The Best American Mystery Stories 2015 (7 page)

He was jacking in a fresh round when my second shot nailed him dead center. So did the next three.

Pete DeNoux wasn’t the only one raised on the rules. When you shoot something, you damn well put it down.

I spent three days on suspension while the state police conducted an independent investigation, then I had to face a shooting board, in a conference room at Hauser Center. Three command officers from Lansing and me. I was entitled to have an attorney present. Didn’t ask for one. Maybe I should have.

Some officers serve their entire careers without drawing a weapon. I’m guessing the bureau chief who chaired the review was one of them.

He kept rephrasing the same pointed questions. Why had I sought out a violent felon, a suspected murderer, alone? Why had I attempted an arrest without calling for backup?

Had I ever met the decedent? Had any previous dealings with him? Did I bear him a grudge?

“I knew who Ox was,” I admitted. “In high school, I spent my summers working in the woods, swinging a chainsaw. You hear about guys who are okay, guys to avoid. I thought Sorsa would be more likely to come in peacefully with someone he could relate to.”

“But you couldn’t convince him?” the captain pressed. “How hard did you try?”

“Not very,” I admitted, tired of the dance. “When I suggested it, he threw a skinning knife at my head and went for his rifle.”

He waited for me to expand on that. I didn’t.

“I’d say you misjudged the situation pretty badly.”

I didn’t rise to that either. He was certain I’d gone after Ox alone for reasons of my own.

He was right.

Sorsa had taken blood money to murder a boy he didn’t know. There’s no redemption for a crime like that, no way back. But there was no grudge involved. If he’d surrendered peacefully, I would have brought him in alive.

He didn’t.

So I kept my answers brief, my tone neutral. And in the end, the board decided the case on the facts. Sorsa was an enforcer for the Aryan Militia, a convicted felon in illegal possession of a firearm, and the sole suspect in a homicide. He died with a loaded rifle in his hands and I had a gash in my forehead that took eight stitches to close. The board conferred for twenty minutes. Then ruled the shooting as self-defense.

Justified.

I’d won, I suppose. It didn’t feel like it.

After the hearing, I headed back to my office at the House. I needed time alone, to think things through. But Todd Girard was there, waiting for me. It was just as well. It saved me the trouble of tracking him down.

He was in the visitor’s chair beside my desk. I dropped into my swivel chair, facing him. Neither of us offered to shake hands.

“You roughed up Harvey Bemis,” Todd said.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “It should have been you.”

“Me?”

“You served in the sandbox, right?”

“Helmand, eight months,” he said. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Ever sit in on a tribal council?”

“No. Look, Dylan—”

“Bear with me. Tribal councils are pretty straightforward. No judges, no lawyers. Just clan chiefs and their bodyguards, an imam for a referee. Everybody comes strapped, nobody pretends to be neutral. They all push for their own interests. Like we did at the Jury’s Inn.”

“What’s your point?”

“Avery was protecting the Champlins,” I continued. “The Champlins were protecting their boy, all of us were looking out for the college. Everybody had a voice. Except the one who mattered most. The snow angel. Julie Novak. That was your job, Todd. To speak for the victim. Instead you gallantly stepped aside, to avoid a conflict of interest. And you handed the case off to Bemis. Only he didn’t speak for the victim. Didn’t even pretend to. He thinks his job is keeping you happy. And he did that, by protecting your friends.”

“I never asked him to.”

“You didn’t have to ask! You knew how he’d play it. So did the rest of us. But we let it pass. Because it gave us the outcome we wanted. A closed case, a four-year school, serious cash for the Novaks. A good outcome, till it went off the rails. I’m not laying the blame on you, Todd, we all own a piece of it. All we can do now is try to set it right.”

“What do you want, Dylan?”

“Two things,” I said flatly. “First, Bemis is out. Kick him to the curb. He doesn’t have the soul for this job.”

I expected an argument. Didn’t get one. He just nodded. “And the other?”

“Give Novak a break, Todd. Some kind of a deal.”

“Not a chance,” Girard said, shaking his head. “The man paid for a murder, Dylan. He caused the death of an innocent boy.”

“He didn’t know he was innocent! If we’d given him the truth instead of buying him off—”

“Maybe he would’ve murdered the Champlin boy instead!” Girard snapped. “We’ll never know, will we? We only know what he did.”

“We put him in a lousy situation and he made a lousy choice. I’m not saying he walks, but we owe him something. What can you do?”

“I—hell.” Girard looked away, chewing the corner of his lip. “If he serves the minimum with no more trouble, I’ll consider a humanitarian release. That’s the best I can offer.”

“Then I guess it’ll have to do.”

“Not quite,” he said, meeting my eyes dead-on. “I need a straight answer from you. About Sorsa.”

“What about him?”

“If you’d brought him in breathing, I could have used his testimony against Novak to put them both away for life. You told the board you went alone, hoping he’d surrender. Was that true?”

I didn’t say anything.

“I didn’t think so,” he said, rising, looking down at me. In every sense. He waited a moment for me to say something in my defense. When I didn’t, he turned and stalked out.

He left angry, thinking the worst. Thinking he knows an ugly truth about me.

But he’s wrong.

I chewed over his question a good long while after he left.

I’ve known Todd since high school. I didn’t want to lie to him.

But I couldn’t tell him the truth.

Because I don’t know what it is.

Some night, many years from now, maybe I’ll wake in the dark and know to a certainty what really happened in that clearing. I’ll know that I gave Ox Sorsa a choice because I hoped he’d surrender. Or because I hoped he wouldn’t.

For now, I’ll have to live with not knowing.

So will Todd.

I worked at my desk the rest of the afternoon, catching up on paperwork. When I headed out into the fading twilight, a gentle snow was falling. Downy flakes, swirling on the wind. But as I walked to my car, I slowed, then stopped.

Listening.

Up the block, in Memorial Park, a children’s choir was on the bandstand singing Christmas carols, their voices carrying clear and pure in the gathering dusk.

Without thinking, I fell in step with a throng of shoppers and families and passersby, all of us drawn by the music, gathering around that small stage. Letting the old songs carry us back to a time when the world was a simpler place. Or we were too young to know the difference.

Peace on earth, good will to men.

It’s tough to argue with that.

But as I listened to the voices ringing in the icy air, my gaze strayed to the far corner of the park, where a winged figure stands watch over a memorial, a stone tablet that bears the names of the Great Fallen. Local boys who died in the first War to End All Wars. And in all the wars since.

It’s a long list.

The mourning angel that guards it was aglow, decorated for the holidays with glittering lights, her hands spread wide in benediction, a marble teardrop frozen on her cheek.

And my throat seized up. And I couldn’t breathe.

I wonder if I will
ever
see an angel again without remembering that shining schoolgirl sleeping in the snow.

I hope not.

ANDREW BOURELLE

FROM
Law and Disorder

J
ACK PUT FOUR
shells of double-ought buck into the twelve-gauge, chambered a round, then added the fifth shell. His breathing was shallow. He wondered how he was going to get through this. Beside him in the passenger seat, David had already loaded the 30.06 and the .270 and seemed to be waiting patiently. A Kenny Chesney song about a guy leaving his summer fling and heading back to Cleveland was playing on the stereo and Jack turned it off.

“I thought you liked Kenny Chesney,” David said.

“He ain’t bad. It just ain’t the right kinda music for now is all.”

David nodded and looked out the window. They were parked in an empty Raley’s parking lot. The sun wasn’t up yet; the black of night was turning gray. They had guessed this might be the best time to make their move. With meth users, it wouldn’t matter if it was three in the morning or three in the afternoon. At least at dawn they’d have some light to shoot by.

“Take this, would you, brother?” Jack said, handing over the shotgun.

David put it next to the rifles, all three leaning against the bench seat between them, butts on the floor, barrels pointed toward the back window of the truck. The two rifles both had black scopes. David would be using them. The shotgun was just backup. On the floor were boxes of ammunition, more than they’d be able to use. Jack picked the Derringer off the seat and checked it. He’d already checked it once. Two shots. That was it. He took a deep breath.

“I still think we should just go in shooting,” David said.

“No,” Jack said. “This is the best way. Just trust me, okay?”

“I trust you. It’s just you could be dead inside before I fire a goddamn shot.”

“Ain’t gonna be that way. These are druggies. Speed freaks. They’re gonna have guns, but they ain’t gonna know how to use them.”

“You said that already.”

“If they ever fired them at all, it was out in the desert at bottles and cans.”

“You said that a hundred times already.”

“Most of them ain’t never shot something real, something moving. Just pretend they’re deer and do what you do when you got a buck in your sights.”

David shook his head. “That don’t change the fact that it’d be better if we just went in together, guns blazing.”

“They got cameras. They’d see us coming and be waiting at the front door with who knows what kind of firepower. We’re gonna be able to shoot better than them but that’s ’cause we’re prepared and they ain’t. If we give them time to be ready, things might be different. We talked about that a hundred times already too.”

David shook his head like he always did when he still disagreed but didn’t want to argue.

“This is the way we’re doing it. It’s the best way.”

Truth was Jack wanted to keep his baby brother as far away from the fight as possible. He didn’t want both his brothers dead. But he couldn’t pull this off by himself. David was a good shot with a rifle—probably better than Jack, even at sixteen—and putting him in the truck would be a relatively safe place.

Jack checked the Derringer again, then promised himself it would be the last time.

“You ready?” he said.

“Yep.”

Jack believed his little brother. But he wasn’t so sure about himself.

“Better go ahead and get down.”

David crouched onto the floor and covered himself with a quilt their grandma had made. He pulled the guns toward him and covered them too. Jack put the Derringer inside his hat, tore off a piece of duct tape from the roll sitting on the seat, and taped the gun inside. He put the hat on. He’d practiced this; the gun fit nicely.

Jack started the truck and pulled out of the parking lot. The five weeks since Jamie’s death had led him to this point. He and David had spent three of those weeks camping at Lake Tahoe, driving down into Carson City every night, asking questions, trying to find people. They were surprised by what they found going on in a town that didn’t seem all that big or special. Which probably meant this kind of stuff was happening everywhere. But their hunt was over. Now was this thing. And by noon they’d be done. David wanted to stop outside the city and get whores at the brothel before heading back to Montana. To celebrate. But Jack said they ought to see how they felt after it was all over. Truthfully, he didn’t know what to expect. He figured he’d never be the same person again after what they were about to do. Never. David neither probably. That is, Jack thought, if we ain’t dead.

“All right,” Jack said as he pulled onto the street where the house was. “We’re here.”

They’d driven down the street a few times in the past week, trying to scope out the neighborhood. On their second drive by, David had seen the camera in the tree, so they waited a couple days before coming back. The last time they’d come, they sprung for a rental car so the drug dealers wouldn’t recognize his truck. They didn’t know how carefully anyone was monitoring the camera (or cameras, if they hadn’t spotted all of them), but they wanted to be cautious.

Jack stopped several houses from their target, parking the truck on a slight curve about a hundred yards away to give David a good shooting lane down the street. They’d discussed this. It would be hard on Jack getting back to the truck after the shooting started, but David’s rifles would be able to reach out a lot farther than anything the guys inside would have. So the distance was in their favor.

“This is it, brother,” Jack said.

“Good luck.” David didn’t stir; he spoke from beneath the blanket.

Jack’s heart beat hard. Sweat slid down his skin inside his button-down shirt.

“I’m leaving the window down,” he said. “You probably won’t be able to hear the Derringer, but listen anyway. Be ready when I come busting out of that place.”

“When you grab a gun,” David said, “don’t get nothing too complicated.”

“I reckon I’ll grab what I can grab.”

“Grab something you know how to use is all I’m saying. You don’t want to be fumbling with the damn safety or figuring out how to get a round in the chamber.”

“I ain’t gonna have time to be choosy, I don’t think.”

“Don’t miss.”

“You neither.”

Jack got out of the Chevy and started walking down the street. His boot heels clicked on the pavement, loud in the morning silence. His hat felt heavy on his head, weighed down by the Derringer. They’d talked about him dressing different, trying to fit in better, but they decided once he opened his mouth, the people in the house would figure him for a redneck anyway. He’d had a shaved head and worn the same green clothes as everyone else in boot camp, but it didn’t stop them from nicknaming him Hillbilly. Might as well make it part of his story.