Something inside Rachel snapped. She might have taken the job out of desperation, but she was determined to perform her duties in an honorable and forthright fashion. If people didn’t respect police officers today, it was because they had failed to earn respect. They were becoming legally sanctioned gangsters. Her childhood was behind her, but Sergeant Larry Dean had been an outstanding role model—a man of valor and integrity. Rachel refused to allow her career as a police officer to become a sham.
“I’ve got a news flash,” she said, placing her palms on the table. “For all I care, you can blab it to everyone in the department. I haven’t filed my report yet. When I do, I’m going to tell the truth.”
Carol’s look of anger changed to alarm. “What are you going to say?”
“That I saw Grant use Timothy Hillmont as a human shield,” Rachel told her. “And I saw him kick Donald Trueman senseless, the primary reason the boy picked up the gun and started shooting.”
“You were mistaken,” Carol said, her voice cracking. “You’ll destroy Grant if you go through with this. He’ll be brought up on charges. His future will be destroyed. The job is his life. You know that, Rachel. Everyone in the department knows it.”
Rachel slowly shook her head. “I know what I saw.”
“What about me?” she said. “Don’t you know what this is going to do to my relationship with Grant? We have plans, Rachel. We’re trying to build a life together.” She sniffed back tears. “My father’s dying. Now you’re trying to ruin the man I love. My whole life is coming apart. If you won’t drop this for Grant’s sake, then please…do it for me.”
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said. A second later, a light came on in her head. She knew how Grant operated. He never did his dirty work himself. “Grant put you up to this, didn’t he?”
“Grant has a lot of friends in this department,” Carol shouted in fury. “As of today, you have none.” She slid out of the booth, reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of money. Tossing the bills in Rachel’s face, she turned and stormed out of the restaurant.
c h a p t e r
SIXTEEN
At 4:15 that morning, Rachel was dispatched to respond to a complaint of loud music in the 400 block of Maple Avenue. “Don’t you have a house number?” she asked the radio operator. “Maple is a long street.”
“Since the reporting party lives at 453 Maple,” the male dispatcher advised, having already given Rachel the complainant’s address, “it’s got to be somewhere close if she can hear the music, don’t you think?”
A strange noise came over the radio. Rachel bristled, knowing it was the other officers clicking their microphones. Before Ratso had aligned himself with Grant, the officers had clicked their microphones at him when he uttered something foolish over the radio. Rachel had opened her mouth without thinking. Loud music calls never came in with an exact address, particularly at this hour of the morning. It was getting close to the witching hour, though, and almost every officer on her watch had said something silly at one time or the other. But Rachel was no longer one of the guys. Even Carol Hitchcock was now her enemy. She had turned on a fellow officer. She realized that any mistake she made, no matter how insignificant, would now be subject to ridicule.
Maple Avenue was part of the Windermere tract. The houses were similar in size and appearance to the one Rachel rented on the south side of the city. Constructed out of brick and wood, they were single-story residences. Even though the exterior facades were different, the interiors of the homes were all the same. Adjusting the volume on her radio and rolling down the window in her unit, she slowly cruised the tree-lined streets. Most noise complaints were a waste of the taxpayers’ money. By the time an officer responded, the offending party had turned the music down and gone to bed. Hearing what sounded like the Rolling Stones blasting at a deafening level, Rachel hit the brakes and steered her unit to the curb.
The yard was overgrown with weeds. The paint on the house was cracked and peeling. As she approached the front porch, she picked up the scent of rotting garbage. Three overflowing trash cans stood by the side of the house. She was glad she didn’t have these people for neighbors. They had managed to get the garbage out of the house, but they were too lazy to drag the containers to the curb so the trash collectors could pick them up.
The front of the house was dark. Before ringing the bell, Rachel checked in with the station via her portable radio to let the dispatcher know she had arrived at the scene. Placing her ear to the door, she tried to determine if there were people inside or if someone had just left the house without turning the stereo off. The pounding bass of the Rolling Stones drowned out all other sounds.
Removing her flashlight, she flicked it on and trained the beam toward the ground. Seeing a few flecks of red on the concrete porch, she bent down to get a closer look. Reaching down with her fingers, she tried to see if the spots were wet. A slightly reddish stain appeared on the tips of her fingers. She sniffed it, knowing blood generally had a distinctive odor. Unable to identify the substance, she wiped her hands on her thighs.
Rachel was reaching for the doorbell when she suddenly dropped her hand. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing straight up. She turned and looked back at her police unit, then let her eyes travel up and down the street. In the academy, the instructors had taught her to listen to her instincts, never to take a premonition lightly. A good cop learned to smell trouble from several miles away.
She started to call for a backup unit, but was afraid if she did so without a good reason, she would never live it down. If she was too chicken to ring a doorbell and ask someone to turn down the music, she didn’t belong in a uniform.
Rachel rang the bell. She waited. She rang the bell again. The people were probably asleep, she decided. In the Windermere houses, the bedrooms were located in the back. Walking past the rotting garbage, she approached a six-foot wooden gate leading into a backyard, secured with an industrial-size padlock. Grabbing the top of the gate, Rachel hoisted herself up so she could check the yard for dogs. She didn’t want to dance a jig with a Doberman pinscher. She’d already had that pleasure back when she was a rookie, and she had a scar on her calf to prove it. “Woof, woof, woof,” she barked over the top of the fence. “Come and get it, doggie.” Hearing nothing, she tossed her leg over the fence, hanging on until she felt the ground under her feet.
The grass in the backyard was even higher than in the front. It came to Rachel’s knees, and she reminded herself to notify the fire department. Tall grass was a serious fire hazard, and the occupants deserved to be cited. Besides, she didn’t know what was brushing up against her legs. Snakes lived in high grass. She was more terrified of snakes than she was of Doberman pinschers.
She peered through the nearest window into darkness. Generally she did not enter someone’s backyard without another officer present. People could easily mistake you for a burglar and start shooting.
“Station one, 2A2,” the portable radio squawked near her ear. “We’ve just received our third complaint of loud music on Maple. Have you located the house yet?”
“I’m at the house now,” Rachel advised. “The address is 489 Maple. The situation should be resolved in about three minutes.”
Standing near the window, she shouted, “Police. This is the Oak Grove Police Department. Answer your door. We’ve received numerous complaints about your music.” She paused, sucking more oxygen into her lungs. “If you don’t turn the music down, I’m going to cite you for disturbing the peace.”
Rachel listened, but all she heard was another Rolling Stones song blasting from somewhere inside the house. Looking to her left, she saw a sliver of light coming from what she thought should be the smallest of the three bedrooms. When she walked over, she put her face to the glass and saw the back of a person’s head through the transparent curtains. The room was too dark to determine if it was a male or a female. The light wasn’t inside the room itself, she decided. From what she could tell, it was c
oming from the hallway.
The person’s hair was dark, and cleared the ears, and he or she was sitting in an upholstered recliner. From the bureau mirror, she saw the reflection of a TV flickering on the far side of the room. She pounded on the glass. No response.
It had to be a drug overdose, Rachel decided, or possibly a heart attack. Either that, or the person was in a drunken stupor. Knowing she couldn’t take a chance of ignoring a legitimate medical emergency, Rachel tried the window and found it unlatched. Lucky break, she thought, hoisting it up so she could crawl through.
The curtains had hidden a great deal. Boxes and clothes were strewn all over the floor. As soon as her feet hit the floor, Rachel saw what appeared to be a broken glass right below the windowsill. “I’m a police officer,” she announced loudly to the silent form, gingerly making her way across the room. “Are you okay? Are you sick?” She reached down to her side and unsnapped the strap holding her gun in place, resting her hand on her revolver.
As Rachel circled to the front of the chair, her heart was racing like a steam engine. She whipped her gun out of the holster, then dropped her arm back to her side. She knew the girl in the chair was dead. Her throat was slit from ear to ear. It was as if she had vomited blood down the front of her shirt, or someone had tossed it on her from a bucket. As Rachel moved closer, she could see the girl’s severed vocal cords and what appeared to be the back of her spinal cord. Bloody pools had formed on the floor. She inhaled the putrid odor of human excrement, the overwhelming stench of death. One more inch, she thought, and the girl would have been decapitated.
“Oh, God,” Rachel said, bending over and regurgitating her breakfast into a pile of gore.
“Station one,” she said a few moments later, “I-I need backup fast. Send me a couple of units, and advise the sergeant to respond as well.” She was not allowed to say she had a homicide over an open radio frequency. If she did, the press would pick it up over the police scanner and arrive on the scene before the medical examiner and the homicide detectives. If she’d been in her unit, she could have used her scrambler. For years they had used police codes for such calls, but the news media had memorized all the codes. She listened as the dispatcher called the units on the adjoining beats, Carol Hitchcock and Jimmy Townsend, advising them to respond for assistance.
Something moved behind her. Before Rachel could turn around, an enormous weight landed on her back, slapping her to the floor in a sloshy puddle of blood. Her portable radio flew out of its pouch, landing on the floor a few feet away. Her attacker’s body odor was rancid and foul. Rachel knew it had to be a man, as the person’s musculature was too well developed for a woman. She tried frantically to throw him off, grunting as she strained.
“You fucking bitch,” he shouted. “I told you not to take my stuff. Didn’t I tell you I’d kill you if you took my stuff, huh? Didn’t I, huh? Didn’t I?”
“Let me up,” Rachel pleaded, trying to get her hand on her gun. The man had a knee positioned in the center of her back, and was using his hands to press her head against the floor. She couldn’t panic. The other units would be here in a matter of minutes. All she had to do was keep the man talking and pray he didn’t still have the knife that he’d used to slit the girl’s throat. “You’re strung out,” she said, her mouth so close to the floor that her words were muffled. “You need help. If you go to the hospital, they’ll give you some really good dope…bring you down. I can help you. I promise. All you have to do is trust me.”
“You’re lying,” the man said, seizing a handful of her hair.
The portable radio squawked a few feet away. Rachel heard the dispatcher asking Carol Hitchcock her ETA. The radio operator spoke her call signals again and again, trying to raise her. “Advise your ETA, 3A4,” the dispatcher asked Jimmy Townsend. “The sergeant’s responding from the station. He’s a good fifteen minutes away. Something must be wrong with Hitchcock’s radio. I can’t get a response from her.”
Rachel choked on her own saliva. In fifteen minutes, she could be dead, butchered like the woman in the chair. Both Townsend and Hitchcock should be here by now. When they’d first received the call, they had been only a few minutes away.
The man released her hair, and Rachel lifted her head, able to see his face for the first time. She gasped in horror, knowing instantly that he was psychotic. His hair was long and filthy, his face smeared with blood and what looked like feces. But it was his eyes that told the story. His pupils were no larger than the head of a pin. Oozing sores covered his face and arms. Wearing a Harley-Davidson T-shirt, he grinned at her with rotting yellow teeth. Only one drug could drive a person this far—methamphetamine. On the street it was known as speed, crystal, crank, meth. After repeated use, the drug became toxic, exiting the body in open sores.
Rachel saw a shiny object on the floor a few feet away. When she realized it was a bloody butcher knife, she stretched out her fingers, but the weapon was several inches outside her grasp. Just then the man moved, and she managed to scramble to her knees. As she did, however, she heard the creaking of leather. The man had yanked her gun out of the holster.
An explosion reverberated in her eardrums. She collapsed on the floor, certain the man had shot her.
When she got the courage to raise her head, Rachel saw that the man was shooting wildly. Bullets were striking the adjacent wall, the ceiling, the floor. When he fired at the television, the picture tube exploded and sparks and glass flew through the air.
Carol Hitchcock’s voice finally came out over the radio. “Station one,” she said, “I’m on a traffic stop. I may have a drunk driver. I can’t clear until I’ve given him a field sobriety test.”
Rachel’s muscles locked into place. They weren’t coming. This was their revenge because she had threatened to expose Grant. The man had the muzzle of the gun pressed to the center of her back now. On the radio she heard Jimmy Townsend advising the dispatcher he had a flat tire. The radio operator called other units, but they either didn’t answer or they claimed they were tied up on other calls and were unable to clear.
Catching the man’s reflection in the mirror, Rachel saw he was smiling at himself and posing with the gun. She lunged for the knife. The man was a homicidal maniac. She couldn’t wait for her fellow officers to respond.
Once the knife was in her fingers, she gritted her teeth and plunged it into the man’s right kneecap, praying she had struck a nerve. A psychotic was often unable to feel pain. The man looked down at her with a demented grin. He didn’t flinch. All he did was shift his weight to his uninjured leg.
Then he pointed the gun at her.
Rachel rolled her body to the side just as the man fired. The bullet seared its way into the wood flooring only an inch away from her abdomen. Raising the knife again, she drove the blade into his thigh. At the same time, she waved her free arm from side to side, trying to prevent the man from getting a clear shot at her head.
As she withdrew the knife and thrust it into him again, Rachel sobbed hysterically. She had been transformed into a killer. She saw the awful face of Nathan Richardson, remembered his coarse hands on her body. All the bitterness of a lifetime seemed to converge into that one moment. When she struck her attacker’s femoral artery, blood gushed out and struck her mouth, her eyes, saturated her hair. The gun tumbled from his hands to the floor. Rachel seized it, and trained it up at his face. The man’s head fell back against the wall. For a few moments he was motionless, then his body slowly slid to the ground.
Rachel didn’t check to see if his heart was beating. She didn’t care. She refused to touch him again. His blood in her mouth tasted like rusted metal. She spat onto the floor, choking back another spasm of nausea.
Picking up her radio, she gasped, “Station one, I’ve just stabbed a man. Maybe now you can get me some help. I have a female DO A with her throat slashed. The man may still be alive. Dispatch an ambulance and notify the medical examiner. While you’re at it, call Captain Madison at home and advise hi
m to respond as well. I have some things to discuss with him.”
“I’m en route,” Miller shouted in the radio. “What do you need the captain for? It’s five o’clock in the morning, Simmons.”
“Station one, I’m rolling too,” Carol Hitchcock said. “I just cleared my traffic stop. I’ll be on Maple in less than ten minutes.”
Rachel listened as Townsend, Ratso, Rogers, Harriman and the rest of the officers on her watch checked in with the station. Her eyes drifted over to the partially decapitated corpse, the unconscious man she had stabbed, the bullet holes, the pools of blood on the floor. With the mention of the chief, the cockroaches had decided to crawl out of their hiding places. For forty-five minutes, she had been trapped in a room with a deranged killer, waiting for her fellow officers to come to her rescue. They were too late, a lifetime too late. Picking up the portable radio, she hurled it across the room.
While Rachel was waiting for the units to arrive, she checked the residence for other suspects, then returned to the back of the house to find a bathroom and wash the blood off her hands. Entering what should have been the master bedroom, she saw what appeared to be a makeshift lab. Bunsen burners were set up on a long oak table. Chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine were stored in a metal cabinet. The windows were boarded up with sheets of steel, and a steel overlay had been hammered over the wooden doorframe leading into the bedroom, the front of the door secured with four deadbolts. As the house itself was not alarmed, she decided the occupants didn’t care if a burglar broke into the main section of the house as long as their drug lab was safe.
Abuse of Power Page 18