Steven James - Opening Moves

Ralph gritted his teeth, shoved his other hand through the crack as well so he could get a better grip on Ellen’s limp body.

He managed to get her high enough to free her legs, then he leaned heavily against the door.

Joshua had the necrotome raised when the door swung open. Lyrie stepped forward to support Parker, and the enormous guy who’d lifted her whipped out a Glock, aimed it at Joshua. “Move away from the bed!”

“Listen to him!” It was Bowers again. He stood in the doorway beside the big guy. “Back away.”

The evil which I would not.

That I do.

In an instant, the rest of the passage came to him, the conclusion St. Paul had reached, the one Reverend Tate had mentioned in his prayer at the funeral: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” and Joshua thought of his wife dying at the hand of this man now lying in front of him, and he thought of redemption and sin and hope and eternity. He had, all of his life, wanted to find God’s forgiveness, and now he was sure he never would.

“Step back!” Ralph bellowed, moving into the room.

“Get back, Joshua!” I yelled. “Now!”

“No murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” Those words raced through Joshua’s mind, chased by the ones from Reverend Tate’s homily, “Let us take responsibility for our sins…Let us trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, the one whose blood cleanseth us from all sin.”

The blood.

Always the blood.

And that cleansing was what Joshua yearned for, even as he said to Basque, “A shedder of blood shall die,” and then he thrust the necrotome deep into the man’s abdomen.

But that was the last thing he ever did. Because Special Agent Ralph Hawkins fired three shots in quick succession and Joshua Padilla dropped dead to the floor and entered eternity.

For the reckoning.

Ralph lowered his gun.

The knife handle jutted from Basque’s abdomen.

“We need a doctor in here!” I yelled. “Now!”

TWO DAYS LATER

Friday, November 21

The Coffeehouse

8:31 a.m.

They were able to save Richard Basque.

They stitched up his abdomen, wired his jaw shut, and the prognosis was positive.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

We’d stopped Griffin, Basque, and Joshua Padilla. Radar was safe, Lionel, Colleen, Tod, Adele and Mallory had all been through traumatizing experiences, but all were recovering. Agent Parker was fine.

But we’d lost Sylvia Padilla.

All too often endings in real life are bittersweet. We all die, but we don’t all find peace before we do. However, when I remembered the look on Sylvia’s face as she passed away, I knew there was forgiveness there. And I trusted that God had seen what was in her heart and judged her accordingly.

Inevitably, there were going to be charges filed against Carl, Vincent, and Radar for the crimes they’d committed to fulfill Joshua’s demands, but I was hopeful that, considering the circumstances, the judge would be lenient-especially with Radar. Initial indications were that things were leaning in that direction.

Browning had, as it turned out, known that Griffin had killed Mindy Wells and it looked as though he would be spending a long time on the other side of some prison bars. So, the wheels of justice were already turning, working their way through the complex, multilayered case.

My shoulder and leg ached, but they would heal soon enough. People say that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. I wasn’t so sure about that, but the things that don’t kill us do shape who we become. And I knew the events of the last week would shape me forever. Whether in a good way or a bad one, only time would tell.

Agent Parker had flown back to DC yesterday, but I’d offered to take Ralph out for coffee before his ten o’clock flight today. When I’d said that, he’d eyed me suspiciously. “You don’t even drink coffee.”

“Yeah, well, you were bragging on it so much the other day, I figured I’d give it a shot.”

He’d looked pleased, and now we were at a neo-hippie coffeehouse not far from the airport. A sign on the wall announced COFFEE THAT’S BETTER THAN ALTERRA’S!

Alterra was one of the most famous roasters in Milwaukee and if I was going to try coffee, I guess this was the place to do it.

When the ponytailed barista behind the counter asked if I wanted “bold” or “mild,” I asked if he was kidding. “Would any guy ever say he wants ‘mild’?”

“You’d be surprised,” he told me.

Both Ralph and I ordered the bold. He went for the largest size they had, I chose the smallest, which they called a “tall” and I had no idea how that worked. The person who’d named it was either a marketing genius or a complete idiot. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt.

We picked up our drinks. I grabbed a couple sugar packets, tipped some cream into the cup, and we took a seat near the window so we could watch the gently falling snow drift down across my city.

Ralph went at his coffee right away. One gulp and half of it was gone. He shook his head. “I still can’t believe a police chaplain did all that.”

A lot had come out in the last two days, including confirmation of what Joshua had told Radar about a place under a barn on some land his family used to own in Colorado. Two skeletons were found down there. Dental records told us that one of them had been Joshua’s father.

I thought of a young Joshua partaking in the atrocities that happened beneath that barn.

And I thought of a five-year-old Ted Oswald being forced to watch as his father slaughtered puppies in front of him and then lashed out at him if he showed any sign of emotion.

And again, as I had the other day, I wondered about our choices and the point at which we ultimately become accountable for them.

Can we ever really know when someone else is old enough, or mature enough, or mentally healthy enough to be held responsible for his crimes? An arbitrary age of eighteen? The current definition of mental health? Our motives are so tangled and intertwined that I imagined a person could point to extenuating circumstances for nearly any crime. But there must also be accountability. There must be justice.

A reckoning.

If justice exists, there must be a hell.

If love wins, there must be a heaven.

I had a feeling it was going to take me some time to sort all that through.

There was no way to know for sure, but Thorne, who’d known Padilla the longest, speculated that he’d turned to religion to try to find redemption. Just as Radar had said that Griffin deserved to go to hell, I believed Padilla did too. Still, I wondered if, in the end, anything he’d learned or shared with others over the years about the grace of the Almighty had sunk in when it mattered most.

Ralph drew me out of my thoughts: “You must have swung that meat hook hard.”

I stared at my cup. I really did not want to do this. “What do you mean?”

“Broke his jaw. Basque’s.”

I blinked. “When I swung the meat hook?”

“Yeah. When it hit him. I just heard this morning, he told, well…” Ralph smiled a little. “I should say ‘wrote out for’ his lawyer that that’s how his jaw got broken.”

Basque’s apprehension replayed in my mind: grabbing that meat hook, swinging it at his face, him dodging it. The fight. Cuffing him. Sylvia’s death as he mocked her. Then punching him. Twice. Hard. The crunch of bone when I hit him-not when I swung the hook at his face.

Ralph stared at me. “What is it?”

“Yeah,” I said distractedly. “No, I did. I swung it hard.”