the eighty-eighth key

Posted on February 24, 2020 by adrianleverkuhnwrites

88th key cover image

Once upon a time in a city by the bay, lived a man named Harry Callahan…

…this is his story…

+++++

the eighty-eighth key

part one

chapter one

Thunder in the distance, thunder like a broken promise. Thunder and rain, the strained promise of rain, rain in the air, rain – like an uncertain release after the warning wind – stains the night. Winds now both old and new, winds sifting through old pines outside his window. His mother downstairs, waiting in the dark. Nervously waiting, waiting inside the promise of rain.

He heard her playing as he watched the pines sway, dancing in the expectation of uncertain renewal – her song at once familiar yet strange. Without knowing the how or the why of his feelings, he too felt that soft, waiting renewal, not knowing the hidden currents of such things. Almost…he could almost feel a stirring in his gut…close now – but not touching. Never touching. Like such music the wind played was forbidden fruit.

Yet he could hear her song so clearly in the gathering storm. Even as deep thunder and her inevitable renewal came to the night once again.

Even now, before he truly understood that she was lost to him.

+++++

“Another rough night, Callahan?”

“No? Why?”

“Crying in your sleep again,” his dorm-mate said, stifling another yawn.

“Bullshit.”

“Something about thunder – and maybe a song, I think?” Al Bressler added through his own early morning yawn.

Harry Callahan sat up on the edge of his bunk and rubbed his eyes, tried to squeeze the memory out of consciousness…yet he still heard the wind in the trees…still heard her lingering music as he slid out of bed onto the cold tile floor. He slipped into his flip-flops and walked down the hall to the bathroom, stood at the urinal draining the night away before he returned to his room. Bressler was making his bed, getting ready for morning inspection, and apparently done with small talk…

“You ready?” Bressler said, the worry in his voice clear to anyone who knew what their common uncertainty really meant.

They’d been up ‘til two in the morning working their way through the California Penal Code one last time, memorizing statute numbers for all the major crimes – and the relevant mental states for each – yet now the acid-drenched day stretched ahead in all its agonizing uncertainty. This was it. The last day of academy, and Callahan knew his own mental state was perilous.

If only because so much was riding on this day.

Bomb the test and that was it, the end of the road. Anyone failing would be shown the door and six months of life would be wiped from the ledger. A low passing score would get you into a shitty precinct with a burnt-out FTO, which was almost as bad as washing out – if not more dangerous. A high score, on the other hand, would see you in to your choice of precincts and your future in the hands of an experienced, even a talented Field Training Officer, so to say this was a momentous day in the life was an understatement.

But why had the dream come again? Was she trying to tell him something? Even now?

“You better comb your hair again, Harry. You look like a toilet brush.”

“Yeah? Well, you smell like one, Meathead.”

They both tried to laugh as they finished up their room, then Bressler ran for the toilet. He didn’t make it.

+++++

Walking to the dining hall after the written exam, Callahan was sure he’d bombed the test and thought he should feel despondent. Bressler, his hands habitually in his pockets, walked alongside scowling at the clear blue sky, whistling a show-tune while doing his best to hide his anxiety.

“How’d you do?” Bressler finally asked as they walked into the dining hall.

Callahan shrugged. “Who knows? You still worried about this afternoon?”

The second part of the final exam was one last physical agility test, and it promised to be a bear. Carry a hundred and eighty-pound dummy twenty yards then drop it, get over three progressively higher fences, sprint a half-mile through hills and trees around the academy grounds before going up and down an exposed four-story stairway, then finish the course, after a last brief sprint, by swimming one lap in the training pool – while towing a flailing academy instructor to the finish. All in uniform, and all in under eight minutes. In practice sessions earlier that week almost half the class had failed, and tensions were running high.

“I think I’ll manage,” Bressler sighed.

“Not if you eat a big lunch,” Lou Valenti added, joining them in the food line.

“Fuck that,” Bressler said. “I’m going to drink about ten glasses of water.”

“A gallon is about eight pounds,” Valenti said, grinning. “Sure you want to carry the extra weight?”

“Fuck.”

“Well, at least they’re going to post the written scores first,” Valenti said, scowling. “If you don’t cut it you can just slip away without adding insult to injury.”

“I passed,” Bressler said – a little too defensively.

“Yeah? Harry, how’d you do?”

And once again Callahan shrugged, turning the question away unanswered. “I think,” he managed to say as he stared at Bressler’s pooling uncertainty, “that I really don’t give a shit anymore.”

“That’s our Harry,” Valenti said to Bressler, smirking as he cast a sidelong glance at Callahan. “Always got to play it cool, don’t you?”

+++++

Test results were posted, as promised, on the bulletin board just inside the academy gym promptly at 1330 hours, and the 35 members of class 421 stood in academy blues reading down the list of names, looking for their futures. Callahan’s name was, not unexpectedly, at the top of the list; Bressler’s score was fifth best. Seven cadets looked over the list and crashed, their journeys over for now, and this glum little group trudged off to the admin building. Callahan noted a gaggle of the academy’s drill instructors lurking in the shadows by the locker room doors, then he saw the director walk in the main doorway and head over to their sea of smiling faces.

“Everyone ready?” the Old Man asked as he came up to Callahan.

Everyone, apparently, was.

“Okay,” the Old Man said, “let’s get this over with.”

The group walked through the locker room and out to the oval track, and almost everyone’s eyes seemed to drift nervously between the drill instructors and the course they were about to run as they approached the starting area.

But not Harry Callahan’s.

He’d been a runner all his life, had grown up playing baseball or running track and so was no stranger to hard work and the lonely road. Any softness had been drilled out of his body by the United States Army’s basic training – and two subsequent years stationed in Germany – so Callahan had breezed through all the Department’s various physical training programs without breaking a sweat. Still, a sprained ankle could ruin your day out here, so this was no time for complacency.

One of the DIs explained the course – one more time – and pointed out that instructors would be posted at key points along the route to call out times, then each cadet was asked to verify their understanding of the route – one last time. All the cadets were stretching now; a few were already about to puke.

“We’ll run alphabetically, two at a time,” the DI manning the start called out. “Adams and Baker! On the line…NOW!”

Carol Adams and Stanton Baker walked over to the starting line on the track, both taking deep breaths while they looked at the DI…

…who then yelled “GO!” before they had a chance to think about their anxieties for another second…

Carol Adams leaped ahead of the much heavier Stan Baker, and she was at the huge, canvas dummy well ahead of him; she struggled, lost time heaving the weight onto her shoulders before she took off running, with Baker a second or so behind. She stumbled once, lost a step, but was still ahead as she cast off the dummy and made for the first fence – a four-foot-high picket fence with pointed slats. She and Baker leapt over in unison, making for the second – a six-foot-tall chain-link fence – and this one required coordination and dexterity to tackle without injury. Baker took the lead when he came down, and he sprinted for the next obstacle…an eight-foot-tall concrete-block wall.

Timing was everything on this last fence. You had to really time your jump on the short approach in order to leap high enough to get both hands on top of the ledge; then you had to pull yourself up and make the jump over the top and down, all without killing yourself – or breaking a leg – in the process.

And Baker missed his jump, slid down the wall and had to backtrack, make the leap a second time, and Adams passed him then, made her jump up and over in one fluidly ragged motion. Someone called out her time but she was too stoked now to hear the words.

By the time Baker made it over, Adams was twenty yards ahead and well into her half-mile run through the trees. Trees, and short, steep hills, much of the track here in coarse, rocky scree. Even so, Carol Adams seemed to pull ahead even more, and she was bounding up the third course of stairs before Stan Baker made it to the first. She passed him on the way down and saw the panicked look in his eyes, tried not to smile as she made her way down and to the hundred-yard sprint to the Olympic sized pool.

The drill here was to dive into the deep end, take your drowning victim in tow by the approved method, then get them to the far end without drowning. Because most “victims” would – out in the real world – be panicking, the academy’s instructor/victims would be flailing and kicking and screaming like any other freaked-out drowning victim.

Adams dove in and approached her flailing victim, who promptly tried to climb on top of her, so she ducked under, surfaced, then balled her right fist and slammed it into her victim/instructor’s nose. With enough force to give the former marine a bloody nose. Then she towed her victim to the shallow end of the pool and to the hypothetical finish line.

She heard a fragmented, disjointed voice call out “Seven minutes and twenty-three seconds…” as she stumbled out of the pool. Then the flood of lactic acid hit her gut and she went to her knees, retching as she fell.

“Baker, you got thirty seconds left! Move your ass!”

Yet Adams stood and started cheering her classmate on – “Come on, Stan! You can do it!” – and her classmates joined her…from a quarter-mile away. All but Harry Callahan, that is. He and Bressler moved to the starting line just then, the wait now becoming almost unendurable.

Callahan heard a cheer from the pool, assumed Baker had just crossed the line in the allowed time, then he heard a loud “GO!” and looked at his dummy.

He was surprised how dry his mouth was, how anxious he suddenly felt, and then – in a flash – it dawned on him: he did care. Passing these last tests mattered. Becoming a cop mattered. But being the best mattered most of all. In an instant he felt the adrenaline rush as he watched Bressler get a jump on him, but by the time he scaled the third fence, the eight-footer, he found his pace and pulled steadily ahead…

…and then he felt the distant peeling rip of deep thunder somewhere out over the Pacific…

…and he saw his mother’s hands once again – working towards the eighty-eighth key…

+++++

She had appeared to most people – when she first arrived in San Francisco, California – as a stern woman, perhaps even an unforgiving soul. And, if indeed eyes are windows to the soul, what most people felt when they looked into Imogen Callahan’s eyes left them profoundly unsettled. Her eyes were the deepest cobalt, her close-cropped hair a brilliant blond that bordered on white, and she was disconcertingly tall. Some people took the expression on her face, and in her eyes, as a sort of upwelling – of anger, perhaps – or hints of profound despair – yet nothing was further from the truth. She was a serious woman, true enough, a musician and a teacher, yet most people adduced she was a woman of uncertain passions.

Yet, she was a woman dedicated to the truth of the world.

Lloyd Callahan had first laid eyes on Imogen Schwarzwald in early Spring, 1945, and when he saw her his first unyielding impression was that he was looking at a ghost. Except this ghost was playing a piano…a battered concert grand piano…and she was seated inside a barren cafe-like building located in a far corner of a hastily cobbled together passenger terminal inside a run-down seaside wharf in Copenhagen.

And inside that crystalline moment, he had been caught like a fly in amber, mesmerized, unable to move as the ghost’s fingers danced across unimaginable chords, working into the deeper registers, an impossible, soaring sadness echoing off the tattered building’s barren walls. Unaware he was walking through scattered rubble, he made his way to her side, saw her tear-streaked face, the long, almost skeletal fingers working at the ends of her emaciated arms…and he had wondered how such stark beauty survived the ravages of prolonged war.

He had never known anyone that looked even remotely like her, and he had never known such an accomplished pianist. He learned she had been, at a very young age, an accomplished pianist, reputedly a composer of some import as well, yet he was surprised to learn she was not a professional musician.

It was in those first days together that he learned she was a physicist. And a jew.

And when for some reason she latched onto him he suddenly felt an exhilarating – and solemn – obligation to take care of her, and even though she wore the trauma of her recent existence like a deep shadow, even during the near-catatonic spells she endured almost daily, she fell into the solidity of this big man’s sheltering eyes. In time she fell into the brighter sunlight of his very existence.

He was a deck officer on a hospital ship, part of the British expeditionary response looking into claims of terrifying abuses at recently uncovered camps such as Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt, yet what this force soon learned about the killing camps in Poland was beyond horrific, and all this destitute horror only served to wrap Imogen Schwarzwald deeper into his protective embrace.

As the European war drifted away, he took Imogen to Vancouver, Canada, and then on to Northern California, where he had enrolled in the state’s merchant marine academy. He bought a small house in the Potrero Hill neighborhood on the south side of San Francisco, a property with a large back yard, and with room enough to plant a small stand of lemon trees. When he wasn’t tied up with his maritime studies he helped Imogen with her English, and to help her advance her own academic work.

With his wartime experience, Lloyd quickly graduated, and he soon began working for a passenger line carrying tourists between California and Hawaii. He was, unfortunately, away for long stretches of time, though he was home for even longer periods. And after one very long time away he bought Imogen a piano, and music returned to their lives.

And with music came a son: Harold Lloyd Callahan.

Life took on a sudden, fresher intensity after Harry’s arrival, and music seemed to be the focal point of all the family’s time together. Harry started to play almost as soon as he could walk, and by the time he finished elementary school he was considered something of a prodigy – but then he fell in love with baseball and all thoughts of a career in music seemingly fell away beyond the lights. Not long after Imogen began to fall away from music, too.

She grew restive and depressed when she was not at her teaching job in Berkeley, then took to composing dark, ominous pieces that seemed to Lloyd like the distant echoes of her time in the Theresienstadt ghetto. There were times in high school when Harry came home after school and found his mother frozen at the keyboard, lost in unheard memories that left him dazed and confused.

And yet, what pulled her from these minor-key fugues was Harry’s playing. He’d somehow fallen back in love with the piano during his senior year, only now he played Gershwin tunes, punctuated by intense ragtime rants that poured out of the little house like sunstreams through dark clouds – and these new forms enthralled Imogen almost as much as she loved watching her son play again. Their last Spring together was, therefore, a magical time for her, but then – out of the blue – he joined the Army and was soon on his way to flight school, and a year later he was flying helicopters in Germany near the Fulda Gap. Soon enough she found Harry in her dreams, but the uniform he wore wasn’t American. She dreamt in blacks and silvers, his red armbands dripping with mercurial zephyrs that colored these interludes as shivering cold passages of fear.

With the increased American involvement in Southeast Asia, Imogen’s soul seemed to fracture along ever deeper faults, and she fell into that darkest space within the deepest chords of her fear. And with Lloyd still away weeks at a time – now sailing to Hawaii, but occasionally as far away as Japan – she drifted on solitary seas of her own design. Lloyd assumed that – perhaps – these near catatonic spells had something to do with Harry being in Germany, but she remained distant and utterly uncommunicative about these inward flights. Yet when Harry wrote long letters about the German people, about how freedom-loving they all seemed, not to mention how beautiful the towns and villages were, this only served to deepen her isolation – and for perhaps the second time Lloyd began to understand what was happening: Harry was bringing her past into the present, and so once again his future fell into Imogen’s searing chords.

And soon enough Imogen only composed for the piano when violent thunderstorms approached, and it was then that Lloyd noted a further pattern emerging in her music. As these storms approached, as the sturm and drang of thunder and lightning drew near, her music seemed to mimic the deep low-pressure waves deep within the air – as if natures’ kinetic kaleidoscopes were a crucial guide informing each new, shattering crescendo she crafted.

And true enough, each new storm left her ragged and spent, leaving only the warped, fragile shell of her distorted soul to stand guard. She seemed to cave inward after these floods of emotion, to turn away from the visions that constantly came to her after each new composition, but Lloyd felt these fallings-away were now somehow different. Deeper, more introspective and less predictable, he began to worry that perhaps one day she might not find her way out of the darkness.

After Harry’s return from Germany, he came back to the little house for a while, but Lloyd felt that his boy was adrift. Harry whispered that he had thought about studying music again, but one day – while picking up supplies at the local co-op – he witnessed an armed robbery at a gas station across the street. Police arrived, a minor shoot-out played-out in the street and between cars on a nearby parking lot, and after the dust settled he gave a witness statement to one of the patrolmen.

And then he asked this man what it was like ‘out there’…doing the whole ‘cop’ thing?

The cop was an older man, maybe 35 or so, but he’d been on the streets long enough to know the score. They talked about the life some, and then Harry rode along with the cop a couple of times over the next few weeks, picked up a feel for what his world might look like if he took that next fork in the road. Lloyd watched the budding interest and wondered where it came from; Imogen could feel the change in her son, too, only a new fear became palpable in her music when she imagined her son as a policeman.

And so, when two weeks later Harry Callahan submitted his application to the San Francisco Police Department, she felt herself coming undone. Not quite knowing what else to do, she drove north to the city to a synagogue, and after wandering through the tangled cobwebs of memory she, at last, walked inside.

She had, years ago, sworn this was the one thing she would never do again – yet as she walked into the heavy air of the musty old temple she was overcome with lightness, as if all the burdens of the past twenty-five years had quite suddenly slipped ever so softly away.

She saw a man in the temple, a man at once ancient and eternally young, a man who seemed to reside inside blue pools of deep wisdom. She walked towards the man, not sure what she expected, but she recognized something in the shape of his still waters, a sudden memory both vital and unexpected, and as she made her way up to him he turned and smiled at the surprise in her eyes.

Surprise turned to recognition in her eyes just as a sudden cold darkness reached up for her, and she felt herself falling into the music once again – as the clouds of that looming storm came for her out of the darkness.

chapter two

The violence of San Francisco came as a surprise to Harry Callahan.

Growing up in a quiet middle class neighborhood, even in an enclave nestled between the bay and the city, had left him unprepared for the reality of a San Francisco he had never really known. Homeless men and women sleeping in boxes, children selling their bodies to strangers for the price of a hamburger, predators everywhere lurking in the night. Everything, it seemed, was available for a buck. The city was an ocean of broken dreams lapping at the shores of extraordinary material wealth, two worlds in perpetual change, and conflict, and all in a way that left him speechless.

His first homicide left him reeling.

In the early part of his rookie year, riding with a grizzled old FTO, they were the first to arrive at a massive house out beyond Golden Gate Park – and he was not prepared for the questions he felt he needed to ask…but couldn’t.

A middle-aged man. White. Affluent, if the Mercedes in the driveway was any kind of indicator. The man’s house was palatial, like an Italian Renaissance villa, all framed by views of the Pacific and the Golden Gate. Earlier that morning, the man had been stretching, getting ready to go for an early morning run – something that Callahan did routinely. And just then a kid, maybe ten years old, a black kid as it happened, walked by and shot the man in the face, then simply walked off into the morning. Two witnesses, same story. Homicide detectives got to the scene a half hour later and did their thing while Callahan and his training officer gathered witness statements on the sidelines.

Callahan had a hard time shaking the apparent senselessness of that murder. The man was a lawyer, had been a juvenile court judge for years before returning to private practice. By all accounts a good man, so was it simply hard luck? Or retaliation?

Did it matter why? Really, he asked himself, in the end…did it really matter?

A life meaningfully lived, snuffed out in an instant.

The kid apprehended. Nine years old, so not even prosecuted. No links to ulterior motive, so in the end just another truly senseless death. One of three that day, as it turned out.

Yet…how could such senselessness not matter? But could you measure it? Weigh it on a scale? Were there, he wondered, degrees of senselessness? A year hence, would any besides a handful of people even remember the man with the shattered face? Like a faucet with a slow drip, could you measure the sound made by just one drop of blood? Was that, in the end, how senselessness reduced the passions and essence of one man’s life? Blood on a sidewalk?

Yet Callahan kept hearing about something called the wall, the wall cops erected to protect their sanity while living and working in a world awash in senselessness. The whole idea of such a wall had seemed kind of preposterous at first, but not after that first year on the street, and not after looking at the lawyer’s blasted ruins of a face. Yet, how could a nine-year-old kid do something like that? What did that kid’s actions say about the state of their world?

His last FTO didn’t have an answer to that question, either. In fact, the old man seemed to get off work and head straight to a favored watering hole after almost every shift, and Callahan went with him more than a few times during the waning days of his “rookie” year. Cops congregated in darkened back booths and shot the shit while tossing back frosted schooners of Anchor Steam and shaking hands full of salty peanuts, yet it was here in these barely hallowed halls that Callahan first saw that ‘the wall’ was palpably real…indeed, it was a vast impenetrable veil of carefree carelessness that wafted in settled swirls within those smokey limpid eyes. Nothing got through the veil, he soon saw. Nothing. Not even senselessness. Especially not senselessness.

Until the beer and waking nightmares soaked through, that it, because then quite suddenly these old men grew wide-eyed and distant, their lips curling down into clinched fists. He watched the crumbling wall more than once those last few weeks and walked home in an early morning fog to his small apartment – where the walls seemed to grow uncomfortably close as he thought about those eyes – and what they meant for the future.

He was cut loose soon after that year with all those Training Officers, assigned to evenings in the Tenderloin. He had his own evening beat, a walking patrol on the other side of life, cutting through a tidal surge of peep-shows and streetwalkers, wading through discarded scraps of senselessness that lined the filthy streets. He watched marching columns of middle-aged men in worn three-piece suits who filed out of office towers at five o’clock, vacant eyes on the prowl for a cheap pop before heading home to an empty apartment and another frozen dinner. Callahan walked and worked along the fringes of lust and hormones, where predators circled in the shadows, waiting.

Within a few months Harry Callahan knew all about the wall. He looked at his eyes in passing mirrors and tried to run away, but really…there was nowhere that far away.

+++++

He’d found that room not far from Fisherman’s Wharf, a so-called efficiency apartment that was furnished with a bed, a desk, and a pitifully small room off to the side that was supposed to be a kitchen. He had picked up a second-hand sofa and called it home, though his mother never came by for a visit.

Harry got off work at midnight, but by the time he finished his shift’s reports and changed into street clothes, it was usually closer to one. He’d hop one of the last cable cars of the night and get home a few minutes later, then shower and crawl between the sheets, hoping that the wall would wait until he was asleep before it came crashing down.

There was an old bar across the street, a jazz bar, and musicians usually kept at it ‘til three or four in the morning. Tourists from the glitzier places down by the wharf would wander by during these foggy pre-dawn interludes, and a few would take note of the music and drift inside. And quite often Callahan would watch the action if he couldn’t sleep, watch the predators in the shadows as they sized up the passing prey.

One night he watched an older platinum-blond woman coming down the walk, her steps tentative, not quite full-blown drunk, and he quickly sized up the opposition: two kids lurking in the darkness just off an intercepting alley.

“Goddammit,” he sighed as he grabbed his .357 and made for the street.

He made it to the intercept in time to hear the woman scream once, because by then the inevitable struggle was well underway. By the time he found them, the boys had ripped most of the woman’s clothes off and one was attempting penetration while the other held their terrified victim down on the grimy asphalt, a gloved hand over her powdered face.

“Looks like you’re having a little bit of trouble,” Callahan said to no one in particular as he walked upon the scene. Both boys looked up, startled at first, then angry.

“Get the fuck out of here,” the kid on top snarled, “or else…”

“Or else, what?” Callahan replied casually.

“Or else I’ll cut your fuckin’ face off,” the other kid said, standing now and pulling out switch-blade.

Then he stepped towards Harry Callahan…

…who pulled the Smith & Wesson from inside his windbreaker and leveled it at the kids face…

…and then the kid rushed at Callahan, knife drawn…

Callahan fired once, the semi-jacketed hollow point striking the boys face just under the left eye. The result was immediate and catastrophic.

The kid fell to the ground while the other would-be rapist stood up and started to turn and run.

“Don’t do it, punk,” Callahan growled. “You can’t outrun a three fifty seven.”

“You a pig?” the kid sighed, eyeing Callahan warily but now clearly resigned to his new reality.

“Yup.”

A small crowd had gathered at the entrance to the alley, and Callahan asked someone to call the police department. A few minutes later the first squad car arrived.

The pool of blood at Callahan’s feet was massive. People stared at the scene, then at the pistol in the cop’s hand before scattering into the night.

+++++

The interrogation room used by Internal Affairs was wired for sound, the room dimly lit and physically uncomfortable. Two detectives and a watch commander questioned Callahan about the sequence of events for the third time, trying to uncover inconsistencies in Callahan’s statement, but by midday they broke for lunch and told Harry not to come back.

“Should I report for my shift tonight?” he asked.

“Take the night off,” the watch commander said. “Unless you hear different, come in tomorrow.”

“Yessir.” Callahan turned and started to walk off.

“Callahan?” Lieutenant Neil Briggs growled.

Harry stopped and turned, looked at the lieutenant. “Yessir?”

“Good job.” The lieutenant turned and walked towards the division commander’s office.

Callahan nodded his head and walked out of the building.

He hopped on the cable car and sat near the rear, watched the city rumble by as another sodden breeze filled in, as always coming straight through the Golden Gate. He drifted on echos of the night before, reliving each instant again and again, the cable car’s clanging bell the only thing holding him to the present. He was almost two blocks past his stop before he knew it had passed, but he hopped off and began walking back up the hill to his street.

And he wasn’t so surprised when he found his father sitting on the steps outside of his building. The look in his old man’s eyes was something else entirely.

+++++

He’d never seen such a troubled look on his father’s face. But troubled wasn’t exactly the right word, he thought as a walked up to his old man. Lost was more like it.

“Dad?” Callahan said. “You okay?”

“Oh, hi Harry.”

“Dad?”

“Can we go upstairs? We need to talk.”

“I’ve got coffee, juice and water,” Harry said as he closed the door behind them.

“Nothing right now.”

“Something wrong?” Callahan asked, his voice suddenly uncertain. “Is it Mom?”

“She left last night.”

“Left? Where’d she go?”

His father walked over to the same window Harry had looked out the night before, and he even looked in the same general direction where the rape had gone down.

“Strange, fucked up world,” Lloyd Callahan whispered.

“Dad? Where’d she go?”

And a father turned and looked at his son, not knowing what to say, or even where to begin. “Israel, Harry. She went to Israel.”

+++++

They talked through the rest of the afternoon, and then long into the night. Lloyd told his son about his mother’s wartime experience: being among a group a Danish physicists forced to Peenemunde to work on Nazi rocket projects; her eventual refusal to be complicit in the results of the program; and her forced relocation to the Theresienstadt ghetto in late 1944.

Harry listened in astonished silence, this part of his mother’s vast journey a complete surprise. He became confused, then angry at both his parents for their silence, but Harry saw his father wasn’t having any of it…

“When you graduated, went off to Germany, she came undone. The letters you wrote describing Germans as freedom loving…”

“But they are, Dad. That’s a fact…”

His father shrugged his shoulders like a tired boxer, looked down at his hands as he steepled his fingers, cradling another forgotten memory. “Maybe. Maybe not, but that really doesn’t matter, son. To your mother, Germans will always be the epitome of evil.”

“But, that’s so – unfair,” Harry sighed.

“Of who, son? Based on her experience, who’s being the most unfair here?”

Harry looked away, shook his head, sighed before whispering: “I can’t even imagine…”

“I followed her up here a few weeks ago, on a Monday. To a synagogue. She returned the last two Mondays, disappeared inside. I followed her up a few days ago, waited and waited. She never came out. Yesterday this came in the mail…”

Harry looked at the envelope in his father’s trembling hand, willed himself to reach out and take it, then he took out the letter and began reading. Soon his hands were shaking too.

“This came for you at the house,” his father added, holding a second pale yellow envelope in the fading light.

The letter was from the Department of Defense, he saw, and he tore it open then stared at the words on the paper.

“Harry? What is it?” his father asked, and not knowing what to say Harry passed the notice to his father.

“Vietnam?” his father whispered, his hands starting to shake. “My God, what will your mother say?”

+++++

He’d been “in-country” for a week and still had no idea what was going on, or where he was supposed to be. No one did, or so it seemed, but Saigon was interesting, the bar at the Caravelle even more so. Lots of “round eyes” in the bar, for the most part old men in straw fedoras, and Callahan quickly picked up that things in that bar were not always as they seemed. Not on the surface, anyway. Too many hushed whispers and sidelong glances, not enough hookers.

A harried-looking kid in muddy fatigues came in and took a seat at the table next to Callahan’s; he saw splattered blood and vague bits of errant tissue on the back of the stranger’s neck and so looked him over a little more closely. Blood on his boots, on the tops of both hands, a medical corps insignia on his lapel, the look was topped off by shaking hands and a vacant stare.

“Hey man, you okay?” Callahan asked.

“I’m tactical,” the man said, waving a waitress to come over. When the elven angel drifted by and hovered overhead the man ordered a double Scotch – neat – then turned to Callahan: “Need anything?”

“Another Budweiser,” Callahan said to the waitress, now clearly mesmerized by the woman’s exotic beauty. She floated away, and Callahan noted the man hadn’t once looked at the waitress.

“Who are you?” the stranger asked.

“Callahan,” Harry replied while taking the strangers offered hand. “You?”

“Parish.”

“Looks like you’ve a fun day,” Callahan added.

“Fun…? Yeah, fun. That’s the very fuckin’ word I was lookin’ for. Fun. What a good fuckin’ word. I like it…” he said as he took his first cocktail from the waitress, who he still ignored. “Let’s drink to fun,” he said before he downed the drink. He finished, his eyes now focused on some faraway place deep within the cracked paint on the ceiling.

The waitress shook her head knowingly as she took the empty glass and walked off to the bar, and while Callahan took a long pull on his Bud, Parish seemed to recoil from something or someone hiding in distant shadows.

Callahan turned and looked at Parish again. “What are you doin’ here, man?” he asked. “Maybe you should go wash up.”

Parish brought his hands up to his face and looked at the plastered human debris there. “Smart kid. Sniper got him, I think. Took a round right outside the OR. Tried to save him, ya know? Nothin’ there man. Nothin’. But we got a pulse, got him on a Huey, and I got some more plasma in him, some D5W, on the ride down. He bit it about five minutes out, didn’t come back this time. Good kid. Working as a scrub tech, wanted to be a doctor. When he grew up, I think he used to say. Well, he’s all grown up now…”

“You a doc?” Callahan asked quietly.

“Me? No way, man. I’m the boatman, I carry all these kids across the river,” Parish said as he took his next cocktail from the waitress. “Purgatory, ya know? I help ‘em on their way.”

“Where you based?”

“Who? Me?” Parish sighed after his second scotch disappeared. “Nowhere, man. I’m a real nowhere man.”

Callahan nodded, saw blood running from an open wound under Parish’s shredded tunic. “You know you’ve been shot?” Harry said, looking at the stuff dripping on the floor.

“That?” Parish said absentmindedly as he poked at his belly. “Oh, that’s nothing.”

“It’s bleedin’ a little bit more than nothing, man. Can I take a look?”

“Nope. You can get me some more fuckin’ whiskey, though.”

An army kid in starched khakis walked in the bar and looked around, then walked up to Harry. “You Callahan?” the kid said.

“Yup.”

“I got your papers,” the kid said as he tossed an envelope on Callahan’s table. Before he could open the sealed orders the kid had turned and disappeared.

+++++

Almost three years later Callahan took the sergeant’s exam and scored first; after sitting for the review board he was given his stripes and assigned to ‘Deep Nights’ in the Mission District. ‘The Mission’ represented the City’s soft underbelly – rundown residential areas situated next to industrial warehouses lining the 280 and 101 – and the entire nature of policing was completely different here, radically different from the easy predatory byways of the Tenderloin. Family disturbances – most very deadly affairs – were the norm on ‘deep nights,’ but so too were armed robberies and homicides. Broken dreams and drunkenness were a plague on these mean streets, so fractured teens took to the streets to console one another with random acts of violence. All in all, violence was – on the surface of this underbelly – appallingly bad day or night, but on ‘deep nights’ it tended to the ferocious.

And the cops assigned to work ‘the Mission’ were all considered somewhat ferocious, as well.

Yet Callahan’s job was fundamentally different now, too. He no longer answered calls, was no longer assigned a beat. He responded as a back-up unit on ‘hot’ calls, or assigned other free, unassigned units to respond as a back-up unit on certain types of ambiguous calls. Several times a shift he had to meet up with squads and review paperwork, and units working complex events called him to the scene to ask questions or seek advice.

And in very short order Harry Callahan knew working ‘the Mission’ was a more hands-off proposition, and he hated it. When hot family disturbances came out he was often first on scene, and when these incidents resulted in extreme violence, notably homicides, Callahan often did a lot of the preliminary investigative legwork.

And while this did not sit well with Callahan’s immediate supervisors, several inspectors in Homicide took note. One in particular saw something interesting in Harry Callahan, a familiar resilience perhaps, and this detective began quietly asking discrete questions about the new sergeant working nights in ‘the mission’.

His name was Frank Bullitt.

+++++

So, here ends the first part of the tale. I’m moving slow these days, slower than I’d like, slower than I’m used to. Words don’t come like they used to, either. Ideas? No problem there. Getting those bastards down on paper is another thing entirely. They’re low-down-squiggly and now they can run faster than I can. C’est la vie-vie.

Oh, yeah, I know you see gaps in the timeline. Don’t worry, that’s what flashbacks are for…

Cottage Cheese and Green Onions + Ch. 01 + (WIP)

Posted on May 7, 2017 by adrianleverkuhnwrites

cottage cheese image

Okay, this story devolves from ongoing work on Out of the Blue, the Dallas cop novel-in-progress. You recall ‘The Duke’ – from Predators? Well, here’s a little backstory and yes, he figures in the arc of the novel’s main storyline, too.

I’m subsisting on Percocet and coffee these days, and hopefully this isn’t too incoherent, so dig out your old CDs and find Suddenly Last Summer by The Motels, put your feet up and have a read. This is a short piece, so it shouldn’t take long, but it get’s kind of gritty. Well, really gritty, so no popcorn with this one. Oh, the action starts in October, 1982, just so you know…and as usual this is fiction, but you could consider it more like experience dressed up to look like glossy bullshit and not be too far off the mark. As such, this is part of a nightmare landscape, one of many that just won’t go away.

+++++

Cottage Cheese and Green Onions

Chapter One

Maybe it would go through after all, he thought. This was the biggest deal he’d had on his desk in years, something that would put him back in the game – big time – and he’d known going in his presentation had to be flawless. It was, too. He was sure he’d nailed it, and he was ecstatic about the way the morning’s talks had gone. One of the company’s senior partners, Linda Markowski, had been there and she’d seemed pleased by the whole morning as well, so the signs were good.

They’d gone to lunch after, just he and Markowski and a couple of the principals involved, and she’d made noises about promotions if the deal was signed, sealed and delivered – and he felt like he had in the late-70s. Invincible. One of Wolfe’s Masters of the Universe. They finished two bottles of Champagne and he’d felt it, too. She was coming on to him…no doubt about it. Problem with that was simple enough, however.

It wasn’t just that she worked at the same place; no, he’d screwed half the women in the office over the years, so that wasn’t the problem. No, Markowski was Fugly – as in fucking ugly – and from behind her ass was about as wide as a Volkswagen Beetle’s. And roughly the same shape, too, he thought. Round and low. Fugly…with ankles as fat as her thighs. She was brilliant, however, so he’d considered screwing her before. Now, with her nearing fifty, sex was out of the question. No way, if only because it was still considered bad form to throw up on your boss’s tits.

So, when a high heel brushed his ankle he – successfully – tried not to jump, then he slowly, not at all obviously, moved away, not letting his part of the conversation break stride. She picked up the check – on her corporate card, of course, then they rode down in the elevator together.

“I’ll see you Monday,” he said as they split in the parking garage; he didn’t wait for a possible invitation and walked through the garage to his car – an old BMW CSi that had seen better days. He got in the queue to pay for his time, then turned right out of the lot onto Elm, made an immediate right on Field and was approaching the light at Ross when he saw her. Maybe homeless, maybe just a hooker, she was dressed like a vagabond but even from a distance he could tell she was a looker.

As he approached she held up a small cardboard sign that read ‘will fuck – for food,’ and he damn near skidded to a stop by the side of the road where she was standing. He rolled down the window and looked at her as she walked up to the side of his car.

“So,” he began, “you hungry?”

She looked at him, pretended to smile a little. “Yeah. Feel like some company?”

“Yeah, ya know, some company might be good right about now. Know someplace we can go?”

“No, not really. Aren’t there a bunch of hotels out on Hines?”

“Yup. You a cop?”

“Nope. You?”

“Not likely,” he said as he unlocked her door. She picked up her book-bag and opened the door, stepped inside, and he was surprised if only because she didn’t stink. He’d half expected filth as she looked, from a distance, like a vagrant. But no, she smelled of perfume, and not cheap perfume, either. He looked at her as she buckled up, noticed her jeans were clean, her halter top was too, and her sneakers were almost brand new. Kind of like a cop, in other words, and he suddenly grew cautious.

“You know someplace?” she asked quietly, now almost like she was shy, maybe even a little confused – and he relaxed again. If she was a cop she’d have a place in mind, someplace already bugged, probably with vice waiting in a room next door.

“No, not really. I don’t do this kinda thing very often, if you know what I mean. What’s with the sign?”

“Good way to get you stop, wasn’t it?”

He smiled, tried not to laugh. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“Why don’t you just head up Harry Hines. There’s got to be some places out there.”

“So, you don’t do this often?”

“Nope. First time for me. You married?”

“No, not in a few years.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. You like rough stuff?”

She looked out the window and grinned. “As long as I’m the one being rough, yeah.”

“You do much stuff like that?”

“Um-hmm,” she sighed.

“You like it that way?”

“You have no idea,” she cooed.

He pulled into the first sleaze bag motel he saw, got a room then went back out to the car, drove around the side and parked out of view from the office, then opened her door, helped her out of the Beemer. He opened the room door, stepped inside and turned on the a/c, and when he turned around to face the girl she stepped into his arms, kissed him deeply, massaging him through his jeans until he felt like he was ready to explode.

“You got something for me?” she asked.

“Hmm, what? Money?”

“No, silly. You feel like you’re about to lose it down there.”

“I am.”

“You want me to take care of that for you? We can go for round two a little slower, if you know what I mean?”

“Oh, God…could you?”

She knelt and pulled his slacks down, took him in her mouth and worked him over quickly, and she was careful to take all of him in her mouth. When she was finished she told him to take off his clothes and lay out on the bed.

“Spread your arms to the corners,” she commanded, and she reached in her bag and took out two pairs of handcuffs, then cuffed each wrist to a bed post. “Spread your legs,” she hissed next, and with two lengths of rope she tied him off to the bed. She pulled a very soiled pair of stockings and panties from her bag and took them out of the baggie she’d put them in about two hours ago, then rubbed them over his face. “Open wide,” she said a minute later, then she stuffed them in his mouth, tying the wad in his mouth with one of the stockings. “You wanted it rough, didn’t you,” she cooed again, smiling at him.

He tried to say something but of course couldn’t, and she walked over to the TV and tuned into an afternoon news program, turned up the volume then turned to him again and walked over to the side of the bed. “Ready for some rough stuff?”

He mumbled something but nodded his head.

“Well, okay, but I’m going to need you to hold back, okay? I don’t want you to cum too soon. If you do, I’ll be upset. Okay?”

He nodded his head and she started working him over with her hands, occasionally taking him in her mouth until she was sure he was about to blow his load, then she straddled his thighs, still using her hand on him…

“You know, I think you’re about to cum. And you know what? I haven’t even been fucked yet. Do you know how pissed that makes me? Huh? Have any idea?”

He shook his head while he watched her rise up over his groin, then he saw her take his penis in hand and guide it inside. When the warmth enveloped him he tried everything he knew to stop the flow – but it was pointless and he came inside her moments later…

“Did you just do what I think you did?” she cooed again – only now she pulled an eight inch kitchen knife from her bag and in one swift motion drove the blade into his chest, just beneath the sternum. She cut through his stomach and bowels then pulled the knife out just shy of his penis, reinserted the blade and cut from his liver to his spleen, severing the aorta in the motion and leaving a neat cruciform wound across his gut, then she went to the shower and rinsed his semen, and his blood, from her body.

After she dried off she went over and checked his pulse – and of course there was none – so she dressed and went to her book bag, took out a pint container of cottage cheese, then a baggie full of finely sliced green onions, and she sprinkled the onions on the cheese and ate about half the container before leaving it on the bed by his face, then she packed her bag and walked out of the room.

She figured her mark would stop at this hotel, so she’d parked her two month old Ford Mustang nearby then hopped a bus downtown; now she went to the convertible and opened the door, drove up Harry Hines to the medical school – and she drove into the student parking lot and got another book bag out of the trunk and walked to her first year anatomy lecture.

She got to the lab just in time, and smiled all the way.

+++++

His name was John Wayne Dickinson, and he’d been with the Dallas Police Department for a little more than five years. His first two years, in academy and with an FTO, or Field Training Officer, had been followed by three more years working patrol in Central Division, in and around downtown Dallas. He’d done some good preliminary work on a couple of homicides and scored well on the Civil Service exam, so had then been sent to a school to learn basic criminal investigative duties and procedures; when he aced the final exam he went back to Central hoping to work homicide but soon learned that – like everything else about this job – you had to pay your dues and put in the time before plum assignments came your way.

He had, of course, landed on the bottom rung of the ladder – right in vice – yet he had found the work instructive so far, as long as you could keep from falling into the gutter. The cases he’d had so far tended to lead downward – down into the darker recesses of humanity. He didn’t particularly enjoy the work, but at least a few of the cases had been challenging. Others, like one at an adult bookstore earlier in the week, had left him feeling soiled, ashamed to be a member of the human race.

Some weenie-wagger had gone to the glory holes in the video arcade and had promptly stuck his hard-on through the first available hole; the person on the other side took a nine inch hat-pin and stuck it right through the guy’s erection – in effect impaling him to the wall. Until his screams brought management, who then called the paramedics – who then, of course, called dispatch. And the responding patrolman had of course called CID, or the Criminal Investigative Division – and so, of course, the call landed on Dickinson’s desk.

As there was no imminent danger of the guy bleeding out, the paramedics left the guy impaled there until Dickinson showed up, and after he photographed the poor guy the medics took tin-snips and cut him free, not bothering to catch him when he fell to the floor – which resulted in a major head injury.

That report had been a son-of-a-bitch, too.

There’d been no evidence, of course, save for a small, half-eaten container of cottage cheese with green onions sprinkled on top. He’d bagged the container, if only as a matter of policy, then taken the container straight to forensics – and hoped for the best.

It was a warm Friday afternoon, the first day of October, and the State Fair was going on and he hoped to get out there over the weekend with his brother and sister-in-law, and their kids, too, because the Fair was still a big deal to them. Always had been. Back in grade school they’d always gotten a day off from classes and rode out to Fair Park in school buses, and he’d been fascinated by the train exhibit that opened up in ‘63 – a few months before that Kennedy fella got himself shot over on Dealey Plaza. Some guy named DeGolyer collected all those trains – then donated ‘em, and he thought that was just too cool.

He looked through his mail, called to see if forensics had anything on the “cottage cheese caper” – as his captain had called it – but no, nothing yet, but his photographs were in and he pulled out the prints and cringed when he saw that hat-pin sticking through that poor devil’s dick.

“Man, talk about coitus interruptus,” Becky Sawyer said as she walked into the room. She was an old hand around CID, one of the first women to make detective in Texas, and that had been ten years ago. She was homicide now, and a damn fine detective – at least that was the scuttlebutt on her. He felt her leaning over his chair, her breath on his neck as she looked at the pictures in his hand. “Goddamn, don’t that make your balls shrivel up, run for cover just lookin’ at ‘em?”

“Now that you mention it, yeah.”

“Anything come back on that cheese?”

“Nope.”

“Was there a spoon in the container?”

“Yup. Sterling silver, too.”

“What?”

“Yeah, some fancy English brand. Real expensive, according to Perry.”

“That doesn’t add up.”

“Yup. I’ve called all the retailers in the area. Told ‘em to call if someone comes in looking to replace a spoon. Called a few pawn shops, too.”

Sawyer nodded. “Good thinking. Did you check and see if any have been reported missing in recent burglaries?”

“I got Records working on it.”

“You know, for a spud you ain’t doin’ half bad.”

He turned and looked at her; she was still close to him and smelled like cigarettes and chewing gum – not the nicest thing in the world – but she was cute in an east-Texas kind of way. Lanky, strong, a pure country gal – the real deal – and then the intercom blared to life:

“Anyone down there?” a dispatcher called out.

“Sawyer and Dickinson,” he replied.

“We got a bad one out on Harry Hines, signal one and thirteen,” the metallic voice said.

“Okay, we’ll take it,” Sawyer said, then she turned to him. “Hey, murder and a sex crime, ya know? Homicide and vice? Sounds like a match made in heaven…”

“Well, fuck-a-doodle-do,” Dickinson said. “Let’s do it!”

“Did you just say fuck-a-doodle-do? I mean, did I hear that right?”

“Yup.”

“Shit. I didn’t know people still talked like that…”

“Yup. Well, I do.”

She stood back and looked him over – a little like she was looking at a weird bug under a microscope. “Oh, well,” she said after a long pause, “this could to be interesting.”

They made it out into the parking lot in time to see a good ole West Texas frog strangler rolling in from Ft Worth, lightning flickering in the towering anvil shaped cloud – and they both retreated into the station to get raincoats before finally getting in the gray Ford Crown Vic and checking into service. The crossed through downtown and got on Stemmons, made there way over to the motel on Harry Hines, a real doozy with a long, distinguished reputation among the guys working vice. Rain was starting to drizzle down from the anvil as they walked into the hotel room – waiting behind the wall of patrolmen and paramedics standing just outside the open door.

Dickinson saw the eviscerated body splayed out on the bed and bunched his lips: “Fuck-a-doodle-do,” he whispered – then his eyes went to the container of cottage cheese on the bed by the victim’s face and he walked over, looked down and saw green onions scattered in the melted goo and turned to Sawyer. “Better take a look at this.”

She came over and looked in the container. “Fuck-a-doodle-do,” she sighed, then she grinned as she turned to the door. “Who got here first? Anyone touch this container?” she said as she pointed at the cheese.

“I was here first,” a patrolman said, “well, second, after the manager came to check on a noise complaint.”

“Touch anything?”

“No, Ma’am. Not even a light switch.”

“What do you have so far?”

“Names of the manager and all staff on duty, the name of the RP who called in the noise complaint. I’ve pretty much been right here, making sure no one disturbed the scene, Ma’am.”

“Pretty much? You sure no one’s been in here since you arrived?”

“Yes Ma’am, I’m sure.”

“Got a service number yet?”

He looked at his steno-pad. “82-10-494.”

She scrawled the number on her note-pad and nodded. “Go get the manager and the RP, would you? And don’t bring ‘em in here, okay?”

“Yes’m.”

Dickinson was looking at the wound, or trying to, anyway. The victim had bled out fast and the nature and shape of the cuts was hard to make out – until he leaned close and looked close, anyway.

The guy’s colon had spilled it’s contents into the peritoneum and he could see barely digested shrimp and lettuce floating in the congealing brine. He took a deep breath and stepped away, wondered what would happen to his reputation if he flashed-hash right here on his first big homicide crime scene.

“What is that?” Sawyer said. “Do I smell light remoulade?”

That did it. Dickinson ran out and spewed his guts in the parking lot, grateful the rain was falling hard now and would wash away the evidence…

+++++

It took them an hour to check the room and the car for prints, and to take a few shots of the scene, but there were, essentially, no real witnesses. The guy had checked in and the manager on duty hadn’t seen anyone in the car with the victim. The reporting person had called in to complain about the loud noise coming from the television in the victim’s room – and while that pinned down the time of the event the RP hadn’t seen anything. Sawyer cleared the scene and they drove over to Parkland, to the medical examiner’s facility in the basement. The ME’s van was just pulling in, too, and they rode down in the elevator with the victim and the ME’s crew. They sat and worked on their preliminary report while the body was prepared, and when they were called in they got their first chance to see the extent of the damage.

“Is that, roughly speaking, a crucifix?” Sawyer asked as the tech looked over victim’s body.

“Yup, you could call it that,” the tech said as she took smears from the victim’s penis and put them on glass slides. After she washed and dried the body she picked up a pair of forceps and began picking food from inside the body cavity, placing each piece in a separate, numbered petri dish. Next, she took a bright light and began examining the victim’s mouth.

“Any pubic hair?” Sawyer asked.

“Nope,” the tech said as she took more samples from his tongue and cheeks, then under his fingernails.

“Did he die fast?” Dickinson asked, and both women turned and looked at him.

“You new at this?” the tech asked.

“Yup.”

“Look, you better get this shit under control, buddy,” the tech continued, “‘cause if you don’t you ain’t gonna last. Got it?”

Dickinson nodded. “Yeah, I got that, but what I want to know is, did the perp try to draw this out, make him suffer?”

“Oh. Well, no. See the aorta? Severed. I mean slashed. Death was instantaneous after that, and I do mean fast. Seconds, ya know…way less than a minute, anyway. Big blade, too. Maybe seven, even eight inches. Like a K-Bar, or maybe a kitchen knife. Whatever it was, it was sharp as hell, too.”

She took a syringe and prepped a vial, then slipped the needle into the victim’s right eye and drew the plunger back, filling the syringe with fluid from inside the eye that would be used for one of the toxicology screens, and Dickinson squirmed when the eye deflated like a punctured beach ball.

“You know…I think I’m going to go try and find some people who knew this guy…” he said as he walked out of the lab – while Sawyer and the tech grinned at one another.

“What a pussy,” the tech said, laughing.

“Only been with us a few weeks. Assigned to vice, anyway.”

“Wet behind the ears.”

“So were we all, once upon a time.”

“I can’t remember that far back.”

“Live in a sewer long enough and even shit begins to smell sweet, ya know?”

They looked at one another and the tech nodded. “I’ll try to cut him some slack.”

“Thanks. He’s sharp, but still at that vulnerable stage. Probably best to help him over the hump.”

“Got it,” the tech said as she flipped the body, ran a gloved hand up the victim’s anus, checking for fecal matter to send off to the lab…

+++++

She found him out in the waiting room, on one of the phones reserved for law enforcement and she listened as he talked.

“So, what time did you last see him?” He listened, scribbled on his steno-pad.

“Where’d you have lunch? The Dallas Petroleum Club? Where’s that?” More scribbling.

“What did y’all talk about?”

“Uh-huh. Is it possible anyone at that lunch followed him? He might have been, ya know, involved with?”

“Hate to ask, but did you have anything going on with him?”

“I see. Yeah. Sorry, but I have to ask these things, Ma’am. Kind of obvious stuff, but we have to cross all the T’s, dot all the I’s, ya know?”

“Yes, Ma’am. My name’s John Dickinson, and here’s my number. You need anything, you just give me a shout, okay?”

“Yes, Ma’am, you too.”

He hung up the phone and looked up at Sawyer.

“Co-worker, had lunch down there today, some big business deal.”

“Oh? What kind of business?”

“Oil. Nigeria. Say, you know about this Petroleum Club thing?”

“Yeah. Way above our pay grade, Slick. Don’t even think about going down there without an okay from the Chief.”

“Really?”

“Really. Top two floors of the First National building. Good grub, too.”

“You been?”

She ignored the question. “What else did she say?”

“They, uh, weren’t involved. Doesn’t think anyone there was either, mainly as everyone else was male.”

“So? You ever heard of homosexuality?”

“She was pretty sure about that, if you know what I mean.”

She shook her head, sighed. “Get a list of the people at the lunch? Who they work for?”

“Yup.”

“Well, run the names when we get back to the station. Maybe give ‘em a call on Monday.”

“Will do.”

“What about the vic? Any background?”

“A little. Local boy, University Park. Highland Park High. Married twice, divorced twice, no known girlfriend right now.”

“You thinking hooker?”

“Seems likely to me.”

“Was that the same sterling pattern as the bookstore?”

“Yup.”

“Okay, we got us a possible serial killer just getting wound-up.”

“We need to see if any other departments have had a similar set of killings, don’t you think?”

“We’ll have to go through the FBI for that, but yeah, good idea. What time is it?”

“2230, thereabouts.”

“Fuck, let’s head to the barn, maybe run over to Adair’s, see if they have any hamburgers left.”

“How can you think about food…?”

“You get used to it, Slick. You start on the report yet?”

“Me? This is homicide, not vice.”

“Yeah, so? You want to make it to homicide, don’t you? Well, here’s your chance. I’ll let you sign off on the main report; I’ll do the supplementals.”

He brightened at that. “Yeah? Thanks.”

“Well, let’s head on back, get something written up…”

+++++

They made it over to Adair’s just before the doors closed, got their orders in just before the kitchen shut down the grills and the beer was still cold, too. Sawyer leaned back in the booth and sighed; Dickinson quaffed his Lone Star in one pull, walked up to the bar for another, then came back and saw Sawyer was asleep – or damn near, anyway – but when he sat her eyes popped open.

“You married? I can’t remember…” she said.

“Nope.”

“Been with the force, what, five years? And you’re coming on thirty?”

“Yup.”

“So, what’d you do before?”

“Army. Warrant officer. Helicopters, spent ‘74 and ‘75 in ‘Nam.”

“Were you there when…”

“Yup. Pretty real, too, if you know what I mean. I spend two weeks running orphans out to Tân Sơn Nhất, loading ‘em on Braniff DC-8s – one right after another for a few days. When I got home I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but the whole gun and a badge thing sounded interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“I like the idea of serving, I guess. Better than selling aluminum siding, anyway,” he said, quaffing his second beer.

“You always slug ‘em down so fast?”

“Yeah, you know, before they get warm. Warm beer tastes like donkey piss.”

“Oh? That the voice of experience speaking?”

He laughed a little. “The girls in Bangkok will do anything for a buck, ya know?”

“So I’ve heard.”

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“Married, all that jazz.”

“No. Never found anyone that clicked, ya know? I was goin’ with someone when I went into academy; that didn’t last two months ‘til he got all possessive and jealous and shit. Had a few since, but it’s always the same song. Want to know what it’s like, then when they find out they scoot.”

“Where you from?”

“Athens. Well, a farm south of there.”

“College?”

“Yeah. East Texas Baptist,” she said, looking away.

“You into all that?”

“What? God?”

“Yup.”

“I used to be.”

“Oh?”

“Hard to believe in God after a few years out on the street, ya know?” She drifted, saw that crucifix carved on the guy’s chest and shook herself back to the present. “What about you? You right with God?”

“God and I parted company somewhere west of Saigon.”

She nodded her head. “Roger that. You better go get another brew. I’ll drive you home.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Do it.”

He walked up to the bar and came back with two, put one in front of her. “Don’t fall too far behind, now.”

Their burgers came and they were still the best thing on this side of the sky, the fries still hot and homemade-thick, and with three more ice cold Lone Stars onboard Dickinson began to feel almost human again. They talked some more – until she looked around and saw they were the last people in the joint, and that waiters were staring at them.

“We better split,” she said, standing up.

He looked around, saw the score and stood too, but almost fell over.

“Come on, Slick. Better let me hold onto the reins, help you out to your horse.”

“That’s just what I need. A fuckin’ horse.”

He was slurring his words now and she shook her head. She knew from experience some folks had a hard time wrapping their heads around homicide, so this wasn’t all that unexpected. The problem now, she knew, was that this kid was cute – and she was getting horny. ‘Not good,’ she said to herself as she buckled him in her car. ‘No, not good at all.’

“Where to, Slick?” she asked as she looked at him.

“Your place.”

“Come again?”

He turned to look at her and smiled. “Are you as horny as I am right now?”

And she looked him right in the eye. “Yeah. Probably.”

“Well then, I think I’ll come again, if you don’t mind.”

Turned out she didn’t, not even a little.

Images of Other Days

Posted on March 23, 2017 by adrianleverkuhnwrites

Here are the four impressions from the Images Series, united in one rendering. Not much new, just a few lingering missteps cleaned up.

Images of other days

Images of Other Days

Part One: Impressions of an Afternoon, in Spring

First Impression: Water

It is late in the afternoon, and the sky is green.

An early Spring this year, he thinks – but a different kind of weather seems to be lurking just out of sight. Yesterday’s air too cold; today’s too warm, too humid. Too early for this kind of unsettled warmth, too soon for the such big storms to be moving in – and he wonders what is happening to this world. Something feels amiss, out of balance, and nature abhors imbalance.

He is driving on an Interstate, and there is a wall cloud ahead, the hanging cloud an unnatural shade of greenish-gray. Seeing a large freeway overpass ahead, he pulls over to the side of the road, just under the sheltering concrete, and watches the cloud as it falls and spreads. An instant later heavy hail pours from the sky, thunder rumbles overhead, and just a few hundred yards away lightning strikes a green highway sign, the arc transfixed in time for several seconds – before blinking out of existence.

He leans forward, peers through the hail, and grabs the radio.

“3114, I have a funnel on the ground, I-20 at Spur 4-0-8.”

“3114, at 1848 hours.”

Seconds later warning sirens pierce the evening, and when hail turns to rain he ventures back onto the highway, paralleling the funnel cloud as it heads for a residential neighborhood…

“3114, notify Duncanville PD they have a funnel working, headed for the area between Clark and Cedar Ridge Road, headed south-southeast.”

“3114, at 1851 hours.”

The sun is setting and the air radiates green – everywhere. The clouds are green, the wet streets a series of shattered green reflections, and he watches as high tension power lines twist in the green air over the Interstate, then snap – showering green sparks as they snake their way down to the grass.

“3114, power lines down at 408, on the roadway; we’re going to need to shut down the Interstate…”

“3114, at 1853 hours.”

He stops on the left shoulder of the highway, strobes flashing, power lines writhing like sparkling snakes a hundred yards away, and he gets out in the rain, places large orange cones across the highway and stops motorists with an outstretched hand. More patrol cars arrive and, like a bleeding artery, the highway is clamped off, sealed. Power crews in cherry-pickers arrive, and soon traffic is backed up for miles in every direction.

“3110 to 3114.”

“3114, go ahead.”

“Duncanville and Cedar Hill are working a reported car washed off the road, Highway 67 just south of Danieldale Road. They’re requesting a Rescue Diver, so I need you to clear and get over here.”

“3114, code five.”

“3114, at 1922 hours.”

He cuts across the wide grassy median and runs Code 3, with lights and sirens running, to Highway 67, and he heads south a few miles and stops behind a crowd of police and fire rescue vehicles. 3110, the district’s evening shift sergeant, is waiting for him, watching as he gets out of his patrol car.

“You have your gear with you?” the sergeant asks.

“Everything but tanks,” he advises.

“FD has three. Will you need more than that?”

“I doubt it. At these depths and water temps, two will last longer than I will. What’s up?”

“Car washed off the road, about a hundred yards upstream from here. Witnesses advise it was a small car, hatchback maybe, red or dark orange. One witness states she saw five people inside, two adults, three kids. Officers are walking the banks, and they’ve found several deep holes where a car could get hung up.”

He nodded, looked at the swollen river, the fast moving currents. “I’ll need a couple of men holding safety lines…”

“Already rigged. But, well, there’s a lot of stuff ripping through the water, branches, things like that. And, uh, it looks like there are a bunch of water moccasins in there, too.”

“What?”

“In the first deep hole. I saw about fifty moccasins.”

“Well, shoot the goddamn things! Run ‘em off. I can’t get in the water with that many snakes…I won’t last a minute in there.”

“Can they bite underwater?”

“They can bite anywhere they want, and I don’t feel like getting’ killed by a bunch of goddamn snakes tonight, sergeant.”

A fireman, a Chief, walked up, and he was listening to their talk about snakes, then he spoke up. “We can dump a few hundred gallons of gas upriver, let it run down; there won’t be any snakes in the water for days after that. Fucks up their eyes, real bad.”

“As long as the EPA doesn’t find out, you mean?”

“There could be survivors in the water,” the Chief said. “We need to get you in as soon as possible. You think I care about what fuckin’ EPA is gonna do?”

“Okay. If you think it’ll work…”

“It does. Gimme about ten minutes to set it up.”

“You better gear up,” the sergeant said. “I’ll get the tanks.”

He went to the trunk, slid his duffel close to the edge and opened it, stripped out of his uniform and put on the wetsuit and booties, then his hood and, in the warm, humid air behind the storm he immediately broke out in a sweat. He grabbed his mask and fins, then his regulator/vest, and trudged down the road to a steep trail that led down to the river’s edge.

“Could you have someone bring the tanks down to the hole?” he said to the sergeant, then he started off down the steep trail to water’s edge. It was another hundred or so yards to the first hole, and he looked in the water as he walked along the water’s edge, saw perhaps twenty moccasins writhing around in the watery gloom. Men started shining flashlights on them when he stopped at the hole, and he looked down at the water’s edge, saw a half dozen white-mouthed, black skinned snakes coiled up on branches just beneath his feet. A patrolman walked up next to him, looked down at the snakes and chambered a round in his 870 pump and fired five rounds into the hive, and he watched bloody chunks break off and roll away in the churning water. He heard men wrestling SCUBA tanks down the trail, hauling them through the tangled brush, and he rigged one to his vest while men started shooting into the water, killing more snakes –

– then the smell of gasoline became almost overpowering –

More lights shining in the water, no snakes on the surface now so he heaved the tanks over a shoulder and strapped the vest tight across his chest, then slipped his fins on. Someone handed him his mask, and he slipped that on too, and once he double checked his safety line he jumped into the water.

The water’s force was remarkably strong, and he kicked against the current as he felt his body being pulled away from the bank. He turned, saw three men holding safety lines and he went under the surface, turned on his flashlight. The first thing he saw was a moccasin, it’s bilious mouth snapping at his hands. He grabbed it behind the head and pulled on the line. Men pulled him to shore, saw the snake wrapped around his wrist, and someone leaned over, cut the snakes head off, and he fell back into the flow, submerged again, then kicked his way to the bottom. He saw a faint glow in the murky water below and swam for it, saw the headlights of a reddish Toyota in the swirling muck. He grabbed hold of the front bumper and pulled himself close, looked through the windshield, saw four people staring ahead, their eyes cold and lifeless, then he pulled himself around to the right side of the car. The back door had been pulled open and it dangled in the current on a broken hinge, so he went closer and saw an infant car seat strapped in the middle of the rear bench. It was empty, and he choked back a sob.

He swam upstream, against the current as best he could, poking into the branches and limbs that choked off the river in drier times, and after a half hour of poking through limbs he saw an infant’s leg poking up out of a tangled mass of branches and garbage. He pushed through the limbs, got hold of the little leg and pulled a little girl’s body free, then he pulled on the rope, swam for the surface, cradling the little girl’s body to his own while men pulled him to shore.

He passed the little girl’s body up to waiting hands, and he could feel the gasoline in the water working into his skin.

“Find anything else?” the fire chief called out.

He spat the regulator’s mouthpiece from his mouth. “Yup, right below me, at about twenty feet. Four bodies, still in the car. Let me bring those up, then I’ll hook up a tow line. Oh, better toss me a couple more lines while I’m up.”

Someone shot him a thumb’s up and he slipped beneath the water as soon as he had the new lines in hand, and he swam back down to the Toyota and tied one off to the bumper, then he swam around to the dangling door and reached in, cut away seat belts and grabbed another little girl before the current could take hold and pull her free. He tied a bowline around her waist and pulled on the line, felt his body being pulled through the water until he broke surface once again, and he handed the girl up, waited for the line to be untied, then he dove, three more times, bringing up the other members of the family. He made one last dive and secured a braided metal tow line to attachment points under the front bumper, then waiting hands pulled him free of the water. He was shivering by then, though his skin felt like it was on fire. The fumes wafted into his eyes, up his nose, causing him to wretch.

He saw them then, in all their sundered humanity. A mother and father, their three kids, laid out on the banks of the river like they were taking a nap. Firemen helped him out of his gear, then up to the highway, and they used a firehose to wash away the gasoline on his wetsuit, and from his skin, then they threw him towels. He had a spare change of clothes in his duffel and changed in the back of an ambulance, then the first bodies were brought up and he saw the little girl, the girl from the infant’s car seat, and he had to turn away.

The sergeant was waiting for him outside on the highway.

“Sorry, but you’re the only accident investigator working southwest tonight,” the sergeant said, “and we’ve got a bad one over on Stemmons, by Love Field.”

He nodded his head, walked back to his patrol car and took out his activity sheet, then checked in with dispatch, wrote down the location of the latest accident. He looked through the windshield, past the beating windshield wipers, as firemen loaded bodies into waiting ambulances, then he checked en route to the next accident.

He drove through traffic with images of that kid’s leg sticking up through branches down in the darkness, then he felt a snake wrapping around his wrist, saw it’s fangs through the green water, snapping away at his face – and he turned away.

Second Impression: Blue Smoke, Still Air

He is steaming mad, or he is at least acting that way.

He is sitting behind the wheel, waiting for his rookie to get her seat belt on.

“Any time now would be good,” he said, not a little sarcastically.

“Yessir.”

“I think I meant sometime today.”

“It’s hung up on my goddamn holster,” she said, almost crying.

“Jesus H Christ,” he groused, turning to help her. “Here, let me give you a hand.”

You weren’t supposed to cut rookies any slack, none at all, but this was only his second female rookie, and she didn’t look like a cop. For that matter, she didn’t act like one, either. She’d been a teacher, and a French teacher, at that, and her hair had kind of a French Poodle thing going. Curly reddish blond hair, deep brown eyes, skinny as hell – but she was unnaturally nice, too nice to be a cop, but that wasn’t what bothered him most. After just one night riding together, one night he’d not soon forget, he was more convinced than ever she should go back to teaching, or maybe social work.

She had been part of the first class at the academy that had focused more on a “being nice” style of policing – and less on the conventional “good ole boy” approach that had been employed for decades – a style which, to put it mildly, involved a more physically confrontational approach to dealing with criminals. Old timers regarded the new academy routine as suspect, too “touchy-feely,” and most were concerned such an approach would lead to more violence, and more officer involved shootings, not less.

But he’d been an FTO, or Field Training Officer, for a few years, and as such he was well regarded. The rookies he trained went out on their own well-grounded in the art of not just taking care of themselves, but in looking after their fellow officers as well, and that was considered a large part of the job, maybe even the most important part. The first girl he had trained was doing well, too, at least in the eyes of those who mattered most – his fellow patrol division officers – and that mattered, to him.

But Deborah Desjardins had come out of academy with with an oddball reputation. Smart as hell, cute as hell, too, she came out with an attitude, the same one she had when she went in, and that was bad.

She argued with everyone. Students, staff, instructors – it made no difference. If someone said something she disagreed with, she was off to the races, and she tended to disagree with everyone. No point of law was too trivial, no street procedure mundane enough – if she thought it questionable her hand shot up and she started asking questions – and his first day with her, just yesterday, had soon grown into something approaching a living nightmare, a nonstop series of questions and arguments.

Why this, why that, why not do it this way, shouldn’t you being doing this instead of that?

And this morning was starting off the same way, and suddenly, he had finally had enough. “Why don’t you just shut your goddamn mouth for a half hour, just shut up and listen. Pay attention, and really listen, because it’s obvious you aren’t learning a damn thing.”

“What?”

“Look, you’re too busy thinking about how you can object to something to even take in what’s being said. You get out on the street and fail to listen to every word being said, every sound in the bushes, and you’re going to get killed. And soon.”

“I resent being talked to like this!”

“And I don’t give a flying fuck what you resent. I do care about how you think. Your job right now is to learn how we do things – out here, in the real world – and not to question everything we do. If you can’t wrap your head around that one little thing, you need to let me know, and right now.”

“Why?”

“Because all I need to do to end your career in law enforcement, right here, right now, is write up one note and get it to the watch commander. You’ll be out of here within a half hour. No appeal, no due process, just gone. And as far as I’m concerned, you’re about ninety five percent of the way there. Got it?”

“But…”

“Ninety six percent.”

–

“We clear now? The gravity of your situation apparent now?”

“Yes,” she said, yet her voice was dripping with malicious sarcasm.

He got on the radio. “3114 to 102.”

“102,” the watch commander replied.

“Need to 25 with you about a personnel matter.”

“Red Bird Airport.”

“Code 5.”

“What’s this all about?” Desjardins said, her voice now defiant.

“I’m writing you up, terminating your training.”

“WHAT!?” she screamed.

“Are you deaf, as well as stupid?”

She crossed her arms, her lower lip jutting all the way to the little airport, and he pulled into the parking area by the old terminal building, spotted the lieutenant’s patrol car – parked under a shade tree – and he drove over, parked window to window in the shade.

“What’s up?” the lieutenant asked.

“She’s not going to make it, L-T. She just doesn’t have the aptitude or the attitude, and it’s my opinion the department shouldn’t waste another dime on her.”

“WHAT!?” she screamed, again.

“See what I mean?”

“I sure do. Have you written up her 4301 yet?”

“I was going to right now, sir, but I didn’t bring one with me. Do you happen to have one handy?”

“No. Tell you what…I’ll let her finish out the day with you, and you can turn it in after shift-change.”

“Yessir.”

“How’s your schedule look for Monday?”

“I’m free in the morning, sir.”

“Oh? Well, why don’t you save an hour for me, say around nine.”

“Will do, sir.”

“Seeya later.”

He drove away from the L-T’s car, turned back to their patrol district and resumed scanning traffic and buildings, not saying a word to her. And after a few minutes of silence, Desjardins was about to explode…

“Did he just schedule you for something?”

“Yup.”

“What, if you don’t mind me asking?” Her voice was subdued now, and she had relaxed somewhat, too.

“I’m a CFI, a flight instructor, and I’m teaching about a dozen guys in the department to fly. The L-Ts one of them.”

“No kidding? Where’d you learn to fly?”

“In the Navy, then I flew commercially for a few years, before the airline went bust. I had a mortgage to pay so applied with the department, and the rest is, as they say, history.”

“Do you like it? Being a cop, I mean?”

“Yeah. You know, I do. A lot more than I thought I would, too.”

“But you still love flying?”

“I’m a pilot. I guess that’s hard to explain, but…”

“No, it’s not. My father was a pilot.”

“Was?”

“He died, last year. Cancer.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m a lousy teacher,” she said, out of the blue.

“Why do you say that?”

“I couldn’t get along with anybody. Not students, not teachers, not admin. It’s always the same, wherever I go, too.”

“I guess you’re wondering why, too?”

“Yeah. Got any ideas?” she said, smiling.

“Yup. You don’t listen.”

“What?”

“Case in point. I think there’s this voice going off in your head all the time, and every time you hear someone talk, well, you aren’t paying attention because you’re listening to the voice inside your head. You’re trying to find a way to dispute what’s being said, or you’re trying to remember something you did, but did better than the person talking. So, you don’t listen…to what’s going on around you.”

He looked at her, saw her head nodding, then a tear running down her cheek. “I think you nailed that one,” she said, “right on the head.”

“Look, I don’t mean to pile it on, but in my experience when someone cries they’re trying to distract me, trying to run away from the problem, so why don’t you dry up now, try to confront the issue head on?”

“Are you, like, a closet psychiatrist?”

“No, but close.”

“Huh?”

“My parents are physicians. My father’s a heart doc, my mom was a shrink. I couldn’t get away with shit in our house, and they always had an answer for every question.”

“So, you’re carrying on the family tradition, I see. And I bet you’re married, too?”

“Yup. She’s in med school now.”

“Of course she is. And you’ll fly away soon, too. I’d make bet on that.”

“Oh, I will one day, but I’ll stay in the reserves. It’s too much fun out here – I’d miss it.”

“I think I would have liked it too.”

“Maybe. Odds are you’d get yourself killed within a year. Or get someone else killed.”

“You think if I learned to listen better I could do it?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“What would it take for you to know?”

“I’m in Traffic, I’m an accident reconstructionist and I usually work motors…”

“Motors?”

“Motorcycles. But twice a year I get a rookie, and I spend six weeks with them. With you, but in this case five weeks and three days don’t count.”

“Oh.”

“The point I’m trying to make is simple. I work with rookies right out of academy, but they only send me the ones that are really questionable, the ones the academy staff just couldn’t make up their minds about.”

“The borderline cases?”

“Yup.”

“That’s me, huh?”

“That’s you. I know this sounds ridiculous, but it’s nothing personal. I’m trying to save lives here, especially your life. Your life, my fellow officers lives, and yes, even the public. I’m part of the last line of defense, one of the guys the department looks to, to keep our ranks strong.”

“I guess flying helps with that, too. Being an instructor, huh?”

“Sure it does, but back to your question, I don’t usually make up my mind with a rookie until the end of our time together.”

“Yet you made up your mind this morning?”

“I did.”

“That bad, huh?”

“As bad an attitude as I’ve ever seen, yes.”

“Jeez. I’m sorry. I really am.”

“3114?”

He reached for the radio. “14, go.”

“3114, advise public service.”

“14, code 5.”

“3114 at 1700 hours.”

“What’s public service?”

“Call in on a telephone land line. Sensitive information, too sensitive to let it slip on air.” He saw a ‘stop and rob’ – a convenience store – ahead and turned into the parking lot, drove slowly by the front, looking at everyone inside, then he pulled up to a pay phone and parked. “Go in and get a couple of cokes, would you?”

“Sure.”

He went to the phone, called in and took notes, then went back to the patrol car, called the shift sergeant and the watch commander on the tactical channel, then waited for her to get back.

“They didn’t charge me,” she said, exasperated.

“I know. Store policy. We drive in, show the flag, and it’s safer for everybody. And we get fatter, too, and Coke all over the seats,” he said, sighing.

She laughed as he backed out of the parking space and turned onto the street.

“What was the call about?”

“A suspicious person, but with a twist,” he said.

“And?”

“Patience, Deborah.”

“Okay.”

He pulled back into the parking lot at Red Bird Airport, only now there were a half dozen patrol cars there, waiting. He pulled up to the group and got out of the car, then repeated what dispatch had just told him.

“There’s a male, white, 43 years old, in a silver Dodge pickup, parked in front of the Sewing Center,” he said, pointing down Camp Wisdom Road. “Just served with divorce papers, maybe two hours ago. Wife works in the store, called and advised he’s out front, has a bunch of guns with him in the truck. He’s alternately threatening and despondent.”

The lieutenant and the sergeant looked at him, the the L-T spoke.

“Okay, you two swing by the parking lot, try to ID the truck on your pass, then report what you see. Stay on tactical.”

“Yessir.”

He got back in the patrol car, and Desjardins looked at him as he buckled in. “He’s armed?” she asked.

“That’s what the wife reports.”

“Ex-wife, you mean.”

“Nope. Not until the papers are signed by the judge, kiddo.”

“Right. What if she’s…?”

“Setting him up? Been there, done that. Or, this could be a suicide by cop. Or, he’s about to storm a sewing shop full of little old ladies with an AK-47. Take your pick, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends…”

He pulled out onto Camp Wisdom Road and they drove by the shopping center.

“Did you see it?” he asked.

“I’m not sure.”

He drove another block, then turned off the main road onto a side street.

“14 to 102 on 2.”

“2, go.”

“He’s parked facing the store, two rows back, right in front of the main door. He’s sitting on the passenger side right now.”

“Okay. Two units are at the rear of the store, going in now. You and 10 are going to enter the lot at opposite ends, try to remain out of sight and close on foot at 45 degree approach angles. Start now.”

“10/4.”

He drove back to the little shopping center and pulled in, parked out of sight, then turned to Desjardins. “You take the shotgun, chamber a round here, keep the safety on. Follow me, one step behind, a little to my right. If the door opens you take cover, get ready to back me up if I have to close on foot. Sergeant will be to our left, so don’t, for God’s sake, shoot his ass. Got it?”

“Yessir.”

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

They made their approach in low crouches, and he kept his eyes on the suspect by looking through the windows of parked cars; he saw the sergeant doing the same, and in less than a minute there were only a few parked cars between the suspect and the two of them –

– then the man looked over, saw the sergeant –

– then put the barrel of a shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger –

He heard a muffled boom, and the truck’s cab filled instantly with blue-gray smoke – and he stood, ran to the truck’s door and peered through the blood-stained glass. He opened the door and the man’s decapitated body writhed out, a fountain of blood spraying out the stumpy remains atop his chest.

He pulled out his hand unit and called in: “3114, we’ll need the medical examiner’s and CID at the scene for photographs, and call this a Signal 60 at this time, pending final disposition.”

“Signal 60?” she asked.

“Deceased person.”

“What do we do now?”

“Preserve the integrity of the scene until CID gets here, then we get information for our report and clear the scene – hopefully in time for dinner.”

“What? Dinner?”

“Fuck yeah, man. I missed lunch, and I’m starving.”

“I hear that,” the lieutenant said, now standing by their side. “How ‘bout Whataburger? And I’m buyin’!”

Third Impression: Images of Firefights

He’d figured out once, a long time ago, that Sean O’Malley wasn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, but the kid’s heart was always in the right place. They’d shared a dorm room the first six weeks of academy, and he’d helped O’Malley out with everything from simple math problems to the finer points of Vernon’s Annotated Civil Statutes, and while O’Malley was as strong as an ox, he just wasn’t in the hunt when brainpower was called for. He’d played ball in school, football – because in Texas no other kind of ball counts for much – then he’d gone into the Army. O’Malley ended up, and he’d still never figured this out, flying helicopters over in ‘Nam. Hueys, for the most part. Slicks and Chickenhawks. O’Malley told him once that they’d figured out he was all balls and no brains, so he was perfect for the job. He got injured grunts out of the tightest, hottest L-Zs, and he did so with a shit-eatin’ grin on his face, no matter how tough the call. If someone’s life was on the line, O’Malley got the call, and his Huey was the most shot-up – and beloved – bird between Hue and Danang.

After the sixth week of academy cadets were cut loose, allowed to commute to school from home, and O’Malley called him their first night home, asked if they could car-pool, use the time to go over homework assignments or just shoot the shit. He said “sure, why not?” – and agreed to pick O’Malley up at five thirty the next morning.

He’d not met Micki O’Malley yet, Sean’s wife, though Sean had talked about her non-stop for the last six weeks. He got to their rented mobil home a little early and went to the door, and Micki came to the door, told him that Sean was still getting dressed.

“Can I get you some coffee?” she asked.

“Yeah, you know, that’d be good,” he said, but he was staring at the woman as she turned and walked away – because she was just about the cutest human being of the female persuasion he’d ever laid eyes on. Blond hair and blue eyes, freckles all over her nose and forehead, and bodacious legs too, but it was the enormous sense of ‘cute’ that lingered as she walked away – and he felt like he’d just looked into the eyes of every male’s idea of the perfect girl.

And he wondered just how the hell O’Malley had pulled it off. What could she possibly see in him?

Her coffee, on the other hand, was godawful stuff – not fit for the living.

Which, in the end, didn’t matter all that much.

He picked O’Malley up and they drove in to academy together five days a week, and he did so, he soon realized, because the O’Malley’s couldn’t afford a car – not yet, Sean said – and besides, Micki wasn’t really the ‘go to work’ type. She was a born housewife, Sean said, and was already baking their second kid in the oven when Sean made it into academy, so her getting a job just wasn’t in the works.

And that’s the way they both wanted it.

He also figured out, in short order, that O’Malley lived with the most sensuous female God had ever put on this earth, and the poor guy had never really had a chance. O’Malley loved Pearl Beer and Micki, and when he got off work neither was far from his face. And if Sean had a hard time studying, Micki was the reason. O’Malley dragged his ass out to the car every morning looking like she’d fucked his brains out all night long. Some mornings he smelled like it, too.

And yes, he was jealous.

Things developed into a pattern when he got to the mobil home. He pulled up and Micki met him at the door, and every now and then she reached up and pecked him on the cheek, then O’Malley would drag his ass out of the bedroom…

And Sean would say: “How’s it hangin’, Peckerhead?”

“Down to my knees. You?”

“Pointin’ at the moon, Ace.” And Sean would point at Micki with his thumb – and they all laughed.

So O’Malley struggled, academically anyway, through academy, but he graduated – at the bottom of their class – but once he was on the street he soon became everyone’s favorite. He was the class clown in briefing, cracking smiles wherever he went, and whenever he had dealings with the public, even as a rookie, his supervisors got calls telling what a great officer he was, and that he was an asset to the community, and to the department.

And it was the truth. He was.

But in time his stint in helicopters called out to him, and a few years after academy he applied to and was accepted in the department’s Aviation Division. After Sean finished training on Jet Rangers, he moved downtown, to Central Division, and life for them finally seemed better than good. O’Malley bought a house and moved his family in, and they finally had a new car, a first in their lives.

He invited Sean and his family over for an afternoon Bar-B-Q after the transfer, and their kids played in the pool while the wives talked about babies, and he and Sean talked about their days together in Academy. And the thing was, he realized, he really liked Sean, missed working with him. He was a friend, despite their radically different upbringings, and pretty soon the O’Malley’s were coming over most weekends. They came over for Thanksgiving, and there were Christmas presents waiting at his house for Sean’s kids, and so over the next year they became best friends. Again, or maybe just for the first time.

One night Micki called him – in tears, begged him to come over, and when he got there she took him to their bathroom. Sean was curled up in the bathtub, crying, and he smelled like a brewery. And urine. Sean was in a fetal ball, sobbing as recollections of hot L-Zs, going in for wounded troops, coursed through veins of memory, but it was apparent there was a whole lot more going on than just simple recollection. Sean was in distress, going down fast.

He called his wife, who by that time was a resident in Internal Medicine, and he asked her to come over. After she examined Sean she recommended he go see a psychiatrist, even a VA shrink – if they wanted to keep the department in the dark, but in the end it didn’t matter. O’Malley’s episode that night wasn’t his first, Micki sobbed, but this one, she said, was her last. Sean apparently grew violent as his episodes lagged, and Micki showed off bruising all over her body, and they loaded Sean’s kids in his wife’s car and she drove them to their house.

When it became apparent Sean wasn’t coming out of this one, he took Sean to the ER, checked him in and then called Tom Anders, one of the assistant chiefs, because Anders had been a light colonel in ‘Nam, and he knew the score. He took over and arranged for treatment with the VA, and when that fell short the department stepped in, and O’Malley went onto so-called ‘light-duty’ after he was cut loose from the hospital. He landed in dispatch, taking 911 calls and sending them to the appropriate operator, but he came to work with dark bags under his eyes, and often smelling like he hadn’t bathed in days.

Yet even the stress of taking calls proved too much, and one night Sean called him, in dire straits indeed. He got to the house just in time.

O’Malley was curled up in the bathtub again, a 45 Colt in his hand, the barrel in his mouth. He saw that and leapt on his friend, disarmed him and then called Chief Anders, and they carried him to the ER again. O’Malley spent almost a year at a psychiatric hospital after that, but Micki never filed for divorce. She and the kids stayed away, lived with he and his wife, but she never gave up on him.

When he was released this time he was put on disability, told he’d never work for the department as a sworn officer again, so Sean started applying with other departments in the region, and in the end, the County Sheriff took him on, baggage and all. After Micki agreed to move back in, they gathered all the kid’s and Micki’s belongings and drove her back to Sean’s house, but it was an uneasy, uncomfortable reunion, a fragile truce.

Still, a new routine developed, and weekend Bar-B-Qs featured in their lives once again. Sean was sober, he was off medication and feeling good, and he was enjoying the work over at the S-O – the Sheriff’s Office.

“So, what are you doing?” he asked.

“Serving paper, for the most part. Divorce, bad checks and evictions, but sometimes arrest and search warrants.”

“Really? That sounds a little intense?”

“Only had to do a couple so far, and I think I’m dealing with it okay.”

“Cool.”

“What about you? What are you up to know?”

“Still on motors, but I just went to Tac school. The thinking is we can get to calls faster on our bikes, maybe do a little recon before the rest of the team shows up, something like that.”

“Still doing the FTO thing?”

“Yup.”

“You give up on flying?”

And he shook his head, took a deep breath and held it. “Nope,” he said, letting his breath out, “but I don’t suppose I can ignore the situation much longer?”

“Is it Annie?”

“Yeah.”

“You know, you’re a good cop, but this isn’t what you were meant to do.”

He nodded. “I know, but the thing is, it’s as fun now as it was when I started.”

“Fun? That almost sounds like the kid inside talking, ya know?”

“Maybe so. Micki looks good, Sean. Makes me happy to see you together again.”

“I couldn’t live without her, you know?”

“I do. I think it’s mutual, too.”

And O’Malley nodded his head, looking across the yard at his wife, at his ‘bestest friend in the whole wide world.’ “I worry about…” he started, then he stuttered to a stop, thought about what he was trying to say. “I worry about her, if something ever happened to me, ya know?”

“You don’t have to.”

And O’Malley looked at him. “You love her too, don’t you?”

“I love you both. We both do.”

And O’Malley nodded. “I know. You’ve meant the world to us, too.”

“Come on, we better check on the ribs…”

And so time passed, several months, anyway, then one night, when he was working traffic on a summer’s evening, he got a Tac callout and rode over to a dodgy part of town, an area of run down bungalows over by Fair Park, and it turned out the Sheriff’s Office was going to try and serve an arrest and search warrant at a so-called ‘cook-house’ – a house where drugs were – allegedly – being manufactured. The warrant mentioned PCP and stolen automatic weapons, too, stolen from a National Guard armory, so a heavy Tac call-out was in progress.

He saw O’Malley standing in a group with patrol officers and other S-O deputies, and as he pulled up on his bike Sean turned and shot him the thumb’s up. “See they finally took the training wheels off that thing,” Sean said, grinning. “Do that mean you finally knows how to ride that thar thing?”

“I don’t know. This is my first day without ‘em.”

“So, how’s it hangin’, Peckerhead?”

“Down to my knees. You?”

“Pointin’ at the moon, Ace.”

And they laughed together one more time – at their time, this time.

He geared up when the Tac van got on scene, and then the team discussed how to take the house. They would surround it first, then monitor windows for activity, and when the team leader had an idea of who was where, they’d storm all the doors simultaneously, so the team spread out while patrolmen blocked off the ends of the block. People in the houses around the suspects’ house were evacuated, then the Sheriff’s deputies and Tac team members moved to the doors and windows.

He and O’Malley were teamed up and assigned the back door.

When the main team shouted “Police!” and crashed through the front door, he and O’Malley went through the back door. The way ahead was a simple, narrow hallway, with two bedroom doors about ten feet down the narrow corridor, on opposite sides of the way. There was pandemonium in the front part of the house, and they eased their way down the hall with their backs on the walls, each covering the opposite side of their approach, with O’Malley a little ahead of him.

As Sean approached the first door he saw the shotgun blast before it registered, and he saw O’Malley fall to the floor as gunfire erupted all over the house. He had an H&K MP5 and he turned, emptied the 30 round magazine through the wall and dropped the magazine, then reloaded. Moving forward, and low now, he peered around the corner into the bedroom, saw a man holding onto his belly, but a shotgun still in hand. Then the shotgun was coming up again, and he emptied the clip into the man’s chest and head. He darted into the room, checked to see if anyone else was hiding, then he dashed back to check on Sean.

O’Malley’s neck and face were a tangled mass of blood and sinew; buckshot had penetrated his left eye and that was simply gone, now a pulpy mess, but blood was pulsing out of two neck wounds, and foamy blood was coming out his mouth and nose. He leaned close, called out “MEDIC!” – and tried to staunch the flow coming from the neck woulds.

O’Malley grabbed him by the vest, pulled him close, and his last words were “Micki, Micki…loves you too…”

He took his friend’s hand, held on tight. “Don’t worry about her. I’ve got your back.”

He felt a last squeeze, and his friend slipped away.

He sat in that hallway for hours, holding his friend’s hand all the while, and people kept their distance.

Services were not quite a week later, at a Catholic Church over off Oak Lawn, and there wasn’t room enough for all the cops and deputies and Army buddies that came, and the procession out Hillcrest to Northwest Highway was simply huge.

Micki O’Malley stood by his side all the while, dressed in black of course, but everyone looked at her, then him, and shook their heads. It was so obvious now, wasn’t it? She’d been in love with him, and it had driven Sean to drink. That had to be it. Why else would such a great guy have had such a rough time?

Forth Impression: Impressions of concrete, and yellow pools of light

“2141, are you clear for a call?”

He put his ticket book in the Harley’s saddlebag and clamped it shut, then reached the radio.

“2141, go head.”

“Uh, 2141, reports of a male, black, on the overpass, I-20 and Highway 67, witnesses advise they think he may jump.”

“41, code 5.”

“2141, en route at 2245 hours.”

He u-turned in traffic, rode as quickly as he dared to an on-ramp for 67 and got on the highway, drove the half mile to the bridge and saw a man sitting on the railing, his feet dangling over the edge, as he approached. An ambulance was already on scene, stopped just ahead of the black man; the paramedics were standing back from the man – and they were clearly agitated.

“41, show me code six, and let’s get a few units out here to close the ramp.”

“2141 at 2248 hours.”

He walked up to the man – who turned out to be a kid, just a very big, black kid – and the kid had a pistol in his hand. It looked like a Beretta, or a Brazilian knock-off of a Beretta, but he could see there wasn’t a magazine in the stock, that it just didn’t look ‘right’ – and he sighed.

“I told them,” the kid said, waving the pistol at the paramedics, “and I’m tellin’ you, mutha-fucka…keep the fuck away from me.”

“Yeah. Sure,” he said as he walked closer, but he stopped a few feet short and leaned on the heavy tubular guard rail, his back to the traffic roaring by fifty feet below. He looked at the kid for a minute, then slid down until he was sitting on the pavement – and he could feel the kid staring at him, not sure what the hell was going on now.

“You know, my best friend died a couple months ago. A friend, here, on the force. He was killed, and I’ve been taking care of his wife and kids ever since.”

The kid looked at him, still not sure what was going on, but he turned now, and looked down at the cop.

“You know what the real pisser is? She’s pregnant again. She just told me, a couple nights ago. The problem is, well, I’m married.”

The kid slid down to the pavement and sat next to him. “Whoa…is it, like possible the kid is yours?”

“Yup.”

“Fuck…dude…what are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know, man. I haven’t…well, you’re the first person I’ve told.”

“No way…”

“Way, Amigo. Deal with it.”

“So, like, what do you want to do? I mean, like have the kid?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, man. It feels too big for me, like I can’t handle it.”

“You love your wife, don’t you, man. If you love her you got to step up, make it right.”

He nodded, then looked at the kid. “What about you, man? What got you?”

“My girlfriend dumped me and I got bummed at work, and my manager fired my ass?”

“Really? What the fuck for…?”

“Oh, some customer started ragging on me and I shot my mouth off, told her to fuck off…”

He laughed with the kid. “No shit? Bet that was a sight…”

The kid looked at him, shook his head. “I don’t know, man. It wasn’t right. What she said, what I did. Nothing was right.”

“Wasn’t right for your boss to shit-can you, was it? I mean, what would you have done in his place?”

The kid leaned over, put his hands in his face. “I fucked up, man. Fucked up big time. Not sure I can make it without Amy, ya know?”

“What happened with her? Do you know?”

“No, not really. She started hangin’ with another dude in study hall and before I knew what hit me they were going out, then she just fuckin’ dumps me.”

“That’s fuckin’ cold, man. Sounds to me like you’re better off without her.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“What about your folks?”

“They don’t fuckin’ care, man. No one cares, ya know?”

“I know it feels like that sometime. Like all the world is just hangin’ out there, waitin’ to take a shit all over you. Funny thing, though, sometimes just hangin’ back, chillin’ out for a while, finding someone to talk to, that’s all it takes to get things back in perspective. The trick is to learn how to hold on to your feelings – at least ‘til you can get to that place and talk it out.”

“I got no one to talk to, man.”

“Sure you do. You got me, don’t you?” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a business card. It had his name and badge number on it, and a couple of department phones numbers printed near the bottom, but he took a pen out and scrawled another number on the back. “That’s my home number. You get in deep shit, need someone to talk to, give me a yell.”

“Thanks, man.”

“You ever been flyin’? Like in a small plane?”

“No. I ain’t been up in nothing. Never even been outta the city…”

“Well, tell you what. I’m taking a guy up this Saturday, in the morning. You want to come along?”

“What?”

“Yeah. I teach kids how to fly. You wanna come along?”

“What? You gonna teach me to fly?”

“Who knows, kiddo. Stranger things have happened.”

“So…what happens now?”

“You get in the back of the ambulance and take a ride down to Parkland. I meet you down there and we talk to a doc. If you want, I can call your folks, try to help straighten things out. If the doc thinks you’re okay, you go home, and you go flyin’ with me Saturday morning.”

“You want this?” the kid said, handing over the ‘pistol’ – which turned out to be a squirt gun, a water pistol.

“Yeah. Better let me get rid of that…”

He got back to the station as the day shift took to the streets, at 0800, and he went to his locker and changed into his street clothes, then called his wife and talked with her about his night. He grabbed a cup of coffee after, and his notepad, then went to the briefing room and started in on his reports from the night before, but a half hour later dispatch called him on the intercom, asked him to come up to the lobby.

The kid was there, along with his father, talking to the watch commander, and when he came out into the lobby the kid’s father came over and shook his hand.

“I just wanted to thank you, for what you did last night,” the man said.

“You’re welcome, sir,” he said.

“About this flyin’ thing…did you really mean that?”

“Yessir.”

“I ain’t never been in an airplane. Is it safe, for my boy, I mean?”

“Yes, it is. There are risks, but there are risks when you cross the street, or step into a bathtub.”

The man nodded his head. “Any way I could come along?”

“Sure. I can do that.”

“When and where?” the father asked.

“Saturday morning, how ‘bout eight o’clock, at Red Bird, by the old terminal building.”

“Know it well. We’ll be there.”

“Lieutenant, I’m still working on reports and, well, I’m supposed to be on at two and haven’t been home yet…”

“Taken care of. You’re off until Monday. Go back and finish up, and see me before you head for the barn.”

“Thank you, sir.”

When he got back to the briefing room Deb Desjardins was sitting at the table, reading through his notes; she’d already read through his – unfinished – report, but she looked up when he came in, and she smiled.

“I remember your handwriting, you know. Looks like a draftsman’s script. I never got how you do it, especially in a car.”

He shrugged.

“You told the kid you got Micki pregnant?”

“I needed an insurmountable problem, needed to appear vulnerable. I needed to get him to empathize with me in order to get him to trust me.”

“Jesus H Christ. And what, you just came up with that standing out there? And he had a gun in his hand?”

“I could tell something was wrong with the thing. It looked like at didn’t have a clip in it…”

“A magazine?”

“Yeah, sorry. And he wasn’t acting, well, threatening, not yet. Somebody who wants to commit suicide usually doesn’t want to take someone with him, and when I saw it was a kid, well…”

“How old is he?”

“Fifteen.”

“I saw him in the L-Ts office. Looks like a fuckin’ mountain.”

“Play’s offensive line over at Duncanville High. Made varsity his sophomore year – good student, too.”

“The shrink, at Parkland? He called the chief this morning. Said he watched you talking to the kid down there, that you saved his life. Anyway, he wanted us to know.”

He looked away, shook his head.

She shook her head, too. “I wonder if he knows how lucky he is?”

“Lucky? What do you mean?”

“Well, how many cops responding to a call like that would have seen the gun and taken him out, no questions asked?”

“Well, how many times might someone like that turn on the cop as soon as he pulled up, try to shoot him?”

“So, why did you do it?”

He sighed, shook his head. “You remember our first week? They guy in the pickup truck?”

She shook her head, too, turned back to run through the memory, reliving their approach, then that ‘boom’ – and the cab filling with smoke. Then opening the door, seeing all that stuff on the ceiling and running down the inside of the glass. “Yeah, you know, there are nights I can’t stop seeing those things. It’s like they’re never going to leave me, ya know.”

“I know. I wake Annie up in the middle of the night. Screaming, sweats, racing heart – the whole nine yards. I’m kind of resigned to them now.”

“Them?”

He laughed a little, nodded his head. “Ghosts, maybe. I don’t think they want us to forget them, forget their pain, so they come by for a visit from time to time.”

“Our last night together? You remember that one?”

“The bedroom window?”

“Yeah. That one…”

The call had come out mid-evening, around eight or so, parents called about their son, a kid in middle school. He’d fallen in with a bad group, drugs, falling grades, and they’d had a big falling out at dinner, a really big argument that quickly got out of hand, then the father had threatened to send the kid away to school, a military school, up in Indiana. When they got to the house the mother was distraught and the father livid, domineering, his blustering voice audible from the street as they got out of their patrol car.

They had gone inside, figured out the basic contours of the conflict, but the kid had locked himself in his bedroom and wasn’t coming out.

“Does he have any firearms in there?”

“Yeah,” his father advised. “A Colt Diamondback, 22 caliber, and a Winchester Model 94.”

“30-30?”

“Yes.”

He looked down at the briefing room table, at his report, then he looked up at Desjardins and nodded his head. “That may be the worst nightmare I have.”

She nodded her head, too. “I know. Mine too…”

Standing outside the kids room, knocking on the door. Hearing a commotion from inside the room, hearing a train in the distance. The window opening, the train louder.

“Something’s not right…kid’s not in the room anymore…”

He kicked down the door, saw curtains fluttering in the wind, saw lightning outside, then the deep rumble of thunder…close, and getting closer…

And the train…close, and getting closer…

He ran to the window, lightning flashed and he saw the kid running through the muddy field behind the house, towards the tracks. He crawled out the window, jumped to the ground and took off, but after days of rain the field was almost a muddy swamp and his boots sunk deep into the ooze with each stride, and the kid had a fifty yard head start.

He saw the train through falling rain as he ran, then as he got close he saw the kid lay down by the tracks, put his neck on the rail, and he drove his legs through the mud, running as hard as he ever had in his life, closing, closing…getting close now…and leaping…

He dove for the kids legs, pulled him back as the train passed and he sat up, saw the kid’s decapitated body crumpled up by his own, twitching now – and he sat up and screamed, began crying and pounding his fists in the mud…

Desjardins ran up and gasped, got on the radio and called in, then the kid’s parents ran up.

Father looked at his son and turned away, walked back to his house.

But the boy’s mother looked at her son, then at the officer crying in the mud, and she knelt by him, and she hugged him. She held his head while he cried, rocked him like a baby, and Desjardins came up to him and she held his head to her thigh.

“Know what?” she said, bringing him back to the present.

“Hmm, what?”

“I fell in love with you that night. With your humanity, I think.”

“Did you really –” he said, grinning.

“How many?”

“How many – what?”

“Suicides?”

“Me? On view? Maybe ten.”

“How many have you talked down?”

“A couple.”

“You know, there’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you.”

“Now’s as good a time as any. Fire away.”

“That form you threatened to fill out? The 4301, I think you called it? When you were going to cut me from the department?”

“Yeah?”

“I checked a few years ago. There’s no such form.”

“Yeah? How ‘bout that…?”

“Why?”

“Why? I don’t know. Just a feeling I had. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?”

Part II: Impressions of Summer, in the Evening

First Impression: Pictures of Plastic Man, in Pearls

‘Still an hour to go ‘til shift change,’ he thought, just glimpsing his watch on the Harley’s vibrating handlebar. Eleven at night. 2300 hours, on a hot August night. Quiet so far, too; only a couple of accidents, minor injuries – no big deal. He needed to pull in somewhere, get a Coke and write-up the last accident, and that would probably take him to midnight – and then three days off – three days in a row!

He saw a Mustang up ahead. New. Dealer plates on the back. Black, red pin-stripes. Big pipes, deep, throaty rumble. One guy behind the wheel, having trouble keeping the car in his lane, slowing for a red light a few hundred feet ahead. Middle lane, six lane divided road, light traffic.

He pulled over to the right lane, watched the driver swerve a little, sharply this time, then the driver corrected and got back in his lane. Keeping out of mirror angles, he pulled closer, maybe twenty feet behind the Ford and stopped, waiting for the light to turn green.

When it did, the driver in the Mustang pounded the throttle, then let up as quickly; then accelerated smoothly away from the light, then swerving through traffic erratically a moment later.

He picked up the mic and called the tag into dispatch, then checked out on traffic – hitting the strobes, letting the siren wail for a few seconds – and the driver lost it completely then, veered off the road, jumping a curb in the process, and he watched sparks fly off the underbody. The Mustang careened through the parking lot, narrowly missing several parked cars on the way to a collision with a large, concrete and steel light tower.

Smoke poured out from under the Mustang’s hood as he got off the Harley and, with hand on pistol, he walked up to the driver’s window.

He sees driver leaning back in his seat, his trembling hands grasping the steering wheel, and he hears hard, fast breathing, as if the man is in distress…

Then he sees blond hair bobbing in the driver’s lap.

She is in the short strokes now, and he backs off, waits for the performance to end – which isn’t too far in coming. The driver is pounding his head against the headrest, his hands are squeezing then releasing the steering wheel, then he is screaming, almost a Tarzan-like yell, a real, shattering Johnny Weissmuller yodel, and he laughs – then shines his Mag-Lite into the cabin. The driver, just coming back to earth, turns his head and looks at the motorcycle cop standing outside his window – and grins.

“Are we having fun tonight?” he asks the driver. The girl is sitting up now, clearly embarrassed, her face a pearlescent wreck.

The driver nods. “Yup.”

“You had anything to drink?”

“Not yet. But I intend to take care of that shortly.”

“Ma’am? You alright?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she groans.

“No ma’am. I need a straight answer. Are you alright?”

“Look, this son-of-a-bitch just shot two gallons of splooge down my throat. How do you think I feel?”

“Pretty damn good!” the driver said, grinning deeply now.

“Ma’am, are you in this car against your will?”

“No, but I sure didn’t know this son-of-a-bitch had a foot long dong hiding down there.”

He looked down, saw radiator fluid running out from under the new Ford and sighed. “You’re going to need a wrecker to get out of here, sir,” he said to the driver.

“What? Why?”

“Better come take a look.”

The driver got out, opened the hood and a boiling wave of steam billowed up into the air, and the steam smelled like scorched ethylene glycol and burnt rubber.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” he cried.

“That’s what I said,” the girl added, wiping stuff off her chin.

“This is gonna be the most expensive blowjob in history,” the driver sighed, then he looked at the motor-jock, ticket book in hand, and he cringed. “Man, don’t write me up. I work in the DAs office, and Henry will fuckin’ nail me for this.”

He sighed, shook his head. “Got your ID?”

“Yeah, yeah.” The driver went to the car, fished around in his jacket, pulled out his wallet and ID, handed it over.

He looked it over, then filled out a ticket, handed the lawyer his ticket book. “Go ahead and sign it. I’ll have to call in the morning, but if you’re legit I’ll cut you some slack, void it out.”

The driver seemed a little put out, but took the ticket book and signed on the dotted line, then handed it back.

“You need me to call you a wrecker?”

“Yeah, could you?”

“Sure. No sweat.” He walked back to the car, looked at the girl. She had finished cleaning up the mess on her face and neck; now she looked up at him sheepishly as he came to the window and leaned over.

“You sure you’re okay,” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, gently now, “I’ll be okay.”

“Not the safest place to do this, you know?”

She nodded her head. “Would you like my telephone number,” she asked.

“I might, but my wife sure wouldn’t,” he said, smiling. “Can I call someone for you, or you want to stick it out with Tarzan?”

She handed him her business card, looked up at him. “Just in case,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am. You have a good night.”

Second Impression: Hand in flame, reaching skyward

It was the first day of a new school year, and every officer in both Patrol and Traffic was geared up to work school zones this first morning. Indeed, for the next week anyone busting a school zone would get hammered. No leniency. No excuses. Just a massive fine. Fifteen over the limit and a trip downtown for Reckless Driving, per orders from both the Mayor’s and the DA’s office. Too many kids killed last year, and a big PR campaign was underway.

He was set up in a parking lot near a large elementary school, the school located on a busy, six lane divided roadway. There were volunteer school crossing guards at four of the major crosswalks leading to the school, and it didn’t take long.

A little red pickup zipping through traffic, he guessed a solid forty five in the twenty miles per hour zone, and the truck tripped his radar at 46. He tossed the radar in his saddlebag, pulled in behind the boy and flipped on his lights – the kid pulled over and looked at him nervously as he walked up. He explained to the boy why he was being stopped, and asked his age.

“Fifteen, sir.”

He nodded his head, had dispatch call the kid’s parents, ask them to come to the scene, then he called for a Juvenile Division officer to come to the scene and get ready to take the kid into custody.

He heard: “Jimmy, don’t!” and turned, looked at the crosswalk – and he could see it unfolding before it happened. He started memorizing the scene, the placement of vehicles, the locations of people…

A hundred feet away. Cars stopped in the outside and inside lanes, the middle lane clear. Six kids in the crosswalk, following the crossing guard – one kid darting out ahead of the guard. His name, apparently, Jimmie. A red car in the middle lane, Toyota Corolla, four door, estimated speed fifty. Girl, blond hair, high school, not paying attention, doesn’t see the kid because of the other stopped cars – they’re blocking her view.

Hits the kid as he crosses into the middle lane, his angle of departure a little to the left, towards the inside lane, knocked about fifteen feet up into the air, flies about seventy feet before landing on the inside lane. Body tumbles about fifty feet more then comes to a rest on the concrete median, and he’s marking the impact points in his mind’s eye when he realizes the red Toyota is out of control now, heading right for him.

He jumps out of the way as the Toyota skids past, slams into his Harley before careening into the back of the stopped pickup truck. He pulls out his hand unit and calls dispatch:

“2141, 36B my location, pedestrian down, signal 60, secondary collision and impact with previously stopped vehicle. Need EMS, possibly a helicopter my location, and code 3 backup for traffic control.”

“2141 at 0755 hours.”

He runs to the kid in the street, feels for a pulse and there’s nothing, so he runs to the Toyota. There is gasoline all over the scene now and he calls dispatch again. “2141, get me an engine on scene, I’ve got gas all over the place, and three kids trapped inside their car.”

“0756 hours.”

“Get back!” he yells at onlookers and passers-by – as he runs around to the passenger door, tries to pull it open. He cuts the seatbelt free of the girl sitting there and cradles her head as he pulls her free, and someone helps him carry her to the sidewalk. Black smoke starts coming up from inside the Toyota’s engine compartment and in an instant fire engulfs the little car. He jumps back, then runs to the pickup and sees the boy is now unconscious, slumped over the steering wheel. He opens the door, pulls him free and throws him over his shoulder, runs to the sidewalk and more people help him put the kid down.

Two men are spraying the Toyota with small fire extinguishers as he runs for the driver’s door. He reaches in through the flames and yanks the girl free; her clothes on fire now and people help him douse the flames. Someone empties another fire extinguisher on the car and he sees a little kid in the back seat screaming – before the car disappears from view in howling flames and boiling black smoke.

Fire trucks in the distance. Sirens. He looks down, sees the scorched flesh on his hands and arms – but oddly, he can’t feel anything.

Patrol cars, paramedics and firemen are everywhere now, making an opening for two helicopters. Three kids are loaded and the helicopters rise into the morning air, head for Parkland.

The Watch Commander is walking the area, talking to the chief by radio, describing the scene, then walks over to him.

“You look like a fucking hot dog,” the lieutenant said, shaking his head, “like someone held you over the fire too long. Why aren’t you on the way to the hospital?”

“I’ve got to get my measurements, L-T.”

“Bullshit. We can do that.”

“No, sir. This is on-view, and I know where everything is,” he says, pointing to his head. “I know where the key points in the sequence are. I’ve got to get my points marked, my measurements down now. I can do the rest later, but I’ve got to get those down now.”

The lieutenant nodded his head, called a patrol officers to help, and he got to work.

Third Impression: Wet grass and smoking clutches

He hated this stuff. With a passion.

Once a year, three days of recurrent motorcycle training. Running cones. Endless courses of cones. Tight circles, so tight his Harley’s floorboards were ground down to nothing now. U-turns, inside the space of a single parking place. High speed sprints, then locked up brakes and a sharp, 90 degree turns to the right, followed by a quick left and another sprint. All day long, over and over. Smoking clutches and scorched brake pads and frayed tempers, all brittle by day’s end.

The course was set up at DFW airport this summer, on the vast concrete apron outside fire station number three, but this was the third morning, so at least an end was finally in sight.

But this was the joyride day, the real world practicum day. The tough day, in other words. The day you were scored – by how many times you put your foot down. With a new clutch assembly installed, and fresh rear brake pads too, his Hawg was ready for the grind, the mechanical grind, anyway, but he remembered this was the most emotionally, as well mechanically stressful day of the class. It was supposed to be; it was designed to be. When you were a rookie motor-jock, and after three weeks of training, this was the day, and the test, that so many washed-out on attempting – and who then went back to patrol.

If any of them washed out today, they’d get one more chance, get to make one more run, next week – and another failing score would see a quick return to patrol, and a measurable loss of face in the eyes of brother Traffic Division officers. Scoring was simple, too. Put your foot down at any time on the joyride – and lose a point. Five points and you were out, sent to the barn.

The group started out running, one at a time, down closed runway 13 left – at very high speed. An instructor rode alongside, kicking his bike’s left saddlebag – as hard as he could. Once at the end of the runway he entered a circle, rode around slowly, letting the adrenalin rush taper, fade away, and when all the other officers finished it was out onto Highway 114 and a quick ride down to Texas Stadium. Into the stadium parking lot, a meandering course to an open gate, then up the inclined ramps inside the stadium to the upper deck. Up steep steps to an opening a couple hundred feet above the 10 yard line, then down the steps, through the bleachers to the bottom row of seats and a hard left turn. Fight off the vertigo, make the turn – without putting a foot down – then run along the seats to the next set of steps, then another hard left and back up the steps. Without putting a foot down. Then around the deck – up, down, up, down.

He felt his clutch slipping more now, compensated with more rear brake, but he made it out without a point off. They rode into the city, rode through downtown traffic – stopping at red lights – without putting a foot down when they stopped. Clutch simmering now, they rode out to Fair Park and rode the ramps up and down through the old Cotton Bowl, then ran over to Adair’s for hamburgers and Dr Pepper – foot down allowed here – then a long, high speed run on back country roads to DFW, where one last course through the cones was set up for them, waiting to claim one more careless victim. One of the official Police Rodeo short courses was set up, and here the scoring was adjusted a little. Time became a factor, with any time greater than one minute through the course disqualifying, while a foot down still garnered a point off.

With his clutch in terminal decline he entered the course, zipped through and went over to the fire station, parked his bike and hopped off. His hands still shaking, he took off his helmet and sat on the grass under a shade tree. He wiped the sweat from his face, tried to ignore his shaking hands and trembling knees.

He caught his breath, looked on as the rest of the guys made their runs through the course, then he heard a thunderstorm in the distance and sighed. A motor-jock from Plano came over and sat by him, and they looked up at the clouds as another rumble echoed across the airport.

“Nothing like running home in the rain,” the guy from Plano said.

“Unless it’s hail. I really love riding in hail.”

They both wiped sweat from their heads, then one of the firemen came over. “We got some Cokes in here, on ice.”

That was all it took.

He got up, held his hand out and helped the other guy up, then they walked inside the bays to a big, galvanized tub full of ice, overflowing with red cans of Coke. He grabbed one, popped the top and downed it, then let out a huge, billowing belch.

“Goddamn, that feels good…” he sighed, and he saw one of the instructors walking his way and grabbed another Coke.

“Looks like you’re number two today. 47.3 seconds and no fouls. Not bad,” then he looked at the guy from Plano. “57.5 and three fouls. You pass, but that time sucks. You need work, amigo.”

“That’s what he told me last year,” the guy said, slamming down his third Coke as the instructor walked away. He ripped off a burp that lasted minutes, then grinned.

The last jock was about to enter the course when he heard sharp thunder, now very close, and they turned, saw a dark wall of cloud racing for the airport, then lightning arcing through the clouds overhead. A few sprinkles hit the pavement, and the instructors looked nervously at the clouds, then at the last guy weaving through the cones.

“Gonna be close,” he said, and the guy from Plano burped again, a long hissing burp easing past his nostrils, nodding his head all the while, then the last guy was through, parking by the station.

More thunder, this time right overhead, and a lightning strike over by 114.

“Alright, guys,” one of the instructors said. “Let’s take cover.”

The group went inside the bays, but all the huge overhead doors were open, the immense fire engines, in effect, aimed at the runways – waiting, while a table was set up with hot dogs and hamburgers, firemen sharing their dinner with the cops.

He went over to one of the bays overlooking the runways on the east side of the airport, watched a little Learjet flare and land a few hundred yards away and he was glad he wasn’t flying this afternoon. He watched an American 727 struggle with a gust on the far side of the airport, then felt a sudden shift in the wind. He was about to turn away when he felt a ripple in the air, then he saw a huge, billowing fireball behind the cargo terminals…

“What the fuck,” Plano said.

He watched as the back third of an L-1011 tumbled through the grass just beyond the cargo ramp, smoke and bodies flying through the air, fires starting and instantly smothered by the heavy rain that had just started falling – and everyone was running for the parked bikes, starting them as they strapped helmets on, then screaming across the cargo ramp to the grass. He threw the Harley’s kickstand down as he stopped, then ran into the grass, ran through a sea of smoldering bodies and glistening grass…

Forth Impression: Speed

He was sitting right seat this morning, Deborah Desjardins doing all the driving now as she was well into her third week of training. It was warm out by eight that morning, and the air conditioner in the Dodge Diplomat was already having trouble keeping up, so running with the windows down seemed a better option, at least until afternoon came ‘round. Eighty days in a row with temps above 110 degrees, but she was getting used to it now, not complaining as often. Still, when you weren’t used to wearing a vest, a bullet-proof vest, in this heat, the misery index tended to shoot off the scale.

“Where to?” she asked after she’d double-checked the squad car’s inventory of flares and cones, and after he’d loaded his dive gear and reconstruction duffel in the trunk.

“Take 67 south to Camp Wisdom. Remember your briefing? There’s been a spike in burglaries in our district, and both DeSoto and Duncanville are reporting the same. Did you write down the suspect vehicle information?”

She looked at her notes, read through and he shook his head as he watched.

“Deb? CCR! You got to get this shit into memory. You can’t stop and consult your notepad out there…you’ve got to know what you’re looking for. Black Camaro or Firebird, damage on right rear quarter panel, some kind of decal on the back glass, maybe an STP decal. Sergeant read that out, not for your amusement but for you to have in mind while you patrol your district. Got it?”

“You memorized all that? This morning?”

“Yeah, you got to. I can remember shit like this from two weeks ago, some from months ago. And you’ve got to. We’re not cruising around out here just for fun, we’re looking for specific targets. You see a black yada-yada-yada today, you turn on it and we scope it out. Got it?”

“Yup.” She left the station and made for the highway, and they drove south out Highway 67. “Are they mainly hitting houses, or apartments?”

“Good question. The sergeant didn’t specifically tell us, did he? But he gave us street names both here and in Duncanville. All residential, single family homes.”

“Understood. I’ve got to memorize all these street names too. Right?”

“Yup. Pain in the ass, but when I was a rook I took a street map of my patrol beat into the house with me, and just started memorizing street names and block numbers. It’s tedious, but using a map is the only way to go. You’ve got to not only know the names, you’ve also got to know the quickest way from X to Y. Remember the Civil Service Exam? The most direct way is often neither the quickest or the safest way. All these things come into play, but here’s a clue. This knowledge takes time to acquire and assimilate. You have time now, as a rookie, to start learning this stuff, but you really have to apply yourself. It ain’t easy, and it won’t come together without hard mental prep time.”

She nodded her head. “It’s funny, driving out here, how suddenly everyone starts to drive the speed limit.”

“Yup. People see the bubble gum lights on top of the car and they get religion – real quick. But there’s a lesson in that, too. Know what it is?”

“Something about showing the flag?”

“Maybe, but no, something a little less obvious. The guy driving a little too perfectly, too carefully, he’s usually hiding something. You look at his car carefully. Is it well kept? Are the tags current? The inspection sticker? Sometimes you’ve got to drive close, get a closer look, see if he looks like a scrote.”

“A scrote?”

“Yeah, derived from scrotum, I think, but someone who looks hinkey, suspicious. It’s a perception thing, too. You can look at someone out here, after a while, and you can almost read their arrest and conviction record before the printout is in your hand. Certain types of tattoos are a dead give away, but I can see it in the eyes now. More a smirk, you know? No respect for the law, or for the badge, and that usually comes after a little time in the big house.”

“The big house?”

“Behind bars.”

“Oh. What do you think is the common denominator? I mean, behind criminal behavior?”

“Wow. Now there’s a question. Maybe a pointless one, but let’s see. If I was going to lay one thing out there, it’s that most street criminal think they’re real smart. That makes them lazy, and often careless. Another word that comes to mind is stupid.”

“Stupid? Really?”

“Yeah, you watch a few when you arrest them. They do things they think are smart, but in the end those moves are self-defeating, not thought through real well. Poor planning, poor execution. Stupid, in other words.”

“Then why do so many get away with stuff?”

“Well, I hate to say it, but luck plays a big role in that. Not to mention we’re stretched thin, especially at certain times of the day, and, believe it or not, cops aren’t immune to fucking up, too. The problem with being out here, exposed like we are, is that when we fuck up we, generally speaking, get fucked up. My biggest fear isn’t getting shot, it’s being run over on a traffic stop, or out on a highway, working a wreck.”

“Really?”

“The closest I’ve come to getting killed was working a wreck out on I-20. A couple of 18-wheelers got into it, jack-knifed across all lanes of traffic, and one of ‘em was a chemical tanker. I get there, park on the shoulder and start helping a patrolman get cones and flares set out on the road. A sergeant was parked up beside the tanker truck, his strobes on, flares set back from the truck. I see a car barreling along, in the lane I was standing in, and I put out my hand – like, “STOP! Now!” – but the car doesn’t slow down, not one bit, and as I leap out of the way all I can see is a ‘little old lady’ – squinting under the steering wheel – as she roars by, doing at least seventy.”

“No shit?”

“And she plows right into the tanker truck. She was killed instantly, but so was the sergeant. I mean vaporized. The explosion knocked us off our feet, blew out windows in houses and businesses on both sides of the interstate, and the sergeant’s squad car was just a black, scorched pile of twisted metal. That fast, you know? Probably thinking about his kids, but who knows? Maybe he coulda done X, Y, or Z if he had been paying closer attention, but he didn’t, and he was just dead. Smart guy, nice, dedicated. Great father, good husband, and he was a friend, too. And I watched him die. That’s part of the job too, one you need to get ready for. It’s not ‘if,’ Deborah, it’s when. It WILL happen to you, someday. You WILL see someone you know get seriously hurt, or killed. You WILL go to a lot of funerals, dead officer’s funerals, and it will fuck you up.”

“How many have you been to?”

“Three. In the last year. When there’s one anywhere within driving distance, the chief likes at least four motorjocks to show up.”

“Jesus.”

“When it happens to a friend? Man, that fucks with your head, big time.”

“How many? For you, I mean?”

“Too many, Deborah. One would be too many…but…too many. Uh…Camp Wisdom Road, one mile.”

“Got it.”

“Turn left at the light, go down to Hampton and make a left.”

“K. Where we headed?”

“The country club.”

“What?”

“Turn right on Red Bird, then right, the next right, into the lot.”

“Okay?”

“The maroon Jaguar over there. Under the tree. Pull my side up to the driver’s door.”

“Right.”

He rolled down his window when the car stopped. “Hey, Dad, how’s it going?”

“Alright. Who’s this?”

“New rookie. Deborah Desjardins.”

“Pleased to meet you,” the old man said, eyeing the rookie closely. “Why don’t you talk this asshole into bringing you to dinner at my place this weekend. Sunday afternoon.”

“I, uh, well, I’ll try, sir.”

“Well, you’re invited, so come on over anyway.”

“Bad case this morning?” he asked his father.

“Old guy, in his 80s, replaced his mitral valve last year. Bacteria all over it, eating it up. Tried to fix it…I told him it was too risky, but he insisted.”

“Lose him?”

“Yup.”

“Whoya playing with this morning?”

“Bill and Henry. They ask about you, you know? They’ll be there Sunday, so try to come, willya?”

“Yeah.”

“You too, young lady.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Seeya later, Dad.”

He rolled up his window as she pulled ahead, and he pointed at the road. “Right on Red Bird, then the next left. Lake Placid, I think, then let’s start cruising the alleys.”

“Right. Now what the fuck was that all about?”

“Hmm? What?”

“Inviting me to dinner?”

“Guess he liked you.”

“So? He’s not married to, like, your mom?”

“She passed a couple of years ago.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“He’s lonely as hell, and he’s a world class flirt. I think you’d have a good time.”

“So, did you arrange this little meeting ahead of time?”

He turned and looked at her, grinned: “Who? Me?”

“Hell, I guess I should be flattered.”

“Flattered?”

“That you’d think of me that way. Someone your dad might like.”

“Look, kiddo, if I wasn’t married I’d be all over you.”

She blushed, turned away.

“Next alley, make a right.”

“K.”

“Windows down, go real slow,” he whispered. “Slower…now…stop. Engine off.” He got out of the car and tip-toed along slowly, up to a six foot tall wood fence. He crouched low, walked up to the fence and pushed aside some shrubbery, peeked over the fence then motioned her to get out of the squad car and come over, but he was grinning like a fool. She walked over quietly and looked over the fence, then tried her best not to break out laughing.

A naked blond, by the swimming pool, with a German Shepherd between her legs, doing the deed…

She doubled over laughing, stumbled back to the car and got in, watched as he came back and got in the car…

“Goddamn!” she said, now laughing hysterically. “You knew she was going to be here? Doing that?”

“Most mornings, all summer long.”

“Shouldn’t we arrest her? You know, like animal cruelty? Something like that?”

“Did you see that dog’s face? Does he look like he’s suffering to you?”

She started laughing again, this time harder.

“I mean, you’re going to testify in court? Testify about the look on the mutt’s face? Really? That fuckin’ dog is in Hogg Heaven. Animal cruelty?”

She was losing it now.

“Roll up your window, dammit! You don’t want to disturb them, do you?”

“Goddamn you,” she snorted. “You’re a sadistic sonofabitch, you know it?”

“What? Don’t it make you horny?”

“Stop it!” she tried to say, but she was laughing harder now. “I’m about to piss my pants…”

“2141?”

He picked up the radio, all business now. “2141, go ahead.”

“2141, signal 53, Woodstock and Oak Forest. RP advises a black Camaro in the area just pulled into one of the houses on the cul-de-sac, unsure of the address.”

“41, code 5.”

“2110, show me code 5, and get another unit en route.”

“Units en route at 0935 hours.”

“Do you know how to get there?” he asked.

“No…”

“Left to Reynoldston, then make a right. We’ll turn left on Polk.”

“Okay.”

“Put your overheads on.”

“Got it.”

“Slow for the intersection…look both ways…okay, bust it…!”

“Yeah, got it.”

“Traffic on Polk is gonna be shit,” he said as they approached the intersection. “Okay, nose out just a little, let people see the strobes…okay, you got it…go now…”

She turned left… “Should I keep the lights on?”

“Hell yes…right lane now…Oak Park ahead, right – at the school, then an immediate left…”

“Got it…”

“Slow…down…you got to look ahead, but you have to scan the side streets, remember – look out for the little old lady with her air conditioning going full blast. She can’t see you or hear you…okay, here’s the school…”

“Yeah, got it.”

“Left now, lights off, and about two blocks…lot’s of kids…keep it down now.”

“Okay.”

“Slower…there it is, about eleven o’clock, reddish brick house, hipped roof. Got it?”

“How the fuck do you see these things?”

“Pull over here,” he said as he picked up the radio. “2141, show us code 6 and we have the suspect vehicle in sight now. 2110, can you approach from Oak Trail?”

“2141 at 0939”

“2110 received.”

“2113, show us code 6 in the area at this time.”

“0939 hours.”

He pulled binoculars from his duffel and looked at the black car. “2141, 27 on Arkansas 132 George Paul Sam.”

“Received at 0940.”

He looked at the house, saw movement inside a window then looked at the front door. “2141 going to TAC2,” he said, switching to the tactical channel. “2141 on 2, front door kicked in, male white suspect in the house.”

“2113, coming up behind you.”

“2110 on Oak Trail.”

“Okay, they’ve seen us…running for their car…switching to primary…2141, suspects are in their car, backing out the drive…coming right by me now…”

“0941 hours.”

“Turn around!”

“I’m trying…”

“Just cut through the fucking yard…!”

“Got it…”

He reached down, turned on the lights and siren…as 2113 got in behind the Camaro. “Keep on ‘em, close it up, stay with them.”

2113 busted the intersection with their lights and sirens going, 50 yards behind the Camaro, and they heard the officers in that car take the lead, call the chase.

“That’s Tim,” she said.

“Tim?”

“We were in academy together…”

“Okay…come on, keep it tight. If they wreck out, we’re the lead and we can’t lose ‘em…got it?”

“Yessir.”

“Ease up on the steering wheel, don’t choke it…take a deep breath, good, keep breathing…remember, scan ahead AND the side streets, always ahead…”

“2113, we’re at Camp Wisdom and Polk, southbound.”

“2110, get an air unit up, notify DeSoto and Duncanville we’ve got a chase headed their way.”

“0941.”

“2113, passing under I-20 now…”

“0942.”

Two more patrol cars joined the chase, fell in behind the shift sergeant, 2110, so there were now five patrol cars following the Camaro.

“Roads choke down out here, get hilly and the surface is rough – these shit cars can’t handle it.”

“Air 2 monitoring, think we have ‘em.”

“0942.”

“2113, passing Wheatland Road.”

“0943.”

He looked over, saw their speed was over 80. “You’re doing good, keep a few hundred feet behind now, at this speed if something happens you need a buffer.”

“2113, turning west on Danieldale.”

“0943.”

“Okay, get left in the lane and brake before you start the turn…that’s it…now accelerate through the turn…attagirl. That was smooth. Remember, smooth increases speed, jerky slows you down.”

“Got it.”

“There are some choppy hills up ahead, lots of trees, reduced visibility and sight-lines. Got it…?”

“Yup?”

“You okay?”

“Yup, think so.”

He looked at her, hard: she was sweating and her lip was quivering but she was doing okay.

“Uh, 2110, we’re approaching Cockrell Hill Road. Is Duncanville aware of this pursuit?”

“2110, 10/4.”

He saw a slow car ahead, a big yellow car, and a sharp little hill – but the Camaro pushed it, started to – make the pass –

“Don’t do it…don’t do it…” he whispered, but 2113 started to pass the slow yellow car too. He watched the Camaro duck back into their lane atop the hill – then 2113 went head-on into a pickup truck – at about 80 miles per hour.

“FUCK!”

“2141, 2113 is out of the chase, 36B about a quarter mile east of Cockrell Hill, we’re in the lead.”

“0945.”

“Okay, get around that shithead…”

“2110, someone behind me stop that yellow car.”

“DeSoto 211, we got em, sir.”

“Cite ‘em for failure to yield and hold ’em at your jail.”

“Got it, sir.”

“Uh, 2110, get EMS out here Code 3, looks like multiple 60s.”

“What?” Desjardins cried. “Dead?”

“Concentrate on your driving, Deb. You have one job now. Don’t lose these fuckin’ scrotes. Got that?”

She became feral, possessed, punched the accelerator – hard.

“Ease it up, don’t let your anger carry you away.”

“Right.”

“2141, we’re going south on 67 now, uh…wait one…okay, 2141, the guy on the right is leaning out the window, he’s shooting at us…notify Cedar Hill we’re in their jurisdiction now for Sig 1A.”

“2110 to Air 2, you got a sharpshooter on board?”

“Air 2, negative.”

“2141, their engine is smoking…looks like they’ve thrown a rod, slowing fast now, they’re going for the frontage road…”

“0947.”

Smoke pouring out of the underside of the Camaro, the two men jumped from the car as it rolled to a stop on the frontage road…

“2141, out on two suspects running into the woods, 300 yards south of Wintergreen Road.”

“0947.”

Police cars from four jurisdictions slid to a stop, twenty patrolmen started running into the hilly scrub west of the highway; Desjardins was following the driver of the Camaro with her gun drawn. He heard a pop-pop-pop, saw her stop, aim and fire two rounds – and he ran to her, then ran with her – to one suspect down on the ground, two bullet wounds in his chest.

“2141, Signal 33 shots fired, one suspect down, one suspect still at large.”

“0948.”

“Air 2, second suspect in custody.”

“2141 to 2110, my partner took out the driver, and he is Signal 60.”

“2110, notify CID and the watch commander.”

“0949.”

Fifth Impression: Martyrs in shadow, part one

‘Still an hour to go ‘til I finish up with this mess,’ he thought, and he rubbed his eyes, looked at his watch. Seven thirty already, but the sun was nowhere near ready to go down. Two more hours, at least, ‘til he could wrap up his measurements and head home. Nineteen hours straight. Called back to work at midnight, on his only scheduled day off this week, five hours after going off duty. Now, nineteen hours on top of that. Two bad wrecks in the morning, and he had been heading in to work on those reports when this one came out. A school bus full of kids going to a church campout. Railroad track. Driver not paying attention. Speeding train. Thirty four killed, seventeen injured.

“You know, there’s not enough room in the human soul for this much heartbreak.”

He turned, looked at a pastor and saw a kindly soul, at least that’s what he thought when he looked into the old man’s eyes.

“You knew…”

“All of them. Every one of them.” The old man’s eyes were red, watery and red, and he could tell this soul had endured enough today.

“Why don’t you go home now, sir. You look…”

“The Lord will give me strength, son. Don’t worry about me.”

He followed the pastor’s eyes, turned and looked at the last two bodies being loaded in a medical examiner’s van, then looked down at the ground and rubbed his eyes again.

“What about you, son? How are you doing?”

“You know, I’ve been better.”

“You look tired. More than tired. Your soul looks – well, almost broken.”

He smiled. “Does it? I’m not surprised.”

“Oh? Why do you say that?”

“It’s been a bad month, sir.”

“My name is Ewan. Ewan Biltmore. Please, call me Ewan,” the old man said, handing him his card.

He took it, looked it over, then got out his. “Here’s my card, sir. You’ll need the information, this service number, for your insurance company and, I assume, legal counsel.”

The old man nodded his head, looked him in the eye. “Perhaps you can’t speak now, but please, call me when you have some time.”

“Sure.”

The old man walked across August’s scorched grass in a fading breeze, over to an old station wagon and to the arms of his wife – and he watched them as they held on to one another, consoling one another in the face of this sudden eclipse. He turned, found the department photographer, confirmed all the angles he needed had been covered, then he walked the half mile down the rough gravel roadbed to the locomotive, up to the engineer.

“Sorry to keep you so long,” he said. The man was about fifty, his expression bleak, lifeless. “Could you tell me again exactly what you saw?”

“Like I told the detectives, I was approaching the crossing and I see the bus slowing, then the driver looks, and I could see his face.”

“He looks? What do you mean, he looks?”

“He looked up, right at me.”

“How far away were you when you saw him look up at you?”

“Fifty yards. Maybe a little less.”

“Your speed?”

“Forty, on the nose. Those NTSB guys have the recorder now, but I swear I was right on forty.”

“I’m not questioning that, sir, just need to make sure I’ve got my notes squared away.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Where was the bus, I mean what part of the bus did the locomotive strike? Front, middle, rear? Just your opinion, okay?”

“You want my opinion?”

“Yessir.”

“That guy waited for the train, and the driver pulled out onto the tracks, then stopped.”

“He what?”

“I been sittin’ here thinkin’ about this for a few hours, playin’ this thing over and over in my head. I see that guy lookin’ at me, his face all blank like, then he pulls right up on the tracks…and stops, and he never stopped lookin’ at me…not once, the whole time.”

“You think he, what? He committed suicide?”

“Yessir, I sure do.”

“You tell this to anyone yet?”

“No, sir, I haven’t. No one asked me about my opinion – ‘til you did.”

“What about the kids? Any of them in the back of the bus looking at you?”

“They all was, officer. All of ‘em, lookin’ and screamin’ – and I can still see them…oh sweet Jesus!”

The engineer turned away, leaned over and held onto a handrail, vomited once, then wiped spittle on his arm. He turned back a moment later, looked at the motorcycle cop standing there, almost like a robot.

“One more question…Anything like this ever happened to you before?”

“Couple of suicides, yeah, but never anything like this.”

“Okay, Mr Simmons, I guess I’m done here. Take my card; anything else you want to tell me, give me a call. You have anyone you can talk to about this?”

The man shrugged, looked away. “Won’t do no good. Wasn’t anything I could do, you know? I just ain’t ever gonna get those kids’ faces out of my mind.”

“I know. Still, sometimes talking about these things helps. Then again, sometimes nothing does.”

“What about you? You seen shit bad as this before?”

He looked away, thought of the Tri-Star tumbling through the thunderstorm a few weeks ago, the bodies in the grass, the smell of jet fuel and seared flesh still fresh in his mind, then he looked back at the engineer.

“You have a…no, sorry. Adios, Mr Simmons.”

“Yeah. You too.”

Part III: Sketches of a hot Summer Night, in Rain

First Sketch: Of Shadows and rain

“2141, show me in-service with an accident report, and I’ll need a second service number the a Signal 60 supplemental report, with one -95 for JCID.”

“2141, clear at 1845 hours, second service number 8521197.”

“1197, received.”

It was close to dinner time and he looked at his watch, figured he was close enough so he might as well run home, maybe grab some dinner and get out of the heat for a few minutes. He started the Harley and checked traffic, then u-turned in the street and started for the highway. The neighborhood was hilly, full of dense brush and tall trees between widely spaced houses, and the afternoon sun was slanting through the trees, casting long shadows in the stillness. A father and son were tossing the football in their front yard and they waved as he passed, and he waved back, smiled at similar memories of his father on autumn mornings, then he thought of the kid back there in the road. No more football, that much was certain.

Running wide open with his girlfriend on the back of his dirt bike, he’d lost it in a corner and tried to brake but high-sided – and they’d been launched as the bike flipped sideways.

His trajectory took his right thigh through a stop sign – and severed it completely. His body landed in a bleeding heap and tumbled, his outstretched arms impacting the curb and shattering both in several places, with the remainder of his severed leg vaulting into a vacant field, almost lost among tall weeds and scraps of gravelly litter.

The girlfriend landed in the street, and a kid speeding through the neighborhood in a pickup truck didn’t see her until it was too late to stop. People in their homes ran out and stopped the boy from bleeding out, but the girl was beyond help, dying slowly before their eyes. Mothers hid children’s eyes from the sight – but for too many it was too little too late, the damage done.

And now the damage done to three lives was irreparable, and for the girl, final. There were open bottles of beer in the kid’s pickup, alcohol on his breath, and at fifteen his life was now little more than wreckage, just as surely as the other boy’s dirt bike was scrap.

And now it was his job to make sense of it all.

To make sense of the senseless.

Pointless, too, he thought. Physicians and surgeons would try to put one life back together, and maybe psychiatrists could fix the other life, but what about the girl? Lawyers and insurance companies would slug it out, he knew, and they’d rely on his report to get to some kind of arrangement, some sense of closure, but she was gone and her death would never be anything more or less than senseless.

Once the road was closed he’d gone about the scene making his measurements, taking photographs and talking to witnesses, and when he, in the end, knew what had happened he just shook his head, put his stuff away and wanted to disappear down a deep hole. What were fifteen year olds doing out on the streets in trucks and motorcycles? Playing? Playing their parts in a vast mechanism of automobile manufacturers, car dealerships and insurance companies, all orchestrated by oil companies and big government. Profit and loss statements to some, nothing but shattered lives to all the others: parents called from homes to scene after scene, day after day, futures wiped away in an instant. “The show that never ends,” he sighed.

Freedom. Free to be irresponsible. Free, to look like a pizza smeared down seventy three feet of asphalt. Free, for the stump of your thigh to look like a spiral sliced ham. That’s freedom, alright, and he wondered how he would react if he got the call some dark and stormy night.

He was riding home and he stopped at a stop sign and sighed. “How many this month?” he wondered. Fifteen – by last weekend, and five more so far this week? Twenty dead, and those were just the wrecks he’d worked. Day in and day out, no time off for holidays, people were simply out there killing themselves in record numbers – and nobody gave a damn. Killing more in a year than in ten years of war in Vietnam, and where was the outcry, the outrage.

Just the price you pay for freedom, right? Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, or so goes the song…until it happens to you. Then there’s some outrage.

He thought of the TriStar tumbling through the field short of the runway, smoldering bodies on wet grass. He’d walked up to the first water tower, where the cockpit impacted and he couldn’t recognize anything human. And yesterday, an NTSB investigator told him the cockpit was found there, right where he’d been looking, and everything, the entire cockpit – man and machine – had been compacted in the impact to a lump about the size of a shoe box.

He heard a car pulling up behind his Harley and saw people sitting there, looking at him, waiting – and he shook his head, waved them to pass, then he paddled over to the side of the road.

Two girls, teenagers, pulled up alongside.

“Are you okay?” the girl closest to him asked.

And he nodded his head. “Yeah. Thanks for asking.”

“You were at the wreck, weren’t you? Stacy…she was our friend.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, but he turned away, didn’t know what to say to such grief anymore.

He heard doors opening and closing, felt them standing by his side, putting their arms around him and he realized he was crying. He’d been crying for weeks, ever since the moment –

The spinning hulk coming to a rest. Running through fields of gold, running through bodies falling like rain, then through the smoke – a man, walking. He was running towards the man, saw his white skin black now, black and peeling, his business suit smoking, and the man walked right up to him.

“Excuse me,” the man said – and he remembered the voice, “but I seem to be lost. Do you know the way to the baggage claim?”

And then the man fell into his arms.

Dead.

He put the side-stand down and climbed off the bike, went and sat on the side of the road, the girls still crying as they held onto him.

Another car stopped – Stacy’s mother, it turned out – and she came up to see what was the matter, what was wrong, and soon she was holding the girls, and him, crying as the sun slipped behind trees far, far away.

Second Sketch: Martyrs in rain, part two

‘Desjardins fourth week of training,’ he wrote in his training log, ‘and she’s made progress but it’s a struggle for her to let go of old ways of seeing the world…’

He looked at her across the briefing room table, thought of her those first few days…so self-centered, almost narcissistic. Always questioning, never listening for an answer, never watching things take shape right in front of her face – to blind to see – seeing so much she was blind to everything going on around her.

But she was changing. The chase, losing her friend from Academy, shooting a man who was getting ready to shoot her. She was starting to listen. Just. She would make it, he knew, but only if she could keep on listening.

They walked out to the patrol car in a light rain, and she checked out the car while he put his gear in the trunk. She got behind the wheel and checked them into service while he settled-in and put on his seat belt.

“Where to?” she asked, but he just turned her way and shrugged.

“You listen during briefing? Even maybe just a little bit?”

She picked up her notepad and he snorted, shook his head. “Goddamnit all to hell,” he grumbled – and she put her pad down and sighed.

“Sorry,” she said, looking down.

“Concentrate! Commit to memory! Recall! CCR – got it! Now think…what happened in our district today?”

“Two burglaries…?”

“Suspect information?”

“Male black in an old Datsun pickup, light blue, maybe a lawn mower in the back?”

“Anything on Camp Wisdom this morning?”

“Armed robbery, gas station at Cockrell Hill, in Duncanville.”

“And the suspect did what?”

“Came into Dallas, east on Camp Wisdom.”

“Vehicle description?”

“Red Firebird, first three on LP are 277.”

“Good. Damn good. So, based on that, where should we go?”

“Camp Wisdom to Red Bird, neighborhoods first, before people start coming home from work.”

“Okay? So, what are you waiting for?”

She smiled, turned on the windshield wipers and into traffic, then made for Highway 67.

“You still flying? Doing lessons and all that?”

“Yup.”

“Could you take me up sometime?”

He turned and looked at her, then resumed scanning.

“It’s just, you know, I’d kind of like to learn how to fly.”

He looked at her, didn’t say a word – yet.

“It looks like it would be fun, I guess. Up there. Free as a bird.”

He sighed. “Yeah. When we finish up together, if you still want to give me a call.”

“Who was your favorite FTO?” she asked, out of the blue.

“Guy named Ed MacCarley. Worked deep nights, downtown, out of Central.”

“Worked?”

“Retired a few years ago, went sailing.”

“Sailing.”

“Yup.”

“Alone?”

“No.”

“Have you heard from him? Since he left?”

“No. Don’t imagine I will, either.”

“Oh?”

He pointed ahead. “Focus on the road. Three cars in front of us. What do you see?”

“Red Firebird.”

“And?”

She sped up, pulled close enough to read the license plates then slowed down, pulled back into the right lane.

“Don’t get caught up day dreaming, Deb. Did you see the light blue Datsun pickup headed north?”

“What? No…”

“You were talking about flying just then.”

“Shit.”

He sighed. “No lawn mower, driver was white.”

“Shit.”

“None so blind as those who will not see. You can’t talk and think about this shit at the same time, so don’t try.”

“Shit.”

“You know, we need to work on your vocab.”

“Right.”

“Yeah, take a right – on Red Bird, let’s take the back way in, by Westmoreland.”

“Reason?”

“My ass is twitching.”

She took the Red Bird exit, drove down to Westmoreland and turned left there – and a moment later he said “Stop, now.”

He was looking out the right side of the car into a thick stand of trees and he picked up the radio before she managed to stop. “2141, show us out on a 54, Red Bird at Westmoreland.”

“2141 at 1615.”

He was out the door, running, and she still hadn’t seen a thing, let alone a ‘welfare concern,’ but she got out and started running after him – then she saw it. Him. A kid, young boy, naked, holding onto a tree, crying. When she got to the kid he was already kneeling there, talking to him.

“Hey buddy,” she heard him say, “what’s going on?”

The kid was in shock, taking deep breaths between vacant sobs, and she guessed he was eight or nine – and there were bruises all over his torso and legs. Wide bruises, straight edges.

He took out his hand unit and called in: “2141, need an ambulance, code 2 this location.”

“1617.”

“Can you tell me your name, buddy?”

The kid was shivering in the rain, looked up and saw the badge, the uniform, then fell into his arms, suddenly hyperventilating.

He held the kid close, and as he stood she watched the kid wrap his arms around her partners neck, legs around his waist. He cradled the kid and walked through the trees back to car, telling the kid it was all over now, that everything would be okay now. That he was safe now.

And she knew he was telling the kid the absolute truth. She could feel it in his voice, in the strength of his words, and the kid felt it too and he let loose, started crying – and then she saw feces, runny diarrhea running down the kids legs, urine flowing down her partners shirt and pants – but still he held on to the kid – and he held on tight until the ambulance and a fire truck arrived, ten minutes later.

Paramedics took the kid and put him in the back of the ambulance, and he got his duffel out and took out a change of clothes, had firemen hose him down. He toweled himself dry and changed in the street, then went to the back of the ambulance. A paramedic saw him and stepped outside.

“Kid’s been raped. No telling how many times, but a bunch. I’d say he was strapped down for an extended period of time, maybe days. He’s dehydrated and…”

“Okay, I got it. Is he stable?”

“Yup.”

“Hold off on transport for now. I need to talk to him first.” He turned, called the watch commander. “2141 to 2102, need you to 25 my location, and 2141, need someone from CID this location, code 2.”

“2141 at 1625.”

“2102, code 2.”

He turned to Desjardins. “Take a fireman, go back and see if you can pick up a trail, but don’t let anyone see you. There are house about a quarter mile in…”

“Right.”

He went back to the ambulance, stepped inside and closed the door. The boy was wrapped in blankets, an IV running wide open into his right arm. The boy was staring ahead, wide eyed, almost catatonic – and he sat next to him, ran his fingers through the boy’s hair.

“Look at me,” he said, and the boy turned to the voice. “I need your help now, and you’re the only one that can help me. Understand?”

The boy nodded his head.

“Do you know the man, the – who did this to you?”

The boy nodded his head, and he didn’t break eye contact.

“Do you know where you were when this happened?”

“No,” the boy said, his voice far away and tiny.

“If I drove you by the place, do you think you would recognize it?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.”

“Did you know the man who did this to you?”

“There are a lot of them. They keep us in cages, then they take us out and take pictures of us while they do things…”

“How many boys? In cages?”

“I don’t know. Five or six in the room I was in. I think there are more, in the other rooms.”

“How did you get out?”

“The lock on my cage wasn’t shut right and I snuck out, crawled through a window where they do the laundry.”

“How long ago? Did you crawl out the window, I mean?”

“Not long, but I’m not sure. Maybe an hour?”

“Could you tell me your name?”

“Jason.”

“What about your mommy and daddy…”

“Don’t call them,” he cried, suddenly very frightened. “Please, don’t…”

“Okay, Jason. I won’t, but can you tell me why?”

“They took me there, left me…”

“They took you there? Why?”

“It’s a secret. I can’t tell.”

“Okay Jason. No problem. I want you to just stay here and rest, okay? I’ll be right back – in a minute.”

He stepped outside, the hot rain wrapping it’s arms all around him and he shook himself back into the present, tried to keep his anger in check – saw the watch commander’s car pull up behind the fire truck – followed by a gray Ford Fairmont – and he walked to them as the lieutenant and a detective got out of their cars.

“Saw a kid over there in the trees,” he said, pointing, when they were standing together in the rain, “naked, in shock, semen around his anus. I just finished talking to him, says he’s been locked in a cage for a long time, along with several other kids in cages, raped and photographed during the act. And here’s the thing. His parents dropped him off there, left him…”

“What the hell…?” the lieutenant said.

“My rookie and a fireman are looking for a trail, but he said he escaped recently, like within the hour, so I’m thinking we may be able to find the place. Put him your car, Andy,” he said to the detective, “drive him around, see if he can point out the place…”

But he saw Desjardins running through the woods just then, the fireman behind her, and she saw him and altered course, came up to him and joined the group, the fireman as well.

“Other side of the woods, street,” she said, gasping in the wet air. “Men looking, calling out a name…”

“Jason?”

“Uh-huh. Yup.”

“One of them is a pastor of some sort, has the collar, anyway” the fireman added – and the lieutenant sighed, looked away – for he was a religious man.

“How many houses in the area?” the detective asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, wheezing, “Long street – maybe fifty?”

“Front door open at one house near the end. Pale orange brick, white asphalt shingles.”

“Let me have your hand unit,” the lieutenant said to Desjardins, then he took it from her hand, angrily lifted it to his face. “2102.”

“2102?”

“Get a TAC team rolling this way, and about ten patrol units – and notify 100, have him head this way.” The L-Ts voice was dripping cold fury now, and his hands were shaking.

“Uh, 10-4, at 1633,” the dispatcher’s voice trembling now.

“Okay,” the lieutenant began, “we need to block off American Way, both ends of Cedar Circle, and, well, probably Corral, too.” He turned to the fireman: “Get onto your chief, tell them to standby for a pediatric call-out, better notify Parkland, too.” He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Better use a land line, keep as much of this shit off the air as possible.”

He walked back to the ambulance, stepped into the air conditioned space and wanted to sigh, but he walked back. leaned over the boy and scratched his head gently. The boy was woozy now, coming out of shock, but as his body rehydrated his color was improving, and the kid looked up and smiled when he saw the uniform.

“You feeling better now?” he asked the boy.

“Yup.”

“The house? Orange brick?”

The boy nodded his head.

“Do you know what color the front door is?”

“White, and there are white shutters, too.”

“The roof?”

“White.”

“Okay.”

He stepped outside, went back to the group. “Kid says orange brick, white door and shutters on the house, white roof, too.”

“That’s the one,” Desjardins said.

“We’re gonna need a warrant, lieutenant,” the detective said. “This is too thin.”

“Exigent circumstances. They know the kid is gone, they’ll be cleaning up their act right now.”

“So? We let them alone, let things settle down, hit them in a few days?”

“And what if they decide to get rid of a bunch of witnesses? What happens then, detective?”

The detective shook his head, thought he knew how this was going to end. “I’m going, gonna try to get the house under surveillance.”

The lieutenant nodded his head, looked at his watch. “Damnit! What’s taking them so long…”

“I can take Desjardins, we can work our way behind the house,” he said…

“Go!” the L-T said, tossing the hand unit back to Desjardins.

“Come on,” he said, grinning. “Up for a little run. Again?”

He took off into the woods and she followed; he heard her swearing under her breath and he slowed, let her catch up. “This is why you ran and ran and ran all during academy,” he said, trying not to sound too ironic. “And the reason why you’re about to drop right now is you haven’t run since you got out of academy. Right?”

“Right, you fucking asshole.”

He laughed. “And no more Dairy Queen. Got it?”

“Fuck you.”

“God damn you’re slow,” he said, picking up into a near sprint. The cursing got louder, but a few minute later he slowed, held up a fist and stopped, and she stopped beside him, knelt when he knelt, by his side. She watched his breathing, wanted to reach out and hold him, kiss him. Love him.

“That’s it, down there,” she said, pointing through thick brush at the orange brick house. There was no activity now, either in the yard or along the street, but he saw the gray Fairmont pulling up several houses further down – under a thick tree, of course, and he laughed, then picked a way through the woods so they could get around behind the house without being seen.

And she cursed when he took off at a dead sprint, followed him around the back of the neighborhood and into deeper woods. She saw him leap through the air and slowed, then detoured around a coiled up copperhead, trying to keep up with him while keeping an eye on the ground now – but he had stopped, had a fist raised again, then he was almost tip-toeing through dead leaves and broken branches, moving noiselessly now, and she tried to mimic him.

He was kneeling behind a tree when she caught up to him, and she could feel a shuddering pulse hammering away inside her skull – yet she tried to breathe soundlessly – because he was.

“2141, 102, we’re behind the house, maybe twenty yards, lots of activity inside, screaming, crying.”

“Any reason you shouldn’t go in now?”

He heard a man’s voice inside – “No, we have time…I’m not going to do that!” then a physical altercation started.

“2141, we’re going in, need code 3 backup!” He started for the back porch, picked up a wrought iron lawn chair and threw it against a sliding glass door, and she followed him through cascades of falling glass…

Third Sketch: Sitting in the shade on a summer afternoon

They drove by her apartment a little before seven, and she was waiting for them – dressed a little too well, he thought. Nice dress, high heels and makeup, and he hardly recognized his rookie. She seemed nervous, a little self conscious as they drove across town to his father’s place, but it had been a hard couple of days. The shooting review board, hours of questioning by Internal Affairs and a routine interview at the DAs office – but no verdict yet. No decision whether her first shooting had been justified or not.

Neither would be allowed back on the street until there was one.

He wasn’t worried, though.

But she was. She was rattled, unsure of herself now.

“You look nice,” his wife said as Desjardins got in the back seat. “Has he told you much about his father yet?”

She looked at his eyes in the rear view mirror, then looked at his wife. Much taller than expected, she thought. Kind eyes, but kind of mad, too. Like she’d seen enough, knew enough about people to remain curious.

“Just that he’s a heart doctor of some kind,” Deb said.

“Well, he’s brittle,” his wife said. “Like: push him hard and he’ll break. Don’t talk about June, his wife, unless you want to see him break.”

“Okay.”

“For that matter, don’t talk about June around this guy…”

“Alright,” he said, “that’s enough.”

She watched the exchange, sensed friction in the action and reaction, the give and take. Like both had been worn down by such back and forth over the years. Like she had had enough hushed reprimands over the years, and now she turned away, looked out the window as the drove south on Preston Road past the country club. A few more blocks and he turned down Willow Wood Circle and drove down to the very end. He pulled up to the curb and stopped, went around and helped his wife out of the car, then came around and got her door.

“Thanks,” she said, but she saw he looked distracted, careworn, and wished she’d ducked the invitation, but he led them down to the walkway and then up to the door. It was a two story affair, pinkish brick that seemed darker in the shade of so many trees, and the steep roof was vaguely French, she thought, and it was sheathed in what looked like slate and copper. He rang the bell and a maid opened the door, told them “everyone is out back, just awaitin’ for y’all…’ and he led them through the house to the backyard.

And it was like a forest back there, she thought. A solid canopy of dense foliage, not a shred of sunshine making it down to the ground. And no grass, either. Nothing but plants and monkey grass, until she saw the pool. Small, multi-level tiers, and the walls and bottom of the pool seems to be made of black slate – and the net effect was of being in a grotto of some sort. Like the world outside this house was a world apart, held away by the illusions created by and within these walls.

“I guess you’ve had a rough few days,” she heard, and she turned to the voice, saw the man from the maroon Jaguar – and she looked down, saw his outstretched hand. She took his hand and he held it for a moment, looking into her eyes, then he seemed to sigh a little, and draw inward. “Could I get you something to drink?”

She looked around, saw that a cluster of kids had formed around her FTO, and she desperately wanted to get back to him, back to something familiar – because suddenly she felt very out of place. The women were diamond encrusted and well-coifed, the men looked like fashion models just in from a catalogue shoot – and she felt like someone her partner’d just dragged in from the boondocks.

“You know, I really don’t know what…”

And he smiled. “Come with me,” he said, and the old man led her into the house, to the bar, and he went inside the little room and picked up a glass and filled it with shaved ice, poured a little dark rum, then a little light rum, and finally, something she didn’t recognize. He stirred the contents then added pineapple juice and a splash of orange juice, poured everything into a blender and added more ice. He hit the switch for a second and poured the contents into a chilled martini glass, looking at the color before he handed the drink to her.

“Try this,” he said, smiling – and she did.

“Oh my God,” she breathed. “That’s so smooth!”

He beamed. “It’s strong, so not too fast – or you’ll be sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“You might do something you’ll want to forget later.”

“Such as?” she said, a little suggestively.

And he looked at her just then, looked into her eyes again. “You never can tell, Miss Desjardins.”

He even pronounced her name correctly, and that, for some reason, thrilled her. She watched him come around for her, and he held out his hand, led her back out into the yard. “Now, why don’t you come over and tell me what in heaven’s name convinced you to become a police officer?”

He was so unlike his son, so easy to talk to, so attentive, so unwilling to criticize. When her glass was empty he went in and made her another, and another, and she found it easier and easier to talk to him, told him things she’d never told anyone before – and pretty soon he didn’t look like a man in his fifties. Didn’t look even a little like her own father.

No, he looked like a man, an attractive man who was paying serious attention to her.

“Look,” she said after an hour of increasingly intimate questions, “I’ll never find my way to the restroom, so could you take me, please?”

He looked at her and smiled, then stood and offered his hand, again, and led her inside – to his bedroom, then he stood with her outside his bathroom and he looked at her.

“I’m curious,” she said. “Do you want me to fall in love with you, or am I reading this all wrong?”

He smiled, looked away, looked around his room. “Do you know, you’re the first woman who’s been in this room since my wife passed.”

“No one in the bed?”

“Not a soul.”

“Why me?”

“I’m not sure I know how to answer that. Not yet, anyway.”

“You’d better lock that door,” she said, “and turn out the lights.”

Forth Sketch: In a darker light

He looked at the name on the post-it note and searched memory for a moment, then recalled the face. Ewan Biltmore, the pastor from the bus wreck, all those kids. He looked at the number and went to the briefing room, dialed the number and sat at the sergeant’s desk with a notepad out, at the ready.

“Reverend Biltmore’s office, this is Barbara speaking. How may I help you?”

He told the girl who he was, and that he was returning the ‘reverend’s’ call.

“One moment, please.”

The man’s voice came on, rich and sonorous. “Yes, son,” the man said, “I just wanted to know how you’re doing?”

“I’m fine, sir.”

“I see. I ask because you seemed a bit distraught the other day.”

“Yessir, it’s been a rough few weeks.”

“Do you attend services, son?”

“No sir. Not in years.”

“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“After my mother passed away, I just…well…”

“I understand. Look, I don’t want to keep you, but I wanted to invite you to services this Sunday. We serve lunch after, so bring an appetite, would you?”

“I’m working Sunday, sir, but if I’m free I’ll try to stop by.”

“Yes, I’d like that. Hope to see you then.”

“Goodbye, sir.”

“Yes, good day to you.”

He looked at the clock on the wall: 11:23 – not quite time to check in service. He went over the hit list, the speeding-related accidents over the past week that Traffic Division used to set radar enforcement schedules, and the L-T had circled Kiest and Westmoreland, between noon and three, and put that in his box. He dropped off a supplemental report and headed to the parking lot, checked out the Harley and put on his helmet, then checked into service.

Out onto Illinois then south on Cockrell Hill Road to Kiest, just like yesterday. Just like the day before yesterday. Just like tomorrow would almost certainly be.

Yet…what was waiting for him out here today, he wondered. What shit-storm was waiting to break open and fall from the clouds. “And who’s gonna die,” he asked no one in particular.

Certainly not God. God’s not interested in questions, is he?

He thought of Biltmore as he pulled off the road a few hundred yards south of Kiest, thought of the locomotive engineer’s words: “I see that guy lookin’ at me, his face all blank like, then he pulls right up on the tracks…and stops, and he never stopped lookin’ at me…not once, the whole time.”

Why? Why such despair? Why would someone be willing to kill himself – and dozens of children, too? A church employee, no less?

He pulled out the radar gun and flipped-on the power, ran the ‘TEST’ circuit, then pulled out his tuning forks and knocked them on his knee, one by one, holding the vibrating rods up to the radar aperture and hitting the trigger. When all three checked he put the forks back in his shirt pocket and looked at a car – headed his way – at, he guessed, 38 miles per hour. He held up the radar and triggered it, saw the car’s speed at 37 and falling – rapidly now – and with his visual estimate verified he sat on the bike with the radar balanced on his thigh, waiting for his first customer of the day.

It didn’t take long.

Bright orange corvette. Heavy acceleration from the light at Kiest – a manual transmission, convertible. Visual estimate 55 and climbing, in a 35 zone, and he triggered the radar, then dropped it in the left saddlebag and toggled the starter, pulled out into traffic as the Corvette streaked by. Strobes on, siren next, get in close, read the plate. She’s signaling now, got religion real bad now…

“2141, traffic.”

“41.”

“Out at Westmoreland and Silverwood on Texas personalized Henry Oscar Tom, Lincoln Edward George Zebra.”

“11:55 hours.”

He got off the Harley and looked over the car, slowly, then walked up to the drivers door. Blond hair – long; face – sunburned. He moved closer: white gym shorts, orange halter top, bare feet. Inspection sticker expired, no seat belt. Fingernails? Long and black, with little red spots on them. Perfect, he thought. A black widow…

“Morning ma’am,” he said, running through the department’s mandated ‘seven step approach’ for initiating a traffic stop: “Hello, my name is officer ‘insert your name here’, and you were observed having sex with a donkey, in violation of the Laws of the Great State of Texas…”

“…And I’ll need to see your driver’s license and proof of financial responsibility.”

“My what?”

“Proof of insurance, ma’am.”

“Oh.” She rummaged around in seat, then the car’s glove box – then turned to him. “Sorry…I must’ve left them at home,” she said, batting her eyes. “Was I really going fifty five?”

“Ma’am, I’ll need your full name and date of birth, please.”

“Mindy Haskell, March third, fifty nine.”

“Keys, on the dash, please?”

“What?”

“Car keys, up there on the dash now.” He walked back to the Harley and picked up the mic: “41, need a 27, 28 and 29 on Haskell, Mindy, female white, three, three, fifty nine.”

“11:59 hours.”

“Ma’am, please keep your hands where I can see them.”

“2141, stand by to copy 29 information.”

“Oh, great,” he said, reaching for the mic. “41, go ahead.”

“Multiple 29s signals five, twenty three, and that D-L comes back suspended for signal 40 times three.”

“41, confirm warrants, and I’ll need a unit for transport, dispatch wrecker this location.”

“1200 hours.”

“Ma’am, hands where I can see them. Now.”

His hands go to the Sig226 on his hip – but her hands aren’t coming up. She’s looking at him in the door mounted sideview mirror, and he can see her eyes.

‘Not scared,’ he says to no one in particular, ‘and that ain’t right.’

The Sig comes out and he steps out of her line of sight, moves to the right, and he sees her turn, sees the pistol in her right hand as she lifts up in the seat, then the pistol is coming up and everything slows down.

It sounds like a loud ‘SNAP’ and he feels the bullet slam into his vest – but two rounds have left his Sig by then. The first round hits her left eye, the second goes through the right side of her neck, exits after going through her spine.

He hears “2230 out with 2141 – signal 33, shots fired!” on the radio and he wonders who 2230 is, then sees a patrol car across the street, sliding to a stop. “2230, ambulance code 3 and 41 looks okay, one suspect down.”

“1203 hours.”

His chest is on fire and his breathing feels constricted – and he’s stumbling backwards, then sitting on the pavement, pulling off his shirt then pulling the velcro straps on his vest, throwing it off.

He sees Desjardins running his way and he’s pulling off his t-shirt, clawing at his chest. “I can’t breathe,” he hears a voice say, then he thinks ‘I’m falling – backwards – slowly’ – and he hopes she catches his head before it hits the pavement, because that might hurt.

Fifth Sketch: Martyrs in rain, part three

He’s sitting outside in the twilight, on the grassy lawn, the orange brick house behind him now. News helicopters circle overhead, trying to get the shot they’ll lead with for the ten o’clock news, and the watch commander and the chief are talking with reporters down the street, the camera’s bright lights attracting a million flying insects. Desjardins has been in an ambulance with one of the last kids they found – a boy, maybe six years old, hiding under a bed. She heard his cries, found him – and now the kid wouldn’t let go of her. He’d counted sixty cigarette burns on his thighs and torso, then gave up and walked back into the living room.

The cages had been moved into the garage by the time they stormed in, and the men were busily setting up rooms to look like this was an ongoing church school, that everything was peachy keen and hunky dory. “No, no problems here, officer, and sure, you can come in and look around. See all our happy, smiling children?”

A detective walked over and sat down on the grass next to him, pulled out a steno pad and flipped to a page he’d written on earlier that evening. “Okay, let me run down what you told me, see if anything else comes to mind.”

“Sure, fire away.”

“You were out back, behind the tree you marked, and you heard someone yell ”No, I’m not going to do that!”

“Yup.”

“And you put the 33 out, ran for the back porch, the sliding glass door, and you picked up the chair on the way, threw it into the glass door and you and Desjardins entered the residence that way.”

“Yessirree–Bob.”

He chuckled at that. “I’m curious…why not just try the door?”

“I was kind of in a hurry. Anyway, I was thinking, ‘What would Steven Seagal do, you know?’ Would Seagal just try the door? Fuck no. He would pick up that very same chair, throw it just exactly the same way I did.”

“I can quote you on that?”

“Fuckin-A.”

“Okay. So, first thing you see is a kid, throat cut, on the floor, and at least one other body halfway in a large, black garbage bag.”

“That’s a big ten four, good buddy.”

The detective looked up, frowning: “You alright, man?”

“No, I am not alright, man. I’m very seriously not alright. Make sure you put that down in your fuckin’ report, too, wouldya?”

“Yeah. Got it. So the next thing you saw was the reverend. Ewan Biltmore. And you say you saw him at least once before?”

“He invited me to services once, then lunch.”

“And you went?”

“To lunch, yes.”

“I’m curious. Why?”

“Couple of weeks after I worked a bad wreck, the accident with the bus from his church and the train…”

“Oh, shit. Didn’t know that was you, man.”

“Yeah, well, he called me, wanted to see how I was doing.”

“How you were doing?”

“It was a bad’ wreck, Sherlock.”

“I know. So, Biltmore has a gun, a Smith 629. He sees Ainsworth coming in through the front door and he was getting ready to shoot, and you take him out. A double tap? That right?”

“Yup, once in the chest, the next right between the eyes.”

“You’re still on the pistol team, aren’t you?”

“Yup.”

“Okay, that accounts for the head shot. So, you run to Biltmore, Desjardins takes off for the sound of someone crying in a bedroom, and that’s when you hear more shots, run to the bedroom where you think Desjardins is, and you say she drilled that Pridemoor fella, twice.”

“Yup, and that’s when she heard that kid, got him out from under the bed.”

“Right, got that. So, you hear two shots next, you think Ainsworth’s, that right?”

“I think, yes, but I couldn’t see that part of the house from where I was just then.”

“Okay. Then the shotgun, what sounded like a shotgun, and by the time you got to the garage Ainsworth was down, and you hear the garage door opening. You see two men running, both with what you say were rifles, and then one turned on you, and that’s when you fired shots three and four?”

“Yup. Two head shots.”

“Why not double taps?”

“I was angry. I thought, gee, maybe I should shoot them in the nuts, but no, I had to do it the hard way.”

“I see. And after that?”

“I started looking for survivors.”

“Anything you want to add?”

“No.”

“If you think of anything…”

“I’ll call you, slick.”

“You need anything?”

He coughed once, then looked up and laughed – shook his head and turned away before he said what he wanted to say. What he needed so say.

He felt her by his side a few minutes later, sitting there on the grass. She was looking at his hands and he looked down, saw blood all over them and he wondered when that had happened.

“Damn,” he said. “I don’t remember how I got blood on…”

“Ainsworth,” one of the paramedics said as he walked by. “You were doing CPR on him.”

“Hmm,” he said. “Weird, ya know? I don’t remember doing that.” He turned and looked at her, saw the expression on her face, in her eyes. “You know, there are guys that have been here twenty years and never drawn a gun. Now there’s you. Two weeks and two down. If you’re not careful, you’re going to develop a reputation.”

“I was thinkin’, you know. I wanted to…I think I got into this because…”

“I know.”

“I think I’m going to turn in my letter. Go back to teaching.”

He shook his head. “No. No, you’re not.”

“Oh?”

“You’re not, because I’m not going to let you.”

“You won’t let me?”

“Yup.”

“And why not?”

He turned and looked her in the eye: “Because, you’re too good a cop.”

She looked at him, let his words roll around in her mind for a while. “You know,” she said, “I hope I never meet your wife.”

“Oh?”

“It’ll be a bitch telling her how much I love you.”

He nodded his head, looked down and laughed. “Wait’ll you meet my old man.”

Part IV: Images and Echoes of Other Dreams

First Image: Ice, in mud

He was, along with every other Traffic Division officer, on duty that night.

New Years Eve.

DUI checkpoints on all the major ‘party-hearty’ roadways, every available patrol car working radar, working the highways – but it was 28 degrees out – and a light drizzle was falling. Bare tree limbs turning white as ice coated them, streets and sidewalks glazing over rapidly, and by 2200 hours the streets were, he thought, good for only one thing: ice skating.

Everyone was inside drinking, getting ready for Dick Clark to make his annual Times Square Countdown, and he knows by the time people get out to their cars they’ll find themselves smack-dab in the middle of an upside down winter wonderland. Hopefully before they did something really stupid, like start their cars and try to drive home.

Still, he was hopeful. The roads were, so far, remarkably empty, very few people were out and about – yet – and he was in one of the departments new Suburbans. The normal tires had been swapped for winter tires, and he’d just stopped by the garage and had them put on chains. He was good, but how many people in Baja Oklahoma were? On a night like this, Trouble was out and about, ready to make mischief on his appointed rounds.

He rotated his left shoulder, felt bone fragments tearing into muscle and winced, let his arm down slowly and realized he’d been holding his breath. He sighed, took a deep breath and tried not to think about it.

“2141.”

And he knew what the call was even before he picked up the mic.

“41, go.”

“2141, 36B, Greenville and Caruth Haven, officer on the scene advises code 3 not necessary.”

“41, code 5.”

“2141 at 2230 hours.”

He left downtown and got on Central, drove north as quickly as the chains allowed and exited at Caruth Haven, turned right and there it was. Patrol car already had the intersection blocked off, the scene secure, so he was just here for the report. Weird, he thought, because they only called him for the bad ones, and this didn’t look all that bad – then he saw one of the cars.

“Oh, god no…” he groaned, then shook his head – wished he could be anywhere else than here right now.

He gathered his notepad and opened the door, stepped out on the ice and nearly fell before he was halfway out the door. He steadied his fall with outstretched arms and winced, very nearly cried out when his left shoulder took too much weight.

But he managed to walk over to the wrecked gray Maxima and look inside.

The L-T was sitting there. His friend. The watch commander at the Biltmore bust. His sense of religion shattered in the aftermath, then his marriage shattered too. Divorce, almost bankrupt, the L-T had come to him, asked for help. Financial help, anything at all. Help to try and pull his life back together. He’d lent him money, co-signed a couple of loans with him and the L-T had been getting there, slowly, but at least he had some kind of life now, something worth living for.

Then he saw the girl in the passenger seat. Young girl, maybe in her twenties – at least he hoped she was – wearing hooker heels and cheap perfume.

“Hey, L-T…what happened?” But he knew. He could smell the booze on his friend’s breath, on his clothes, in the air, and when his friend looked up at him it was all there, plain to see. Eyes red and glassy, and he’d been crying. The girl was looking away, clearly trying to act bored – which meant she was hiding something. “Okay, hang tight, let me see what’s going on out here.”

He walked over to the officer who’d responded first. “What do you have so far?” he asked them.

“The lieutenant ran the red light,” the officer said.

“Oh, did you observe that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then someone alleges the L-T ran the red light. Is that a more accurate statement?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Any other witnesses?”

“No sir, not yet. I’ve been securing the road.”

“Uh-huh.” He walked over to the other car, an old black Firebird, a real scrote-mobile, and he looked at the two guys in the front seat. Total hooks; scraggly blond hair, house tattoos on their knuckles and forearms – and they were nervous now, watching his every move with angry eyes as he walked up to the driver’s window.

“Howdy,” he said genially. “Reckon either of you can tell me what happened?”

“Yeah, that bastard ran the red light…” the driver said.

“And which bastard would that be, sir?”

“Fuckin’ whack-job in the Maxima.”

“Okay. Can you tell me what happened?”

“We come out of that gas station…”

“Which one?” he asked, starting to sketch the scene.

“That one, there,” he said, pointing across the intersection.

“If you don’t mind, could you sketch where you were, which pump you were at, and what happened next?”

He watched as the driver took the pad, his hands shaking, then he took the pad back when he finished and handed it back. “So, those pumps over on the far side?”

“Yessir.”

“I’ll need both your licenses, as well as your registration and proof of insurance,” he added, and when the driver handed over the papers he looked them over, saw the insurance was expired and for another car, while the passenger said he didn’t have a license. “Nothing? No ID at all?”

“What do you need that for?” the passenger said. “I didn’t do nothin’.”

“Just for the reports, sir. I’ll need some kind of ID.”

The man got his wallet out, handed over his state issued ID card and he took it, thanked them and said he’d be back in a minute. He walked over to the first officer on the scene and looked him over. Young, arrogant, lazy. “Did you bother to ID those guys, run their car?”

“No, sir,” the officer said. “Thought I’d leave that for you.”

“Oh? Well, thanks. Here are the IDs, and here’s the tag number. Run them, now, and get CCHs on both those jokers. And keep your radio volume down.”

He walked over to the gas station and found the attendant inside. “Did you see what happened out there,” he asked.

“Yup. Sure did.”

“What pump did those guys use?”

The attendant pointed at pumps on the other side of the station. Not the ones the driver had indicated.

“How did the car exit the station, sir. Could you sketch it’s path on this diagram?

The man sketched an altogether different route than the driver had, one that put them exiting the station and driving about a hundred yards on the wrong side of the divided roadway before turning south on Greenville. “Do you have a readout you could print up showing me which pump these guys used?”

“Sure,” the man said, and he printed up the receipt, handed it over.

“I’ll just need your name and a phone number sir.”

“The station number okay?”

“Both would be best, sir.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

He walked back out onto the ice, walked gingerly back to the first officer, looking at the contrite little turd as he walked up.

“Driver has warrants, both have CCH for signals 1, 3 and 5.”

“The car?”

“Plates come back on a 77 Mustang…”

“And that car is?”

“Not a Mustang, sir.”

“So, let me get this straight. You’ve got a stolen car over there, driven by a dude with a criminal history including murder, burglary and armed robbery, and with warrants out for his arrest, and you’ve been letting him sit there, watching you, not knowing whether he’s armed or not, for about a half hour. Is that about right?”

“Well, I uh…”

He picked up his radio and called dispatch: “2141, I need the district WC and about three units for back up this location.”

“2141 at 2241 hours.”

He turned to the officer. “Get your 870 and get behind that fuckin’ car, right now,” he growled.

“2141, we have returns on the second ID now.”

“41, go.”

“Suspect Leftwich has an active BOLO and warrant out of Beaumont for Signal 1, signal 3.”

“41, confirm warrant, expedite backup to Code 3.” He looked at the officer and shook his head, knew the kid had no business being out here and wondered what his story was. “I guess you didn’t hear me? 870, cover the rear of the car? Like…now?”

Ten minutes later the bad boys were on their way downtown and he walked over, talked to the district watch commander about the officer’s performance – and the old man shook his head.

“Navy SEAL, thinks he knows it all.”

“He’s a menace, L-T.”

“You’re the third person to tell me that in the last two weeks. Write him up and I’ll send it in to personnel.”

“Who was his FTO?”

“Another SEAL.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. Now, what about Truman?”

“Drunk, but the accident wasn’t his fault.”

“Damn.”

“Yessir.” A DUI for a cop meant immediate termination and loss of certification. Period. State law and no exceptions allowed for any reason, personal or otherwise.

“You know him?” the L-T asked.

“Yessir. We’re friends.”

“Goddamn. You want me to assign this to someone else?”

“No, I got it. I’ll put all my notes with the supplemental, and you should have Nelson assign someone to double check my report, but it’s cut and dried. A rookie patrolman could’ve worked this one. Just not that asswipe,” he said, nodding at the other officer.

He walked to the Suburban a few minutes later, and the SEAL was waiting for him by the front door. He turned on the Olympus Pearlcorder in his shirt pocket as he walked up, smiling as he approached.

“What did you tell the L-T?” the SEAL asked.

“What happened out here.”

“Such as?”

“Dereliction of duty, incompetence, and that you’re a menace to your fellow officers.”

The SEAL grinned. “Oh, is that right?”

“No, it’s not right. Everything about your performance out here tonight was anything but right.”

“Here’s a piece of advice for you, hotshot,” the SEAL said. “Maybe you need to be careful what you say from now on. And who you say it to.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said – but the SEAL was walking away now so he got in the Suburban, pulled out the little Olympus and spoke into it for a few minutes, describing who said what, and why, as well as when and where.

“2141, are you clear for a call?”

“2141, 10/4.”

“2141, DPS advises they have multiple cars in the water on Highway 67, the west span over Lake Ray Hubbard. Two are submerged, no survivors reported.”

“41, code 5.”

“2141, clear and code 5 at 0014 hours.”

He sighed, made his way south to Highway 80, then turned northeast, heading for 67, mindful of the ice now. It was almost an inch thick and snow had started falling; there were cars off the road everywhere he looked and whole neighborhoods were dark from power outages. He heard Lieutenant Nelson call dispatch, report that all accident investigators were now working calls and to get out the reserves, get back-up on the street now. Then Nelson called him.

“205 to 2141.”

“41, go.”

“Don’t let DPS rope you into doing their report. Get back here as fast as you can.”

“10/4.”

“And 41, go to inter-city now, keep me posted.”

“Got it.” He switched over to channel three and called in. “41 to 5, go ahead.”

“Check 6.”

“4.”

He pulled over at the scene on 67, walked over to the DPS trooper and got the low-down, then walked back to to Nelson’s car, took out his Olympus and played the recording.

“Well fuck,” Nelson said. “Nasty little fucker, ain’t he, threatening a brother officer and all.” Nelson grinned, then looked at the scene. “You better get suited up. Need a hand with that shoulder?”

“Yeah, see if the fire department has any tanks handy. I’ve only got one 60 with me.”

“Okay. Oh, I heard Truman was in that wreck on Greenville.”

“Yessir. A 40.”

“Fuck.”

“Yessir.” He walked to the back of the Suburban and got his dry-suit on, and he was about to hook the 60 pound tank to his vest when a fireman arrived with an 80. “Whew,” he said, “thanks.”

“Hey, better you than me…that water’s freezing now. Literally, I mean icing up.”

“Swell.” He pulled his hood on and sealed it, then walked down the highway to where two cars had left the road. Two set of tracks, both yawing left as they tried to steer back onto the highway, and one of them appeared to have begun to flip on it’s top as it entered the water. Someone helped him into his BC and he snapped the vest tight and pulled his mask down, walked into the water, felt pressure as the water pushed in against his skin, but no leaks…

He turned, held out his hand and a fireman threw a safety line out and he caught it, clipped it onto his vest. “Get another ready,” he called out, then he sat down in the water and slipped his fins on, cleared the vest and took a deep breath, put his mouthpiece in and cleared it too. He crab-walked over the slimy boulders below until he was under water, and he turned on his flashlight, started walking along the bottom until, about fifty feet out, he saw the first car. He swam over to it, shined his light inside and saw two kids, maybe five years old, in the back of the station wagon – and both were still alive, breathing in an air pocket at the bag of the wagon.

They couldn’t have much oxygen left, he thought, not enough to mount a rescue operation, and he shone his light in again, looked at one of the kids fingernails. Blue nail-beds, hypoxic already.

He tapped on the glass and one of the kids put his head under the water and saw him. He smiled, pointed at the left side passenger door and made a slamming fist motion, then swam to the door and saw it was locked – so he reached for the rescue hammer strapped to his leg. It took two swings but the glass broke and the pressure inside the wagon broke too, flooding the back.

He had the door open within seconds and swam in, grabbed both kids and pulled them free of the car, then yanked sharply on the safety line, felt sure hands pulling him in. He broke surface and the kids started coughing and gasping, and a dozen firemen and police officers were in the water within seconds, helping him to shore. Both were in deep hypothermia but both were alive, and he asked for slack and submerged again, swimming down to look for the second car.

It was a little orange Honda Civic, resting on it’s top about fifteen feet beyond the station wagon and he swam down, looked in the window, saw all he needed to see for now and swam back to the wagon, looked for the driver and saw an old man face down on the front seat – lifeless. He reached around, unlocked the door and on the off chance felt for a carotid pulse, but no. Nothing. He hauled the man out and pulled gently on the safety line, felt pressure as he was pulled through the water again. When he was almost to the shore he held up two fingers: “Two more,” he said as he handed over the man’s body – before he disappeared under the waves again. He swam back to the Honda and easily opened the door, saw several empty bottles of beer rolling around on the ceiling and shook his head. He pulled a young man out, felt for a carotid pulse then pulled on the safety line, and a few minutes later went back down again, for the young girl he’d seen crammed in the back.

He pulled the girl’s leg and her naked body slipped towards the door and he stopped, looked at the knife wounds on her hands, the slit throat. Defensive wounds on her arms and hands – and why was she naked, in this weather? He closed the door, pulled sharply on the safety line, felt himself jetting through the water, breaking the surface a few feet from the rocky shoreline. He pushed his mask up on his forehead, treading water.

“Is this DPS’s call?”

A trooper on the rocks called back: “It’s mine. What do you have?”

“Homicide is my guess. Naked, slit throat, defensive wounds on her hands and arms. Probably better to tow the car up intact, preserve what evidence might be left?”

“Like what?”

“Semen would be my guess. Pulling her body through the water might wash away anything like that.”

“Fuck.”

“Anyway, you think about it while we get the first car hooked up.” He swam up to shore and took a metal tow line from the wrecker driver, then swam down to the wagon, secured it to the rear tow hook and swam around the car one more time, saw a kid’s teddy bear resting on the muddy bottom and picked it up. He surfaced and gave a thumb’s up to the wrecker driver and swam clear of the towline, then watched the wagon slide clear of the water, then up onto the roadway.

“Just leave the body in the car,” the trooper called out and he swam over and took the towline down again, swam around to the front and hooked it up. He looked the scene over, then surfaced again. “Car on the roof. One more line, please,” he called out before he took the second line down and hooked it to the rear axle. Back on the surface he called out “Take in line one!” and he watched the Honda spin on it’s roof. “Okay, take in two,” and he watched as the Honda flipped over on it’s tires. “Okay, hold on while I let the second line go.”

He swam down, released the second tow line and pulled it clear, surfaced and called out: “Okay, she should come in easy now.” He walked up the rocky bank as the Honda rolled up the incline, but he stood there a moment, then turned and dove back into the water, swam down to the bottom. He could see where both cars had been and he swam around, poking in the mud as he moved along inches above the bottom.

His eyes caught something, a flash, an impression, and he swam over to a large rock, swept his beam of light around the area. A knife. Serrated edge, eight inch blade. He picked it up, put it in his vest pocket and swam back up to the rocks and climbed out. When he saw the trooper waiting he walked over to him.

“Got an evidence bag handy?” he said, opening his pocket.

The trooper took the knife, shaking his head – and he walked back to the Suburban, found Nelson still there, waiting for him. He looked around, saw the ambulances were gone and turned to his L-T.

“How’re the kids?” he asked.

“Girl was shocky, they did CPR once, got a rhythm and took off for Parkand. The boy’s fine.”

“Hot damn! We got lucky tonight.”

“Yes, they did.”

“What time is it?” he asked, unzipping his dry-suit and climbing out of it.

“Not quite three.”

“Shit, how long was I in the water?”

“‘Bout two hours, I’d say. You cold?”

“No, not with this fleece. I was sweating in there. Feels good out here.”

Nelson shook his head. “Better you than me, Ace.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?”Second Image: Shadows in the dark light of day

Cleared after the Biltmore shoot, he and Desjardins saddled up for their last week riding together, and if he signed-off on her she’d go to deep nights for six weeks, then to days for six weeks. After that she’d go to traffic, probably with someone other than him for a week, then to CID for a week. She’d be assigned a district and a shift after that, but ride two-up for another year, and if she passed all that she’d be cut loose – to a car of her own, a beat of her own.

“You feel like driving tonight?” she asked as they walked out of the station.

“You don’t, I take it?”

“No, not really.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said as he put his dive gear in the truck. She did the walk-around, checked flare and cones and the 870, then got in the right door and buckled up. He got in and looked at the expression on her face, shook his head and checked into service, then took off down Illinois, heading for 67. “What’s the problem?” he said a moment later.

She sighed, looked out the window at traffic, then turned to him. “It’s your father.”

“Oh?” he said, slowing for a stop light.

“I think I’m in love with him.”

He turned to her, grinning. “About goddamn time, Deb.”

“What?”

“Why do you think I invited you over there? I was hoping something like this might happen…”

“You…what?”

The light turned green and he took off, turned on Zang then slipped onto the freeway. “Yeah, I mean, why not? He’s lonely and you’re cute as hell? It’s a match made in heaven, right?”

“You think I’m cute as hell?”

“Look, Deb, I told you day one if I wasn’t married…ya know?”

“But you are, right?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Are you two doing okay? Arguing a lot?”

He looked at her, frowned. “It shows, huh?”

“Like a fucking bonfire.”

“It’s been going on a while. She wants me to quit, start flying again.”

“So? Why don’t you?”

“I dunno. Maybe I like it out here, ya know?”

She shook her head. “That’s insane. You ought be outta here, like yesterday.”

“You think so?”

“I do, but here’s the real problem. I want you so much it hurts.”

He looked at her again, frowned, shook his head.

“I’m not kiddin, Ace. I’ve had it bad for you, real bad, since about the second week.”

“That’s half infatuation and half Stockholm Syndrome…”

“Stockholm…? Why do you say that?”

“‘Cause I’m holding you hostage. Your career is in my hands, remember?”

She laughed. “I’m trying to be serious.”

“Yeah? Well, so am I. I’m here to train you, get you ready for a life out here. I’m not here to fall in love,, and neither are you.”

“So? Have you?”

“What? Fallen in love with you?”

“Yeah?”

He turned, looked at the road for a long time, not saying a word, then he looked at her and shook his head. “What makes you say that,” he said, softly.

“I see things. I see things, like in your eyes.”

“Look, I care for you, alright? But that doesn’t mean I’ve fallen in love with you. Okay? Got it?”

She nodded her head, looked away. “Yup.”

“Goddamn…I wish you were butt-ugly and had a face full of zits…but oh no, you had to be so fuckin’ cute it makes my heart ache. You had to have a voice that makes me melt. And yeah, I could fall in love with you in a heartbeat, but you know what? Ain’t gonna happen. It just is not going to happen.”

“You know what? You keep telling yourself that and you just might get around to believin’ it – but I doubt it.”

“2141?”

“41, go.”

“2141, signal 53, possible 14. Reporting person is a pilot landing on Runway 17 at RedBird, advises a gold sedan is parked in the trees off Mountain Springs, possible in-progress 14.”

“41, code 2.”

“2141 at 1615.”

“2110 code 2.”

He exited on Ledbetter, tore down to Old Hickory and made a hard, sliding left, yawing on the gravel and correcting, and seconds later they were on scene.

“Check us out,” he said, bailing out of the Ford just as it slid to a stop. Gun drawn, he ran past the gold Mercury Montego and she saw him skid to a stop – then turn around, laughing.

She ran up, heard music playing from a boom box and then saw a teenager – fucking a blow-up sex doll – complete with blanket spread out on the ground and a six-pack of beer in a cooler.

The kid was oblivious, and when the sergeant pulled up they walked over and explained what was going on…

“No shit?”

“No shit. Yet, anyway.”

They all walked up just as the kid was in the short strokes, grunting away like a pig, then blasting away into PVC ecstasy, and the three of them burst out in applause…

The kid rolled over, going from pure white to crimson in seconds.

“I give him a ten on form, but a three on the exit,” he said.

“And the East German judge gives him a five! Boo-hiss!” Desjardins said, and the kid was staring at her now, devastated.

The sergeant walked up to the kid slowly. “Do you have a permit for that sex doll, young man?”

“Uh…w-w-hat?”

“Do you have a permit for that sex doll? In order to use a sex doll in public, you have to have a permit.”

“Uh…n-no, I didn’t know…”

“Well, that’s a felony you’ve just committed. Did you use a rubber, at least?”

“What?”

“A rubber? Did you take steps to insure you don’t get that doll pregnant?”

Desjardins turned and staggered back to the car, trying not to let the kid see her laugh.

“Look, the last thing we need is for a bunch of pregnant sex dolls to start showing up at Parkland. No permit. No rubber. What kind of irresponsible young man are you, anyway?”

“What? Dolls can’t get pregnant!”

“Can too. Why do you think the state requires a permit?”

The sergeant turned to him: “Get his ID, call it in.”

He walked close and the kid lunged at him, tried to grab his gun and the sergeant took out the kid’s arm with his nightstick, pulled him up and slammed him into the Mercury and cuffed him.

“2141, 27, 29 on subject.” He called in the kid’s information, and while they waited for the return he started talking to the kid. “Why’d yo do that?” he asked.

“I ain’t got no permit. I don’t want to go to no jail. I know what they do to kids like me in jail…”

“Oh? Been to jail before?”

“Been to joovey. Couple times.”

“What for?”

“Jackin’ off.”

“Jackin’ off? Where?”

“House next door. I sneak in, jack off on Mrs Zimmermann’s panties.”

“Still doin’ that?”

“Not as much as I used to.”

“2141?”

“41, go.”

“Subject clear, negative 29, negative 27.”

“41, 28 on Paul George Ida – 283.”

“Standby.”

The kid looked nervous now and he walked over to him, looked in his eyes. “Where’d you get the car, Ronnie?”

“What car?”

“2141, have returns.”

He motioned for Desjardins and took the kid by the belt and walked him over to the patrol car. “This kid’s about to rabbit on us,” he said. “Lets get him in the back.”

“I ain’t gonna run…”

“I know you’re not.”

“Then why?”

“It’s air conditioned. You look hot.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

Once he was strapped in he reached inside and turned off the radio, then went out and called dispatch. “2141, go ahead.”

“Vehicle reported stolen two days ago by registered owner, Zimmermann, Edna, 3001 Gladiolus, city.”

The sergeant walked up, shook his head. “What do you think his mental status is?”

“IQ about the same as a head of lettuce?” Desjardins said.

“Yeah. My thought too,” the sergeant said.

He looked at them, shook his head, “I think we need to get to that house, check it out.”

“Why?” the sergeant asked.

“My guess? The kid killed her, took some money, bought the doll and came out here.”

The sergeant nodded his head. “I’ll follow you.”

He got behind the wheel, turned on the radio. “2141, 10-95 one, code five to address on 28 for a 54.”

“2141 at 1643.”

“2110, I’ll be with 41.”

“1643.”

It wasn’t far. A few blocks, a few turns. A nondescript beige brick house, tan shingles, brown trim around the windows and doors – just like most of the other houses in the neighborhood. Front door locked, back doors too, but when he looked in a bedroom window he saw the woman on her bed, hands tied behind her back with pantyhose, her neck twisted at an unnatural angle, her body starting to bloat as it decomposed.

“2141, need the ME this location, and a truck with hazmat suits for a Signal 60 evac, possible signal 1. If someone from juvenile could come down, too?”

“41 at 1650.”

“2110, get two units over here for traffic control.”

“1651.”

He walked back to the car, got in the driver’s seat and pulled out his Miranda Card and read through the kid’s rights. “You understand what I just read you, Ronnie?”

“Yeah.”

“When did you kill her?”

“I didn’t kill her. I was just going to scare her.”

“Did you stick your thing in her, Ronnie?”

He nodded his head. “Yeah. But I didn’t mean it to…it just kind of happened.”

“Did she know you took her car?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Firetrucks rolled up a moment later and he left the kid with the sergeant.

“Better you than me,” the sergeant said, laughing.

He led Desjardins to the truck and they put on bright yellow hazardous materials suits, but she looked at him like he was nuts…

“Trust me,” he said, and when they were sealed-in the suits they walked up to the front door.

“No air conditioner going,” a fireman said.

“I know.”

“Hey, better you than me…”

“I know.”

The fireman put a huge pry bar up to the lock and pushed a little – and the door knob exploded, fell to the concrete porch and scattered – and he pushed the door open, walked in.

“This way,” he said to Desjardins. “Bedroom’s back here.” He walked up to the door, saw it was closed. “God damn,” he moaned.

“What?”

“Look, I can’t do this to you.”

“What? What can’t you do?”

“I can’t let you open that door.”

“What? Why?” she said, reaching for the knob.

“Don’t do it, Deb. I mean it.”

She stopped. “What are you saying?”

“Look, every rookie gets one of these, but I just can’t do it to you.”

“What?”

“When you open the door air pressure in the room changes. The skin ruptures…basically…the body explodes. It’s fuckin’ awful.”

“Did you do it? When you were a rookie?”

“Yeah, and they sent me in without a suit. Had to burn the uniform.”

“Then it’s my turn, isn’t it?”

“I don’t want you to.”

“Why? You protecting me?”

He turned away.

“I knew it. You do love me. Don’t you?”

He turned and looked at her. “I told you. I care for you.”

“No! Say it. Tell me that you love me.”

He shook his head. “Don’t do this to me, Deb.”

“Then shut the fuck up and teach me how to do my job.”

“Okay. Right. Look, that shit is going to fly everywhere, so the trick is to open the door and jump back…”

“But if I go back out there without that shit all over me, they’re going to know you warned me, right?”

He nodded his head. “Right.”

“So? You’d better stand back.”

“Nope. You’re not doing this alone.”

She turned and looked at him again.

“I wish you were a man.”

“What?”

“Man enough to tell me the truth – how you feel about me.”

“Actions speak louder than words, Deb.”

He took her hand – and she reached out for the doorknob.Third Image: Broken dreams

He was sitting at an exercise machine, working his shoulder back and forth, up and down – with two pounds of resistance – about all the joint could take today. His physical therapist was a real charmer too, he thought. Like a Marine Corps drill sergeant is charming.

“Come on. Don’t cheat…move that joint all the way up.”

He was sweating, cursing under his breath.

“You pussy! My Aunt Gladys can do better than that!”

“Does your Aunt Gladys have four fucking pounds of stainless steel in her fucking shoulder, you cunt!”

She laughed. “That’s the spirit! Come on, fight through the pain…that’s it, FIGHT!”

They worked ten more minutes, then she took his temp and BP and wrote them down on a chart. She handed him a towel then she rolled him back to his room, and a nurse came by and they helped him up into the bed, his left femur still not ready to take any weight.

“So,” she said, “you’re with the PD? A motor-jock? What happened?”

“Working radar, truck went by, down there, on Harry Hines. Just robbed a store. They blew by and I had them on radar at close to 70, then the BOLO comes out. Anyway, some clown starts shooting at me…”

“I remember. You went through Snyder’s windshield, right?”

“Yup. That’s me.”

“Thirty six fractures. Man, you are going to be a human barometer.”

“So my wife tells me.”

“How long have you been in here?”

“Five weeks now.”

“That’s right,” the drill sergeant said, suddenly making a connection, “your wife’s a doc here too, right? Internal medicine?”

“Yup…and speak of the devil, here she is now!” His wife walked in – in green scrubs and a lab coat – and he looked at her. “Scrubs? What gives?”

“Your dad did one of my patients this morning, and he let me scrub-in and watch.”

“Fun. Ready for another residency?”

She laughed. “Not quite. Oh, he and Deb are going to come down in about a half hour, she’s bringing in some Chinese.”

“Ah…awesome. I’ve been craving…”

“I know. I gave her the list.”

The drill sergeant stood, excused herself, but not before she told him she’d be by at ten tomorrow morning – for a little more fun, she said – a little too sadistically.

“I can’t wait.”

She turned to him after the therapist left, tried to smile. “Your white counts are weird. Need to do a few more tests.”

“Another needle. Oh, I can’t wait.”

“I know.”

“Weird, huh. Is that one of those fancy new medical terms?”

She came and sat on the edge of the bed, ran her fingers through his hair, shook her head. “What am I going to do with you.”

“A blowjob would be nice?”

She laughed. “You’d say anything to get me to do that, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Sorry. No can do.”

“Yeah, me too.”

She turned away, looked at his most recent vitals on the board. “Still running a fever?”

“All night. Look, if you have someplace you’d rather be, you don’t need to hang around.”

“No, no, I wanted to see Deb. It’s been a while, ya know?”

“Have you seen her since the wedding?”

“Once, I think, right after the accident.”

“How’s your – friend?”

“She’s fine.”

“Are you staying over there now?”

She nodded her head. “Sometimes.”

“It’s funny, ya know. If I’d lost you to another guy – I think I could understand that better.”

She looked at him, a little too defiantly, he thought. Gloating, maybe? Like: what did you expect? Gone all the time, never home. Not one vacation in the last three years. But why –why with a woman? Something else he’d missed along the way?

“Things happen, I guess,” she sighed.

Deb and his father came in a little before noon and they talked about life outside the hospital for a while, and Deb talked about all the usual BS going on the department, but he found himself looking at the ring on her finger more than once, and at how good she looked. Happy, he thought, and his father looked happier than he’d seen in years. Maybe ever – and that made him happy too. Then he looked at his wife and he felt like he’d lost something precious, even vital, while a world beyond reach began spinning out of control.

And soon enough both his wife and father excused themselves, he to make rounds, she to see patients. Once they were gone he looked at Deb, and she hadn’t taken her eyes off him in minutes.

“Your father told me about what’s going on,” she said, out of nowhere. “With Carol, is it?”

“You didn’t know?”

“No.”

“Good. That means I wasn’t the last to find out.” She laughed, and he did too, a little. “How’s Dad doing? Treating you alright?”

“He’s an amazing man, took me flying last week.”

“Ah. Where to?”

“Uvalde.”

“I guess he told you that part of the story?”

She nodded her head. “Sad.”

“You know, my mother knew. Everything, all along, when I was growing up. Never said a word about it.”

“I think I would have liked her.”

“I suspect she knows you now, somehow. I can’t imagine a little thing like death keeping her from taking care of Dad.”

“He loves you, you know. The accident scared him to death. He cried for days, until you were lucid.”

“I can’t imagine what life would be like without him. You do love him, don’t you?”

“I do. More than you’ll ever know, but never as much as I’ll love you.”

“You know, when she came in, a while ago, she asked if she could do anything for me…and I said, sure, how about a blowjob? She just walked away, too. I guess it hit me then. She was never into things like that. Never once, in ten years, did she ever do anything like that. Said it was revolting.”

“Yup, she’s a lesbian alright.”

They laughed, for a long time.

“So, would you like it if I…?”

“Like what?”

“Give you a blowjob?”

“Nope. I love you too much to put you through that kind of guilt.”

“And what if I love you too much to let you lay their suffering.”

“Look at me? I’m not going to push you away – but only because I can’t. But I will ask you not to, as nicely as I can. Again, because I love you, and I love my father. And I know this much, Deb. If it’s meant to be, between us, it will be. I’m willing to wait, if you are.”

“You’re a Boy Scout, you know that? Too nice. To a fault.”

“So are you. A Girl Scout, I mean,” he said, laughing a little.

“What are you going to do?”

“What? Now? Get into PT, get my body back. Six months, that’s the word. Six months and back to unrestricted duty…”

“No.”

“No – what?”

“No, as in no more duty. No more department. Take a medical, retire, move on. It’s time, and you know it…”

“No, it’s not, and I know it.”

“It’s going to kill your father…if you go back. You have no idea how much he worries. Your becoming a cop was childish, infantile, a need to act out cops and robbers fantasies, a need for adoration…”

“Adoration?”

“Yes, adoration. Can’t you see that? All you’ve wanted, your whole life, is to fly. Your father told me…in the middle of your second year in med school you dropped out, you dropped out because you got a position flying. Who does that? And then, when that was taken from you, you start this whole cop bullshit? Why”

“I thought it would be fun?”

“Fun? Bullshit. Think about it? Up in the cockpit, everyone adoring you, all those stripes on your sleeve, walking through terminals. Then that gun and badge, and wherever you walk, people…”

“If you say adoring me I’m gonna puke. It’s more like the exact opposite…”

“Sure. Tell it to that kid. What was his name? Jason? At the Biltmore shoot. That’s real adoration, in case you didn’t know it…”

He looked at her, shook his head. “How’d we get from blowjobs to taking me down a notch?”

She rushed to the bed, took his hand and kissed it. “Oh, my love, I’m not taking you down. I want you to do what you were always meant to do. Can’t you see that? I’m trying to protect you, and your father, from all this childishness.”

“Policing isn’t childishness…”

She sighed. “No, it isn’t, but your doing the job is like living out a child’s fantasies. Your father told me with your grades, your MCAT scores, going back to med school was still a possibility, but even if you couldn’t, there are so many other things you could’ve done. Why go out there and put your life on the line – everyday? Why do it? What were you trying to prove?”

“Deb, you know as well as anyone it’s a war out there. A war that’s been raging since the beginning of time. Good and evil, right and wrong. If everyone turns away from their responsibilities, to insure we aren’t overrun by evil, well, then evil wins. I’m just doing my part. Giving back. I feel that in my bones, too, and that’s the God’s honest truth of it.”

She looked at him, blinked her eyes then nodded her head a little.

“Okay. I can buy that. But even so, you’ve given enough. Done enough. It’s time to move on. You’ve been walking the razor’s edge for years. You need to move on. Too many people…need you.”

There came a gentle knock on the door, and she walked over, opened it a little. She saw an older man, little Ben Franklin glasses perched low on his sunburned nose, and a young woman standing behind him in the corridor, but the man looked over Deborah’s shoulders into the room.

“Hey? Rookie? What the fuck are you doing in bed? Time to get up and get dressed…we got work to do!”

“Eddie?” he whispered, his voice full of wonder. “Ed Fuckin’ MacCarley! Oh my fuckin’ God! Eddie! What are you doing here?”Forth Image: Flames and mud

He had his favorite spots. Like fishing holes, he’d once thought. Places where he liked to sit up and, with radar gun in hand, watch traffic, waiting for ‘the big one.’ The 60 in a 30. The 45 in a school zone. The really egregious violations.

It was called ‘stroking.’ As in, ‘yeah, I got a good one out there today, stroked him for 75 in a 55.’ Or: she got a double stroke – meaning two tickets, or the dreaded ‘triple stroke’: three tickets, three strokes for the truly big assholes. The more a ‘scrote bitched and moaned, the more strokes he got – simple as that. Nice people usually got away with one, or even a warning.

He sat up in the shade of an old pecan tree and pulled out the radar gun from the Harley’s saddlebag and went through the calibration procedure again, the bike balanced between his legs, a light breeze blowing on this sunny Spring afternoon. ‘God, what a glorious day!’ he said to himself – and he closed his eyes, felt the wind sifting across his arms, over his face.

He was on a two lane road that approached a school playground, set up where the speed limit dropped from 45 to 30 – and he looked down the road, saw a little red car headed in at close to 70; he watched as the car passed the 30MPH sign and pulled the trigger.

“72,” he grinned – and the little car’s brakes locked up, the driver looking at him as she skidded past. He put on his strobes and pulled out behind her, but she was already pulling off the road into a faculty parking lot at the school. He pulled in behind her and killed the strobes, then checked out on traffic with dispatch and dismounted, approached the car.

He saw blond hair, long, wavy blond hair – and black skin. As he got close: long legs and purple fishnet stockings, a gold lamé dress – and the shoes, too. Big hands, and aircraft carrier sized shoes.

“Yes, good afternoon…” he began, scanning the car for weapons.

“Well, it was. It sho ain’t now,” the woman said, lightly laughing.

“Yes, well, you were observed doing 72 in a 30, and I’ll need to see you license and proof of financial responsibility.” He watched her closely now…hand on his Sig.

She opened her purse, pulled out a license and an insurance card and handed them to him.

He looked at the license and did a double take. “Uh, it says your name is Harlan T Polk. Is this your license – that your name?”

“Yes it is,” he said, his voice now a deep baritone. “Any problem with that, officer?”

He bit his cheeks, tried not to laugh as he walked back to the Harley. “Uh, 2141, need 27, 28 and 29 on…” he said as he called out the driver’s and vehicle information, then he added. “I’m out on a female, black, in a gold lamé dress in heels.”

When dispatch read out Polk’s information the radio erupted in squelch pops, a sure sign that everyone knew what was going down, and sure enough, by the time he finished writing up Polk’s citation two patrol cars drove by, officer’s hooting as they passed.

He walked back to the car and handed over the ticket book. “Press hard, you’re making three copies,” he repeated – as he did for all his paying customers, then he took the ticket book back and tore out Polk’s copy, handing it to him. “By the way,” he continued, “I’ve heard that talking in a falsetto like that really damages your vocal cords, and there’s an increased risk of cancers in the throat associated with it.”

Polk looked up at him like he had just stepped out of the mothership and said ‘Take me to your leader.’ “You for real?”

“Yessir. I read that in an Otolaryngology Journal a few months ago.”

“You what?”

“There are speech coaches that can help you with this, over at Parkland.”

“Say what?”

“Where were you going, I mean, why so fast?”

“I’m late…for one of my customers, if you know what I mean…”

“Ah…well, you have a good afternoon, Ma’am, and please try to drive more safely.”

Polk shook his head, rolled up his window and drove off – slowly – and he walked back to the Harley – shaking his head, too.

A patrol car pulled up, windows rolled down.

“Was she cute, at least?” the FTO in the passenger seat asked.

“Not my type,” he said. “Hands too big, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, you like them trannies with teeny peckers?”

“Yeah, man,” he said, grinning, and everyone laughed.

“You get many of those?” the rook behind the wheel asked.

“No, not many. A couple, I think, in the last year.”

“How did you keep from shooting it?” the rookie said next, and he looked at the boy’s FTO. The old man scowled, rolled up his window and they drove off while he mounted the bike and started the engine. He cleared from traffic, stowed his ticket book and the radar, then rode off for another fishin’ hole.

Another good one, too. An alleyway, heavily shaded, and another speed transition zone. He was about to open his saddlebag when he saw a car headed his way…weaving across two lanes of traffic…and he saw two black men in the front seat. As their car passed he saw one man with a glass pipe in his mouth, then a sudden fiery flare-up coming from the pipe.

Free-basing? While driving? He called into dispatch: “2141, signal 61 on traffic, southbound Clark at Big Stone, two male blacks – and get a unit headed this way.”

“1310 hours.”

He pulled in behind the black Camaro and it was obvious the driver had no idea who was behind him, let alone why. There was a small strip shopping center ahead and he flipped on his strobes, and – still – no reaction.

Just another fireball, this time from the driver’s seat.

He saw a patrol car ahead, in the shopping center – but they apparently didn’t – and he flipped on his siren, finally causing an – immediate – reaction. Paraphernalia started flying out the window, most into the hands of the officer standing by his patrol car’s door, then the driver decided it was time to try and flee. His speed leapt from an annoying 20 to, perhaps, 35, but the kid obviously couldn’t see well, at least well enough to see the lane markers – or the sharp curve in the road ahead.

The Camaro left the road at 43 miles an hour and nosed into a very deep drainage ditch. And both were not wearing seat belts, as it happened. He checked out on traffic, called for an ambulance as three patrol cars screeched to a stop behind his Harley. Five officers, three with shotguns, emerged – and advanced in a line on the steaming Camaro. Guns aimed, spreading out as they approached – he joined the advance, then crawled down into the ditch, and down to the passenger’s door – and he looked in.

“Y’all might as well start traffic control,” he said to men above,“because these kids are about 99% dead.”

“Well, shit,” one of them, the rookie from earlier that afternoon, said, “thought we was gonna get to shoot us some coons.”

He looked at the FTO again, then walked over to him. “You need to get this kid off the street, now. He has no business being out here, and you know it.”

The man nodded his head. “I know, but my hands are tied on this one.”

“Yeah? Well, y’all just go on. Really. Get him away from me.”

They left, the rookie still driving, and he walked back to the Camaro, got down to the bottom of the muddy ditch and felt for a pulse on the driver’s neck, but the neck flopped over, obviously broken when it impacted the steering wheel, so he crawled around to the passenger’s door and reached in. Firm, steady pulse, barely conscious…

“Hey, amigo, can you hear me?”

“Yeah…what happened, man?”

“You’ve been in an accident. Try and hold still, we’ll get you out of here in a second, okay?”

“Yeah…like where am I?”

“Don’t worry about that now, just try to hold still…the firemen are here now…so just hang on…” he made way for firemen and paramedics as they jumped down into the muddy ditch and he crawled up the steep bank – just as another patrol car drove up.

He smiled. Dickinson, The Duke, another kid he’d trained two years ago.

“Hey,” he said as he walked over to Dickinson’s patrol car, “they finally took the training wheels off your car, huh?”

“Yeah, solo – three months. What is this shit, anyway?”

“Total clusterfuck,” he said, running down the sequence of events.

“Well, fuck-a-doodle-doo,” Dickinson said, holding up an evidence bag full of paraphernalia – and two baggies full of white powder, “lookie what I found?”

“Holy shit…what say we go pull this car apart and see what else we find…?”

It turned into a long night.

Fifth Image: Interceptor

Betty Sue Rollins walked out to her ‘63 Rambler Cross Country station wagon – with two buckets full of the Colonel’s Secret Recipe fried chicken in a big paper sack – and she put the chicken behind her seat and got in her car, started the motor and drove through the parking lot for the exit…

Mark Tyler was stopped at the red light on his brand now Honda VF1000F “Interceptor”, revving the engine with sharp, sudden twists of the wrist, and when the light turned green he hammered the throttle and dropped the clutch –and the Interceptor popped into a ‘wheelie’ for a second, then rocketed away from the intersection. He looked down, for a split second, and saw he was passing a hundred – when something caught his eye…

A beige station wagon, pulling into the road just ahead –

Before his mind had a chance to register the event, before his hands and feet could react and engage the Honda’s brakes, the motorcycle penetrated the driver’s door – at what would later be measured between 127 and 129 miles per hour.

The motorcycle penetrated the drivers door and metal was fused to metal in the instantaneous friction of the collision. The motorcycle’s engine and chassis collided with Betty Sue Rollins, vaporizing her torso and arms, literally, leaving her dancer’s legs intact – severed from mid-femur down.

The Rambler slid a few inches to it’s right, but the overwhelming force lifted the left side up and the car began to flip, sideways, through the air. Tyler’s abdomen and legs were fusing to metal at this point, his chest and head arcing down into the car’s roof, the force great enough for his face to break through the thin metal roof, flesh fusing to metal again, in the process. When the overturning motion was complete the Rambler slid on it’s roof another forty three feet, grinding Tyler’s head and chest into the concrete roadway well before the car stopped sliding.

Witnesses and onlookers ran up to the Rambler and stopped dead in their tracks; most turned away in horror, a few dropped to their knees and vomited. The first patrolmen on the scene blocked off the scene, called for more units – and an accident investigator.

It was Sunday, and his day off when the pager started beeping. He was sitting with his father and Deb by the pool, but he was on-call and in uniform, his Harley waiting in the driveway out front. He went inside and called dispatch, wrote down the particulars and turned, saw his father standing there – his old man’s hopes dashed one more time.

“You have to leave, I take it?” his father asked.

“Yup.”

“I suppose you’re getting back at me. For all the times I left, when you were growing up?”

He walked over to his father, hugged him. “Look, I’m happy for you, for you both. Have you set a date yet?”

“Christmas Eve. I’m hoping you’ll be able to drop by,” his old man added – more than a little sarcastically.

He laughed, a little, then leaned over and kissed Deb on the cheek. “Gee. Bye – Mom…”

Everyone laughed at that, and he walked out to the Harley and got on, checked in service – and his father jogged over, put his hands on his son’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you, son,” his father said, and they both choked-up a little bit.

“You know? That’s the first time you’ve ever said something like that to me?”

“I know. I know, and I’m sorry.”

They looked at one another and he slipped the transmission into first and let go of the moment, flipped on his strobes and siren, riding through Sunday afternoon traffic out Preston to Royal Lane. The area already secured, he surveyed the scene and made his measurements, took his photographs, then called in, asked for a department photographer to bring some High Speed Infrared and a Wratten 25A filter on an 85mm lens. He talked to witnesses, dozens, as it turned out, and every recounted version was uniformly the same: high speed acceleration for a few hundred yards, perhaps two seconds, then a shattering impact.

Another one for lawyers, he sighed. Cumulative negligence. The driver of the Rambler: failing to yield right of way; the rider: speeding, obviously, but reckless conduct as well. Insurance companies and their lawyers would struggle to apportion blame, divvy up all the various liabilities, but he looked at the senselessness of the scene, again, and wondered what it would take to stop the carnage?

The boy? Seventeen years old. His motorcycle endorsement not even a month old. The bike: three hours off the showroom floor, a father’s last words to his son – “be careful out there.” Rollin’s son called to the scene, his breakdown immediate – followed by murderous rage. News crews walking the scene, their camera men walking behind reporters all imaging the carnage, interviewing the boy’s father, the mother’s son. All the tears, all the anger, and it would all be forgotten by tomorrow morning – and by next weekend he would be at another scene almost identical to this one. More father’s burying sons, more grandmothers and aunts and uncles would be driven to the basement at Parkland for autopsies in an endless parade of gasoline fueled misery. Happy motoring! He said to himself, then:

“Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends…”

He couldn’t, of course, rely on witness statements to establish the motorcycle’s velocity – not speed, mind you, but velocity. He would have to derive that using simple physics, and he had to make sure he had all the vectors to make that formula work. All the approach vectors, all the departure vectors, the coefficients of friction: for the roadway, for the car’s roof – and he’d have to establish a baseline acceleration vector, too, but he’d have to wait, do that tomorrow – with a real Honda. A new one, with the intersection blocked off. That exercise would take more hours, more traffic units. Then he’d autopsy the bike, in order to derive an additional speed estimate, this time by measuring front fork deflection and deformation.

Once Rollins’ body was removed he had the department’s wrecker hook up to the Rambler, tow it up to 30 miles an hour, then cut it free, slide to a stop, with Tyler’s body still fused to the metal, and he measured the distance it took the car to stop and wrote that figure down. He took a patrol car and did the same thing, measuring the braking distance to determine a baseline coefficient of friction for the concrete. He measured everything about the roadway. He observed the traffic signals, for sequencing and nominal operation. He marked locations of everything from witnesses to stopped cars. Everything there when the event took place.

This preliminary part of his investigation took five hours, then he rode downtown to Central, to his office in the Traffic annex, and he fixed coffee then laid out all his notes on the huge drafting table. There were no computers to help him with the math, no drawing programs or pre-packaged Accident Investigation programs to do the work for him; in fact, the courts insisted that all the math be done in pencil on paper, so that each step could be checked for error.

With his notes on the table he drafted the scene, in pencil, right down to the correct radius for each corner, all the medians too, then the exact placement of traffic signals and drain openings, the locations of man hole covers and every surface irregularity he’d noted on the pavement – right down to large cracks in the concrete.

Two hours later he began placing vehicles and witnesses on the drawing, down to the inch, noting where they were located at the time of impact. He penciled in the approach angles, then the departure angles, and with that established he began to construct the vector diagram he would use in his ‘conservation of linear momentum’ calculations.

Using an H-P 41 calculator he ran through the math, arrived at a speed of 129, then he filled out the State accident form, reducing the accident to a series of simple written explanations. With that complete he started in on the much more detailed, infinitely more complex departmental forms, and all his notes and completed drawings were folded up and put in a large manilla envelope, attached to this report, then put in the L-Ts in-box. Fifteen hours after he sat down at his drafting table, twenty one hours after he took the call, he left the station and rode home – just as the sun started to peek above the horizon.

She was gone by then, of course. An angry note on the corkboard by the refrigerator signaling her cold fury, her growing contempt for his lingering absences. He groaned, walked to the little bedroom he was sleeping in now, and he fell into a deep sleep – as images of crashing motorcycles pushed their way into his dreams.

Sixth Image: That’s the way heroes go

Her belongings were boxed up, waiting for movers to come by and pick them up, and he walked around the house looking at a world without her in it. Only his pictures on the walls now – her’s all packed. His stuff in the kitchen – but nothing she’d bought over the years. He walked out back, looked at the swimming pool, looked at memories of parties they’d had out there over the last two years, when his father had come out for dinner with Carol.

That’s the night they met, wasn’t it?

She was a scrub nurse, and he’d asked her to come with him that night. That was when all this started, the long slide to “goodbye and good luck.”

He walked further out into the yard, looked over the fairway. His father had bought five lots out here at Preston Trail, and had built five very large, very fancy “spec” houses on Club Oak Drive. Then he’d simply leased one to him, and to him alone. Her name wasn’t on one piece of paper.

“Why not, Dad?”

“Because I don’t trust her, son. I never have. There’s something different about her eyes, something I don’t recognize, and I don’t trust it.”

Yeah, he whispered to the trees, he always was better at people.

“Right again,” he sighed, “one more time.”

He looked up, saw a Baron on base, in the pattern for Addison, and he squinted into the sun, tried to make out the color – but no go. He turned away, looked at his watch and nodded his head. That was probably them, coming back from New Orleans after the long weekend. Said they were going to drop by on the way home, too, so he went inside and stripped off his uniform, jumped in the shower and washed the day away. He dried off and put on some shorts and a polo shirt, then walked out to the mail box and picked the letters out, looking over three days of mail. He flipped through, found one envelope from TWA, another from American – and he looked at them both for a long time, his hands shaking a little, then he went inside, put them on the entry table – still unopened – and walked to the kitchen, poured himself an orange juice.

Nine years. Nine years – and that’s it? Just turn and walk away from it all? Like it all never ‘really’ happened?

He laughed long and hard, wondering what life was ‘really’ all about – while he wiped a sudden tear from his eyes. 384 fatality accidents. Three shootings. Too many felony arrests to count. Shot twice. Two motorcycle accidents resulting in forty-plus fractures. Fifteen fellow officers trained – including Deb – his new ‘mother.’ Too many funerals attended. Too many friends gone. Lost forever. Some shot, like Sean, some accidentally run down out there on the streets. All of them now simply dead and gone.

He thought of MacCarley, still out there on Awaken. In France, with Sarah, on the canals. “Living the dream,” Eddie had called it. He’d found the dividing line, found his way out of the blue. Not a bad way to go, he thought.

He heard a car pull into the circular drive out front, saw his father’s Jaguar stop on the far side of the glass door, and he watched his old man go around and get Deb’s door. She was his pygmalion, he thought, his diamond in the rough. The country girl with the pure heart he’d been smart enough to recognize, and now she was his elegant wife, beyond gorgeous – yet still working for the department, though behind a desk now. Assigned to ‘Crime Prevention’ – working schools, talking to classrooms full of kids again, teaching them about the world ‘out there.’

He watched her as they walked in, so beautiful it made his heart hurt – literally hurt. Anything money could buy, hers now. And he couldn’t think of anyone more deserving.

He let them in and led them past mounds of stacked boxes to the living room, but his father darted to the guest bath and they heard him let go – the loud “Ahhhhhh” audible, he felt sure, all the way to Oklahoma. Washing hands, then the customary loud fart – just for good measure – and he bounded back into the room, grinning.

“Good one, Dad.”

“Good what?”

“About a seven point four on the Richter Scale.”

“Y’all head that one?”

“They heard it in St Louis, Dad.”

“Bosh!” his old man said as he walked to the kitchen. “Deb? Anything?” he called out.

“Ice water! Gallons of ice water!”

“K.”

“How was Brennan’s?” he asked.

“Heaven, as always. John and Claire send their best.”

He nodded. “I always liked them. Good people.”

“You had a thing for their daughter, didn’t you?”

“In junior high, yes. When I was twelve, I think.”

“She remembers you. Divorced recently. She wanted me to make sure I told you that, for some odd reason.”

“She was always a cute.”

“She’s not cute anymore. She’s what I would call drop dead gorgeous.”

His father was walking back from the kitchen – but he stopped at the entry table. “What’s this?” he said, picking up the envelopes. “Not even opened yet? Deb? Here, please!”

She scrambled over, took the envelopes and carried them into the living room while he brought their drinks in.

“Not even opened? What the hell is wrong with this picture?”

“Just brought ‘em in, Dad, when you guys pulled in.”

“Uh-huh. You gonna open them, or shall I?”

“Oh, you go ahead.”

Father looked at son, shook his head just so – to indicate mortal disgust – then he ripped open the one from American and shook his head, frowned. “No go,” he said – tossing the envelope aside – then he opened the one from TWA. “Report first May, Kansas City, for First Officer training on L-1011s,” he said, and he came over and pulled his son up into his arms, hugged him for what felt like hours. “Well, I guess that interview went better than expected!”

“Maybe, yeah.”

His old man stepped back, concern in his eyes. “You’re going to take it, aren’t you?”

“It’ll mean moving, Dad. Maybe LA, probably Boston. I’m not sure I want to do that. Be away from you two.”

“Take Boston. I’ve been wanted to buy some property up there, maybe retire on Nantucket, get a big fucking sailboat.”

“Well then, Boston it is,” he said glumly.

“So? You’re gonna take it?”

“Yeah, you know, I’m gonna think about it. How long do they give me to confirm?”

His old man read through the letter again, looked up. “Next Friday; a phone call will do.” He looked at his son, saw indecision in his eyes and frowned, then he looked at his wife, saw the tears in her eyes and grumbled. “I think you need a swift kick in the ass, but in as much as I can’t kick worth shit these days, why don’t you let me take the two of you out to dinner. Maybe a swift kick of bourbon will do the trick?”

“Is Edelweiss open on Sunday?” Deb asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “At five.”

“Could we go there tonight?” she asked. “Does that sound good?”

He looked away as the phone rang, and he went to the study and picked up the handset. “Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Hello, you.”

“I don’t feel good.”

“Oh?”

“About all this. About – everything.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“You. You’re on my mind. I can’t get you out of my mind. Not all week long.”

“And?”

“This is all wrong. This wasn’t supposed to happen to us.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he said, and he felt his eyes filling with tears. “No, it sure wasn’t.”

“I’ve been talking with Carol all afternoon. About my feelings for you, for us. She says she can’t be the one to come between us.”

“Well, God bless Carol.”

“Look, don’t be trite…”

“I’m not, I mean it. God bless her. You tell her I just fell in love with her, too.”

He heard their laughter.

“Don’t tell me…she heard that?”

“Yup.”

“Hey, Carol! I love you!”

More laughter.

“I was wondering. Could I come over? We need to talk.”

“Uh, yeah, sure. Dad and Deb are here, we’re going to run down to Edelweiss. You wanna join us, or come by later?”

“We’re close. Could we just drop by now? Say about ten minutes?”

“You live here. You don’t need to ask for permission to come home.”

Her’s was a long pause. “You’re right. And thanks for understanding. We’ll be there in a few.”

“Yeah.” He hung up the phone and went into the living room…

“Did I hear that correctly?” his old man asked. “Second thoughts about all this nonsense?”

“She wants to talk. Coming over now, or so she says. About ten out.”

“Well, hell, we better get this road on the show…”

“Nonsense. I told her you both are here, and that we’re going out to dinner. Asked them to join us, as a matter of fact.”

His father looked at Deb and grinned. “Always spending my money for me.”

“Like father, like son,” she said to him, grinning right back.

And he kissed his wife…hard.

“Y’all go get a room, wouldya?”

He heard a siren in the distance, saw a dirt bike running up the fairway out back, chewing up the grass – and they all went over and watched as an Addison PD patrol car chased the bike up the fairway.

“Shit, not again…” he said.

“Is that the same kid as last summer?”

“Yeah, the Andrews kid.”

“Thought they caught him?”

“His father’s a big deal with one of the oil companies downtown, a lawyer, I think. Got him off with a slap on the wrist, paid for all the damages.”

“Live around here?”

“Yeah, just up the street.”

“Well, come on, Doll. Let’s give these two have some privacy. You finish up early just give us a ring, we’ll meet you at the restaurant. We’ll shoot for five, maybe a little after. That okay with you?”

“Yeah, sure, but you ought to stay…”

“Bosh…” he said, standing. “Y’all have some serious talking to do. Don’t need me looking over your shoulder…” He reached out and Deb took his hand. “Come on, darlin’, let’s hit the road.”

He walked out with them, heard the siren and the revving engine a few blocks away, and he helped Deb in her seat while his father opened his door – but his old man just stood there, waiting – and he walked around, took his old man’s hand.

“A year ago and I wasn’t even sure I’d see you walk again, and now this. TWA. I’m so proud I could bust.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“And I’m married to the sweetest gal that ever lived…thanks to you.”

“To me?”

“She told me, a long time ago, how you two feel about one another.”

They looked at one another for a time, and he nodded.

“Anyway. I thought my life was just about over, only now I find it’s simply beginning again. The next chapter. And you got me there, son.”

They heard it then, getting closer. The siren, the Andrews boy on the dirt bike, then he saw her car, a bronze BMW 325 convertible, coming up the street. They turned, saw the dirt bike roaring down the street, the Addison police car a hundred yards behind – and everything went into slow-motion…

His wife, turning into the drive, her eyes looking at him, then at the dirt bike.

The kid, paying attention to the cop behind, not the road ahead.

The last minute reaction, then the bike slamming into her door. The BMW lifting, rolling – and his eyes were locked on hers.

Then she’s gone and only a haze remains. He’s on his knees, sliding into the ruins, trying to get to her, and he sees his father and Deb pulling Carol out of the gasoline soaked wreckage, people running from houses, standing and staring, women crying, children peeking out from behind skirts, mother’s shepherding their kids away.

He has her hand, can feel her trying to squeeze his hand. Her face is intact, but her chest is torn apart and she’s bleeding out – her blood falling down on him as he looks up into her eyes.

“Love you,” she whispers, and he pushes up through the twisted metal, kisses her – then people have his feet, his ankles, and they are pulling him away from her, away from the sudden fire that is engulfing the wreckage. He stands and watches for a moment, then dives for the pavement, for a way back into Hell – but strong hands have him again, pull him from the brink.

His father. He’s beside him, holding him, crying with him. And Deb. She has him now and he looks at her, not knowing where love is anymore. Where one love ends and another begins. Where life stops for a moment, and changes, moves to a different beat – like a broken heart, he imagines.

But his father fixes broken hearts, doesn’t he?

He breaks away, walks down the street – then turns and looks up at the sky. He shakes his fist at God and screams “You mother fucker! You Goddamn mother fucker!” – then he falls to his knees, crying.

Coda: Out of the Blue

He’s at Central two weeks later, cleaning out his locker, going over memories of the last nine years. The walls in this room feel so familiar, even the smell of the place is like a warm embrace. Almost like home, yet anything but. He has boxes filled with ticket books, hundreds of them, each ticket a memory – some good, some bad. Folders full of incident reports, reports he wanted to keep for one reason or another. Hundreds of photographs, most from wrecks, a few of fallen friends, all neatly labeled and catalogued away in boxes now, ready to go home with him. Letters of Commendation, diplomas, training certificates, all filed away, meaningless now to anyone but him. He carries a couple of boxes out to his car, then goes in to get the last one when he sees her, standing outside the locker room, waiting for him.

“I guess you thought you could just slip away,” she said, “like a thief in the night.”

“Worth a try, I guess.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “it wasn’t.”

“One more to get,” he said as he walked past her. He came out a minute later and walked past her again, kept on going through the station, out to his car. He put the box in the trunk and turned, looked at her. “What’s up?” he asked.

“When are you leaving?”

“Now.”

“Why won’t you answer your father’s calls?”

“I’m not ready for that yet.”

“And you’re ready to fly?”

“I am.”

“Presto, ladies and gentlemen, and the Wall–Comes–UP! Just like that, huh?”

“Just like that.”

“And what happens when the wall breaks?”

“It won’t.”

She looked into his eyes, searching for something, anything to hold onto – and not finding it. “Yeah. Who knows, maybe it won’t. So, this is it?”

He nodded his head, looked away and she watched him for a while, then took his hand.

He responded to her touch, closed his eyes and saw her in the wreckage, the fear in her eyes, the words forming on her lips.

“What are thinking?” he heard her ask.

He turned, looked her in the eye. “Life is but a dream.”

“Yeah, row, row, row your boat. But what about me? What about us? Were we a dream, you and me?”

He leaned over, kissed her on the forehead, then looked around and sighed. “I’m gonna miss this place, you know? I’m going to miss every mother-fuckin’ moment of this place.” He opened his door and got in, started the motor and backed out of his parking space, then he rolled the window down and looked up at her.

“I’ll see you around the campfire, darlin’ – ” and he looked at her once again, then slipped away into midday traffic and was gone.

She watched for a while, for an hour or so, and in the end she smiled a little, wiped away a tear or two.

“Yes, you will,” she said, as she walked back into the station.

Images et échos d’autres réves

Posted on March 19, 2017 by adrianleverkuhnwrites

images and echoes

Well, here’s the last set of images.

I’m thinking I’ll combine these four parts into one long post, maybe. Kind of. Who knows? I sure don’t.

Anyway.

Here it is.

(insert drum roll here)

Hope you enjoy.

+++++

Images et échos d’autres réves

When I look up to the skies

I see your eyes a funny kind of yellow

I rush home to bed I soak my head

I see your face underneath my pillow

I wake next morning tired still yawning

See your face come peaking through my window

Pictures of matchstick men and you

Mirages of matchstick men and you

All I ever see is them and you

Pictures of Matchstick Men Status Quo (1968)

He was, along with every other Traffic Division officer, on duty that night.

New Years Eve.

DUI checkpoints on all the major ‘party-harty’ roadways, every available patrol car working radar, working the highways – but it was 28 degrees out – and a light drizzle was falling. Bare tree limbs turning white as ice coated them, streets and sidewalks glazing over rapidly, and by 2200 hours the streets were, he thought, good for only one thing: ice skating.

Everyone was inside drinking, getting ready for Dick Clark to make his annual Times Square Countdown, and he know by the time people got out to their cars they’d find themselves smack-dab in the middle of an upside down winter wonderland. Hopefully before they did something really stupid, like start their cars and try to drive home.

He rotated his left shoulder, felt bone fragment tearing into muscle and winced, let his arm down slowly and realized he’d been holding his breath. He sighed, took a deep breath and tried not to think about it.

“2141.”

And he knew what the call was even before he picked up the mic.

“41, go.”

“2141, 36B, Greenville and Caruth Haven, officer on the scene advises code 3 not necessary.”

“41, code 5.”

“2141 at 2230 hours.”

“Oh, god no…” he groaned, then shook his head – wished he could be anywhere else than here right now.

But he managed to walk over to the wrecked gray Maxima and look inside.

Then he saw the girl in the passenger’s seat. Young girl, maybe in her twenties – he hoped.

He walked over to the officer who’d responded first. “What do you have so far?” he asked them.

“The lieutenant ran the red light,” the officer said.

“Oh, did you observe that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then someone alleges the L-T ran the red light. Is that a more accurate statement?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Any other witnesses?”

“No sir, not yet. I’ve been securing the road.”

“Uh-huh.” He walked over to the other car, an old black Firebird, a real scrote-mobile, and he looked at the two guys in the front seat. Total hooks; scraggly blond hair, house tattoos on the knuckles and forearms – and they were nervous now, watching his every move with angry eyes as he walked up to the driver’s window.

“Howdy,” he said genially. “Reckon either of you can tell me what happened?”

“Yeah, that bastard ran the red light…” the driver said.

“And which bastard would that be, sir?”

“Fuckin’ whack-job in the Maxima.”

“Okay. Can you tell me what happened?”

“We come out of that gas station…”

“Which one?” he asked, starting to sketch the scene.

“That one, there,” he said, pointing across the intersection.

“If you don’t mind, could you sketch where you were, which pump you were at, and what happened next?”

He watched as the driver took the pad, his hands shaking, then he took the pad back. “So, those pumps over on the far side?”

“Yessir.”

“What do you need that for?” the passenger said. “I didn’t do nothin’.”

“Just for the reports, sir. I’ll need some kind of ID.”

The man got his wallet out, handed over his state issued ID card and he took it, thanked them and said he’d be back in a while. He walked over to the first officer on the scene and looked him over. Young, arrogant, lazy. “Did you bother to ID those guys, run their car?”

“No, sir,” the officer said. “Thought I’d leave that to you.”

“Oh? Well, thanks. Here are the IDs, and here’s the tag number. Run them, now, and get CCHs on both those jokers. And keep your radio volume down.”

He walked over to the gas station and found the attendant inside. “Did you see what happened out there,” he asked.

“Yup. Sure did.”

“What pump did those guys use?”

The attendant pointed at pumps on the other side of the station. Not the ones the driver had indicated.

“How did the car exit the station, sir. Could you sketch there path on this diagram?

“Sure,” the man said, and he printed up the receipt, handed it over.

“I’ll just need your name and a phone number sir.”

“The station number okay?”

“Both would be best, sir.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

He walked back out onto the ice, walked gingerly back to the first officer, looking at the contrite little turd as he walked up.

“Driver has warrants, both have CCH for signals 1, 3 and 5.”

“The car?”

“Plates come back on a 77 Mustang…”

“And that car is?”

“Not a Mustang, sir.”

“Well, I uh…”

He picked up his radio and called dispatch: “2141, I need the district WC and about three units for back up this location.”

“2141 at 2241 hours.”

He turned to the officer. “Get your 870 and get behind that fuckin’ car, right now,” he growled.

“2141, we have returns on the second ID now.”

“41, go.”

“Suspect Leftwich has an active BOLO and warrant out of Beaumont for Signal 1, signal 3.”

Ten minutes later the bad boys were on their way downtown and he walked over, talked to the district watch commander about the officers performance and the old man shook his head.

“Navy SEAL, thinks he knows it all.”

“He’s a menace, L-T.”

“You’re the third person to tell me that in the last two weeks. Write him up and I’ll send it to personnel.”

“Who was his FTO?”

“Another SEAL.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. Now, what about Truman?”

“Drunk, but the accident wasn’t his fault.”

“Damn.”

“Yessir.” A DUI for a cop meant immediate termination and loss of certification. Period. State law and no exceptions allowed for any reason, personal or otherwise.

“You know him?” the L-T asked.

“Yessir. We’re friends.”

“Goddamn. You want me to assign this to someone else?”

He walked to the Suburban a few minutes later, and the SEAL was waiting for him by the front door. He turned on his Olympus Pearlcorder in his shirt pocket as he walked over, smiling as he approached.

“What did you tell the L-T?” the SEAL asked.

“What happened out here.”

“Such as?”

“Dereliction of duty, incompetence, and that you’re a menace to your fellow officers.”

The SEAL grinned. “Oh, is that right?”

“No, it’s not right. Everything about your performance out here tonight was anything but right.”

“Here’s a piece of advice for you, hotshot,” the SEAL said. “Maybe you need to be careful what you say from now on. And who you say it to.”

“2141, are you clear for a call?”

“2141, 10/4.”

“2141, DPS advises they have multiple cars in the water on Highway 67, the west span over Lake Ray Hubbard. Two are submerged, no survivors.”

“41, code 5.”

“2141, clear and code 5 at 0014 hours.”

He sighed, made his way south to Highway 80, then turned northeast, heading for 67, mindful of the ice now. It was almost an inch thick and snow had started falling; there were cars off the road everywhere he looked and whole neighborhoods were dark from power outages. He heard Lieutenant Nelson call dispatch, report that all accident investigators were now working calls and to call out the reserves, get back up on the street now. Then Nelson called him.

“205 to 2141.”

“41, go.”

“Don’t let DPS rope you into doing their report. Get back here as fast as you can.”

“10/4.”

“And 41, go to inter-city now, keep me posted.”

“Got it.” He switched over to channel three and called in. “41 to 5, go ahead.”

“Check 6.”

“4.”

He pulled over at the scene on 67, walked over to the DPS trooper and got the low-down, then walked back to to Nelsons car, took out his Olympus and played the recording.

“Yeah, see if the fire department has any tanks handy. I’ve only got one 60 with me.”

“Okay. Oh, I heard Truman was in that wreck on Greenville.”

“Yessir.”

“Fuck.”

“Yessir.” He walked to the back of the Suburban and got his dry-suit on, and he was about to hook his 60 pound tank to his vest when a fireman arrived with an 80. “Whew,” he said, “thanks.”

“Hey, better you than me…that water’s freezing now. Literally, I mean icing up.”

He turned, held out his hand and a fireman threw a safety line out and he caught it, clipped it onto his vest. “Get another ready,” he called out, then he sat down in the water and slipped his fins on, cleared the vest and took a deep breath, put his mouthpiece in and cleared it. He crab-walked over the slimy boulders under him until he was under water, and he turned on his flashlight, started walking along the bottom until, about fifty feet out, he saw the first car. He swam over to it, shined his light inside and saw two kids, maybe five years old, in the back of the station wagon – and both were still alive, breathing in an air pocket at the bag of the wagon.

They couldn’t have much oxygen left, he thought, not enough to mount a rescue operation, and he shone his light in again, looked at one of the kids fingernails. Blue nail-beds, hypoxic already.

He tapped on the glass and one of the kids put his head under the water and saw him. He smiled, pointed at the left side passenger door and made a fist, then swam to the door and saw the door was locked – and he reached for the rescue hammer strapped to his leg. It took two swings but the glass broke and the pressure inside the wagon broke too, flooding the back.

He had the door open within seconds and swam in, grabbed both kids and pulled them free of the car, then yanked on the safety line, felt sure hands pulling him in. He broke surface and the kids started coughing and gasping, and a dozen firemen and police officers were in the water within seconds, helping him to shore. Both were in deep hypothermia but both were alive, and he asked for slack and submerged again, swimming down to look for the second car.

It was a little orange Honda Civic, resting on it’s top about fifteen feet beyond the station wagon and he swam down, looked in the window, saw all he needed to see for now and swam back to the wagon, looked for the driver and saw an old man face down on the seat – lifeless. He reached around, unlocked the door and on the off chance felt for a carotid pulse, but no. Nothing. He hauled the man out and pulled gently on the safety line, felt pressure as he was pulled through the water again. When he was almost to the shore he held up two fingers: “Two more,” he said as he handed over the man’s body – before he disappeared under the waves again. He swam back to the Honda and easily opened the door, saw several empty bottles of beer rolling around on the ceiling and shook his head, pulled a young man out, felt for a carotid pulse then pulled on the safety line, and a few minutes later went back down again, for the young girl he’d seen crammed in the back.

He pulled the girl’s leg and her body slipped towards the door and he stopped, looked at the knife wounds, the slit throat, Defensive wounds on her arms and hands – and why was she naked, in this weather? He closed the door, pulled sharply on the safety line, felt himself jetting through the water, breaking the surface a few feet from the rocky shoreline. He pushed his mask up on his forehead, treading water.

“Is this DPS’s call?”

A trooper on the rocks called back: “It’s mine. What do you have?”

“Homicide is my guess. Naked, slit throat, defensive wounds on her hands and arms. Probably better to tow the car up intact, preserve what evidence might be left?”

“Like what?”

“Semen would be my guess. Pulling her body through the water might wash away anything like that.”

“Fuck.”

“Just leave the body in the car,” the trooper called out and he swam over and took the towline down again, swam around to the front and hooked it up. He looked the scene over, then surfaced again. “Car on the roof. One more line, please,” he called out and he took the second line down and hooked it to the rear axle. Back on the surface he called out “Take in line one!” and he watched the Honda spin on it’s roof. “Okay, take in two,” and he watched as the Honda flipped over on it’s tires. “Okay, hold on while I let the second line go.”

His eyes caught something, a flash, an impression, and he swam over to a large rock, swept the his beam of light around the area. A knife. Serrated edge, eight inch blade. He picked it up, put it in his vest pocket and swam back up to the rocks and climbed out. When he saw the trooper waiting for him he walked over to him.

“Got an evidence bag handy?” he said, opening his pocket.

The trooper took the knife, shaking his head – and he walked back to the Suburban, found Nelson still there, waiting for him. He looked around, saw the ambulances were gone and turned to his L-T.

“How’re the kids?” he asked.

“Girl was shocky, they did CPR once, got a rhythm and took off for Parkand. The boy’s fine.”

“Hot damn! We got lucky tonight.”

“Yes, they did.”

“What time is it?” he asked, unzipping his dry-suit and climbing out of it.

“Not quite three.”

“Shit, how long was I in the water?”

“‘Bout two hours, I’d say. You cold?”

“No, not with this fleece. I was sweating in there. Feels good out here.”

Nelson shook his head. “Better you than me, Ace.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?”

“You feel like driving tonight?” she asked as they walked out of the station.

“You don’t, I take it?”

“No, not really.”

She sighed, looked out the window at traffic, then turned to him. “It’s your father.”

“Oh?” he said, slowing for a stop light.

“I think I’m in love with him.”

He turned to her, grinning. “About goddamn time, Deb.”

“What?”

“Why do you think I invited you over there? I was hoping something like this might happen…”

“You…what?”

The light turned green and he took off, turned on Zang then slipped onto the freeway. “Yeah, I mean, why not? He’s lonely and you’re cute as hell? It’s a match made in heaven, right?”

“You think I’m cute as hell?”

“Look, Deb, I told you day one if I wasn’t married…ya know?”

“But you are, right?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Are you two doing okay? Arguing a lot?”

He looked at her, frowned. “It shows, huh?”

“Like a fucking bonfire.”

“It’s been going on a while. She wants me to quit, start flying again.”

“So? Why don’t you?”

“I dunno. Maybe I like it out here, ya know?”

She shook her head. “That’s insane. You ought be outta here, like yesterday.”

“You think so?”

“I do, but here’s the real problem. I want you so much it hurts.”

He looked at her again, frowned, shook his head.

“I’m not kiddin, Ace. I’ve had it bad for you, real bad, since about the second week.”

“That’s half infatuation and half Stockholm Syndrome…”

“Stockholm…? Why do you say that?”

“‘Cause I’m holding you hostage. Your career is in my hands, remember?”

She laughed. “I’m trying to be serious.”

“Yeah? Well, so am I. I’m here to train you, get you ready for your life out here. I’m not here to fall in love with you.”

“So? Have you?”

“What? Fallen in love with you?”

“Yeah.”

He turned, looked at the road for a long time, not saying a word, then he looked at her and shook his head. “What makes you say that,” he said, softly.

“I see things. I see things, like in your eyes.”

“Look, I care for you, alright? But that doesn’t mean I’ve fallen in love with you. Okay? Got it?”

She nodded her head, looked away. “Yup.”

“Goddamn…I wish you were butt-ugly and had a face full of zits…but oh no, you had to be so fuckin’ cute it makes my heart ache. You had to have a voice that makes my heart sing. And yeah, I could fall in love with you in a heartbeat, but you know what? Ain’t gonna happen. It just is not going to happen.”

“You know what? You keep telling yourself that and you just might get around to believin’ it – but I doubt it.”

“2141?”

“41, go.”

“2141, signal 53, possible 14. Reporting person is a pilot landing on Runway 17 at RedBird, advises a gold sedan is parked in the trees off Mountain Springs, possible in-progress 14.”

“41, code 2.”

“2141 at 1615.”

“2110 code 2.”

He exited on Ledbetter, tore down to Old Hickory and made a hard, sliding left, yawing on the gravel and correcting, and seconds later they were on scene.

“Check us out,” he said, bailing out of the Ford just as it slid to a stop. Gun drawn, he ran past the gold Mercury Montego and she saw him skid to a stop – then turn around, laughing.

She ran up, heard music playing from a boom box and then saw a teenager – fucking a blow-up sex doll – complete with blanket spread out on the ground and a six-pack of beer in a cooler.

The kid was oblivious, and when the sergeant pulled up they walked over and explained what was going on…

“No shit?”

“No shit. Yet, anyway.”

They all walked up just as the kid was in the short strokes, grunting away like a pig then blasting away into PVC ecstasy, and the three of them burst out in applause…

The kid rolled over, going from pure white to crimson in moments.

“I give him a ten on form, but a three on the exit,” he said.

“And the East German judge gives him a five! Boo-hiss!” Desjardins said, and the kid was staring at her now, devastated.

The sergeant walked up to the kid slowly. “Do you have a permit for that sex doll, young man?”

“Uh…w-w-hat?”

“Do you have a permit for that sex doll? In order to use a sex doll in public, you have to have a permit.”

“Uh…n-no, I didn’t know…”

“Well, that’s a felony you’ve just committed. Did you use a rubber, at least?”

“What?”

“A rubber? Did you take steps to insure you don’t get that doll pregnant?”

Desjardins turned and staggered back to the car, trying not to let the kid see her laugh.

“Look, the last thing we need is for a bunch of pregnant sex dolls to start showing up at Parkland. No permit. No rubber. What kind of irresponsible young man are you, anyway?”

“What? Dolls can’t get pregnant!”

“Can too. Why do you think the state requires a permit?”

The sergeant turned to him: “Get his ID, call it in.”

He walked close and the kid lunged at him, tried to grab his gun and the sergeant took out the kid’s arm with his nightstick, pulled him up and slammed him into the Mercury and cuffed him.

“2141, 27, 29 on subject.” He called in the kid’s information, and while they waited for the return he started talking to the kid. “Why’d yo do that?” he asked.

“I ain’t got no permit. I don’t want to go to no jail. I know what they do to kids like me in jail…”

“Oh? Been to jail before?”

“Been to joovey. Couple times.”

“What for?”

“Jackin’ off.”

“Jackin’ off? Where?”

“House next door. I sneak in, jacked off on Mrs Zimmermann’s panties.”

“Still doin’ that?”

“Not as much as I used to.”

“2141?”

“41, go.”

“Subject clear, negative 29, negative 27.”

“41, 28 on Paul George Ida – 283.”

“Standby.”

The kid looked nervous now and he walked over to him, looked in his eyes. “Where’d you get the car, Ronnie?”

“What car?”

“2141, have returns.”

He motioned for Desjardins and took the kid by the belt and walked him over to the car. “This kid’s about to rabbit on us,” he said. “Lets get him in the back.”

“I ain’t gonna run…”

“I know you’re not.”

“Then why?”

“It’s air conditioned. You look hot.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

Once he was strapped in he reached inside and turned off the radio, then went out and called dispatch. “2141, go ahead.”

“Vehicle reported stolen two days ago by registered owner, Zimmermann, Edna, 3001 Gladiolus, city.”

The sergeant walked up, shook his head. “What do you think his mental status is?”

“IQ about the same as a head of lettuce?” Desjardins said.

“Yeah. My thought too,” the sergeant said.

He looked at them, shook his head, “I think we need to get to that house, check it out.”

“Why?” the sergeant asked.

“My guess? The kid killed her, took some money, bought the doll and came out here.”

The sergeant nodded his head. “I’ll follow you.”

He got behind the wheel, turned on the radio. “2141, 10-95 one, code five to address on 28 for a 54.”

“2141 at 1643.”

“2110, I’ll be with 41.”

“1643.”

“2141, need the ME this location, and a truck with hazmat suits for a Signal 60 evac, possible signal 1. If someone from juvenile could come down, too?”

“41 at 1650.”

“2110, get two units over here for traffic control.”

“1651.”

He walked back to the car, got in the driver’s seat and pulled out his Miranda Card and read through the kid’s rights. “You understand what I just read you, Ronnie?”

“Yeah.”

“When did you kill her?”

“I didn’t kill her. I was just trying to scare her.”

“Did you stick your thing in her, Ronnie?”

He nodded his head. “Yeah. But I didn’t mean it to…it just kind of happened.”

“Did she know you took her car?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Firetrucks rolled up a moment later and he left the kid with the sergeant.

“Better you than me,” the sergeant said, laughing.

He led Desjardins to the truck and they put on bright yellow hazardous materials suits, and she looked at him like he was nuts…

“Trust me,” he said, and when they were sealed-in the suits they walked up to the front door.

“No air conditioner going,” a fireman said.

“I know.”

“Hey, better you than me…”

“I know.”

The fireman put a huge pry bar up to the lock and pushed a little – and the door knob exploded, fell to the concrete porch and scattered – and he pushed the door open, walked in.

“This way,” he said to Desjardins. “Bedroom’s back here.” He walked up to the door, saw it was closed. “God damn,” he moaned.

“What?”

“Look, I can’t do this to you.”

“What? What can’t you do?”

“I can’t let you open that door.”

“What? Why?” she said, reaching for the knob.

“Don’t do it, Deb. I mean it.”

She stopped. “What are you saying?”

“Look, every rookie gets one of these, but I just can’t do it to you.”

“What?”

“When you open the door air pressure in the room changes. The skin ruptures…basically…the body explodes. It’s fuckin’ awful.”

“Did you do it? When you were a rookie?”

“Yeah, and they sent me in without a suit. Had to burn the uniform.”

“Then it’s my turn, isn’t it?”

“I don’t want you to.”

“Why? You protecting me?”

He turned away.

“I knew it. You do love me. Don’t you?”

He turned and looked at her. “I told you. I care for you.”

“No! Say it. Tell me that you love me.”

He shook his head. “Don’t do this to me, Deb.”

“Then shut the fuck up and teach me how to do my job.”

“Okay. Right. Look, that shit is going to fly everywhere, so the trick is to open the door and jump back…”

“But if I go back out there without that shit all over me, they’re going to know you warned me, right?”

He nodded his head. “Right.”

“So? You’d better stand back.”

“Nope. You’re not doing this alone.”

She turned and looked at him again.

“I wish you were a man.”

“What?”

“Man enough to tell me the truth – how you feel about me.”

“Actions speak louder than words, Deb.”

He took her hand – and she reached out for the doorknob.

III

“Come on. Don’t cheat…move that joint all the way up.”

He was sweating, cursing under his breath.

“You pussy! My Aunt Gladys can do better than that!”

“Does your Aunt Gladys have four fucking pounds of stainless steel in her fucking shoulder, you cunt!”

She laughed. “That’s the spirit! Come on, fight through the pain…that’s it, FIGHT!”

They worked ten more minutes, then she took his temp and BP and wrote them down on a chart, then she rolled him back to his room. A nurse came by and they helped him up into the bed, his left femur still not ready to take any weight.

“So,” she said, “you’re with the PD? A motorjock? What happened?”

“I remember. You went through Snyder’s windshield, right?”

“Yup. That’s me.”

“Thirty six fractures. Man, you are going to be a human barometer.”

“So my wife tells me.”

“How long have you been in here?”

“Five weeks now.”

“That’s right,” the drill sergeant said, suddenly making a connection, “your wife’s a doc here too, right. Internal medicine?”

“Yup…and speak of the devil, here she is now!” His wife walked in – in green scrubs and a lab coat – and he looked at her. “Scrubs? What gives?”

“Your dad did one of my patients this morning, and he let me scrub in and watch.”

“Fun. Ready for another residency?”

She laughed. “Not quite. Oh, he and Deb are going to come down in about a half hour, she’s bringing in some Chinese.”

“Ah…awesome. I’ve been craving…”

“I know. I gave her the list.”

The drill sergeant stood, excused herself, but not before she told him she’d be by at ten tomorrow morning – for some more fun, she said, a little too sadistically.

“I can’t wait.”

She turned to him after the therapist left, tried to smile. “Your white counts are weird. Going to do a few more tests.”

“Another needle. Oh, joygasm.”

“I know.”

“Weird, huh. Is that one of those fancy new medical terms?”

She came and sat on the edge of the bed, ran her fingers through his hair, shook her head. “What am I going to do with you.”

“A blowjob would be nice?”

She laughed. “You’d say anything to get me to do that, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Sorry. No can do.”

“Yeah, me too.”

She turned away, looked at his most recent vitals on the board. “Still running a fever?”

“All night. Look, if you have someplace you need to be, you don’t need to hang around.”

“No, no, I wanted to see Deb. It’s been a while, ya know?”

“Have you seen her since the wedding?”

“Once, I think, right after the accident.”

“How’s your – friend?”

“She’s fine.”

“Are you staying over there now?”

She nodded her head. “Sometimes.”

“It’s funny, ya know. If I’d lost you to another guy – I think I could understand things better.”

She looked at him, a little too defiantly, he thought. Gloating, maybe? Like: what did you expect? Gone all the time, never home. Not one vacation in the last three years. But why –with a woman? Something else I missed along the way?

“Things happen, I guess,” she sighed.

Deb and his father came in a little before noon and they talked about life outside the hospital for a while, and Deb talked about all the usual BS going on the department, but he found himself looking at the ring on her finger more than once, and at how good she looked. Happy, he thought, and his father looked happier than he’d ever seen him. Ever. And that made him happy too. Then he looked at his wife and he felt like he’d lost something precious, even vital, while the world spun out of control.

And soon enough both his wife and father excused themselves, he to make rounds, she to see patients. Once they were gone he looked at Deb, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“Your father told me about what’s going on,” she said, out of nowhere. “With Carol, is it?”

“You didn’t know?”

“No.”

“Good. That means I wasn’t the last to find out.” She laughed, and he did too, a little. “How’s Dad doing? Treating you alright?”

“He’s an amazing man, took me flying last week.”

“Ah. Where to?”

“Uvalde.”

“I guess he told you that part of the story?”

She nodded her head. “Sad.”

“You know, my mother knew. Everything, all along, when I was growing up. Never said a word.”

“I would have liked to have known her.”

“I suspect she does. I can’t imagine a little thing like death keeping her away from Dad.”

“He loves you, you know. The accident scared him to death. He cried for days, until you were out of that coma.”

“I can’t imagine what life would be like without him. You do love him, don’t you?”

“I do. More than you’ll ever know, but never as much as I’ll love you.”

“Yup, she’s a lesbian alright.”

They laughed, for a long time.

“So, would you like it if I…?”

“Like what?”

“Give you a blowjob?”

“Nope. I love you too much to put you through that kind of guilt.”

“And what if I love you too much to let you lay their suffering.”

“Look at me? I’m not going to push you away – because I can’t. But I will ask you not to, as nicely as I can. Again, because I love you, and I love my father. And I know this, Deb, too. If it’s meant to be, between us, it will be. I’m willing to wait, if you are.”

“You’re a Boy Scout, you know that? Too nice. To a fault.”

“So are you. A Girl Scout, I mean,” he said, giggling a little.

“What are you going to do?”

“What? Now? Get into PT, get my body back. Six months, that’s the word. Six months and back to unrestricted duty…”

“No.”

“What?”

“No, no more duty. No more department. Take a medical, retire, move on. It’s time, and you know it…”

“No, it’s not, and I know it.”

“Adoration?”

“I thought it would be fun?”

“Fun? Bullshit. Think about it? Up in the cockpit, everyone adoring you, all those stripes on your sleeve, walking through terminals. That gun and that badge, and wherever you walk, people…”

“If you say adoring me I’m gonna puke. It’s more like the exact opposite…”

“Sure. Tell that to that kid. What was his name? Jason? At the Biltmore shoot. That’s real adoration, in case you didn’t know it…”

He looked at her, shook his head. “How’d we get from blowjobs to taking me down a notch?”

“Policing isn’t childishness…”

“Deb, you know as well as anyone it’s a war out there. A war that’s been raging since the beginning of time. Good and evil, right and wrong. If everyone turns away from their responsibilities, to insure we aren’t overrun by evil, well, then evil wins. I’m just doing my part. Giving back. I feel that, in my bones, Deborah, and that’s the God’s honest truth of it.”

She looked at him, blinked her eyes then nodded her head a little.

“Hey? Rookie? What the fuck are you doing in bed? Time to get up and get dressed…we got work to do!”

“Eddie?” he whispered, his voice full of wonder. “Ed Fuckin’ MacCarley! Oh my fuckin’ God! Eddie! What are you doing here?”

He had his favorite spots. Like fishing holes, he’d thought once. Places where he liked to sit up and, with radar gun in hand, watch traffic, waiting for ‘the big one.’ The 60 in a 30. The 45 in a school zone. The really egregious ones.

He was on a two lane road that approached a school playground, set up where the speed limit dropped from 45 to 30, and he looked down the road, saw a little red car headed in at close to 70; he watched as the car passed the 30MPH sign and pulled the trigger.

He saw blond hair, long, wavy blond hair – and black skin. As he got closer, long legs and purple fishnet stockings, a gold lamé dress – and the shoes, too. Big hands, and aircraft carrier sized shoes.

“Yes, good afternoon…” he began, scanning the car for weapons.

“Well, it was. It sho ain’t now,” the woman said, lightly laughing.

“Yes, well, you were observed doing 72 in a 30, and I’ll need to see you license and proof of financial responsibility.” He watched her closely now…hand on his Sig.

She opened her purse, pulled out a license and an insurance card and handed them to him.

He looked at the license and did a double take. “Uh, it says your name is Harlan T Polk. Is this your license – that your name?”

“Yes it is,” he said, his voice now a deep baritone. “Any problem with that, officer?”

He bit his cheeks, tried not to laugh as he walked back to the Harley. “Uh, 2141, need 27,28, 29 on…” he said as he called out the driver’s and vehicle information, then he added. “I’m out on a female, black, in a gold lamé dress in heels.”

When dispatch read out Polk’s information the radio erupted in squelch pops, a sure sign that everyone knew what was going down, and sure enough, by the time he finished writing up Polk’s ticket two patrol cars drove by, the officer’s hooting as they passed.

He walked back to the car and handed over the ticket book. “Press hard, you’re making three copies,” he repeated as he did for all his paying customers, then he took the ticket book back and tore out Polk’s copy and gave it to him. “By the way,” he continued, “I’ve heard that talking in a falsetto like that really damages your vocal cords, and there’s an increased risk of cancers in the throat associated with that.”

Polk looked up at him like he had just stepped out of the mothership and said “Take me to your leader.” “You for real?”

“Yessir. I read that in an Otolaryngology Journal a few months ago.”

“You what?”

“There are speech coaches that can help you with this, over at Parkland.”

“Say what?”

“Where were you going, I mean, why so fast?”

“I’m late…for one of my customers, if you know what I mean…”

“Ah…well, you have a good afternoon, Ma’am, and please try to drive more safely.”

Polk shook his head, rolled up his window and drove off – slowly – and he walked back to the Harley shaking his head, too.

A patrol car pulled up, windows rolled down.

“Was she cute, at least?” the FTO in the passenger seat asked.

“Not my type,” he said. “Hands too big, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, you like them trannies with teeny peckers?”

“Yeah, man,” he said, grinning, and everyone laughed.

“You get many of those?” the rook behind the wheel asked.

“No, not many. A couple, I think, in the last year.”

Another good one, too. An alleyway, heavily shaded, another speed transition zone. He was about to open his saddlebag when he saw a car headed his way…weaving across two lanes of traffic…and he saw two black men in the front seat. As their car passed he saw one man with a glass pipe in his mouth, then a sudden fiery flare-up coming from the pipe.

Free-basing? While driving? He called into dispatch: “2141, signal 61 on traffic, southbound Clark at Big Stone, two male blacks – and get a unit headed this way.”

“1310 hours.”

Just another fireball, this time from the driver’s seat.

The Camaro left the road at 43 miles an hour and nosed into a very deep drainage ditch. And both were not wearing seat belts, as it happened. He checked out on traffic, called for an ambulance as three patrol cars screeched to a stop behind his Harley. Five officers, three with shotguns, emerged – and advanced in a line on the steaming Camaro. Guns aimed, spreading out as they approached – he joined the advance, the crawled down into the ditch, then down to the passenger’s door – and he looked in.

“Y’all might as well start traffic control,” he said to men above,“because these kids are about 90% dead.”

“Well, shit,” one of them, the rookie from earlier that afternoon, said, “thought we was gonna get to shoot us some coons.”

He looked at the FTO again, then walked over to him. “You need to get this kid off the street, now. He has no business being out here, and you know it.”

The man nodded his head. “I know, but my hands are tied on this one.”

“Yeah? Well, y’all just go on. Really. Get him away from me.”

“Hey, amigo, can you hear me?”

“What…what happened, man?”

“You’ve been in an accident. Try and hold still, we’ll get you out of here in a second, okay?”

“Yeah…like where am I?”

He smiled. Dickinson, The Duke, another kid he’d trained two years ago.

“Hey,” he said as he walked over to Dickinson’s patrol car, “they finally took the training wheels off your car, huh?”

“Yeah, solo – three months. What is this shit, anyway?”

“Total clusterfuck,” he said, running down the sequence of events.

“Well,” Dickinson said, holding up an evidence bag full of paraphernalia and baggies full of white powder, “lookie what I found?”

“Holy shit…what say we go pull this car apart and see what else we find…?”

Betty Sue Rollins walked out to her ‘63 Rambler Cross Country station wagon – with two buckets full of the Colonel’s Secret Recipe fried chicken in a big paper sack – and she put the chicken behind her seat and got in her old car, started the motor and drove through the parking lot for the exit…

A beige station wagon, pulling into the road just ahead –

Before his mind had a chance to register the event, before his hands and feet could react and engage the Honda’s brakes, the motorcycle penetrated the driver’s door – at what would eventually be measured between 127 and 129 miles per hour.

It was Sunday, and his day off when the pager started beeping. He was sitting with his father and Deb by the pool, but he was on-call and in uniform, his Harley was in the driveway out front. He went inside and called dispatch, wrote down the particulars and turned, saw his father standing there – his old man’s hopes dashed once again.

“You have to leave, I take it?” his father asked.

“Yup.”

“I suppose you’re getting back at me. For all the times I left, when you were growing up?”

He walked over to his father, hugged him. “Look, I’m happy for you, for you both. Have you set a date yet?”

“Christmas Eve. I’m hoping you’ll be able to drop by,” his old man added, more than a little sarcastically.

He laughed, a little, then leaned over and kissed Deb on the cheek. “Gee. Bye – Mom…”

“You know? That’s the first time you’ve ever said something like that to me?”

“I know. I know, and I’m sorry.”

They looked at one another and he slipped the transmission into first and let go of the moment, flipped on his strobes and siren, riding through Sunday afternoon traffic out Preston to Royal Lane. The scene secured, he made his measurements, took his photographs, then called in, asked for a department photographer to bring some High Speed Infrared and a Wratten 25A filter. He talked to witnesses, dozens, as it turned out, and every recounted version was uniformly the same: high speed acceleration for a few hundred yards, perhaps two seconds, then a shattering impact.

The boy? Seventeen years old. His motorcycle endorsement not even a month old. The bike: three hours off the showroom floor, a father’s last words to his son – “be careful out there.” Rollin’s son called to the scene, his breakdown, then murderous rage. News crew walking the scene, their camera man walking behind the reporter, imaging the carnage, interviewing the boy’s father, the mother’s son. All the tears, all the anger, and it would all be forgotten by tomorrow morning, and by next weekend he would be at another scene almost exactly like this one. More father’s burying sons, more grandmothers and aunts and uncles would be driven to the basement at Parkland for autopsies in an endless parade of gasoline fueled misery.

“Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends…”

Once Rollins’ body was removed he had a department’s wrecker hook up to the Rambler, tow it up to 30 miles an hour, then cut it free, slide to a stop, with Tyler’s body still fused to the metal, and he measured the distance it took the car to stop and wrote that down. He took a patrol car and did the same thing, measuring the braking distance to determine a baseline coefficient of friction for the concrete. He measured the roadway. He observed the traffic lights, for time and operation. He marked witness locations.

Using an H-P 41 calculator he ran through the math, arrived at a speed of 129, then he filled out the State accident form, reducing the accident to a series of simple written explanations. With that complete he started in on the much more detailed, infinitely more complex departmental forms, and all his notes and drawings were folded up and put in a large manilla envelope, attached to this report, then put in the L-Ts in-box. Fifteen hours after he sat down at his drafting table, twenty one hours after he took the call, he left the station and rode home – just as the sun started to peek above the horizon.

She was gone by then, of course. An angry note on the corkboard by the refrigerator signaling her cold fury, her growing contempt for his lingering absences. He groaned, walked to the little bedroom he was sleeping in now, and he fell into sleep – as images of crashing motorcycles pushed their way into his dreams.

Her belongings were boxed up, waiting for movers to come and pick them up, and he walked around the house looking at a world without her in it. Only his pictures on the walls – her’s all packed. His stuff in the kitchen – but nothing she’d bought over the years. He walked out back, looked at the swimming pool, looked at memories of parties they’d had out there over the last two years, when his father had come out for dinner with Carol.

That’s the night they met, wasn’t it?

She was a scrub nurse, and he’d asked her to come with him that night. That was when all this started, the long slide to “goodbye and good luck.”

“Why not, Dad?”

“Because I don’t trust her, son. I never have. There’s something different in her eyes, something I don’t recognize, and I don’t trust it.”

Yeah, he whispered to the trees, he always was better at people.

“Right again,” he sighed, “one more time.”

Nine years. Nine years – and that’s it? Just turn and walk away? Like it all never happened?

He laughed long and hard, wondering what life was really all about – while he wiped sudden tears from his eyes. 384 fatality accidents. Three shootings. Too many felony arrests to count. Shot twice. Two motorcycle accidents resulting in forty-plus fractures. Fifteen fellow officers trained – including Deb – his new ‘mother.’ Too many funerals attended. Too many friends gone. Lost. Some shot, some run down out there on the streets.

He thought of MacCarley, still out there on Awaken. In France, with Sarah, on the canals. “Living the dream,” Eddie said. He’d found the dividing line, found his way out of the blue. Not a bad way to go, he thought.

He watched her as they walked in, so beautiful it made his heart hurt – literally hurt. Anything money could buy, hers now. And he couldn’t think of anyone more deserving.

He let them in and led them past mounds of stacked boxes to the living room, but his father darted to the guest bath and they heard him let go – the loud “Ahhhhhh” audible, he felt sure, all the way to Oklahoma. Washing hands, then the loud fart – just for good measure – and he bounded back into the room, grinning.

“Good one, Dad.”

“What? Good what?”

“About a seven point four on the Richter Scale.”

“Y’all head that one?”

“They heard it in St Louis, Dad.”

“Bosh!” his old man said as he walked to the kitchen. “Deb? Anything?” he called out.

“Ice water! Gallons of ice water!”

“K.”

“How was Brennan’s?” he asked.

“Heaven, as always. John and Claire send their best.”

He nodded. “I like them. Good people.”

“You had a thing for their daughter, didn’t you?”

“In junior high, yes. When I was twelve, I think.”

“She remembers you. Divorced recently. She wanted me to make sure I told you that, for some odd reason.”

“She was always a cute.”

“She’s not cute anymore. She’s what I would call drop dead gorgeous.”

His father was walking back from the kitchen – but he stopped at the entry table. “What’s this?” he said, picking up the envelopes. “Not even opened yet? Deb? Here, please!”

She scrambled over, took the envelopes and carried them into the living room while he brought their drinks in.

“Not even opened? What the hell is wrong with this picture?”

“Just brought ‘em in, Dad, when you guys pulled in.”

“Uh-huh. You gonna open them, or shall I?”

“No, you go ahead.”

Father looked at son, shook his head just so – to indicate mortal disgust – then he ripped open the one from American and shook his head, frowned. “No go,” he said – tossing the envelope aside – then he opened the one from TWA. “Report first May, Kansas City, for First Officer training on L-1011s,” he said, and he stood, came over and pulled his son up into his arms, hugged him for what felt like hours. “Well, I guess that interview went better than expected!”

“Maybe, yeah.”

His old man stepped back, concern in his eyes. “You’re going to take it, aren’t you?”

“It’ll mean moving, Dad. Maybe LA, probably Boston. I’m not sure I want to do that. Be away from you two.”

“Take Boston. I’ve been wanted to buy some property up there, maybe retire on Nantucket, get a big fucking sailboat.”

“Well then, Boston it is,” he said glumly.

“So? You’re gonna take it?”

“Yeah, you know, I’m gonna think about it. How long do they give me to confirm?”

“Is Edelweiss open on Sunday?” Deb asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “At five.”

“Could we go there tonight?” she asked. “Does that sound good?”

He looked away as the phone rang, and he went to the study and picked up the handset. “Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Hello, you.”

“I don’t feel good.”

“Oh?”

“About all this. About – everything.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“You. You’re on my mind. I can’t get you out of my mind. Not all week long.”

“And?”

“This is all wrong. This wasn’t supposed to happen to us.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he said, and he felt his eyes filling with tears. “No, it sure wasn’t.”

“I’ve been talking with Carol all afternoon. About my feelings for you, for us. She says she can’t be the one to come between us.”

“Well, God bless Carol.”

“Look, don’t be trite…”

“I’m not, I mean it. God bless her. You tell her I just fell in love with her, too.”

He heard their laughter.

“Don’t tell me…she heard that?”

“Yup.”

“Hey, Carol! I love you!”

More laughter.

“I was wondering. Could I come over? We need to talk.”

“Uh, yeah, sure. Dad and Deb are here, we’re going to run down to Edelweiss. You wanna join us, or come by later?”

“We’re close. Could we just drop by now? Say about ten minutes?”

“You live here. You don’t have to ask for permission to come home.”

Her’s was a long pause. “You’re right. And thanks for understanding. We’ll be there in a few.”

“Yeah.” He hung up the phone and went into the living room…

“Did I hear that correctly?” his old man asked. “Second thoughts about all this nonsense?”

“She wants to talk. Coming over now, or so she says. About ten out.”

“Well, hell, we better get this road on the show…”

“Nonsense. I told her you both are here, and that we’re going out to dinner. Asked them to join us, as a matter of fact.”

His father looked at Deb and grinned. “Always spending my money for me.”

“Like father, like son,” she said to him, grinning.

And he kissed his wife…hard.

“Y’all go get a room, wouldya?”

“Shit, not again…” he said.

“Is that the same kid as last summer?”

“Yeah, the Andrews kid.”

“Thought they caught him?”

“His father’s a big deal with one of the oil companies downtown, a lawyer, I think. Got him off with a slap on the wrist, paid for all the damages.”

“Live around here?”

“Yeah, just up the street.”

“Yeah, sure, but you ought to stay…”

“Bosh…” he said, standing. “You two have some serious talking ahead of you. Don’t need me looking over your shoulders…” He reached out and Deb took his hand. “Come on, darlin’, let’s hit the road.”

He walked out with them, heard the siren and the revving engine a few blocks away, and he helped Deb in her seat while his father opened his door – but he stood there, waiting – and he walked around, took his old man’s hand.

“A year ago and I wasn’t even sure I’d see you walk again, and now this. TWA. I’m so proud of you I could bust.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“And I’m married to the sweetest gal that ever lived…thanks to you.”

“To me?”

“She told me, a long time ago, how you two feel about one another.”

They looked at one another for a time, and he nodded.

“Anyway. I thought my life was just about over, only now I find it’s simply beginning again. The next chapter. And you got me there, son.”

His wife, turning into the drive, her eyes looking at him, then at the dirt bike.

The kid, paying attention to the cop behind, not the road ahead.

The last minute reaction, then the bike slamming into her door. The BMW lifting, rolling – and his eyes are locked on hers.

Then she’s gone and only a haze remains. He’s on his knees, sliding into the ruins trying to get to her, and he sees his father and Deb pulling Carol out of the gasoline soaked wreckage, people running from houses standing and staring, women crying, children peeking out from behind skirts, mother’s shepherding their kids inside.

He has her hand, can feel her trying to squeeze his hand. Her face is intact, but her chest is torn apart and she’s bleeding out – her blood falling down on him as he looked up at her.

And his father fixes broken hearts, doesn’t he?

Coda

He’s at Central two weeks later, cleaning out his locker, going over memories of the last nine years. The walls in this room so familiar, even the smell of the place. Almost like home, yet anything but. He has boxes filled with ticket books, hundreds of them, each ticket a memory – some good, some bad. Folders full of incident reports, reports he wanted to keep for one reason or another. Hundreds of photographs, most from wrecks, a few of fallen friends, all neatly labeled and catalogued in the boxes now, ready to go home with him. Letters of Commendation, diplomas, training certificates, all filed away, meaningless now to anyone but him. He carries a couple of boxes out to his car, then goes in to get the last one when he sees her, standing outside the locker room, waiting for him.

“I guess you thought you could just slip away,” she said, “like a thief in the night.”

“Worth a try, I guess.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “it wasn’t.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Now.”

“Why won’t you answer your father’s calls?”

“I’m not ready for that yet.”

“And you’re ready to fly?”

“I am.”

“Presto, ladies and gentlemen, and the Wall–Comes–UP! Just like that, huh?”

“Just like that.”

“And what happens when the wall breaks?”

“It won’t.”

She looked into his eyes, searching for something, anything to hold onto – and not finding it. “Yeah. Who knows, maybe it won’t. So, this is it?”

He nodded his head, looked away and she watched him for a while, then took his hand.

He responded to her touch, closed his eyes and saw her in the wreckage, the fear in her eyes, the words forming on her lips.

“What are thinking?” he heard her ask.

He turned, looked her in the eye. “Life is but a dream.”

“Yeah, row, row, row your boat. But what about me? What about us? Were we a dream, you and I?”

“I’ll see you around the campfire, darlin’ – ” and he looked at her once again, then slipped away into midday traffic and was gone.

She watched for a while, for an hour or so, then she smiled.

“Yes, you will,” she said, as she walked back into the station.

Images de pluie, dans l’ombre

Posted on March 17, 2017 by adrianleverkuhnwrites

rain and shadow

So, here’s the third set of images. I’ll do one more, then I’m taking a break from all these ghosts for a while.

+++++

Images de pluie, dans l’ombre

Lost in their eyes as you hurry by

Counting the broken ties they decide

Love comes to you and then after

Dream on on to the heart of the sunrise

Lost on a wave that you’re dreaming

Dream on on to the heart of the sunrise

Sharp distance

How can the wind with its arms all around me

Sharp distance

How can the wind with so many around me

I feel lost in the city

Heart Of The Sunrise Yes

+++++

“2141, show me in-service with an accident report, and I’ll need a second service number the a Signal 60 supplemental report, with 95 JCID.”

“2141, clear at 1845 hours, second service number 8521197.”

“1197, received.”

It was close to dinner time and he looked at his watch, figured he was close enough so he might as well run home, maybe grab some dinner and get out of the heat for a few minutes. He started the Harley and checked traffic, then u-turned in the street and started for the highway. The neighborhood was hilly, full of dense brush and tall trees between widely spaced houses, and the afternoon sun was slanting through the trees, casting long shadows in the stillness. A father and son tossing the football in their yard waved as he passed, and he waved back, smiled at memories of his father on autumn mornings, then he thought of the kid back there in the road. No more football, that much was certain.

Running wide open with his girlfriend on the back of his dirt bike, he’d lost it in a corner and tried to brake but high-sided – and they’d been launched as the bike flipped sideways.

His trajectory took his right thigh through a stop sign – and severed it completely. His body landed in a bleeding heap and tumbled, his outstretched arms impacting the curb and shattering both in several places, with the remainder of his leg vaulting into a vacant lot, almost lost among tall weeds and scraps of litter.

The girlfriend landed in the street, and a kid speeding through the neighborhood in a pickup truck didn’t see her until it was too late to stop.

People in their homes ran out and stopped the boy from bleeding out, but the girl was dead. Mothers hid children’s eyes from the sight – but for too many it was too little too late, the damage done. But now the damage done to three lives was irreparable, and for the girl, final. There were open beers in the kid’s pickup, alcohol on his breath, and at fifteen his life was now little more than wreckage, just as surely as the other boy’s dirt bike was scrap.

And it was his job to make sense of it all.

To make sense of the senseless.

Pointless, too, he thought. Physicians would try to put one life back together, and maybe psychiatrists could fix the other life, but what of the girl? Lawyers and insurance companies would slug it out, he knew, and they’d rely on his report to get to some kind of arrangement, some sense of closure, but she was gone and her death would never be anything more or less than senseless.

Once the road was closed he’d gone about the scene making his measurements, taking photographs and talking to witnesses, and when he, in the end, knew what had happened he just shook his head, put his stuff away and wanted to disappear down a deep hole. What were fifteen year olds doing out on the streets in cars and motorcycles? Playing? Playing their parts in a vast mechanism of automobile manufacturers, car dealerships and insurance companies, all orchestrated by oil companies and big government. Profit and loss statements to some, the shattered lives of all the others: parents called from homes to scene after scene, day after day.

Freedom. Free to be irresponsible.

Free, to look like a pizza smeared down seventy three feet of asphalt. Free, for the stump of your thigh to look like a spiral sliced ham. That’s freedom, alright.

He stopped at a stop sign and sighed. “How many this month?” he wondered. Fifteen by last weekend, and five more this week, so far. Twenty dead, and those were just the wrecks he’d worked. Day in and day out, no time off for holidays, people were simply out there killing themselves in record numbers and nobody gave a damn. Killing more in a year than in ten years of war in Vietnam, and where was the outcry, the outrage.

Just the price you pay for freedom, right? Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, or so goes the song…

He thought of the TriStar tumbling through the grass, smoldering bodies in wet grass. He’d walked up to the first water tower, where the cockpit impacted and he couldn’t recognize anything human. And yesterday, an NTSB investigator told him the cockpit was found there, where he’d been looking, and everything, the entire cockpit – man and machine – had been compacted in the impact to a lump about the size of a shoe box.

He heard a car pulling up behind his Harley and saw people sitting there, looking at him, waiting, and he shook his head, waved them to pass him, then he paddled over to the side of the road.

Two girls, teenagers, pulled up alongside.

“Are you okay?” the girl closest to him asked.

And he nodded his head. “Yeah. Thanks for asking.”

“You were at the wreck, weren’t you? Stacy…she was our friend.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, but he turned away, didn’t know what to say to their grief.

He heard doors opening and closing, felt them standing by his side, putting their arms around him and he realized he was crying. He’d been crying for weeks, ever since the moment –

The spinning hulk coming to a rest. Running through fields of gold, running through bodies falling like rain, then through the smoke a man, walking. He’s running towards the man, his white skin black now, black and peeling, his business suit smoking, and the man walked up to him.

“Excuse me,” the man said – and he remembered the voice, “but I seem to be lost. Do you know the way to the baggage claim?”

And then the man fell into his arms.

Dead.

He put the side-stand down and climbed off the bike, went and sat on the side of the road, the girls crying now as they held him up.

‘Desjardins fourth week of training,’ he wrote in his training log, ‘and she’s made progress but it’s a struggle for her to let go of old ways of seeing the world…’

But she was changing. The chase, losing her friend, shooting a man who was getting ready to shoot her. She was starting to listen. Just. She would make it, he knew, but only if she could keep on listening.

“Where to?” she asked, but he just turned her way and shrugged.

“You listen during briefing? Even maybe just a little bit?”

She picked up her notepad and he snorted, shook his head. “Goddamnit all to hell,” he grumbled – and she put her pad down and sighed.

“Sorry,” she said, looking down.

“Concentrate! Commit to memory! Recall! CCR – got it! Now think…what happened in our district today?”

“Two burglaries…?”

“Suspect information?”

“Male black in an old Datsun pickup, light blue, maybe a lawn mower in the back?”

“Anything on Camp Wisdom this morning?”

“Armed robbery, gas station at Cockrell Hill, in Duncanville.”

“And the suspect did what?”

“Came into Dallas, east on Camp Wisdom.”

“Vehicle description?”

“Red Firebird, first three on LP are 277.”

“Good. Damn good. So, based on that, where should we go?”

“Camp Wisdom to Red Bird, neighborhoods first, before people start coming home from work.”

“Okay? So, what are you waiting for?”

She smiled, turned on the windshield wipers and into traffic, then made for Highway 67.

“You still flying? Doing lessons and all that?”

“Yup.”

“Could you take me up sometime?”

He turned and looked at her, then resumed scanning.

“It’s just, you know, I’d kind of like to learn how to fly.”

He looked at her, didn’t say a word – yet.

“It looks like it would be fun, I guess. Up there. Free as a bird.”

He sighed. “Yeah. When we finish up together, if you still want to give me a call.”

“Who was your favorite FTO?” she asked, out of the blue.

“Guy named Ed MacCarley. Worked deep nights, downtown, out of Central.”

“Worked?”

“Retired a few years ago, went sailing.”

“Sailing.”

“Yup.”

“Alone?”

“No.”

“Have you heard from him? Since he left?”

“No. Don’t imagine I will, either.”

“Oh?”

He pointed ahead. “Focus on the road. Three cars in front of us. What do you see?”

“Red Firebird.”

“And?”

She sped up, pulled close enough to read the license plates then slowed down, pulled back into the right lane.

“Don’t get caught up day dreaming, Deb. Did you see the light blue Datsun pickup headed north?”

“What? No…”

“You were talking about flying just then.”

“Shit.”

He sighed. “No lawn mower, driver was white.”

“Shit.”

“None so blind as those who will not see. You can’t talk and think about this shit at the same time, so don’t try.”

“Shit.”

“You know, we need to work on your vocab.”

“Right.”

“Yeah, take a right – on Red Bird, let’s take the back way in, by Westmoreland.”

“Reason?”

“My ass is twitching.”

She took the Red Bird exit, drove down to Westmoreland and turned left there – and a moment later he said “Stop, now.”

He was looking out the right side of the car into a thick stand of trees and he picked up the radio before she managed to stop. “2141, show us out on a 54, Red Bird at Westmoreland.”

“2141 at 1615.”

“Hey buddy,” she heard him say, “what’s going on?”

The kid was in shock, taking deep breaths between vacant sobs, and she guessed he was eight or nine – and there were bruises all over his torso and legs. Wide bruises, straight edges.

He took out his hand unit and called in: “2141, need an ambulance, code 2 this location.”

“1617.”

“Can you tell me your name, buddy?”

The kid was shivering in the rain, looked up and saw the badge, the uniform, then fell into his arms, suddenly hyperventilating.

Paramedics took the kid and put him in the back of the ambulance, and he got his duffel out and took out his change of clothes, had firemen hose him down. He toweled himself dry and changed in the street, then went to the back of the ambulance. A paramedic saw him and stepped outside.

“Kid’s been raped. No telling how many times, but a bunch. I’d say he was strapped down for an extended period of time, maybe days. He’s dehydrated and…”

“Okay, I got it. Is he stable?”

“Yup.”

“2141 at 1625.”

“2102, code 2.”

He turned to Desjardins. “Take a fireman, go back and see if you can pick up a trail, but don’t let anyone see you. There are house about a quarter mile in…”

“Right.”

“Look at me,” he said, and the boy turned to the voice. “I need your help now, and you’re the only one that can help me. Understand?”

The boy nodded his head.

“Do you know the man, the – who did this to you?”

The boy shook his head, but he didn’t break eye contact.

“Do you know where you were when this happened?”

“No,” the boy said, his voice far away and tiny.

“If I drove you by the place, do you think you would recognize it?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.”

“Did you see the man who did this to you?”

“There are a lot of them. They keep us in cages, then they take us out and take pictures of us while they do things…”

“How many boys? In cages?”

“I don’t know. Five or six in the room I was in. I think there are more, in other rooms.”

“How did you get out?”

“The lock on my cage wasn’t shut right and I snuck out, crawled out through a window where they do the laundry.”

“How long ago? Did you crawl out the window, I mean?”

“Not long, but I’m not sure. Maybe an hour?”

“Could you tell me your name?”

“Jason.”

“What about your mommy and daddy…”

“Don’t call them,” he cried, suddenly very frightened. “Please, don’t…”

“Okay, Jason. I won’t, but can you tell me why?”

“They took me there, left me…”

“They took you there? Why?”

“It’s a secret. I can’t tell.”

“Okay Jason. No problem. I want you to just stay here and rest, okay? I’ll be right back – in a minute.”

He stepped outside, the hot air wrapping it’s arms all around him and he shook himself back into the present, tried to keep his anger in check – saw the watch commander’s car pulling up behind the fire truck – followed by a gray Ford Fairmont – and he walked to them as the lieutenant and the detective got out of their cars.

“What the hell…?” the lieutenant said.

“My rookie and a fireman are looking for a trail, but he said he escaped recently, like and hour, so I’m thinking we may be able to find the place. Put him your car, Andy,” he said to the detective, “drive him around, see if he can point out the place…”

But he saw Desjardins running through the woods, the fireman just behind, and she saw him and altered her course, came to him and joined up, the fireman as well.

“Other side of the woods, street,” she said, gasping in the hot air. “Men looking, calling out a name…”

“Jason?”

“Uh-huh. Yup.”

“One of them is a pastor of some sort, has the collar, anyway” the fireman added – and the lieutenant sighed, looked away.

“How many houses in the area?” the detective asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, wheezing, “Long street – maybe fifty?”

“Front door open at one near the end. Pale orange brick, white asphalt shingles.”

“Let me have your hand unit,” the lieutenant said to Desjardins, then he took it, lifted it to his face. “2102.”

“2102?”

“Get a TAC team rolling this way, and about ten patrol units – and notify 100.”

“10-4, at 1633.”

“Okay,” the lieutenant began, “we’ll need to block off American Way, both ends of Cedar Circle, and, well, probably Corral, too.” He turned to the fireman: “Get onto your chief, tell them to standby for a big pediatric emergency, better notify Parkland, too.” He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Better use a land line, keep as much of this shit off the air as possible.”

He walked back to the ambulance, stepped into the air conditioned space and wanted to sigh, and he leaned over the boy. He was woozy now, coming out of shock as his body rehydrated, but the kid smiled when he saw the cop.

“You feeling better?” he asked the boy.

“Yup.”

“The house? Orange brick?”

The boy nodded his head.

“Do you know what color the front door is?”

“White, and there are white shutters, too.”

“The roof?”

“White.”

“Okay.”

He stepped outside, went back to the group. “Kid says white door and shutters on the house, white roof, too.”

“That’s the one,” Desjardins said.

“We’re gonna need a warrant, lieutenant,” the detective said. “This is too thin.”

“Exigent circumstances. They know the kid is gone, they’ll be cleaning up their act right now.”

“So? We let them alone, let things settle down, hit them in a few days?”

“And what if they decide to get rid of a bunch of witnesses? What happens then, detective?”

The detective shook his head, knew how this was going to end. “I’m going, gonna try to get the house under surveillance.”

The lieutenant nodded his head, looked at his watch. “Goddamn! What’s taking them so long…”

“I can take Desjardins, we can work our way behind the house,” he said…

“Go!”

“Come on,” he said, grinning. “Up for a little run. Again?”

He took off, she followed, and he heard her swearing under her breath and he slowed, let her catch up. “This is why you ran and ran and ran all during academy,” he said, trying not to laugh. “And the reason why you’re about to drop right now is you haven’t run since you got out of academy. Right?”

“Right, you fucking asshole.”

He laughed. “And no more Dairy Queen. Got it?”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s it, down there,” she said, pointing through thick brush at the orange brick house. There was no activity now, either in the yard or along the street, but he saw the gray Fairmont pulling up several houses further down – under a shade tree, of course, and he laughed, then picked a way through the woods so they could get around behind the house without being seen.

And she cursed when he took off at a dead sprint, followed him around the back of the neighborhood and into deeper woods. She saw him leap through the air and slowed, then detoured around the coiled up copperhead, trying to keep up with him while keeping an eye on the ground now – but he had stopped, had a fist raised again, then he was almost tip-toeing through dead leaves and broken branches, moving noiselessly now, and she tried to mimic him.

He was kneeling behind a tree when she caught up to him, and she could feel a shuddering pulse hammering away inside her skull – yet she tried to breathe soundlessly – because he was.

“2141, 102, we’re behind the house, maybe twenty yards, lots of activity inside, screaming, crying.”

“Any reason you shouldn’t go in now?”

He heard a man’s voice inside – “No, we have time…I’m not going to do that!” then a physical altercation started.

III

They drove by her apartment a little before seven, and she was waiting for them – dressed a little too well, he thought. Nice dress, high heels and makeup, and he hardly recognized his rookie. She seemed nervous, a little self conscious as they drove across down to his father’s place, but it had been a hard couple of days. The shooting review board, hours of questioning by Internal Affairs and a routine interview at the DAs office – but no verdict yet. No decision whether her first shooting had been justified or not.

Neither would be allowed back on the street until there was one.

He wasn’t worried.

She was.

“You look nice,” his wife said to Desjardins. “Has he told you much about his father yet?”

She looked at his eyes in the rear view mirror, then looked at his wife. Much taller than expected, she thought. Kind eyes, but kind of sad, too. Like she’d seen enough, knew enough about people to remain curious.

“Just that he’s a heart doctor of some kind,” Deb said.

“Well, he’s brittle,” his wife said. “Like: push him hard and he’ll break. Don’t talk about June, his wife, unless you want to see him break.”

“Okay.”

“For that matter, don’t talk about June around this guy…”

“Alright,” he said, “that’s enough.”

She watched the exchange, sensed friction in the action and reaction. Like both had been worn down by such back and forth over the years. Like she had had enough hushed reprimands over the years, and now she turned away, looked out the window as the drove south on Preston Road past the country club. A few more blocks and he turned down Willow Wood Circle and drove down to the very end. He pulled up to the curb and stopped, went around and helped his wife out of the car, then came around and got her door.

“I heard you’ve had a rough few days,” she heard, and she turned to the voice, saw the man from the maroon Jaguar – and she looked down, saw his outstretched hand. She took his hand and he held it for a moment, looking into her eyes, then he seemed to sigh a little, and draw inward. “Could I get you something to drink?”

“You know, I really don’t know what…”

“Try this,” he said, smiling – and she did.

“Oh my God,” she breathed. “That’s so smooth!”

He beamed. “It’s strong, so not too fast – or you’ll be sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“You might do something you’ll want to forget later.”

“Such as?” she said, a little suggestively.

And he looked at her just then, looked into her eyes again. “You never can tell, Miss Desjardins.”

No, he looked like a man, an attractive man who was paying serious attention to her.

“Look,” she said after an hour of increasingly intimate questions, “I’ll never find my way to the restroom, so could you take me, please?”

He looked at her and smiled, then stood and offered his hand, again, and led her inside – to his bedroom, then he stood with her outside his bathroom and he looked at her.

“I’m curious,” she said. “Do you want me to fall in love with you, or am I reading this all wrong?”

He smiled, looked away, looked around his room. “Do you know, you’re the first woman who’s been in this room since my wife passed away.”

“No one in the bed?”

“Not a soul.”

“Why me?”

“I’m not sure I know how to answer that. Not yet, anyway.”

“You’d better lock that door,” she said, “and turn out the lights.”

“Reverend Biltmore’s office, this is Barbara speaking. How may I help you?”

He told the girl who he was, and that he was returning the ‘reverend’s’ call.

“One moment, please.”

The man’s voice came on, rich and sonorous. “Yes, son,” the man said, “I just wanted to know how you’re doing?”

“I’m fine, sir.”

“I see. I ask because you seemed a bit distraught the other day.”

“Yessir, it’s been a rough few weeks.”

“Do you attend services, son?”

“No sir. Not in years.”

“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“After my mother passed away, I just…well…”

“I understand. Look, I don’t want to keep you, but I wanted to invite you to services this Sunday. We serve lunch after, so bring an appetite, would you?”

“I’m working Sunday, sir, but if I’m free I’ll try to stop by.”

“Yes, I’d like that. Hope to see you then.”

“Goodbye, sir.”

“Yes, good day to you.”

Out onto Illinois then south on Cockrell Hill Road to Kiest, just like yesterday. Just like the day before yesterday. Just like tomorrow would almost certainly be.

Yet…what was waiting for him out here today, he wondered. What shit-storm was waiting to break open and fall from the clouds. “And who’s gonna die,” he asked no one in particular.

Certainly not God.

Why? Why such despair? Why would someone be willing to kill himself – and dozens of children, too? A church employee, no less?

He pulled out the radar gun and flipped in the power and ran the ‘TEST’ circuit, then pulled out his tuning forks and knocked them on his knee, one by one, holding the vibrating rods up to the radar aperture and hitting the trigger. When all three checked out he put the forks back in his shirt pocket and looked at a car – headed his way – at, he guessed, 38 miles per hour. He held up the radar and triggered it, saw the car’s speed at 37 and falling – rapidly now – and with his visual estimate verified he sat on the bike with the radar balanced on his thigh, waiting for his first customer of the day.

It didn’t take long.

Bright orange corvette. Heavy acceleration from the light at Kiest – a manual transmission, convertible. Visual estimate 55 and climbing, in a 35 zone, and he dropped the radar in the left saddlebag and toggled the starter, pulled out into traffic as the Corvette passed. Strobes on, siren next, get in close, read the plate. She’s signaling now, got religion real bad now…

“2141, traffic.”

“41.”

“Out at Westmoreland and Silverwood on Texas personalized Henry Oscar Tom, Lincoln Edward George Zebra.”

“11:55 hours.”

He got off the Harley and looked over the car, slowly, then walked up to the drivers door. Blond hair – long, face – sunburned. He moved closer: white gym shorts, orange halter top, bare feet. Inspection sticker expired, no seat belt. Fingernails? Long and black, with little red spots on them. Perfect, he thought. A black widow…

“…And I’ll need to see your driver’s license and proof of financial responsibility.”

“My what?”

“Proof of insurance, ma’am.”

“Oh.” She rummaged around in seat, then the car’s glove box – then turned to him. “Sorry…I must’ve left them at home,” she said, batting her eyes. “Was I really going fifty five?”

“Ma’am, I’ll need you full name and date of birth, please.”

“Mindy Haskell, March third, fifty nine.”

“Keys, on the dash, please?”

“What?”

“Car keys, up there on the dash now.” He walked back to the Harley and picked up the mic: “41, need a 27, 28 and 29 on Haskell, Mindy, female white, three, three, fifty nine.”

“11:59 hours.”

“Ma’am, please keep your hands where I can see them.”

“2141, stand by to copy 29 information.”

“Oh, great,” he said, reaching for the mic. “41, go ahead.”

“Multiple 29s signals five, twenty three, and that D-L comes back suspended for signal 40 times three.”

“41, confirm warrants, and I’ll need a unit for transport, dispatch wrecker this location.”

“1200 hours.”

“Ma’am, hands where I can see them. Now.”

His hands go to the Sig226 on his hip – but her hands aren’t coming up. She’s looking at him in the door mounted sideview mirror, and he can see her eyes.

‘Not scared,’ he says to no one in particular, ‘and that ain’t right.’

“1203 hours.”

He’s sitting outside in the twilight, on the grassy lawn, the orange brick house behind him now. News helicopters circle overhead, trying to get the shot they’ll lead with for the ten o’clock news, and the watch commander and the chief are talking with reporters down the street, the camera’s bright lights attracting a million insects. Desjardins has been in an ambulance with one of the last kids they found, maybe six years old, hiding under a bed. She heard his cries, found him – and the kid wouldn’t let go of her. He’d counted sixty cigarette burns on his thighs and torso, then gave up and walked back into the living room.

“Sure, fire away.”

“You were out back, behind the tree you marked, and you heard someone yell ”No, I’m not going to do that!”

“Yup.”

“And you put the 33 out, ran for the back porch, the sliding glass door, and you picked up the chair on the way, threw it into the glass and you and Desjardins entered the residence that way.”

“Yessirree–Bob.”

He chuckled at that. “I’m curious…why not just try the door?”

“I can quote you on that?”

“Fuckin-A.”

“Okay. So, first thing you see is a kid, throat cut, on the floor, and at least one other body halfway in a large, black garbage bag.”

“That’s a big ten four, good buddy.”

“You alright, man?”

“No, I am not alright, man. I’m very seriously not alright. Make sure you put that down in your fuckin’ report, too, wouldya?”

“Yeah. Got it. So the next thing you saw was the reverend. Ewan Biltmore. And you say you saw him last once before?”

“He invited me to services once, then lunch.”

“And you went?”

“To lunch, yes.”

“I’m curious. Why?”

“Couple of weeks after I worked a bad wreck, the accident with the bus from his church and the train…”

“Oh, shit. Didn’t know that was you, man.”

“Yeah, well, he called me, wanted to see how I was doing.”

“How you were doing?”

“It was a bad’ wreck, Sherlock.”

“I know. So, Biltmore has a gun, a Smith 629. He sees Ainsworth coming in through the front door and he was getting ready to shoot, and you take him out. A double tap? That right?”

“Yup, once in the chest, the next right between the eyes.”

“You’re still on the pistol team, aren’t you?”

“Yup.”

“Yup, and that’s when she heard that kid, got him out from under the bed.”

“Right, got that. So, you hear two shots next, you think Ainsworth’s, that right?”

“I think, yes, but I couldn’t see that part of the house from where I was then.”

“Okay. Then the shotgun, what sounded like a shotgun, and by the time you got to the garage Ainsworth was down, and you hear the garage door opening. You see two men running, both with what you say were rifles, and one turned on you, and that’s when you fired shots three and four?”

“Yup. Two head shots.”

“Why not double taps?”

“I was angry. I thought, gee, maybe I should shoot them in the nuts, but no, I had to do it the hard way.”

“I see. And after that?”

“I started looking for survivors.”

“Anything you want to add?”

“No.”

“If you think of anything…”

“I’ll call you, slick.”

“You need anything?”

He coughed once, then looked up and laughed – shook his head and turned away before he said what he wanted to say. What he needed so say.

He felt her by his side a few minutes later, sitting there on the grass. She was looking at his hands and he looked down, saw blood all over them and he wondered when that had happened.

“Damn,” he said. “I don’t remember how I got blood on…”

“Ainsworth,” one of the paramedics said as he walked by. “You were doing CPR on him.”

“I was thinkin’, you know. I wanted to…I think I got into this because…”

“I know.”

“I think I’m going to turn in my letter. Go back to teaching.”

He shook his head. “No. No, you’re not.”

“Oh?”

“You’re not, because I’m not going to let you.”

“You won’t let me?”

“Yup.”

“And why not?”

He turned and looked her in the eye: “Because, you’re too good a cop.”

She looked at him, let his words roll around in her mind for a while. “You know,” she said, “I hope I never meet your wife.”

“Oh?”

“It’ll be a bitch telling her how much I love you.”

He nodded his head, looked down and laughed. “Wait’ll you meet my old man.”

Images d’une brise décolorée en août

Posted on March 11, 2017 by adrianleverkuhnwrites

Images of a fading breeze in august

Variations on a theme. Recollections into fiction.

Ever seen a police motorcycle rodeo? No? Well, go to Youtube and hit search. Watch a few. Try Texas or California. Kind of interesting, from a spectators point of view, anyway. Hard work. Nerve-wracking, too. Yes, yours truly used to do that shit, but today’s ‘images’ aren’t about rodeos and such. Picks up where we left off last week.

+++++

Images d’une brise décolorée en août.

I have been happy, tho’ but in a dream.

I have been happy—and I love the theme:

Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life

As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

Of semblance with reality which brings

To the delirious eye, more lovely things

Of Paradise and Love—and all our own!

Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

Poe Dreams

+++++

He pulls over to the right lane, watches the driver swerve a little, sharply this time, then the driver corrects and gets back in his lane. Keeping out of mirror angles, he pulls closer, maybe twenty feet behind the Ford and stops, waits for the light to turn green.

When it does, the driver in the Mustang pounds the throttle, then lets up as quickly, then accelerates smoothly away from the light, yet swerving through traffic erratically a moment later.

He picks up the mic and calls the tag into dispatch, then checks out on traffic – hitting the strobes, letting the siren wail for a few seconds – and the driver loses it completely, veers off the road, jumping a curb in the process, and he watches as sparks fly off the underbody. The Mustang careens through the parking lot, narrowly missing several parked cars on the way to a collision with a large, concrete and steel light tower.

Smoke pours out of the Mustang’s hood as he gets off the Harley and, with hand on pistol he walks up to the driver’s window.

The driver is leaning back in his seat, his trembling hands reaching for the steering wheel, and he hears hard, fast breathing, like the man is in distress…

Then he sees the blond hair, bobbing in the driver’s lap. She is in the short strokes now, and he backs off, waits for the performance to end – which isn’t too far in coming. The driver is pounding his head against the headrest, his hands are squeezing then releasing the steering wheel, then he is screaming, almost a Tarzan-like yell, a real, shattering Johnny Weissmuller yodel, and he laughs – then shines his Mag-Lite into the cabin. The driver, just coming back to earth, turns his head and looks at the motorcycle cop standing outside his window – and grins.

“Are we having fun tonight?” he asks the driver. The girl is sitting up now, clearly embarrassed, her face a pearlescent wreck.

The driver nods. “Yup.”

“You had anything to drink?”

“Not yet. But I intend to take care of that shortly.”

“Ma’am? You alright?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she groans.

“No ma’am. I need a straight answer. Are you alright?”

“Look, this son-of-a-bitch just shot two gallons of splooge down my throat. How do you think I feel?”

“Pretty damn good!” the driver said, grinning deeply now.

“Ma’am, are you in this car against your will?”

“No, but I sure didn’t know this son-of-a-bitch had a foot long dong hiding down there.”

He looked down, saw radiator fluid running out from under the new Ford and sighed. “You’re going to need a wrecker to get out of here, sir,” he said to the driver.

“What? Why?”

“Better come out, take a look.”

The driver got out, opened the hood and a boiling wave of steam billowing up into the air, and the steam smelled like scorched ethylene glycol and burned rubber.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” he cried.

“That’s what I said,” the girl added, wiping stuff off her chin.

He sighed, shook his head. “Got your ID?”

“Yeah, yeah.” The driver went to the car, fished around in his jacket, pulled out his wallet and ID, handed it over.

The driver seemed a little put out, but took the ticket book and signed on the dotted line, then handed it back.

“You need me to call you a wrecker?”

“Yeah, could you?”

“You sure you’re okay,” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, gently now, “I’ll be okay.”

“Not the safest place to do this, you know?”

She nodded her head. “Would you like my telephone number,” she asked.

“I might, but my wife sure wouldn’t,” he said, smiling. “Can I call someone for you, or you want to stick it out with Tarzan?”

She handed him her business card, looked up at him. “Just in case,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am. You have a good night.”

It was the first day of the new school year, and everyone in both Patrol and Traffic were geared up to work school zones this morning. Indeed, for the next week anyone busting a school zone would get hammered. No leniency. No excuses. Just a massive fine. Fifteen over the limit and a trip downtown for Reckless Driving, per orders from both the Mayor’s and the DA’s office. Too many kids killed last year, so a big PR campaign was underway.

He was set up in a parking lot near an elementary school, the school located on a busy, six lane divided roadway, with volunteer school crossing guards at four of the major crosswalks leading to the school, and it didn’t take long.

A little red pickup zipping through traffic, a solid forty five in the twenty miles per hour zone, and the truck tripped his radar at 46. He tossed the radar in his saddlebag, pulled in behind the boy and flipped on his lights – the kid pulled over and looked at him nervously. He walked up, explained to the boy why he was being stopped, and asked his age.

“Fifteen, sir.”

Hits the kid as he crosses into the middle lane, his angle of departure a little to the left, towards the inside lane, knocked about fifteen feet into the air, flies about seventy feet before landing on the inside lane. Body tumbles about fifty feet more then comes to a rest on the concrete median, and he’s marking the impact points in his mind’s eye when he realizes the red Toyota is out of control now, heading for him.

He jumps out of the way as the Toyota skids past, slams into his Harley before careening into the back of the stopped pickup truck. He pulls out his hand unit and calls dispatch:

“2141 at 0755 hours.”

He runs to the kid in the street, feels for a pulse and feels nothing, then runs to the Toyota. There is gasoline all over the scene now and he calls dispatch again. “2141, get me an engine on scene, I’ve got gas all over the place, and three kids trapped inside their car.”

“0756 hours.”

Two men are spraying the Toyota with small fire extinguishers as he runs for the driver’s door. He reaches in through the flames and yanks the girl free; her clothes on fire now and people help him douse the flames, someone empties another fire extinguisher on the car and he sees a little kid in the back seat screaming – before the car disappears from view in howling flames and boiling black smoke.

Fire trucks in the distance. Sirens. He looks down, sees the scorched flesh on his hands and arms – but oddly, he can’t feel anything.

Patrol cars, paramedics and firemen are everywhere now, making an opening for two helicopters. Three kids are loaded and the helicopters rise into the morning air, head for Parkland.

The Watch Commander is walking the area, talking to the chief by radio, describing the scene, then walks over to him.

“You look like a fucking hot dog,” the lieutenant said, shaking his head, “like someone held you over the fire too long. Why aren’t you on the way to the hospital?”

“I’ve got to get my measurements, L-T.”

“Bullshit. We can do that.”

“No, sir. This is on-view, and I know where everything is,” he said, pointing to his head. “I know where the key points in the sequence are. I’ve got to get my points marked, my measurements down now. I can do everything later, but I’ve got to get those first.”

The lieutenant nodded his head, called a patrol officers to help, and he got to work.

III

He hated this stuff. With a passion.

Once a year, three days of recurrent motorcycle training. Running cones. Endless courses of cones. Tight circles, so tight his Harley’s floorboards were ground down to nothing now. U-turns, inside the space of a single parking place. High speed sprints, then locked up braking and a sharp, 90 degree turn to the right, followed by a quick left. All day long, over and over. Smoking clutches and scorched brake pads, frayed tempers, brittle by days end.

The course was set up at DFW airport this summer, on the vast concrete apron outside fire station number three, but this was the third day, so an end was in sight. But this was the joyride day, the real world practicum day. The tough day. The day you were scored – by how many times you put your foot down. With a new clutch assembly installed, and fresh rear brake pads too, his Hawg was ready for the grind, the mechanical grind, anyway, but he remembered this was the most emotionally, as well mechanically, stressful day of the class. It was supposed to be; it was designed to be. When you were a rookie motor-jock, this was the day many washed-out – and went back to patrol.

If any of them washed out today, they’d get one more chance, get to make one more run. Another failing score would see a quick return to patrol, and a measurable loss of face in the eyes of brother Traffic Division officers. Scoring was simple, too. Put your foot down at any time on the joyride – and lose a point. Five points and you were out, sent to the barn.

The group started out running, one at a time, down runway 13 left – at very high speed. An instructor rode alongside, kicking his bike’s left saddlebag – as hard as he could. Once at the end of the runway he entered a circle, rode around slowly, letting the adrenalin rush taper, fade away, and when all the other officers finished it was out onto Highway 114 and a quick ride down to Texas Stadium. Into the stadium parking lot, a meandering course to an open gate, then up the inclined ramps inside the stadium to the upper deck. Up steep steps to an opening a couple hundred feet above the 10 yard line, then down the steps, through the bleachers to the bottom row of seats and a hard left turn. Fight off the vertigo, make the turn – without putting a foot down – then run along the seats to the next set of steps, then another hard left and back up the steps. Without putting a foot down. Then around the deck – up, down, up, down.

He felt his clutch slipping more now, compensated with more rear brake, but he made it out without a point off. They rode into town, rode through downtown traffic – stopping at red lights – without putting a foot down when they stopped. Clutch simmering now, they rode out to Fair Park and rode the ramps up and down through the old Cotton Bowl, then ran over to Adair’s for hamburgers and Dr Pepper – foot down allowed here – then a long, high speed run on back country roads to DFW, where one last course through the cones was set up, waiting. One of the official Police Rodeo courses was set up, and here the scoring was adjusted a little. Time became a factor, with any time greater than one minute through the course disqualifying, while a foot down still garnered one point off.

With his clutch in terminal decline he entered the course, zipped through and went over to the fire station, parked his bike and hopped off, took off his helmet and sat on the grass under a shade tree. He wiped the sweat from his face, tried to ignore his shaking hands.

He caught his breath, watched the rest of the guys run through the course, heard a thunderstorm off in the distance and sighed. A motor-jock from Plano came over and sat by him, and they looked up at the clouds as another rumble echoed across the airport.

“Nothing like running home in the rain,” the guy from Plano said.

“Unless it’s hail. I really love riding in hail.”

They both wiped sweat from their heads, then one of the firemen came out. “We got some Cokes in here, on ice.”

That was all it took.

“Goddamn, that feels so fucking good…” he sighed, and he saw one of the instructors walking his way and grabbed another Coke.

“Looks like you’re number two today. 47.3 seconds and no fouls. Not bad,” then he looked at the guy from Plano. “57.5 and three fouls. You pass, but that time sucks. You need work, amigo.”

“That’s what he told me last year,” the guy said, slamming down his third Coke as the instructor walked away. He ripped off a burp that lasted minutes.

The last jock was about to enter the course when he heard thunder, now very close, and they turned, saw a dark wall of cloud racing for the airport, then lightning arcing through the clouds overhead. A few sprinkles hit the pavement, and the instructors looked nervously at the clouds, then at the last guy weaving through the cones.

More thunder, this time right overhead, and a lightning strike over by 114.

“Alright, guys,” one of the instructors said. “Let’s take cover.”

The group went inside the bays, but all the huge overhead doors were open, the immense fire engines, in effect, aimed at the runways, while a table was set up with hot dogs and hamburgers, the firemen sharing their dinner with the cops.

“What the fuck,” Plano said.

He watched as the back third of an L-1011 tumbled through the grass just beyond the cargo ramp, smoke and bodies flying through the air, fires starting and instantly smothered by the heavy rain that had just started falling – and everyone was running for their bike, starting them as they strapped helmets on, then screaming across the cargo ramp to the grass. He threw the Harley’s kickstand down, ran into the grass, ran through a sea of smoldering bodies…

“Where to?” she asked after she’d double-checked the squad car’s inventory of flares and cones, and after he’d loaded his dive gear and reconstruction duffel in the trunk.

She looked at her notes, read through and he shook his head as he watched.

“Deb? You got to get this shit into memory. You can’t stop and consult your notepad out there…you’ve got to know what you’re looking for. Black Camaro or Firebird, damage on right rear quarter panel, some kind of decal on the back glass, maybe an STP decal. Sergeant read that out, not for your amusement but for you to have in mind while you patrol your district. Got it?”

“You memorized all that? This morning?”

“Yeah, you got to. I can remember shit like this from two weeks ago, some from months ago. And you’ve got to. We’re not cruising out here just for fun, we’re looking for specific targets. You see a black yada-yada-yada today, you turn on it and we scope it out. Got it?”

“Yup.” She left the station and made for the highway, and they drove out Highway 67. “Are they mainly hitting houses, or apartments?”

“Good question. The sergeant didn’t specifically tell us, did he? But he gave us street names both here and in Duncanville. All residential, single family homes.”

“Understood. I’ve got to memorize all these street names too. Right?”

“Yup. Pain in the ass, but when I was a rook I took a street map of my patrol beat into the house with me, and just started memorizing street names and block numbers. It’s tedious, but using a map is the only way to go. You’ve got to not only know the names, you’ve also got to know the quickest way from X to Y. Remember the Civil Service Exam? The most direct way is often neither the quickest way nor the safest. All these things come into play, but here’s a clue. This knowledge takes time to acquire and assimilate. You have time now, as a rookie, to start learning this stuff, but you really have to apply yourself. It ain’t easy, and it won’t come together without hard mental prep time.”

She nodded her head. “It’s funny, driving out here, how suddenly everyone starts to drive the speed limit.”

“Yup. People see the bubble gum lights on top of the car and they get religion – real quick. But there’s a lesson in this, too. Know what it is?”

“Something about showing the flag?”

“A scrote?”

“The big house?”

“Behind bars.”

“Oh. What do you think is the common denominator? I mean, behind criminal behavior?”

“Wow. Now there’s a question. Maybe a pointless one, but let’s see. If I were going to lay one thing out there, it’s that most street criminal think they’re real smart. That makes them lazy, and often careless. Another word that comes to mind is stupid.”

“Stupid? Really?”

“Yeah, you watch a few when you arrest them. They do things they think are smart, but in the end those moves are self-defeating, not thought through real well. Stupid, in other words.”

“Then why do so many get away with stuff?”

“Well, I hate to say it, but luck plays a big role in that. Not to mention we’re stretched thin, especially at certain times of the day, and, believe it or not, cops aren’t immune from fucking up, too. The problem with being out here, exposed like we are, is that when we fuck up we, generally speaking, get fucked up. My biggest fear isn’t getting shot, it’s being run over on a traffic stop, or out on a highway, working a wreck.”

“Really?”

“The closest I’ve come to getting killed was working a wreck out on I-20. A couple of 18-wheelers got into it, jack-knifed across all lanes of traffic, and one of ‘em was a chemical tanker. I get there, park on the shoulder and start helping a patrolman get cones and flares set in the road. A sergeant was parked up beside the tanker truck, his strobes on, flares set back from the truck. I see a car barreling along, in the lane I was standing in, and I put out my hand – like, “STOP! Now!” – but the car doesn’t slow down, not one bit, and as I leap out of the way all I can see is a ‘little old lady’ – squinting under the steering wheel – as she roars by, doing at least seventy.”

“No shit?”

“And she plows right into the tanker truck. Killed instantly, but so was the sergeant. I mean vaporized. The explosion knocked us off our feet, blew out windows in houses and businesses on both sides of the interstate, and the sergeant’s squad car was just a black, scorched pile of metal. That fast, you know? Probably thinking about his kids, but who knows? Maybe he coulda done X, Y, or Z if he had been paying closer attention, but he didn’t, and he was just dead. Smart guy, nice, dedicated. Great father, good husband, and he was a friend, too. And I watched him die. That’s part of the job too, one you need to get ready for. It’s not ‘if,’ Deborah, it’s when. It WILL happen to you, someday. You WILL see someone you know get seriously hurt, or killed. You WILL go to a lot of funerals, dead officer’s funerals, and it will fuck you up.”

“How many have you been to?”

“Three. In the last year. When there’s one anywhere within driving distance, the chief likes at least four motorjocks to show up.”

“Jesus.”

“When it happens to a friend? Man, that fucks with your head, big time.”

“How many? For you, I mean?”

“Too many, Deborah. One would be too many…but…too many. Uh…Camp Wisdom Road, one mile.”

“Got it.”

“Turn left at the light, go down to Hampton and make a left.”

“K. Where we headed?”

“The country club.”

“What?”

“Turn right on Red Bird, then right, the next right, into the lot.”

“Okay?”

“The maroon Jaguar. Under the tree. Pull my side up to the driver’s door.”

“Right.”

He rolled down his window when the car stopped. “Hey, Dad, how’s it going?”

“Alright. Who’s this?”

“New rookie. Deborah Desjardins.”

“Pleased to meet you,” the old man said, eyeing the rookie closely. “Why don’t you talk this asshole into bringing you to dinner at my place this weekend. Sunday afternoon.”

“I, uh, well, I’ll try, sir.”

“Well, you’re invited, so come on over anyway.”

“Bad case this morning?” he asked his father.

“Old guy, in his 80s, replaced his mitral valve last year. Bacteria all over it, eating it up. Tried to fix it…I told him it was too risky, but he insisted.”

“Lose him?”

“Yup.”

“Whoya playing with this morning?”

“Bill and Henry. They ask about you, you know? They’ll be there Sunday, so try to come, willya?”

“Yeah.”

“You too, young lady.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Seeya later, Dad.”

He rolled up his window as she pulled ahead, and he pointed at the road. “Right on Red Bird, then the next left. Lake Placid, I think, then let’s start cruising the alleys.”

“Right. Now what the fuck was that all about?”

“Hmm? What?”

“Inviting me to dinner?”

“Guess he liked you.”

“So?”

“He’s not married to, like, your mom?”

“She passed a couple of years ago.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“He’s lonely as hell, and he’s a world class flirt. I think you’d have a good time.”

“So, did you arrange this little meeting ahead of time?”

He turned and looked at her, grinned: “Who? Me?”

“Hell, I guess I should be flattered.”

“Flattered?”

“That you’d think of me that way. Someone your dad might like.”

“Look, kiddo, if I wasn’t married I’d be all over you.”

She blushed, turned away.

“Next alley, make a right.”

“K.”

A naked blond, by the swimming pool, with a German Shepherd between her legs, doing the deed…

She doubled over, stumbled back to the car and got in, watched as he came back and got in the car…

“Goddamn!” she said. “You knew she was going to be here? Doing that?”

“Most mornings, all summer long.”

“Shouldn’t we arrest her? You know, like animal cruelty? Something like that?”

“Did you see that dog’s face? Did he look like he was suffering to you?”

She started laughing again, this time harder.

“I mean, you’re going to testify in court? Testify about the look on the mutt’s face? Really? That fuckin’ dog is in Hogg Heaven. Animal cruelty?”

She was losing it now.

“Roll up your window, dammit! You don’t want to disturb them, do you?”

“Goddamn you,” she snorted. “You’re a sadistic sonofabitch, you know it?”

“What? Don’t it make horny?”

“Stop it!” she tried to say, but she was laughing harder now. “I’m about to piss my pants…”

“2141?”

He picked up the radio. “2141, go ahead.”

“2141, signal 53, Woodstock and Oak Forest. RP advises a black Camaro in the area just pulled into one of the houses on the cul-de-sac, unsure of the address.”

“41, code 5.”

“2110, show me code 5, and get another unit en route.”

“Units en route at 0935 hours.”

“Do you know how to get there?” he asked.

“No…”

“Left to Reynoldston, then make a right. We’ll turn left on Polk.”

“Okay.”

“Put your overheads on.”

“Got it.”

“Slow for the intersection…look both ways…okay, bust it…!”

“Yeah, got it.”

“Traffic on Polk is gonna be shit,” he said as they approached the intersection. “Okay, nose out just a little, let people see the strobes…okay, you got it…go now…”

She turned left… “Should I keep the lights on?”

“Hell yes…right lane now…Oak Park ahead, right – at the school, then an immediate left…”

“Got it…”

“Yeah, got it.”

“Left now, lights off, and about two blocks…lot’s of kids…keep it down now.”

“Okay.”

“Slower…there it is, about eleven o’clock, reddish brick house, hipped roof. Got it?”

“How the fuck do you see these things?”

“Pull over here,” he said as he picked up the radio. “2141, show us code 6 and we have the suspect vehicle in sight now. 2110, can you approach from Oak Trail?”

“2141 at 0939”

“2110 received.”

“2113, show us code 6 in the area at this time.”

“0939 hours.”

He pulled binoculars from his duffel and looked at the black car. “2141, 27 on Arkansas 132 George Paul Sam.”

“Received at 0940.”

He looked at the house, saw movement inside a window then looked at the front door. “2141 going to TAC2,” he said, switching to the encrypted tactical channel. “2141 on 2, front door kicked in, male white suspect in the house.”

“2113, coming up behind you.”

“2110 on Oak Trail.”

“Okay, they’ve seen us…running for their car…switching to primary…2141, suspects are in their car, backing out the drive…coming right by me now…”

“0940 hours.”

“Turn around!”

“I’m trying…”

“Just cut through the fucking yard…!”

“Got it…”

He reached down, turned on the lights and siren…and 2113 got in behind the Camaro. “Keep on ‘em, close it up, stay with them.”

2113 busted the intersection with their lights and sirens going, 50 yards behind the Camaro, and they heard the officers in that car take the lead, call the chase.

“That’s Tim,” she said.

“Tim?”

“We were in academy together…”

“Okay…come on, keep it tight. If they wreck out, we’re the lead and we can’t lose ‘em…got it?”

“Yessir.”

“Ease up on the steering wheel, don’t choke it…take a deep breath, good, keep breathing…remember, scan ahead and the side streets, always ahead…”

“2113, we’re at Camp Wisdom and Polk, southbound.”

“2110, get an air unit headed this way, notify DeSoto and Duncanville we’ve got a chase headed their way.”

“0941.”

“2113, passing under I-20 now…”

“0942.”

Two more patrol cars joined the chase, fell in behind the shift sergeant, 2110, so there were now five patrol cars following the Camaro.

“Roads choke down out here, hilly, and the surface is rough – these shit cars can’t handle it.”

“Air 2 monitoring, think we have ‘em.”

“0942.”

“2113, passing Wheatland Road.”

“0943.”

He looked over, saw their speed was over 80. “You’re doing good, keep a few hundred feet behind now, at this speed if something happens you need a buffer.”

“2113, turning west on Danieldale.”

“0943.”

“Okay, get left and brake before you turn…that’s it…now accelerate through the turn…attagirl. That was smooth. Remember, smooth increases speed, jerky slows you down.”

“Got it.”

“There are some choppy hills up ahead, lots of trees, reduced visibility. Got it…?”

“Yup?”

“You okay?”

“Yup, think so.”

He looked at her, hard: she was sweating and her lip was quivering but she was doing okay.

“Uh, 2110, we’re approaching Cockrell Hill Road. Is Duncanville aware of this pursuit?”

“2110, 10/4.”

He saw a slow car ahead, yellow, and a sharp little hill – but the Camaro pushed it, started to – make the pass –

“Don’t do it…don’t do it…” he whispered, but 2113 started to pass the slow car too. He watched the Camaro duck back into their lane atop the hill – then 2113 went head-on into a pickup truck – at about 80 miles per hour.

“FUCK!”

“2141, 2113 is out of the chase, 36B about a quarter mile east of Cockrell Hill, we’re in the lead.”

“0945.”

“Okay, get around that shithead…”

“2110, someone behind me stop that yellow car.”

“DeSoto 211, we got em, sir.”

“Cite ‘em for failure to yield and hold ’em at your jail.”

“Got it, sir.”

“Uh, 2110, get EMS out here Code 3, looks like multiple 60s.”

“What?” Desjardins cried. “Dead?”

“Concentrate on your driving, Deb. You have one job now. Don’t lose these fuckin’ scrotes. Got that?”

She became feral, possessed, punched the accelerator – hard.

“2110 to Air 2, you got a sharpshooter on board?”

“Air 2, negative.”

“2141, their engine is smoking…looks like they’ve thrown a rod, slowing fast now, they’re going for the frontage road…”

“0947.”

Smoke pouring out of the underside of the Camaro, the two men jumped from the car as it rolled to a stop…

“2141, out on two suspects running into the woods, 300 yards south of Wintergreen Road.”

“0947.”

Police cars from four jurisdictions slid to a stop, twenty patrolmen started running into hilly scrub west of the highway; Desjardins was following the driver of the Camaro with her gun drawn. He heard a pop-pop-pop, saw her stop, aim and fire two rounds – and he ran to her, then ran with her – to one suspect down on the ground, two bullet wounds in his chest.

“2141, Signal 33 shots fired, one suspect down, one suspect still at large.”

“0948.”

“Air 2, second suspect in custody.”

“2141 to 2110, my partner took out the driver, and he is Signal 60.”

“2110, notify CID and the watch commander.”

“0949.”

“You know, there’s not enough room in the soul for this much heartbreak.”

He turned, looked at a pastor and saw a kindly soul, at least that’s what he thought when he looked into the old man’s eyes.

“You knew…”

“All of them. Every one of them.” The old man’s eyes were red, watery and red, and he could tell this soul had endured enough today.

“Why don’t you go home now, sir. You look…”

“The Lord will give me strength, son. Don’t worry about me.”

He turned, looked at the last two bodies being loaded in a medical examiner’s van, then looked down at the ground and rubbed his eyes again.

“What about you, son? How are you doing?”

“You know, I’ve been better.”

“You look tired. More than tired. Your soul looks – well, almost broken.”

He smiled. “Does it? I’m not surprised.”

“Oh? Why do you say that?”

“It’s been a bad month, sir.”

“My name is Ewan. Ewan Biltmore. Please, call me Ewan,” the old man said, handing him his card.

He took it, looked it over, then got out his. “Here’s my card, sir. You’ll need the information, this service number, for your insurance company and, I assume, legal counsel.”

The old man nodded his head, looked him in the eye. “Perhaps you can’t speak now, but please, call me when you have some time.”

“Sure.”

The old man walked across the scorched grass of August’s in a fading breeze, over to an old station wagon and to the arms of his wife – and he watched them as they held on to one another, consoling one another in the face of this sudden eclipse. He turned, found the department photographer, confirmed all the angles he needed had been covered, then he walked the half mile down the rough gravel roadbed to the locomotive, up to the engineer.

“Sorry to keep you so long,” he said. The man was about fifty, his expression bleak, lifeless. “Could you tell me again exactly what you saw?”

“Like I told the detectives, I was approaching the crossing and I see the bus slowing, then the driver looks, and I could see his face.”

“He looks? What do you mean, he looks?”

“He looked right at me.”

“How far away were you when you saw him look at you?”

“Fifty yards. Maybe a little less.”

“Your speed?”

“Forty, on the nose. Those NTSB guys have the recorder now, but I swear I was right on forty.”

“I’m not questioning that, sir, just need to make sure I’ve got my notes squared away.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Where was the bus, I mean what part of the bus did the locomotive strike? Front, middle, rear? Just your opinion, okay?”

“You want my opinion?”

“Yessir.”

“That guy waited for the train, and the driver pulled out onto the tracks, then stopped.”

“He what?”

“You think he, what? He committed suicide?”

“Yessir, I sure do.”

“You tell this to anyone yet?”

“No, sir, I haven’t. No one asked me about my opinion ‘til you did.”

“What about the kids? Any of them in the back of the bus looking at you?”

“They all was, officer. All of ‘em, lookin’ and screamin’ – I can still see them…oh sweet Jesus!”

“One more question…Anything like this ever happened to you before?”

“Couple of suicides, yeah, but never anything like this.”

“Okay, Mr Simmons, I guess I’m done. Here’s my card. Anything else you want to tell me, give me a call. You have anyone you can talk to about this?”

The man shrugged, looked away. “Wouldn’t do no good. Wasn’t anything I could do, you know? I just ain’t ever gonna get those kids’ faces out of my mind.”

“I know. Still, sometimes talking about these things helps. Then again, sometimes nothing does.”

“What about you? You seen shit bad as this before?”

He looked away, thought of the Tri-Star tumbling through the thunderstorm three weeks before, the bodies in the grass, the smell of jet fuel and seared flesh still fresh in his mind, then he looked back at the engineer.

“You have a…no, sorry. Adios, Mr Simmons.”

“Yeah. You too.”

Predators

Posted on March 9, 2017 by adrianleverkuhnwrites

So…

Here are all the chapters in the Predator series, as well as Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, all wrapped up in one giant burrito. I’ve made a few changes and additions along the way, mainly to smooth transitions and to better integrate Beyond into the main story arc.

This was not the initial intent, however, so the two will, I think, reside side by side rather uneasily. And I wouldn’t be surprised if I come back to this one oneday, make a few tweaks here and there. It’s not finished yet, really, but what really ever is? As she stands, about 240 pages, single spaced, and I’ve divided the tale into Parts and Chapters.

If you’ve just finished reading the original (parts of the) story, I’m not sure you’ll find enough new material to justify the time, but who knows what works best on a rainy Sunday afternoon?

+++++

Predators

Part I – Shadows Beyond the Reef

Chapter 1

Dallas

He was about forty, forty five years old, very tall, almost gaunt, and not very well groomed. The man was, in every way imaginable, a slothful looking creature, yet in a soiled, potbellied way, and he was wearing greasily tattered green chinos and an old, plaid short-sleeved shirt – not quite tucked-in all the way. His sneakers were foul looking and, to anyone unlucky enough to get close enough, truly foul smelling. Officer Amy Breedlove watched the suspect through binoculars from an unmarked patrol car, a battered, twenty-six year old Pontiac Grand Am coupe that had, once upon a time, been painted a nice, bright silver. She was parked beside a fragrant trash dumpster off Harry Hines Boulevard, deep inside the industrial wastelands of central Dallas, Texas, in an almost war-torn district full of taquerias, strip joints, peep shows and barren industrial warehouses. She had been following this ‘perp’, a 45 year old habitual offender named Bruce Walker, for three days – ever since CID had received an anonymous tip that Walker was downloading kiddy porn from the so-called ‘dark web’ – and that he had been roaming around schools and playgrounds. Walker had been released from from federal prison a month ago, and as a registered pedophile-rapist, local law enforcement had been tasked with keeping an eye on him.

Yet here he was in an area full of homeless addicts, scabby-legged hookers and tired old gays cruising glory holes for their next load – and not working the parks and playgrounds the detectives in CID were hoping for. Still, Breedlove had her orders – document all his activities – so she pulled a battered old Canon 1Ds from the seat beside her and slapped a 400/5.6 on it, then swung it to her face. She lightly depressed the shutter and centered his face in the viewfinder, then fired off a five frame burst when his face was clearly visible, then she snapped a few of the adult bookstore he was coming out of.

It was around two in the afternoon, two hours to shift change, and it was hotter than hell outside – maybe ‘110 in the shade’ hot, and of course the air conditioner in this stinking, fucked-up old car had seen better days – ‘like maybe ten years ago,’ she thought. Breedlove was baking in the afternoon heat, and with summer thunderstorms brewing sweat had been pouring down her neck for hours; now it was running down her back, and she wanted an ice cold Coke in the worst sort of way. She leaned forward and tried to pull her water-logged bullet-proof vest away from her skin, sure the goddamn thing was adding about ten extra degrees to her internal temperature, when she caught sight of really odd looking person following the suspect.

“What the fuck! Is that – a woman?”

The woman was short, dressed in black fatigues – including a black hood covering her head – and every instinct Breedlove had screamed “wrong!” – that this woman was not simply following the suspect, she was stalking him – like a predator. Breedlove raised the camera to her face, fired off a long burst of the woman, but just then the woman stopped, turned and looked directly at her unmarked car. Breedlove instinctively fired off a burst with the Canon – and perhaps sensing this, the woman turned and disappeared in the shadows between two warehouses. Breedlove noted the time and location on her notepad, started the engine and slowly made her way over to the area where she had seen both the suspect and the woman, and when she came up empty she started to drive around the area, looking for any trace of either.

“I don’t fucking like this,” Breedlove said to the hot air in the car, so she picked up the mic dangling from the radio and pushed the transmit button:

“317 to 310 on two,” she said, calling the district patrol sergeant on the tactical frequency.

“310, go head.”

“Uh, 310, I’ve got a female over here in what looks like black fatigues, including a hood, following a signal 7 suspect.”

“317, what’s your 20?”

“Harry Hines at Freewood.”

“10/4. 247, are you clear yet?” the sergeant said on the primary frequency.

“247 to 310, 10/4, clearing now.”

“247, back up 317, Harry Hines at Freewood on a signal 13. Contact 317 on Tac2 for more information.”

“247, code 5.”

“Central received, 247 en route at 1420 hours.”

Breedlove circled the area, was driving north on Harry Hines when she saw someone running west from a Church’s Chicken a block ahead, so she jumped on the accelerator.

“317 to 247, got the suspect running west on Mrytle Springs, away from the chicken place, black fatigues, black hood, looks like a large knife or machete in hand.”

“10/4, almost code 6.”

“310 to Central, get me some units heading to 317s location, and notify CID.”

“Central received at 1422 hours.”

“317, suspect running south on Maybank, through the trees!”

“247, code 6 in the area.”

“247 at 1426 hours.”

“247, this is 310 and I’m about a minute out.”

“Received, uh, 247, Signal 33, officer down, repeat, 33, officer down on, on Maybank, just south of Myrtle Springs…”

“310, get air support headed this way, and all responding units go Code 3, now!”

“1426 hours.”

“310, code 6, oh, crap! 310, two officers down, repeat two down! I want a full tactical callout, now! Advise Watch Commander…oh, shi…”

“310, received at 1427 hours.”

“141, Code 6 in the area.” ‘141’ was Ben Acheson, a traffic officer a motorcycle cop, assigned to the northwest district that day, and as he was close when the call came out, he headed to the area to provide extra back-up. He was the next unit to roll up on the scene, and he nearly lost it when he saw the carnage in the street.

He jumped off his BMW R-1200-RT-P motorcycle and let it fall to the ground while he drew his Sig-Sauer P-226 from his holster and covered the scene.

“141, I’ve got three officers down, decapitated, no suspect in sight.”

“141 at 1429 hours.”

Acheson kept his 9mm moving, his senses acutely tuned to pick up the slightest sight or sound, but all he heard now was a rolling avalanche of sirens, then a helicopter overhead. Within a minute he was relieved to hear a herd of patrol cars approaching, and he knew a mobile Command and Control Unit would be on the scene soon. He holstered his weapon and walked over to the three slain officers; their bodies were artificially positioned, leaning against one another, the heads placed neatly in their laps, and he fell to his knees and vomited, just as the first back-up units screeched to stop behind him.

Chapter 2

Acheson could hear several helicopters over the crime scene now, and he knew the entire area was being cordoned off as detectives and Crime Scene Units from the department arrived. He saw techs from the Medical Examiner’s office looking over the bodies and his stomach lurched again. Looking around, Acheson guessed there were more than fifty patrol cars searching the area now, and news helicopters were circling overhead too. He poked his head in Breedlove’s unmarked car, looked it over, read her notes, and walked back to his BMW. Now he was trying to re-trace Breedlove’s route from where, he’d read on her notepad, she’d first sighted the female suspect.

He circled around a particularly seedy area on Harry Hines, a bunch of bunch of small businesses just south of Lombardy Lane, looking at a cluster of adult bookstore/video arcades that were usually full of gays, and worn-out hookers, worshipping cock on their knees, when he thought he saw something odd behind a tire store on the corner. He motored over and saw a leg sticking out from behind a pile of old, discarded truck tires, and got on the radio.

“141, out on a possible Signal 1 at 10499 Harry Hines, believe this is related to 317s case.”

“141 at 1455 hours.”

“105, get some backup and CID over there, Code 3!”

“1455 hours, 309, 315, respond Code 3 to 10499 Harry Hines, at Lombardy, back up 141 on a possible Signal 1.”

Acheson got off his bike and walked over to the tires, looked down and suddenly felt like vomiting again. There on the ground lay what was left of an old man, his head severed and his green pants pulled down past his knees. The man’s penis had been cut off, his abdomen cut open from the sternum to the pubic area, and his intestines were spread out randomly on the dirty concrete. He walked around the tires, heard sirens closing in on his position when he found the man’s head.

Acheson fell to his knees again and vomited uncontrollably when he saw what he assumed was the man’s severed penis lodged in a hideously contorted mouth.

Chapter 3

Captain John Wayne Dickinson, usually called “The Duke” by his team in CID, or the Criminal Investigations Division, was in charge of the Breedlove investigation, and he was tired, dog-tired, having been at the scene on Maybank since late afternoon – the day before. He picked up another glazed donut and took it down in one bite, then downed a pint of ice cold milk in one long pull.

“Look, I want to get some sleep sometime this month,” he said as he looked over the crime scene photographs one more time, “so let’s summarize what we know so far.

“First, Breedlove was assigned to tail this perp, Walker, and had been for three days;

“Second, she had him near the cum-palaces on Harry Hines, south of Lombardy;

“We also know she was detailed to photograph the perp, so she had one of the department’s Canons with her, a 1Ds with a 200 macro and a 400, and those are both missing;

“Third, she calls-in and advises she has a suspicious person, dressed in some sort of black, maybe a ninja-style get-up, stalking the perp, this Walker guy…

“So, do we assume she got some images of this suspect?”

The Duke looked around his briefing room.

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Ben Acheson said.

“Remind me, Officer Vomit, just why you’re here?”

“Watch Commander assigned me, sir, in case I can fill in any gaps.”

The Duke sneered derisively. “Fine, but if you barf on my floor, you’ll be working Animal Control for the next five years. Got it, Meathead?”

“Yessir.”

“Well, again, assume she got some images of the suspect, as well as the perp she was tailing. So, where does that leave us?”

The Duke looked around the room. “Anyone have any ideas?”

“I do,” Acheson said.

“I don’t give a fuck if you do or don’t, Meathead. Anyone else?”

The room was silent.

The Duke fumed.

“Okay, Meathead, let’s hear it.”

“Well, okay, assume she shoots them both, but the suspect sees her with the camera. Taking her photograph, that is. If that’s the case, it seems to me the suspects first priority would be to recover the camera, get the memory cards. So she disappeared, briefly, then lured Breedlove into a kill zone, took her out but then had to deal with two other officers who got on the scene quicker than anticipated. So, she took ‘em out too.”

The Duke nodded, grunted his approval. “Then what?”

“She circles back to her original target, Walker, and takes him out, then gets the fuck out of Dodge.”

“Okay, I like it, makes sense. What about the crime scene? What does that tell us, Meathead?”

“First, she treated the officers’ bodies with respect. She placed the heads neatly on their laps, so my guess is she killed them reluctantly, out of perceived necessity. I guess we can assume the suspect was pretty pissed off when she did Walker, sir.”

“Okay, the rest of you take off, get some sleep. I want to talk to Acheson for a minute before I go home.”

The room cleared, leaving The Duke and Acheson alone.

“That’s pretty much what I took from things, kid. Good work.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“No sirs when we’re in here chewing the fat, kid. So, why are you on motors?”

“Calculus, I guess, sir.”

“Calculus?”

“I have an engineering background, BS in Mechanical, UT Austin. When I finished my probation they moved me to Traffic, sent me to reconstruction school…”

“Oh? Where?”

“Northwestern, sir.”

“No shit. So, you’re one of those hotshots, eh? You’re not exactly young. What did you do before?”

“Air Force, sir. C-17s.”

“Really? Why aren’t you flying for American or Delta, or some such shit?”

“I did. For a couple of years. Layoffs got me, in 2008.”

“Oh, yeah. Shitty times all over.”

“Yessir.”

“Duke. Call me Duke.”

“Sorry sir, ain’t in my DNA.”

“Alright. So. Did you know her?”

“Sir?”

“Breedlove. Did you know her.”

“Yessir. Academy.”

Ouch, Dickinson said to himself. Academy classmates were always close. “You okay about that?”

“I will be, sir. In a few days, I guess.”

“Okay, understood, but don’t keep it bottled up. Any interest in coming to CID?”

“No sir, none. I love it out there on motors.”

“Yeah, I did too.”

“Sir?”

“I was in motors, Traffic, for about five years. Bad crash, fucked up my arm.”

“You miss it, sir?”

“Somedays, but not when it rains.” The Duke laughed, then shook his head. “Fucking shoulder is like a goddamn barometer now. Every time a fucking storm heads this way my whole fucking arm feels like it’s going to implode.”

Acheson nodded. “Sorry, sir.”

“You ride out there long enough and you’ll know what it’s like to feel like a barometer. Don’t you forget that.”

“Yessir. You still ride?”

“Yup. A hawg, every now and then. Electra-Glide.”

“Heavy bike. Where do you ride around here?”

“Hill Country. Llano. Usually run down to Cooper’s Bar-B-Q and pig-out, then come back up next day.”

“I’ve heard about that place, sir. Good grub?”

“The best.”

“Well, next time you head that way, give me a yell if you want some company. I’d like to get out on the open road, away from all this traffic, anyway.”

“Sure, kid. Well, I guess you’re with us on this one. You finish your report?”

“Yessir, the original and two supplementals, one for each crime scene.”

“Okay, I’ll look ‘em over later, but tomorrow. I’m going home now, get some shut eye. Report to me after briefing tomorrow morning, but write up your theory about what happened, put it in a supplemental and drop it in the Watch Commander’s box. Tell him I told you to.”

“Yessir.”

“And good work, Meathead.”

Acheson turned, grinned. “Thank you, sir.”

Chapter 4

Acheson wrote the report Dickinson wanted, dropped it off at the lieutenant’s office then walked to the locker room, grabbed his helmet and a fresh ticket book before he ambled through the station and out to the parking lot. He started the BMW’s motor and turned on the strobes, then walked around the bike, checking to see that all the emergency lighting was working properly. He mounted the bike, turned off the lights and was getting ready to retract the side-stand when a patrol car pulled up alongside.

“Hey,” Carol Denison said as she rolled to a stop.

Acheson looked at her and smiled. “Hey, yourself.” Then he looked at the thing next to her, and groaned. “Hey, Rookie,” Acheson barked.

“Sir!”

“Don’t you ever, and I mean ever, ever let me see you picking your nose when you’re in a department squad car. You got that?”

“Sir?”

“And that bugger on your fucking finger? If you put that mother fucker in your mouth and I’ll put three rounds in your fuckin’ face. You, like, hear me, Rookie?”

“Sir! Yes sir!”

“You his FTO?”

“Yup. Hey, someone’s gotta train these kids…”

“Guess so.”

“Well,” Denison said – rolling her eyes, “How’s it hangin’?”

“Low. Like down in the weeds low.”

She nodded. “I don’t know how you did it, man.”

He looked away, didn’t really want to go there today.

“So,” she said when she saw his eyes, “Would you like to come over for dinner tonight? Me and Brad are doing up some steaks by the pool. Maybe a salad and ice cream?”

“Y’all still over in that complex off Northwest Highway?”

“Yup.”

“Well, sure. Unless…”

“Yeah, I know, I know. There he is, ladies and germs: Joe Ace, Traffic Reconstructionist Extraordinaire. Gets called to go work every bad wreck in the county.”

Acheson grinned. “I never, ever shoulda taken calculus. No good ever came from taking too much math.”

“You finally figured that one out, like all by yourself?” Denison smiled. That knowing smile, the one he remembered from academy.

“With a pencil, too. Say, that reminds me. Rookie!”

“Yes sir!”

“Do you know how a mathematician gets rid of constipation?”

“No, sir!”

“Works it out, with a pencil.”

Stone cold silence.

“So, you get it?”

“No, sir.”

“Where do they dig up these morons,” Acheson moaned.

Denison shrugged. “He’s not too bad, Ben.” But not as good as you were, she said to herself. She and Amy Breedlove and Acheson had become inseparable halfway through their academy class, and for a while there had been even money on who loved Acheson more, Carol Denison or Amy Breedlove. Yet Acheson had been oblivious to everything, was always the serious student and had never let on he noticed what was going on.

And who knows, Denison thought, maybe he really hadn’t caught on. Better for him now if he hadn’t.

“So, got a girlfriend yet? If so, bring her along!”

He shrugged. “You know me, still flying solo. You and Brad engaged?”

“No way! He’s still married to his job…”

“Still selling cars?”

“Cadillacs, Ben, not cars.”

“Oh, right. Silly me.”

They laughed.

“Well, okay. Seeya around four thirty or five?”

“Sounds about right, and Rookie? Keep that finger out of your nose.” he said, then he looked at Carol: “Be careful out there.”

“You too, Ben.” She slipped the car into gear and eased away, pulled out into traffic and was gone.

“141, are you in service?”

“141, 10/4,” he groaned, knew what was coming next.

“141, 27B, Lemmon at Turtle Creek. Vehicle on fire, one fatality reported.”

“-41, Code 5.”

“141, at 0910.”

“Well,” he said as he pulled away from the station, “there goes the day.”

Chapter 5

Acheson cleared from the wreck a couple hours later, then headed out Lemmon Avenue past Love Field, then wound his way over to Harry Hines and began cruising the area Amy had been working the day before. He didn’t have any idea what he was looking for; in fact, he felt kind of lost as he cruised up and down the streets around the crime scene. He stopped on Maybank, looked toward the tire store as a Southwest 737 lined up on final for Love Field, then made his way back to Harry Hines. He was waiting to make a left onto Lombardy when something, some sort of insight, flashed through his mind. The light turned green and he turned east on Lombardy, rode a few hundred yards, then stopped on the shoulder and looked around again. Something was bugging him, but after a minute he pulled back onto Lombardy, then turned south on Denton Drive. Another few hundred yards and he crossed a little concrete bridge over a paved storm-water runoff ditch that carried floodwaters down to the Trinity River, and there it was again – he knew he was missing something important. But what? He pulled the bike over onto the shoulder again, and something in his gut twitched, some little alarm in his head went off.

“So, if I ran from Maybank to Lombardy, killed Walker there, where would I go next?”

He looked through the trees to his right. He could just see the tire store, there beyond the drainage ditch. And the crime scene on Maybank – was at the far end of an imaginary line running from here through the tire store.

“Well, I’d keep on running, away from the scene on Maybank.”

He drew a line on the map in his head, and it led to right here. He pulled the BMW off the road, parked under a shade tree and walked down the sloped concrete to the drainage ditch, then over to the bridge that carried traffic on Denton Drive over the ditch. He saw a couple of water moccasins in the shallow, brownish water and skirted them warily, then walked under the low bridge.

He saw it immediately.

A white towel, folded neatly on top of a small blue duffel bag.

He walked over to pile, took a pencil and unfolded the towel.

A blood-soaked knife. A notepad.

And some writing on the notepad.

“Better luck next time, Ben,” was written on the pale yellow pad, and in a daze Acheson ran up to the BMW and called dispatch.

The mobile crime scene unit arrived before anyone from CID, and they secured the scene while Acheson paced ‘round and ‘round, obviously agitated.

One of the techs came up a few minutes later.

“Any idea who this ‘Ben’ is?” the tech asked.

“Yeah. Me.”

“No shit? That’s fucked up, man.”

Acheson looked at the guy, cold smoldering fury in his eyes.

“Well, right, anyway, the camera is in the duffel, along with a bunch of shots of that Walker dude, probably from the CF card.”

“That sounds about right,” he said as the implications of the note pounded away inside his head. He went to the radio again, shook his head, took a deep breath.

“141,” he said into the mic.

“141, go ahead.”

“141, would you contact Captain Dickinson, advise him he needs to come to this location.”

“141, at 1347 hours.”

Acheson walked over to a telephone pole and put his hands out, leaned against the creosoted wood as his head began swimming in the currents of his doubts and fears.

Then he vomited. Again.

Chapter 6

Dickinson arrived on the scene about an hour later; Acheson led him down into the ditch and over to the bridge. The CSU techs had left everything pretty much as they’d found things, primarily to let Dickinson look things over before they tagged and bagged the evidence and took it all down to Central Evidence.

Dickinson read the note, then whistled.

“Holy fuck-a-doodle-do,” he said. “I didn’t see this one coming.”

“No, sir. Neither did I.”

“So, how the fuck did you find this shit?”

“I worked a major accident first thing this morning. When I cleared I decided to come over here, just poke around. I thought, well, I tried to picture a vector, a trajectory, from the crime scene on Maybank to the tire store, and I carried that line forward. I, well, it pretty much leads to the bridge, sir. I came down there, and bingo. Here it is.”

“Are you, like, a weirdo, or some kind of fucking genius?”

Acheson shook his head. “Not hardly.”

“I guess there’s no memory card in the camera?”

“Uh, no sir,” the CSU tech replied, “it was in the bag. Probably wiped, but there are images on it.”

“And no fingerprints?”

“None.”

“Fuck-a-doodle-do,” Dickinson said again. “Any theories, Meathead?”

“It’s either a cop, sir, or an ex-cop. And maybe she put this stuff here yesterday, or saw me a while ago and dumped it then.”

“Damn right it’s a cop, and a pissed off cop, too. Fuck-a-doodle-do.” He walked down the ditch towards Harry Hines. “Anyone check the area for footprints?”

One of the detectives from CID answered that she and her partner had just finished walking both sides of the ditch down to Harry Hines and back, and had found nothing.

“Figures. Well, fuck-a-doodle-do. Guess we’d better send the towel and the bag over to the Federales, see what the fuck they can come up with.”

“Yessir,” the CSU tech said. “Can I bag it now, sir?”

“Yeah, go ahead. Acheson, let’s go grab some chow. If I can’t sleep, we might as well eat.”

“Sir, one of my Academy friends is cooking steaks this evening. Meeting her around five. Could we head over there?”

“Steaks? Well, why the fuck not. Never turned down a steak in my life.”

“It’s not far from here, sir, if you want to follow me.”

“Lead on, boy. Just don’t lose my ass. That fucking bike looks like it’s going a hundred miles an hour just standing still. Hey, come to think of it, we’d better stop off and pick up some extra meat. I’m fucking hungry!”

Chapter 7

“So, just what did you run into over on Denton,” Carol asked when Ben and The Duke had settled down in lawn chairs out by the pool behind her apartment building.

Ben looked at Dickinson, who nodded it was okay to talk about it.

“Some evidence. From the thing, uh, yesterday.”

“What Mr Articulate here is trying to say, Officer Denison, is that he found the missing camera and the murder weapon.”

“Really? That’s, uh, pretty wild. How’d you put that together?”

“I can’t wait to hear this,” The Duke said. “I swear to god, Meathead, you ought to go into politics. You could bumfuzzle a raccoon.”

“Yessir. Uh, well, I had a picture of the area, uh, in my mind. I just drew, well, a line. Well, in my mind…”

“I just fuckin’ love this guy,” The Duke interrupted. “He’s like Cary Fuckin’ Grant. Suave, man, I mean fuckin’ grace under pressure.”

Carol laughed, then looked at her watch.

“Heard from Brad,” Ben asked.

“Nope.”

“Well, I’m starved,” The Duke said. “Got some charcoal handy? I’ll get us a fire going…”

Carol’s cell phone pinged, she answered, walked away from the pool while she talked, then came back a few moments later.

She did not look happy.

“Well, I guess that’s that,” she said.

“What’s up?” Ben asked.

“Brad. He’s done with me, with us, the whole police widow thing.”

“Hot damn!” The Duke yelled. “A purdy girl all to ourselves, and an extra steak for me! Fuck-a-doodle-do!”

Chapter 8

“That guy’s a trip,” Carol said a few minutes after The Duke left.

“Kind of a force of nature. And a legend in Texas law enforcement, from what I’ve heard.”

“You know, he kinda looks like John Wayne, too. Spooky.”

“I think he’s even bigger,” Acheson answered. “How’re you holding up?”

She shrugged, turned away, walked into the kitchen.

Ben heard tears from the living room, walked into the kitchen, stood behind her. “You going to be alright?” he asked.

She turned, walked into his arms and buried her face in his neck. “I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to blow off two years. You know what I mean?”

“I reckon so.”

“Haven’t you ever had a serious thing with a girl before?”

“Yeah, once.”

“Once? When…”

“In college. Well, we were together from our second year ‘til we graduated.”

“And you split up after…”

“No.”

“What happened?”

“Killed. An ice storm up in the panhandle, on 287. She was headed home for Christmas, a truck lost it on the ice, hit her head on.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, Ben. I didn’t…you never…”

“Nope, no reason to. Never been a big fan of pity parties.”

“And, well, has there been anyone since?”

He shook his head.

“No one?”

“Nope. Not a soul. Actually, I thought I’d make a decent priest, gave it some serious thought, too.”

She laughed, then stopped. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes, but see, the thing is, I’m not big on the whole God thing. I figured that might not be the best way to approach the ministry.”

“I can see that might present a few problems,” she said gently, almost smiling again.

“A few?”

“You know, Amy and I were both in love with you. Back in Academy.”

His eyes didn’t register the words, but his head shook a little. “What?”

“We were both in love with you. Amy and…”

“You?”

“Me. I. Yes.”

“Sorry. I had no…”

“Idea. Yes, we figured that out. It still surprises me, though. I thought we were kind of obvious.”

“That’s so…weird. I just never thought…”

“Of me that way. Yup, I know.”

“But…”

“Yessiree. Good ole Carol, the invisible girl.”

“What? Why do you…”

“Why do I say that? Well, Officer, let’s look at the evidence before the court, shall we? See? There’s this girl in his arms, this suddenly available girl, and this girl’s had like a mad crush on him for like five years, and you aren’t even going to kiss me, are you? You aren’t even going to, like, throw me down on the kitchen floor and fuck my brains out, even though she’s just standing there, right in front of you, practically begging you to do just that?”

“You want me to kiss…”

“Oh-my-fucking-God! Do you like have some kind of brain tumor or something, some weird-ass-fucking-thing in your head that makes you totally stupid when it comes to girls?”

“A tumor?”

“Would you just shut the fuck up and kiss me now, you moron?”

Chapter 9

“So, did you and Officer Carol swap some spit last night,” The Duke asked when Acheson made it into CID the next morning.

“What?”

“Are you, like, totally stupid? Or are you some kind of fuckin’ space alien, from, you know, like Mars or someplace like that?”

“What?”

“Jesus H Fucking Christ, Meathead! I have never, and I mean never, ever seen a girl as crazy in love with a guy like that gal is with you! Tell me, really, you weren’t like, you know, picking up on that even just a little bit?”

“I think she kinda got me dialed into that, sir. Took a while, though.”

“Man, and I thought you was like half way smart, too. Shame on fucking me.” The Duke shook his head, grinned a little, then said: “You’d better go wash your hands again, son. I think I can smell a little, well, you know, on them fingers.”

Acheson turned a deep crimson purple, put his hands behind his back.

“I’m serious, slick. That hand smells like a can of tuna that’s been sitting out in the sun for a week. Now, git! And use some soap this time, too.”

Acheson took a leak, washed his hands, then went back to CID.

“So, did y’all set a date yet?”

“What?”

“Jesus, this is fun.”

“What?”

“Okay, Meathead, okay…where do we go with this case? Any ideas?”

“Forensics. On the bag and towel. Any idea when we’ll get those back?”

“Probably a week. Thereabouts, anyway, but I don’t feel like waiting. So? What’s next?”

“We bait a trap.”

“And how would we do that?”

“We find another perp, another Walker, get CID onto him, put a tail on the guy.”

“Tether a goat, wait for the lion?”

“Yessir.”

“Might work. What else?”

“Unmarked patrols around the bookstores and arcades. Clear out all the marked units from Harry Hines, for a while, anyway.”

“Oh. Did you finish that accident report? From yesterday?”

“Yessir. I came in early, 0600, and wrapped it up.”

“She’s seems like a helluva girl, Ben. You figure that out yet, or are you going to pass?”

“Carol?”

“God, I’m sure there’s a fucking brain in there somewhere,” The Duke said as he squinted hard and looked at Acheson. “Yes, Carol. Did she say how long she’s been in fucking love with you?”

“Since Academy. She’s says, sir.”

“That fits. What district is she working?”

“She’s floating, Field Training Officer this month. Working with a rookie around Love Field, I think.”

“I’m going to pull her off the street, until this is over.”

“Sir?”

“Well, first Breedlove is killed, then the note to you. It could be random, or you might be the common denominator in this case, and if that’s true then she’s at risk.”

“Unless she did it, sir.”

“Already checked that one, slick. Last night, while you had your fingers in the pie, so to speak. She was here in the station when you checked out on Maybank, doing paperwork, and she didn’t leave until it was all over. So…”

Acheson nodded, felt a chill run down his spine. “Have to wait until the woman strikes again,” he almost whispered.

“No way, Meathead. No fuckin’ way, and don’t ever let me hear you thinkin’ like that again, not even to yourself. We don’t wait for people to get killed, got it?”

“Yessir.”

“Now, don’t make a fuckin’ stink about it, but go check your bike in, write it up on a mechanical or something, then check out an unmarked and head over to Harry Hines, just start setting up, scoping out those dirty movie places, them glory holes where the hookers hang out. My bet is she’s going to hit some guy who’s about to take out a hooker.”

“What about the pedophile angle, sir?”

“Possible, but we’ve got the district squads handling that, putting pressure on the parks, so maybe that’ll push her to the peep shows. Assuming she’s smart, but I’m assuming that’s her kill zone.”

“Sir, if she’s inside, she probably knows every unmarked car we have.”

“Hadn’t thought of that,” The Duke said as he looked out a window while he stood by a water cooler in the corner of the room. He bent over, took a little paper cone and filled it with cold water, then tossed it down while he looked out the window. He filled it again, tossed that one down too, then crumbled up the little cup and threw it across the room to a waste can by his desk.

He didn’t miss; the wadded paper flew straight in the can, and The Duke smiled.

“That’s kind of like life, kid. You gotta take the shot, every time. But you can’t afford to miss.”

“Yessir.”

The Duke looked around the room, walked over to a long table, opened up a white donut box sitting by some folders.

“Empty! Motherfuckers! Not one fuckin’ donut left! Bunch of goddamned vultures! What kind of fuckin’ police station is this! Where are my Goddamn donuts!” The Duke screamed as he rambled off down the hall…

Chapter 10

Acheson was driving an old, impounded Toyota past Love Field, on his way out to Harry Hines, and he stopped by the old Braniff hangers on the north side of the airport and watched as a Southwest 737 flared over the threshold and roared to a stop. He looked at the jet and had to admit that he missed it. Flying. Being in the cockpit. The economy that had ruined his career had turned around again – and he wasn’t too old, yet. He could get back on with a major again, or even Southwest, if he really wanted to. Get a type rating on 737s, or go back to 777s.

Still, he really loved police work, and he’d never expected that. He loved riding motors, working wrecks. Even arresting people from time to time, those that really needed it, anyway. He could see himself doing the work, doing it for the rest of his working life, but every time he saw a 737 coming in to Love, or a heavy out at DFW, his heart fluttered a bit. It was a lot like loving two women, each with a lot of good things going for her, and then being forced to choose between them.

He shook himself back into the present, got back on Lemmon Avenue and headed toward Northwest Highway – then that instinct hit him in the gut again and he swung off Lemmon into a parking lot, cursing himself as he jumped a curb. He opened his briefcase and pulled out a map of the city, penciled in a line from the initial scene on Maybank to the tire store on Lombardy, then extended the line out in both directions.

“Fuck!” he said. The line extended south, straight to Love Field, right through runway 1-3 Right until it veered slightly into a new parking garage across from the remodeled main terminal building. His stomach lurched as he got back into traffic, then he U-turned and backtracked on Lemmon until he hit Mockingbird Lane, then after another half mile he turned right on Cedar Springs and into the airport.

“Now what?” he asked himself as he drove on to the terminal area. He slowed, looked at his marked-up map again, looked where the line crossed the runway and veered through a new parking garage, and so he headed for it. He came to a pay gate and took the time-stamped card the machine spit out at him, then drove inside.

The garage looked to be three, maybe four stories tall, so he started cruising the lanes, looking between parked cars as he worked his way up to the next level. There were construction trucks parked on the second level, and construction materials were stacked in a few corners of the building, but there were still a lot of parked cars, just normal airport traffic mixed in with the trucks and pallets…

“What the hell is that?”

He stopped near a corner of the garage on the second level, and while there was some sunlight flooding through other parts of the building, this corner was dark, almost pitch black. He could just make out a large pile of what looked like garbage stacked in this corner, some construction debris maybe, but a blue plastic tarp covered a large part of the pile – but something else caught his eye.

Acheson picked up his flashlight and got out of the car, then walked over to the pile, lifted the tarp, fell to his knees and started vomiting. Again.

_______________________________________

Captain Dickinson got to the scene fifteen minutes later, along with a few dozen patrol cars, and he made his way up to Acheson’s location as quickly as he could. The Duke got out of his Ford and walked over to the CSU van; he saw Acheson standing away from the scene, then he saw the fresh pile of puke Acheson had just deposited on the concrete.

He walked over to the victim, looked at the poor fucker and turned away before his own stomach started to heave.

“Fuck-a-doodle-do-do!” he said as he made his way over to Acheson. “Man-o-man, she field dressed that poor sumbitch. Phew-whee, poor fucker must’ve eaten at Taco Bell. Wow! You ever small anything like that?!”

Acheson stifled a heave. “Could you stop it, please?”

“So, what got you this time? The olives? Or the sour cream?”

Acheson dropped to knees again, and The Duke walked away with a big grin plastered all over his face, then ‘high-fived’ a CSU tech as he walked inside the van.

“Got anything interesting?”

“Nothing much, but a few differences. Same MO. Cut his head off, probably same type of blade, maybe a Special Forces K-Bar. Disemboweled, as before, only this time looks like she took a bite out of the large intestine.”

“No shit? Hungry little bitch, I guess. Bite marks worth a damn?”

“Still working on that. Anyway. Cut his penis off, same type knife, then put the pecker in the guy’s mouth, tip sticking out, just like the one yesterday. Another something different. She took the guys testes, put them where his eyes used to be.”

“Now, that’s a nice touch. Find the eyes?” The Duke heard Acheson ask.

“Not yet,” the tech replied.

“Oh, you back among the living, Meathead?”

Acheson was standing behind The Duke. “Yup.”

“So, what do the eyes tell you?”

“She thinks we’re blind. And we’re thinking with our balls, or think like men, I guess you’d say.”

“Uh-huh. We probably are, but that’s the problem with having nuts. Anything else?”

“Yeah, the shoe-print.”

“She left…a shoe-print? Didn’t see that…”

“Well, it’s over here, and I’d say it’s a plant. It’s too perfect.”

“Show me.”

The tech, Acheson and The Duke walked over to the corner by the body; there were bright work lights set up now, and a team of techs was dusting everything down for fingerprints. A few feet away, bright yellow tape on the concrete demarcated a dark red shoe print on the concrete, and a tech was photographing it when the three of them approached.

“So, what is it? Blood, or paint,” The Duke asked the tech.

“Best guess right now? Blood.”

“The shoe?”

“Woman’s high heel, probably size 7. Imprint on the sole says Pepe Jimenez.”

“An imprint?”

“Yeah, that’s the giveaway. Probably a new shoe, never worn.”

“Search the building. I’d make bet it’s in here somewhere.” He turned to Acheson. “So, what’s that shoe supposed to mean?”

“Either, uh, wait a minute…” Acheson said as walked back to his unmarked car. He rummaged around on the floor, then came back carrying a compass and a map of the city in his hands.

“Hey, look! It’s…Dallas!” The Duke cried when he saw the map. “Holy shit, what a clue!”

Acheson ignored him, put the map down on the concrete, spread it out to show most of the city.

“Okay, sir. Here’s how I found this scene. I drew the line…”

“Yeah, from Maybank to the drainage ditch. You told me that. What of it?”

“Well sir, I extended the line. It leads to the runway over there,” he said, pointing to the threshold of 1-3 Right, “but veers into the garage. Right here, as a matter of fact.”

The Duke kneeled down to the pavement and studied the map. “I’ll be damned.”

“Now, that bearing is roughly 130 degrees true. My guess is if we take the heel and the tip of the toe on that shoe print and use that as a vector, we’ll get roughly 130 degrees.”

“Do it.”

Acheson walked over to the print and gently placed an edge of the map along the heel-toe axis, then placed the compass on the axis. “132 degrees, sir.”

“Fuck-a-doodle-do,” The Duke said, looking at Acheson. The tech nodded, clearly impressed.

“So…?”

“So, think she’s pointing us to her next kill? What’s along that axis, Ben.”

Acheson placed the map on the pavement again and extended the line on the map to the very edge of the paper. “Condos and high rises on Turtle Creek…”

“Gucci Gulch, you mean?”

“Yessir. Then along Haskell, on to the other side of Central, and then out to the north side of Fair Park.”

“A lot of potential kill zones in there. Anything stand out?”

“Besides the fair grounds? No, nothing jumps out at me, sir.”

“What about the shoe? You were about to say something. What was it?”

“Well sir, it’s feminine. The shoe, I mean, and it’s a woman’s size. She’s either telling us something about herself, or her next victim.”

“Assume it’s hers. Then what?”

“First, we find out about the shoe, find out who carries that brand, then try to find anyone in the area who bought one in that size, then cross check that info with women in the department, with that shoe size.”

“Like we have that kind of information on file, Meathead!”

“Then we get it, sir. Daily briefings. Shouldn’t take more than a few days.”

“Okay. So I think we should extend that line north and south, plot it out on a really accurate, really big fucking map. Start patrols along that line. Like, today.”

Acheson shook his head again. “Probably isn’t going to matter much, sir. Whoever it is, she’s probably inside, very dialed in to what we’re doing, my guess is she’s monitoring all our frequencies, and my guess is she has whatever equipment she needs to de-scramble every channel we use. She’ll know the patrol districts, squad numbers, you name it.”

“Ben, you and I are going downtown, talk to the Chief. Leave that piece of shit car here, ride with me. Give the keys to…what’s your name?” The Duke asked the tech.

“Logan, sir.”

“Logan, have someone get that unmarked back down to Central when you clear.”

“Yessir.”

“I’ll go get my stuff out, sir,” Acheson said as he jogged over to the old clunker. Then…

“What the FUCK!” he cried.

The Duke and an army of detectives and crime scene techs ran over to Acheson’s car.

Down on the driver’s seat was another notepad, open to a fresh page.

Acheson leaned over, read it aloud:

– Not bad, Ben, but you’re not there yet. And time’s running out, so don’t waste any more of my time. Luv, C –

Everyone stood up and looked around. Whoever planted the notepad had done it in the past few minutes, while the group had been over next to the body looking at the shoe print, only now the car’s passenger door stood open – and there was a stairwell just beyond the car’s open door.

Thirty cops and detectives took off running for the stairs; half ran up, half ran down, and nobody found anything or anyone in the least bit suspicious.

+++++

“You know,” the Chief said as The Duke looked on, “you took the sergeant’s exam, scored high, could have had your stripes but you turned ‘em down. I’m curious. Why?”

“I would have had to give up motors, Chief. I like Traffic, I like what I do.”

“I can relate to that,” he said. “I was on motors in LA for nearly fifteen years. Still, no ambition beyond motors?”

“I’m not sure, Chief,” Acheson said as he looked away.

The Chief opened Acheson’s personnel file. “Oh, yeah, you’re one of the pilots. I understand now. Southwest’s hiring. So are United and Delta, maybe American, too. When are you going to apply?”

“I haven’t decided what I want to do yet, Chief.”

“You mean, you might stick it out here?”

“Yessir.”

“You miss flying, son?”

“Something awful, sir.”

The old man nodded. “Yeah, once it gets in your blood it’s hard to shake, and life’s short.”

“Did you fly, sir?”

“Me? Yup, a little – ‘Nam. Navy. RA-5C, recon bird. You know it?”

“Yessir, probably the prettiest aircraft ever made. Must’ve been a hoot and half, sir.”

“You flew, what, the C-17? Then for American? What did you fly with them.”

“Right seat, 757s, then 777s, just before things turned south.”

“Pretty bird, too. Still a lot of carriers using ‘em,” the Chief said, pointedly. “Bet you could get a job tomorrow.”

Acheson shrugged, looked back at the man.

“What could I offer you? To keep you here?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“What about…if you could have ‘em both. Would that work?”

“Sir?”

“Go get your job, just keep yourself based here in the Dallas area, work some days off as a Reserve.”

“Could I stay in Traffic, Chief?”

“Maybe, sure, but the Duke wants you pretty damn bad. Over in CID.”

“Maybe Traffic for a few more years, then jump over to CID?”

“Duke? Would that work for you?”

“Hell, Mike, we’re short downstairs, and I could use him full time, right now. I’d bump him up to sergeant tomorrow, get him on the list to take the Lieutenants Exam in September. I’m retiring in five years. He’s got the chops to take my place, the only one I’ve been around the past few years that has the mind for the job. Anyway, that’s what I want, Ben.”

“Ben,” the Chief said, “I’m not a high pressure type of guy. You want to fly, you go fly. Do whatever you can in this life that makes you happy. I believe if you’re happy, your family will be happy, and the people you work with will be happy. That said, we can sure use you. We need men and women that can think on their feet. Hell, the world’s changing faster than ever and, well, we need officers like you more than we ever have. Ya know, the days of redneck policing are over, the job is simply getting too complex. Anyway. We need you. Please think about that…before you make any decisions. Okay?”

“Yessir.”

“Oh, one more thing. I’ve got a complaint from a rookie about you. Says you threatened to blow his head off?”

“Yessir, I did.”

“Oh? I guess I’d kinda like to know why…?”

“He was right seat, in a patrol car, saw him pick his nose, and I think he was getting ready to eat a pretty big bugger, sir.”

The Chief’s and The Duke’s eyes went round, the Chief made a small retching sound.

“Tell you what, Ben; you see that sumbitch do that again you put that pistol of yours right in his mouth, and tell him I told you to pass along that’s his last warning. We clear on that, Officer?”

“As a bell, sir.”

The Chief stood, held out his hand. “It was good to meet you, son. I hope you decide to stick around, and if you do just let Duke know. Now, Adios you two.”

“Yessir. Thank you sir.”

The Duke and Acheson walked in silence down the hall to CID, the old man stopping once to look at a particularly nice pair of legs, then they went into the briefing room and sat down.

“Nice set of stems on that one, eh?” The Duke said.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. That your secretary?”

“Yup. New gal. Took her on a few months ago. Sweet as can be, had a sad life. Well, nice chat with the Chief. Guess you know where things stand.”

“Yessir. Thanks. For what you said in there. I appreciate it.”

“Well, you’ve got a report to write, me too, for that matter. Then why don’t you get over to that gal’s place, Carol, and take her out to dinner? You two might have a few things to talk over tonight, too.”

Acheson smiled, nodded. He hadn’t thought about her all day.

“Oh, by the way, I’ve got her detailed to dispatch for the time being, until we get this little fracas settled, anyway. In case you want to drop by or call her or something.”

“Sir?”

“Oh, man, you do disappoint the shit out of me sometimes, Meathead.”

“Yessir.”

+++++

“Sounds like you had another weird day,” Carol said as they settled in a dark corner booth at a decent little Mexican place close to her apartment.

“Yup. Weird’s a good word.”

“You found…another body?”

“You want some guacamole or something?” he asked, hoping to change the subject.

“Sure. Maybe about ten Margaritas, too!”

“Yikes! Hope you got kneepads, and your plumbing works!”

A waiter came by and Ben ordered a couple of Maggies and some green stuff…

“Anyway, I had a ‘two-on-one’ with Dickinson and the Chief this afternoon.”

“Uh-oh,” she said, turning serious. “About my rookie and that stuff about picking his nose?”

“Oh, no, not really. More the ‘are you going to stay with the department?’ kinda stuff. Am I going to go back to flying, in other words, and Duke wants me to move to CID as of yesterday, will bump me to sergeant right away if I do, and as much as said he wants me working towards taking over CID when he leaves.”

“Holy shit, Ben, that’s wonderful news. What did you tell them?”

“Nothing, yet. It was more a ‘you need to go home and think about this for a few days’ kinda thing, but Duke seems to think you might have something to do with this decision.”

“Oh, really? Me?”

“Well, he seems to think you love me, and that I’d be crazy not to jump all over you…”

“Or maybe he’s just using me to manipulate you?” she said.

He shook his head. “Maybe, but I doubt it.”

“You like him, don’t you.”

“Kinda reminds me of my grandfather. Hard around the edges, but a real softie inside.”

“You trust him, then?”

“I think so. He’s a natural leader, but an honest one, too. Rare, in other words.”

“Loves donuts, or so I hear.”

“Loves? Shit, he drinks ‘em down. I mean it, in like one bite. And he inhales a pint of milk after almost every one. Fucking amazing. Amazing he doesn’t weight four hundred pounds. Anyway,” he leaned forward, took a folded up letter from his shirt pocket and opened it. “It’s from United. Got it today. First officer’s position, 757s. Probably Seattle, maybe Denver. Pay is about twice what I’d make as head of CID five years from now.”

“Uh-huh? But?”

“But the Chief said I could fly and, if based out of Dallas, still do motors in the Reserves.”

“But aren’t you still in the Air Force Reserves?”

“Yup.”

“So, you’d be flying three days a week, then maybe a day or two per week on the street, and what is it, a weekend a month driving C-17s for the Air Force? Sounds an awful lot to me like you’d be burning the candle at both ends.”

“To me, too.”

“So, you’ve got a big decision to make, don’t you?”

“Yup.”

“And do I fit in there, somehow?”

He sighed, nodded his head. “I, well, I guess that’s the question. I say we give it time, see where it goes.”

“Yup, no need to rush.”

“So, this stuff…when you say you loved me in Academy? Were you serious?”

She smiled, shrugged her shoulders. “I wasn’t making that up, Ben, but maybe it was more an infatuation, for a while, anyway. But over time, as I watched you, well, I don’t know. I began to feel something more, as I got to know you better. Amy did too, but I never thought it was anything like love – with either of us. It was more like we respected how you picked yourself up after getting dropped by American, how you didn’t give up. But it was more than that, too; it was how seriously you took becoming an officer, like you really respect the job, the problems we deal with, that people have to care enough about the world to try and make a difference. The funny-sad thing about Amy, though? I think she fell for you, hard. Like she really wanted to love you, somehow needed to…but she never really got over the idea when it looked like, well, you two just weren’t going to happen. I tried to move on, tried to tell her to, too, but really, it’s funny, I could never commit to Brad, and I think he guessed the real reason why. But Amy? Like I said, she never really tried to move on. I think she wanted to be near you any way she could, maybe even just to talk to you every now and then. Who knows, maybe she thought if she was around you long enough she’d get an opportunity.”

“That sounds sad. And it’s like, well…I never had a clue.”

“She was poor, I mean her folks never had anything. She never had anything, either. Then she met you.”

“Why didn’t she say something? To me?”

“What would you have done if she had?”

“I don’t know. She was nice, I guess, but not my type. A little too wild.”

“She could be. Remember the party, after graduation? When she started stripping?”

“Not sure I’ll ever forget that. She was toasted.”

“And she did come on to you, didn’t she? That night.”

“Yeah, but she was coming on to everyone that night.”

“No, Ben, she wasn’t. She was, well, she was making her play for you.”

“Drunk people are a real turn off – to me. Maybe if she had…well, no, we just never clicked.”

Carol nodded. “Did you feel anything last night? With me?”

He looked at her, wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. “Kinda hard to put into words.”

“You’re off the next three days, aren’t you? What are you going to do?”

“Going up to Denver, to United, and talk with them.”

“It must be like a dream come true for you.”

“In a way, yes. I never thought the choice would be anything but clear…like I always knew I would fly for a living. It’s what I always wanted to do.”

“Then you should, Ben.”

He nodded his head. “If that’s the choice I make, well, would you stay with the department?”

“It’s too soon to make those kinds of decisions, Ben, but if you want me there with you, I will be. If not, I’ll understand, and I like what I do. Life goes on.”

“So, Ben,” The Duke said as Acheson walked into the CID briefing room, “how was Denver?”

“Decent. Good package. Shitty city.”

“Oh?”

“Uglier than this place, and I always thought that would be just about impossible.”

“But the mountains…”

“They’re there, all right. I guess. Smog was so thick I couldn’t see ‘em.”

“Well, the Rockies are something else. Best motorcycle roads in the country.”

“Yeah, imagine so.”

“So. United? Good pay package, you say?”

“Decent. Yessir.”

“Did you sign with ‘em?”

“No, not yet. Hung up on how long I’d have to wait before I could make Captain. I was due at American. United wants me there five years before they’d consider it. Not sure I want to wait that long.”

“Hallelujah!” The Duke said as he slapped his desk. “Their loss! Anyway,” he said as he walked over to the wall behind his desk, “here’s the map, with your 130 degree vector drafted on it. City surveyor did it, so it’s accurate.”

Acheson walked over and studied it, slid his finger along the line. “Oak Lawn, Holland, Turtle Creek, then…that Frank Lloyd Wright building. The Dallas Theatre Center, it’s right on the line.”

“Theatre? Why – is that important?”

“Maybe, but, well, this is, in a way, someone’s scripted drama unfolding slowly, isn’t it? What better place than a theatre!”

“Let’s go!”

____________________________________

They came down Blackburn, turned left on Sylvan and approached Wright’s cream colored masterpiece slowly, then turned up the hill into the little parking court and got out of The Duke’s Ford. Acheson walked up the stairs and over to the glass entry doors and peered inside. He tried a door – it was locked, so he walked over to a little fountain and stopped dead in his tracks.

“I think this is what we’re looking for, Captain!”

Duke walked over, looked down into the water and saw a woman’s shoe; it was already in a department evidence bag, sealed from the water. “The bitch is playing with us now, isn’t she?”

“Gotta camera?”

“In the trunk.”

They both heard it, at the same instant. Footsteps, running on gravel, then on pavement. Acheson ran to the car, looked on the front seat.

“Mother fucker!” he yelled. Duke trotted up right behind him and looked down into the car.

A note pad, open to fresh page.

“What’s it say, Ben?”

Acheson read it silently first, then aloud:

– What? No back up? You guys are pathetic. Ben, you most of all. Expected more from you. Come on, get with it. Oh, Ben. I hope you enjoyed Denver as much as I did. Luv, C –

“What the fuck?” The Duke said.

“She followed me?”

“Okay, let’s grab some pictures and bag that shoe, then get the fuck out of here…”

“You think I should try to follow her?”

“There?” The Duke said, pointing at the bamboo, and the trail beyond.

“Used to be a railroad track up there, now it’s a jogging trail. She ran towards Lemmon…”

“There are hundreds of joggers on that trail every hour. Forget it; let’s get to work. And I want to get you out of here, out of the city, before she nails you.”

“Calm down, Duke. She wasn’t in Denver. It would be too damn easy to check passenger manifests against our employee roster, and DHS could run that down in about two minutes flat. Remember, look where we are. This is theatre, she’s the director, and she’s fucking with us.”

The Duke turned and stared at Acheson. “If you go to Denver it’s gonna be a black day for law enforcement in this town, Ben.”

“Come on, let’s get the camera.”

“Yup. We were stupid, Ben. Shoulda had the area surrounded before we got here.”

“She would have known, Duke, and wouldn’t have shown up here, or maybe just jogged on by when she made us.”

They got back to the fountain, and Acheson looked at the shoe for a moment, then looked up and drew his pistol. Dropping into a combat stance he moved forward toward some deep bushes at the periphery of the building, then stepped into the undergrowth. He looked back at the shoe once, then pushed his way deeper until he came to the next body, then he jumped back out of the bushes, fell to his knees – and vomited.

“So, the shoe is made by Pepe Jimenez, style is ‘Lola,’ a 4-inch pump, size seven, made in Spain and imported into the US by a firm in Illinois called Classic Pumps; in the past 12 months they’ve shipped this size and color to 21 addresses in the Metroplex. If you look at all sizes and colors shipped here, then it’s to almost a three hundred addresses in the region. None of these addresses collate in any obvious way to any officer in the department.”

“What about P O Boxes?” Duke asked.

“Just six, sir,” the CSU tech advised.

“Let’s get to those POs, pull the cards, see who signed for those boxes,” The Duke said to the detectives from CID, “and let’s get those by lunch time, okay?”

He motioned to the tech by the video projector to move on.

“Now, the bodies,” the tech resumed. “The victim at Love Field was one Jonah Feldman, 42, lived in an apartment over off Northwest Highway. Mister Feldman is, or was a registered sex offender, three convictions for child pornography, a couple misdemeanors for lewd conduct, exposing himself in adult movie theaters…”

“Sounds like my father-in-law,” someone said.

“Knock it off!”

“Anyway, his parole officer noted some porn in his apartment on his last home visit, wrote him up…”

“Parole officer?” The Duke sat up. “Cross check all female parole officers with the shoe data, and the post offices.”

“Maybe we should cross check with female sheriff’s deputies too,” one of the detectives added.

“Do it.”

“Right on it, sir.”

“What about his computer? Anything on it?”

“About twenty thousand encrypted images sir, mostly young boys being sodomized, but there’s a bunch snuff porn, again, young boys, looks like southeast Asian stuff, some south of the border stuff too, and more recent. His email contacts were sent to the FBI, and to Interpol.”

“Anything else on this guy?”

“Not much at this time. Nothing much on phone records, neighbors didn’t say much one way or another, parole officer thinks he was born again, reformed, but he ran his PC through a maze of fire-walled networks set up by other kiddy pornsters. How he hid his activity. Pretty common.”

“What about that duffel and towel from the Walker crime scene? Anything back on that yet?”

“Lands End duffel, both mail order and sold at Sears, more than four thousand sold in the area over the past two months, in this sales region alone, sir. The towel is worse. Target’s house brand, pretty generic, maybe twenty plus thousand sold over the past year in Dallas County alone.”

“Shit.”

“Could be our girl chose these items for their anonymity,” Acheson said. “What did you find on Walker’s computer?”

“Lot of porn, kiddy porn. Boys, sodomy, mainly stills, but a few snuff videos, too.”

“Well, there’s a link,” Acheson added.

“Rodriguez,” the Duke interjected, “did you check air traffic to Denver and back for the weekend?”

“Yessir. Nada. DHS ran a broader crosscheck of all LEOs in the region. Only one made the trip, a male, Tarrant County SO lieutenant, went up to Ft Collins for his mother’s funeral.”

“Okay, that’s a blank, just like you called it, Ben. What about the victim on Turtle Creek?”

“That would be,” the tech resumed, pausing to look at his notes, “one Rueben Salazar, thought to be a mule for one of the big border cartels, been running junk and girls out of Oak Cliff, DeSoto, Cedar Hill, and The Grove, and with some recent moves into Waco reported. Been using girls to move product, works ‘em for a while then allegedly dumps ’em.”

“Dumps? You mean kills ‘em?”

“Well sir, no one knows. Most of his girls, well, all of ‘em, probably, are illegals. There’s just no record of them, no way to track ’em.”

“So, what are you telling me? There are drug runners up here using girls to move product and possibly killing them off after a while? And we have no idea how many have been killed, or even where the bodies are?”

“Yessir,” the tech said, looking down at his notes. “That about sums it up.”

“Holy Mother of God. So, this Salazar? Any porn on his drives?”

“Stuff’s still downstairs in Evidence, not in the lab yet, sir.”

“Expedite that. So,” The Duke said to the detectives in the room, “why does this one feel important? Why hit Salazar? Maybe he into porn. Or was he?”

“Well,” Acheson replied, “he’s trafficking women, now purportedly killing them, too. That makes our Ninja an avenging angel, doesn’t it? Out doing what we can’t, or haven’t been able to do.”

“Like that movie, Death Wish,” one of the detectives added.

“Maybe,” Ben said. “Could be as simple as that, but I kinda doubt it. That Bronson character in the movie is motivated by revenge, isn’t he? Hoods break into his apartment, rape and kill his wife, beat up his daughter, rape her too, and the cops seem powerless to do anything about it so he goes on a killing spree. Becomes known as a vigilante killer. Public see him as doing the cops’ work for them, crime goes down as ‘scrotes get taken out, and in the end he becomes an invisible hero.”

“So,” The Duke said, “are we missing something big here? Motive? Revenge is the oldest motive in the world, isn’t it?”

“My guess is Salazar is the key,” Acheson replied. “He seems atypical, as a victim anyway, but something atypical might be on his computer, something that links him to the first two perps. Say,” Acheson said to the tech, “that email list? Is it possible that Feldman was getting images from either Walker or Salazar? Or the other way around? Are they linked somehow?”

“Haven’t checked that angle, sir.” The tech got on his cell and made a call.

“Well, Salazar was running women and drugs up here,” Acheson continued. “He had a working pipeline, a renewable, fresh supply of talent, so who’s to say he wasn’t running families, and families have little boys in ‘em. Maybe he was providing kids to these perps, for them to photograph, or have, uh, sex with. Or…oh sweet Jesus.”

“What, Ben? What is it?”

“Or to kill. Snuff vids,” Acheson groaned. “What if these guys were making snuff vids, then dumping the bodies. Kill the kids, then kill their moms. Leave no trails…”

“BINGO!” cried the CSU tech. “Multiple IP hits on Feldman’s drive with Walker. As soon as we know Salazar’s IPs we’ll run crosschecks on that one too.”

“Cloud storage,” Acheson said. “Check to see what kind of Cloud storage facilities Feldman used, see if Walker…”

“Right! Got it!” The tech was back on his phone, relaying instructions.

“Cloud storage?” The Duke asked.

“Places to store huge files off site, video files mainly, encrypted and easy to share with known associates. Be hard to locate because he’s got so many…was he using Tor?”

“Yeah,” the tech said, “they all do, but it’s not as bullet proof as they think. NSAs been inside Tor for years.”

“So, we ask NSA to run down these guys, see if they were running a network together. Captain? That might have to go through the Chief, via the FBI.”

“Got it, Ben. I’ll go have a chat with him. Say, do you think our suspect is leading us to these guys?”

Acheson leaned back in his chair, looked up at the ceiling. “There’s not a doubt in my mind now, Captain. That’s exactly what she’s doing.”

“So. Do we really want to run her down?”

Acheson looked at The Duke. “She killed three of our own, sir.”

“Yeah. She’s gotta pay for that.”

“Uh-huh, but my guess is she’s always going to be at least two steps ahead of us. So in the end, Captain, when she’s got what she wants she’ll either turn herself in, or just disappear.”

The Duke nodded, left to go see the Chief, grateful this stuff hadn’t got too much attention in the press. Yet.

But it would. Stuff like this always did.

+++++

The Duke, Acheson and a handful of detectives from CID were sitting behind little school-desks eating ribs and brisket at Sonny Bryans’ on Inwood Road, and had been talking about the case and where it was leading them – before their food was ready.

“You know, potentially, this shit’s going to go international. Those pedophiles had, have, a huge network set up,” Acheson said, “so there’s just no way of knowing where this is going lead.”

“God damn, these are good fucking baked beans!” The Duke cried. Acheson took that to mean it was time to stop talking shop.

“Ribs ain’t too bad today, neither,” Deke Slater, one of the senior detectives added. “Still, too much sauce. Like mine dry, any-who.”

“How’s that sam’ich, Ben? Got onions and relish over there if it’s too dry.”

“It’s fine, sir.”

“Ya know, this is still the best place in town,” The Duke continued, “Has been since the sixties, when Sonny was still cookin’. Heard he was a dentist! Did y’all know that? Come in and stoke the fires on his way to his office. Course, don’t know if that’s true or not, but it sounds good. Died of cancer. Shame. He was a good man.”

“You knew him, Captain?”

“Yup. Short man, nice smile. Had this old 60-something Mercedes, silver I think, drove it in every morning, always around four or so, almost always had a police escort, or so legend has it. When they opened up in the mornin’ there’d always be about ten squad cars out back, just waitin’. Shame he didn’t sell donuts, ya know? He’d a been a gozillionaire.”

Nods around the group, then The Duke’s cell phone pinged.

“Dickinson,” he said into the thing as he took out a notepad. “Okay, go ahead…yup…yup…you don’t say. Well, fuck-a-doodle-do. Alright. We’ll see you back at CID in, say,” he looked over at the desert menu on the wall, “in about forty five minutes. Right. Bye.”

“Anything new?” Acheson asked.

“Probably. That cloud shit? They’re all linked. Internet addresses, too. Looks like twelve more here in town, on Feldman’s list anyway, and seems they share the same cloud storage thingy, so presumably we got eight or nine more potential targets. FBI’s running down the addresses now, they’re gonna meet us at the station, go over what they got with us, then maybe we’ll go pay some of these boys a little visit this afternoon. Say, Slim, is that peach cobbler worth a shit today?”

___________________________________

The group got back to Central CID just before noon, just before a small contingent of FBI agents arrived, and The Duke took a seat, loosened his belt a notch, then lifted a cheek and cut loose a monster fart.

“Jesus H Christ, Captain, smells like you ate fuckin’ road kill for lunch.”

“Don’t smell half as bad as that after-shave crap you’re wearin’, Slim,” The Duke parried. “By the way. You ever heard of deodorant?”

Then, a knock on the door.

“Y’all come on in.”

A handful of federal agents, easily identifiable in their blue suits, white shirts and red ties, walked into the room, but all the detectives’ eyes zeroed in on one agent in particular.

About five foot six, trim, navy blue blazer and mid-length skirt, sheer stockings and…

‘Navy blue pumps…’ Acheson said to himself. ‘About a seven, seven and a half.’ He stared at her shoes, then up at the woman’s eyes. ‘And looks exactly like the shoe in the fountain,’ he thought as he looked at her legs and shoes again. ‘A she’s got a runner’s legs, too.’

He looked up at her again, only now saw she had stopped in her tracks – and was staring at him.

He pursed his lips, turned red and looked away, then the woman came and sat next to him.

“Genie. Genie Delaney. And you are?”

“Ben Acheson.”

“Oh, right, the motor-jock.” She held out her hand. “Read your reports, good work. Nice to meet you.” She then leaned over, almost conspiratorially, and whispered: “Say, you got, like, a shoe fetish thing going on there, Ben?”

Acheson pulled away, turned even redder in the face.

“Not your thing, huh?” Delaney said triumphantly as she leaned back in her chair.

“Guys,” The Duke began, “This here’s Red Gibbons, SAC Dallas. Red? Why don’t you make up a few introductions?”

“Well, let’s see, that’s John, Paul, George and Ringo,” the Special Agent in Charge of the Dallas Bureau said sarcastically as he pointed at four of the sunglass’d agents, “they do computer crime when they’re not playing video games. The shady looking pervert over there is, uh, Mick Jagger. Sex Crimes are his thing, when he’s not in the bathroom jacking off. The chick with the legs is, what the fuck, she’s Twiggy today, and she’s our profiler. A psychologist too, so watch what you say around her, boys, or you’ll be on the couch.”

“So,” Acheson said. “We’re keeping this on a bogus, first name basis. Cool.”

“Yeah, well, these guys are from D.C., but they’re not here, if you know what I mean.”

“Ah. Quantum teleportation, is that it?” Acheson said.

“Whatever, slick,” the SAC said sarcastically. “Anyway, where are you guys on this thing?”

“Ben, this is pretty much your show. Why don’t you get these freaks up to speed?”

Acheson jumped a little, looked down, saw Delaney’s shoe rubbing against the inside of his right ankle, then he looked up, caught a faint smile on her lips. He stood and went to the map on the wall, the new one with the vector drawn on it, then recounted events of the last week.

“So, you’re the one that figured out the line linking the kill zones?” Gibbons said when Acheson finished. “How’d you come up with that?”

“I’m not really sure. I think I was looking up at a jet on final, landing at Love. I was over on Maybank, and I could see the tire store, well, some trees by the store, and everything was lined up just right. From where I was to the tire store, and then there was this aircraft, a 737, right above the store, and on the same line. Anyway, I just started looking along that vector…”

“Vector? You a math freak?”

“BS in Engineering, UT Austin, sir.”

“No shit? Not exactly common for a traffic cop?”

“He’s a pilot too, Red,” The Duke added. “Air Force, American Airlines. Got dropped when the shit hit the fan back in ‘08.”

“Okay,” Gibbons nodded. “So, that’s how you found the duffel?”

“Yessir. And that’s when I started thinking more and more about the vector. Anyway, that’s what took me to Love Field, and that confirmed the theory.”

“Interesting. And the shoe? You figured out the compass thing from that?”

“Yessir, and the shoe at the Theatre Center, that it pointed to Salazar, in the bushes.”

“How long had Salazar’s body been in there, Duke?”

“About two hours, plus or minus.”

“So she knew you were out of town, when you’d get back to the station, and about how long it would take you to figure out the next kill zone.”

“Yessir, and I’d say her note mentioning Denver proves that.”

“Why didn’t you guys set a trap for her there?” Delaney asked.

“I fucked up,” Acheson said.

“We fucked up,” The Duke added. “My fault. Shoulda seen that one coming.”

“She wouldn’t have shown if you had,” Delaney said.

“I know,” The Duke said, “and Acheson told me that too, at the time.”

“Solid work, Acheson,” Gibbon said. “Why don’t you take a seat. We’ll fill y’all in with what we found, then we’d better hit the street, see if we can round up a few of these fuckers.”

Acheson returned to his seat, Delaney leaned over again and whispered in his ear: “You have a cute ass, too.”

He turned beet red. Again.

Her shoe was on his ankle a second later, and she poured it on now: “I wore these today, just for you.”

He sat back, pushed his chair away from her, then she winked at him.

“Hey, Ben,” Gibbons said, smiling, “don’t let her fuck with your head too much, okay? She’s a pro, but I think she’s having way too much fun today.”

Delaney sat back in her chair, a mock pout on her face, her lower lip leading the way. “You’re no fun, Red, you know that?”

“Yeah, well, deal with it, Delaney – and stop dangling that shoe,” Gibbons smirked as he began handing out papers, “Anyway, these are the addresses associated with the IPs and links you gave us this morning. Most are known sex offenders, a few are registered, all have been confirmed as using the cloud storage box Feldman was using, and it shows a lot of recent activity from these guys, within the past 48 hours too. I say we break up into two man teams and hit them right now.”

“Warrants?” Acheson asked.

“No time, exigent circumstances.”

The Duke nodded. “Agree.” He looked at the printout in his hand, then around the room, and called out assignments. “Ben, why don’t you take Miss Twiggy there and hit the guy at 4408 McKinney.”

‘Swell,’ Acheson groaned as he looked over at Genie – again.

“Oh, this is gonna be fun,” Delaney said – as she rubbed his ankle again.

They left the station and were making their way through town to Central Expressway when she started in on him.

“So, you a leg freak?”

“Excuse me?”

“You were practically drooling over my legs when…”

“I was looking at your shoes. They look like a match…”

“But the color’s off, don’t you think, Darling?” Delaney said in a patently sultry voice.

“Are you for real?”

“Oh, alright. I’ll be good. So, you have a girlfriend?”

“Jesus H Christ! Would you like me to pull over right here? Fuck you now, so we can get it over with?”

She laughed. “Not a bad idea, Ace, worth thinking about anyway, but maybe we ought to check out the place on McKinney first?”

He grumbled, looked ahead, still shaking his head. “And yes, I have a girlfriend.”

“Really?”

“Well, sort of.”

“Uh huh.”

“But your legs aren’t bad,” he said, smiling.

“You oughta smell these things…”

“What?”

“The shoes! The leather! Spanish…and, well, it’s just kinky as hell.”

“So, are we kinky?”

“Play your cards right Ace, and you might find out.”

“Uh-huh, So, I take it, you just got them?”

“The shoes? FedEx, this morning. Hit the web, called the owner, ordered ‘em after I read your report. You know, for follow up, evidence, that kinda thing.”

“Wow.”

“So? You think they’re sexy?”

“If you want to get there in one piece, you’ll knock it off, right now.”

She laughed again. “Never had anything quite like ‘em. Ever since I put ’em on this morning it’s been nonstop stares. Kinda cool.”

“If you dig giving men woodies, yeah, I guess that’s kinda cool.”

“Oh? You feeling a little stiff?” she said as she started to go for his ankle again.

“Stop it!” Acheson said as he pulled onto Central.

“Traffic’s not too bad,” she said, suddenly all business and looking at her GPS. “Better take Henderson.”

“I know…”

“Of course you do, darling. I’m so sorry.”

“You just won’t let up, will you?” he said as he rolled his eyes. He exited on Henderson, turned across the highway, then south on the frontage road.

“Looks like Oliver is the best cross street – and park just after you make the turn.”

He turned, pulled to a stop and parked the car, then checked out on the radio.

“Is it an apartment?” he asked.

“Yeah, back right corner, looks like,” she said, glancing at her iPhone. She looked up, then around the area, before pointing – “Right over there.”

“Okay, let’s do it,” he said.

“Glad you’re not in uniform,” she said. “What are you carrying?”

“Sig, 226.”

“Great, me too. Got extra clips in my coat pocket if you need ‘em.”

“Yup, got three in mine.”

“Cool.”

They walked to the alley behind the building, stopped at the tall iron fence that surrounded the parking area in the rear; Acheson hopped over, then drew his pistol and went into a low combat stance. When he heard Delaney, cursing her high heels now, behind him as he moved towards the building, a maroon brick two story affair that looked – vaguely – like Frank Lloyd Wright had inspired the design.

“Which unit?” he whispered.

“That one,” she pointed, then they ran for the door.

“Fuck!” they whispered – in unison. The door was ajar, there was blood on the sill and on the floor just inside the door, and Delaney bent down, touched it, rubbed it between her fingers.

“Still warm,” she whispered.

Acheson kicked the door gently, stuck the Sig, then his head inside the doorway.

“Stairs right here, covered in blood, looks like someone was just pulled down.”

“You lead,” Delaney said, and Acheson slipped inside, began heading up the stairs – with his 9mm in the lead. There was a living room at the top of the stairs, a dining room to his left in the far corner. The kitchen was to his left, and he guessed the bedroom and bath would be behind and to his left. He led off to the kitchen and walked through it, then headed back toward the bedroom…

“Oh, shit,” Acheson said as Delaney came up behind him.

“Oh, bloody fucking…” She bent over, retched once, then vomited.

The little bedroom was almost completely bathed in blood, there were splatters on the ceiling, huge sprays on the walls, but worst of all was the bed. A middle aged male, decapitated, penis in mouth, lay on the floor, and a little Mexican kid was tied by wrists and ankles to bedposts, spread-eagled, obviously dead and floating in a pool of almost black blood; what appeared to have been a fairly sophisticated video recorder, on a tripod, lay by the foot of the bed. Acheson looked at the rig, guessed it had been set-up at the foot of the bed, but now lay in pieces on the carpet. The CF card was gone, the battery too, so everything in memory was wiped.

“You better call Gibbons; I’ll go get the car, get dispatch on…”

“Okay…” Delaney groaned.

“You alright?” Acheson looked at Delaney. She seemed pale, more than upset.

“No. No, I’m not.”

“I know. Sometimes it helps if you barf, sometimes it doesn’t.”

“So I’ve heard.”

They laughed.

“Yeah, I must be famous by now. Well, I’ll be right back.”

“I’m going with you,” she said.

He turned, looked at her. “What is it?”

“Something, I don’t know, monstrous. Evil. It’s everywhere, and it’s close, too,” she said, shivering, then she looked at the bed again. “Poor fucking kid. Never had a chance in this world, did he?”

“Don’t think about that right now. Think about the evidence, the scene.”

“You’re right. Sorry.”

“Okay, let’s get downstairs. You stand outside the front door; we have to secure the scene.”

She nodded her head, seemed unsteady. “Yeah.”

“Give me your hand,” he said when he got her to the top of the stairs. “You look kind of shaky.”

He led her down the stairs, noticed she was still shivering when he got her out under the mid-summer sun. “Can you call Gibbons?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll be right back.” Acheson ran to the iron fence and jumped it, then ran over to the car and got on the radio.

“741 to 700,” he called, using his temporary and The Duke’s call numbers.

“Go ahead, 41.”

“We have multiple Signal 1s at this location.”

“You aren’t the only one, 41. Does it look fresh?”

“10/4, yes sir, maybe an hour, maybe less.”

“700, get back-up headed to 741s location, Code 3!”

“700, at 1418 hours.”

Acheson grabbed his hand unit, cursed himself for forgetting it, then jumped out of the car and drew his weapon just in time to hear Delaney scream, followed by rapid bursts of gunfire.

Then… silence.

“741, shots fired this location!”

“741 at 1419 hours.”

He ran for the fence, jumped it, sprinted across the parking lot and found Delaney breathing heavily, blood all over her blouse and jacket and a defensive knife wound on her left forearm.

“That way,” she said, pointing towards McKinney Avenue. “Black one piece suit, hood, about a fifteen inch blade,” she said, gasping. “Black hair maybe,” she said airily as she slumped to the ground.

“741, Signal 33, officer down behind 4408, am in foot pursuit of suspect at this time!” he yelled into the hand unit.

“741 at 1420 hours.”

He heard sirens everywhere as he ran between buildings and out onto the grassy lawn in front of the apartment building. He shuddered to a stop, turned and looked both ways down McKinney.

Nothing.

“What the Fuck!”

He heard a car peeling out behind 4408 and ran back between the buildings for the alley, ran right past Delaney and hopped the iron fence again, then stopped in the alley.

Nothing.

“741, lost contact, heard a car leaving the area at high speed, going back to down officer.”

“741 at 1421 hours, paramedics advise ETA less than two minutes.”

“Received.”

He jumped the fence again and got to Delaney’s side; she was pale, breathing rapidly, and he pulled her coat open, saw a massive slashing wound across her belly, could make out her intestines through a pool of blood.

“Did you see the car?” he asked.

She nodded. “Bla-ck. Camaro. May-be – mid 80s. T-tops. Clean. Two people inside, both masked.”

“741, stand by for BOLO!”

“741, go ahead at 1422 hours.”

“741, BOLO black mid-80s Chevrolet Camaro, t-tops, two occupants. Vehicle described as clean…”

“I seen ‘em.”

Acheson spun around, saw an old homeless man standing in the alley behind the fence, and he could smell alcohol on his breath from ten feet away.

“Describe them!”

“Yeah, okay. Only one I saw good was a gal, had on some kind of leotard like thing. Black. Her skin was real white, black hair. Had on…”

Sirens were close now, Acheson ran to the gate and hit the inside release and the powered gate started retracting just as the Fire Department’s ambulance unit pulled onto Oliver.

“In here!” he yelled, waving his arms. When the driver saw him he turned and ran back to Delaney.

“They’re here, kid, just hang on.”

“Not feelin’ too hot, Ace. Sorry.”

He ran his hands through her hair, looked her in the eye. “C’mon. Just fight it a few more minutes. Keep breathing! You can do it!”

She nodded her head just as the first paramedic ran up.

Acheson backed out of the way, turned to the homeless man. “Okay, she had on what?”

“Well, like that girl there. High heels. Real nice ones.”

“Color?”

“Black, man, like everything else she had on.”

“741, more BOLO information. Suspect one, white female, black leotard, black high heels, very white skin, black hair, and, wait one…what did you say?”

“She had a big knife, man, and a gun, a pistol, in a black shoulder holster.”

“741, suspect one armed with a knife and a handgun in a shoulder holster.”

“741, at 1424 hours.”

“Okay, did you see the driver of the car?” Acheson asked as he watched one paramedic starting CPR, while another started an IV.

“Not real good.”

“Male, or female.”

“Oh, a girl, same black hair, same clothes.”

“Anything else stand out?”

“Yeah, the car. It had Oklahoma license plates.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah…”

“741, BOLO update, suspect two probably a white female, same description, black hair, black clothing. Suspect vehicle reported to have Oklahoma license plates.”

“741, at 1426 hours.”

“700 to 741 on tactical, how’s your partner?”

Acheson switched to the encrypted TAC channel, then keyed the mic: “Alive. Multiple knife wounds, bleeding out, looks bad. CPR and IV going now.”

“Be there in about five.”

“10/4. Sir, the suspect dragged a body from here, to their car, wherever that was. There’s gonna be a blood trail. We need a lot of manpower here, right now.”

“I’ll take care of it, you look around but stay close to Delaney, ride with her in the box if we don’t get there first. Find out anything you can, got it?”

“Yessir.”

“We’re going to transport now,” a paramedic said. “You coming?”

“Yup.”

+++++

“We’ve got a blood expander going now, and her BP’s stabilized. Bad belly wound, but it doesn’t look like the intestine or stomach is cut, so probably no peritonitis. There’s a really, really good cutter at Parkland right now, guy named Sanchez, and he’s standing by in the ER. My guess is she’s going to be fine.”

Acheson held her hand, squeezed it, and he felt her squeeze his hand in return: “Hear that, kid,” he said gently in her ear, “everything’s going to be okay.”

She opened her eyes, looked at him oddly. “Are you crying?” she asked through the clouded green oxygen mask.

He rubbed his eyes. “Guess so. Sorry.”

She squeezed his hand again. “Don’t be sorry. It’s not so bad.”

“Shouldn’t have left you alone.”

“Bullshit. You did everything right. I screwed the pooch, lost my concentration.”

“You remember anything?”

“Pretty sure I hit her in the arm, left arm, maybe her side too, like near the left ribcage. And her eyes. They were bright blue. Like really bright.”

“Contact lenses?”

“Probably. And the hair. It’s a wig.”

“Witness said she was wearing shoes like yours.”

She thought for a moment. “Didn’t see that, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Why?”

“They’re nice shoes, Ace. Got you going, didn’t they?”

“They sure did, baby.”

“Why’re you calling me that?”

“Because I don’t want you to leave me.”

“Why?”

He shrugged, shook his head. “I guess because…”

Her eyes fluttered, closed. The EKG began to dance, her BP started falling.

“Step on it, manno!” the medic called out to the driver. “She’s crashing!”

“‘Bout three minutes, Steve! Pump some more of that secret sauce in the bag!”

The ambulance pulled into the ER’s parking area and backed up to the huge, covered unloading ramp; a team of nurses and medics was waiting and pulled Delaney from the box, then rushed her through sliding doors into Trauma 2; Acheson ran in behind them, only to be pulled out of the room by a uniformed officer. Acheson stepped back, pulled out his badge and the other officer let him go.

“Who is that,” the officer asked.

“FBI.”

“Oh, shit. Say, you wouldn’t be Acheson, would you?”

“Yup.”

The other officer stepped back. “Hey, man, that’s cool…just don’t, you know, like barf on me, okay?”

+++++

The Duke, Red Gibbons and Acheson sat in the surgical waiting room somewhere in the UT Southwestern hospital complex, and they were worried. Delaney’s operations was supposed to last two hours max, but she had been under now for almost five hours.

For the first hour or so they had talked about the case, and the fact that the Camaro had been abandoned a few miles away and, not surprisingly, that the car had been reported stolen a few days hours earlier by some kids visiting from Tulsa. And again, no surprise, there were no unaccounted for fingerprints in the car, only a single Pepe Jimenez pump in the back seat, size seven, this one Navy blue.

Just like Delaney’s.

As the second hour approached – and passed, the talk turned more to Delaney, her background, and Gibbons talked about her like he knew her pretty well.

“She’s just a kid, you know? Bright as hell, a psych major at Penn, went from grad school straight to the Academy at Quantico. Valedictorian. Hates guns, so with her background went into profiling. Seemed a natural, ya know what I mean? But she likes to play games, fuck with people’s heads. Been bounced out of two postings, doesn’t make friends. Probably intimidates too many people, those she doesn’t irritate the hell out of, anyway.”

“No boyfriend we need to call?” Acheson asked.

“She’s cute, Ben, but watch out. Still waters – know what I mean?”

“So that means, I take it, no boyfriend?”

“No one. You spend enough time around her and you’ll get it.”

The Duke watched this exchange knowingly, looked at Ben and saw all the signs, then shook his head. ‘Well,’ he said to himself, ‘you never know when it’s going to hit, do you?’

Passing four hours, Ben was almost beside himself. He was up and down, pacing back and forth, looking at the clock on the wall one minute, at his wristwatch the next, then a few minutes later a surgeon in bloody scrubs came into the waiting room.

Red and The Duke came over, stood next to Ben.

“A real mess in there,” the doctor began. “Thought all we had was a knife wound, but we found this in there.” He held up a bullet, and the three cops’ eyes went wide. “.223, best guess, anyway. AR-15 probably. Too bad she wasn’t wearing a vest.”

“Is she okay,” Acheson asked, now almost pleading.

“Well, yeah. Her gut’s a mess, the bullet’s the problem, though. Why she crashed, anyway. Nicked her aorta. Close call. Tim Snyder, a great vascular cutter, just happened to be around the corner when we put out the first Code Blue, but he was there when we needed him. He’s still in there, finishing up. Her lucky day, I guess. Not too many docs around here could’ve handled a clusterfuck like this, and he’s the best we got, period.”

“So, she’s gonna make it?” Acheson asked pointedly.

“Well, yeah. Didn’t I just say that?”

“Thank you, doctor,” The Duke said, taking Ben by the shoulder and turning him away. “Say, let’s go get some dinner. Red? Wanna tag along?”

“Might as well,” he said, looking at Acheson and shaking his head. “Where to?”

“Want some ribs? Sonny’s is still open, and they’re just across the street?”

“Didn’t we eat there, for lunch?” Acheson asked through a fog.

“What, you some kinda Yankee? Can’t eat Bar-B-Q two times in one day?”

“Well, I kinda wanted to keep my cholesterol under 1500, at least once in my life, anyway.”

“Shee-yit, then don’t eat two desserts this time, Meathead!”

+++++

He went up to her room after The Duke and Gibbons took off, sat up beside her while she slept – until he too fell asleep – sitting up in an old blue vinyl recliner. Sometime in the night a nurse came in and reclined his chair, covered him with a blanket, and he slept through a world of nightmare images: little boys being cut up by butchers, drowning in oceans of blood. Then he woke with a start around five in next morning – when another nurse was drawing blood and checking vitals.

“You’ve been here all night?” he heard Delaney ask.

He sat up, rubbed his eyes, smiled when he saw her face. “Yeah, guess so. Where are all the horses?”

“Horses?” Delaney said. “What are you…”

“The ones that walked through my mouth. Tastes like one took a shit in here.”

“Goddamn!” she cringed. “Don’t make me laugh, you asshole!”

He came to her side. “Hurts, huh?”

“Feels like I’ve been shot.”

“You were.”

“What?”

“.223. Just missed your right kidney, nicked your aorta.”

“Shot?”

“In the back, kid. Whoever these bitches are, they’re playing hardball.”

“That’s right. There’s more than one.”

“It’s worse than that, kiddo. Best estimate is, as of now, anyway, there’s at least four two-girl teams out there.”

“What?”

“Three of the other search teams ran into them, when they went to their target houses.”

“This is unreal. Have you ever heard of anything like this before?”

Acheson shook his head. “No one has. Gibbons told me last night the FBI is bringing a few hundred agents down from D.C. Full court press, I think he called it.”

“How long am I going to be here? Anyone tell you?”

“Depends on your aorta, how it heals. Maybe a while, so maybe you’re taking an early medical retirement.”

“That bad?”

He nodded. “Could be, from what the doc told Gibbons. You’re lucky to be here right now; that’s what an OR nurse told me, anyway.”

“Got that right, sweetie,” the nurse finishing up her rounds added. “You coded, twice. Lucky ain’t the half of it, sister!”

“Coded?”

“You was dead, sweetheart. Dead times two. Now, can I get you anything? Pain alright?”

“Feels okay. Kind of a bad burn in my back, that’s all.”

“Okay, I’ll slip you something in your IV. You’ll sleep good for a while, too.”

“Could you give us a few minutes?” Delaney asked.

“Sure. Just hit that call button when you’re ready.” The nurse left the room.

“So, I remember you crying,” she said.

“Yup. Like I said. Sorry.”

“And I remember you squeezing my hand.”

“Guilty, your honor.”

“So, uh, I’m not going to ask any questions. Well, maybe one.”

“Fire away.”

“Are you, like, crazy or something?”

He laughed. “I wasn’t. Not until I met you.”

“Oh. What was it? My sparkling wit, or the shoes?”

“I’ll never tell.”

“Prick,” she said with a smile.

“Douchebag.”

They both laughed, then she winced, one eye closed tightly.

“Time for Mister Morpheus, me thinks,” she said.

Then Acheson’s phone rang.

Number blocked. He ignored it. Then it rang again. And he ignored it.

Then again.

He answered.

“Hello?”

“Tell her we’re sorry.” It sounded like a middle aged woman, mid-western accent.

“Who?”

“Delaney. Agent Delaney.”

“And who would you be?” He reached down, put the phone on speaker.

“A friend of Anne’s. I shot Agent Delaney.”

Delaney’s eyes went wide.

“So, why’d you shoot her?”

“I was trying to knock the gun out of her hand.”

“Nice shooting. Any of your people hurt?”

“No. Tell Delaney, when she gets back to D.C. she needs more time on the range.”

“Right. So, when is this going to end?”

“We’re almost done. In Dallas, anyway. Then we’re moving on.”

“Moving on? We?”

“We accomplished what we set out to do. We’re moving on.”

“Don’t suppose you want to tell me who ‘we’ is, do you?”

“Hang on.”

They heard a phone being exchanged between people.

“Hello?” It was a new voice, an older woman’s.

“Acheson here.”

“Oh, hello, Ben.”

“Excuse me, but have me met?”

“Only indirectly, but yes, we have.”

“Oh? Are you Anne?”

“No names, Ben. Not yet.”

“Got it. So, maybe someday?”

“Maybe, but I owe you another apology.”

“Oh? What for?”

“Amy,” she said, “and the other officers. I didn’t find out Breedlove was a friend of yours until yesterday. Were you close?”

“Friends. From Academy.”

“Oh. I understand. Well, I’m sorry.”

“I’m curious,” Delaney interrupted, “why are you calling now?”

“Agent Delaney? You’re awake?”

“It’s either that, or this is one seriously fucked up dream…”

The voice on the other end laughed, and they heard other women’s voices in the background laughing as well.

“Obviously I’m not going to answer that, Agent Delaney, but you’re on the right, shall we say, track?”

Then the line went dead.

“Now what did she mean by…Ben, what is it?”

But Acheson had gone stiff, as if an icy hand had suddenly gripped his heart.

He looked at his iPhone, found The Duke’s home number and dialed it.

“Ben? That you?”

“Sir, I know where the bodies are, and there’s something else.”

“Ben, it’s like five in the morning. Where are you?”

“Sir, with Delaney. They just called, here.”

“Who? Who called you?”

“Them. The suspects. Just now.”

“Fuck-a-doodle-do!” Acheson could tell the old man was now wide awake.

“Meet me at Fair Park, sir. On Washington, by the train exhibit, and get a CSU rolling.”

“Do we need a TAC team?”

“I doubt it, sir, but better safe than sorry. They told me they’re finished in Dallas, and moving on.”

“What? Told you? You believe ’em?”

“Yessir. I think so. Still, it could be a trap.”

“Okay. Give me…uh…we’ll be there in about forty five minutes or so.”

Acheson cut the connection, looked at Delaney.

“Holy mother-fucking guacamole,” she said.

“I know. Gotta go, but…mind if I kiss you first?”

“If you don’t, I’ll shoot you myself.”

He leaned over, kissed her gently on the lips.

“That feels nice,” she sighed. “I could get used to that.”

He kissed her again. Longer this time, and deeper, then he leaned back, ran his fingers through her hair, and noticed her eyes were locked on his.

“I’ve been waiting for you, for a long time,” Delaney said.

“Have you now?” She winced again, took a deep breath. “Pain getting worse?”

“A little, yes.”

“I’ll get the nurse.”

She nodded, but the skin on her face looked pale and waxy, and her brow was lined with beads of perspiration. “Ben, be careful. I doubt this is over. These aren’t the kind of people that leave loose ends, and I sense something much bigger is going on.”

He nodded. “I think you’re dead right.”

Chapter 11

Acheson took surface streets through town as dawn came to the city, and he made his way to Haskell Avenue and streaked east through light traffic towards Fair Park. As he approached Washington he turned off his headlights and wound around the convoluted intersection until he was sitting a few hundred yards away from a fairly large exhibit of old steam engines and passenger cars.

Within minutes he spotted The Duke’s Ford, followed by several large dark blue step-vans, all with their headlights off.

Acheson flicked his lights once, and the caravan headed for his position.

“Seen anything,” The Duke asked as he pulled up to Acheson’s open window.

“Nothing.”

“Okay, so why are we here?”

“A pun.”

“A pun?”

“She said we were on the right track. This exhibit is right on the line, sir.”

“Oh, fuck-a-doodle-do.”

“Yessir. My sentiments, exactly.”

The Duke picked up his radio’s mic: “700 to all units, let’s move in on foot, surround the train exhibit. Anything in there moves, kill it, ask for ID later. Got that?”

Seventy Tac Team officers poured out of the vans and sprinted around the fenced-in exhibit; Acheson and The Duke followed and went to a gate in the fence; the lock was destroyed. Some sort of acid had been poured on it, the metal had simply melted away, leaving the gate ajar.

“Blood?” Acheson said, pointing down at the ground. “Is that blood?”

A Tac sergeant came over, took out his SureFire and hit the ground with it’s intense beam.

“Looks red to me,” the sergeant said.

“Okay Collins, get ten of your best over here, and let’s follow the trail.”

The sergeant turned, called out names and a new team formed and assembled by the gate.

“Weapons free,” The Duke whispered hoarsely. “Y’all follow me.” He led off, the TAC sergeant by his side, Acheson just behind, and the rest of the team fanned out beside and behind the leaders, H&K MP-5s sweeping the area as they followed the blood trail…

…which led between two rows of old “heavyweight” passenger cars, and ended at an old Railway Post Office baggage/mail car…

…and the lock on this car had been similarly defeated; drooping bits of melted metal lay on the sill, and had dropped down onto the ballast below in slagging heaps…

…The Duke slid the door open…

…The Tac sergeant shined his light inside…

…and Acheson looked in, then fell to his knees and started vomiting. Again.

+++++

The rest of the pedophiles were inside the baggage car, hanging from meathooks strung out evenly from the ceiling – heads lay below each disemboweled body, a severed penis in each mouth, testes in each eye socket, and seething piles of warm intestine lay oozing all over the old oak floor.

The sun was up now, and it was getting hot – very, very hot. Acheson took notes for his report but was already getting tired of all this detective crap. He wanted nothing more than to get on his BMW and hit the streets, write a few tickets even, if only because all this ‘blood & guts’ crime shit was starting to get on his nerves. He popped another Tums and chewed the chalky crud, then swallowed it.

“Here, have a donut,” The Duke said, holding out a fresh, warm glazed one.

Acheson scowled at the thing. “No, thanks.”

“Man, ain’t you figured out why cops eat donuts yet?”

“Nope.”

“Well, Meathead, it’s because nothing, and I mean nothing neutralizes stomach acid faster than a fresh glazed donut and a pint of ice-cold milk. And besides, they kinda help keep things in perspective.”

“Well then, you better give me a couple.”

“See? You ain’t as dumb as you look, Meathead.”

“Got Milk?”

“Hey, beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Swell.”

“Got any more of them Tums?”

“Yup.” Acheson handed his bottle over. “Perspective, huh?”

“One born every minute, Meat. Did you stay up with her all night?”

“Think I slept some.”

“How is she?”

“Better.”

“I could see it in your eyes last night. She hit you like a ton of bricks.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Gibbons had a good laugh over it, anyway. Seems to think she’s a handful. Personally, I don’t doubt that. Good legs, though.”

Acheson looked at The Duke. “Yessir, reckon they are.”

“What about Carol, what’s her name? Denison?”

“Sir?”

“Think she’d go for an old fart like me?”

“She’d be a fool not to, sir.”

The Duke smiled. “We’d better head for the barn, lots of reports to write.”

They walked back to their cars, still parked side by side, down on Washington Street. Ben opened the door, saw a piece of folded up paper on the passenger seat as he got in. He sighed, looked at the thing like it was a cobra, then picked it up and read it:

– Ben, if you want, check the old man’s laptop, in his desk drawer. Go to C:photos:personal:99eXMFM. Mostly girls, lots of girl on girl, a few dirty movies, nothing too bad. Probably enough to get him fired, enough to get you promoted to Lt pretty fast, if that’s what you decide. Anyway, that’s for you to mull over. We’re not going to do anything about him. Again, sorry about Amy, and for what it’s worth, you should stay with the department. Luv, C –

“What’s that?” The Duke asked, looking at Acheson while he read the note. “Is it – from them?”

Acheson handed the note to The Duke, watched him read it, watched his face turn pale gray. After a minute, The Duke handed it back.

“Well, like it says, it’s for you to decide, ain’t it?”

Acheson reached into the car’s glovebox, found an old box of matches, struck one and held it up to the paper. He watched the paper ignite and held it out the window, watched it burn, let the ashes fall to the ground. When it was completely destroyed, he let go of the last fragment, then started the car.

“Seeya at the station, Duke.”

“Okay, Meathead. I’ll stop off and get some fresh ones on the way in.”

“Better get some milk, too. Cold.”

Chapter 12

Six Months Later

Dallas

The 757 from Seattle flared over the threshold of Runway 17 Right and touched down in a light freezing mist. The First Officer applied the spoilers and reverse thrust, then applied the brakes gently with his toes, and the old Boeing slowed smoothly and turned off the active half way down the runway. Flaps and slats were retracted while the jet taxied to Gate E7, and after Delta Flight 322 mated with the Jetway, the FO cut the engines and began working his way through the Engine Shutdown Checklist.

“I’ll handle the passengers,” the Captain said, referring to the post landing ‘meet and greet’ one of them had to attend to after every flight.

“Yessir,” the First Officer said. “I got it here.”

The Captain exited the cockpit, walked back to the doorway just ahead of the wing port-side; he smiled at the older folks, waved at the kids, then his eyes locked on a gorgeous pair of legs and he smiled at the woman appreciatively, if for no other reason than she was dressed well enough to make any man drool. Still, her high heels were over-the-top old school, the kind movie stars and pin-up queens back in the fifties and sixties used to wear, and he was old enough to appreciate them, yet still young enough to feel a certain welcome stiffness setting in.

The woman passed him on her way out the door and her coat swung open just enough to reveal a gold badge clipped to the belt around her waist, and his eyes moved quickly to the old couple behind her and he smiled at them, waved to a kid behind the old people, but his head turned to catch one last glimpse of the legs as they started up the Jetway.

Genie Delaney walked up the sloped ramp and into the terminal, then turned toward the escalator that would carry her down to the baggage claim area. She found the assigned carousel and a nice spot to watch for her bag, then waited for all the flight’s luggage to start coming down the chute – when she felt someone move in close, too close.

“Hey, douchebag,” the man by her side said.

She turned, looked at the DPD motor-jock standing by her side. “Hey, prick, didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s stupid to ride a motorcycle when it’s icy out? Or did they finally put training wheels on your scooter?”

People nearby listened, some moved away, not sure what the cop would do after such a deadly insult, while others thought it was great fun, like ‘who the Hell puts down a cop that way, and lives to tell about it?’ ‘What would he do next?’ ‘Beat her over the head with his flashlight?’

The cop slowly took off his helmet, then his sunglasses, and he put these in a shirt pocket, and all the while the woman looked him in the eye. He put his helmet on a seat-back and took the woman’s face in his hands, then leaned down and kissed her. It was a long, deep kiss, and people all around the couple smiled and laughed a little, while more than a few men’s gazes lingered on the woman’s legs – and for way too long.

Delaney’s bag came; the cop grabbed it and, holding her hand in his, they make their way out to the short term lot, to a rain spattered Ford SUV clearly belonging to the Dallas Police Department. He opened her door, helped her get in, then put the bag on the seat behind her. Once he was strapped-in, he started the engine and made for the north airport exit, then turned eastbound on Highway 114 and drove on into the city. He knew just by looking she was exhausted so they drove in silence, and by the time they passed Las Colinas she was fast asleep. He drove through the city towards the SMU campus, then a few blocks north to Milton St, and into the driveway of his little house. He quietly went around, got her bag and carried it in to his bedroom, then went back out and woke her, gently.

“Did I fall asleep?” she said, yawning.

“You sure did, darlin’. Let’s get you in, and to bed.”

“Um, that sounds kinda good,” she purred. “Dinner?”

“I can make you a salad. Anything else sound good?”

“Maybe you should just come to bed.”

“I can try…”

“…But you’re on call. I knew it. You’re always on call.”

“Sorry.”

“Can’t people in this town go just one night without killing themselves in a car?”

“Come on, I’ll carry you.”

“Ooh, really?”

“Really.”

“You haven’t done that in a while, Officer Studly PooRight.”

He leaned over, picked her up, carried her into the house and on into his bedroom.

“Right there,” she pointed, “right on that there bed!”

“Coming right up, M’am.” He put her down gently, then settled down next to her.

The telephone rang.

“Oh, fuck! Already?!”

“Don’t answer it, Ben.”

“Sorry. Got to.”

He picked up the phone. “Yo!” he said.

“Ben? That you?”

“Duke! How’s it hangin’?”

“Fine, fine. Say, is Genie back?”

“Just picked her up. What’s up?”

“Wanted to know if you two were up for dinner.”

“Duke wants to know if you’re hungry.”

“Sure. Here, or out?”

“Yeah, Duke, come on over. Steaks and salad here?”

“No, gonna need some curry tonight.”

“No shit! Curry?”

“It’s that gal of ours. Broadening my horizons. Again.”

“Wow. I’m impressed. She’s coming, then?”

“Yeah,” The Duke said. “We’ll be there in about fifteen or so.”

“Okay. See you then.”

“Duke?” Delaney asked. “Man, it’s been awhile. Carol with him?”

“Yup. But he sounds a little tense. On edge.”

“Oh? Well, I’d better throw a little water on my face, brush my teeth. Any mail today?”

“I’ll go see.” He was gone a few minutes, then came back with a handful of letters. “Couple of letters from schools, one from D.C.”

“You need to shower?” she asked.

“Probably.”

“Why don’t you hop in?”

“Okay,” Acheson said, but he was thinking about the tone in The Duke’s voice. He hadn’t heard that kind of stress since last summer, and hadn’t seen him in weeks. He showered, dressed in a fresh uniform and got his hand unit’s spare battery out of the charger and slapped it onto the bottom of the radio just as the doorbell rang.

He heard Genie and Carol talking about how good the Christmas tree looked, about how crowded the malls were, then The Duke – asking where Ben was.

Knock on the bedroom door.

“Ben? Mind if I come in?”

“Nope. Entrez vous!”

“What was that? Frog?”

“Yup.”

“So, are you still flying that Paris route.”

“Yup. One day over, one day on the ground over there, then one day back and three days off, then repeat as often as necessary until the desired results are achieved. Gives me two days to work wrecks, though.”

“Almost sounds fun. I know the Chief appreciates it. So, what are you flying?”

“777s. Fun airplane. Huge, though.”

“I’m a little jealous.”

Acheson grinned, then turned more serious. “You also sound pretty stressed-out, Duke. What’s up?”

“Those gals have been in Portland and San Francisco. West coast, anyway. Lots of rumbles in Orange County, Irvine area. And now Seattle, too. A couple of cops taken down again.”

“Same MO?”

“Yup. Decapitations, disembowelments, the dicks and balls…all the same shit.”

“And?”

“And, well, I got this is the mail yesterday; it’s addressed to us, but you were still airborne so, well, just read it.” He handed Acheson a letter, still folded neatly in it’s envelope.

Acheson took the letter out and looked it over; it had already been dusted for prints.

– Hi, boys. We’ve been busy, as I guess you know, but we’ve been recruiting and our numbers are growing. This note is just to let you know that we’ve got a permanent team set up and operating in Dallas now, and we’ve got a few new targets lined up and ready to go. Real fun ones, too, I promise. As I doubt there’s anyone around the department who can figure us out quite like the ‘Junior Birdman’ can, it’s our hope you can convince him to join us on our next wild goose chase. The last one was fun, and this one promises to be even funner! Oh, and tell him to look near the Inner Marker; he’ll know what to do. The next one will start with a bang, too! Luv, C –

“Well, that’s quaint,” Acheson said. “Nothing like goading someone along, is there?”

“Look, the Chief wants you back, full time…”

“Ain’t gonna happen, Duke. If y’all want to pull me off traffic to work on this, fine. I don’t much like driving that mastodon-mobile around on the ice, anyway. Bikes are one thing, but that fucker ain’t no fun at all.”

“So, two days a week? That’s all?”

“I don’t think it’ll matter much, Duke. Sounds to me like they’ll set up their kills when they know I’m around. Either that or they’ll be so mad at me they’ll take me out.”

“You know, it sounds like they’ve got the department completely infiltrated.”

“Oh, you can count on it.”

“You don’t sound surprised. Why?”

“Simple, really. It’s just history, so look at it that way. We’ve got hundreds, maybe thousands of women coming back from wars in the Middle East, and many have seen combat operations, but they’ve been working in close proximity to the most misogynistic culture on the planet. In other words, they’re battle tested, but they’re pissed off, too. They get back here and see the same old misogynist bullshit they always have, the same old male patriarchy keeping them down, the same old predatory bullshit where rapists get a slap on the wrist while their victims get pummeled in court and victimized over and over for the rest of their life. Then the President from Hell gets into office, and things only promise to get worse, much worse. So what are these women supposed to do? Well, they plan, they think and plan for the long term. They organize, they look at where the real problems lay, then they join police departments, sheriff’s offices, any kind of law enforcement agency they can, any kind of job that helps them gather intel on whatever kinds of targets they want to go after. They develop hit teams, intel teams, logistics teams, then, probably, political action teams, and in time, when they’re ready, they’ll move into politics, begin to reshape the political agendas in targeted regions, then nationwide. Then in fifty years or so, who knows? The cultural landscape will be completely altered.”

“You think they’re that well organized?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Well, why?”

“Because these women want change, real change. The kind of change they want will only come about through some kind of revolution, maybe even civil war.”

“Maybe the family values people are right…” The Duke sighed.

“What? A woman’s place is in the kitchen?”

“Yeah…”

“Maybe a hundred years ago you could justify that kind of thinking, when religion dominated social discourse in much of the country. Today? All you have to do is look at Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, places like Iran to see where that leads. And guess what? Our new President is leading us right down that path, to a Christian theocracy, to putting women back in the kitchen. My dad always taught me to put yourself in the other fella’s shoes, you know, kind of a ‘do unto others as you’d have them do unto you’ kind of thing. How would you like to be objectified, subjugated, put down at every turn, then for good measure have your spouse beat the Hell out of you every time you displease him?”

“Ben, really, do think this is linked? I mean, they went after pedophiles…”

“Yeah, so what? Serial pedophiles are just the worst of the worst. Remember, these aren’t “just women” – I’d guess a bunch of them are mothers, too. What would represent the worst repression possible to a woman and a mother – than men who prey on their children?”

“Jesus, Ben, do you know what you’re saying?”

“Yeah, sure, I’ve been thinking about this for months, and it’s about the only thing that does make sense. And you know what? More power to ‘em.”

“What?”

“Duke, look, it’s simple. Women want equality, right?”

“Sure.”

“Well, the thing is, nobody is ever “given” anything, especially things like equality or freedom. These things are earned over time, usually earned with the tip of a spear, through force. Look at the civil rights movement, the equal right’s movement. You can pass all the laws you want but in the end nothing changes. Fifty years after women began burning bras very little has changed, and a lot of what has changed is little more than window dressing. Fifty years after LBJ and the civil rights movement, what’s happened? The welfare state was dismantled and black men have been incarcerated in record numbers. Why? Because no one’s going to “give” them equality, and rather than face the music, rather than endure more cities burning, like what happened in 66 and 68, it’s far better to warehouse all that anger. So we put blacks in prison, we arrest them for the slightest provocation, let ’em rot in hot cages, at least until they acquiesce, and by then all the revolutionary fervor is burned out of them, and then we ‘let’ these burned out hulks spend the rest of their lives on the streets, maybe sleeping in shelters.”

“Hey,” they heard Genie say from the living room, “you guys coming out, or should I get a salad going?”

“We’re coming now,” Dickinson said, then he turned to Acheson. “Okay, so what do I tell the Chief?”

“You know what? That secretary of yours? The one with the great legs? Start giving her all our plans, what we’re thinking of doing, how we’re going to respond…”

“You don’t think…?”

“I’m going to assume so until proven otherwise. You’d be well advised start thinking that way, too.”

“But, why?”

“I’d want them to know what I’m doing, at least until I don’t want them to know, but by then they’ll trust the intel they’re getting. Then I’d be in a better position to confuse them.”

“Okay, got it. But, what do I tell the Chief?”

“For now? I’ll work in CID a couple of days a week. I’ve got three weeks in June, I’ll spend those working downtown. That’s when they’ll make their big move, if my hunch is correct. The one year anniversary would be nice timing.”

“Yeah, makes sense. Well, guess we’d better head on out,” The Duke said, “before we have some seriously pissed off womenfolk out there.”

“Reckon so,” Acheson replied, shaking his head at life’s little ironies. The Duke would never change. How many men could?

“Ben!” Carol Denison almost screamed when he and The Duke came back out to the little living room. “She got in!”

“What?” Ben said, smiling.

Genie looked up from the letter in her hand; “UT Southwestern. Here’s the letter.”

“What’s this?” The Duke asked.

“Med school,” Acheson said, glowing with pride. “She got into UT Southwestern! Hot damn! Baby, I’m so proud of you!”

Carol turned to him, smiled that knowing smile of her’s and came over to him, hugged him. “And I’m so proud of you, too,” she whispered, and he felt her slip a little piece of paper into his hand before she slipped into The Duke’s protective embrace.

They walked out the front door, out to their cars, discussed where to get curry in Dallas on a Friday night and decided on a place out on Greenville Avenue, but because Ben was ‘on call’, they broke up into two cars, and he helped Genie up into huge SUV while The Duke and Carol went over to his Ford.

He walked around to his side of the car, paused to read the note Carol had slipped him:

– We knew you’d understand. Luv, C –

Ben Acheson looked across his ice coated lawn at Carol Denison sitting beside the head of CID, and he understood. He saw her eyes, the love, the compassion, the cool fury, and he wondered where all this would lead, and what the world would look like after all this wild passion burned it’s way through – to the scorched heart of the earth.

Part II – Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Chapter 12

Seattle

I took the call a little after midnight, and yes, it was a dark and stormy night, but in my line of work nights tend to get stormy – in one way or another. Dispatch called in the middle of a dream, just as I ran across an ex-wife in a very interesting situation, but the sleepy voice on the other end of the line had no way of knowing that, and even if she had, there wasn’t a damn thing either of us could do about it. Sometimes late night calls are just the luck of the draw, some nights you end up in the wrong place at the right time, and everything goes to hell from there. No one’s fault, you know what I mean? But still, some calls are like a stone skipping across a pond, they ripple through time, across the windmills of your mind – before they sink from view. This one sure would.

I slid out of my berth up forward and looked at the puffy-eyed stranger I saw in the mirror, threw on some clean pants and ran my belt through the loops, then hooked my badge over the left front pocket and strapped my old Sig P-220 into the crusty leather shoulder holster a wife – which one? – had given me twenty years and more than a few nightmares ago. Funny how some things from marriages last longer than others, even if the joke turns out to be on you. On second thought, maybe that isn’t so funny.

I hopped off the boat – another consequence of one wife too many – and walked through the fog-shrouded marina to the department Ford sitting in the parking lot. I was soaked-through by the time I got seated, and I checked ‘in-service’ with dispatch, groaned when the light rain suddenly turned heavy. As if losing another night’s sleep wasn’t enough, I’d forgotten my raincoat, something you do in Seattle at your peril. Oh well, it’s only water, right? Just like water under the bridge. You live and learn; at least, you’re supposed to, anyway. Funny how we never do, and how all the unintended consequences pile up around us on our march to the big sleep.

The windshield wipers beat like drums ahead of a funeral march, lightning rippled inside clouds just overhead, and reflections of city streets drizzled by in the tired, mechanical cadence. My mouth tasted like horse manure, too, and to make the morning even more interesting I’d felt a sore throat coming on during the night, but that didn’t matter: sick, well – or even dead – this was my call and I had to take it. Mine to ‘make or break,’ to solve or to seriously fuck-up. You never know what’s out there, but that’s the real fun of police work. Hell, at least the rain was supposed to let up later in the day. But would it? I’ve heard some rains last forever. That’s why there’s Prozac and bourbon, right? But that dark, endless rain is why some cops give up and swallow a hot chunk of .38 caliber ambivalence, too…

The address dispatch read-off didn’t mean a thing to me, neither did the run-down apartment building I parked in front of ten minutes later: both were in a run-down, bleak area just south of downtown – an area full of docks and warehouses – and home to lots of broken dreams and burned-out souls. It’s funny, well, maybe not, how such places seem to reek of despair. How phrases like ‘income inequality’ and ‘collapsing American dream’ take on a pathos of uncertainty and despair when you get up real close – and smell that reality in every shadow you desperately try to ignore. But cops can’t ignore the shadows, if you know what I mean.

Three squad cars were already parked out front, their red and blue strobes pulsing in the waterfront rain – crystalline echoes caught in gravity’s embrace. The frenzied light created strange moving shadows on the walls of this brick canyon, and the feeling was unsettling, even to my tired eyes. An ambulance was out front, too, and a couple of firemen sat in the brightly lighted back of the box; they looked bored – tired and bored – because they’d seen it all before, and probably ten times this week. Still, those guys looked as though they were sitting in an island of intense light, and that kind of clarity looked out-of-place here in this landscape of lightning and foggy shadows.

Out-of-place, too, because this part of the city is a land of shadows, and clarity isn’t really welcome in the shadowlands. Truth is a painful subject to the down-and-out, a reminder of all the wrong turns some people made along the way to here – to the last stop on their long road to nowhere, and I guess it can be kind of rough to turn around and everywhere you look you’re reminded of how far you’ve fallen.

Like that pain in your gut where hunger used to live isn’t enough?

A medical examiner’s rain-streaked van, dull blue with official looking white letters on it, pulled up behind my old Ford right as I got out of the car; Mary-Jo something-or-other was behind the wheel writing on a clipboard but she looked up and waved at me as I walked away. I nodded and wished I’d worn a hat; no one ever told me when I was growing up that cold rain on a head with three hairs left on top could be so interesting.

Anyway. Mary-Jo something-or-other and her assistant got out of their van (both wearing rain coats and hats, by the way) and followed me into the building; I made it to an elevator just before the door closed – and they squeezed in.

“Messy night,” her assistant said. “Gonna rain for a week.”

“No shit,” I said. “Welcome to Seattle.”

“Hey, Woody, you still on the boat?” Mary-Jo asked.

Funny, but I couldn’t remember telling her I lived on the lake, but that’s just another one of the joys that go along with white hair and hemorrhoids, and I’d known Mary-Jo through work for more than a few years. She was cute in a thirty-something kind of way, but the work had taken a heavy toll on her – yet. She’d filled-out a little too much over the last few years, yet she wasn’t what I’d call fat, either. She was like everyone I’d ever met on the M.E.’s staff: puffy dark circles under her dulled eyes, cigarette ashes on her blouse, and of course, the requisite weird sense of humor. Working around dead people does that to you, I guess. Even so, working around victims of violent crime sucks the humanity from the marrow of your bones – and living that life soon leaves people like her pale and dried up. Having worked homicide for fourteen years, that’s a statement I feel I can make with some authority. You get used to human degradation, to the meanness that lurks our there, waiting, yet even so there are things waiting for you out there you never get used to. Not and still consider yourself human, anyway.

These cheap apartment buildings are all the same. Grimy, rickety old elevators spit us out into a dingy, dimly lit hallway, and why the hell are the ceilings so goddamn low in these shit-holes? Virgil’s “Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here” should be carved in stone over the entries to these hovels, because it’s my guess that’s exactly what happens to the poor souls living in them. And man, did I feel it just then, looking down that empty, piss-soaked hall to the open door at the end. The walls even smelled like this was a place broken people came to die, to give up and drop dead on the floor, even if it took them years to get around to doing it. This was a world of frayed carpets and peeling, cracked linoleum, of bare light-bulbs hanging from broken fixtures – like the necks of old men after that last trip up the stairway to heaven, into the hangman’s waiting embrace. If I had to write building code violations for a living, I could have turned this place into a career.

Still, the essential truth of places like this is simple: nobody cares whether you live or die. All you need to do is make rent and everyone will just leave you the fuck alone. That’s just the way it is when you live in the shadows: life is all the shit that rolls down on your head – then you die.

Up on that third floor it was the same story: dim grunge everywhere I looked, haunted eyes looking through cracked doors, maybe a little curiosity – but a whole lot of indifference too – mixed with a little fear of the unknown, and the known. Just ahead, right down there in the gloom, I could see the door to Apartment 321 standing wide open, and I saw the indirect light of a camera flash strobe off an unseen wall – so someone from forensics was already up here photographing the scene. A patrolman stood outside the door, looking bored, of course, and because, I guess, some things never change. A couple of nervous neighbors had gathered in the gloom across the hall and were hopping around like birds in a broken cage, but there was no place to fly now, and they knew it. Life had them trapped now, and held them fast to their despair.

I walked past a couple patrolmen on my way into the room and – stopped dead in my tracks.

The first victim was a middle-aged man and what I saw was a shattered wreck; the sight of so much blood still gets to me. The young M.E.’s assistant walked-in – but he turned away a little too late. I watched him stagger back from the sight, watched as he flashed hash by the doorway, and within seconds the poor guy fled to the safety of the elevator, retching as he stumbled away.

“Fuck a duck,” Mary Jo said quietly as she came in the room.

“I don’t think so, Ma’am,” I said in my best Joe Friday. “No duck did this.”

The guy was sprawled out on the living room floor, and the worn green carpet under him had been unable to absorb all the blood. Now vast pools of the stuff had coagulated under his head and torso. His throat had been cut and he’d been stabbed in the chest and belly too many times to count, and for good measure his penis had been cut off and stuffed in his mouth.

“Jealous wife?” Mary-Jo said as she bent down beside the guy.

“Or boyfriend,” one of the techs from forensics said.

I bent down to have a closer look, saw something odd under the blood on the guy’s belly.

“Somebody get me some gloves, and a wad of four-by-fours. Maybe some saline, too.”

A paramedic brought me a wad of gauze pads and a one liter bottle; I gloved-up, popped the cap and poured a little saline on the guy’s belly, just below the sternum, then I wiped away the coagulated – and just had to shake my head at what I found.

Letters, carved in his flesh.

“What does it say?” Mary-Jo asked, looking over my shoulder.

“Love me,” I said absently. Whoever had killed the guy had taken something really sharp and carved the two words into his flesh, even taken time to underline them with a nice, bold slash.

“Well, sometimes love hurts, I guess,” Mary-Jo chuckled.

See, I told you working around dead people sucks.

Mary-Jo had her tackle box open and was taking samples from under his fingernails a minute later – when I saw something in his hair.

“Better take a look here,” I said, pointing at his scalp.

She came up, her gloved fingers sifting through the victim’s hair: “Semen?” she thought out loud.

“Well, I sure ain’t gonna smell it. Tell you what? Why not take a sample and do some of that science shit, maybe tell me just what the fuck it is? Okay? Maybe even whose it is?”

She chuckled: “Maybe he shot his load all the way up here…”

I rolled my eyes: “Mary-Jo? You need to get your fat ass laid. And bad, too.”

“You volunteering, Woody?” she said as she removed some of the stuff with a sterile swab. She held it up and looked at the gunk with a UV light, then put it in a vial, before turning around and saying: “Cause, ya know, I swallow…”

I had to get away from her then. Even the dude from forensics stepped back and looked at her all wide-eyed, like she was some real crazy shit. Me? I didn’t know quite what to say. Neither did the tech. Mary-Jo just laughed and laughed, before she looked at me and licked her lips, letting her tongue linger like a writhing phallus.

+++++

But the guy in the living room wasn’t the only victim.

I moved to the bedroom, started poking around, trying to come to terms with one more senseless crime scene, but this one just didn’t fit with what had gone down in other room. There was another middle aged white guy on the floor, but this one had a single entry wound in the middle of his forehead, his brains splattered on the wall behind, forming one vector. And he’d been shot at close range, very close – almost execution style. I could see powder marks by the entry wound, and the entire back of his skull was simply gone. Vaporized. And there wasn’t another mark on him that I could see.

And then there was the kid on the bed. And the camcorder on the tripod, aimed at the kid.

He was asian, maybe ten years old. Maybe. And the kid was dressed up like a girl. Stockings, high heels, makeup…the whole ten yards. Wrists and ankles tied to the four corners of the bed. Sex toys everywhere.

So, someone had been filming this scene. Maybe the guy on the floor with the headache? If so, who was fucking the kid…assuming that’s what was being filmed.

I walked back to the living room. “Has this place been searched?” I asked the patrolmen standing at the door.

“Not really, sir. We came in, saw this shit on the floor and called it in, stepped out here.”

I drew my pistol and wheeled around, walked quietly to the bathroom. The door was by the bed’s headboard, and it was closed.

I tried the knob.

Locked.

I heard a patrolman come up behind me, turned, saw his gun out – and I motioned him to take one side of the door, then stood back and kicked the door in.

The little room was basically all white tile, but the room as red now. It looked like a slaughterhouse, too, after a busy day.

White guy, twenties, was my first best guess, but his head had been cut off, and neatly, too. Like in one blow. His body was hanging from the shower head by the wrist, his gut had been sliced open from sternum to groin and his intestines had simply spilled out on the floor. His head was in the sink, the stump of a penis stuffed in his mouth.

“What the fuck is that?” I heard Mary Jo ask, and she in the doorway now, pointing at the bottom of the bathtub.

A white fabric shower curtain, blood soaked. Several light blue towels, ditto. And a foot. A woman’s foot. I pulled the stuff back, saw a woman, handcuffed, and terrified. Very much alive, and out of her mind as pure terror filled her waking mind.

“Paramedics,” I screamed at the patrolman. “Now, you fucking moron!”

I was furious. Not only had the idiot failed to search the place, there was a victim in need of serious medical attention just laying here, and for how long?

I heard paramedics running down the hallway, then turning into the room. I listened to their “Oh, Gods!” and “No fucking ways!” as they were led to the bathroom, and when the stepped inside it was like someone hit a switch. One of them retched, then made it to in the toilet and flashed hash, the other ran to the kitchen and let go in the sink there.

Let me tell you something…when paramedics can’t stand a crime scene, you know it’s bad. This was the worst I’d ever run across, and it was getting more so by the minute.

We got the woman out of the bathtub and I took off her handcuffs, put them in an evidence bag and sealed it, but then I looked at them, saw an FBI identifier stamped in the metal and shook my head, really confused now. The medics guided her through the slaughterhouse, and a few minutes later I heard the ambulance below, leaving with sirens on, but I was still caught up in the mess in the bathroom.

Caught up?

Well, yeah. Crime scenes like this one are usually loaded with symbols. Actions are metaphors. One kind of knife wound says anger, another type screams fear. Looking at a crime scene like this was like trying to read a book – in a language you barely understand – because each scene is created by a different writer. A monster with a language all his, or her, own.

The dicks, all savagely cut off and stuffed in mouths? Anger. Sexual anger. Or reprisal? A woman’s sexual anger, or revenge? This was patient and methodical, not to mention seriously messy work, and it would take someone with a fair amount of intestinal fortitude to carry it out. And strength, too.

Or, more than one?

But everything was carried out with knives, except for the guy on the floor with the headache. FBI handcuffs? Where the fuck did those come from?

Turn around, walk back to the main entry, walk through the apartment again, play it back in my mind like a video recording of the event. Look at the guy on the floor with ‘love me’ carved on his gut. Clean cut, no beard, physically fit.

“Law enforcement?” I whispered. “FBI?”

Had he come in – but why? – and found this going down? Taken out the guy working the video camera? Had he interrupted the people in the bathroom? What happened then?

Too many questions.

The answers would be in the crime scene, but then I thought about the camera, and the kid.

A pedophile, making a film?

I shook my head, knew I couldn’t put off getting my hands dirty any longer, yet I didn’t know where to start.

I remember thinking you have to start at the beginning, and the beginning was the kid. Asian. Woman in the bathtub was too. Who the fuck was she? A hooker? The kid’s mother?

Pulled out my notepad, started writing down ideas, theories, impressions. Leading the photographer around, take this picture, no, from this angle, over here, that smudge on the wall, that one too, lift the kid up, see the semen running out his ass, get that too…

When you do this for a living you get into the zone, you move like a robot, analyze this, bag that, get the ME to take samples of x, and y, and z. It’s bursts of movement, interludes of pure thought leading to another burst, another insight, and on and on and on. Hours of it.

Ligature marks on the wrists and ankles on the man in the living room, and a few deep, small cuts inside his thighs – like the victim had been tortured before he was killed – yet the things I’d seen so far just weren’t adding up to a routine murder. All the evidence was contradictory. Tied-up but no signs of a struggle? So had been some element consensual behavior? That was nonsensical. And if that was the case, then everything I was looking at had to have been some kind of pre-arranged encounter. A paid encounter – with some really weird ideas about foreplay? Or…some kind of set-up? Lure the cop here, let him…? What?

Like I said.

Nonsensical.

Because all the evidence – out here, anyway – said most of his wounds had been the result of an aggressive – and hardly consensual – assault.

Before things went way south anyway, so the guy probably didn’t really know his assailant all that well.

But what if he had?

Then he didn’t know the perp well enough to have trusted her (or yeah, him) with his life. Probably, but then again, what if he had? But then, there was the explosive nature of the wounds on his torso, the penis stuffed in his mouth, the carved words on the gut – Love Me! – and all that added up to evidence of pure rage. The murderer, or even murderers, were uncontrolled or consumed with blinding rage at this point, either wild with rage or completely off-the-wall in some sort of frenzied lust.

Then there were the basic assumptions. Was the ‘perp’ a woman? What about motives? Envy? Jealousy? I went back, looked at the kid again. Still, without more to go on, I was grabbing at straws now, because without evidence, real evidence or witness statements, the scene was loaded with conjecture. What about the woman? Had she seen anything? Heard anything? What was her relationship to the scene?

“Yo! Woody!” Mary-Jo called out from the living room. “Better come take a look at this.”

What else was I missing? I looked at the bed again before I turned to the other room.

“What you got?” She was bent over the guy now, her assistant holding his legs up, shining her UV light up his ass.

“Semen. All over the external anus.”

“Swell.” So there was another angle to consider.

“We’ll have to wait until autopsy,” she said as I bent over to take a look, “to sample what’s inside.”

“Peachy. Can’t wait to read the results.”

“Woody? You ain’t going all soft on us down there, are you?”

The woman was merciless, just annoying, and merciless. Hell, it would probably be a month before my poor dick would get up again after seeing that smile – while shining her light up that guy’s ass. “You know, M-J, if I have to listen to anymore of your shit I’m going to go somewhere and join an order. Maybe the Benedictines.”

“Yeah, sure thing Woody. You’ll get all you want there.”

“You’re a twisted bitch, you know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah, ain’t it the truth? But I know you love me.”

I looked at the words carved on the guy’s belly and shook my head, then walked back into the bedroom with my back to her laughter. “Very punny,” I said over my shoulder as I disappeared around a corner.

I looked around the bedroom again and poked around the head of the bed; a pillow was stained and still wet with what looked like some sort of clear fluid, and not semen from what I could smell. Urine? There was a length of discarded rope on the floor, and in the corner a pair of pantyhose: “Johansen! Did you get these yet?” I called out to the photographer shooting in the bathroom.

“What? The rope and stuff?”

“Yeah. The pantyhose. Did you get those?”

“Yeah. You ready for me to bag ‘em?”

“Let the M.E. have ‘em, see if they can get some hair or fluid. Maybe we’ll get some DNA.”

“You got something in there for me, Woody?” Mary-Jo asked suggestively as she came into the room. There are days when I wish my last name wasn’t Woodward, and this was one of them. When I heard Johansen snickering in the bathroom I’d have gladly settled for Smith. I guess I should be grateful my folks didn’t name me Richard. Dick Woody. Yeah. That would have been just the thing on a night like this.

+++++

The sun was coming up, the rain had tapered to a drizzle and paramedics were loading bodies in a large coroner’s van; they’d be transported to the lab, get logged-in for autopsy. Forensics had a pile of evidence to log-in at Central and I had a headache – like I’d just come out of a bad slasher movie and eaten way too much buttered popcorn. I rubbed my eyes while Mary-Jo joked with one of the patrolmen, then groaned when I saw her headed my way. I rolled down my window as she walked up.

“You hungry?” she said.

“You’re like, kidding, right?”

“No, not at all. Seeing a guy’s severed cock stuffed in his mouth like that always makes me hungry.”

“Brings out the man-eater in you, does it?”

She looked down after that, turned serious. “Woody, I need to ask you something. Some serious shit.”

“I could use some coffee,” I said, nodding. “If you’ll stop with all the creepy shit for a while.”

“Right. Pike Place?”

“Sure. The alley? There ought to be a place to park on Pine or Stewart this early in the morning. Oh, and be sure to park that heap in front of a good restaurant. Good PR. Know they’ll thank you for it.”

“Gee, Woody – that’s nice,” she said, looking at her Medical Examiner’s van. “And you call me creepy?”

+++++

I beat her there, made my way to Post Alley then followed the scent of roasting beans and got a table inside; rain had given way to fast-scudding clouds over the sound, and now the tops of the Olympics were all aglow in the sunrise.

Cool, clean air, roasting coffee, fresh pastry…life suddenly felt good again, and Mary-Jo showed up a few minutes later. I got a couple of two-liter quadruple-shot espressos and she waited at the table.

Nothing like a slight buzz to start the day, I always say.

“Geesh, I didn’t know they made ‘em that big,” she said while she stared at the cup, considering the implications of so much caffeine.

“Oh, sure. Gets the main pump throbbing.”

“Really? My guess is your heart’s going to explode one of these days.” She looked nervous, like she didn’t know how to say what she had to say.

“You know, I find it best to just spit it out, M-J.”

“What?”

“You had a question? Some serious shit, I think you said?”

“I got divorced, you know,” she began, “a few years back…”

“Well no, M-J, I didn’t know that. In fact, just to set the record straight, I’m pretty sure I didn’t know you were married. Come to think of it, I don’t even know your last name.”

“What? Oh, shit,” she said as she laughed. “Right. Kopecki. Maria Josephina Kopecki.”

I held out my hand: “Ed Woodward. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m sorry,” she continued, “I just took it for granted, ya know, having worked around you all this time…”

“No problem. Now, what’s up?”

“Well, see, I’ve been trying to hook up with someone for a while, like, through the internet. Well, see, I did, sort of, but it didn’t really work out. Turns out the guy, the last one, was kind of creepy. I mean really creepy.”

“Is that, like, ‘really, really creepy’?”

“Don’t make fun of me, alright?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Right, well, see, the problem is, the dude’s a cop.”

“Uh-huh. Define creepy.”

“Well, see, he wanted to meet the first time at this club. A swingers’ club.”

“And?”

“Yeah, well, see, I did, and he had already hooked up with another couple by the time I got there. He wanted to go back to their place and I don’t know why, but, well, see, I did.”

“Really? Why?”

She looked down, just shrugged. “I dunno,” was all she could say – yet everything she said, even the way she said it – looked a little like an act to me.

“So, what’s the problem?”

“Well, the guy has shown up a couple of times, like, see, at things where I was.”

“Things?”

“Clubs.”

“Clubs? You mean like…”

“Yeah, swingers’ clubs.”

“This is, well, see, your thing, then?” I was trying my damnedest not to laugh, or even smile for that matter, but the stupidity of young people sometimes leaves me breathless. And if she said ‘well, see’ one more time I was going to have to hurt her. Strangling her came to mind.

“I’ve done it a few times, yeah.” She was speaking quietly now, very self-consciously. “It’s fun.”

“Yeah, well, whatever floats your boat.”

“Well, see, I wasn’t sure if he was following me, or if it was just, like, a coincidence…”

“Well, see, I’m still not seeing the big problem?”

“Well, see, he’s got a big tattoo on his chest. ‘Love me.’ That’s what it says.”

Now she had my attention. “Uh-huh. What’s his name?” I asked as I took a notepad out of my shirt pocket.

“I don’t know, for sure.”

“Oh?”

“Well, see, like I only know his internet address and his screen name.”

“And how do you know he’s a cop?”

“He, like, told me so.”

“Uh-huh. Did he like show you a badge or anything?”

“No,” she said.

Sometimes I wonder how people so fucking stupid could possibly live long enough to reproduce. Then again, maybe more than a few don’t. “Can you describe him?”

“Tall. Six feet, maybe a little more. Not fat but like really buff…”

“Buff?”

“Muscular. Like a weight-lifter.”

“How old?”

“Late-forties, maybe fifty. Red hair and freckles. You know, he’s got like a faint scar on his right cheek.”

She had just described Mark Tottenham, one of the department’s assistant chiefs, to a T; Tottenham had been in charge of Internal Affairs for years, and while I’d heard rumors he was flaky, this was off the charts.

“Got an email address?”

She gave it to me.

“When’s the last time you saw the guy?”

“Night before last.” but her eyes darted to the left when she said that, always a sure sign of deceit. Hiding something. A lie.

Hinkey. Cops call it that, but don’t ask me why.

I looked over my glasses at her, tried not to judge the kid too unkindly. “I’ll see what I can find out. Where can I get in touch?” She gave me a number.

“Thanks, Woody. Maybe I could buy you dinner?”

“Yeah. Maybe.” I flipped my notebook over and made a few more notes then put it away. “Well, see, like I got to go now. Do like some cop shit. I’ll give you a call this afternoon.” I made my way to the Ford, felt a little sick to my stomach. I checked in with dispatch, then drove over to Tate’s office.

Richard Tate had been a detective for almost thirty years; now he was doing the PI gig, doing sensitive background checks for corporations and taking photographs of cheating spouses. For the past ten years we had been best friends – I had his back and he had mine – that kind of thing, and Tate has been the only friend I’ve ever had who I’d trust with my life. Now I wanted him to run down the internet stuff for me because I didn’t want any traces of a search on department computers, or my private one for that matter. I gave him the run-down on what Mary-Jo had told me and he whistled, leaned back in a squeaky leather chair and steepled his fingers.

“You ain’t gonna believe this,” he said, “but this ain’t the first time Tottenham has been in the shits for something like this. The tattoo thing, the wife-swapping shit; he’s been into some pretty creepy shit over the years. He supposedly likes, or used to, anyway, to rough-up girls. I heard once he was into kids, too?”

“Kids? And?”

“Nobody found anything, but I’m not sure how hard they looked.”

“What about guys?”

“Guys? What do you mean? Gay shit?”

I told him about the murder scene this morning and he whistled again. “No shit?”

“That’s a fact. No shit, but maybe a little piss – on the bed.”

“Crap. I can get a friend in Tacoma to run down the IP. Can you get a picture of Tottenham to show to the girl? Just to confirm things?”

“I dunno. Might be better to get someone outside the department. Maybe a reporter,” I said, grinning.

“Are you kidding?” he said. “Then what? They’d want some inside angle or some other tit-for-tat, or fuck, they could get hold of something you’d missed and then what the hell would you do?!”

“Fuck, I don’t know, Tate. I’m tired, been at it all night. And this one took something out of me. I need a change – I can feel it now.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll see what I can do.” He steepled his hands again and sighed. “Shit, it’s probably nothing anyway. No telling how many people have that tattoo.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Who knows? But it couldn’t be that common, could it?”

+++++

I drove back to Central and went up to my office in CID, called dispatch, asked them to run-off the NCIC data I’d called in earlier. I wanted to know more about the background of the guy in the living room, because I had a really bad feeling about that one. The voice on the phone told me to come down to her office.

“He’s clean, Woody,” Trisha Wickham told me when I walked in. “You won’t believe how clean.” She was the lead dispatcher on duty that morning, and an old friend.

“FBI?” I said, now really on edge.

She looked at me, shook her head. “How’d you know? White-collar crime unit, mainly computer crime. Talked to the SAC a while ago; he filled me in. The guy’s as clean as they come, too; fifteen year veteran, wife, two kids, straight as a razor.”

“Shit. Anyone told his family yet?”

“Nope. SAC wanted to talk to you first.”

“Got a number handy?” She read it off to me. “Thanks, Trish. Appreciate it.”

“Woody?”

“Yeah?”

“Something big is going on, maybe. You be careful, okay?”

Now just what the fuck was going on? How the hell did she know something big was going on? Something she heard from her call to the FBI?

This was beginning to feel a little like I’d just been shoved down the rabbit hole, but where was Alice leading me?

I went back to my office, wanting to look through recent intel reports, see if we’d picked up any new pedophile stuff, but first, I had to call the FBI.

+++++

Peter Brennan was the SAC, or the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s SeaTac office; I’d known him for years and he was generally a straight-shooter, a no nonsense, old school kind of Irish-American cop, the kind of guy who has your back when the chips were down.

He was waiting for my call, too, and he sounded anxious.

“Woody, what can you tell me? Any suspects?”

I gave him the basics but left out the grittier details. “Hell, Pete, we haven’t confirmed anything yet, don’t even have the other fingerprints processed. Was your guy supposed to come in this morning?”

“Yeah. He was a no show, his wife said he went out early last evening on a call, never came back. She called in about six-thirty this morning, worried.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Yeah. Anything you can tell me now?”

“Let me pull the prints and I’ll run ‘em over in a bit. Got any time this morning?”

“I’ll make time.”

“Okay, Pete. Seeya later.” I hung up, walked down to the locker room and picked-up my mail, then dropped by dispatch to pick up the NCIC and DL print-outs that would have to be attached to my preliminary report. Trish was not there so I turned and walked back to the elevator.

And Tottenham walked into to the elevator right after I did.

“Hey Woody, how’s it going?”

“Fine, Chief. You?”

“Can’t complain. You still livin’ on the boat?”

I laughed to avoid the question. “Well, it worked for a while but it got real small, real quick.”

“I can imagine. Brennan called me a while ago. You got the case?”

“Yessir.”

“Any leads?”

“Not a thing, Chief.” The elevator binged and the door opened.

“Well, keep me posted.”

“Right, Chief.”

“Seeya later.”

“You bet.”

The door closed and lurched up to the next floor; I walked to my office and got my coat, then called forensics and told them to fax a copy of the fingerprints to Brennan. My other line lit up and I took the call: it was Dick Tate.

“Hey Woody! Long time no see, amigo. Wondered if you’d like to have lunch and swap lies.”

“Hey there yourself! What the hell have you been up to? You still chasin’ lyin’ husbands and cheatin’ wives?”

“Only when I’m not screwing their wives!”

“Yeah. Ain’t Viagra a wonderful thing?” We laughed. “Listen, I have to drop by and see Pete Brennan for a minute, but how ‘bout I meet you for a bowl of chowder at Betty Lincoln’s?”

“Be good; like old times. Say about noon?”

“That’ll be fine.”

“Okay, buddy. Can’t wait. Be good to catch up on things.” He hung up; I’d managed to tell him of FBI interest in the case and told him to meet me near Ballard Locks, and he’d told me he had something important to discuss. Hopefully, if anyone was monitoring the line they’d not get too suspicious.

I drove over to the main FBI office by the Wa-Mu building and talked with Brennan; he told me they’d handle the notification and I thanked him.

“Any leads yet?” he asked.

“Nothing yet. I’ll let you know as soon as something breaks. I assume you’ll start your own investigation?”

“Already have.”

I nodded.

“You got a private number?”

“No, sir.”

He squinted, sat down and wrote out two numbers: “The first is unlisted, anytime. The second is my home number.”

“Understood.”

“You got something, don’t you?” he asked.

“Nothing definitive, more like a hunch, need to make a few calls.”

He nodded. “You need me, just call.”

“Pete, if I need you it’ll be too goddamn late to call.”

“That bad?” he said, sitting down.

“Worse,” I said, looking out the window.

He leaned back, looked me in the eye. “You sure you don’t want to fill me in?”

I shook my head. “Not there yet,.”

“Okay,” he said, but I could see the gears turning now.

“Pete?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t put a tail on me, okay? I’m halfway expecting someone to try, and I don’t want you to run ‘em off.”

“Fuck.”

“Promise, Pete?”

He stood, held his hand out. “Scout’s honor, Woody,” but his eyes darted to the left.

I smiled. Like I said, Pete was ‘good cop’ – and by that I mean – predictable.

I drove down to my boat on Lake Union and put the Zodiac in the water, then took off toward the locks. So far I hadn’t seen anyone on my tail, either on the ground or in the air, but the game is best played by people who know how to blend in. It’s a hard game to play well, and the stakes are highest when the feds get in on the action.

Tate was standing on a dock about a hundred yards shy of the locks and I pulled over, let him hop on; if anyone had followed him they’d have to hustle to follow us now – but he hadn’t seen a thing either – and that worried me. I puttered over to the south side of the channel and we both watched the shore as we trolled along.

“Victim was an FBI agent, supposedly clean.”

“His name Dan Harvey?” Tate asked.

“Yeah. How’d you find that out?”

“Through IPs of Mary-Jo’s contact. It’s Tottenham alright, and there’s been a lot of activity between him and this Harvey fellow over the past few months. A lot of meets at a code name, some place they refer to as the Hole in the Wall.”

“My. How original.” I’d need to look at my notes, but MJ hadn’t mentioned that name.

“So Harvey was FBI, huh?”

“Yeah, and supposedly clean. White collar crime.”

“Think maybe he got onto someone, maybe Mark?”

“Possible, but I doubt it. Why all the contact?”

“Maybe they were working a joint task force? Undercover?”

“Maybe. Ran into Mark this morning; he didn’t let on he knew the guy. Any luck on a photo?”

“Yeah. Pulled one off the net, from the Post-Intelligencer; about a year old, so it ought to do.”

“Good deal.”

“So Mark knew the guy and didn’t own up to it? And the tattoo? You think the girl might know the name of the club?”

I smiled. “Yeah, I think so, but she’s acting a little hinky, too.”

“Say, think we could grab a bowl while we’re out?”

“Yeah. You know, that actually sounds pretty good.” I rolled on the throttle and scooted up channel toward Fisherman’s Terminal and tied-off below Chinook’s. With any luck we’d miss the lunch crowd; we got lucky and sat way back from the entrance, looking out over the fishing boats, and from this vantage Tate could cover the entrance while I watched the docks. We ordered clam chowder and coffee and had just begun to relax when Dick sat upright and coughed attention.

“Tottenham,” he said under his breath. “At the desk, trying not to look this way.”

“Fuck.”

“What the fuck have you gotten me into, Woody?”

“Your guess is as good as mine?”

“Well, here he comes…”

The waitress came by and dropped off two huge bowls of chowder – and a gallon jug of Tabasco. “Damn, that looks good!” Tottenham said as he walked up. “Tate! What are you doing here? Where’s your Nikon?”

I turned and looked up at Tottenham.

“Sheesh! Well, looky who’s here!” Tate said. “Surprise, surprise.”

“Hey Chief,” said yours truly, feigning a little surprise of my own.

“Shit. This is like old times, huh?”

“You alone, Mark?” Dick asked. “Can you join us?”

“Kind of you to ask, but no. I’m meeting Pete Brennan, should be here any minute.”

My heart lurched. So, he had me tailed – surprise, surprise.

“Well, good to see you Dick. Woody, check in with me this afternoon, would you?”

“Right, Chief.”

Brennan walked in and they took a table across the restaurant from us.

“I think I’ve lost my appetite,” Tate said.

“At these prices? Better go find it, and fast.”

He laughed. “Too bad you’re on duty.”

“Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth. Nothing like a real cold one with hot chowder.”

“So. What the fuck do you think’s going on?”

“I have no clue, Amigo. Maybe Harvey found something on Tottenham, or maybe they were just into the same shit and met up with Cruella de Vil in that apartment. Anyway, I asked Pete not to throw a tail on me. I didn’t think he was lying when he said he wouldn’t, but guess what?”

“Really? I wouldn’t count on that prick to not sell out his mother.” He sighed, looked out over the water for a minute, then looked at me. “Well, anyway, Woody, you’re missing something. Something big. Why the hell would Tottenham and Brennan both be here? Right now? I hate to say it, but it sure feels like someone’s following you. Someone’s really uptight, too.”

“Besides us?” I chuckled.

“Right. Besides us.” He coughed, looked over at Brennan. “Thanks, I think, for coming over this morning.”

“Doesn’t matter. Food’s good, sun’s out… what else is there?”

“A pretty girl with a warm mouth?” Tate sighed and looked away. “Yeah, I guess, Woody.” He shook his head, and I really couldn’t blame him for feeling put-upon. “You’d better think about lining something up with the girl soon.”

“Yeah. Name is Mary Jo, works for the ME. You working anything major right now?”

“Nope. Not even anything minor.”

“Things that slow?”

“Slower. In a recession nobody gives a damn if their spouse is cheating ‘cause nobody has any money. I’d sure hate to be a divorce lawyer these days.”

“No, you wouldn’t. I can guarantee you they made enough off me the last twenty years to keep themselves in Guccis the rest of their sorry, goddamn lives.” We laughed, but we’d both been there and done that. Most cops have, and I guess that’s why most cops grow old by themselves. Bitter and cynical doesn’t even begin to describe it.

We finished up and paid the bill, Dick went over to say ‘bye to Tottenham and Brennan while I washed up, then we hopped into the Zodiac and continued up channel to the lake, and my boat. The shore was lined with boat dealers and houseboats, and even Tate wanted to linger and look over the little floating shack where they filmed “Sleepless in Seattle.”

Whoever it was tailing us was doing a good job, because neither of us picked up anything until I turned into the little marina where I kept my boat – and even then he was hard to see. Standing up on the second deck of a parking garage overlooking the lake, we saw a man with binoculars and a walkie-talkie watching us; he looked away when we looked at him, then stepped inside a van.

“Dark suit,” Tate said, snickering.

“Sunglasses,” I said, scowling.

“FBI,” we both said, laughing. It was an old joke. Never seems to get old, too.

“Yeah, but pretty good anyway,” Tate said, then we looked up at the garage again.

“Why would they be watching us?” I said, thinking out loud. “I mean, we’re not suspects?”

“Wanna follow you, I guess; see where you lead ‘em?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? What else?”

“Keep us from getting too close to something.”

“Woody? You’re getting paranoid.”

“Damn straight. I just hope I’m getting paranoid enough.”

“Amen to that, Amigo.”

+++++

I dropped Tate off by the locks as the sun dropped behind some clouds; the plan was for him to fall way behind me on an agreed-upon route – and see who was tailing me. I took my phone out and slipped it into my shirt pocket, hooked up a hands-free headset and took off down Market Street, then turned right on 15th Avenue and crossed Ballard Bridge.

The phone chirped and I looked at the screen. Dispatch. Trish?

“Woodward,” I answered.

“Detective, there’s an urgent call for you from the Medical Examiner’s office.”

“Gimme the number.” I scribbled the info on a pad and hung up. The phone chirped again – immediately. Tate this time.

“Yeah?”

“Two cars. Fed plates, and I’m pretty sure there’s one on me too.”

“Right. Go to the barn.”

There was no way to beat this kind of operation; too many resources had been allocated – and that, really, told me all I needed to know. The FBI had been running some kind of op; Special Agent Harvey had been made and neutralized. Now, the question was: what role was Tottenham playing, and what did Brennan know, or not know about Tottenham’s role? But lunch together? This was getting weird, and fast.

I drove back to the lake along Mercer, wound around to Westlake and pulled into the MarinaMart lot and locked the car; I stopped at the pay phone outside the gate and called the MEs office. Mary-Jo picked up on the first ring:

“You alright?” I asked her.

“Yeah. You know who the guy is yet?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. So do I.”

“What about the stuff you found inside the back door?”

“His property.”

“No shit. Want some dinner?”

“Sure.”

“Ray’s Boathouse, Shilshole. Six o’clock.”

“Okay.”

“And you’ll be followed.”

“Oh, okay?” She sounded pretty uncomfortable now. There was a little quiver in her voice when she continued: “You too?”

“We’ll talk then.” I hung up, took out my mag-key and held it up to the gate; it buzzed open and I walked though, then turned when I heard a lot of cars pulling in the lot. Two black Fords slipped into the lot and parked near mine; I thought I might as well wait for Tate – and he pulled in a few moments later – trailing his own caravan of black Fords. Tate got out and surprisingly all the other feds did too – Brennan in the lead. As Tate walked my way the entire entourage did as well, so I stood by the gate and held it open, watched as all the Men in Black filed past – silently – and there was something almost comical in their clinging uniformity – like every black suit and all the Ray-Bans in the Pacific Northwest had been scooped up by all the FBI agents in Seattle, and here they were now, my very own parade.

I walked past them and hopped on the boat – Brennan and one other agent I didn’t know followed me up and Tate brought up the rear; we went down below and I put on a shitload of coffee.

“Why’d you have to bring him in on this?” the unknown agent said, pointing at Tate.

I looked at the man and took in his smug swagger, his pompadour hair, then looked at Brennan: “Don’t y’all still administer a test that measures the basic stupidity of your applicants?”

Brennan laughed; Pompadour bristled.

“Look, Woodward,” Pompadour said, “its hard enough keeping a lid on things without you, well, without you bringing in every broken down old cop in Seattle.”

“I guess you don’t plan on getting old?” I said. “Does that about sum up your little corner of the universe, asshole?”

Pompadour huffed-up, stepped toward me. “Sit down, Rollins,” Brennan commanded. Pompadour sat, just like any other well-trained Doberman might, but he kept his eyes locked on mine. Did I see him drooling, too? Foaming at the mouth, maybe?

“I thought you weren’t going to throw a tail on me, Pete?”

“I didn’t know you were bringing in reinforcements.”

I nodded. “Hard to know who you can trust, isn’t it? I’m sure you understand.”

SAC scowled. “Did you get the ME’s preliminary yet?”

“Nope,” I said, and he handed me a faxed copy.

“Read it. Enlightening, to say the least.”

I read it. The conclusions were pretty freaky. “Someone dosed him with Viagra?”

“Yeah. He might have been unconscious, by the time they killed him, anyway. Apparently some people can pop a woody, even in their sleep.” Pompadour laughed at the pun, I flipped him the bird. “Best guess is they jacked him off, then shot him up with potassium, caused a massive heart attack, then started hacking away.”

“They didn’t find any…”

“No, it doesn’t hang around too long… not much of a half-life. But there are a couple of puncture wounds consistent with injection sites…”

“Insulin, maybe?”

“Fuck, are you kidding?” Brennan said.

“Had to ask. Induces a coma. Kind of a double tap.”

“Anyway, I hope he was out – before they did that to him. Would freak anyone out, you know?”

I shrugged. “Okay Pete, why were you with Tottenham this morning?”

“He called, wanted to meet.”

“And?”

“And nothing. He didn’t even mention the case. Wanted to talk about some Homeland Security shit.”

“You know about the tattoo on Tottenham’s chest?”

“What…no?”

“Says ‘Love Me’, right there in red and blue, right over his heart.”

“Fuck.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Pompadour, on hearing that little tidbit, turned livid white.

“Know any people in your office with something similar?” Both men shook their head.

“So, there’s no tail on Mark,” Tate stated, a dour look on his face. “That’s great. A roman legion on our ass and not one on the prime suspect. Perfect.”

“Hey, not our fault,” Pompadour said. “You kept us out of the loop, remember?”

“I have a hunch,” I interrupted, “that we’re dealing with a club of some sort, some sort of organization. There may well be a lot of guys with that tattoo. Anyway, I hate jumping to conclusions.”

“Right,” Brennan said, but I could tell he was still holding something back. Who the fuck was this clown he’d brought with him?

“So, what’s your interest in the case, other than losing an agent?”

“Sorry,” Pompadour said. “Need to know only.”

“So, let me get this straight, just so I’m crystal clear on this. You think I don’t need to know?”

“No. Not yet, anyway.”

I looked at Brennan. He shrugged, said not one word, and didn’t even bother to look at the Doberman.

“Fine,” I said. “That’s just fucking great.”

“Your tax dollars at work,” Tate said, shaking his head.

“When are you meeting the girl from the MEs office?” Pete said.

“What? You don’t know?” Tate shot back.

“There’s a limit to what we can do, Bucko. You know? Congress? Surveillance courts, all that shit? Ring any bells?”

“Doesn’t seem to have stopped you guys much lately,” Tate fired back.

Brennan’s face was a blank mask: “So anyway,” he said, “we’re not monitoring your phones. Yet.”

“You going to drop the tail?”

“No. Not unless you’ll wear a wire, and a locator.”

“No way. Not yet.”

“Then we’ll be around.”

“So, why this meet?”

“Just don’t try to shake us, alright,” Pompadour said. “Waste of time; anyway, your field-craft sucks.”

“Bet you didn’t know your mother gave me a blowjob under the table at lunch,” Tate said. “She’s coming back for seconds as soon as you leave.”

Pompadour fumed, stomped up the companionway ladder and jumped off the boat.

“Nice, Tate. Real class,” Brennan said sarcastically. “By the way, Harvey was his partner.” We looked away, things jumped into focus. “Alright, the low-down is this: we’re going to be on you, that’s the point of this meet. And don’t try to drop the tail, you’ll just make my guys angry, and you don’t want to do that.”

“Why, Pete? What are you saying?”

“Just listen to me, Woodward. Don’t think. Just listen. Act like you don’t know or don’t care, your choice, but don’t shake the guys on your six.”

“I don’t like it,” Tate interjected. “Not one fucking bit.”

“I don’t care, Dick. I’m perfectly happy to lock you up for a few days if you won’t play ball.”

I got it then. Pete’s reasoning was clear. “Okay, Pete. I got it.”

He looked at me, relieved. “Be careful, Woody. I mean it.”

“I hear you.” I looked at him then, and knew it was an organized ring. So, this WAS big. And they were on it, too.

He tromped up the steps and all of the Feds trooped off behind him.

“Okay,” Tate said, “what am I missing?”

“We’re the bait, the tethered goat.”

“Oh, shit.”

“I couldn’t have said it better.” Because Brennan had told me what I really wanted to know. This was big. Bigger than big. And I was in real danger, too. Then we went below and I told him what I knew, and let him read my notes.

Chapter 13

I looked at my watch: a little after three. “Better call Tottenham now,” I said to myself as I fished out my phone. I called dispatch, they transferred me.

“Chief? Woodward.”

“Woody! How was ole Richard doing? Is he getting along well?”

“Not much business, he says. Barely making ends meet.” Tate flipped me the bird.

“Oh really? Too bad. Well, pensions don’t make up for sloppy retirement planning.”

“No sir, they sure don’t.”

“Do you have the medical examiner’s report on the FBI guy?”

“I’ve got to go over and pick it up, sir.”

“Oh? Well, fine, fine. Keep me posted on this, would you? Pete seemed pretty bent about it at lunch.”

“Will do, sir.” And with that, the line went dead.

“You gonna meet the girl?” Tate asked.

“Yeah. At Ray’s.” I shook my head. “Guess what they talked about at lunch?”

“Yeah. One lie leads to another. Always does.” He grinned. “So, Shilshole for dinner?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re gonna put on ten pounds today.”

I looked down at my stomach. It was still flat – except when I sat. Well, maybe a little when I stood…

“I gotta take a nap,” I said. “Feel like I’ve been up for two days.”

“Okay if I sit here for a while?”

“Sure.” I went forward and crawled in my bunk; I think I was out before my head hit the pillow. I dreamt again, about an ex-wife giving me a hand-job, with razor blades between her fingers.

+++++

Someone was shaking me, shaking me from somewhere far away.

I opened my eyes. “Fuck, that hurts…” I think I said.

“What?”

“I said fuck. As in, ‘why is that whenever someone wakes me up it’s not an insanely gorgeous redhead wanting to sit on my face.’”

“Ah. Yeah, I pretty much have the same problem. It’s called getting old, Dickweed.”

I sat up, rubbed my eyes. They burned, burned like someone had thrown acid in them. I reached over and grabbed some eyedrops, asked Tate what time it was while I struggled to put them in.

“Five-ten. You got time to take shower?”

“Thanks, yeah. What have you been up to?”

“Looking through your porn stash.”

“Hah-hah.”

“I was reading a book. ‘Cruising in Serrafyn,’ by a couple named Pardey. Pretty cool stuff.”

“Yeah, I met ‘em at the boat show a couple years back. Nice people.”

“Well, I get it now. The whole boat thing, keep it simple.”

“Right. Well…”

“Oh, shit, excuse me…”

I shut the head door behind him and hopped in the shower, looked in the steamed up mirror when I got out and freaked when I saw that stranger in there again. Man, getting old hurts, and in all the wrong places.

We locked the boat and went up to the parking lot, and all the black Fords were nowhere to be seen. Spooky.

“Okay. You sure you don’t want me to join us?”

“No. I’m gonna go home. Got to feed my cat, commune with some old Hustler magazines for a while.”

I laughed. “As long as you keep the two activities separate!”

“That’s just gross, Woody.”

“Well, it’s nice to know you’re still getting some pussy.”

He stared at me, then shook his head. “You need to get out more.”

“Hey, where do ya think I’m going?”

“This ain’t a date, Woody,” he said, serious now. “Don’t forget that. Anyway, she sounds like damaged goods to me.”

I nodded. “Probably right.”

“I’ll keep my phone on,” Tate said.

“Right. Be careful.”

“You too.”

We got in our cars and I took off towards the bridge, then retraced my earlier route out past the locks and pulled into Ray’s. The lot was nowhere close to full, and I wondered where the Feds were – because if they were tailing me, I sure hadn’t noticed. And I had to admit I was worried about Tate, too – dragging him in on this…whatever this was.

Mary-Jo pulled into the lot and parked next to me; I got out and walked around, opened her door and helped her out. She’d gotten dressed for the occasion – and my khakis and boat shoes were a little shabby next to her rig. I held out my arm and she slipped hers in mine and we walked in, checked-in and we walked out to a table looking over the Sound.

“You look fantastic,” I told her, and the truth of the matter was she really did look good. Sexy as hell. In fact, she didn’t look anything like she had earlier: her hair was down, her face was made-up discreetly, the dress… well, classy described it well. Black, low-cut in front, and her legs were simply stunning – there was a lot to see, too, and I felt myself responding to her before I knew what was happening. We ordered drinks and looked out over the Sound – a ferry was making it’s way across the water to Bainbridge Island, the snow-capped Olympics stood beyond the Sound, beyond the ferry, and I suddenly wanted to get away from all the ugliness in this world – to just leave it all behind – while I still could.

“What are you thinking about?” Mary-Jo asked.

“Out there,” I said, pointing.

“What about it?”

“I think,” I sighed, “I’m ready to retire.”

“What? Out there?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, right. The boat.”

“So, have a look at this.” I pulled out the image of Tottenham and handed it over; she unfolded the paper and looked at it for a split second then folded it up and handed it back. “Is that him?”

“Yup. No question.”

“What can you tell me about the club? Where you two met?”

“I think he called it the Hole in the Wall, but the building doesn’t have a name on it. Anywhere. It’s a red brick building over on Leary.”

“By the docks?”

“Yeah. I don’t know the address but I could take you there, show you where it is.”

I nodded. “Tell me about the people in there.”

“Like what?”

“Anything that comes to mind. Rich, poor, black, white – whatever.”

“Well, I’d say mainly middle-aged white people, probably pretty educated group as a hole. Some nights they have erotic poetry readings, other nights erotic art shows.”

“Do people just hook-up there, or do people have sex there as well?”

“To tell you the truth, Woody, I’m not sure. I think the place is pretty big, but I’m not sure how big. I’ve only seen a few rooms, but I think it was an old warehouse, looks like it’s been redone. A lot of money out into it, too.”

“Is there a bar?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Any people doing drugs? You know, out in the open?”

“I saw some guys doing lines off the top of a girl’s thighs. Does that count?”

We laughed.

“Probably so,” I added, then I looked her in the eyes: “How many times have you been?”

She looked away: “More than a… more than once.”

“With Tottenham, or with other people?”

She didn’t answer.

“What are you into, Mary-Jo? Swinging? Or is it something else?”

Again, she just looked away, didn’t answer. She was either embarrassed, or acting that way.

“I need to know, Mary.”

She nodded, looked down. “Yeah, I know.” She seemed to gather inward on herself, as if to protect herself from a storm, then she looked up at me. Her eyes were really lovely, soft, kind, but something darker than confusion lurked in her shadows.

“Tell me,” I said again, and I remember that now. I commanded her to tell me, and something seemed to snap-to when I spoke in that tone of voice.

“I’m a Bottom, Woody.”

“A Bottom? What’s that? Like something to do with anal sex?”

She laughed. “No Woody, it means I’m submissive. I do what people command me to do.”

“What do you mean, ‘what they command you to do’?”

“Sexually, though sometimes it’s more than just role playing. You know, like the French maid and the Gestapo interrogator?”

“What? You mean like bondage and stuff?”

“If that’s what my master wants to do.”

“Your master?”

“Yeah. The Top, the person in charge.”

“The person? You mean, like, see, a man, or a woman?”

“Yes.”

I coughed, took a long pull on my drink.

She reached up, wiped my forehead: “You’re sweating, Woody. Does that turn you on?”

It was my turn to look away.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Woody. Everyone has fantasies, everyone wants to let go a little.”

“Yeah? I suppose so.”

“What would it be, Woody? Would you like to tell me what to do? Would you like to do that?”

Her hand was under the table now, it was resting on my thigh. I cleared my throat as her hand drifted up to the zipper on my khakis.

“Or maybe you’d like it better if I told you what to do. Would that do it for you, Woody? Would that trip your trigger?”

She was squeezing me through my pants, and I’m pretty sure I felt an eyelid trembling.

“Ooh, Woody! I think that’s it! I think you’d like it if I told you what to do!” She squeezed again: “Do you feel that, Woody? Feel that need? To let loose, lose control? Let me take control? For a while? Would you let me?”

“Let you? What?”

“Let me take you there, Woody?”

“You keep squeezin’ my dick like that and you won’t have to take me anywhere. I’ll pop-off right here.”

Her eyes smiled, she licked her lips. “Really?” I felt her foot on my ankle, my heart hammering in my skull.

She slowly pulled the zipper down, undid the belt, then she reached in and pulled my cock out; our waiter came over to fill our water glasses and she looked up at the kid: “Would you bring me a clean glass?” she said to him. “An empty one, please?”

“Certainly, Ma’am.”

He disappeared and she started squeezing my cock again, milking it. Every now and then she’d pause and run her fingernails up and down the shaft, then she’d jerk it fast a few times before squeezing it again, milking me, bringing me to the edge and letting me float there.

The waiter came back and dropped off the glass.

“Take it, Woody. The glass. Hold it down there.”

I did as she said, felt my balls boiling, my cock getting hard as a rock.

“Hold it there, Woody; let me shoot it in the glass.”

I did as best I could, but within a blinding flash I started to cum. And cum. And cum some more.

“Jesus, Woody! How long has it been?”

I couldn’t answer. I was biting my lower lip, holding on to the edge of the table with one hand and the glass with the other…I was still cuming…and it felt like it lasted forever…

“Hand me the glass now, Woody.”

I brought it up from under the table and put it on the table.

“Woody?”

“Yeah?”

“No, Woody. Not yeah. It’s ‘Yes, Mistress.’” She squeezed my prick with her fingernails to drive home the point. “Woody, I said hand me the glass.”

I picked it up and put it in her hand, then she released my cock and I groaned.

A couple at the table across from ours was looking at us, they were leaning close and whispering something to one another. Mary-Jo held the glass up to the dim light like she was examining a fine wine, then she drank the cum – all of it – in one smooth motion. The man across from us squirmed in his seat, the woman with him was directing all her attention to his lap, and soon he held up his own glass, as if toasting us, and then he handed his glass of cum to the woman.

I guess it really hit me then; the couple across from us were our minders, here to keep an eye on us. Just part of the club, I guess, but I felt cold dread as I looked at the smiling couple across from us, as I watched the woman drink down the milky contents of her glass.

I felt my phone go off in my coat pocket and excused myself, went up on the front desk and called dispatch, trying to conceal the contradictory alarms I felt going off in my head. The only way anyone could have found out about our dinner plans was through Mary-Jo – or Tate, and the latter just wasn’t possible – was it?

“Woodward.”

“Detective, we have officers at the scene of a homicide; they want to talk to you directly. Can you take a number?”

“Go ahead,” I said as I fumbled for my pad. I scribbled as she spoke, then hung-up and dialed the new number.

“Woodward.”

“Detective Woodward?”

“Yeah. Go ahead.”

“Ah, yessir, we’re going to need you to come out here.”

“What’s going on?”

“Can’t say sir. Not on an unsecured line.”

“Well okay, where the hell are you?” I wrote down the address of a hotel out north off the Interstate. “I’ll be there in about an hour,” I said as I closed the phone, then: “Fuck!” I walked back to the table, sat down beside Mary-Jo, avoided looking at her.

“You okay?” she asked. The couple across from us had departed, I noted.

“A call.” I couldn’t even look her in the eye.

“You have to take it?”

“Apparently so.” Fuck! What had I just let happen, and just who the fuck was this girl?

Our waiter had brought our dinner while I was out; I had a beautiful King Salmon and some steamed broccoli Hollandaise and I was damned if I was going to walk away from it, so I lit into it as fast as I politely could.

“Goddamn, someone back there sure knows how to cook fish!” I said as I finished up. I flagged our waiter, got the bill and paid up. “Sorry,” I said as I stood.

“I understand. Will you call me later? Let me know you’re alright?”

“Yeah.”

“Ed? I liked this. I like you. Could we do it again sometime. Maybe soon?”

I leaned over, kissed her once, then leaned closer and kissed her again, for a long time – then I turned and left, clouds of confusion and uncertainty hanging over me as I fled. I walked out to the Ford, saw a note tucked under the windshield wiper and plucked it up while I opened the door.

‘Watch your six, and they’re close…T’

Goddamn! Tate hadn’t gone home after all, and he’d seen something. I closed the door and my phone went off again.

“It’s me,” he said. “Did you get the note?”

“Four.”

“Need to twenty-five with you,” he said. “Betty Lincoln west?”

“Four.” I started the Ford and drove three blocks to the visitor’s parking lot by the locks; Tate winked his lights and I drove over and parked next to him.

“There’s a shitload of traffic on the scanner. I mean, even the Chief’s on the air, en-route to a Signal One.”

“Tottenham?”

“No, no, not an A/C… I mean THE Chief.”

“Fuck.”

“Nice night to dawdle over dinner, Dickhead!”

“I just got the call, I think. That girl…something’s not right.”

“Your face is flushed. You alright?”

I shook my head. “Not sure yet. I know she’s out there, though.”

“What did she do to you?”

I told him.

“Shit. Nobody ever done that to me, Amigo. How come you get all the fun calls?”

“I dunno. Not sure that was fun, ya know?”

“Want me to tag along?”

“If you’re not too tired, sure. The Silver Cloud, in Mukilteo.”

“Wow, out of jurisdiction, no less. Oh well, I’ll follow you.”

We made our way over to I-5 and blended with northbound traffic, and I didn’t even bother to look for a tail; we probably would have looked like a freight train if I had. Twenty minutes later I exited and we wound our way west between huge Boeing assembly buildings, then down to the waterfront. More patrol cars – local ones, more flashing lights, a couple of ambulances. I could see Chief Anders waiting in the lobby, looking at his watch. Then looking at my car.

“Great! Just fucking Great!”

I grabbed my stuff and walked in, looked for the Chief and walked over to him. He was on his phone talking in hushed tones: “Okay, he’s here now. I’ll call you in a half hour.”

“Chief Anders,” I said as I walked up.

“Where the hell have you been? And wipe that shit off your shirt!”

I looked down, saw a nice, shiny glob of salmon on my shirt and groaned.

“Who’s that with you? Richard Tate?”

“Yessir.”

“He’s retired, isn’t he? What’s he doing here?”

“Chief, I’m still active in the reserves; just putting in my hours.”

“You were homicide, weren’t you?”

“Yessir.”

“Oh, well, come on, then.” We walked up a flight of stairs and down a hall that stretched off into infinity to an area cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape. We walked past two local patrolmen into the room.

Mark Tottenham lay face-up on the bed, his penis had been cut off and was dangling from his mouth. The tattoo on his chest had been cut out of his flesh, and it looked like he’d been stabbed about a hundred times in the chest, belly and thighs.

And now I didn’t know what to think.

My prime suspect was dead, afloat in a sea of blood.

I looked at the Chief. There was a tear running down his cheek and his teeth were clenched so hard the side of face was trembling. Tate walked over to Tottenham’s body while I walked around to the other side of the bed. There was a glass there, the rim smeared with red lipstick, and obviously, whoever she was, she’d drunk a shitload of cum from the glass.

I groaned inside, thought of MJ, and I just knew her little performance hadn’t been coincidence. Tate knew it too, as soon as he saw the glass. I heard her say “Call me Mistress” and wanted – no, I needed – to turn and run away.

Some nights are worse than others, I guess. Nature of the beast; no two nights are ever the same – yet somehow they all are. After a while you learn to put up The Wall. How to compartmentalize your feelings. Things that would make a combat vet flinch and turn away don’t get through the wall. If they did, even a patrolman wouldn’t last on the streets for more than a few years. After a while, The Wall becomes automatic, a self-defense mechanism. When you run into a cop on the street, that hard, faraway stare is The Wall, ready to come up and shut you off.

But this wasn’t just déjà vu all over again. Even with more than a decade of looking at wrecked and mutilated bodies, this one got to me. I don’t care what you have to say about it, or even what you think about cops: when you look at one of your own, a brother officer, your feelings are…well, they’re different. The Wall can’t get up fast enough. you’re left wide open and vulnerable – and just like every other Joe on the street you feel a big, cold slap on the face as reality breaks over you like a wave of black hate. There’s no other way to look at it: without The Wall you feel everything in the scene around you, and it fuckin’ hurts. It hurts because you don’t get to play the objective observer anymore, you’re not just a cop. It hurts because the pain hits you where you live – and there’s no place to hide. And you can’t run from your feelings, either. They come for you hard and fast, grab you by the throat, like a leopard grabs a goat by the throat, and you know that cat won’t let go until you stop breathing.

Chief Anders was shook up bad, too. He was standing at the foot of this perverted hotel bed looking down at Tottenham’s body and I couldn’t even begin to guess what was running through the old man’s head. They’d gone to Academy together, been close friends for just a little longer than forever – and now this. This wasn’t a random drive-by or another officer run-down by a drunk driver; this wasn’t a pissed-off veteran blowing his brains out after a bitter divorce or a forced retirement. No, this one was different…because everything in that room was so goddamn dark and twisted – so evil – and what was left of The Wall came tumbling down.

Because it looked like the body on the bed had gotten there on its own, so this was a consensual encounter. So – what happened? Had Tottenham been betrayed, or set up? Still, as I looked around the room it hurt most of all because it hinted that something immeasurably dark and vicious – was on the inside, prowling within our ranks.

Whoever it was had not bothered to untie the wrist and ankle restraints this time, and Tottenham’s body was obscenely splayed; he looked like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man – drawn in blood on bleached white sheets. There were deep impressions all over his body, too, marks not easily explained.

Only Tate seemed relatively unaffected. He’d never really cared for Tottenham, thought he was a martinet and had done sloppy work in Internal Affairs, yet Tate seemed to be the first to grab hold of the implications of having the head of IAD compromised; I didn’t get it yet because none of us had grasped the depth of departmental penetration this murder implied.

+++++

This was another city’s jurisdiction, but after learning the identity of the victim we’d been asked to join their investigation; given the FBIs tertiary interest I wasn’t surprised when Brennan walked through the door. Tate and I helped the local detectives, a crusty old veteran named Spiros Pantazis, and a new detective, a four year veteran – who also happened to be a woman.

Her name was Susan Eklund, and my first impression of her was that she might make a good cop – when she got out of high school. To my eye she looked like a teenager, but then again I’ve been a little slow to admit that just about everyone under the age of forty looks like a teenager to me these days. Eklund had a cute, round face and wavy red hair, sort of reddish-blond, but not quite, and there was a zit on her chin that looked like it was about to go Vesuvius on us. She was wearing a dress. A very sexy dress, like she’d been called away from a family dinner. She was putting on a good show, too. Miss Know-it-all, and her partner, Pantazis, regarded her knowingly, yet we could tell he was embarrassed by her show. I would have thrown her off my crime scene, but that’s just me. I like it quiet, I like to think, and showboats are a distraction. They come and go, and usually leave a mess in their wake, but I had to admit…her legs were cuter than hell, and I had a hard time not looking at them.

Their photographer was moving around as directed, taking photos then standing back, waiting for orders; Eklund seemed intent on ignoring Tate and myself but was deferential to Chief Anders, but neither of them, it seemed to me, knew what the fuck what they were doing…and that bothered me. It became apparent to both Tate and myself that we would have to teach these yahoos how to work a crime scene, around the Chief, and that made me uneasy.

I went over to the bed’s headboard and looked at the grain of the wood. “Prints here, I think,” I said; Pantazis came close and looked too, held up a little UV lamp and looked again.

“Good call,” he said. “Missed that one.”

That had been Eklund’s first mistake and he wanted her to know it, too. She glowered at me and came over with her kit and began taking the print.

I walked over to the sliding glass door; it was unlocked. “Anyone been here yet? Dusted the door?”

No one had. “And don’t let anyone in the bathroom!” I said. The carpet, I could tell, was already useless.

Pantazis came over and looked with me. There was dozens of prints on the glass, and we wouldn’t be able to tell about the door-handle and lock-lever until Eklund tried to lift prints from them, but I was guessing there’d be a relevant one or two – at least – on both.

Pantazis groaned.

“You’re gonna have to ride her ass,” I whispered. “She’s sloppy, and a know it all. Bad in the line of work.”

“I know, but she’s a councilman’s daughter.”

“Ah.” I shook my head, knew he wouldn’t have made it in our department. “You shootin’ film?” I asked their photographer.

He looked like he was – maybe – fourteen, then shook his head.

“No, sir. We haven’t in years. Canon 1Dx Mark II, with data verification.”

“Can you shoot IR?”

“What’s IR?”

“Never-mind,” I grumbled as I took out my phone. I called dispatch, had them transfer me to the lab.

“Woodward here. Is Harker on tonight?”

“Yeah, hang on.” I heard some hollering in the background, banging sounds of stools falling over onto the floor, then the always and ever diminutive: “Jonathan Harker here.”

“Jon? Woody. You got any high speed infrared loaded?”

“Yeah, sure. Tons. What’s up?”

I filled him in; he got excited and loaded up his stuff and was headed our way in a flash, he got to the room about a half hour later – somehow keeping his velocity just under the speed of light. I had managed to keep everyone away from the patio door, and the bathroom, until he arrived, then told him what I needed. I moved off and let him do his thing. He knew what I was after, and I didn’t have to ride herd on him.

We finished the crime scene about five hours later, and only then did we let the M.E.’s people move the body. I had Harker shoot some IR where Tottenham’s body had been, then pulled down the comforter and had him shoot the blanket, then each sheet underneath. Pantazis and Eklund looked on like I was nuts.

“You need a new photographer, too,” I told Pantazis after their useless teenager left.

Anders and Tate were down in the lobby when I got off the elevator, and there were a couple dozen reporters outside on the sidewalk – too late for the morning editions, I told myself as I walked over to the Chief – and Tate handed me a cup of coffee when I got there.

“Thanks. That was rough…”

“Woodward, I want a total black-out on this for now. Strictly ‘no comment’ – got it?”

“Yessir.”

“Of course that goes for you, too,” Anders said as he looked at Tate.

“I know.”

“Did you get what you needed?” Anders asked.

“Think so, Chief. If the locals cooperate, anyway.”

“They will.”

The way Anders spoke left no doubt in my mind: he would turn up the heat when and if needed. Even Brennan had taken one look at Anders and moved off.

The elevator dinged; Pantazis and Eklund walked out; a photographer pointed and all the gathered reporters got ready. Obviously they didn’t know who I was, maybe not even Anders, so it was a cinch Tate was totally off their radar.

“There a way out of here?” I asked the girl behind the reception counter. “To avoid that?” I added, pointing at the press.

She pointed to a hallway: “Down there, door at the end of the hall. Leads right into the parking garage.”

“Thanks.” I turned to Anders and grinned. “You sure you don’t want me to talk the reporters?”

“Get out of here, you bum,” he half-snarled, half grinned at me, “and keep on Harker and the lab until you know something.”

“Right.” I turned to Tate, motioned with my head and we walked-off down the hall to the covert exit. I opened the door and recognized her immediately: Liza Mullins, crime reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She’d staked us out, been waiting for us.

Ambushed…

“Got anything for me, Woody?”

“Well, does ‘No comment’ count?”

“Heard it’s a cop. Any truth to that?”

“I heard there’s a shuttle headed up to the mother-ship. It’s already on the roof and they’re holding a place, just for you.”

“Can I quote you on that? ‘Seattle PD claims alien Mother Ship wants Ace Reporter?’”

“So, you’re an Ace Reporter?” We laughed, then: “You never give up, do you?”

“Never.”

“You ever been married, Liza?” That seemed to shut her up…

“I’m not now. Why?”

“Well then, would you marry me?”

Her left eyebrow shot up: “Sure, Woody, right after the aliens get through probing your asshole.”

“That’s just about what I thought you’d say. Always the same story with us, isn’t it.” We all laughed – even as Tate and I turned and walked off, leaving her standing there. Then I heard her high heels clattering along behind us and we stopped when I got to the back of my Ford. “You still here?” I pointed at the ceiling: “They ain’t gonna wait forever, ya know?”

“Knock it off, Woodward. Gimme something!? Please?”

“Sorry. No can do.”

“How ‘bout coffee later? Or some breakfast?”

I looked at her; cute kid, maybe a pest – but cute. I could handle some cute after a night like this. “I don’t know how long I’ll be?”

She handed me her card. “Call me. Whenever.”

I looked her in the eye. “Cute,” I said, and that eyebrow shot up again.

“What?”

“I said, cute. As in, you-are-cute.”

She started to blush as I opened the door and got in, started the engine and let it warm up. She moved closer, until she was blocking my open door, then she knelt down beside me.

“Do you mean that?” she said.

“What? About the mother ship?”

She didn’t have a come-back ready, or maybe she was being serious, but she just looked at me.

“Yeah, Liza, I think you’re cute. Maybe 99 percent gorgeous. Why?”

“Just didn’t expect you to say that, that’s all.” She was looking all kinds of serious now, but it was kind of odd because for some reason I didn’t regret saying it. I’d know her for years, we’d bantered back and forth over cases – the normal back and forth between cops and reporters – and yet for any number of reasons nothing had ever developed. We’d certainly never exchanged Christmas cards or birthday greetings, let alone met for coffee, so I considered this a most unusual, and interesting development.

“Well, maybe I should have told you years ago, but there it is.”

“Will you call me?”

“For coffee? Sure, why not?”

She looked at me. She got it. “Okay. I’ve got to get some sleep, but I’ll answer.”

“Right.”

She shut my door and I backed out and drove out from under the building; Tate fell in behind me and called as soon as we were clear:

“What did she want?” he asked.

“Anal sex. With me and a goat.”

“You wish, Dickhead. Seriously, Woody, what’s she after.”

“A warm shoulder, I think. Who knows?”

“Aren’t we all. What else.”

“Coffee. Chit-chat.”

“No shit? You need a chaperone or anything, you let me know.”

“Right.”

“I’m wasted, Woody, gonna head to the barn and crash for a while.”

“Yeah, you old farts! Gotta get your rest or you…”

“Woody?”

“Yeah, Tate?”

“Suck my dick.”

“No thanks. Tryin’ to quit.”

“Well, then, be careful…”

The line went dead.

+++++

Forensics was in an annex to the original Central Precinct building; it had been cobbled together over the years to make room for new gadgets and ever newer technologies, but somehow digital had yet to replace film completely in our lab, and I for one was grateful. Digital is good, don’t get me wrong, but a fine grained film in the hands of a good photographer with a Leica can reveal all kinds of things better than digital, particularly in the infrared spectrum, and that’s why I’d called Harker.

Infrared excels at picking up things the human eye misses; things like leather scuff marks on floor tiles, or the impression made by knees or shoes on blankets and sheets. Harker knew exactly what I was looking for; he hadn’t needed to ask because we’d danced this dance a hundred times before. He came out of the darkroom a little after nine that morning with a big smile on his face.

“Bingo!” he said.

“Yeah? Let’s see.”

He laid out a pile of 11×17 inch prints on a drafting table and flipped on an articulated desk-lamp/magnifying glass and pulled it over; I sat down and looked at the first print…

“She probably stood over him, on the bed. High heels, probably a size seven, maybe a seven and a half. Look at the next one.”

I picked up the next image and put in under the light.

“Scuff mark on the tile in the bathroom, and a couple of other prints in the next shot. Same shoe, same size.”

“So… female for sure.”

“Yeah. Probably pretty small, too. Like five four, five five, maybe a shade more. Look at the next one… close.”

“This the bathroom floor again?”

“Yeah.”

“What is it?”

“Two sets of prints, really. The same high heels, and a man facing her. About a size nine, maybe a ten.”

“Tottenham?”

“Size thirteen. I checked.”

“Bingo, indeed. Good work, Amigo.”

“Woody? It’s pretty weird you know, even so.”

“Why?”

“Well, all the usual places you’d find prints were wiped down, like a cop was in on it, but an insider would know we might use infrared. Any competent lab would.”

“So?”

“Well, I had just assumed an insider, you know, what with that FBI guy and the A/C.”

“How’d you hear the other was FBI?”

“Shit, Woody, are you kidding? Everyone was talking about it yesterday.”

I bunched my lips, frowned. It would be in the papers today. Had to be. It would be interesting to find out their source someday. “So then, what are you thinking? Amateurs?”

“Yeah. Or just sloppy.”

“Or tryin’ to throw us off the trail.”

He shook his head at that one. “Glad this is your case, Woodward.”

“Yeah, ain’t life grand?”

Chapter 14

Anders wasn’t in; he’d gone home and left a note for me to call him that afternoon. I pulled Liza’s card from my pocket and dialed the number.

“Hello?” She sounded half asleep.

“So, let me take a wild guess. You blew off the Mother-ship?”

“Woody?”

“Yup.”

“You find out anything?”

I didn’t answer.

“Oh, right,” she said. “Sorry. No questions allowed.”

“Coffee?”

“I could do that.”

“Starbucks on Westlake, by the Marriott. Half hour.” I broke the connection then checked my messages. First one was from Tottenham, telling me to check in with him in the morning. Okay, nothing unusual going on there. Next one was from Mary-Jo, late last night.

“Woody, sorry about last night. Maybe we could so something this weekend?”

Uh-huh. Sure. Right after I get back from the mother-ship.

Next was from Tate, this morning when he got home: “Just checkin’ in, Woody. Call me if you haven’t heard from me by noon or so.” I dropped by my mailbox and then walked out to the Ford, got in and drove over to Lake Union, went into the Starbuck’s and bought a New York Times. I looked around, took a seat away from the windows.

The Times, I thought, really ought to piss her off.

She came in a few minutes later; the dark circles under her eyes were almost as puffy as mine.

“I didn’t take you for a bird owner, Woody.”

“Hm-m…what’s that?”

“The only reason to buy a rag like that. To line the bottom of a bird-cage.”

“Ah. Gee, I didn’t even think…”

“You order anything yet?”

“Nope; thought I’d wait and see what you wanted. You know, like bein’ chivalrous and all that crap.”

“Woody?”

“Yes?”

“Cram it.”

“Here? Now? Are you sure?”

She laughed. “Yeah, man. Bend over.”

“What do you want?”

“Hi-test. Big.”

“I hear that.” I came back a few minutes later and sat across from her, slipped two fingers up to my carotid and felt for my pulse.

“I didn’t take you for a Lake Union kind of guy,” she said as I sat. “You got a boat?”

I ignored the question. “So, what are you hearin’ on the street about this?”

“At least two cops dead, same MO.”

“Someone inside tell you?”

“Is that a confirmation?”

“Nope. A non-denial denial.”

“Then I’m sorry. My sources are confidential.”

“Tit for tat, huh?”

“No other way in this biz, Woody.”

“C’est la vie.”

“Il ne doit pas etre de cette facon.”

“Yes it does. It wouldn’t work for very long if we expected each other to compromise our integrity.”

“Guess so.” She looked me in the eye: “You lonely, Woodward?”

“No, I’m tired.”

She nodded. “When’re you going to retire?”

“Yesterday.”

She laughed. “How long ‘til you can?”

“Oh, I could now. Just not with full benefits.”

She sighed. “So, why are you staying?”

“Habit.”

“The bad ones are tough to break.”

“The hardest. May I ask you a question?”

“I’m forty three, was married once, divorced about ten years ago.”

“Touché. Damn, I hate being so predictable.”

“Well, if it means anything to you, Woody, I’m lonely.”

I nodded, looked at her eyes, saw the long nights typing stories, just meeting deadlines by minutes day after day, year after year, and pushing everyone she cared for right out of her life. It was all right there – hiding in plain sight.

“What about you?” I asked. “You gonna work ‘til you drop?”

“I’ve thought about quitting but I have no idea what I’d do. Guess I could teach somewhere.”

“Where you from?”

“Portland. You?”

“Military brat. All over.”

“Married? No. Wait. How many times?”

“Three.”

She whistled: “Just didn’t work out, huh?”

“The hours. You have to be around every now and then in order to have a relationship. Took me awhile to figure that out. Funny thing is, we’re all still good friends. No alimony, none of that bullshit. Just friends. Like the marriage thing never happened.”

“That’s why I never remarried, I think. No good reason to, really, because I was never ready to put my work in second place.”

“Any regrets?” I asked. She was so easy to talk to, like an old friend.

“No, not really, not then, anyway. The prospect of growing old, alone? Well, that’s not so comfortable anymore.”

“Perspectives change a little bit, don’t they?”

She nodded. “If you retired tomorrow, what would you do?”

“Depends. If it was just me I’d take off, maybe just go wandering.”

“Really? What, like on a motorcycle or something? A motorhome?”

I took a deep breath, wasn’t sure I wanted to put so much about myself out there in the public domain. Then it just sort of slipped out: “I have a boat.”

She went wide-eyed on me: “No shit!?”

“No shit.”

“Powerboat?”

“Hell no, are you serious?”

“Good for you. Always thought that would be fun. Sea of Cortes, Baja…”

“Tahiti.”

“Now you’re talking. When do we go?”

We laughed at that one, but it was an uneasy, loaded laughter, like we were all of a sudden finding something in common and grasping to make something out of nothing and see where it took us. Maybe we were. Maybe we could…but this was rocky terrain.

My stomach growled.

“You hungry down there?” she said to my belly.

“Always. How ‘bout you?”

“You know? I could eat.”

“Follow me.” We walked out and went over to the Ford, I opened the door for her then got in behind the wheel, drove the few blocks down Westlake. We walked down to the slips and I buzzed-in the gate, then led her out to the boat.

“She’s nice. How big?”

“Forty one.”

“About right for two people.”

“Yep.” I unlocked the companionway, slid back the hatch and stowed the boards, went down and offered her my hand. She ignored it and hopped down with practiced ease.

“It’s nice, Woody. Comfortable.”

“Thanks. Eggs and bacon sound okay?”

“Maybe. How ‘bout some juice or something…”

“Okay, comin’ up.” I poured a couple glasses, put them on the table.

“You don’t have any tissue handy, do you?”

“Sure. Be right back.” I went to the head, rummaged around for a fresh box and went back. She had some eye-drops out and her eyes were watering; I handed her the box.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

She took her juice and drank most of it. “Good stuff.”

I took my glass and downed it. I thought it had a funny aftertaste – kind of bitter.

She smiled at me now. “I don’t really feel like bacon and eggs, Woody.”

“Oh?”

“No, I had something, well, firmer in mind, something a little more satisfying…”

She was looking right at my groin and I swear she was licking her lips.

“Oh?”

“Come on,” she said as she stood. “I’m going to fuck your brains out, Woody.”

She came over, took my hand and pulled me up, led me forward. I felt a little light-headed, suddenly sleepy. She pulled me up to the berth and turned me around, pushed me gently and laughed as I fell back. I felt like the world was spinning now, like the whole world was careening wildly out of control. She leaned over and unbuttoned my shirt, undid my belt, then she yanked down my pants. “Sit up,” she commanded; I felt her tugging my pants all the way down, pulling my shoes off, pulling them over my ankles.

I could hardly keep my eyes open now.

“Woody, push yourself up, to the head.” It was hard, my arms and legs felt like hot lead, nothing worked right anymore. “Here, I’ll help you…” I felt her arms under my shoulders, wanted to say something but couldn’t. She fluffed-up some pillows, propped me up in a reclined position and I watched as she took off her clothes, folded them neatly and put them aside.

She opened her purse, took out a bottle and opened it, then she came over, opened my mouth, slipped a pill under my tongue. “I want you nice and hard, Woody. Real hard.”

“What?” I think I managed to say.

“Don’t try to talk, Woody.”

“What? Why?”

She had my handcuffs now and she came over and put them on me, clamped them down hard. I think I winced.

“Is that too tight, Woody? Hmm?”

“Why?”

“That’s right… I heard you like it rough. You like it rough, don’t you Woody?”

I felt cold fear in the air all around me. “Who?”

“Mary-Jo told me, Woody.”

I blinked. I wasn’t tired anymore, just…paralyzed. She had pantyhose in her hands now and she leaned over and tied my cuffed hands behind my head with them, then draped the moist crotch over my face. “Does that smell good, Woody? Do you like that?”

I could see her moving through the fabric; no details, really – just her body moving slowly around the cabin. It was getting hard to swallow and I felt fear for the first time, wondered how it was going to feel to die, then I felt her leaning close, felt her hot breath on my cock, her tongue stroking it. It felt like a hot, wet glove had gripped me and I saw her shadowy head moving back and forth, up and down…

“Oh, Woody, you’re getting so nice and hard.”

“Glad…you like…it…” I managed to say.

“Oh, Woody. I do, I do like it.” She leaned forward and licked my lips through the fabric, stuck her tongue in my mouth, forcing the nylon in with it. My left eye was clear now and I watched her as she leaned back over my cock and took it in her mouth again. I tried to move my legs, felt some kind of rope around my ankles and gave up.

I was aware of the smell now, the smell of her pantyhose up against my face, then I felt her get off the berth and walk to the rear of the boat. I turned my head, saw her talking with someone out there. There was someone with her, a man. It was too dark to see anything clearly but everything was becoming all too clear.

She came back a minute later and leaned over me, kissed my open eye as she reached down and stroked my cock. “You ready for me, Woody?”

“Ready?”

She straddled me, rubbed the head of my cock against her cunt. I felt the heat, the unbelievable wetness, felt her hand grab the head and guide it inside, then she slid up and down a few times – until I could feel my cock getting unnaturally hard. She slid off me, then up my body and I watched as she moved the nylon from my face and hovered over me.

“I’m going to mark you now, Woody. Mark you as mine…”

I felt hot liquid splash my face, smelled urine, tasted it as it ran down my face and across my lips. She lowered herself onto my face and mashed her wetness all over me, pissed some more – filling my mouth until it spilled down my chin and onto my chest – then as quickly she lifted herself from my face and slid down onto my cock again.

“It’s hard, Woody. So hard. I think you liked that. You ready to cum for me?”

I couldn’t speak at all now but I saw her lean forward and take a cotton ball and moisten it with alcohol, then she wiped my arm, took out a syringe.

“It’s not going to hurt, Woody, I promise.”

She stuck the needle in, pushed the plunger down slowly and I felt a sudden warmth flooding through me.

I didn’t feel too different at first, then the dizziness returned. My vision changed, everything looked cast in blues and purples, and I felt her hand around my cock. She was jerking it furiously now.

“Not much longer, Woody…not much more…”

I could see her holding a glass under the head of my cock, then felt an incredible orgasm wrenching through me, pulsing into the glass…

“Ooh, Woody! So much! And so soon, too!” She kept jerking it, mouthing her surprise as she looked first at the glass, then at me, then she held the glass up and looked admiringly at the pearlescent flow. She came up to me again, sat beside me so I could see her face clearly and she drank it down, licked the sides of the glass to get every bit of it, then she put the glass aside carefully and turned to me, kissed me. She forced her tongue into my mouth and painted broad strokes of cum across my face, dribbled a huge wad down onto my forehead, then licked it off and spit it down again, this time onto my lips.

She got up suddenly and the man came into the cabin. He had a mask on, and she stood beside him silently while he looked down at me.

“Did I do well, Master?”

He only nodded, but then he whispered in her ear.

“Yes, Master,” she said after a moment. “I will obey you.”

He handed her a knife.

She came up to my face again and looked at me, spoke gently, almost kindly: “My Master says I must tell you that this is a warning. A warning to stop, now.”

She held the knife at my neck, I could feel the point just beneath my chin and she pressed gently.

“Will you stop now, Woody?”

The knife pressed it into my skin; I could feel my heart beating, then the knife slid through skin – into muscle.

“Yes.”

“Do you swear it?”

The knife pressed deeper, and I could feel my pulse hammering in my head…

“I… swear…”

She turned, looked up at the masked man. He nodded and she withdrew the knife, then he turned and left the cabin.

She leaned into me, kissed me again – this time gently.

“You’re a sweet man, Woody. So sweet. I wish I’d met you a long time ago.” I could see she was crying, like she hated what she had done – but that she had been powerless to resist, as well.

“I…”

“Don’t try to talk now, Woody. You’re going to sleep now.”

“Please…don’t…”

“It’s okay, Woody. This is it. It’s all over now. As long as you don’t break your promise, this is it.”

I felt sleep coming, powerful, irresistible sleep. I could feel her cradling my face, kissing my forehead, telling me that everything would be alright again, that everything would be fine…but I knew nothing would ever be fine again…nothing would ever be the same…

I hoped it wouldn’t hurt. Hoped they wouldn’t find me with my dick hanging from my mouth and take pictures of me and wonder what the hell had happened to get me mixed up with this bunch of crazy, fucked-up monsters, then I felt myself falling…falling…and I wondered if this was how Lucifer felt when he was forced out of Heaven and fell from the sky.

Chapter 15

My head hurt – as if from a series of violently spinning falls, and my gut burned like nothing I’d ever felt before. Everything was dark, pure unadulterated black, but I saw distant glowing flashes of light that were like a lightning – yet not quite, more like flashing, streaky pinpoints of reddish light.

Then the thought hit me: these flashes were a sign or some sort. What were they trying to tell me? What had I missed?

Obviously, I was dead… or maybe still just dying. That was clear if only because nothing in my experience had ever felt even remotely this –. The sensation of falling was so real, so vertiginous, it overwhelmed almost every other sense, yet it was more the supporting elements that were so disturbing.

I could feel my hair fluttering in the slipstream, hear vast oceans of wind howling as I fell downward, and those strobing pinpoints…those signs? Photons might be passing through me on their way to wherever they went, leaving just the faintest impression of their passage. Was that what they were?

Then I could hear something like muffled surf, perhaps wild breakers crashing on a distant shore. The sound would come – and as suddenly fall away.

It went on like this for hours, days…the pulsing light and distant surf that defined this windward passage…yet from time to time I felt a jabbing in my arms, pressure in my chest…then one day: An eye opened. No, not that. It was opened by someone. Someone was above me, holding my right eye open, shining a light in my eye. I tried to see beyond the woman, the woman holding the light, but she followed my eye, followed my movements and kept shining the light in.

Then I saw her hand. Fingernails. Sharp fingernails. She was pressing my forehead with her fingernails, right between my eyes. Son-of-a-bitch – that hurt!

I wanted to tell her to stop, but couldn’t.

Then she had an earlobe; she was pinching it with those fucking talons of hers and I found all I could sense or feel now was the pain she was inflicting. I struggled to tell her to stop. Stop it… stop…

“STOP! GODDAMN IT!”

And she did, too.

And it was like I heard people letting go after holding a deep breath… or was it me struggling to breathe?

Both my eyes were open now, but it was like someone had smeared Vaseline in them… everything was a coarse blur, coarse and watery. I wanted to move my hands, rub my eyes – but I couldn’t and I felt a familiar panic grab my chest…

“Mr Woodward… you’re in the ER, the emergency room at Mason. You’re alright now so try to relax.”

Her words found me and I understood what she was saying but panic still gripped my chest… like a vice…gripping…darkness again, coming for me…

“Oh fuck!” I heard the woman say. “He’s going into arrest again…get me a…”

Then darkness. Darkness and falling, all consuming darkness…and the wind and the surf returned.

+++++

I knew I was awake. Knew something wasn’t quite right, but I was awake. But what was with all the incessant beeping?

Beeping. I heard beeping everywhere, just like I was on the set of some hokey medical show, and I remembered thinking I must have become an actor somewhere along the way because here I was, starring at a television show about a man dying in an unknown hospital.

I opened my eyes, looked at banks of streaming monitors in black and green and I tried to swallow but my throat was too goddamned dry. My tongue was stuck…to the roof of my mouth. I tried to raise my head, to say something…something, to somebody…but I couldn’t see anyone…

“Hel…” I gasped. “Hello!”

Nothing.

“Hello! Help!”

Footsteps. I heard footsteps! Then a woman, huge and black. I remember thinking I was in Star Wars, I was a prisoner and someone had brought me before Jabba the Hut. Her eyes were round and huge too, and even the room looked kind of like a cave.

So.

I was an actor now. This was my big chance…

“Mista Woodward? Can you hear me?”

“My name is Luke,” I said, proud I’d remembered the lines, “Luke Skywalker. If you let me have the Princess and Han, I’ll let you live…”

And Jabba was laughing now, right on cue: “Oh, Mista Woodward! You ain’t no Luke Skywalker, and I sure ain’t no Princess Leia. Now. You thirsty?”

“Not Leia?” I was – crushed.

“How about some ice?”

“Yes. If you’ll tell me where I can find her?”

“Shit! Don’t dat beat all…” I heard her say as she left the room, laughing as she went…

She came back a few minutes later, and an old man was with her:

“Obi-Wan?” I said.

“I’ll be damned,” my old friend said to Jabba. “You weren’t shittin’ me, were you?”

“Obi-Wan?”

“Yeah, Luke, old buddy. It’s me. Howya feelin’.”

“Obi-Wan? The Princess…she…the Dark Side. Oh, I’m so tired…”

“Woody, come on… snap out of it. What are you saying, what are you trying to tell me?”

“Woody?”

“Yeah, that’s you. Me Richard. You Tarzan. Now come on, Woody. Concentrate.”

“Woody? Woodward?”

“Yep. Now, what about this princess? Who are we talkin’ about, Woody?”

“Reporter. Liza.”

“Mullins? She did this? You sure?”

I nodded. “It was a warning. They told me it was a warning.”

“They? You mean she wasn’t alone?”

“A man. And Liza. ‘This is a warning,’ she told me. I have to stop. Stop, or they’ll kill me.”

“Shit.”

“Obi-Wan? Got to find out what size shoe she wears?”

“What? Woody, what the fuck?”

“Harker. Photographs.”

“Woody. Jon’s dead. Fire. In his apartment.”

“Harker?”

“Yeah, Woody. He’s dead.”

“When? When did…”

“It’s been a few weeks now.”

“Weeks? What do you mean, weeks?”

“You’ve been out a while, Woody. Almost a month.”

“Coma?”

“Yeah. Probably drug induced. You were high as a kite on morphine and LSD when I found you.”

“You… found me?”

“Yeah. When you didn’t call I went down to the boat.”

“The boat?”

“Yeah, Woody. She’s alright. I’ve been taking care of her.”

“Can somebody lift my head or something?”

The nurse hit a button and a motor under the bed whirred, my back inclined. “Dat better, Mista Woodward?”

“Yeah, thanks Princess.” I winked at her and she laughed, put a cup full of ice on the table over the bed and left the room.

“I remember the ER. Did I have a heart attack?”

“Three.”

“Three? Heart attacks?”

“Yep.”

“Swell.”

“You’ll be joining the ranks of the disabled and retired now, Woody. Sorry.”

“Fuck.”

“Ain’t it the truth.”

“Harker took photographs, in infrared. Tottenham. Woman, small. Like size seven shoes. High heels. Man. Size nine or ten.”

“You want me to see what size shoes she wears?”

“No, wait. It was a warning, right?”

“I can’t do this without you, Woody.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t do it, Richard.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

“Have there been any more? Murders?”

“No. Not a one.”

“I wonder what the hell we were on-to?”

He shrugged. “No way to know now, is there?”

“Call her.”

“Call? Who?”

“The reporter. Liza. Tell her I want to talk to her.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“No. Now, do it now.”

He looked at me – his eyes hard, then he nodded and left the room.

Everything was coming back to me now, in a flood. Memories were flooding in, out of control, like water pushing through a cracked dam, running unrestrained across a vast, empty plain, soaking it all in…

+++++

Tate came back in a few minutes later.

“Did you get her?”

“Yeah.”

“She coming?”

“Yeah, Woody. She’s coming.”

“Can you find out about the photographs? The infrared prints?”

“Why?”

“The only evidence. If they’ve penetrated the department, compromised us, then the photos will be gone. They’ve won if that’s the case.”

“If I ask around that might alert whoever, ya know?”

“Who said anything about asking?”

“Gotcha. Look, Woody, I don’t wanna be anywhere near this place when that bitch gets here, ya know?”

“I understand. Not sure I want to, either.”

“Then, why?”

“Something I gotta know.”

“Dangerous, man. This is real fuckin’ dangerous.”

“I think I got that. Something I need to know before I take the next step.”

“I sure hope you know what you’re doin’, man.” He seemed reluctant to talk, like he was afraid of something else.

“What’s bothering you, Richard?”

“Later. We’ll talk later. I’m gonna split now. I’ll come back tonight.”

+++++

“Crushed ice! Man, I love it.”

The nurse, another one, basically ignored me as she went about the little room scribbling down readings from various machines, then she injected something into my IV and started to leave the room.

“What is it this time?” I asked. “Heroin? Potassium?”

She stopped, turned and looked at me and she smiled, then said: “Not this time, Woody.” She looked at me for what felt like an hour, mouthed the words ‘Love me’ – then walked out of the room.

There are certain moments in your life that run up on you fast, like lightning out of a clear blue sky, and time stops because nothing makes sense anymore. I think dying must be like that.

This was one of those moments.

She came back in a little later, adjusted the drip on the IV. “Can I get you anything?” she asked.

“Think I could have a Coke?”

“Yeah, sure.” She looked at me again, this time with real human kindness in her eyes, then leaned forward, ran her fingers through my hair. “Don’t do anything stupid, Woody.”

“I’m doing my best.”

She lifted up her skirt and ran her hand inside her panties and rubbed herself, then she brought her fingers to my face and wiped her juices under my nose. She smiled at me the whole time; her eyes were bright, almost feverishly bright, then she ran her fingers over my lips. “You know you want to, Woody. Go ahead.”

I opened my mouth and she slipped her fingers in, I tasted her cunt on the soft skin of her fingers and sucked them for a moment, then she smiled, laughed a little before she turned and walked out of the room.

“What the fuck…” I think I said.

She came back some time later with a cup; she sat by my bedside and spooned ice into mouth, then opened a can and poured some Coke into the cup. She put a straw in and handed it to me. “Suck it, Woody.”

I laughed, took a pull on it, then chewed on the ice.

“We’re going to have fun, Woody. You and I.”

“Are we?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, very much.”

“Who do you belong to?”

“My Master, you mean?”

“Yes.”

She smiled. “It doesn’t matter now, because he’s given me to you.”

“Given?”

“Oh yes. I am yours now. Your property.”

“Indeed. And if I don’t want you?”

“Then I will have failed. I will die.”

“Die?”

“I will be killed.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes. Just like that, Woody.”

“And you must do whatever I ask of you? Is that it?”

“Yes. That is The Way.”

“The Way?”

“Yes.”

“And if I commanded you to tell me who your old master was?”

“I will tell you, but then I must kill you.”

“I see. But then, you would have failed. Is that right?”

“Yes. And I would die.”

“So, why have I been given… this honor?”

“You were marked. By my sister?”

“Your sister?”

“We are all sisters. Think of us as belonging to a religious order.”

“You say she marked me?”

“When you opened your mouth to her, and took her inside.”

“I see. Your sister; I am expecting her.”

“Oh, she is here. She has been, for a while.”

“Why didn’t you…let…”

“Master, she can only come to you when commanded.”

“I see. Well, I’d like to talk to her. Alone.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“But…”

“Just…Woody, for now. Okay?”

“Okay, Woody.” She stood by the bedside, waiting. I think she was waiting for me to dismiss her and the thought was mildly silly.

“Dismissed,” I said… and she turned to leave the room. “Stop!”

She turned to face me again: “Yes, Master?”

“I don’t know your name.”

“My name? Master, that is yours to choose. Each master chooses.”

“Fine.”

She stood solidly still.

“Go on, then!”

This was exasperating. Stupid, silly – and totally exasperating. And not even mildly interesting, I told myself.

The door opened and Liza came in. She was dressed in black from head to toe, like she was in mourning, yet even so I looked down at her shoes. Her feet were small, too small, but she was wearing high heels.

“Hello.” She said when she got to my bedside. “How are you?” Her voice seemed flat, almost forced.

“Not bad, considering.”

“I’m sorry. We didn’t know your heart was so weak.”

“Neither did I.”

“I feel very bad. For what happened.”

“Was the man with you your master?”

“No.”

“Who is?”

“Do not ask me this. It is very dangerous to talk about these things.”

“But if I ask, you must tell me.”

She hesitated. “No, that is not so.”

Why did she hesitate? Was it that simple?

“And if I command you?”

“Then I must tell you. But do not, please.”

“Alright, I won’t.”

She looked at me and I saw a great weight fall from her; her eyes became kind and I wanted her so much it hurt inside. But I needed to know more, and fast. I couldn’t fall under her spell again.

“You said something, before you left. You said you wished you’d met me long ago. What did you mean?”

She looked at me with those eyes and I struggled, simply because I was powerless before the weight of the lust I felt for her.

“It doesn’t matter now, Woody. Truly.”

“Did you kill Mark Tottenham?”

“Only a servant may kill a master. I will say no more.”

“Can a master kill his servant?”

“If it is his pleasure, yes.”

“And if I wanted to be your Master?”

She looked at me and beamed: “Would you?”

“If that was what I wanted, how would I make that happen?”

“If you pass the trials, if you are accepted, you have only to ask the council.”

“I see. But in the meantime?”

“You have a servant now.”

“I can have only one?”

“For now. Yes.”

“Would you want to be with me?”

“What I want is of no importance. To be wanted is all I could ever hope for.”

“All?”

“Yes, it is all to be worthy of a Master’s desire. It is all one could ever ask for.”

“I desire you. With all my heart.”

That broke her. Clean through. She leaned over, put her hand on my cheek and rubbed my face.

“Then you forgive me?”

“You changed me. I can’t think about anything but you.”

“Truly?”

“Yes, truly.”

“Will you join us?”

“If that is what I must do to possess you, then yes, I will join.”

She nodded. “I had hoped this would happen.”

“Will you tell your Master?”

She clouded over. “No. I cannot.”

I understood then. Tottenham had been her master.

“Then you will tell who you must of my decision.”

“They know now.”

“Can you come by from time to time? While I’m here?”

“If that is your wish, then yes. I will come.”

“Well then, it is my wish that you visit me each evening, until I leave this hellhole.”

She smiled. “Then I will. Are you tired?”

“Yeah, think so.”

“I’ll leave you now.”

“Alright.”

“Woody?”

“Yes?”

“I think you will be a good master.”

“Good?”

“Fair. I think I meant to say fair, as in just.”

I nodded. “Would you send my nurse in?”

“Yes. Good night.”

“Good night, my love,” I whispered, when she was leaving.

I knew she heard me, too.

This was going to be a very dangerous game, indeed.

+++++

“I have decided on a name for you,” I said to my nurse when she returned. “Persephone.”

“Thank you, Master.”

“I assume you heard our conversation?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Well, I accept you as my property so long as you accept me as your one master.”

She hesitated, the conflict immediate.

“Get out of my sight!”

“But…”

“Now! Leave! Find me a new nurse.”

She fled in tears.

That was easy, I told myself.

Too easy?

I waited a few minutes then hit the call button. She came in; it was obvious she’d been crying, and was probably scared to death. What did she say? If she failed – she was toast?

“I’m…”

“Master, no. You must never apologize.”

“Of course. Nevertheless, I was careless. I should have understood the conflict I put you in.”

She was looking at the floor but I could tell she didn’t know what to say.

“Your friend has returned.”

“Tate? Already?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Send him in.” She left the room, came back in with him and lingered in the back of the room. I didn’t send her away – probably no point. I had to assume complete surveillance from now on.

“What did you find out?”

“No photographs, Woody. Sorry.”

“Well, it probably doesn’t matter anyway.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter, Richard. If the department wants to continue the investigation, well, then, that’s their business. Like you said, I’m retired.”

His face creased as he scowled, and it looked like he was chewing the inside of his cheek as he turned my words over in his mind. “You feeling okay?”

“Yeah, fine. You say the boat’s okay?”

“Yeah. There wasn’t too much to clean up.”

“Forensics?”

“Yeah, you know the score. It was a potential homicide scene.”

“You had any new cases?”

“A couple new ones. Cheating husbands, angry wives.”

“Have Nikon, Will Travel!”

“Paladin! Man, that was a great show!” he added.

“You know it, amigo. You need anything? Hustler? Penthouse?”

“Nah, you know me… I was always a Leg Show kinda guy!”

He laughed, so did the nurse – my Persephone.

“Well, I guess I can leave now. Looks like you’re in able hands.”

“Yeah, she seems very dedicated to her profession. Right, nurse?”

“Yessir.”

“See? How ‘bout that, Richard?”

Did he see? Could he make the leap? If he had, he didn’t show it.

“Well Woody, if they cut you loose I’ll drop by the boat in the morning; maybe see you around lunch time.”

I closed my eyes after he left, felt myself dozing, then ‘Persephone’ came in with “dinner”.

“Sorry. Restricted diet for a while.” She rolled the table over my lap and I looked at red Jell-O and green yogurt and felt very ill indeed.

“Gross.”

“Sorry,” she said again. “And you won’t be going home for a while.”

“I know. All things being equal, I think I’d rather suck on your fingers again.”

She smiled, came next to the bed and lifted her skirt.

“I’m glad I can please you, Master. Do you like the way I taste?”

As a matter of fact, I did.

+++++

I was discharged from the hospital a couple of weeks later. “Persephone” had somehow, astonishingly no doubt to those of you following along here, been assigned to the hospital’s home health care division and presto! – she came home with me. Again, I ask for leniency here; please do consider, despite your misgivings, that a boat can be a home – and anyway, she took to it like a duck to water. But I want to be clear: as I have never been particularly adept at housework I was glad to have the help. The fact that she had sworn a blood oath to serve me until death? Hey, man, icing on the cake.

Now, don’t get me wrong. You see, it’s like this: having three heart attacks over the course of a week – while in a coma, no less – fucks with your head. You stand up from a chair too fast and you hear the grim reaper walking up behind you, his scythe whizzing through the air – right for your carotids. Which were already, I had reason to believe, pretty well clogged after a twenty-five year binge on Quarter Pounders and Krispy Kremes. Having a nice, sexy-as-Hell blond-haired, blue-eyed nurse following me around begging to please me was – well, frankly – kind of unexpected, yet this was just one of the unforeseen perks accrued by hooking up with a bunch of homicidal sadomasochists. Hey, I’ve always said if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Who am I to question the logic of this fucked-up world? Join ’em, then beat ‘em?

And Sephie (and frankly, she hated being called that, but calling out “Persephone!” in a crowded grocery store will get you all kinds of unwanted attention) was a miracle. She was like Carnation Instant Love; add a few teaspoons of cream and she was all kinds of happy. She’d chosen this life, too. She even told me it was true. She wasn’t some Central American or Asian kidnap victim sold into a life of sexual servitude. No, she’d been a nurse for years and had met someone who knew someone and before you can say “beat me, spank me, make me write hot checks!” she was into the scene and loving every ass-smacking minute of it. Honestly, have you ever whacked a girl on the ass and had her fall to the floor in orgasm?

Well, right, neither had I.

Like I said, this whole scene was fucking with my head, and I think I may have mentioned my head was already pretty well scrambled, and, so, everything about my life now was pretty fucked up. One day I went down to Central to fill out some paperwork and bang, just like that – it was all over: I was a retired cop. Since I was officially retired, I didn’t have to turn in my gun and badge, so like Tate I signed up for the reserves. I week later I got a call; they’d had a bad one and wanted my help. Would I mind coming down?

Would I mind? Fuck. They even sent a patrol car over to pick me up! Limousine service! If only I’d figured this out sooner!

Sephie claimed she preferred being chained to the floor by the foot of the bed but I wasn’t having any of it. A cold teak floor? Am I heartless? No, I had her curl up behind me and scratch my back all night. I’d never had a wife do that for me before, so what the hell was wrong with this picture? Sex? Don’t ask… just command! It was like Nirvana. On steroids:

“Say baby, I’d like to screw upside down hanging from the top of the mast!”

“Sure thing, Woody. Let’s do it!”

– or –

“What say we read poetry tonight, to each other?”

“I’d love to…”

It was every misogynists’ dream come true, enough to make Susan B Anthony turn barrel-rolls in her grave. There was only one problem, but it was a big one. I hated it. Everything about it. When she asked me to get rough with her I cringed inside, then I hated myself afterwards. If I left a red mark on her ass I had to go into the head and somehow keep myself from puking. Let me be perfectly clear: I was not then and am not now wired that way. Causing pain or administering corporal punishment for her supposed infractions did not make me happy, did not help me get my rocks off.

It was a means to an end.

Let me explain.

I’d made my decision the first time I saw Liza after I came out of the coma. I knew I loved her. I don’t know how, or why, and anyway, I don’t give a damn. When she walked into my room in the ICU the lights got brighter, my heart suddenly felt young and strong, and I wanted to live – but only with her by my side. That feeling became bedrock, too.

But she, apparently, belonged to – if not someone – then something that made it impossible for her to just drop off the map and sail away. She let me know in no uncertain terms that there was no running from these people. They weren’t limited to Seattle, to the Pacific Northwest, or even to the good ole U. S. of A. They were, she told me, everywhere. Literally. Senators belonged. Federal judges too. And – pointedly – chiefs of police belonged. FBI agents, CIA operatives, even a former President were regular adherents. I had no idea. My tax dollars at work! And here I’d thought all these years that politicians took no pleasure from screwing us over!

Just goes to show ya, huh?

The ‘local affiliate’ had been started years ago, she told me, by a bunch of uppity-ups at Microsoft (hey, that figures, doesn’t it?); now, she said, more than a thousand of the most influential people in the area were deeply involved, but they were always on the look-out for talent that could help in a pinch. She told me if I wanted to get an idea of what the group was like to watch Kubrick’s last film. You know; the one with Tom and Nicole and all those nice people wearing leather beaks. She let me know these people were, however, just a touch meaner than those in the film. Having been at two crime scenes and admired their handiwork, I was prepared to take this appraisal at face value. Then it hit me: If the cops and the courts were compromised, then what? If you took down a couple, or even a couple dozen, there were hundreds more buried everywhere ready to hunt you down and feed you your dick.

And the simple fact of the matter was you’d never know who to trust, or who not to. With that simple maxim as gospel, then trusting Tate – maybe especially Tate – was out of the question. If you don’t know who to trust, you trust no one. If there is any doubt, then there is no doubt. This arithmetic is simple, the kind I understand. If I was going to do anything, if I was going to extract my pound of flesh, it was going to be a solo operation. Either that or I could just go with the flow and enjoy Persephone and Liza and learn how to use a riding crop.

And believe me, there were times I thought that was an attractive proposition, too. How fast we fall, eh Lucifer?

+++++

The first time Liza came down to the boat after Sephie joined the crew was, well, interesting. Like every red-blooded male in America my favorite fantasy involved making it with two women at the same time. Let’s ignore the fact that I had never known two women at the same time that I’d have even been tempted to do this with; now I had two women who, simply stated, were more than willing. Way more than willing. The biggest problem now was I’d recently had three major coronary vapor locks: my V-8 was now an inline four, and Viagra was a major league no-no. What would I do, enquiring minds wanted to know?

But did that stop these two girls? My two girls? In a word: No. In two words: Hell No.

They were gentle, at least at first, and not very demanding – which was highly appreciated. Remember, all it took to send Sephie over the edge was a good smack on the ass. Liza was simply oral, like Linda Lovelace was oral; apparently her tonsils and clit had merged years ago – and to wondrous effect. The only thing she liked more than giving head was receiving a little. She could lay back and take a licking – for hours at a stretch, too. Fortunately the only thing I enjoy more than receiving is giving, so we were perfect for each other. And face it, all either of us had to do was smack Sephie on the ass every now and then and we were all three in carnal heaven. Hard to do on a boat, believe me, but we managed.

And this went on for months. Whoever or whatever this organization was, they were content to sit back and watch and listen for any signs that I might be trying to plot my revenge. I, however, was equally content letting Liza and Sephie clean my clock any time the mood hit.

And then there was the poor guy on the boat next to mine?

Every time I poked my head out into the sunlight the guy bowed at me like I was Krishna or the Buddha. I never really considered that sound carries through water, but our exploits were becoming the stuff of legend. So, like I said, I was retired now, and in goods hands. An equitable exchange, don’t you think? And now I had groupies.

I thought you’d enjoy that, too.

So, life took on all the aspects of a comfortable routine – but things were, in truth, not quite what they seemed. Once or twice a month the department would need me and someone would come for me and I’d go do my cop thing for a day or two. Tate joined me from time to time, then he sponsored me and I got my P.I. ticket and bought my own Nikon. Well, a Canon, but you know what I mean. I went out with him every now and then and took photos of philandering husbands and cheating wives; the rest of the time Sephie and I puttered on the boat: I taught her to sail and believe it or not I taught her how to love. Someone paid her salary, everyone left us alone, and three or four times a week Liza came over to spend the night, and along the way she taught me how to love, too. It was a trip, a real slice of life.

I think after a year of this routine I’d have been quite content to live out the rest of my days doing this, and only this. Tottenham’s murder receded into a dim and hazy past, dreams of sailing south to the tropics began to feel unnecessary, even narcissistic. I was content, even happy. I hadn’t made any waves and all indications were that I wouldn’t.

In short, they had me right where they wanted me.

And I was counting on that, too.

Chapter 16

It was right before Christmas, more than a year later, when the call came.

They were apparently sentimental characters and wanted me to attend their annual Christmas get-together. Liza told me the Satanists in the group tended to boycott the affair but it was, generally speaking, a rather low-key orgy followed by the ritual sacrifice of a few goats and a seminar or two on the proper use of riding-crops. Everyone there would be masked except, of course, me. I would, if I chose to attend, be examined, judged, and if found wanting, killed. By Sephie. Who would then be killed.

No pressure or anything. Just your average holiday get-together. Mistletoe over the spiked punch and all that jazz.

“Don’t we, like, exchange gifts or anything?” I asked. This could be fun!

“Woody, this is serious.”

“I am. It’s Christmas, for Christ’s sake!”

The girls laughed at my naiveté. They had no idea how naïve I was, or am – for that matter. Old dogs and new tricks and all that nonsense. I mean, come on: I like Christmas, always have. I still get the warm fuzzies when I watch A Charlie Brown Christmas. I like it when the Grinch finds his heart is still pure. I love watching kids open their presents on Christmas morning, and don’t mind opening one or two of my own – so shoot me! How cold-hearted could a bunch of homicidal sadomasochists be?

+++++

It was the thought of spiking their Christmas punch that intrigued me. How could I do it and not get caught? And what could I spike it with that might drive the point I was trying to make home? More to the point, what could I spike it with that would break no laws but really fuck with them where they lived?

Acid? I mean LSD, not hydrochloric – geesh – cut me some slack, wouldya? Anyway. No. Too common, and they’d used it on me.

An overdose of Viagra? Nope, I could cause a couple of heart attacks that way, yet even so the idea of a hundred or so men turning up at local ERs with permanent hard-ons did have a certain “use it or lose it” appeal.

No. What I was looking for was the anti-Viagra. Something I could give these guys that would make it impossible for them to get up for a long, long time. Permanently would be even better, but hey, do you think I’m a heartless son-of-a-bitch? Even better, to keep them from killing me I could allude to having an antidote, and my remedy would of course be the only way to restore potency.

Fuck me! This might even be fun!

But this was really only a nice daydream, perhaps, because I didn’t know any biochemists or physicians, and anyway, these guys probably had half the scientists in Seattle in their back pockets. Maybe I was just going to have to play their game, which led to one inescapable conclusion. Maybe I’d just have to be content to live with these two beautiful women the rest of my life, because the choice, as it was being presented, seemed pretty obvious to me: go along with their way of life and remain alive, or refuse their offer and die. But what would I do, I wondered, if I acquiesced only to find I was getting pulled in deeper? Maybe into something really dark? What if there really was no third option, no way to get away from these people and secure some sort of happiness? They’d tried to warn me off but had damn near killed me. Still, I was under no illusions – they didn’t owe me a thing.

Killing two cops had been dangerous for them, but they’d had the right people in the right places to mitigate the damage. Killing me might have been over the top, and they might have seen endless security issues as a result, but the other option kept gnawing away at the back of my mind. What if the man I saw on the boat with Liza had a plan? Or, what if he was the intermediary between me and this ‘council’? Had he had kept me alive – for a reason? And, I reasoned, the real key to to figuring all this out would involve what was the first domino to fall…why kill Harvey, the FBI agent? Was he inside. or had he been investigating something peripheral and stumbled onto the group? Had he been compromised, or warned like me, then tried to join the group – and failed?

But, and this was a big but, I was now on the outside, looking in. I wasn’t a cop anymore, not a real one, anyway. Weekend warriors don’t have the same administrative rights and access to information that full-timers have, so that left my new PI ticket as my only way inside, and that left me dependent on Richard Tate.

And what if Tate was the intermediary, the man on the boat who’d spared my life. He was smart enough, skilled enough to pull off most any subterfuge, and he was my friend – and that alone might have been motive enough to cause his intercession.

And what about Anders, the chief. What if he was inside, and wanted to put a stop to things before they got out of hand and exposed this seamy underside of his life? And SAC Brennan, or anyone else in the Bureau’s SeaTac office?

What I was left with was a ‘no-win’ situation, there was no way out, and I only had a week to come up with something if I decided to make a break.

That was when Mary-Jo dropped by, and paid us a little visit. That was something I hadn’t been counting on, and for quite some time too, if you know what I mean.

+++++

“So, you’re really going to join?” M-J asked when she came on board, meaning, was I really going to go to meet the council, and seek membership in their little club?

“Well, it’s either that, or Seph is going to go all Sunni on me with a knife,” I replied with a shrug, smiling a little. So much for idle chit-chat, anyway.

“That’s not a real positive attitude, if you get my drift, for wanting to come in out of the rain,” she added.

“Maybe if they’d just let me be, not bunked me down with the hottest nurse in the Pacific Northwest?”

“They couldn’t trust you, Woodie. Simple as that.”

“Well then, what made them think being held almost incommunicado for a year would make me more trustworthy?”

“I suppose, but…what did you call her? Seph?”

“Persephone. Queen of the underworld.”

“The underworld? Like Hell?”

I smiled. “Not quite.”

“Well, what I was going to say is I think they weren’t counting on Persephone’s ability to control you.”

“Even though I am her master?”

Now it was M-J’s time to smile. “Yes, funny how these things work, isn’t it? Isn’t control almost always an illusion? Anyway, just what do you feel towards Persephone?”

“Feel? I love her completely. Aside from that, she’s the best friend I’ve ever had.” Persephone, sitting by his side, smiled demurely, knowingly. “If she were taken from me tomorrow I think I might wither and die.”

“Really? Die?”

“I don’t think I’m trying to be disingenuous here, M-J. We’re very close.”

“Well then, suppose I order her to leave you, right now. What then?”

“Well then, I suppose I would begin to wonder just who you really are? What you’re role in this little organization really is?” Truth of the matter is I thought I knew exactly who she was, yet even so at this point I was more than a little concerned. I knew a lot was riding on my answers the next few minutes, and that M-J was holding all the Aces.

“You still think like a cop, Woodie.”

“True blue, all the way through.”

“And you’ll never change, will you?”

“Are you kidding? Persephone has changed me, completely.”

“How so?”

“Because I love her, M-J, and I love what she is. What she is has been defined by the role she plays within your organization.”

“My organization? You presume too much.”

“I don’t think so.”

She smiled. She knew I knew. Everything hung in the balance now.

She stood, looked undecided, first at Persephone, then at me.

“You’re dangerous, Woodie. You always will be.”

I stood, came to her and held out my hand. She looked down and took mine, and I kissed her fingers.

“We were almost friends,” I began, but she cut me off.

“Almost?”

“We never had a chance to see where we could go.”

She shrugged. “Some things are never meant to be.”

“And Persephone? Was she meant to be?”

“She was always meant to be your executioner.”

“You know, I think I’m too old to be a danger to anyone.”

“But you’re not.”

“So then, it comes down to…”

“Allegiance, Woodie.”

“What are your aims, I wonder?”

She smiled. “Allegiance is complete, or it’s meaningless.”

I kissed her hand again, and said “I agree,” and that was really all there was to it.

M-J smiled at me, then to Persephone she said, “I release you, Persephone. You belong to no one now but this man. You have no conflicting orders or purpose. You belong to him now, and will serve him until his death. Do you understand?”

“I do, Mistress.”

She turned to leave, this Mistress, my almost friend, and then I saw her entourage in the cockpit. Girls dressed in black, women who looked like ninja warriors, and then I remembered an intel briefing I seen the last time I was at Central, something about a group that had started taking out pedophiles in Dallas. Ninjas? So, was this another piece of the bigger puzzle I’d wondered about last year – when this first started going down?

I started to follow M-J but she turned and stopped me. “You will stay here now. Down here. Do not leave for a week. Do not communicate with anyone outside. Do you understand?”

“Yes. And Liza?”

“She is masterless. Do you want her?”

“Yes.”

“You must understand one thing. Once she is yours, it is to the death. She killed her master, and she is marked. If she fails you, you must kill her. Do you accept?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitating.

I could see surprise in M-J’s eyes, but no doubt, and she nodded her head in appreciation. “Perhaps one day I will trust you,” she said as she looked at me.

“But not today.”

“No, not today.” She pulled my face to hers and bit my earlobe so hard I was sure she had severed it, and when she pulled away I could see my blood on her face. “Not yet, Woodie, but the day may come when you will be given the opportunity to prove yourself.”

She disappeared into the night, leaving me and Persephone down below, with only lapping waves hitting the hull for company. A strong gust shook the boat, and wind moaned in the rigging. I turned to Persephone, and when she saw my wound she ran to get first aid supplies from the head.

“She marked you,” Persephone said as she worked on the injury.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Either she wants you for her own, or she intends to kill you.”

“Now, there’s some good news.”

“Did you really mean what you said to her? About me?”

“Every word.”

“Even though I was meant to kill you?”

“I meant every word.”

“You really love me?”

“Yes. Completely.”

“And Liza? You really love her too?”

“Yes, but not like I do you. It’s different. You are like a wife to me, Persephone. Liza is more…”

“A concubine? For your pleasure?”

“Perhaps, yes. But she brings me comfort, too.” I looked at this woman, this care-giver, and I did indeed feel something unique when I looked into her eyes. Love? Yes. Fear? Way too much. Would she still kill me if ordered? I doubted that not at all.

+++++

The next morning I felt the boat move as someone hopped aboard, and went to the companionway and looked up into the cockpit. Liza was there, sitting beside the wheel, and she looked at when I poked my head up into the light.

“You here to stay?” I asked.

“Could we talk? Up here?”

“Sorry. I’m down here, for the week. Orders.”

“I’m glad you said that,” Liza said. She had been testing me – as I assumed she might.

“Well, not sure I’ll cook you breakfast again, in case you were wondering.”

She smiled, but there was pain in her eyes as she confronted the reality of being a murderer.

“It doesn’t go away, does it?” I said to her indecision.

She shook her head.

“So, you coming down?”

“Could I sit up here for a while?”

“Suit yourself.” I ducked below, started working on the alternator’s belt. Sephie was forward, I assumed, reading a nursing journal, but then I heard her coming up behind me. She knelt down, put her hands on my shoulders and whispered in my ear: “We’re going to need a bigger boat…”

I turned, looked at her, saw the smile on her face – and I smiled too.

“We’ll need a bigger bed, too,” she added.

“Hadn’t thought of that,” I grinned.

“I have,” Liza said. She was sitting on the cockpit sole, leaning into the companionway.

I looked up, was kind of surprised to see her so soon.

“I have a question for you,” I said to her. “Kind of an important one, too.”

“Okay.”

“You marked me, remember?”

Her eyes were half closed, but she nodded her head.

“What does that mean? To mark me?”

“That I marked you as my property.”

“I understand that, but what are the consequences?”

“You are mine.”

“But that’s where I’m a little fuzzy, Liza. I am your master, am I not?”

“You are. True.”

“Yet you say, ‘you are mine’? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?”

“No, not at all. ‘You are mine’ simply means that I am sworn to you, that my soul belongs to you.”

I turned away.

“You do not believe me?” she asked.

“No, I don’t.” I looked at Persephone. “Is she telling me the truth?”

She nodded her head.

“Why haven’t you marked me, Persephone.”

“I can not answer.”

“That’s okay, I think I get it.” I turned back to Liza. “Lying to me is the same as failing me,” I said to her. “Or do you disagree?”

“Oh, no, I agree. Will you kill me now?”

“When it pleases me, I will.” That seemed to penetrate the fog, and she nodded her head slightly. “Come below now, and go forward.”

She didn’t hesitate. She climbed down the steps and went to the forward cabin, and I let her stay up there the rest of the day, by herself.

Sephie helped me change the alternator belt, then we fixed lunch and I sat at the chart table for a few hours looking over sailing routes from Puget Sound the Polynesia.

An hour later, Liza called out; she needed to use the head.

“Show her how, Seph,” I said, and she went forward. When Liza came aft I saw she was naked, and I wondered why but kept my mouth shut. I heard the head being pumped clear a minute later and watched as Liza walked back to the forward cabin, but I let her stew in silence a little longer. When the sun was sliding behind the hills to the west I told her to come to me.

“No more lies, Liza. When I ask you a question, I want a truthful answer.”

“If I can.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“I’m sorry.”

I nodded my head, opened up chart table drawer and pulled out my old Kimber 45 ACP, and screwed on a silencer. I racked the slide, chambered a round, and leveled the pistol at her chest.

“Care to change your answer?”

She looked at the pistol, then at my eyes, judging me.

“Only members of the council may mark a master,” she said.

“And Persephone isn’t a member?”

“No.”

I unscrewed the silencer and put the pistol back in the drawer.

“Woodie, were you going to shoot me?”

“Yes.”

“You are a master! I knew it!”

“Don’t ever lie to me again,” I growled.

She dropped to her knees. “Yes, Master.”

“Why did you mark me?”

“Because I killed my master. I was masterless, and afraid.”

“Afraid? That is your truth?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Yes, Master.”

“I will cook you something.”

“No, Master, let me…”

“No, you need to understand, it pleases me to cook. Even for you.”

“As you wish.”

“It would also please me no end if you’d stop calling me Master, and talking like you’re some kind of medieval vassal. And, get off the floor, for heaven’s sake – unless you’ve dropped a contact lens or something…”

Liza smiled, stood, and looked at me.

I opened my arms, she came to me, and I held her close. Persephone looked at us, and she smiled too, but there was something new in her eyes, something that hadn’t been there for the past year.

I told Liza to go forward and put on some clothes, and when she was gone I went to Persephone and kissed her passionately for the longest time. When I was sure she was completely confused I let her go, and turned to the galley with a smile in my little black heart.

Phase One was now underway.

+++++

Tate came over a few weeks later, and, he said, he just wanted to just shoot the shit for a while. Liza was off doing her thing as a reporter, while Persephone remained on hand like my very own two legged Golden Retriever. That is to say, she was right by my side, my ever faithful, golden haired companion, so talking would be a little restrained.

“When I have my big heart attack, can I have one just like yours?” Tate said when Persephone came up into the cockpit carrying a tray loaded with orange juice and heart-healthy snacks. That’s code for saw-dust, by the way. There’s no such thing as a heart healthy snack, unless of course you’re talking about oral sex.

Anyway, Sephie smiled, handed Tate a glass of fresh squeezed, then settled in by my side.

“You look like you could use some sun,” Tate said. “You’re pale.”

“It’s her fault,” I said, pointing at Sephie. “She sleeps all day and flies away at night, in search of fresh blood.”

“That explains everything,” Tate said. “Listen, I think I’ve got a case I can’t handle alone. Think you’re up to it?”

“I’ll have to check with his doctors,” Persephone said. “The last time he went out with the department he had some strange rhythms, and was light-headed.”

“Oh, still bothering you, is it?”

“Well, it’s pretty much a permanent condition now.”

So, in pidgin-cop talk he’d just managed to ask if I was still under house arrest, and I’d confirmed his suspicions.

“Well, it’d be nice if you could. The case is going to involve a lot of camera surveillance, and you could make a few bucks while just sitting back in your car with a Nikon for company.”

“If the doctor approves, could I come with him?” Sephie asked.

“No reason why you couldn’t, as far as I can see.”

“That might be fun,” she said.

“Do we have any avocados?” I asked out of the blue, knowing full well we didn’t.

“I could run out and get a few,” Tate said, helpfully.

“No big,” I said to Sephie. “Next time we’re out, I think we should get a few.”

“Have a craving?” Persephone asked.

“Oh, you know me. Put avocado on shoe leather and it’d taste good.”

“Want me to run out and get a couple?” she asked.

“No, next time we…”

“Don’t be silly. It’ll just take a few minutes, remember? The farm stand’s open down the street!”

Like, really, I’d forgotten? “Would you?” I asked innocently. “That’d be great.”

And a few minutes later Tate and I were alone. I pointed to my ear, indicating possible listening devices might be planted, so we continued with small talk about his difficult case, but at one point I bent over to pick up a napkin and slipped a note under his shoe. A minute later he knocked his napkin off the little cockpit table and retrieved the note, just before Sephie returned.

“Want me to make some guacamole?” I asked them.

“Sure,” Sephie said, and Tate nodded his head.

So, what was in the note? Just an innocent question concerning the PI business, but it would be enough to trip up Tate if he was part of the group, and if he wasn’t he’d understand in no uncertain terms that I was not free to move around on my own.

And yeah, I made some guacamole, and Liza got back just in time to have some, too.

+++++

Every couple of years I haul the boat and get the bottom scrubbed and re-painted, and it was coming up on that time again. We, the girls and I, packed overnight bags and checked into a hotel down the street, then Tate and I drove the boat to a yard across the lake, then hopped into the Zodiac and puttered back across to the hotel’s marina. Somewhere along the way Tate slipped a note into a coat pocket, but otherwise kept quiet. End result, I thought he was clean, but wouldn’t do anything compromising – for a while longer, anyway.

As summer approached, Liza started making noises about wanting to take some time off, some real time off, and wanted to know what I thought about taking a trip.

“On the boat?”

“Yes, of course. Why own a boat like this? Certainly not to let it sit in a slip and rot?”

“Guess that depends on what my doctors say. Isn’t that right, Persephone?”

“That would depend on how strenuous a journey we make? Like, where to, how long?”

“Like Tahiti,” she said. “How long would that take, Woodie?”

“Did we have a bad day at work, dear?” I asked. I swear I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice, too, but that did it. She broke down, went into a rant about an editor at the paper who had been riding her ass for months, and that got me wondering…

Were there limits to the interventions this group was willing to make? To preserve their identities, and the group’s security? Or was this editor of hers in the group? Interesting, I thought, but the answer to her original question still hung in the air, apparently waiting to be answered.

“So, Tahiti. What do you want to know?”

She looked at Sephie: “Could he do it?”

Persephone looked a little hesitant, like she wasn’t sure this was something she was allowed to talk about, but then she looked at me and shrugged her shoulders: “Assuming we were both there to do most of the heavy work? I think so.”

The heavy work? I had to laugh. These two had been out on the boat in the Sound a bunch, and under a variety of conditions too, but they had no idea what lay on the other side of the Olympic Peninsula. There was a malevolent beast waiting out there, a sleeping monster called the Pacific, and neither had ever been ‘at sea’ – not even once.

So, I kept my mouth shut about that, and launched into the less intimidating aspects of such a voyage. Like: most people from the Northwest hop down the coast, stopping at Astoria, San Francisco, and usually in L.A. too, before pausing for a long breather in San Diego, where supplies are replenished and gear maintained, then it’s a non-stop thirty-two hundred mile grind to the Marquesas, the gateway to French Polynesia from North America, then another nine hundred miles on to Tahiti. Boats like mine can make almost two hundred miles a day under optimal conditions, but a more likely average is closer to a hundred and ten, which puts a voyage from San Diego to the Marquesas in the forty day range. But the trip down to California can take more than a few weeks, and most people stop off in the Marquesas for several weeks. Trip time by that point is almost three months and climbing, and most people who’ve made the trip then spend a year or more wandering around the islands before heading to New Zealand.

“New Zealand? Why there?”

“Well, I suppose because it’s lovely down there, but there’re other reasons as well. It’s like sailboat heaven, and after a year or more at sea boats need work. Serious work. And a lot of people sour on the dream by that point, and decide to either sell their boats there or ship them back to the states and start over.”

“Start over?”

“Well, just looking at the experiences of people I know who’ve made the trip, if they make it that far one of two things happens. Married couples either divorce and sell the boat and return to the states, or they double down and head west for Australia and on to the Med.”

“You mean…”

“Yup. Circumnavigate. That’s a five to seven year deal, assuming you stop to smell the roses from time to time.”

“Holy cow. Do many people do that?”

“More than you might think, but that’s a trip for people like you. Starting off in your forties is the norm for a trip like that. People starting a circumnavigation in their sixties are rare. My guess is if I started a trip like that now you’d probably get to spread my ashes somewhere in the Indian Ocean.”

“Now, Woodie…”

“No, I think that’s realistic, and it wouldn’t be the most horrible thing in the world, you know? Life is a one way ticket, I seem to recall. To leave this life doing something you always wanted to do isn’t the worst outcome imaginable.”

“Is it something you always wanted to do?”

“I used to think so.”

“And now?”

“Are you kidding? I’m getting older by the minute and haven’t a care in the world, but to make matters worse I live on my boat with two stunning women I just happen to adore. And yes, I know we need a bigger boat. If we made such a trip, we’d need a newer, bigger boat, or spend a heck of lot upgrading the hardware on this one. But there’s a more important question: why make the trip now?”

“Because you’d be happy.”

“You’re assuming I’m unhappy, aren’t you, Liza?”

“I know you’re unhappy,” Persephone said.

“Well, if anyone knows what I’m feeling, it’s you. And I mean that in the best possible way, of course.”

Sephie came to me and put her head in my lap, and I ran my fingers through her long hair for the longest time. Liza came and sat by my side, and she leaned in close.

“Do you want to at least try?” Liza finally asked.

And there I was, hesitating on the precipice, lost in the vertigo of a great decision. Two years ago this had been the dream, the plan. Retire and head south, then make for the Med or the South Pacific, and I’d even considered making the voyage solo, maybe meeting some wahini along the way and making a run at it together, but now…everything was different. And it was different in the most sinister way possible.

Just what the Hell were they up to? Get me offshore and push me overboard? Or just shoot me in the head and let me wash up on the shore somewhere?

“I couldn’t make it without both of you,” I thought aloud, “and I couldn’t ask that of you. Wouldn’t be fair, you know.”

“You don’t have to ask, Woodie,” Persephone said.

“Yes, I do. I could never impose my dreams on someone else, especially the only two people left in the world I love.”

“That’s not what I meant, Woodie,” Persephone said. “I love you too, and I’d want to share this, be a part of this.”

I could see the end of my life in her words, and it was fascinating. Simply fascinating.

All in all, the air around me felt exotic, heavy with portentous meaning, and suddenly it felt as if I was sitting in an Indian bazaar, flute in hand, watching a pair of cobras dancing to a tune only they could hear.

+++++

We decided to head out for a sail a few weeks later, kind of a trial run out towards Vancouver Island. Blue water, if you know what I mean. Real ocean, not that calm stuff in Puget Sound. That was the idea, anyway.

Mother Nature always has her own plans, and this was one of those days. No, not stormy. Far from it. The water in the Straits resembled a Wal*Mart parking lot – in Kansas. Flat. Flat as a billiard table, and not a breath of air all morning. We were off Port Townsend just after noon and still heading west northwest, and the only excitement we’d had had been dodging the occasional log. That, and my pointing out the passing fins of the odd blue shark that happened along from time to time. Odd how focused people get when they spot a man-eater.

By mid-afternoon we were past Victoria harbor and still motoring west, a Seattle-bound ferry crossing southbound off our stern the only company to be had. I hopped down the companionway and made some log entries, grabbed a few Cokes and went back up to the wheel and noticed the girls weren’t in the shaded cockpit. I looked around, saw them up on the foredeck deep in conversation. I saw the Beretta 92SBF in Liza’s right hand within the span of a single heartbeat, and it didn’t take me too long figure out what was on their minds. I reached down and let off the main sheet and the traveler lines, then moved all the way aft and got behind the wheel, and waited.

Persephone saw me first, maybe a minute later. She turned and looked at me – and I could see the sorrow in her eyes, the pain in her soul. She didn’t want to kill me, she never had. Then I looked at Liza. What I saw in her eyes made my blood boil. It was lust, pure blood-lust. In all my years on the street I’d encountered such savage evil only a few times, and I recognized what I saw in her eyes immediately. She smiled at me then, smiled as she drew the pistol and leveled it at my chest.

Liza moved towards the starboard shrouds as she started aft, and Persephone followed close behind. The Beretta is Liza’s right hand barely wavered as she drew near the canvas awning over the cockpit, and that’s exactly when I threw the wheel over hard to port.

Right as rain, the main boom rocketed off to the starboard rail, and with the satisfying ping of a four iron on a par five fairway, both Liza and Persephone were knocked high over the lifelines and into that deep blue sea.

It was time to make a few quick decisions, and though I’d had a few days to think about what I’d do if my worst-case-scenario came to pass, the sadness in Persephone’s eyes called out to me across that mirrored sea. In point of fact, Persephone began calling out to me at that very moment, and she looked pathetic. Helpless, and pathetic.

Liza, on the other hand, looked ferocious. Pissed off, and ferocious. Her hands were flailing away, no Beretta visible now, but she soon settled down and starting swimming after the boat. I dropped the RPM down to twelve hundred and tightened the turn, then straightened out, aiming to come alongside Persephone; Liza saw what I was doing and started back towards her.

The dilemma facing me was simple. The first thing that crossed my mind was that it would never be possible to trust either girl ever again, not right now – and probably not ever again. So, the next thing that hit me? Well, simply put, bringing one or both back to shore would leave me in exactly the same predicament. It would only be a matter of time before the order would come to kill me again. So, I reasoned, the simplest thing to do would be to run them down, kill them out here in the Pacific and let the sharks have them. There were no witnesses and, I calculated, I could do this with a clear conscience. They had set this up, all this talk about going to Tahiti, with nothing more in mind than killing me. They were predators, merciless, mercenary predators.

And then I saw the Beretta. Right there on the cockpit cushion, hard by the companionway. Leaning forward, I scooped it up before coming alongside Persephone. I throttled back a bit and turned away from her, watched as the panic set in. Liza arrived by her side a moment later and I just watched them. I watched them watching me, watched them study me, looking for the first sign of hesitation, or resolve.

And then I saw the shark.

A white. A Great White. Rare in these waters, but not completely unheard of, and now the huge fish was circling perhaps thirty yards away from the girls, probably trying to figure out exactly what they were, and how they might taste.

So here I sat – fat, dumb and very unhappy – on my boat, and just a few yards away two very nervous women paddled away in very deep water, completely oblivious to the danger that had entered their very precarious orbit.

I raised the Beretta, let Liza see it for what it was as I cut power and dropped the transmission into neutral. The boat slowed, but was still a good ten yards from the girls, and then I pointed at the fin.

“I think that’s a Great White,” I said.

Synchronized swimmers had never executed such a precise, coordinated turn in any venue, nor had any actress in any horror movie ever made shown such wide-eyed awareness of her impending doom as those two girls did.

Personally, it was kind of gratifying, but almost three decades of carrying a gun and a badge made what happened next a completely forgone conclusion. I swung the wheel hard to starboard and slipped the transmission into reverse and backed down slowly, then I slipped it into neutral and hopped down onto the swim platform and dropped the ladder into the water. Predictably, Liza made it to the stern first, and I reached down and hauled her aboard in one smooth motion. As she clambered into the cockpit I reached down and took Persephone’s frantically grasping hand in mine and hauled her onto the platform, then I grabbed her shaking body and held her close to mine.

I knew Liza had the Beretta even before I turned around, but when I looked at her she held it out to me, handed it over without so much as a murmur.

“Go grab some towels, would you, darlin’?” I said softly. I helped Sephie into the cockpit, took the towels Liza carried up a moment later and wrapped them both up and held them tight, kissed each on the forehead.

“Don’t ever do anything like that again,” I whispered in Liza’s ear. “Okay?”

I could feel her head nodding assent through her violent trembling. When she calmed down a few minutes later I handed the Beretta back to Liza, and with my head I motioned her to toss it overboard.

She didn’t hesitate. When I heard that definitive ‘ker-plonk’ I took her face in hand; I kissed her hard on the mouth, kissed her until she responded with an authenticity I’d never felt from her before, then I kissed Sephie, and more deeply than I ever had before.

It hit me hard, that irrational moment out there under then sun. Despite everything, I knew I loved them both, I mean really and truly loved them, and that I could never let go of them. Still, a part of me clung to the knowledge that I could never really trust them. Yet…there had been something so unexpectedly tender about those fleeting seconds that had caught me so completely off-guard. Something about the way we loved one another as we turned back towards the Sound, about the desperate gratitude we shared as we clung to one another, something about the looks I found in their eyes that told me the tables had finally turned.

You can’t have love without trust, after all. Or is it the other way around?

+++++

We didn’t talk too much about what had happened out there on the water. There wasn’t much to say, the way I saw things. They’d been ordered to do away with me, but up to that point in time whoever controlled them had never seen any reason to question their loyalty. By the time we tied up at my marina on Lake Union that assumption had been turned on it’s ear. I was alive. They’d failed – for whatever reason, and now there would be consequences. Whoever was calling the shots in their world, I assumed, just might expose themselves to get this done. Someone would have to give the order, and then someone would have to execute the operation against “their” girls. That’s what I was counting on, at least, and that, hopefully, would give me the opening I had been hoping for.

+++++

And so I wasn’t entirely confused when Mary Jo came down to the marina a few hours later. I had just sent the girls to the market for some grub, which wasn’t all that surprising either. The slip, my boat, were under constant surveillance, and again, I’d kind of assumed that for quite a while. But here she was, and all alone, which did confuse me. I had expected a return appearance of her ninja warrior girlfriends, but no, that was not the case. At least, they weren’t visible, but that’s the point with ninja, I suppose.

“Hello, Woody,” she said as she stood on the dock below the cockpit. “Kind of surprised to see you.”

“Are you, indeed,” I said as I climbed out the companionway and stepped into the cockpit. “Why’s that, I wonder? And where are those delightful girlfriends of yours?”

“Around.”

“Yes, of course.” I looked at MJ, remembered that night and her hand under the table. “Well, you’re looking good,” I said as I smiled at her. “Would you like to come aboard?”

“Assuming you’re not going to try to kill me, then yes.”

I almost laughed as I gave her my hand and helped her aboard. “So, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

“Why are you still alive?”

“Well, as long as we’re asking questions, why do you want me dead? I thought we had an understanding?”

“We did.”

“What changed.”

“Circumstances.” Only the voice I heard wasn’t Mary Jo’s. It was a man’s voice, and one that sounded very familiar.

“What the fuck!” I said as Mark Tottenham stepped out from behind a pillar and back into the land of the living.

He walked over to Mary Jo, pulling a little Walther PPK/s from under of his jacket as he drew near. “Get down on your knees, you stupid bitch,” he said as he came up behind her. He screwed a silencer on the barrel, then put the tip up to the base of her brain and squeezed off one round. Mary Jo fell into the water between the dock and the boat and disappeared; Tottenham tossed the Walther into the water after her.

“You didn’t need to kill her, Woody. That was unnecessary, and stupid.” He took black leather gloves off his hands, then walked up to the gate without saying another word. As he left the marina, I took a remote control from my pocket, and hit the pause button. “This might be easier than I thought,” I had the audacity to say, but in truth, Tottenham’s resurrection was troubling.

I heard the sirens a few minutes later, and a half dozen patrol cars careened into the marina parking lot moments later. Their guns drawn, dozens of officers stormed towards the gate, but as they didn’t have a key, I had to walk up and let them in.

+++++

“Long time no see, Woody,” Chief Anders said as he climbed aboard.

“Hey Chief. How’s it hangin’?”

“Down to my knees, Peckerhead.”

“Good to hear it. Come on down. I think you’ll enjoy this.”

A couple of grunts from CID were already down below, and SAC Brennan was as well. They’d of course seen the recording already, which was why I wasn’t being booked-in at that very moment, but Chief Anders hadn’t seen it, which was why he was here now, and Brennan had thought it important he see it as soon as possible.

First, and for his benefit, I explained what had been happening for the past fourteen months, during my impromptu retirement, then I played the tape.

When he saw Tottenham step into view, when he heard his voice, Chief Anders just about came unglued. “What the fucking Hell is this!” he shouted. “Some sort of CG bullshit!”

Liza stepped into the cabin, right on cue. “Not quite, sir,” she said. “It’s his brother, Paul. Identical twins. I think Mark wasn’t going to cooperate, so Paul had him killed. Oh. He’s also the head of the local council.”

“Council?”

“Whatever you’d like to call them sir. They’re usurping control all around the country, coopting officials at every level of government.”

“A silent coup, Chief Anders” Brennan interjected. “A complete government takeover, using blackmail. Sexual blackmail, one of the oldest tricks in the book. Minimal personnel involved, very quick, very efficient. Even the Romans used to do it this way.”

“Shit,” Anders said, no small amount of wonder in his voice. “And this Paul Tottenham? He’s in charge?”

“I don’t think he has much power beyond Seattle,” Liza said.

“Do you know, Miss… Hell, I don’t even know your name, but you sure look familiar.”

“I’m with Woodie,” my dear little Liza said. “Have been for a while.”

I took her hand in mine.

“So you don’t know much about their operations, beyond the local structure?” Anders asked. “Brennan? You need to keep her for a while?”

“I don’t think so, Chief. She’s cooperating, and we have enough already to make a few dozen arrests. We may break open a larger investigation that way. I think it depends on how deep their penetration is, but it sounds like this could be a very sticky operation.”

“Woody, you think you’re well enough to come back?” Anders asked.

“Me? Hell Chief, I hadn’t thought of that. I wouldn’t count on me, though. Liza and I have been thinking of taking a trip, on the boat.”

Anders looked at Liza and almost smiled, but I could see the envy in his eyes. He just nodded his head, mumbled something that sounded a lot like ‘wish I could’, then he climbed up into the night and was gone. I’d already burned several copies of the recording, and everyone had their discs now, as well as Liza’s statement, and soon they were all gone.

Persephone was still forward, and she came aft as soon as I gave her the all clear. She had recorded the proceedings on board that evening, ‘just in case’, and Tate was buried away in the parking garage making recordings of all the people coming and going as well.

Divers recovered MJs body early the next morning, and they found the little Walther, too, so ballistics wouldn’t be a problem, and with the recordings there wouldn’t be any problem getting a conviction. There was certainly no ‘reasonable doubt’ about what had happened, anyway. For good measure, Tate took copies of all our recordings to multiple safety deposit boxes around the city, and I did the same at a few other banks. That done, we met back to the boat.

“So,” Tate asked when we were safely back on board, “are you really going to head out? Do the trip?”

“I’m thinking I might just give it a try?”

“You going solo?” he asked, and I could see he was wondering where the girls were.

I just smiled.

“Man, wish I could make that trip!”

“Yeah, I bet you do.”

It took a few weeks to square away the new boat and provision her, but I guess you know I had some help. She’s a little bigger boat, not by much, but she’s a lot stronger…yet the most important thing, more important than anything else, is the bunk in my cabin is a whole lot bigger.

Hey, I’m just sayin’, you know, but I’m pretty sure you understand.

Part III – Welcome Back My Friends, to the Show That Never Ends

Chapter 17

Dallas

She sat at her desk, listening to the man drone on about his wife. About how the wretched woman just didn’t understand him. How she never wanted to have sex anymore. How life had become totally empty, devoid of all meaning, all happiness.

She looked at this little maggot and wanted to laugh. ‘Have you looked in a mirror lately, you fat slob,’ she wanted to say. ‘Who’d want to fuck you? Who the hell would want to understand your pathetic, empty life? Jerking off to porn in the basement at two in the morning? Not even having the balls to jerk off in her face? Hiding in the shadows, afraid of your own shadow – all the shadows in your life…’

“Well, Mr Peterson,” she said after she’d listened to about as much as she could stand, “it looks like our hour’s about up. I’d like you to reflect on some of the strategies we discussed today, and keep writing in your journal.”

“Okay. How do you think I’m doing?”

“Fine, Mr Peterson. Just fine.”

“How many more sessions do we have?”

She looked at her appointment app, scanned his court-ordered sentence. “Another eight weeks ‘til your next mandated evaluation. Then I make my report to the court.”

“You think I’ll do okay?”

“I can’t discuss these matters with you, Mr Peterson. You know that, so please don’t make me remind you again.”

“Yes, doctor.”

“Now, it’s time for you to leave. I’ll see you on Friday, at ten.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

He even walked like a worm, she thought as he stood and made to leave, but he turned and looked at her – tried to look at her, anyway – but she was behind her desk and so denied him the view he sought.

He’d been sneaking down in the middle of the night to jerk off to online porn for years, then one night his wife came down – quietly – and caught him in the act. She belittled him for days after, until one evening he couldn’t take it anymore. After she hit him with a long string of insults he snapped, and he pushed his wife against the wall and screamed at her. He’d fallen to the floor, crying, and she’d called the police.

Domestic violence wasn’t tolerated in this city, Judge Thornton Thomas told him at one point during his sentencing, and in addition to the twenty-five hundred dollar fine – as well as all court costs – he’d been sentenced to six months of psychiatric counseling – again, at his own expense. And of course his wife filed for divorce, so now he was living in a flop-house by the warehouse district near Love Field. He could at least walk to work these days, flipping burgers at a nearby fast food place, which was a good thing – as he’d lost his car after being fired from his job.

But now he was infatuated with this psychiatrist – Dana Devlin – and her endlessly long legs. She usually left her office just after their session, and he knew this because he waited and watched for her, and for the limo that waited for her just outside the medical office building. The limo would whisk her to TV studios downtown, where she had a syndicated noon-time call-in self-help program, where she would discuss issues surrounding domestic violence and substance abuse – with a nationwide audience. He liked to watch her as she left the building, liked the feeling of hiding and watching her surreptitiously, but he loved looking at her long legs and high heels most of all.

So he was waiting for her downstairs this morning, behind some trees not far away, and he watched her as she walked out, watched her legs as she turned and climbed into the limo, and he relished that one fleeting moment most of all – when, with one leg outstretched her skirt rose up, revealing stocking tops and garters. He shuddered when he caught that glimpse this morning, wanted to crawl home and turn on his laptop.

But no, not today. Today he wanted to see more, so he caught the bus downtown – with a smile on his very happy face.

+++++

“Yes,” Devlin said, “bi-polar disorder has become, I’m afraid, a too-broad definition, a catch-all phrase being used to justify all manner of inexcusable behavior. Like a doctor’s note to get you out of gym, it’s become almost trendy, and now, today, people are calling themselves bi-polar without any sort of formal diagnosis, thinking their swings in mood can be excused away with a shrug and a smile – and a hastily contrived diagnosis. So, the point I’m trying to make is simply this; if someone is indeed bi-polar, they need medication, they need treatment, and that won’t happen without seeking help from a qualified medical professional. Absent that, people need to stop self-diagnosing the problem, and applying labels they simply do not understand.”

“Okay,” the show’s host said, “this has been The Help Desk, with Dr Dana Devlin. This is Dick Durban, and we’ll be back next week with a frank examination at post-pubescent bed-wetting, and what you can do to move on from suffering the consequences of this humiliating nighttime scourge.”

The lights dimmed and Devlin unclipped her mic and set it on the desk in front of her, then leaned over and thanked Durban.

“You coming tonight?” she asked.

“Oh, wouldn’t miss it,” he said, smiling.

“Good,” she said, then she left the studio, stopped off at the gym before going out for the evening. She did not, apparently, notice she was being followed as she went inside the gym.

+++++

He had been planning this night all week, and now it was time. He was going to follow her, wait until she was alone then take her. He’d been looking on from afar for too long, he told himself, and she had given him the courage he’d need to see this night through. He was sitting in the back of the taxi he’d called when she came out, and it fell in behind her Mercedes as it took off from the gym.

+++++

They had been waiting until night fell, and perhaps a half hour after the sun set a rope dropped noiselessly from the roof, and two shadows slipped through the night and into Peterson’s grimy little room.

They left a half hour later, the contents of his computer downloaded onto a card.

+++++

He looked up as a jet roared by just overhead, and barely made it in a back door without being caught; he followed the driving beat of the music down dark service stairs into an obscure, poorly marked basement, and slipped unnoticed to the back of the room, his heart racing as he looked at the action on the floor. It was dark in the big room, a few strobes pulsed in one corner, beating like a sick heart to raw music, and he saw her down there, dressed in latex and PVC – everything black, everything shiny, almost wet looking – even the huge phallus she had just strapped-on was shiny-wet and black.

Then he saw the judge – his judge – down there on the floor, strapped down to a high bench. She was whipping him – savagely, too, he thought – then she moved between the jurist’s splayed legs and planted her strap-on over his anus – and plunged-in – then began mercilessly pounding the man’s ass. When he cried-out in pain she only whipped him more fiercely.

He pulled out his phone, slipped it into video mode and began recording, and after just a few minutes he slipped back out of the building and disappeared into the night.

Shadows within shadows watched his movements, and one broke off and retraced his steps into the building, into the basement. She came out a few minutes later and her team disappeared into waiting shadows.

+++++

The next week, at his scheduled therapy session, she noticed he was looking at her differently – almost leering at her, she thought.

“What would you like to talk about today, Mr Peterson,” she started, unsure of his mood.

“I’d like you to call me Pete.”

She smiled. “Oh? Why?”

“First, could you tell me the difference between love and lust?”

She seemed amused at this new line of thought. “What’s on your mind today, Pete?”

“It’s a question that’s been on my mind a lot lately, and I’ve been thinking about what might be different between the two.”

“Well, what do you think the difference is?”

“That’s not my question, Dana.”

“I’ve told you before, Mr Peterson, I’d prefer that you refer to me by my title.”

“I really don’t care what you want me to call you, Dana. I would like you to tell me the difference between love and lust.”

She looked into his eyes and unconsciously crossed her arms over her lap, then caught herself and sighed. “The difference, you say?”

“Yes. How are they different?”

“Well, love is about continuity, about seeking permanence in life, while lust is all about the moment, impulses and needs. I’d say lust is more about impermanence, instant gratification, while love is about long term fulfillment. Now, Pete, what’s this all about?”

“I’d like to show you something, and I wonder if you could conjure up a definition of hypocrisy out of your black hat.” He stood, took out his phone and came close to her desk, turned it on and opened the video player. He put the phone on her desk and pressed play…

She leaned over, picked up the phone and watched as images unfolded; her hands began to shake, a line of perspiration formed on her brow. When the recording stopped he took the phone and returned to his chair.

“Interesting,” she said. “So. You’ve been following me.”

“No, I’ve had a private detective following you, and Thornton.”

She smiled at his bluff. “What do you want?”

“Right now? Right now, I want to fuck you in the ass. When I’m finished I want a letter from you making all this go away. A week from now, I want to read about that fucking judge’s resignation from the bench, and it better be front page news.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“Yes, that’s all. And I’m assuming you think I’m a moron. That I haven’t taken precautions to make sure this video shows up all over the internet if something happens to me. I could disappear, you know, or men in white coats could show up at work, throw me to the ground and put me in a straight-jacket, take me to the funny farm. Just let me tell you if anything like that happens to me, you and the judge are going viral. Youtube city, if you get my drift, and that’ll be just for starters.”

“And if we comply?”

“I hit delete.”

“Simple as that, huh? And we get to trust you, that you won’t publish?”

“Simple as that.”

The shadows listened intently now, confirming all their recording devices had good signal.

Devlin turned in her chair, hit a button and all the drapes in her office closed, the lights dimmed.

“Pete?”

“Yes?”

“Take off your clothes, Pete. And from now on, when you answer me, you’ll say only ‘yes, mistress,’ or ‘no, mistress.’ Is that understood?”

“Sorry, but no. I’m not playing that game with you.”

“Pete? Please? Just play along a little, would you? Make it easy for me?”

“Well…”

“Pete? Get your clothes off, then I need you to come over and lick my legs, suck my toes.”

“Uh…well…if you insist…”

“Oh, Pete…I had no idea your cock was SO big…”

And still the shadows listened.

+++++

He wasn’t exactly sure, but it looked to him as if someone had been in his room. Nothing too out of place – not exactly – but just enough, and he had to admit he hadn’t counted on this. He went to his laptop and opened it up, and everything – seemed – okay…so why this feeling?

He saw a shadow, or thought he did, and he turned, looked out the window –

“What the fuck!” he screamed. “Who the fuck are you?!”

It, whatever it was, looked like a giant, black owl – like something out of one of those Whitley Strieber books he used to read.

An alien, he said to himself, now sure someone, or something, had been in his room – and suddenly he rubbed the back of his head again and again – for he had been sure, once, that he’d been abducted, and that they’d implanted something in his skull.

Now, the more he thought about it, the more aliens made sense. Who else could have told Molly he was in the basement? How else could he have run into a psychiatrist as warped as Devlin, a judge as twisted as Thornton? They had to be in on it, all of them, and he bet they had been, for years, from the beginning.

That spot on his head was itching now, and he was sure he could feel it getting hot. They had to be transmitting now, transmitting instructions to him. Again. That’s why it was getting hot – that had to be the reason. He felt the room spinning, his eyeballs starting to itch – and he wanted to scratch them out of his head – because the noise was getting so loud now, the voices so insistent…

+++++

“What the fuck’s going on with him now?” one of the shadows said.

“I don’t think he took his meds this morning,” another one said.

Yet another laughed.

“No, I’m serious,” the second one said. “I don’t think he took anything, and two of them are anti-psychotics.”

“Too bad for him,” the first said. “Look, he’s going to whack-off again!”

“I can’t fucking believe this guy. It’s like anything sets him off.”

“This is like the third time today…”

“Did you see the recording from her office?”

“No. What about it?”

“He popped her in the can, then blew a load all over her face. He made her lick the shit off his dick after.”

“That woman has no pride.”

“I think she’s desperate.”

“You’d have to be fucking desperate to let that cretin anywhere near your asshole.”

“You should’ve seen what was on his hard drives.”

“I don’t want to know. Did the committee reach a decision?”

“Yes. He made the list, too.”

“Well, one more won’t make much difference, I guess.”

“No, it won’t.”

They had been in the basement earlier that day, and the team had epoxied all the windows shut, then had placed shaped charges in the ceiling, taped to a dozen 20 pound LPG tanks. No, it wouldn’t matter at all…

+++++

She had invited Pete to tonight’s event – “just to show you there are no hard feelings!” – and she’d picked him up a little before eight, driven him to the warehouse. A jet taking off from Love Field flew by just overhead as she got out of her Mercedes, and he followed her to the front door, then past the security guard beside the main basement stairs. She led him downstairs to the big playroom and told him to make himself comfortable while she changed into her play clothes, or so she called them. He looked around, didn’t see Thornton anywhere, and for some reason that bothered him. Someone handed him a drink and he tossed it down, then walked over and looked at a girl being sodomized by someone in a gorilla suit…but no, he was pretty sure it was an alien on top of the girl…then the room started to spin, he felt like he was about to suffocate – then the room went dark.

+++++

They watched on their video feed as Thornton and Devlin tied him down to a bench, then as someone gave him an injection. He’d begun to come around after that, but he was gagged now, and they couldn’t make out more than a few words that Devlin and Thornton were saying.

Soon Thornton walked over to Peterson, and they noted he had a large cordless drill in his hand; the judge put the drill above Peterson’s ear and pulled the trigger…

“You know,” one of the shadows said, “I really don’t want to watch this…”

“So, hit the detonator – whenever you’re ready.”

+++++

“Southwest 227, taxi to position and hold.”

“227”

“227, clear for take off. Contact departure one two two niner and good night.”

“227, two-two-niner. Rolling.”

“Give me ninety eight percent.”

“Ninety eight.”

“Helluva crosswind tonight.”

“Yup. Passing eighty. One-ten. EP at ninety eight. V-one – and rotate!”

“Positive rate, gear up.”

“Gear up…what the hell was that?!”

“Uh, Southwest 227, this is Tower. Looks like a large explosion under you at this time. Lot’s of flame and airborne debris.”

“Tower, 227, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! We’ve lost number two engine, lost primary hydraulics, and we’re getting fire alarms from the cargo deck. We’re gonna try a right turn, try for runway three six.”

“227, say souls on board.”

“48, Tower. We’re three eight zero A-G-L, have about 5–5 percent on number one, can’t hold a climb at this weight.”

“Roger, 227, emergency services notified.”

“What the hell was that?,” the Captain said. “Did ATC say they saw an explosion?”

“I think so. Felt like a large IED.”

“Hit the APU, deploy the RAT.”

“Got it.”

“Might as well start dumping fuel, too. Okay, I’ve got Harry Hines and Mockingbird, I’m going to line up off them. Start reading off the radar altimeter, would you?”

“2-7-0 feet, gears still down and three green, flaps at twenty. Now 2-5-0 AGL, rate of descent is 3-5-0 feet per…”

“Landing gears are going to come right off at this weight.”

“Now 2-1-0 feet, speed 1-7-7, rate of descent now 400. Looks like Denton Drive in about a quarter mile.”

The computer chimed: “Minimums, minimums!”

“This is gonna be close, Mike.” The Captain keyed the intercom, her voice calm now: “Flight attendants, brace for impact.”

“Over Denton, now 1-1-0 feet, speed 1-5-5.”

“Mike…? I think we’re gonna make it…”

“You got it, Captain.”

“Crosswind’s a headwind now – good – okay, over the threshold.”

The computer began talking again: “Fifty – forty – thirty – retard – retard!” She felt the main gears hit, was going for reverse thrust when she felt the entire aircraft lurch – hard – to the left…

And that happened when the left main gear failed – which then blew through the top of the wing. The wing tanks ruptured, vaporizing thousands of pound of jet fuel – which ignited. The left engine nacelle dug into the runway, causing an immediate, violent yaw to the left, and the right main gear collapsed. The main spar failed next, then the entire right wing separated from the fuselage. Eight fire trucks began chasing the flaming wreck down the runway, spraying thick white foam on everything. When the wreck ground to a stop, doors and slides opened, dozens of dazed people tumbled to the ground and were soon coated in thick white goo.

First responders from all over North Texas converged on Love Field, while the FBI’s counter-terrorism task force was convened in Washington D.C. Survivors walked down the runway, some fell to the ground as soon as they cleared the flaming hulk. Off duty police and fire investigators all over the city heard their beepers go off, and families turned on their TVs, trying to figure out what that huge explosion was…

And Ben Acheson looked at his phone, rolled out of bed, showered and kissed Genie on the forehead, then got in his Yukon, drove across town to Love Field. The Duke was already there, walking around the wreckage on the runway, looking tired and very put-out.

“Took you long enough to get here, Meathead,” Dickinson said, glowering.

“Bring any donuts?”

“Couple dozen,” The Duke growled. “Back seat.”

“What happened?”

“Warehouse, over off Cedar Springs, blew up. Well, I mean was blown up. Powerful stuff. Jet was taking off, got hit by debris, force of the blast apparently did most of the damage.”

“So the warehouse was the target?”

“Yup. Firefighters still working it. As soon as they’re done we’ll move in. We’ll have lead, I assume FBI will back us up – unless terrorism is the initial conclusion, anyway.”

Acheson grumbled.

“How’s Genie? Still liking school?”

“It’s tough. Tougher than expected.”

“Miss the Bureau yet?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Good. World needs more doctors, not a bunch of cops.”

“World needs both, Duke. Nothin’s ever gonna change that equation.”

Dickinson grumbled, then his hand unit crackled. “700, are you still on scene at Love?”

“700, 10/4.”

“700, Fire Department would like someone from CID on scene at this time.”

“700, 741 code five.”

“Code five at 2310.”

“It’s gonna be a long night, Ben.”

“Glad you got two dozen. Nexium ain’t working anymore.”

They drove over to Cedar Springs, then down Manor Way to the burning building and got out, walked over to the Fire Department’s Mobile Command Unit; the Chief was waiting for them: “You come from Love?” the fireman asked.

“Yessir.” Dickinson knew it was rare for the FD’s chief to be out on a call like this – unless something way out of the ordinary was suspected. “What’ve you found so far?”

“HE residue everywhere, on everything. On the remaining structure, all over the debris field.”

“C4?”

“Maybe. Maybe something more exotic.”

“FBI here yet?”

“Nope. Thought I’d let you handle that. And, well, we’ve no way of telling if there’s any unexploded ordnance in there.”

“That’s nice. Who do you think – FBI, or Army?”

The chief shrugged. “FBI ought to be able to handle it; Army might be better equipped.”

“Okay,” Dickinson said as he turned to Acheson – but the kid was across the street, walking towards a dumpster, so he took out his hand unit and called dispatch: “700, notify SAC/Dallas he’s needed at this location, advise him we’ll need an EOD team here code three, and FD thinks Army may by better equipped for this one. Have Traffic shut-down on Cedar Springs from Mockingbird to Inwood, and we need to evacuate apartment buildings in the area.”

“700, 10/4 at 2335. Did you want us to notify 100?”

“Ah, 700, this is 100,” the Chief of Police said, “code five your twenty.”

“100, code five at 2336.”

“700 received.”

“2336.”

Dickinson looked at Acheson, who was looking around the area across the street.

“Oh, no,” Acheson whispered. “Not again.”

But The Duke could tell the boy had seen something as he walked up to the trash dumpster in a parking lot, and now Dickinson could see the envelope taped to the side of the dumpster. He watched Ben pull it free, open it up, then look up and around the area again. “Fuck-a-doodle-do,” The Duke whistled, waiting for Acheson to walk back, but he knew in his gut already.

They were back and it was happening again – and tonight was just the opening salvo. “Oh Carol,” Dickinson sighed, “what have you done to us now – what have you gotten me into?”

He turned, walked over to the charred, smoldering building, and looked down into the crater at shattered basement. Many bodies were recognizable in the rubble, though they too were charred, while other’s had simply been blown apart, then the nature of the facility came into sharp relief. Racks, benches, a viewing area, all of it, he’d seen all of it before, and more than once over the years.

He felt Ben walk up, felt him staring down into the pits of Hell.

“It’s them,” he said at last.

“I know,” The Duke sighed. He turned, looked at the package in Acheson’s hand. “Well?”

“A couple of discs, list of names, of the people down there. A brief synopsis of why they took ‘em out.”

“The names. Give me that list.” Acheson handed it over and Dickinson read down the list, then whistled again. “Fuck-a-doddle-do…”

“Yup. Three judges, and look at the last name, on the second page.”

“Oh, no.”

“He was officially running, so we’ll have to notify the Secret Service. Oh, and there’s this,” Ben said, handing the Post-it note to Dickinson.

“Where was this?”

“Windshield of your car, under the wiper.”

“Figures.” He read the note, whistled again. “Copies already sent to the Morning News, and to CNN. Well, that’s another big fly in the ointment.”

“No way to make the names on that list go away.”

“You know, Ben. They’re always one step ahead of us. Here, out west too.”

“We’re penetrated, at every level.”

“I know. Carol. She told me she was done with them.”

“Go on the assumption she isn’t. I would, anyway.”

“Do you think that’s why she expressed interest? In me, I mean?”

“Possible, but doubtful. I know her pretty well, and if she did something like that it would be way out of character. Still, I don’t know what motivated her to join that organization in the first place.”

“Neither do I…”

“Captain?” one of the Fire Departments unit commanders said, jogging over. “Could y’all take a look at something?”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“Over here, sir.” He led them to the edge, pointed with his flashlight at a large, 1500 pound gas cylinder. “Any idea what that is on top of that tank?”

Dickinson looked at the tank for a moment, then turned to everyone within earshot – “Everyone out of here, NOW!” – then he turned to Acheson, grabbed him by the arm and began pulling him away from the edge. “Detonator – countdown timer…”

They were almost to their cars when the device triggered, and the concussive wave knocked them both off their feet – hurled them through the air – and both landed about fifteen feet away, in the street. Their clothes scorched, the skin on the backs of their heads burned badly, they turned in time to see a wall of flame flaring up from the original crater…

“Well, there goes all the evidence,” The Duke said, picking himself off the asphalt. “Looks like they gave us just enough of a glimpse to substantiate their allegations.”

“Like you said, sir. Always one step ahead.”

The Duke was feeling the back of his head, not liking what he felt, then out of the blue he turned and looked at the raging ruins. “When your basic assumptions prove wrong, it’s time to challenge all your assumptions.”

“Sir?”

“It’s time to go on the offensive, Ben.”

Chapter 18

“So, what do we know so far?” Special Agent in Charge Red Gibbons asked.

“First on my list,” Dickinson began, “the airplane appears to be collateral damage, not an intended target.”

“You mean – they actually fucked up?” Gibbons said, chuckling dryly. “That’s a first.”

“Yup. Maybe. Next up, the building was targeted because that’s where this group was meeting up. Records show an entity called Argosy Partners have been renting the space for a few years. They were, before they rented this one, meeting out near White Rock Lake, in a private home.”

“Who’s home?” Gibbons asked.

“Thornton’s,” Acheson said. He’d dug up that information earlier this morning.

“This is a fucking nightmare,” Gibbons said. “We’ve got a US Senator, three local congressmen, two local and one federal judge down in that crater…and one presidential candidate.”

“Not to mention a half dozen local big-shots,” Dickinson added. “That TV shrink and her co-host, the CEO of SimCON, and well, we’ve yet to ID a bunch of bodies that aren’t even on the list.”

Gibbons shook his head. “I heard they found a head…with a drill-bit stuck in the side of his skull. That true?”

“Yessir,” Deke Slayton said. “The bit is drilled in, wasn’t blow-in during the explosion.”

“Fuck, those were some strange-rangers,” Gibbons sighed.

“I doubt this was entertainment, sir,” Acheson replied.

“Go on,” the SAC said, “let’s have it. The unvarnished version.”

“Probably retribution. Someone crossed them, so they took him out. Publicly, I’d say.”

“Retribution, huh?” Gibbons said, then he started writing on a notepad. “Okay, what else?”

“The charges, sir,” Acheson said. “One of the firemen ID’ed the detonators we saw as a so-called ‘shaped charge’ – and in case…”

“I know what they are, Ben. So, some sophisticated firepower, not available on the street, not easily cobbled together in a basement.”

“Stolen, would be my guess,” Dickinson interjected. “From a weapons lab, or a nuclear storage facility.”

“Oh, well, let’s kick it up a notch. Weapons from a nuclear facility, and all of sudden these chicks go to the top of the FBI’s most wanted.”

“It’s not going to be that easy,”Acheson sighed.

“Why not?”

“Well, first, look around this room. Not one woman in here. Next, we’re having the room swept for bugs, and have been – for months. For all intents and purposes this has become a ‘woman free zone’ – and simply because we have no idea who’s on the inside, who might be working for them.”

“So? What does that tell you?”

“Well, for one thing, this could easily ramp up into some sort of civil war. Look how rapidly their movement, hell, their ideology, has spread. What we first thought was a series of copy-cat crimes turned out to be well-coordinated by a national organization. They’re taking out scumbags all over the country, but what happens if this is a first move on more political targets?”

“You think,” Dickinson said, “that last night was a political act?”

“I don’t think we have enough information on hand,” Acheson said, “to make that call. Not yet, anyway. It’s certainly a possibility, though.”

“You know,” Gibbons said, his voice uncertain now, “there’ve been several BDSM groups, mainly on the west coast, that have merged their activities with political action groups, mainly by bringing prominent business and political leaders into their operations. We’ve been working in Seattle, trying to get one such group under control, for a while. We lost a couple of agents, and Seattle PD lost a few two, including an AC.”

“That was one of the last cases Genie was working on before she accepted the slot at Southwestern.”

“I know,” Gibbons said, looking away. “I wish she was still with us. I have a feeling we could use her insight.”

“You know,” The Duke said, “I remember reading about that Seattle thing. Seems to me the ‘ninjas’ were part of some BDSM group’s hierarchy.”

Gibbons looked around the room. “Okay, what I’m going to tell you has got to stay in this room, but that mess is a lot more complicated than we’ve previously let on.”

“Oh?” Dickinson said.

“It wasn’t just law enforcement that was compromised. Legislators, judges, prosecutors…even people in broadcasting and newspapers…all either compromised or actively taking part in the group’s organization.”

“You’re saying that this group had infiltrated almost all levels of government, and had, in effect, neutralized people in media?”

Gibbons nodded his head. “Yup. Reporters to owners, papers and television stations.”

“So,” Acheson sighed, “why do I get the feeling you haven’t gotten to the bad part yet?”

“Because I haven’t gotten to the bad part yet.”

“Swell,” The Duke said, reaching for a donut.

“Could I have one of those?” Gibbons said, eyeing the dwindling supply.

“Help yourself, Red. Ben, you haven’t eaten this morning, so for God’s sake, eat a donut – before you bleed out.”

“Yessir. So. What’s the bad part?”

“We’re picking up chatter inside FBI headquarters now; we may be infiltrated. Furthermore, it appears that a few members of congress may be compromised, and a few White House staffers, as well.”

“You’re saying,” The Duke said quietly, “that the federal government may have been compromised in some way by this group? The group in Seattle?”

Acheson jumped in before the SAC could respond: “But what if there’s no operational difference between the Seattle group and the one operating here? What if it’s just one organization?”

“Why go after a BDSM group, if that’s the case,” Gibbons asked.

“I don’t know. Competing objectives? Or maybe this group didn’t have anything to do with the Seattle group. Friends in need, that kind of thing.”

“That’s interesting, Ben,” The Duke said. “About competing objectives, I mean, and that makes a certain kind of sense. Once an organization gets big enough, especially one with political objectives, that group will begin to fracture internally as sub-groups form, as competing interests vie for supremacy. What if this group, the one taken out last night, wasn’t simply a group of perverts – and I say that advisedly. Recall, if you will, that they went after pedophiles last time, and that drug runner too. And here we go, operating under the assumption that taking out sexual deviants is still the primary objective.”

“But, what if it’s not?” Ben asked.

“Exactly,” The Duke sighed.

“Going after a bunch of politicians and judges is a helluva way to make your point,” Gibbons said.

“Not if this was an intramural skirmish of some sort,” The Duke said softly, “or not if this is an internal power struggle. This could be a message, to us, and to any other internal factions watching.”

“Wait a minute,” Acheson said, suddenly agitated. “This group in Seattle? You said it’s a BDSM group, but was it an all female group?”

“No,” Gibbons said, the point suddenly hitting home, “it’s not – or wasn’t.”

“So, two possibilities,” Ben said quietly. “The first; this has always been one group, and now it’s splintering due to internal dissent. Or the other possibility: there are multiple groups, but they came together through a marriage of convenience, and now there’s a power struggle underway.”

“That might explain,” Dickinson said, “the targeting last night. Assuming members of this group, or faction, had come into conflict with the, uh, well, the parent organization.”

“I, uh,” Gibbons said, coughing on a bit of donut, “well, can we just call them – the Ninjas – for now?”

The Duke shrugged. “They’re not ninjas, Red. They’re radicals subverting the system to achieve an agenda, in effect radicalizing a distinct segment of the population to undermine the rule of law, preying on those gullible enough to think there’s no other way to effect change.”

“Okay, predators,” Red said. “Let’s just call ‘em Predators.”

“No, I don’t think so,” The Duke said, shaking his head.

“Why not?”

Ben sighed: “Because we’re objectifying their actions, projecting motives we may not fully understand, and until we do calling them anything is premature.”

“All their handwritten notes to us have been signed ‘– C’, haven’t they?” Gibbons said. “Who do you think that is?”

“My guess,” Ben said quickly, “is Committee?”

“Okay,” Red said, “so we call them The Committee.”

Ben barely looked at Dickinson, tried not to feel guilty for such a brazen lie, but he’d spoken to protect her, to protect The Duke – and his relationship with her. “So, what’s the next step?”

“What about your vector theory,” Gibbons asked. “Does the location of this latest attack fit along the axis of the earlier string of murders?”

“It’s close to Love Field,” Ben said, “where we found the victim in the parking garage, but even this close it’s several hundred yards off the other established vector.”

“They’re not going to try that again,” The Duke said. “We were getting close a couple of times, probably too close for comfort…”

“And you’re assuming they want to play games with us,” Ben added. “Last night was different. Last night was a statement. When that list hits the Morning News and CNN, the lid is going to be blown right into orbit, and there’s not going to be any way to deny the group’s existence after that. Within a week, the talking heads will be putting two and two together, talking about nothing else. And if there’s a second incident? Or if this ‘Committee’ releases a manifesto of some sort? Hell, it’s going to hit the fan big-time, and open warfare won’t be far off.”

“Ben, turn up the TV, there’s something on CNN right now…”

All eyes turned to the huge flat-screen, to a hotel on fire, apparently burning furiously, out of control – yet one wing of the building was simply gone, like it had been blown away…

“Yes, Wolf, officials here at the scene believe this was caused by an explosion of some sort, a large explosion, but they’re not speculating at all about the cause…”

The helicopter circling overhead pulled back, and the motel’s tall highway sign came into view: ‘Manor House Lodge’ it read, and Ben felt a chill run down his spine.

“Manor House?” he sighed. “Manor House? – OF COURSE!”

“Ben? What the devil…?”

“Manor House!” he said, this time loudly. “And last night, the explosion was on Manor Way. If these are linked, well then, this isn’t a coincidence…”

The intercom crackled, and a voice from dispatch entered the room: “Anyone down there?”

“Dickinson here,” he replied.

“Patrolman out on a call advises he’s got a signal one, wants CID and a CSU code two.”

“Okay, where is it,” Dickinson said, nodding to Acheson it would be his call.

“Hotel out on Central. The Manor House, off Royal Lane.”

Everyone’s eyes went to Acheson – who only seemed to smile.

+++++

They drove out Central in a tight convoy: CID, the FBI, multiple Crime Scene Unit vans, but The Duke rode with Acheson, let him drive while he thought. “Why a murder there? Why this morning?”

Acheson shook his head. “Not even an hour after the explosion in Maryland? It doesn’t make sense, unless…”

“Unless what?”

“It’s to draw us in.”

“What? Why?”

“Shit!” Ben said as he picked up the radio’s mic. “741, notify units on Central to begin an immediate evacuation of buildings around their location, get EOD units to the area, notify fire and rescue to respond…”

“You don’t think…?”

“If last night was an announcement, a change in strategy, not just tactics…”

They were two miles away just then, when they felt more then heard a deep ‘woomp’ rolling through the air.

“Oh-sweet-Jesus,” Dickinson said when he saw the explosion further out Central, just as their Tahoe passed under Northwest Highway. “700,” he said into the mic, “large explosion, vicinity Central and Royal.”

They heard dispatch calling the patrol units already on scene – and none responded. More calls, more silence, then an avalanche of units responding to the scene checked in.

Dickinson pulled out his cell, called the chief’s office: “Chief, you got this stuff on the radio?”

“No, I’ve been in a meeting.”

“Large explosion, officers already on the scene not responding. Looks similar to the thing in Maryland.”

“What thing in Maryland?”

“Turn on CNN, get caught up. We’ll get a command post set up somewhere on Royal, and you’d better think about getting out here, getting a statement ready for the press.”

“What do you think’s going on?”

“The ninjas are back. Nationwide, would be my guess. And they just declared war.”

+++++

News helicopters were still circling overhead three hours later, and while both Acheson and Dickinson had been up for over thirty hours they could see no end in sight. Ten officers down, six dead, four in the burn unit at Parkland, and more than sixty bodies found in the hotel – and in three nearby buildings that collapsed in the primary blast. One person tried to flee the scene and her car had been wired; as soon as she hit the ignition she – and everything within a hundred meter radius – was vaporized.

Reports came in that attacks similar to this one, as well as the one in Maryland, had been discovered, and possibly thwarted, but by late morning three more occurred – one in Atlanta, the next in Phoenix, and the third in Tacoma – and each blast occurred in a facility that had the word ‘manor’ in either the place-name or the address.

There was now, literally, nothing else on the news – on any channel – and as letters taking credit for the attacks began showing up at major broadcasters and newspapers, the group’s objectives were being splattered over the airwaves – and the ‘net – at an alarming pace.

Acheson and Dickinson walked the rubble after firefighters secured the scene, and it didn’t take them long. A large bedroom, far from the lobby on the second floor, hadn’t been completely destroyed by either the blast or the subsequent fires, and they found the shattered remains of a young boy, dead, tied to the four corners of the bed. He had been tortured, sexually, and apparently for an extended period of time, according to the initial forensic examination conducted on scene. The boy’s rectum had been savaged, and more than a pint of semen remained in his lower colon. ID, driver’s licenses and credit cards, had established that the pastor of a local, politically very active Baptist church was one of the pedophiles, and the other was Clive Thornton, brother of one of the judges found in the aftermath of the first blast on Manor Way.

And before CID or the FBI could confirm these identities, let alone finish their reports, news outlets on the national level were broadcasting not only who was at the Manor House Lodge in Dallas, but what they had been doing to deserve retribution – complete with audio – and video – of their actions.

By nightfall, people around the country had begun to doubt the integrity of their leaders as never before, and a great, shuddering sigh of anxiety could be felt all across the land.

+++++

“How bad is it?” a dour Genie Delaney said when she saw Ben walk in the door.

Acheson just shook his head, looked at her books stacked on the dining room table, noted the silent kitchen and groaned his way to the shower. He looked at his watch before he took it off and almost stumbled into the shower, trying to do the math in his head. Fifteen hours until he had to be out at DFW, fifteen hours until the next flight to Paris – then two days away from this Hell. Two days of – room service, two days of endless sleep.

Then what? Two days off. Then two days downtown, two more days of this never-ending Hell. Genie, ass-deep in her studies, too wrung-out to do even the simplest household chores, nail-biting anxiety as exam after exam rolled over her like waves breaking in a hurricane – and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do for her but try to help maintain some semblance of order around the house.

At least she wasn’t a slob, he thought as the hot water pounded the back of his neck. He put his arms out, leaned forward and let the water hit his lower back, then he felt a little blast of cool air. She was beside him then, then in front of him, on her knees. He felt her mouth engulf his need, felt her arms encircling his thighs and he moved into the zone, relaxing completely. How many days had it been, he wondered, but soon that calculus didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, nothing at all, only the smooth, easy rhythm that came so naturally to her.

He stood, moaned, put his hands behind her head and added his motion to hers, but then she picked up her pace. He felt her fingernails on the insides of his thighs, the water running down his legs, the electric flutters building in his gut…

“I’m close,” he said, and she picked up the pace. Swirling tongue, jackhammer rhythm, so much need – “I’m coming…” he managed to say, but still she kept up her driving pace…

He slipped into the clouds and the rain, felt the world dissolve, heard her sharp intake of breath as his cum screamed in release. Her head swirled now, creating a waterfall of new, overwhelming sensation and he felt his knees buckling, felt her swallowing, then bobbing for every last drop.

She came up to him a moment later, rinsed her face in the spray then nestled into his neck, holding him tightly.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“I couldn’t help it, Spud. You looked like you needed it – almost as much as I did.”

He looked into her eyes, felt himself adrift on the ocean of their love, basking in the light of her…

And he saw a red laser’s beam dancing across the back of the shower – and turned – saw a woman dressed all in black, standing in the doorway from the bedroom.

“What is it,” he heard Genie ask.

“I think we’re having company for dinner.”

+++++

“That was sweet,” the woman said. She was middled-aged, possessed peregrine eyes that took everything in, yet she was attractive, Acheson thought. Actually, more than attractive. Pure coiled energy, like a predator, yet still quite feminine.

And they were in the bedroom now, all curtains drawn, and there were five of them standing by the doors and windows – her guards dressed in black, all carrying H&K MP5s. All looked very focused, and more than a little menacing.

The woman looked at him, sighed, put her hands together. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said, handing him a towel, looking at his groin.

“Thanks,” Ben said. “If I’d known I was giving a performance I might have lasted a little longer, gone for a classier exit.” He was staring at the woman, memorizing her features: maybe fifty years old, sandy reddish-blond hair, very fit, hazel eyes and straight teeth. Maybe 5’5”, 120 pounds, and her feet were small, almost tiny. And her eyes: clear, intelligent, cool and calculating. Adversarial – predatory. He kept thinking peregrine, like a falcon’s eyes.

The woman smiled, just a little, then moved towards the door, shut it and locked it. “Sit down,” she commanded.

They sat. “Whatever you say,” he didn’t need to add. “Uh, to what do we owe this little visit?”

“Your conference, this morning.”

“So, you’re listening-in still?”

“You’re still on the right track,” the woman said, smiling broadly now, “and that surprised me.”

“That your group has gone political? All terrorist acts are political – so why should it surprise you that we came to that conclusion?”

“I wasn’t sure. Not after the airliner.”

“Collateral damage?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, sighing. “Unfortunate timing.”

“Well, it certainly got a lot of attention.”

“Not the kind we wanted.”

“What do you want? Why are you here?”

She opened a case, took out a large manilla envelope and handed it to him. “I’d like you to read this tonight, pass it on to your superiors if you deem it interesting.”

“You could have slipped this under the door mat. You haven’t answered my question: why are you here, now? This evening, in my house?”

“I wanted to meet you.”

“Oh?”

“And I wanted to tell you that as much as I admire you, and what you do, if you get too close I’ll hurt you. I’ll hurt you by killing her,” she said, pointing to Genie. “She won’t be able to hide, so think about what I’m saying.”

“You can’t expect me to not do my job?”

“I suppose I could simply tell you to quit the reserves, go fly full time, but the truth is, Ben, I admire your tenacity, your sudden flashes of insight. And I want…no, I need a worthy adversary.”

“Well then, logically, you think I’ll get too close, eventually. So, logically, you want me to succeed, and you want to kill Genie.”

“No. No I don’t.” She looked him in the eye, then stepped close, leaned over and kissed him, hard, on the lips. She slipped her tongue between his, reached down and pulled on his cock, then she stood over him, a look of triumph in her eyes. “No, Ben, I don’t want you to get too – close.” Then woman laughed a little, then the group simply walked out of the room and into the gathering night.

“Jesus,” Genie said, letting out a breath too long held, “what the fuck was that all about?”

“I have no clue,” he said, now shaking inside. “I felt like a cobra had coiled around me, uh, my neck when she did that.”

“Well, you must have liked it.”

He could feel it now, his cock standing straight up again. “Oh, no.”

“At least she didn’t give you a blow job,” Delaney said, but she appeared shook up, at least a little, he thought.

But something wasn’t right.

No jealousy, he sighed. No possessiveness.

Why not?

+++++

“At least she didn’t give you a blow job,” the woman heard on the video feed. She was watching the live feed from inside an agency van, watching Ben and Genie and the aftermath of their encounter, and she leaned over, turned up the volume.

“You think she wants me?”

“Did you hear what she said, about needing an adversary? Oh, yes, she wants you, Ben, she needs you, big time. That’s what she was saying. Killing me will, in her mind, only make you more available. You’ll be crushed after she kills me, but then she’ll pull you back out of yourself, back out into life among the living – her living. In the beginning, she’ll be your tormentor, then she’ll become your savior. In her mind, she’ll redeem both your sins and hers by claiming, and reclaiming, you.”

She listened to Delaney’s words and wanted to deny the truth she heard, but she too had been a profiler, and, like Delaney, had been with the FBI for years, before she moved to the NSA. She too was capable of extraordinary empathy, prone to sudden flashes of brilliant insight, but usually not where her own feelings were concerned – so as the girl’s words rocked her, she knew they may very well be true. The feeling in her gut when she saw him come out of the shower, the way his nakedness aroused her? She had wanted to fuck him like she had never wanted fuck anyone before, and yet even so she’d felt herself coming undone when he walked by, then felt the need to run from her feelings before they overwhelmed her. There had been more to tell him, instructions to relay, and now she’d have to contact him again.

She wasn’t used to making mistakes of this sort, and the idea bothered her. The very idea of him bothered her. She finished changing clothes as she watched them talk, and by the time the van drove out onto the private jet ramp at Love Field she was ready to play her part again. The dutiful Assistant Director sent by the President to ascertain the political fallout of the attacks in Dallas.

She hated this President, with all his blatant, corrupt hypocrisies – but he had been so useful. Until now, anyway. Now she had to deal with his buffoonery, his slip-ups on Twitter, and she was sure now his usefulness was at an end.

+++++

“Duke?”

“Yeah, Ben.”

“They just made contact.”

“Who?”

“They did. Their leader, I think.”

“In person?”

“They came inside the house, five of them, all heavily armed. The station is compromised, they’re listening to everything we say. I’d assume they’re listening to us right now.”

“Interesting. Were their faces covered?”

“Not the leader, but we need to talk. Echo all right with you?”

Dickinson seemed to hesitate. “It may be a while.”

“Carol?” Ben asked, sensing trouble in The Duke’s voice.

“Yup. Can it wait ‘til morning?”

“I don’t think so. I’ll be gone, and something big is brewing.”

“Right. Gimme an hour.”

Acheson hung up the phone, turned to Genie. “Something’s not right.”

“With what? Dickinson?”

“Yup. Are you sure that was her?”

“I am. It took me a minute, but I know who she is.”

“And she must know you know.”

“Safe assumption,” Genie said, looking away.

“So you really are in danger.”

She walked over to the window, looked out into the back yard. “I don’t like this weather. It’s unsettled, the clouds are moving too fast.”

He joined her, put his arms around her and held her close. “Everything is moving too fast. Maybe you should come with me. To Paris.”

“That would be nice.”

He felt a tremble pass between them, like insatiable need coming to an untimely end. “Come on. We’d better get some clothes on…”

“You don’t want to go naked?”

“Somehow I don’t think that’ll work out very well.”

“You’re no fun.”

“I know, but you still love me, don’t you?”

She turned, fell into his arms. “‘Til the end of time, Spud. ‘Til the end of time.”

+++++

It was called Flippen Park these days, but for ages it had been known as Echo Park, so-called after the little Renaissance-Romanesque gazebo in the center of the park that produced a surreal echo effect. The park surrounding the gazebo, though small, made for a nice place to walk, and to talk while keeping an eye out for someone following, or watching from a distance. Ben and Genie were standing not far from the gazebo when they saw a Highland Park Police patrol car drive by, the officer inside staring at them as she passed, then Dickinson’s car turned on Versailles from Lomo Alto. He pulled to a stop behind Delaney’s personal car and watched the patrol car make a u-turn and drive by again.

The officer stopped her car and got out, hands on her service pistol, and she walked up to Dickinson’s window.

“Good evening,” the officer said. “This is a residential neighborhood, what are you doing here?”

“I’m with Dallas, captain in CID. Badge is in my back left pocket.”

“Slowly,” she said, her hand on the holstered SIG. He took it out and handed it to her, and she flipped it open, looked at the badge and ID, then handed it back to him.

“I’m meeting them,” Dickinson said, pointing to Acheson and Delaney, and he thought he saw her smile.

“Okay,” the officer said, he thought a little too casually. “Y’all be careful out there.”

“Yeah, you too.” He watched the patrol car leave, but it went a block up Versailles and turned off it’s lights, the girl obviously watching them, so he got out and walked across the park to Ben and Genie.

“What was that all about,” Ben asked.

“I hate to say this, but my guess is she’s with them. So, what’s this all about?”

“The woman who came to the house,” Delaney began, “the woman Ben and I assume is this group’s leader, is Anne Rutherford. She was with the FBI, worked as a profiler in DC for fifteen years, but she moved over to NSA a few years ago. Right after I started with the Bureau.”

Dickinson whistled. “Fuck-a-doodle-do.” He looked up at the clouds, and they all turned when lightning lit the sky a few miles away. “You think she knows that you know?”

“Absolutely,” Delaney said.

“So that was part of the message. What was the other part?”

“This,” Ben said, holding out the envelope “and she told me if we get too close they’ll kill Genie.”

The Duke nodded his head, seemed to draw inward on himself. “When Carol got in this evening she seemed different. Unaffectionate, all business. Then she said pretty much the same thing to me: if we get too close she’d kill me.”

“She what?” Ben said, clearly alarmed now.

“I told her she’d better leave, and she just laughed. ‘Not a chance,’ she said. I guess the implication’s are clear enough. We’re penetrated, and I’m compromised. So. What’s in the envelope?”

“A manifesto, of sorts. A declaration of war, I think you could call it, but the gist of it is simple enough. Rights are never given, they’re earned, usually through blood sacrifice. The civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement were all shams, and women have banded together to take what is rightfully theirs. They’ve been gathering intel for years, who their friends are, and who’s the enemy. They’ll be taking out their enemies over the next few weeks.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Dickinson sighed. “I’d hate to be a Republican right about now.”

“I don’t think this is about party affiliation,” Delaney added, a hard, brittle edge in her voice. “I think this is about revenge, and retribution, and that’s going to cross party lines.”

“I think so, too,” Ben added. “There’s more than enough anger out there to turn this into a full-blown civil war, and enough military and law enforcement in their ranks to make them a more than credible force.”

“All those pedophile murders,” Dickinson said, suddenly thinking about last summer, “were just training exercises. Perfecting tactics, working out the kinks in their command and control network.”

“I think they’ve moved beyond that now,” Delaney said. “The problem is how do we…”

“Genie,” The Duke said, “there ain’t no ‘we’ in this deal, not now. You’re in medical school now…”

“And they just put me in the crosshairs, too, Duke,” she shot back. “You think I’m going to wait around until someone decides to shoot me in the back of the head, or cut open my belly again?”

He seemed taken aback by that – for a moment, anyway – then he nodded his head. “I hadn’t thought about it quite like that, but I think your finishing school is a higher priority.” He sighed, turned to Acheson: “Ben, I think you ought to turn in your notice, turn your back on the department, focus on your flying and getting a family started. There’s no telling how bad this is going to get, let alone who’s going to get hurt, or how long this is going to last. This isn’t the time or the place for heroics.”

The lightning was getting close now, the thunder growing louder, more insistent, and Acheson held out his right hand. “Okay, Duke,” he said, slipping a note into his hand. “We’ll be seeing you.” They turned and walked to Genie’s car, and The Duke walked back to his. The girl in the patrol car a block away took out a rarely used cell phone and hit a speed dial number, and reported what she’d seen.

The drone overhead had captured both the audio and video, so while her report was redundant, almost superfluous, Anne Rutherford was glad to have another layer of confirmation. With Acheson out of the way, and with Dickinson compromised, North Texas was no longer a concern.

Only four more cities to go, she told herself, and they’d move on the Federal Reserve, but first, she decided, it was time to neutralize the President. All she needed was a well-placed lie – and gravity would take care of the rest.

Chapter 19

Acheson sat behind the wheel, looked at Genie sitting beside him in the dark, then he flipped on the overhead light, picked up a notepad and began writing. “I need to get packed,” he said as he wrote, “and stop by the pharmacy on the way to the airport.”

“What time’s your flight?”

“I have to be in dispatch by nine. Scheduled departure is 10:20.”

He finished writing and handed her the pad, and she read while he started the car and drove up Versailles, then turned on Lomo Alto. At Mockingbird he turned right, and they drove in silence until he stopped at the light at Hillcrest, then he motored slowly through the SMU campus, checking for a tail, before he pulled into the driveway to his little house. He took the pad from her, tore the page from the pad and wadded it up as they walked inside.

He packed his clothes, took an envelope he kept inside a small, wall mounted safe and put it in his flight bag, then he sat beside her for a long time, rubbing her head.

She shook her head after a few minutes, stood and walked over to one of the bedroom windows. “I feel horrible inside,” she said as she looked at lightning dancing across the sky. “Like nothing makes sense anymore. I just want to go away and hide somewhere.”

“Might not be such a bad idea, if you could still look yourself in the eye, anyway. Not sure I’ll be able to, but I’ve had enough for now. I’m not sure this is a war we can win.”

“Nobody ever wins, Ben. Winning is an illusion, an idea politicians sell to get people ready for the next war.”

“You’re turning into a cynic, aren’t you?”

“We had to read this book for our Medical Ethics class,” she said, handing it to him. “It really shook me up.”

He turned the book over in his hand – 12, 20 & 5: A Doctor’s Year in Vietnam – then he read the blurb on the back cover. “Sounds, uh, interesting.”

“Interesting. Yes. It was that.”

“And?”

“I wonder…is it ever going to stop? I mean, what’s the point of all this – if we’re not going to learn from our mistakes? If we keep doing the same stupid stuff over and over again?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? What I do know is there’s always going to be somebody out there who wants your stuff, and who’s willing to kill you to get it. Does it really make any difference why?”

“Maybe not. Maybe we’ll always be Neanderthals. Maybe that’s just all there is, no getting past that.”

“You carried the badge, you know the score. Once upon a time I went with the assumption that all people are basically good. I mean, deep down. It took about a year on the street to figure out how stupid that is.”

“Is it? Maybe all people are born good, then maybe life changes us, slowly, little by little, until maybe it sucks the good right out of us. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with the species.”

“I don’t even know how to respond to that. How do you explain a Mother Theresa, a Gandhi?”

“Did you ever read any Piaget? Or Kohlberg?”

He shrugged. “My degree was in engineering, remember?”

“You should read up on Lawrence Kohlberg. The stages of moral development.”

“They making you read that stuff, too?”

“Yup.”

“Morality and medicine, huh. Well, there’s an unexpected thought.”

“You’re a philistine!” she said, laughing a little.

He tuned the book over in his hand again. “Mind if I take it with me?”

“No, go ahead. You’ve been warned, though. Might change the way you think. What’d you need at the pharmacy?”

“Some more eyedrops.”

“I’ve got a spare. Want to take mine?”

“You don’t mind?”

“No. You still having trouble?”

“Smog and dry air. Bad combination.”

“Just use the drops, and stop rubbing your eyes. You get nodular episcleritis a few more times and you’ll need to go back to the doc for some real work.”

“Wish I’d taken a nap yesterday.”

“What is it, a seven hour flight?”

“Depends on the jet-stream, but that’s close enough. Usually closer to eight.”

“Where are you staying?”

He shrugged. “Usually out by the airport. Marriott, probably.”

“Makes sense, I guess.”

“You haven’t been yet, have you?”

She shook her head. “No, I haven’t. Can’t imagine why, either.”

“We’ll have more time now. Burning the candle at both ends…isn’t that what you said I was doing?”

“Yup. Maybe we could go – together? Still, I’m not sure…”

“Look, the cop thing is over with now. Time to move on.”

“You think you’ll miss it?”

“Being a cop? Hell yes. Every day.”

“I do, too.”

“You should’ve gone straight to med school, never done the FBI thing.”

“I know. 20-20 hindsight, huh?”

“And I never should have joined the department.”

“Well, the bottom fell out on the airlines, didn’t it. You weren’t the only one laid off.”

“It’ll happen again, you know,” he said. “If this really turns into a full blown civil war, the global economy will tank.”

“I know.”

“Then what?”

“Then we pick up the pieces. I get through school, you go work for the Sanitation Department…You can drive a truck, I take it?”

He chuckled. “I guess I deserve that.” He looked at his watch, shook his head. “I’m going to miss you, maybe a little more than usual this time.”

“You’ll be gone, what, three days?”

“Yup.”

She came and they hugged, then he picked up his bags and walked out to his department car, then he drove downtown and parked it in the central lot and hailed a cab for the ride out to the airport.

He got inside the taxi and ignored the man in the back seat by his side while he buckled his seat belt, then he turned and looked at The Duke, who handed him an overstuffed envelope.

“Here’s the contact information, and what little background info I could lay my hands on.”

“Seattle PD?”

“Yeah. Went out on a medical. CID for fifteen or so years. He says their department is completely compromised, the FBI field office out there is too.”

“What’s Carol think?”

“About?”

“Rutherford.”

“Not much. They’re very compartmentalized, local cells, then regional. The national hierarchy is diffuse. She really doesn’t know the details, and is getting testy when I ask.”

“Think she can infiltrate?”

“Nope. She thinks even making the attempt would expose her. She’s walking a razor’s edge as is, one slip and they’ll know she’s playing both sides against the middle.”

“You wanna get her out?”

Dickinson sighed, then shook his head. “Not yet. I’d like to know what their objectives are locally first.”

Acheson snorted. “I’d say we know that, already. Discredit the political system, expose corrupt officials, then…”

“Yeah, it’s the ‘then’ thing that has me bothered, Ben. What comes next, you know? Yeah, I get the whole ‘discredit’ and ‘expose’ thing, but what’s their end game? And what lengths are these people prepared to go to in order to achieve their goals?”

“Well, they’ve killed over a thousand people in the last two days…”

“Exactly. So, what’s next?”

“Who’s next might be the better question.” Acheson added.

“You ever wonder why so many of people in government have such serious kinks? Why so many kids have been a part of this?”

Acheson shook his head. “I’m no expert, but the whole BDSM thing is about consensual control, isn’t it? With control the operative principle? And the pedophile angle? That’s got to be about exercising power over someone completely, well, powerless hardly describes a kid.”

“What you said, the whole ‘manor’ thing, the medieval feudalism angle? What do you make of that?”

“Well, feudal power rested within an uneasy alliance between lorded aristocrats and the church. That’s beginning to resemble our modern world again, isn’t it? A vested political elite appealing to an evangelical class – which itself wants greater access to power and money – in order to solidify their own hold on power. It’s a symbiotic relationship, Duke. They’re feeding off one another, until one gains momentary supremacy, anyway, then there’s a renewed power struggle after a new hierarchy emerges, until the other can maneuver into a position of supremacy again.”

“Dominance games?”

Acheson laughed at that. “All world history deconstructed into dominance games. With the emerging sexual undertones we’re finding each day, that may not be too far off.”

“Simple way to end that world would be to cut off all the balls. Get rid of testosterone as the fuel driving the motor of civilization.”

“Or…get rid of all men in positions of political power.” Acheson and The Duke looked at one another, then both shook their heads and laughed.

“No way,” they said in unison. “Not gonna happen.”

The Duke looked out the window, at the world passing by, still trying to make sense of the new contours taking shape out there.

“What happens if things get out of hand, Ben? Start to spiral out of control?”

“I told Genie to head out west, to Alpine. My gramps has a place out there. Cattle for the most part, but he’s kind of a survivalist, big on self-sufficiency.”

“Maybe I could tag along with her?”

“Sure. I told her I’d try to get there…if something starts to go down.”

“I have a bad feeling, Ben. Like things could break down fast. Once it does, things will take on a momentum of their own.”

“Oh, you know, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Someone will figure out how to…”

“I’m not so sure, Ben, not this time. This time feel different.”

+++++

He had a new First Officer that morning, and she was already at work in the cockpit when he walked in and hung up his jacket. He stood by the closet door and looked at her for a moment, wondering, then turned to stow his flight bag – but she was up, her hand out, waiting for him.

“Sandy Beecham,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve flown together before.”

“Ben Acheson,” he said, taking her hand – while thinking ‘My, that was fast.’ “No, I don’t think we have. Ready to take a walk?”

“Yup,” she said, gathering up her raincoat.

It would be at least another 45 minutes before pre-boarding began, but it was still raining out so he slipped his rain jacket on too. They walked out through the galley to the stairs off the Jetway, then on out into the storm. He looked up at the clouds once he was on the wet concrete, scudding low, whipping across the prairie, they gray-brown grass around the airport driven by a howling north wind, then he walked to the left wing while Beecham took off for the right. He checked tread depths on tires, talked to the ground chief about the turn-around report and what had been finished – and the squawks that remained on the 777s ‘down’ list – then he signed the fuel load-out and finished his walk-around, meeting up with Beecham under the tail.

“Look good?” he asked.

She nodded her head. “Hardly anyone onboard today,” she added. “Five in First, three in Business, and fifteen in coach.”

He shook his head again, wondered how long the airline could keep this up. So much uncertainty, and coming on so quickly, had undermined international commerce, and once again consumer confidence had fallen through the floor. With fuel prices spiking, this 777 needed almost 70 percent of her seats filled just to break even, and today’s load was nowhere near that. He was a captain now, but he was low on the seniority list and that familiar worrying sensation came back again. He’d be among the first let go this time…

“You ready to head up?” she asked, but she was watching him closely now.

“Hmm. Oh, yes, let’s go.”

“You alright?”

“I was just thinking, about the last time. In 2008, with the crash. How fast the lay-offs came…”

“Me too,” she said. “I was at Northwest, had just started in A320s, then the boom fell.”

“Too much uncertainty out there right now. Things feel spooked.”

They started walking back to the Jetway, both lost in thought, and they slipped into the cockpit and took their seats quietly. But the routine was the same, and they fell back into the familiar: they pulled out checklists and began waking the bird up, getting ready like today was just another day.

But of course it wasn’t. Pilots in the dispatch office had been wary, on edge, and even the weather was unsettled. Like the earth had decided it had had enough, and even it too wanted change. Big change.

“Someone told me you work with the Police Department, here in Dallas.”

“I did,” he lied. “I quit recently. Too much on my plate.”

She nodded her head. “Got to be confusing. You look tired. Get much sleep last night?”

“You know, I had trouble falling asleep. All this stuff on the news I guess,” but he found himself thinking of Genie – and that book about the doctor in Vietnam. He wanted to go someplace quiet, find a fat chair seat by a fireplace and read for a while, but he shook himself back into the present…

“You married,” she asked.

He turned and looked at her, pointed at the ceiling – the universal sign that the cockpit voice recorder was on – and he began calling out the pre-start checklist. He was all business now, and a few minutes later the Trip-7 was pushing back from the gate.

“American 48 heavy, clear to taxi,” the tower said, “on K to 1-7 Right, DALLAS FOUR departure approved. Winds out of the south now, 1-6-6 degrees at four knots, ceiling 2500, visibility five miles, altimeter two niner niner one.”

He watched as the push-back cart disengaged and pulled away, then reached up and turned on the wipers as Beecham began starting two. The ground chief standing in the rain below got on the intercom: “Okay, double checks on baggage doors complete, all show red-locked. You’re ready to go, Captain.”

“Thanks, Chief,” Acheson said, and when the man was clear he advanced the throttles and cleared the brakes, then began the short taxi out to the runway.

“Pre-takeoff checklist complete,” Beecham said as he slowed at the EK intersection, then a powerful gust shook the aircraft. “That’s out of the north,” he said, then he called the tower. “Uh, 48 Heavy, can you re-advise wind speed and direction, please.”

“Uh, 48 Heavy, winds now out of the north at 2-5 knots. Standby one.”

“48, standing by.”

“Uh, 48 Heavy, take off runway 3-5 Left, BLECO SEVEN departure now active, winds now 0-1-0 degrees at 2-7 knots, altimeter two niner niner four.”

“3-5 Left and BLECO SEVEN, 48 Heavy.”

“Look at those clouds,” Beecham said, and he looked left, to the north. The clouds were almost black, and he thought he could see a wall cloud off to the left.

“Uh, 4-8 Heavy, you got anything on doppler to the north northwest?”

“4-8, heavy precip, no hooks.”

“I think I see a wall cloud from up here. Might keep an eye out.”

“Uh, tower, Delta 224, we just went through and it’s a screamer, picked up some hail and a lot of chop.”

Acheson listened as the tower advised all aircraft in the pattern of the storm, and they taxied south for the new runway; he re-entered the new departure information on his FMC, or flight management computer, and he watched as his display changed, as new waypoints and steering commands appeared on his display. An American Eagle RJ ahead pulled onto the runway and roared by, then he stopped at the holding area and double checked power settings and climb angles entered in the computer.

“4-8 Heavy, taxi to position and hold.”

“Heavy.” He released the brakes, turned onto the runway and lined up on the centerline, applied the brakes and waited. He peered into the sky a little off to the left. “I don’t like this,” he sighed.

“What?”

“That cloud.” He keyed the mic again: “4-8 Heavy, any update on this storm?”

“Still heavy rain, no hooks. Uh, Heavy, you are clear for take off.”

“4-8 rolling,” he said as he advanced the throttles. He scanned the engines then began looking at the storm…

“80 knots,” Beecham called out, then “V-one…and…rotate…”

He pulled back on the stick…

“Tower to all aircraft…tornado on the ground one mile north of 3-6 Right, repeat, tornado on the ground. The pattern is closed, the airport is closed!”

He looked to the left and saw the rope twisting in the sky and turned right. “Go to full take off power. Positive rate…”

“Gear coming up. Where is it?”

“Right fucking there,” he said – as the skies opened up. They flew into an impossibly thick hail storm, then the right wing dipped, and dipped some more. He didn’t fight it, turned right with the gust. “Uh, tower, 4-8, heavy hail, we’re turning right to 0-2-0 degrees.”

“0-2-0 approved, contact departure on 1-2-5-decimal-1-2, and good day.”

“48, bye.” He switched frequencies. “American 4-8 Heavy, out of 3-5 Left for BLECO, we’re deviating around this funnel cloud, on 0-2-0 right now. What’s it look like out there?”

“4-8 Heavy, resume 0-0-4 degrees as soon as possible, direct to YUNGG at 7000 approved. Storm is now at your eight o’clock, four miles. Do you have any damage?”

“Nothing showing right now.”

“Okay, 4-8, only traffic now a Delta MD80 at your ten, eight miles, he’ll be turning ahead of you, about two thousand over.”

“4-8, got it. Where are the tops right now?”

“Solid to flight level 2-4-0.”

“4-8, okay.” He shook his head, scanned the engines again – looking for any sign hail ingestion had damaged a fan blade, but everything looks good. “Let’s clean the wing,” he said as he turned to the originally programmed course.

“Flaps and slats up.”

“Well, that was fun,” he said.

“You mind if I go change my underwear now?”

He laughed, turned on the intercom: “Uh, ladies and gentlemen, for those of you on the left side of the aircraft, yes, that was a tornado. Sorry, that thing came out of nowhere and we had to make a few abrupt turns, but we’re on time and it looks like we’ll be in Gay Par-ee a little after midnight local time. No more bad weather on the radar, so as soon as we reach our cruising altitude the crew will be around to serve lunch. We’ll keep the seatbelt signs lit until we’re out of this cloud, so sit tight and enjoy the ride.” He flipped off the intercom, but the chief flight attendant called as soon as he did.

“Uh, Captain, it’s like floor to ceiling barf back here. Carpets, walls, you name it.”

“Was it that bad?”

“You have no idea. Half the overhead bins popped, one woman didn’t have her seatbelt latched properly.”

“Is she hurt?”

“Don’t think so, maybe a few bruises.”

“Okay. Keep me posted.” He looked at the FMC and watched it make the turn at YUNGG.

“4-8 Heavy, clear to flight level 2-7-0, contact Oklahoma Center 1-2-4-decimal-1 and good day.”

“4-8, bye.” He turned to Beecham as he changed COMMs. “Go back and take a look around. See if this bird needs a look see in Tulsa. Check on the folks, wave the flag.”

“Right.” She got up to leave and he put his mask on, and after she left he sealed the door again. Such a visit was now very unusual, but he felt it warranted under the circumstances. She chimed a few minutes later, and he picked up the intercom.

“Nothing bad,” she said, “but I think the ground crew at CDG ought to be warned. Maybe a few seats need to changed out, that kind of thing.”

“The injured woman?”

“There’s a doc onboard. He says it’s no biggie.”

“Okay. Codeword?”

“Pink-two.”

“Opening now.” He unsealed the door and Beecham came in, double locked the door then sat down. She handed him a sandwich and a Coke, then buckled up.

“What is it today?”

“They had pink sludge, and green. This is the pink.”

“Okay. But what is it?”

“Supposed to be roast beef on rye.”

“It’s oozing. I’ve never seen roast beef ooze before.”

She unwrapped her’s and took a tentative sniff.

“Goddamn, I can smell it from here,” he said, and she tossed them in the trash.

“I brought a couple of granola bars,” she added.

“I think I’ll wait. There might be some good food left in Paris.”

“Not a three in the morning.”

“Good point,” he said as he took the offered granola bar from her. ‘Well,’ he thought, ‘is she one of them? Is she going to try to kill me right here? Now? Can I not trust any woman, ever again?’ He sighed, tore open the mylar wrapper and started in on the bar. ‘Can’t live that way. Not sure I’d want to live that way…’ then, for some reason, he thought of a play he’d had to read back in high school. A Greek comedy? About women, and the Peloponnesian War? Women who joined together, stopped having sex so men would stop making war? What the hell was the name of that?

“Lysistrata!” he shouted.

“What?”

“Oh, I was just thinking,” he said, but he saw the look she gave him just then. A little sidelong glance, a look full of suspicion. Then he settled in for the flight, centered his thinking and time passed.

“Do you think they’re serving real food in First today?” he said a while later.

“You hungry?”

“I am. Skipped breakfast, can’t even remember what we did for dinner.”

“So, you’re not married?” she said, ignoring his earlier warning about the CVR.

He sighed. “Not technically, but I might as well be. Genie. She’s in med school at Southwestern.”

Beecham laughed. “That’s too much.”

“Oh?”

“My husband was in med school; he started his internship and filed for divorce the same day. I paid the bills while he was having an affair – with a goddamn nurse, too!”

“Sorry. What do you think happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, it’s just the cop in me, I guess, but marriages rarely fail due to just one person’s issues. It’s more like a group effort.”

She leaned back, sighed…

“4-8 Heavy, Toronto Center, clear to flight level 4-1-0.”

“4-8 to 4-1,” he said as he leaned forward and entered the change on the AP panel, then initiated the climb.

“I never looked at it that way,” she added.

“You know, you’ll burn up inside if you can’t put yourself in the other fellas shoes every now and then.”

“I know.”

And he chuckled.

“What’s that for?”

“Oh, every time I hear someone say ‘I know’ I think that’s the last thing on their mind. ‘I know’ is a deflection, a statement used to turn away from an uncomfortable truth.”

“You study psychology, too?”

“Engineering.”

“Okay. Now I’m confused.”

“Oh?”

“I thought engineers were anal retentive types, all numbers and slide-rules and shit like that.”

“Did you say slide-rules? How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Air Force?”

“Navy.”

“Oh, that explains it.”

“What?”

“Oh, Navy pukes still use slide-rules and have wind-up rubber bands in their engines.”

She laughed. “Don’t tell me. Air Farce.”

“Up in the air, Junior Bird Man,” he sang. “So. What was your contribution?”

Beecham looked out the windshield for a while, then she turned to him. “Mind if I turn off the CVR for a few minutes?”

“Oh. I don’t know,” he said as he nodded.

She reached to the back panel of the overhead panel and flipped the breaker, then shook her head. “He wanted sex, like all the time. I mean, like whenever we were together, but after a while it became mechanical, no love at all. He wouldn’t kiss me, or even say anything to me during. He just wanted to get his rocks off, and I began to feel like I was his plaything, his personal vagina, just someplace to shoot his load.” She looked away, and he saw she was upset.

“That sounds lonely,” he said.

“Yeah, it was.”

“So, you were upset when the divorce came?”

“Yeah,” she said, but she was crying a little now.

Time to get back on the clock, he said to himself. “We’ll finish this up later,” he said. “Turn on the recorder.”

“Yessir.”

The sun was setting now, and he saw stars popping out ahead, and an endless layer of low cloud stretched ahead.

“I never get tired of the view up here,” she sighed.

“Me too. It’s magic.”

“You know where we’re staying?”

“The Marriott.”

“At the airport?”

“Yup.” He noticed she hadn’t turned on the recorder yet, and he looked at her, wondered what was going on in her head. “The recorder?” he reminded her.

“Oh, right.” But still she didn’t move. “Is everything okay between you and – Genie?”

“Yup.”

“I haven’t been with anyone in a while.”

“A while?”

“Three years, and change.”

“Jeez.”

“I don’t suppose you’d care to help me out with that, would you?”

He looked at her, looked at her looking down at her hands, trembling a little – like a little girl. “You know, if you need a shoulder, or someone to talk to, yeah. I’ll be right there.”

She nodded her head, sighed. “Okay,” she whispered, then she turned around and flipped on the CVR. “Thanks,” she said.

The rest of the flight passed uneventfully, and they landed in Paris a little before two in the morning. Ah hour later they checked into the Marriott; he went up to his room and watched Beecham walk into the room next to his, then after he dumped his bags he called Genie.

“How’d it go?”

“Rough.”

“I heard about the tornado. Were you near it?”

“We were in it, real close, as it turned out.”

“In the air?”

“Maybe a few hundred yards. Close, in other words.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“How was school?”

“Oh, you know. The same. I saw Carol this evening.”

He was instantly on guard now. “Oh, how is she?”

“Uh, she seemed fine.” Which was Genie’s way of saying she had been anything but.

“Hear from The Duke?”

“Yep, he came over a while ago.”

“Oh?”

“Right after Carol left.”

“Oh?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Okay.”

“What time do you get in Friday?”

“Around 3:30.”

“Want me to pick you up?”

“Could you?”

“Sure.”

“That’d be great.”

“Okay, see you then.”

“Thanks, Genie. I love you…”

But she had already rung off. He put the phone down and looked at it for a while, then lay down and turned out the lights.

+++++

He slept in, woke up around noon and saw his message light flashing on the house phone. He dialed the message line and listened.

“Hey, Captain Sleepy-head. Call my room when you get this?”

He trudged to the head and showered, brushed his teeth, then went back to the desk and called her room.

“You weren’t kidding,” Beecham said.

“What?”

“That you didn’t sleep the night before. You were a zombie in the crew shuttle; Bruce thought you were going to pass out.”

“I feel like I could use another few hours.”

“I went into the city, bought a few things.”

“Oh? How were the crowds?”

“None. Even the Chinese are gone.”

“Damn.”

“I know. Say, you want a back rub?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Could you give me a few minutes. I want to try something on, and I need your opinion.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Thanks. Give me five minutes, and my door’s unlocked.”

He looked at the adjoining doors, and he went over and moved the little baggage rack out of the way, then put on some khakis and a polo shirt. He looked at himself in the mirror, looked at the redness in his eyes and shook his head, then went and opened the door.

All the lights in her room were off, the curtains drawn.

“I’m in the bathroom,” she said. “Be right out.”

He went in, sat in a chair by the window and sighed, then the bathroom light went out and she walked into the room.

She was dressed in black – black lingerie, stockings and heels, and she walked across the room, right up to him.

“What do you think?” she said. “You like the way this stuff looks?”

“You know, I think I need to go now,” he said, trying to stand. But she stepped closer still and blocked his way, pushed him down into the chair. “Look, I’m serious…”

“So am I, Ben. I need you. Oh, God, how I need to feel you right now. I need to feel you inside of me, need to feel your cum inside of me.”

“I, uh…”

“Please don’t say no, Ben,” she said as she moved closer. “Don’t do this to me, not now.” She pulled his face forward, until the side of his face rested on her panties and garters, and she pushed and gyrated against his skin until she felt his resolve softening. When his hands went around her thighs she smiled inside…

The camera had a hard time focusing in such low light, but the operator adjusted the gain a little, then began recording.

Part IV – The Lioness, and the Tethered Goat

Chapter 20

Off the coast of Oregon

It’s hard to say when we jelled as a crew. The three of us, I mean.

Leaving Puget Sound on a sunny winter morning, heading outside together for only our second time together. Past Victoria, past where we had our little epiphany – with the Beretta and the Great White. Turning south at Tatoosh, running down the coast for days, sailing past the nightmarish Columbia River bar for the easier pass at Coos Bay. Cross the bar, sail under McCullough Bridge into the back bay, tie up at the little marina back near the flats. Pump out the holding tanks, fill up with diesel and spend the night after a quick dinner ashore, then back out into the Pacific.

We kept close enough to the coast to keep cell coverage, and about half way down to San Francisco I watched news reports on my phone, about bombings in Dallas and Maryland while I sat behind the wheel. Persephone was with me when I started swearing.

“Woodie?” she said, clearly alarmed. “What is it?”

I handed her the phone.

“Oh, no.”

“I think it’s started,” I sighed.

You know, there’s something heartbreaking about a cute girl saying ‘Oh, no.’ Like watching a little girl on her first bicycle falling down and scraping her knee, there’s a helplessness inside the moment. Maybe a little inevitability, too, but that’s not the point. I looked at my golden girl, the sudden pout on her lips, in her eyes – and I just wanted to hold her close.

Then the phone chirped and she gave it back. I looked at the screen: “Chief Anders,” I said, “Yo. Chief.”

“Where are you?”

“Coming up on Point Arena, not quite ten miles offshore.”

“You see the stuff about Dallas?”

“Yessir.”

“This is it, isn’t it?”

“Opening move, my guess, anyway.”

“How far are you from San Francisco?”

“About a hundred and ten miles from the Golden Gate. Call it tomorrow afternoon, late.”

“Fuck. Why couldn’t you buy a goddamn motor boat. I can walk faster than that festering turd.”

“What’s up, Chief.”

“There’s a Coast Guard facility, on the east side of Treasure Island. Call them on 72 when you pass the Gate, then follow their instructions.”

“Chief? You didn’t answer my question.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Roger that.”

“Let me know if you need anything.”

“We’re running low on condoms, Chief. Think you could…”

“Woody?”

“Yes, Chief?”

“Fuck you, Woody.”

“Thank you, Chief.”

The line went dead, and Sephie just looked at me, scowling.

“What is it, baby.”

“We’re not low on condoms, Woody? I didn’t even think we were using condoms anymore.”

Ah, that’s my Persephone. Did I mention…well, yes, I’m sure I did. She’s a natural blond, through and through, and I love her more than life itself.

+++++

“Sailing Vessel Black Dog calling Coast Guard on 72.”

“Black Dog, Coast Guard, what’s your location?”

“Just coming up on the west span.”

“Roger that.”

And that was, indeed, that.

Then I saw an aluminum CG 44 footer cutting through the bay, headed right for us, and the little ship turned wide and came up on us from the rear. I held a steady course while it came alongside, and I saw a lieutenant come to the rail as they slowed and matched speed.

“You Woodward,” the lieutenant said, his eyes focused like twin lasers on Sephie’s chest.

“I am. And this is Persephone,” I said, as graciously as I could, “And this is Liza.”

“Yes they are,” he stumbled, his eyes still locked on Sephie cleavage. “You need to follow me, sir, and we’ll help you get tied up.”

I had to laugh. He’d never run across two girls more adept at tying things up than these two. If he only knew, right?

+++++

Once we were tied up the lieutenant led me to an administrative building, and Anders was inside, laptop on desk reading away intently. Tate stood in a far corner, looking out the window. He looked at me and gave a quick nod, and I did the same.

“Sit down, Woodie,” Anders said absently, yet his eyes never left the screen. I watched him for a few minutes, then he closed the screen and turned to Richard. “Tate? Take a seat.”

“Okay.”

“You been keeping up with all this?” Anders asked, looking at me.

“There’s been more?”

He nodded his head. “About ten strikes so far. Another in Dallas, a few on the east coast, a few out here.”

“And?”

“They’re targeting politicians, compromised politicians and people in…”

“Let me guess. Corrupt judges, lawyers, cops?”

“Among others, yes. The press, broadcast reporters, and some pervs, too.”

“And what’s this got to do with me?”

“When Tottenham took out that girl…”

“MJ?”

“Yes, the Kopecki girl. Seems she was head of the local branch of, well, you remember reading that intel report on the stuff going on down in Dallas?”

“Some women, wasn’t it? Targeting pedophiles?”

“Uh, yeah. Well, they were dressed as Ninja.”

And I remembered MJs girls up in the cockpit, dressed in black, like Ninja. “So, MJs girls and Tottenham’s group weren’t together?” I asked quietly, if only to myself.

“Nope. Brennan thinks Kopecki’s Ninja group infiltrated Tottenham’s ‘whips and chains’ crowd, seemed to integrate with them, and I emphasize the word ‘seemed,’ but now the Ninjas are taking them out – and it’s a nationwide effort, with all that implies.”

“So, these two groups are everywhere, and a war between them is breaking out?”

Tate nodded, cleared his throat. “My guess is when Tottenham took out Kopecki he started a war, and while the moves we’ve seen so far are overt, and very public attacks, a bunch of the Kinks have turned up dead, sometimes in their homes, in their cars, but not in an overt manner.” He tossed some photos on the table and I picked them up, flipped through a couple. Slit throats, bullets in the face, the usual.

So our immediate concern is this,” Anders interjected. “These two girls of yours were in deep, up to their eyeballs in that kink group, and those people are disappearing like snowballs in the Sahara right now.”

I nodded my head. “Yessir. I see where this is going.”

“Okay. Second concern. They’re either taking out cops directly, or compromising us. Blackmail, set ups and blackmail. There’s a Captain in CID down in Dallas. Dickinson’s his name, and he led the investigation last summer. He’s compromised, or so he says, but his lead on the case, a kid named Acheson, isn’t. The thing is, he’s a reserve. His day job is with American, flies for a living. He’s on his way to Paris as we speak. And you’re leaving at nine tonight.”

“Sir?”

“For Paris. I want you to compare notes, and Tate has a few toys he’d like you to try out. He’ll be with you, but I want you to get this Acheson fella up to speed on things going on out here, the structure we know about…”

“Chief, you can’t expect me to leave the girls here?”

“Safest place for them right now is at sea, next safest place is tied up right here. For now, anyway. Brennan wants to take them and put them in Witness Protection.”

“Jesus.”

“Except he thinks the Marshall’s are compromised too.”

“Oh, now that’s just fuckin’ great. Tell me, Chief. What have they got on you?”

And I could see it in his eyes, before he turned away. “Yeah, don’t ask, Woody. I’m going to go down in flames, and soon. They got me with a hooker a few months ago.”

“Marie doesn’t know?”

“Nope.”

“Why don’t you just tell her. Apologize like hell, get down on your knees and beg for her forgiveness.”

He almost laughed. “What if she’s one of them, Woodie.”

I didn’t know what to say. “You think that’s possible?”

He nodded his head. “They’ll crucify me on TV, and within days I’ll be gone.”

“You know, I think this is going to be impossible to stop. Whatever it is they’re doing, they’ve been planning it for years, quietly moving assets into place, and they’re not constrained by the norms of typical political debate. They’re going to take out their enemies, violently – publicly, then, after compromising the ethics of the standing elite, they’ll just move in to fill the vacuum.”

“Yup. I hear the Romans did it that way a few times, and it worked for them, I guess. Quick, bloody coups work. That’s the lesson.”

“So, we’re Rome now?”

He snorted. “Hell, we’re just people, Woodie. People arrive at similar solutions to similar problems.”

“And we create the same problems, over and over again, don’t we?”

“Maybe so. Whatever, someone else made that call. We either fight them now, or we roll over and play dead.”

“I think I should get on my goddamn boat and get the fuck out of Dodge.”

“I do too. I would if I could.”

“Then why? Why ask me to do this?”

“Maybe there’s a chance you and Tate can figure something out.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. A group with thousands of people spread throughout government, with several years head start, and that’s killing with impunity? What am I supposed to figure out, Chief?”

“Look at it this way, Woodward. We’re in the beginning stages of a civil war. The president and the Joint Chiefs are looking at it this way, too. The next step is to find the snake and cut off it’s head.”

“What if there’s more than one snake?”

“Then they’re going to start killing all the snakes.”

“What?”

“You heard me. It kind of gives a whole new meaning to Gender Wars, doesn’t it? Round up suspected women, everywhere, and kill them.”

“This is seriously being considered?”

“The pieces are being moved on the board as we speak.” He looked at me, then at Tate.

“And pawns will be sacrificed,” I sighed, “won’t they?”

“Yes, Woodie, pawns will be sacrificed.”

+++++

I gave the girls the rundown and they took the news about as expected: Sephie went into full meltdown mode and Liza went aft and helped me pack, then she started packing a bag too. Tate looked at her, then at me – shaking his head.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re coming with you. And don’t even think of arguing with me, either of you.” When she was packed, she went forward and got Persephone. “Where’s your Passport?” she asked, and they went went to my safe and got them just as I felt else someone hop onboard.

“Woodie?” I heard Anders say from the cockpit.

“Yes, Chief?”

“How’s your heart?”

I shrugged.

“Would it be better if these girls went with you?”

“Probably.”

“Well, get ‘em packed up, then we’ll make a run for the airport.”

“Yes, Chief.” He threw me a wallet, and I opened it – then looked up at him.

“I know. Kind of funny, but Brennan insisted, and who knows, it may come in handy. Anyway, if anyone asks you’re the AD of their SeaTac field office, tasked with counter-terrorism operations. And you’re authorized to carry this,” he said, handing me a Sig P-220, “everywhere. Even on the goddamn airplane.”

Liza was looking at all this go down, then she came up from behind and put her arms around me. “Come on, sweet-cheeks,” she said. “It’s time to go save the world.”

+++++

We flew over on Air France, in one of those A380 double deckers, and the changes were obvious as they were unsettling.

In the airport, very few women seen, not even behind the counters. On the aircraft, the same story: all the flight attendants were male, and only a few passengers were female – and those were Muslim. Not that it mattered; on an airplane designed to haul over 500 people, there were less that fifty on board, and it didn’t matter what class you were in, everyone got the same chow. Factory made sandwiches, all beverages either canned or poured from a sealed bottle. Paranoia run amok, I think, and to me it felt like the initial conclusions had been assimilated by leaders in Washington D.C. and then passed on to world leaders: a cabal of women was behind these attacks, and they were intent on taking over the country, maybe even the world. Was Anders mimicking a greater breathless hysteria, or was something really so formidably drastic taking shape all around us?

The four of us sat together on the upper deck, and there was a television show playing while we boarded, a French production, the dialogue translated as text, streaming along the bottom of the screen. Women all across Europe were not showing up at their jobs, men were reporting that wives and girlfriends had simply stopped having sex with them, then a reporter in Tokyo was onscreen, saying much the same thing. In Brazil? The same. Cape Town? Ditto. From Amsterdam to Zimbabwe, women were disengaging from civic life, and from their personal routines, too. More ominously still, local politicians’ illicit sex lives were making their way online, or on-the-air, and the same pattern first noted in Dallas, then around the United States, began appearing around the world. Weird sex clubs and rampant pedophilia were the norm in these lurid exposés, and some of the politicians caught up in the reports resigned forthwith. Those that didn’t soon turned up in charred wreckage somewhere – a bombed out motel or warehouse frequently the scene.

And I noticed that while Sephie watched the unfolding horror with empathy in her eyes, Liza watched for a moment – then turned away.

And perhaps I hadn’t seen the faint echoes of a smile on her face. Maybe it was all just my imagination.

Then I saw a live report from Paris, something about Christmas shopping, and I saw snow falling in the cameras lights, then looked down at my shorts and boat shoes. Had I even packed one pair on long pants? Hell, I couldn’t even remember if I owned any long pants.

That’s what living on a boat with two sadomasochistic nymphomaniacs will do to you.

+++++

Paris is, I suppose, simply Paris – and it always will be, right? Another big city with a phallic monument in the center. A male phallus, of course – at least that was Liza’s version of the city as we drove in from the airport – but she seemed more than a little put out by the whole phallus thing. Like she was anxious, even angry about men and their penises – and how we’d, figuratively speaking, of course, rammed our dicks down the world’s throats since the beginning of time.

“Excuse me,” I said to her sulking reflection in the window, “but is it that time of month?”

Which was, of course, not the right thing to say. At all.

Arms crossed over chest, steam coming out ears, she glowered the rest of the way into the city. Sephie, of course, looked out the window, oohing at the Eiffel Tower while Liza snorted derisively. Yin and Yang, Ego and Super-Ego, two sides of the same coin – falling through time. One was Conscience, the other Lust, and isn’t it a simple truth that we go through life attracted to both – and yet we can never decide which we hold most important?

Someone had booked us into a little hotel on the Ile Saint Louis; we walked up to our room and I showered while the girls unpacked, and as I dressed I heard Liza talking to Sephie.

“You stay here, keep an eye on the room.”

“I want to go with him,” my golden Persephone said. “You’re so mad right now you’ll get him in trouble.”

“I will not.”

“You will to.”

“Uh, girls. I’m sorry, but Daddy doesn’t like to see his baby girls acting like three year olds. Can we get it together? Or does Daddy have to go out by himself?”

Then Liza cut to the heart of the matter, holding up my bottle of Viagra: “Does Daddy want a little blue pill, make little stick big again so he can go boom-boom?”

Touché.

Why is it that girls are always right?

Maybe because it’s so easy to lead men around by the balls?

So, Sephie stayed in the room while Liza and I walked out of the hotel – and Tate had gone. Vanished. We looked around, got our bearings and walked the few blocks to Notre Dame, and we sat on a bench at the south end of the little park by the river, and we waited.

He was lanky, that’s what I remember most about Ben Acheson. Tall, and lanky, and he had a kind of Jimmie Stewart air about him that day. Kind of an “Aw, gee shucks, Ma’am…” thing going. Like he’d screwed the pooch big time, and didn’t mind if we knew it.

He ambled up and sat on the bench beside ours, then he sighed.

“Woodward?”

“Yup.”

“Who’s she?”

“The person I most trust with your life.”

“Okay.”

“So, why are we here?” I asked – and I noticed Liza scanning the sky overhead.

“To share notes, I think.”

“Drone,” Liza whispered. “Overhead. We’re blown.”

At least the kid had the good sense not to look up. “Okay,” he said, “what’s next?”

“Why don’t you tell me what you know?”

So he did. Everything that had happened in Dallas, all the Ninja stuff from the summer before, the attacks this week, then the stuff about Rutherford in his house – which as far as I could tell no one else knew about.

“So, she’s an AD at the NSA?”

“Yes. Kind of clever, don’t you think? Get yourself on the inside of the surveillance state, the head of the snake…”

“That’s what Anders, my chief, said. ‘We’ve got to cut off the head of the snake.’”

“So, how’d all this get started out there?”

So I told him my story, including Persephone and Liza’s part in the drama, and of the Tottenham twins demise.

“I take it,” he sighed, “you know your department is compromised, from top to bottom. The FBI, too?”

I nodded. “From the first, when Chief Tottenham was killed.”

“So his brother killed this Mary Jo, and that precipitated the split?”

And for the first time, Liza spoke-up about that night. She cleared her throat, then looked at me.

“Not quite. MJ was protecting Woodie,” she said to Acheson, then she turned to me. “She was from the beginning. Tottenham and his clique wanted you out of the picture, she intervened, kept you from being killed – at least three times that I know of.”

“What?”

Then she turned to Acheson again. “What’s eating you?” she asked. “You look like you’ve swallowed a squirrel.”

“I think they got me this morning?”

Liza just looked at the kid, then I could see it all over his face too.

“What did they get you with,” I asked. “A woman?”

He nodded his head, told us about the encounter.

“You married?” I asked.

“Not yet. I guess that means no, as in it ain’t gonna happen now.”

“Man,” Liza said, shaking her head, “I am so glad I wasn’t born with a dick. Don’t you guys ever stop thinking with that fucker?”

“Alright, knock it off,” I scolded. “So, your girl either gets over it or she doesn’t. They think they’ve got you over their barrel now, that they own you, and maybe we can use that to our advantage…” But I could tell the kid was turning something over in his mind, like he was working a math problem in his head. “What is it, Ben?”

“Rutherford,” he whispered. “She kissed me, seemed vested in me somehow.”

“She wants you,” Liza said. “All these Alphas, these leaders, have to take a mate, but they have to take them from another woman, then kill the other woman too, usually with their own hands. They have to break down their new mate after that, mentally, emotionally – and physically, before rebuilding him. The idea is to make the new mate totally dependent, totally demascluinize him. Like a role reversal dominance game, taken to a new extreme,” she added, looking at Acheson. “She’ll turn you into a girl, what girls were to men in the old order, anyway.”

“Right,” the kid said. “Over my dead body.”

“That’s what it’ll come down to,” she added, looking him in the eye. “These Alphas are predatory, feral, and the veneer of civility they wear is very thin. They’ve been plotting this for decades, and they know the kinds of sacrifices that are being made won’t ever be undone. In their eyes the battle of the sexes was never some kind of joke, or something they were ever prepared to lose, for that matter. They’re preparing to completely upend the old patriarchy, to end ‘what was’ and replace it with something totally new. And they’re counting on you thinking with your dick, and not your head, to help them make that happen.”

+++++

So, there it was. The end game, the backgammon.

Tate dropped by, had us download an app on our phones, told me what he and Acheson had in mind – just in case – then we split again. He followed Acheson out to the Marriott while we went back to our little hovel – and waited.

Acheson was leaving for Dallas in the morning, and we would leave for San Francisco an hour after he. At least, that was the plan.

Would Rutherford’s group respond? Had we set an attractive enough trap?

Only time would tell.

Chapter 21

Acheson sat in the back of the taxi, trying to ignore the female driver sneering at him from the driver’s seat.

‘My God,’ he thought, ‘they’re everywhere. Yet only where they need to be.’

The logistics were staggering, coordinating the movement of millions of assets around the globe, and it would all be impossible, he knew, without the ‘net. And without apps to tie-together their vast network, innocent social media apps, that literally everyone had access to. All they’d need was a language of their own. Codes, he thought. Deciphering codes? Was that the key? Rutherford was NSA, so…

He looked out the window, at the endless stream of little cars – tiny little Renaults and Citroens – and how unlike the scene was compared to Dallas. Pickup trucks and Cadillacs, gas-guzzlers all, versus these tiny gas-sippers, and he saw a vast train station beyond the freeway. Dozens of trains filling with people, ready to leave for the furthest reaches of the country. So very different, yet the same. People moving freely, always on the move: on business, to take care of family, to ramble on an endless vacation.

What would happen if it all just stopped?

Because what loomed on the horizon was a sudden, screeching halt. An end to one way of life, and the sudden imposition of a new, radically different way of life. What had that girl, Liza, implied? Men would be maintained as breeding stock, and dumbed down men would be utilized for heavy labor – until, presumably, men could be replaced by robots or genetic engineering. The idea was comical, like Our Man Flint meets Blofeld, only now, after watching events unfold in Dallas, and hearing about these groups working around Seattle, he was sure this was a serialized comic book caper anymore.

No, this is just the opposite. This is real, and it’s happening now. Right now.

What had she said? Stop thinking with your dicks? How was that even possible? And what would happen if the unexpected reared it’s ugly head? What would unravel first?

“Qu’est-ce que vous avez dit?”

“Pardonnez-moi, je ne me rendais pas compte que je parlais…”

“Vous avez dit, ‘comment était-ce possible?’”

“Oh je suis désolé…”

“You are English?” she asked.

“American.”

“So, what is not possible?”

“Someone just told me something funny, that it is impossible for men to not think without using their, well, their penis.”

“Ah. Yes, this is probably true, but that is who and what you are, is it not?”

“Exactly.”

“So, why is this funny?”

“I think she was asking me to think like a woman, which is clearly not possible.”

“Perhaps. But how does a woman think?”

“You tell me?”

The woman thought for a moment, then she brightened. “A woman does not live in the moment. She lives in the future, yet also in the past. She thinks not of pleasure, but how pleasure can be used to her advantage. She thinks of the moment as a stop along the way to what she desires.”

“That seems very mercenary to me, very cold and calculating.”

“Perhaps. But men’s calculations are as narrow. What gets me power, and how do I gain power, yet with the most pleasure attached?”

He shook his head, laughed a little. “We are a doomed species.”

“Perhaps, yes,” the woman said, “or perhaps it is better to try a new way, while there is still time.”

“So, who do you work for?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He nodded his head, looked ahead. He could see aircraft landing and taking off at CDG, then his hotel on the left. “Do you know…are they going to kill me?”

She looked at him in the rearview mirror, then shrugged. “Truly, I do not know, but I would not want to be in your shoes.”

“Well said. And I doubt I could walk in heels, if you know what I mean.”

She pulled up to the entrance and he pulled out his wallet, but she shook her head. “It is not necessary.” She turned and looked at him now, and she shook her head just a little. “If I were to give you one piece of advice, I would say act not inside the moment, but within the future you seek.”

“What does that mean?”

She sighed, and frowned. “It means you must be prepared to sacrifice yourself to save the ones you love.”

“Maybe you could just take me to the airport…”

She laughed, looked him in the eye. “You cannot run. There is no place that far away.”

“Okay.”

“Good luck, my friend.”

“Yes. You too.”

He got out of the little Renault and walked through the lobby. A woman looked over her newspaper and watched him pass, then sent a text.

He went upstairs and pulled open the drapes, then got out the little book Genie had read for her ethics class – 12, 20 & 5 – and he started reading. The book was about choices, he saw, about choices forced and choices randomly arrived at. It was about choosing who lived, and who died, and all under the most impossible circumstances imaginable. Ultimately, it was a story about trying to impose order when man is surrounded by chaos – of his own making. Even if the only thing he’d ever surrounded himself with before was apathy.

He stood up to go to the bathroom and heard people outside his door, so he bent to his phone and sent the emails he’d composed. One to Genie, one to The Duke, and one to Woodward, then he went to the door and opened it.

Five of them came in. All in black, black Ninja, and he walked into the bathroom, left the door open while he took a leak, then he went back to his chair and picked up the book and resumed reading.

Another knock on the door.

One of the Ninja opened it, and she walked in.

Rutherford, the assistant director of operations for the NSA.

She walked in – black dress, blacks stockings and heels – and she stopped, looked out the window at the airport, then down at him. Then she put her heel on his groin – and pushed.

“I liked that book,” she began. “Read it years ago. Kind of heartbreaking, in the way Hooker’s MASH was.”

“The more things change…” he said, trying to hide the pain of her spiked heel on his penis.

“Yes. Exactly. I want you, but I guess you know that, don’t you.”

“I’m not sure why?”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I do.”

“I understand.”

“The audio on our end wasn’t good. I take it Woodward’s little bitch filled you in?”

“Pretty much. You’ll have to kill Genie, with your own hands, to sanctify the marriage, that kind of thing?”

“Don’t trivialize something so sacred.”

“I’m not. I simply…I don’t understand.”

She looked at him with, perhaps, a little compassion, maybe even understanding in her eyes, then she turned to one of the Ninja. “It’s time. Turn on the television.”

One of the girls found the remote and turned it on, then tuned into CNN.

“The President met in Reykjavík this morning. Secretly, of course,” she smiled. “He’s about to leave…they’re all about to leave, now that their press conference is over. Watch…”

He saw Air Force One taxi to the end of the runway, then make it’s run. It lifted into the air and was beginning to make it’s turn for the Atlantic when it simply exploded, and a huge black and orange fireball appeared – where only moments before there had been normalcy.

She nodded at the Ninja – who turned the sound down – then she turned to Acheson. “Right now, and I mean right this moment, the vice president and the entire chain of succession is being eliminated. Within the hour, a huge explosion will simply remove the Pentagon from the face of the earth. When Congress convenes in emergency session this evening, that building will fall down around their heads.”

“My. You seem to have thought of everything.”

The back-handed slap was brutal, as her leather gloves were full of lead shot, and he felt his left water.

“I’m not fond of sarcasm,” she said.

“Apparently not.”

The next blow was more savage, then…

“Director, on the television. Look!”

Rutherford turned to CNN and she saw – Rutherford, turning to look at the television.

“What is this?” she almost screamed.

“It’s CNN, and smile, you’re on Candid Camera!” Acheson said, pointing at an air conditioning vent.

She turned, snapped her fingers and all the Ninja made for the door – only Woodward and Tate and half the FBI were waiting, guns drawn and ready.

They opened fire, cut them down in one massive volley. All of them but Rutherford.

The war had been joined now. He could see it in the woman’s eyes.

Then she turned and looked at Woodward. “Leave us for a moment, please. I need to tell him something. Something personal.”

Acheson nodded, and the team stepped back out into the hall, closing the door – almost.

She knelt between Acheson’s legs and cupped his face in hand: “I’m sorry, Ben. Sorry I hurt you.”

And he took her hand and kissed it. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand why this happened, but I’ll try.”

“I know you will. That’s why I chose you.”

“That’s a good look for you,” he sighed, trying to smile. “You look good in black. Sexy.”

“And that’s why I’ll always want you.”

“Okay.”

“This isn’t over, you know?”

He nodded his head. “I know.”

“God, I want you so much it hurts.”

He watched as one of the agents came into the room, and he looked as the man pulled out a silenced pistol and came up to her from behind. He placed blue steel against the back of her neck, and Acheson turned away.

Chapter 22

She was looking into his eyes – and he could see fear lurking in the shadows, then he watched as the medic came up from behind and slipped the syringe into her deltoid muscle. Her eyes fluttered moments later and she fell into his lap; by then Tate and Woodward were back in the room, looking at her, then at the ninja’s on the floor – blood splattered all over the room.

Woodward came over to Acheson, put a finger on Rutherford’s carotid as he bent over her. “We got that co-pilot at the airport; her name isn’t Beecham, by the way. Her ID is in the FAA database, but the image doesn’t match what’s on file. First run of fingerprints comes up dry too.”

“She’s polished on 777 procedures,” Ben said, “so work through foreign pilot registries, look for women with the appropriate type ratings. Russia, Ukraine, places like that.” Acheson ran his hands through Rutherford’s hair, and he wondered why he felt such a strong attraction to this woman…then, “where did you pick her up?”

“International departures,” Tate said, walking into the room.

“Surprise, surprise,” Acheson added, then he looked at this new man: “Do I know you?”

“He’s my partner,” Woodward said. “Richard Tate, retired from CID, Seattle PD; he’s working under a private ticket now. Dick, this is Ben Acheson.”

“Anders told me about you,” he said, shaking Acheson’s hand. “Good work on that stuff last summer.” Tate looked at the woman on Ben’s lap and grinned. “Is it just me, or does it look like that dame’s giving you head?”

Acheson looked at Tate, then Rutherford. He shook his head, tried to hide from his feelings again. “Can we get her off now?” Ben said.

“Poor choice of words, Amigo,” Woodward said, and everyone laughed. Everyone, that is, but Acheson.

+++++

Acheson rode in a caravan to de Gaulle with Tate, Woodward and several FBI agents; they walked into Terminal 2E and were instantly overwhelmed by a sudden, massive increase in security. The group passed a bank of television monitors tuned to news outlets from around the world, and images of a wide debris field, floating in the sea off Iceland’s west coast, filled the screens one minute, then switched to images of the US Capitol Building the next. Flames and black smoke were pouring out of shattered windows, then the camera shook, the cameraman trying his best to keep his footing as he wheeled around, trying to frame the source of the explosion in his viewfinder. A huge fireball was rising from the White House, and another, across the Potomac – over the Pentagon…

And Acheson stopped, stared as an image of the new President of France filled the screen. The woman was giving a fiery speech, had just declared a new order was beginning when she turned and screamed as troops stormed the studio. She turned, tried to run and was gunned down, several cameras capturing her horrendous death on live feeds.

“What the hell is going on?” Acheson said as the screen switched to surveillance feeds coming from a subway platform. A large explosion could be seen lighting up a distant subway tunnel, then flames filled the platform. Another feed flickered to life, smoke pouring out of subway entries all around the Kremlin filled the screens, then as quickly changed to images from Beijing and Tokyo, then Aukland and Sydney – the images always the same. Political landmarks, and politicians, exploding or being gunned down. Globally. In real time.

“There’s no way any one network could have these feeds,” Acheson said. “Someone’s taken control of television networks, globally. They know where the next strike is, and are tying into the feeds…”

One of the FBI agent’s phones started chirping, and several of the men took out phones and began reading out the text message. “The Vice-President is dead,” one said. “Major blasts at the Capital Building, the Pentagon, FBI Headquarters, the Supreme Court Building…”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Acheson said, pointing at the live feeds. Airport control towers around the world were next on TV. Video feeds from Los Angeles to Lagos began showing the exact same thing: large detonations toppling control towers, streaming live on-screen…then the fact registered…

“Oh, fuck!” Acheson said. “Everybody! Get down…!”

A concussive series of explosions rippled through the terminal; he heard glass breaking and then screams filled the air, walls falling in every direction – then Acheson felt himself flying through the air, thudding off a far wall, coming to rest on a pile of steel beams and shattered glass.

“Got to out of here…” Acheson said as he climbed to his feet. He ran to the dispatch office, tried to open the door – but there was no power – and the electric security lock had tripped – then gone offline. He banged on the door with his fist, heard someone trying to open the door from inside. It opened and a dispatcher stood there, her scalp bleeding, blood coming from her ears, then she fell back and landed on the floor, gasping for breath.

Acheson went to her, helped her into a chair, then went to the dispatch board and looked at gate assignments and fueling status; he grabbed the crew’s clipboard and memory cards for the flight to DFW, then made his way through the terminal to his gate. The ramp chief was talking to gate agents, and they turned to Acheson as he ran up.

“What’s the status of the aircraft?” he said to the ramp chief.

“Fueled, ready to go, but no bags yet.”

“Fuck the baggage. Get everyone onboard, now.”

He pushed through the crowded departure lounge, walked down the Jetway, heard people running up from behind and turned, saw Woodward and Tate, and two girls running beside Woodward, holding him up.

“Get on, now,” he yelled, then he ran past the flight attendants gathered by the main door, ran straight for the cockpit. He slammed the door shut, engaged the locks then turned around.

He saw Sandy Beecham, or whoever the hell she was, sitting in the FOs seat – turning to look at him, and two ninjas standing behind her seat, little Sig pistols pointed at his gut. He heard moaning, looked down and saw Rutherford on the floor behind his seat, blood coming from a scalp wound, debris all over her clothes.

“Did you just get here?” he asked Beecham.

“Yes.”

“Anyone done a walk-around?”

She shook her head.

“Go!” he commanded. “We’ve got a full fuel load out, and no squawks on the cheat sheet, but check the holds are locked and crossed.”

She looked at him, not sure what to do.

“Look, either you do it, or I do. This way one of your girls can keep an eye on me. Got it?”

“Yes, Captain,” ‘Beecham’ said. As she left the flight deck he turned to the ninja: “There’s a First Aid kit in there. Get it, please.” One of the girls holstered her weapon and opened the closet, handed the kit to him and he opened it, took out some gauze pads and a little bottle of saline. “Give me a hand, would you? Pour the saline in her hair,” he said as he picked little bits of glass from Rutherford’s scalp with tweezers. “Good, now take a fresh gauze pad and tamp it dry.” He taped a fresh gauze over the wound, then took out a penlight and shined it in her eyes, saw little pinpoint pupils, but they were equally reactive.

“Help me sit her up, then go get some water, a couple of bottles, at least.”

One of the girls bent to help him lift her, then left for the galley – just as Beecham came back in.

“I think she’s okay,” he said to the girls. “Are they ready for us to start two?”

“Da…I mean, yes.”

“Okay, Comrade. Let’s get to work on the checklist, shall we?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“So, tell me…how’d you get roped into this little caper?”

“Excuse me?”

“They chose you, how?”

“I am captain rated on this model. Apparently they could not recruit any US pilots.”

“Oh. So not simply because you’re a world class fuck?”

“I did not know this would be asked of me.”

“Odd.”

“Why odd?”

“Seemed like you enjoyed yourself, I guess.”

She looked at the ninja, then looked ahead. “I did,” she whispered, “very much, yes.”

“Well, just so you know where we stand, I enjoyed you, too. Very much, yes.”

She looked at him and smiled. “Ready for push-back?” she said as she settled in her seat.

He put on his headset, then he called for the ramp chief.

“Oui?”

“We’re about ready to go up here.”

“Oui, capitain, but we have no authority from ground control.”

“I really don’t care, chief. Push us back and get us away from this building, and I mean right now. There are fires in there, and they’re spreading!”

There were, he knew, multiple ground control towers at de Gaulle, and the first two he called were offline, but he heard one after he dialed in 121.675.

“de Gaulle ground, Swiss 332, we are VFR OPS only at this time, and all airway routing is down.”

“Ah, 332, roger. You advise a straight in approach for runway 27 left is approved?”

“de Gaulle ground, Swiss 332, that’s affirmative.”

Acheson keyed the mic. “de Gaulle ground, American 3-8 Heavy at 2E-1-0, ready for push-back.”

“de Gaulle ground, American 3-8 Heavy, standby one.”

“3-8, standing by.”

“de Gaulle ground, American 3-8 Heavy, clear to push back.”

Acheson switched to the ramp intercom. “Chief? We’ve got the go from ground.”

“Roger. I picked it up too. We’re ready down here.”

“Thanks, chief. Ready when you are.”

Acheson watched the terminal fall away, then looked at Beecham when the 777 stopped. “Start two.”

“Starting two.”

“American 3-8 Heavy, de Gaulle ground, we’re ready for read back.”

“de Gaulle ground, American 3-8 Heavy, taxi R-Robert to Whiskey-one-one. You will be number two for departure on runway 2-6-right. Wind is calm, altimeter 2-9-9-2. This will be a VFR only departure, and departure control is offline. London is offline, but Shannon is currently on the air. New York and Dulles are off the air, but La Guardia is still on the air. Denver and Dallas Fort Worth are on the air, but Houston Intercontinental and Hobby are off the air. ATL, FLL and MIA are reporting limited VFR OPS. KDFW reporting thunderstorms, ceiling 2500, winds out of the southwest at 2-0 knots. ILS OPS currently restricted.”

Ground, 3-8 Heavy, Robert to Whiskey 1-1, number 2 for 26 right, two niner niner two. VFR to DFW.”

“3-8 Heavy, be advised we have no radar, no ATC at this time. Rennes, Brest and Plymouth are attempting to coordinate. Contact Rennes approach on 122.25, and you are clear to taxi.”

“So,” Acheson said as they began rolling, “where are we going? I mean, really going?”

“To DFW?” Beecham said, shrugging.

“Flaps seven,” he said. “So no grand plan now?”

“Seven, check. No, Captain, no plans.”

An Emirates A380 was ahead of them, just turning onto the active runway, and Acheson could see landing lights in the distance, yet “the tower” – such as it was – hadn’t mentioned any incoming traffic.

“Uh, 3-8 Heavy, de Gaulle, we see several aircraft lining up for all runways. Do you know who they are?”

“3-8, you are cleared for immediate take off. We are getting word these could be Russian troop transports. Berlin just reported dozens of Russian transports landing, then went off the air. Air Force units now report Russian incursions, air combat near Liege.”

“Okay, 3-8 Heavy, we’re rolling.”

“Bon chance!”

Not quite at the end of the taxiway, Acheson guessed the first transport was two miles out, then he started his turn. “Damn…wish we were in a C-17 today…”

“Captain, you are going a little fast for this turn, are you not?”

“Fuck it.”

“What about the 380s wake turbulence?”

“Fuck it.”

“This could be interesting, Da?”

“Da, Comrade,” he said as he pulled out on the runway and applied full take-off power – and he watched as four Sukhoi-35s streaked low over the airfield – on their way to the city. “Oh, this just isn’t funny. Not one little fucking bit…” he whispered.

“80 knots,” Beecham called out. “V-one – and rotate!”

He barely pulled back on the stick, and when the radar altimeter read 150 feet he called for “Gear up!”

“What are you doing?” Beecham cried.

“Staying down in the trees until we’re away from those goddamn fighters.” He looked at the city off the left wingtip, saw explosions in the distance, then dark smoke trails rising into the sky. “This can’t be happening…”

“Da, it can be. Russian leadership is opportunistic. They seek weakness, they exploit weakness. US politically neutralized, Germans and French now too. Russian Army will move into Eastern Europe and Baltics in one move, into Iraq and Saudi Arabia in other.”

“So, you’re Russian? Aren’t you happy now?”

“No, not Russian. Ukraine.”

“Ah, so not happy.”

“No, now we have new Soviet monster.”

“The bear slips out of his cage again, I guess?”

“Da – Power lines!”

Acheson pulled up sharply on the yoke, and the 777 vaulted into a steep climb – just clearing a set of high-tension power lines hanging over the Seine. “Okay, enough of this. Clean the wing, configure for a maximum speed climb, then look up the numbers for Shannon.”

“Shannon? Why?”

“Because,” they heard Rutherford say, “he’s the captain, and he knows what he’s doing.”

He turned around and saw the woman looking at him, then he reached around and took her hand, felt her kiss his fingers. “You feeling groggy?”

“A little, but what’s going on down there?”

“It looks like our Russians friends are getting adventurous again. They’re taking European governments right now.”

“Damn,” Rutherford said.

“You were not expecting this, I take it?”

“It was not completely unexpected, but it means the entire North American command and control network remains compromised.”

“Well, you did infiltrate it? You did try to compromise it? What were you expecting?”

“A quicker transfer of power. Consolidation of our assets in Washington and Omaha.”

“Do you honestly expect members of the military to fall in line with you?”

“Yes, when they see the current order collapse, and sudden threats emerge to our control of the larger world order.”

A light on the overhead panel started blinking, then chiming.

“What’s that?” Rutherford said, looking at the light.

“SELCAL. Company broadcast.” He flipped the switch, selected the main cabin speaker.

“Repeat. EWO-EWO-EWO. Emergency War Order case Baker. Repeat. EWO-EWO-EWO. Emergency War Order case Baker…” He flipped off the channel, shook his head. “Goddamnit all to hell…” he sighed.

“Ben?” Rutherford said, her voice now unsettled. “What is it?”

“Oh, in plain English it means the Civil Defense network has been activated, that nuclear hostilities are considered imminent, and all airborne aircraft are free-agents now. We’re to get our aircraft and passengers out of harm’s way, any way and any where we can.”

“That means the…”

“This order, Baker, is supposed to go out when missiles are being fueled in their silos, when launch is imminent.” He looked at Beecham, then shook his head. “What’s your name, anyway?”

She turned, startled, and looked at him. “I – don’t…”

“You don’t remember your name?”

“No, of course I do, but I think I like this Sandy Beach name.”

“Sandy Beach. Yeah, I get it. Well, okay Miss Sandy Beach, get the numbers for Bermuda into the FMC, and a heading as soon as you can.” He settled on 270 degrees, looked over the panel, saw the Scilly Isles ahead and to the right, then checked their current altitude. He changed frequencies, listened to eastbound commercial traffic trying to check in with London…

“Delta 003, is anyone on this frequency?”

“American 3-8 Heavy, go ahead Delta.”

“Geez, all our COMMS are dark. What’s going on?”

“Russian fighters and transports in the air over major European cities right now. We have an EWO broadcast. Did you get that yet?”

“Negative.”

“I’d get down on the ground as fast as you can. There are Russian fighters over Paris.”

“What about London?”

“Been off the air for an hour or so. Shannon is supposed to be on the air.”

“Uh, Speedbird-2 here, did you advise London is off the air?”

“Affirmative 2, advised by controllers on the ground at LFPG.”

“Well, Delta, Dublin is a better facility for heavies. Ah, 3-8 Heavy, where are you off too?”

“Over the western channel now, heading for Bermuda.”

“I say, I wish we had enough fuel for that.”

Acheson heard knocking on the cockpit door and flipped on the closed circuit camera, saw Woodward standing out there, with two of the flight attendants. He unlocked the door, then turned to one of the ninja. “Let them in,” he commanded.

The girl looked at him, then at Rutherford.

“He’s the captain. Follow his orders.”

Woodward walked in, saw the ninja, then Rutherford, and he sighed. “Ah. Things have changed again, I see.”

“Captain?” one of the flight attendants said. “What should we do back there? People are getting restless, getting phone calls from home. There’s a lot of confusion…”

“What’s the food situation?”

“We have enough.”

“How many passengers did we end up with? The manifest says 220…”

“We’re full up front and in Business Class, but coach is almost empty. Maybe 150.”

“That figures. Well, get meals out fast, free booze for everyone. Tell them I’ll have an update in a half hour.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Woodward? We’re headed for Bermuda, that’s about all I can tell you right now. We’ll get on the ground as fast as we can, then…”

“Why? Why aren’t we going to the States?”

“Again, I’ll tell you more in a half hour. Things aren’t real clear right now.”

“Speedbird-2, 3-8 Heavy, are you still on the air?”

“3-8, go ahead.”

“Reports coming into Dublin advise Russian forces have moved into Norway and Finland, and that an American carrier battle group has been attacked in the GIUK gap. There is apparently a large air engagement taking place off the Yorkshire coast, NATO forces trying to stop a Russian air strike on petroleum facilities near Rotterdam.”

“So, you’re saying it’s World War Three? Right? Just not nuclear?”

“It rather looks that way. We’re tucking into Shannon, try to refuel, then head your way.”

“Okay. We’ll stay on this frequency, our ETA is about four hours.”

“Right-o. See you there.”

“Did he mean – war has broken out?” Woodward asked.

“It’s the law of unintended consequence,” Rutherford said. “Do one thing, expect one set of consequences, then another materializes, upsetting all prior calculations. Our movement critically weakened the West, to the Russian mind, anyway, and this is the opportunity they’ve been waiting for, patiently, since 1945.”

“So,” Woodward asked, “what happens next?”

“The war either remains conventional, and protracted, or it ends quickly, via nuclear exchange.” Rutherford added. “Our military will be assuming command absent civilian leadership. They’ll be least likely to resort to nuclear war, until they see a direct threat to the homeland or NATO, then they’ll strike out, fast and hard. If a carrier group has been attacked while rushing to reinforce Norway, submarines will be getting their firing orders soon.”

“Fallout patterns,” Acheson whispered.

“Da,” ‘Sandy Beach’ added. “We must go south.”

“South?” Woodward asked.

Rutherford stood. “Could someone get me some water, please?” One of the ninja left for the galley, and Rutherford stood up behind Acheson, put her hands on his shoulders. “Bermuda can house thousands, but it hasn’t the agricultural base to support such a massive influx of permanent residents. Nor do any of the Caribbean islands, except perhaps Puerto Rico, or the Dominican…”

“Too close to fallout,” Sandy said. “If war breaks out, we must get as far south as possible.”

“I can’t handle this,” Woodward said, leaving the flight deck, mumbling as he went.

“Many people will react like this,” Rutherford said as she watched Woodward leave. “Many will want to go home, regardless, others may simply lose the will to live. You need to be mindful of this, Captain.”

Acheson was more mindful of something else he heard in her voice. She had just surrendered to him, in effect submitted to his authority. She had told her girls to obey not her commands, but his. She was depressed, perhaps from the tranquilizer, but she was compromised emotionally, and he needed her strength right now.

“Your airplane,” he said to Sandy, then he motored back in his seat while he undid his harness. “Come with me,” he said to Rutherford, and he took her by the hand, led her aft to the toilets by the forward galley. He pushed her inside, felt her flaccid response, then turned her face to his –

And he slapped her, hard.

He saw the sudden fury in her eyes, the trembling lips of uncertainty, then he bent to her and kissed her with all the passion he could muster. She responded instantly, and as passionately, digging her fingernails into his back.

“You know me so well,” she whispered in his ear. “It’s like we were born to love one another. I feel it in my bones.”

He held her close, then felt her fumbling with his belt, pushing his trousers down. He knew where this was going, felt himself falling over the edge of the abyss, then he was entering her, helping her legs encircle his waist. Her mouth open beside his, he heard her breath mingle with his own, felt all his fear turn to inverted lust, then he put his mouth on hers, driving into her, fear to lust, lust to need, then an infinite release.

“I need you,” he heard himself say, a coarse whisper at first, and he felt her shuddering orgasm as he added “I want you.”

“I am yours, forever,” she sighed, her legs pushing him deeper as they came down.

“And I need your strength, so don’t leave me again,” he said as he kissed her a few minutes later.

“You need to call Genie,” she said. “Warn her, get her headed south,” then she went to her knees and began cleaning him with her mouth, taking him in, swirling his need with hers, and a minute later his knees began to buckle, his back arched – and he felt himself coming undone in her mouth, and he held her head while she cleaned him again, then his hands went out to the walls, holding himself up against all the contradictions he felt flowing through his veins on the way – into her.

Chapter 23

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out some things, and when I looked at that Acheson kid I could see it all over his face. Mid-30s, in command of an airliner, re-captured by the very same women we thought we’d captured just a few hours before. That Russian girl up there? How did they do it? I told Tate as soon as I got back to my seat, then Liz and Persephone were leaning close, listening to every word that came out of my mouth – like it was the last thing they were ever going to hear.

Then Acheson comes out of the cockpit with that Rutherford woman, his face set in stone, like anger, only worse, then that bitch. Like she’s in heat. Lips puffed up, breathing deep, then he’s in that bathroom and the walls start shaking. Like the fucking starting gate at the Kentucky Derby. Then he walks out of there a minute later and the front of his slacks look like Monica Lewinsky’s little blue dress. Then she crawls out of there, cum running down her legs and looking like she’d gone ten rounds with Ali. I swear, I’d do anything to be thirty years old again.

Then Tate’s looking at me – like ‘what the fuck?’ – as in: what’s going on up there?

Then Liz leans over, tells us to be cool, some kind of dominance game was going down, that Acheson was taking control of Rutherford, and it hit me then. We’re like dogs and cats, the birds and the bees. We’re nothing but hormonal drives and dominance dances, not a helluva lot different than Frigate Birds on Midway Island, or gorillas in an African mist.

Anyway, Liz starts looking at me all goo-goo eyed and hands me a Viagra, and I’m like, ‘Really? World War Three is breaking out, and you want to get laid?’

Then I’m thinking about it. Yeah, you know, if the human race wants to go out with a bang, well then, what the fuck. Why not get a woody and duck into the head, join the Mile High Club? Then Sephie is looking at me, her lips all puffed up and I’m wondering, like, if there’s room for three in there…and will my heart be able to take it?

But really? Why the fuck not?

Know what I mean, Jelly-Bean?

+++++

Acheson climbed back in his seat, noticed the SELCAL light chirping away and slipped on his harness, then put on his headset. He scanned the panel, then he flipped the circuit and listened to the message – through the headset this time. Headquarters had activated Case Epsilon. War, probably nuclear war, was considered imminent, and all pilots were now ordered to land at the nearest open airport. He listened to The Lord’s Prayer coming over the circuit, then shut it down and took off his headset.

“What was it?” Rutherford asked.

Acheson shook his head, bent over the keypad on the Flight Management Computer and entered ‘LPLA’ – then watched data stream onto his PFD, the Primary Flight Display. A prompt came up: “Execute?”

He sighed, hit the button on the keypad, and the aircraft banked hard to the left, then settled onto the new course.

“Lajes?” Beach asked. “Why?”

“We’re two thousand miles from Bermuda, six hundred from the Azores. We’ll lose GPS signal any time now, they’ll be encrypted. There’s a storm off the east coast, it’ll sock-in Bermuda by the time we get there, and without GPS I’m not sure we can shoot an approach there.”

“Why will we lose GPS?” one of the ninja said.

“It’s SOP when launch of ICBMs is considered imminent.”

“Oh sweet Jesus,” he heard the girl whisper.

“Yeah, if you’re the praying sort, now’s the time to get on your knees and pull out your rosary. Sandy, write down our coordinates, the coordinates for Lajes and start a DR plot, the faster the better.”

“Okay,” she said, her hands shaking now.

He scanned the horizon, saw something far off to the left. “You see that?”

“What?” Sandy said.

“Ten o’clock, a little high.”

She peered around the center-post, squinting just a little and he smiled, then turned back to the panel.

“You know, I see three aircraft, maybe four…”

An alarm sounded, then another.

“Alert! Collision imminent, turn right!”

Acheson toggled the autopilot and pushed the yoke down and to the right.

“Something’s not right,” he said as he re-engaged the autopilot, then the alarm sounded again.

“Alert! Collision imminent, turn right!”

He looked out the windshield again, looked aft as far as he could, then he smiled, relaxed – as four F/A-18F Super Hornets pulled up alongside the port side of the 777. He signaled 121.5 to the lead pilot and switched COMM 1 to the emergency frequency.

“American 3-8 Heavy to Diamondback Lead.”

“Lead here. What’s with all the evasive maneuvers, Captain?”

“Collision alert sounded. Sorry about that.”

“You headed to Terciera?”

“Yeah. How many of you are there out here?”

“Whatever’s left of the air wing from the Papa Bush. We had about half my squad up when she was hit. Low yield nuc, torpedo we think. Subs in the Atlantic were ordered to MFD about twenty minutes ago.”

“What’s MFD?” Rutherford asked.

“Missile Firing Depth.”

Another alarm hooted, and Acheson looked as the GPS SIGNAL LOSS banner flagged on his PFD. “Fuck,” he whispered, then he toggled his mic, “Okay, D-Back lead, we just lost GPS. You have encrypted sets in those birds?”

“Yup. I suppose you want to follow us?”

“You got enough gas?”

“Yeah, we just tanked. Another section is tanking east of here. You military?”

“Air Force, reserves now. C-17s.”

“Rank?”

“Major.”

“Well hell, look who just assumed tactical command?”

“Swell. Okay lead, why don’t you scoot up ahead, leave a couple back here with me.”

“Alright, 3-8 Heavy. Out.”

He turned to the ninja, looked them over and shook his head. “You know, where we’re going, if you get off this airplane dressed like that you’re likely to be run out to the nearest wall and shot.”

The girls looked at each other and nodded, then peeled off their suits.

“What about me?” Rutherford said.”

“What do you mean?”

“What are you going to do about me?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. What do you think I should do with you?”

She frowned. “I think you should try to get in touch with Miss Delaney.”

And he smiled…which, he could tell, seemed to shock her.

Chapter 24

Genie Delaney left the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School campus, driving on Harry Hines towards downtown, then north on Oak Lawn, and then down Maple to Turtle Creek. She drove along the creek, looking at the dry winter grass along the waterway, the bare oak and pecan trees, their bare limbs hanging over the street, and she decided to drive up to Preston, to look at the big pecan tree – still strung with Christmas lights – and she saw they were on now, and smiled.

Her phone chimed as she stopped at the light, and she saw a new email from Ben in her in-box, but it was a huge file so she decided to wait until she got home to open it. The light turned and she passed mansions on her right, then the country club, and she turned there, on Mockingbird Lane, and drove down to the SMU campus and turned left on Hillcrest. A few minutes later she turned on Milton and, a block later, into the driveway at Ben’s old bungalow.

She looked at the file and decided to open it on the desktop machine in his study, so gathered her book bags and lab coat and walked to the front door, fumbling with her keys as she walked across the crunchy grass. She went through the house to his bedroom, hung her lab coat in the closet, then went to the study, fired up his Mac Pro and sat, waiting for it to load and open. She went to Mail and opened her account, then opened the email.

It was a huge video file, and she double clicked it, waited for it to open.

She saw a darkened hotel room, with Ben sitting in a chair – and she leaned forward, looking closely at the image – then she saw a woman walk out of the bathroom, dressed provocatively in garters and stockings and heels – and little else.

She paused the file, saw this was a fifteen minute long recording and could guess what was on the rest, so the closed the video file then put the email in trash – and deleted it.

They’d been expecting this, at least she had – and for months. They had to compromise him, like they thought they had The Duke, and despite both their misgivings, she had counseled him to let them do it. It would be safer, she reasoned, if they thought they had something on him – especially something as innocuous as this was. She looked at the time – yes, guaranteed to make her call him late at night – over there – the better to get him off-balance, and keep him that way.

She picked up her phone and opened the Cryptor app, dialed Ben’s line and waited for him to pick up.

“Hello.”

“It’s me. I got an interesting email, on your account.”

“The video?”

“Yup. Was she good, at least?”

“Not bad, but not good, either. Generic.”

She laughed. “God, how many women have you laid?”

“Laid? I don’t know. I’ve only loved a couple, though.”

“What about Rutherford? She’s dropped off the radar here, reports say she may be in Brussels.”

“That figures. The President spoke at NATO headquarters today, and he’s going to Iceland tomorrow. Something feels weird to me, Genie. Like there’s some kind of storm brewing. A big one. Different, too.”

“Like we haven’t been down this road before. Yeah. I’ve been picking up on that all day long.”

“Remember, it’s a game, a chess game, Genie. We have to try to guess their next three moves.”

“Then she’s going to try and get to you.”

“And she has to know we’re thinking that, too. So she’s already thinking of counter-moves.”

“Doesn’t matter, Ben. Just the fact she’s so compromised by her desire is enough. It’s her Achilles heel.”

“Yeah.”

“Ben? Just don’t let it be yours.”

“I hear you.”

“So, if things head south, you still want me to go…?”

“To Alpine, yes.”

“Okay. Be careful, Ben. I love you.”

“I love you, too. More than you’ll ever know.”

+++++

Acheson thought about that call, then looked at the elapsed time on the FMC, at their current fuel state. They’d land at Lajes with less than half their load used, so close to the aircraft’s maximum allowable landing weight. He ran his rough mental computations through the computer once again and nodded his head, then looked at the F/A-18s off his wingtip. The pilots out there seemed focused, and he wondered what was going on “out there” – in the real world beyond this floating cocoon.

Then the closest pilot held up his hand and signaled – 1-2-1.5.

“3-8, go.”

“Back-4 here. About 250 N-M-I. When do want to start your descent?”

“‘Bout now would be good. Keep it about .83 Mach down to flight level 1-8-0, then 270 knots to 12,000. Once we have the field in sight…”

“Diamondback Lead to 3-8 Heavy.”

“Lead, 3-8, go.”

“Lajes reporting Cat 2 ops at this time in heavy thunderstorms, visibility down to a quarter mile, wind out of the east at forty knots. You got the freqs?”

“As long as they haven’t changed them in the past month.”

“Roger. Be advised we intercepted four CONDORs east of the islands, there are some Russians trying out for an Olympic swim team down there now, but my guess is there will be more, and soon. We have AWACs coverage now, and they’re picking up FULLBACKs over the Portuguese coast at this time. Westbound at 900.”

“Okay, so call it an hour.”

“Yeah. The Stennis and Teddy Roosevelt are now on station with a CAP over the island, so two battle groups are now mid-Atlantic. They won’t take Lajes without going nuclear.”

Acheson sighed, considered their options, then decided. “Okay, if you can stay with us to the localizer, stick around in case Ivan shows up, we’d appreciate it.”

“Back-4, out.”

Acheson flipped the radar to maximum range, saw a line of thunderstorms ahead and to the east, then he set up the descent in the computer. “Localizer set to 109.9,” he said, then he called on the radio: “Lajes approach, American 3-8 Heavy, 150 out, request permission to land, I-L-S runway 15.”

“3-8 Heavy, clear runway 15, ceiling 800, visibility 1 mile, wind 1-4-0 degrees at 38, altimeter 28.90. Be advised we are under an air raid warning at this time. Seventy, repeat 7-0 Sukhoi 34 inbound, potentially 20, 2-0 heavy transports behind this wave.”

“3-8 Heavy, got it.”

“Localizer to 109.9,” Beach confirmed.

“Beacon to 341.”

“341.”

“TAC-DME to 109X.”

“109X, got it.”

“Enter 12.5 DME and 3-5-hundred, 6.5 DME and 2000.”

“Okay, 12.5 DME to 3500, and 6.5 DME to 2000.”

“D-Back four, 3-8 Heavy, cutting power now,” he told the lead Hornet, and he eased off power, popped the speed brakes as he looked at the VOR/TAC needle and DME readout go active. “Okay, starting a gradual turn – now,” he told the Hornet as the needle started to center in the HSI. He cut power to 80 percent EGP and watched speed bleed as he increased spoilers. “Flaps 7, now,” he said as he cut power a little more.

“Flaps 7.”

He switched to NAV2 and watched the LOC flag pop in the Flight Director, then GS ARM popped in the window and he turned the Glide Slope button on the AP panel to ACTIVE and watched as the autopilot locked onto the airport’s ILS. He cut power again, dropped flaps to 15 degrees, then engaged auto-throttle. He looked up then, saw the wall of cloud ahead, then back down at the instruments.

“3-8 Heavy, if lead elements of Russian strike force break through, they’ll be here in 2-9 minutes. You are clear to land, and you’ll need to clear the runway as quickly as possible.”

“Any place in particular?”

“Air Force facilities are still at the northwest part of the field. You might want to keep as far away from there as you can.”

“Any other commercial aircraft at the terminal?”

“One KLM, one Air France. We have a BA Speedbird en route, about two hours out. There is no room at the ramp, but we’ll have stairs and buses meet you on shut down.”

“3-8 Heavy, 12.5 out.”

“3-8, gusts to 4-3 knots now.”

“Say heading?”

“Sorry, still 1-4-0 degrees.”

“Okay.” He turned to Sandy. “Flaps 25, arm spoilers.”

“Got it.”

“3-8 Heavy, 6.5 out.”

“3-8, clear to land.”

“Okay. D-Back four, thanks for sticking around.”

“Got it. Seeya.”

“Flaps 33, gears down.”

“Thirty three, three down and green.”

“Okay, I got the lights.” He saw the strobes leading to the threshold and put his hands on the wheel and throttles, his feet on the pedals. “Wipers to MAX.”

“MAX.”

He followed the autopilot’s movements with his hands and feet, and as soon as the mains hit he switched off the AP, then went to reverse thrust and started to brake. He saw all the buildings were dark, the KLM A340 and an Air France A330 were as well.

“I don’t like this,” he whispered. He switched COMM 1 to 121.9, to ground control, and he called. “Ah, Lajes Ground, can you get fuel trucks and a cart out to me? I’m going to shut down by the fire department buildings. I’d like to gas up and get the hell out of here, if you don’t mind.”

Beach and Rutherford looked at one another, then at Acheson.

“Where are you thinking of going?” Rutherford asked, her hands shaking nervously.

“Ah, 3-8 Heavy, negative, base commander advises you get your passengers to shelters. Buses should be there momentarily. There are two more waves of Russian strike fighters inbound, up to 120 new aircraft.”

“Yeah, tower, that’s why we want to get out of here!”

“Sorry, 3-8, commander advises we don’t have the fuel to spare right now, not for civilian OPS.”

Acheson shook his head, muttered under his breath: “Goddamn two hundred million dollar airplane is gonna get shredded, you dickwick…” then he turned to Beach. “Let’s shut her down, get everyone on the buses.”

He flipped on the intercom, switched to CABIN and spoke: “Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Acheson here. We’re going to get you off this airplane now, into buses, and these will take you to air raid shelters. There is a massive Russian strike force headed this way, fighter aircraft and troop transports, and the facilities here are low on fuel. So are we, for that matter, so this is the end of the line – for now. Effective a few hours ago, civil aviation in the United States was grounded, and this aircraft was ordered by headquarters to divert to the nearest open facility and land until hostilities are over, or until it’s safe to resume our flight. What we do know right now is that Russian forces are in the process of moving into Europe, but that’s all we know. Assuming this aircraft survives, and that fuel is allocated, we’ll try to get you on to your destination when that becomes possible. There are four buses pulling up on the left side of the aircraft right now, and you need to get in them as quickly as possible. Again, there are Russian attack aircraft inbound, so let’s move quickly and in an orderly manner, and we may just get out of this alive.”

“Shut-down checklist complete,” Sandy said.

“Okay, get the door, then get down there and help get people moving to the buses.”

“I’m staying with you,” Rutherford said quietly, then she turned to her two guards. “You go, just blend in as best you can. If we survive the night, then you…” But Rutherford broke down then, her dreams at an end, and she sat in the jump-seat and waved them on. “Go now, and be careful,” she whispered.

Her two ninja left, followed Sandy Beach out the cockpit door, and Woodward came in, with Tate and the two girls standing just outside the door, looking in.

“Ben?” the old cop said, his voice full of concern.

“Yeah?”

++++++

But I could see it in the kid’s eyes. He was lost now, full of concern for his aircraft, for his passengers, and even for that Rutherford dame. She was stuck on him too, like white on rice. And the thing is, I could tell he was into her, too. Kind of odd, you know, now that I think about it, but that’s the thing with human beings. You just never can tell.

He was a good looking kid, too. Kind of like Clark Kent, if you know what I mean. A real straight arrow. Think Jimmy Stewart and you’re on the right track, but with a touch of Tyrone Power. Tall, skinny, kind of a self-deprecating guy. Quiet, radiating strength sitting up there in the cockpit, a man fully the sum of his parts. Cop and pilot, you know what I mean? And women? Maybe that was his kryptonite.

Then there was this Rutherford dame. Maybe five feet tall out of her heels, maybe forty five, fifty years old. Serious, a hard edge in her eyes, but a soft one, too. Like a falcon. Like a falconer had just pulled the hood off her head. Her eyes blinking, her head swiveling, and when I looked at her the only word that ran through my mind was “machine.” A human machine, calculating, using her senses to figure out what was happening around her – and then she’d look at Acheson and melted. To my eyes, it was like she had just discovered the order of the universe – and it wasn’t what she thought it was.

And Ben? He was lost in thought, a different kind of machine altogether…

“Ben?” I remember saying, and he looked up at me, and I saw “LOST” in his eyes.

“Yeah?”

“What’s our play, man?”

“There’s enough fuel to get us to Brazil, or west Africa somewhere, but not to the US.”

“Probably better to stay here,” Rutherford said.

“Nowhere else TO go, right now, anyway” he said, his voice almost a whisper.

“Not until this is over,” Rutherford added.

And there it was. In the blink of an eye, the world had gone from normal, what it was, to insane. What it always came down to when War begins.

When it’s over? When is it ever really over? What next?

I remember Ben flipping switches after that, turning off batteries and the cabin going dark. He groped in the closet, get his coat and a medical kit, then found a flashlight to get us to the stairs. He led is down to the last bus, and I remember him standing there, looking up at the huge Boeing – ‘his aircraft,’ I recall thinking to myself just then. He alone commanded that thing, and now he was surrendering her, walking away as the world began crashing down around us.

And I could tell it was eating him up. Who wouldn’t feel that way?

We were standing down on the ground in heavy rain when the first missile streaked by, just over our heads, and before anyone could react it detonated a few hundred yards away, over the middle of the runway, then dozens of floating bomblets fluttered down all around us…

+++++

Acheson heard the roar and pulled Rutherford down to the ground, covered her body with his own. Woodward, pulled down by Liz and Persephone, felt Tate cradle the girls. The bus stood between them and that first detonation, and first the concussive wave lifted it up into the air and spun it around like a child’s toy – debris falling all around them, and waves of shrapnel cut into the aircraft. Fuel began leaking from the wing tanks, and when it was over Acheson kneeled, surveyed the scene as two more incoming missiles hit the air force complex at the opposite end of the airfield.

“Three missiles,” he said out loud. “Three got through…” he said as he turned and looked at the Boeing, at the fuel, spilling like blood, from her wing tanks…

“We’ve got to get away from here,” he said, then he saw ‘Sandy Beach,’ sitting by the overturned bus and he ran to her, Rutherford by his side. Blood was running from her ears, and she had a deep laceration on her forearm, but she tried to stand and Acheson helped her.

“Are you okay?”

She pointed at her ears, shook her head, and he nodded, put his hand on her shoulder.

“Oh my God,” he heard Woodward whisper, and he turned his attention to the people trying to get out of the bus.

He saw more people with lacerations, burned flesh, people trying to crawl out or walk on broken arms and legs. People lay on the ground like scattered dolls, cradling broken arms or a dying loved one, then Acheson looked at Rutherford.

“I guess this is the law of unintended consequences, all come to life?” he said, his voice dripping with malicious sarcasm.

She nodded, saw pools of fire reflected in his eyes, then turned and walked away.

He ran over to Woodward, helped him with one of the girls – who seemed more than dazed.

“Liz?” the old cop sighed, “Liz, can you hear me?” Blood was trickling from her left ear, and the right side of her body looked scorched.

Acheson and the other girl help the other old man, Tate, sit up; he rubbed his eyes and shook his head then stood.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Tate said, looking for Woodward, then he saw Acheson looking at his damaged aircraft: the shredded tires, engine cowlings punctured, oil and hydraulic fluid running onto the tarmac – and without asking Tate knew the Boeing was mortally wounded, would never fly without serious reconstruction.

He turned and was walking back to Woodward and the girls – when he flinched, felt the super-sonic booms of aircraft passing through the clouds overhead. He turned, saw Acheson running for them – then bombs started falling like rain, slamming into the hillside on the far side of the airfield. He watched as more fell – landing closer – then he saw Acheson flying through the air – just before he and the girls pulled Woodward into a drainage ditch.

Part V – Dance on a Volcano

Chapter 25

Somewhere in the Atlantic

He woke up.

Tried to sit up, but it felt like he was cemented, to the earth.

He tried to lift his hands to his face, but couldn’t. They weighed too much.

He closed his eyes and felt himself drifting off, feeling lost and afraid.

+++++

He opened his eyes. Turned his head.

Gray. Nothing but gray. Was that steel? Are these steel walls?

A woman walked by. A nurse, and he tried to speak but everything he said was muffled, garbled, his words like hollow echoes coming from the middle of his skull. An Air Force nurse turned and spoke to him, and he saw her lips move, saw her eyes on him, but he couldn’t hear a thing she said.

“I can’t hear you,” he tried to say, but he felt the words more than heard them, and incompletely, at that – like every sound was coming from behind walls of hissing static, with an occasional high-pitched whine thrown in for good measure – but he saw her smile before she turned away.

He tried to think, imagine where he was, then he gave up and put his head down on the pillow. He felt himself drifting…then…

Someone lifted an eyelid, shined a light in his eye and he tried to turn away but strong hands held him fast. He blinked when whoever it was finished, then he felt a sting in his upper arm. He was rolling down a narrow corridor a moment later, then in a small room with bright lights overhead. A busy, worn out man leaned over and peered in his eyes, then he felt himself drifting away again.

+++++

He heard someone calling his name, pinching an earlobe and calling his name.

He opened his eyes, saw a woman eyes peering over a surgical mask. Brown eyes, warm and soothing…

“Captain Acheson? You can hear me?”

Not American, but not Russian, either. Maybe.

“Yup.”

“Good. You know where you is, are?”

“No.”

“You know what day it is?”

“No, I don’t.”

“How about time? Know what time it are…uh, is?”

“No, no, nothing. Look, can you tell me where I am, what day it is? I’d kind of like to know, you know?”

She nodded her head, wrote on her clipboard. “You on NATO ship, hospital ship. Uh, you found three weeks ago, after attack on Lajes. Surgery one week ago, you out since.”

“Where are we, I mean…like at sea, or anchored somewhere?”

“Oh, yes, we go Lisbon maybe, or Gibraltar.”

“War? Still war?”

“Oh, no, war over. Seven cities destroyed, then stop.”

“Cities? Which ones?”

She looked away, shook her head. “New York and Washington in America. Boston too, I think, someplace like that. Moscow and St Petersburg in Russia, some submarine base, too. Maybe Hamburg, in Germany, and a navy base in southern France. There are stories about Korea and China in the news, nobody know much yet. So, you are pilot captain?”

“Yes. American Airlines, and a major in the US Air Force.”

“Oh? This I did not know. You feel pain now?”

“Yes, a little.”

“Where? Can you point where?”

He tried to move his right leg, but it felt stiff, weak, and he said “The side of my head, behind my right ear.”

“You have ringing in ears?”

“A little, yes.”

“No other pain?”

“My leg is, it feels strange. It hurts, then it goes away.”

“Break near knee. Bad fracture. Will need surgery. In cast now.”

“There were people with me. Last names Woodward, Rutherford. Any way to check on these people?”

“I try. You rest now,” she said, slipping a syringe into his IV. “We be in land tomorrow, then maybe you knows more.”

+++++

He felt himself moving and opened his eyes, saw men ahead and behind him, and he realized he was on a stretcher, moving through the corridors of a ship. He saw warnings – in Cyrillic –painted on the walls, then he looked at the uniforms the men wore, but he didn’t recognize them. They came to the main deck and he was in sunlight, being carried down a long, sloping ramp, and he looked up at the ship, saw a Russian ensign flying and he lay back, looked up at the sky and realized he’d told that nurse he was in the Air Force.

There were men at the bottom of the ramp, men in suits, and when his stretcher reached the men they looked at his chart, and one of them came over to him.

“Major Acheson?” the man said.

“Captain. American Airlines.”

“Yes, Major Benjamin Acheson, United States Air Force Reserves. C-17 pilot. We have your file now.”

“So. I’m a prisoner of war, I take it?”

“If there was a war, yes, you would be. But now you are just an enemy of the people, of the Soviet Union. You will be dealt with accordingly.”

“I see.” He heard a voice, a familiar voice, and he turned, saw Rutherford with a Russian colonel, laughing gayly now, her arm slipped inside his, and as he watched her disappear inside a black Mercedes sedan, he looked up at the sky – at a passing cloud. “The law of unanticipated consequences,” he said, laughing a little.

“What was that, Major?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking. How funny life is, sometimes.”

“Da. Funny. My family lived in St Petersburg. I am sure you think that funny, too.”

And he did, in a way. He thought of Genie and The Duke, and of a butterfly sneezing somewhere on the far side of the world, and he smiled as they put his stretcher into the back of a dark green truck.

And he smiled when he thought of all the butterflies out there, just waiting to sneeze.

Chapter 26

He winced when the truck went over bumps and around curves, he pulled the blanket up to his chin when rain started dripping through tears in the canvas overhead, and as sleep was impossible he tried to peek under the canvas from time to time, look at the passing countryside. They drove north, he thought, for a few hours, then he heard aircraft overhead and soon they passed an air base. He saw troops removing EU and NATO signage, and as the truck slowed to turn into an newly erected prison area he saw men lined up along a wall, a firing squad taking aim – then a burst of fire and falling bodies. He looked away, saw the tails of several Antonov 124s poking up above hangers a few hundred yards away, and two charred F-16s being bulldozed out of the way, presumably to make room for more transports.

The truck stopped outside a quonset hut and men came out for him, pulled his stretcher from the back of the truck and carried him inside the building. The first thing he noticed was the smell inside. Disinfectant, and lots of it, overwhelmed his senses, and he saw several men on beds, bags of IVs dripping into arms as he was carried to a bed. Nurses helped transfer him to a real bed, and the troops left, leaving him with even more unanswered questions.

A women, dressed in khakis and with insignia on her collars, came over to his bed and picked up the clipboard the soldiers had left laying on his belly, and she read through the pages, making notes from time to time, then she leaned close and spoke.

“Your name Acheson?” she said, her accent southern. Georgia, maybe, or the Carolinas.

“Yup.”

“They got you in Lajes?”

“Yes’m.”

She chuckled. “Let me guess. Texas?”

“Borned and raised, sweetheart.”

“Jenny Cullwell, late of the Savannah Cullwells,” she said, curtsying. “And a reluctant Navy doc.”

“Navy, here?”

She shook her head. “We were en route from Italy, being evacuated. Seems we waited too long. What about you?”

“Flying an American 777 from Paris to DFW when we got the order to land.”

“Wait…you’re not military?”

“Major, Air Force reserves.”

“Oh.”

“Do you know what’s happening out there?”

“Yes, I do. You sure you want to hear about it?”

He nodded his head.

“The main attack on the US was preceded by large scale cyber attacks, came right after all that bullshit, after Air Force One went down, like it had been coordinated. Nukes hit San Diego and Puget sound, Norfolk and sub bases in Maine and New London. Missile fields too, and major air force and naval bases right after, sub-launched ICBMs, we heard. From what I’ve heard, major Russian cities took a pounding, city-buster hydrogen warheads, maybe a hundred and fifty million dead in Russia and Eastern Europe. We knocked out most of their second wave of ICBMs, targeted on cities, knocked ‘em right out of the sky, so loss of life at home was less, until their bombers hit. Cities in the south, Dallas and Atlanta, weren’t hit so hard, but cities on both coasts are gone now, and up north.”

“What about fallout?”

“It’s bad. Getting worse. There’s a lot of rain, too. Something about dust thrown up into the upper atmosphere.”

“Nuclear winter.”

“Sure, I guess that sounds right. Now, what about you?”

“They said my knee needs surgery, I think they operated on my head, but I have no idea why.”

“Penetrating blunt force trauma,” she said, pointing at his chart. “At least that’s what the doc wrote, assuming I can read this scribbling. An Air Force doc at Lajes did the surgery, so relax, you might live. If one of Ivan’s docs did it you’d be a drooling cauliflower right about now.” She turned his head, examined the wound behind his right ear, then shined a light on it. “Think we’ll start some antibiotics, margins are looking a little iffy.”

“You have antibiotics?”

“Yup, but that’s about it. No x-ray, no imaging equipment at all, and no orthos, so we’ll cut off that cast and check it out, then recast you. So, you’re a pilot?”

“Yup.”

“Fighters?”

“C-17s”

“Really? Well, ain’t that interesting.”

“Oh, why?”

“There are two of ‘em here. MATS birds, from Charleston.”

“Pilots?”

“Shot. Something about a code, so you might keep that in mind.”

“Thanks. What about my leg? Just cast it, let it heal?”

“Probably, unless it’s a tibial plateau fracture. If that’s the case you’ll have to have surgery, or you could lose that leg if you walk on it.”

“Swell.”

“Look, I’ll just give it to you straight. You might want to skip the antibiotics, all the heroics, and just try to check out. A Russian doc told me their estimate is three months before fallout levels become totally lethal.”

“What about the southern hemisphere? Like South Africa, or the Falklands?”

“The song remains the same, Paco. You might eke out a few months more, but nobody really knows.”

“So that’s it? Do not go gently into that good night? End of the line?”

“Yup. This is actually a damn good spot, which is why Ivan moved in here so fast. They’re digging caves in the mountains, trying to get a few hundred thousand into them, some kind of Strangelove thing, but a lot of fallout coming from the Americas falls into the Atlantic so levels right here aren’t that bad – until it rains, anyway. Then we get a spike.”

“Any TV? Any news coming from home?”

She shook her head. “Not a thing. I’m guessing it’s like medieval there now.”

“I wonder what went wrong, with our air defenses, I mean.”

The guy in the bed next to his looked up and laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, not really. You a pilot?”

“Yeah, F-22s. Look, it’s simple. Our defense contractors sold us a bill of goods. Four hundred million bucks for an F-22 or F-35, and they were built on a simple premise. One of our fighters had to be good enough to take out ten, maybe twenty of there’s. Right? Got that? So anyway, Ivan decides the way to take care of that is to send fifty aircraft for every one of ours. Overwhelm by sheer numbers. And it worked. Lajes and Iceland are like giant aircraft carriers, they make it possible to resupply NATO with an air bridge from the states, so Ivan knew if he took them, that was the end of any resupply effort. So he made a maximum effort, sent about 800 aircraft from here alone, and the Stennis and Teddy Roosevelt could keep about 30 in the air at any one time. They didn’t last an hour.”

Acheson looked at the man. One leg gone, his hands wrapped in gauze. Very bitter.

“It was a good plan…for fighting maybe Saddam’s air force. But stupid for a Cold War style engagement, especially when the Russians started building really good aircraft, and cheap, too. Never learned to make good subs, though. That’s what got ‘em.”

“Oh?”

“Our missiles in Montana never got off. Every silo hit in the first wave, taken right out of action. The boomers launched, of course, and that’s like 3000 warheads right on target. War was over by then, but nobody bothered to tell Ivan. He just kept on comin’ – their bombers came in and met with zero opposition. Dropped their bombs and flew to Cuba, I guess.”

“What did you do?”

“Me? I was escorting B-2s. From Italy to Germany and Poland, dropping tactical nukes on positions northeast of Berlin.”

Acheson shook his head and Cullwell put the back of her hand on his forehead. “So, what’s it gonna be? Antibiotics, or morphine?”

He laughed. “Fuck you, ma’am. I’m getting’ better and goin’ home, and if you want to join me, you better get this leg working. And pronto, if you know what I mean.”

And she laughed too. “Right, Paco. I’ll get right on that.”

“You do that.”

And she looked at him again. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Goddamn right I am. Me and Stumpy over there,” he said, pointing at the F-22 pilot with his thumb, “are going to go out and hijack us a C-17. Fly it right down Main Street, USA on our way to Alpine, Texas. Ain’t that right, Stumpy?”

“You bet, Tex. You steer that trash-hauler and I’ll work the radios. We’ll be pole dancin’ in Big Springs with the best of ‘em.”

+++++

The last time I saw Acheson, on the ramp at Lajes, he looked like a broken man. His aircraft was, for all intents and purposes, dead, and that Rutherford woman a broken doll. She walked off into the night, leaving me and Persephone sitting there with Liz, wondering what to do next.

And what had it been?

Maybe three weeks since we’d left Puget Sound on the boat? Just a few days from San Francisco?

Then Tate is by my side, bombs are falling and that’s when I saw Acheson. Flying through the air. Then I’m sliding into a ditch, and we crawled to a culvert as waves of bombs hit all around us. We crawled out an hour later and the first thing I saw was that airplane. It looked like two or three bombs had hit it dead center – the wings were askew, the cockpit pointing straight up at the moon, and I thought it looked like a moon launch, gone bad. I saw firemen loading Acheson’s body in an ambulance, and then he was gone.

And it hit me then, and hard.

How fast things can change.

How quickly things can come undone. All the things you take for granted, like – bam, gone, in an instant. No time to think about it, just blink your eyes and your old life is gone. Here one minute, gone the next. Get on a plane in Paris, and presto! Five hours later we were supposed to be in Dallas. But five hours later that life was gone. Forever.

I heard that Rutherford woman say something about unintended consequences, and when I heard that I wondered what she meant. Personally, I mean. If she’d been making plans for something like this, then she’d been anticipating something like this might happen, and that got me to wondering. What kind of person does that? What kind of person sets out to destroy a world, a way of life, without thinking through the consequences for the people around them.

I’d been sitting on the plane, thinking about all that. About ideologies, and how they warp perspectives. I was talking to Liz at the time, about all those Republicans trying to kill health insurance for the poor. They knew their legislative actions would lead to tens of thousands of lives being lost, yet there they were, screaming about the rights of unborn fetuses. Or all the gays on the left, getting so ‘in your face’ about gay marriage and public displays of affection, and Trannies in bathrooms, for God’s sake. Did they really think their actions weren’t going to cause a reaction, even a violent reaction? Was that what they really wanted? ‘Cause that’s sure what they got.

And that Rutherford dame? I mean, seriously? The patriarchy had to go, a new order had to take it’s place. To me, sitting up there in that airplane, I thought she was insane, like she was trying to put a picture puzzle together – with half the pieces missing. It’s like our founding fathers got lucky once, all the right circumstances came together to make a clean break from the past, and then all these people come along – wanting to tear it all down. People on the right wanted to tear it down and build a theocracy, people on the left wanted to build a socialist utopia, and in the end it seems nobody understood just how precious and rare the United States was. It just wasn’t what They wanted, so it had to be torn down. No room for a plurality of vision, no room for compromise, just ‘Me-Me-Me.’ No room left for reason and forethought, so light that match, baby, and let’s watch it burn while we sing around the bonfire of our vanities.

The bomb’s stopped falling after the rain stopped, and we started walking up into the hills as fast as we could. The roads weren’t bad, not steep, anyway, but they were narrow and lined with shrubs – but that was a good thing. We saw paratroopers coming down through the clouds and ducked into the undergrowth as hundreds of men landed around us, and after they’d gathered their equipment and started down the hill, running for the air base, we started walking away as quickly as we could. A few hours later we came to a town on the coast, I think on the south side of the island, and the streets were deserted, fires burning out of control everywhere we looked.

But we made it down to the harbor – and what did I see?

A marina. Full of sailboats.

Need I say more?

Chapter 27

Acheson was laying in bed, watching a bag of vancomycin disappearing into his arm when a guard came in the hut. Cullwell was summoned, told that a high ranking member of the military was coming by for an inspection and to get the place cleaned up, ready for inspection. She nodded her head and turned back to changing the bandages on a badly burned Russian airman, and Acheson looked at her grim determination, her stoicism. He felt a little pride, too.

A few minutes later there was a commotion at the door, then several Russian officers came in – and Rutherford was in their midst, hanging back from the main group. They walked through the makeshift ward to the office in the back, and she ignored him as she passed.

He heard shouting in the office, some asshole berating Cullwell for a perceived slight, and a few minutes later the group walked by, Rutherford still in the rear, but just before she got to the door she begged off, asked to remain for a few minutes, “to talk with a few of my countrymen,” she added.

The Russians left and she started walking among the patients, trying to cheer the men up – but she passed Acheson’s bed once again, then walked back to Cullwell’s office and talked for a while. Acheson, however, never took his eyes off her, and he wondered what her game was now.

She came out a few minutes later, and walked straight to his bedside.

“How are you doing, Ben?”

“Fine, I think. I see you landed on your feet.”

“I may only have a couple lives left.”

“Oh, I doubt that.”

She took his hand, held it tightly. “Don’t hate me,” she whispered. “Not quite yet, anyway.”

“I don’t,” he said. “Not quite yet, anyway.”

She smiled. “Do you need anything? A new leg, perhaps?”

“That’s what the doc thinks. I guess that will have to wait until they can see me at the Mayo Clinic.”

“Oh. Well, anything else?”

“How about the code to unlock the FMC on one of those C-17s. Think you can dig that up for me?”

“Oh? Gonna make a break for it?”

“Something like that.”

“Now that sounds like an adventure.”

“Yeah, might be.”

She leaned close, her lips brushing his ear. “I want you so much it hurts,” she breathed, then, “God, how I love you.”

She pushed away from him and almost ran from the tiny building.

“What the hell was that about?” Cullwell said, standing by the foot of his bed.

Acheson shrugged his shoulders. “Not sure. Something to do with chocolate malts and cheeseburgers.”

“Is she a friend of yours?”

“I have no idea, doc. None at all.”

She looked at Acheson for a long time, wondering who the hell she was, let alone who he was, then she walked back to her office. She had a lot to do to get him ready.

+++++

Men came in at three the next morning, loaded Acheson in another truck, but he was barely aware of the world around him by that point. He was heavily sedated, finishing his last bag of vancomycin as they loaded his stretcher into a Antonov 32, and three hours later he was riding in an ambulance through Geneva to an orthopedics clinic. An hour later he was on an operating table, the surgeons regarding him fearfully as Russian troops looked on. He stayed in an isolated ward post-operatively, Russian troops stationed outside his door, and a week later he returned to the Russian air base in Portugal – in the exact same An-32 – and he learned the crew, as well as the guards, had been on detached duty all the while, free to roam Geneva while he convalesced, so they had been more than disappointed to learn he wasn’t staying a month.

His knee was stiff, but he had started light physical therapy in Geneva, and had graduated to walking with crutches by the time he flew back, and now, a few days later, he was walking all over the air base, gaining strength every day. A Russian captain, Leo Piskov, his hands burned, and with his left leg in a cast, started walking with him, and as Piskov’s English was passable they found they enjoyed each others company. Then, after two weeks, their conversations took on an interesting new tone.

“My wife outside Vladivostok,” he mentioned that day. “Work in Navy hospital. You have married woman?”

“Not married, but yes, in Texas. I have no idea if she’s alive or not.”

“So? Call her.”

Acheson laughed. “I might, if I had a phone.”

“That is problem. So, I hear you fly 777, and C-17.”

“I was flying for American Airlines when the trouble started.”

“You go Lajes?”

“That’s right.”

“Bad luck. We makes big effort get Lajes.”

“Believe me, I know.”

“Sorry. Bad night for many people. You still fly C-17?”

“Every now and then. About once a month.”

“Ah, you reserves?”

“Yes.”

“Ever fly Afghanistan?”

“Many times.”

“My father killed Afghanistan.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Was he a pilot?”

Leo nodded. “Helicopter. Mi-24, you call HIND.”

“Ah, the gunship. Powerful aircraft.”

“Not enough. Mujahideen took him with shoulder fire weapon. Maybe Stinger is name? I don’t know, too young remember.”

They walked towards the ramp, towards one of the C-17s, and as they got close men began watching them from the control tower.

There was a keypad by the lower door, and it was locked and armed, Acheson saw. Two attempts to unlock it had been made; one more and a large explosive charge would go off in the cockpit, effectively destroying the aircraft.

“You know code?” Leo asked, and now Acheson knew why these walks had been allowed, and why he had been allowed so close to the flight line.

“No, every aircraft has a unique code, and the code is changed every month.”

“Any way get code?”

“Sure, at the operations office in Charleston. The duty officer will have it.”

“Can you call? Get code?”

“Why? So you can use the aircraft?”

“We have no need. No, I was thinking, maybe you get all Americans here, from hospital, we load and you fly them to this Charleston. Maybe you go Texas, find girl.”

Acheson turned to the Russian, looked him in the eye. Then he saw the men in the tower, looking at them with binoculars.

“We have an audience.”

“Da. Big problem. Base commander wants to kill all Americans. I think another solution. Get you home. War over. No need kill now.”

“I see.”

“No, Ben. You no see. Big struggle over prisoners. Many want to kill, even yesterday. If I bring you phone, can get code? You can call Texas. If you can get code, and if I can get people to airplane, can you fly to America?”

“I can try.”

“What about woman?”

“Woman?”

“Woman who love you. Rutherford?”

“What about her?”

“She need leave this place before GRU kill her. She dangerous.”

“How many people?”

“Please?”

“How many people need to leave on C-17?”

“Twenty five on stretcher. Fifteen in seat.”

“I would need to refuel. At Lajes. Is possible?”

“Difficult, but possible.”

“Are there any other pilots here? For C-17?”

“C-17 loadmaster, ground chief. No C-17 pilot, but two other pilots. F-22, F/A18.”

“What about you? You want to go too?”

He looked away, then very quietly said “Da. Maybe get to wife from Alaska. No way from here now.”

“I see.”

“I hope you do. I may need your help.”

“You can get me a phone? A satellite phone?”

“I think, yes.”

“And when do you want to leave?”

“Early. Tomorrow.”

“I think I want to walk back now.”

“Okay. You think possible?”

“Yes. It is possible, but must find ground chief and ground power cart. Understand? Airplane has been sitting too long.”

“Yes, understand.”

“Alright. Listen Leo, I feel like shit. You understand shit? I need to lie down, now.”

Leo turned to the tower and waved his hands, and men started running when Acheson fell to the ground.

+++++

Cullwell was starting an IV when he came to, and he felt feverish, but something else bothered him about the way he felt. A little nauseated, maybe?

“Any way to figure out how much radiation we’re soaking up?” he croaked.

“Nope.”

“I feel like shit.”

“No hard feelings, Ben, but you look like shit, too. No, make that diarrhea.”

“Gee, thanks. I think. You really know how to make a guy…”

“I know. I feel it too, so I’m assuming we’ve passed 200 rem now. Getting up lethal dose in a hurry now.”

“So, in pilot-speak, we’re past the point of no return?”

“Yup, close anyway.”

“Oh, swell.”

“Look, there were troops in here, while you were gone, and some of them looked sicker than shit. We’re a month and a little bit out from radiation release, so people close to the blasts are already gone. I’d say that we, as a whole, were not real close but close enough. We have a month, at most. People well away from detonations, say in South Africa, or at bases in Antarctica, will be reaching 100 rem now, so they may have lifetimes expressed in months, but that’s it.”

“What’s your point?”

“You want to die at home, now’s the time to go. Some air force type came with the troops, told me to get my patients ready to go on a long flight. I’m assuming that had something to do with you and your walk with that Russian?”

“Yup.”

“Will they let us leave?”

“I doubt it. The question is, even if they do, am I well enough to make an eight hour flight?”

“I doubt it, but once we’re airborne I can keep fluids running through the line…”

“What about a catheter. I don’t feel strong enough to get up every half hour to take a leak.”

“Yeah. I can do that.” She turned away, shook her head. “Ben, I’m sorry about all this. Not having the stuff on hand to take care of people better than I have…”

“What the devil are you talking about, Jennifer? You’ve been like an angel sent directly from God…everyone in this room would be dead if not for all you’ve done.”

“It wasn’t enough.”

“And that’s not any fault of yours.”

“I just feel so…”

“Nope. Don’t go there, doc. Let’s get on with the business of living, okay? The rest can wait for another day.”

She nodded her head, tried to brighten up. “Yeah. Got it.”

Piskov walked in, an Iridium Sat-Phone in hand, and he came to Acheson’s bed and sat, beads of perspiration glistening on his forehead. “I think I feel as bad as you now,” he said as he handed over the phone. “The phone is about half charged, I think, but we have no charger for it, so talk quickly.” He turned to Cullwell, grinned. “Do you still have Coca-Cola here?”

She smiled. “For medicinal purposes only, but yes, we do. Ben, you want one too?”

“Sounds good. Don’t suppose you have any crushed ice?”

She laughed again, then walked back to her office. Piskov looked at Ben expectantly, then frowned. “You want privacy, I think?”

“I think, yes.”

“I go sit with doctor.”

Ben watched him walk away, then powered up the unit and dialed the duty officer’s desk at the 628th Air Wing, and someone answered on the second ring. “Duty Officer, Captain Nichols.”

“Major Acheson, calling from a Russian POW camp in Portugal.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m calling from a Russian POW camp in Portugal. I’ve been told they’re going to allow us to take a C-17 and try to get a planeload of injured back to the states tomorrow morning.”

“Name, rank and full DOD service number, please.”

Acheson recited the information.

“Stand-by one, Major.”

He looked up, saw several men on the ward staring at him.

“Acheson?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“How do you expect to fly across?”

“Refuel at Lajes, direct to Charleston after that.”

“What bird?”

“60002.”

“You won’t have the range, Major.”

“What about Bermuda?”

“Unknown.”

“No refueling assets?”

“I’m not sure. Doubtful.”

“Captain, it looks like I’m going to be able to get about 50 people out of here and home. Is there anything you guys can do to help?”

“Look, buddy, things aren’t running real smooth right now, and you need to know something. They’ve tried this twice, load up a small warhead on the payload, detonate it when they get in US airspace.”

“I understand.”

“I’ll call back in a while, but don’t get your hopes up, okay?”

“Yeah, understood. This phone has about a half charge, call it an hour or so of talk time.”

“Got it, and I have your number. I’ll call you in 12 hours.”

“Signing off.”

“Roger.”

He looked at the phone, then called his grandfather’s house in Alpine, Texas. No one picked up, and he left a brief message, about where he was and how he was trying to make it home, and maybe being there in a couple of days, then he signed off and powered down the phone.

“What’s the C-17s range?” the pilot in the bed next to his asked.

“Call it 2400, maybe a few hundred more with a light load.”

“It’s 3000 to from Lajes to the mid-Atlantic coast, but what about Maine? Or St Johns?”

“Around 2000, assuming there are facilities up there. A nuke hit mid-coast Maine, so…”

“Well, that would get us home.”

“Yeah. Guess so.”

“What about navigation? Without GPS, I mean?”

“Some older aircraft have inertial. I think that one out on the ramp does. Or did.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“I hear paper and pencil still works…” Acheson said, grinning.

Cullwell came out with a coke in a red plastic cup, and when she handed it to him he saw three ice cubes floating in the cup and he grinned. “Thanks, Ma’am.”

She nodded, smiled. “My secret stash.”

He watched Piskov walk up behind Cullwell, and the Russian was smiling. “You are to leave at 0500, for Lajes. We will start moving out to the aircraft an hour before. I assume you have the code?”

Acheson smiled. “I’ll be ready.”

“I see. Well, I hope so.”

+++++

He sat up in bed when the phone chirped, a little before three, and he listened to the duty officer in South Carolina. He listened to what he had to say, how the Russians had tried to send Medevac aircraft to Kentucky earlier that morning, where the latest interim government was located, but those efforts had been intercepted, the aircraft shot down. They wouldn’t be allowed into US airspace, and the man warned him to look out for anything suspicious being loaded on the aircraft, then he was gone. He shook his head, then dressed carefully, taking care not to disturb the IV shunt dangling from his arm, and then he went went outside. Piskov was out there, still grinning, waiting for him in some sort of Russian jeep; two soldiers saluted when he came out, and he saluted them as he climbed in the front seat.

“You feeling okay?” the Russian asked. “You looking kind of green.”

“I feel green.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“That means my eyes still working.”

“Ah.”

“You have the code?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Shall we go?”

Piskov drove across to the ramp, and Acheson saw Russian ground crews huddled under the C-17’s wings – and three American airmen, hand-cuffed, under armed-guard, by the aft cargo door. There was also a large metal box sitting on the ramp by the door, with two men standing beside it.

‘So, that’s the bomb?’ Acheson said to himself as he looked at the C-17. ‘And this is the Trojan Horse.’

And then he saw Rutherford standing by a car in the shadows, watching him as they approached.

‘And I’m supposed to lead the horse inside the gate?’

Part VI – The Lioness Learns

Chapter 28

Once upon a time

She’d always considered herself an anarchist, and she thought that ironic – or she had, anyway – once upon a time.

Anne Rutherford left Grand Island, Nebraska for Cambridge, Mass, in a way unlike few before her. Wide-eyed and sure of herself, academically accomplished and politically naïve, she made it into Harvard on a Wadsworth scholarship, determined to make a real difference in the world. Yet she’d grown up in the Methodist Church, and had even believed some of the things she learned there, and she had been raised to become a good man’s wife. But in time she picked up on some of the more glaring internal inconsistencies within the Good Book, and that came to her as an awakening of sorts. She began to focus her inquiries on the internal inconsistencies she found in her home after that, and then, soon enough, everywhere she looked – and always through that same questioning prism, searching for inconsistencies in arguments, for human frailty and weakness.

One of her father’s oldest friends, a deacon at their church, ran a hand down her skirt one Sunday after services, and when he slipped a finger inside her, when he played with her physical emotions for the very first time, she seemed confused at first. Far from being scared, or even upset, she was curious about the feelings she experienced, and when he pulled out his penis and forced her to take it in her mouth, she grew only more curious about the man’s inconsistencies. He did the same thing almost every time he came over, usually after Sunday services, and in time she began to anticipate his various little comings and goings, looking forward to things she might learn by examining the man’s emotions. And, in time, she learned how to gauge his emotions, chief among them the need to control her, but then she used his errant feelings to tease him – just a little, in the beginning, anyway. She began to see how easy it was to manipulate the old man, to use his lust as a weapon, and eventually, to turn it against him to her advantage – to take a perceived strength and turn it into a weakness, to play with him, if only for her own private amusement.

She began to watch people, men mostly, after that, and she began to see patterns in their behavior. She saw how men expected to be treated, and how they reacted when they weren’t. They pouted her little brother, she thought, only men wore grown-up clothes. She was twelve, maybe thirteen years old when a local city councilman did the same things to her, and she let him. She led him deeper into a relationship of her own design, then she dumped him, and she regaled as she watched the man dancing on strings she alone knew about. When he pushed back, tried to control her again she exposed him, and she laughed inside as the police took him away – while the world saw her tears.

And her ability to exploit men had set a pattern of sorts, by the time she began high school. When she had trouble with a class, when the material was just too hard to get a handle on, she went to her teachers and got all the help she needed. Men, women – it made no difference. All had their needs, and she knew how to take care of them. She began to see herself as a chameleon, able to change color in an instant, recognize danger and adjust, quickly, to the needs of the moment. To survive. That was, by high school, the ‘all’ of her existence. She lived in a man’s world, and she had to play by certain rules – or learn ways to invert the rules, use them against men.

And curiously, as a result she didn’t have time for ‘boys’ her own age. They learned they too seemed focused on just one thing: using sex as a crude means of control, and, unlike older men, when they couldn’t control her, usually because they were so clumsily arrogant, they became jealous – and often, violently so. One boy tried to ‘make it with her’ after a football game one night during her junior year, and she sensed, as she rejected him, that he was going to rape her. And the whole thing was so pathetic, she thought at the time. When he pushed her down she had simply laughed at the boy, made fun of the size of his penis, and he dissolved before her eyes – disappeared behind crumbling walls of humiliation. So, it was just that simple. Learn the mechanisms of control, then use them.

Then one Sunday a cousin asked her to come with her to a presentation.

“About what?” she asked.

“Oh, you’ll see.”

And so she went, curious why there was a need for such secrecy.

The event was held at a conference room in a local motel, and there were a few hundred people gathered there, sitting around tables loaded with literature and snacks. She looked at the people, all very earnest and hopeful, then a fiery pastor of some sort came out and began to exhort the gathered about how to best live their lives. Using a skillfully woven narrative, the woman related biblical passages to current events, leaving no room at all for any other conclusion that the end was nigh, that the Second Coming was at hand, and that the only way the people in that room could avoid damnation was to reach DEEP down into their pockets – and GIVE!

Despite the crudeness of the message, let alone the messenger, what struck Rutherford was the rapt adoration she felt being showered on the pastor. There was an unquestioning acceptance of everything the woman said, even though, to her, anyway, much that she heard was patently absurd. Still, the force in the woman’s voice made it was hard not to be taken in. There was talk of love and brotherhood, and a community coming together through a shared love for the Lord, and for Jesus Christ.

After a few hours of this, there came a pause, and the pastor asked those in attendance to stand – but only if they had taken the Lord Jesus Christ into their hearts. And people stood while the woman shouted about Christ’s love, about Christ’s willingness to forgive, to accept – but then the woman stopped speaking, and everyone in the room turned to Rutherford, for she alone had remained seated.

And she had never, not once in her life, felt so much hate in one room as she felt just then.

And the pastor turned to her with something akin to fire in her eyes, and she pointed at Anne, called her out as an agent of Satan, and the hatred she felt in the room turned to something far more sinister. Men turned and faced her, and other men, standing by the stage, handed out canes as the pastor screamed for the assembled to strike out at Satan, to drive Him from their midst.

She stood and ran for a door, but the way ahead was blocked – by more men with canes – and she turned, slipped through the converging crowd, made it to a fire escape and burst out into the night, ran all the way home – and yet as she ran all she could think about was the woman’s power, her ability to control an otherwise normal group of people, and it took years for her to get the woman’s fiery eyes out of her mind.

By the time she was a first year at Harvard she knew the stakes had increased, but the game was still the same. She could lead men around by their needs, get what she needed from them by playing along with their game, she could still use them up and spit them out, move on to the next errant fool – but she discovered something even more interesting in Boston: there were more people here, people just like her, playing the same game. And, she soon learned, the stakes grew even higher in this league, the state of play was more polished, and, not infrequently, the game was played to the death.

Her second year roommate, Julie, told her she had good legs and that she ought to wear more provocative clothing, but Anne explained she simply didn’t have that kind of money. “That isn’t a problem,” Julie explained, and she put forth a solution. They went to an underground club that next Friday, and Julie explained Anne’s problem to an older gentleman, and he said he’d be more than happy to help Anne out.

And he had been, too.

He picked her up the next morning, in a limousine, no less, and had spent the day with her. They visited the trendiest boutiques on Newbury Street, and some of the lesser known but no less trendy fetish shops on the other side of the night, then he took her to get her hair done. She had her first manicure, and a pedicure too, and by the time Saturday night rolled around she was, in his estimation, anyway, ready for the big leagues.

When he came by her dormitory at nine that night, in the limo again, he took her to a club “not very many people know about.” There were lot’s of limos dropping off people in an underground garage downtown, and these people were dressed, by and large, in black leather, and they carried bags in with them. They dressed inside, dressed in outlandish costumes, and they wore props like she had seen in some of the seedier shops earlier that afternoon. She saw her roommate then, with a short whip in hand, and a phallus strapped around her waist, working over a man, while another woman was doing her level best to suffocate the poor chap with her vagina.

Her escort, the old man, seemed to understand this was Anne’s first exposure to such proceedings, but he proved a gentle teacher. He was, he explained, a top, or a master, but that, obviously, not all men were tops, and as he led her from scene to scene he explained the roles on display, what he called the transfers of power going on, who was doing what, and, presumably, why. And the why was suddenly of great interest to Anne, for she was seeing a new, much larger vista into the inner workings of power and control that women, in particular, exerted over men, and as suddenly she knew she wanted to be a top, too.

Yet she could feel her escort’s growing lust – for her – and she intuitively understood that she would have to play with him – on his terms. But rather that wait for him to take charge, she stopped at one point and held out her hands, wrists together, and she said four words that forever changed her life.

“Please, Master? Teach me?”

He had taken her to a room that night, and with several other women to assist him – his women, she learned – she was taken in, indoctrinated, and she became his plaything, for a while. Until, a few months later, she felt him falling in love with her. Then, and only when she was sure he was under her control, she turned the tables on him. She asserted control the next weekend at the club, she wielded the whip, wore the phallus, and she began to bend him first to her need, then to needs of his own he had long repressed.

She knew by then, of course, that he was an immensely wealthy and powerful man. He walked the corridors of power in Washington as easily as he helmed his schooner off the Vineyard; he had a jet, of course, and took her places on weekends, and she knew enough by then to not ask about his wife. He took her skiing in Austria and fishing on Scottish rivers, became her tutor, her mentor, advising which classes to take, which professors were good, helping her some nights with her studies, and as his was an able mind she listened, and learned. About his world, first, then about the doors he might open for her.

When they went to the club he taught her even more, more about the inner dynamics she observed, the tormented inner psyches, the hidden impulses on open, sudden display. There was no act depraved enough, she soon learned, no personal backstory dark enough, and in the end she understood that all life revolved around power and control – and nothing more.

She thought of all the boys in high school who had ‘come on’ to her, and she began to see their clumsy efforts as nothing more than the pathetic attempts of lost children. Children not open to or aware enough of their own cravings to assert control over their darkest needs, and she began to reclassify people. People who knew, who understood the nature of these needs, and people who remained clueless, children who let half-understood impulses control their lives. She began to see that very powerful people were, by and large, very tuned in to this part of their selves, and that they were very tuned in to others on the same wavelength. Like neurons in a vast body, such people were linked by this awareness – and in time she was, too. She began to study this connection, the way it worked, and could not work absent this special ‘awareness,’ but once the connection was made it was like whole new worlds opened up to her.

They spent a week together on his yacht the summer after her junior year, and they sailed from Boston to Southwest Harbor, Maine. He gave her a book to read their first night out – Rand’s Atlas Shrugged – and he told her it was an important book in Washington, but that the hidden parts of the story could be found in the heroine’s extraordinary submission to men. The author had been, he claimed, a complex, introverted woman, yet a very dominant presence in the world – until she was around a true Master. Then she had reverted to type, he said, and wanted nothing more than to be raped, to be physically consumed by the real Master, the World Historical Figure, the real men who moved about world creating massive societal change. She would have to be, he told her, willing to bow before these real men in her quest for power, or in her ascent they would crush her – if only in their sport.

Then one evening he had asked, and seriously, too, if she would like to get married – to him.

“Why?” she asked. “Do you love me?”

“You are the only person I’ve ever loved. I was born to love you.”

“I don’t feel that way about you.”

“Oh, I quite understand that.”

“Then, why?”

“Because I want to help you achieve your dreams.”

And so she married him, and he guided her through the ins-and-outs of Washington – until one day he was gone. She was surprised how much his passing hurt, but by then she had grown immune to such things. She in fact viewed herself now as a something like a shark, cruising reefs in dark solitude, feeding when necessary, but most of all enjoying the feeling of immense, unquestioned power. She was a predator, she knew, consuming anyone and everything that got in her way, and she moved up the career ladder at FBI headquarters with patient, monotonous regularity.

She was a good cop, and she was good because she understood the repressed sexual dynamics that seemed to drive the human mind. And criminals were, after all, human beings – of a sort, anyway. The sort who had little control over such things, just the type she most loved to crush.

+++++

Over the years, one other fact of life emerged in Anne Rutherford’s world that seemed to edge out all other concerns, and that was the continuing social injustice women faced in society. The fact bothered her intellectually, and from a distance, for as a career law enforcement officer many such facts of life had been eased by federal regulation. Such things as unequal pay and sexual harassment were no longer ‘obvious’ issues in the workplace, but of more importance, in her capacity as a law enforcement officer she ran into the real savagery such inequality visited upon women and children, and on an, almost, daily basis.

And she learned two things very quickly in her first years on the street.

The first was that there appeared to be real predators out there, predators whose crimes were not simple, accidental encounters. Their crimes were nothing less than the pre-meditated savagery of men who preyed on weak women and powerless children, and who most often did so to exert control over a weak, terrified victim. The second: that there were men in law enforcement who simply saw this predation as a part of the natural order of things, and as such, these were crimes hardly worth bothering with. She listened to agents toss off brutal jokes about women serially abused and murdered, jokes referencing mutilated vaginas or the emotional vagaries of PMS, and she wondered why some men thought these things funny.

Perhaps because they knew so little about themselves? About the true nature of life?

Her first assignment, after completing her post-academy training at a field office in Hartford, Connecticut, had taken her into the bizarre realm of profiling, the reconstructive/predictive psychoanalysis of criminal behavior. With her academic background in sociology and psychology, this was a natural progression for her, and with her less well known sexual predilections an integral part of her deeper background, she discovered she had a real interest in this work.

She was sent to the field office in Cleveland, Ohio, when a series of disappearances gained national attention, and she began looking over the information gathered to date. The first things she noted were the victim’s names, names like Anna and Hannah. Palindromes. Every victim’s name was a palindrome, so instantly she knew these people had been chosen, that their disappearances were not random.

So, if they weren’t random, were there other unifying characteristics?

After she posited her ‘palindrome insight’ with the SAC, or Special Agent in Charge,