Chapter 7 - Breaking the Judge
Barnes stared out at his ruined tactical team, the rain pouring down through the open door, soaking his uniform.
His swagger was gone. His eyes darted from my face to Hector, who stood thirty feet away, methodically binding the hands of the surviving deputies with heavy zip-ties.
"Dennis..." Barnes whispered, his voice cracking. "Dennis, you can’t do this. This is treason. This is murder of law enforcement officers—"
"No one is dead, Rick," I said, my voice level and quiet. "My team doesn't miss. If I wanted these men dead, their bodies would already be cold. Just like Tyler would be if Harold Donnelly hadn't spent six hours piecing his legs back together."
Barnes swallowed hard, the cold steel of the rifle barrel pressing into his skin. "You think you’ve won? Harlan Vance is at the courthouse right now with the state attorney’s special investigator. They’ve already issued federal warrants for you. You’re a terrorist, Dennis."
"Harlan Vance isn't at the courthouse," I said.
I pulled out my radio and keyed the transmitter. "Maya. Report."
Maya’s voice came through the speaker, crisp and clear. "Judge Harlan Vance is currently in his study at the manor on Oak Ridge Road. We took his private security detail down without firing a shot five minutes ago. He is currently reviewing his offshore bank statements with Julian."
Barnes’s face lost every trace of color. "You touched Harlan?"
"Harlan signed the orders that allowed you to turn this county into a private cartel," I told him. "He took twenty percent of every container that moved through the rail yard. He looked the other way when you broke three boys' ribs behind the high school two years ago. And he prepared the warrant that was supposed to keep Tyler locked in a cell until his bones fused crooked."
I leaned in closer. "We are going to visit the judge together, Rick."
Ten minutes later, Barnes sat handcuffed in the passenger seat of his own Suburban, with Hector behind the wheel and Bishop watching the rear road through night-vision optics.
We arrived at the Vance estate on Oak Ridge Road as the storm reached its peak.
The iron gates were bent open. Inside the grand library of the brick mansion, Judge Harlan Vance sat trembling behind his antique mahogany desk. His silk tie was undone, his expensive suit rumpled, and Julian Ward stood behind him like a stone gargoyle, a gloved hand resting lightly on the judge’s shoulder.
On the desk sat three open laptops, displaying financial transfers that Maya had already frozen using backdoors into the international banking networks.
When the door opened and Hector pushed Sheriff Barnes into the room, Vance looked up with eyes wild with absolute terror.
"Rick!" Vance cried. "They know everything! They have the Swiss accounts, the timber shipping manifests, the shell companies in Delaware... they have the recordings from the courthouse intercom!"
Barnes looked at the old judge, then looked at me.
"What do you want, Dennis?" Barnes growled, his voice breaking under the weight of utter ruin. "You want money? Take it all. Take every dime in the accounts. Take the deeds to the timber land. Just let us walk."
I walked over to the desk, picked up the judge's heavy fountain pen, and laid a clean piece of parchment before Harlan Vance.
"I don't want your money," I said. "Tyler doesn't need your blood money. He needs the truth."
"What truth?" Vance whimpered.
"You are going to write a full confession," I instructed the judge. "You will detail every shipment, every bribe, every falsified warrant, and every violent act committed by Rick Barnes and his deputies over the last twenty years. You will name the state senators who protected you. You will sign every page. And then you will submit your immediate resignation to the Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court."
Vance grabbed the pen with trembling fingers. "And if I do? You won't kill me?"
"You'll live to go to federal prison," I said. "Which is far better than what you gave the people of this valley."
Vance began to write, his hand flying across the paper in a desperate, frantic hurry.
Barnes stood by the bookshelf, his jaw clenched, watching his entire empire dissolve into ink and paper.
"And what about me?" Barnes asked, his voice low and hateful. "What do I get, Reaper?"
I turned to look at him.
May you like
"You get what you gave my son," I said.
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