Night Passage

Chapter 76

When suitcase Simpson pulled up in his own car behind the men in battle dress fatigues gathered around the station, he could see Jesse on the front steps with a shotgun. There were no lights showing at the station, but several men in the crowd had flashlights focused on Jesse. Simpson parked quietly on the street and got out. He was in uniform, wearing a bulletproof vest. He carried a shotgun and his service pistol. He stood silently in the shadows behind the Horsemen.

Two steps forward of the other Horsemen, Hasty Hathaway stood very straight in front of Jesse.

“We’re relieving you of your duties,” he said to Jesse. “And we are coming to take your prisoner.”

Simpson felt someone move up beside him. It was Abby Taylor. She had on something that looked like a navy pea coat and the collar was high up around her head so that Simpson could barely see her face. Her hands were deep in her pockets. She looked briefly at Simpson and then looked at Jesse on the station steps. Neither of them spoke.

On the steps Jesse worked the pump on his shotgun and jacked a shell up into the chamber. The sound of the action was very sharp in the quiet night. Jesse was wearing a vest too, Simpson noted.

“Couple of things, Hasty,” Jesse said.

His voice wasn’t loud but it carried and the men were very still, nearly trancelike, confronting the stunning thing they were about to do.

“First,” Jesse said. “Anything happens here and I’ll kill you.”

As he spoke Jesse raised the shotgun slowly and aimed it directly at Hasty. Before he could stop himself, Hasty took a step back.

“Second,” Jesse said. “I’m arresting you for the murders of Tom Carson, Tammy Portugal, and Lou Burke.”

Peter Perkins’ Mazda pickup pulled in beside Simpson’s car, and Perkins and Anthony DeAngelo got out, with shotguns and vests. They looked at Simpson. Silently Simpson gestured that they should spread out behind the Horsemen. Molly Crane arrived on foot. She was wearing sweats and sneakers and her service pistol. Her badge was pinned to the sweatshirt. Simpson pointed her to the left and she nodded and went.

“You can’t bluff us, Stone,” Hasty said. He felt dreadful about stepping back. His face felt hot. He tried to make his voice cut like Jesse’s had. “We have relieved you of duty. Step aside or... step aside... or be killed.”

“I hear one round go up into one chamber,” Jesse said, “and I will shoot you dead, Hasty.”

Hasty didn’t step back this time, but he glanced automatically around at his troops to see that no one put a round up.

“You are a murderer and a goddamned fraud. What you really want is to kill me, and to kill Jo Jo. What were you going to do, rush the jail and shoot him? Claim it was a stray bullet? Poor Jo Jo. You gotta kill him because he knows. You tell your men how you got conned on the arms deal? Jo Jo knows. You tell them how you were sleeping with Tammy Portugal until she wanted to get serious, then you had Jo Jo kill her? You tell them how you had Tom Carson killed? Jo Jo could tell them.”

As Jesse talked the other cops drifted in: John Maguire, Arthur Angstrom, Eddie Cox, Billy Pope, Pat Sears.

“You tell them that when I had some evidence on Lou Burke you had Jo Jo throw him off the top of Indian Hill?”

Something like an inaudible sigh moved through the Horsemen as Jesse talked. Hasty felt it. He looked at the small dark eye of Jesse’s shotgun only five feet away, and he backed away.

In the darkness behind the Horsemen Suitcase Simpson spoke softly to Abby, still standing beside him.

“Go to Peter Perkins’ truck. When you see the lights go on in my car turn them on in the truck.”

Sheltered among his troops, shielded by other Horsemen from the gaze of Jesse’s shotgun, Hasty said in as much voice as he could command, “Third squad marksmen, prepare to fire.”

A set of headlights behind them went on, and then a second set and the Horsemen were bathed in light. Then Simpson’s voice, amplified by a bullhorn, came from the darkness behind the light.

“This is the Paradise Police,” the voice said. “We have you surrounded. Put down your weapons.”

There was a long frozen silence. The Horsemen nearest Hasty turned and looked at him, waiting. Hasty didn’t know what to do. He had not thought of this. He didn’t know what to do. With the shotgun held in his right hand and pointing straight toward the sky, Jesse walked down the steps of the station and shoved past three Horsemen to stand in front of Hasty. His face was right next to Hasty’s.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Jesse said. “You have the fight to an attorney.”

Hasty started to back away and Jesse stayed close to him, walking him backward through the Horsemen as he recited the Miranda rights. The battle-dressed Horsemen parted silently as Hasty backed out of the group and into the police perimeter in the darkness beyond the headlights. Behind the headlights Suitcase Simpson stopped him with a hand in his back. Molly came out of the darkness and handed Jesse a pair of handcuffs and Jesse snapped them onto Hasty’s wrists. In the distance, sounding very clearly through the quiet night, came the sound of sirens.

“That’ll be the state cops,” Simpson said.

“You call them?” Jesse said.

“Yes.”

“Good thought.”

The sound of the sirens broke the last resistance among the Horsemen. They began to drop their weapons and move away from the station. As the sirens got louder the Horsemen began to move faster and soon they were running, out of the bright headlights, past the silent policemen who made no attempt to stop them, heading home in the darkness, leaving their rifles and shotguns on the ground where they had stood.