Sin City Homicide (21 page)

38

Alma Parr waited until the sun broke over the horizon before he slipped on the Kevlar vest and his sunglasses. The three other people in the car began prepping
, too. He checked his sidearm then placed it back in the holster. The SWAT van was twenty feet away to the west. A few of the men were stretching and taking nervous pisses. Back when he was in SWAT, he had to crap before every raid.

Behind the van sat two men in ankle and wrist cuffs,
with two SWAT officers behind them, holding semi-automatic rifles. The men were staring at the ground. One of them was having minor convulsions and tremors. It had been a while since his last hit.

“How’d you know they’d have sentries?” Javier asked from the backseat.

“Because I’m paranoid, and that’s what I would do if I ran a compound.” Parr took a deep breath. “Sun’s up. Let’s go.”

He slipped out of the car and left the door open. Aside from the SWAT van, at least half a dozen cruisers with uniforms
were standing by. The SWAT commander, who was in the passenger seat of the van, looked over and gave the thumbs-up. Parr did the same, and SWAT officers silently hopped out of the van and began making their way to the compound entrance, which wasn’t more than thirty feet away.

Parr fiddled with the lock
on the gate, hoping to break it off, but it was solid. He looked back at the SWAT commander and motioned for the van to break through the gate. The commander whispered to one of the officers next to him, and he ran back to the van and turned it on. Parr and his men scattered as the van roared down the dirt road and crashed into the gate, ripping it off its hinges. The officers swarmed in.

Two women were out smoking
, and they screamed. One of the officers grabbed them both by the back of the neck and threw them in the dirt. He put his boot on one of them and had his shotgun turned on the other.

Parr had gotten the layout from one of the sentries. He had refused to cooperate, so Parr
had asked for a few minutes alone with him in the back of the van. The other officers took a break, and it didn’t take much for Parr to get what he needed.

Three of the five buildings were housing, but the last two had operational functions. One was the meeting place and housing for the leaders of this sector of the Brotherhood,
which consisted of eleven men in total. The other was a heavily guarded weapons and drug cache armory.

SWAT went for the armory while Parr, Jay, Javier, and three officers went into the leadership’s stronghold. Shots
rang out from the various buildings, then the crackle of return fire filled the air. Parr kicked down the door and went in gun first. He swung left and right as the others came in behind him.

They were inside a bar.
Rather than walking around them, Parr kicked over tables as he made his way through. The surprise had worn off, and now the guys had to feel intimidated. Otherwise, the officers were in for a fight.

A blast behind them
threw Jay off his feet and over a table. Parr swung around and saw a man behind the bar lift his shotgun and aim at one of the other officers. Parr fired twice. The first shot went through the man’s forearm, and the shotgun fell to the floor. He held up his hands in surrender and screamed, “Don’t shoot!” Parr fired again, sending a round through his eye, spattering skull and brain matter on the liquor bottles behind him.

Jay was choking and coughing as he pulled
off the hot Kevlar. Parr bent over him and scanned his back. It was bruised with half-inch purple-and-black circles, but there was no blood.

“Stay here,” Parr said.

“No fucking way.”

Jay got to his feet and put the Kevlar back on, still coughing.

Parr told one of the other officers, “Stay behind him.”

They made their way through the bar
, to the door at the far end. Parr took one side, and Javier took the other. He could hear machine-gun fire outside, as well as the high-pitched squeal of pistols. Parr held up his hand, counting down.
Three, two, one…

He kicked open the door
to a large room with furniture, a computer, swastika posters, and a Confederate flag. There was a bed in the room, and the sheets had decorations of skulls on them. They walked through the room silently, watching the door on the other side. Parr glanced at the closet. He tried to blink away the hot sting of sweat in his eyes. He got to the closet and flung open the door.

A woman screamed
, and he placed his weapon against her head. He lowered it when he saw that she wasn’t armed. He grabbed her by the hair and threw her to the floor. There was no one else in the closet.

As he turned to go to the unopened door, three shots went off in succession. An officer screamed and tumbled to the floor
, his ankle a mass of slick, wet flesh and bone.

“Under the bed!” Javier shouted.

Parr jumped to the floor on his side as two more shots went off. The man under the bed looked up just as Parr pulled the trigger. His mouth opened to scream, and the round went down his throat and out the back of his neck. He was choking and gurgling as Javier grabbed his feet and pulled him from under the bed. The woman was screaming frantically, and it was hurting Parr’s ears. He looked at the officer’s ankle then at the woman. He lifted his firearm and slammed the handle across her head just behind the ear, knocking her out.

“Get him out,” he said to one of the other officers
, who lifted the wounded officer. They limped out of the room as Parr went to the door. It led out to a hallway with three rooms on one side and two on the other. He thought about waiting for SWAT to join him, but he could hear the firefight still raging in the next building.

He made a flurry of hand signals,
directing two officers down one side of the hallway and two down the other. He and Javier took the right side. Parr slid along the wall, keeping low. He passed quickly by the first door, glancing in. It was an empty bathroom. He was about to turn away when he noticed the cupboards underneath the sink. He leaned down and opened them. A man was curled up tightly, his back to Parr.

Parr whispered, “I’m about to blow your brains over that Lysol bottle. You have one chance to live. Show me your hands and quietly climb out.”

The man, shaking, showed his hands and began to slip out. Javier searched him and placed cuffs on him, pinning his hands behind his back.

They moved on to the next room. Parr glanced over at Jay and the other officer
, who had just come out of a room across the hall. They shook their heads. Parr turned to the room in front of him and went inside. It was a child’s bedroom. There were stuffed animals on the bed and toys strewn across the floor. Behind the dresser was a young girl, no more than twelve. Parr put his finger to his lips. “Shh,” he said as he pulled her out.

She had been crying
, and he gently placed his hand on her shoulder and sat her down. He leaned close and whispered, “I don’t want to hurt anyone here. Tell me where your parents are so that more people don’t have to get hurt.”

“They’re not my parents,” she whispered back, anger in her voice.

Parr looked around the room. The closet was open. Lingerie hung on hangers, along with high heels meant for a child. Rage tingled down his spine.

“Wait here for me. I’ll be right back.”

“No, don’t leave me.” She grabbed his arm. “Please.”

“Sweetie, I will be right back. You just sit here and wait for me.”

She began to cry. “No, no please.”

Parr looked at Javier. “Get her outta here.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Do it now.”

Parr stood up and went back into the hallway as Javier lifted the girl in his arms. He nodded to him as he turned and went back down the hall to the exit. Jay and the officer came out of the last room on their side of the hall, shaking their heads. There was one room left, and the door was closed.

Parr stood in front of the door, sweat rolling off his face
and onto his arms and hands. He watched three drops trickle down. No sounds came from the room. He placed his hand on the knob, twisted, and pushed open the door.

Brody
was sitting in a chair, smoking a joint. Three Rottweilers, thick chains around their collars, waited at his feet. Brody held the end of the chains in the same hand holding the joint. In the other hand was a 12-gauge shotgun.

“Mornin’
.” He flicked the joint onto the floor, and with it, the chains.

The dogs rushed forward. Parr lifted his weapon
, but teeth clamped down on his arm and twisted him to the side. Another dog bit into his thigh as Jay lifted his weapon. A thunderous boom ricocheted around the room as Brody’s weapon tore Jay’s leg in half, and he fell to the floor screaming.

The
terrified uniformed officer stepped back into the hall as Brody rose to his feet and fired another round. The third dog chased the officer, who got off one round, which went into the ceiling when the dog tore into his inner thigh.

Parr saw the massive amount of blood pouring out of him onto the hardwood floors. The Rottweiler on his arm twisted so hard that he flew into
nearby boxes. The second dog had a death grip on his thigh and refused to let go. The dog on his arm released its grip and went for his throat.

Parr held up his forearm to block it
, and the dog ripped into it so violently that a spray of warm blood hit Parr’s face like rain. It jerked its head back and forth, sliding Parr across the floor like a rag. He lifted his other hand and saw that his gun was gone. The dog on his thigh tried to pull him farther down, and Parr jabbed his finger into its eye hard enough to pry it from its socket. Howling in pain, the dog released its grip.

Parr s
potted his gun next to a closet door. He lunged for it just as the other dog leapt for his face again. He pulled up his gun and fired a round into the dog’s brain. With a whimper, the lifeless body fell on top of him. He swung around, pressed the muzzle against the other dog’s ear, and fired. It didn’t let go. He fired again and again, until finally, the dog went limp, but it still didn’t let go. He pried open its jaws and got to his feet. The burning pain of torn flesh rocketed through his leg. Brody was nowhere to be seen.

Parr limped to the wall and leaned against it, his gun
near his face. He lowered his gun and went to the door, sliding against the wall because he was unable to walk without support. He peeked out. The uniformed officer was on his stomach, a large pool of blood around the gushing wound in his back. Muffled screams came from the room where he had left the girl.

Pushing one hand against the wall, he
hobbled around to the door and glanced in then quickly backed away. He’d seen Brody on the floor, the girl held between his arms, and a dog next to them. He hadn’t seen Javier. Parr looked back in.

“Howdy,” Brody said. His face was bright crimson
, his eyes so red Parr thought they might have been bleeding.

“Let her go.”

“Now why would I do that? Me and this little darlin’ have had some fun times. Haven’t we, Daisy?”

Parr stepped slowly into the room.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Brody said. “One word, and my pup there’ll rip out her throat. Or maybe I’ll just blow her head clean off and dirty that nice dress’a hers.”

Parr could see the shotgun
lying next to Brody. Both his hands were on the girl.

“The gunfire’s stopped,” Parr said
. “You’ve lost. Let her go.”

“Why you all come here anyway? We didn’t do nothin’. We just wanted to be left alone.”

“You didn’t do nothin’? What about her?”

“You didn’t know about her when you
’s came. No one did. This here’s a little Southern peach we picked up in Louisiana. No way you knew about her.”