Whorl

by James Tarr

  A pistol fired, and he could hear the bullets hitting his car. A tire blew, his car sunk a few inches, more glass shards flew over him, but he couldn’t tell where the shooter was. The man kept firing, hitting the car, the ground, what was left of the windows, emptying the pistol, trying to keep Dave’s head down. Dave saw the man he’d just dropped, crawling in the dirt. The bits of red plastic from the tail light looked like confetti in his hair as the man reached for and grabbed a pistol lying in the dirt. Shit. Dave fired at him with half his rifle barrel underneath the Mustang, and the concussion in the enclosed space raised such a dust cloud he pulled back from the car, spitting.

  “Parker!” someone yelled. Their voice was very faint.

  Dave didn’t know who Parker was, didn’t care. He backed off from the Mustang and rolled around the rear bumper, rifle up, dialed in. Get some. He caught a glimpse of movement at the rear bumper of the Monte Carlo and fired twice, past the open driver’s door. A man popped up behind the Monte Carlo and fired quickly at him over it, then ducked back down. Dave hammered the car with rounds, trying to hit the man through the thin layers of steel.

  “Gabe, get out of there!” Dave heard a man yell. Someone stood up behind the Charger—fuck, how many guys were there?—and fired four times at him. Dave flinched but apparently not as much as they’d expected or hoped. The man between the Monte Carlo and the Charger decided to make a run for the open door of the Monte Carlo, and Dave saw him. Left forearm braced against the rear bumper of the Mustang, rifle in the pocket of his shoulder, Dave pulled the trigger as fast as he could, shooting into and through the door of the Monte. He could see his hits, the tiny holes in the door panel just below the window, the man running to meet them. The bullets zipped right through the car door, as he knew they would. The running man staggered, tried to raise his gun, then fell, half-in and half-out of the Monte Carlo. Dave could see his legs and pelvis underneath the door, and shot him four more times for good measure. Because FUCK YOU, that’s why! a small part of his brain screamed.

  Wilson saw Gabe go down. Saw the kid shoot his unmoving body. It was fucked, they were all fucked. Eddie, Parker, Gabe….it made him want to cry. What the fuck had happened to them? What had gone wrong? Part of him wanted to charge the kid with the rifle, just end it all—and where the fuck did he get that? Who drove around with a loaded rifle in their car? What the fuck was wrong with these gun nuts?

  Instead he threw the Charger into reverse and floored it, looking over his shoulder through the rear windshield. He hadn’t killed anybody, hadn’t trashed his car, there was a chance no one would even know he was—and then he saw the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department cruiser skid to a stop on the asphalt road behind him.

  Jim Bonniker slid his unit to a rocking stop on the blacktop at the end of the dirt road. Even over the sound of the siren he’d heard the shooting, but hadn’t been sure exactly what was happening as, well, it was a shooting range. But as he looked down the narrow road he saw two cars at angles, and bodies in the dirt. There was a black Charger racing down the road toward him in reverse. Bonniker expected it would stop as soon as the driver saw his cruiser, as it wouldn’t be able to get by, but instead he heard the deeper growl as the Charger accelerated.

  “Fuck!” the deputy yelled, and grabbed onto the steering wheel with both hands as the Charger slammed into the front corner of his cruiser. Bonniker bounced off the exploding airbag and fell half across the passenger seat, not having worn a seatbelt since he’d put on the uniform. He discovered the Charger had shoved his unit halfway across the pavement, and tasted blood.

  With a grunt he grabbed the handle then kicked his door open. He was drawing his Sig as the driver’s door of the Charger opened, and a big black guy climbed out. The cruiser’s flashing red and blue lights bounced off his expressionless face. Somewhere in the distance he heard yelling, but as his vision tunneled everything else faded away. “Freeze! Get on the ground!” Bonniker yelled. It was then he saw the pistol in the man’s hand. “Put the gun down!” he screamed even louder, his voice cracking. Instead, the man raised the pistol and pointed it at Bonniker.

  In fifteen years on the job, Jim Bonniker had found occasion to point his duty weapon at a few people, but never anyone visibly armed, and he’d never had to pull the trigger. Never even came close. With a sense of disbelief he felt himself pulling the trigger on his pistol, saw it buck in recoil. He viewed himself from above in a near out-of-body experience firing over and over, firing at the man who kept trying to point a gun at him, firing at the man who just calmly stood there and took it, firing until the big man slowly fell to the ground.

  Bonniker climbed out of his cruiser and approached the body, face down on the ground. The deputy’s gun was in front of him, and it was quivering. He kicked the Glock away from the man’s lifeless hand, then looked up the dirt road at the pile of cars, at the bodies, at the whole scene. It was then that his brain caught up to his ears, and he remembered what he’d heard someone shouting from the pile of cars up ahead.

  “You wanted a gunfight?” an unseen male had yelled in the distance as Bonniker was confronted by the driver of the Charger. “I’ll give you a gunfight. I’LL GIVE YOU A FUCKING GUNFIGHT!”

  “What the fuck is going on here?” Bonniker yelled at the distant pile of cars, at the man he’d just killed, at the world.

  PART IV

  UNGOVERNED

  A government is a body of people usually, notably, ungoverned.

  Captain Malcolm Reynolds

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Two more Oakland County cruisers were the first to arrive. By that time Bonniker had approached the scene down the road, put Dave in cuffs, secured his rifle and pistol, and verified that the three guys on the ground were well and truly dead. He ordered the gawkers at the range to back away, and had Dave sit on the side of the road behind his cruiser, as his car wasn’t going anywhere. Not only wasn’t it drivable, it was part of the crime scene now.

  “I have multiple fatalities at my location,” he told the dispatcher. “I need command staff out here, ASAP, Fire, and as many units as you can spare to secure the scene and the witnesses.”

  “Ten-four,” she told him.

  With everything that had happened Bonniker had forgotten he’d never called out anything but speeders and the dispatcher assumed that the deaths were due to an accident caused by the pursuit. In the modern age of smartphones there was no such thing as a day off, but the Sheriff was actually out of town on vacation with his family. The Undersheriff, however, answered his cell phone on the third ring, sounding sleepy. He told the dispatcher he’d be out to the scene as soon as he got dressed.

  “You walk into the middle of a gunfight, Jim?” one of the responding deputies asked Bonniker, staring at the bodies littering the road and the shot-up cars. Gunfight at a shooting range. “Holy shit. You okay?” Bonniker was looking a bit shaky. Except for car wrecks, none of the deputies had seen that many dead bodies in one place—at least in the States.

  “I shot this guy, but all that other shit happened right before I got here. I don’t know…get those people over there,” he pointed at the club members standing on the far side of Dave’s Mustang, “get ‘em separated. I don’t know if any of them saw anything. Keep them away from the cars.”

  “You’re good?”

  Bonniker felt anything but good, but near as he could tell he hadn’t been shot. His face hurt from the airbag, and he’d probably have a stiff neck, but thank God, he hadn’t been shot. “I’m good, don’t worry about me.” As the air pulsed with the sound of approaching sirens, he walked over and looked at the kid sitting on the ground in cuffs. He wanted to ask him what the fuck had just happened, but knew before he did that he probably ought to read the kid his Miranda rights, and he just didn’t have the energy for that. “Don’t move,” he finally told him.

  The kid, looking exhausted, just nodded. After a few seconds he said, “This started in Troy, you might want to call them.”


  Bonniker turned back to look at him. “What?”

  “I’m a P.I. and was doing a surveillance in Troy, and one of those guys started shooting at me, and chased me to here.”

  “Why? Who are they?”

  The kid looked up at him, complete confusion on his face. “I wish I knew.”

  Mrs. Maddie Bridger’s arthritis was so bad that she couldn’t sleep more than two or three hours at a stretch, and some nights just didn’t have it in her to climb the stairs to her bedroom on the second floor. Friday night she’d had one too many Tom Collins’ during her monthly bridge club party, and after her guests left had fallen asleep on her recliner while watching the news.

  She awoke at four, the alcohol having helped her sleep five hours straight, but when she got out of the chair she felt halfway crippled. No one to blame but herself, she knew that, and had Jack still been alive he would have laughed at her hobbling up the stairs to take a long hot shower. At least she wasn’t hungover. For some reason, on those rare occasions when she did celebrate a little too much—at the birth of her last grandbaby, for instance—she never got a hangover. Her knees and knuckles and elbows might be putting up a mighty racket, but her head, while a bit stuffy, didn’t hurt at all.

  After seventy-two years she knew her own body, and what aches and pains the hot water didn’t erase she knew activity would. After putting on her old housedress she spent a good forty-five minutes getting her kitchen clean. Virginia Walker had helped her put away the leftovers the night before, but the counters still needed to be wiped off, the dirty dishes rinsed off and put in the dishwasher, the folding chairs put away, and then there was the vacuuming. Holy Moses, it looked like a crumb bomb had gone off in her front room. Did none of her old buzzard friends know how to use a napkin? Vacuuming worked her hands and elbows hard, but for some reason they hurt less when she was done. They always did.

  She was staring out her front window sipping a nice big steaming mug of coffee—decaf, her intestines couldn’t handle caffeine any more—when the hot rod parked on the street in front of Betty Green’s house across the street. She kept waiting for the driver to get out and walk to a house, but he didn’t.

  “Nine one one, what’s your emergency?” she heard in her ear after dialing.

  “Yes, this is Maddie Bridger at 5725 Larkins. I’ve got a very suspicious person out here.”

  The woman dispatcher didn’t seem to share her worry, and instead said flatly, “A suspicious person? What are they doing?”

  “He’s sitting in his car in front of my house. He’s been just sitting in his car for ten minutes. I saw him pull up. I’m a widow and I can’t have just any suspicious characters lurking around the neighborhood.”

  “What kind of a car is it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a race car of some kind, black.”

  “Can you see the license plate?”

  “No, it’s sideways.”

  “And he’s just sitting in the car? I—wait, hold on a second. No, ma’am, you don’t have anything to worry about, we know exactly what he’s—“

  “Oh my God!” Maddie screamed, dropping the phone, and the dispatcher heard loud noises in the background. A loud roar, and multiple pops.

  “Ma’am! Ma’am! Are you all right? What’s going on?”

  There was rustling, then the phone was picked up. “He just shot him! They’re chasing him!” She sounded nearly hysterical.

  “What? Who shot? Who’s chasing who?”

  “A black man just shot the man in the car, he just shot at him right in front of me! I saw the whole thing. Oh my Lord! He drove off, but they kept shooting, and I think they’re chasing him.”

  “Hold on ma’am, I’m sending units to your location.” The dispatcher had heard gunshots over the phone before, and to the experienced ear they didn’t sound anything like fireworks or slamming doors or car backfires, not that anybody had cars that backfired anymore. Gunshots were very distinctive. There was a pause, and Maddie Bridger heard some electronic beeps in her ear. Her heart was racing in her chest, and it felt like she was going to faint. The dispatcher got back on the line, exuding professional calm. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”

  Two Troy cruisers responded to the scene. The tire tracks on the street were immediately visible, as was a single 9mm cartridge case, but it took them a little longer to notice the shards of glass by the curb and the other empty cases. Officer Paul Taylor was just talking to Mrs. Bridger when their dispatcher came over the air. “Units responding, be advised that Oakland County has just reported an officer-involved shooting, it sounds like the vehicles from your scene were involved. Location is Dequindre north of Hamlin.”

  The two officers looked at each other, and Taylor got on the radio. “Dispatch, show me responding to that location. The other unit will remain on scene here. Have an evidence tech roll out here, we’ve got some shell casings, skidmarks, and glass. We’ll also need a detective. And whoever the highest ranking officer on call today, you better call them. This looks like it’s going to be big.”

  “Ten-four.”

  “What are you guys doing here?” a harried deputy asked the four of them, standing about fifty yards back from Dave’s Mustang. They couldn’t leave—the dirt road blocked by Dave’s Mustang was the only way off the range.

  “Club members. Here doing some maintenance.”

  “Work hours,” another one told him.

  “Did you see what happened?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  “Some of it.”

  “Okay,” he told them. “Someone is going to need to take your statement. Go stand over there, don’t go anywhere.”

  Frank walked over to the picnic table as the deputy instructed, pulling out his cell phone as he did.

  “Hello?”

  “Dude, wake the fuck up. You’re never going to believe what just happened. Oh my God. Jesus.”

  “What?”

  “Gunfighter just got into a fucking gunfight, right here at the club!”

  “What?

  “Dave just got into a gunfight, right here.”

  “Dave Anderson shot somebody?”

  “Shot somebody? Dude. Duuude. No, he got into a fucking Hollywood gunfight with two fucking carloads of fucking bad guys right fucking in front of Bay Seven and killed them all. With his fucking TTI AR. I mean….Jesus. I saw the whole thing and I can’t fucking believe it. He had four guys shooting at him and he just fucking stood there and filled the air with fucking brass like a fucking action movie. It was the most awesome thing in the history of….awesome. Fuck.”

  “What? Who were they?”

  “I don’t know. Buncha black dudes, chased him down here and started shooting. There’s about a thousand fucking cops screaming here, can you hear all the sirens?”

  “Carjacking?”

  “I don’t fucking know.”

  “Is he hurt?”

  “No, but you should see his Mustang. Shit’s messed up.”

  By the time Troy PD Officer Taylor arrived at the second crime scene it was a sea of swirling red and blue lights and he couldn’t park anywhere close. Dequindre was completely blocked off in both directions by units, and he could see two ambulances and a fire truck. He parked on the shoulder of Dequindre and walked the hundred yards down Forest, the narrow asphalt road. There he ran into the first crime scene, a tape line strung on poles at distance around an Oakland County cruiser with its nose crushed.

  “Who’s ranking officer on scene?” he asked the crowd of officers.

  “Sergeant Leven,” one of the deputies told him. The man squinted at his uniform. “What’s Troy want with this?”

  “Sounds like it started in our city. What kind of cars do you have involved?” He could see the black Charger by the damaged cruiser, but a berm blocked his view down the dirt road. He could also see a body in the road by the Charger.

  “That Charger there, a black Mustang, and a burgundy Monte.”

  “Yep, same vehicles.”

&
nbsp; “We’ve got four dead here. What the hell happened?”

  Taylor shook his head. “I think there was a P.I. on a surveillance, and somebody started shooting, then chased him here.”

  “What, a jealous husband kind of thing? Somebody catch somebody cheating?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The kid, is that the P.I.?” someone asked him. They pointed at a young man sitting in the back of one of the squad cars in handcuffs.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well shit, I guess you know as much as we do then, which is nothing. You should probably talk to the Sergeant.”

  Undersheriff Raymond Marx arrived ten minutes later. He’d forgotten to grab his prep radio, and no one had called him on his cell since he’d talked to dispatch, so he didn’t have any further details of the incident. He wasn’t surprised at the amount of activity at the scene, if in fact there were multiple fatalities, but what the hell was Troy doing here? The dark blue uniform stuck out among the brown sea of deputies.

  “All right, somebody give me a rundown, what have we got?” He looked around at the faces—shit, there had to be twenty deputies and EMTs wandering around—looking for a detective. He didn’t see one. “Any dicks on scene yet?”

  “No,” Leven, one of his sergeants told him. “But I think we’ve pretty much figured out what happened, although why is another question.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “A young man, David Anderson, called in to Troy dispatch, saying he was a P.I. and doing a surveillance in a neighborhood. Not five minutes later a neighbor calls in to their dispatch as well, thinking Anderson looked suspicious. While she’s on the phone with Troy, somebody walks up to his car and shoots him, or at least shoots at him.”

  “Shoots him? I thought this was a high speed chase.”