Violence

by Timothy McDougall

  Anderson tried an interior door in front of him but it held fast. Maybe that’s why Derek went up. All the way up. It must be that entry to the factory floors were barred at every level, by either locks or seals of some sort. At least the access door to the roof seemed to be open. This was crazy. It was four stories to the top. Should he let the police grab Derek? But then maybe Derek could find a way down another side and get away cleanly. A building this old, pre-code and non-fireproof originally, would have been retrofitted.

  Anderson noticed added sprinklers in the ceiling above him. His eye just registered that detail from the construction side of his brain. The fire commissioner would have also required, to conform to code, two legal exits from every floor, remote from each other, and that would include the roof. Should he try to find the other fire-escape? Could he get through? But then maybe Derek could come back down this way? The decision Anderson eventually made was actually processed in microseconds.

  Heart beating through his chest, Anderson started the climb. Every door was locked on the way up. Adrenaline carried him to the top fast.

  Anderson paused briefly again just short of the summit to weigh his options and catch his breath. He figured Derek had to be breathing heavy, too, lugging a leg wound and the duffel bag. And all Derek had was his muscle right now, unless he picked up a brick or piece of wood or a pipe. Anderson wondered if he should just stay here, gather himself and listen for another indication of Derek? No, it was better to make a move right away. Just go on instinct and prayer. Anderson got down to almost a kneeling position. He put a shoulder to the bulkhead door at the top of the staircase…

  …and rolled out on to the roof, two hands on the gun. He had expected to be immediately met by a kick or a punch from Derek. Something. But Anderson spun cleanly to a stop, eyes looking everywhere. He quickly got up, keeping low as he searched.

  Every protrusion looked like a human figure in some sort of position. There were the typical flues, standpipes, hose racks, vents and framings for skylights. His finger was twitching on the gun as he held it out, aiming it in every direction.

  Anderson spotted the large box-like structure housing the elevator machine room for some interior service lift. That was halfway across the roof. He also could see beyond that where the other bulkhead was located for the second fire escape access door. Could Derek have made it over there already? He’s most likely hiding around the corner of the larger structure housing the elevator machine room. Have to move fast. First check the other fire escape access door, and at least see if it’s open. If Derek figured out what it was, and went there straightaway, he just might have already gone through there.

  Anderson kept the gun extended in front of him, ready to shoot as he swung wide around the edge of the roof, using the protective two-foot high parapet wall to guide his steps. He also avoided most of the tripping hazards by using the roof border to make his run and kept some reaction space between himself and the elevator machine room. He scooted up quickly on the second fire escape bulkhead when he reached it, rounding the corner to check the door and immediately his arm was grabbed by Derek.

  Everyone inside of “Helicopter One” could see the muzzle flash from Anderson’s gun on the rooftop below with the unaided eye as the chopper pilot banked the craft in high over the factory roof. It was particularly easy to see the thermal images on the FLIR (Forward Looking Infra-Red) system of two men fighting in close quarters there, also. Crotty and Peterson knew who it was grappling way down there.

  Derek dropped the duffel bag and drove a forearm into Anderson’s face, slamming Anderson’s gun hand hard against the bulkhead, making the gun fall free from Anderson’s grip.

  Anderson punched Derek solidly in the jaw sending Derek reeling backwards close to the roof’s border. Derek recovered quickly, eyed the “Saturday night special” and started for it, but Anderson leapt on top of him, driving his elbow into Derek’s ribcage.

  A second CPD police chopper throttled back into a low speed orbit and hovered in a flanking position to Helicopter One over the factory rooftop. It trained its searchlight on the fighting figures of Anderson and Derek.

  “Chicago Police!” The co-pilot of the second helicopter announced over the chopper’s 700 Watt public address loudspeaker system. “Put your hands out to your sides, and lay down flat, face down on the rooftop!”

  Anderson and Derek ignored the command, continued their battle as the downdraft from the second helicopter’s rotor wash buffeted them. Anderson let loose with a flurry of punches into Derek’s side as Derek reached out for the gun again.

  Across the rooftop, Helicopter One’s pilot was working the vertical stabilizer fin on the tail rotor to keep the hovering craft steady as Crotty and Peterson exited the rear compartment and soon stepped off the end of an aerial ladder on to the roof. Crotty and Peterson drew their service pieces and, crouching low, headed off in opposite directions to circle around Anderson and Derek.

  At the roof’s edge, Anderson pinned Derek, hitting him with a series of blows that soon turned Derek’s head into a bloody mess. Anderson grabbed the “Saturday night special” and stuck it in Derek’s face.

  “Go ahead, fuckin’ do it!” Derek howled and spat in Anderson’s face. “DO IT!”

  Crotty crept up around to the elevator machine room and peered around a corner at Anderson and Derek.

  “Tell me you’re sorry!” Anderson raged. “I want to hear it!”

  “Sorry? No way! I’m not fuckin’ sorry!” Derek snarled contemptuously. “I raped your wife, and it felt good! That rich bitch trying to turn her fuckin’ nose up at me! She had to fuckin’ die for that, and I killed her! I put your own gun right under her smug face and blew her away! And I killed your fucking daughter, too!”

  What? Anderson’s eye’s filled with a hellish fire.

  Crotty heard all this. He was tempted to spring out on the pair but Derek wasn’t done talking.

  “That’s right! She wasn’t dead! She just hit her head! I pushed her in the water!” Derek continued to proclaim with a fiendish delight. “I drowned that little bitch and you know what… I don’t give a shit! So go ahead, fuckin’ shoot me! You’ll be doing me a favor!”

  Anderson’s finger twitched on the trigger. Thoughts of what might have been raced through his mind like a cruel review. Maybe he could have given Tristan some semblance of a life if she had survived. He would have worked every day to help her believe that life could be lived as a fairy tale, even if he didn’t believe it himself anymore. Karen had given him that magical existence for fifteen years even though he came from the dirt and was meant to return to it. But Tristan never deserved that. She deserved to live, to laugh, to love, and if she met sorrow to experience the heartache of loss that could be overcome. And Derek, in an instant, took her life away on a wicked whim. A thrill kill because he was angry that God or the devil hadn’t made him king. It wasn’t self-control that kept Anderson from killing Derek right now… it was Crotty suddenly stepping out from the shadows.

  “Noel, don’t do it!” Crotty barked as he held out his service piece, freezing Anderson momentarily. “Drop the gun, Noel, it’s not worth it!”

  Peterson moved up and crouched behind the cover of the first bulkhead. He cautiously looked across the roof at Crotty advancing on Anderson and Derek. Peterson decided to hold off for a moment to let his partner try to neutralize the tense situation. He didn’t need to start running up and complicate matters. As he waited, the fire escape door behind him started to open and suddenly Peterson was coldcocked by… Al Ward. Peterson crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

  Crotty leveled his service piece at Anderson and Derek as he slowly progressed up on them.

  “Drop the gun!” Crotty shouted the command at Anderson again.

  Anderson waited. For a moment more. Then reluctantly took his finger out of the trigger guard and slid his gun away across the slag floor of the roof. Anderson put his hands in the air and rose up off Derek.

  Crotty t
ook a step to collect Anderson’s gun, and was stopped in his tracks by a voice coming from behind him.

  “Not so fast!” Al Ward yelled, stepping up to the group with a firm two-hand hold on a Sig Sauer which he aimed at Crotty. “Drop it, Wayne, I mean it!”

  Crotty hesitated for a second, but he knew Ward was capable of killing, so he set his service piece compliantly down on the roof at his feet, and put his hands up passively.

  Derek carefully stood and, with false timidity, raised his hands, eyes darting between the “Saturday night special,” the duffel bag and Ward.

  Ward was on to him, though, and turned his Sig Sauer on Derek.

  “Al, what are you doing?” Anderson exclaimed, realizing what Ward was about to do. “This isn’t your fight!”

  “He’s going to pay for what he did!” Ward shouted, leveling the Sig Sauer on Derek and ignoring the intense glare coming from the helicopter searchlights that had set the whole rooftop aglow.

  A sharpshooter in the rear compartment of the second helicopter steadied his sniper rifle and put Ward squarely in the crosshairs on his bright-green illuminated telescopic sniper scope. It was becoming clear to those in the choppers that Ward had to be some sort of dangerous interloper considering that Detective Peterson was laying prone in Ward’s wake and they had seen on their infrared that it was Ward who had knocked him out.

  “Al, don’t do it! Let the authorities handle it now!” Anderson pleaded as he stepped towards Ward who instantly backed him off with a tense flick of his Sig Sauer.

  “They’ll let him out!” Ward bellowed angrily. “Or he’ll escape, or there’ll be a riot or an earthquake and he’ll be set free! He’ll live with hope even after he’s taken that away from everybody, and we’ll have to pay for the privilege to watch him! We know what he did! All of us! I’ll do the dirty work! Your hands are clean, but he’s not living another day!”

  Derek started for Anderson’s gun.

  Ward didn’t hesitate at all, and blasted off a trio of shots that hit Derek squarely in the chest.

  Derek was immediately thrown back by the impact and toppled over the edge of the low parapet wall at the edge of the roof. Derek grabbed and used both hands to cling tenuously to the rim of one of the decorative header stones atop the sloping coping wall portion of the parapet.

  Anderson quickly stepped over and took a grip of Derek’s wrists at the last second as Derek’s fingers slipped on the slick glazed terra cotta surface.

  Instantly, Ward was hit with a single shot in the shoulder from the sharpshooter’s rifle. Ward reeled, tripped over a vent protrusion, and crashed through a skylight, his body plummeting to the factory floor below where his spine was snapped in two over an old wooden workbench.

  Crotty rushed over, and looked down through the broken glass in the skylight opening. The illumination from the chopper searchlights above was enough to see that Ward was “dead right there.”

  Anderson tried to brace his hip against the parapet and keep his hold of Derek.

  Derek threw a glance at the 40 foot drop below his feet. He coughed blood and smirked, looked back up at Anderson.

  “’Sorry’?” Derek laughed, and then taunted Anderson with a malevolent deliberateness. “The only thing I’m sorry about is I didn’t fuck your daughter, too!”

  Anderson lost his grip.

  Derek fell, arms and legs flailing, landing hard atop a pile of cinderblocks.

  Anderson stared down impassively at Derek’s twisted and now lifeless form as the second helicopter’s searchlight hit Derek’s body and stayed on it to make sure there was no possible movement.

  * * *

  A Coast Guard chopper working Lake Michigan responded to a request to assist in a medical evacuation of Peterson from the factory roof. Peterson said he didn’t want to get in the rescue basket and go to the hospital to be examined but all hits to the head have to be checked out. It was a good sign that he was talking.

  There were a mass of cops milling around amid a multitude of flashing lights in the area now in front of the abandoned warehouse. Yellow police tape was strung everywhere. There were some red tape areas as well, mostly about the factory roof environs that even kept the patrol guys at bay. Fire trucks sat idling. A couple of news crews stood about their respective vans waiting to get information on what had happened.

  A lot of people were interested in what had transpired, especially those who didn’t have to deal directly with cleaning up the mess and filing the reports. For the detectives who did hold sway, if they could’ve rolled the bodies into another jurisdiction they would have done it. There were a lot of “fuck you, asshole” and “thanks a lot” looks thrown Crotty’s way. Some good-natured. Many not so genial. Crotty promised the other detectives whose area and district this all happened in that the pieces to solving this case would come together quickly. They were going to hold him to it. It would be a long night cleaning up this mess.

  They figured out pretty fast how Ward got there. Ward had been tracking Anderson and then Derek through a GPS beacon that was located in one of the plastic protective rail pads on the underside of the duffel bag. They found a pair of cell phones in Ward’s pocket and some ear buds which then lead them to quickly ascertain, through trace logs and SMS messages, that Ward was not only able to follow Anderson and Derek but was able to eavesdrop on their conversations as well. Ward, it seemed, knew exactly what had transpired between them as it actually happened (Ward had also planted a GPS tracker in Anderson’s Mercedes but that turned out to be useless when Anderson switched cars with Roman).

  Anderson, after he came down from the factory roof, refused a trip to the hospital. He just wanted to find Jeannie. Luckily, she wanted to find him, too and didn’t care about going to the hospital, either. He found her standing amidst the confusion. A policewoman was talking to her. The other cops around were throwing looks in Jeannie’s direction, trading wild theories about what happened. They tried to keep Jeannie and Anderson separated, at first, citing a desire to avoid witness contamination, but that wasn’t going to happen. Anderson and Jeannie hugged for a long moment at the rear of a police cruiser.

  Jeannie’s hair, even dirty, smelled like heaven. Like a good shampoo a woman would use. Karen’s hair always smelled that way. He didn’t know why it made such an impression at that moment, or had such meaning, but it did. It seemed to be an indication of the way out. The thought that stuck out the most in Anderson’s mind at that moment was that Jeannie was not going to pay for any of the things that had happened. Seeing her in the center of all those lights, she was the symbol of hope, something to fight for. Anderson suddenly felt himself as a rooted part of the earth again. If she let him he was going to live every day for her happiness. No more darkness. She would not live a life of despair if he could help it. Maybe they could find redemption together. This embrace was the start of their long road back.

  When she finally stopped crying, Jeannie kept telling Anderson how sorry she was, that she didn’t understand what he had been saying about an engagement ring over the cell phone. He told her not to worry about it, she did fine, and assured her that he would talk to her later about everything. They both finally agreed to be interviewed separately and gave witness statements of their “accounts” to local detectives to get it out of the way.

  Right now they were back together in a “safe area” set-up outside the police tape, waiting for Crotty to officially release them from having to remain at the scene. They clearly weren’t suspects in the deaths that occurred that evening. They were told the Expedition and the Impala were going to be impounded, at least until things were “sorted out” and there was a reconstruction of everything that happened that evening as well as in the entire previous 48 hours. Anderson and Jeannie were running on fumes now. Whether they were going to get a ride or have to get a cab, they just wanted to get out of there and get some sleep.

  For the two men who had the unenviable task to haul Ward’s remains, it took over twenty minutes for the
m to carry his body from the factory to the van for transport to the morgue. They had to stop several times to rest in their biohazard “bunny suits,” pushing up the respirators on their foreheads to breathe unrestricted. Derek’s removal was going to be even trickier and more arduous because of its location but no one was in a hurry, there were still too many issues. The Major Case guys were still trying to figure out just how to get back to Derek. They would have to cut through some barriers and needed more light to properly document the scene and no one wanted to step or fall on something sharp.

  Max Franks, the kid detective from Crotty’s station house, had hurried over to help Crotty after he heard what had happened to Peterson. Max was Crotty’s partner in the field now so to speak and was handling some of the routine, making sure they were copied on everything. Max broke away from talking with a local detective and an evidence technician who handled the recovery of Ward’s footwear (along with some other items of Ward’s that were scattered upon his impact with the factory floor).

  “He came right out of his shoes.” Max announced out loud as he approached Crotty who had been doing a million things and was just finishing up giving his own “version of events” in an interview. Crotty knew Ward had come out of his shoes. He was there. Crotty also knew Anderson could hear what Max just said because Anderson was even closer to Max than he was.

  Crotty was into his second wind. He had just experienced a big evening and a crazy last couple of days, but he knew he was past the crisis and he was out of that heavy uncomfortable bullet-proof vest, and that was a relief as well. That was why he wasn’t going to chastise Max right now and remind him about the importance of not disclosing case particulars outside of the investigative team because everybody is a suspect until proven otherwise.

  “You want me to ask these guys here to expedite a shoe impression…” Max asked, indicating the local detective and evidence tech who were logging in Ward’s items. “…add it to the list of those other donors we’re collecting?”