by James Tarr
Dave’s thumbs stopped, and he peered at his phone in silence for about thirty seconds. His eyes moved back and forth. “Shit,” he finally said.
“What?”
“’Jerome Beiers, age 38, of Newark, died as a result of complications from his injuries yesterday,’” he read. “This was….shit, almost a couple of weeks ago.” He read the newspaper story further. “Looks like he was stabbed in an attack, and his attacker cut off his finger. Doesn’t say which one. The finger was not recovered. “Police have no motive in the attack, and no suspects. Anyone with any information….blah blah blah. Fuck.”
He threw the phone down and rubbed his eyes. He was so tired he was weaving in the chair. Now he knew the why of the gunfight yesterday, but he sure as hell didn’t feel any better about it. He now knew that it wasn’t just a one-time random occurrence. If what the FBI evidence tech said was true—and he didn’t have any reason to doubt him, everything he’d said made sense—the Detroit cops coming after him wasn’t going to be the last excitement he’d have in the near future.
Shit, he thought, could that thing a few weeks ago, when I was on surveillance, be tied in with this? The crazy cop killer? Had the guy been coming after me and been interrupted? “I’ve got to go to sleep, think about this tomorrow.”
Dave looked at the FBI—former FBI employee, and saw how exhausted he looked as well. “You can take the couch. Anybody comes through the door, jump on them and start yelling. I’m going to bed.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mickey opened his eyes, not quite sure where he was. He heard someone moving around nearby, but didn’t recognize the room he was in. Well decorated, somebody’s living room…..with a groan he sat up on the couch, remembering where he was. Anderson’s house. That’s probably who he heard, walking up and down stairs.
He checked his watch. Nearly ten a.m. Jeez, he’d slept nearly nine hours. He hadn’t slept that much since before….this all happened. He’d never been able to relax enough to catch more than two or three hours in a row, even when he was in the hospital. There he kept waiting to hear the heavy tread of the police, or worse yet, the FBI. He’d refrained from Googling himself since Boehmer had left him for dead; he wasn’t sure exactly how much activity on the internet the government monitored, but he knew they did it. No reason to make them suspect he wasn’t, in fact, dead.
Stiff-legged, he levered himself off the couch and went in search of a bathroom. He found one off the kitchen, used the toilet, and stared at himself in the mirror. He looked horrible, like a scarecrow. There were dark hollows under his eyes, and his neck….his neck would never look the same. Seventeen stitches, that’s how many it had taken to close up the wound, after the doctor had cleaned out the pus and scolded him for leaving it untreated for so long. The left side of his neck was a lumpy tangled mass of pink flesh. Plus, his chest still hurt, his broken ribs had not healed all the way. He hadn’t mentioned anything about broken ribs to the medical staff at the hospital, and if they’d noticed the yellowing bruises across his torso they’d never asked about them. It didn’t hurt him to breathe anymore, but if he leaned too far this way or that pain shot up his side.
Anderson was coming out of the garage when Mickey emerged from the bathroom. He looked like he was busy doing something, harried and grumpy. “Can I grab something to eat?”
Dave stopped and looked at him. “Yeah, sure. Food’s in the fridge, and some in the cupboard. Get whatever you want.”
Eating a bagel and drinking some Diet Coke, Mickey watched Anderson make two more trips to the garage. “What are you doing?” he asked the young man. Actually, Anderson wasn’t that young, he reminded himself, he was the same age as Mickey. But Mickey felt old. Older than he was. Running for your life tends to age you.
“Packing.”
Mickey blinked. “Packing for what?”
Dave stopped and shook his head. “I’m not staying here. I need to get the hell out of here.” He rested his hand idly on the Glock in his holster. His spare gun, the one Taran had used at the match, as the other had been taken into evidence even though he’d never fired a shot out of it. But the cops couldn’t take his word for that.
Mickey was confused. “What do you mean? Where are you going?”
“I’ve got a house—a cabin, more like—in Arizona. I’m going to head out there.” He’d already called Joe at Absolute earlier that morning, told him he was going to take a little time off.
“Davey, you take as much time as you need,” Joe told him. Actually, he’d been glad Davey wanted to take some time off. While the local TV stations only had his high school graduation photo to post during their stories, Dave was still recognizable, and driving around Detroit after killing a handful of black Detroit cops—whether they were dirty or not—could cause serious problems. Armored car personnel were already targets.
“But—“ Mickey started to say, but stopped himself. He looked around the kitchen. He’d just gotten there, and now Anderson wanted to leave again? But, he supposed, it made sense. Anderson wasn’t safe, not until they could go public with this.
“But what?” Dave said angrily. Mickey found himself getting angry in return.
“You know, you’re not the only person they’re trying to kill here.” He jabbed a finger at his ugly neck. “I got shot, almost died. In fact, they—my boss—shot me so many times he thought he killed me. My ribs are still messed up.”
Anderson’s mouth opened like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing and stepped close, like he was going to hit him. “Do you actually want sympathy from me? Is that where you’re fucking going? This is all your fault! If you’d just kept your damn mouth shut I’d probably be in the FBI Academy right now. You’d still have a fucking job, and your neck wouldn’t look like a pussy with third-degree burns.”
Mickey opened his mouth, closed it, then said, “Is that really what it looks like?”
Dave took a couple of breaths and calmed down. “It looks bad, yeah.”
“No, I mean, does it really look like a vagina?”
Dave frowned and cocked his head. “Yeah, it does. A sideways one.”
“Shit”. He’d been afraid of that. Mickey looked at Dave. “What are you planning to do when you get to Arizona?”
“I’m not planning on anything. I just want to get out of here. Those cops didn’t come after me on their own, somebody put them up to it. Probably dirty FBI, the same ones who shot you. And they’re still out there.”
They both looked around. For the first time Mickey noticed how big the house was, how empty it seemed. “We should stick together,” he said. He didn’t know if Anderson had been planning on leaving him there, but he wasn’t about to let him get away after travelling across half the country to find him.
Dave stared at him for a long while. “Can you shoot at all, if it comes to that?” he finally asked. Opposite the Glock 35 on his hip were two spare magazines on the left side of his belt. He’d already put his spare rifle and competition shotgun into the Jeep.
Mickey blinked. It wasn’t a question he’d been expecting. “My uncle took me shooting once. He was an FBI agent.”
“Did you have to do any shooting or qualifying for the FBI Lab?” Mickey shook his head. “Shit.”
“What?”
Dave told him, “You don’t get good at something by only doing it once in your life, and shooting, especially with a handgun, is a perishable skill.” He eyed Mickey’s rumpled clothes. “How soon can you be ready to leave?”
“Um….can I take a shower first? And maybe borrow some clothes?”
While the FBI Lab geek was in the shower, Dave called John Phault. “Hey,” he said, sounding tired.
“Hey,” John replied. “Have you turned on the news yet?”
“No.”
“Good, don’t.”
“Why, is it that bad?”
“Let’s just say you were there, so you know what happened, but everyone else on TV just keeps guessing, and talking about everythi
ng. They’re fascinated by the fact that these guys were out on bail when this happened, and they’re giving the FBI a giant public screwing about it. The usual suspects also keep pointing out that it was a couple of white guys—you and the deputy—who killed a bunch of black guys. And somebody dug up the fact that this isn’t the first time you’ve killed black guys.”
“Jesus. I don’t care what color they were. I didn’t even notice, I was too busy shooting back. Both times.”
“Yeah, I know. Hey, did you call your insurance company yet?”
“No, not yet. It’s Sunday, anyway. I was calling you to let you know I was going to take a few days.”
“Dude….” He heard his boss laugh. “You take as much time as you need, shit. Hey, um, if you, you know, need to talk to anyone about it, I know someone who’s really good.”
“You mean a shrink?”
“Yeah. Well, a therapist.”
Dave made a face that his boss couldn’t see. “No thanks.”
“No shame in it,” John told him. “PTSD’s a real thing, I’ve had it. I know a lot of people who have, professional badasses.”
Dave knew it was a real thing. Hell, he’d hardly slept the night before with all that had happened, and all that he’d learned. When he did sleep, he kept reliving the gunfight, except his rifle malfunctioned, or the bullets had no effect. PTSD….the gift that kept on giving. “Talking about it’s not going to help me.” Bombing the FBI lab, that might help me. Maybe going back in time a month or two.
He heard John sigh. “Okay, but if you do feel the need to talk, you can talk to me, too, you don’t have to talk to a shrink.”
“Thanks,” Dave said grudgingly.
“You call me in a day or two, okay?”
Dave agreed and hung up the phone before he did something stupid like tell John about his little fingerprint problem. John couldn’t help him, and telling him would only put him in danger. He quickly finished packing the Cherokee, then waited while Mickey got dressed.
“How long of a drive is it to Arizona?” Mickey asked him, tugging on a borrowed t-shirt. He only had a vague sense of the geography east of the Appalachians.
“With two of us, we can drive straight through. You can drive, can’t you?” As un-American as it was, especially from the view of someone who lived so close to the Motor City, he knew a lot of D.C. and New York City residents couldn’t drive because they always depended on public transportation.
“Sure, I can drive.”
“Good. Straight through, depending on traffic and construction, should only be twenty-eight, thirty hours. Plus stops for gas and bathroom.”
“Thirty hours? Really?” Holy shit, that was forever.
“What? Oh, you’re an east coast kid, aren’t you? You forget just how big this country is?”
Mickey asked him, “Why don’t we just fly?”
Dave just stared back. “Dude, seriously? You live your whole life in a box? First off, I want to have a car when I’m there. I’m not going on vacation in Cancun. Second, third, last, and most important,” and he pointed at the gun on his hip, “this is staying on me til I die. Which probably is going to be a lot sooner than I’d like.”
“Christ, can you turn on the music, the radio, something?” Mickey exploded after nearly six hours of complete silence.
“What? Oh, sorry,” Dave said. “Thinking. And I spend so much time in the car doing surveillance, I’m sort of burned out on the radio. You want some music?”
“That would be good, thanks.” Six hours felt like twelve, and they were still only in Illinois.
Dave kept the Cherokee in good shape since he depended on it when following people. He’d just gotten an oil change a few weeks before, and the tires were only six months old. The interior wasn’t in good shape, but that’s what happened when you lived inside your car three days a week. He grabbed his iPod off the center console, turned it on, and flicked on the radio on the dash.
“Oh my God, what is this?” Mickey said about thirty seconds later.
Dave glanced down at the iPod, touched it so the display would light up. “Truck Stop Tuna. A lot of people say they sound like early Pink Floyd.”
“The only people who would say that are those who have never heard Pink Floyd. It’s like Down’s Syndrome set to music. I need to change this or I’m going to lose my mind.” He grabbed the iPod without waiting for permission.
Dave shot him a dark look, then glanced back at the road. “What the hell do you like? Lady Gaga?”
“Actually I do like a lot of her stuff, but I prefer classical music in the car.”
Dave rolled his eyes. “This is going to be a long fucking trip.”
Mickey thumbed through the iPod, trying to find something he liked. “Sooooo,” he said slowly. He still didn’t have a read on Anderson. “What exactly happened yesterday with those cops? I talked to some of the neighbors, but….did they just come at you?”
Dave really didn’t want to talk about it. He was pissed off at this fingerprint tech, this was the guy who’d ruined his life. And yet…he knew that wasn’t quite fair. The guy couldn’t have known what would happen. No one could, and to be honest, he’d suffered more loss than Dave had—no job, no life, and a bullet wound in the neck that just looked nasty. Hell, it looked pornographic. Hands gripping the steering wheel tight he frowned, then told Mickey, “I was sitting in my neighborhood on a surveillance when they came up in two cars behind me. One of them walked up and just tried to shoot me.”
The road in front of him faded out as he flashed back to the scene; the glass filling the cabin like glittering dust, the back end of the ‘Stang threatening to break free as he floored it, the taste of fear in his mouth.
“Yeah, that’s what the people I talked to said. And then they chased you down and what, ran you off the road?”
Dave shook his head. “I couldn’t outrun them. They were better drivers than I was.” He shrugged. “So I said ‘Fuck it’ and made a stand.”
“You stopped on purpose?” Mickey said, eyes wide. He tried to picture it and couldn’t. It made no sense to him. He stared out at the passing scenery for a few seconds. “But weren’t there four of them?”
Dave shrugged. “I didn’t know how many there were. I knew there were at least two, because there were two cars.”
“Did you set them up in an ambush or something?” Mickey was trying to figure out how Anderson was still alive. Four veteran SWAT cops versus one scared young private investigator. The math didn’t add up in his head.
Dave was having a hard time talking about it but he figured Mitchell had a right to know. “No. I just stopped and they came at me.”
“Were you in the military or something?” He didn’t remember that from Anderson’s application packet, but he was still trying to make sense of what he was hearing.
“No.”
Mickey stared at him. “How are you not dead?” he asked frankly.
Dave had replayed the incident a thousand times in his head and knew the answer to that….but explaining it to the FBI lab guy might be difficult. “I was in a gunfight a few years ago,” Dave told him. “I was still in college, doing an internship, a ride-along, with a local police department. And we ran into a carload of bank robbers. I mean,” he shook his head, a grim little smile on his face, “we actually ran into them. Or they ran into us. And they started shooting the shit out of our car, and the officer in the car with me, he got hit in the head and was out of it. So it was up to me.” He frowned. “And I fucked up so bad both of us almost died. I missed a guy not much farther away than the end of this car with a shotgun. A shotgun! We should have died, but the assholes shooting at me were even worse shots than I was.” Images from that firefight flashed through his mind.
“I was scared, but not that scared. I was more scared afterward than I was during, just like the Detroit cops the other day. So I should have shot better than I did.” He shrugged. “Considering that I was going into law enforcement, and even wante
d to get into the FBI back then, I thought actually becoming a better shot might be a pretty good idea if I didn’t want to die stupid. So I started shooting competitively. What you’d call ‘combat style’ shooting. And I practiced, and practiced, and practiced, and practiced, with the idea being that if I ever found myself in the same kind of situation I’d have practiced shooting so much that I couldn’t miss. That the muscle memory would kick in no matter how freaked out I was.”
Mickey heard what he was saying, but it still didn’t make sense. “But that’s target shooting, right? They were SWAT cops.”
He tried to put it in terms the guy from the FBI lab might understand. “I have a criminal justice degree, and know a lot more than the average CSI viewer about fingerprints. But compared to you I’m probably a moron. Think of it in those terms. Those cops, they are probably great at kicking in doors and putting handcuffs on assholes, but even though they’re SWAT I bet they only go shooting once a week, if that. There is so much more to the job than shooting people, which, if they’re doing their job right, they will rarely if ever have to do. Hell, what they do every day on the job is drive, and you see what happened there, I couldn’t outrun them even though I had a faster car. A much faster car.” He silently mourned his brutalized Mustang for a second. “But when it comes to shooting, I practice every day. Every day. Hell, I had the rifle in the car because I was going to practice at the range later.”
He looked at Mitchell and saw the tech still wasn’t quite following him. “Okay, what about golf. You know anything about golf? If shooting was golf, I’m good enough to get onto the PGA. I’d never beat Tiger Woods, but…” he thought back to the state match and Taran Butler, “I’ve competed alongside him. And didn’t embarrass myself. Those SWAT guys weren’t professional golfers, professional shooters, they were just guys who worked with and usually go up against people who aren’t any better than them. Cold honest truth is I was just better than they were. A lot better, and by the time it happened I wasn’t scared any more. I was just pissed. Being not scared makes a huge difference, trust me, you’re in front of the curve. I was pissed, I had cover, and I had my rifle. I’m really good with that rifle, and if I died I knew it wouldn’t be for lack of shooting back. Shit, the farthest shot was maybe twenty yards, which is nothing for a rifle. Looking back on it, once I got my rifle in my hands it was all over. They were already dead, they just didn’t know it.”