15 Seconds

by Andrew Gross

  My blood was simmering, and I could feel myself growing more and more angry at how the whole thing had gone down.

  That’s when I saw an old-model blue sedan, a Ford or a Mercury or something—I wasn’t the best at those kinds of things, and nor was I really paying attention—pull up next to Martinez’s patrol car.

  Yeah, that’s what I’m sure it was, I said to myself—a cover. To give him some justification for what he did, yanking me out of my car. There probably never was any other person or woman in any car. In fact—

  Suddenly I heard a loud pop coming from behind me. Like a whip snapping.

  Then another.

  I spun around and saw the blue sedan pull into a frenetic U-turn, screeching away from Martinez’s car.

  Everything was scarily still. Just this total absence of movement or sound. Including my own heartbeat.

  What just happened?

  I looked in my mirror as horror began to grip me. Martinez was slumped forward against the wheel.

  Oh shit, Henry . . . I leaped out of my car, this time no one barking at me to remain inside, and hurried back to Martinez.

  His police light was still flashing and the driver’s-side window was down. Martinez was pitched forward, his forehead against the wheel. The warning pad was still in his lap. There was a dark, dime-size hole on the side of his head, a trickle of blood oozing.

  I found a second wound, a blotch of matting blood, near the back of his skull.

  He wasn’t moving.

  “No, no, no,” I shouted. How could this be . . . ?

  My heart surged into fifth gear. I ripped open the door and did a frantic check for a pulse or any sign of life. There was none. Martinez must have been dead when his head hit the wheel. I let him fall back. There was nothing I could do. Except take a step back from his car in disbelief.

  He’d been killed directly in front of me.

  My head whipped around and I realized that the blue sedan, which had made a sharp right onto Lakeview, was speeding away. In front of us there was this blind curve, other cars finally driving by, stopping at the light across from me. Some drivers appeared to glance over, watching me coming out of Martinez’s car. Maybe seeing the body slumped there. Probably not sure at all what had just happened.

  But they damn well would be soon.

  I had to do something. I’d just seen a cop being killed. And I’d seen who had done it! At least, I’d seen the car he was driving. I bolted back to my car and grabbed my cell, frantically punching in 911.

  Then I stopped.

  A tremor of hesitation wound through me. What was I going to say? That an unidentified blue car carrying the person who had done this was speeding away? Half the police force in Jacksonville had just seen me in the back of Martinez’s car. In cuffs. Almost carted off to jail. All those incriminating questions hurled at me . . .

  Not to mention, all these people driving by now. Seeing me come out of Martinez’s car.

  Away from his body.

  The body of the policeman who had tried to arrest me!

  My hesitation escalated into outright panic as I realized just what they were all going to realize.

  The whole fucking world was going to think it was me.

  Chapter Three

  Okay, think, Henry . . . Think! I knew I hadn’t done anything. But I’d just seen a cop executed. And now the killer was speeding away. I was the only one who could identify him. And at the same time, exonerate me!

  What was I supposed to do, just sit here until the cops came back again and automatically assumed it was me?

  I didn’t think on it a second more. I thrust the ignition on and swung the Caddie into a U-ey, then pulled up to the light on Lakeview. All I remembered was that the killer’s car was blue. I hadn’t been able to determine the make. Or a plate number. I had noticed that the plate wasn’t from Florida, but more like an off-white ground with blue numbers . . . And as I hit Lakeview, pushing my way to the light, a couple of letters on the plate came back to me—AMD, or ADV . . . I tried to recall. Or was it ADJ? And I thought I’d seen a four somewhere . . .

  But something did come back to me with certainty as I took off after it. A kind of insignia. A dragon maybe—red, with a long tail. Or a winged bird of some kind. That might make it easier to find.

  I swung a right onto Lakeview at the first break in traffic. I hit the gas, weaving in and out of cars, pulling ahead of as many as I could. The guy had a minute or so on me. But there were tons of lights. And traffic. So he couldn’t just take off crazily and risk being stopped. For all I knew he could have turned off onto a side street by now. Or pulled into a strip mall and switched cars. I fixed on that plate and that image I had seen. And looked out for the police. They’d tossed me in cuffs for a meaningless traffic violation. What would they do to me now if they thought I’d killed a cop?

  I knew I had to call it in. Only a couple of minutes had gone by, and the police probably didn’t even know what happened yet. I reached for my phone and punched in 911, still no sight of the car. After a few seconds, a female operator came on. “Emergency . . .”

  “I’ve just witnessed a murder!” I shouted. I placed my phone on speaker. “A policeman! In his vehicle. On . . .” Suddenly I realized I didn’t even know the name of the street Martinez had had me pull onto. “Christ,” I said, stammering, “I don’t know the street. It was off Lakeview. Near Bay Shore Springs Drive . . .”

  “Sir, you say the victim was a policeman?” the operator replied, her voice responding to what she’d heard. “In his patrol car? I’m going to need your name. And the location you’re calling from. Are you still at the scene? Are you able to give us the patrol car’s number?”

  “No, no.” I wasn’t sure what I should say. “I’m driving on Lakeview. The person who did it took off in a blue sedan. I’m chasing him now!”

  “Sir, I am going to ask you to please pull over and go back to the scene,” the operator instructed me with urgency.

  Damn. I had to stop at a light. I pushed myself up and tried to see over the tops of the stopped cars.

  Nothing. The son of a bitch was getting away! I tried to concentrate on what I’d seen on the plate. A dragon or a snake, or a winged bird. Red, I was thinking. Yes, it was red. All I knew for sure was that the plate definitely wasn’t from Florida. But I couldn’t completely visualize it. Everything had happened so quickly.

  “Sir, I’m going to need you to return to the scene of the crime,” the 911 operator said to me again. “And I’m going to need your name.”

  The light changed. I drove on. My name . . . ? I was about to give it, the accelerator pressed to the floor, doing sixty on a crowded, suburban street. Seventy. “It’s . . .”

  Then I stopped.

  A few lengths in front of me was a blue sedan that looked like the one I saw, and it was weaving in and out of traffic. “Hold it!” I said, as if I’d been jolted by EKG paddles. “This may be him!”

  “Sir, I don’t need you to be a hero . . .” the dispatcher shouted at me. “Just give us some identifying characteristics. We’ll take care of it from there.”

  Hero . . . ? I wasn’t trying to be a hero. I was trying to do what was right and at the same time save my own skin! Go back to the scene? Without a plate number or some identifying characteristics. I knew I’d have one helluva time explaining myself back there.

  I was forced to stop at another light. But so was the blue car, which was approximately ten cars ahead of me. I saw a road sign for I-10, one of the main highways, straight ahead! That’s likely where he was heading. That’s where I’d be heading! The light changed, and the blue car drove on ahead. I leaned and caught a quick enough glimpse of the plate before it was blocked, and again I noticed the light ground, just like I’d seen.

  “Sir . . .”

  I knew I’d lose the guy for good with the dispatcher continuing to bark at me. I waited a few agonizing seconds for the cars in front of me to move, every nerve in my body bristling with electr
icity and urgency.

  Then I just said, The hell with it, Henry. Let’s go!

  I swung into the turn lane and sped up to the intersection, and went right through the light. I was already in up to my eyeballs anyway!

  “The guy is in a blue sedan heading down Lakeview toward the entrance to I-10!” I shouted into the phone. Which caused the dispatcher to warn me to stop for a third time.

  I ignored her. I spotted the car again—maybe ten or twelve vehicles in front. I kept speeding up, dodging ahead of other vehicles in front of me, making up ground.

  Eight cars now.

  Then, to my astonishment, I spotted another blue car! This one was one or two in front of the one I was chasing.

  Which was the right one?

  Neither had in-state plates, but the second one—the one in front—did have something else on the back plate, and as I squinted in the sun, I saw it began with an A! I pressed on the gas. The speedometer climbed to seventy. Now I was only a handful of cars behind them. Five or six. We were rapidly approaching the highway. I yelled to the 911 dispatcher, “There’s a second car!”

  If one of them got on the highway and the other remained on Lakeview, I’d have to make a choice.

  The first car I had spotted put on its blinker and began to veer toward the highway, picking up speed. I couldn’t make out the plates, other than an AD or maybe a J or something . . . I couldn’t see part of the plate. The second car stayed on Lakeview. And it had that thing on the plate.

  I had to make a choice.

  I yelled to the operator, “One of them is veering onto I-10. West. The other is staying on Lakeview . . . I’m staying,” I told her.

  The first car veered onto the ramp, heading onto the highway. I went past it, underneath the overpass, praying that wasn’t Martinez’s killer getting away.

  I hit the accelerator, pulling myself closer to the second blue car. It had light-ground plates, just like the one at the scene. I started to make out the number. AB4 . . . I didn’t know. That could have been it.

  And some kind of image too . . .

  I sped up, inching closer, until I could finally make out the plate number in full. AB4-699.

  It was from Tennessee. And the image I saw . . . It was a U.S. Army medallion.

  And there was a sticker on the back window. Honk if you support our troops.

  Could that be it?

  As I pulled up even, I saw a woman behind the wheel. And a kid in the back. In a kiddie seat. The one thing I was sure of was that the person driving the murder car was a man! I drove alongside of her, staring in futility and frustration. The woman leered back at me like I was some kind of nutcase and changed lanes.

  “Fuck!” I slammed my palm against the steering wheel. The killer was heading away on I-10. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck fuck!

  All of a sudden reality sank back into me. I had to go back to the scene and tell the police what I knew. I had to face a bunch of pissed-off, angry cops who might well slam me onto the ground and slap the cuffs on me again.

  “I need your name, sir!” the 911 operator kept insisting.

  Would they buy for one second what I’d been saying? That I was chasing after a blue car. The killer’s car. With nothing concrete to identify it. These same cops who had just seen me in cuffs, in the back of Martinez’s car. Having argued with the very policeman who was now dead! And taken off from the scene!

  “You have to find the car,” I said to the operator. “It’s heading west on I-10. It’s a blue sedan. Out-of-state plates. I think the first letters were AMD . . . Some kind of image on it, a dragon or winged bird. I’m heading back to the scene. Someone has to have spotted it.”

  I hung up and began retracing my route along Lakeview, nervously going over what I was about to face. Up ahead, it appeared as if traffic was being diverted off the main road. By now they’d probably found Martinez’s car. They all knew who I was anyway and what car I was driving. I’d have some explaining to do. How I didn’t kill Martinez. Why I’d run from the scene.

  I decided to give myself up to the first policeman I saw.

  About a mile from the scene, police cars had blocked Lakeview and were pushing traffic onto a side street. I knew I’d need a lawyer. A good one. A criminal attorney. As I inched closer to the cops, to my impending capture, I started going over in my head who I could call. I inched to about eight car lengths away, and spotted two navy-clad patrolmen waving cars away.

  My eyes stretched wide.

  One of them was that asshole. Rowley. Baldy. The one who just winked at me maliciously and said, “Just never let me catch you again!”

  He’d wanted to rip me a new one over nothing more than a traffic violation. Now one of his own had been murdered.

  He was the last person on earth I wanted to hand myself over to!

  I thought about pulling out of my lane and finding someone else. But there wasn’t anyone. Not here. The line of cars kept creeping forward. I had no choice but to inch closer, or draw attention to myself. The kind of attention I didn’t need right now.

  Suddenly Rowley looked up and scanned down the line of cars, and to my dismay, his eyes seemed to lock like a magnet on the sight of my white Caddie.

  Then they fixed directly on me.

  Every cell in my body froze. I put my hands up where he could see them. I didn’t know what else to do.

  Then I watched as the sonovabitch shouted something to his partner and reached for his gun.

  To my horror, he started running up the line of cars toward me.

  I started yelling, “No, it wasn’t me! It wasn’t me!” And he was shouting something back, “Out of the car! Out of the car!”

  Oh, shit!

  And then he aimed!

  My heart almost clawed its way up my throat as I vividly recalled what he had warned me of if our paths ever crossed again. A warning bell inside me rang: Henry, you have to get the hell away from this guy! Now!

  I jerked on the wheel and forced the Caddie out of my lane.

  I turned around and saw Rowley’s weapon aimed directly at me! He’s going to shoot, Henry! My heart clawed its way up my throat. No way I could simply make myself a sitting duck for him.

  I hit the gas.

  Suddenly the front windshield exploded, glass raining all over me. He was shooting!

  Oh my God!

  “No, no,” I yelled back in horror. “It wasn’t me!”

  I whipped my head back and saw Rowley again, this time in a shooter’s position, two hands on his weapon, steadying, eyes trained directly at me.

  He’s going to kill me! I screamed to myself.

  I floored the accelerator, the Caddie screeching into the oncoming lane, as another shot crashed through the side window, shattering it, narrowly missing my head.

  “How the hell is this happening?” I screamed in the car. “It’s not me!”

  I spun a U-ey, jolting up onto the pavement and hitting a street sign, ducking my head as low as I could, and sped off in the opposite direction on Lakeview as two more shots slammed into my chassis, clanging off the rear.

  I didn’t know if I was making the biggest mistake of my life, but I was sure that if I didn’t get out of there, I’d be dead.

  I cut a sharp right onto the first cross street I encountered, and then an even quicker left onto a residential lane. I floored it again and for the first time checked behind me.

  No one was there.

  Chapter Four

  At the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, on Adams Street downtown, it was Carrie Holmes’s first day back on the job.

  She knew it wasn’t going to be an easy one. It had been four months, the four toughest months of her life, since that day. The day her world had fallen apart. But she knew she had to get back into the world. Back to the person she was before . . . Before “the day my heart died too,” as she always referred to it.

  Take a deep breath, she told herself, stepping off the elevator onto the detectives’ floor.

  Life
starts over—now.

  Carrie worked for the JSO. Community Outreach Director, her business card read. A glorified way of saying she took care of matters in which the department’s duty interacted with the public, building goodwill in the parts of town where the department didn’t have much. Softening the outrage after an incident in which excessive force was used, or worse, an officer-involved shooting. Overseeing police-sponsored community events. A new chief had been appointed since she’d been gone. Erman Hall. More of a numbers guy who was given a mandate on issues like the tough immigration law and budget control. She’d heard that everyone was trying to curry favor with him.

  Truth was, Carrie was kind of surprised she hadn’t already received her “pink slip” in the mail. Let’s just say “community outreach” wasn’t exactly a priority in a time when cops were being pulled off the street and station houses closed. She’d always expected she’d become a detective herself—her dad had been a chief in New Hampshire for twenty-four years and her older brother, Jack, was a supervisor with the FBI in Atlanta. With a master’s in criminology from the University of Florida, she’d always thought that was the path she would take, but with Rick on duty overseas, and then starting up his law practice, and then Raef, she took the job that opened—in Administration—and it just kind of stuck. The brains of the family, her dad always said, and the looks!

  Not that any of that really mattered now. Brains, looks, but nothing had prepared her for what had hit her. Nothing could.

  To lose your husband and your son . . . Well, almost your son . . .

  And on the very same day.

  Now it was time to start over.