15 Seconds (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

B
usiness was booming for Dexter Ray Vaughn these days.

Booming enough for him to buy, in cash, the run-down row house in Cobb County outside Atlanta that he'd been renting—and fill it with a boss Bose sound system and a sixty-inch Samsung, which, other than a mattress in the bedroom, was pretty much his only furniture. Good enough to buy the tricked-out Ford 450 pickup he was driving lately.

Only problem was, he thought as he glanced around in his T-shirt and undershorts, his wife, Vicki, was always so stoned she couldn't keep the house in any form other than “Early Shithole.” And the fridge never had anything in it but vodka and stale pizza. But considering the kinds of customers and business associates he had floating through here on a daily basis, it was, like,
Who the fuck really cared?

The meth lab in his basement was turning out a hundred grams a day, when he got the urge to work. He had a distro network, both in town and even out in the boonies—if you called his half-witted cousin Del, who sometimes ran for him there, a distributor. More like a sloth who sat in the trees farting and scratching himself.

Not to mention the neat, little side business he had going for himself in pharmaceuticals.
Diversified
—just like Warren E. Buffett—he had once seen the word in a magazine at his doctor's office. Local gangs moved some of it locally and provided protection, so Dexter didn't even have to lose sleep at night worrying about the cops.

Shit, some of the cops were his best customers.

Life Was Fucking-A Good,
just like the words on the T-shirt he was wearing and had apparently passed out in last night. He'd been partying most of the night and woken up at two in the afternoon on the couch, with a world-class hard-on. Vicki was nowhere around, probably blowing some Mexican up the street for weed. Dex didn't really care. Shit, he could call up a half-dozen meth skanks who'd be over in thirty seconds and go down on him for what he'd left out on the table.

But, he got up and sighed, commerce called. His amigos were expecting more inventory mañana. He had to get to the lab. Dex stretched, still a little wobbly, and took the last chug from a can of warm beer he'd left on the rug.

Man, this steady nine-to-five crap was killing him.

The doorbell rang.

Fuck.
Who the hell was there
? He groaned. Winston, the Jamaican, was supposed to come by, but that wasn't until around six. Dexter shuffled over to the window, scratching his crotch. He parted the curtain, but was unable to see who was there. He pushed the hair out of his face and reknotted his ponytail, all-presentable like. “
Who is it, man?”
he called, squinting through the peephole. “Speak and be recognized.”

“Del sends his regards,” the person said.

Fuckin' Del . . .
The guy looked like a rube from Okefenokee.
Didn't that pimply bladderhead know better than to send his hicks around . . . ?

“Del oughta know better,” Dexter said, turning the knob and pushing open the bolt. “He—”

And then the door pretty much exploded in his face.

Before he even knew what was happening, this old dude had forced his way in. Heavyset. Arms like fucking ham hocks. Bald on top. Dexter's hand shot to his mouth and there was blood on it. “The fuck you doin', man . . .”

Then his eyes grew wide when he saw a shotgun in the guy's hands.

“Dude, you outta your fuckin' mind?” Dexter blurted at him, thinking he knew about ten people right off the top of his head he could get to blow a hole through this guy as wide as a highway. Stupid fool clearly had no idea where he was.

But then the guy's elbow jerked and the butt of the shotgun caught Dex hard in the mouth. He felt his lip burst open, and when he looked down, he saw three of his own teeth staring up at him from the floor.

“On the couch,” Vance demanded, motioning to the dilapidated tweed thing that sat in front of the wide-screen TV.

“Listen, old man, you must be touched!” Dexter said, spitting blood onto his hand. “You don't have any idea what the fuck you're doing here. You think you can just—”

“Sit. On. The. Couch,” Vance said again, this time emphasizing each word with the muzzle of the shotgun.

“All right, all right . . .” Dexter said, lifting his palms. “I'm going. I'm going . . . Just keep it cool, old man.” He shuffled to the couch and sank down. He wiped blood off his mouth. “Look what you done, dude? What the hell is it you want? You need a boost?
Weed?
X? A little meth maybe? I can get it all. You surely look like you can use some X, there, dude, if you don't mind me saying so. Got no cash—no worries, we can work something out.”

“I look like I came here for drugs?” Vance demanded, staring down at him. He grabbed the cane chair that was in the middle of the room and plunked himself down on it, facing Dexter Vaughn, the shotgun dangling loosely from his side. The blinds were already down. “You sold some Oxy to someone named Wayne Deloach, back in Acropolis. Through some poor fool named Del.”

“Roxies . . . ? Acropolis . . . ? Nah, never heard of Acropolis,” Dexter said, wiping the blood out of his mouth, surely wondering what was going on.

“You heard of
him,
though,” Vance replied.

“You some kind of cop?”

Vance shook his head. “Not anymore.”

“Then I'm sorry to tell you, I don't the fuck know any Wayne Deloach. Though you're surely right on one thing . . . My cousin Del damn well is a poor fool.”

“A dead one too,” Vance said, looking at him.

The ponytailed dealer swallowed. Vance could tell from the sheen of sweat that had popped up on his brow that he had gotten the guy's full attention now.

“You said Wayne, right?”

Vance nodded, shifting the gun across from the guy's knee.

“Still, don't know him. In fact—”

Vance squeezed the trigger, sending a casing of Remington 341 buckshot into Dexter's kneecap, causing him to jump up and howl clutching his knee, which, through his jeans, was mostly blood and exposed bone now.

“Look at that! Look what you fucking done
,
man!”

“I'm gonna give you one more chance to rethink your answer—about whether you knew this Wayne or not—before you become a dead fool too.”

“You fucking busted my knee, you sonovabitch!” Dexter rolled back onto the couch, writhing on the cushions, inspecting the hole in his jeans, blood all over them. “You must be fucking crazy, man.
Ow . . .”

“That knee'll soon end up the healthiest part of you”—Vance cocked the other barrel—“unless you tell me where your Oxy comes from. I know it was you and I don't give a shit about whatever else is going on. All I want is a name. Whoever it is who supplies you, son. So unless you want to start losing more body parts by the minute and end up on the floor slithering around like a fish in a catch bucket, you better start thinking of some names.”

He lifted the barrel again so it pointed level at Dexter's midsection. “I got a big fat target, son. The Oxy, boy. I want a name.”

“He's no one!
No one . . . !
” Dexter cried out, putting his palms up for protection. “He's just some jerk-off mule who earns a few bucks bringing them up to me once a month. Hell, it's all small potatoes anyway. What's the big fucking deal?”

Vance squeezed the trigger again and the Remington blasted a hole in Dexter's other knee, taking away much of his shinbone as well.

“Aaargh,”
Dex screamed, crying now, falling onto the floor and rolling from side to side in pain. His arms wrapped around both his shredded legs.

“The
big deal
”—Vance stood up and bent over him—“is that there are people who are dead, son. People who had a lot more worth in life than you, you miserable mess, because of what you do. And others, who won't get a chance to live their lives out 'cause they were stupid and weak and easily preyed on by the likes of you.”

Dexter rolled around on his back, sobbing.

“Now, I can just leave you as you are, son, and you can get those legs mended—maybe—and you may well even walk one day and prey on some other fool's daughter. You'd like that around now, wouldn't you, son, if it turned out like that?”

“Yes,” Dexter said, moaning.
“Please . . .”

“Or we can try another part. Say, right here . . .” Vance held the gun over Dexter's groin. “Shit, probably gonna be useless to you anyway after today . . .”

“No, no, no, no, no . . . !”
Dexter covered his crotch, his eyes stretched wide with panic.

“Then you give me the name, son. Who supplies you. Where'd that Oxy come from . . . You can spare yourself a lot of pain, not to mention eventually getting your head blown off.”

“All right, all right . . .”
Dexter moaned, sobbing, his face a mishmash of blood and tears. “No more . . . Please, no more. He's no one. Just some mule who brings it up. Pays for his own use. He's just a mule. That's all.”

Dexter gave him the name and told Vance where he could find him.

“Now you gotta get outta here.
Please . . .
I gave you what you wanted.” Tears ran down Dexter's face. “Now just leave me.
Please . . .”

Vance shouldered the gun, and for a moment he almost did leave Dexter be. After all, the guy would likely never walk in a straight line again anyway.

But then Vance stood there thinking for a minute or so, remembering all that had happened and why he was here. And what his vow was. His gaze bored deeply into Dexter's helpless, pleading eyes.

“Can't, son,”
he admitted sadly.

He drew the gun over the dealer's chest, who put up his hands and started muttering,
“Please, no, don't, don't . . .”
and turned his face away.

Vance said, “Sorry, just not the way it works here.”

He squeezed and the recoil lifted his arm all the way up to his shoulders. Dexter's body jumped off the floor, his “Life Is Fucking-A Good” T-shirt with the winking smiley face on it pooling up quickly with blood.

“Someone's gotta pay.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

C
arrie left the Exxon station with an envelope full of security tapes from the morning Martinez was killed. A camera had been focused onto Lakeshore, but the angle was wide enough to catch a view of vehicles driving toward the highway.

She drove back to headquarters by way of Avondale, where Mike Dinofrio lived. Whoever killed him had likely driven via I-95 and gotten off at the Riverside Boulevard exit. From there, it was another six or seven minutes to Avondale. Martinez and Dinofrio had been murdered within about thirty minutes of each other, and Carrie calculated it would have taken approximately fifteen minutes or so to get to Dinofrio's given traffic and the time of day. Whoever had done it—either the person in the blue car or Steadman via taxi—would have needed to get there fast.

She exited at Riverside and scanned both sides of the street as she drove past familiar office buildings—the
Florida Times-Union,
Haskell, Fidelity—until the structures along the road grew residential. Under a canopy of old oak trees, she passed the stately, historic homes that lined both sides, looking for cameras.

Nothing.

Eventually she hit Riverside Park, the neighborhood growing progressively more upscale, but still she saw no obvious cameras.

Until she happened on something that gave her hope.

A speed warning.
YOU ARE GOING 35 MPH
, the digital sign read.
SPEED PATROLLED BY AUTOMATIC CAMERA
.

Her heart rose with excitement. It would have definitely caught whoever had passed by two days before.

A couple of hours later, Carrie was back at the office, in the fourth-floor video station, reviewing the tapes. She'd gotten the speed-warning video from a friend who worked at the Transportation Authority. She began, frame by frame, with the tape from the Exxon station near where Martinez was killed.

The camera was focused on the comings and goings at the station, but it also took in the first two lanes of Lakeshore Drive heading west.

This was the best she had.

Carrie fast-forwarded to 10:06
A.M.
, the approximate time of the Martinez shooting. She sighed that it would have made this process a whole lot easier if Martinez had just had an in-dash camera in his car like a lot of the patrol cars now had.

She rolled the film forward, estimating that it was approximately two miles to the highway from the crime scene, and taking into account the traffic flow, which was steady, the blue car would have had to have passed by the station sometime between 10:09 and 10:11.

If it hadn't turned off sooner.

And
if Steadman wasn't lying.

She watched the footage closely. It was going to be difficult to read the full license plate, especially on a car driving in the outer two lanes, because the camera angle wasn't exactly positioned to capture that view. Steadman had said the car was a domestic make. A dark blue. Which wouldn't exactly be helpful since the film was black-and-white.

10:07
. . .
Just a steady stream of traffic passing by. Nothing yet.

Carrie advanced the frames. 10:08 . . . At the slower film speed, she studied every car she could. In real time, they had driven by in a flash, the camera picking them up for only a split second.

It was impossible to make out the car color, so she focused on the plates. South Carolina. ADJ-4 . . .

10:09:23
. . .
Still nada. She was thinking a car might have already passed by this time. This was starting to feel like a giant waste of—

Something flashed by her on the screen.

A midshade sedan switching lanes. The camera picked it up for only a second. Carrie stopped the tape, rolled back, was able to zoom in. It was a Mazda. Not what Steadman had said, but he'd also said he wasn't sure.

At the higher magnification the resolution grew even grainier. But she was able to make out numbers—at least some of them, though only on the right-hand side of the license plate: 392. The left side was completely obscured.

On the bottom of the plate she could make out a word that made her heart sputter:

Carolina.

Not South or North. The left side wasn't clear.

Just
Carolina
.

It wouldn't be hard to figure out which Carolina; however, she didn't know state license-plate colors by heart.

And the plate also wasn't ADJ-4, like Steadman insisted. Nor was it a Ford or a Mercury, whatever he thought it was. The only thing that stood out was the state.

10:09:46. Driving by at a high rate of speed
.
She wondered if that could be it. She made a note of the time and license numbers and continued forwarding the frames, just in case.

A minute later, another car passed by. This one she recognized immediately. It was Steadman's white Cadillac STS. Carrie even verified the plate numbers.

He was clearly in pursuit, like he said, chasing the car that had gone before him.

She reversed the tape and replayed the first car over again. There was nothing,
nothing
even remotely suspicious about it. The plate didn't match up, though she couldn't make it out completely. The make was different. If she brought this information to Akers, or one of the detectives, as if it proved something, they'd look at her like she was crazy.

Shit,
if she brought it to Raef, even
he'd
probably look at her like she was crazy.

Carrie sighed, filled with frustration.
What the hell are you doing?
she asked herself. This proved zero. She took the Exxon tape out of the player, marking down the one car that had caught her attention.

Then she put in the tape from the speed warning on Riverside Avenue.

Dinofrio had been alive at 10:15, when his wife left to go to her Pilates class. His killing had to have occurred before Steadman arrived, which, according to the cabbie was, 11:02. Accounting for the time it took for him drive back to the scene, escape the police, ditch the car, walk to the Clarion Inn, find the cab, and drive there.

Calculating the probable time it would take someone to get to Dinofrio's house on Turnberry Terrace, she started with 10:30
A.M
.

Carrie started advancing the tape. This one was a whole lot easier. While it was also black-and-white, the camera focused directly on an oncoming car's front grille and license plate.

It
was
a speed trap.

But the work was still slow. There was no exact way to know precisely what time anyone would have passed there. Or, it occurred to Carrie, if they had even come by this route. Who could be sure?

Dozens and dozens of vehicles went by. With no matches.

10:35
.
Carrie started to grow disheartened.
Give it up,
said a voice inside her.
Sometimes people who do bad things don't fit the part. Look at Ted Bundy. He didn't look the part. He could charm the pants off a—

10:40. Twenty minutes or so until Steadman would have passed by in the cab.

Still nothing.

Then suddenly it came into view. Her heart lurched to a stop.

Oh my God.

10:41:06. There it was. The very same Mazda. 392. This time with South Carolina plates. Perfectly clear.

And this time, Carrie saw
all
the numbers.

Her eyes doubled in size.

ADJ-4, the license plate read. Followed by what she had seen before. On Lakeview.

392.