Heaven and Hell (35 page)

“You are shittin’ me,” Dad was still
whispering.

“I wish I was Ford,” Ozzie was now
whispering.

Dad shook his head, looked at me, Sam then
Ozzie and asked, “Okay, well, so? Clearly Vanessa called it
off.”

“Unfortunately, no,” Ozzie replied, Dad
blanched and his eyes shot to me while Ozzie kept talking. “The
broker took a percentage, gave the contact details to Coot and
Vanessa and it was all done electronically. Three e-mails. One to
inform. One to confirm wire transfer of the money. One to confirm
they wanted him to go through with the hit. They were warned that
once they sent that third e-mail, that account would be made
invalid, they would not hear from him again and could not call him
off.”

Dad’s throat was working, his eyes, locked
to me, were working and I tried to pull away from Sam again but his
other arm went around me, caging me in.

Ozzie went on.

“We had a man on her, Ford, all the time. We
don’t really have the resources to do it but we did it. And we’re
doin’ everything in our power to track this guy down.”

“And you went off to Europe,” Dad said to
me. “Jesus, God, Kia, what was in your head?” he clipped.

“She didn’t know,” Sam stated and Dad’s eyes
sliced to him.

“Say again?” he demanded.

“Kia didn’t know,” Sam kind of repeated.

Dad’s eyes sliced back to me then Ozzie when
Ozzie spoke quickly.

“We thought, what Kia’d been through, what
you all had been through, what you all were facin’ considerin’ Coot
was gone and the time had come to face it, not to mention what he
left behind just knowin’ all he was up to with Vanessa, we wouldn’t
add to that burden.”

“You wouldn’t add to that burden,” Dad
whispered.

“Ford –” Ozzie started.

“
Are you out of your ever-lovin’
mind?
” Dad thundered at Ozzie and I watched Ozzie clench his
teeth and he held Dad’s eyes but he didn’t answer.

Dad tore his gaze from Ozzie’s and shook his
head, running his hand through his hair while doing it and
muttering, “I don’t… I cannot believe this shit. I cannot
believe
this
shit.
”

“Right,” Sam put in, Dad’s eyes cut to him
and Sam announced, “This is where we’re at now. The Sheriff’s
talkative deputy gave me the head’s up three days ago.” Sam looked
at Ozzie. “So you need to know there are four men in your town
who’ll be visible watching Kia and her home. I’ll get you names and
pictures so your men can identify them. They are carrying concealed
and three of four of them have a license to do that in this state.
I’ll ask you to look the other way with the one who doesn’t. I can
assure you he’s trained and he knows what he’s doin’ or I wouldn’t
have him on Kia. I’m also carryin’ concealed and I don’t have a
license in Indiana either. I’ll have a weapon on me at all times
and another one in Kia’s house and, since I couldn’t get home to
North Carolina to get my own hardware, I do not hold permits for
either. I’ll ask you to look the other way on that too. There are
also two men hunting this guy at my request. They’ll need
information which means I’ll need a full brief from you and I’ll
need to talk to Vanessa Cloverfield. So as not to fuck your case
against her, you’ll not have anything to do with that. But, she
doesn’t talk to me; I’ll escalate my tactics to get her to talk to
me. You’ll need to look the other way on that too.”

“Son, you cannot ask me to do that,” Ozzie
replied then finished, “
Any
of that.”

“I just did and you’ll do it,” Sam returned
and Ozzie’s face started to get red.

“Cooper, I understand –” Ozzie started but I
felt Sam’s body get taut at my back and I braced because I knew,
for whatever reason, he was done.

“No, Sheriff, you
don’t
understand.
If you did, at the very least Ford would have been aware of this
situation before Kia’s ass was on a plane. For three weeks, she was
wandering Europe alone and unprotected. For a week and a half, she
was with me and I had no clue. You do not know who this
motherfucker is therefore you do not know what resources he has
available to him. She should never have been on that plane. In the
months after you learned about this situation, she should have had
more than the Sheriff Department’s protection but also the
protection of her family and a security system installed in her
house or, seein’ Ford’s reaction, her ass moved to this one and a
system installed here. None of this happened. And months have
passed and you have not found this guy. My experience, you haven’t
found him yet means you got nothin’ on him and your leads have gone
stone cold. So he’s not in the wind, he
is
the wind. And
when that shit happens, your boys can be brilliant, but unless
they’re trained to lock down that kind of target, they got no hope.
They also got other shit to do. I do not. The hunters I called in
on this do not. And the men at Kia’s back have one focus,
Kia
. I know you are not unaware of the last seven years of
her life and what she’s been livin’ with behind closed doors at the
hands of that piece of shit. Now he’s still controlling her life
and he’s fuckin’ dead. I got the power and the means to make
certain that shit stops and I’m gonna do it. And last, I’ll give
you the head’s up that I do not make threats so take that into
consideration when I say, I’m doin’ this and you do not wanna stand
in my way.”

When Sam was done I was holding my breath,
Ozzie was holding Sam’s gaze and Dad was staring at Sam like Santa
Claus and the Easter Bunny popped in to give him a brand-new
hunting rifle and a year-round permit to shoot all things cute and
furry
and
a basket as big as a house filled with chocolate.
In other words, like he’d just hit the mother lode.

The silence stretched so before I passed
out, I decided to start breathing again.

Finally, Ozzie spoke.

“I’ll admit those leads are cold, Cooper,
but they’re cold for us, they’ll be cold for you.”

“First, what’s cold for you is not cold for
my boys and second, I’ll ask, you sure you got all you could get
from that piece of shit’s bitch?”

Clearly knowing who Sam was referring to,
Ozzie answered, “Vanessa was very forthcoming as advised by her
attorney. She’s arguing that it was all Cooter’s idea and she was
along for the ride, without collusion but with a fair amount of
coercion, so I suspect her attorney wants to show she’s been
helpful in order for it to assist her case.”

“Interesting to see if the woman who pawned
a bunch of shit and conned her husband who she drove to committing
murder into getting a second mortgage to pay for a hit can convince
a jury of that bullshit but I don’t care about that. I asked if
you’re sure you got all you could get from her,” Sam returned.

“And what I’m sayin’ is, yeah. She’s up the
creek without a paddle. I reckon she thinks that’s her paddle,”
Ozzie stated.

“Then you haven’t got all she could give
you,” Sam declared.

“How you figure that?” Dad asked and Sam
looked at him.

“Because she’s covering her ass. She was
bein’ smart and doin’ the right thing, she’d come completely clean,
cop to what she did, confess and use her tell-all as ammunition for
a plea bargain. She’s hidin’ something,” Sam replied.

“You can’t know that, you haven’t even met
her,” Ozzie told him.

“Have you found the broker?” Sam asked
Ozzie.

Ozzie inclined and twisted his neck but
didn’t answer. In other words, no.

“My guess, she or the piece of shit met with
the broker, face-to-face,” Sam speculated.

“Yeah,” Ozzie confirmed. “She said Coot did
but that guy’s in the wind too.”

“Bullshit,” Sam clipped. “His percentage is
probably ten, at most twenty. He’s local. He does not evaporate
after brokering a deal, he doesn’t make the kind of cake that lets
him relocate like that especially seein’ as he’d need to activate
or create a network of scum everywhere he relocates. He needs
business. He’ll be reachable. We’ll reach him.”

“Vanessa told us he told Coot that he also
doesn’t have contact with his men,” Ozzie informed Sam.

“Then either that bitch lied or the broker
lied to her. If he doesn’t, he knows someone who does. He can
hardly get them assignments without some form of contact,” Sam
returned.

“We thought of that but we got a warrant for
her computer and she gave us details and he’s unreachable. No one’s
even heard of him,” Ozzie returned.

“Then she met with him personally and
that’ll hurt her case so she’s hidin’ somethin’ from you. She’ll
give it to me. And the way I’ll get it means either during or after
your Department will get a call from her. If she tells you I’m
there, your boys take their time showin’ up. If she calls after I’m
gone, you cover my ass,” Sam demanded.

“You have got to know askin’ me to do that
is not only unlawful, it’s insane.” Ozzie was getting heated.

“I get that you got a responsibility to all
your citizens, including that bitch. I feel for you, that’s gotta
tear you up. But straight up, I don’t give a shit about that
either. You’ll cover my ass.” Sam was still cool as a cucumber.

“You need to stand down and let my boys
handle this,” Ozzie snapped, at his end.

“And I’m tellin’ you, I’m not gonna do
that,” Sam retorted.

“Then you’ll find trouble in this town,”
Ozzie returned.

Sam was silent.

I waited.

Dad waited.

Ozzie waited.

Sam finally gave it to Ozzie.

“Seven years, you knew,” he said
quietly.

Ozzie
and
Dad sucked in breath.

I held mine.

Sam wasn’t done.

“You, of all people, had a responsibility to
her.”

“I –” Ozzie started but Sam cut him off, no
longer cool, totally pissed.

“Don’t,” he bit off. “Do not. Do not stand
in front of her and make excuses. Do not do it. Her friends, her
parents, they were caught in his web, she was fragile, they had to
be careful not to break her in trying to deal with that shit or tip
him into making it worse. You have no excuse.”

“She never called it in, never made a
report,” Ozzie said softly then his eyes came to me. “Darlin’, I’m
sorry but –”

Sam cut him off. “That’s an excuse.”

Ozzie’s gaze sliced to Sam and he clipped,
“You clearly do not understand the sometimes extremely frustrating
limits of law enforcement.”

“Yeah, I do. But not for men who hunt with
an abused woman’s father who’ve known that woman since she was a
little girl. Men like that make shit happen so that shit
stops,
” Sam fired back.

It was time, I felt, for me to intervene and
I did this by lifting both hands and wrapping my fingers around the
arm Sam had around my chest, twisting my neck, tipping my head back
to look at him and whispering, “Sam, honey, that’s not fair.”

Sam looked down at me. “Did you tell me you
were contaminated?”

Another audible breath from my Dad.

I stared in Sam’s eyes, silent.

“Did you tell me that, baby?” Sam asked.

“I… yes,” I whispered.

“You’re terrified of me when I get angry.
Not an adrenalin rush, you get the shakes. I see ‘em, it’s so
fuckin’ bad.”

“Sam,” I was still whispering.

“First, a woman like you with a family and
friends like yours, beauty like yours and a personality like yours
should
never
feel like she’s contaminated. I do not know how
that feels for you, baby, but I do know what your face looked like
when you said it to me and I held you in my arms when you cried
after you confessed that shit so I can guess and that is not right,
that
is not fair. And you jumpin’ straight to that kind of
fear because you were trained to do so at the hands of your dead
husband is also not fair.” Sam looked to Ozzie. “I know you’re a
good man. I can see you warred with this for a long time. I can
also see you carry a burden for the decision you made. So what you
need to do now is stop makin’ decisions that cover your ass and
start makin’ them to take care of Kia.”

“You don’t understand what you’re askin’ me
to do,” Ozzie said quietly.

“I do and I’ll do my best to make sure
nothin’ I do blows back on you. That said, shit happens and I’m
focused on makin’ Kia safe so, if it does, you need to suck it up
and think quick to cover my ass and yours.”

Ozzie stared at Sam and Sam held his
stare.

Then Ozzie looked very briefly at me but he
avoided Dad’s eyes before he looked back at Sam.

“You hurt Vanessa, I won’t cover for
you.”

“I’d like to rip the bitch’s head off but
that’s not how I work,” Sam replied.

Ozzie tipped up his chin then continued,
“Whatever you get you also give to us.”

“Done,” Sam agreed.

“You track either the broker or his man
down, you give them to us.”

Sam shook his head. “No fuckin’ way.”

“Then no deal,” Ozzie fired back.

“We get what we need from them; you can have
‘em. But not until we know shit is locked down and Kia is safe,”
Sam returned.

Ozzie clenched his teeth. Then he
nodded.

Then he added, “Heartmeadow is not the OK
Corral. Your badasses do not have carte blanche to make it so. They
see a threat, they call it in.”

“They see a threat, they neutralize it then
they call it in,” Sam countered.

“Jesus, Cooper!” Ozzie exploded, “How
exactly do you think I can cover for your crew if a man who is not
licensed to carry concealed in the State of Indiana or you, who’s
in possession of two firearms for which you don’t have permits,
drills holes into a suspected assailant before he becomes an
assailant?”

“That is not my problem, it’s yours,” Sam
stated. “And it’s the whole reason for this head’s up and why Essie
is not in here right now learnin’ about what’s goin’ down with her
daughter because she also has the right to know. What she doesn’t
need is to be accessory to anything that might turn bad.”