Whorl

by James Tarr

  “Are you still westbound on Warren?”

  “Yes ma’am.” Motherfucker, he yelled in his head, were they driving here in reverse? He knew that wasn’t fair, he knew the DPD cops would be screaming to both locations as fast as possible, it just seemed to be taking forever.

  “Units responding, be advised we have confirmed there are two officers down at the first location,” the dispatcher said in his ear. “Multiple gunshot wounds.”

  “Coming up on Greenfield,” John told her. “Uhhh, light’s turning green for us.”

  He rolled up slowly to the intersection as the cars waiting at the light started pulling away. The van was to his left, two cars up, and had almost come to a stop at the light before it changed. John checked out the van as well as he could without being obvious about it. “It looks like there’s only the driver in the van,” John said into his phone. Then he saw the first cop car.

  It was stopped on Greenfield at the light, southbound. In the right lane, first in line, waiting to turn. John flicked his gaze back and forth between the van and the cop car, but the van driver didn’t do anything, and the cops just sat there. John rolled through the intersection, and a few seconds later saw the cop car in his rearview mirror as it turned onto Warren behind him. Lots of one-story businesses lining Warren here…pizza place, adult book shop, travel agency.

  The van moved over into the right lane, four cars ahead of John’s Expedition, but kept to the speed limit. The cop car moved out from behind John into the left lane, and slowly passed him. He glanced down at the cop in the front passenger seat, and saw the officer looking at him. The expression on his face was unreadable.

  A hundred yards up, on the other side of Warren, past a CVS Pharmacy, John saw another cop car poke its nose out from a side street, and he instinctively took his foot off the gas. The cop car next to him accelerated and closed the distance to the van.

  John heard no roaring engine, but he saw the van pulling away from the car behind it, and the police cruiser creeping up in the left lane. As the cruiser across Warren pulled out and headed in their direction, the first DPD car hit its lights, and gave a single bloop of its siren. “PULL OVER!” he heard one of the cops over their PA. It wasn’t a shout, but it was close. Their adrenaline was up too.

  Already pulling away, the van accelerated, and John could hear its engine, which was immediately drowned out by the big V-8s in the DPD Crown Victorias as they roared up and crowded its rear bumper, and both sirens went on full blast. There was no way the van would be able to outrun the cruisers, and the driver seemed to know it. After the first surge, the van’s brake lights flared, suddenly, and one of the cruisers pulled up next to the van.

  “PULL OVER!” the cop on the PA called out again. It was the passenger in the cruiser next to the van, John could see him on the handset, looking across half a lane at the van’s driver, and then everything went crazy.

  The air between the two cars went all sparkly and glittery, and something happened to the passenger side window on the cop car, which began to swerve. The sound of loud pops echoed around him, and John realized that the driver of the van had just fired on the first cop car, firing through his own window while driving.

  The cruiser under fire took a dozen pistol rounds, and veered away from the van, into oncoming traffic. The first few cars were able to miss it, then a frantically swerving pickup couldn’t help but tap the cruiser’s rear bumper. The Crown Vic spun around and slammed into two parked cars sideways at forty miles an hour. There was a loud screeching crunch, and more glass went flying.

  “Oh, shit!” John spat, and got back on his car’s accelerator. “The driver just fired on one of the cop cars!” he yelled into the phone. “It crashed on Warren.”

  The van accelerated to the limit of its engine, and began weaving between the traffic on Warren. John kept pace, three car lengths back from the remaining squad car. He glanced into his rearview, and saw another cruiser flying up on him like he was standing still. He dropped the phone onto his passenger seat and put both hands on the wheel as the new cruiser rocketed by him. He was able to see two officers in the front, and as he watched them pass he saw two more DPD cars ahead on Warren Avenue, roaring toward them.

  The cruiser swung wide, out into the center left turn lane, passed John’s Expedition, passed the other cruiser still behind the van in the right lane, and then skipped across two lanes.

  At seventy miles an hour the DPD unit slammed into the side of the van at a forty-five degree angle. With a crunch the van went up on two wheels and turned, sliding sideways, so that it was broadside to the cruiser embedded in its side. Somehow the van didn’t flip over, maybe because it had been only travelling slightly slower than the cruiser before the impact, and the two now-bonded vehicles scraped to a stop, smoke and steam and flashing red and blue lights.

  The window frame hit Marsh in the back of the head when the cruiser plowed into him, and his vision and hands went all tingly and sparkly for a second. The sensation disappeared almost immediately, and by the time his crippled van had come to a stop he was already trying to get his door open. It wouldn’t budge, the impact must have buckled it.

  He’d shot out his own window, and right out the empty frame he was looking at the two officers in the Crown Vic which had just broadsided him. Everything moving in slow motion, he brought his Springfield up and waited, as he couldn’t get an angle on their heads inside the car, and shooting them in the vests was just a waste of ammo.

  The passenger got out first, standing in the vee of the door and the car, his duty gun coming up as he started to yell at Marsh, everything happening in slow motion. At a distance of eight feet putting two rounds into the cop’s face was easy, and by the time he was done the driver was sticking his face and gun out the crack between door and cruiser.

  The cop fired several rounds at Marsh, which he assumed missed as he never felt them. He took an extra half second to aim, then fired three shots at his only target, the officer’s forehead. The first round hit the door post, and the third he pulled above the officer’s head, but the second 9mm bullet missed the officer’s Glock by half an inch and hit him in the left eyebrow. The bullet continued on into his brain, and the cop dropped instantly.

  The van was a bullet magnet, and Marsh knew it was time to find another ride. He could hear tires screaming, sirens wailing, and out the windshield saw three more cops cars hurtling at him, only seconds away. Time to go. Banged up from the vehicle impact but not actually injured, Marsh clambered out of his seat and tried the door on the passenger side. It worked. He jumped out, between his van and the cars parked on the street, and did a reload while moving slowly toward the rear of the van. He was right next to a used car lot, and if it hadn’t been enclosed by a tall fence he would have run in there to use the cars for cover.

  The other cop car had skidded to a stop thirty feet behind the van, and the officers were hunkered down behind their doors, using cover more than he could have preferred. Marsh fired twice at the legs of the cop behind the passenger door, then darted sideways behind a Jeep parked at the curb. Angry return fire spanged off the metal around him, and glass shattered, but he kept moving. He came quickly around the far side of the Jeep, and saw he had a great shot at the closer of the two cops, who was looking at where he’d been, not where he was. The cop on the passenger side instinctively straightened up to return fire, and between that and the new angle Marsh had him.

  He brought the Springfield up and fired, but something went wrong. There was pain, and flashes, and spinning. He found himself on the ground, staring up at the blue sky. He tried moving, but couldn’t. Why was he on the ground? He had to get out of there, had to….mouth working, he died staring at a wispy cloud drifting across the peaceful sky.

  “Cover me!” John yelled. His vehicle was two car lengths behind the cruiser, and he stood up from where he was crouching behind the engine compartment and moved forward.

  AR-15 at his shoulder, John advanced as fast as he coul
d without bouncing the red dot off the downed gunman. The air was filled with sirens and the smell of burning brake pads, yells and screeches, someone screaming in pain, but he tried to tune it all out as he drew close to the killer. The cop who’d last been shot at was on the ground off to the left, yelling and kicking his legs.

  A pistol was a few inches from the shooter’s outstretched unmoving right hand, and John kicked it away. From the front, the man appeared unharmed, with only a tiny black smudge on his shirt visible where one of the two .223 rounds John fired hit him. Underneath him, however, there was a spreading pool of blood. His eyes were open and unseeing.

  “Clear!” John yelled. Safing his rifle and holding it out away from his body, muzzle down, neither hand anywhere near the trigger, he was suddenly aware of a half dozen bodies flooding the empty space between the cars, everybody with a gun out.

  “Who the fuck are you, a fed?” one of the uniformed cops asked him. At least half of them had seen him drop the shooter. Most of them were staring at the body on the ground, and everybody was still jacked up and looking for blood. The smell of burning plastic filled the air, people were moaning in pain, and glass crunched underfoot.

  “We need EMS out here right NOW!” one of the cops was yelling into his radio. “We have officers down, multiple officers down.”

  “Stop staring at that fucker and secure the scene!” a Sergeant yelled at the massed officers, as even more squad cars came screaming up. He looked across the crowd of his officers at John, and their eyes met.

  “You the P.I.?” he asked him.

  “Yeah. If you let me put this away, I can help with first aid,” John told him, motioning with the AR. “You got a lot of guys down. I’ve dealt with gunshot wounds before.”

  The Sergeant looked at him for a second, then grabbed one of the younger officers and pointed. “Lopez. Secure that rifle. Don’t set it down, don’t let it out of your sight.” He then looked at the scene, left and right, then back at John. “What the fuck just happened?”

  John could only shake his head.

  Dave sat on the curb about fifty feet away and did his best to stop staring at the bodies. They weren’t the first dead bodies he’d seen, but seeing dead bodies and futilely trying to do first aid on two men who’d been shot in the face was something completely different. He looked at his hands—he’d done his best to wipe the blood off, but it was still in the creases of his palms, in the corners of his fingernails.

  Yet another DFD engine rolled up, the men jumping off in their blue shirts and thick pants held up by suspenders. “You okay?” one of the firefighters asked him, seeing the drying blood on his forearms.

  “Yeah, not my blood,” Dave told him. The man jogged toward the crime scene, where at least a dozen cops and firefighters were milling around at a distance from the bodies and the cruiser. His phone started ringing.

  Dave looked at his hands, then made a face and dug his phone out of his pocket. He’d be able to wipe his phone off, but he didn’t like the idea of rubbing the officers’ blood into the pocket of his jeans. He saw it was his boss. “John? You okay?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not going to make it back there. How about you? Are you okay?” John felt a little guilty, just tearing off to let Dave deal with the cops who’d been shot, but there’d been no other option. They’d just driven him to the precinct, where he knew he was in for a long wait.

  “Me? Yeah, fine, why? You’re the one who shot somebody.” The officers who’d responded to this scene had told Dave what had happened to the shooter.

  “It’s not the first guy I’ve shot.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re not the first guys I’ve seen shot,” Dave told him.

  John shook his head. He flashed back to the first time he’d ever met Dave, in his office. The kid looked great on paper, and in person he was very self-assured; not cocky, just confident. Then there was his personal history, which explained it all. How is it I always run into guys like him? Or do they run into me?

  “Is there, uh, anything you want me to say to anybody here when they question me?” Dave asked him. “Or not say?”

  “Answer any and every question they give you to the best of your ability. Tell them exactly what you know and saw and did.”

  “I don’t know anything. I didn’t see anything. And I couldn’t do shit for these guys, they were dead before they hit the ground.”

  “Yeah. Me and you both, kid. I’ll give you a call tomorrow. Forget about the surveillance, I think we both need a couple days off.”

  The detective opened the door and came in with a spiral notebook and a cup of coffee. “You want some—” he started to say, then saw John already had a cup.

  “This is perhaps the worst coffee I’ve ever tasted,” John told him, sipping from his cup. Even loaded with sugar and powdered creamer it was disgusting.

  “Yeah. Welcome to my world.” Bill Rochester set down his notebook and cup and then settled into the chair across the table from the P.I. Pretty much the entire precinct, hell, the whole department was in an uproar, but for the moment, in this room, there was just the two of them.

  “You’re sure you’re ready to give a statement?” Rochester said to him, looking the man up and down. He seemed pretty composed for someone who, just a few hours before, had been in a car chase and then dumped a dude using his own assault rifle. That was the great thing about this job. No such thing as a routine day….

  The P.I. frowned into his cup of coffee. “It’s been a couple of hours. I presume you’ve run me. I’ve been involved in shootings before. Back in the day I worked for the DEA.”

  Rochester had run him through LEIN and CLEMIS, then Googled him just to be on the safe side. He’d found enough things to make him very interested in the guy. “Why’d you leave?”

  John smiled ruefully. “Among other things, my wife—ex-wife—thought it was too dangerous, and I came into enough money to do something else.”

  Rochester gestured at the microphone on the table. “You ready to make an official statement? Okay if I start recording?”

  John looked at the microphone, then up at the video camera in the corner up at the ceiling, then at the mirror taking up most of one wall. He knew there had to be people on the other side of it, watching him. “Shit, I figured you were recording already.”

  “Fair enough.” Rochester hit the button, identified himself, the location, stated the day, date, and time, and the names of everyone present.

  “Mr. Phault, are you aware that this statement is being recorded?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do I have your permission to record it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you currently taking any medication or drugs, prescription or otherwise, which might influence or affect in any way what you’re about to tell us today?”

  “No.”

  He didn’t read him his Miranda rights, because he wasn’t a suspect, and wasn’t being charged with a crime. If that changed, well….“Well then, if you would, please tell us in your own words what happened today.”

  John sighed, then went through the incident step by step. John had taken—and given—enough police statements that he knew what details they were looking for. He’d also already told abbreviated versions of it to the uniformed cops on the scene, and the first detective, a female, so he had the details organized in his head. That female detective had only spoken to him briefly while he sat in the back of a squad car, handcuffed, on Warren Avenue. This detective didn’t interrupt him at all but took furious notes.

  “Have you ever seen the man you shot before?” Rochester asked him when he finished.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “And the name, uh,” Rochester checked his notes, “Robert Williams, is that familiar at all to you?”

  John shook his head. “As far as I know, I’ve never seen the man before in my life, and his name is not familiar to me at all. Did you get anything when you ran his license?”

  “We’ve got people w
orking on that,” the detective told him.

  “He from Rochester Hills?”

  Rochester remembered that the P.I. had run the plate of the van Williams had been in, and that it was registered out of Rochester Hills.

  “No. He had an Ohio license. That mean anything to you?”

  Ohio was less than an hour away, they saw cars with Ohio plates driving around all the time. Ontario too. The fact that the guy had an Ohio license didn’t mean anything to John. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “But I’ll tell you something.”

  Rochester lifted his head up from his notebook. “Yeah?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if that guy was a combat vet. He knew what the hell he was doing, and I don’t think he was rattled even with all the cops screaming up on him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  John leaned forward. “He shot those two cops, killed both of them before they could even get a shot off, is what I heard from your people, and they’re both wearing body armor. Then he takes off, but instead of panicking, he’s driving the speed limit, doing whatever he can to not get noticed. Calm, after dumping two of your guys. When the cops do show up, and try to box him in, he takes out two carloads of your guys with a pistol. I think he might have had a chance of getting away if I hadn’t been in the right spot at the right time.” He sat back, and took another sip of his coffee. It was cold, and even more disgusting than before.

  The detective sat and looked at him for a good thirty seconds, then glanced down at his scribbled notes. “Maybe you can help me with something,” Rochester said.

  “What?”

  “You were there doing a surveillance on a worker’s comp claimant. We talked to him—hell, the uniforms talked to everybody still living on the block, and none of them knew you or your employee were out there doing a surveillance. Ferguson and his partner rolled up on you just because you were sitting in front of another officer’s house.”

  John nodded. “Right. A narcotics cop or something like that.”