Red Man Down (2 page)

‘Buddy, I’m not touching anything, I just have to get one look. Because if this is a fatality where’s all the— Oh.’

Spurlock’s first shot must have been a thousand-to-one successful crime-stopper that entered just below his chin. It appeared to have kept going straight back, probably through his spinal cord. Or was buried in it? Either way, there wouldn’t have been much bleeding after that bullet found its target. This man was probably dead when he hit the ground.
Nice shooting, Officer Spurlock
.

She walked back and stood beside the young officer. ‘Looks like your suspect died really fast,’ she said. She glanced through her notes and found his first name. ‘Daniel,’ she said, watching the nerve twitch in his cheek, ‘is this your first shooting?’

‘Yes, it is,’ Spurlock said, ‘and I gotta tell you, it does not feel good.’

‘It never does,’ Sarah said. ‘I would be quite alarmed if you said it did. But you and I are going to have to walk this scene together while you tell me everything you can remember about what happened here. And then, once the rest of my crew gets here, you and I will go downtown and meet somebody from Internal Affairs. I’ll sit in while he interviews you and we’ll make out the preliminary report. First, though,’ she said, pulling on gloves, ‘I have to ask you for your badge and your weapon. As of now you’re on paid investigative leave, Daniel.’ She watched his eyes darken for a couple of seconds and got ready for an argument, but the moment passed and he pulled his badge off his belt.

‘Call me Dan – everybody else does. This doesn’t feel so good either,’ he said, unclipping the holster that held his Glock.

‘I know. Think of it as a nice paid vacation with the family.’

‘I’ll try. When does it start?’

‘As soon as you finish talking to me and Internal Affairs.’

‘How long does the investigation take, usually?’

‘On average? Three or four months. But you won’t get that much time off – just three working days, usually. Though you can request one or two extra if you feel you need it. What shifts are you working?’

‘Saturday through Tuesday.’

‘So you might get back to work on Tuesday, if all goes well. Check with your duty sergeant. Meanwhile a dozen or so people will be writing their reports – I’ll write one, and Delaney, and the Chief of Police after he walks the scene with one of us. Internal Affairs will review the scene and write a report, too, and somebody from the County Attorney’s office—’

‘Jeez,’ he said, ‘everybody gets to comment but me?’

‘Oh, you’ll get interviewed plenty – more than you’re going to like, probably. But the more you help me right now, the easier the whole thing will go.’ She turned to a fresh page. ‘Did you talk to the men who called in the complaint?’

‘No. Like I said, the minute I got here I saw that guy and called for backup. I walked over to that bar as soon as the other two patrol cars got here and asked the guy who’s running the place to show me who called it in. He said they left right after they ended the call, said they didn’t want to get involved.’ He shrugged. ‘People are funny about that sometimes, aren’t they?’

‘Yes.’ The ME’s car had just parked beside hers and she saw Moses Greenberg, a.k.a. the Animal, get out of it and stride impatiently toward the tape. Sarah removed the ammo clip and the last bullet from the chamber of Spurlock’s gun, then dropped it and his badge into an evidence bag, saying, ‘Will you wait here, please, while I have a word with Doctor Greenberg? Then we’ll take a stroll around this lot before we go downtown.’

She walked over and stood beside the doctor, who was already hurling questions across the eight feet of space between him and the photographer. How come the scene was only just getting photographed? Greenberg wanted to know. Where were all the detectives who should be here by now? Had the photographer rolled the body yet? How much longer did the doctor have to wait? Moses Greenberg had a Type-A personality augmented by a fanatical fitness regimen. Running marathons, biking mountain trails and swimming a mile or two a day, he stayed fit and ready to cope with the next crisis, which as often as not he would create himself.

Dr Greenberg was not easy to be around. Sarah liked him anyway, because his standards for himself were even higher than for everybody else, and he had a nice, respectful way with bodies.

Buddy Norris flung back short answers without looking up, making it clear he didn’t give a crap about the doctor’s anxieties. ‘I’ll be done here in about five minutes,’ he said, ‘but then I gotta do all that junk in the pickup and a bunch more in the warehouse. Plenty of time for questions later, Doc.’

‘Good morning, Doctor,’ Sarah said, and waited through a couple of loud, well-phrased sentences describing everything that was wrong with the way this scene was being handled. His curls and high coloring grew more dramatic as he described the several catastrophic mistakes it was probably already too late to prevent.

When he paused for breath she said, ‘Yes, well, you know this is an officer-related shooting? So we’ll need detailed descriptions of the number and placement of bullet wounds.’

‘Ah. Yes, I suppose you will be quite anxious for that,’ Greenberg said, ‘considering how little blood I’m seeing. Looks like the poor sap died while he was still falling down.’ He looked at her sideways. ‘No witnesses, huh?’

‘No. Spurlock called for backup but everybody was on another call. It took a few minutes for anybody to get here.’

‘Well then,’ Greenberg said, ‘let’s hope all the entry wounds are at the front.’

Not needing any more of Greenberg’s black humor just then, Sarah walked quickly back to Spurlock and said, ‘Let’s take a hike.’

They started at the street. Standing in the driveway in front of Officer Garry’s makeshift check-in desk, Spurlock had distance from the body and better concentration. ‘Take it from the top,’ Sarah said. ‘You were on Flowing Wells when you got the call? Heading north or south?’

‘Just crossing Wetmore, headed south. Dispatch asked if there was anyone in the vicinity, said witnesses reported somebody burglarizing an abandoned warehouse on Flowing Wells. I called in, said that I was just north of there and I’d take it.’

‘So you were approaching from the north, you arrived at this address and turned in right away?’

‘No, I stopped right there at the curb’ – he pointed to a spot ten feet from his foot – ‘to eyeball it for a minute. I had a good view across the empty parking lot. I suppose that’s why he thought he could score some wire here today,’ Spurlock said, indicating the bleak, boarded-up windows and long-neglected parking spaces with their headers askew. ‘Christmas break, Saturday, the street is busy but all the action is at the malls. This is a pretty dead area normally. Today, you can see, there’s hardly anybody in the buildings on this side of the block.

‘The only vehicle in sight was that old Dodge pickup a few feet back from the power box. The driver’s-side door was open and the driver had the cover off the box. I didn’t have to get any closer to see what he was doing – he already had a small spool of wire started.

‘I got on the radio, told Dispatch what I was looking at and asked for backup ASAP. But then nobody came! All while I was on the radio, he had that auxiliary motor turned on and was rolling copper wire around the spool. There was one big shriek when the wire tore loose at the far end and then he just kept rolling it up, neat as can be.’

‘You were still paused on the street?’

‘I was right here in the driveway’ – he pointed to the ground by his feet – ‘pulling in. I wanted to wait for backup but I saw that wire coming out and I thought,
I can’t just sit here like a doofus and watch taxpayers’ property being destroyed.
’ The pulsing tic reappeared in his jaw as the stress of the decision replayed in his mind. ‘So I pulled into the lot—’

‘This way?’ She started them moving, under the tape, back toward the body. The rest of the detective crew began to arrive – all at once, it seemed. They all pulled up to the driveway, saw the tape and then backed out and pulled ahead to park at the curb. Soon there were three more Impalas lined up nose-to-tail in front of hers.

Ollie Greenaway nodded to Sarah, signed in and ducked under the tape. He strode silently toward the doctor in his rock-solid, old-street-cop way. Jason Peete was right behind him, talking fast to Ollie’s back. He wore a watch cap pulled down to his eyebrows, covering his shaved head, and a fleece-lined jacket with the collar turned up; he hated the cold. And Oscar Cifuentes, pressed and pomaded as always, got out of his Impala and added his stiff macho presence to the scene. When they had all signed in and were talking to Delaney, last of all came Ray Menendez, flashing his handsome smile at Sarah – ‘Just always so
cleaned-up
looking,’ said the tech staffer who had the biggest crush on him. To no avail – he was scrupulously faithful to the beautiful girl he would soon marry.

Spurlock was still speaking. ‘I turned on my flasher as I drove toward him—’

‘You did?’ Sarah said. ‘So there’ll be a recording in your camera.’

‘Well, yeah,’ Spurlock said. ‘Come to think of it, I never thought to toggle the camera on, but … it starts saving the recording when the overhead flashers come on, doesn’t it?’

‘Sure does. Picks up the last thirty seconds before the lights came on, too. You might have a video of the whole event.’ The camera was rigged to compensate for the understandable tendency of street patrolmen to forget to hit the ‘record’ button during their most stressful times. Always running, it would start to save the video if they activated their warning lights or siren, or when their speed exceeded seventy-five miles an hour. Smart camera; lucky Spurlock.

‘What next?’

‘I turned on my outside speaker too, and I said, as loud as I could, ‘Put down your tools and stand up with your hands over your head.’ Spurlock’s voice grew stronger as he remembered that. Sarah thought it helped him to see the lot filling up with police personnel. His personal nightmare was turning into a civic event, and he could deal with that. Soon it would be in the newspaper and belong to everyone.

‘Did he respond promptly? Or seem to think about flight?’

‘He stood up when I told him to but he never seemed to think about running. I had my eyes on him the whole time and it seemed to me that as soon as he heard my voice he accepted being caught. All his moves for that next minute looked calm and easy, like somebody who’s been arrested before. You know what I mean?’

‘Yes.’ First year on the street, you learn to look for the difference between beginners and the ones who’ve been around a while. Often the first-timers are the dangerous ones; nobody knows what they’ll do. Experienced thugs accept the occasional arrest as the price of doing business.

‘I stopped in front of him and watched him straighten up before I opened my door. When he was all the way up, I said, ‘Step away from your vehicle,’ and he did. When he was standing on the asphalt, away from everything, I drew my weapon, opened my door and got out of the car. I still had the door between me and the suspect but I never took my eyes off him. He’d put his hands up nice and easy, held them just above his head. I opened my mouth to tell him, “A little higher,” but just as I stepped out from behind my door his right hand dropped behind his head, and quick as a snake he pulled it forward holding that gun, the Sig you see on the ground there, and started
firing.
He’s got a holster pulled up tight behind his neck, you’ll see.’

‘That must have been quite a surprise.’

‘Tell me about it. Tricky bastard.’ She was watching Spurlock curiously now because despite his sweaty upper lip and the jumping nerve in his jaw, this rookie patrolman had apparently put three bullets – three was his own guess, but it might turn out to be more – into the kill zone of the moving man he claimed had shot first. He’d hit his target every time. He might be a little nervous but if everything he was saying was true, Gerald Spurlock was one hell of a shooter.

‘You believe he only got off one round?’

‘That’s all I heard. There could have been a second shot covered by the noise of my firing, but I don’t think he had time for that.’

‘Where did his bullet go, do you know?’

‘No. Not into me was what I noticed.’ They each gave a small, humorous snort. Spurlock had already learned that you didn’t carry on about these things. ‘As soon as I saw that gun in his hand, I returned fire three times. He went rigid for a couple of seconds and then dropped like a stone.’

‘So it was all over very fast?’

‘Yes.’ Dan Spurlock turned his boyish face toward Sarah, raised his eyebrows and said, ‘The whole incident took place in less than a minute.’ He made another small sound, like a hiccup.

They had walked and talked their way back to the body, where everything had changed and was still changing for the man on the ground. Copper wire had no value for him now. He had been photographed many times, front and back, from every angle. His temperature had been taken and his eyes were closed. And he had found security at last – he had his very own toe tag now, with its own incident number, so there was no danger of his being mistaken for some other aspiring copper-wire dealer who might lie beside him on a shelf in the morgue.

His body bag was coming out of the transport van and he would lie inside it, growing colder and stiffer and then softening again while police detectives learned everything there was to know about him – except, perhaps, the answer to the question they had all begun to ask each other, looking around them at the multi-use buildings which, while not at the top of the heap commercially, were not entirely empty either – some had traffic coming and going, and every one had dozens of anonymous windows that blinked transparently down on his bagging-up.

So the whole crew of detectives had begun to ask each other, ‘What was he thinking?’

And before very long, from wondering that they went back and took another look at the dead man as if his face might hold the answer. And then another question began to circulate.

Ollie Greenaway asked Sarah, as soon as she walked up to him. ‘Doesn’t this guy look familiar?’