by James Tarr
Drake shot Dave another look between Stone and Sergeant White, then stomped off. White looked at Dave, then tapped Stone in the center of his body armor. “Have the paramedics look at him, then get him out of here. Take him back to the station.” The sergeant then looked pointedly at Dave. “And shut up,” he told him fiercely.
“Sit here, don’t move, and don’t talk to anybody,” Stone had told him, depositing him into the back corner of the empty roll call room.
The police station was practically a ghost town, everybody was still on scene, or at the hospital. One of the firefighters had looked him over, and saw some of the cuts in his forehead from flying glass were pretty deep. Stone had driven him to Bi-County Hospital where one of the doctors had stitched up the cuts in his head. One stitch for one of the cuts, two stitches for the other. He’d picked a few pieces of glass out of his hair, checked out his hands which had now started to hurt, and given him a handful of ibuprofen. His neck felt weird too.
Dave didn’t feel any pain from the cuts even before the ER doc had given him the shot to numb his forehead. Stone was standing by the door when they heard a loud commotion outside that passed by. He looked at Dave. “Stay here,” he said. Dave didn’t have much choice, at the moment the doctor was threading one of his cuts closed. Stone was back in a minute.
“Was that him? Was that Kennedy they brought in?”
Stone shook his head. “Team Jacob.”
“They okay?”
“I think they’ll be okay. They got banged up bad, car rolled a couple of times. The paramedics brought them in here on back boards until they can x-ray their necks and backs, but they should be okay. Nothing more serious than some torn muscles, hopefully.”
“What about Kennedy?”
Stone shook his head. “I don’t know.” The cop looked like he wanted to say more, but he pressed his lips together and just stared at the young man, then shook his head. “We’ll find out. He got anything other than a couple of cuts, doc?” he asked the man sewing up Dave’s head.
“Not that I see,” said the skinny doctor. “You didn’t hit your head, did you?” he asked Dave.
“No, I don’t think so,” Dave said.
In the back of the roll call room, Dave checked his watch. How long had he been sitting there? It felt like hours….it had been hours, it was almost nine o’clock, and the accident had happened about four-fifteen. Every so often he would hear someone walk down the hall, the squawk of a radio, but he had no idea what was going on. He assumed they were doing some sort of CSI stuff at the scene, but how long would that take? He had no problem sitting there however long they wanted him to, but it would have been nice for them to let him know how Kennedy was doing. Last he’d seen him, the big man had been pale from blood loss.
Dave had been able to wash his hands, but he was still wearing the same blood-stained shirt and tie. It would have been nice to be able to change, even though he didn’t have a spare shirt at the station. Weren’t they supposed to take it for evidence, or something?
He jerked roughly as his pocket rang. “Shit!” He pulled his cell phone out and looked to see who was calling. “Hi Mom.”
“Dave? Are you okay?”
“What?”
“Are you okay? There’s this big story about Warren on the news, bank robbers and the police and ambulances, and I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Dave smiled. “Yes, mom, I’m okay.”
He heard her sigh. “I knew you would be,” she told him. “I told your father they wouldn’t let a college student just riding along get close to anything bad that was happening.”
“I…..think I’m going to be late, though,” he told her.
“Are you okay? You sound tired.”
He smiled to the empty room. “Lot of stuff going on here mom. I’ll talk to you later, okay? Tell dad I’m fine.”
“I will. Okay, be safe, love you.”
“Love you too.” He stuck the phone back in his pocket and slouched in the chair. He was bored, and yet he was jittery, still. He’d heard the word flashback, before, but he really knew what it meant, now. He kept seeing the Monte Carlo coming at them in slow motion, the flying glass, the gun, the blood. No shakes for him though, not yet, no throwing up. He wasn’t sure if that was normal or not. Talk about a huge adrenaline dump, though….wow. It had been like caffeine mixed with God.
Stone showed up about forty five minutes later and thumped into the chair next to Dave. He had a Pepsi in his hand, and had a bottle of Diet Coke for Dave.
“How’s Kennedy? You hear anything?’
Stone shook his head. “Still in surgery, last I heard. I don’t think it’s too bad, but, you know…surgery.”
“What about the bank robbers, the guy I hit? Are they talking to them?”
Stone turned and gave him a strange look. “What?” Dave said. Just then the cop’s cell phone rang, and Stone grabbed it out of his breast pocket.
“Hey, yeah? No, he’s still in surgery. I don’t know. No. No, they were DRT. No, all of them. Kennedy? No, I don’t think so. No, it was just him and his ridealong. I was first unit responding, and it was all over by the time I got there. I don’t know man, we’re still in keep-your-mouth-shut mode, and I don’t know what the hell to think. He’s sitting right next to me, I’m the babysitter. Brass? I haven’t heard anything from anyone for a couple of hours, I’ve been securing the scene for the Evidence Techs, talking to command, and doing my report. I’m guessing they’ll have some news on Kennedy and Team Jacob at midnight roll call. No, their cruiser rolled a couple of times, doing about eighty miles an hour. Yeah, they were wearing seatbelts, and the airbags went off, but you should have seen their cruiser, looks like Godzilla sat on it. They ended up upside down. Yeah, no shit it’s a circus, they called half of day shift back in to cover, where were you?” Stone paused. “Yeah, as soon as I hear something, I’ll give you a call. Good thoughts, man.”
Stone shut off his phone and pocketed it. He looked at Dave, but didn’t say anything, just took another sip of his Pepsi.
Officers started trickling into the roll call room a few minutes later. Dave checked his watch—just barely after ten, roll call wouldn’t be for another forty-five minutes. Maybe everyone was showing up early, or being called in early?
The room filled up slowly, a few officers asking Stone questions, but he didn’t have any answers for them. Dave got a few looks from the midnight shift officers, some of whom might not have known who he was.
“Radio, all units,” Stone’s radio crackled. “Command has asked all officers going off duty to meet in the roll call room at twenty-two thirty hours.”
By ten thirty the roll call room was packed. All the seats were filled, and a dozen officers were standing along the walls. All of afternoon shift, minus a few officers pulling overtime duty securing the scene, half of the recalled day shift, plus all of the officers about to head out. Dave also saw close to ten guys he recognized as officers in their street clothes, probably coming in just to get the news, and in case they were needed. The department was two hundred and fifty officers, but he’d seen they were a family of sorts as well.
Dave got a lot of heated looks from some of the cops, and Drake still looked like he wanted to kill him. But he also got a lot of stares as well, calculating looks he couldn’t figure out. He was hot, and his hands were sweating as the cops talked among themselves, but the room was much quieter than it should have been with that many bodies in it.
Finally, Sergeant White entered the room, followed by an older man Dave recognized as the Chief of Police, and a blonde woman he knew was Lieutenant Younks, even though he’d never met her—her portrait was up on a wall in one of the hallways. White and Younks were carrying a folding table, on which were two computers and two flatscreen monitors.
The Chief stepped up to the small podium while White and Younks were messing with the computer. “I know the first thing on all of your minds are your fellow officers, and I’m glad to be able t
o tell you that everyone is fine,” he told them.
There was a collective sigh around the room. The Chief went on. “Bill Kennedy is out of surgery and listed in serious condition at Bi-County. He lost a lot of blood from a gunshot wound to his neck, and took two rounds to his vest. He has a broken arm and several cracked ribs, and maybe a concussion, but the doctors don’t think there’s anything to worry about. They are ‘cautiously optimistic’.”
“Tough motherfucker,” someone in the back of the room muttered.
“Jake Williams and Jacob Pulaski were both banged up when their cruiser rolled what looks to be at least three times. It may be a few days before we know the extent of their injuries, but they all appear to be mostly soft tissue from getting tossed about. Williams might have a broken hand, and Pulaski probably has a cracked collarbone, and I’d be surprised if they don’t both have bad whiplash, but that might be it. Air bags and seat belts save lives, people, remember that—the trooper helping us with the accident reconstruction thinks they were doing at least seventy when they flipped.”
“Go Team Jacob,” somebody said.
Dave noticed two men in suits had appeared at the rear of the roll call room, standing quietly in the back. They looked like cops, but he didn’t recognize them. Both of them glanced over at him, then went back to watching the Chief.
“The FBI,” the Chief said, then nodded toward the two men at the back of the room, “tells us that the four men involved in the bank robbery today appear to be the same individuals responsible for half a dozen or so other bank robberies in the area.” Many of the cops turned around to check out the feds. The FBI agents nodded cordially back. “We will be working closely with them to clean this up, and I expect full cooperation from everyone here, or I will have your ass. Is that understood?”
“Yes sir,” the room replied, almost in unison.
The Chief looked down at the podium, then back at White and Younks. The two screens were lit up with blurred images. “Are you ready?”
“Yes sir,” White told him.
“Are they synced?”
“Yes,” Younks said. “Two seconds, let’s go full screen on this,” she told White.
While they were doing that, the Chief turned back around. “For those of you not aware, Kennedy had a ride-along with him today. Mr. David Anderson, a college student, who’s sitting in back there.” He nodded his head and most of the cops in the room turned to look at him. Most of the looks were not friendly. “Some of you may have heard there were a few….poorly worded comments made immediately after the incident, in the heat of the moment. They seem to have upset a few people.” He ran a hand over his head, which was covered by a rapidly thinning layer of grey.
“Both Frank-10, Kennedy’s car, and Bravo-40 were camera cars,” the Chief told the assembled officers. “Both I and my staff have reviewed the video footage from those cameras. Bear in mind, we still have to complete a full investigation of this incident, in conjunction with the FBI, and we are following proper evidentiary and chain-of-custody procedures with these videos. However, after watching the video from the cameras we think it might be a good idea to show you the footage, just so everyone knows what happened. The FBI, by the way, has seen this footage.” He turned to the officers behind him. Both Younks and White were poised over computer keyboards. “Your show.” He moved out of the way and stood against the side wall.
“Ready?” White asked. He looked at the room. “Get closer guys, you’re going to want to watch this.” The expression on his face was unreadable.
Chairs scraped on the floor as the officers got up and moved forward, crowding the front of the room. They shuffled and pushed, and finally ended up in three rows, sitting, leaning, and standing.
Younks nodded. “I’ve got the feed from Frank-10, Kennedy’s unit, on my screen,” she told the assembled officers. “The other monitor is the feed from Team Jacob’s camera. The cameras should be synced….” She peered at the timecodes on the two video displays, then nodded.
Stone had stood up and moved toward the front of the room. Dave couldn’t see anything, and didn’t want to get close to the press of officers. After a moment of indecision, he stood on top of one of the tables so he could see.
“You ready? On three. One, two, three.” On three, both Younks and White hit the buttons that started the videos playing.
The left screen looked almost like a still show, just a view of the raised grassy median of Mound. The tinny sound of sirens filled the roll call room, and it was the right screen that caught the eyes of everyone in the room. The rear of a silver Monte Carlo was visible just beyond the front bumper of Bravo-40, swooping back and forth across the lanes at what looked to be a high rate of speed.
“These assholes are starting to piss me off,” Williams could be heard saying on the video, shouting over the sound of their siren. That got a few laughs from the officers watching.
“Anything happens, keep your head down, and stay in the car,” Kennedy could be heard saying on the other video.
“Think they’re going to stop?” Dave heard himself saying.
“Oh, we’re not going to leave it up to them,” Kennedy replied.
Bravo-40 flew down the slope toward I-696, the digital speed limit readout on the video display quickly climbing toward triple digits. The driver of the Monte decided to try to outrun the cruiser and stopped slaloming, but it just didn’t have enough horsepower. The cruiser stayed right on its ass as they went under the overpass in the center lane. The room filled with the sound of roaring engines and sirens.
“Bump him?” Pulaski yelled on the video.
“Too fast,” Williams yelled back. “He’s going to lose it if he tries to take a corner!”
“I’ll tell you right now, this is going to end down in Detroit, with a crash and them bailing out of the car,” Dave heard Kennedy repeat.
Beyond the Monte Carlo, Dave could see Frank-10 sideways across the road up ahead, growing larger with frightening speed. Bravo-40 was right on the Monte Carlo’s ass when the driver decided to start weaving from side to side, then apparently saw the cruiser slung across the road sideways. Their brake lights flared, Bravo-40 started to shoot past them, then in the corner of the video everyone could see the front corner of the Monte come back around.
There was a huge crunch, a squeal, the video feed from Bravo-40 spun sideways, and then suddenly there was blue sky and green spinning and no sound but the roaring engine and wailing siren. “Fuuuck!” somebody in the car yelled. The car hit with a huge crunch then, and rolled sideways, over and over and over. The view from the camera was a maelstrom of spinning debris and sparkling glass bits. There was no way to make sense of it.
While the view on the right screen was still spinning, Dave heard Kennedy yell “Fuck!”, and then the view out their front windshield spun with the sound of a huge crunch. At the time he’d been too dazed, but he realized watching the video feed that the impact of the Monte Carlo had spun their cruiser around 360 degrees, until they were back facing the median through a now cracked windshield.
“Holy shit,” one of the cops watching observed.
The crunching spinning thuds finally stopped from Bravo-40, and the camera looked out a windshield that looked like a festival of snowflakes. “Okay, stop here,” Younks called out. Both the sergeant and the lieutenant hit the stop buttons on their computer video players.
“Their car’s upside down now, I need to flip the monitor,” Sergeant White said.
“That’s was three rotations,” one of the officers watching said. “One in the air, two on the ground.”
“How did they not die?” someone in the room asked.
“Who t-boned Frank-10?”
“The Monte,” White said. “Check out the front end damage. That’s why Kennedy’s arm and ribs were busted up, they hit his door almost straight on at about fifty.”
“Fuck.”
“Okay, it’s a little hard to tell with the damage to the windshield, but Bravo
-40’s camera is now pointed almost directly at Frank-10. But most of the action you’ll see here,” Younks said, tapping the screen with the frozen image of the Monte Carlo on it. The camera from Kennedy’s car. Dave didn’t want to watch, he was soaking in sweat just watching it all again, but he couldn’t look away.
“Ready?” She and White hit Play simultaneously.
Steam began roiling out from underneath the Monte Carlo’s accordioned hood from a ruptured radiator. There were a few seconds where nothing happened, then Dave heard a groan. He didn’t know if it came from him or Kennedy, but then he saw the passenger door of the Monte Carlo open and a tall black male kick his leg out. He looked around for a second, dazed, then focused on the one cop car in the area still on its tires.
“Sir. Sir. Kennedy! Bill!” Dave heard himself yelling, and there was a groan.
The man looking toward their cruiser raised his hand and Dave saw a gun in it. He fired, and the windshield in front of the camera shuddered. He took another second to aim, and fired again. On camera the sound of the bullet skipping off the cruiser’s sheet metal sounded eerie.
“Bill!” Dave heard himself scream, and the cruiser started rocking. He knew he was shaking Kennedy at that point, but all the camera saw was the guy with the gun walking unsteadily in their direction, firing over and over. The camera caught the sounds of the bullets thudding into the car.
Behind the man advancing toward them the driver of the Monte could be seen trying to start the car, but it was having none of that.
“Fuck! Fuck! Bill!” Dave heard himself yell. The man with the gun was getting closer and closer, and suddenly he also appeared on the frosted view of Bravo-40s camera, twenty feet in front of Kennedy’s car. The area in front of Kennedy’s cruiser was a bit blurry from damaged glass, but the officers watching had a clear view of the passenger side of Frank-10. They could see Dave struggling inside.
The view from Frank-10s camera was shaking back and forth, and Dave knew that was because he was yanking with all his might at the shotgun, forgetting it was electronically locked in place. The guy with the pistol looked like he was right in front of the car as he fired another shot, which was followed by a groan from Kennedy.