Last Man Standing

  eruption. Several men that he had sentenced to prison had threatened his life. Once he had almost fallen prey to a letter bomb sent by a white supremacist organization that hadn’t cared for Leadbetter’s steadfast belief that all persons, regardless of creed, color or ethnicity, were equal under the eyes of God and the law. These circumstances dictated that Leadbetter receive additional security, and there had been a recent development that had further increased concerns for his safety.

  There had been a daring prison escape by a man who had sworn revenge on Leadbetter. The prison where the man had been held was very far away and the threats were from several years ago, yet the authorities were wisely taking no chances with the good judge. For his part Leadbetter simply wanted to live his life as he always had and the beefed-up security was not particularly appealing to him. However, having barely escaped death once, he was practical enough to realize that the concern was probably legitimate. And he didn’t want to die violently at the hands of some piece of filth who should be rotting away in prison; Judge Leadbetter wouldn’t want to give the man the satisfaction.

  “Any news on Free?” he asked the U.S. marshal.

  That the man who had escaped from prison was named Free had always rankled Leadbetter. Ernest B. Free. The middle initial and surname weren’t his real ones, of course. He had had his name legally changed when he had joined a paramilitary neo-conservative group whose members all had taken that name as symbolism of the perceived threats to their liberty. In fact, the group called themselves the Free Society, ironic since they were violent and intolerant of anyone who didn’t look like them or who disagreed with their hate-filled beliefs. They were the type of organization that America could certainly do without and yet they were also an example of the vastly unpopular types of groups that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution was constructed to afford protection to. But not when such groups killed. No, not when they killed. No bit of paper, no matter how cherished, could protect you from the consequences of that.

  Free and other members of his group had broken into a school, shot two teachers to death and taken numerous children and teachers hostage. Local authorities had surrounded the school, and a SWAT team had been called up, but Free and his men were heavily armed with automatic weapons and body armor. Thus, federal lawmen specializing in hostage rescue had been called up from Quantico. At first things looked like they would end peacefully, but shooting had erupted from inside the school and eventually the Hostage Rescue Team had gone in. A horrific gun battle had ensued. Leadbetter could still vividly recall the heartbreaking sight of a young boy lying dead on the pavement, along with two teachers. A wounded Ernest B. Free had finally given up when his accomplices had been gunned down.

  There had been some question as to whether Free would be tried in federal or state courts. While it was believed that the school was targeted because it was a cutting-edge magnet school for integration and enhancement of race relations, and Free’s racist views were well known, it still would have been hard to prove, Leadbetter recognized. To start with, the three people killed—the two teachers and the young boy—were white, and thus prosecuting Free under a federal hate crime statute looked relatively weak. And while technically Free could have been charged with assaults on federal officers, it seemed the best shot was to make things simple and try him in state court and seek the death penalty for the multiple murders. The result was not one any of them had intended.

  “No, Judge,” replied the marshal, snapping Leadbetter out of his reminiscing. The marshal had been looking out for Leadbetter for a while now and they had quickly established a good rapport. “If you ask me, that man’s plan is to head to Mexico and then on to South America. Hook up with some Nazis, people of his own kind.”

  “Well, I hope they get him and put him right back where he belongs,” said Leadbetter.

  “Oh, they probably will. Feds are on it and they sure got the resources.”

  “I wanted that bastard to get the death penalty. That’s what he deserved.” It was one of the few regrets that Leadbetter had as a circuit court judge. But Free’s defense counsel had, of course, raised the issue of insanity and even tiptoed along the fringe of alleging a claim of brainwashing by the “cult,” as he had described the organization Free belonged to. The attorney was just doing his job, and in the minds of the prosecution, it apparently had raised just enough doubt about the odds of a solid conviction that they had struck a deal with Free’s counsel before the jury had come back in. Instead of a potential death penalty, Free had gotten twenty to life with the possibility, however slight, that he might someday be paroled. Leadbetter hadn’t agreed with the deal, yet he really had no choice but to sign off on it. The media had taken an informal poll of the jury later. Free had the real last laugh then. All jury members would have voted for conviction and all would have recommended the death penalty. The press had had a field day with that one. Everyone had ended up with egg on his face. Free had been transferred, for a variety of reasons, to a maximum security prison in the Midwest. That was the place he had escaped from.

  Leadbetter looked over at his briefcase. Folded neatly inside was a copy of his beloved New York Times. Leadbetter had been born and attended school in New York City before heading south and settling in Richmond. The transplanted Yankee loved his new home, but each evening when he got home, exactly one hour was spent reading the Times. It had been his habit for all his years on the bench and his copy was specially delivered to the courthouse before he left each day. It was one of the few acts of relaxation the man was able to enjoy anymore.

  As the marshal drove out of the court’s garage, his phone rang and the answered it. “What’s that? Yes, sir, Judge. Yes, sir, I’ll tell him.” He put the phone down and said, “That was Judge Mackey. He said to tell you to look at the last inside page of the front section of the Times if you want to see something really amazing.”

  “Did he say what it was?”

  “No, sir, just that you were to look and then to call him right back.”

  Leadbetter glanced at the paper, his curiosity running high. Mackey was a good friend and his intellectual interests ran similar to Leadbetter’s. If Mackey thought something fascinating, probably so would he. They were stopped at a light now. That was good because Leadbetter couldn’t read in a moving car without getting violently ill. He pulled the paper out, but it was too dark to see in the car. He reached over and turned on the reading light switch and opened the paper.

  The annoyed marshal looked back and said, “Judge, I told you not to be turning that light on. It makes you a durn sitting duck—”

  The tinkle of glass stopped the marshal cold, that and the sight of Judge Louis Leadbetter toppling facedown onto his precious New York Times, its pages now soiled with his blood.

  12

  Kevin Westbrook’s mother, Web learned, was probably dead, though no one could tell him for sure. She had disappeared years before. A meth and crack addict, she had most likely ended her life with the prick of a dirty needle or snort of impure powder. The identity of Kevin’s father was unknown. Apparently these were not unusual gaps in personal history in the world where Kevin Westbrook dwelled. Web drove down to a section of Anacostia even the cops avoided, to a crummy, falling-down duplex amid others just like it where Kevin reportedly lived with a hodgepodge of second cousins, great-aunts, distant, kind of, sort of uncles or step brother-in-laws. Web wasn’t really clear on the boy’s living situation and, apparently, neither was anyone else. It was the new and improved American nuclear family. The area looked like a reactor had been hemorrhaging nearby for a few decades. Apparently, no flowers or trees could grow here; the grass in the small yards was a sickly yellow; even the dogs and cats in the street looked ready to keel over. Every person, place and thing looked totally used up.

  Inside, the duplex was a dump. From outdoors the stench of rotting garbage was overpowering, and indoors there were offensive odors heightened even more by the close quarters. This lethal
combination hit Web so hard when he walked through the doorway, he thought he might end up kissing the floor. Lord, he’d take tear gas over this homemade toxin any day.

  The people who sat across from him didn’t look unduly worried that Kevin was not among them. Maybe the child routinely disappeared after a shootout of staggering proportions. A sulky young man sat on the couch. “We already talked to the cops,” he said, more spitting the words at Web than saying them.

  “Just following up,” said Web, who didn’t want to think about what Bates would do to him if he found out Web was nosing around on his own. Well, he owed it to Riner and the other guys, to hell with official Bureau policy. Still, the butterflies were numerous and reproducing freely in his belly.

  “Shut your mouth, Jerome,” said the grandma-type who sat next to Jerome. She had silver hair, big glasses, an enormous bosom and a no-bullshit attitude. She had not given Web her name and he had not pushed it; it was in the FBI file no doubt, but he had tracked it down from other sources. She was as large as a small car and looked like she could take Jerome, no problem. Hell, it looked like she could take Web, no problem. She had asked to see Web’s badge and credentials twice before unchaining the door. “I don’t like letting people I don’t know into my house,” she explained. “Police or otherwise. This area ain’t been safe for as long as I can remember. And that’s from both sides of the table.” She said this with raised eyebrows and a knowing look that penetrated right to Web’s federal law enforcement soul.

  I really don’t want to be here, Web wanted to tell her, particularly since I’m holding my breath so I won’t puke. When Web sat down he could see between the wide cracks in the floorboards all the way down to the hard clay the house was built on. This place must be toasty warm in the winter, he thought. It was about sixty-five outside right now and it felt like thirty inside. There was no comforting sound of a furnace going and no smells of good food simmering in Grandma’s nice kitchen. In one corner of the room was a pile of diet Pepsi cans. Somebody was watching her weight. Yet next to that was a mound of McDonald’s trash. Probably Jerome’s, thought Web. He looked like a Big Mac and fries kind of guy. “I can understand that,” said Web. “Have you lived here long?”

  Jerome simply snorted while Granny looked down at her clasped hands. She said, “Three months. Other place we were in, we’d been there a long time. Had it fixed up nice.”

  “But then they decided we made too much money to be living in such a nice place, and they kicked us out,” added Jerome angrily. “Just kicked us out.”

  “Nobody said life was fair, Jerome,” she told him. She looked around the filthy place and drew in a heavy breath that seemed to drain all of Web’s hope away. “We gonna fix this place up too. It’ll be fine.” She didn’t sound too sure, Web noted.

  “Have the police made any progress on Kevin’s disappearance?”

  “Why don’t you go ask them?” asked Grandma. “Because they ain’t telling us nothing ’bout poor Kevin.”

  “They lost his ass,” said Jerome as he slid farther down into the mound of sagging, heavily stained cushions that passed for a couch. Web couldn’t even tell if there was a frame left. The ceiling was split open in three different spots that Web could see and it sagged down so far you almost didn’t need stairs to get to the second floor, you could just reach and pull yourself up. The walls had black mold growing over them, and there was probably lead paint in there as well. And no doubt asbestos clung around the pipes. There was rodent excrement everywhere, and Web would have bet a thousand bucks that termites had eaten most of the wood in the place, which was probably why it had that little lean to the left he had observed as he had come up the front sidewalk. The building inspectors must have just written off this whole area, or else they were drinking coffee somewhere and laughing their butts off.

  “Do you have a picture of Kevin?”

  “Course we do, gave one to the police,” said Grandma.

  “Got another?”

  “Hey, we ain’t got to keep giving you stuff,” snarled Jerome.

  Web leaned forward and let the grip of his pistol show very prominently. “Yes, Jerome, you do. And if you don’t lose the attitude, I’ll just haul your ass downtown and we can go over your record for any outstanding warrants that’ll put your little butt away for a while, unless you want to try and bullshit me and claim you’ve never been arrested, slick.”

  Jerome looked away and muttered, “Shit.”

  “Shut up, Jerome,” said Grandma. “You just shut your damn mouth.”

  There you go, Granny, Web thought.

  She pulled out a little wallet and lifted out a photo. She handed it across to Web, and when she did, her fingers started to tremble a little and her voice caught in her throat, but then she straightened everything out. “That’s my last picture of Kevin. Please don’t lose it.”

  “I’ll take good care of it. You’ll get it back.”

  Web glanced down at the photo. It was Kevin. At least the Kevin Web had saved in the alley. So the kid Cortez and Romano had babysat was somebody else who had lied and said he was Kevin Westbrook. That took some planning, but it also would have to have been on the fly. And yet for what purpose?

  “You said you gave the police a photo of Kevin?”

  Grandma nodded. “He’s a good boy. He goes to school, you know, most every day he does. A special school because he’s a real special little boy,” she added proudly.

  Down here, Web knew, going to school was an accomplishment to tout, perhaps second only to surviving the night.

  “I’m sure he is a good boy.” He looked over at wild-eyed, felony-in-waiting Jerome. You were a good boy too once, weren’t you, Jerome? “Were they uniformed police?”

  Jerome stood. “What, you think that we’re stupid? They was FBI, man, just like you.”

  “Sit down, Jerome,” said Web.

  “Sit down, Jerome,” said Grandma, and Jerome sat.

  Web thought rapidly. So if the Bureau had a photo of Kevin, then they had to know that they’d had the wrong boy, however briefly, in custody. Or did they? Romano had been clueless about there being two boys. He had just described him as a black kid. What if that was the entire official report? If the fake Kevin Westbrook had disappeared before Bates and the others got on the scene, then all they’d know was a black kid around ten years old named Kevin Westbrook who lived at such-and-such address near the alley was missing. They’d come here and talk to the family, get a picture, like they had done, and go about their investigation. It’s not like they’d for sure go ask Romano and Cortez for a positive ID, especially if they had no reason to suspect a switch. And Ken McCarthy had said the snipers hadn’t gotten a look at the real Kevin when Charlie Team had passed him on the way in. Perhaps only Web knew about the deception.

  Web looked around, and for the sake of the grandmother, or whatever her relation to Kevin was, he tried hard not to show his disgust. “Did Kevin actually live here?” Bates had said Kevin’s home life was miserable and that he probably avoided it when he could, which would explain why he’d been out alone in the middle of the night instead of here in bed. The physical surroundings truly were awful, but probably no worse than many of the other homes down here. Poverty and crime were everywhere and the marks they left were in no way pretty. Yet Granny seemed solid as a rock. A good person, and it seemed like she genuinely cared for Kevin. Why would he avoid her?

  Granny and Jerome exchanged a glance. “Most of the time,” said Granny.

  “Where would he live other times?”

  Neither of them said a word. He watched as Granny looked at her very substantial lap and Jerome closed his eyes and swayed his head, apparently to some bitchin’ music in his head.

  “I understand Kevin has a brother. Does Kevin live with him sometimes?”

  Jerome’s eyes popped open and Granny stopped looking at her lap. In fact, from the expressions on their faces it was as though Web were pointing a gun at them and had just told the pair to
kiss their respective butts good-bye.

  “Don’t know him, never seen him,” said Grandma quickly as she sat there rocking back and forth like something suddenly was hurting her. She didn’t look like she could take anybody right now. She looked like an old woman scared out of her wits.

  When Web looked over at Jerome he jumped up and was gone before Web could even rise. Web heard the front door open and then slam shut and then came the sound of feet running away.

  Web looked back at Granny.

  “Jerome don’t know him neither,” said Grandma.

  13

  The morning came for the official memorial service, and Web rose early, showered, shaved and dressed in his nicest suit. The time to formally honor and mourn all of his friends had come, and all Web wanted to do was run like hell.

  Web had not spoken with Bates about what he’d learned from Romano and Cortez, nor about his visit to Kevin’s home. Web wasn’t exactly sure why he hadn’t, only that he wasn’t feeling in a real trusting mood, and because Bates would no doubt chew him out for interfering in the investigation. To Web, Bates had identified the kid as Kevin Westbrook, which meant either the boy had told him that was his name or Bates had gotten it from Romano and Cortez if the boy had disappeared before Bates had arrived on the scene. Web would have to confirm which it was. If Bates had seen the other kid, then when he had taken Kevin’s photo from the grandmother, he’d have known there were two different kids involved.

  So Web had given a kid with a bullet wound on his cheek a note to take to his HRT guys. That kid had told Web his name was Kevin. The note had been delivered, but apparently not by the same kid Web had given the note to. That meant that between him giving the kid calling himself Kevin the note and the note being delivered, the boy had been switched with another kid. That could only have taken place in the alley between where Web was and the charging HRT unit. That wasn’t a whole bunch of space, yet it had been enough to pull the switch, which meant other people had been lurking somewhere in that alley, waiting for this to happen, maybe waiting for a lot to happen.

  Was Kevin’s coming down that alley planned? Was he working for his brother, Big F? Was he supposed to check for survivors, and had he not expected to find any? And when he did find Web alive, had that thrown a monkey wrench in somebody’s plan? And what the hell could that plan have been? And why pull one kid out and put another one in? And why did the fake Kevin lie and say Web was a coward? And who was the suit who had taken the replacement kid? Bates had been pretty tight-lipped about losing the kid. Was the suit Romano had talked to even an FBI agent? If not, how could one imposter have walked right in with creds and bravado impressive enough to fool Romano and Cortez and waltz off with another imposter? It was bewildering, and Web was so full of doubt that turning to Bates for answers and information sharing was not real high on his list of