Carrier Wave: A Day Of Knowing Tale

by Robert Brockway

  Helms put three bullets in his back, center mass.

  He didn’t even flinch.

  The other arm came off as easy as the first, and was tossed aside with equal disdain. He reached down and grabbed Hughes’ left leg by the knee. Hughes kicked and bucked, but to no avail. The man put his foot on Hughes’ crotch, and in dead silence, wrenched his leg free from his body. Helms put two more rounds in his back, then steadied herself.

  Slow is smooth, she thought, smooth is fast.

  She took an extra fraction of a second to line it up, then pulled the trigger and put a round in the back of the guy’s head. He fell to his knees, then to his side, still clutching Hughes’ severed leg in both hands.

  Helms holstered her pistol and ran to Price, who was choking and gagging, pulling at his neck. She laid on top of him, pinning his arms to his side, and spoke low and fast and breathless.

  “It’s okay it’s okay it’s over you’re okay don’t fight it just give it a second just one second take a slow breath real slow and easy you’re okay-“

  Price stopped struggling and was still for a long moment. Then at last came the rasping of a slow, thin breath. He tapped Helms on the arm, and she rolled off him. He didn’t sit up, just stared at the ceiling and focused on breathing evenly. Helms went to check on Hughes next, but she could tell at a glance that he was dead. Almost certainly from shock. His face was frozen in a mad mask of disbelieving fear, blue-white and bloodless.

  “Two officers down,” Helms yelled into her handset. “God damn get everybody over here now!”

  She rechecked Price, still breathing rough but consistent, and headed back toward the pinsetter; toward Jackson.

  She laid flat on her belly, as if to crawl in after him. But she froze.

  Fear, shaky and electric, wrapped around the base of her spine and pinned her in place.

  “Jackson,” she called out instead, “hang in there, help is coming.”

  She went back to Price, and sat at his side, stroking his forehead until the EMTs arrived.

  ***

  “I told you half a dozen times already,” Danny Greene whined to Helms, “we was just minding our own business, throwing a few rounds. When this little guy came up and held out a tape recorder – one of those dealies that fits in your hand. He hit play and it made some beep boop kinda sounds, then he just turned and walked away before we could even say nothin’. Me and Joe and Marky bowled a few more rounds, then I looked back and Joe was crying or something. So I made fun of him some -- like you do -- and he just flipped out and started beating on me. Well I took right the hell off, I don’t mind telling you, and that was all I saw. I went back to Becky’s trailer and I got real drunk there until I fell asleep on the foldout. You can ask her, I was there!”

  Helms rubbed her eyes with her pointer finger and thumb. She was so tired that her vision would go blurry every few minutes until she paused to massage life back into them. She took another sip of Styrofoam flavored coffee from the absurdly tiny cup, and pretended to recheck her notes. There was no need. Danny Greene had told the same story each time he was questioned, and the other witnesses backed him up as best they could. Nobody saw the guy with the tape recorder, but they all saw Joe go nuts on Danny for no real reason. Then he turned on the folks in the next lane, then the manager, until everybody bolted, leaving him and Mark Kimmel alone in the alley. Witnesses said that when Joe started attacking folks, Mark just laid down on the floor and went still. Stayed like that the whole time.

  Jackson had so many stitches in his face he looked like a scarecrow, but he managed to keep the eye. His statement said he and Hughes arrived on scene to find a prone Mark Kimmel, while Joe Greene roamed aimlessly up and down the lanes, muttering to himself. Hughes split off to check on Kimmel, while Jackson went to confront Greene. Hughes got there first, and the second he knelt down by the body, Kimmel sprung to life and hurled him all the way up over the railing into the shoe rental. Kimmel looked around, saw Jackson, seemed to think for a second, then just laid back down and went still. Jackson called out then, and the noise got Greene’s attention. He laid into Jackson like a madman, and that’s when Helms and Price came on scene.

  All the stories matched up. And none of them made sense.

  Joe had some assaults on his record, but nothing this serious, and never with his own brother. They were tight as two sticks in a popsicle – if anything, people insulting his brother was the excuse Joe used to fight most often. Mark Kimmel had nothing on his record at all. He hung out with assholes, but if that was a crime half this town was going to jail.

  So they, what? Went crazy because of some beeps on a tape recorder?

  Even assuming that was true, what Kimmel did was impossible. Not ‘crazy on drugs’ improbable – literally impossible. He lifted Price -- who was six foot and a buck eighty himself -- like a sack of potatoes, and still ran at full speed. Then he pulled off Hughes’ limbs without so much as breaking a sweat. Drugs could kill your pain center, make you take a lot more damage -- that would explain why Kimmel didn’t go down when Helms emptied into him, but no drug made you superhuman.

  And if it was the tape recorder that caused it, why did Greene seem to have normal strength and went around attacking strangers, while Kimmel went all Superman but just laid on the floor until somebody got close?

  Helms circled and underlined various words in Danny’s statement, basically at random. How the hell do you type up something like this without sounding like a maniac yourself?

  “You hold tight, Danny,” She said, and scooted her chair back. It wailed metal on metal. “We’ll get you out of here, soon.”

  “You fuckin’ better!” Danny said, then immediately regretted it. “Sorry, it’s just… I been in here for hours and I wanna go see Joe. They won’t even tell me how he’s doing.”

  He waited to see if Helms would enlighten him, but she just smiled a little when she stepped out the door. Price was waiting with a replacement Styrofoam coffee. He handed it to her and sipped from his own, wincing as it went down.

  “How’s the neck?” She asked.

  “Dandy,” he croaked, his voice like wet gravel.

  Price was speaking as little as possible on his first day back. He wasn’t even supposed to be here yet, but he’d checked himself out of the hospital after only 36 hours. The captain figured it would be better for his recovery to let him stick around and do deskwork, rather than hollering and shouting about forced leave. Helms had been pulled from the field after the shooting while the investigation went through, but she knew that wouldn’t take long. Besides, she could use the time away.

  She knew beat cops were supposed to fight against every second of desk-time, but Helms was actually quietly relieved. She’d never so much as fired her service revolver in the line of duty before taking down Kimmel two days ago. Her usual targets were tin cans and paper outlines. She couldn’t say she was exactly losing sleep over it -- but that was what worried her. Helms told herself it was because Kimmel clearly wasn’t human anymore – not with that strength, not with that speed – and she’d seen what he did to Hughes. Knew what was on the line when she pulled that trigger. But there was still a nagging little part of her asking “what if you’re just a killer? What if that’s why it doesn’t bother you – because you’re a psychopath?”

  Their station was small; the therapist had to come all the way from Des Moines, and wouldn’t be here until tomorrow. Helms would put up a fight for show – “guess I gotta go get my head shrunk by some witch doctor” she’d snark – but once that door was closed, she was looking forward to talking to someone. She wasn’t worried about the investigation -- you could go take a look at Hughes’ mangled body if you had any questions about whether or not it was a good shooting. His single remaining leg and three ragged stumps would do all her testifying. But she could sure use somebody with a big rubber stamp that would deem her ‘sane’ right about now. And that wasn’t happening anytime soon. So that left her stuck at the station for at l
east a week when she should be...

  Doing what, exactly? What was her lead here, the crazy music guy?

  Price noticed her staring at the wall, delicately sipping hot black water, and grunted.

  “What? Sorry, just thinking…”

  He grunted again, with an inquisitive tone this time.

  “About where we go from here, with the case.”

  Price groaned.

  “Look, just because we’re both riding desks doesn’t mean the work stops. If all we have is the guy with the tape recorder, then sure, I guess that’s where we start. If nothing else he’s a material witness at two crimes, one assault and one murder…”

  A doubtful grunt.

  “Well, okay, I’m assuming that it’s the same guy. But this is a small town – you really think there are two tape recorder pyschos out there?”

  An acquiescing groan.

  “Right then. I’ve got some paper time in front of me anyway. I’m going to look into noise disturbances, see if there’s anything there. You want to look into assaults and pull witness reports, see if somebody mentioned a guy with a boombox or a tape recorder or something?”

  Price nodded. He smiled at Helms, and slapped her on the shoulder. Her terrible coffee sloshed over her fingers, scalding them. She sighed at nothing in particular and turned away from Danny Greene, still sitting at the holding room table, picking his nose and carefully examining his discoveries.

  ***

  Fully 90% of the noise complaints in the last month were from a single person: one Eleanor Dubicek, of 2031 April Terrace, Unit C. She thought the neighbor across the way was ghastly, with his leafblower going so early in the morning. She thought her downstairs neighbor absolutely didn’t need to watch Knight Rider that loudly, and her upstairs neighbor was probably listening to Springsteen at such a high volume so as to drown out his criminal dealings. And surely the garbagemen didn’t need to make such a racket every Thursday morning – they were probably banging the cans around just to spite her.

  Helms read through every single report anyway, just in case the old bat had filed a complaint about the positively disrespectful young man that went around her complex, fiddling with a tape recorder and making people murder each other.

  She did not.

  The remaining 10% of the noise reports were scattered – mostly kids having parties while their parents were away, drunkenly hollering while they smoked cigarettes on the porch late at night. But there was one interesting report: Two weeks ago, Andrew Falkous called police from the Cosmo’s Ladder Trailer Park to complain of a neighbor making loud squeaks and squeals all through the night.

  It was thin, but Helms was ready to grab at less. She pushed her chair back and took the report over to Price, who was grimacing down at his own tower of folders.

  “Check this out,” she said, slapping the report down on the desk in front of him.

  He arched an eyebrow at her, and stared quietly.

  “Just read it,” she said, and left to get them both refills from the coffee machine.

  When she got there, she found the pot empty, but still sitting on the active burner. The last dregs of coffee burnt into black tar death.

  “Terrell,” she yelled over her shoulder, in the general direction of the office.

  “What?” Came an answering voice, already annoyed.

  “Did you take the last of the coffee?”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  Helms turned and stalked out of the breakroom, over to Terrell’s desk. He was a chubby guy, just starting to bald. He used to be a looker, back in the day. Helms knew this, because he told literally everybody about it. He kept a framed photo of his younger self on his own desk. In it, he was standing on the beach somewhere with his shirt off, big smile, defined pecs glistening beneath a bed of curly chest hair. That and the southern accent didn’t make him unpopular with the ladies. Helms knew this, again, because Terrell told everybody he met just about as soon as he met them.

  “So what?” She sighed. “So if you take the last of the coffee, you make a new pot. Or you at least turn the burner off so we don’t get this…this industrial waste shit to scrape out.”

  She rattled the pot at Helms, who just curled his lip and swiveled his chair away from her.

  “Making coffee is women’s work,” Terrell said, loud enough for the whole office to hear. “Or maybe the help. You look like both to me.”

  Helms entered into a beautiful and elaborate fantasy wherein she cracked the glass pot against the back of his head, the shards exploding outward like a new universe being born. The stupid look on Terrell’s face – hovering there right between confusion and terror…

  She should at least say something clever in response, but she’d gone blank while entertaining the beautiful dream, and now the moment had passed. She settled for calling him an asshole, and returned to the breakroom. She set the pot in the sink, filled it with water, and returned to Price.

  He’d had enough time to read the report, but he was still flipping back and forth between the pages, trying to decide something.

  “What do you think? Worth checking out?” Helms asked.

  “Hmm?” Price said.

  “Hmm what? Listen, the Chewbacca thing only goes so far. You’ll have to talk sometime.”

  “I think,” Price croaked, “that neither of us are allowed to check anything out.”

  “Oh, no, of course not,” Helms waved his concerns away. “I only meant if it looks solid enough to bug the other guys with. Have them do a follow up or something, just a friendly visit.”

  “I…” Price gagged a little and took a second to compose himself. “I think Terrell and Bryant are the only ones on active duty tonight, so no visit is going to be ‘friendly.’”

  “Damn,” Helms bit her lip and glanced over at Terrell’s desk. He was deep in concentration filling out the crossword puzzle. No way in hell he’d follow up on a noise disturbance as a favor to her. And if she tried to explain…

  On her first day, Helms showed up with a lucky rabbit’s foot on her keychain. Terrell saw it and made some crack about ‘you darkies and your voodoo.’

  Terrell and Bryant were not an option.

  “Maybe it can wait until tomorrow when they’re off rotation,” Helms agreed.

  Price smiled at her, and turned back to his reports.

  Helms started back toward her desk, made sure Price was lost once again in the paperwork, and walked right past it, out the side door. She unlocked her cruiser, gave herself ten seconds to feel stupid about what she was doing, then put it in gear and drove off.

  ***

  Andrew Falkous would have been a stunningly handsome man if not for the severe overbite and facial psoriasis. He opened the door to his weathered and peeling trailer in nothing but a very open and very pink bathrobe. It took him a long second to realize he was hanging in the breeze, and he tied the belt with no special hurry. Falkous had a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon in one hand and a TV remote in the other. In the background, something with an obnoxious laugh track regularly interrupted their conversation.

  “Mr. Falkous?” Helms said.

  She was still wearing her uniform. She kept telling herself she wasn’t here in an official capacity. The uniform would give everybody the right impression, but maybe if she specifically avoided introducing herself as an officer or mentioning police business she could leave herself an out when this inevitably blew up in her face.

  “Mr. Falkous is my daddy, you lil’ sip of molasses,” Falkous said. “You can call me Andy.”