Thief of Souls

by Ann Benson

A slew of cops.

  Debris and dust were flying everywhere. I looked all around, in slow motion. A uniformed officer was down about thirty feet inside the line.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus, look at that. . . .”

  He lay on his stomach in a spreading pool of his own blood. One arm was outstretched and twitching. His gun lay about three feet from the clutching fingers, which grasped futilely in that direction. A crouching EMT worked his way under the line and tried to advance toward the prone cop, but before he’d gone ten feet, a shot ricocheted off the pavement only a few inches away from him. Every time a different EMT or cop tried to get there, the same would happen. But they were never hit, just warned off.

  “He has to be trying to miss,” Spence said from behind the open door of our unit.

  Once again, an EMT crouched downward and set out toward the prone cop. This time the shot was fired directly at the equipment mounted on top of one of the news vans. Metal shards splattered all over the place, hitting people within close proximity. Everyone ran for deeper cover.

  “Well, I guess we know he’s not a bad shot,” I said.

  It was a dream, a nightmare, a mindscape—there was no sense of reality. But logic broke through the madness, and a stunning realization came to me.

  I rose up slowly and holstered my gun in plain sight, then approached the yellow tape.

  Spence reached out and tried to grab me, but I was already beyond his grasp. I heard Escobar calling my name, telling me to get down. Calmly, I turned and said, “He’s not going to shoot me. He’s trying to draw me out.”

  In unison, they shouted their protests. I made out the words nuts and crazy and the phrase sure about that. Still calm, I answered their concerns. “He wants me to come inside. He’s not going to shoot me before I do that.”

  Step by step I approached my fallen comrade. When I reached him I rolled him over onto his side; he gave me what help he could by shoving himself upward with one hand.

  “What about your back and neck?” I screamed over the chopper blades.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Then I’m going to drag you out of here. Help if you can, but I can do it without your help if you can’t.”

  He smiled weakly and nodded. I rolled him fully onto his back and grabbed hold of him under the arms. I grunted and pulled, he groaned and shoved with his feet. A trail of blood marked the path of our excruciating crawl to the yellow line. When we were within a few feet, I let go and rushed around to place myself between him and the studio building. Two other cops and two EMTs came out; together they lifted the bleeding young man into the dark safety of the shadows. In a matter of only a few seconds the ambulance flashed off in a haze of red.

  Spence and Escobar were all over me. “What the hell are you thinking don’t you ever pull a stunt like that again they’ll yank your shield for this . . .”

  But they were wrong, and I knew it. I was a free woman, at long last. My biggest professional danger now was that I might be late for the parade they would hold in my honor. I had bought my professional liberty with an act of valor that was probably being broadcast live throughout the world.

  A profound sense of lightness accompanied the understanding that this one moment would define the rest of my life, if there happened to be a rest of my life. I thought about my children; how they would do without me, if it should come to that. They had aunts, grandmothers, cousins who would step in and care for them, and an adoring father.

  Jeff’s father, I realized, had not yet been told of this. I hoped he was still at the division, insulated from this.

  I looked at Spence. Confusion, worry, and agonized concern were all over his face. He had never seen me behave like this before. It must have surprised him to hear me say, “Have someone call Jeff’s father and get him nearby. Not here; he’ll be too much of a distraction. But he should be available when we bring Jeff out.”

  “Why don’t you go back and get him, Lany? We’ll take care of this from here.”

  I gave my comrade a sad but grateful smile. “Nice try,” I said. “This is my show, and you know it.”

  “Lany, don’t. Please don’t.”

  I stepped forward into the open, floodlit parking area that surrounded the studio of Angel Films. I paralleled the blood smear as I approached the building. As I stepped inside the door, I looked back briefly; Spence and Escobar were heading in my direction by the same route. Two shots rang out; neither hit. Soon they were by my side inside the reception area.

  “Did you send someone like I asked?” It was all I could think to say.

  “Yeah,” Spence said. His voice was barely audible.

  “Thanks.” I patted him on the shoulder. I smiled at Escobar. “You guys are the best.”

  For three seconds we sniffed and wiped.

  “Okay, let’s go do God’s work.”

  The door into the main studio area was open just enough for us to see that it wasn’t secured—I guess Durand thought it would be easier for us just to simply walk in there instead of having to shoot the lock out. That’s really a movie thing, anyway—if you shoot out a lock in real life, you end up in a bloody mess of metal shards and splinters, and more often than not the lock holds anyway.

  The reception area was deserted, but there was one small lamp glowing on one of the desks; it gave off just enough light for us to make our way across the room without tripping on anything. There were boxes all over the floor, as if it were moving day. We worked our way to the main door and stood on either side of it to listen for a moment. The sirens, radios, and chopper blades could barely be heard in here because of the sound-stage insulation. I put my ear against the wall, which my comrades repeated in kind. We all listened intently.

  I heard thin whimpering—maybe Jeff. And then that girlish voice of Durand’s: Quiet, Evan, your mother will be here any second now to save you, so there’s nothing to be afraid of. Everything will all be over soon.

  He’d said Evan. Not Jeff. But how would he know, unless he’d specifically seen me with him? When they went to the exhibit, both Kevin and Jeff’s father were there, and everyone had clowned with everyone else. How could he have known?

  “Very sloppy, Wilbur,” I whispered.

  I lost my religion a long time ago, but I prayed more sincerely than I ever have in my life. Not for this to be over, not for this never to have happened, both of which would have been considered reasonable pleas by even the cruelest and most jealous god. Not for absolution from my sins or for another chance to be the perfect cop; there wasn’t enough time for either of those wishes to be fulfilled.

  I prayed instead for aim, for the missiles that barreled out of the nose of my gun to hit Wilbur Durand in the heart and the forehead and the kidney and the liver until his light went out forever. I filled my lungs with air, then signaled to Spence and Escobar that I was going in.

  Again I kicked the open door aside: I wanted both hands on the gun. There was a large wood crate just inside the door; I stepped into its lee and took a quick look around. The lights were incredibly bright and it took my eyes a minute to focus after the low light in the outer area—no doubt part of Durand’s plan.

  When my vision finally adjusted, I thought I was seeing triple: Three Jeffs were tied up, each to individual posts on the other side of the room in a sort of semicircle. All three had blood on their bellies with protruding entrails—dear God, entrails. I couldn’t tell if it was real or fake.

  And I couldn’t tell which one of the boys was really Jeff. With Evan, I would have known. But this was not Evan, despite what Wilbur believed.

  Wilbur Durand stood opposite the three, behind a camera. He was almost laughing. He saw my confusion and said, “I did pretty well, didn’t I, Detective Dunbar.”

  I ignored him and tried to listen to the boys’ moans, thinking that maybe the voice would give the real one away. But without the familiar cadence of his words, it was impossible. As I listened, I began to hear the sounds of more people arriving inside the building.
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  “Stay out,” I yelled back. “Don’t interfere.”

  “Good call,” Durand said. That nasty little voice of his made me cringe. It sounded as though he had electronically altered it for the occasion.

  “Did you like the little exhibit I left for you at my home, Detective?”

  “I didn’t stay long enough to take a real good look at it.”

  “Pity. It was a nice piece of work, if I do say so myself. One of my better efforts.”

  “I guess. You had me fooled for a minute. Had a lot of us fooled. Nice touch with the houseboy, by the way.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But, like I said, I didn’t stay long.”

  He gave me the most evil smile. “I didn’t think you would. Not with the main event happening here.”

  I had to keep him distracted. If I did, Spence or Escobar might be able to figure something out. He wasn’t going to tangle with either of them; I was his quarry. I looked in the direction of the three boys again. Their Animatronic movements didn’t seem mechanical at all; they all looked alive.

  And then I realized that they were all alive! The bastard—he’d hired actors!

  But I could use that; real people can be really frightened. “If he told you this was a film scene,” I shouted, “he was lying. These are real guns, we are real cops, and he is going to pull the guts out of all of you before he finishes.”

  Two of them raised up their heads; with frightened eyes, they regarded each other’s bellies and the glistening protrusions that draped forward. I held up my badge—stupidly, because they were probably told to expect that. Then I fired my weapon up into the ceiling; the light fixtures shattered, sending down a shower of glass.

  At that point, the two on the right began to struggle against their restraints.

  “He’s the one on the far left,” I called back.

  He alone was completely still.

  I looked back at Durand and saw on his face the realization that he’d been finessed, that it was time to whip out the trump card. I saw his arm coming up again and the gun was pointed right at Jeff. The motion was smooth and real and utterly believable. In his hand was some sort of automatic weapon—if he just sprayed it he would get all three of his targets. If he swept it around the room, he’d get me, Spence, and Escobar as well.

  Spence stood suddenly with his gun drawn and shouted, “Over here!” Durand reacted without thinking; his arm swung around and came to an abrupt halt with the gun trained directly on Spence. By then I was on my feet as well, shouting, Freeze, police, drop your weapon now, but only because it’s legally required for the shoot to be labeled clean. It was a moot exercise; I fully intended to shoot him whether he froze or not.

  I factored in all these considerations in a split second—but Wil Durand didn’t have that kind of training. He might have worked with a weapon, but he hadn’t learned to live with one as we all do. He had never awakened in the middle of the night and reached for the gun under the pillow when some alley cat knocked over a trash can. He bore no bruises on his hip from where the holster sat. He didn’t tilt to the left because the weight of the gun on the right made him so unbalanced. Not to mention the radio, the pager, the badge, and the stick. He would never be one with the gun.

  He started screaming to get back, and when Spence and I kept advancing, he raised himself up a little on the camera seat. The camera itself had sheltered him, and it was still big and bulky enough to keep any of us from getting a decent shot.

  This would be our best chance to get him. Instinctively I went into a modified Weaver stance, with both hands on the gun and feet shoulder distance apart. I set one foot slightly in front of the other, so my profile shifted and I made a narrower target, which our training sergeants keep telling us is harder to hit.

  I was a sitting duck, Weaver or no Weaver. I saw a series of flashes from the muzzle of his automatic before I heard the sound of the shots; this all happened just after I squeezed the trigger of my weapon and hit nothing.

  “His shots went wide, wide to the left,” Escobar screamed from somewhere behind me. I got off another round that ricocheted against something on the corner of the enormous camera, but I saw Durand wince and grab his shoulder, so I knew he must have been wounded, probably by shrapnel from the camera.

  It didn’t stop him—he brought the gun up again and pointed it in the direction of the boys. There was that horrible rat-a-tat-tat, and then shots from behind and to the right.

  Durand’s gun went flying across the room. Blood began to spray from his arm. I pulled the trigger on my own weapon and hit Durand again in the same arm. And that was it—the shooting stopped.

  Spence rushed toward Durand, and Escobar dashed forward toward the boys as I sank to my knees. I had barely eaten in days, but what little I had eaten came back in the form of a green and bitter-tasting bile. Somehow I managed to find and speak into my radio. Then I staggered to my feet and ran to Jeff.

  He was looking up at me with such terror in his eyes, but he was alive, oh, Lord, he was alive still, and there was hope that we could get out of there.

  I heard myself asking him if he was okay and then saw him shake his head weakly to indicate that he was not. I was still struggling to get the gag off him when we were surrounded by a swarm of EMTs with their equipment and carts and unfathomable competence. They moved right in and pushed me away. I wasn’t a cop just then, I was an intimate of the victim—typically a mild to moderate pain in the ass, but in this case a true menace who could do nothing but get in the way of their lifesaving work.

  Spence and Escobar literally lifted me up by the armpits and carried me out of the way.

  I stood back, helpless, as they worked on the boy who’d eaten Spaghetti-O’s at my dining-room table. It was quickly established that Jeff was the only one of the three boys who had truly been injured. But both of the other two were in shock. One started to rise up; from somewhere behind I heard Fred’s voice.

  “Don’t move!” he was yelling. “We need to clear our officers of any wrongdoing in their shots. You do want to cooperate with that effort.”

  The kid obeyed without question.

  Lights flashed in rapid repetition. The clicking of shutters began to rival the sound of chopper blades in my head. I watched out of the corner of one eye as Jeff was gently rolled onto a stretcher, with tubes attached seemingly all over his body. He looked small, young, and terribly vulnerable. The scene swirled around me; I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and saw Errol Erkinnen standing there.

  “How did you—”

  “It’s all over the news,” he said. “Your lieutenant let me through when I showed up.”

  I could feel my shoulders slumping as the exhaustion set in. Somehow his presence made it okay for me to break down. “Oh, God, what a mess . . . what a mess I made of this. . . .”

  “You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “You don’t have to justify anything right now. I’ll stay with you until you feel safe enough to be alone.”

  This detached, professional assurance had roughly the same effect on me as being cradled in my mother’s embrace. I gave myself into his supporting arms for one brief moment and just trembled. And then I pulled away; there was a scene to attend to, my crime scene, and I did not want to let it get away from me.

  The whirlwind of activity brought me the strength I needed to plunge back in. As I was demonstrating the views I wanted to the photographer, one of the EMTs came and told me that they were almost ready to take Jeff to the hospital.

  The question I didn’t really want answered came out of its own free will.

  “Too soon to tell.” The standard, safe answer. Then he was gone.

  I glanced around briefly at the chaotic crime scene, wondering how this one had gotten so out of my control. In the end, it wouldn’t matter; there was no “solving” required. We knew what had happened and who had made it happen.

  From out of the corner of one eye I saw them securing Jeff’s intestines t
o his abdomen. They wrapped the protrusions in plastic and then strapped everything down.

  Incredibly, I found myself thinking, It’s not that much, just a couple of feet, he has lots of feet of intestines, he can spare a couple of feet . . .

  Hope is such a strong force.

  I couldn’t watch anymore. I went over to where they were working on Durand and observed from a little distance. Dozens of eyes were on me, waiting to pounce if I did something stupid. But I kept my distance, the whole time pleading with the cosmos to let Durand die. I wanted someone to come up with the idea that they should quietly stop treating him so he would just bleed out on the spot. His right arm was literally blown off, and he was still struggling. He was screaming like that bastard Scorpio in Dirty Harry that he was hurt, that he needed to be taken care of, and that someone had better do it, because the horrible, violent police had hurt him. When he saw I was looking at him he actually grinned up at me and made this disgusting flickering motion with his tongue.

  I leaped. Ten hands grabbed me. Durand was laughing and howling and screaming all at the same time. I struggled against my captors, but they held me fast.

  “Let go of me,” I screamed. “I’m going to kill him, I’m going to blow him away, I’m going—”

  Durand howled even louder. “She’s threatening me, she’s going to hurt me even more—”

  Someone finally found the switch for the overheads and threw them all at once. The glare stunned me into submission. Suddenly I felt myself being tossed into the backseat of a cruiser. Erkinnen got in beside me. I heard the click of a belt, the thrum of a starting engine, and then I went under, into some fuzzy place where nothing evil existed, where nothing bad could happen to a child. They would have to mop up this scene without me.

  The monstrous Wilbur Durand was secured to a gurney with multiple restraints and transported to the hospital under double guard. Detectives Frazee and Escobar rode along. I would have to read it all later in the report, but I could imagine it in my mind’s eye. Spence would be in Durand’s face, just a few inches away, and he would be hissing, You have a right to remain silent, asshole, but you can talk now if you want to, I don’t care, because I’m going to nail your one-armed ass to the wall no matter what you do. Escobar would pretend to try to pull him off, and they would engage in a limited good-cop bad-cop routine, the theory being that if anyone could get something out of Durand, it would be the Father Confessor.