Justice(5)

“Don’t I always?’ I say with a smirk. “You guys have a good night.” With my best fake smile, I turn around and walk out.

Another perfect end to another perfect night with the perfect lovebirds. I prefer a conversation with a serial killer any day of the damn week.





CHAPTER TWO


ESCAPE


I leave Galilee Gardens with its million dollar homes up and down the coast with suburbs and strip malls filling in the rest until the state park begins. As I drive over the infamous mile long Pendergast Bridge, a steel structure whose pylons undulate like the Andalucía River waves below, I feel nothing. Not even when I pass the spot right in the middle where I stopped that night twenty years ago.

Now, I was never one to believe in anything higher than the top of my head. I’m practical to a fault, or so I’ve been told. So the fact that the two of us ended up on that bridge at the same time, to me, is just a random, happy occurrence. Justin gives the credit to the universe. I will admit that the fact two sort-of orphans the same age, who had no cause to meet, both arriving on a deserted bridge at two in the morning is odd. If I believed in fate then that’s what I’d call it. But I don’t, so I’ll just chalk it up to blind luck.

I chose that spot for the view. I wanted the last thing I’d ever see to be the best of my city, Galilee Falls, the fifth largest in the nation. I love my city. I wouldn’t live anywhere else. Whenever I think about it, I swell with pride. Like now. To the north, glass and concrete fill the sky for what seems like the end of the world. The biggest is Pendergast Pavilion, seventy-seven stories topped with a silver spire off a church salvaged from the Dark Ages adding five more stories to it. But my favorite building is the hospital right at the edge of the river facing The Falls on the other side of the bridge. It’s the biggest hospital in the country at thirty stories. The best too, at least according to every major magazine. Know where they first isolated the Uber-Gene? Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow in my home town, that’s where.

With the good always comes the bad. The beauty fades as I continue driving into the heart of darkness known as Diablo’s Ward, my old neighborhood. Vagrants, corner kids, junkies, and hookers litter the streets surrounded by boarded up, graffittied buildings that are barely standing. Gunshots and shouting are commonplace. Ever since I’ve been on the job I’ve spent more time here than when I was a kid.

I drive through the Ward toward the ocean where the road to the Xavier Bridge is. Two miles offshore with only the drawbridge for access is Xavier Maximum Security Prison, home to the worst of the worst: Hellion, Wolfsbane, Belladonna, and the man I’m making the trip for, Janus Manx, a serial killer responsible for killing ten prostitutes a year ago. Xavier is smaller than a normal prison, housing only two hundred inmates, three psychiatrists, seventy-five guards, and a partridge in a pear tree. The cells are encased in lead, the inmates get an hour of rec time a day, followed by some of the strongest tranquilizers this side of the zoo. Drooling idiots, just how I like my murderers.

I cross the small, two-lane metal bridge over the ocean, the water sparking with an orange tint as the sun sets above. I’m soon back on dry land. As I approach the three-story building, the huge electrified fence looms with twirling lights above barbwire. Men in brown uniforms toting shotguns stand like centurions on either side of the gate. The one on my side approaches as I flash my shield. He signals to his partner and the gate slides open. I add my car to the rest in the small lot and walk up the steps to the double doors. I’m right on time.

Cam, my man on the front lines, waits for me right near the overweight guard standing by the metal detector. Cam’s in his very late forties with a boxer’s build, which he compliments with a bald head, almost true black skin, and a problem matching his clothes. I’m no fashion plate by any standards, but any member of normal society should know that bowties and suspenders went out in the fifties. He towers over me at 6”1’ with enough muscle that my thigh is the exact size of his arm. We know because on a stake-out we measured. We look ridiculous standing next to each other. I’m 5”2’, so petite my clothes from middle school still fit, pale as a ghost with freckles on my nose, long curly jet black hair, and wide bright blue eyes. Shortest person on the force.

If his size intimidates, his face makes you fall in love with him. Not a wrinkle, with a black and gray goatee. If his wife Tawny didn’t feed me every other week, I’d entertain the thought of seducing him. Her pork chops are that good.

We’ve been partners since I started at Priority Homicide for almost two years. He was hesitant at first as his partner of five years had just retired, but after one week when I tackled a drugged-out man double my size, he started to warm a little. A month after that, I was practically part of the family. I’ve lost count of how many blind dates that family’s tried to set me up on. If they only knew.