by Lyle Howard
Gabe took another sip from his soda and wiped his mouth. Un tipo duro, a tough guy. Gabe smirked, then he slid out of the booth. But when he stood, something was terribly wrong.
His head began to spin, and he felt disoriented. He had to grab the back of his chair to regain his equilibrium. Taking a second to fight off the feeling, he stepped around his table and moved closer to the junkie.
The bandit took a step backward and aimed the pistol at Gabe’s forehead.
“You don’t wanna do this, slick,” Gabe warned.
It was obvious to Gabe from the thief's bloodshot eyes that he was hopped up on something. His nose was running and he was shivering, but not from the cold. “Shut the fuck up, man, and get down on the floor like everybody else!”
Gabe turned a bit to his side, revealing his own gun and gold shield. “This ain’t your night, compadre. Now, you don’t really wanna kill any of these nice people, do ya’?”
The robber took another step backward and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his ragged topcoat. “I don’t give a fuck who you are, man! Come any closer, and I swear I’ll shoot you!”
Gabe took two giant steps closer. “Go ahead and pull the trigger, slick. You’d be doing me a huge favor. The way I’m feeling right now, killing me would probably be a blessing in disguise.”
Having found refuge behind the counter, Gabe’s waitress grabbed a steak knife and was holding it with surprising proficiency.
“Hey, you think I won’t shoot you, ‘cause you’re a cop? Bullet’ll go through your head good as anyone else’s.”
Gabe held up his hands, showing that he had no intention of reaching for his firearm. “Then go ahead and pull the trigger, amigo. My life ain’t worth two shits anyway.”
Hansen used Gabe’s distraction to free her gun.
Gabe caught her movement out of the corner of his eye and stepped between her and the robber.
The junkie held his gun with both hands. The weapon shook in front of him like a divining rod that had discovered water.
Gabe cocked his head. “Uh-oh. You hear that?”
The gunman fidgeted nervously and swung the gun around to where old man Strofsky was lying prone on the floor. “Man, all I wanna hear is the sound of that cash register opening up!”
“Come on,” Gabe said. “You had to have heard it, right?”
“What are you talkin’ about, man?”
Gabe gestured with a thumb over his shoulder. “Well, it was kinda faint.”
The robber brought the gun back around toward Gabe, staring down the barrel at him. Snot was running freely from his nose no matter how hard he sniffled—and he sniffled a lot. Gabe could sense that everyone else in the restaurant was holding their breath.
“You’re a crazy motherfucker, man.” Spittle flew from the robber’s mouth. “Now get down on the floor so I can get my cash!”
Gabe nodded over his left shoulder. “So you didn’t hear my partner unsnapping her piece from its holster? You sure?”
One of the robber’s bloodshot eyes peeked out from behind the gun.
“Listen to me, amigo,” Gabe pleaded. “If you pull that trigger, you’re gonna hit the floor a few seconds after I do.”
The gunman looked longingly at the cash register.
Gabe’s demeanor suddenly turned grim. “I’m guessing this night ain’t quite workin’ out the way you planned, right?”
The junkie scratched his face with the muzzle of his gun, as though it was infested with bugs that only he could feel. The moment of truth had come: his face knotted up in frustration. “Next time, hijo de puta!” he screamed as he bolted out the front door and disappeared into the camouflage of the pouring rain.
“What the fuck!” Hansen chided, standing up and holstering her gun. “I gotta give you points for originality, but why didn’t you let me take the shot?”
Gabe just shrugged and helped old man Strofsky to his feet.
“Dinner’s on me,” the old man called out gratefully as Gabe slid back into the booth.
Joanne Hansen took a deep breath of relief and stared across at her partner who was once again eying his plate of food indignantly. Gabe looked up at her and frowned. “Now my fries are cold.”
* * * * * *
Fifteen minutes later, after things had calmed down, the dispatch the two detectives had been waiting so long for finally came through. The dispatcher’s voice crackled over the hand-held radio sitting on the table. Gabe quickly gobbled down the last mouthful of his burger as he listened. The 911 call to central receiving had been cut off. The caller’s name was Jamal Wallace; the dispatcher had spelled the first name. The location was Seminole High School. Wallace thought the intruder was still present, so he had spoken in a whisper. Wallace claimed there was blood all over the third floor, which he worried might be that of his wife, a night custodian at the school. The dispatcher reported that there was the sound of a scuffle, after which the line went dead.
Seminole High School was 15 minutes away in the poor weather, but, if Gabe drove, they could make it in eight.
Their waitress came by the table and offered Gabe a refill on his creme soda. He threw a couple of singles onto the table for her. “This could be number six. I’m not letting him get away again.”
Hansen stood up and grabbed her backpack from the booth. “Stop it, Gabe. He was a face in the crowd back then. If he’s resurfaced, we’ll stop him this time.”
“Maybe another time, Gladys,” Gabe said, noticing the waitress’ name tag for the first time. “We’ve gotta run.”
Suddenly, the room began to spin and the waitress had to catch Gabe before he lost his balance. “Detective?”
Hansen moved quickly to her partner’s side. “Want someone else to take the call with me, Gabe?”
He braced himself on the back of the booth. “You reach for that radio and I swear I’ll break your arm.”
“They’re getting more frequent,” Hansen warned, scrutinizing his face with her fingers.
Gabe brushed her hand away as the dizziness subsided. “I’m fine.”
“It’s been over a year,” his partner argued, “and you’re still letting Renee and Kimmie’s deaths rip you up. You need professional help.”
“First things first,” Gabe grunted as he headed out into the turbulent darkness.
* * * * * *
While old man Strofsky wiped down the detectives' dirty table, he glanced angrily over at Gladys who was staring out the front window into the street. “It wouldn’t be too much to ask for you to bus your own table?” he asked in his thick Yiddish accent.
But the waitress wasn’t listening. She was watching the tail lights of Gabe’s car blink out around a corner. In a flurry of activity, she hustled toward the rear of the restaurant, untying her apron, kicking off her shoes as she went.
Strofsky followed her into the storage closet that doubled as a locker room. Once inside, pungent odors accosted their nostrils, coming from a shelf full of liquid cleaners and an opened box of toilet bowl deodorant blocks. The room was small, barely big enough for them both to squeeze into. A single 60-watt light bulb hung from a chain, scarcely illuminating the room. “And just where do you think you’re going?” Strofsky demanded, his fists clenched at his hips. “I’m running a restaurant here!”
“I’ve got business elsewhere,” Gladys said coolly.
“What is it with you? Do you think you can come and go whenever you want to? You haven’t worked back to back days in the three months since I hired you!”
An amazing metamorphosis came over the old waitress as she quickly slipped her work shoes into a nylon tote bag and eased into a pair of comfortable running shoes. She pulled a dark track suit out of the same bag and proceeded to strip right in front of the old man. No longer hunched over, her eyes sparkled with the enthusiasm usually reserved for youth. She stood and squeezed Strofsky’s jowly cheek hard enough to leave an imprint. “I’m leaving now,” she said. “And I won’t be back.”
�
�And why is that?”
She shoved past him and threw her uniform across the room, missing the soiled linen bin on the far wall. “Come over here.”
Strofsky approached her cautiously, but before he knew what hit him, she grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pushed his face against a rust encrusted mirror that hung over the equally decrepit looking sink. She slammed him against the glass so unexpectedly hard that the old man thought she might have loosened a few of his capped teeth. “Your office is on the other side of this wall?” she whispered menacingly, her lips mere inches from his ear.
The side of his face was flattened against the glass, his eyes beginning to water from the pain.
She yanked him backward by his thinning gray hair. “Such a randy old man,” she said, wagging her finger playfully in his face. “It’s a one-way mirror. Do your female employees know about the private peep show you’re running back here?”
She had him by the short hairs.
“Okay, you can work whenever you want,” he stammered, massaging the swelling side of his face.
Her eyes narrowed and she shook her head. Her natural Irish brogue was menacing. “This behavior is inexcusable.”
“You want money?” Strofsky pleaded. “Everybody wants money. Take what’s in the register and go.”
She rubbed her ample chest up against his back. “You think this is about money?”
“If it’s not money, then what do you want from me?” The old man sounded puzzled.
The room went quiet as her eyes rolled up into her head in the same way a shark’s does. The gleaming blade came out of nowhere. It drew a flawless arc through the air, only slowing momentarily to bisect the old man’s throat.
“I want you to die.”
3
Seminole High School was one of the oldest structures in the Dade County School System. High stucco arches over the exterior doorways harkened back to a simpler time in the school’s history, when ice cream vendors, not crack dealers, waited to sell their wares on the nearby street corner after school. Wrought iron bars protected every window and a ten-foot chain link fence surrounded the perimeter of the campus. Fifty years after the first class bell sounded, the building now gave the appearance of a maximum security prison rather than an institution of higher learning.
Adrenaline pumped through his body as Gabe Mitchell brought the car to a screeching halt in front of the school. The storm that assaulted the car was growing in intensity. Water backing up from the overtaxed sewers nearly covered the wheel wells.
“This weather sucks,” Hansen griped.
Gabe checked the clip in his gun. “You’re not gonna let a little water bother you, are you?”
His partner took out a tissue and wiped the fog off the inside of the windshield. “A little water? We just drove past animals walking in pairs!”
Gabe reached for the door handle. “We go on three. Meet at the front door.”
Hansen pulled a rubber band out of the glove box. “Hang on a minute. I need to tie up my hair.”
Gabe waited impatiently while his partner tied her long blond hair into a pony tail.
“You ready now, princess?”
She nodded.
“Make a bee line for that big arch!”
On three, both detectives threw open their respective doors and bolted for the school’s main entrance. It was less than a 100-yard dash for both of them, but with lightning bursting all around them and thunder slamming at their bodies, it was like running through a war zone.
They reached their destination, but the overhead archway didn’t offer very much protection from the elements. “Cover me,” Gabe ordered as he warily opened the front door.
Hansen drew her weapon and did as she was told. They inched their way slowly down the dark main corridor past the school offices. Their soggy shoes squeaked on the tiled floor, giving away their position and any opportunity for surprise. Gabe pointed down at their feet, and they both quickly removed their shoes and socks. The floor proved shockingly cold.
“Wallace said the third floor,” Hansen whispered, her back to a wall of metal lockers.
Gabe wiped the water off his face that kept dripping down from his hair. “That was fifteen minutes ago,” he whispered back, pointing up at the hallway clock. “If he’s still here, he could be anywhere!”
Methodically, the two detectives leapfrogged past each other checking out every square inch of both the first and second floors. Their quest turned up empty.
Hansen pointed her pistol toward the stairwell. “Only one floor left!”
Gabe ducked his head out of the protective cover and glanced up the stairs. “Don’t forget there’s the roof too!”
Hansen looked skeptical. “In this storm? I doubt it.”
The school's central air-conditioner was on a programmed timer and had been off for more than two hours now. Even though it was cold outside, the lack of circulating air made the humid hallways feel like a sauna. Gabe's leather coat was already sticking to his arms like a second skin. “You think some guy that’s going around raping and killing women is going to mind the rain as much as you do?”
He motioned toward the stairwell. Hansen gestured back that she had him covered. “You’re just never gonna let me live this rain thing down, are you?” she snarled as he wormed past her.
Gabe took two steps and paused.
“What’s the matter?”
He rubbed his forehead and his hand came away soaked, not from rainwater, but from sweat. “I feel a little woozy again … like the whole place is spinning around me.”
Gabe felt his partner’s hand on his sleeve. “Are you gonna be alright? You want me to go ahead?”
Pain shot through him like someone had jabbed an ice pick into the base of his neck, but he was sure it would pass. He had had this same strange sensation three times over the past week or so, and each time the discomfort dissipated after a few minutes. It was probably another one of those quirky little aches and pains that creep up with age. “Just give me a second to get my bearings.”
Hansen stepped ahead of Gabe on the stairs. “I’ll go. You cover me.”
“I’m right behind you!” As he raised his gun to track her ascent up the stairwell, Gabe discerned a vile taste rising in the back of his mouth. His hamburger was about to make a return appearance. He wanted to call out to his partner, but the words choked off in his throat.
* * * * * *
Reaching the third floor landing, Hansen looked down over the railing, but saw nothing in the spiraling darkness. “Gabe?” she whispered. “Get your ass up here!”
When no response came, she called over her shoulder. “I’m moving out into the hallway. Stay close!”
Always believing that she had to constantly prove herself to the rest of her male colleagues, Joanne Hansen occasionally crossed the fine line between aggressiveness and recklessness.
Hansen stepped into the hallway with the firm belief that her partner was following not far behind her. The third floor was dark like the previous two, but smelled from an odor that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. With her gun raised to her sight line, she tip-toed toward the first classroom door. Thunder rattled the metal locks that hung on the lockers lining the corridor. She was less than a yard from the first door when she suddenly stopped.
Beneath her feet, Hansen felt something sharp and knelt down to retrieve it. It was a splinter of wood about two inches long. She groped in the darkness with her free hand to see if there was more. There was. She turned to show the evidence to Gabe, but he wasn’t there! She was alone!
This wasn’t good! Everything Hansen had ever been taught about correct police procedures told her that, before she took another step, she needed to find out where her partner was.
But suddenly, there was a noise coming from a few feet away … from inside the doorway where she had discovered the slivers of wood.
Kneeling as low as she could and with her back pressed against the wall, she began feeling her w
ay toward the door. Sweat glistened on her face as she tried to keep her gun poised and ready. She advanced her way cautiously down the shadowy corridor. Keeping her eyes fixed on the door, she never saw the three-inch splinter that had wedged itself into the baseboard only a few inches ahead of her. Like a skewer piercing a chunk of beef, it impaled the small toe of her bare right foot! Covering her mouth, she had to command every ounce of willpower she had not to scream in pain! As she bit into her lower lip to hold back the tears, she yanked the sliver free. The shard of wood tore out of her tender flesh with a grisly sucking sound.
There it was again … that sound … like thumping. There was definitely someone moving around behind that door!
The pain in her foot was so intense! Warm blood oozed from both sides of her toe. She found a mangled tissue in her pants pocket and haphazardly bandaged the wound with trembling hands.
Don’t pass out, girl! You’re so close, you can hear him!
Hansen pulled herself up into a standing position as thunder once again rattled the lockers and flashes of lightning silhouetted the hallway. She worked her way to the doorway with both hands wrapped around the butt of her raised pistol. Silently, she began counting down.
Three … stop shaking!
Two … shoot only if you’re compromised!
One … only the good die young, right?
Jamal Wallace was dead, hanging from a rafter in the teacher’s lounge. A telephone cord had been used as a noose and cut a deep red gash into the unshaven skin beneath his chin. Wind and rain rushing in from a broken window caused his lifeless legs to rhythmically bump into a coffee table in the center of the room. That must have been the noise she had been hearing! His bloodshot eyes were bulging from their sockets, frozen in a ghoulish gaze. Even in the murky moonlight and occasional lightning flashes that filtered into the room through the broken window, she could see that the man’s tongue had been removed. A steady cascade of blood dripped down his chin, forming a sticky puddle on the floor beneath his swaying boots.
Hansen felt sick to her stomach. The person who did this would have to be awfully strong to overpower someone this big, let alone lynch him.