Betty was like a cannon blast as she suddenly came running out from between the condominiums and dashed past Freeman, zeroing in on the creature that had hurt the leader of her pack.
“Betty!” Freeman yelled.
But, the dog paid no attention to her name being called out as she raced over the grass and leaped into the air. With unbelievable speed, the homeless man knocked Betty to the side with its strong arm, watching as the animal hit the ground, rolled over, and got back up, ready to charge again.
That was when another gunshot roared.
The creature once again dodged a bullet and stared into the blackness behind the building. When Lt. Peterson appeared, the thing looked back at Freeman and hissed one last time. It then took off toward the rear of the complex before disappearing through the opening of the cinderblock wall.
Calling Betty over to him, Freeman squatted down and hugged the dog. ”I know you’re brave,” he said, “but I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Betty starts wagging her tail and licking the side of his face.
“We’ll get the bastard next time,” Freeman promised.
Just then, Lt. Peterson walked out of the darkness and over to where the man and his dog were at on the sidewalk.
“What in the hell was that?” he asked, stepping up to them.
Police cars were pulling into the complex with sirens on and emergency lights flashing. They parked haphazardly along the street where the community park was located. As uniformed officers got out of their vehicles and entered the park to help the young girl, Peterson shook his head in amazement.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Freeman said.
“Did you hit it?”
“Yes,” Freeman said, rising to his feet. “I wounded the creature in the shoulder, but the .45 caliber bullet apparently wasn’t strong enough to take the thing down.” Freeman stared at the lieutenant with curiosity in his eyes. “Do we know each other?”
“Lt. Frank Peterson, Metro Homicide Division,” the cop said, sticking out his hand.
Freeman shook the offered hand and said, “Ben Freeman.”
“There’s been a series of killings in Clark County since May,” Peterson said. “All of them were by the same person, or so we assume. They always tend to happen on a night when there’s a full moon and most seem to happen on the east side of town.”
“So, you’re here about the attack I experienced earlier in the evening?”
“Another officer and I heard about it and decided to drive over and talk to you. When we saw you weren’t home, he left. I decided to hang around.”
Two police officers were walking the petrified girl to a marked cruiser.
“I’ll come over to your place in about fifteen minutes,” Peterson said.
Freeman saw his wife hurrying up the sidewalk as other residents stepped outside their homes to see what all the commotion was about. He glanced one last time at Peterson, and then walked down to meet her with Betty trailing after him.
An unmarked police car stopped in front of Peterson, and Dwayne Matthews climbed out and made his way over to his boss.
******
Detective Matthews and Lt. Peterson stepped out of Freeman’s patio and down the two steps to the parking lot. Behind them, the ex-soldier in the entranceway and watched them walk over to Matthews’ vehicle. As the two police officers looked back at him, he gave them a nod and closed the door. They could hear Freeman going back inside the condo and shutting the sliding glass door that led into the kitchen.
“Did you honestly believe that story he told us about Vietnam?” Matthews asked.
“You didn’t see the creature,” Peterson said as he gazed upward at the full moon. “I did. The thing wasn’t human in any sense of the word. Its face was so terrifying I nearly pissed in my pants, Dwayne. So, yes, I believed what Freeman told us.”
“Hell, Frank, you’re as crazy as he is.”
“I probably am.”
“Reckon he’d show up tomorrow to sit with the sketch artist?”
“No, I don’t. I think Freeman has more important things on his mind right now.”
“Such as?”
“Getting a more powerful handgun,” Peterson said with a smile.
Matthews didn’t know how to reply to that, so he kept his mouth shut as he climbed into his car, started the engine, and drove back up the alley. He saw Peterson in his rearview mirror, standing there thinking and watching the red tail lights as they disappeared around the corner.
The day after Halloween
Freeman made himself to get up early the next morning to get dressed. He felt worn down by the pain killers as if he’d been run over by a Mack truck.
Once he’d managed to get a little bit of coffee inside of his system, he had driven over to the Blue Bayou Hotel & Casino on West Tropicana to see about taking some time off. The General Manager had taken one look at his battered face and told him to head back home.
Freeman had then driven over to Dr. Dave Dimascio’s office and told the receptionist he’d been mugged the previous evening and that it was an emergency. She gazed at the tape over the broken nose, the blue-and-green discoloring underneath the eyes, and the broken teeth when Freeman offered her a rather gruesome smile. Nodding in agreement, the receptionist brought the doctor out from the back office. Dr. Dimascio had taken one look at Freeman and said he hoped the other guy looked a lot worse.
Freeman had smiled at the joke.
The dentist then had one of the assistants take Freeman to another dental room so he could be shot up with Novocain. Dr. Dimascio said it would be about twenty minutes before he could get started on his teeth.
******
Freeman came out of the adobe-designed office building, working his jaw from side to side, trying to ease the affects of the Novocain. The doctor had put on a couple of temporary crowns to hold him till the new ones arrived in a few days.
Walking down the sidewalk to his SUV, the ex-tunnel rat reached a decision in the back of his mind by the time he climbed into vehicle.
He knew what had to be done and what was needed to accomplish it.
******
Detective Matthews was sitting with the heels of his feet resting on the corner of the desk, leaning back in his roller chair, shooting a rubber band up into the air and catching it. He watched as Frank Peterson made his way through the busy office and came over to where he was seated.
“Did you talk to Freeman?” the lieutenant asked.
“Nope, but I just got off the phone with his wife,” Matthews said. “Freeman hasn’t gotten back from the dentist. I’ll call again in a few hours.”
“Find out anything else?”
“Yep.”
Matthews took his feet off the desk and sat up straight in the chair. The lieutenant unconsciously realized that the detective was getting ready to tell him something important so he took a seat on the edge of the desk and waited for the detective to spill the beans.
“Remember when we were at the hospital last night?”
Peterson nodded.
“Before you arrived, I got Freeman’s address from the Admission’s desk. I also got his Social Security number,” Matthews said, smiling like a little kid who just discovered sex. “When I got back to the office, I ran his background. I also sent in a request for his military records to an old friend who works at the Department of Defense.”
“You’ve been busy, Dwayne,” Peterson said. “Have you already received his military records?”
“It pays to have friends in high places.”
“Was his story true?”
“I don’t know about the creature he fought,” Matthews said, “but Special Forces Captain Mike Malloy saved his ass on what would be his last mission as a tunnel rat. Freeman later married Malloy’s sister, Sheila. Malloy is a lot like Rambo. He won just about every kind of medal offered by his branch of the Service. The man now lives in Boulder City and acts as a consultant for a very hush-hush organization
out of San Diego that does contracts with the Government.”
Peterson digested the information and then asked, “Anything else?”
“There sure is, boss.”
“Well, Jesus, are you going to tell me, or do I have to drag it out of you?”
“Ben Freeman is a fucking war hero, too.”
“How so?” Peterson asked.
“On his next to last mission, Freeman had to go into the tunnels that surrounded Saigon during the TET Offensive by himself,” Matthews said, picking up a pencil and bouncing it up and down on its eraser. “Two tunnel rats had already disappeared in the underground complex. He went in after them and no one heard a damn thing from Freeman for three very long days.”
“And?”
“He finally popped up about six miles from where he’d started, dragging out a live tunnel rat behind him. The man had been tortured by the Vietcong. Freeman had to kill at least twelve Vietcong to eventually get out of the tunnel s alive.” Matthews grabbed the pencil in mid-air and stared at Freeman. “The guy he saved, Buddy Rogers, verified all the information. Freeman was nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor, but turned it down because he felt all the rats in his platoon deserved to be given one.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“That’s not all, either. Freeman spent twenty years on the LAPD, retired as a Homicide Detective, came to Vegas, and got the job as Director of Security at the Blue Bayou Hotel & Casino. He apparently used some connections to secure the position. He reminds me a little bit of you.”
“Knowing this,” Peterson said, “how do you feel about his story now?”
“He’s probably telling the truth.”
“I think he is, and that he’s getting ready for a final confrontation with this shape changer, or whatever the hell you want to call it.”
“What’s the plan?” Matthews asked.
“I’ve got some paperwork to get out of the way,” Peterson said. “I want you to call the house again in two hours and see if he’s gotten home.”
Matthews nodded and laid the pencil down on the desk. “Can you believe that he turned down the Medal of Honor?” he said. “That’s the highest military award any Vet can achieve; yet, he said no to it. I have to give the guy high marks for having the balls to do that. I bet his commander chewed his ass out royally. ”
“The more I hear about Ben Freeman, the more I like him.”
“Well, this is the icing on the cake,” Matthews said, smiling up at the lieutenant. “While he was working vice in Los Angeles, he won the Medal of Valor for saving three scumbags from a burning house. They had a meth lab in it, and the thing blew up. Freeman did some kind of karate kick and busted the back window. He crawled inside the house, battling the heat, the goddamn smoke, and the roaring flames to pull each of them out alive. I would’ve let them burn.”
Peterson stood up and laughed, shaking his head.
“Freeman’s definitely a war hero,” he said.
“And you really think he’s going after this creature all by his lonesome?” Matthews asked.
“If it was me, I would.”
“Like I said, you both are two peas in a pod. Oh, I forgot to tell you that Buddy Rogers lives here in town. He has a license to sell handguns from his home. Maybe Freeman is going to visit him and order a damn cannon to take out this thing.”
“Maybe, Dwayne.”
******
Standing in the backyard of Buddy Rogers’ home on the outskirts of North Las Vegas, Freeman fired another round at the steel plate on a heavy wooden stand. He was wearing eye and ear protectors; yet, the sound from the huge Smith & Wesson .50 caliber magnum revolver was monstrous. He could feel the muzzle lift all the way up his arms and into his shoulders. It took a lot of muscle to handle the stainless steel revolver with a 6.5 inch barrel. The muzzle lift was high as a kite and the recoil as heavy as a couple of jugs of water being carried to the office cooler.
“How did I do?” Freeman asked.
Buddy Rogers, who was standing at the end of the table, lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes and studied the metal plate. Though short, Rogers was a wiry man who still had all of his hair and looked younger than he actually was.
”Those were good shots,” he said. “You hit the plate four-out-of-five times.”
“Shit,” Freeman muttered.
“Hey, considering this is the first time you’ve ever shot a .50 caliber revolver, I think you did a damn good job, Ben.”
“Four out of five isn’t good enough.”
“With a little more practice, you’ll be placing all five in the black.”
Freeman laid the huge revolver down on the table, next to its blue carrying case. “That’s one heavy mother,” he said. “The muzzle lift is so high that for a moment I thought the revolver was going to swing back and hit me in the face.”
Rogers set the binoculars down on the table and gazed at Freeman.
“I told you the recoil was hard on the hands and arms,” he said. “Why don’t you try the .44 magnum? I have a revolver with a six inch barrel. It’s just like the one Dirty Harry used. The revolver’s a baby compared to this son-of-a-bitch, but still has a lot of stopping power.”
Freeman moved down to the end of the table where Buddy was standing.
“I need something heavier than a .44 magnum,” Freeman said.
“What the hell for? Are you hunting elephants in Las Vegas?”
“Something like that,” Freeman said, staring out at the firing range, lost in thought. “How soon can you get me one of these with a four-inch barrel?”
“Less than two weeks,” Buddy said. “I have to tell you that a four-inch revolver is going to be a bigger bitch to handle. The recoil’s a hell-of-a-lot worse than the one on this monster. You’re going to have to stick with a two-handed grip just to hit anything and especially to get it back on the target.”
“Let me worry about that. Can you get a shoulder rig and a leather pouch for two speed-loaders?”
“No problem,” Buddy said.
Walking back to the side of Buddy’s house where his SUV was parked, Freeman stared out at the desert in the northern part of the county. The one-story, clapped-board house was isolated in a patch of surrounding wasteland with no other homes in sight. It was the kind of place a loner lived, or someone who wanted to see the police coming from a mile away.
“What’s the total cost going to be?” Freeman asked. “I’m going to need eight boxes of ammunition, a couple of speed loaders, a leather pouch for them, a cleaning kit, and the shoulder holster. I’ll also need a pair of ear protectors and glasses.”
Buddy was walking after Freeman, lost in his own thoughts. The two men stop beside the black SUV and stared silently at each other for a second.
“I’ll let you have everything for cost, Ben. No more than fifteen hundred tops.”
Freeman pulled out the stack of hundred-dollar bills from his back pocket and started counting out the money. He then handed a wad of it to Rogers. “Here’s two thousand,” he said. “Try to get everything ASAP. I would appreciate that, Buddy.”
“Listen, you saved my life in Nam,” Buddy said. “I owe you for that.”
“You don’t owe me shit.”
“Yes, I do. If I can help you with whatever’s going on, let me know, and I’ll be at your side in a heartbeat.”
“Thank you,” Freeman said, shaking his friend’s hand. Then, opening the door to the SUV, he climbed in and stared out the opened window at Buddy. “Call me when everything comes in.”
Buddy watched as Freeman started up the engine and backed out to the dirt road in front of the house.
******
Lt. Frank Peterson made his way through the outer office of the Homicide & Robbery Division, glancing down at his wristwatch as he switched directions and headed through a maze of occupied desks, seeing Dwayne Matthews sitting in the rear with a phone pressed against his ear.
“Thank you, Mrs. Freeman,” Matthews sai
d into the phone. “Uh-huh, yes, ma’am.” He rolled his eyes at the lieutenant. “Be sure to have your husband call us when he gets home.” He then hung up the telephone and stared at Peterson. “She just got back from the grocery store. Her husband hasn’t gotten home yet, and she doesn’t know where he is. Think she’s giving us the run-around?”
“No,” Peterson said. “Are the two patrol cars still stationed over there?”
A Final Taste of Blood Page 4