Joe

“I’ll kill them,” I said.

I was livid. I couldn’t think of a time when I’d ever been so enraged or actually wanted to kill someone with my bare hands before in my life.

When I came over for my dinner date with Gina I could tell something was wrong. It wasn’t easy prying it out of her but eventually she broke down and told me about her encounter with Victor Silas and “The Cobras” that afternoon.

They’d actually threatened the woman I loved and my best friend. Not to mention their mother and possibly their father too. There was no telling where their reach of madness would end. And knowing what I did about Victor Silas I knew he meant every single word. The man was relentless, and he did not lose.

“You can’t go after them,” Gina said.

“I have to do something,” I snapped back. “The cops can’t do anything about this guy, well then we have to take matters into our own hands. That’s just the way it is sometimes.”

“You aren’t thinking straight,” Gina said.

I stopped pacing the floor and stared into her sweet, beautiful face. She was full of concern and care for me. It was startling to see how scared she was. I couldn’t stand to see her like this.

Maybe she was right, though. I needed to let a cooler head prevail here and think this through. I had to calm down. This was no time for me to go off with a head full of steam. That had never worked well before. And it sure as hell was not going to work here.

“Dammit!” I yelled. “I just feel that I have to do something. The thought of these pigs coming at you that way…. I just want to…”

I slammed my fist down on the counter in frustration. I had to get a grip. This was not going to solve anything.

“I know,” Gina said. “I feel the same way, but we have to find a better way. You can’t take them all on by yourself. You’d be gunned down in two seconds. Violence isn’t the answer to this one.”

I grabbed the bottle of whiskey off the shelf and took a swig without bothering with a glass. I replaced the cap and set it back in the cabinet. Then I closed my eyes, breathed in the hot, whiskey-laced air and tried to relax.

Gina was right. I couldn’t fight all of “The Cobras”. This wasn’t a movie where I could infiltrate their command center and take them all out one by one like Chuck Norris. No, I was going to need a different tactic.

“Are you going to tell Ronnie?” I asked.

Gina was silent for a moment. Finally, she answered meekly.

“I don’t know.”

“I think he needs to know,” I said. “It’s his decision to make what he wants to do with his life.”

“I don’t know if I can give him this choice. I’m thinking about just telling the police.”

“That could be dangerous,” I said. “From the rumors I’ve gathered about “The Cobras” they have several officers on the payroll. And besides, if the cops do ask them about this or try to put the fear of God into them then they might just have Ronnie killed right off to be done with it. And then who’s to say you and your mother aren’t next?”

Gina lowered her head. I could tell she was trying to hold in the grief she was plagued with. She was a tough woman who hated to show emotion.

“There might be another way,” I said.

“What?”

“Well, my uncle Bob is a bit of a legend on the force. I might be able to use that pull to get some inside information. I’d like to look at those crime scene photos a bit more in-depth and I’d like to see why there weren’t more forensic measures taken.”

“Why? What do you think that will prove?” Gina asked.

“Maybe nothing, but it’s a start. I just can’t sit on my hands anymore. I mean, think about it. They basically just booked Ronnie on circumstantial evidence. I mean, it is very compelling circumstantial evidence, but there is no actual proof that ties him to the murder or the crime. Why was he knocked unconscious? What ties did he have to the victim? There was no hard evidence that they’d ever even spoken before that night. The prosecution’s defense doesn’t hold water on several things. It looks to me that they are trying to close a quick case involving a few drug dealers to get it off the books.”

“They would do that? Just to close a case?” Gina asked.

I hated telling her the truth, but I nodded.

“It’s a hard pill to swallow, but it happens a lot more than you’d ever know.”

“Wow, that’s insane,” Gina said. “That makes me sick to think about.”

I leaned over and kissed her softly. Pulling back I brushed her hair back off her face gently with my hand to calm her, soothe her.

“It’s going to be ok,” I said.

But truthfully, I wasn’t so confident.

The next day I was at the sheriff’s office. Luckily the lead detective on the case was a guy named Marvin Beck. He was a rookie cop who had worked with my uncle Bob many years ago. It was a lucky break in a long line of unlucky ones. I felt like counting my lucky stars.

“Thanks for helping me out,” I said as Beck laid the crime scene photos in front of me.

I’d actually attended the academy to become a deputy when I was twenty-one years old, mostly just because my family expected me to do it and follow in my uncle’s footsteps. It wasn’t really for me, though. I’d never done that well with following orders and instructions set forth by other people. Becoming an officer of the law was a lot like miniature boot camp. It was not easy and it was not fun. And for someone like me it was a non-stop headache of butting heads with people who thought they could control me.

Yep, I’d always been rather unemployable.

“I’m not sure what you expect to find in there,” Beck said. “But you are more than welcome to comb through them.”

“Yeah, I’m honestly not sure either,” I said. “But I feel like I have to do something.”

I scanned over the pictures of the crime scene but from what I could tell they didn’t mean much.

All I could see was the body of the man who was killed. The area had been marked off with police tape. He was a man about Ronnie’s age and he had a bullet hole in his chest. It was pretty bloody and very tragic. After a few moments of scanning the picture, I turned away from it.

There was nothing there. Beck was right, but I had to at least be sure. It was a start. From what I could tell, everyone had given up on the case and were pretty convinced that Ronnie was going up the river for a long time. Nothing was going to stop that, right?

Well, I was never going to stop trying to help my friend. If Ronnie was convicted of murder then Gina would never be the same. As close as they were a light deep within her would be forever extinguished. I couldn’t bear to see that.

And I knew my best friend was innocent. He was not a saint by any means but Ronnie was not a killer. I had to prove it.

“What about a forensics report?” I asked.

Beck sighed. I knew he was getting tired of wasting time with me and if I was anybody else besides the nephew of the legendary Bob Simpson then he would have told me to take a hike a while ago.

“Well, the ballistics match. That gun fired that bullet that killed this man. The only other thing we found was a gum wrapper. It was a bit different. Something called Black Jack. I don’t see that much nowadays.”

“Black Jack?” It didn’t ring any bells to me. “Any surveillance cameras in the areas catch up with anything?” I asked.

“No, we’ve looked through them all. They were in the park just out of the range of any of the cameras of any nearby stores.”

“Sounds like this was pretty well planned,” I said.

“Yeah, it does,” Beck agreed.

“I mean it was pretty well planned as a great set-up.”

Beck sighed and leaned forward.

“Look, I know you hate to think that your friend might have done something this heinous. I mean, we like to think we know those nearest and dearest to us, but one thing I’ve learned in the twenty years of this job is that people change and you never know what is really going on inside someone’s mind.”

“Not this time,” I said. “I know Ronnie didn’t do this. Haven’t you checked out “The Cobras” at all? Ronnie told you about the gambling trouble he got into.”

“We have and we don’t have anything concrete to go after them for on this,” Beck said. “I’m sorry, but we need more than just a story to go on. We have to have proof.”

“How hard can it be to pick up these guys on something?” I asked.

“The Cobras aren’t just criminals by the standard definition. They are a criminal enterprise. They run it like a business and they are very good at what they do. Most people don’t have the faintest. They have the best crooked lawyers in the business. Their legal team makes them almost untouchable. We’d almost have to see one of them actually shoot someone in a courtroom in front of the jury to convict them of anything.”

I burst out laughing. This was ludicrous.

“Wow, what am I hearing? It sounds like you are all afraid of them. I guess the rumors are true that they do have the police in their pocket.”

“Hey!” Beck said.

Good. I’d touched a nerve.

“What?” I asked.

Beck took a moment to calm himself.

“Listen, I wish I could help you, but the law is the law. Sometimes that means our hands are tied about how to proceed.”

“So criminals get the law on their side? That’s just great.”

I stood up to leave. As I got to the door Beck had one more piece of wisdom to lay on me.

“No, the law is not on their side. The law is on the side of the citizen. And they are still innocent until proven guilty.”

I smirked.

“Tell that to my friend Ronnie Breyer.”

I walked out the door.

Driving home I felt a bit defeated. I didn’t think I was going to get any true answers there, but it still felt awful to come away totally empty-handed. I felt a bit defeated. It wasn’t often that I felt that way and I knew I needed to find a way to regroup and get things back into perspective.

The cabin.

Yes. I had not been to my family’s cabin in quite some time. It was a little oasis like place in the middle of the desert close to Lake Samco. There weren’t many lakes in southern Arizona, but this was one of them. And my family happened to own a nice cabin out there. It was quiet and peaceful. It would be the perfect place to get away from everything.

But only if Gina would come with me. I knew she had Fridays off from classes and a long weekend at the lake would do us both wonders. And it would be romantic. It would be blissful. It would be perfect.

I just hoped she would be as excited about the idea as I was.