Justice Burning (Darren Street #2)
Scott Pratt
Life’s filled with trauma. You don’t need to go to war to find it; it’s going to find you.
—Sebastian Junger
PROLOGUE
A cold breeze was blowing as I walked down the dark sidewalk toward the bar. I was wearing a dark-brown jacket with a black wool sweater beneath it, a black stocking cap, black jeans, black running shoes, and black socks. My hands were covered by a pair of black cold-weather running gloves. A Beretta pistol was shoved into my pants, secured by my belt, at the small of my back. I slipped into a creek bed and moved up close to the gravel parking lot outside the bar. To my surprise, there were only two vehicles in the lot. One was a brown Chevrolet that had been parked by the door earlier in the day. I assumed it belonged to the owner, a man named Sammy Raft. The other was Donnie Frazier’s girlfriend’s pickup truck.
I considered my options. I could wait out there in the cold until they came out, which might not be until closing. The door said closing time was 2:00 a.m. on Fridays. That was six hours away. Or I could walk into the bar and improvise. It took me about five seconds to decide.
“Fuck it,” I said out loud and headed toward the door. When I walked in, Sammy was standing behind the bar, polishing a glass. I knew what he looked like because I’d ordered a cheeseburger from him earlier in the day while checking the place out. The bar smelled of stale beer, cigarette smoke, and hamburger grease. Donnie Frazier and Tommy Beane were in a booth against the wall to my right. A Merle Haggard song called “Momma Tried” was blaring on the jukebox. I sat down at the first bar stool, and Sammy walked over.
“A little slow for a Friday, isn’t it?” I said.
He shot a glance toward the booth behind me. “It’s them two. They done run everybody off. Want the place to themselves. Probably be best for you if you don’t stay long.”
“I’ll take a Budweiser, longneck,” I said. “Appreciate the heads-up.”
Sammy turned and reached into a cooler. He popped the cap off the bottle and set it on the counter.
I didn’t touch it. Instead, I leaned toward him as though I wanted to draw him into a conspiracy. “Can I ask you a personal question? I know it might seem a little strange, but is your mother still alive?”
Sammy looked to be around sixty, pudgy and balding, with bright-blue eyes. He gazed at me curiously. “She passed about ten years ago. The cancer took her.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Were you close? Did you love her?”
“My momma? Are you asking me if I loved my momma?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ll understand in a minute.”
“I loved her to death. She was the finest woman I ever met, even better than my wife, Linda, and that’s saying a lot. Now tell me why you want to know if I loved my momma.”
“Because I loved mine, too, and those two insects in that booth over there raped her.”
I saw Sammy swallow slowly. His blue eyes locked on to mine, searching for an answer to a question he was afraid to ask. Finally, he asked the question. “Are you planning to do something about it?”
“I am.”
“Here? Now?”
“Afraid so. You know those boys well?”
“Well enough to know I don’t much care what happens to them, but I don’t see myself sitting back while you kill two men in my place of business.”
I’d told him they’d raped her, but the two men in the booth had killed my mother. I’d done a lot of planning, taken some serious risks, and had driven a long way to get revenge. The man standing in front of me had done nothing to me, but I wasn’t going to let him stop me from doing what I’d come there to do. If I had to kill him, too, I was prepared to do so and chalk it up to unavoidable collateral damage.
“I’m not asking you to sit back. I’m asking you to take a little trip to the bathroom,” I said. “There’ll be some noise. Wait until the noise dies down, and then come back and call the police, but take your time about it. Tell them you went into the bathroom and heard shooting start. You were afraid to come out. When you finally came out, they were dead.”
“Why would they rape your momma?” he said.
“It’s a long story, something you don’t need to hear. Those boys are going to die in the next couple of minutes. You can either go into the bathroom or you can die with them.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“You don’t have to believe me, but fate has put you and me and them in this bar together at this moment, and something is about to happen.”
“What if I pull this sawed-off shotgun out from under the bar and blow your head off with it?”
“You better be quick,” I said.
He stared at me again for a long minute. His expression changed to one of resignation, and I watched him make his decision. He began slowly walking around the bar. He walked behind me, past Frazier and Beane, to the end of the bar, turned left, and disappeared behind a black door that said RESTROOMS.
By this time, Merle Haggard’s song was done playing, and Johnny Cash was singing “Folsom Prison Blues.” I got up off the bar stool, took a deep breath, and was surprised I wasn’t more nervous. I pulled the Beretta and hid it behind my back. I flipped the safety off and walked up to the booth. Beane was to my left with a cigarette hanging from his lips. He looked just like the photo I’d been given: Elvis Presley hair and sideburns, dark eyes, thick neck. Frazier had a dark-blond ponytail and greenish-blue eyes. Both of them had tattoos on their necks and on their hands. Their arms were covered with shirtsleeves, but I was sure they were also covered in prison tats.
I looked them over for a couple of seconds before Frazier said, “What the fuck you lookin’ at, boy?”
Without saying a word, I put three rounds into Beane’s chest. The noise inside the small bar was deafening. Beane melted into the booth, blood already oozing from his shirt. Frazier froze and looked up at me, his eyes wild with fear. I didn’t feel a bit of sympathy for him or for the man I’d just shot three times. My heart rate was steady. My hands weren’t shaking. More than anything else, and for the first time in a long time, I felt in control.
“My name is Darren Street,” I said to Frazier. “Ring a bell?”
I pointed the Beretta at his forehead as his eyebrows raised and an “Oh shit” look came over his face. “This is from my mother.”