by Neal Arbic
Delware stared at the old man a long moment, his face darkened with doubt. “But, Jack, what if we’re wrong?”
Jack smiled to himself. “Take it easy, kid. We’re holding all the aces this time.”
Delware thought about his new life with that gold shield. In that quiet moment, Delware confessed. “Jack, I got to tell you something.”
Jack turned.
“You know how I told you my uncle was lynched?”
Jack nodded. “Sure, kid. I remember, in the heart of Dixie, the buckle on the Bible belt. I don’t forget anything.”
“Well, you’re right about me - that night in the desert. It had crossed my mind that getting into Homicide would teach me how to commit the perfect murder. To kill…and not get caught.” Delware looked away. “I’ve thought about it from time to time. Going back one day and getting the sonvabitch who led the mob that lynched my uncle.”
Jack nodded and sat there a full minute. “There’s a file, in cold cases. Look under 1957, June 7th, an informant gone wrong called William Lee. You follow the details in that report like a set of instructions. If you do, they’ll never catch you.”
Delware turned to ask if the William Lee file was one of Jack’s kills, but he didn’t have to, the answer was already on Jack’s face.
Delware asked, “You’re not surprised?”
Frowning, Jack shook his head. “I read you, kid. Had you pegged from that first day in my living room, confirmed it that day in the morgue when you pulled your gun. It’s in your eyes. You don’t hold a gun like a man who doesn’t mean to use it.”
Looking up through the windshield, Jack gazed at the desert stars. “Let me tell you something.” After a silent moment, Jack looked at Delware in earnest. “Before you go messing around with the past, you gotta ask yourself…do you really want to end up like me?” Jack opened his door and paused. “You got a future, kid. There’s hope for you yet.”
Jack left the door open.
Delware watched him walk into the darkness and had a sudden premonition that the old man would not live through the night.
***
Watching the waves of officers scrambling up the dunes in the moonlight, Jack’s mind flashed with the shadowy figures of four hippies scrambling up the long driveway of the Tate mansion.
When the signal came that the perimeter had been secured. Jack made his way to the top of a dune. He looked down at the moonlit ranch. It was still an Old West ghost town, an abandoned movie set, a cluster of dilapidated buildings nestled into the foothills. Jack scanned the scene. There were no lights on. The street was deserted. Beyond was nothing but sand stretching to the horizon.
Creeping around the corners came shadows. The first wave of officers moved slowly among the buildings. Detectives lay on the dunes and watched. It was October 3rd, 1969 and they were witnessing the first significant deployment of LAPD's new SWAT unit. With tactics more like soldiers than cops, the SWAT unit searched the barn and smaller buildings, but found no one. They now surrounded the scatter sheds. Three officers were at the windows of the ranch house, checking inside. Flashing through Jack’s mind was the Manson family, creeping across the lawn and peeping into the windows of the Tate mansion.
As if in a dream, as if he were there at the night of the murders, he stood up and began to walk towards his vision of hippies outside the mansion.
Delware noticed first; he whispered fiercely, “Jack!”
Jack walked down the dune towards the ranch house. Delware tried to follow, but Pat grabbed his arm. “Keep down, stay where you are.” Pat shook his head and whispered, “Jesus Christ! What the hell is Jack doing? He’s going to get himself killed.”
Delware thought of the Middleton curse. Jack’s father and grandfather had died in the line of duty. Was that what Jack meant when he said ‘Now he can…go out…?’
Jack walked straight towards the front door of the ranch house. In his mind, he was walking the grounds of the Tate mansion. Two SWAT team members with rifles and helmets silently waved him away. Jack stared at the door, for a moment he thought he saw the word ‘pig’ scrawled in blood on it. He blinked in the moonlight and it was gone. A young SWAT officer looked at the old man in disbelief and whispered to his crouching partner, “What the hell is he doing?”
The young officer saw Delware running down the dune towards Jack. The other officer saw him too and whispered urgently, “Come on Neil, do it before these lunatics blow our cover.”
Someone hit the lights inside of the ranch house. A voice came from within, “Do you hear someone outside?”
Neil rose with resolved eyes and kicked the door open. There was a moment of stunned silence as the hippies inside turned their heads. The walls were spray painted with the words, piggy, rise!
Cops poured in through the doorway. Naked teenage girls jumped from sleeping bags, the air was stabbed with screams. Long haired guys grabbed knives, pistols, anything that could be a weapon. The boom and thud of doors being broken brought more cops bursting into the ranch house. A redheaded girl rose up naked in the middle of chaos and let loose a breathless, psychotic laugh. Naked girls ran helter skelter, cops knocked them down and clubbed and pistol-whipped their boyfriends. Heads cracked and clubbed kids hit the floor. Grating, out of tune screams came from every direction and swirled around. The sergeants tried to shout orders, but they could not be heard over the dim. Girls plunged at cops, clawing their faces; frantic fists relentlessly smashing.
Outside, black-and-whites roared in flashing red. Shouts and gunshots rang throughout the compound. A helicopter flew overhead, a search light shone down bright as daylight.
Jack stepped into the midst of the screaming, but to him it sounded like one thing and one thing only: murder. He was hearing the screams in the Tate mansion on the night of the murders. He heard the song Helter Skelter: the ripping guitars, the smashing cymbals.
A tall hippie came from behind the front door, the SWAT team had missed him in the confusion. He rose tall with a gun in his hand, slowly, deliberately his arm rose and he took aim at the back of Jack’s head.
Delware burst through the doorway, “Drop your weapon!”
Jack turned to stare down the barrel of the gun.
The tall man ducked and shot at Delware. The door frame exploded into splinters by Delware’s head. The hippie rolled and shot again. Delware fired, but a naked girl ran by, knocking him to one side. Hearing another shot, Delware felt a pain in his shoulder, so powerful he dropped to his knees. In the blur of motion, Delware aimed at the hippie and fired three rapid shots, each one connected. The hippie stumbled back and fell lifeless.
Jack watched the gun battle like a dream, then turned and walked through the confusion.
To Jack, he was still walking through the blood spattered Tate murders. He saw and heard it all: the boy trying to escape in his car, the gun shots shattering his windshield, piercing the boy, who, opening the car door, fell out dead. A long haired blonde, covered in blood running to the mansion’s door screaming, falling in the doorway, her beautiful summer dress: red. The man managing to make it to the front lawn, bloody and beaten, being swarmed and stabbed, blades piercing him, falling to the ground, crawling away, until a tall hippie shot him and plunged a carving knife into the back of his neck. Jack saw Sharon Tate, a screaming pregnant woman being thrown to the ground and the Manson family holding her down, stabbing, blood spraying through the air, blades rising and falling, the sound of them entering flesh, and the screaming mouths of victims. In the ranch house, naked girls screeched as they were wrestled to the ground and handcuffed. Jack saw blood soaking into the Tate’s carpets, the bloody pages of the Bible being used to scrawl RISE across the walls.
Jack felt him, very close: Manson. Then he saw it on a bedroom door inside the ranch house, the word written on it with multi-colored paints: Helter Skelter. Jack walked, staring at those words. He stood before the door. Raised his .38, he almost saw through the door, into the dark room beyond. There was a dark devil
inside, waiting for him.
He gave the door a solid kick.
Before him were only shadows. Black. Jack stepped in, temporarily blinded. He stumbled; his gun wavered trying to find a suspect to fix on. His eyes shot wide open like he’d seen a ghost. His hair stood on end. Standing in the center of the room was the butchered body of Sharon Tate. He stared into her blood covered face. Her bloody finger pointed to a corner of the room and vanished. He turned. His pupils widened, he saw the dark outline of a bed, on it a man with long hair perched like an animal. In a split second, Jack saw there were no other doors and one tiny window. He trained his gun on the shadowy figure. He had him! There was no escape. Jack felt dark, poisonous eyes staring. Slowly, the man rose, knocking the curtain from the window. The moonlight fell on the rising man who loomed ever larger. To Jack’s lysergic eyes he was a great shadowy demon, a black avenging angel. At full length, he towered over Jack. Jack tried to speak, but couldn’t, as if this devil had snatched his breath. Jack half-expected the black angel to swing a white sword and lop off his head. He saw this demon dragging his soul into the depths of Hell for all his sins. Jack stood transfixed by the set of dark eyes, a murderous, insane stare, concentrating all their power on him.
Suddenly, the man’s arm burst forth with a vehement, damning finger at Jack. A guttural voice shrieked an unholy condemnation, unleashing all the pent-up fury of Hell,
“PIG!”
Epilog
1970
Jack Middleton played a key role in providing evidence and testifying at the trial of Charles Manson and the Manson Family. Jack passed away peacefully in his sleep on December 8th, the day after the conviction of Charles Manson.
1992
Delware Hicks was named Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. He was the first African-American police commissioner of the LAPD, taking over after Chief Daryl Gates' resignation following the 1992 Los Angeles riots. He tried to create a positive image of the Department and close the rift created between the police and black neighborhoods by the violent arrest of Rodney King in 1991.
Newspapers around the U.S. featured his official LAPD portrait with the exception of the San Francisco Chronicle which ran a color photo of a young Delware Hicks in 1969. The picture was taken at Spahn Ranch. It showed the sun coming up. In the background was Charles Manson being led away in handcuffs; in the foreground, a bandaged, but smiling Delware Hicks with a shotgun cocked on his hip, leaning back against a black-and-white.