Vigilare

by James, Brooklyn

  “Maybe we have the wrong address.” Gina winks at her. “Since we’re here, how would you like to see a real live police car?” Gina holds her hand out. The girl hesitates only for a moment before putting her hand in Gina’s, squeezing tightly. Gina looks to Officer Marks. He silently reads the direction in her expression, taking the little girl’s hand, escorting her to the safety of the patrol car. Gina maneuvers stealthily inside the front door, her Light Double Action 1911 pistol engaged, her eyes peer through the sights, searching.

  “Vanguard Police. We received a call to this house. I can’t leave until I talk to someone,” Gina coaxes as she clears the living room and kitchen, making her way down the hall. A muffled cry, a woman’s voice, is heard on the other side of the door to her right, followed by a shifting of bodies.

  The door flies open, Gina quickly backs up to a safe distance, her pistol aimed and pointing at her target.

  “I’ll cut her up, you come any closer,” a male voice pumped full of adrenaline yells, his arm clenched tightly around his victim’s neck.

  “Please, just leave,” the woman chokes through tears as her hands remain locked around her captors forearm, attempting to maintain her balance and keep the pressure of the knife blade off her neck.

  Gina flashes her eyes around the room, clear of anyone else. The shattered mirror over the sink smeared with blood matches the bruises and lacerations on the woman’s forehead and eyebrow. Her lip is cut open and swollen. Gina swallows hard, curbing her instinct to verbally admonish the man. “Put the knife down. Nobody’s in trouble here.” She lowers her weapon, reholstering it, her hands palms out at shoulder level, as a sign of good faith. “I’m only here to help. Talk to me. Put the knife down and talk to me.”

  The man hesitates, his facial expression flashes from desperation to helplessness. His eyes begin to water as he loosens his grip on the knife around the woman’s throat. “I didn’t. I didn’t mean to,” he whimpers.

  The front door to the house bursts open, startling the man. He tightens his grip, pulling the woman backwards, dragging her to the room behind him. “Liar!” he yells through clenched teeth, shutting the door.

  “Nice Gronkowski,” Gina growls, as he and his partner, Officer Torres enter the hallway.

  The sound of shattered glass echoes from behind the closed door. Detective Gronkowski plants his shoulder into the frame, forcing the lock. Gina pushes past him into the room. In front of her, jagged glass hangs from the window frame. To her left, the woman sits in a corner, her knees hugged to her chest rocking back and forth, holding pressure to her neck. Gina kneels in front of her, inspecting her wound.

  “Where’s my daughter?” the woman cries.

  “She’s safe. She’s with Officer Marks, out front. Everything’s going to be okay, ma’am.”

  Gronkowski catapults out the window in pursuit of the fleeing man.

  “Torres,” Gina beckons. Torres exchanges places with Gina, comforting the woman. “Call an ambulance. Stay with her.”

  Torres radios in, watching Gina successfully launch through the window pane, her feet plant firmly onto the concrete as her knees and lower back take the brunt of the impact. In a full sprint, it takes her a few seconds to catch up with Gronkowski.

  “Just can’t stand it, can you? Always have to be first,” Gronkowski says through labored breaths, maintaining a steady run. “Were you a middle child or something?”

  “It’s not about being first. I’m not a quitter. This was my call. I started it. I finish it. And, FYI, I was an only child.”

  “That figures,” he replies, accompanied by a cough, the cold air stinging as it makes its way forcefully in and out of his chest.

  “What’s the matter Gronkowski, riding patrol making the lungs soft?” She chuckles. Their pace matched stride for stride, their boots dig into the grass of neighboring backyards as they dodge clotheslines and swing sets.

  “Yeah, that’s it. It couldn’t be the two hours of Jiu-Jitsu training I had this morning.”

  “Jiu-Jitsu? Nobody told me.”

  “Don’t worry DeLuca. It’s not through the department. Kills you to think you might be missing out on something, huh?”

  “50 bucks...he goes for the fence,” Gina wagers, her words interrupted by her lungs requiring maximum oxygen intake at this rate.

  “You’re on. Makes more sense to take the alleyway.” Tony pauses, catching his breath. “We’ll catch him on the fence.”

  “Because criminals are always the sharpest tools in the shed.” Gina playfully thumps the back of her hand off Tony’s chest, inhaling and exhaling rapidly, before continuing, “See, there he goes.”

  “You gotta be kidding me,” Tony huffs at the sight, his labored breathing visible in the cool air. “The jackass is going for the fence.”

  “When opportunity knocks,” Gina says, kicking up her pace, outrunning Tony. She lunges forward, scaling the front of the fence, her hands making contact with the man’s T-shirt as he is straddling the fence, preparing to jump off the other side. Her hands are now tightly wound in the cotton fabric. “Open the door,” she continues, letting her weight fall back to the ground, the man coming with her. His back comes to rest in the cold, dead grass, creating a dull thud!

  “You had to do it, huh? Had to be the one to take him down,” Gronkowski mutters through strained breaths, as he turns the man over, his knee shoved into his back, forcing his hands behind him into cuffs.

  “Ow. Shit. Ow! My arms, man. You’re hurting my arms,” the man proclaims.

  “Don’t be a poor sport. You get to manhandle him,” Gina chimes in, her choppy reply matching the arduous rise and fall of her chest. She grabs her radio. “We got him. We’re at the 600-block of Worchester Ave.” Pocketing her radio, she continues with a grin, “You’re built for brawn. I’m built for speed. We might as well stick with what we’ve got.”

  Tony is roughly maneuvering the man to a sitting position against the fence. “This shit hurts!” the man yells into Tony’s face.

  Tony grabs him by the neck scolding him through clenched teeth, “And you think what you did to your girlfriend felt good? I ought to turn her loose on you, right here. Put a baseball bat in her hand and let her beat your sorry ass to a pulp.”

  “Tony,” Gina lays her hand on his back.

  Tony shoves the man backward, bouncing his head off the fence behind him.

  “You better be careful hotshot. I know my rights,” the man threatens.

  “Good. I guess I won’t have to read them to you, hotshot.” Tony turns to Gina. “Besides, I slowed down so you could keep up, speedy.”

  The sound of sirens wail as a police cruiser pulls up to their location. Gina and Tony bend on both sides of the man, pulling him to a standing position to be loaded in the car. "Denial...first step Gronkowski.” Gina shrugs her shoulders, a smirk across her lips, “Just staying.”

  Chapter 2

  EVENING. A WOMAN wheels her grocery cart to her car, exchanging pleasantries with a passerby. With one click of the car remote, her trunk gives way to its latch. She eyeballs her surroundings in front, to the sides, and in back prior to bending into the trunk, offloading her groceries to their temporary resting place. The coast is clear, leaving her to feel comfortable and safe. A conscientious citizen, she returns her grocery cart to its appropriate corral in the center of the parking lot, gets in her car and drives off. As she leaves the lights of town, she can’t help but feel unsettled in her gut, her innate instinct warming up. She searches in her mirrors, scanning the scene around her. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Oh stop it,” she coaches aloud. “Quit being a big scaredy-cat.” She smiles at herself into the rearview mirror, flicking the button on the radio.

  I always feel like, somebody’s watching me. The tune floods through her speakers.

  “Geez-us!” she exclaims, quickly hitting the scan button, tuning the dial to a different song. “Someone actually thought that was a good idea for a song? Creepy.”
/>
  When the working day is done, oh girls, they wanna have fu-un. Oh girls just wanna have fun. Cindy Lauper comes at her through the radio.

  “Now, that’s more like it.” She cranks the volume, shimmying around in her driver’s seat. “‘That’s all they really wa-a-a-ant. Is some fu-u-u-un. When the working day is done. Oh girls, they wanna have fu-un.’”

  “I like the last song better,” a voice sounds from the backseat.

  Her eyes dart to the rearview mirror. A man wearing a baseball cap and full beard sits directly behind her. She slams on the brakes. The car screeches all over the road. She wants to scream, but can’t.

  “There’s no need to cause a scene. Take your foot off the brake. Drive the speed limit. Now!” he demands, brandishing a .38-Special Revolver. He leans up over the seat, nuzzling the snub-nosed pistol into her hair directly behind her ear. The cold, hard steel causes the skin on her entire body to form goosebumps. She pulls the car back into the right-hand lane avoiding a collision with a pair of oncoming headlights, following his instruction. Her hands are visibly shaking as they maintain control of the steering wheel.

  The woman’s eyes flicker back and forth from the road to the man in the rearview mirror. Her mind races a mile a minute. Drive into a tree. Speed up. Cause attention to yourself. Do something!

  The man chuckles. “Don’t even think about doing something stupid. All that crap you women read about ‘fighting the good fight, don’t let him take you to a secluded area, make a scene.’ It’s bullshit. The only way you get out of this alive is do what I tell you. You got it?” He rams the revolver further into her skull behind her ear. “You got it!”

  She nods her head, holding back a sob.

  After a long, torturous drive, the car pulls up to a remote body of water. The man jumps out of the car, wrestling the woman out of the driver’s seat. “Help me! Please somebody help me!” she yells.

  “You can scream all you want to now, baby. Ain’t nobody around for miles.” He grabs a handful of her hair, pulling her in the direction of the water, wielding the pistol in his other hand. “I lied. All that shit they tell you women—turns out it is true. You should’ve made a scene when you had your chance.”

  “Why are you doing this!” the woman cries.

  “It’s the only thing you uptight sluts respond to.” He spins her around facing him, grabbing the collar of her blouse, he runs the barrel end of the pistol over the silk material covering her chest. She winces and pushes against him with the contact. “Night after night. Bar after bar. I tried buying you bitches drinks. Asking you out on dates. A guy gets tired of asking. Eventually, I started taking. Sorry baby, you’re not my first,” he jeers, forcing her hand to the front of his pants, stroking it over his zipper.

  Overcome with disgust and rage, the woman bangs her forehead into his face, causing him to release her shirt collar, instinctively tending to his bloody nose. She makes a run for the water. He fires the revolver in her direction. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! She falls to the sand lying on the outer edge of the lake. He makes his way to her, rolling her over onto her back. He scans her body for blood, bulletholes, something...without a trace.

  He straddles her, shaking her seemingly unconscious body, “Why’d you fall down? Are you hit? Goddammit!”

  She opens her eyes and lets out a deviously provoking chuckle. “You’re a horrible shot.”

  “You think it’s funny? I’m some kinda clown to you? Bitch!” He holds his revolver to her temple.

  “Click,” she exaggerates the sound of an empty gun with a smile. “Unless yours magically holds seven, you’re out of ammo Wyatt Earp.”

  He throws the gun into the sand, pulls her torso up off the ground by her blouse and slams his forehead into her face. She groans with the impact. “How’s that feel, funny girl? Not so funny is it!” He lets her head and upper body fall back into the sand.

  Her vision is temporarily inhibited by stars of the entoptic sort, surely a side-effect of her throbbing nose, from which blood begins to trickle. Her upper lip tingles at every contact point of the viscous substance. Ga-gung...ga-gung...ga-gung, her heartbeat quickens, gaining in strength as if it is supplying a body at least twice the size of hers. With each inhale, her back arches allowing her chest and ribcage the expansion needed to accommodate the massive amount of air her lungs suddenly seem to require. She opens her eyes, scared and startled, breathing laboriously through pursed lips, attempting to slow her rapid breathing rate. The look on the man’s face begins to match her own as his eyes make contact with hers, emerald green and sparkling. He tries to look away, she attempts to close her eyes, but the connection has been made. His visions are now hers. She sees the first woman he raped (a college freshman—he slipped Rohipnol in her drink, and left her on the front yard of her sorority house). And the last. He raped her right here on the sand. Held her head underwater, until she quit fighting.

  With the last image, the stare is released. They begin to grapple, exchanging positions of domination in the sand, their bodies encroaching on the water.

  “What kinda freak are you? You been to the Halloween store or something?” he teases through ragged breaths. The man holds her down, submerging her face under water, which splashes and bubbles as she struggles against him.

  His hands losing their grasp on her neck, he digs in with his fingernails, drawing blood. The first drop of the red sticky substance released to the air sends a jolt of adrenaline through her system, shocking in its effect. She lies still momentarily, her body absorbing the impact, then releasing with a surge of supernatural strength as she physically overpowers the man who easily outweighs her. Gasping for air as she comes up out of the water, she locks her legs around his back and neck forming a triangle hold. Her eyes flickering down over his.

  “Night after night. Guy after guy,” she begins, twisting his previous monologue. “I tried being nice. Asking you schleps to change your lives.” She tightens her thigh muscles further, causing his face to turn a bright red. “A girl gets tired of asking. Eventually, I started taking.” She releases her legs, pushing his head back into the water. His muffled protests stifled by bubbles. “Sorry baby, you’re not my first.”

  VANGUARD POLICE DEPARTMENT, early afternoon. Chief Robert Burns, a burly middle-aged man with a full head of thick, wavy, salt and pepper hair sits sorting through paperwork at his desk. Quite uncomfortable in his heavily starched uniform shirt his wife insists he wears, he has removed his tie, and released the top button after several near death experiences from contact of the tight fabric against his Adam’s Apple.

  He holds the call key down on his phone, “Bonnie, did you leave those files on my desk this morning? I can’t find the damn things.”

  “Sure did, Chief. Right-hand side, in front of your computer,” Bonnie’s pleasing and patient tone comes through the speaker.

  Frustrated, he continues shuffling through the files haphazardly. A knock sounds from the glass pane separating his office from the main corridor. Detectives DeLuca and Gronkowski poke their heads inside the door.

  He motions them in. “Bonnie…” he begins.

  “Be right there, Chief,” she interrupts.

  He hangs up the phone. “Well, if it isn’t my little regulators. You two mind telling me what the hell happened out there yesterday?”

  “It was my fault, sir,” Gina and Tony speak in unison.

  Bonnie enters the office. She is a page right out of Mad Men, redheaded and buxom, wearing a professional, yet formfitting blouse with a pencil skirt, fully in charge of her magnetic prowess. Tony, and Gina, cannot help but follow her with their eyes as she enters the room. Gina looks down at her bland navy blue uniform top, feeling uncharacteristically inferior at the moment. Without missing a beat, she reaches over and lightly taps Tony’s chin, firmly reconnecting the admirable gape to his jaw. The only person unaffected by her presence is Chief Burns, completely oblivious and happily married for the past twenty-five years.

  B
onnie rifles through the files on his desk. “If it were a snake, it would have bit you.” She smiles, pulling the file from the exact place she told him it resided. She sets a brown paper bag in front of him. “Mrs. Burns left this for you. She’s so sweet.”

  “Thanks Bonnie.”

  Bonnie nods her head, a gentle bow of duty. “Anything else, Chief?”

  “That’ll do it.”

  “Detectives,” she politely recognizes them upon her exit.

  “Bonnie,” Tony and Gina mumble, swiveling their necks in her direction like two awestruck teenagers. Gina subconsciously touches her hand to her hair, slicked back in a ponytail, as she watches Bonnie’s glorious wavy auburn crown bounce and flow with each step, reminiscent of a supermodel on the catwalk.

  “Ahem,” Chief Burns clears his throat, causing their necks to jerk back to him in attention. “Yesterday…what happened?”

  “I should’ve posted for backup until Detective DeLuca gave me her position,” Tony says.

  Chief Burns clumsily removes a hoagie from the brown paper bag. “It’s been a while since I went through the academy, but if I remember correctly, alpha team—Detective DeLuca—should’ve waited for backup before entering the building.”

  “She had it under control, until I showed up busting through the front door,” Tony defends.

  “I should’ve waited,” Gina speaks up.

  Part of the filling from the hoagie Chief Burns is desperately trying to direct to his mouth falls from the bun, dribbling down his shirt. “Dammit!”

  Gronkowski and DeLuca bite the insides of their lips, attempting not to smile or laugh.

  Chief wipes at the hoagie filling with a piece of paper from his desk. Gina leans forward pulling a napkin from the brown paper bag, handing it to him. He swipes it out of her hand agitatedly. “Thanks. You two are two of the best I’ve got. I can’t have you out in the street, tearing up the neighborhood. It’s bad press. I’ve got citizens complaining you ran through their backyards, tearing down their clotheslines. The flower shop on West Avenue, delivered a bill this morning for five hundred sixty-two-dollars and twenty-nine cents! And don’t think I didn’t notice the ding on the brand new squad car, DeLuca.” He slaps his hand down on his desk, then runs it through his hair frustratingly.