Out of Promises (37 page)
Authors: Simon Leigh
In the chopper above the tunnel exit, McGowan waited, weapon at the ready.
‘What’s taking so long? Ground teams, clear the tunnel.’
Before he knew what was happening, tire squeal screamed from beneath and headlights rushed towards him. He took aim at the driver and fired. The shots missed, dotting the roof, an almost impossible shot with the car going so fast. It sped underneath him and the pilot gave chase.
He shot again, missing every time.
They chased him for two of miles, hoping he wouldn’t go into the city – a chopper pilot’s nightmare. Luckily, the streets at this time of night were quiet this far out. In the city, though, the streets were bustling with cabs and revellers hard at work celebrating.
He called for a team to set up a road block with spike strips, which would take some time with most of the police force out at the torn up house in Bakersfield; the warehouse explosion; and the docks. All he could do was follow.
Where are you going?
Bill knew where he was going and what he was doing. The gas was running low and he couldn’t run forever. He moved onto the freeway and passed over the tunnel he’d let Valerie escape through, smiling to himself that she was now free to start her life afresh.
The fuel light blinked as he approached some train tracks beside a multi-story parking lot near a Southbrook train station, switching off the headlights and stopping the car facing the direction of oncoming trains.
The barriers descended and he sat tight.
‘What are you going to do?’ Preston wheezed.
‘Freeing my sister from your grip is what I’m doing.’
‘You’ll die.’
Bill said nothing. His window shattered as McGowan fired round into it and a cold breeze swept through.
‘We can work this out.’
‘Not a chance.’
‘Come on. You, me, and Cyrus.’
‘Cyrus is dead.’
‘What?’
‘I killed him. He died drowning on his own blood like a pathetic pig.’
The chopper’s speakers came on, ‘William Yates, move the car from the railroad.’
He sat tight.
‘Bill, get that car out of there,’ McGowan yelled again.
Ahead, they could see an oncoming cargo train. The loud horn sounded, but he sat tight.
It’s going to hit.
Preston panicked. ‘We can’t go out like this.’
‘We’re not. You are.’ Bill’s plan was to hop the barrier and escape into the parking lot, to vanish from view forever with his conscience free and his sister safe.
The train was thirty seconds out.
‘See you later, Preston,’ he said and tried the door, but it wouldn’t open, the mechanism damaged by one of McGowan’s bullets.
Shit.
He moved over to the passenger side.
The train was twenty seconds out.
Sweat drenched his brow as he pushed the door. With one foot out, he was almost away, almost free to taste the freedom when he was grabbed from behind and held back.
‘If I’m going, so are you,’ Preston laughed.
The grip was tight and Bill tried desperately to pull free, blindly punching the hard to hit his head, searching for an eye he could press. Even as adrenaline surged through him, he couldn’t fight the inevitable.
His final thought before the train hit was of Valerie.
On the tunnel’s bridge, Valerie screamed as the train smashed into the car pushing it along the track and shredding it to pieces. A blaze of fire erupted at the front end and dispersed into the air before the train left the tracks and jack-knifed followed by the cargo.
‘Bill!’ she yelled, falling to her knees, still weeping.
He was gone. She didn’t want to move. The main scum of the city had well and truly died, but along the path, it had taken one of its best assets and she knew that. She hated herself for feeling this way after everything he’d done, but couldn’t deny the fact he had done it with the best intentions for his family. She may have even done the same thing.
Sirens came from all over her. She had to move.
Picking herself up, she ran.
Back at the docks an hour later, the shootout had died down. Some stragglers who eventually surrendered were being cuffed and taken away and the yacht was being emptied. More cars and vans arrived on scene to clear up the mess and bodies were loaded into ambulances.
The FBI had ripped into Baker for going it alone and he left them on the phone to his captain while he went to greet the chopper.
McGowan jumped out.
Baker asked, ‘What happened?’
McGowan explained everything – that Bill, Valerie, and Preston all perished in the blazing inferno.
‘All of them?’
He nodded. ‘The driver of the train is also feared dead. The streets are better off without them.’
‘Valerie was innocent in all of this.’
‘You still think so? They fled. I think that’s proof enough.’
‘Valerie was raped, you know. By Preston’s right hand man.’
McGowan looked at him, his jaw slightly dropped.
‘We have Lucy at the station. It’s thanks to her we got here and she’s given us the whereabouts of Matherson’s body. She’s cooperating fully and told us everything that happened. Like I said, Valerie was innocent.’
David Leach was given a posthumous Southbrook medal of honour for his undercover services and his name was added to the memorial wall at the Southbrook Police Department headquarters. Baker had released all details of him and his family received a sum of money to help them through their lives. The remains of the train crash had been cleaned up, but tests showed only two victims were in the car at the time. The driver of the train was also confirmed as a casualty.
Baker was sitting at his desk finishing up the case report. His captain hadn’t let him off lightly, though he’d fought back by saying he’d gotten the result he needed whether the Feds liked it or not, for which he got away with a warning.
McGowan came over, ‘What’s the plan now?’
‘Move onto the next case,’ he said, sitting back, relieved.
A parcel landed on the desk – a box with the words ‘Detective Baker’ scribbled in large black letters. He figured it had to have been hand delivered as there was no address. He opened it, finding a note saying:
THOUGHT YOU MIGHT NEED THESE
With the note were the missing Wong tape from the security office and the missing ledger pages from Matherson’s HQ, all detailing the names of police officers, judges, lawyers, reporters, and even doctors. You name it they were on it. It also said the amount of payoff each one received.
Baker scanned down the list.
McGowan watched him. ‘I’m not on there.’
Baker smiled. ‘I know. I just looked.’
He frowned, but maybe now he’d earned his trust. He said, ‘It’s Freddie Decker’s funeral today. Strange how they only identified two bodies in the wreckage. I have a hunch the third one, and the person who delivered that box, will be there.’
‘Leave it, McGowan.’
Snow came drifting from the heavens landing lightly outside the church graveyard. Lucy and Chloe were standing opposite Father McGregor as he read out a prayer and Freddie’s body was lowered lovingly into the ground.
Beside Chloe was a boy, Michael.
From her position behind a large gravestone, Valerie could see that he looked a lot like his dad and if he were there, he’d be so proud.
She shed a tear for her friend and looked on into the future feeling hopeful for Lucy. In a way she was free and didn’t need to suffer any longer. If only Freddie hadn’t gone to that church, things could have played out differently and he’d be at home nursing his new found son into adulthood. She felt pain for him, that he would never see him grow up alongside his sister and would miss out on the best days of his life.
She watched Lucy weep as the body disappeared below.
Having seen enough, she left the cemetery, not looking back, but looking ahead to where her life would take her next.
Having been to her apartment and finding the mess Cyrus had made on her bed, she packed what she could that wasn’t a reminder of him. It seemed that even in death she couldn’t shake him. She took everything with her name on and any letters or contact with the organization was thrown in a trash can on another street away from her apartment.
It was late at night when she walked into Jackson’s apartment one last time to say goodbye. After making sure nobody was about, she’d used a key Jackson had given her not long after moving in.
The place was almost empty. The landlord had started clearing it after the police had searched it, though there was still plenty to do. Almost everything he’d owned was gone and it basically stood as an empty shell.
Immense, with two levels, and sitting half way up a tower block of ten floors, it looked like most other apartment blocks in the city – the same usual square shape, size, and the same boring architecture.
The inside was white. All of it was white. She pictured a red rug by an electric fire, a TV mounted above it on the wall and leather sofas arranged as a square around a glass coffee table. She’d been here before but this time she felt a sadness; a sadness that this once underused and recently rented apartment for bringing back girls once housed one of the most decent men she’d ever met.
She moved into the bedroom, which was also white and once held a king size bed in the centre that she fondly remembers Jackson bringing her to once, failing to convince her to join him. She smiled and closed the door, moving on to his study. She’d never been inside this room before; he’d never let her. It contained too much sensitive information that she wasn’t privy to, or so he said.
The room was still full of furniture. The desk was still there but the computer was missing, taken by the police. The cupboards and drawers were also empty.
She walked around smiling and wondering if Jackson could see her disobeying him. Her feet on the laminate floor were loud, each noise echoing and creaking until she walked to the corner and it turned hollow. She looked down at a piece of floor flexing under her weight.
What the hell?
On her knees, she pushed it. It didn’t move so she pried a key into the gap, popping the wood out to reveal a safe. How the cops missed that she didn’t know.
Probably not finished their search, thankfully.
The safe was two feet by one with a digital number pad. The door was locked, which proved nobody had seen it unless they were coming back for it. She tried his date of birth, knowing he wasn’t that stupid and, as expected, it didn’t work. She sat back and thought of what it could be. Numbers went through her mind: her date of birth, Matherson’s date of birth, the first day they met, the number of people in the organization. She gave up, fearing that if she tried too many wrong numbers it would alarm or alert someone so she left it where it was, replaced the floorboard and walked to the exit.
She was about to say goodbye when she remembered a piece of paper with numbers written on it, found in Cyrus’s bedroom after he’d taken it from her apartment.
Really?
She ran back into the study, removed the floor and entered: five, five, five, six, five, three, and seven. The door released.
Yes!
Inside was cash, just cash. All bundled together in hundred dollar bills. She figured there must’ve been at least a hundred grand there. Picking it up, she piled it into her case.
Thank you, Jackson.
At the door she took one last look and said, ‘Goodbye.’
The next morning, she found herself in Southbrook airport. Large with three terminals, it had been built on the outskirts of the city. Planes came in to land on a snow free runway while other were taking off again. It was five days before Christmas and the airport was heaving with Christmas holiday makers on route to meet their families or just get away from the wicked winter chill.
Valerie looked around the airport’s toilet cubicle she was in. It was white and clean, but also small and cramped and very claustrophobic. People came in and left all the time. She paid no attention to them. It was the thought of being in a giant metal tube thousands of feet above the Earth with hundreds of those people that got to her and she felt sick.
Announcements came through the speakers, none of which interested her. Her plane wasn’t boarding yet and she was in two minds whether to board at all or just go back to the city. Even renting a car and just driving to wherever the road would take her crossed her mind.
Part of her felt excited to start a new life somewhere else. Somewhere away from this life where she could be another person and hold down a proper job. She figured she had enough money to last a good while, why not enjoy it?
Then an announcement came for her flight. First class to start with followed by coach. She was in coach as she thought first class might make her stand out a bit more with envious tourists watching her.
She stood up, left the cubicle and washed her hands. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw a younger Valerie staring back, like she’d acquired a new lease on life and she smiled.
She held up the pregnancy test, and it showed positive.