The Quest: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 6 (5 page)

     Luther was pissed and had good reason to be. But he was a decent man, and took the time and trouble to drag the bodies out the back door and to bury them in the back yard. It was a lot of work for a man of his years and took the better part of two days to complete. They weren’t buried very deeply. But they were far enough below ground to keep the flies off of them. And it was more of a burial than they deserved, in Luther’s mind.

     The old man took refuge in the house after that.

     He felt he was entitled, and there wasn’t anyone left alive to argue the point anyway.

     So now he had a safe and comfortable place to stay. But he still had no food, and had to boil the water from the swimming pool out back to have something to drink.

     Those days were way past him now. It had been more than a year and a half since he buried those bodies, and Luther’s life had become more or less a dull routine.

     He’d been paid a visit by the San Antonio po-lice one afternoon, who believed his story about how he managed to be in possession of the huge home. The officers who came to call were going door-to-door, looking for bodies, and even took the time to thank Luther for disposing of the Palmers’ bodies for them.

     One of the officers came back not long after to help Luther dig a small plot for a garden in the Palmers’ back yard, and provided him with several packets of seeds.

     Luther never had much need for the po-lice until that time. He’d been hassled and harassed by them many times over the years.

     But this particular officer seemed to be different. He seemed almost… human.

     Luther would never consider John Castro a friend. His ill will toward the po-lice went far too deep for that. But he did have to admit that maybe some cops weren’t so bad after all.

     On the day John was shot, Luther just happened to be walking down Marbach Road on his way to an abandoned liquor store. He’d run out of Jim Beam and needed a bottle or two to dull the pain from his arthritis.

     So it was a coincidence, and nothing more than that, that he saw John in the distance, half a block away, leave his patrol car and start picking flowers.

     He was too far away to see John’s face, but he knew who it was. He’d encountered the officer a couple of times before while on his liquor runs, or when going to his friend Marco’s house to play dominos or checkers.

     He would have yelled a greeting to John Castro and waved to him as he passed by. Maybe even have said something civil like, “Have a good day, officer.”

     But he never had the chance to do that.

     He was still fifty yards away when the first shot rang out, knocking John Castro to the ground.

     By the time the second shot pierced John’s chest a second and a half later, Luther was already on the ground.

     He’d heard enough gunshots in his time in San Antonio’s vicious Victoria Courts project to know the drill.

     So he hugged the ground for several minutes before raising his head and looking around to see if it was safe to go on.

     Now Luther had a dilemma.

     He’d been raised by his parents to fear and spite the po-lice. And they’d certainly done nothing in his adult life to show they deserved any respect or quarter.

     Until John Castro came along to help him with his garden.

     Part of him said to go the other way. To forget the liquor. To go home and wash his hands of… whatever had just happened. Not to give the po-lice the chance to blame him for the shooting. To railroad him into prison on trumped up charges just to clear their case.

     But Luther Brown was better than that.

     He’d led a hard life, sure. He’d seldom been given a fair shake by the man, no doubt.

     But he’d brought a lot of it on himself with his poor decision-making over the years.

     And there on the ground, fifty yards away, was the only member of the San Antonio po-lice who’d ever been good to him.

     Once he was sure the threat was gone, Luther made his way over to the fallen officer to see if he was still alive.

     John Castro’s luck was holding.

-7-

     “Hello… hello…”

     Luther Brown had seen his share of cop shows. In his youth, he actually liked
Adam-12
and
Dragnet
. Although even back then they represented “the man,” they nonetheless caught his interest.

     In later years, he even watched
Cops
occasionally, although he abruptly stopped one day when he watched an episode taped in Dallas and saw an old friend get arrested.

     He knew how to use a police radio from watching the shows, although he had no clue how to speak the language.

     Timidly, with the air of a kid who knew he was going to be chewed out for doing something wrong, he keyed the microphone and called out the only way he knew how.

     “Hello… hello… is anybody there?”

     “
Sir, you’re on a frequency reserved for the San Antonio Police Department. Do you need to report an emergency?”

     “Yes, that’s right. I want to report a ‘mergency. One of your officers has been shot.”

     All over the city, ears perked up and heads turned. Every officer stopped what they were doing and listened.

     “
Sir, can you tell us your name and your location?”

     “My name is Luther. I’m on Marbach Road by the old Valero Station. The street sign is gone but I think it’s South Ellison. You better hurry. He’s shot up pretty bad.”

     “
All units sector six. Respond to call of officer down at South Ellison and Marbach Road.”

    
They were wasted words. Every officer who’d heard Luther’s plea was already rolling.

     “
Sir, do you know who did the shooting?”

     “It wasn’t me, no sir. I didn’t see who it was. It came from a distance, like a rifle.”

     “
Has anyone else been shot?”

     “No, sir. Nobody I can see. It was just them two shots and then nothing.”

     “
Is he conscious?”

     “I don’t know. He ain’t moving. He looks to me like he’s dead.”

     Robbie smiled at Luther’s words. He was rolling, but at a much slower speed than the rest of the force.

     It was important that he not be the first to arrive on the scene. Others might wonder later how he happened to be in such close proximity to the shooting.

     “
Sir, can you tell us where the officer was hit?”

     The dispatcher was wasting his breath.

     Luther was gone, running up South Ellison to the nearest alley.

     He knew the drill. As the only one in the area, and a black man at that, he’d be instantly suspect. They’d have him face down in the dirt, and if their officer really was dead they’d take it out on him.

     Luther had no desire to be beaten and locked away for something he didn’t do.

     John Castro had been kind to him in the past. Had done some nice things for him.

     Now Luther had done his own good deed.

     They were even.

-8-

     For Robbie Benton, things hadn't exactly gone according to plan.

     Immediately after firing the second shot into John's chest, he’d turned tail and ran.

     Robbie drove quickly to the far end of his patrol sector, so that no witnesses could place him near the scene of the murder. And in his mind, it was indeed a murder. The one perfect murder that killers always sought and very seldom achieved.

     He hadn't realized he had twitched as he squeezed off the first shot. It was that slight. And he hadn't realized that his second shot missed the heart. Just barely, but it was enough to spare John certain death.

     In short, he screwed up. Big time.

     And it wasn't just the two missed shots. He blew it in other ways too.

     In his zeal to murder one of his best friends, he'd forgotten to scour the area for potential witnesses. Had he done so, he'd have seen Luther Brown, in plain view less than a block away.

     And a quick third shot would have taken care of that problem.

     He was also missing a shell casing.

     And it was driving him crazy.

     Robbie's plan was to get as far away from the crime scene as possible before John's body was discovered. And he was able to put a couple of miles of distance behind him.

     But Luther's plaintive cry over the police radio caught him off guard, and he cursed aloud.

     "Where the hell did a witness come from?"

     Robbie's concern, of course, was that Luther would announce to everybody within earshot that a policeman had shot John Castro.

     He was relieved when Luther said he failed to see the shooter.

     He was also greatly distressed when the first unit on the scene, Officer Fisher, announced that John was still alive and was enroute to St. Mary's trauma center.

     "How in hell..."

     Robbie realized then that his shots weren't as true as he'd thought.

     In short, he had failed.

     It was important to Robbie that he not appear to have a vested interest in either the crime itself or in its investigation.

     To do so would be tantamount to placing a huge neon sign over his head that said "killer" and pointed downward.

     So he made certain he wasn't the first unit to arrive at the scene.

     Or even the second or third.

     By the time he arrived at Marbach Road and South Ellison, John was long gone.

     Someone had placed crime scene tape around the area where John fell. There wasn't much there now, save a few scattered wildflowers and two puddles of blood.

     Robbie was hoping to see large pieces of brain matter scattered here and there.

     But none were evident.

     And that worried him a bit.

     For a time, he mingled with the other officers on the scene, professing to know nothing more than they did.

     None of the officers on the scene were trained investigators, but they applied common sense to gather a handful of clues.

     They ruled out a handgun, because the witness said the shooter wasn't in sight. They assumed from the lay of the land that the shots had come from the northwest, because that was the only place where the terrain was significantly higher than the target and where the shooter would have a clear shot.

     That much, Robbie knew, they had correct.

     A team of officers was already in place on the hill where Robbie had been half an hour earlier, searching for shell casings and clues.

     Without thinking, Robbie placed a hand in his pocket to feel the brass casings he'd recovered from the crime scene.

     But he felt only one casing in his pocket.

     A trained detective would have noticed the blood suddenly draining from Robbie's face and would have immediately known something was wrong. A good detective might take that to mean Robbie knew something he wasn't sharing.

     Luckily for Robbie, no one noticed. And if they had, they probably would have thought nothing of it. Because they were patrol officers. They weren't trained to watch for such clues. And even if they had been, they certainly wouldn't have expected any such behavior to come from one of their own.

     Robbie excused himself from the others who were scouring the area for something... anything, which could lead them to whoever had done this evil deed.

     As he walked away, his right hand continued to finger the single casing in his right front pocket.

     He knew he'd picked up both casings. He remembered doing so.

     At least he thought he did.

     By now his mind was playing tricks on him.

     And he was starting to worry.

     “I’m going up on that hill, to help find the shooter’s nest.”

     A couple of the others looked at him. One shrugged. They didn’t care. Robbie might as well go there as anywhere else.