The Dead Detective

by J. R. Rain

  I set off at a run toward the second truck. As I do, the trailer of the first finally topples over, hitting the blacktop behind me with the shuddering impact of an earthquake. One of the ambushers repeatedly shoots a flare gun into the gas tanks in its cab, and they explode, one after the other, illuminating the whole highway. A man in a black toque dressed like a mechanic aims a wild burst of M5 fire at me; I stop and calmly drill him through the forehead with one of the Cap’s throw-downs from my belt, just like on a firing range. I hadn’t even realized I was holding the gun. An intense odor like that I’d smelled inside Burchhalter’s house wafts up to me, the cloying, overpoweringly sweet stench of gasoline. At first I think it’s just the smell of the fire blazing away behind me; then I realize that one of the side fuel tanks of the second rig got riddled with slugs, and its contents are leaking out all over the roadway, creeping like an oily tide towards my feet. A blood-red tide; they’ve been illegally running on “farm diesel”, which is tinted red and taxed at a much lower rate. But it’s still diesel fuel; if it reaches the fire, then the second truck and everything in it will go up in flames. Along with me.

  But I’m not in charge here. I’m not even the boss of me. I’m already being jerked around to fire in the direction of the trees. I can’t see anyone there, but for reasons known only to herself, Nancy has me empty most of the clip into the darkness, before moving me off again. I sneak a peek around the roadway. There’s no sign of Malena―or the rookie, Howell, who must have been standing in front of the first truck when it plowed into his car. Which means he probably got crushed to a pulp―and then set on fire like Burchhalter. Only he’s not dead, because he can’t die. Somewhere in the hell behind me, he’s struggling to get out of the wreckage, probably roasted and half flattened like in a Roadrunner cartoon, to try to make his way home in the night. I don’t even want to think about that now.

  It is behind the trailer of the second 18-wheeler, the one whose cab I’ve just passed, that the fight’s still going on. Its rear doors have been pried or shot open, I can’t tell which, but the Sicilians or Maltese or whoever had obviously prepared a surprise of their own―at least one man’s buried deep inside the trailer inside some kind of fortified nest firing what sounds like a military machine gun. The trailer itself is illuminated by the blazing headlights of the third tractor-trailer, which sits idling and deserted behind it. Two of the Horvaths are lying in pools of blood on the asphalt, almost torn in half by bullets; a third is limping away. Other dark bodies, probably those of the occupants of the third truck, litter the roadway. Obviously, the front and rear semis are just there to escort the money shipment, their crews supposedly providing the security. The money is all in the second.

  I know what’s coming next. The Horvaths want me to go inside the open semi-trailer’s cargo space and kill the shooter or shooters of the machine gun. Just march through a hail of bullets, no matter what damage they do to me, to get the job done. That’s what I’m here for.

  “Try not to get yourself shot to pieces in there,” says a voice behind me. Val Tabori’s.

  I’m helpless to move without Nancy’s consent, so can only stand there motionless as he smooches the back of my neck and then pats my arm. My ex-lover. My murderer. Because it’s finally dawned on me that it must surely have been Val who killed me that night at the warehouse, before Nancy and Gana Kali revived me. “Of course, our child won’t actually need a mother who’s still got a face―just one who can nurse him after he’s born.” And he laughs.

  What is it with me and guys? I mean, can I pick ‘em or what? At least Devon only hired somebody else to kill me―instead of pulling the trigger himself. And I suppose it’s kind of flattering that of all the women cops in the world, Val chose me to murder―so he could then try to impregnate me, I guess. Hey, I take my compliments where I can get them these days.

  A pair of dark figures emerge from the darkness to stand on the opposite side of the open back door of the semi-trailer: Nancy, lighting a cigarette with her Bic and gingerly carrying her own handgun, the wounded Horvath brother, and one of his crew, who is armed with an AK-47. All four of us cower back from the line of fire of the guy with the machine rifle hidden deep inside. Then Val, who is also carrying a Mossberg, moves past me to lob in, one after another, a pair of CS canisters. Moments later, their billowing fumes erupt from out of the back of the truck.

  Val shrinks back behind me again, as I find myself climbing onto the corrugated steel bed of the trailer, my weapon blazing. The effect of suddenly breathing the CS gas is like being kicked in the head by a donkey―my throat and chest are on fire, tears are streaming from eyes, and I’m barely even aware of the bullets flying around me. Until a pair of them hit me and I go down.

  Then all I can sense are two things: I can’t breathe or move, and Val, who’s been using me as a human shield, steps over me and fires the Mossberg into the void at the back of the semi-trailer where the shooter was holed up. Then all the shooting stops. I don’t actually see Val do this, at least not with my human eyes, because they’re covered by a film of burning tears, but with my astral vision.

  And I see something else.

  Bull McGuiness’ face. The ghost detective has climbed up into the trailer after Val and is gazing concernedly down at me. “You okay, toots?” But, of course, I’m effectively mute for the moment. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of this in a few shakes. I got a plan.” That last set of headlights I spotted through the trees must have been him and the Gimp arriving on the scene.

  But Val Tabori, coughing, is already moving through Bull and jumping down from the trailer bed. Val turns and drags me out after him, depositing me on my side on the asphalt just in front of the third truck’s headlights like a broken ragdoll. From the angle I’m lying at, only inches away from Nancy’s Nikes, I can’t help but notice a gleaming little river of spilled gasoline advancing toward me from the direction of the cop car’s ruptured tank. Regular fuel, the color of piss. I’m still not able to breathe, even after being hauled away from the worst of the pepper gas―I’ve been shot twice in the chest, although the Kevlar absorbed the bullets, their impact has damaged me. I’ll have a hell of a bruise, maybe even a couple of broken ribs; usually when a cop takes a hit in one of these vests, he goes straight to ER. Not an option, in my case.

  From ten yards or so away, inside the dark and now-silent open trailer, I catch a glimpse of the white tops of what I’d seen earlier; dozens of rows of Hammermill paper boxes lashed together with plastic and stacked about waist-high, extending almost all the way to the back.

  The money. Val has retrieved a few bills from the stacks, which he hands over to Nancy to examine. “Looks like we’ve hit the jackpot,” he says to her. Then something in Romani to the other two men, who shake their heads.

  “No, we drive the vardo,” says the wounded Horvath brother. He sounds stubborn. The thieves are starting to fall out already.

  “How much you think is there?” Nancy asks. Gone is any hint of girlish deference; she thinks she’s running the show and is clearly enjoying it.

  Val and the remaining Horvath brother look at each other and shrug. “A few hundred million, maybe,” Val says after a minute. “A quarter of a billion? Enough for the whole family. For all of us.”

  “Andrej and Yanko are both mullered,” mutters the other Romani. “Makes more for all of us, yeah?”

  Horvath yells something at him in cant, but is cut short by the crack of a bullet.

  “Police! Freeze!” shouts Malena Ayon from the darkness. By now, the silent tide of spilled fuel, a swirling mix of red diesel and yellow-colored regular, has pooled around the shoes of all three of the Gypsy men and is creeping forward only a foot or two away from me.

  f I could scream anything at Mal to warn her, I would, but I can’t. It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway; Val doesn’t even hesitate before pulling out his own Siggy and firing at her. I can’t see anything, but I hear the dull thud of a body hitting the pavement some distance
away. My partner’s. And that’s when I really lose it.

  For the first time, I can feel myself struggling with Nancy’s will, with her mind control over me. She wants me to get up and walk over to Mal to finish her off. Instead, I fight. And I’m not all by myself in this struggle; Bull has appeared beside her. I figure there’s not much he can do, but the sight of him fills me with a sense of wild hope. I rise slowly to my feet and pull the remaining drop-piece, a cheap silver Ruger, out of my belt. But instead of turning to move off toward Mal, I just stand there, rigidly facing the Gypsy girl. Val stares at the two of us, wondering what’s up, while Nancy breaks into a sweat with the effort to dominate me.

  “Shoot her!” she says to Val through clenched teeth, and he points his gun at me. He at least looks hesitant, which is a heartwarming memory to treasure. Doesn’t want to mess his baby mama up too much. “Not with that―with your shotgun!”

  He holsters his piece, then reaches for his Mossberg, which he’s left on the bed of the trailer. The second Gypsy raises his AK to fire at me, and it clicks. He’s run out of ammo, just like me. That’s the problem with automatic weapons: you lose count of all the rounds you fire.

  Then a lot of things happen almost all at once, bang-bang. For one thing, there is the faint but swelling sound of police sirens in the distance. Malena must have called this in before she crept down here from the trees to play hero. She probably jumped the gun because she was trying to save my life.

  For another, the Soul Eater suddenly rears up out of the darkness over the bulk of the semi, moving slowly towards us. Lit by the flickering flames of the first rig, it looks like a demon straight from Hell. But I don’t have time to stare at the terrifying apparition; Nancy has raised her own Siggy, as if to shoot me point-blank in the face. But she hesitates for an instant, her finger trembling on the trigger…and then Bull gives her arm a hard shove.

  It doesn’t budge her, of course, but she obviously feels it, probably the way I feel it when ghosts walk through me: as a shocking and unexpected kind of tingle. Whatever, it distracts her for a few milliseconds, just long enough for me to slip from her consciousness. And to raise my Ruger and shoot her almost point-blank through the right eye. Gore sprays out of the back of her head as her finger instinctively jerks on the trigger, but the bullet whizzes over my head into the night.

  I turn to squeeze off a pair of shots at the Gypsy King, who’s still pumping his shotgun while he watches this take place. My first shot misses, the second hits him somewhere hear the left nipple, and he staggers back. But he doesn’t fall; I’d forgotten he’s wearing a police vest just like me under his shirt.

  The other two guys have been watching this in shock, but already they’re raising their weapons to fire at me. I swivel the gun in the direction of the surviving Horvath but miss.

  “Hit the deck!” Bull yells at me. “Then use the lighter!”

  What the fuck is he talking about? I drop to the pavement beside Nancy’s body. What lighter? Meanwhile the Soul Eater has paused and seems to be bending down to scoop up something on the roadway; the ghost of one of the dead drivers, maybe. Or that of Brady Howell.

  Then I see it: the half-filled pink Bic the girl used to light her damn cigarettes has rolled out of her pocket and is lying next to my left hand. I snatch at the little canister, then clutch at Nancy’s body with my other hand, pulling her toward me to reflexively check for a pulse.

  Okay, I hate her guts, but police training. Although if she’s still alive, I guess I’ll just have to kill her again. Luckily, she isn’t.

  “Hurry!” Bull bellows at me. The Eater hovers over us now, swinging its long black crepe-covered arms from side to side, lowering its weird birdlike snout closer and closer. What am I supposed to do now to save myself? Sing to it? Meanwhile, Horvath directs a shotgun blast in my direction―which smashes into the corpse of his sister or cousin or whatever she is, banging it up against me. In addition to protecting me from his shot, Nancy’s body has also acted as a dam against the flood of gasoline―something I’m just about to discover firsthand, it turns out.

  “It’s the only way to drive off the Eater!” Bull hisses in my ear. “They’re afraid of fire!”

  So without actually thinking about the consequences, I flick the spark wheel and then toss the lighter at Horvath. All three men have been standing―actually, Val sort of slowly crumpled over from the impact of my shot, and is sitting on his butt―in a lake of mixed fuel for the last few minutes, and the effect is far more spectacular than I could possibly have imagined when the little lighter hits the ground. On its own, diesel fuel’s hard to ignite. But in this case, the regular it’s mixed with acts like a detonator.

  Like I lit the jets of a gas broiler inside an oven. The surface of the road in front of me is instantly on fire, not like a bonfire or anything―the height of the tallow flames is only about a foot at most―but it races around to engulf everything around the big rig’s eighteen tires. Horvath is the first to move, limping forward to hurl himself out of the ring of fire just in front of the third truck’s headlights. I shoot him in his good leg, and he goes down, dropping his shotgun and screaming hoarsely from the pain. The shins and cuffs of his jeans are on fire. So is the front of Nancy’s body, which has shielded me from the blast.

  The second Gypsy drops his AK-47 and runs off in the opposite direction, disappearing into the trees like his heels are on fire. Which they totally are. Val has managed to get to his feet and is trying to put out the fire in his pants; I squeeze a couple more shots at him and see him stagger again; then I take off to find Malena. She’s huddled on the grassy verge clutching at her chest and wheezing. And shivering with cold and shock.

  “What the hell―you forgot your vest?” I crouch at her side. Sheer terror is making me sound like I’m scolding her.

  “No time,” she says weakly, as I unbutton her shirt. I feel almost dizzy with relief that she’s still alive. The sirens are coming closer, now from the same direction the convoy was coming from. I strip my partner’s shirt back and have a look at the wound, probing behind her shoulder with my other hand, which is instantly sticky with warm blood. Exit wounds are way messier than entries.

  “Missed your heart, but I think it broke your shoulder and maybe a couple ribs.” I don’t mention my main fear, which is that she’s bleeding from her lung.

  “Yeah, hurts like merry buggery…” I check her lips for froth. There is a loud explosion behind me as the gas tanks on the second rig go up.

  Now I can see Mal’s wound way more clearly, and tear off one of my sleeves to stanch it. The night air up here in the mountains is freezing, even with the big toasty bonfire I’ve lit.

  “It’s only a 9 mm, you big pussy. Not even a hollow point.” I don’t tell her how I know: because I was shot through the heart by the very same gun. “Dying on me is not an option. I hope that’s clear.” Then I dial 911 for a medevac. And get put on hold.

  While we’re waiting, we watch the Money Ship go up in smoke. The semi-trailer is now completely engulfed by flames, and the Hammermill boxes inside crackle as they ignite, one by one, like hotdogs on a campfire. From time to time, banknotes float out the back in the billowing smoke, to spin and drift like confetti into the road.

  Bull was right about the Soul Eater. It’s gone, just as if it never was.

  The first of the sheriff’s deputies arrives just as 911 finally picks up. “Officer down!” I shout at him. Then I give him Malena’s shield and show him mine. “She’s in crit―needs a helicopter medevac.”

  He goes back to his squad car to call it in, as several other deputies arrive; then an ambulance shows up, lights flashing, just behind the cop cars, and I call the medics over.

  They say it’s faster to just take her to the nearest hospital than to call a helicopter in. They say they don’t want her with me in the ERV; I say tough shit and climb in anyway. Then the sheriff shows up and says he needs me at the crime scene to make a report, and I give him the number to Ayon’
s cell, which I’m still holding. Once we clear all this up, we take off, sirens screaming.

  Mal grabs my hand, over the ineffectual objections of the burly, bearded medic, and gasps out questions to me through her respirator while they give her blood. Like what the hell I was doing with the Gypsies and who the hell was I shooting at in the dark. As I’d guessed, she’d driven up to my house just as they were leading me away, then followed them out here.

  “What made you drop by?” I ask her. “I thought you were trying to get a good night’s sleep.” Not that I’m complaining, you understand; she saved my ass, if not my life, by coming after me.

  “I had the strangest dream,” she says. The drugs in the IV they’ve stuck in her arm are starting to take effect, and her voice is very faint, even childlike. “A guy, a really cute guy in an old uniform told me you were in great danger and that I needed to wake up right now and come to rescue you. He said his name was…”

  “Wiley Fontenot. My dream soldier.”

  “Huh? How did you―?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll fill you in on everything later,” I lie to her soothingly. “I promise.” But seriously, how the hell can I ever tell her the whole truth? However, I briefly fill her in on how Val killed Tamara and then raped me to get me pregnant.

  “Seriously?” she says, eyes wide.

  “Yeah, seriously.” I squeeze her hand. “Listen, partner―I love you.”

  “Love you, too, partner,” she murmurs drowsily, the shock and the IV bringing her adrenaline levels down to earth at last. Then later, as we turn into the hospital driveway, “But not in any dykey way, right?”