Roulette

by Don; Linda Pendleton

  A councilman put in, “Of course we are thinking toward the future, Chief.”

  “Fine, I’m glad to hear it. So am I. Let’s just not let go of the present while we do that.”

  “We could fund the fifteen new officers,” the CM stated off-handedly, “with your current overtime budget.”

  The chief shook his head in disagreement. “No you couldn’t, not without loss of efficiency. You’re getting maximum service for your dollar right now. The amount of paid overtime is cheap when you realize that it’s less than half the actual overtime put in by these people. You mentioned maximization of resources. That is exactly what overtime is. It means that every officer is stretched to his limit in providing police protection for this city. How many civilians on your payroll are regularly working sixty to seventy hours a week for fifty hours’ pay? I can answer that—not a one, not even the salaried executives—but sixty per-cent of this force does it as a matter of course.”

  The other councilman hastened to say, “No one is impugning the efficiency of your department, Chief, or the dedication of your officers. We want to help you, not hinder you. However, you mentioned ‘mandate’ and that is exactly what we are working under. It is the mandate of the electorate that we prepare this city for the pressures of the 21st century.”

  Walsh sent a hidden wink at Peter Storme as he replied, “We go a large way toward that goal, Councilman, by remaining prepared for the pressures of today. Why don’t you let me work out a timetable that is responsive to both concerns.”

  “We’ll have to have it by the end of the week,” said the CM. “Be aware in advance that the council would like to see a shakeup in your detective bureau.” He gazed directly at Storme as he continued, “The feeling is absolutely unanimous that a severe imbalance exists in your shift coverage.”

  Storme gazed directly back and ventured in where he did not belong but characteristically speaking for himself in the matter. “Then there is an absolute unanimous ignorance regarding detective routines, sir. You want maximization. That’s what you’re getting and you’re getting it damned cheap, like the chief said.”

  Walsh drily said, “Sergeant Storme, gentlemen, swing shift detectives,” as a perfunctory introduction which needed no elaboration.

  Indeed, Storme’s fame had preceded him. “Yes, we have the file on Sergeant Storme,” said the CM. He smiled that cold smile but kept it focused on the chief. “It would appear that he exercises an autonomous franchise in the department. That is one of the disturbing features that surfaced during our review.”

  “Not true, sir,” said Storme. “I report directly to Lieutenant Morgan who reports directly to Captain Helme who reports to the chief. That’s the chain of command. There is no autonomy.”

  “You pretty well set your own hours and assignments.”

  “No, sir. My shift is from 1430 hours to 2300 hours, Tuesday through Saturday, and my assignments are self-dictating by the situations requiring response on my shift. I can’t choose my assignments, sir; they choose me.”

  And so it went, through a long litany of complaints and responses in an inquisitional atmosphere, with Storme under scrutiny and holding his own but working against a stacked deck and aware of that fact. Except for the chief, the brass almost seemed to enjoy the exchange with the brash sergeant on the defensive, and of course it was a mixed bag for all these officers. Several of them were longtime and loyal friends of Storme, but for all of them the plans being advanced by the CM and the council must have been happy news indeed since it would mean promotions throughout the line and an expansive period for all their careers as well as for the department itself. It must have seemed insane to any of those men to resist such propitious winds of change. The chief himself, obviously Storme’s only advocate in the dispute, had as much to gain as anyone and seemed to be offering only token resistance, not arguing against change but only about its manner of implementation.

  The meeting lasted an hour and ended without any immediate decision regarding the fate of Peter Storme’s swing team, but all concerned knew that big changes lay just ahead.

  Jack Morgan, Storme’s immediate superior, took him by the arm just outside the chief’s office and steered him toward a quiet nook for some direct communication; told him, “You’re pissing up a rope, pal, but I do admire your style. Don’t know what you’re so lathered about, anyway. You’re blowing your goddam marriage, you know. I overheard some of that between you and Rebecca awhile ago. You ought to welcome this change as maybe the only thing that could keep the two of you together. Myself, I think you’re nuts. I wouldn’t be out prowling the streets in the dead of night on my own time with something like that waiting in my bed.”

  “Sure you wouldn’t,” replied Storme, “and I guess you wouldn’t have to, would you?”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “She’s under your eye enough, as it is. Isn’t the whole day shift enough for you? You have to take classes with her too?”

  “Hey, I don’t deserve that! And neither does Rebecca! Are you that big a jerk, to think…?”

  Storme showed his boss a smarting smile and replied, “Yeah, guess I am. I take it back. Sorry. She’s got me crazy, Jack.”

  “Well you’ve got her crazy too, if that’s any satisfaction. Spend more time with her. That’s all she wants.”

  “I guess we’ll see,” said Storme.

  “Quicker than you might think,” Morgan agreed with a knowing look. “I’d guess you’ll be working under Tom Petit this time next week.”

  “You know something I don’t? He’s moving over to Swing?”

  The reference was to another detective-lieutenant who had been working as a training and liaison officer for the department. Petit had been promoted to Lieutenant a year earlier. At one time he had worked under Storme as a rookie detective.

  “Chief has known about this plan all week, Pete. I heard him discussing Petit with Captain Helme this morning. I think, yeah, he’s the one they’ve tapped. Hey, he’s a good man. And it’s your own damned fault that he passed you by. You could have sat for that promotion.”

  “I don’t want the damned promotion, Jack. I just want my swing team.”

  “Well, dammit, it looks like you can’t have that any longer, pal. So what you gonna do? Sit down and cry, or sit for the next promotion? Take some classes, dammit. With your wife. Or she will pass you by.”

  Morgan showed his longtime friend a significant grimace and walked away.

  It was not exactly a novel idea for Storme, the prospect of his wife outranking him one day. What the hell—she was smart, she was capable, and she was ambitious. She would probably fill the next opening for Sergeant, which could be sooner than anyone would have expected before all this talk of “expansion” began. So what the hell anyway? The marriage itself would probably not last to see that day.

  The “winds of change,” sure.

  And Peter Storme knew that he was already being swept away by them.

  Chapter Five

  Whatever the future may hold for the San Remo Police Department, it was business as usual that evening for Sgt. Storme’s swing team.

  An early stakeout in the industrial park netted an escaped felon who had been reported in the area and thought to be employed at one of the warehouses.

  Later they rolled on two armed robberies less than an hour apart, one at a liquor store and another at a fast-foods restaurant, and participated in a high-speed chase to catch the three men suspected of both crimes.

  At nine o’clock Storme and Rodriguez encountered two visiting hookers working from a van in the parking lot of a shopping mall. This was “small shit” to Storme, not worth the booking and reporting time an arrest would require, so the swing dicks merely escorted the ladies to the nearest freeway on-ramp, politely but firmly sending them back to L.A. where they belonged.

  At a few minutes past ten o’clock, all three responded to a report of shots fired at one of the local trouble spots, a tavern at the ed
ge of town. An ejected patron had returned with a gun and shot up the place. Nobody was hurt, but the man was barricaded inside when the swing team arrived. Storme went in and talked the disturbed man into surrendering his weapon, a double-barreled shotgun, without further incident.

  To that point, it had been a more or less routine shift. Part of the routine, of course, involved the writing of detailed reports, an onerous and time-consuming task. While Barton and Rodriguez worked on those, Storme made a rolling surveillance of several suspected crack houses in “old town,” interviewed a hit-run victim at the hospital, and met with a pet informer who always had street gossip to divulge and sometimes something interesting enough to sell. In this instance, Storme was particularly interested in what the streets might know about the rape in Woody Heights but he drew a total blank there.

  He closed out his shift at precisely 11:30 P.M. and tagged his partners for any after hours on-call responses. Storme had off-duty personal plans and did not wish to be disturbed for the rest of the night.

  It had been his intention to stop at an all-night convenience store and pick up a bottle of Rebecca’s favorite wine, also some flowers if they had any left, and to be home before midnight. Rebecca should have been home from her evening class by eleven o’clock, if she’d gone straight home. He had resisted an impulse to call and check on that, feeling that she might take it wrong, and he had no wish to increase the tensions between them. He just wanted to go home feeling halfway good and try to get his marriage back on track.

  But it was not to be, and Sgt. Storme probably knew that at some level of awareness the moment he pulled into the parking lot at the convenience store. It was a corner lot, with access from both streets at the intersection, parking for twelve cars.

  Two were parked directly at the front of the store, another was at the rear of the lot. Convenient parking was still available, yet a fourth vehicle, with lights on and engine idling, stood in the drive directly blocking the two cars that were parked at the front of the store. An agitated teen-age girl was at the wheel and the passenger door stood open.

  The scene inside the store confirmed Storme’s initial quiver. Two male patrons stood stiffly near the beer cases, gazes fixed on the activities at the front of the store. A young male was at the checkout. The cashier—52-year-old Eileen Triesta, whom Storme knew from his regular patronage—was fumbling at the cash register and obviously very frightened.

  All this came to Storme in a single glance as he rolled on beyond the idling vehicle and pulled across broadside to block the exit.

  The girl was on her horn immediately and revving the engine in instant panic.

  Storme exited his vehicle and hit the ground running with pistol ready at precisely the same moment that the youth ran from the store, also with gun in hand. The off-duty detective slid to firing stance and loudly commanded the other to drop his gun, and it seemed for one of those impossibly stretched moments that the boy was going to comply.

  He was frozen at mid-stride, obviously very scared—eyes flaring and mouth working silently—and Storme’s experienced sensing of the situation was that the kid was going to surrender. But then the girl screamed something at him from the waiting car. The youth spun on Storme and fired.

  Sgt. Storme fired back, of course. It was pure reflex, just a soft little squeeze into the grips the way all his trained instincts demanded, and the boy went down…hard.

  Storme knew without even checking that the kid was dead, but he followed the protocol to immediately secure the situation, tore the gun from a frozen hand and slapped on the cuffs, then closed on the girl.

  She was in total panic and backing wildly when her car slammed broadside into another vehicle that was turning in from the street. The impact threw the girl through the open door on the passenger side and beneath the front wheels of the other car.

  So there were two kids down, and a long night was in store for Sgt. Storme. He had shot and killed a juvenile following an armed robbery of something less than one hundred dollars, and a 16-year-old female accomplice required emergency transport for treatment of serious injuries.

  Routine police work, one might think—at most, an unfortunate incident which could involve most any policeman at most any time.

  But it was not routine for Peter Storme. With fourteen years on the job, this was his first fatal shooting. Even if it had involved a hardened and vicious criminal, it was not the sort of experience to send one home feeling halfway good.

  Storme did not go home that night.

  An incident of this nature would call out all of his superiors from the chief down, and it was going to be a long night indeed.

  Rebecca did go straight home that night, but she gave up on Pete at 12:30 and went to bed feeling even more strongly that her marriage had become a mere technicality even though she also had suddenly acquired some understanding of the moving forces in her husband’s life. That understanding had come, as most do, through her own exposure to similar forces.

  She could not get the Woody Heights rape out of her head. It had bugged her all day, and even kept intruding on her forensics studies that evening to the point that she had taken few notes and could remember little that had been said during the class.

  So Rebecca could understand, yes, how a case could get under a policeman’s skin and exert a disturbing influence on the personal life. This was the first real hardball case she’d been involved with since she’d been a detective. Pete was routinely working three or four such cases a week—sometimes in a single shift—so, yes, she was beginning to understand a little of what her husband was dealing with. Still, that did little to comfort the growing feeling that their marriage had absolutely no place in Pete’s list of priorities.

  Rebecca went to sleep angry—at her husband, herself, the seemingly irreconcilable conflicts between career and marriage, and the usual fate of women in a world built by men and for men.

  She’d set the alarm for five o’clock, an hour earlier than usual, because she’d decided that she needed a dawn look at Woody Heights.

  Pete was still not home when the alarm awakened her. That was not too unusual, but this time it served to reawaken her anger and further the resolve to have it out with that guy and let the chips fall where they would. Did he want to be married, or not? If married, then it was time to get on the stick. If not, then it was not an uncorrectable mistake and she was ready for that, too.

  She reached the neighborhood where the rapist had struck at a few minutes after six. It was not exactly a swank district—not Beverly Hills swank—but certainly the next best thing and by far the nicest part of San Remo. The area was hilly, with plenty of trees and exotic vegetation, the streets winding about the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains with frequent cul-de-sacs in the near-chaotic maze, a single thoroughfare running north-south connecting the area to the rest of the city.

  It was still dark enough that the automated street lamps remained lighted but muted by the morning mists that are a characteristic at that time of year. Here and there Rebecca could see the scattered glow of house lights, also muffled by the mists, and an occasional moving vehicle.

  But it was very quiet up there at that hour, and she was feeling totally isolated from other human presence, other-worldly, as her car crept along the winding streets. Once she instinctively pulled her purse closer to her on the seat of the car to feel the comforting outline of her revolver then sheepishly pushed it away as she realized what she was doing.

  She consciously dealt with the feeling and decided that she was not actually afraid of anything that might be out there in that gloom. This was a very nice neighborhood, after all, and very nice people lived here. Young, successful people with young children, living the American dream. No werewolves, no demons. It would be something to plan for and work toward, a home in Woody Heights. She was just feeling…creepy. Yesterday morning at this time she would not have felt that way. Envious maybe, but not creepy.

  And she decided that she was feeling creep
y with good reason. A psychopath could be out there somewhere in those mists, at that very moment, stalking the American dream.

  Stalking was the right word, yes.

  And preying. Yes, that was it. A sensing of prey, that was what Rebecca was feeling.

  It had not been a lucky stroke by the rapist that he picked the very moment when Helen Carter would be most vulnerable to attack.

  The bastard had known exactly what he was doing.

  The victim had described him as self-confident, sure of himself. Call it cocky, and understand why. Cocky because he had picked his victim and his moment well and knew that he had the territory to himself.

  As she crept along the quiet streets, Rebecca felt herself entering that psychotic mind and thinking as it thought—and suddenly she knew exactly what she was looking for. She was looking for stirrings.

  She moved a clipboard beside her on the seat and began jotting down the addresses of those homes displaying interior lights. There were not many, just an occasional glow here and there, and she knew that she was onto something.

  At six-fifteen she passed an elderly couple walking their dog along the sidewalk two blocks over from the Carter house. She stopped and went back to speak to them. The couple were interested and cooperative when she identified herself but had no useful information except to say that they walked every morning at that same time, that they could not recall seeing anyone out in a jogging suit during those walks, and that they’d noticed nothing unusual in the neighborhood on the preceding morning.