That’s How I Roll: A Novel Read Free Page B

finally brought me down made national news. But that was just because of the body count. National news doesn’t always bring in national Law.
    All the killings had been in one state, so there was no way the Feds could just ram their way in and take over. That’s what the local Law kept telling themselves, anyway. They ran around saying “jurisdiction” to each other like it was a holy word … the way people in the movies hold up a cross to banish vampires.
    That only works in the movies.
    eeping the Feds out of our business, that’s like a religion around here. But if a federal agent gets killed—they
are
coming. Get in their way and, no matter how big you are, lawman or not, you’re nothing but a pile of hot asphalt waiting on the steamroller.
    ll I could do was be patient. Deep inside, alone, watching the layers of protection I’d taken so many years to build up slowly come off.
    I knew this would happen someday. I thought I was ready for it,because I’d had so much practice. When I knew pain was coming, I could go someplace in my mind. Someplace else. From there, I could watch it happening, happening to me, but I didn’t feel it. I’d learned to do that as a child. Maybe not “learned,” because I hadn’t studied on it—one day, I realized it had just happened. After that, it always did.
    And now it was happening again. I was watching what the big bears were watching. Only, this time, what they were watching was an illusion. They weren’t getting any closer to what they really wanted. But the closer they thought they were getting, the easier it was for me to keep checking steps off my list.
    t seemed like everyone in the world wanted to talk to me. But even if they weren’t undercovers, they damn sure weren’t showing up because they cared about me.
    And I surely didn’t need any “spokesman.” There was no shortage of volunteers for
that
job.
    I didn’t worship “the media” the way most folks did. Longing for attention is for killers who
haven’t
been caught. Like that Zodiac sex fiend in California who kept sending letters to the papers. Or that Unabomber psycho who wanted to see his stupid “manifesto” in print. Now he has the rest of his life to read it.
    I’m nothing like them. I’m not crazy. I never wrote taunting notes to the police; I never got a thrill out of what I did. I was just an assassin, good at my trade. Like any skilled workman, I charged a fair wage for my work, and I never expected payment in full until I finished each job to the customer’s satisfaction. Contract killers aren’t all the same. The only thing we have in common is that we all commit murder for money. Speaking for myself, it was
only
for the money.
    But there’s more to this work than making people dead. The contracts always have other terms and conditions to them, and those hold forever. It didn’t matter if I was caught—as long as Ididn’t cross those lines, I was free to strike any deal for myself that I could.
    Only I didn’t want a deal.
    ust as the local bears got their first turn at me, the local boss bear—the District Attorney himself—took his before anyone else.
    He came to the jail alone. Well, not really alone. He had a couple of assistants with him, and the Sheriff’s men were real close by all the time. They weren’t there to protect him; it was their job to bear witness to the act of Christian charity that the big boss was going to deliver.
    When everybody was in place, he reached down and shook my hand.
    “You’ll never face the death penalty in this county, Esau,” he said. “Folks around here, we all know what you’ve been through.”
    He never specified on that, but he sure as Satan knew why I hadn’t stood up when he’d held out his hand.
    I knew he would never try for the death penalty anyway. Not around here. Not for someone like me.
    I’d read up on this, and I knew the defense could ask for a change of venue—that’s moving the trial to another part of the