“Let Martha go!” He pleaded. “We have young children!”
Galen Cheney gave no indication of having heard this.
“The path of the righteous man,” he declaimed solemnly, “is strewn with pitfalls. But when I come across those who have sinned I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.”
There was no anger in Galen Cheney.
Just sadness and resignation as if there was nothing he could do about what happened next; everything was pre-ordained and he was just following the way of the righteous. He was just doing His God’s work.
“What kind of cowardly traitor would kill a pregnant woman in her own house?” Martha Drinkwater demanded, tears rolling down her pale cheeks as she finally fought past her husband’s despairing restraining arms and stood directly before the gunman, the muzzle of his revolver just inches from her sternum. “What kind of man could follow a god who allows such obscenities to be committed under His sight?”
The tall stranger inclined his head a little to the left as if he was pondering this question.
“I’m an American patriot,” he said in a voice falling down to earth from an unimpeachable pulpit. “And my war has only just begun.”
Chapter 13
Sabrina Henschal had just about had it with the LAPD and the cub reporter — ‘cub’ as in so wet behind the ears he left a moist trail on the ground wherever he went — the Editor of the Los Angeles Times had sent down to Van Nuys to get her off his back. She had given Nick Williams a hard time when the wise guy running the Van Nuys District, an overdressed prick called Captain Reginald O’Connell, had given her the brush off after she came over from the hospital.
‘Reggie’ O’Connell was a throwback, everybody knew he was crooked; how else did he get to live in a fucking mansion up in the fucking Hollywood Hills on a police captain’s pay? Reggie and his latest trophy wife, Loretta — who behaved like she was the Queen of Mulholland Drive — were minor local celebrities, they went to all the best parties and got to rub shoulders with every arsehole in town.
Sabrina and Nick Williams of the Los Angeles Times did not go back that far. She had button-holed him at a couple of gallery exhibitions before the war when she was still actually trying to sell her stuff; lately that sort of thing had not seemed very important. Nick was straight up and down; he had been the main man at the Times since 1958 and he was shrewd enough to know that it was good to have friends in the Canyon who might be in a position to feed his stringers by-lines on quiet news days.
The Times was no local hick operation, it thought big these days and reached a long way beyond Southern California. It and the Washington Post had been in bed together the last eighteen months, syndicating nationally and Nick Williams seemed to have the inside track when it came to what was going on in West Coast politics. Which was all fine and dandy but today she needed the threat of the Los Angeles Times to back her up and once she had told Nick Williams about what had happened at Gretsky’s, her place in the Canyon and on the road back to Van Nuys, and then linked this drama to what had probably transpired at The Troubadour on Santa Monica Boulevard, the Editor of the Times had taken the hook like a starving Barracuda.
The cub reporter’s name was Tom Wrigglesworth, he was twenty something and been studying journalism at UCLA at the time of the war. Tall, gangling, awkward, and far too polite to make it in any newsroom Sabrina could imagine even in the middle of a chemically induced hallucination, the boy had no idea how to deal with cops.
That was not to say that Sabrina had not been somewhat perturbed herself discover nervy National Guardsmen hefting World War II vintage M1 Carbines outside, and inside, Van Nuys Police Station.
“Who the fuck is running this fucking circus?”
Everybody in the foyer of the station stopped talking and turned, seeking the source of the shrilly incandescent screech. For some reason most people looked first to Tom Wrigglesworth, who in turn, nodded towards his wiry, diminutive companion. There might not have been a lot of Sabrina physically — she was five feet four, sparsely built with a shock of straw blond hair streaked with grey — but nobody had ever denied that she had presence.
“Tom Wrigglesworth from the Los Angeles Times,” the young man explained apologetically. “I’m here to cover Ms Henschal’s report concerning corruption by,” he frowned, consulted his notebook, “a Captain O’Connell?”
While the young man was speaking Sabrina had elbowed her way to the reception desk like a hungry she wolf carving through a herd of confused ungulates which until a moment before had been minding their own business unknowingly standing chewing the cud between her and her next meal.
“The Times,” she shouted angrily, “is running a story later today about how officers from Van Nuys rousted a pregnant woman, and several mothers and young children from my place in Laurel Canyon last night. My friend Judy’s waters broke when Captain O’Connell’s fucking storm troopers cuffed her. They refused to take off the cuffs until AFTER she’d had her first contraction!”
A woman civilian administrator behind the desk was staring at Sabrina aghast; the desk sergeant’s mouth was moving but no sound was as yet emerging.
“THAT WAS IN THE BACK OF AN LAPD CRUISER!”
The momentary silence was instantly oppressive.
“Let me through!” Barked a gravelly voice.
Sabrina looked over her shoulder as a stocky, grey-haired National Guardsman approached through the crowd.
“Lieutenant Sanchez, ma’am,” he growled. He glared at the desk sergeant. “I suggest you clear this room. Now!” His tone had about it that particular inflection with suggested this was not the first time he had ‘requested’ the LAPD to ‘get a grip’.
“The Captain said….”
“I don’t give a shit what the fucking Captain said!” Sabrina shrieked, spinning around to confront the cop behind the desk. “The Captain’s a fucking wise guy and if you don’t know that you’re as bad as him and those fucking arseholes who forced my best friend in the whole fucking world to give birth to her first baby in the back of a fucking LAPD cruiser!”
The press of bodies was lessening as those nearest the exits edged backwards.
The left-hand side of Lieutenant Sanchez’s face bore the sun-bleached scars of old burns and his head beneath his cap was cropped. Part of his left ear looked like it had melted and been clumsily re-shaped many, many years ago. The old warrior’s expression was grim.
“I would be the man running this circus, ma’am,” he explained patiently. “As of six hundred hours this day the Governor of California declared a seven-day state of emergency under which martial law is in effect in designated areas of the State of California.”
Sabrina was briefly but only briefly speechless.
Somebody, somewhere in this fucking country got something right eventually!
The National Guardsman flicked an irritated glance at the looming form of Tom Wrigglesworth, and then to a trooper standing with his carbine slung over his shoulder by the main entrance.
“Escort this gentleman out into the car lot!”
Sabrina scowled, said nothing.