Injustice for All (30 page)

“Out of the way. Police!” Peters roared behind me, but the crowd became denser, more compact. Absolutely silent, and compact. To this day, I don’t know if that silence existed anywhere but in my mind. It ceased when I reached the escalators.

People coming down screamed and swirled back up the moving stairs, attempting to escape the carnage below. They encountered a wall of people above them who stood unable to move, transfixed by fear. I saw Darrell Watkins as he broke and ran. Gun in hand, he dashed up the escalator three and four steps at a time, plunging over people, pushing them aside.

Delayed pandemonium erupted through the crowd as I touched the rail of the down escalator.

Maybe the noise was there the whole time and I only just then heard it. Clearing the way with my drawn .38, I charged up the downward treadmill, desperate to reach the top. My only hope was to drive him farther up into the building. Away from the crowds. Away from doors that would lead him outside.

Peters must have been only one or two steps behind me at the outset, but the crowd caught him in a crushing wave of panic and carried him back toward the door with them. I paused and turned briefly at the top of the stairs, hoping he was with me.

He wasn’t. 

It would be Darrell Watkins and J. P. Beaumont. Alone. The Trade Center is made up of a soaring atrium, with a ground floor and two layers of shops arranged around circling balconies under a huge skylight. Watkins charged up the second escalator.

On the second level the crowd had thinned. I raced across the landing to the up escalator and followed, watching in dismay as he disappeared around a corner and down a hall before I reached the next level.

He was halfway down the long corridor when I turned the corner in hot pursuit. “Stop or I’ll shoot,” I shouted.

I paused to fire, but he was out of range. My slug ponged harn-lessly off the wall behind him. I ducked my chin into my chest and sprinted down the corridor after him as he vanished into a stairwell. Gasping for breath, I flung open the fire door.

I stood on a concrete landing, listening to the echo of retreating footsteps. For one heart-stopping moment, I thought they were going down. Then a gust of fresh air rushed down the stairwell into my face, followed by the warning shriek of an alarm on an opened emergency exit. He had gone to the roof.

I crept up the stairs. It could be a trap. He might have opened and shut the outside door to trick me. Maybe he was lying in wait around the blind corner of the stairs, ready to blast me into oblivion. I held my breath as I rounded the turn. He wasn’t there. The stain; leading to the emergency exit were empty.

Below I heard the wail of sirens as ambulances and emergency vehicles raced to the scene. They would set up a command post and summon the Emergency Response Team, trying to position them to negotiate a surrender or, as a last resort, to fire off a clean shot. Peters would direct officers through the building, evacuating the crowd, securing first one area and then another. But all that was happening in another world, far below us. Out on the roof, Darrell Watkins was waiting. For me.

I pushed open the heavy door. Over the wail of the alarm, I heard a bullet whine past the door’s metal frame above my head. That was his second shot. I counted, wondering subconsciously what kind of a gun Homer had smuggled into his jacket. How many bullets?

Did Darrell have four more shots, or seven? And did he have another gun of his own?

Standing in what amounted to a metal bunker at the top of the stairwell, I was better off trying to draw his fire and exhaust his ammunition while I could use the heavy door as armor between us. Each bullet he expended was one less available to slaughter innocent bystanders. Or me. I yanked the alarm wire off the wall, silencing its bloodcurdling screech. In the sudden quiet that followed, a surprising calm settled over me. He was trapped. His only way out was past me. If I could drive him to a frenzy, force him to attack me in the open, maybe I could end it. The irony struck me with the force of a physical blow. Darrell Watkins and J. P. Beaumont, men who had possessed the same woman, were locked in mortal combat.

I remembered Homer’s hopeless pronouncement in the kitchen. “Put him out of his misery.”

I was tempted! God, was I tempted! But shooting was too easy, too good for him. I wanted him to live to know his loss, to pay a price, to suffer humiliation and defeat, to live out his days with Philip Lathrop as his lifelong companion. They deserved each other. I would take him alive. I steeled myself to use every weapon at my disposal.

Somehow Ginger Watkins would forgive me. I opened the door a crack so he could hear me.

“She was a hell of a lay,” I called into the night. "What?”

“Ginger. She was one hell of a lay,” I taunted. “Too bad you didn’t know how good she was.”

Another bullet whined off the metal door. That was three. “You lying son of a bitch!”

“What’s the matter. Can’t take a dose of your own medicine? She was hot stuff, Darrell,”

I continued, soft enough so he had to strain to hear me. “She was so hungry. You never gave her what she ‘wanted. She needed a man to take her, to make her know she was a woman.”

I waited, silence brittle between us, hoping another bullet would crash into the wall near my head. Nothing happened. He was across the roof from me, crouched out of range behind a small fenced terrace outlined in a sudden splash of moonlight.

Needing to draw his fire, I opened the door and spun around toward the back of the rooftop box that formed the top of the stairwell.

It worked. Too well. A slug ripped into my upper left arm, spinning me against the wall. Searing pain came quickly, making it hard to talk, to concentrate. How many bullets was that now, four or five?

“You couldn’t handle that, could you?” I rasped through gritted teeth. “You had to have young ones like Darlene, girls you could impress with money if not performance.

Ginger had been empty so long I couldn’t fill her up.” “Liar,” he said.

“Just because you couldn’t get it up for her didn’t mean nobody could.” “No,” he croaked, his voice a hoarse, broken whisper. “It’s not true.” “It is, too. Ask me.

Ask Sig. Didn’t he tell you? He could have. ” “Maybe with , him, not you.” His voice rose dangerously. A tongue of flame spewed from his pistol in the darkness. The shot whistled harmlessly away into the night sky. Five or six? Let there be only six bullets, I prayed, not nine.

“I can prove it. How about the stretch marks from Katy? Remember those, or had it been so long since you looked at her that you forgot?” I waited to see if he would reply. There was nothing. No response. “She’d have been stupid to divorce you,” I continued. “She should have just screwed around behind your back. That would have been fair.”

Several separate shots peppered the wall of the stairwell, followed by silence. For a long time we remained motionless, frozen in place, him across the fenced balcony and me behind the stairwell, a sticky stream of blood oozing through my jacket sleeve.

I couldn’t tell for sure if he had emptied the bullet chamber. Or if he had another gun. It was time to play Russian roulette.

I stepped into the open. If he had only one shot left, he could squander it on me.

Whether or not he got me, Darrell Watkins was finished. “I always knew she was fucking around. She had to be.” “Is that why you killed her, Darrell, or was it the money?”

He raised up, his form outlined on the other side of the terrace. “Both,” he said simply. “She was going to divorce me.” He spoke with the wonder of a philosopher contemplating life’s fundamental mysteries. He seemed quiet, subdued. “Drop the gun, Darrell.”

“I won the election. Did you know that?” “Put your hands on your head. You’re under arrest.” My words were a catalyst, spurring him to action. With an enraged roar, he vaulted over the fence, charging at me like a wounded bull. He landed on the terrace.

Except it wasn’t a terrace at all. It was the skylight. The glass shattered. With an agonizing screech, he plunged out of sight, crashing into the melee of television cameras and milling people three stories below. I walked over to the jagged hole and looked down. Far below, Darrell’s crumpled body lay in a broken heap, seeping blood on the red brick floor. Around him television cameras hummed, fighting for focus and position, recording live footage for the people staying up late to watch election-night returns. Viewers would have their full recommended daily dose of blood and guts before they fell asleep. In living color. The door behind me flew open.

Peters burst onto the rooftop, his .38 glinting in the moonlight. “Are you all right?” he demanded. “I am now.”

Chapter 38

WE went to Peters’ house in Kirkland the following Sunday for dinner. My left arm was in a sling. Cody Borden insisted she knew just what I needed. She would cook Southern for usSouthern Fried Chicken, black-eyed peas, and combread. She bustled around Peters’ kitchen with Peters serving as cook’s helper. She wore stiletto heels.

One of Peters’ oversized aprons was cinched tightly around her tiny waist. She looked better than any middle-aged woman has a right to look. Peters was catering to the invalid. I had been off work the rest of the week, recuperating. In the interim, Peters, Cody, and Ames had joined forces to spoil me rotten.

Ames, content for once to let Cody out of his sight, sat on a couch with Heather and Tracie cuddled on either side of him. He was teaching them the Pledge of Allegiance.

They had never learned it while they lived with New Dawn in Broken Springs, Oregon.

At Greenwood School in Kirkland, they were required to memorize it.

I listened on the sidelines. Uncle Ralph, as they called Ames, showed infinite patience.

It was funny that the man who inspired stark terror in the heart of Maxwell Cole was meek as a lamb with those two little ankle-biters. They had him wrapped around their fingers. It was a quiet family setting, as American as apple pie. I sat in an easy chair across from them, my arm safe from squirming little bodies, sipping a McNaughton’s. Physically, I remained in the room, but my thoughts roamed far afield.

Had Homer Watkins lived, things would have been different. Since there were no surviving partners, however, Armour Life would pay the insurance proceeds to each person’s next of kin. Tom Lander had put his 76 Station on the market. He planned to buy a motor home and hit the road. Sig’s children had been notified and were in the process of filing a claim. No one had yet been able to locate Mona’s brother, but Cody said she was working on it. Cody said it would be only a matter of days before death benefits owing them were paid. As far as we could tell, Homer had no surviving kin, and his attorney said that his will left everything he owned to Children’s Orthopedic Hospital.

I understood Blia Vang had used her reward money to make a down payment on a small house with room for a large garden. Ames was handling those details, including getting Blia hired on in the Westin laundry. Blia’s whole family-aunt, uncle, and cousins-would be moving out of the low-income housing development and into a place of their own.

I didn’t go to Homer and Darrell’s double funeral. I sent flowers to Homer, not Darrell.

The funeral was widely attended. And televised. Thinking about Ginger still hurt, but Anne Corley’s pain was a little more remote. I had Ginger to thank for that.

She had helped me say good-bye to Anne, to move beyond that chapter in my life. Without her, I don’t know how long it would have taken to get back on track.

I returned to Peters’ living room in time to hear the girls repeating in singsong unison: “One nation, under God, invisible, with liverty injustice for all.” “And justice for all,” Ames corrected gently. I took a long sip of McNaughtons. Thinking about Ginger and Mona and Sig and Homer, I wondered if the girls hadn’t gotten it right the first time.