by Frank Zafiro
“I’m almost there,” Stefan Kopriva replied.
Then where the hell were they? Chisolm thought.
There!
He saw a figure, short and slender, running hard near the fence. The figure pulled up abruptly, probably noticing the lights. Chisolm drew a bead on the figure, trying to see his hands but unable to at this distance.
“Adam-112, I see him about mid-block,” Chisolm told Radio.
There was a flash of light from the figure’s hand and a loud bang.
“Shots fired!” called Katie.
Chisolm carefully aimed at the figure, but held his fire. The danger of cross-fire was too great. He would give Katie and Stef a few seconds to take cover, at least.
The suspect climbed the fence. He went over it military style with almost no effort, climbed rapidly up one side, swung over the top and then dropped to the ground in two quick, controlled movements. He landed in a crouch and immediately fired in Chisolm’s direction.
Chisolm ducked next to the wheel well, using the engine block for cover. He heard the sound of shattering glass as the bullets struck the patrol car. He popped up and returned fire over the hood of the car, squeezing off three quick rounds. The muzzle flash took away his already minimal night vision. He scanned for movement but saw none.
“Adam-112 to -14, do you see him?” Chisolm keyed the mike with his left hand while keeping his pistol pointed where he’d last seen the suspect.
“We’ve taken cover here in the yard. We lost visual on him as soon as he fired.”
“Copy. -12 to Radio, he may have fled southbound.”
“Copy, southbound.”
Chisolm heard a moan from the driver’s side and glanced over. Payne was nowhere in sight. The spotlight was dark. Chisolm ran around the back end of the car and saw Payne collapsed on the ground holding his face. He could see dark blood next to him and seeping through his hands.
“Adam-112, officer down,” Chisolm spoke into his portable radio. “I need medics to my location.”
Radio copied his transmission as he knelt next to Payne, still keeping his weapon trained on the threat area. “Payne?” He asked gently.
Payne moaned. “It hurts.”
Chisolm pulled Payne’s hand away from his cheek and saw the cut. It was two inches long and had probably been caused by flying glass after the spotlight had been hit.
“You’ll be okay,” he said through gritted teeth, then keyed the mike. “Adam-112, injuries are a facial laceration, not life-threatening.”
“Copy, I’ll inform medics.”
Chisolm stood by with Payne as a dog handler arrived on scene and began a track. He remained alert but at Payne’s side for twenty minutes during the track until it was called off. The K-9 officer advised that it was likely that the suspect had gotten into a vehicle at Sharp and Elm.
Medics, who had been standing off until the area was declared secure, arrived and treated Payne, who seemed to be slipping into shock. Chisolm watched as they wiped the cut with iodine and put a gauze pad against it to stem the bleeding, which had slowed to a trickle. An ambulance transported Payne to Sacred Heart Hospital for stitches.
As the ambulance pulled away, Chisolm picked up Payne’s gun and put it in his briefcase. The young officer had not asked about it once. Chisolm felt sorry for him. Not only because he’d been hurt but also because it was very apparent that he was shortly going to have to recommend that Payne be fired.
What the hell, Chisolm thought. I was his teacher, his doctor and now I am going to be the axe-man. Bad night for us all.
Thomas Chisolm, despite being a fourteen-year veteran of the police department and former Green Beret with two tours in Vietnam, could not shake the sinking feeling in his chest as he kicked the shards of glass from the spotlight to the curb of the street. He couldn’t stop wondering how much worse it was going to get.
Saturday, August 13th
Day Shift
0554 hours
Officer Karl Winter made his way out of the locker room and toward the roll call room for his fifth day shift of the week. He walked past the sergeants’ offices and the lieutenant’s office to get there, but didn’t even turn his head. Despite their rank, he held most of his superiors in contempt. Besides, he remembered when some of them were rookies who could hardly keep from handcuffing themselves instead of the suspect.
Officer Stefan Kopriva passed him on the way out of the roll call room. The graveyard officer had changed into plain clothes before finishing up his reports.
“Go home and get some sleep, kid,” Winter said.
“I will,” Kopriva said, his voice a tired croak. He slid his reports into the IN box, muttered, “G’night” to Winter and headed down the hallway.
Winter remembered those days well enough. Kopriva had three or four years on the job, and he’d spend quite a few more on graveyard before he gained enough seniority to bid another shift.
Not me, Winter thought, and smiled inwardly. Nine months to go and he’d retire. Not long. Just like waiting for a baby to be born. Only the delivery would be a piece of cake and when it was over, he and Mary would sell the house and move up to the lake cabin where he planned to catch so many fish they’d have to re-stock the lake.
Winter’s thick mouth broke into a half-smile at the thought.
The roll call room was unimpressive and square, with three large tables, one for each sector. Most of the shift was already present. Winter walked toward his seat at the Charlie sector table. He noticed several graveyard patrol officers at the back of the room, still working on reports.
“Milking the system, Chisolm?” Winter asked.
Chisolm looked up. The intense look on his face melted and he smiled at Winter. “Call me a dairy maid.”
Winter chuckled. “Nine months, Tommy.”
“Nine months and you drop that baby elephant you’re carrying?” Chisolm grinned.
Winter ran his hand over his uniform shirt, which was stretched tightly over his large stomach. “Ah, screw you. Nine months and I retire.”
“Oh, hell, Karl. You’ve been retired on the job for years now.”
“I say again, screw you. You’re just jealous.” Karl gloated. “What do you have left? Six, seven years? Ten?”
“You’re jealous.”
“Me? Why? Because I don’t get to work graveyard and live like a vampire?”
“No,” Chisolm said evenly, “You’re jealous because I get to eat your wife but not her cooking.”
Karl exhaled heavily into the silence. No way he could top that one without sounding lame. Chisolm’s eyes danced mischievously as he waited.
Finally Winter said, “Oh, go back to shafting the citizens out of their tax dollars, you O-T whore.”
Chisolm chuckled and returned to his report.
Winter plopped down into his customary seat at the Charlie sector table. All around the room, insults and jokes flew across the room, while others discussed everything but police work. Cars, boats, sports and hunting were popular topics. The two rookies assigned to the shift sat rigidly in their chairs, speaking only when spoken to, obviously uncomfortable in the midst of so much seniority.
Will Reiser tossed a travel brochure to Winter. The words Bienvenido a Cancún were plastered above the picture of a smiling blonde in a bathing suit. The model walked along a sandy white beach next to a light blue ocean.
“Whattya think, Karl?” he asked. “A trip to Mexico good enough for a twenty-year anniversary?”
Winter thumbed through it briefly, nodding. It was a good idea. Police wives go through a lot in a twenty-year career. Will’s wife Patty deserved a trip like this. So did his Mary, for that matter.
“You bet. Good choice.” He slid the brochure back to him. Rookies coming on now had a new retirement system and had to do thirty years or until age fifty-five. He felt sorry for their wives.
Sergeant David Poole entered the room and sat wordlessly at the head of Winter’s table. He looked grouchier than usual. W
inter didn’t find that surprising. Poole had made sergeant before Alan Hart, who was now a lieutenant. Poole had helped Hart study and brought him along. Once Hart made sergeant, the two were bosom buddies. But after Hart made lieutenant, he suddenly became too good for a lowly three-striper and began dumping on Poole. Worse yet, Poole had become an effective, if reluctant, suck-up.
Lieutenant Alan Hart entered the room and talk quickly subsided. Winter knew Hart thought it was out of respect for him, but in reality, no one wanted him to over-hear anything. In a profession of strong-willed men and women, Winter saw an awful lot of disagreement but there was one thing universally agreed upon: everyone loathed Lt. Hart. Even the boot-lickers who sucked up to him didn’t like him.
Hart was either unaware of this fact or didn’t care. He stepped up to the lectern and looked around the room slowly before calling everyone to order. “Listen up. Several stolen vehicles last night.”
Only the two rookies wrote in their notebooks as the lieutenant read off four license plates belonging to stolen vehicles.
Hart continued, “Has anybody seen Gregory Macdonald lately? Black male, hangs out down on the Block? Detective Browning wants to talk to him. Call him anytime day or night.”
He shuffled papers, skipping an irrelevant memo, then said, “Captain Reott is looking for volunteers for the Cops-2-Kids program. Two from each shift. Paid as overtime. Any volunteers?”
Anthony “Gio” Giovanni spoke up, “Lieutenant, no one wants to do that because Channel Two puts you on TV.”
Hart’s eyes narrowed. “I have one volunteer. Thank you, Tony. Any others?”
No one even breathed.
“Okay, well, there will be a volunteer by roll call tomorrow or I will designate one. And Tony,” he turned to face the officer, “since Channel Two is paying for everything but your time on this project, don’t you think they deserve a little help with the publicity?”
Giovanni didn’t respond. Winter knew what the officer thought and figured he and everyone else in the room knew how difficult it was for Gio not to say it.
Hart held his stare for a moment then moved the memo to the back of the stack.
“Okay. Graveyard had another armed robbery tonight in Adam Sector. The 7-11 at Birch and Maxwell was hit. Suspect fled westbound. Officer MacLeod gave chase through the lumber yard at Maxwell and Elm. . .” Hart looked up and directed his gaze toward the back of the room. “Officer MacLeod?”
Winter turned to look at Katie, who looked up from her report. “Sir?”
“The suspect was armed?” Hart asked.
“Yes, sir. He displayed a black revolver.”
“Same description as the other Scarface robberies?”
MacLeod nodded.
“And you chased this man through a construction yard in the dark?”
MacLeod nodded again.
Hart looked around the room of assembled officers. “Let’s learn from this, people. Is it safe to pursue an armed robber alone into a dark construction yard? Or would it be better to set up a perimeter and wait for backup?”
“She had backup.” Chisolm stared coldly at Lt. Hart. The thin white scar that ran from Chisolm’s temple to his chin pulsed with hatred.
“Sir,” MacLeod said calmly, “perhaps this is something you would like to discuss with my lieutenant?”
Hart blanched as if just struck with a one-two punch. The tension in the room had jumped noticeably and a couple of day-shifters chuckled surreptitiously at Hart’s dilemma.
Typical, Winter thought. Hart wasn’t diddly on the street and now he is the ultimate Monday-morning quarterback. It was no wonder Scarface hadn’t been caught yet, with people like Hart directing the response. Winter admired MacLeod for standing up to him. The girl had grit.
Hart recovered quickly, brushing aside the exchange. “I understand the suspect fired several shots at officers. A trainee was wounded. Yours, I think, Tom?”
A rumble erupted from the tables. Winter shook his head in disbelief. Officers were involved in a shooting last night and Hart leads off the briefing with stolen vehicles and some community program?
Chisolm appeared to ignore the grumbling and locked his glare onto Hart. “It will be in my report, Lieutenant.” He then lowered his eyes to the paper in front of him and resumed writing.
Winter smiled, glad his back was to Hart. Another bureaucrat trying to screw with Tom Chisolm. Good luck, Al. You haven’t been successful yet.
Hart moved on. “This is the eleventh robbery in two weeks. The department is starting to look like the Keystone Kop Brigade. Double…no, triple your checks of all convenience stores and fast food restaurants. Everyone understand? And you might want to think about canceling breakfast until this guy is caught. It looks bad to see four police cars at a restaurant with Scarface out robbing places.”
Screw you, Hart, Winter thought, knowing everyone in the room shared his sentiment.
“Anyone have anything for the shift?”
No reply.
“Okay, then, hit the streets.” There was a scraping of chairs as everyone stood and gathered their gear. Hart shifted his gaze to Chisolm. “Officer Chisolm, I’ll need to see you in my office.”
Chisolm nodded. “As soon as my report is complete.”
“No, now.”
“Lieutenant, the Captain wants a copy of this report on his desk right away, since there was an injury and shots fired.” Chisolm spoke in an even voice.
“Fine,” Hart’s tone was curt. “As soon as you finish.”
“Yes, sir,” Chisolm answered, his respect a hollow echo.
Hart gathered his papers and left the room.
What a prick, Winter thought. From the look on his face, Thomas Chisolm was thinking the exact same thing.
0643 hours
Breakfast was holy writ for the day tour. Everyone knew it, including the radio dispatchers. Day shift dispatchers routinely held low-priority report calls to allow the officers their break. The oft-given justification was that once things got busy, there was a strong chance that the officer would not get a lunch later on. This was rarely true.
Eliza’s Café was seven blocks from the station and a favorite of the south-side day tour. Winter arrived to find Will Reiser and Mark Ridgeway already half a cup down.
“Can you believe that prick Hart?” Reiser asked Winter as he sat down.
“Been that way since he got the gold bar,” Winter responded, waving at Eliza and mouthing the word coffee.
Ridgeway, a seventeen-year veteran who was one of the fittest men on the department, sat glumly at the table. His craggy face pinched into a scowl. “Hart,” he said in a bitter voice, “is so stupid he couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a flashlight.”
Eliza brought Winter’s coffee. “What are we chuckling about today, my evil little policeman?”
For a woman who looked like everyone’s grandmother, Winter was often surprised at what came out of her mouth.
“We were discussing the virtues of our superior officers,” Reiser told her with a wink.
“Oh, you mean what a horse’s patoot Lieutenant Alan Hart has become.” Eliza returned the wink before turning to Winter. “The usual, Karl?”
Karl considered the offer, then declined. “Just coffee this morning, sweetie.”
Eliza shrugged. “Is anyone going to eat this morning?”
“Gio will,” Reiser said. “Hart volunteered him for something at roll call. You can probably start the French toast now.”
Eliza walked away, saying, “If he doesn’t show, I’m charging you for it, William Reiser the Third.”
Reiser grinned.
The three men talked easily for several minutes, though Winter and Reiser carried the conversation. Ridgeway muttered an occasional response, then returned to sipping his coffee.
Ten minutes later, Anthony Giovanni entered and slumped into his seat. He looked at each of the three men in turn, then asked, “Is that Hart a raging prick or what?”
&n
bsp; All three men nodded sympathetically.
Giovanni continued. “Try to tell the guy why there are no volunteers and I get hammered.”
“No good deed goes unpunished,” Ridgeway said, stroking his short mustache.
“And who the hell else calls me ‘Tony’? No one has ever called me that. Even my own parents don’t.” He shook his head. “It’s like some kind of harassment. That’s what it is. I should call my Guild rep and file a grievance.”
“Why don’t you?” Winter asked.
Giovanni shrugged. “It is overtime.”
“Charlie-257 and a unit to back,” squawked the portable radios of all four men.
Giovanni cursed. “I just checked out here.” Then to radio, “-257, go ahead.”
“An alarm, 5103 E. Trent, KayPlus parts. No zoning.”
Giovanni copied the call and looked at all three men. “That vindictive wench.”
All three immediately understood. Thirty-two year old Giovanni was one of the youngest men on day shift. Fit, tall and dark, he made use of his physical assets when it came to dating. A self-proclaimed womanizer, Giovanni made no bones about his intentions and he made no promises. And given that, he couldn’t understand what the hell was wrong with all these women who ended up hating him so much.
Irina was the third dispatcher Giovanni had dated briefly and then stopped calling. In each case, he ended up getting hammered on calls for quite some time after the breakup.
Winter chuckled. He didn’t really approve of Giovanni’s dating habits, but he had to admit he had lived vicariously through him on occasion. Twenty-four years of marriage, even a happy marriage, was not as outwardly exciting as Giovanni’s many conquests.
“I’ll take it,” Reiser said, finishing his coffee and notifying radio. Ridgeway did the same. All four men could hear the slight tone of irritation as Irina copied their transmissions.
“You know,” Reiser said as he left, “Janice would not let this type of thing go on. She might not be a supervisor but she would still put that Irina in line right now.” He snapped his fingers.
“Too bad she went to graveyard,” Ridgeway muttered as he walked away. “Abandoned us.”