no record of a grand jury testimony. Is there or isn't there? Don't
you fucking lie to me!" he yelled, back-handing O'Donnell with the
gun.
Tim's head jerked to one side with the blow. When he sat back up,
blood was running from a cut beneath his right eye. "We don't have
court reporters for normal grand jury sessions, but you can request one
if you want to keep a record."
Derrick smacked him again in the same place, bursting the cut open even
wider. "Now you fucking tell me, man!" He pursed his lips, trying to
figure out his next move. "OK, bitch."
I assumed he was talking to me.
"You think you're so smart, but now I know you got a transcript, you're
gonna tell me where it is."
"It's at the office," I said.
"That's bullshit," Derrick said. "Tim tells me you been holding out on
him. He couldn't find the files in your office and tells me you've
been hiding them at home. Only way he knew you indicted me was a
secretary. Ain't that right, Tim?"
I looked over at O'Donnell. The right side of his face was swollen and
bloodied.
"Alice mentioned it to me," he said by way of explanation. "She
recognized the name and thought I should know about it."
In an office where I could never find anyone to help me, I'd managed to
find someone who was too competent. I should've known Alice Gernstein
wouldn't miss a beat.
It was clear that O'Donnell was losing his resolve to fight. It was
also clear that I wasn't digesting the new information quickly enough.
My first impulse was to be pissed at him for snooping through my
office, but then I remembered that this was a man who had helped kill
Jamie Zimmerman, sent an innocent man to death row, and led the
Derringers to me to save his own ass.
Derrick was behind me now, running the head of his gun along my
collarbone, pushing aside my hair to graze the back of my neck. "Tell
us where the transcript is, Sam, or I'm gonna have one hell of a time
on your buddy Kendra before she dies."
I resisted the urge to tell him I wasn't as stupid as O'Donnell. I
knew they were going to kill us and do horrible things to Kendra before
they killed her, whether I was helpful or not. I also knew that the
promise of those transcripts was the only leverage I had at this
point.
Luckily, I'd left my case file in the trunk of my car. "I've got them
locked in a safe," I said.
"Good girl," Derrick said. "Now where's the safe?"
"Upstairs," I said, "in the master bedroom."
"Aangh," he responded, like a buzzer on a game show, "wrong answer. I
personally tossed this place looking for your little friend's peepshow
pictures, and there ain't no safe."
"It's an old wall safe. It's hidden in the baseboard. There's no way
you'd see it."
I could picture Derrick searching his memory for the ransacking of my
bedroom, doubting whether he would have noticed an irregularity in the
oversized baseboards. He threw a note pad and pen at me from the
dining room table. "The combination," he said. "Where is it in the
baseboards?"
"Directly behind the bed," I said, as I scrawled down three numbers
that were all slightly off. If my guess about what was going to happen
was wrong, I could always tell them that the safe stuck sometimes.
Derrick snatched the paper from my outstretched hand and gave it to his
brother, gesturing with his head toward the stairs. "Here, take
these," he said, throwing him a pair of gloves from his jacket pocket.
Frank took the stairs two at a time. I heard a few thumps from
upstairs, followed by silence and a few more thumps. I tried not to
think about Frank Derringer being in my bedroom.
After a few more rounds of thumps, Frank scrambled back down the stairs
I had sworn at myself many times for buying a solid maple bed that I
couldn't move without the help of a strong friend. But it had just
been added to the very short list of things I'd never get rid of. That
is, if I lived past eight o'clock.
Derrick was less happy with the news. "Jesus Christ, man.
Can't you do a fucking thing by yourself?" Then he looked around the
room, in search of Plan B. C'mon, pea brain, I thought, watching him
ponder the possible combinations. There's only one right answer
here.
His eyes eventually fell on me. He gestured toward the stairs with his
head and said, "You, go up and help." Yes! Good answer, Derrick, good
answer! "Try anything, and Ken-dra will pay the price," he yelled as I
went up the stairs, Frank behind me.
Frank was a lightweight. The bed was approximately four centimeters
from where I'd last left it. I walked around to the far side, saying,
"If we each take one leg of the. headboard and pull back, it's usually
the best way to move it."
I watched Frank take his position on the other side of the bed, and
then I crouched to my knees to reach beneath the bed ruffle and grab
the headboard. As Frank pulled against his side of the bed, I pulled
on my side with my right hand. With my left, I reached inside the top
shelf of my nightstand and pulled my .25-caliber automatic loose from
the tape that held it to the bottom of my drawer. I slid it onto the
floor next to me and then pulled on the bed hard with all my weight.
The bed jerked a few feet away from the wall. Frank rose from his side
of the bed and saw my gun aimed on him before I'd fired off the shot.
If he could've just stood still, the bullet would have hit him dead
center in the chest. Instead, he ran for the door quickly enough that
it caught him in the right shoulder.
I fired off a second shot but missed and hit the doorframe. Damn. Too
much time on the firing range, not enough chasing down wily targets.
Two quick shots rang from downstairs as I followed Frank to the door.
By the time I got there, he was almost to the end of the hallway
leading to the stairs. I fired another shot. I must've hit him,
because I heard a low grunt. I must not have gotten him good, though,
because he turned down the stairs, and my next shot ripped through the
shameless Warhol knockoff on my wall.
Assuming that Derrick would be waiting for me at the bottom, I took the
stairs with my back pressed against the inner wall. I stopped at the
last step before the landing, steeling myself to make the turn. The
pressure of my heart pounding against my chest was fierce, and I fought
to catch my breath.
I poked my head around the corner and then retreated to the safety of
the wall again. Keeping my back against the wall, I began moving down
the second half of the stairs. Tim O'Donnell was still in my Mission
chair, but now blood was oozing from a dark hole in his forehead. From
the looks of things, a second bullet had been fired into his groin.
As much as I'd practiced shooting, I'd never made a sweep through a
house before, and I didn't know what I was supposed to do next. Without
any other basis of info
rmation, I instinctively relied upon that most
reliable of sources, television.
From the landing, I could see that the front entrance and living room
were clear. I swung off the stairs in a half circle to face the back
of the house, my gun outstretched in front of me. Still clear.
The living room and Tim's dead body were to my left now as I faced my
dining room and kitchen. I reached down slowly, keeping my gun pointed
in front of me, and grabbed my purse. If I could just make it out the
front door and to the safety of my car, I'd be home free.
As I reached to unbolt the front door, I saw Derrick spring around the
corner of the dining room with his gun in front of him. He must've
watched TV as a kid, too. What he should've been doing was practicing
at the firing range, because he was a piss-poor shot. I heard the
mirror behind me crash as a bullet ripped into it.
I fired off two shots as I jumped across the hallway, over the top of
my sofa, and into the coffee table. I muffled a cry as pain shot
through my left side where I landed against the oak edge. I scurried
backward to get myself out of the pool of blood that was quickly
forming beneath O'Donnell and my Mission chair. The noise was blocked
out by the sound of the back door sliding open, followed by tires
squealing down the street.
I don't know how long I lay there, listening to myself breathe, trying
to convince myself that I couldn't hear anything else. Even Vinnie was
quiet now.
I finally mustered up the courage to crawl around the back of the sofa
and sneak a quick peek into the dining room. I'd done right by the
firing range. Derrick Derringer was on his back, two bullet holes
squarely in the middle of his chest. Apparently, it was OK for me to
move while I was firing, as long as my target stood still.
Based on the trail of blood through the dining room, into the kitchen,
and out the back door, I guessed that Frank had fled when he saw his
brother go down. More blood outside suggested that Frank was long
gone.
I freed Vinnie from the pantry as I dialed 911. Then I sat in a ball
on the kitchen floor holding him and my gun close to my chest until I
heard sirens pulling up to the house and fists pounding on the front
door.
Sixteen.
When I finally woke up the next morning, my whole body was on fire. I
was also sleepy and had a sore throat. By the time the police finally
left around two in the morning I'd related my entire story three
different times. First, I had to tell the patrol officers who
responded to the 911 call, so they wouldn't shoot me when I answered
the front door with a gun in my hand, two dead bodies behind me, and
bullet holes all over the place.
Then I had to give it to Walker and Johnson, who drew the MCT call-out.
They offered to page Chuck for me. I guess once your sex life's on the
front page of the newspaper, it's considered public knowledge. They
apparently didn't know the whole story, because they seemed caught off
guard when I asked them to call my dad instead.
Then I had to explain it all a third time to Griffith, who showed up
just as the medical examiner was zipping the body bag closed around Tim
O'Donnell's corpse.
"The Chief called me," he said. "He thought I should know that two of
my deputies were involved in a shoot-out."
By then, my narrative skills had gotten pretty proficient. The
Derringers' involvement in street-level prostitution. O'Donnell's
extracurricular interests, which led him from what he thought was a
staged fantasy with an underage prostitute to the murder of Jamie
Zimmerman. How Kendra's assault arose from the same scenario, but this
time with Travis Culver as the not-so-innocent dupe. Culver's lies
about Frank's car. O'Donnell's fabrication of the Long Hauler letters.
My night of shoot-'em-up action. I dumped it all on him. Except the
part where I'd given O'Donnell my resignation.
"You should've come to me with this, Samantha," he said. He looked
tired, and, in the light of my kitchen, the wrinkles that usually
seemed distinguished just looked old.
"I thought I did the right thing at the time. I knew O'Donnell was set
on killing the case, and I assumed you'd listen to him unless I had
some leverage."
He stood to leave. "You should give me more credit, Sam. I'm an
independent thinker, and now I'm going to go home to think." As he
headed out the door, he gave me a wave over his shoulder. "Nice house
you got here. See you in the morning."
I had assumed from his comment that I was supposed to go to the office
this morning, regardless of my sleep deprivation, sore throat, and
aches. It definitely beat being dead, though.
And at least I was safe from the Derringers. At my insistence, Walker
had dispatched patrol officers to watch Haley and Kendra while police
began their search for Frank Der ringer. I thought about doing the
same for Travis Culver, but as far as I was concerned, he could fend
for himself. The warning call I placed to Henry Lee Babbitt seemed
courtesy enough.
Around the time Griffith left, Johnson snapped his cell phone shut and
announced they'd found Frank.
"Was he dumb enough to go home?" I asked.
"Wherever he was headed, he never got there. Traffic responded to a
major one-car accident on I-Eighty-four. The car burst through the
railing at an overpass and flipped head first onto the concrete below.
Driver was dead by the time they cut the car open. They were searching
the car for holes, trying like hell to figure out where the bullets in
the driver's shoulder and ass came from, when they heard the APB for
Derringer on the radio."
"His butt?" Walker said.
"Yeah. Looks like that second bullet of yours went straight into the
man's left cheek, Kincaid. Must have hurt like a mother fucker when he
was driving on the freeway. He was probably squirming around trying to
take the weight off his bony ass when he lost control."
I hadn't been able to laugh with them about it then, but in the morning
shower, as I rubbed a bar of Dove on my own left bum, I could see the
humor, and I laughed until I started crying again.
A strange bubble of silence followed me through the courthouse as I
walked to my office. I guess no one knew what to say to me. This
morning's news had featured vague reports of a fatal shoot-out at my
house involving the Derringer brothers and O'Donnell. The reports
didn't explain that they were all trying to kill me, only that "police
were investigating."
When I got into my office, I checked my voice mail, hoping for a
message from Chuck. No luck. He hadn't called my home or cell,
either. I did, however, get a message from Griffith, summoning me to
his office.
When I got there, he handed me a piece of paper and asked me what I
thought.
It was a letter from Griffith to Governor Jackson, supporting the
pardon requests of Margaret Landry and Jesse Taylor. It explained that
&n
bsp; all currently available evidence indicated that Frank Derringer and Tim
O'Donnell had killed Jamie Zimmerman during a rape arranged through a
teenage prostitution ring managed by the Derringer brothers. O'Donnell
had pursued the case against Landry and Taylor based upon the
circumstantial evidence that existed, possibly providing the
confidential information to Landry that eventually helped secure the
convictions. Then, when Frank and an unnamed suspect assaulted Kendra,
he'd done what he could to get rid of the case. When I thwarted his
efforts to issue it as a general felony, he fabricated the Long Hauler
by using confidential information he found about unsolved murders in
the cold case database and then ordered me to dismiss the case.
The memo went on to explain my discovery of the Derringers' connection
to the sex industry. After briefing Griffith, I'd obtained an
indictment against Derrick Derringer as the first step in an envisioned
investigation into the Zimmerman and Martin cases. Unfortunately,
O'Donnell had discovered the investigation and tipped off the
Derringers. They broke into my house, I heroically saved the day, and
Griffith would be pursuing any remaining culprits to the full extent of
the law.
It was accurate in the ways that counted, and at this point I really
didn't care if Duncan wanted to cover his ass. He was covering mine
too, and the end result was the right one. "Looks good," I said. "Will
Jackson issue the pardon?"
"It's a done deal," he said. "The governor's office will announce it