by Tracy Clark
We heard banging above us, a noise none of us could readily identify. Still three flights to go. Sirens blared outside—the cavalry at last. “Open the door!” Farraday shouted. “Now!”
Ben and I exchanged a foreboding look.
“Go!” I yelled, hoping to spur us both on. Two more flights. “Farraday! Stand down!” I called out, my voice reverberating off the dirty walls along with the banging from up top.
“What is that?” Ben asked.
“Sounds like somebody trying to push a door in,” Grimes offered, his sweat-soaked red hair plastered to his head. The three of us hustled up the steps double-time, finally reaching the last flight. When I rounded the final landing, I saw Farraday, his back pressed to the door jamb, sunlight streaming in from the roof. He’d gotten the door open, but it didn’t look like he was in any hurry to burst though it alone. It was the first smart thing he’d done all day. Farraday saw us there, his expression practically gleeful. It turned my stomach. “He’s out there.” Farraday kept his voice low. “I got him boxed in.”
Ben looked as though he might shoot Farraday himself. “How the hell did you get ahead of us?”
Farraday sneered. “I saw him shoot out of the yard. I took off after him. Not my fault you two are slow.”
Ben’s eyes flashed danger. “You took off without your partner?”
Farraday’s eyes darted toward Grimes. “He had the car. I got this.”
“I hear you all out there!” Jimmy yelled from the other side of the door. “You all need to back up. I ain’t going down. I ain’t going to jail!”
“Cover me,” Farraday said, pulling himself away from the door. “I’m going in.”
I grabbed him by the arm, pulled him back. “Like hell you are. We’re not killing this kid, you hear me? Now back off.”
Farraday pulled his arm free. “He’s my collar. I ran him down.”
Ben faced him. “Are you really that far gone that you’re itching to be the white cop who guns down a poor black kid on a rooftop?”
“Fuck you, Mickerson,” Farraday spat out. Ben looked as though he wanted to pound Farraday into sand; instead, he simply turned his back on him.
I turned to Grimes. “You hold the spot. He holds it, too. Understood?” Grimes looked as though he might faint, but he nodded a confirmation and held.
“This is bullshit, Raines, and you know it,” Farraday hissed.
My eyes held his. “I’ll tell you what I know. I know I’d better not see your stupid face on the other side of this door until we get this kid off the roof. Period. Now get the hell away from me!”
Farraday slunk back, seething, as Ben and I counted off three and then eased through the door a half step at a time. Maybe Jimmy had a gun, maybe he didn’t. I hoped he didn’t. The tar-covered rooftop seemed to sizzle under my feet and cling to the soles of my shoes. Guns up, we stepped farther out, checking everywhere for Jimmy Pick. We found him along the building’s edge, his back to us, as though he was thinking about jumping. His hands weren’t visible. My heart seized. Ben and I fanned out. He took right this time.
“Hey there, Jimmy,” I began, fighting hard to keep the quiver out of my voice. “Mind if we talk?”
“Ain’t in a talking mood, especially not to no cops.” Ben and I each took a step forward, flanking him. We exchanged a look, and Ben nodded, giving me the okay to take the lead on talking Jimmy down.
“I can respect that. A man’s entitled to talk to whoever he wants.” I slid another glance toward Ben. I had no idea where to go with this. Sweat pooled on Ben’s face, his jaw clenched tightly, as though it were chiseled in stone. “See? Thing is, Jimmy? You’re making a whole lot of people real nervous. I’d like to get you off this roof safe and sound, but I also need my partner and the other cops down there to be safe, too.”
“You don’t give a shit about me being safe.”
I balanced evenly on the balls of my feet. “That’s where you’re wrong, Jimmy. I’d like us all to be safe.”
“But I’ll be the one going to jail.”
I swallowed hard. There was no use lying to the kid. “Yeah, that’s true.... This is how it goes, Jimmy. You’ll put your hands way up and out where me and my partner can see them clearly. Then you’ll turn around really, really slow, facing us. We’ll ask you to get down on the ground, spread eagle, and then lace your hands behind your head, again, real slow, real easy. Then the cuffs go on, we stand you up, and take you down to the car. That’s it. That’s all. That’s how it has to be.” My gun weighed heavy in my hands, my palms sweating. “No one wants to hurt you, Jimmy.” God knows I didn’t. “But I’m going to need you to put your hands up and out now, just like I said. Up and out.”
Jimmy did not comply. He barely moved. I couldn’t be sure he’d even heard me. I wet my lips. Out of the corner of my eye, I could tell Ben was bracing himself for what we both hoped wouldn’t come to pass. “Nobody has to die here today.”
Jimmy said nothing. He was likely watching the squad cars multiply down in the alley. He had no place to go. He had to know it. He had to feel it. “You cops like shooting black folks in the back,” Jimmy said. “So go ahead.”
Beads of sweat dripped into my eyes, and I quickly wiped them away with the sleeve of my blazer. “You’re wrong about that,” I said. “We don’t want to shoot anybody.” I shifted into firing position, my heart beating so wildly it seemed to ram against my rib cage. “Up and out . . . then around slowly.”
“Then what?” Jimmy asked.
My fingers tightened on the grip of my gun, my eyes pinned to Jimmy’s back. “Then on the ground, spread eagle, cuffs. Just like I said.”
“Then what?” he asked again. He was toying with me, goading us. Shit. Shit. Shit. Jimmy began to slowly turn, his hands still down.
“Hands up! Do it now!”
Ben and I shouted together. “Now!”
Jimmy slowly raised his hands, a contemptible scowl on his face. “I ain’t dying today, cop. I’m going to let you take me in.” He held his hands out to his sides. “You don’t shoot me, I don’t shoot you. Fair deal.”
“Down! Hands behind your head!” Niceties were done. Every cell in my body was operating in overdrive. I could hear the blood rushing through my veins, the valves in my heart opening and closing. I could count every pimple on Jimmy’s face. His pockets hung heavy. There could be a gun in one of them, or a cellphone. I couldn’t let his hands get anywhere near his pockets again.
Ben drew forward. “Get down. Face in the dirt. Now!” Ben and I made eye contact. He knew I had his back. I watched nervously as Ben slowly approached, keeping a safe distance. Jimmy, seemingly resigned now to going to jail, prepared to plaster himself to the rooftop. He’d just started his descent, when the door to the roof banged open, and Farraday barreled through like a runaway freight train.
“Down, you asshole!” he barked, gun drawn, his feral eyes boring into Jimmy’s confused ones.
“Farraday, stop! What the hell are you doing?” I yelled, but Farraday kept coming. I watched in horror as the expression on Jimmy’s face flipped from resigned acceptance to primal ferocity. We’d had a deal and this wasn’t it. He looked at me as though I’d betrayed him. I saw in his eyes the very moment he made up his mind to kill us all.
“Jimmy, don’t,” I pleaded. “Don’t do it.” Ben peddled backward, caught off guard by the sudden shift in activity. He dropped his handcuffs, raised his gun. A couple more minutes and we’d have had Jimmy cuffed and off the roof. Now this. “Farraday! What the hell? Back the fuck up!”
Jimmy let out an angry wail. “You lied!”
What happened next happened all at once and, seemingly, at twice the speed of light. Jimmy’s arms, once held in surrender, shot down to his sides, and his right hand plunged into his pocket. I registered the glint of shiny silver. Ben was exposed, caught flat-footed partway between the safety at my side and the danger Jimmy posed. Time meant nothing. Gun. Gun. Gun. It was all I could see; it was all my brain could process. Gu
n.
I fired. Jimmy fired. Ben fired. Farraday fired. The acrid stench of spent gunpowder and the heart-sickening sound of rapid gunfire ricocheted off the sides of the grimy buildings, whipped around my ears, and then hung in the air eerily suspended before melting away to nothing. The dizzying progression from glint of metal to muzzle flash seemed to take no more than a finger snap. I suddenly felt a sharp, searing pain in my chest so intense that it knocked me backward and off my feet. Time, which had raced like a thoroughbred horse just half a second earlier, stopped dead. Just stopped. Dead. Nothing moved, no one moved as the world beyond the rooftop fell away.
I began to fall, feeling myself go, my back crashing against the hot, sticky tar, my gun tumbling out of a hand that could no longer grasp it. I lay there stunned, my chest burning, and stared up at the clouds, watching as a bird flew overhead. These would be the last things I ever saw, I thought, the last things my senses would touch. Bile rose in my throat. I could feel warm blood pooling at my neck. The smell of my own sweat mingled with the metallic stench of fresh blood, my blood. The vest protected my chest—my heart, my lungs, the things that counted—but Jimmy’s bullet had caught me just above where the vest ended. It was my bad luck. Two minutes. Two seconds. No difference. There was no real time, only the rooftop and gunfire reverb, blood, sweat, gunpowder, bile, fear. Dammit. I was going to die today. Ben’s head shot into view, blocking out the sky. The stricken look on his face told me all I needed to know. It was bad. I felt for him. I didn’t want him to be the cop who lost a partner on a roof. It was a rough road to travel on. Still, I wanted the clouds back. I’d even take the bird, though I’d never liked them much. Way too chirpy.
“Hey, Cass,” Ben said, feverishly checking me for signs of life. My eyes were open. Weren’t they open? I could see the clouds, right? “Stay with me. Shit! You’re all right. You hear? Keep breathing. Farraday, you son of a bitch!” My eyes blurred, watered. Nauseous, I clenched my eyes shut, waiting for the worst to pass. It didn’t. Wouldn’t. I’d planned on pizza for dinner, and now I couldn’t catch my breath. I’d miss Christmas, I’d never have children, and I left dirty dishes in my sink. “Breathe,” Ben ordered, tears flooding his eyes. Wasn’t I breathing? I thought I was breathing. I watched, my vision fading, as he struggled out of his blazer, balled it and pressed it to my neck. A couple millimeters left or right and I’d have walked away from this. Ben’s efforts sent a fresh wave of agony through me, but I didn’t let on. I didn’t want him to feel bad. He’d never be able to wear the jacket again, of course. He’d never get my blood out of it. “Officer down! Officer down!” Ben shouted into his radio. I watched the clouds. I wanted them to be the last things I took in.
“Jimmy?” I croaked.
Ben shook his head. “You got him.”
But I didn’t want to get him. He was bad news, but he was just a kid. I wanted him to live. I wanted us all to live. What happened? Where had it gone wrong? Then I remembered.
Farraday.
The chatter over the radio sounded like it was coming from the end of a long tunnel, and I couldn’t make sense of it. I turned my head only as far as I could manage and there was Farraday, his face as pale as a ghost, but very much alive and well. Jimmy Pick was dead. I was dead, too. But there he stood. I heard the paramedics coming, but it didn’t feel as though I could wait for them. I managed just one more half inhale before the sounds of salvation faded, and my field of vision shrank to the breadth of a pinprick. Calmly, silently, I let go of the world. I was cold at last and hadn’t even needed to go to space for it. I thought I had more time. I hadn’t planned on dying today.
Chapter 3
“Wouldn’t you rather sit, Detective?” Dr. Voigt asked. “I don’t charge for the use of the chair.”
Dr. Nelson Voigt, dressed neatly for autumn in a white oxford shirt, navy knit vest, and black slacks, smiled and eyed me keenly from his overstuffed chair, his right leg crossed languidly over the left, his lean body perfectly still. Penetrating gray eyes that gave nothing away peered out of a narrow, clean-shaven face. Voigt, who appeared to be in his mid-fifties, didn’t strike me as a careless man, yet his socks were mismatched, one black, one navy blue. It was a small thing of little importance in the grander scheme, yet there they were.
“Good to know,” I said. There were just twenty-two minutes left in my fifty-minute session, and I was choosing to spend them as I’d spent the first twenty-eight, staring out of the police psychologist’s window at a sterile courtyard with its faux serenity fountain and small waxen trees meant to ape the real thing. Beyond the courtyard, a tree—a real one—had gone from crimson to brown, as trees did in fall. A cardboard skeleton dangled inside a window across the street, a reminder that Halloween was just a week away.
“Cass?”
I watched a skittish sparrow light on the limb of one of Voigt’s bogus trees before it suddenly flitted away again. I envied the bird. “I’ll stand.”
Voigt’s ballpoint pen scratched across the notepad on his lap. The scratching stopped. “Tell me about Jimmy Pick.”
I stiffened, took a moment. “He’s dead.” Jimmy had died where he fell. Two rounds from my gun had pierced his aorta. One of his had narrowly missed mine, leaving damage. My left arm was now weaker than it had been, and rehab was slow. I thought I would die, but I didn’t. Instead, I spent weeks in the ICU, tubes sticking out of me everywhere, the steady beeping of the monitors my only assurance that I was still among the living. Now I was here watching birds. Tell me about Jimmy Pick?
“How do you feel about that?” Voigt asked as though he were asking me how I felt about losing a pair of gloves on the Red Line. The bird was back, or maybe it was a different bird. “Anger would be a normal reaction,” Voigt prodded. “Anxiety, fear, even guilt for not being able to change the outcome are also normal. We haven’t talked about the shooting. Maybe we should?” Silence hung like a heavy mist. I didn’t feel compelled to break it. “So, what happened out there?” Voigt said gently after a time.
Farraday happened. I could have brought Jimmy in. I nearly had him. But Farraday wanted the collar; he wanted to be a hero. He didn’t give a fig whether Jimmy Pick lived or died. Apparently, he felt the same about Ben and me. I squeezed my hands into angry fists. I could feel Voigt’s eyes on my back, hear him scribbling. What was he writing down? What did he see that I couldn’t? “You read the report.”
Voigt paused for a moment. “The details were there, not your feelings.”
I rolled my eyes. Feelings. Damn it all to hell and back. “I gave my statement. I feel that’s enough.”
More scribbles. I wondered why Voigt pressed the pen so heavily against the paper that I could hear the scratching clear across the room. Was he afraid the ink would fly away? “Tell me about Detective Farraday. His account was rather different.”
I reeled to face him. “That’s because he’s a lousy liar.” The words shot out of my mouth before I had a chance to edit them, as rage blasted up from somewhere deep. “That kid would be alive, if not for him. He nearly got us all killed!”
Voigt watched me intently. “It was ruled a justifiable shoot.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, seething. Even thinking about James Farraday was almost too much. I opened them again, a little calmer, but not by much. “They gave him a commendation. Never mind the dead kid. Nobody wearing a star died, you see. That’s all that counts.”
“You backed up your partner. You did your job.”
“Did I? Tell that to the protestors marching in front of the district. Their signs have my picture on them. KID KILLER. KILLER KOP.” I took a breath, two. “I got a commendation, too, and so did Ben. You want to know why?”
Voigt stared at me intently. “Sure.”
“Because they couldn’t just give Farraday one, and they really wanted him to have it. A commendation looks good on your record. It’s what they look for when they move you up.”
“They?”
“Brass,” I said. “They’v
e got plans for Farraday no matter how many times he gets it wrong, no matter how many kids die.”
“You take issue with how the department handled the situation.”
I inhaled deeply. “Maybe it takes almost dying to lower one’s tolerance for bullshit.”
“How’s the Xanax working?”
The little brown bottle was tucked inside the front pocket of my jeans. I could feel it there, pressed snugly against my right hip. I reached down and felt for it, disturbed by the level of comfort it gave me. The bottle was still full. “I don’t need pills.”
“It’s not a battle, you versus the pills. Taking them is not a sign of either weakness or surrender.” He was wrong. For me, taking even one would be exactly that, surrender. Every day I didn’t open the bottle was a victory, and I needed the win no matter how small it was. Each pill-free day got me through to the next twenty-four hours and the twenty-four after that. Soon, I wouldn’t need to chalk up the score; I wouldn’t need to carry the bottle. Soon, but not today.
“Are you sleeping?”
Sleep? How could I sleep when every time I closed my eyes I saw a dead kid? We’d had a deal, Jimmy Pick and me—up, out, down, safe. I couldn’t get his look of betrayal out of my head. Would I ever? I’d promised him he’d be safe. Now I was a kid killer.
“Like a baby.” The lie came out easily. The truth was I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept more than an hour or two at a stretch. How could a kid killer sleep? “Do you have the time?”
Voigt glanced at the digital clock sitting on his desk. “We’ve got a few minutes more. I’d like to keep going.”
“How many minutes exactly?”
“Eight.”
I felt like a big bird trapped in a tiny cage with not enough room to flap my wings or hop on the perch. Eight minutes.
“You’re seeing someone. A cop. Everything okay there?”
“I ended it. Let’s not talk it to death.”
I could feel Voigt watching. The bird on the branch took off. My wistful envy gave way to a slow and bitter resentment.