Justice for None: Texas Justice Book #1 (35 page)

Gary Griggs, Val realized; one of the best guns on the police force. Val had thought that Gruene had killed Gary; he was relieved that he had been wrong. With Jack
and
Gary out there…

“Griggs,” Hockley said, his frown deepening. “Shit.” He swung around on Jasper and yelled, “Let’s go!” then dropped to his knees and reached down for another bag.

Parker stayed where he was, towering over Valentine and Slick, he stowed his revolver, but kept Slick’s .22 in his hand. He watched as Jasper and Hockley wrestled two more bags out of the pit. There was no clinking this time, but the bags were heavy and awkward. It must be cash. A lot of cash judging by the size and weight of the bag. They brought up three more just like it.

“That’s all of it,” Jasper said. With the removal of the gold and cash, he was almost neck deep in the pit. He thrust up a dirty hand to Hockley.

Hockley looked at the hand, shook his head and backed away. He aimed the flashlight into Jasper’s eyes then pointed his pistol in the same location. “No, that’s where you’re going to stay, Jasper.”

Jasper squinted against the glare of the flashlight, a sardonic smile playing across his swollen lips. He seemed unsurprised by the turn of events, almost bored. “Now, Cap’n, the White Boys—”

“Green-lighted you,” Hockley finished. “No loose ends and more money for everyone.” He shrugged. “A win-win situation.”

Jasper lost the smile. His good eye glared with a percolating malevolence. He started to say something but bit it off. There was nothing to say and he knew it.

“What about him?” Parker interrupted, waving Slick’s pistol at Valentine.

Hockley spoke over his shoulder, his eyes never leaving Jasper. “Shoot him in the head,” he said. “But do it quietly. Use Hernandez’s pistol.”

Parker grinned as he raised the silenced pistol and cocked the hammer.

“One bullet,” he said to Val, “as promised.”

62

Gruene
motioned Victoria back toward the stairs with the pistol, the flashlight hanging slack at her side, casting jumping shadows on the walls and the low-hung rafters.

“Sit down,” Gruene said.

Victoria sat on the edge of the step, her feet tucked up under her, planted squarely on the floor. Gruene stared down at her for a long moment before speaking again. The cocked pistol never moved, it stayed focused on Victoria’s nose.

“You don’t look like much,” Gruene said as her eyes trailed over Victoria’s disheveled clothes and scratched face. “You know what Laroy calls you?” Gruene asked. “Little Miss Dry-Hump.”

“That’s clever,” Victoria replied. “What do you think he’ll be calling you after he gets the Suttons’ money? Little Miss Dead-in-a-Ditch?”

Gruene flushed and shook her head, but Victoria could see the doubt in the woman’s eyes.

“Laroy loves me,” Gruene said, as the flush crept up her neck

“Laroy loves himself,” Victoria replied.
“And money.
If he does come back it’ll be to kill us both,” Victoria paused as her eyes went from Gruene’s pinched, hawkish face down to her broad shoulders and square hips. The woman was all hard lines and sharp edges. And the shapeless black suit she was wearing wasn’t doing her figure any favors. Victoria put her eyes squarely back on Gruene’s. She had set the hook in Gruene’s jaw, now she gave it a hard yank. “Then he’ll use
your
share to find someone prettier.”

“Shut your damned mouth!” Gruene screamed. She stepped closer, her limbs working with a jerky locomotion, and pressed the barrel of the pistol to Victoria’s forehead.

The steel was cold on Victoria’s sweaty skin, but the bullet would heat it right up, she thought. The blast of gunpowder would cook the inside of her skull like a goat head at a South Texas barbecue.

Suddenly, from outside the house came a series of gunshots. Gruene froze and so did Victoria, then both their eyes jumped to the room’s one window, set high in the wall of the basement, though they could see nothing.

Two more shots were followed by silence. The two women remained motionless for several moments but no further shots were fired.

Gruene turned back to Victoria, smiling. “I’d say your husband just got his bus ticket to Hell. And now I’m going to punch yours—” she began, but that was as far as she got.

Victoria was no one’s victim. She lunged up from the step, her right arm sweeping up, aiming for Gruene’s gun hand.

Gruene didn’t hesitate, she pulled the trigger. The pistol belched flame and thunder in Victoria’s face and everything went black.

63

As
Parker cocked the hammer of the little .22, gunfire erupted inside the Suttons’ house.

Hockley half turned toward the sound, instinctively shifting the flashlight’s beam that way, a moment of distraction that Jasper Smith took full advantage of.

Jasper’s right hand darted for the gun tucked in his waistband while his left clawed at the lip of the pit. He vaulted himself up and out of the septic tank, the big automatic in his right hand sweeping up, the hammer going back with an audible ‘click-clack.’

Hockley spun toward the sound. Both men started shooting at the same moment, each of them pulling the trigger as fast as they could without bothering to aim. Val saw Hockley’s right leg buckle as blood bloomed from his thigh, but Hockley kept firing even as another shot hit the flashlight in his hand, shattering the lens and knocking it flying, pitching the clearing into a darkness that was alleviated only by the yellow flashes of gunfire.

Bullets whizzed through the air above Val’s head, crashing into the redbuds with a ratcheting clatter, causing Parker to duck for cover, his focus pulled away from Val to the shadowy gunfight taking place on the edge of the pit. That was all the chance Val was likely to get. He came up off the ground as fast as he could, burning his last reserves of energy, lunging for Parker’s knees in one lumbering, too slow motion. But luck was with him, the move caught Parker completely off guard. Val hit him mid-thigh, wrapped him up one-armed like a defensive corner tackling a wide receiver and took him down hard. As Parker hit the ground, his breath exploding from his lungs, Val grabbed the .22 by the barrel and tried to wrench it free. Parker pulled the trigger and a bullet carved a bloody groove down Val’s forearm from wrist to elbow, the pain crashing through the weakness that was turning his limbs to crepe paper, giving him a shot of adrenaline straight to the brain. He used that momentary energy for all it was worth, dug his toes into the soil and shoved, clambering up Parker’s torso, still gripping the .22 by the smoking-hot barrel, until he was face to face with the younger man, breathing Parker’s s soiled air, panting and sweating and growing weaker by the second.

Parker heaved and bucked beneath him like a rodeo bull while Val struggled to tear the .22 free. Parker twisted right, his legs gaping wide, his heels churning the dry soil, throwing Val halfway off and almost breaking free completely but leaving himself hopelessly exposed in the process. Val saw his chance; he pushed himself up on his left knee and drove his right knee deep into Parker’s groin.

Parker gasped and his grip on the .22 slackened. Val jerked it free and rolled left, fumbling the gun one-handed as he rose to a sitting position. His hand was numb, trembling. It seemed to take an eternity for him to turn the gun around, get his hand around the grip and bring it to bear on Parker.

Parker was starting to rise by then, the revolver that had been strapped to his hip now in his fist. He lifted the pistol, cocking the hammer in the same motion, but Val was already aiming the .22 across his body, the extended barrel just inches from Parker’s temple.

Val squeezed the trigger three times as quickly as he could. Parker flinched with each bullet’s impact, but the guy was tougher than he looked. He didn’t go down, he just kept struggling to lift the pistol, his body responding to messages sent out from a brain that was crackling and sparking around the three low-velocity slugs.

Val had heard of men who had survived after being shot in the head with a .22. He wasn’t taking that chance with Parker, he couldn’t afford to. A ten-year old girl could have kicked Val’s ass at that moment. He fired twice more in rapid succession. He was about to fire again, when Parker stiffened then dropped back into the weeds and lay still.

Val’s eyes spun around the clearing, his ears straining at the sudden silence; there were still two more men with guns out there in the darkness.

Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound.

Cautiously, Val pushed himself to his knees. The pain in his shoulder was almost too much. Blood dripped from his fingertips, splattering the brown grass. And then the world spun out of focus and he found himself face down. For a long moment he teetered on the edge of consciousness, but the memory of the gunshots from inside the house drew him back.

“Victoria,” he croaked. Dead grass scratched his lips and the taste of dust filled his mouth. He shoved himself up to his knees and stayed that way for a moment, unsure if he could rise. But he would crawl if he had to.

“Help me,” someone moaned from the direction of the septic tank, a gurgling sound like water trickling into a sewer grate. “Help me.”

Val cocked his head toward the voice and narrowed his eyes. By the thin light of the moon, he saw Hockley lying on his back ten feet away, one hand trailing over the lip of the septic tank, his head resting on a filthy Adidas bag. The Sheriff’s Captain had his hands clasped over his abdomen where blood was spilling out at a fatal rate.

But where was Jasper Smith?

Val’s eyes panned the yard and the dark row of hedges, but he could see very little. Still, he had the sense that Jasper was not nearby. Was Jasper making a run for it? No, Val knew in his gut that the ex-con was not running. Jasper had a death to repay. He had gone after Victoria.

“Help me,” Hockley said again, the words barely audible. He spit up a lungful of blood onto his shirt. “Help me.”

“Sure, I’ll help you,” Val slurred. “Right into a coffin.” There would be no trial, no lawyers, no prison, and no parole for Hockley any more than there had been for Lamar or Lemuel. Val raised the silenced .22 and tried to focus on the front sight.

A woman screamed inside the house, the noise huge in the silence of the deserted neighborhood. Val froze, but a second even louder scream acted like a starter’s pistol. He turned his back on Hockley and headed for the house at a shambling, weaving trot.

Hockley was as good as dead, anyway, but there was still one man left standing.

One man left to kill.

64

Victoria
came off the step like a sprinter out of the blocks, lunging inside the gun’s arc just as Gruene squeezed the trigger.

The gunshot lit up the right side of Victoria’s face with pain that was like a blast from an acetylene torch, the flash instantly blinding her as the bullet whipped past her cheek and blew splinters from the step behind her. Her arm-sweep missed the gun completely, but collided with Gruene’s flashlight, knocking it from the woman’s hand. It hit the dirt floor and winked out, pitching the room into utter blackness, but Gruene didn’t stop shooting; she desperately worked the trigger, firing again and again, blasting ragged holes in the stairs and lighting up the room with staccato flares of yellow light. Just enough light that the wild punch Victoria threw connected solidly with Gruene’s jawbone a split second before Victoria’s shoulder slammed into Gruene’s sternum and drove her over backwards,

They hit the dirt floor in a tangle, Victoria atop Gruene. The pistol in Gruene’s hand went flying, but she didn’t go for the one tucked into her waistband, she was too busy trying to escape Victoria,

Gruene was slender, but she was whip-steel strong. She heaved her hips and bucked Victoria off then threw a brutal right cross of her own, clipping Victoria over the right eye. Even from a position flat on her back, without any leverage, Gruene managed to put some zip on the punch. She knocked Victoria sprawling then scrambled to her knees and dove on top of her, pinning Victoria to the floor. There was almost no light in the basement, just a gray trickle from the window at the top of the far wall, so Victoria never saw the boney fist that caught her solidly in the temple and lit up her brain like a road flare, or the next punch that smashed her lower lip into her teeth. The taste of blood filled her mouth. Gruene threw another punch, a hasty blow, much less well aimed, that glanced off the top of Victoria’s forehead with a flat ‘Pop!’ as one of Gruene’s knuckles gave way.

Gruene screamed and jerked her injured hand back as if she had been bitten, already starting to rise. Before she could stand fully, Victoria lunged up from the floor and viciously raked her nails across Gruene’s face. Gruene gasped, staggered away and fell to her knees. Even in the darkness, Victoria could see the shimmer of blood on her face.

Gruene didn’t speak, didn’t curse or scream, she gave a rasping hiss, a primitive sound first heard in the caves of Neanderthal man, and boiled up off the dirt floor. She lunged at Victoria, the gun tucked in her waistband forgotten in her rage.

But Victoria was no stranger to a fistfight, she was already on her feet and ready for Gruene. She sidestepped Gruene’s charge and threw a perfectly timed right hook, getting her body weight behind it, driving her fist into Gruene’s ear. The blow and Gruene’s momentum sent the woman tumbling into a drunken roll that ended when she hit the far wall with a bone-jarring thump.

Victoria fell as well, the force of her punch carrying her off her feet. She hit the dirt, but she didn’t lie still. Gruene still had another gun! Victoria rolled away from the female detective, spinning across the floor, only to come up against a wooden workbench placed against the opposite wall. She scrambled up and ducked around the corner of the bench then crouched there as her eyes spun around the dark basement, seeing nothing but murky shadows. Where the hell was Gruene? Victoria had lost her bearings, though she thought the female detective was straight ahead and to the right. Victoria tried to listen for movement, but her heart was beating too loudly, her breath coming in ragged, panicky gasps.

“It’s not over yet,” Gruene said in a choked, winded voice. She
was
straight ahead, maybe fifteen feet away. “Your husband is dead. And Laroy will be here soon.”

Victoria said nothing. She crouched tensely against the wall, trying to pinpoint Gruene’s exact location.

“Maybe we’ll give you to Jasper Smith,” Gruene said.

Again Victoria made no reply. She knew Gruene was trying to provoke her, to make her talk and give away her position.

“Maybe we’ll give him your little boys too. He’ll carve them up like baby pigs. He’ll—”

“He’ll end up with a needle in his arm down in Huntsville just like you,” Victoria snapped, her anger overwhelming her good sense. “I’ll be there to watch them give you the juice—”

A gun flash lit up the basement and a bullet blasted cement chips from the wall beside Victoria’s head, sending a fistful of rock-shrapnel into her already damaged face, drawing quick blood. But in the brief flash of light Victoria had seen Gruene seated on the floor, leaning against the wall, her pistol resting on her knee.

And Gruene had seen her as well.

Victoria fell away from the workbench just in time to duck another bullet that knocked sparks from the wall. She hit the ground on her knees but came instantly back to her feet and charged across the room. Another shot ripped the air near her left ear, but she had almost closed the gap by then, just feet to go. Just feet between her and a pistol that was undoubtedly tracking her approach.

Victoria did the only thing she could do; she dove for Gruene’s shadow just as Gruene squeezed the trigger for the fourth time, sending another shot whipping past Victoria’s head to blast a hole in the ceiling.

Victoria landed atop Gruene, grabbed the gun and wrenched it down, trapping it between their bodies. Gruene squirmed and thrashed desperately beneath her. Knees and elbows drove into flesh and the air was thick with heavy breathing and grunts of pain and rage as they fought for the gun, a fight that Victoria was winning; her weight and leverage overwhelming Gruene. And Gruene knew it. In desperation, she began to squeeze the trigger.

“No!” Victoria screamed and wrenched the gun down and sideways, twisting her body hard to the left. A muffled gunshot and then another. Victoria felt intense heat followed by agonizing pain and a wet flush of blood. She released the gun and spun away, her hands clasping her bloody stomach. This time she didn’t try to rise, didn’t try to run, she just lay there, bracing herself for an agonizing death. The throbbing pain in her belly at that moment was nothing compared to what she knew was coming. Soon all the pain sensors would light up and she’d be screaming. Right up until the moment Gruene delivered the coup de grâce.

“Oh, God,” Gruene moaned, followed by a soft thumping sound that Victoria instantly identified as the detective’s heels drumming the floor’s packed soil. “Oh, God,” Gruene said again, her voice weak, shivering, slurred.

Still, Victoria didn’t move. Gingerly, she tested the flesh of her stomach. Pain raced through her like she had been hot-wired to a car battery, but she found no gunshot, just powder burns and plenty of blood. Blood that was not her own.

“Jesus, help me,” Gruene said with that same sloppy lilt to her voice. “Help me.”

Carefully, still fearing for her life, Victoria rolled to her knees. But she didn’t go to Gruene, instead she crossed unsteadily to the staircase, the only object in the room she could make out clearly in the darkness. She dropped to her knees at the base of the steps and felt around in the dirt. It took her a moment to find the flashlight. When she did, she turned it on, but nothing happened. She shook it and the light came on then went out again. The base cap was loose. She tightened it and the beam came on solid and clear.

Victoria panned the circle of light onto Gruene. The detective’s head was cocked against the wall, her legs splayed wide, her arms slack at her sides. Blood was bubbling from her chest. Gruene flinched away from the light, squeezing her eyes shut. Her arms flapped weakly at her sides, making a bloody snow angel in the dirt.

Victoria could see by the amount of blood that Gruene was dying fast. Gruene had just tried to kill her, but Victoria couldn’t just stand there and watch the woman bleed out. She wasn’t built that way. She had to do something. And then she thought of Valentine, outside with a trio of killers.

To hell with Gruene! She had to get to Val!

Victoria turned and charged up the stairs. She was halfway up them when a flashlight beam hit her square in the face, dazzling her.

“You ain’t leaving the party so soon, are you, honey?” Jasper Smith asked from the doorway at the top of the steps.

Victoria froze as her eyes locked up on a B-movie monster coated in black slime, broken teeth glimmering like shards of gray pottery. Instinctively, she backed away, moving quickly, back down to the bottom of the steps.

Jasper had a flashlight in his left hand and a dingy gray satchel in his right. He dropped the satchel with a heavy, clanking thump, but his hand wasn’t empty, he was still holding something.

“Oh, Jesus,” she breathed, as her eyes made out the axe in Jasper’s hand.

He grinned at her as he hefted the axe to his shoulder, his one good eye shining with a merry light. He came down the steps toward her at a leisurely pace, drawing the moment out, the stench of an open sewer preceding him, filling the basement, settling over Victoria in an unbearable fog. Her eyes remained on the axe, her feet rooted to the dirt floor, frozen like a deer pinned in a car’s headlights. She remembered the women murdered in this basement, the crime scene photos of their dismembered bodies, memories that cinched off her air and stole her voice.

Jasper stopped in front of her, close enough to touch, but Victoria remained frozen, her attention fixed on the axe. He didn’t say a word; he just hit her in the face with the flashlight, striking her with enough force to knock her off her feet. The flashlight in her hand went flying. It skittered across the dirt floor and came to rest in the far corner, still on, aimed into the middle of the room, casting a watery yellow ribbon of light across the floor.

Victoria landed on her face, but quickly rolled over onto her back in a panic, dazed by the force of the blow, but not so dazed that her heels didn’t scrabble at the dirt, propelling her along on her butt, away from Jasper Smith, until she came up against the workbench once again.

Jasper didn’t pursue her. He stepped over to Gruene’s prostrate body and dropped his own flashlight to the floor. “Hey there, detective Sally.” he said. Gruene blinked up at him and said nothing. But Jasper wasn’t interested in conversation. He planted his feet wide, hefted the axe like a demented Paul Bunyan and brought it whistling down, swinging from his heels, driving it straight through Gruene’s ribcage with a sound like breaking chicken bones.

Gruene screamed. Coughing gouts of blood expelled from her mouth and her arms and legs thrashed wildly, but only for the briefest of moments before they drooped like dead vines to the floor.

Gruene lay still, her flesh going the color of cigarette ash.

Jasper watched Gruene die, a satisfied smile twisting his battered face into a gargoyle’s mask. When Gruene went slack, he turned in Victoria’s direction and his smile grew wider, contorting his face even further. He walked toward her, leaving the axe jutting from Gruene’s chest.

“Turn out the lights,” he sang in a rich baritone, “the party’s over. But, sweetheart, I saved the last dance for you.” As he crooned, Jasper dug a lock-blade knife from his hip pocket and flicked it open. Four-inches of well-honed steel reflected the light of the two flashlights lying in the dirt. “You and me is gonna
slow
dance, darlin’,” he told her.

Victoria pushed herself up from the floor. Her knees were so weak that she had to lean against the wall for support. As Jasper took a step toward her, waving the knife in front of him, cutting lazy figure eights in the air, she slid along the wall to her left, her shoulder blades dragging along the rough rock, heading for the far corner of the room.

Jasper kept coming, the offal smell wafting off him engulfing her. She gagged and her stomach heaved.

“Why, ain’t you a delicate little thing?” he said. “I know I don’t smell so pretty, but
I am
a very rich man. That’s supposed to go over big with the ladies.” By then, Jasper had crowded Victoria into the corner. Her only way out was through him. Past the knife blade. “You might say I was filthy rich,” Jasper added as he reached for her with his free hand.

Victoria ducked the hand and lunged toward the steps, but Jasper was too close. He snatched a fistful of her hair, jerked her to a stop and threw his arm around her throat, squeezing her shoulders tight to his filthy chest, choking off her air, lifting her feet clear of the ground. She kicked his shins and scratched at his bare forearm, but Jasper only tightened his grip. There was a sudden, sharp pain and a brittle crackle as her larynx fractured. Her lungs began to burn and her vision went gray. She was on the edge of unconsciousness when a sound from the top of the basement steps drew her and Jasper’s attention and caused Jasper to slacken his choke hold.

The sound was unmistakably the double ‘click’ of a pistol’s hammer being cocked.

Someone was there in the hall doorway at the top of the stairway, only a dim silhouette, but Victoria recognized him anyway.

“Valentine,” she said, her voice plaintive and thin, whistling through her damaged larynx, “I’m ready to go home now.”