A Dark and Lonely Place (45 page)

T
he brief glimpse of towering white clouds and Miami’s wide blue sky took John’s breath away as Officer Frank Miguel shoved him roughly into the Corrections Department van. Could I live without seeing that sky or Laura for the rest of my life? he wondered.

Is she safe? Does she know where I am? Where is she? He tried to focus on sending her a message. Was it over? Was his life slipping away?

Officer Frank Miguel rode shotgun as a corrections officer drove. John was being transported to Ward D at JMH, a half mile away, but their circuitous route would take them far afield.

Nothing in Miami is ever simple, sensible, or easy.

John had to be booked into the jail in the civic complex, less than a mile away, first. The cash-strapped county had recently suspended prisoner intake at all but that single location. Police from all over the two-thousand-square-mile county were now required to drive further and wait longer to process their prisoners. On busy nights, the streets outside the jail were jammed bumper to bumper with idling police cars.

A few municipalities, small departments unable to spare on-duty cops to spend hours in line for their prisoners to be fingerprinted, photographed, and screened, instituted catch-and-release programs. Suspects they arrested were asked to sign a promise to show up in court and then released.

Earlier in the week, Miami-Dade’s prisoner processing had become even more problematical when a major roof leak in the booking section shut down the antiquated electrical system at the main jail. As a result a shuttered facility in another part of the county was temporarily reopened.

That’s where John Ashley would be processed and booked into the system, along with two other prisoners in the back of the van with
him. The two were talkative. One had fought cops who tried to eject him from a Miami Heat game for repeatedly harassing a referee. The other had shotgunned his big-screen HDTV and held off a SWAT team for twelve hours after the Mets beat the Marlins three in a row. Both bitched and moaned about lousy plays, bad calls, and their painful hangovers, until one asked John his story.

“I’m innocent,” he said, “but they’re asking for the death penalty.”

The booking process seemed to take forever. Forbidden to bring firearms into the jail, the cops had to lock their guns in their cars, parked blocks away in a high-crime neighborhood.

The perp walk from the van to the processing center, paraded past so many fellow police officers and their prisoners, was humiliating. John was not only handcuffed but hobbled by ankle chains that threw him off balance whenever Miguel shoved him or jerked his cuffs. Miami was his home, the city where he’d made a difference and was recognized for his work. The people he cared about lived there. How quickly his life, his reputation had changed.

A few cops snapped cell phone photos. “Good luck, Sarge. We’re with you,” said a young cop he’d trained. Officer Frank Miguel glared, then stared at the officer’s name tag, intimidating others who said nothing, though a few nodded to John.

One prisoner spat in his direction.

Miguel loved it. What a pity, he thought, that no one had alerted the press. There should be cameras, he thought. He hated reporters but decided to tip them off himself next time.

“How’s it going, John?” A silver-haired jailer he’d known for years took his fingerprints.

“Could be worse.” John tried to smile. “I don’t know how, but I’m sure it could.”

“Hang in,” the man said, eyes watery.

By the time all three were processed and back in the van, Miguel was hungry, so he and the driver stopped for Cuban sandwiches. When they were finally back on the road, rush hour had begun.

Traffic on the Dolphin Expressway was bumper-to-bumper, with westbound drivers blinded by the blazing late-afternoon sun. They were headed for the Twelfth Avenue exit, which feeds traffic into the Civic Center, which includes the jail, the Justice Building, and the sprawling
Jackson Memorial Hospital complex, which has more than twenty buildings and parking garages. The prison ward, now called the Rehabilitation Center, was in building eighteen. Elevated Metrorail commuter tracks ran parallel along NW Twelfth Avenue with its Civic Center station part of the complex.

A blue, nondescript older model Ford sat in the far right breakdown lane, a black-haired woman behind the wheel, cell phone to her ear. Anyone who saw the way she scrutinized approaching traffic in the rearview mirror might think she was watching for a tow truck. But she wasn’t.

A car also sat in the same lane at the approach to the Seventh Avenue exit, a small red-haired woman behind the wheel, cell phone to her ear. “I think I see it! It’s passing now. That’s it! The license number is correct. Good luck.”

She started her car, drove down the Seventh Avenue exit, and returned to work.

The woman in the Ford up ahead passed the word along.

A helmeted motorcyclist in dark jeans approached the Twelfth Avenue exit, slowed down, exchanged a long, meaningful look with the dark-haired woman in the Ford, then proceeded down the exit.

She checked her rearview mirror. Now she too saw what they all waited for.

The afternoon sun blazed its brightest. Even motorists wearing shades pulled down their overhead visors. Reflections and the painful glare off hoods and windshields made them blink and squint.

An older man in work boots, a bright orange hard hat, a Department of Transportation jumpsuit, mirrored shades, and an international orange safety vest walked up the grassy side of the exit. He stopped at a traffic barricade on the grass, picked something up from behind it, carried it back toward the exit, and gazed to the east, where he too saw what they all waited for.

He grinned and waited for a moment’s break in traffic. “This one’s for you, Johnny,” he said, and flung what looked like a pair of long sticks across the twenty-foot-wide exit ramp. They hit the pavement as traffic began to stream down off the expressway. He walked away briskly before anyone even realized what he had done.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

T
he first three cars drove over the spike strips used by police and the military to flatten the tires of fleeing vehicles. A pugnacious criminal defense attorney drove the first, a Cadillac Escalade. A Haitian family of six was packed into the second, a rusting Honda Civic. Two tattooed Cuban brothers and three of their cousins, gang members en route to post bond for another brother, were in the third, a black 2011 Camaro, with red flames on the hood, oversized tires, and expensive hubcap spinners.

The spikes flattened every tire. The drivers braked and blocked the bottom of the exit ramp, as all the occupants piled out to assess damage. The driver of a white Hyundai suddenly saw men, women, and children milling about in the roadway in front of him and stood on his brakes. A bipolar senior citizen off his medication was driving his handicapped twenty-four-year-old daughter with Down syndrome to pick up her mother, a juror in a carjacking case. The driver behind him, a lost and bewildered New Jersey tourist in a rented Nissan Sentra with his wife, two children, and the sun in his eyes, plowed into the back of the Hyundai and forced it into the Camaro.

The next vehicle, halfway down the ramp, was the county Corrections Department van. The driver squinted through the glare, saw trouble ahead, and braked too late to back up. Traffic piled up behind him.

Frank Miguel unleashed a torrent of curses. The driver jumped out to urge motorists to move their damaged cars off the ramp. No one was hurt but the scene was chaotic. The eighteen men, women, and children who had emerged from all five cars began to look like a mob.

The gang members swore and shouted in Spanglish, nearly drowned out by the earsplitting hip-hop blasting from their stereo, tuned to pirate
gang radio. The lawyer shouted, cursed, and, late for a contempt hearing, pointed repeatedly at his Rolex, which drew the gang members’ attention to the timepiece, clearly a mistake. The milling Haitians berated the gang members in Creole. The gang members retaliated and menaced the Haitians. The bipolar senior went for the gun in his glove compartment, and his handicapped daughter wandered away to pick wildflowers on the grassy slope.

At that moment the long-legged motorcyclist left his bike and walked, with a loose-hipped stride, back up the ramp. The corrections officer, who had given up trying to reason with the other drivers, returned to his van. He opened the door to climb back behind the wheel as the cyclist walked by. The cyclist, who had never even looked at the officer, suddenly turned and, hidden from view by the van’s open door, jabbed the barrel of his gun into the small of the corrections officer’s back. He snatched the officer’s weapon from its holster and shoved it into his own belt.

“I don’t want to hurt you or anybody,” he said in the man’s ear, “but I will, if I have to. It’s up to you. Give me the keys to the back, the handcuffs, and the leg irons. All three. Now!” He pushed the gun harder, as the man hesitated.

Officer Frank Miguel had watched the escalating scene on the ramp with disgust at first, then with growing annoyance. He turned to complain to the driver, saw what was happening, and reached for the gun in his shoulder holster. Too late.

Robby had learned to shoot from the best. Three rapid shots hit Miguel in the forehead, the throat, and the left chest. “Told you to look over your shoulder,” Robby said quietly, as he took the dying man’s gun.

The ashen corrections officer immediately surrendered his keys. “Don’t shoot,” he whimpered.

“I won’t,” Robby said. “We’re on the same side. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Not me. I won’t,” the man swore.

John and the other prisoners in the windowless van heard shots but had no idea what was happening. The other two were more startled than John when the back door opened.

“Hey, John.” Robby grinned. “Come on! Let’s go!” He unlocked his
brother’s cuffs, then the ankle chain with steady hands, and gave him the correction officer’s revolver. “You guys want out?” he asked the other prisoners, who sat wide-eyed, their mouths open.

“Why not?” said one, caught up in the moment.

“What the hell! Sure,” said the man who had killed his HDTV.

Robby tossed them the keys. “You’re on your own,” he said.

He and John jumped out the back. So did the others, moments later.

“She’s at the top of the ramp in a rusty blue Ford,” Robby said. “She knows what to do. Go!”

John rubbed his wrists, eager to run. “You coming with us?”

“I’ve got my bike; I’ll head out Twelfth. That’ll add to the confusion. Go, now! Meet you back at the place, bro. By the way, I killed Miguel.” Robby shrugged, stuck his gun back in his belt, and tossed Miguel’s weapon into tall weeds off the side of the ramp.

“No! Shit, Robby. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. Go!”

John sprinted up the ramp, now jammed with cars. Impatient motorists scuffled, swore, and leaned on their horns.

Laura saw him, gasped in relief, and started the car. He wrenched open the door, slid into the passenger seat, and drew her close. Their kiss was electrifying.

He knew this had happened before.

He knew Laura felt that way as well when she smiled, cut her eyes at him and said, “We have to stop meeting like this, John.”

“I can’t believe you’re here!” he said.

“We have to go. Now!” she said, and swung the Ford out into the westward stream of rush hour traffic.

They didn’t hear, as they raced into the setting sun, the gunfire that rang out behind them, back down on the ramp.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

R
obby watched John sprint to where Laura waited. His eyes followed them safely into traffic and out of sight. He smiled as he turned to mount his cycle a few yards away but was confronted by the corrections officer, now bolder and brandishing a .308 Remington 700 rifle.

“Where’d you get that?” Robby asked.

“Mounted under the dash,” the officer said, with a wicked grin. Cold sweat beaded his brow.

Robby frowned. How did he miss that? They had organized the mission so quickly that he’d had little time to plan.

“I have no beef with you,” Robby said.

“Think I’d let you take my prisoners, kill a cop, and walk away?”

Robby hesitated. He couldn’t shoot a man wearing a badge and just doing his job. The officer was young, wore a wedding ring. Killing Miguel was different.

Sirens sounded in the distance. He had to get away. They stood less than ten feet apart. I can take him, he thought.

The corrections officer must have read his mind.

The high-velocity shot from his rifle took off the top of Robby’s head.

Leon had boarded Metrorail at the Civic Center station and sat in an already crowded, air-conditioned, elevated car. The route afforded a view of the chaos below at the Twelfth Avenue exit ramp.

“Look at that mess!” said the large black woman sitting next to him. “Aren’t you glad you’re not down there trying to drive an automobile through that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, heart sinking.

Emergency vehicles had begun to arrive.

Laura’s Ford was gone, hopefully to safety with John. A lone tattooed
gangbanger stood next to his Camaro. A black family was seated on the grass, being questioned by a uniformed officer. Paramedics were treating a bloodied man next to his Escalade. A deputy in a brown corrections uniform was bent over at the waist, one arm leaning on his van. He appeared to be vomiting. Leon didn’t see Robby’s motorcycle, but he could not take his eyes off the centerpiece of the violent tableau, the cycle’s rider lying on his back in a growing red sea of blood.

Nobody was treating his injuries. Leon watched a policeman take a yellow plastic sheet from his car and walk toward the body.

“Oh, no,” Leon murmured. What the hell went wrong? Other commuters craned their necks and commented.

“Oh, my,” the woman beside him said. “Somebody dead down there. Lord, have mercy. Looks like a big accident. That van musta hit ’im.”

“Looks that way,” Leon said, eyes shiny, as the train speeded up and the scenery changed.