Kill or Be Killed Read online

  At just about half past six we were on Race Street. We’d been stuck behind a FedEx truck for several blocks, until now, when it ran a yellow light, leaving us flat-footed at the red.

  I cursed and the gray sedan behind us pulled out into the oncoming lane, its wheels jerking hard to the right, and the driver braked at an angle twenty-five feet ahead of our left front bumper.

  I shouted, “What the hell?”

  But by the time the word hell was out of my mouth, Conklin had his door open and was yelling to me, “Out of the car. With me.”

  I got it.

  I snapped mental images as four men burst from the gray sedan into our headlight beams. One wore a black knit cap and bulky jacket. Another had a gold grille plating his teeth. The one coming out of the driver’s side was holding an AK. One with a black scarf over half his face ducked out of view.

  I dropped below the dash and pulled myself out the passenger side, slid down to the street. Conklin and I hunched behind the right front wheel, using the front of the car as a shield. We were both carrying large, high-capacity semiautomatics, uncomfortable as hell to wear, but my God, I was glad we had them.

  A fusillade of bullets punched holes through the door that had been to my left just seconds before. Glass crazed and shattered.

  I poked my head up during a pause in oncoming gunfire, and using the hood as a gun brace, Conklin and I let loose with a fury of return fire.

  In that moment I saw the one with the AK drop his weapon. His gun or his hand had been hit, or the gun had slipped out of his grasp. When the shooter bent to retrieve it, Conklin and I fired and kept firing until the bastard was down.

  For an eternal minute and a half curses flew, and shots punctured steel, exploded the shop windows behind us, and smacked into the front end of our car. If these men worked for the King, they could not let us get away.

  Conklin and I alternately rose from behind the car just enough to brace our guns and return fire, ducking as our attackers unloaded on us with the fury of hell.

  We reloaded and kept shooting. My partner took out the guy with the glittering teeth, and I wasn’t sure, but I might have winged the one with the scarf.

  The light turned green.

  Traffic resumed, and while some vehicles streamed past, others balked, blocking cars behind them, leaving them in the line of fire.

  There was a lull in the shooting, and when I peeked above our car, I saw the driver of the gray Ford backing up, turning the wheel into traffic, gunning the engine, then careening across the intersection at N17th.

  I took a stance and emptied my Glock into the rear of the Ford, hoping to hit the gas tank. A tire blew, but the car kept going. I looked down at the two dead men in the street as Conklin kicked their guns away and looked for ID.

  I got into the car, grabbed the mic, shouted my badge number, and reported to dispatch.

  “Shots fired. Two men down. Send patrol cars and a bus to Race and N17th. BOLO for a gray Ford four-door with shot-out windows and flat right rear tire heading east on Race at high speed. Nevada plates, partial number Whiskey Four Niner.”

  Within minutes the empty, shot-riddled Ford was found ditched a few blocks away on 17th Street. Conklin and I sat for a while in our shot-to-shit squad car, listening to the radio snap, crackle, and pop while waiting for a ride back to the Hall. My right hand was numb and the aftershock of my gun’s recoil still resonated through my bones.

  I was glad to feel it.

  I said to Richie, as if he didn’t already know, “We’re damned lucky to be alive.”

  Chapter 28

  Two hours after the shoot-out Conklin and I learned that the Ford had been stolen. The guns were untraceable. The only ID found on the two dead men were their Mala Sangre tats. Had to be that Kingfisher’s men had been following us or following Elena.

  We turned in our guns and went directly down the street to McBain’s, a cross between a place where everyone knows your name and the Star Wars cantina. It was fully packed now with cops, lawyers, bail bondsmen, and a variety of clerks and administrators. The ball game was blaring loudly on the tube, competing with some old tune coming from the ancient Wurlitzer in the back.

  Rich and I found two seats at the bar, ordered beer, toasted the portrait of Captain McBain hanging over the backbar, and proceeded to drink. We had to process the bloodcurdling firefight and there was no better place than here.

  Conklin sat beside me shaking his head, probably having thoughts like my own, which were so vivid that I could still hear the rat-a-tat-tat of lead punching through steel and see the faces of the bangers we’d just “put down like dogs.” I stank of gunpowder and fear.

  We were alive not just because of what we knew about bad guys with guns, or because Conklin and I worked so well together that we were like two halves of a whole.

  That had contributed to it, but mostly, we were alive and drinking because of the guy who’d dropped his AK and given us a two-second advantage.

  After I’d downed half of my second beer, I told Conklin, “We weren’t wearing vests, for Christ’s sake. This is so unfair to Julie.”

  “Cut it out,” he said. “Don’t make me say she’s lucky to have you as a mom.”

  “Fine.”

  “Two dirtbags are dead,” he said. “We did that. We won’t feel bad about that.”

  “That guy with the AK.”

  “He’s in hell,” said Rich, “kicking his own ass.”

  Oates, the bartender, asked if I was ready for another, but I shook my head and covered the top of my glass. Just then I felt an arm go around my shoulders. I started. It was Brady behind us, all white blond and blue-eyed, and he had an arm around Conklin, too.

  He gave my shoulder a squeeze, his way of saying, Thanks. You did good. I’m proud of you.

  “Come back to the house,” Brady said. “I’ve got your new weapons and rides home for both of y’all.”

  “I’ve only had one beer,” Rich lied.

  “I’ve got rides home for both of y’all,” Brady repeated.

  He put some bills down on the bar. Malcolm, the tipsy dude on my left, pointed to the dregs of my beer and asked, “You done with that, Lindsay?”

  I passed him my glass.

  It was ten fifteen when I got to Cat’s. I took a scalding shower, washed my hair, and buffed myself dry. Martha sat with her head in my lap while I ate chicken and noodles à la Gloria Rose. I was scraping the plate when the phone rang.

  “I heard about what happened today,” Joe said.

  “Yeah. It was over so fast. In two minutes I’d pulled my gun and there were men lying dead in the street.”

  “Good result. Are you okay?”

  “Never better,” I said, sounding a little hysterical to my own ears. I’m sure Joe heard it, too.

  “Okay. Good. Do you need anything?”

  “No, but thanks. Thanks for calling.”

  I slept with Martha and Julie that night, one arm around each of my girls. I slept hard and I dreamed hard and I was still holding on to Julie when she woke me up in the morning.

  I blinked away the dream fragments and remembered that Kingfisher would be facing the judge and jury today.

  I had to move fast so that I wasn’t late to court.

  Chapter 29

  Conklin and I were at our desks at eight, filling out the incident report and watching the time.

  Kingfisher’s trial was due to start at nine, but would the trial actually begin? I thought about the power outage that had occurred two days ago, followed by the bomb explosion and the threatening message that had read This was a test. Mala Sangre. And I wondered if Kingfisher had already left the Hall through the drain in his shower, El Chapo style.

  His trial had been postponed three times so far, but I had dressed for court nonetheless. I was wearing my good charcoal-gray pants, my V-neck silk sweater under a Ralph Lauren blazer, and my flat-heeled Cole Haan shoes. My hair gleamed and I’d even put on lipstick. That’s for you, Mr. Kingfisher.<
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  Conklin had just dunked his empty coffee container into the trash can when Len Parisi’s name lit up on my console.

  I said to Conklin, “What now?” and grabbed the phone.

  Parisi said, “Boxer, you and Conklin got a second?”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “Counsel for the defense is in my office.”

  “Be right there.” I hung up, then said to Conklin, “I’m guessing Sierra wants to change his plea to insanity.”

  He said, “From your lips to God’s ears.”

  It was a grim thought. In the unlikely event that Kingfisher could be found guilty because of mental disease or defect, he would be institutionalized and one day might be set free.

  “There’s just no way,” said Conklin.

  “Wanna bet?”

  Conklin dug into his wallet and tossed a single onto the desk. I topped his dollar bill with one of mine and weighed down our bet with a stapler.

  Then we booked it down the stairs and along the second-floor corridor at a good pace, before entering the maze of cubicles outside the DA’s office. Parisi’s office door was open. He signaled for us to come in.

  Jake Penney, the King’s new attorney, sat in the chair beside Parisi’s oversized desk. He was about thirty-five and was good-looking in a flawless, The Bachelor kind of way. Because Cindy researched him and reported back, I knew he was on the fast track at a topflight law firm.

  Kingfisher had hired one of the best.

  Conklin and I took the sofa opposite Parisi, and Penney angled his chair toward us.

  He said, “I want to ask my client to take Elena’s offer. He changes his plea to guilty, and he goes to a maximum-security prison within a few hours’ drive of his wife’s residence. That’s win-win. Saves the people the cost of a trial. Keeps Mr. Sierra in the USA with no death penalty and a chance to see his kids every now and again. It’s worth another try.”

  Parisi said to Conklin and me, “I’m okay with this, but I wanted to run it by you before I gave Mr. Penney an okay to offer this deal to Sierra.”

  I said, “You’ll be in the room with them, Len?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Mr. Penney should go through metal detection and agree to be patted down before and after his meeting.”

  “Okay, Mr. Penney?”

  “Of course.”

  There was a clock on the wall, the face a hand-drawn illustration of a red bulldog.

  The time was 8:21.

  If the King’s attorney could make a deal for his client, it had to be now or never.

  Chapter 30

  Conklin and I waited in Parisi’s office as the second hand swiped the bulldog’s face and time whizzed around the dial.

  What was taking so long? Deal? Or no deal?

  I was ready to go up to the seventh floor and crash the conference when Parisi and Penney came through the door.

  “He wouldn’t buy it,” Parisi said. He went to his closet and took out his blue suit jacket.

  Penney said, “He maintains his innocence. He wants to walk out of court a free man.”

  It took massive willpower for me not to roll my eyes and shout, Yeah, right. Of course he’s innocent!

  Parisi shrugged into his jacket, tightened the knot in his tie, glanced at the clock. Then he said, “I told Sierra about the attack on you two by Mala Sangre thugs. I said that if the violence stops now, and if he is convicted, I will arrange for him to do his time at the prison of his choice, Pelican Bay. He said, ‘Okay. I agree. No more violence.’ We shook on it. For whatever that’s worth.”

  Pelican Bay was a supermax-security prison in Del Norte County, at the very northwest tip of California, about fifteen miles south of the Oregon border. It was a good six-and-a-half-hour drive from here. The prison population was made up of the state’s most violent criminals and rated number one for most gangs and murders inside its walls. The King would feel right at home there.

  “I’ll see you in court,” Parisi said to Penney.

  The two men shook hands. Conklin and I wished Parisi luck, then headed down to the courtroom.

  Kingfisher had agreed to the safety of all involved in his trial, but entering Courtroom 2C, I felt as frightened as I had when I woke up this morning with a nightmare in my mind.

  An AK had chattered in the King’s hands.

  And then he’d gotten me.

  Chapter 31

  Kingfisher’s day in court had dawned again.

  All stood when Judge Crispin, looking irritated from his virtual house arrest, took the bench. The gallery sat down with a collective whoosh, and the judge delivered his rules of decorum to a new set of spectators. No one could doubt him when he said, “Outbursts will be dealt with by immediate removal from this courtroom.”

  I sat in a middle row between two strangers. Richie was seated a few rows ahead to my right. Elena Sierra sat behind the defense table, where she had a good view of the back of her husband’s head. A white-haired man sat beside her and whispered to her. He had to be her father.

  The jurors entered the box and were sworn in.

  There were five women and nine men, including the remaining alternates. It was a diverse group in age and ethnicity. I saw a range of emotion in their faces: stolid fury, relief, curiosity, and a high level of excitement.

  I felt all those emotions, too.

  During the judge’s address to the jurors every one of them took a long look at the defendant. In fact, it was hard to look away from Kingfisher. The last time he was at the defense table, he’d cleaned up and appeared almost respectable. Today the King was patchily shaven and had flecks of blood on his collar. He seemed dazed and subdued.

  To my eye, he looked as though he’d used up all his tricks and couldn’t believe he was actually on trial. By contrast, his attorney, Jake Penney, wore his pin-striped suit with aplomb. DA Leonard Parisi looked indomitable.

  All stood to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and then there was a prolonged rustle as seats were retaken. Someone coughed. A cell phone clattered to the floor. Conklin turned his head and we exchanged looks.

  Kingfisher had threatened us since the nasty Finders Keepers case last year—and still he haunted my dreams. Would the jury find him guilty of killing Stone and Whittaker? Would this monstrous killer spend the rest of his life inside the high, razor-wired walls of Pelican Bay State Prison?

  The bailiff called the court to order, and Judge Crispin asked Len Parisi if he was ready to present his case.

  I felt pride in the big man as he walked out into the well. I could almost feel the floor shake. He welcomed the jury and thanked them for bearing down under unusually trying conditions in the interest of justice.

  Then he launched into his opening statement.

  Chapter 32

  I’d never before seen Len Parisi present a case to a jury. He was an intimidating man and a powerful one. As district attorney, he was responsible for investigating and prosecuting crime in this city and was at the head of three divisions: Operations, Victims Services, and Special Operations.

  But he was never more impressive than he was today, standing in for our murdered friend and colleague, ADA Barry Schein.

  Parisi held the jury’s attention with his presence and his intensity, and then he spoke.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, the defendant, Jorge Sierra, is a merciless killer. In the course of this trial you will hear witness testimony and see video evidence of the defendant in the act of shooting two innocent women to death.”

  Parisi paused, but I didn’t think it was for effect. It seemed to me that he was inside the crime now, seeing the photos of the victims’ bloodied bodies at the Vault. He cleared his throat and began again.

  “One of those women was Lucille Stone, twenty-eight years old. She worked in marketing, and for a long time she was one of Mr. Sierra’s girlfriends. She was unarmed when she was killed. Never carried a gun, and she had done nothing to Mr. Sierra. But, according to Lucy’s friends, she had decisively en
ded the relationship.

  “Cameron Whittaker was Lucy’s friend. She was a substitute teacher, volunteered at a food bank, and had nothing whatsoever to do with Mr. Sierra or his associates. She was what is called collateral damage. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  I turned my eyes to the jury and they were with Len all the way. He walked along the railing that separated the jury box from the well of the courtroom.

  He said, “One minute these friends were enjoying a girls’ night out in an upscale nightclub, sitting together at the bar. And the next minute they were shot to death by the defendant, who thought he could get away with murder in full sight of 150 people, some of whom aimed their cell phones and took damning videos of this classic example of premeditated murder.

  “I say ‘premeditated’ because the shooting was conceived before the night in question when Lucy Stone rejected Mr. Sierra’s advances. He followed her. He found her. He taunted her and he menaced her. And then he put two bullet holes in her body and even more in the body of her friend.

  “Lucy Stone didn’t know that when she refused to open her door to him, he immediately planned to enact his revenge—”

  Parisi had his hands on the railing when an explosion cracked through the air inside the courtroom.

  It was a stunning, deafening blast. I dove for the floor and covered the back of my neck with my hands. Screams followed the report. Chairs scraped back and toppled. I looked up and saw that the bomb had gone off behind me and had blown open the main doors.

  Smoke filled the courtroom, obscuring my vision. The spectators panicked. They swarmed forward, away from the blast and toward the judge’s bench.

  Someone yelled, “Your Honor, can you hear me?”

  I heard shots coming from the well; one, then two more.

  I was on my feet, but the shots sent the freaked-out spectators in the opposite direction, away from the bench, toward me and through the doors out into the hallway.

  Who had fired those shots? The only guns that could have passed through metal detection into the Hall had to belong to law enforcement. Had anyone been hit?