“Orange County Dispatch,” a female voice responded.
“This is Sergeant Adams. I have a possible armed and barricaded suspect inside a residence at 631 Maplewood. Request Hummingbird and EMS. Over.”
“Copy, Adams. Requesting authorization for Hummingbird. Over.”
Adams waited, hoping his commander didn’t make a fuss over his request. Hummingbirds were rarely used anymore, but then again, they didn’t often get calls regarding armed subjects.
“Authorization received. Hummingbird and EMS en route. Over.”
“Thank you. Adams, out. Kerrigan, get me the floor-plan on this place. We’ve got a Hummingbird on the way. We’re not taking any chances.”
Kerrigan put down his rifle and removed his pocket comm from a pouch on his utility belt and began tapping away at the screen. Adams called out to another officer to access video feeds from the street cams to see if anyone was seen leaving the residence. A few minutes later, Officer Paulson said, “I got somethin’ here, but it’s kinda messed up,” and keeping his head low, he ran over to where Adams was still crouched behind his patrol car.
“Let me see it,” he said. Paulson handed him his comm and Adams looked at the still image on the screen and tapped a button causing a recording to play backwards. The view was fully blocked in some places and in others it was just blurred. He watched as a green four-door moved backwards and came to a stop approximately in front of the house he was watching. Then a man got out of the passenger side of the car and ran backwards across the yard and into the house. Next, the rear passenger door opened and a person got out, followed by another person, then both of them ran backwards toward the front door of the house.
“What the fuck is this?” Adams said, looking at Paulson for an answer.
“I’m not sure. I think it’s some kind of fat bug. Maybe a bumblebee?”
“This is great. How about the cam from the other end of the street?
“Uh. There’s two. And they point east and west. There isn’t one facing this direction.”
“Goddammit. So our gunman may have just driven away and we can’t even make out his plates. This is just beautiful.” Adams watched the recording again in forward motion. “Aha! You’re not that lucky, you son of a bitch. Paulson, I want you to beam this over to the geeks in the E.D. then I want you to drive over there and personally make sure they get on this and stay on it until they I.D. the make and model and do everything they can to clean up this image. There’s a partial view of the license plate. We can at least get half of it. That’s enough to nail this bastard.”
Paulson took back his comm unit, tapped the screen a lot, then looked over at the front of the house to make sure he was still safe, ran to his patrol car and took off down the street. Adams thumbed his mic. “P743 to base.”
“P743, this is base. Go ahead.”
“Officer Paulson has just transmitted video surveillance evidence of a possibly armed and dangerous suspect. He’ll be working with the Electronics Division on this. Can I get a replacement over to this location? Over.”
“Copy that. Backup will be on the way.”
Just then a police van rounded the corner by the convenience store, turned off its headlights and came slowly rolling down the street. Adams ran over to the driver’s side of the van and spoke to the driver who was looking all around the street for signs of danger.
“Relax. If the shooter’s still here, he’s inside. No lights have gone on or off inside since we arrived, so if he’s in there, he ain’t doing anything. We just don’t want to walk in and get shot. The RP said she heard gunshots, so we called you out just to be safe.”
Officer Bryan Stevens from the Electronics Division smiled and said, “Hey, I’m glad I can help. It’s not often I get to fly around a violent crime scene.” He opened the door and got out. He looked over at the house with the open door. “Is that it?”
“Yeah. Just the way we found it. Street cam caught a guy and possibly two kids leaving the house. We don’t know if that’s him, or if they were escaping from a gunman inside or what.”
“Well, did the guy leaving have a gun?”
“Can’t tell. Some fucking bug or something was walking around on the lens at the time, so it’s kind of fucked up. But we got a partial on the plate, so we’ll find them.” Adams talked as he followed Stevens around to the back of his van.
“At least you got the partial,” he said, opening the rear doors all the way. “Sometimes the cams don’t work at all and people just walk away.” He reached in and opened another set of doors on a black, metal cabinet. He pulled out a large drawer from the cabinet, revealing what looked like a metal half-cylinder with two sets of wings and an oval-shaped head with cameras that looked like eyes.
“I can never get used to these things,” Adams said, looking at the device as if it were alive.
“She probably ain’t too hot on the idea of looking at you either,” Stevens replied, laughing.
“She? Jesus. Don’t give the fuckin’ thing a gender. It’s creepy enough as an it.”
Stevens carefully lifted it from the drawer which had a foam tray with a shallow cut-out in the shape of the body. “You sure you don’t wanna give her a kiss for good luck?” he said, swinging it toward Adams.
Adams took a step backwards and leaned back even further. “Just get that thing in the air so we can get the fuck out of here. The paperwork on this case is gonna be a nightmare and my shift ended twenty minutes ago. Whatever you find, or don’t find, it’s gonna be a long fucking night.”
Stevens set it down carefully in front of the black cabinet and opened another drawer. He brought out a remote flight control unit and a tripod, extending its telescopic legs. Then he grabbed a pair of goggles with attached headphones. “Do you want video sync’d to your comm?”
“No,” Adams replied. “Screens on comm units are too damned small to be of any use anyway.”
“Sticky screens are in the top drawer. Grab one and I’ll sync it real quick.”
Adams took out a thick rolled tube and unrolled it against the inside of the opened back door. He pressed it and smoothed out the wrinkles as it unfurled.
“Got it,” he said.
Stevens pressed a button on the control unit and a few seconds later an image of Michelle’s empty driveway and garage door appeared on the screen. Next he put on a headset and pressed another button on the control unit and the small drone lit up. He pushed a few more buttons to activate the motor and the recording equipment then picked up the device and stepped back a few paces before very gently placing it on the ground in front of him. Stevens manipulated the controls again and Adams heard the buzzing sound from the top set of wings.
“All units on scene. Be alert for the perp. Dragonfly inbound.”
All of the officers looked toward the van to watch the drone as it flew toward the front door where it stopped and hovered in the doorway. A ring of light lit up on the Dragonfly illuminating everything around it. The nose tilted down and the floor lit up.
“We’ve got blood. Do you want a sample now, or keep scouting?”
“Keep scouting. We’ll come back to it.”
“Okay, boss. I’ve got two doorways. One left and one right and the hall continues forward to a probable living room. Have you got a floorplan?”
Adams pulled out his comm and looked at the screen. “Yeah. Take the room on the right. Master bedroom.”
“You got it,” Stevens replied and sent the Dragonfly forward several feet and steered it into the master bedroom, leaving the hallway dark again.
Stevens described what he saw in a bored monotone. It was just an empty room with a bed and a dresser, lamps, etc. Adams told him to check the master bath. Another empty room. Stevens commented that the place looked pretty clean. Like a model house.
“Check the bedroom opposite this one.”
Stevens flew back out of the master bedroom, crossed the hall and entered Michelle’s room. “Looks like someone lives here after a
ll.”
Adams was startled. “Someone’s in there??”
“No. Just looks lived in. Messy. Like a kid’s room. And the window’s busted up. Glass everywhere, like it was shot out.”
“Any blood?”
Stevens spun the dragonfly around to face the way it had come in. “Yep! You got blood. Lots of it. And over here, this looks like a body under the blanket. You want me to uncover it, or keep scoping?”
“There’s only two more rooms. He’s either in the living room or the kitchen/dining-room, which is all practically one big room anyway. Go back out to the hall, turn left and there’s a bathroom a few feet up on the left. Check that, then get to the rest of the house. I wanna get in there a.s.a.p.”
Stevens checked the small bathroom then flew back out and went into the living room and kitchen. “It’s clear. No one there unless you want me to check closets, attic, crawl space—”
“Fucker’s long gone. We’re going in. Give a warning to cover us with Legal and you can take off.”
Stevens extended a microphone down from his headset. He cleared his throat and announced. “This is the Orange County Police Force!” The officers in the street heard his voice in a weird sort of stereo – live on the street, and amplified but distant coming from inside the house. “This house has been determined to be empty. If it is not, reveal yourself immediately. Anyone sighted after a five second countdown will be assumed to be hostile and WILL be shot. This is your only warning. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”
As Stevens flew the dragonfly out of the house, Adams signaled for the officers to join him behind his car. “Okay, ladies. The house looks empty except for possibly one gunshot victim. There’s blood in the entry hall and a possible homicide in the bedroom on the left. Put on your prophs before you enter and step carefully. Let’s not fuck up our only homicide of the year.”
The officers went to their trunks first for prophylactic gear then met up with Adams on the porch where he was already covering his shoes. He pulled a face mask out of a bag and before putting it on, said to Officer Nguyen, “Radio we’re clear for EMS and get us an M.E. in case it’s too late for EMS. Then keep the scene secure.”
Nguyen frowned and said, “Got it,” then walked back toward the patrol cars talking into his lapel mic.
Adams entered the house slowly with his right hand on his holster even though the house was believed to be empty. He wasn’t taking any chances. Not when a citizen was running around with a gun. He aimed his flashlight at the floor and stepped carefully around the small pool of blood on the tile and looked into Michelle’s room.
He saw the blasted window, glass shards, rumpled bedsheet, blood splatter, and wondered where the body was. Then he looked to his left where he saw a dresser. He aimed his flashlight down the length of the dresser, illuminating the shiny blood splatter. When the beam reached the floor he saw the body-shape under the blanket.
“Oh, there you are.”
He reached down with a gloved hand and carefully lifted the blanket up and away, revealing the nude and bloody corpse of Drake Austin.
Forty-six
Charlie looked at Michelle in the rear-view mirror. He didn’t want to upset her by bringing up this subject, but he needed to get a grasp of what was going on.
“Michelle, do you know who the man in your house was?”
Michelle looked at the back of Charlie’s head, then looked at his eyes in the rearview mirror and shook her head.
“Had you ever seen him before anywhere?”
“No… Wait. I think I saw him walking down my street a few days ago. I’m not sure.”
“Did he say anything to you that would explain why he was there, other than…”
“No. He just called me names and was really mean and gross.” Michelle started to cry and said something that Charlie didn’t understand. Deron understood her.
“It was not your fault, Michelle. Don’t ever say that. Don’t even think it.”
“But it is! I went to a club dressed like a total slut. People stared at me everywhere I went. I think he saw me when I was walking home. If I hadn’t been dressed that way, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.” She covered her face with her hands as she cried harder. Deron put an arm around her and pulled her close to him.
He spoke softly to her as he stroked her hair. “It’s not your fault some psycho attacked you, no matter what you were wearing. And I promise you no one will ever hurt you again.”
He continued consoling her, wishing he could reverse time and protect her from what had happened. He’d give anything to go back just two days to when his biggest problems were occasional boredom and idiots at school. Now his life was complete chaos without even the next hour being predictable. But as bad as things were, he still felt thankful that he was with Michelle and Charlie. He just hoped things didn’t get worse now.
Charlie wondered if the police could possibly determine that he had acted to protect Michelle without having him there to explain the situation. They would find a nude man, shot to death in a home where he had no connection to the residents and thus wasn’t a guest. They should be able to figure out that he was an intruder, and his body was in a teenage girl’s room. Surely they’d put the pieces together and realize that Charlie was a hero, not a villain. Thinking of the police reminded him of something.
“I need your communicators. Both of you.”
They handed them over and Charlie lowered his window, stuck his hand out with all three of them in it and then tossed them upward as hard as he could. He looked in his rearview mirror and saw them shatter all over the street when they came down, reminding him of when he’d blown up model cars with firecrackers when he was a boy.
***
After Adams had inspected every room, he returned to Michelle’s room and put his powers of observation on hold in exchange for his imagination. He tried to come up with a scenario that would fit the known facts. He needed to imagine a beginning and a middle that would fit the end. To do that, he needed to know more about the corpse.
He called for Kerrigan on his radio and he showed up a few seconds later.
“House is clean; nobody here, and nothing helpful in any room.”
“Get me everything you can on this guy and any connection at all to the homeowners. And find the homeowners, while you’re at it. I need to figure out what the fuck happened, and they might be able to fill in a lot of missing pieces.”
“You bucking for Homicide, Sergeant?”
Adams just stared, not responding. It wasn’t his job to investigate a homicide, but he wanted to know what had happened here. Why was there a dead guy with no clothes on in a young girl’s room? Why was he shot from outside the house? Who the fuck stands outside and shoots a prowler inside? Why had an old man driven off with the two kids? Kidnapping?
Everything about this scene bothered him.
A short while later Adams was looking at the area outside Michelle’s room, trying to figure out what someone who lived inside the house would be doing outside of it when Kerrigan found him. “Hey, Sarge. I got some info on the parents. Do you want it, or should I give it to McMannis?”
“That wingnut’s on this case? Fuck. Me first, then him. What’ve you got?”
“Stanley and Barbara Kolnick. 42 and 48, respectively.” Kerrigan looked up at Adams expectantly.
“Go on,” Adams replied.
Kerrigan looked back down at his comm and continued reading. One child, Michelle Granger, age 16. I’m thinkin’ that could be the girl in the video that got into the car.”
“Anything’s possible, except for the video getting into the car.”
“Huh?” Kerrigan was confused.
“Nevermind. Continue.”
“Parents in France on vacation. Child’s location is unknown. I’ve got the phone number to the hotel they’re staying at.”
“Good work. Beam me that info. Anything on the stiff?”
Kerrigan focused on his comm, pressing and sliding his fingers on the glass su
rface, then he carefully aimed his unit at Adams’ and tapped the screen.
Adams shook his head. They were standing two feet apart. He didn’t need to aim for the data transfer. Kerrigan tapped some more and said, “Drake Bernhard Austin. 54. Cable guy. Address in Garden Grove. I can’t find any connection between him and the Grangers at all – unless maybe he worked on their cable.”
“Gimme his data too.”
“Already did, Sarge.”
“Thanks. I’m gonna call the homeowners. What the fuck time is it in France?”
Adam’s radio squawked. He thumbed the mic and said, “Adams.”
“Hey Sarge! E.D. took the partial plate number we got from the video and found 17 matches. 6 of them in Westminster, so I started looking at—”
“Skip to the end, Paulson.”
“I think the guy we’re looking for is a Charles Young. He’s got numerous infractions, but it’s all piddly shit.”
“Did you locate his car?”
“Yeah, he’s heading southeast.”
“Well, fuck, Paulson. Send an override command for his car to drive itself to the police station.”
“We can’t. He’s driving a relic – a 2018 Ford Prescient. But we’re in luck. It’s got OBD III, so we can at least shut him down on the highway as soon as you give the word – unless Homicide has taken over…”
“Fuck McMannis. Stop the car and send me the coords. Get the closest local P.D. en route. I’m heading over now.”
“You got it, Sarge. Can I head out too? I’ve never been on a homicide.”
“Yeah. Meet you there.” Adams yelled to the other officers, “We got him. Let’s go.” He got in his patrol car, followed shortly thereafter by Kerrigan. Adams held his finger on the starter sensor, impatiently waiting for the safety restraints to slide into position before the sensor would read his prints and allow him to start the vehicle.
“Should we tell McMannis we found the guy?
The engine hummed to life and Adams wished he was burning rubber as he pulled away but the car’s computer controlled the acceleration rate of the vehicle and it was impossible to burn rubber in a new car.
2043 A.D. Page 20