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  “ Forty-seven, middle of the middle row,” Loomis said, then he turned and spit a glob of black tobacco into the waste basket.

  “ Plane’s been here before, hasn’t it, Loomis?” Earl said.

  “ Ain’t saying.”

  “ I’m asking.”

  “ Sheriff, you know me. I like to mind my own business. I said too much already.”

  “ You didn’t say any more than I’ll find out in the next minute or so.”

  “ And that was too much,” Loomis said.

  The car was just outside now, going past the office. They didn’t even glance at the unmarked Ford. Earl heard the car slow and the rubber wheels of the gate roll across the blacktop as it opened. Then the car drove on through and it closed automatically after them.

  “ We’ll give them a few minutes to get settled in, then we’ll drive on up like we’re going to a storage unit of our own. We’ll take ’em quick like, guns drawn, just like cops on TV. Ya with me, Jackson?”

  “ Yes, sir,” Jackson said, and Earl saw that he was pumped. Earl was pumped, too. This was what being a cop was all about. It was the part he loved and craved, but it didn’t happen too often, the chance to take the bad guys off the streets, the chance to make a difference. He checked his thirty-eight as he followed Jackson out to the car. He felt the hot sun baking into him. He flicked a fly off his hand and headed toward the driver’s side.

  “ Ya’ll can open the gate now,” Earl said to Loomis, and the gate started to slide open. Earl cranked the ignition, headed toward the middle row. He took his time as he motored along, whistling, like he was in no hurry. He was enjoying himself.

  They came abreast of the Impala. Earl moved on by. The Impala blocked the rolled up door of storage unit 47, but it didn’t hide the fact that both men were inside, moving cardboard boxes around.

  “ Lot of stuff in there,” Earl said.

  “ Yes, sir, lot of stuff,” Jackson echoed, hand on the door handle.

  “ Now,” Earl said, slamming on the brakes as Jackson was jumping out the door.

  “ Freeze!” Jackson yelled. He threw his arms across the top of the old Chevy, elbows on the car, arms extended, holding the thirty-eight.

  One of the men started to go for a gun.

  “ Don’t!” Jackson screamed, but the man didn’t stop, didn’t give him a choice. Jackson saw the man’s right arm come out from inside his coat. Saw the forty-five in the man’s hand. “No!” Jackson screamed louder, but the man wasn’t listening and Jackson shot him before he could bring the gun up to fire.

  The sound of Jackson’s gunshot ricocheted through Earl, tearing his insides up in a thousand places. It was louder than thunder, more violent than a summer storm, more intense than sex, stronger than passion. Jackson had never fired on a man before and Earl knew that he’d crossed a bridge and that he would never be the same.

  The second man threw his hands in the air, grabbing as much sky as he could. “Don’t shoot,” he said.

  “ I got him covered, Jackson,” Earl said.

  Jackson turned away from the man he’d shot, holstered his weapon and tried to fight the rising bile. He bit hard into his lower lip, then inhaled a deep breath of the hot air. He clenched his fist, exhaled, took in a second breath, deep into his belly. With the palm of his right hand he wiped the sweat from the back of his neck, exhaled, then vomited.

  “ Sorry,” he said wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand.

  “ Happened to me the first time, too,” Earl said. “Nothing to be ashamed of. Ain’t a man in the world I wouldn’t rather have with me in a shooting situation than you.” It was amazing. Jackson could slap around a hooker, push around the high school punks, smack a drug dealer on the back of the head with his pistol, almost killing him, but he upchucks when he has to shoot a man with a weapon. Earl bent low and scooped the boy’s gun from the floor. A well used forty-five auto. He was scared, Earl thought, it wasn’t the killing that made him vomit, it was the gun pointed at him.

  “ How would you know? I’ve never been in one before.”

  “’ Cause you got guts, boy. The way you ran into that fire and brought out them little girls, no one else woulda done that, not me, not their own daddy. We were there, but it was you that charged into the flames.” But even as he said it, Earl wondered about the truth of it. It took one kind of guts to run into a fire, another kind to face down a loaded weapon. Still, Jackson took the right action, he didn’t flinch, but he was scared, he was shaking now.

  “ One of them died,” Jackson said.

  “ But one of them didn’t. She’s a perfectly normal little girl and it’s all ’cause a you, so stop beating yourself over the head about the dead one. It wasn’t your fault. An’ don’t beat yourself up over this either. You did what you had to do. You did good. Now let’s just go in there an’ see what kind of hornet’s nest we stirred up.”

  The one grabbing for the ceiling couldn’t be more than seventeen or eighteen, and it struck Earl that the man Jackson had hit the other day wasn’t much older.

  “ Johnny Lee Tyler,” Earl said.

  “ Yes, sir,” the kid answered.

  “ What are ya’ll up to here?”

  “ Just loading up some things for his dad,” the boy nodded toward the body.

  “ Who is he?” Earl asked.

  “ Darren Johnson, new kid. He lives with his dad, they only been in town a month.” The boy’s hands, still above his head, were shaking like palm trees in a hurricane.

  “ And you hooked right up with ’em?”

  “ Guess so.”

  “ What ‘cha got in all the boxes?”

  “ CDs. The new Rolling Stones mostly.”

  “ Counterfeit?” Earl asked.

  “’ Spect so,” the boy answered.

  “ And over there?” Earl pointed to the back wall.

  “ Porno videos, the kind you can’t get at the store. You know, the kind with kids in ’em.”

  “ Shit, Johnny Lee, I know your daddy, we go hunting. He didn’t raise you like this.”

  The boy dropped his hands, then he dropped his eyes to the cement floor. The room was quiet for a few seconds that seem like forever. Johnny Lee appeared to be studying a brown beetle as it scurried toward the cracks made between several stacks of the cardboard boxes.

  “ All right, Johnny Lee, what did ya’ll pick up from that plane?”

  “ Two kilos of coke and a briefcase.”

  “ Lordy, Johnny Lee, sex, drugs an’ rock ‘n’ roll. You boys was into it all.”

  “ Not me, honest. It’s Darren’s dad. I just sorta fell into it.”

  “ Was it the drugs?” Earl said.

  The boy nodded.

  “ Where’s the briefcase and what’s in it?”

  “ It’s in the car, in the back. I don’t know what’s in it. That’s the honest truth.”

  “ You wanna get it.”

  “ Sure, Sheriff,” the kid said, and he hustled to the car.

  “ You know, Jackson,” Earl said. “The hardest thing for a police officer to do is tell a man that his wife just died in an accident or that you’ve locked up his boy for killing a man. You steel yourself against it, but when you go up those steps and ring that bell, you’re quaking inside, like a pup that just shit on the rug and knows he’s in for it.”

  “ I can imagine,” Jackson said.

  “ I’m sure not looking forward to seeing Billy Ray Tyler this evening,” Earl said.

  “ And Darren’s father,” Jackson said. Earl saw him looking at the boy’s eyes, wide open in death. Looking at the trickle of blood dripping from a lip that must have been cut in the fall. Looking at the scar under the chin. Looking at the close cropped hair, the white tee shirt, the faded Levi’s, the hundred dollar running shoes. Looking at a life that wouldn’t be lived.

  “ Far as I’m concerned, that boy’s daddy killed him, not you. I’m ashamed to say it, but it will give me a kind of pleasure telling the man that his boy’s de
ad and that it’s his fault. The man sold child porn and drugs. You wanna be there when I take him down. ’Cause that’s one arrest that’s not gonna go by the book.”

  Jackson nodded. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  Earl looked around the warehouse. Not large, thirty by sixty maybe, but it was stuffed full of cartons, mostly compact discs, but quite a few of the video tapes. Darren’s dad was in a lot of trouble. Earl didn’t think he’d be going to his boy’s funeral. He didn’t think the man would be too mobile for a while. Not after he got through with him.

  He turned his eyes away from the cardboard boxes and the dead body and watched as Johnny Lee Tyler opened the back door to the Chevy and fished out the briefcase. He brought it inside, laying it on top of a stack of boxes. He smiled up at Earl, like a hound dog eager to please.

  “ Open it,” Earl said, and the kid fumbled with the latches.

  “ Can’t, it’s locked,” he said.

  “ But you could get it open fast enough if you really wanted to, couldn’t you, lad?”

  “ Yes, sir.”

  “ Then do it.”

  The boy reached behind his neck, under the back of his shirt, and pulled out a large hunting knife.

  “ Where’d you learn how to hide a knife like that?” Jackson asked.

  “ Darren’s dad,” the kid said, then he pried the tip of the knife under the latches and popped them off the briefcase and opened it.

  “ Look at all that money,” the sheriff said, whistling under his breath.

  “ Lots of money,” Jackson said.

  “ Way I see it, we got no choice,” Earl said.

  “ No choice,” Jackson said.

  And Earl shot Johnny Lee through the heart with his friend’s gun. The cannon sound of the forty-five roared through the small warehouse like the sound of an exploding jet engine. One second Johnny Lee was filling Earl with those trusting eyes and the next he was flying across the room. But Earl never got to see where he landed because something slammed into the back of his head and the lights went out.

  Chapter Three

  Maria lost her balance, stumbled and reached out for the seatback behind the prime minister, but she grabbed a fistful of his shirt instead. He pulled her into him, burying her face against his chest, clawing at her, fighting to hold her. She smelled the sweat from under his arms, felt his muscles strain as he fought to keep her from tumbling down the aisle.

  She heard someone scream as she wrapped her arms around his chest, straining and struggling to hold on. His knee came up into her stomach, knocking her breath away. She gasped for air, but she was wedged in tightly against the prime minister, her mouth pulled into his clothes. She moaned and felt him relax his hold on her. Then she saw the orange oxygen mask as he wormed it between her face and his chest. She inhaled, quick short breaths, and in seconds she had her wind back.

  The noise was deafening, louder than the cranked up volume of any of the Texas honky tonks that Earl liked to take her to, louder than the giant speakers at the Weezer and the Wallflowers concerts she went to with her sister last year, louder than the dragsters at the Southern Texas Speedway, louder than God.

  She battled with the prime minister as he tried to turn her around. In her normal, rational mind, she knew what he was doing, but she couldn’t help herself, she fought against him, afraid he was going to take the oxygen away. She pushed against his chest, fighting to get up and out of his lap. Then the plane lurched again, as if a giant boy had a giant fist wrapped around his giant airplane toy, and he was shaking it.

  She stopped resisting and squirmed around so that she was sitting in his lap, but she lost the mask as she came around. She offered no resistance as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close, grabbing his hands onto his elbows in an effort to form a locking ring around her waist. She felt herself getting light, then heavy, then light again as the plane plunged toward the ground, lurched itself level, then plunged downward again. She grabbed onto the seatback in front of her for added support. Shivers zapped her body, but she fought to control her shaking. Something was smacking her in the head and she reached up and grabbed it. It was the oxygen mask. Without realizing what she was doing, she jerked on it with a maniac force, snapping the plastic tube, destroying the mask and cutting off any more oxygen for herself or the prime minister.

  “ Please, God,” the man next to the prime minister murmured as the plane bucked and slammed through a convulsion from hell. It was a desperate plea, like a puppy dog whine.

  She felt the prime minister’s hands slipping.

  “ Help me, George,” he yelled, and she felt a second pair of hands wrap around her left arm just as the plane slammed and jerked further to the right. They were still going down. She felt them pull and strain, fighting to keep her in place, as the plane rocked and rolled through the clear sky.

  Then the angle of descent slackened and they were flying straight and level again. A collective sigh escaped from first class and Maria felt her breath go out as she sighed, too. She relaxed, her shoulders sagged, her heart slowed its wild pumping. The deafening noise was down to a dull roar.

  “ Thank you,” she said, disentangling herself from the two men by pulling up on the seatback in front of her. The attorney general gave her backside a gentle push. She wanted to be back next to the DEA man with the shaved head, safely belted in. She wanted comfort. She wanted a friend. The DEA man was all she had.

  “ Sorry folks,” the captain’s voice soothed through the plane, “I had no control over that, but we have the plane back and she seems to be flying okay. I’ve alerted Port of Spain and they will have medical facilities standing by should we need any. We’re still about forty-five minutes behind schedule. I know it’s difficult, but please try and remain calm. We are doing the very best we can.”

  “ It was a bomb,” Chandee said. She looked over at the man with the strong voice and the puppy dog whine. He hadn’t offered her any help until the prime minister demanded it and she saw why. Sweat ringed his forehead, his eyes were glazed like a rabbit caught in the headlights, his face was ashen, his hands were shaking and it looked like he’d peed his pants.

  “ Shut up, George,” Prime Minister Ramsingh said.

  Maria looked down at them. “Thanks again,” she said. “You probably saved my life.” The prime minister was beaming. The attorney general was not. She watched as he slipped out of his light suit coat and laid it in his lap.

  “ You should go back to your seat,” the prime minister said. He seemed confident now, gone were the knitted eyebrows and the clenched teeth. His neck was no longer bulging and he seemed to be smiling, almost in a state of grace, she thought.

  The attorney general, on the other hand, had bitten into his lower lip and drawn blood. A slight trickle oozed down his chin. That, coupled with his glazed eyes, gave him a crazed vampire kind of look. “Yes,” he said. “The prime minister is right, you should go back to your seat.” The words, whispered above the engine noise, weren’t mean in themselves, but the way he said it, they were threatening. She had seen his fear and he was the kind of man who would never forget it. She wanted to be away from him.

  She turned to go back to her seat when she heard the baby cry again. A loud, long wail that seared her soul. There was only one lap child on board. A darling baby girl. She remembered seating them in the forward bulkhead position, right in front of the movie screen in second class. Just on the other side of the curtain. She prayed the child was okay, she had to know.

  She turned around, away from her seat next to the DEA man, pushed aside the curtain and stepped into second class and chaos. The overhead luggage lockers had been stuffed to capacity with overweight carry-on bags and many of them had come open during the rapid descent, spilling their contents on the passengers below and out into the aisles.

  The baby stopped crying. Her young parents were sharing an oxygen mask, taking turns breathing through it, like a pair of scuba buddies, allowing the baby to wear mom’s mask. She f
elt like reminding the baby’s father that they were low enough so that he could breathe without it, but she noticed his shaking hands. Sharing the mask with his wife gave him something to do. Made him feel like he was taking care of her.

  “ Are we going to make it?” he asked, as his wife was drawing in oxygen.

  “ Certainly, but like the captain said we’ll get into Port of Spain a little late.” Maria kept her smile, trying to project an image of calm security to the young couple, just the opposite of how she felt.

  The plane lurched to the right and another overhead locker opened. She saw the black bag start to fall and she remembered how heavy it was. Full of bricks, she thought when she’d shoved it up there. She remembered mentally cursing the ground personnel for allowing the passengers to bring aboard carry-on baggage that was obviously too large and too heavy.

  She lunged toward the open compartment as the plane careened through more turbulence. Someone screamed. The boy sitting below the falling bag was piercing Maria with innocent blue-eyed trust. The bag was halfway out of the locker. She wanted to scream, tell the boy to move, but she needed all her energy. She slammed her right foot into the deck and dove, hands outstretched. The boy started to look up. The bag was out of the locker. Her stretching fingers tipped it toward the aisle. She tried to loosen her body as she fell, she didn’t want to break anything. She hit the deck and wound up wedged between the bag and a seat stuffed with a large black man. Her right ankle was screaming.

  “ Let me help you,” the man said in a rich baritone, and in the fluid movement of a professional athlete he was out of his seat, one hand lifting the bag and the other pulling her off the deck.

  Standing, she caught her breath and looked up into his eyes. He looked as if he had played basketball when he was younger.

  “ I think I might have sprained my ankle,” she said. She remembered earlier thinking that it was a shame that such a big man had to be folded into one of the cramped second class seats. “There’s an empty seat up in first, if you help me back, you can have it.”