[2001] Public Enemy Zero

by Andrew Mayne

  “So you’re on the ground.” Simmons looked at the metal clipboard in her hands. “So you’re on the top of the stairs by your apartment. Then what?”

  “We were running.”

  Simmons looked at the notes. “Mitch? Mitch was chasing you?”

  “Um, I think so.”

  “So where was your current boyfriend at the time?”

  “Rick? Where is Rick?” Rachel tried to sit up but the paramedic gently held her down.

  “He’s being treated right now. He’s going to be fine.” Simmons noticed Rios behind her and handed him the clipboard behind her back. “Can you remember where Rick was when you opened the door?”

  “Treated? He was taking a shower. Why is Rick being treated? Did Mitch hurt him, too?”

  Simmons pursed her lips. Rios had noticed it was her tell for when she was trying to make sense of something. “He’s going to be fine. When was the last time you remember seeing Rick?”

  “When he was in the bathroom. I think that was it.”

  “Did Rick approach Mitch? Did the two argue?”

  Rachel shook her head. “No. No. I don’t even think they’ve ever met.”

  “OK. We need to talk to Mitch. Do you have a number where we can reach him? Maybe a photo?”

  Rachel turned her head to look around. “In my apartment. On the table.”

  Rios looked at the clipboard. The first officer on the scene had taken down her address. It was only two streets over. “I can get it.”

  Simmons turned to Rachel. “Do you mind if my partner goes into your apartment and gets your phone to bring to you? You can take it to the hospital with you if you like.”

  Rachel nodded.

  Rios looked at the apartment number and then handed the clipboard back to Simmons. “Be back in a second.”

  He looked down and gave Rachel a smile. He couldn’t imagine what he would do if someone had done something like that to his own child or sister. He knew there were two sides to every story. In his mind, though, nothing could explain the smashed-up face and the scared and trembling girl. The anger turned what would have been a brisk walk into a fast jog to the apartment.

  He took a shortcut and passed through a wooden gate next to a spilled-over garbage can. In the middle of the alley between the two buildings there was a metal gate on the ground. It looked like it had been ripped from it mountings. There was blood all over it. Some of the bars were bent in. He made a mental note to make sure they took that in as evidence.

  Down the street he could see another ambulance. Paramedics were working on the current boyfriend. His right leg looked like a bloody mess. From where he was standing, it looked like they were just trying to stop the flow of blood before they took him to the hospital. The man was screaming out in agony.

  He overheard one of the EMTs mention something about trying to “save it.” From the report Simmons let him look at, it looked like the man had walked three blocks on a green-stick fracture. How that was possible without being high out of your mind was beyond him. He was curious to find out what was in his blood when they took him to the hospital.

  Rios reached the foot of the stairs. It was taped off as part of the crime scene. At the top of the stairs he could make out where part of the support bars had been bent in a little. There were a few drops of blood. He looked around and found another staircase leading up to the second level.

  The screen door to the apartment had been ripped partially off its hinge and hung at a funny angle. The wooden door was wide open. Rios stepped inside and looked around. Well kept and in order, it didn’t look like the fight started inside. He could see wet footprints leading from the bathroom to the door. Those were most likely the current boyfriend’s, he assumed. Rios wondered if he was using but didn’t want to use the girl’s permission to get the phone as a pretext for looking for drugs.

  Angry ex-boyfriend. New boyfriend. Girl. That was all you needed for a first-rate domestic disturbance. Add some alcohol to the raging testosterone and things got worse. How the parking officer figured into it was the next question. Rios would bet that she just ran into Mitch on the really wrong day.

  From somewhere he heard a whimpering. His hand immediately went to the butt of his gun. He loved dogs, but dogs didn’t always love cops. He heard the whimper again. This was a small dog. Rios relaxed. He spotted a large couch and leaned down.

  Under the couch, two scared-looking eyes peered back at him from locks of dirty blond hair. It was trying to hide behind his paws.

  “It’s all right.” Rios patted the ground to see if the dog wanted to come out. “Your mommy is going to be fine.”

  The dog didn’t want to budge. It just let out another whimper.

  “OK, buddy. Stay there.” Rios made a mental note to shut the door before he left so the dog wouldn’t wander. They’d ask Rachel if she had someone to come take care of the animal. If not, the department had a person who would handle it.

  Rios was a little surprised the dog was still there. Often in a domestic disturbance, it would follow the owner and give chase to the assailant like a good pack animal should. Of course, other times they just hid.

  He found a phone on the kitchen table and assumed it was hers. The lock screen was a photo of the dog. As he pulled the door closed, he flashed the screen at the couch with the dog hiding under it. “Some protector you are.”

  Rios walked back to the ambulances and handed the phone to Rachel. Simmons was talking to the detective who had interviewed the parking officer. While the woman’s injuries consisting mostly of lacerations, bruising and a probable concussion weren’t critical, the loss of blood was.

  Rachel struggled with the phone but couldn’t operate it with her bandaged hands. Rios held out his hand. “Let me do that for you.”

  She handed him the phone. “It should just be under ‘Mitch’.”

  Rios scanned through her contact list. No Mitch came up. He looked again. Nothing. “Would it be under his last name?”

  “No. Try Dickhead.” Embarrassed, Rachel looked off to the side.

  Rios grinned. “Breakups are hard.” He scrolled through and found a phone number next to the entry for Dickhead. He noticed there were a few other obscenities in there as well. Not his business, he reminded himself.

  He wrote the number down. “What about a photo?”

  Rachel shook her head. “I deleted them all.” She thought for a moment. “He’s still on my Facebook, though. Go ahead. Do a search for Mitchell Roberts.”

  Rios clicked open the Facebook application and looked up the name. One of the benefits of social networking was how easy it made finding photos of people and intimate details they’d never tell the police face to face. He found the photo. He was not quite what he was expecting. It was a friendly, affable face. Not that it mattered. Faces can hide a lot.

  “Do you mind if I email this to myself?”

  “Sure.”

  He handed the phone back to Rachel. “I saw your dog back in there. He’s pretty scared. Do you have a friend who can come look after him?”

  “What about Rick?”

  Rios hesitated. “He hurt himself chasing after Mitch and is going to the hospital with you.”

  “OK.” Rachel leaned back and closed her eyes.

  Rios decided to leave her be for now.

  The ambulance carrying the parking officer drove off. Rios half expected the other parking officers to follow after in a motorcade in their carts like cops did when an officer was shot. A supervisor came over to explain the situation to the parking officers.

  Simmons finished talking to the detective who took the woman’s statement and walked over to Rios. In the background, a police photographer was taking photographs of the smashed-up car. He was trying to lean into the car without touching the glass. Rios morbidly wondered if he used the same camera to take photos of his family.

  “This is going to be fun,” said Simmons as she neared him.

  Rios arched an eyebrow. “How so?”

>   “Like the girl, she can’t give a coherent explanation as to what happened.”

  “That’s not surprising. She’s still in shock. What’d you expect?” Rios would have been surprised if anyone who went through that and had at least a probable concussion could remember much of anything.

  Simmons shook her head. “She talked a little. What she says is kind of mixed up. She says she was attacked, but when they asked her where, she said while she was outside the car and he was inside.”

  “I’m sure she’ll sort things out.”

  “Yeah, but when a defense attorney gets a hold of her first statement, it’s going to make his job a lot easier.”

  Rios looked over at the smashed-in windshield and the splattered blood. His stomach churned at the thought of the guy getting away with it. “So, what’s our next step? Get him fast and get a confession?”

  Simmons nodded. “Give him a call. See if he’s willing to walk in. The computer pulled up no priors, so it’s doubtful he lawyered up just yet. If we can get an incriminating statement, we can make the case sail through a lot easier.” A voice called out on her radio. She pulled it from her waist and answered.

  Rios could overhear the dispatcher say something about the mall nearby.

  Simmons put the radio back down. “We need to get over to the mall right now.” She looked around for the officer in charge of the crime scene.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. Some kind of riot, or a fire. It sounds big.”

  13

  Stolen car. That’s what he was in. A car he just jacked from the woman back at the mall. Mitchell’s life had just turned into one of those downward spirals he’d seen on the news. Next was the chase, then the helicopters and then it ended with him making a pathetic attempt to run away as people watched from a news helicopter. He’d make it 10 feet and then he’d be tackled to the ground.

  Worse for him was the possibility of what would happen next. He wouldn’t just be tased and kicked; he’d be torn apart.

  He wanted to turn himself in, but he was afraid of what would happen next.

  He cautiously turned on to the main road by the mall and kept driving. He tried to keep pace with traffic and not stand out. Subconsciously he sank down in the seat. As if people seeing a car with an invisible driver wouldn’t notice.

  At the moment, he just had to keep his focus on not getting stopped. Doing that meant avoiding anything that looked suspicious.

  “Fuck,” he said as he drove through a red light.

  He needed to pay attention to what he was doing, he scolded himself. Sirens were coming at him from the opposite direction. Already? Prior experience told him to pull over to the side of the road. Fear told him not to.

  He kept driving and the squad cars blew past him. They were heading to the mall. Of course they were. People were dropping off the roof back there in one horrific trail of carnage from the food court to where he’d stolen the car. Stolen car.

  He had no idea where he was going. He had no idea what to do. This wasn’t the kind of thing he thought about. He was just a third-rate radio host on a second-rate radio station.

  The radio station. The fax machine. All those police reports he’d read when they came in when he was working. He had to have learned something! Mitchell searched his mind. How do people get caught?

  They get caught when they do something stupid like drive through a red light. OK, don’t do that again. They get caught when they run. OK, don’t attract attention. They get caught because they look like criminals. What did all of the men in the bulletins look like? They were either black, Hispanic or white guys who had neck tattoos and didn’t look like they finished high school. They almost always dressed like thugs or homeless people.

  Mitchell looked down at his ripped shirt. The collar had been pulled loose and there were tears in it. Specks of blood dotted his chest. It had criminal written all over it. He had to resist the impulse to take it off right there in the car. He looked over at the passenger side seat and saw his backpack. He still had it. There was another shirt in there. He could put that on when he had a chance.

  Where was he going? A fire engine raced past Mitchell, snapping his attention back to the road. He realized that his best chance of getting far away was right now. But to where? He only had thirty bucks on him. Hell, how would he even spend money if every cashier wanted to kill him?

  He saw an ATM in the middle of an empty parking lot. Should he go empty out his account? It had to be then or never. If he used it farther away from the crime scene, they’d know what direction he was going.

  Direction. Mitchell realized that if he wanted to go north and get as far away as he could he was going the wrong way. He needed to go back where he came from and past the mall. The mall. Was that stupid?

  He realized it didn’t matter. He didn’t want to go toward Miami, where it was more populated and he had less familiarity. If he was chased down there, there was nowhere else to go unless he felt like swimming to Cuba.

  Mitchell got into a turn lane and took the car back in the other direction. He spotted the ATM and pulled into the parking lot. He couldn’t help the fact that the camera on the ATM would see him, but if he parked in back of it, he could avoid the car getting seen. For whatever that was worth.

  He looked around the parking lot to make sure it was empty. Pulling up at an ATM in a stolen car was bad enough. He didn’t want to have to deal with the fear of someone getting between him and the car and trying to murder him.

  He put the car in park but left the keys in it. He walked briskly around to the ATM, looking over his shoulder every few seconds. His hand trembled when it tried to pull out his wallet. He took a deep breath and put in the card.

  His mind went blank for a moment as he tried to remember his pin code. He closed his eyes and took another deep breath. It came to him. He keyed it into the touch pad and withdrew the $500 maximum. There was still another $300 in his checking account. He had no idea what he’d use it for or how, but it would have been better to have it.

  More sirens were coming toward him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw three ambulances in a row heading to the mall. Oh man, he thought, that’s a lot of emergency personnel. All because of him.

  Mitchell heard brakes squeal. A bus was coming to a stop at a bus stop in front of the parking lot twenty feet away from him. There was no point in waiting to see if anybody got off. By then it would be too late.

  Mitchell hurried back to the car. He shut the door and belted himself in. The card! He’d left it back in the machine. Christ, he was not good at this, he reminded himself.

  He saw three young black men get off the bus with backpacks. He felt guilty for thinking they were just going to steal the card. More guilt. Then he realized that wouldn’t be a bad thing. If someone stole it and used it, it’d put the card far away from him. Damn, if he’d thought of that earlier, he could have written his pin number on the card.

  Maybe they’ll take it, maybe not. The card was gone for him now. Now he needed to get as far away as he could and think of his next step. He also had to figure out how to get away from the car sooner than later. It didn’t look expensive enough to have tracking in it, but it was a hot car and the license plate could be traced. He either had to ditch it or change the license plate for another one. He didn’t know which was the smarter idea.

  Mitchell waited for the bus to leave and then entered the road from the parking lot and headed back toward the mall. Once he was past it, he would take some side streets and just keep going north until something came to him.

  As he neared the intersection by the south end of the mall, another row of ambulances drove past. He could see squad cars and unmarked sedans with magnetic blue lights on their roofs pulling in, as well. That made him even more anxious for some reason. Maybe it was the thought that those cars contained detectives and not just beat cops.

  He tried not to look, but all the other cars had slowed down as they passed the mall. It
was hard to ignore the flashing lights from the fire trucks, ambulances and police. He allowed himself one glance, although he was afraid he was going to get sick from the anxiety.

  Two of the fire trucks had their ladders against the roof as firemen carried people down one by one. Mitchell tried not to count, plus it was hard to see from where he was, but it looked like a hundred people were up there. He didn’t want to think how many fell or were trampled.

  Pangs of guilt seared into him like hot pokers. He knew he had to do something. Even though he felt like a victim in all of this, he hated being the fugitive. He had to do one more thing before he flat-out left.

  Mitchell pulled his iPhone from his pocket and dialed 911.

  “911 emergency services. How can we assist you?”

  “People are trying to kill me.”

  “Slow down, sir. Who is trying to kill you?”

  “The girl. My girlfriend. Fuck, the people at the mall. Everyone.”

  “I see.”

  “Are you in a safe place now?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? What is safe about everyone trying to kill you?” Mitchell knew the flood of emotion was making him sound like he was insane.

  “Do you need the police?”

  “So they can fucking shoot me?”

  “Calm down, sir. I want to help you. It says here you’re calling from a cell phone. What’s you exact location? Are you near the mall?”

  Mitchell’s heart skipped a beat. They can trace those things. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  “Sir, are you near the mall now? If you’re hurt, one of the paramedics there can help you. Just find a place to sit down.”

  Oh man, they thought he was one of the people. One of the victims back at the mall. “Thank you.” He thought for a moment. “I know this won’t make much sense, but when you watch what happened, really watch. You’ll understand that they attacked me.”

  “Yes, sir. We need to keep this line available for emergency calls. If you need assistance, just ask for one of the paramedics or talk to a police officer. We have more coming.” She paused. “Lots more.”