whatever he’d accomplished in his life.
His reputation. His prestige. Take all that away, and he was no better than a shit pile in a dust storm. You had to cut out his heart to make him bleed.
And that’s what Vance would do: cut out his heart.
Like Amanda’s had been cut out.
And he knew exactly how to do it.
Near Atlanta, he stopped and found one of those Internet cafes. Vance didn’t know a whole lot about computers, but the waitress helped him. He looked up Doctors Without Borders and located the meeting in Jacksonville that Steadman had spoken of to his friend. At the Marriott Sun Coast there. On March 19.
And he saw Steadman’s name on the list of speakers.
Everything knitted together. There was only one piece he had to add, and he thought he knew just how to do that. He needed some help to fully carry it out. And he knew where to find that help.
He’d waited years to use it.
Near his home, Vance stopped at a diner and found a phone. He dialed 411 and asked for a name. A name from deep in his past.
In Jacksonville.
Once, their lives had come together in a moment that could never be undone. It was more than a bond; it was a debt. A debt that had never been called or forgiven. Or even asked to be repaid.
The line rang, and to his delight, a man picked up, kids shouting in the background. “Hello.”
Vance said the name that would unleash it all. “Robert Martinez, please.”
The Jacksonville cop hesitated.
Vance felt himself hurtled back in time. For a moment all the quiet mediocrity and held-in futility of his life fell away.
“It’s Vance. So what do you know, old friend…?”
Vance leaned his elbow against the wall. “Been a long time, huh?”
Chapter Forty-One
Vance brought the image of the black man’s face back into his mind as clearly as if he were standing in front of him now.
Slim and wiry. Around forty, Vance had guessed. Reminded him of that comedian, Jimmie Walker, who was popular back then. Skin like blacktop, and those big, wide eyes. Slippery like an eel, Vance remembered thinking when he first came upon him. A water moccasin, slithering through the mud, looking for prey.
Except this time the snake bit him.
It was ten years ago.
Vance had just gotten off his four-to-midnight shift, and was finishing off a steak at a diner off the highway, about to head home, when the call came in.
“All available units, ten-twenty-four.” A home break-in. In Deerwood. Dispatch said the husband and wife were locked in a closet while the intruder ran through their house. Their young daughter was severely beaten. Possible sexual assault.
The suspect was spotted heading west on Southside in a black SUV.
Vance could have ignored it; he always knew this. He was done for the night, and on his way home to Yulee. But it was the part about the little girl that got him going.
Until that moment, Vance’s life had been going in a steady, if undistinguished way. And that was fine with him. He had joined the local force straight out of the reserves. Never more than a high school degree, but he knew how to do what he was told and he didn’t back down from trouble when it faced him.
Amanda was nine, and Joyce was working at the county clerk’s office. They had a two-bedroom home. Paid things off. Maybe he drank a stage. Maybe he used the back of his hand when his frustrations built up. He was never very good at controlling them.
But they had a life, a good life, simple as it was. They even went away on trips together back then. Myrtle Beach once, and another time to Elvis’s home in Memphis.
Vance threw on the lights and siren, tracking the chase on the radio. On a side street, he came upon them, second on the scene.
Martinez was on him first, and already had the guy spread up against his car. A black Land Cruiser.
“Sonovabitch claims he was nowhere near Deerwood,” Martinez said, recognizing Vance, a state trooper, but whose beat was local. “But lookie here what the boy had on him.”
Martinez held up a black handgun, his thumb and index finger around the trigger guard.
“Sumbitch is a goddamned liar,” Vance said, coming around the car with his nightstick. He could smell a piece of shit from a mile away, and this one, with those scared, buggin’ eyes and multipocketed North Face jacket, driving a car Vance couldn’t afford in ten years, had the smell all over him.
“You like to rob houses?” Martinez asked the guy, shoving him in the back with the stick. “You like to beat up on little girls…?” he pressed. He let the stick slide down to the guy’s ass. “Maybe do other things. Put your hands where they don’t belong?”
“I didn’t do shit to anyone,” the guy turned and said. Scared, but still indignant. “I was at my cousin’s. I-”
Martinez kicked out the suspect’s feet and made him fall to the ground. “Don’t you be talking back to me,” he told him. Laughing. “I simply asked you a question, boy. So that’s how you get your rocks off, playing with twelve- year-olds, you piece of gutter shit.”
He kicked him. Hard. In the stomach.
The dude curled up with a loud
“I didn’t do shit!” he yelled out. “I want my lawyer.”
“ ’Course you didn’t do shit.” Martinez kicked him again. He pointed to the guy’s gun. “This is all just fun and games! Right? You lying bastard…” He kicked him yet again. “Don’t you worry, you don’t need no lawyer, rat filth. You ain’t ever gonna make it that far, boy, understand?” Martinez kicked him again, and the guy moaned. “So what’d you take from there? C’mon, we know where you were. We know what you were up to.”
This time he lifted his boot and stomped on the guy’s head.
Vance felt his temperature start to rise and his hands squeeze around the club. He leaned over and peeked through the SUV’s windows. “I don’t see anything in the car.”
“Don’t you worry about the car,” Martinez said to him. He put his boot on the black dude’s skull, pressing it against the pavement. “So that’s what you like to do… Put them slimy, little fingers up a twelve-year-old girl’s nightgown?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the guy moaned, scared shitless, eyes wide. “I wuz at my cousin’s. In Westside. Call there!
“He didn’t do it.” Martinez turned to Vance. “What do you think about that? Says he didn’t do it. You didn’t do it, huh?” He stomped on the guy’s head again, the guy rolling over in pain.
That was when another car came up. Lights flashing, radio crackling. Martinez went around to meet it, leaving Vance alone, his blood pressure rising, alone with the pathetic, cowering animal who’d just put his soiled hands all over a twelve-year-old kid.
