Stagger Bay (7 page)

“I’m not trying to play coy here, but let’s call a spade a spade: It was multiple homicide – not a ‘fight,’ as you put it. That’s a capital crime in most states, last time I looked.” I said.

Jansen’s mouth quirked. He looked around at the surrounding officers, gestured regally at the stenographer, the camcorder, and the camera.

“Your need to protect yourself is understandable,” he said. “For the record, we say the case will be closed as justifiable homicide.”

“I’d like to hear that from a higher authority than you,” I said.

Now the Chief appeared steamed. It was interesting to study the vein throbbing in the middle of his forehead, me keeping my face as stupid as I could while enjoying his discomfiture. He opened his mouth to say something I figured was going to be on the unfriendly side of things, to put me in my place as it were.

One of the cops approached the Chief, managing to catch Jansen’s attention even while simultaneously doing his best to be invisible. Jansen calmed down immediately, nodding to him as if doing a tag team handoff.

This new cop was tall and what most would call handsome, with broad shoulders, wavy black hair, and a uniform shirt tailored to accentuate his muscles. He seemed preoccupied with leather and cop paraphernalia; he was festooned with polished black straps and buckles, and had a lot more gear weighing him down than most of the other cops seemed to find necessary. He looked like a recruiting poster.

“Hi, Markus,” he said with a boyish, plastic smile. His eyes didn’t quite meet mine. “I’m Officer Rick Hoffman.”

He stuck out his paw and I touched it for a moment, then let go. He pulled out a cell phone and hit a speed dial number, waited.

“Hello, Mister Gallico?” he said. “It’s like we talked about, he needs to speak to you.” He held out the phone to me, and I put it to my un-bandaged ear.

“Who’s this?” I asked.

“This is Tom Gallico, District Attorney. Do I need to prove it?”

“No,” I allowed. “I guess you’re who you say you are.” Gallico had never spoken the times he was present during my courtroom crucifixion seven years before, but I recognized his voice from campaign commercials. Hell, I’d even voted for him.

“Well, Officer Hoffman said I’d need to talk to you, and it looks as though he was right as he is so often. I just want to tell you, Markus, we have no plans to file charges against you in this matter. In fact, I’ll cut right to the chase: If you did violate any laws on that day, I’m prepared to offer you complete immunity. Put Chief Jansen on again, please.”

I handed the cellie to the Chief and he listened as Gallico’s declamation issued tinnily from the ear piece. He handed the phone back to Officer Hoffman and looked commandingly around again at the stenographer, the camcorder, and the camera.

“Formally entered into the record, the subject in question is hereby offered full and complete immunity from prosecution for any actions performed that day at the school, in return for his present cooperation with this inquest, said offer authorized by Stagger Bay District Attorney Tom Gallico.”

He turned back to me. “Now it is in evidence. Satisfied?”

“Fully and completely,” I said, and started talking.

I tried to keep in control of my game, but it was harder than I thought to revisit the events of that day. The deposition might have gotten away from me a little bit in some parts; in a couple of places the words may even have poured from my mouth like a runaway freight train of verbiage. But at least my war face didn’t slip all the way – I was damned if I was going to show punk in front of the Man.

When I’d caught my breath after finishing my tale, I asked the Chief, “You going to tell me what it was all about?”

He gazed into the distance. “Those suspects you took, they had just robbed the First National Bank at Stagger Bay Center. One of the tellers hit the silent alarm and was shot dead for it.

“Officer Jerry Pino in Car A-11 responded while the perps were still inside, but they blasted their way out. You saw firsthand the weaponry they had – Jerry was outgunned, they took him too. Three customers and another teller were caught in the cross fire; the teller may survive.

“We wanted them bad, Markus. They were not going to escape us, and you cannot outrun a radio after all. But then they wound up inside the school in a hostage situation, and you went and involved yourself.”

“Have you identified them yet?” I asked, wanting to know something of these men I’d murdered.

“One of them had just been released from Pelican Bay; one of your classmates. All of them had records as long as my arm – a bit like you, Markus, before you reformed and became a law abiding citizen.” Jansen chuckled at his own joke.

“Only one of them was local, the one blown up by the grenade. Wayne Something, where did he live again?” the Chief looked around at his junior officers with brows raised.

“In the Gardens,” one cop contributed from where he leaned against the wall in the corner.

He said it like it was a phrase he wouldn’t use in mixed company. He punctuated it by spitting a brown dip-loogie into the soda can he held.

He wore a battered non-regulation Stetson cowboy hat, pulled down to conceal the upper part of his face like he was trying to sleep. He had one leg pulled up so the heel was planted against the wall under his butt, as if ready to thrust himself into action at a moment’s notice. He had a Colt .357 Magnum in his holster rather than the 9mm-auto most departments favored for a service side-arm, and I didn’t figure his down-at-the-heel cowboy boots for any part of a regulation cop uniform neither.

The Chief nodded at the cowboy-cop’s input, and then returned his attention to me: “Why did you involve yourself, Markus?” Jansen asked, studying my face closely as he leaned forward. “You must have realized it was a hopeless situation. Why did you take them?”

“How did you see it panning out?” Chief Jansen asked slowly, smoothly, gently. “What was going through your head?”

“Here’s where I’ve got to balk, Chief,” I said. “I’m sharing the physicality of what happened as legally required; I’m giving you most of it. But my state of mind? That’s only supposed to be important during sentencing, and you said no charges were to be filed. What happened inside my head belongs to me.”

“Please relax, Markus,” Officer Hoffman said. “You’re among friends with us.”

I looked at him in disbelief. But then I took a good gander at the law enforcement crowding the room, many like they were bellying up to some kind of banquet and they were all famished. Most of these badges, most of these cop faces pointed at me, were beaming approval.

For the first time in my life I was surrounded by law dogs who weren’t projecting animosity at me. I might even be able to convince myself they liked me.

I felt like with one tweak of the dial I could be accepted. Like I had an opportunity to truly let go of my past forever, slip back into the American consensus without a ripple.

Then I noticed the cop in the corner, the one who had a poor opinion of the Gardens, didn’t seem to share his brother officers’ bonhomie: He looked daggers at me from under the brim of his Stetson as our gazes met. Several of the other veterans didn’t look like they really wanted to be drinking buddies either.

That kind of brought me right down off my fluffy cloud and back to familiarity. These weren’t my intimates and the badge would always separate me from them, even if they were all as human as I.

Should I tell them how I’d done my best to channel Sun Tzu and Musashi at the school? Or how comfortable it would be to pretend Gracian and Machiavelli were whispering advice in my ear at this very moment? No: that would be TMI.

“All right,” I said, deciding on what was the least amount of truth I could expose and make them feel satisfied enough they’d go away and leave me the fuck alone. “You wanted my take on how it would all pan out? You want what went on in my brain? Cool. You asked for it, you got it.

“The way they laughed after they shot her, it’s like I got this psychic flash off them or something. It’s like I got to know them all in that instant, inside and out, like the sound of that laugh told me everything that was going to happen, everything they were gonna do.

“They were going to massacre anyone in their clutches at the end, I just knew it, it don’t matter you believe me or not. Those kids’ chances were slim to none.

“Most of those kids were going to die, hard, no matter what I did.” I smiled defiance at all those surrounding badges. “And then of course, the families of all the kids who died would blame me for antagonizing the killers instead of waiting on you, the wonderful wonderful cops, and they’d curse my name forever as being responsible for their babies’ deaths.”

Nobody said anything for a while – the stenographer stared straight ahead with her languid fingers poised idle above the keys of her livelihood. The internal mechanism of the camcorder whirred as it continued recording my deposition for posterity.

“I couldn’t let them die alone, could I?” I blurted out to the friendlier looking cops, surprising even myself at that failure in self control. “I had to make them think someone was coming to save them, maybe make them a little less scared even if they
were
all doomed, right?”

The Chief nodded after a few seconds and then stood. “Perhaps it is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, it does not even matter – but I know the Beardsley kill by heart, and I know you did not do it. And now the wonderful science of DNA has brought you back to us.”

He smiled at me. “Welcome home Markus. I know I speak for everyone here.”

“What was her name?” I asked the Chief, as he shook my hand preparatory to leaving with his entourage of media recorders. “The woman officer they shot at the school, I mean. The one driving.”

“Her name was Kendra Tubbs.”

Most of the force stood in line after that to shake my hand as well. I figured I could probably jaywalk with impunity in Stagger Bay for a little while.

Not all the cops stopped to pay homage however. Some left without even looking my way, apparently having more important business to attend to than pressing flesh with the likes of me.

My scowling friend in the corner waited until everyone else had left the room and we were alone before coming over to stand next to my bed, mad-dogging down at me with baleful eyes. He’d been drinking and the smell of cheap beer wafted off him. Seeing his face without the Stetson pulled down to conceal it, I saw he’d forgotten to shave for a day or three; his lower lip stuck out from the load of dip he had parked there.

This guy was a rough cob, the kind of thick-skulled hard-knuckled redneck I’d always given full respect and attention to when I’d had to bump chests with them back in the day. He was a dirty fighter born and bred, a man who would have you spitting plenty teeth if you weren’t careful.

“You’ve sure got all those rookies from out of town fooled, but I’ve got your number,” he said. “You’re right in my sights, bub.

“So you didn’t kill the Beardsleys? So you saved those kids? Point of fact, you’re just as bad as those animals you killed at the school – you were just fighting on the right side for the first and only time.”

“Does this mean you don’t want my autograph?” I asked.

A sudden expression of agony writhed across his face for an instant before disappearing, but not in reaction to my feeble wisecrack. “Why’d she have to die, and not you?” he asked, even as his sneer returned.

He spat again but his accuracy was curiously inexpert, as the brown juice completely missed his can and instead stained my blanket in a widening pool of brown. Strangely, I felt no urge to comfort him. As he left, I didn’t beg him to stay.

Hoffman stuck his head around the corner, aiming that submissive smile at the floor until he gave me a semi-direct glance and saw the expression on my face. He squinted back down the hall in the direction my newfound buddy had gone, then nodded to himself before coming in.

“Markus, I like you just fine, please believe that. I understand you. But not everyone in this town appreciates you as much as I do; they don’t know you at all.”

“So who the hell is he?” I asked Hoffman. “And what’s his beef with me?”

“His name’s Reese. And the female officer who died behind the wheel, the one you watched shot? That was his fiancée. They were going to be married next week.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, his feelings for her are certainly understandable, but I think you’re probably right – he and I ain’t going to be very close.”

Chapter 15

“Excuse me, Markus?” A man stood by my hospital room door. He looked to be Chinese, with an expensive haircut, an Armani suit, and a watch the price of which could have fed a third world village for a decade. “I’m here to do you the biggest favor of your life. May I speak to you for a moment?”

“My card, Markus,” he said, handing me an elegantly embossed rectangle of bone-white pasteboard.

He took a step back away from my space. His coat was unbuttoned and open; his hands were at his sides with empty palms facing me, fingers spread. His face was blandly polite but he was reading me like human radar, receptive and open to my every mood – this guy was slick as snot.

The card read ‘Alden Wong,’ followed by contact info: cellie, fax, and email – no more. I gave him a questioning look and he smiled:

“I’m a PR man, Markus, an agent. I negotiate and make deals: sell, promote, maximize distribution, whatever makes money for my client. I’m the best there is at what I do,” he said.

He leaned toward me, clasping his hands together in front of him. “Have you given any thought on how to take advantage of your current situation?”

“I just want to be left in peace and left alone,” I said. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“I know you didn’t, Markus. But you’re a bona fide national hero – and Lord knows America is starved for heroes these days. Like it or not you’re part of something bigger now, and they figure you belong to them,” Alden said, nodding toward the outside world.

“Cameras are going to follow you, Markus. Microphones are going to be stuck in your face wherever you go. The media will hound you; the public will want to see you, to know who you are.