by Finn Bell
“Fuck you Martin,” Tom replies, but retreats a step and then takes up his radio to order a hold on his sniper team. Although his tone makes that order seem more temporary than not.
“Martin,” Tobe says to get his attention.
“You two. Why am I looking at you two?” Martin whispers, turning.
“Dispatch said you wanted us. Came through as a Rapid Response call,” I whisper back.
“No, I don’t want you. More fuck ups, but you’re here now so try not to shoot people,” Martin answers angrily. Martin has spent most of his career angry. It seems to work for him.
“Things gone bad?” I ask.
“Gone bad is something that happens to us every day Nick. This—” Martin pauses to wave his arms at the chaotic scene while shaking his head. “—skitters along on the satirical fucking edge all the way to pear shaped.
“You’re here now so make yourselves useful. Go talk to Maud,” he says by way of dismissal, pointing away as he turns back to Tom.
Following his finger we soon find Maud sitting on a plastic chair behind a car, face lit up by the glow of a laptop balanced on his knees.
Maud McNeilly is an ever-smiling red-headed man in his early thirties, so tiny that he seems drowned by his uniform and glasses. A good head shorter than everyone else he’s small, skinny and little all over. He even makes Martin look big. It’s rumoured he failed physical during police college three times. In truth, he’s so small that he’d struggle to ever survive as a street cop but makes up for it with a first-rate mind. Martin figured out a way to keep him around and safe from the street so he can use him at times like this.
“Hey Maud, what do you know?” Tobe whispers to him.
“Tobe, Nick. Why are you here?” Maud says loudly as he smiles up at us. Clearly less involved in the people-currently-shooting-at-cops scenario than the rest of us.
“Dispatch got it wrong and called us in. But—” I begin before we’re cut off by another barrage of gunshots, the muzzle flashes lighting everything in staccato bursts as we duck down again.
“Total chaos, right?” Maud says happily. Maud’s always had unique interests.
“Read the pre-lim?” he checks.
“No. We were off duty. Caught the call and came straight out. Be good if you could get us up to speed,” I say.
Maud takes a minute to type more things into his laptop then nods to himself. “I’m still figuring it all out but for now here we go: The happy home is registered to owners James and Andrea Chen, no criminal records, and two daughters aged 13 and 16. Wholesome picture all round, dad’s a carpenter and mum’s a nurse. No criminal associations that I can see,” Maud says as he clicks through various read-outs.
“Call came in just after 2:00 a.m. Neighbour came home from his steel work shift. He parks his car on the road and walks up the driveway so he doesn’t wake his wife. In doing so he hears raised voices, then spots a masked man with a gun standing in the hallway of the Chen’s house. Spot of luck as it’s the only window without a drawn curtain. The Uniform unit that got the call didn’t even make it out of their car. Shots fired as soon as they pulled up. From then on it’s pretty much been ongoing arrivals from all over. We’ve tried talking to them – phone and speaker – but nothing. Every once in a while they fire a few shots but no one’s been hit. Not even cars. When we evacuated the neighbours we got at least three corroborations that all four members of the Chen family were at home last night,” Maud says.
“How come we know there’s five gunmen in there?” Tobe asks.
“Welcome to Lawrence, Tobe. That cottage is over a hundred years old. Everything is wood. Almost no metal, concrete or insulation. FLIR cam can see through most of it. Wait, I’ll pull up the feed,” Maud says.
FLIR stands for Forward Looking Infrared camera and it can show a reasonably clear heat signature image based on radiation bounce through things like full dark, fog, plants and even metal. But there is a limit to the thickness of the objects and materials it can see through.
“I had to run the image through the computer in the van but yeah, it’s workable. Take a look,” Maud says, turning the screen our way. It’s a grainy black and white image of distorted silhouettes moving back and forth in overlapping confusion.
“This is live. FLIR cam is on the east side of the house. This white blob here is the bad man in the hallway off the front door facing us. Every other bad man is stationed by a handy window, ready for a cops-and-robbers-style shoot-out. Pretty sure the white mass here is the friendlies on the couch. We think they’re tied up,” Maud explains.
“How many guns?” Tobe asks.
“At least one per bad man. That we know of. Only one shooter thus far, who is this bad man in the hallway,” Maud says, pointing to the screen. “Everyone else is pretty sedate, no real movement except for him. So far he’s fired from the hallway, the kitchen window and one bedroom. His aim’s high though, hasn’t hit anything yet.”
“Ok, so we’ve got eyes in there, how about ears?” I ask.
“Yup, we managed to tape two glass mikes on without them noticing. It’s strange though, beyond sounds of movement and some moaning we’ve got nothing, not a single thing’s been said,” Maud answers.
“So what’s next?” Tobe asks.
“Don’t know really. Depends on who wins the argument over there,” Maud says, nodding back to the Comms truck, from where we can still make out hissing strands of argument between Martin and Tom.
“But we’re in pretty good shape here. We’ve got eyes, ears, tooling, position and numbers,” Maud says, ticking off each tactical advantage on his fingers. “When’s the last time you can remember us getting lucky enough to be in a hostage situation with a five for five advantage?” Tobe asks with a grim expression, thinking the same thing I am.
“Never,” I answer. In our line of work you learn that luck, especially when it shows up early and in large amounts, tends to turn into a real bastard before it’s over.
“So where do you want us?” I ask Maud.
“The perimeter is pretty well covered but the house backs onto the forest running up the hillside. If they try to make a run for it that’s the most likely route,” Maud says, pulling up a different read-out on his laptop. “Put yourself on the south-east corner near the spotting team. Take this radio, channel three.”
* * *
The frozen ground crunches under our feet as we settle in amongst the trees. We’ve got a good view looking down on the back yard. It continues the theme of middle-class family bliss complete with a vegetable garden, swing set and a neat garden shed. Even though we are standing in full darkness, the house itself is lit up with overlapping spot lights. You’d have to be suicidal to try and break out. No real danger to us and yet I can’t stop my hands from trembling.
“Something has to be wrong with this picture, right?” I ask Tobe. “Bad people don’t take an innocent family hostage in the middle of nowhere for no reason, right? Has to be dirt here. What do you think?”
“I think Martin should have let Tom shoot four of them in the head. This is going to go bad,” Tobe answers.
“Because?” I prompt.
“Because they’re not talking. Not to us. Not to each other. Whatever they had planned here tonight has gone wrong with us showing up. When things go wrong people’s first response is to try and make it better. But this lot hasn’t done that. They haven’t tried to leave, haven’t tried to make a deal. Means they’re not trying to make it better. Means it’s going to go bad,” Tobe says.
As if they can hear us in the house, almost immediately loud music blasts out from a sound system that’s clearly at maximum volume. The distortion delays recognition for a few seconds and then I know it.
It’s ‘Time Is On My Side’ by The Rolling Stones.
“Interesting,” Tobe says as he pulls out his Glock and aims it at the back door while I do the same.
We’re a few verses into the song when it happens.
All at onc
e. Way too fast and too loud and utterly disorienting.
There has to be a sequence to it, I realise, a chain of events, but in the experience of them they happen so close together that it’s just one big confusing cacophony of light and noise. It’s only looking back at the memory now that I can figure it out in order.
Lying flat on my back with my ears ringing, my eyes seeing stars and the wind knocked out of me gives my brain a handy chance to do this.
First, a muffled gunshot in the house.
Someone yelling, “Breach!” on the radio.
A perfectly synchronised salvo of deafening sniper fire.
Figures breaking cover and converging on the house from every angle.
Then the explosion. A sudden, massive pulse of achingly pure white light, leading a huge wave of rushing air and a storming wall of buffeting sound so loud it’s more vibration than noise. In seconds I’m already a few steps down the hill, stumbling but upright, the air still rushing back into the void of the blast. That’s when the second explosion hits. This one is bigger. I know there’s light and sound and force but they’re beyond my ability to sense. It’s just energy hitting me.
I’m knocked clean off my feet and lying dazed when I hear a distant voice say, “Are you ok Nick?”
“Sometimes Tobe,” I gasp, as I try to make the sky stop spinning while gingerly checking myself for any unexpected holes. I’ve given up trying to get my hands to stop shaking.
“That was two explosions, right?” I ask when I catch my breath.
“Yes Nick,” Tobe says.
“Could you help me up Tobe?” I ask as I blindly reach up my hand, my eyes still adjusting to the dark again. Everything I look at is still over-laid with distorted after-images of the explosion.
“No Nick, I can’t. You’re lying on top of me,” Tobe answers.
“Well thanks for breaking my fall,” I say muzzily as I roll off him and make it up to my knees with my ears ringing. I find I’m still holding my Glock. This makes other parts of my brain finally start working again as, with a jolt of adrenalin, I fully realise what’s happened and where we are. Belatedly I swing around to face the house again but I see there’s no point. There’s plenty of cops already surrounding it. Or what’s left of it still visible in the lone surviving spotlight that’s flickering intermittently.
“Tactical guys are already down there. Quick as bunnies aren’t they?” I say as I holster my pistol and turn to help Tobe up. “Let’s go.”
It’s only a short walk down to what’s left of the back fence but we use our flashlights and radio before we move, waiting for the chaos to die down, not wanting to risk wandering up to a group of armed men just after an explosion.
The place has been transformed into a warzone snapshot. Small fires burning everywhere, jagged pieces of torn wood scattered amongst spasms of homeware shrapnel and glass shards.
As we get down to level ground our path is blocked by Tom Parata’s back.
“Gas tanks?” Tobe asks.
“Looks like it. We ID’d one boxed behind the kitchen. Looks like there were more in the shed. No idea how they could explode,” Tom answers without looking away from the scene in front of us.
“Casualties?” I ask.
“We’re still checking things over. All of ours are ok. Mum is injured but she and the kids are alive, we’ve got them out front now. The five suspects are down. We can’t find the dad. Fire crew is still checking,” Tom says.
“What happened?” Tobe asks.
“We waited too long,” Tom answers as he moves off.
“Find Martin?” I suggest to Tobe, still trying to clear the ringing from my ears.
“No. He’ll be too busy now. Let’s find Maud again,” Tobe says and sets off.
We’re halfway round the house when Tobe stops in front of me and looks down at something by his feet. On the ground amongst the scattered debris I see half of a burned family picture. Under the soot you can just make out the smiling Chen family; two proud parents and what looks to be three young, smiling children and the edge of what must have been a Christmas tree, but the rest of the image is burnt away.
“We fucked this up,” Tobe says to me as he reaches down to pick it up, but then he stops himself, realising this isn’t a family memory anymore, it’s evidence. We make our way to the front of the house.
We fucked this up, I repeat to myself. The way Tobe said it made it sound more accusation than statement. And unusual. He hardly ever swears on the job. The kind of cop that stays calm through most things, plus he’s a church-going man these last years. It happens that way when you stay in it too long. See enough bad things and you either lose your faith in the world completely or dig in deeper, like maybe you can get to the grace in all this wrongness if you work through enough of it and just keep holding on. People do that in different ways. For Tobe it means Jesus in regular doses.
But this one is unusually bad, even for us, I think as I take in the destruction to the house. Everything looked so different when we arrived.
That’s another unusual thing here; bad things happen and then we show up after. Too late to stop it, too late to make it better.
Except this time. This time we were all here before. Ready and waiting. This time was going to be different. We were going to stop it before it started, only we didn’t. Something went wrong.
So instead we got to watch it all play out. A sudden, ugly cascade of violence. If you slowed it down it would be like watching dominos fall, tragic but predictable. Person A killed B who killed C and so on. It’s not an ordinary house on an ordinary street anymore. Now it’s that house where all those people died. While the cops watched in a circle.
We’re still skirting the debris on the front lawn when we hear Martin inside the house. “—don’t talk to me about motive for fuck’s sake. I don’t want the why yet, I want the how. And not their how, I want ours!” Martin angrily cuts off the conversation as we make our way into the house and jostle past people already photographing inside the front door.
The open-plan kitchen-dining-living room off the hallway is small and probably used to be homely. You can still visualise it. Family pictures on the walls, stack of board games next to the couch, named cups on hooks over the sink. Wholesome. The kind of place you’d expect to find in a kid’s story book. Except for the five corpses, the blood splatters, the bullet holes, the fire damage and the pieces of house missing from the twin explosions.
“You two,” Martin says as he spots us. “Come here and tell me who this is.” He points to a white sheet resting over a hastily-opened body frame that keeps it from sticking to the fluids of the corpse below.
We slowly make our way through the living room to the kitchen. There’s a lot of other white sheets to get around.
Tobe lifts the sheet and we look down at the body, then at each other.
Because we know this face. He looks younger with his eyes closed, untouched and somehow cleaner, kinder in death. But then some people carry a lot of themselves in their eyes. His looked unmistakably like his father’s.
“That’s Brian Kepu,” I say to Martin.
“Gang member?” he asks.
“Yes but he’s also blood,” I answer. “Brian Kepu as in only son of Bill Kepu of—”
“Manga Kahu gang,” Martin finishes for me then continues glumly. “Ok, happy days. You know his friends?”
As we go around checking bodies it soon becomes apparent that we’re going to be useful for more than just being knocked over by explosions, because we know every face we look at.
“Not friends Martin,” Tobe says, staring down at another dead face.
“What?” Martin asks.
“These guys aren’t dear dead Brian’s friends. They’re his family. These two older ones are the Black brothers and his cousins. This one’s the same, called Maihi, once removed I think. The last one, the young one, I don’t know, maybe a gang prospect, very likely family. He looks like a Black. We’ll know when the funerals start
,” Martin says.
He’s right. Down here gangs and families sometimes overlap, sometimes conflict in a complex, changing pattern that cops aren’t always privy to. One of the easiest ways to get up to speed is to stake out the funerals and see who shows up. Gangs take their dying seriously.
“That’s the official GIC answer?” Martin asks.
“Yeah it is. Barring the kid, I’ve got files on everyone here,” Tobe answers.
“Any good people die?” I ask.
“Maybe,” answers Martin. “We can’t find the dad. Although the fire crew tells me if he was right next to that gas tank when it blew up then maybe we won’t. They’re saying if it wasn’t for this kitchen counter being made of Australian Ironwood and blocking the blast then we’d be collecting the rest of the family in a bucket. Lucky break for us or this could have been a whole lot worse. The stuff’s stronger than steel and more flexible. Pity the rest of the house wasn’t made of it too. Mum’s still unconscious. Got shot in the chest, but it looks like she’ll pull through. She’s heading to the hospital now. The kids are being treated for smoke inhalation but aren’t saying much of anything. The medics think they’re traumatised. They’re still being processed so we don’t know about rape or violence yet,” Martin says.
“Are these guys the kind of people I’m going to be sorry are dead?” he then asks, looking down at Brian Kepu’s corpse.
“No,” Tobe replies flatly. Meaning that a) they were bad men doing bad things, and b) that none of them was currently working for us.
“At least there’s that,” Martin says, sighing and looking a little more relieved.
“You going for the money?” I ask, realising that must be why he wants the official ID from GIC at 5:00 a.m. If what happened here can be categorised as gang related then it’s organised crime, which means Martin can apply for more resources from GIC to help with the investigation. It also means more cover and political responsibility from the government. Martin’s a smart man; first rule of bureaucracy survival – if something bad happens spread the blame as high up the ladder as you can reach.