City Problems

by Steve Goble

  We were not too far from where we’d pulled the girl out of Black Powder Creek. That’s where my mind was at the moment. In a cornfield, by a muddy riverbank, staring at a dead girl with a Monarch butterfly tattooed on her shoulder.

  Jeff’s date lived out on Buggy Road. This was the quickest way for him to get there from the fortress on Breakneck Hill, so we expected Jeff would roll by soon. Our hiding place was good, our plan was good, but Jeff was taking his sweet time. In the meantime, Shelly was searching the social media accounts, searching for more clues.

  Johnny Cash was singing through my truck stereo. Shelly pretended not to notice, and I had the volume pretty low as a professional courtesy.

  “I’m still thinking Buzz,” Shelly said between songs, and I turned the volume down a bit more.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Just a gut feeling.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see. But we did not connect Buzz to the yellow fibers.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe there is some connection between Buzz and Jeff ? Maybe they were in on it together? Not finding much online, though, except that Jeff and his friends really like Soul Scraped’s music.”

  “We should lock Jeff up for that,” I said.

  “And yet you make me listen to twangy shit.” Shelly sighed. “What do you think of Bowman’s preparations for this?”

  “What, you think it’s a little over the top?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Look, if it all goes according to plan that’s great,” I said, “but a lot of shit could go wrong. God knows how Jeff’s dad and his buddies are going to react when we bust Jeff. I think Bowman is right to have everyone on the ready. If it all just turns out to be a SWAT training day, great, but if it all blows up …”

  “I guess,” Shelly said. “It all makes me a little nervous.”

  She went back to her phone, and I eyed the road, watching for our suspect.

  Johnny was halfway through “Folsom Prison Blues” when Jeff Cotton drove past, one hand on his steering wheel and the other holding a phone to his head. I punched off the music and had the mic in my hand and the truck rolling before Jeff’s truck was out of sight around the bend. “Dee Two to station. Target is rolling. Repeat, target is rolling.”

  Debbie’s voice answered: “Roger, Dee Two. Backup headed your way.”

  I followed Jeff Cotton while listening to Debbie talk to Trumpower. He was not far away, and once we heard him say he was turning onto Buggy Road, I rolled down the window and placed the flashing light on top of my truck. “Irwin is coming from the opposite way,” I told Shelly. “We’ve got this son of a bitch in pincers.”

  “He hasn’t spotted your lights yet,” Shelly said. “Oh, fuck, wait … yep, he’s spotted them.”

  Ahead of us, Jeff Cotton hit the gas. His white Chevy pickup growled and vanished over a rise. Shelly grabbed the mic. “Rabbit is running! Repeat, rabbit is running!”

  I accelerated and concentrated on making the curves without hitting roadside oaks.

  “I am in place, blocking the road,” Trumpower said. “He ought to be in my sights before long.”

  We passed the field where we’d found Megan Beemer. I hoped her ghost was watching, and would see us drag her killer down.

  Jeff Cotton was driving way too fast, and I began to fear that he’d wrap his fucking truck around a tree before I got a chance to wrap his spine around his own leg. My F-150 was hard pressed to keep up, but I floored it and did my best. Shelly, beside me, muttered the names of several saints with machine-gun rapidity and placed her hands on the dash to brace herself.

  I imagined Jeff topping a rise, spotting Irwin’s truck, and braking so hard he might leave ditches in the road. But the football player called an audible.

  Jeff Cotton’s Chevy veered off the road through an opening between guardrails. His truck plunged into an idle field overgrown with every weed Audubon ever catalogued. The truck rolled downhill, toward the oaks and maples and sycamores that lined Black Powder Creek.

  “What the fuck is this motherfucking fuck doing?” Shelly’s voice quavered, because my truck was bucking like a goddamned bronc as I followed Jeff Cotton off the road.

  “He’s bolting!” I steered around a big-ass rock. “Maybe thinks he can run on foot at the creek!”

  “That’s stupid!” Shelly closed her eyes as my truck scraped a large rock. I fought to gain control, and once I did, I yelled back.

  “Yes, it’s stupid! How smart did you think he is?”

  But I began to wonder if it really was stupid when my truck bogged down in a low point, while Jeff’s stopped a hundred yards away at the line of trees that bordered the creek. I smacked the steering wheel. “Son of a bitch!”

  By the time I got my truck freed from the grass and mud, Jeff Cotton was running from his own truck. And he carried a little surprise.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “Fuck,” Shelly replied.

  Jeff carried a weapon, and just as he vanished into the trees, I recognized it. As a SWAT officer, I train for this shit, so I was certain.

  Jeff had an AR-15.

  “Damn, he’s going to put up a fight,” I said.

  “We should call for backup,” Shelly answered.

  “We’ve got SWAT all over the place. You let them know,” I said, aiming my truck for the gap in the trees where I had last seen Jeff Cotton.

  Shelly was still talking into the mic when I braked hard, slammed the gear shift into park, and jumped out of my truck. I had my gun in my hand before Shelly jumped out, too.

  A thunderous drumroll echoed in the woods, and my windshield shattered as sparks flew across the hood of my truck. I dove hard to my left and heard Shelly grunt on the other side of my vehicle.

  Little geysers of dirt and gravel flew into the air around me as Jeff Cotton kept firing.

  I rolled behind an oak that I wished had been about two feet wider as the big gun ripped bark from it. The tree’s outer layers ripped open like a zipper, exposing white wood underneath. Sawdust sprinkled my face, but that beat the shit out of bullets.

  The salvo paused. I risked a peek. I saw Jeff Cotton aim again.

  “Duck, Shelly!” I kept my head down as bullets chewed up my truck.

  A sudden silence took over.

  “I’m hit!” Even yelling, she seemed calm. “Not bad, though!”

  “OK. Calling the cavalry!” I pulled my radio from my jacket pocket and hit the SWAT channel. “Mayday,” I said.

  “Yeah, we heard,” Captain Bowman answered. “We’re go.”

  SWAT had been standing by, with a state patrol chopper over the highway mimicking a traffic air patrol and officers in unmarked cars at various points around the area. The sheriff had argued it was unnecessary, but Bowman had pointed out that Jeff had access to high-powered weapons. Daltry had relented.

  I acknowledged Bowman and signed off just as gunfire sounded from the woods. The tree I hid behind threw bark everywhere.

  I decided to move, rolling downhill and finding a bigger tree to hide behind. I ate a few weeds in the process, but I needed to see Shelly, to assure myself that she was OK.

  Once behind cover again, I stole a glance. She was behind a rock. She had ripped her T-shirt and was using the fabric to bind her right thigh. A good deal of blood stained her jeans. Her tongue was hanging out as she concentrated, and her fingers moved swiftly and steadily. She caught my glance and winked. She yelled: “You like the bare midriff, don’t you?” She waved a hand over her belly, exposed by her torn shirt.

  “I do,” I hollered. “Even on a lesbian.” I knew she was trying to make light of her injury, and I had just enough awareness left to try to help her do that. But what I really wanted to do was gun down Jeff Cotton.

  His bolting act had convinced me. This was our killer.

  “I am OK, Ed. I mean it.”

  She sounded calm. I believed her.

  I took a peek into the woods, but saw no sign of Jeff Cotton.
“I think he moved on,” I said. “I am going after him!”

  “What? Fuck no!”

  “I’m doing it.”

  “No, you wait on backup!”

  “Backup is already rolling in. I’m going to get him.”

  I turned the radio volume all the way down. I didn’t need Jeff hearing a squawk or beep once I got to the woods.

  Then I rose, aimed my gun, and rushed forward.

  “You goddamned reckless shit!” Shelly gave me some covering fire, but I was not sure what she aimed at. Jeff was nowhere to be seen. It wouldn’t really matter, though, if the shots made him keep his head down.

  I reached the bank, crouched by a maple, and peered at the creek. A brown cloud of mud flowed past me, and I spotted a deep print left by a boot on the bank. I listened for a splash and heard one. Jeff Cotton was wading upstream.

  I headed that way, but stayed on the bank, working my way around the trees and foliage. It was slower than I liked, but it avoided loud splashing in the water, and I needed to hear Jeff’s movements. It was the only way I had any idea where he was.

  I didn’t want him to know where I was, either. Maybe he would not know I was on his heels. Maybe he would think I had stayed with my truck. Maybe he would be so focused on moving forward, he wouldn’t look back.

  These are the kinds of things cops tell themselves when they are moving toward a guy with a gun full of ammo it can spit out all at once.

  I wondered what had broken Jeff. He’d been pretty calm in our previous encounters. Now he was running for his life, and apparently ready to take out a few cops on the way.

  I stopped to listen for a moment. I could hear Jeff splashing in the creek. He seemed to have slowed down, maybe looking for cover, maybe searching for pursuit, maybe aiming at me this very goddamned moment. I focused, tried to control my breath, and looked ahead. Jeff Cotton was there, climbing out of the creek on the opposite bank. One hand held his AR-15, while the other grasped a young maple.

  The wump-wump of a helicopter grew gradually louder. The cavalry was coming.

  Jeff reached the top of the bank way sooner than I thought possible, and I knew there was mostly level farmland beyond the trees on the other side.

  I could not see beyond the foliage on the far bank to determine whether there was corn standing in that field or not, but it didn’t matter much. Once he reached that field, Jeff would quickly be beyond my reach. He was faster than me, and far more agile, so I needed to slow him down.

  I raised my pistol and fired three shots. I chopped some branches, and scared the living shit out of a squirrel, but did not hit Jeff. I am a pretty good shot, but hitting a distant moving target in the woods with a pistol isn’t a very easy thing to do.

  It was a desperate, stupid thing to do. Not the kind of thing a calm, dispassionate cop would do. But I was hardly that at the moment.

  I didn’t have a prayer of hitting him, but I had gotten his attention, though. Jeff leapt over a root, did an impressive cut, and then dove behind a fallen tree.

  I figured this would be the best chance I had to close the gap, so I jumped into Black Powder Creek. The water was thigh-deep here, but clear enough to see the bottom. I ran, to the extent that I could, heedless of making noise because speed was all that mattered now. I ignored the cold. If Jeff could take it, so could I.

  Refraction fooled my eyes, and I stumbled on the rocky riverbed. I did a headlong splash as the helicopter whirled overhead and two of Jeff’s bullets kicked up water near my left hand.

  I staggered toward the far bank, surprised my own blood wasn’t streaming into the creek, and hoping the water had not fouled my weapon. I climbed out of the creek, using a big oak for cover, and shook water out of my gun barrel.

  Jeff got up and ran, not across the open field, where corn had been harvested recently, but east along the creek bank. He was sticking to cover now that the chopper was circling overhead. I shot a glance upward. The chopper was bucking in the wind a bit.

  I ran to close the gap. Both of us were zigging between trees and leaping thorny brush like we were eluding tacklers on a football field. South of me, I saw flashing lights on the road as SWAT guys roared in. I knew the same thing was going on to the north as well, though I couldn’t see it from where I was.

  I should have been listening on the radio. I should have been feeding information to the surrounding team members. I should have been helping them zero in on Jeff Cotton.

  But I was not doing that. I wanted to catch this son of a bitch myself. Violent images filled my head.

  Jeff stopped, whirled around, and opened fire. It was a burst of three that missed me by a good three feet, because Jeff just shot without looking.

  I dove behind a rock, not quite big enough to be called a boulder, and realized I was lucky to be alive.

  “We need to talk, Jeff!”

  Down the slope below me, Jeff Cotton peeked from behind his cover, an ancient fallen oak. “Fuck you, cop!”

  “I have a warrant to bring you in for questioning. Just questioning, it says, but you’ve complicated the shit out of things here, Jeff.” I thought I sounded a lot calmer than I really was, but I did not have time to pat myself on the back.

  Jeff answered with two more bursts of bullets, some of which ricocheted off my precious rock.

  I had fifteen rounds left in my gun. Jeff certainly had a whole lot more than that.

  “Fuck you, man!” He punctuated that with another round of gunfire. “Fuck you!”

  “Why’d you kill her, Jeff ?” I fired two shots, then rushed to crouch behind a tree when he ducked. I moved pretty fast. Adrenaline can do that.

  We were maybe twenty yards apart now.

  I had thirteen rounds to go.

  “I didn’t kill anyone, man! You got it wrong!”

  “Drop the gun and you can explain it to me.”

  “You are gonna set me up,” he said, sobbing. “It’s a setup!” Jeff was low to the ground behind his tree, but I could see his gun, the barrel now pointing skyward. I thought for a moment he was going to shoot at the helicopter. I glanced up and saw a rifle aimed at Jeff from above.

  Jeff was crying louder. “I didn’t kill anyone! Not anyone!”

  I rose, stepped forward slowly, gun at the ready, my eyes locked on the tip of his rifle. I was ready to dive if it moved, or shoot him if I saw the least bit of him.

  “You can’t win here, Jeff. No way. You are surrounded by now, plenty of cops with plenty of guns. I don’t care what your dad has taught you, this is not a fight you can win. Let’s just talk, Jeff. You will get a fair shake.” An image of Megan Beemer’s corpse filled my head, then Briana Marston’s, and I suddenly hoped Jeff would make a dumb move.

  “I didn’t kill her!” He was sobbing harder now. The gun lifted, slightly, then the barrel dropped behind the tree he used for cover. “I didn’t!”

  My eyes went back and forth, between the spot where the end of his gun barrel had vanished and the spot where I thought his face would emerge if he decided to fight. I saw that face in my mind, and imagined my bullets turning it into pulp. Megan and Briana cheered me on.

  But he stayed behind the tree.

  I heard men crashing through the woods from several directions. They were moving fast, no doubt having a clear picture of the tactical situation thanks to the eyes in the sky, but with no help from me.

  “We can do this peacefully, Jeff. Drop the gun. Come out with hands up. We can go talk.”

  I did not want to talk. I wanted him to lift the gun, to emerge from cover, to open fire and fully justify my killing him. I wanted that very, very, very much.

  “You can’t blame me for that girl’s death! That ain’t justice!”

  His gun rose. So did he.

  He started to aim the rifle.

  I aimed for his chest.

  Gunfire exploded from the sky.

  I heard Linda in my head. “That’s not justice!”

  Jeff’s gun erupted. Bullets whizzed by my
head.

  I shifted my aim to his knee. His fucking knee. I returned fire.

  My bullets, three of them, ripped into his right leg.

  Bullets from the sky, a staccato triple burst, slammed Jeff in the shoulder.

  Jeff’s gun dropped from his hand, and he spun like a wobbly top. He fell, clutching his shattered knee as blood burst through his fingers.

  I rushed forward, and stood on his gun, my pistol aimed at his head. Ten rounds left.

  The chopper held its place above, wobbling in the wind and the sniper peering down at me, the luckiest son of a bitch alive. Lucky, because I should have been really fucking dead.

  Jeff Cotton was lucky, too, because I really wanted to shoot him in the face. He was writhing, bleeding heavily from the knee and less heavily from the shoulder wound, a shallow cut. It had been a difficult, hurried shot, aimed from a moving vehicle in the air at a moving suspect on the ground. I was sure the man up there—Ty Parker, a damned good shooter—had aimed at Jeff’s head. Jeff should have been really fucking dead, too.

  But here we were, Jeff and I, neither of us dead, and me aiming a gun at his face.

  It wasn’t the witnesses in the chopper above or those emerging from the woods that kept me from pulling the trigger. It wasn’t any sense of right or wrong.

  It was Linda.

  I kept seeing Linda’s face, and hearing her words. “That isn’t justice!”

  Was it mere coincidence that made Jeff’s words mirror hers in that crucial moment? Or was some God trying to keep me from leaping into the abyss I’d been peering into?

  I had no goddamned idea. I only knew that I’d really wanted to kill this fucking kid, and that I could have, and should have, because he was sure as hell trying to kill me … and yet I hadn’t.

  I’d stared into the abyss, but I had not jumped in.

  “Fuck! It hurts!” Jeff clutched his knee. My shots had shattered some bone. His lower leg seemed to be attached to the thigh at the correct angle, though. He ignored the shoulder completely.