The Vulture (22 page)

Chapter Forty-two

Jack Brattan had a problem to solve. Actually, he had several problems to solve. If he had been an animated character in a cartoon, the space above his head would have been filled with a series of light bulbs which glowed and then blinked out as one bad idea after another popped into his head. He sat with his back pressed against the cell wall. The window on the wall had been situated high, and because it was a cell window, it had been fitted with both thick Plexiglas panes and bars. Still, it made him nervous. He didn't trust either the bars or plastic and knew that if Pangborn believed he might talk, neither the bars nor the Plexiglas would be sufficient to prevent something lethal from sailing through. If he insisted on being placed in a different cell, he would have to tell his jailers why. They probably knew anyway, but he didn't want to give them the satisfaction of seeing him squirm. So, were these hick cops smart enough to put two and two together about the other stuff? He didn't know. He needed a lawyer, but to call on the ones he knew would be to put him squarely in Pangborn's court. He'd know where he was and that could lead to the problem with the window even sooner. Maybe he already knew. Or maybe not. Where was Pangborn? What did he know?

He felt like kicking himself for not having a back-up plan. He should have figured this out years ago when he'd seen what the Fifty-first Star was capable of. Seen? Been party to what happens to people who threatened the organization. He paced. Shoulda, coulda, woulda, too late now. Was that a shadow outside the window? So absorbed in his problems that he didn't notice when Billy Sutherlin strolled up to his cell with a tray of food.

“Here you go, Brattan, dinner from the Crossroads Diner. It's the best food in town. Say, you looked a little peaked. You're not worrying about something, are you? Hate to see you spoil your appetite.”

Brattan had developed a facial expression which in the past had been deemed by those exposed to it as terrifyingly intimidating. He called it “The Stare.” Eyes unblinking, face frozen, he swiveled his head around and focused it on Billy.

The cop did not respond. Well, he wouldn't. There were bars between them. Still, it ought to shut him up. It didn't.

“So, here's some news for you, Big Guy. Your boss…maybe your ex-boss by now, that is, just got busted. You'll never guess what for.”

Brattan sat still, the stare intact.

“Okay, so here is how it goes down, Jackie boy. Pangborn is toast. The Fifty-first Star is toast. If you're thinking his big-shot friends are going to pull his chestnuts out of the fire, you're wrong. Whoever they are, they will be putting some serious distance between him and them as fast and as far as possible. You want to know why?”

No response.

“Right. Your boss has a problem, see? He likes little boys. Did you know that?”

Blink.

“Whoa. Maybe you and him shared that twisted lifestyle. Did you?”

Rapid blinking.

“Oh, oh. My friend, you could have a serious problem. See, he might be able to bring enough money and influence to bear to keep hisself out of a prison's general population, but you surer'n hell don't. You do know what happens to baby rapers in prison?”

“I want my phone call and lawyer.”

“'Course you do. Who you want to call? Some of Mister P's? You can do that, but do you think they will want to talk to you? On the other hand, are you sure you want to talk to them? I mean you need to think about your options first. Am I right? Pangborn in cuffs is a different fish than one out and about. Might smell the same and all, but different in important ways. You could be thinking about a deal, right? I would if I was you. 'Course, I ain't, which is a blessing. You sure as hell don't want to go into prison with people knowing who it is you have an attachment to. No sirree. It's a problem, for sure. By the way, we can always set you up with the public defender. You could talk to him. He's pretty good, at least when he's sober, he is. Well, shoot, you got a lot to mull over. You'll want to think about all this, I reckon. I'll give you some alone time and check back later. Enjoy the meat loaf.”

***

Pangborn staggered to his feet, some of his bravado restored. He dusted off his sleeves and scowled.

“You know something, Pangborn?” Ike said. “I promised myself that when I found out who tried to blow up both of us, I would put a bullet in his brain. I would not argue, I would not bargain, and I would not concern myself with the niceties of due process. I would just blow his brains out and walk away. Irrespective of the idea that you'd probably be better off if I did, as I said just now, you should note that I am armed and still thinking about doing it anyway, you son of a bitch. On the other hand, my wife worries that if I were to do that and without some reasonable, that is to say within the bounds of legal, provocation, I, not you, would end up in front of a judge. So, I will not shoot you, unless you try to make a break for it. You won't will you? No? Well then, he's all yours, Director.”

“Ike,” Ruth said, “I've changed my mind. Shoot the fucker.”

“Ruth, we talked about this.”

“I know. Sorry. Shoot the bastard. Better?”

“Much.”

Ike cocked his automatic and aimed it at a point between Pangborn's eyes.

“Do something,” Pangborn yelled, “you're the police here. Make them stop.”

“What? You want me to stop this man here from shooting you or the woman from using bad language? Hell, she already apologized. I'm okay with that. As for the shooting, I don't know. It would save the state a ton of money if we didn't have to try you. Then there is the pain and suffering a trial would cause. Kids would have to testify. You know how the tabloids blow everything out of proportion. Terrible. No, I think shooting you right now would be better for everyone. Go ahead, Sheriff, dust the son of a bitch.”

A dark stain bloomed in Pangborn's pants as he lost control of his bladder.

“Oops. Looks like you got a little problem there, Martin. Say, is it too late to hit you up for a contribution for the policeman's fund? No? Oh well, I ain't too sure I want one from you, all things being considered. We generally don't accept donations from convicted felons, which is what you are about to be.”

Pangborn began to babble.

“You going to shoot him or not, Sheriff? No? Okay. Sergeant, haul this bag of crap away.”

Two state troopers dragged a limp Pangborn to a cruiser, shoved him in and read him his rights. The convoy reassembled and pulled out. A half hour later more busses arrived to remove the remainder of the cadre of militia, the women, and even the ranch hands.

***

A call by the State Police commander to the governor, who in turn called the federal judiciary for advice, resulted with a make-do court set up in a nearby high school gym. Pro bono lawyers, private attorneys, and prosecutors sorted through the number of detainees. By mid-afternoon the following day, the majority of the men and women arrested at the ranch were released on their own recognizance, in jail, or awaiting bond hearings. The core leaders, those with outstanding warrants and Pangborn, were held over with bail set at sums ranging from the mid-five figures to eight figures for Pangborn.

By nightfall most of the relatively innocent were out and on their way home. Seven boys remained in the custody of Child Protective Services, and Pangborn, in an orange jumpsuit, angrily paced in a jail cell, having failed on four separate occasions to contact either his attorneys or arrange bail.

The news of the raid and the rumors surrounding its cause circulated rapidly, the electronic and social media being what they are. The next morning scandal sheets, YouTube, and their clones, alternates, and wannabes were gleefully reporting a
gemischt
of innuendo, half truth, and outright lies about Pangborn, the Fifty-first Star, and its leaders. The one person not already under indictment and who knew the whole, unadorned truth, took his own life.

The afternoon news carried the story of the sudden and wholly unexpected suicide of the junior senator from Idaho. No details were immediately available.

***

Jackson Shreve sat in stunned silence as the news came in over the TV. Pangborn did what? He'd been loyal. As much, maybe more than any of the others, and how was he treated? Like dirt. Okay, the accidental opening of the gate was on him, but did that warrant a trip to Wyoming and exile? And alone? His wife and boy were back in Idaho. “When the whole family is involved,” Pangborn had declared in one of his speeches, “it showed true patriotism” or something like that. Jackson couldn't remember it exactly, only that he had been impressed by the man. So, his family committed. For what? Not for this. How could he? How could he do something like that to anyone? His wife and his son and only child were still there. You do your damndest to raise them up right, to respect the flag and the Constitution, to be patriotic Americans. That's what the Star is all about, right? So, where is it part of what we are defending to include that stuff? An intense buzzing grew in his ears, no in his brain, louder crowding his thoughts. Buzz and drown them out. Some things need never to be thought about.

Buddy!

Jackson Shreve stared at the television in disbelief. It couldn't be. It was. Who…Buddy? His wife called and said they were holding Buddy for tests. What tests? Buddy hadn't done anything. This was police harassment and he wasn't going to stand by and…What tests? His mind blanked out, the buzzing ratcheted up to a dull roar. Nothing stirred behind those watery blue eyes for ten minutes. Then he knew. Tests. Buddy was one of the boys they hinted at on the news. His son. He'd dedicated his son to the cause, enrolled him in Pangborn's Young Pioneers. Pangborn promised they would be the vanguard of the future leaders of the country. But that isn't what he meant at all. The lying bastard.

Jackson felt dirty. Dirty and used, as dirty and used as his son. Abused and discarded. At that thought he began to weep. He wept for Buddy, for himself, but mostly at the enormity of betrayal he'd experienced. He sat in the dark, the television on but unheard for hours. Sometime before dawn, he stood and went to the cabinet where he kept his weapons. He needed to get them ready for what came next.

Chapter Forty-three

Ike and Ruth flew to Raleigh, North Carolina and returned the plane the Agency had leased for them. They rented a car and motored north and west to Picketsville. Before they left Idaho, Ruth managed to open her e-mail account.

“Okay, it happened, Ike. I told you it might and it did.”

“Told me what?”

“I said there would be a limit to how much my Board of Trustees would accept from a basically absentee president. I am commanded to appear before them. There is, this message says, not subtly, by the way, that my continued tenure as president is being questioned. They want to fire me.”

“Well, it would appear that attending my own funeral is not the only item on our agenda.”

“So it would seem. This is no good, Ike. So, while I figure out my speech for the Board, what do you plan to say to all the mourning folks when they show up all teary eyed at your memorial service and see you alive and kicking?”

“Good question. I could quote Mark Twain. You know the line, ‘The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated.' Or I could just yell, ‘So sorry, big mistake, the drinks are on me.' I don't know. Should we send in an advance party?”

“Maybe. It depends on whether you can afford to buy that many drinks.”

“You think many people will plan to attend?”

“Oh, no more than a couple of hundred.”

“How about we skip it and take off for parts unknown? Being dead has its perks. Like no one will come after me anymore. I could get used to being dead and you wouldn't have to be fired, you'd quit.”

“Life as a zombie? I don't know. What's in it for me?”

“No more budgets to finagle, no board meetings to drive you insane, forget the humiliation of begging for money at fundraisers with pushy alumnae, no federal guidelines to worry about, not to mention tenure decisions, weepy sophomores—”

“I think we had this conversation before, but I take your point. Tempting as that may be, and it is, no, not just yet.”

“You may never get a chance like this again.”

“Still taking a pass. I don't run from problems any more than you do. Hey, this is a convertible. Let's put the top down.”

“I'd rather not.”

“Because?”

“It's dangerous. We're exposed in an open car. Anyone who's a decent shot and has the right equipment could blow us away in a heartbeat.”

“That's it? You think there are still people who are gunning for us even now?”

“Maybe. Okay, probably not. Hey, it's force of habit. I never put convertible tops down.”

“You are such a wuss. Listen, Ike, be serious a minute. We need to talk. All this daring-do and action hero stuff has got to stop. I can't be looking over my shoulder the rest of my life. You said you knew a way for it to go away. I'm not talking about joining the zombie nation. So, can you make it all go away?”

“I don't think I said ‘all.' What I believe I said was, with some help from my friends, I might be able to reduce to near insignificance the instances when my past would rear its ugly head and bring down bad juju. That is, I could be erased from the Agency's files and all connection with it to me would disappear. That would not keep a lunatic with bad memories from finding me, or some super hacker with issues. Perhaps we should ask to be put in the witness protection plan.”

“I just said, I'm not ready to give up fighting to keep my job, although, if I don't put an end to this Murder Incorporated, I really will be fired, assuming I can quiet their jets when we get back. There has got to be a limit for what the Board of Trustees will put up with.”

“You do know that as long as I am sheriff, I am stuck with being a potential target for anyone ranging from the criminally insane felon who thinks I am the cause for all of his bad karma to the merely disgruntled who has had his driver's license revoked because I served him with a DUI. Since I and you are now us, that means we will never be wholly safe.”

“You could retire from sheriffing.”

“I could. I do not need to run for reelection next time around. Frank is perfectly capable of running the department.”

“Yes he is. The difficulty with that is, can he get elected? Recall that our mayor harbors plans to return the town to the bad old days of cronyism and corruption.”

“True. Maybe I should run for mayor.”

“You don't mean that.”

“You're right, I don't. We will have to revisit this problem later. There must be better options. We're the good guys, right? But right now I need to figure out how to manage a church service set up to mourn my demise and you need to figure out how to explain your non-widowhood, not to mention your cavalier approach to presidenting.”

“For the second part, I do. As for the first, maybe I don't. Knocking you off would solve both our problems.”

“Frank would arrest you.”

“For what? You're already officially dead. How can I be arrested for your murder if you are already dead?”

“Interesting legal point. I'll have to think about that.”

***

Jack Brattan had his “mull,” as Billy had put it. The public defender advised him to be quiet, plead not guilty, and take his chances. He said the case against him that the local police had him for murder hinged on connecting him as the person who leased the car seen in the video of the shooting to establishing him as the shooter. There was no image of the person in the car, much less one of him. Worst case, the lawyer said, would be as an unwitting accomplice. It was, he maintained, a weak thread at best. With allowances for reasonable doubt, Brattan would surely beat any murder one charge and probably any lesser ones. He thanked the lawyer and said he'd think it over. His problem was not what the local police and judiciary could or could not prove. The state would not have to establish the connection. Pangborn would do it for them. If he was in custody, as the hick deputy said, nothing could save Jack's hide. Pangborn had a larger pile of chips in this game. That included stuff on Brattan that could send him to death row in at least three states. Then there was compromising information he could supply on dozens more in high places—really high places. He would be in position to cut an attractive deal. That deal would include chopping Jack off at the knees with a bushel of politicians and other influential people. Pangborn would see to it that he went down for the Frieze shooting and all those other things as well.

Jack's best play, he thought, would be to make a preemptive strike. He would spill his guts to these local yokel cops and make his own deal before Pangborn got a chance to bury him. Hell, he knew enough to have the bastard put away for, like, a million years. He called his lawyer and sent him off to the county prosecutor. In return for giving them an airtight indictment incriminating Martin Pangborn, he only asked for a reduced charge and a minimum security prison. He hoped the cops wouldn't figure out he had no real leverage. That what he knew about Pangborn could be shot down by any one of the attorneys Pangborn kept on retainer. With any luck, the rubes never would figure it out.

His luck held. He caught a busy prosecutor and a judge in a good mood. Pangborn's attorneys, along with the majority of his powerful friends refused to acknowledge him publicly or privately. Jack would plea bargain and receive fifteen to twenty with a chance at parole and be shipped off to the nearest minimum security prison. A fistfight and a suspicious shakedown of his cell which produced a handmade blade would result in a transfer to the state prison and thence into its general population. He would be found dead, his head stuffed in a toilet bowl, a month after that.

***

His first shot nicked Pangborn's ear. Jackson had choked and jerked the trigger. He knew better than to do that. Hell, he'd been trained by the best the Fifty-first Star had to offer.
Too anxious, need to slow down, take the time.
People screamed and scattered as the report echoed across the street. Pangborn seemed frozen in place.
Stay that way, you bastard.
He would not jerk the trigger this time, he told himself. He worked the rifle's bolt and ejected one shell, locked in another, and settled the crosshairs on the man's core.
Breathe in, pause
…he let his breath out.
Slowly, slowly and…squeeze
. An officer of some sort yanked Pangborn to one side at the precise moment the rifle discharged and his second shot caught Pangborn in the arm. Jackson cursed and yanked the bolt back again to put a third round in the chamber. He scanned the area through his telescopic sight, searching for Pangborn, but couldn't find him. Where did he go? A volley of returning fire came from somewhere opposite. Bullets chipped the concrete around him. He didn't notice or care. Where was Pangborn? Where was the pervert? He found him. Two cops were trying to stuff him into the backseat of a patrol car. He drew a bead on him and fired.

A state policeman, who took it on himself to stop the crazed gunman in the parking garage across the street from the courthouse raced up the staircase. He didn't know how he'd managed to reach the third level so quickly. But he did and was able to drop Jackson Shreve with a single shot to the head at that precise moment his rifle recoiled from his third and final attempt to kill the one man whom he'd come to see as the devil incarnate.

Jackson Shreve, a member of the Fifty-first Star and patriot, would not see the green-tipped and probably illegal round smash into Pangborn's fifth cervical vertebrae. In a way, he'd done him a favor. Pangborn would never experience the terror of being in a prison's general population where his life would be at risk daily, hourly. He would, instead, be incarcerated in a moderately pleasant facility where he would share a room with only one other prisoner. The bad news: he would spend the remainder of his days as a quadriplegic, his continued existence dependent on the goodwill offered by people, most of whom despised him.

***

In another part of the country where things were comparatively less complicated, Ruth twisted in the car's seat and studied Ike. “Tell me something, Sheriff. Before we face the music in Picketsville, why did you call in the State Police back there? The way you were talking, I expected that the minute you had the evidence you needed, you'd storm onto the ranch and splatter Pangborn across the Idaho countryside. What happened?”

“Maybe I heeded your very good advice.”

“Possible, but barely so.”

“Okay, you were right. And recall what I said to Pangborn at the time. You know, it is a funny thing about society in this quarter of the twenty-first century. You can abuse the system to the point where your greed is responsible for the economic collapse of the nation thereby bringing ruination to millions of people or, like Pangborn in his heyday, destroy people's livelihoods and futures. You can be arrogant and bellicose enough to require the deployment of troops into combat or drone attacks on innocent villagers in parts of the world about which you know little or nothing. You can start a war, torture, maim, and destroy people willy-nilly and then retire with a golden parachute, a Nobel Peace Prize, or maybe even a Presidential Library. You may be vilified, but you will endure, equally praised and despised.”

“Ike…”

“However, if you are caught sexually abusing children, you are branded a monster to the end of your days. Your friends will not acknowledge your existence ever again. Your career, if you have one, will be trashed. You will be tracked, monitored, distrusted, and abused in turn for the rest of your hellish life. If Pangborn goes to jail, as I am now sure he will, he may not last a year. If he manages to avoid it, he will have a target on his back the size of Texas. One year or twenty, free or incarcerated, his end, when it comes, will be painful and mortifying.”

“Wow. So you didn't shoot him because…?”

“Shooting him would be a mercy killing and mercy killing is only legal in four or five states and Idaho is definitely not one of them.”

“Right, and you are the sheriff, charged with upholding the law.”

“I am.”

“Okay, I get it. Pangborn gets a living hell before he lands there permanently. Wow, I like it. Now Ike, can we put the top down and live dangerously one last time?”

Ike pulled over. When the top had locked down, Ruth sat back and gazed up at the sky.

“Open sky. No more hiding. What a relief. You don't realize what freedom to move about can be until you lose it.”

Ike's phone buzzed. “It's Charlie. What?…Crap…Okay.”

“What did he say?”

“Someone got to Pangborn. One of his own shot him.”

“He's dead?”

“No, Charlie says he's tetraplegic. What the hell is tetraplegic?”

“It means he's paralyzed from the neck down, a quadriplegic. The wordsmiths in charge of important topics like how we classify things and then name them, in this case medical terminology, were uncomfortable with the American habit of mixing Greek and Latin prefixes and suffixes.
Quadra
is Latin for four and
tetra
is the Greek. Since
plegia
is Greek, it needed a Greek stem. So, substituting
tetra
for
quadra
harmonizes the languages, gives you tetraplegic. See? Simple.”

“Wow, I'm glad we cleared that up. Imagine the potential damage to our youth mixing our classic languages could have.”

“Now, now, no need to be snarky. We have survived near death. Some very bad people have been removed from general circulation, and a potential domestic terrorist organization has been dismantled. Be happy.”

“I am happy. On the one hand our villain has been spared a horrific death in jail, but on the other, he will receive far worse than that—a life in which he will be reminded daily that he is wholly dependent on the willingness of people he loathes to keep him alive.”

“Let's call it a toss-up Look, there's a big bird circling up there. Is that a big hawk?”