First Offense

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  “The police know everything,” Ann shouted. “I’ve already told them, given them evidence. If you kill me, they’ll arrest you, track you down, send you to the gas chamber.”

  For a moment he paused, a flicker of reason appearing in his eyes, then it was gone, and all Ann could see was the madness. Hands of steel locked around her throat, and she felt him squeezing. Ann was gulping and gagging, clawing at his hands with her own. Where were the men? Then she remembered the missing wire. They couldn’t hear her.

  In that instant Ann knew she was going to die.

  He was going to kill her. And like everything else, he was going to get away with it. Rage suddenly filled her, driving her like a powerful engine. Finding his little finger on her throat, Ann bent it backward with all her strength, an old police tactic to break a suspect’s grip. The pressure released long enough for Ann to pry his other hand off her neck and scramble a few feet away. She was on her hands and knees when she felt him on her back, the hard object poking between her shoulder blades unmistakable. A gun. Ann froze and every muscle in her body locked into place.

  “I don’t like using guns, Ann. They’re too loud.” Glen was panting, his face right by her ear. “I did enjoy shooting you, though,” he said with pleasure. “I never hunted a human being before.”

  “Why?” Ann cried. “Why did you want to kill me?” She had to stall him, keep him talking, anything until the men came to her rescue.

  “If I had wanted to kill you,” Hopkins said, nipping her ear with his teeth, “I would have done so. I only wanted to put you out of commission. You were a threat.”

  “I didn’t threaten you,” Ann whimpered. “We’d just made love.”

  “You were going to destroy my business,” he continued. “I worked hard to build that business. For the first time I had real money of my own…more money than most people see in a lifetime.”

  Ann felt the gun press firmly between her shoulders and screamed. Then the pressure disappeared momentarily as Glen stood and used the toe of his boot to flip her over onto her back again. She pushed herself to a sitting position, ready to lunge at his legs and try to knock him off balance, when she suddenly stopped and became perfectly still.

  The gun in his hands looked like a cannon. Only inches from her face, Ann found herself staring down the dark, seemingly bottomless barrel. Never in her entire life had she been this afraid. Her bladder emptied, and warm urine soaked through her jeans. Glen stood over her, quickly seizing a handful of her hair and pulling her to a kneeling position. When he yanked her head toward the gun, Ann opened her mouth to scream, certain it would be her last sound before death.

  The cold metal entered her mouth, lodging deep in her throat. She gagged, her mouth filling with fluid. A few moments later, the gag reflex died under the weight of her terror, and she became as still as a statue.

  “That should shut you up,” he said, laughing as he pushed on the back of her head, forcing the gun even farther down her throat.

  She began praying. Then she felt tears gushing out of her eyes. Tears for her precious child, she thought, but she knew she was grieving for more than David. She was mourning her own death, imagining what it would feel like when he pulled the trigger. She’d seen numerous suicides who’d swallowed a gun. Ann knew she could never survive it. The bullet would blow the back of her head off, her brain along with it.

  Glen’s eyes were searching the area, and he appeared to be noticing how close they were to the parking lot and the streetlight. Too much time had passed now, and he couldn’t take a chance. Sliding the gun out of Ann’s mouth, he said fiercely, “Stand and start walking.”

  Ann struggled to her feet, forcing back the urge to vomit. A horrid metallic taste was in her mouth, and she brought one hand up to rub her throat. Why didn’t he just kill her, pull the trigger and get it over with? It must thrill him to see her helpless and terrified, pleading for her life. Once he killed her, this awesome power he held over her would be gone. He was enjoying himself, so insane that he thought he was invincible.

  Glen nudged her with the gun, and Ann stumbled forward. Should she run for it, she asked herself, make an attempt to escape? No, she decided, knowing he would only shoot her in the back. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. When he killed her, she wanted him to look her straight in the eye.

  “Hurry up,” he commanded, forcing her in the direction of the surf.

  Ann looked off into the darkness, catching a reflection on the water. What was he going to do to her now? she thought in horror. Was he going to drown her instead of shooting her? It didn’t really matter, she decided, resigning herself to her fate. Whatever means he used to accomplish it, Ann knew when it was over, she would be dead.

  The red Honda was parked sideways in the center of the street, the passenger door standing open. One side of the vehicle had sustained substantial body damage. At least a dozen police cars were parked on either side of it, some with their wheels up on the curbs and lawns.

  Jimmy Sawyer was prostrate on the ground in the center of the street in the glaring lights from the police units.

  “Throw out your weapon,” Reed barked over a loudspeaker from one of the units.

  Sawyer pleaded, “I swear I don’t have a gun. Don’t shoot me. Please, don’t shoot me.”

  Reed glanced over at Abrams. “Call Ann and tell her we have Sawyer. She doesn’t have to wait any longer.”

  Abrams scowled. “She doesn’t have an earpiece, Sarge. We’ll have to go get her.”

  “You have been monitoring the surveillance channel?” Reed asked quickly, arching his eyebrows. “She hasn’t called for help and we didn’t hear her?”

  “Of course not,” Abrams answered. “She’s got to be just sitting out there wondering what happened to Sawyer.”

  Reed turned back to the prisoner. The past fifteen minutes had been chaotic. Sawyer had been traveling at such a high rate of speed when Reed first spotted him that a dangerous high-speed pursuit had ensued. Reed in the lead, with other units joining the chase from various side streets. Finally, Sawyer’s Honda had spun out of control and crashed into a tree.

  Reed picked up the microphone again and addressed Sawyer. “Stand up slowly with your hands out from your body. Then strip. Keep your hands where we can see them.”

  Sawyer pushed himself to his feet, his hands out at his sides. He was wearing a sweatshirt and quickly pulled it over his head, immediately showing the officers his open palms.

  “The pants too,” Reed ordered, turning back to speak to Abrams again. “Go get Ann. I don’t want her sitting down at that park alone.”

  While Jimmy Sawyer was removing his jeans and kicking them aside, Abrams spotted his unmarked unit, but it was blocked by several of the black-and-whites. “I’m going to have to wait until we take him into custody,” he told Reed. “I can’t get my car out.”

  “Then walk,” Reed said flatly, picking up the microphone again. “Take off your shorts too,” he told Sawyer, watching while the boy removed this last item of clothing. Now he was standing completely naked in the glaring lights, and he instinctively placed a hand at his groin to cover his genitals.

  Abrams moved in to cuff him, along with several other officers, thinking that now he could get the officers to move their units and head to Marina Park to pick up Ann. Sawyer had switched directions during the pursuit and led them away from the park. If Abrams tried to walk it, he knew it would take too long.

  Once Sawyer was cuffed, Abrams handed him over to Reed, and the detective started shoving him in the direction of his unit while Abrams tried to find the men driving the police cruisers that were blocking his own.

  “I’m freezing,” Sawyer said in the passenger seat of Reed’s unit. “I mean, I came here to turn myself in. Every time I try to do something right, it turns into a fucking nightmare. Can’t you at least let me put my clothes back on?”

  “Not until I get some answers,” Reed told him gruffly. “And for your information, your
roommates rolled over on you. You’re staring down some serious drug charges, Jim-boy.”

  Sawyer was silent, a muscle in his face twitching.

  Reed turned to him, looking him squarely in the eye. “Were you working with Hopkins?”

  “Sort of,” Sawyer replied. “I mean, I liked to think we were working for ourselves, but it didn’t turn out that way.”

  Reed was confused. “Are you talking about the drug lab?”

  “Yeah,” Sawyer said, leaning forward and trying to get comfortable with his hands cuffed behind his back. “He was our financial backer, see. Someone Peter knew on the street told us about this guy who would put up ten grand for us to set up a home lab. They said he would give us all the chemicals we needed to cook the stuff too and we’d make a ton of bread. How the hell did I know the guy was a fucking district attorney?” He started struggling again. “Shit, these handcuffs are killing me.”

  Reed couldn’t believe his ears. Hopkins was dirtier than they’d ever imagined. Feeling a measure of sympathy for the boy, the detective reached over and unlocked the handcuffs. Then he removed his own jacket and tossed it over to him. “When did you first hook up with Hopkins?”

  “I don’t remember the exact date,” the boy said, slipping his arms into Reed’s jacket. “Maybe eight months ago or something. Look, he guaranteed us we wouldn’t go to jail, and the money was great. We cooked the drugs, delivered them to this warehouse he had in L.A., then sold the rest of them on the street. We bought the cars, some new threads. Then when I got busted, things went crazy.”

  “You’re talking about the first arrest, right?” Reed said, rubbing his chin, cursing himself for buying Whittaker’s informant’s tale about Colombian drug dealers. But never would he have connected Glen Hopkins to a drug operation. “Did you shoot Ann Carlisle?”

  “No, I swear,” Sawyer said earnestly. “Hopkins shot her. I even saw him. I mean, I didn’t see him actually pull the trigger or anything, but I saw him running across the parking lot and he had something in his hand.” When Reed just stared at him. Sawyer continued. “He promised I would only get court probation, see. He said he would fix it. Then when I got to court, Ann messed everything up. I was scared she was going to come out and find the lab, so I tried to talk to Hopkins and ask him what he wanted us to do, but I couldn’t because he was with her. I left and then drove back later to find him. That’s when I heard the shots and saw him running across the parking lot.”

  “Why did you stop to help her, then?” Reed asked, fearful Sawyer was feeding him a line of bullshit and might actually have shot Ann himself.

  “Look,” Sawyer said, an indignant expression on his face, “I might be a drug dealer and all, but I don’t kill people, and I wouldn’t let someone bleed to death like that. Shit, he would, though. He just stood there and stared at her. Then when the paramedics got there, he pulled me over and told me to move the lab, that he shot her so she wouldn’t bust us.”

  “Didn’t he realize that if he killed her, they’d just appoint another probation officer?”

  “Hey, how do I know?” Sawyer snapped. He paused and then continued, “Wait, he did say something. He said if she was only out a few weeks, the case would just sit around dead. And he was right. No one else came around, and we had enough time to rent another house and get it set up. But, of course, when she found the fingers, Hopkins told us to shut down for good.”

  Reed’s thoughts turned to Ann, and he picked up the microphone to try to raise Abrams. When Abrams answered, he roared at him with impatience, “Where the hell are you? Where’s Ann? I thought you would be back by now.”

  “I’m almost at the park,” Abrams said, the radio cackling with static. “I could have never walked it. Reed. You have no idea how faraway we were, but listen, Ann hasn’t made a peep all night. She’s fine. I even confirmed it with the dispatcher.”

  Reed dropped the microphone on the seat and stared out the windshield. A funny feeling came over him, the kind he got when something wasn’t right. Ann would never sit down there without a word all this time. At least twenty minutes had passed since she walked into that park. Ignoring his prisoner now, he drove forward a few feet and then stopped in front of several officers, reaching past Sawyer to open the passenger door. “Take this guy in,” he told the men, instantly shoving Sawyer out the door.

  Before the men could react. Reed had roared off, the passenger door of his unit still open. He gunned the engine and the speedometer started climbing, the door slamming shut when he whipped the car around the corner and headed to Marina Park.

  Ann was back on her knees at the water’s edge, pleading with Glen to let her go, the gun trained at her head. “Glen, please,” she begged, “don’t do this. If you did these things because you’re sick, then you can get help. We cared about each other. I have a child. Don’t do this to me.”

  “Should have thought of that before you started poking around in places you didn’t belong,” he said, wiping his sweaty face with his shirttail.

  Ann’s eyes were darting all over. Far off in the distance, she saw what had to be headlights pulling into the parking lot. It could be a total stranger and not one of the officers, but Ann didn’t care. She was filled with such utter hatred that she no longer cared if she lived or died, as long as she could be assured Glen would pay. What she simply couldn’t tolerate was the thought that he would escape without punishment.

  Suddenly Ann stared at the barrel of the gun, and something darted through her mind. Any second he would pull the trigger. Anything she did in her own defense would be better than nothing. If she made an attempt to escape and failed, the outcome would be the same anyway. Cutting her eyes to the parking lot, she saw a dark figure step out of a car and head toward the playground area. If Glen was going to kill her, Ann wanted him to do it now.

  She had her witness.

  But she also had one chance. Not a good one, but a chance. When she had been a police cadet, her father used to practice a trick with her, a way to disarm a person aiming a weapon at close range. She closed her eyes and tried to bring back the exact moves that her father had taught her.

  In a flash she went for it, seizing the barrel of the gun with both hands, twisting his wrist sideways with every ounce of strength she possessed. Once the gun was pointing away from her, Ann used her ribs and body weight to apply more pressure against Glen’s wrist. He yelled in pain and she heard what sounded like bone cracking. With lightning speed Ann slid her fingers between Glen’s and suddenly found his gun in her hand as they toppled over backward.

  “Now,” she said, gritting her teeth as she stared up into his eyes, the gun flush against his forehead, “make a move. Glen. Go ahead. If you so much as hiccup, you’re a dead man.”

  Ann looked to the side and saw Noah Abrams sprinting across the sand. “Over here,” she called out to him. “We’re near the water.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Abrams said, seeing Ann on the ground with Hopkins. Immediately he pulled him off her. “Are you okay?” he said quickly, reaching in his back pocket for his handcuffs and clamping them roughly on Hopkins’s wrists.

  At first Ann didn’t answer. Flat on her back, staring at the sky, she stretched her arms out from her body and let the revolver fall from her fingers onto the sand.

  She was alive.

  “I’m fine,” she finally said, standing and dusting the sand off her clothes. But there was sand in her hair, sand in her mouth, sand in her eyes, and sand inside her clothing. Ann started scratching as if a million fire ants were attacking her. Then she saw Abrams staring at her and narrowed her eyes at him. “Where were you guys, by the way? It’s a good thing I didn’t have a problem out here or anything. I mean, it’s nice to know you’ve got such great backup. Gives a person a real feeling of security.”

  Abrams looked miserable. “I’m sorry, Ann. Really, I feel terrible. I don’t know what happened. As soon as we set up down the street, I called this bastard’s house and he answered the phone. We even di
spatched a patrol unit to watch his house, and I called him again to verify he was still there only a few minutes after you said you were walking into the park.” With Hopkins in a choke hold, Abrams yanked his head back and screamed in his face, “How did you pull this off, asshole?”

  “He has a scanner,” Ann said. “I heard it coming from the fort.”

  Abrams was perplexed. “That doesn’t explain how he could answer his phone, though. How could he be in two places at the same time, Ann?”

  “Answering machine,” Ann offered. “Maybe when you called, you got his answering machine and thought it was him.”

  “No way. It was a real voice on the phone. I don’t know how, but it was him.” Shoving Hopkins to the ground, Abrams moved to kick him. “Tell me, motherfucker, or I’m going to break every bone in your body.”

  “Call-forwarding,” Hopkins mumbled, moaning in pain. “I just forwarded my home number to my car phone. My wrist is broken. I need medical treatment. I’m in severe pain.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Abrams said, “or I’ll break your frigging neck.”

  Off in the distance, they both saw Reed jogging toward them. “Reed’s the one who fucked everything up,” Abrams told Ann. “We popped Sawyer on the way over here, or we would have come back to check on you sooner.”

  Reed reached them and, quickly sizing up the situation, rushed over to embrace Ann. “It’s over now,” he said tenderly. “Sawyer and Hopkins are both in custody, as well as the others. Everything is going to be okay now.”

  Ann pulled back and retrieved Glen’s gun, handing it to the detective. “You might want this,” she said. “It’s probably the gun he used the night he shot me. My gun fell out when he jumped me. It’s back there somewhere in the sand.”