Saints and Sinners, page 14
part #1 of Jessie St James Adventures Series
Jessie saw her chance. She rushed Bill, pummeling into him as forcefully as she could and knocking him back onto the bed. He grabbed at her, pulling her down with him. Her gun had fallen, but she didn’t want to use it, anyway. All she wanted to do, the only way she wanted this to end, was disarming him and getting him some help. He’d have to answer for what he did, but he didn’t need to die for it.
“Let her go and drop the weapon!” Roman shouted.
From the corner of her eye, Jessie saw Roman running up to the bed. His gun was pointed at them, but she knew what was going through his head. They were moving too quickly and they were too close together. A clean shot was out of the question. The gun was an empty threat, and as a cop himself, Bill would know that.
“Let me help you—”
Before the words left her mouth, Jessie heard the sound of another gunshot. It was close and muffled, and she felt the heat coming from the weapon. She pulled back quickly, falling off the bed and onto the floor. Feeling herself, she looked for blood, knowing that if she had been shot, pain wouldn’t come until after the shock wore off.
“It’s not you,” Roman said. “It’s not you.”
When Jessie looked up at Roman, she saw him staring onto the bed mournfully.
With her heart in her throat, Jessie jumped into action. Looking the bed over, she saw that Bill was bleeding heavily, the gun barely in his hands anymore. His body shook and he coughed softly. He was still alive. Thank God, he was still alive.
Pulling a few covers off nearby pillows, she stuffed them into Roman’s hands and then pressed the man’s hands onto Bill’s wound, gently pulling the guns away and setting them on nearby tables.
“What are you doing?” Roman asked, looking over at Jessie with wide eyes.
“First, I’m calling an ambulance,” she said. “Then I’m calling the police in St. James and telling them to be on the lookout for my father. They know him there a little. After that, I’m hauling ass over there and trying to find them.”
“Not without me,” Roman said, beginning to pull away.
“Stop it!” Jessie said, pushing his hands back into place. “I can’t wait for the ambulance. Literally every second counts right now, and if you take your hands off that wound then he doesn’t have a chance. I know he just tried to kill us, but I can’t let Bill die because you want to be involved in this.”
“Is that what you think this is?” Roman asked. “I don’t give a damn about being involved. I don’t want you to get hurt.” He blinked hard. “You might not believe this, but I don’t exactly hate you.”
Jessie took a deep breath. “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me when I get back.”
“Damnit, Jess!” he screamed as she headed for the door. “Just be careful.”
“Oh,” she said, racing for the door and thinking about what she was going to do to Randy once she got to him, “I’m not the one you need to worry about.”
30
Taking the causeway from Sanibel to St. James was nearly forty miles and would take Jessie over an hour to drive this time of year. Taking a police boat would cut the time down significantly, and given that the woman had very little time to speak of and she was still unable to get her father on the phone, she needed every available second she could get.
The wind whipped through her hair as she docked at St. James, her heart heavy and her mind a mess of possibilities, each worse than the last. She had let herself be taken. A snake had slithered its way into her home, and she didn’t even see it. Perhaps that was part of all of this. Perhaps Randy made his connection to Nate clear because he knew it would throw Jessie off her game, because he knew Clint would be less than effective.
It didn’t matter. Whatever the madman’s reasons, Jessie had fallen for his tricks. She knew he was trouble. She could feel it in her gut the first time she ever met him, but she pushed it down. She told herself she was just being critical of him, that she needed to cut him some slack if he was going to marry her aunt. That slack, it seemed, gave him just enough room to get everything accomplished. Her father was in trouble, and she didn’t know how to stop it.
Jessie tied the boat off at the pier, breathless and sweating as much from stress as she was from the heat. She had already called the police department at St. James and sent them to the coffeeshop her dad had mentioned to her. While they could confirm that the coffeeshop existed and that the cake was just as good as Randy said, they found no trace of Randy or her father. That meant that she had an entire city to waft through in an attempt to find her dad. And if Randy started thinking that Bill was taking too long, he might figure that Jessie had gotten the better of him. He may just go ahead and kill Clint if that happened. Jessie needed to move fast. She needed to narrow her search, but how?
Walking down the pier, Jessie thought about everything that had transpired. She thought about the case and how it had all unfolded, and as her mind went over it, a possibility came to her as clearly as if the clouds were parting after a Florida storm.
Gasping, she pulled out her phone. Instead of calling her own father, this time, she rang someone else’s.
“Mr. Parks, I need to ask you a question,” Jessie said, her voice quavering and her hand tight around the device. She hadn’t spoken to Roman’s father in ten years or more, and even then, they weren’t exactly familiar with each other. The fact that she had his number on her phone was only a testament to how much of a completist she was in terms of her phone book. Her mom was the same way. If you always had numbers, you were less likely to be caught unprepared.
“Who is this?” Mr. Parks asked. He obviously didn’t share the same mindset as the St. James women.
“It’s Jessie, sir,” she replied. “Jessie St. James.”
“Clint’s daughter?” he asked. “That’s right. I did hear you came back to the island. I have to say, I’m a little surprised about that. I always envied the way you just picked up and left, started a whole new life for yourself—and did pretty good, if the rumors swirling around the church auxiliary group were any indication. I’m surprised you decided to come back.”
“Sometimes, you get away from home and realize all you ever needed was to know you could do it,” Jessie said. “It’s kind of like climbing a mountain. You don’t make a life for yourself at the top, sir.”
“No offense,” Mr. Parks said without missing a beat, “but that’s just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Those two things don’t have anything to do with each other.”
“Mr. Parks,” Jessie said, trying to interject her question.
“Nobody climbs a mountain to start a new life, sweetie. It’s a false equivalency. You do understand that, don’t you?”
“I do, Mr. Parks,” Jessie said, huffing loudly. “I understand, but there’s a very important reason I called you. I need to know the address of a shoe shop where you worked a few decades ago.”
“Pardon?” the man asked, and Jessie could almost hear the man cocking his head in confusion. “It’s important for you to know the address of a place where I worked for a month a lifetime and a half ago? Why on earth would that be?”
“I can’t explain everything right now, but it has to do with an ongoing police investigation and it could very well mean the difference between life and death, sir.” Jessie swallowed hard. “I know it’s been a long time, and I know there’s a really good chance you might not remember the exact address, but if there’s anything you could—”
“Seven fifteen Axelton Street,” the old man said without missing a beat. “I might be old, but a man doesn’t forget a place where his bread was buttered, Jessie. At least, this man doesn’t.” He waited for just a beat before continuing. “Now, you listen to me, dear. I know my son is in the same line of work. So I’m gonna tell you exactly what I tell him.”
“I’ll be careful. I promise,” Jessie answered.
“That’s good, but it’s not what I was gonna say,” Roman’s father said on the other end of the phone. “I was going to tell you to go get the job done, dear. Whatever or whoever you’re facing, you go out there and you kick their ass.”
Jessie blinked hard, thinking about her own father as she took stock of where she was and where she needed to go. “Yes sir,” she said into the phone right before hanging it up. “You got it.”
It turned out Jessie stood three-quarters of a mile from the address that Roman’s father gave her. Putting it into the navigation system on her phone, it was the fastest seven-tenths of a mile the woman had ever run in her life. By the time she made it to the address, an abandoned looking little block at the end of a quiet looking string of shops, she was panting and out of breath. Her heart was racing, though it was only half because of the run.
Walking up to the address, complete with blackout windows and a boarded up door, Jessie had to consider the idea that she might have been at the wrong place. Thinking that Randy would have taken her father back to the place where he used to run a business in St. James, a place that he very likely may have still owned, was a hunch on Jessie’s part. Though her father told her to always trust her gut and her instinct, the plain truth was that her hunch may have been way off base. For all she knew, Randy and her father weren’t even in St. James anymore. For all she knew, that psychopath had taken her father back out on the water. For all she knew, this place would be completely empty. She would walk in and everything would be untouched. If that were the case, she would know that she didn’t have a shot.
There was no way she’d be able to find her father in time if he wasn’t here. He could be anywhere. He could still be on the move. Or worse than that, he could still be here. He could still be here and Jessie could be too late. Randy could have already done what he planned to do, and Jessie could walk in on a sight so horrible that she refused to even let it sit on her mind for too long.
What if her father was dead? What if she was about to walk in and discover that, and then her life would never be the same?
Jessie took a deep breath, steadying herself and pulling at the people around her. She thought about who her father was, about the kind of woman her mother had always been, and about who Nate was. She thought about their strength. She thought about their kind and pure hearts. She thought about their courage and knew what they would do if they were in this situation, if it was her who was in danger. Then she thought about what Roman’s father had just told her before she hung up the phone.
“Kick his ass,” she muttered.
Setting her jaw, she lifted her foot, taking it to the door with as much force as she’d ever given anything in her life.
It swung open quickly, slamming hard against the wall inside. Jessie blinked hard, moving inside quickly. Pulling her flashlight out, she flicked it on and illuminated the area. The room was bare and empty, aside from a dusty table in the center. Her heart began to drop, thinking she had been wrong and her father wasn’t here, after all. Then, Jessie saw something.
Another flashlight sat on the floor, but it stood out. It wasn’t dusty. It wasn’t worn and old. It was brand new. But why would a new flashlight be in a place like this, an abandoned place, unless people had been in it? Jessie’s heart picked up some steam. She hadn’t been wrong. He had been here, but was he still?
Putting her flashlight between her teeth to free up one of her hands, Jessie reached for her phone. Pulling it out, she dialed her father and held it by her side. After a few seconds, the woman heard a faint ringing coming from the back room.
“Bingo,” she muttered. With renewed purpose, she darted toward the door where the noise seemed to be coming from. All of her training told her to proceed cautiously, to assess the situation and only go in once she had an idea of what she might find on the other side.
All of that training went out the window, though.
Jessie collided with the door, pushing through it like a battering ram. Spitting the flashlight out, she came to a stop inside a room about a quarter of the size of the small room she’d just left.
Looking forward, she saw a sight that both elated her and shattered her heart into a thousand shards. Her father lay tied up in the corner. He looked beaten and bloody, but he was moving. His eyes were open. He was alive.
“Jess, watch out!” Clint yelled in a hoarse voice.
Reacting quickly, Jessie looked to her left, but it was too late. She saw the brunt of a shovel and then stars. Jessie stumbled backward, but the shovel hit her again and again in the face until she could taste blood in her mouth. She fell to the floor and winced as her assailant kicked the gun from her hand.
Blinking away the clouds in her eyes and aching as she moved, Jessie looked up to see Randy standing over her. The flashers that set off in her mind the first time she saw the man were going wild now. Her wore an oil slick of a smile on his face, and his greasy nature had been replaced by something much more devious, an uncovered evil.
“Jessie St. James,” Randy sneered, his mouth turning downward in disgust. “I should have known Billy Yearman wouldn’t be able to take you out. If I’ve learned anything from dealing with you people, it’s that killing one of Clint St. James’s children is a ‘do it yourself’ kind of a job.”
Anger flashed bright and hot in Jessie’s gut. After all these years, after every daydream and horrid nightmare about it, she was finally face to face with the man who took her brother away from her.
“Do you know how I killed Nate, Jessie?” Randy asked. “Did your dad ever have the heart to share it with you? I beat him to death with a shovel a lot like this one. I was going to bury him with it, too. I thought making him disappear and giving your father the smallest glimmer of hope that he might still be alive would be even crueler than killing him. I got greedy, though. I wanted to see the devastation. So I left him there. I left him there, and I watched. I have pictures of that moment too, you know? I look at them often.”
“I’m going to put you in prison for the rest of your life,” Jessie said, breathing heavily. “Death is too good for you. You’re going to rot in a cell until God himself stands in judgement of everything you’ve done.”
“Tell him I said hi,” Randy replied quickly. “You’ll be meeting Him first. In fact, you’ll be meeting Him just seconds before your father does. You see, I thought when Billy failed that I wasn’t going to be able to see the look on Clint’s face when his daughter died. Luckily, his daughter was foolhardy enough to deliver that gift to me herself.”
“Leave her alone, Randy!” Clint said, his voice tearing through the open space. “Kill me if you want, but leave my daughter alone!”
“That wouldn't be very fair, would it?” Randy asked, whipping back around to Clint. “You were responsible for the death of my daughter. Returning the favor is the least I can do.”
“He didn’t kill your daughter, you psycho!” Jessie shouted. “Your wife did. Drugs did.”
“Drugs that he allowed to stay on the streets,” Randy said.
“You think it’s that simple?” Jessie said. “You think you can just snap your fingers or make a decree and suddenly, all the bad stuff goes away? I fought for years to clean up Chicago. There are laws. There are regulations and protocols, and breaking them to ensure a twisted kind of justice makes you every bit as bad as the people you’re sworn to fight.” Jessie shook her head. “But none of them are as bad as you. At least Edgar Salazar knows what kind of monster he is. You’re deluded enough to think you’re justified in the crimes you commit.”
“And you’re just like everyone else,” Randy said. “You think having a badge automatically puts you in the right. Well, it doesn’t. Your father dropped the ball. My daughter died because of it. Billy Yearman’s mother died because of it, too. He started paying for that more than twenty years ago. I thought he was finished, but then you came back. You brought him peace and happiness, a happiness I’ll never get because of him. The whole thing started eating at me. I knew I had to act. So, he finishes paying tonight, and he does so with his family and then with his blood.” He lifted the shovel again. “Goodbye, Jessie St James.”
Clint shot Jessie a look and then nodded.
“Hey!” Clint screamed. “We’ve spent a lot of time talking about my failings. How about we talk about yours? You’re a crappy father!”
The shovel stopped in midair. Randy turned to Clint in a huff.
“What the hell did you say to me?” he roared.
“You heard me. You put the blame on me, the blame on your wife. Where were you? You love your daughter so much. Why didn’t you protect her when she needed you?” Clint asked.
“You need to be careful, you sonofabitch!” Randy yelled.
Clint shot Jessie another look, and this time, she got the message. He was distracting the man in order for her to be able to act.
“I was a good father!” Randy yelled as Jessie sprang into action. She grabbed the gun, turned, and rolled back onto her feet.
Randy turned too, but it was too late. Jessie swung the barrel of the gun across his face and then kicked him squarely in the chest. She grabbed the shovel and ripped it from his hand, bringing that down onto him as well.
He fell to the floor, his head landing inches away from Clint’s feet. Turning the gun around in her hand, she pointed the business end at Randy. Her brother’s face flashed in her head as she took a deep breath.
“It’s over, Randy,” she said, twenty years of emotions bubbling up to the surface. “It’s finally over.”
31
Jessie brought the beer to her lips slowly. Though it had been a few weeks since that awful day in St. James, the cold of the bottle still stung her mouth a little.
It was a quiet, gorgeous day on Sanibel Island, and just like so many days, Jessie was spending her time watching the sun move across the sky and toward the horizon. A breeze came off the Gulf, sending shivers of pleasure up and down her spine. She sighed. It was a sigh of utter peace, and it was one she had always been unable to produce right up until a few weeks ago.
