Beyond Justice (37 page)

"If I was going to hold out, I wouldn't have come back in the first place."

"Fine.  Let's go."  This time, I got myself as far under the beam as possible.  Bishop did the same.  On the count of three, we extended our legs, backs and arms with all our might.

It moved.

"Okay when I say go," Bishop hissed through his teeth and pointed his chin towards the wall, "roll it that way!"

I gave a Neanderthal reply.  For a moment, the beam actually lifted off of Possum's body.  The muscles in my entire body burned like gasoline-soaked logs.

Bishop's eyelids squeezed so tight they could have wrung out blood. "Go!" he shouted.  I leaned forward and pushed with him until the beam slipped out of my hands.  It landed with a heavy boom that echoed up to the top of the hollowed out stairwell.

"Damn!"  Bishop said.

"What?" I was afraid to open my eyes.  When my vision finally cleared I looked down.  Blinking in disbelief, I wanted to ask him if he saw what I was seeing.  Before I could, he trudged over to the door and began squeezing through the opening.  Did I expect anything else?

I looked down at Possum's motionless body again.  "What the—?" His  T-shirt was now stained with black soot in various spots.  There were minor cuts on his arms and shoulders, but the only blood came from his chest.

I knelt.

Looked closer.

A blotch of dark red blood stretched across the center of his shirt.  The shape, the pattern was so distinct that for a moment, though I was staring straight at it, I couldn't process it.  The blood spread and the shape became amorphous.

Then it was just a spot of blood.  Again.

But its momentary form became permanently etched into my memory. 

I've never forgotten it since.

The shape of a bird's wing.

Chapter Seventy-Five

Muttering every step of the way down the steps, Butch checked his gun.  It'd suck if it jammed at a critical moment.  At ground level, he exited and went around the back of B-Block where to his annoyance, he caught a glimpse of an inmate squeezing through a tight crack in a damaged service door.  Butch clicked off the safety of his Smith and Wesson .38 and waited until the con got out. "Freeze!"

It was Bishop.  The big ape actually thought he'd just walk out and climb over the fence right under the abandoned sentry towers.  Bold.  Stupid, but bold.

Bishop didn't bother raising his hands in the air, the smug bastard.  Butch stepped towards his target with caution, never letting him out of his aim.   Their relationship was about to change.  "Going somewhere, Morgan?"

Bishop glared.

"Get 'em up, now!" Butch hollered from a distance of only ten feet away.  Bishop slid both hands into his pockets and looked down his nose at him. "I said get them up!  In the air, or so help me God—"

Bishop shot him a corrosive glare.  "Of all the places to turn for help."

Butch took three steps forward, both hands on his gun, trying to keep it from shaking as he pointed it up and pressed it into the ex-priest's ear.

"I got a feeling if I pull the trigger, this bullet will just come out the other ear—no damage done.  Wanna test my theory?"

Without so much as a flinch, Bishop said, "You ain't got the balls."

"No?"  Butch cocked the hammer, hoping the ominous click would at the very least make him blink.

Nada.

"See?" Bishop said.  "Ball-less."

He just had to make this difficult, didn't he?

"All right, Bish.  Tell you what.  I'm going to hand you a pair of cuffs.  You be a good ape and put 'em on and
if
I decide not to put a bullet in your thick skull, maybe—just maybe—I'll think about telling my guys in National City to let Kathy keep seven of her fingers when we're done here.

This time Bishop jerked back and grunted.

Much better.  High time he remembered who was really in charge around here.

"That, Butch, was a mistake."

"I don't think so."  He began weighing his options.  Which would bring more paperwork, more hassle? Shooting an escaped inmate in self-defense or bringing him back in?

Chapter Seventy-Six

Blood notwithstanding, I put my ear to Possum's chest and felt his wrist for a pulse.  Weak, but beating.  His breath was irregular, he needed medical attention immediately.

With the staircase collapsed, the only way out was the exit.  If I didn't resist capture, maybe they'd listen and go back for Possum.  If anyone was out there.

There was.

And that person was in some kind of shouting match with Bishop.  Whoever it was, however, he had to be able to get some help.  A man's life was at stake here.

With my face halfway through the opening exit, I pressed through and looked back.  "Hang on, buddy," I whispered to Possum.  "Back soon." 

They didn't notice me standing at the door, just about ten yards behind them.  But I saw them clearly.  Butch had his gun pressed into Bishop's ear.  I couldn't make out what they were saying.  Although Possum needed help, the situation was so tense, I dared not move.

Butch reached back for the handcuffs at his belt.

If I had blinked, I might have missed what happened next.

In a flash, Bishop dropped his head, reached back and twisted Butch's arm so forcefully, I wondered if he'd just broken it.  A shot rang out.  He twisted Butch's wrist again.  The gun dropped to the floor.

Before my next breath, he had Butch in a choke hold, a shank at his neck.

"Bishop, don't!" I called out.

He turned to me, his eyes smoldering like a brush fire.  "Grab the gun!" I froze. "Dammit, Hudson!  Pick it up!"

I stepped over, bent down and retrieved it.  The handle was still warm and moist.  I wanted to rub my hands on my pants.  Better judgment dictated that I keep it pointed at... who was I supposed to point it at anyway?

Bishop leaned his face right up against Butch's.  He was going to kill him.

"No, wait!" Butch cried.  "We can work something out.  Anything you want, just name it!"

"You throw me into Gen-Pop, threaten my sister, and now you ask what I want?" he tightened his grip.  Butch groaned.

"But...I made you... you rule Gen-Pop!  You're the—"

"I want you dead, is what I want!"  Bishop tightened his grip around Butch's throat, cutting off his words.  He pressed his shank in and Butch let out a girlish squeak.

"Come on, Frank," I said.  "Do not do this."

His eyes lit like napalm, aimed straight at me. "What?"

"You've had it rough, and yeah, you're no saint," I said, getting closer.  "But you are not a murderer."   I curled my right index finger uncomfortably around the trigger.

"Listen to him, Frank," Butch stammered, his eyes wide.

"Shut up!"  Bishop yanked the C.O.'s head back, then turned back to me.  "You don't know what the hell I am, Hudson!"

"I know you didn't kill that priest— You've never killed anyone."  Somehow, I just knew.  He hesitated.  Then his features galvanized again. 

"You have no idea how many I've killed."

"No.  This is cold-blooded—"

"Sonofabitch deserves it!"  There was no stopping him.  I knew that look of desperation, where there was nothing left to lose.  No one could stand in Bishop's way and hope to live.  He inhaled deeply, let out a slow but savage growl.

I was about to watch Butch's throat get slashed open.

And then, as if all time was suspended, another vision came to me, clear as day.  It was Jenn, the night she was murdered, dying in my arms, struggling to speak.  A warm, tingling sensation coursed through my body, my mind.  I understood, finally realizing what had to happen.

Out of nowhere I shouted, "Mercy, not sacrifice!"

Bishop froze.  Both he and Butch looked up at me with disbelief.

And then I knew what I must do.

I aimed the gun.

And pulled the trigger.

Chapter Seventy-Seven

Bishop hit on the ground and rolled to his side.

In an instant, Butch made a run for it.  "Stop!" I yelled, and cocked the hammer again.  With his back turned to me, he raised his hands. "You're not going anywhere."

"Oh, you're in way over your head, pretty boy!"

I walked over to Bishop.  Looked down.  He was holding his leg and grimacing. "I'm sorry, Frank."

"Sonofabitch," he strained.  "I can't—" he gritted his teeth, "can't believe you did that." Keeping the gun aimed at Butch, I knelt down, moved Bishop's blood stained-hand away.  The bullet had passed straight through his calf.

"How did you know?" he groaned.

"Whenever you girls are done gabbing," Butch said "My arms are cramping here!"  I straightened up and went over to the C.O.  Got up close and looked down into his face.  He sneered, trying to suppress the tremor in his lip. 

I held the gun up to his head.  Pressed it into the spot where his bushy eyebrows were conjoined.  "Bishop's right," I said in an icy tone.  "You deserve to die."

Butch squeezed his eyes shut.  His entire body shook.  Then I did something that surprised me as much as it did him.  It was unplanned, just acting on gut, the same intuition that led me to shoot Bishop.

I grabbed Butch's forearm.  Turned his palm up.  And slapped the gun into his hand.

He opened one eye.  Then the other.  Total bewilderment.

"What the hell are you doing!" Bishop said.

"Why?" Butch's mouth hung agape, his eyes bulged.

"Two things."  The words just seemed to flow out of me.  Only after I spoke them did I realize that I meant it.  "First: As much I'd love to pull the trigger, I'm not the one who judges.  That's God's job."

His eyeballs were about to pop out of his head.  "What?"

"Second:  I need your help."

"What makes you think I'd—?"

"Because your throat isn't slashed open, because you don't have a bullet in your head."

"Oh.  Right."

"Get medical help now.  For Bishop.  And Possum.  He's back in that stairwell, hurt really bad."

"Sam, you stupid little— Don't!"  Bishop slapped the floor.  Butch nodded and jogged towards the building.  Every couple of steps he'd turn back and look at me.  The sun's rays blazed down from a cloudless, azure firmament.  Sweat rolled down my back.

"You're an idiot!" Bishop said.

"Tell me about it."  I removed my t-shirt, tore strip from it and wrapped a tourniquet around his leg, keeping pressure on the wound.  "He'll be back, trust me."  Bishop just shook his head.  I grabbed his shoulder and said, "You going to kill me now?"

"No," he said, then smiled.  "Not now, anyway.  How'd you know?" Bishop tilted his head and looked deeper into my eyes.  "Those words.  Mercy, not sacrifice.  How?"

"They were my wife's last words.  To this day, I still don't know why she said that."

"Well I'll be.  They were my mother's last words too," he said.  I shuddered.  "And no one ever knew what was written in that locket."

"Locket?"

"The one you saw in your vision.  No one could have known about it.  Those words, that verse.  It was inscribed into my mother's locket.  She gave it to me just before she died."  It was too much of a coincidence to actually be one.

I checked the tourniquet and retied it.  "So why did you stop when I said it?"  That hardness in his demeanor, that great rampart, that fortified citadel of anger and disillusionment, it all began to crumble—like the Berlin wall—brick by brick.

"You were right about one thing," Bishop said as the infirmary staff arrived.  "I may have turned my back on God, but I've never stopped believing in Him."  He tried to stand but grimaced and stopped.  With my arm behind his back, I helped him settle back.

"Last night," he said.  "I came to a decision.  I was going to give God one more chance."  He scoffed.  "Yeah, I got some nerve.  I told God that I wanted a sign.  Anything.  I mean, I figured,
you'd
been getting all these visions."

"I didn't think you gave them any credence."

"Well, I didn't at first.  Anyway, I figured, no harm asking.  Then this earthquake hits.  Stupid cons riot and take over the control room.  There was my sign."

An armed guard walked out of the staircase door with Butch.  They exchanged a few words and the guard approached.  From a distance he said to us, "Stay there.  We've got a situation inside."

"How's Possum?" I called out.

"They're looking at him now."  The guard gestured sharply at Bishop's shank, still in his grip.  Bishop tossed it to him.

"Anyway," Bishop continued.  "I'm ready to slash Butch's throat, I'm at a point of decision.  You know, if I decided there really is no God, then what's to stop me?  You know firsthand the things Butch has done."