by Joe McKinney
“Come here, genius,” Mike said, and took the tape from Paul and worked it onto his badge for him.
“And Paul...”
“Yes sir.”
Garwin made a vague gesture towards his own forehead. “Does that, uh, hurt?”
“No sir. I’m fine.”
Garwin looked doubtful.
“It looks bad. You’re off tomorrow and Monday, right?”
“Yes sir.”
“Okay. If it’s still like that on Tuesday, I’m gonna fill out an I9 Form on you, okay? An injured officer report. That means you’re gonna have to go to a doctor and get it checked out. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m sure you will. Just take care of yourself, bud.”
***
Mike already had his gear stowed in their patrol car. He drove them over to Paul’s truck and leaned against the patrol car and smoked a cigarette while Paul got his gear.
“Hey, that stuff in there with Collins. What was that all about?”
Mike exhaled a long thin stream of smoke. “I think he thinks he’s in the wrong career field.”
“How’s that?”
Mike shrugged. “Some people, you know, they don’t really see themselves doing this job forever. Collins, he’s about one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met. You should see him with anything electronic. Doesn’t matter what it is, he can figure it out. Locks too. You ever need to pick a lock, he can do it.”
“Does that come up a lot?”
Mike shrugged again.
“I hope I don’t ever get that way,” Paul said. “To the point I hate coming to work.”
“He’s harmless. Plus, he’s not as bad as he used to be.”
“You’re kidding? He used to be worse?”
“There was a while, about two years ago I guess, he was fucking miserable. He was calling in sick all the time, bitching about every call he made. Getting in trouble over stupid shit. It was a pretty spectacular case of burnout. You’ll see guys go through it every once in a while. It comes with the job.”
“Why?”
“You mean, why does it come with the job?”
“No, I mean about Collins. Why was he so miserable?”
“He was bitter.” Mike laughed. “I mean bitterer than he is now. Bitterer...is that a word? Fuck, who cares? Anyway, he got sued a few years ago. I think that’s what did it.”
“What’d he get sued for?”
“He and Wes pulled up on a guy who was trying to break into a car and they chased him into somebody’s backyard tool shed. Inside there were all these paint cans all over the place. The car burglar pulled a screwdriver on them. After that, the fight was on. They were bumping into the walls and knocking shit over and the paint got everywhere. They were all covered with it. The car burglar, he got some of it in his eyes and ended up suing them for like fifty thousand each.”
“They had to pay fifty thousand each to the guy?”
“No,” Mike said. “Suits like that, they almost never go to trial. Most of the time, the guy just wants to get his hands in some deep pockets. Of course, the City doesn’t help matters much. They usually settle out of court in suits like that. They paid the car burglar something like two thousand bucks and that shut him up. It’s cheaper than paying the lawyers to take it to court. But what really pissed Collins off was that the DA’s Office dismissed the resisting arrest charges against the car burglar, so it was like the guy got paid for fighting with the police. Ever since then, Collins feels like the job’s got it in for him. He started calling in sick all the time, and Garwin ended up having to jump his shit about it.”
“Garwin did?”
Mike took one last pull on his smoke and crushed it out on the pavement with the toe of his boot, nodding.
“I can’t picture Garwin jumping anybody’s shit,” Paul said. “He seems kind of, well, meek, you know? I mean, inside, Collins and Seles looked like they were going to fight, and he didn’t do anything.”
“Garwin’s a good guy,” Mike said. “You may not have got a sense of it yet, but he’s about the best supervisor you’ll ever work for. I mean that, and not just because he lets me get away with fucking off on duty. It’s easy to start despising the public, seeing the kind of crap we see every day. But Garwin’s not that way. He really cares about people. I handled an accident one time where this six year old little boy got killed. The next day, I got called out to the pound to meet the family. They wanted to bury him in his favorite tennis shoes, those ones that light up with every step, you know? Thing was though, the car was all fucked up. His shoes were stuck inside all that twisted metal, and I looked at it and I was like, ‘There ain’t no way in hell I’m gonna be able to get those shoes out of there. I mean...I feel for you folks and all, but there’s just no way.’”
He took his keys from his belt and motioned Paul towards the passenger seat.
Mike said, “At least, that’s what I thought. Garwin came out and he talked to the family and then he told me to go back to my district. I thought that was the end of it. I didn’t find out until later that he ended up spending the rest of the night prying those shoes out of that car with a tire iron. All by himself, you know? There was blood everywhere. Big bloody clumps of the kid’s hair were stuck to the A pillar. The mom was crying her eyes out the whole time. It was the kind of thing that just sort of humbles you emotionally, you know? But Garwin just kept at it until he got those shoes out of there. He’s good people, no matter what you may have seen tonight. I can’t think of many people who’d do that.”
“You know a story about everybody, don’t you?”
Mike smiled. “Seems like it.”
They got in the car, plugged their radios into the chargers, and Mike started going over the pre-trip vehicle inspection. He went down the list, putting check marks on a five-by-eight sheet of paper, then secured it to the sun visor with a rubber band.
“You ready?” Mike said.
“Let’s do it.”
But they hadn’t even put the car in gear yet when Barris’ voice broke the calm on the radio. He sounded panicked, urgent.
“44-50, we got a major accident here at East Houston and I-10, on the access road. I got a car just ran the light and hit an eighteen wheeler. He’s jammed up under it. I’m gonna need EMS and two wreckers for sure. Start us some cover for traffic control, too, if you got it. We’re gonna have to shut down the intersection.”
“10-4,” the dispatcher answered. “I got anybody leavin’ the Sub can help him out?”
Mike keyed up their radio. “10-4, 44-70. Show us on the way.”
“10-4,” the dispatcher said.
She almost sounded bored.
Mike put the gas pedal all the way to floor. He had the car sliding sideways as they shot out of the parking lot, tires smoking, lights and sirens going full blast as he threaded through the sparse traffic.
Paul just held on to the dashboard and groaned.
Less than two minutes later they pulled up on Barris and Seles’ call. The whole intersection was blocked. An eighteen wheeler hauling a load of hay had been turning from East Houston Street onto the access road of 10. A guy in a Ford pickup had been going too fast, tried to beat a yellow light, and ended up smashed underneath the flatbed trailer. The air was swirling with hay. Fluid was all over the road. Cars were driving up onto the curb to go around the scene, honking at each other. Barris was standing near the driver’s side door of the Ford, trying to talk to the guy wedged inside. Seles was in the intersection, directing traffic.
“Oh Christ,” Mike said. “What a clusterfuck.”
He turned the car at an angle in front of Seles, blocking off the traffic lanes. The cars stuck behind him honked, but he ignored them. He strolled up to Seles, pointed him towards the wreck, and Seles turned and ran off to do whatever Mike had told him to do.
As Paul approached, Mike said, “Get some flares out of the trunk. Set up a flare line across here and force everybody to go t
hat way.”
He pointed towards the access road.
“Okay,” Paul said.
Paul made it happen. Drivers started honking at him. He tried waving them on, but they stopped anyway and yelled at him out their open windows.
“I gotta go that way,” one guy said.
“Nobody goes through,” Paul answered back.
“My house is right there.”
“Go down to MLK and turn around,” Paul answered. He turned on his flashlight and pointed the beam down the road. “Come on. Move it.”
The man shot him the bird with his finger. “Asshole,” he shouted, and drove off.
Two more cars followed after him, but the third one stopped and yelled at Paul that he had to get through. A fire truck showed up while Paul was arguing with the guy and squeezed in between the front of Paul and Mike’s patrol car and the wreck. Fire fighters got out and started trying to get the driver in the wrecked pickup out of his vehicle.
“You let him go through,” the guy said, pointing at the fire truck.
What are you, a fucking idiot? Paul thought. But what he said was, “They’re the fire department,” and he couldn’t believe he was even having to explain himself.
The man cursed, and Paul thought he saw the words Fuck it on the man’s lips. The next moment he was driving around Paul, up on the curb, and around the accident scene. Paul trotted after him, then stopped, knowing that he couldn’t stop him.
“Holy shit,” Paul said. “Hey...”
Another car slipped behind him and drove up on the curb. Three more followed him.
“What the hell are you doing?” Paul yelled. He waved his flashlight at the cars, but the drivers just drove on by him.
All but the last car made it through. Before that one could get up on the curb, Mike appeared in front of it and hit the driver’s side window with his fist so hard that Paul thought for a moment that the glass was going to break.
The driver slammed on the brakes and Mike yelled at him. A moment later, the car was headed down the access road, the driver scared near to death.
“What in the hell are you doing?” Mike asked him.
“I’m trying to turn them,” Paul said, “but that first guy just drove around me.”
“You can’t let them through,” Mike said. “They’re trying to pull that guy out of the car. They need room to work.”
“I know. They’re not doing what I tell them.”
Mike stepped around Paul and waved some cars towards the access road. Once he got the first few going, the line behind them followed.
Mike came back to Paul and said, “They try that shit again, put your gas mask on.”
“My what?” Paul looked at him, not believing what he’d just heard. “You’re kidding?”
Mike pointed to the flare line. “Stand out there with your gas mask on. If people think going straight is gonna kill them, they’ll do what you say.”
Paul wasn’t sure if Mike was serious or not. He searched his face, looking for a hint of a smile or something, but he just couldn’t tell. He actually looked serious.
“I’m kidding you,” Mike said, smiling slightly. “You’re doing okay. Just keep pushing them down the access road. Don’t talk to them. Don’t explain why. Just keep pushing them that way.”
Paul looked relieved. “Okay,” he said.
Mike’s gaze shifted over Paul’s shoulder and his eyes went wide.
“Ah shit!” Mike said.
Paul followed his gaze and saw a pair of headlights coming at them way too fast. Mike scrambled towards a lady who had stopped her car at the flare line. She had cracked her window a little and was trying to ask him what she was supposed to do. Mike yelled at her to move out of the way. She stared up at him blankly, too startled by his urgency to do what he said.
“Go!” he yelled. “Go go go go!”
He pounded on her door as the headlights closed on them. Paul could see it was an SUV. The driver was going so fast he could barely hold the road, the SUV’s engine whining at full throttle.
“Mike!” Paul said.
“Move your fucking car!” Mike yelled at the woman. He looked over his shoulder at the SUV barreling down on him. For a horrible moment Paul saw his partner lit up by the approaching headlights, and it seemed that every passing second became elastic, stretched out in slow motion.
He saw Mike yell at the headlights, the SUV swerving blindly in response.
He saw the lady start to move her car, creeping, creeping.
Damn it, lady. Move!
He saw Mike jump on the hood of the lady’s car. He heard the SUV’s brakes lock. Saw it slide through the flare line, standing on its front wheels, passing right through the spot where the lady’s car had just been and within inches of Mike rolling across her hood.
And then Paul heard the loudest crash he’d ever heard.
***
When the smoke cleared, Paul was standing in the middle of the intersection with ash and hay and dust swirling all around him, the lone, continuous drone of a car horn playing the same, ear-splitting note without ceasing.
The SUV, a candy blue Cadillac Escalade, had crashed into and under the back of the fire truck. The Escalade was smashed beyond recognition, the front end compressed into ruin, the back end sticking up at an angle into the air. The back tires were a good eight inches off the ground, still spinning. The passenger cab of the fire truck was undamaged, but the back end was completely destroyed, and the nine hundred feet of hoses it carried were spilled out on the roadway like intestines.
“Holy shit,” Paul muttered. “Holy, holy shit.”
The driver of the Escalade stank of beer and was acting wild, like he was high on methamphetamines. He had a bloody nose from the airbag, but otherwise, miraculously, he was fine. They pulled him out of the vehicle, and when the firefighters tried to check him out, he just stared at them and said, “Get off me, fool. What the fuck you doing in my house?”
“He’s fine,” one of the firefighters said.
“Really?” Paul asked.
“Yeah,” the firefighter said. “He’s an asshole, but he ain’t injured.”
When the firefighters were done with the guy, Paul cuffed him and put him in the back of their patrol car. He came back to the scene in time to witness a paramedic turn from the passenger side door and shake his head at Mike.
He and Mike made eye contact.
Mike said, “She’s 10-60.”
Dead, Paul thought. 10-60 is a D-O-A.
“Go ask that guy her name,” Mike said.
Paul leaned into the car. The man was enormous, even compared to Paul. He was platinum blond and dressed in a skin tight blue silk shirt and white linen pants. His eyeballs jerked in his sockets with a methamphetamine-induced nystagmus. He smelled like beer and cigars. The air around him was liquid with the stink of it.
Paul said, “That girl with you, what’s her name?”
“Huh?”
“The girl you just killed. What’s her name?”
“What fucking dead girl, man? I didn’t kill no dead girl. You come in my house and hook me the fuck up? Bullshit’s what that is, man.” He leaned back into the seat and stared straight ahead. “Ain’t no fucking dead girl in my house. Sheeet.”
Paul slammed the door on him.
“He doesn’t even know what planet he’s on,” Paul said when he rejoined Mike. “He thinks we just pulled him off his couch.”
“Nice. Listen, I gotta go talk to that woman over there, the one I was trying to get out of the way. She’s pretty shaken up, but we’re gonna need her as a witness. Can you go check his car? See if you can find that girl’s purse or something. Something with her name on it for the report.”
“Okay,” Paul said. He looked towards the wrecked Escalade and swallowed. He mentally steadied himself for what he knew he was about to see and said, “All right.”
The inside of the Escalade smelled like ash from the exploded airbags. Everything that had been in the re
ar of the vehicle had shifted forward—seats, clothes, CDs, speakers, hundreds of red pills that Paul guessed were probably ecstasy, maybe something else, bottles of beer—everything.
The dead girl in the passenger seat looked to be around seventeen, her little white halter top soaked with blood. More blood had pooled in the bowl her skirt made of her lap. When the Escalade had folded forward into a V shape, the roof had pushed down on the back of her head, slicing part of it away. Her eyes were open. So was her mouth. Her body was wedged up under the dashboard, her bare arms and shoulders laced with a thousand cuts from all the broken glass. From the way she was twisted up, Paul guessed every bone in her body was broken.
His eyes kept returning the tips of her blonde hair. They were clumped together, saturated with blood. They looked like wet paint brushes.
The Escalade’s horn droned on.
Paul swallowed again, forcing his eyes away from her broken body. There was a strap of something that might have been her purse wedged up by her feet. He glanced at the girl’s face, feeling almost like he needed to ask her permission, and then reached inside, cringing as his hand groped between her ankles, touching her bare legs, her gummy skin.
He couldn’t pull the purse loose and he quickly took his hand away. He felt corrupted, like touching her had made his hand dirty somehow. His lips curled up in disgust. He wanted to wash himself. Then go somewhere and throw up.
He closed his eyes to steady himself, and when he opened them, the dead girl was looking at him, her eyes white as a bed sheet. She was trying to speak to him.
Paul suddenly had a flash of recognition. He saw through the blood and the shattered body and the horror of it all. He saw down to the depths, where another presence was rising up towards him.
“Momma?” he said.
Her mouth moved. He thought he saw his name form on her lips.
She reached a hand out towards his cheek.
Paul.
He shook his head, gently at first, then harder. “No,” he said. “No, go away.”
“Paul.”
He felt confused, not knowing where the voices were coming from. The girl’s lips were moving, but the sound was a man’s voice. Mike’s voice, distant, a world away.