Driving Big Davie (Dan Starkey) (28 page)

Another stone came through another window. Voices were raised. I recognised two of them.

DJ: 'He attacked my wife, he battered her head off a rock, for all I know he raped her as well, and you're telling me we gotta stand here and wait for some prosecutor to drive up from Naples?'

Sheriff Baines: 'No, DJ, you don't got to stand there, you can go home and wait for the prosecutor to drive up from Naples. This isn't just a simple case, DJ. It may be these men are wanted for other crimes, or that the FBI need to get involved. In the meantime I haven't even been able to examine the crime scene because I can't risk leaving them in there in case you guys go haywire.'

DJ: 'FBI? We don't need the FBI, Sheriff! If they're guilty of other stuff, then they'll take them out of the county and we won't never see them again. That's not how we do things round here.'

'DJ, we do things right.'

'I don't disagree with you, Sheriff, and the right thing to do is string 'em up.'

There came a roar of support from the rest of the mob.

'Can't do that, DJ.'

'Can, too. You send them out, Sheriff, or we come in and get them!'

There was another roar. Louder.

It was like listening to a bad radio play, but with the added bonus that at any moment one of the characters could step out of the speakers and kill you.

'You don't try and come in here, DJ.'

'What you gonna do, Sheriff, shoot us — shoot us all?'

'Many as I can pick off.'

There was a buzz of excitement through the crowd. A showdown. Like a hoedown, with guns. Other familiar voices:

JJ: 'You tell 'im, DJ!'

CJ: 'Send those sons of bitches out, Sheriff!'

Stone: 'You put those guns down now, folks, and go on home!'

Sheriff Baines: 'I'm telling you, DJ, you don't put one foot on that step.'

'They killed my wife.'

'She's not dead, DJ.'

'It's looking that way. Could have been any of our wives.'

'From what. I remember, she was.'

It was a brave but foolhardy point to make.

'You ain't got no call to talk like that, Sheriff.'

'And you ain't got no call to come here with a lynch mob. They done something wrong, they'll pay for it. My way, not your way.'

'Your way they'll get some fancy lawyer and they'll walk.'

'Well, that's America, son.'

'No,' said DJ. '
This
is America.'

There was a sudden explosive blast, and a split second later Sheriff Sterling Baines, thirteen days short of retirement, came flying through the station door with a hole the shape of a medium-sized pizza blown from his chest and out through his back.

Dr Cortez screamed.

And so did I.

I was busy thinking my last thoughts on this mortal coil, and they were pretty much the same as ever: they should have been about love and remorse and Patricia, but instead, inevitably, they were of sex and food and rock'n'roll. At least 5 per cent of them were. The rest were about death and how sore it would be. I am not built for pain. I am built for pleasure. Paper cuts and nettle stings can push me over the edge.

I stood frozen at the bars. There was a kind of vacuum by the door; it was open and inviting everyone in, but the death of Sheriff Baines — and he was undeniably dead, you could pitch a tent in the hole in his chest — had momentarily stilled the mob. Dr Cortez was already bending down to the Sheriff, but she didn't even feel for a pulse. If I'd been on the other side of the bars I could have done it for her. I'm good on pulses.

Davie hissed: 'Kelly — please, the keys — get the keys.'

She looked up at him blankly and nodded, but she made no move to clip them off the Sheriff's belt.

'Kelly!'

This second request seemed to shake her from her trance, but it was too late. Deputy Stone came through the door, his face thick with sweat, his eyes jumping with fear. He rammed it shut behind him and bolted it. But it was a wooden door with a tiny lock. Mosquitoes would give it a hard time. He backed away from it with his gun out. A moment later it was thumped hard. A rock smashed through another window.

'Deputy,' Davie said calmly, 'you have to let us out of here.'

'You just shut the fuck up!' Stone glanced down at Sheriff Baines. 'Christ All Mighty,' he said. 'Christ All Mighty.'

'Deputy, you're in charge now.' Davie sounded for once like the police officer he had been.' That door isn't going to hold them. No matter what you think about us, you have to get us out of here.'

'I don't have to do nothing!' Stone yelled. Another rock came crashing through. 'Christ, oh Christ,' said Stone. He looked to Dr Cortez for reassurance. 'He's not dead, tell me he's not dead.'

When it was bleeding obvious.

Cortez could only shake her head.

'You have to call for
help,'
I said.

'Help?'
Stone snapped. 'Where the hell's help going to come from?'

He jumped as Cortez put a hand on his arm. 'They'll come from Naples.'

'Not for hours,' said Stone, 'not for hours.'

There was a sudden thump against the door which rattled violently on its hinges.

'You still have to call them.'

Stone steadied himself against a chair for a moment, took a deep breath, nodded at Cortez, then crossed to the phone. But before he could lift it to his ear, DJ shouted from outside.

'Jesse! Can you hear me, Jesse?'

Jesse hesitated, then put the receiver down and moved cautiously across to one of the smashed windows. I couldn't see what he could see, but it was pretty easy to guess: ranks of angry townsfolk carrying flaming torches yelling, 'Kill the beast! Kill!' The only difference between us and Frankenstein's Monster was that we didn't have bolts through our necks. Yet.

'I hear you, DJ!'

'We've got nothing against you, Jesse, and we're sorry about the Sheriff. Gun just went off — was an accident, y'hear?'

'I hear, DJ. Kind of a convenient accident!'

'I'm telling you, Jesse, and I got a hundred witnesses out here!'

'Well, line them up and I'll take their statements.'

It was an unexpected piece of wit from the man with no chin.

Naturally, DJ ignored it. 'We don't want there to be no more accidents, Jesse, you think about that. All we want is for you to send those two boys out.'

'I can't do that, DJ, you know that.'

'You want us to come in and get them?'

'You can try.' The right words, but the intonation was all wrong; then he made matters worse by yelling: 'And help's on its way! I just called it in! Now you folks all disperse peacefully!' with a voice which broke halfway through, like puberty had just arrived.

'Jesse, first thing we did was cut the telephone line.'

'Don't need no telephone, DJ, we got the Internet.'

'Don't you need a telephone line for that?'

This seemed to flummox Stone for a moment. He was distracted by Cortez holding up her cell phone. Stone smiled gratefully.

'How dumb you think I am, DJ? We all got cell phones. Help's coming, and you had all best go home.'

'We're not going anywhere without those boys, Jesse. Your decision.'

Stone glanced back at us. Then he looked at the remains of Sheriff Baines on the floor. He'd sweated through his uniform and was now dripping on the floor. Cortez was looking at her phone. She bit at her lip. She whispered: 'Low battery.' Stone took another deep breath, and I suffered a stroke.

Another window exploded inwards. Stone ducked down clutching his head as glass sprayed all around him. Ducked down, stayed down. He sat on the floor and let go of his gun. His eyes were tight shut to stop the tears from coming out; his mouth was elongated, showing two rows of perfect teeth clenched hard together in an unintentionally skeletal grin. He was half scared to death. He hadn't joined the Everglades City PD for this. He'd joined for the uniform and the gun and to give out speeding tickets and flirt with the tourists. Not to get shot at or make life or death decisions.

Deputy Stone cowered down as the mob grew louder; the hysteria was growing.

'Deputy,' I said, 'please just let us out. Just get the keys and let us out.'

'I can't.' He wouldn't open his eyes.

Davie rattled the bars of our cell. His knuckles were white against the cool metal, his eyes electric.' Hey, DJ!' he bellowed.

'Davie?'

'DJ! DJ!'

If he had a plan, he wasn't telling me. Probably because it involved giving me up to save his own sorry arse. He'd blame me for everything and slabber his way out of a premature death.

'Can you hear me, DJ?!'

'I hear you!'

'Well, why don't you come and get us then, you retard fuck!' Davie rattled the bars again. His cheeks were red, his brow furrowed and the grooves on it ran with sweat, as if he had a paddyfield on his forehead.

'Davie, for fuck sake!' I hissed. Naturally, he ignored me. So I tried to pull him off the bars, but he was a trained fighting machine, and I could do shorthand. He threw me across the cell and returned to rattle some more.

'Come on, you inbred fuck! Come and get us!'

'What are you
doing
?' Kelly Cortez hissed.

Davie ignored her as well.

'I'll tell you why you're not coming in, you fucking dough-bag!' he screamed. 'You're fucking scared shitless because Jesse Stone is standing here ready to take you all on! He's one man against a fucking mob! But he's not moving because he's a police officer and he swore to uphold the law and he'll do that and he'll stand here and he'll shoot you one by one as you come through that door, and when he runs out of bullets he'll club you down, and when he can't hit you any more he'll go down fighting and scratching because he knows the difference between right and wrong even if you don't! He's a man, DJ, and you are a bunch of fucking old women!'

It was Davie Kincaid as General Patton, or Sylvester Stallone. It was James Stewart barracking low-down dirty politics in
Mr Smith Goes to Washington.
And it seemed to work, for about thirty seconds. Then there came five separate shotgun blasts which tore holes out of the door and the front wall of the station.

As we ducked down again I yelled, 'That was fucking smart!' at Davie.

'Oh yeah?' he said, and I followed his gaze to where Stone was slowly rising through the gunsmoke. His gun was back in his hand; he was checking it was loaded. Then he turned and nodded at Dr Cortez.

'Kelly,' he said, 'take those keys off the Sheriff, get the suspects out of that cell and see if you can get them out the back way.'

Cortez hesitated for just a moment, then smiled at the Deputy. She bent to the Sheriff's corpse and felt along his belt for the keys. She had to move him slightly to get at them; she paused to wipe the blood from them, then hurried across to our cell. She unlocked the gate and let us out. She touched Davie on the arm and said, 'This way.'

'I'll come too,' I said.

Kelly led the way. I made a point of not looking too closely at the Sheriff's body as we passed. Davie stopped for a moment. 'Good man,' he said to Deputy Stone. Stone nodded, but didn't take his eyes off the front door.

We moved down a narrow corridor, through a small kitchen towards a solid wooden back door. As Cortez reached up to unbolt it, Davie grabbed her arm. He put a finger to his lips. 'Listen,' he whispered.

We listened.

They were waiting.

They weren't trying to break in, just hoping we'd run into their ambush.

'They must think we're really stupid,' I said.

Davie now took charge. He led us back up the corridor. He only had to shake his head at Stone to bring him up to date. Davie then bent to the Sheriff's corpse and began to remove his gun.

'Stop right there!' Stone pointed his own gun at Davie.

'We can make a fight of this,' Davie said, his fingers tantalisingly close to Baines's weapon.

'You leave it. Maybe I have to save your lives, doesn't mean we're on the same side.' Davie's fingers nevertheless inched forward. 'I'm telling you, boy, I'll shoot you if I have to. Be doing everyone a favour.'

'C'mon, Davie,' I said.

Davie gave a slight shake of his head, then rose from the Sheriff's body and followed Cortez and me to the stairs.

'This where the teleporter is?' I asked.

'Shut the fuck up,' Stone snapped.

As we hit the bottom step two things happened at once: the front door exploded off its hinges, and a flaming garbage bag came through one of the side windows. It immediately set about burning the station down. Stone raised his gun and fired once through the window, and again through the open door. There was a stampede of footsteps away from both spaces; but moments later shots were returned.

'Move it!' Stone shouted.

We moved it.

I had certain fears about the wisdom of this. I shouted, 'We're going upstairs in a burning wooden building!'

They ignored me, of course. Even I ignored me. I was just pointing out the patently bloody obvious.

The first floor was where Sheriff Baines kept his files and lost property. Davie spotted a fire extinguisher and an axe in a glass case on the far wall. He smashed the glass and removed the axe then followed us on up to the second floor. There was more gunfire from below. The rising smoke seemed to be keeping pace with us.

While Kelly and Davie ran ahead, I paused for a moment at a window on the landing between the floors. It gave me my first real view of the mob. There seemed to be about a hundred of them, but they weren't all involved in the assault on the police station. As far as I could see, there were maybe a dozen taking part; the rest were watching, cheering them on. They were spread out like spectators at an Eleventh Night bonfire; loyal to the cause, but not always willing to participate. Even at this height I could see JJ moving amongst them handing out bottles of beer. Great. There was a free bar at the Mountain View and I was missing it.

As I reached the second floor I found Davie and Kelly examining the far wall. In front of me was a single bed and a desk covered in papers. There was also a suitcase half-filled with neatly folded clothes. Sheriff Baines evidently lived above the shop, but was getting packed up for his retirement. Davie ran his fingers along the paintwork.