Castroville: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 7 (21 page)

     Robbie tried to remember how many framed photos of slained officers decorated the wall behind the sculpture. How many brass plaques hung beneath the photos, telling names, dates of birth, dates of death?

     His mind wanted to recall ten such photos, but he couldn’t be sure.

     He set a goal for himself. Eleven cops in one day. That would be a hefty number indeed. But he’d already killed the first two, with no risk to himself at all.

     Perhaps eleven was doable, if his luck continued to hold.

     Perhaps if he kept his head, didn’t make any rash moves, took out each target strategically and with forethought and planning…

     Perhaps if his luck continued to hold, and it almost always had before…

     Perhaps Robbie’s miserable life wouldn’t have been wasted after all. Perhaps he’d be known for something after all. Perhaps he’d go down in history as the single most prolific slayer of police officers in American history.

     Eleven in one day. Wouldn’t that be something?

     Of course, it wasn’t something his mother would be proud of, but she was a miserable wretch anyway.

     He got distracted for a moment and wondered if he went to hell on this particular day whether his mother would be there to greet him.

     Then he shook the thought out of his head. It wasn’t important.

     Eleven was important. Eleven was his goal, before the day was out.

     He closed the car door, backed up the cruiser, and drove at a leisurely pace toward Chief Martinez’ house.

-45-

     Robbie modified his original plan a bit in an effort to draw a couple of officers into a trap. And to give himself a line of retreat after he sprung that trap.

     At the end of North Hein Road, where it connected with Rigsby Avenue, Robbie pulled Unit 226 into the driveway of the corner house.

    It looked abandoned, as did most houses in the neighborhood. But it wouldn’t have mattered had it been occupied by twenty citizens. They wouldn’t challenge him. And if they did, they’d pay a heavy price for their folly.

     He shifted the vehicle into park and reached over to the radio’s microphone. A large chunk of Oglesby’s skin clung to it, and he wiped it off on the car seat.

     He keyed the microphone and tried to disguise his voice as he shouted into it.

     “Officer needs assistance. Rigsby and North Hein Road. Shots fired.”

     That was it. No details, no explanation. He knew that would get the attention of everyone and send the cavalry running.

     At police headquarters, the two dispatchers on duty looked at each other.

     First, they took the prudent steps of fulfilling the request.

     “All units in the area of Rigsby and North Hein Road, respond to officer assist call. Shots fired. No other information at this time.”

     The calls started raining in, as Robbie knew they would.

     “Charlie Twenty Four, ETA twelve minutes.”

     “Charlie Five, rolling.”

     “Charlie Seventeen, ten minutes.”

     “Charlie Seven, five to seven.”

     Even squads outside the district came running. For they were all brothers.

     “Delta Seven, ten minutes out.”

     “Echo Fourteen, on my way.”

     Nothing gets a cop’s attention faster that an officer down or officer needs assistance call. They say that blood is thicker than water, and blue blood is thicker than either.

     Robbie knew that in mere minutes the cars would come streaming in.

     He left the engine running, rolled the windows up, locked the door, and walked away.

     Five minutes later Robbie was in the back yard of an abandoned house across the street and three houses away.

     He was standing atop a plastic milk crate just inside the six foot privacy fence that strung from the front corner of the house and connected with the front corner of the adjacent house.

     From his vantage point, he had a clear view of the corner house and of Unit 226, still running in the driveway.

     He waited only seven minutes before Charlie Seven rolled around the corner and screeched to a halt inches from Unit 226’s rear bumper.

     Gun drawn and staying low to the ground, the officer ran to the front porch and banged on the front door of the house.

     With no other details as to what assistance was requested, or even what officer was involved, he called in on his shoulder microphone.

     “Charlie Seven on the scene. Who am I here to help and where is he?”

     “We’ve given you all the information we have, Charlie Seven. Have you searched the area?”

     “Waiting for backup. There’s a unit on scene, unoccupied. Unit 226. Who is that?”

     “Stand by.”

     “Charlie Seventeen on scene.”

     The officer on the front porch turned to see another cruiser pulling up in front of the house.

     Another man, also with gun drawn, exited his vehicle and hurried up to the porch.

     Robbie watched patiently as they made their way into the abandoned house. He wished he had a police radio so he’d know what was happening outside his view.

     In the distance he could hear two more sirens wailing, coming from different directions.

     Charlie Seven and Charlie Seventeen declared the house clear just as dispatch came back on the radio.

     “Unit 226 is assigned to Charlie Four-Five, Officer Oglesby.”

     The two officers returned to the front of the house and looked around for their missing comrade.

     One looked into Unit 226, still locked with the engine running. He thought he saw something. Robbie, three houses away and across the street, would never know what the officer saw. But it obviously concerned him enough to call the other officer over.

     It was while the two officers were standing side by side, outside the driver’s door and peering through the closed window that Robbie squeezed off two rounds.

     He was amazed at how easy it was. The first officer wasn’t even finished crumpling to the ground when the second shot rang out. The second officer didn’t even have time to respond to his friend being shot before he was as well.

     Robbie laughed, out loud, the laugh of a madman.

     Numbers three and four down. Seven more to go.

     This was like taking candy from a baby.

     And the best part was, the nearest siren was still two minutes away.

     He had plenty of time to run. To get the hell out of Dodge. To go back to the safety of the zoo, and to return to carry on his fight another day.

     But that magical number, eleven, kept dancing around in his head.

     So he stayed until the next unit pulled up.

     Until the next officer went running over to his two fallen comrades, to see if there was anything he could do to help.

     Robbie squeezed off another round and watched the man’s head explode.

    
Then
he ran.

-46-

     But not back to the zoo.

     No, Robbie Benton was obsessed with killing at least eleven cops on this particular day.

     And maybe, just maybe, he’d finally decided to die himself.

     He could have easily made his way back to the safety of the elephant cage. It was a place the SAPD had never searched. There was plenty of food and water there. The loudest siren was still three blocks away, and the next man to arrive would certainly see the carnage and wait in his car, laying low across the front seat while waiting for backup.

     It would be at least twenty minutes before enough officers, arriving from different areas all over the city, were present to set up a perimeter.

     By that time Robbie could be long gone and cooling his heels in his sanctuary.

     His own personal hell.

     But Robbie didn’t run. Not back to the zoo. He’d decided that this day, this place, this time, was his own personal Waterloo.

     Instead of backtracking to the zoo, he went farther east on North Hein Road.

     To the house directly across the street from where Mike and Eva Martinez still lay upon their front porch, the flies now invading their eyeballs and nostrils and body pieces lay strewn across a good portion of their lawn.

     There was another factor which drove Robbie Benton to fight on. Something more personal than just killing cops.

     He still hadn’t seen John Castro.

     In Robbie’s damaged mind, John Castro was the reason all of this was going down.

     All John had to do was to step aside and let Robbie have Hannah. She was better off with Robbie anyway. Robbie worshipped her. Would do anything for her. Would even die for her. Whatever
love
John had for her was piddling in comparison.

     John failed Robbie when he chose not to step aside. He had to be hard-headed and refuse to give Robbie his due. And his wife.

     That was fine, in Robbie’s eyes. He made his decision, it was only fair he suffer the consequences. But John failed Robbie again. He should have died in that flower field. It would have solved the problem and made things easier for everyone.

     But no, John couldn’t do that. He had to be a big hero and refuse to die. He had to call Hannah to his bedside to help him heal, instead of sending her away, to Robbie’s arms, where she belonged.

     This was all John Castro’s fault.

     And John Castro must pay.

     Robbie had already made a conscious decision to stop at eleven.

     Unless…

     Unless John Castro wasn’t among them. Unless John Castro was still out there when the eleventh boy in blue went down.

     Then Robbie would keep firing. Keep killing. Keep picking off the SAPD officers one or two at a time.

     Or until he died himself.

     This… this was the day of his Waterloo. This was the day the John Castro problem would be resolved once and for all.

     As Robbie patiently waited, other units arrived one by one. The faces of the officers were too far away to make out now. He knew the way John Castro walked, with his artificial leg. Had ridiculed him behind his back for years about the limp in his step. Had called him “gimp” and “peg-leg” and “weeble.”

     He muttered to himself.

     “Where the hell are you, hero? Come out and fight like a man, you chicken-shit.”

     But John wasn’t coming.

     Because Dave Parrish stepped in and told him not to.

     Dave Parrish had come up through the ranks. He’d been a San Antonio cop since William Travis defended the Alamo, it was said.

     That was an exaggeration, but only to a slight degree. Parrish’s gray hair and boundless wisdom, especially when it came to police procedures and tactical strategies, made him a cop’s cop. Beat cops loved him as much as City Hall did, and that was a tough balancing act to pull off.

     Parrish was the number two man in the SAPD only because Mike Martinez had more political connections. But everyone knew it was just a matter of time when Parrish would get his due. Martinez had talked recently of retiring at the end of the year, but had asked Parrish to keep it from the ranks.

     “I hope you’re willing to take the reins, Dave,” Martinez had told him in strict confidence. “Because this job… it’s just not as much fun as it used to be.”

     Parrish was already on his way to work when the radio call came in about an officer needing assistance on North Hein Road.

     He instantly recognized it as the street the chief called home.

     He instantly had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

     He and Martinez had conferred many times about the Robbie Benton situation. Both agreed that Benton was insane enough to try another attempt on Castro’s life. They thought it was just a matter of time before he surfaced and created havoc again.

     That was why they’d transferred Castro to Foxtrot District, on the far north side of San Antonio, a few days before. Had started giving him odd shift schedules so his activities were hard to predict. Why they’d given him a new designation, Foxtrot Twelve. So that if Robbie was listening in on the police radio he wouldn’t be able to track Castro’s movements.

     The sick feeling in Deputy Chief Parrish’s stomach wasn’t borne from something he ate.

     It was there because he instantly suspected a set-up.

     He knew that at the first hint of trouble on Chief Martinez’ street, all officers would come running.

     Including John Castro.

     He strongly suspected that Benton was lying in wait on North Hein Road, waiting for a second shot at a job he failed to complete the first time.

     A second shot at John Castro.

     Within seconds after the officer needs assistance call went out, Parrish was on the radio himself.

     “Foxtrot Twelve, this is Eagle Two.”

     “Yes, sir.”

     “Switch to Tac Two.”

     Both men switched radio frequencies.

     “Foxtrot Twelve here.”

     “Stay in your district. Stay out of this one.”

     “Yes sir.”

     Parrish’s words were terse. But they were enough. John understood them, and understood what the implications were.

     Robbie wouldn’t be getting the target he wanted more than any of the others.