by Jack Quaid
Broken-down heaps lined the road. Some were stolen and dumped, others were no more than shells that had been stripped for parts. Beyond the edges of the road lay a sea of trailer parks that had grown to make one massive maze of portable homes. If you could see beyond that, and most people couldn’t, your eyes would be treated to a view of the devastation which, in these last few hours of daylight, looked as if hell was just over the horizon.
The pain was back. Sullivan ate three more painkillers, lit a cigarette, and peered through the filthy windshield. The rusted sign came into view. He eased off the gas and turned the car into the entrance of the Happy Times Trailer Park.
It didn’t take long to get lost among the trailers, most of which sat in ruin with their faded and torn awnings hanging over cracked windows and punched-in fiberglass walls. Every second lot was home to some sort of vehicle in need of wheels and a miracle, and judging by the sporadic numbers spray-painted onto the walls of various trailers, the lot number that Cooper had given him was farther up the path.
They’d see a car coming, so Sullivan pulled over in front of a trailer that was nothing more than a burnt-out shell and climbed out. Apart from the odd grubby face here and there, the place appeared deserted.
Sullivan pulled the shotgun out of the back seat and racked it. Spare shells went into his pockets as he moved off the path and between the trailer.
After fifteen minutes of stepping carefully through broken glass, Sullivan found the meter box for Lot 67 and followed the cable to the midsize trailer with one bedroom, a living room, half a kitchen, half a bathroom, and a shitter. Nothing about it stood out.
Sullivan pressed an ear to the wall: the low murmur of a television filtered through. He held his breath, crouched, and peered through the dirty window. Rayburn was leaning back on a plastic garden chair, his crew around him: Warren to his left, Mick Evens to his right; next to him was the bouncer from the strip club. At their feet sat a couple of duffle bags that Sullivan assumed contained cash amounting to somewhere in the vicinity of fifteen million dollars. Rayburn must have brought in the extra muscle, and was scraping the bottom of the barrel to have called Mick Evens.
Sullivan’s hands were covered in sweat. He wiped them on his jeans, but it didn’t help. He raised the shotgun, taking aim at the closest, the bouncer. He drew a breath, exhaled, and pulled the trigger.
The blast smashed the glass and filled the bouncer’s shoulder with buckshot. He hit the floor. Sullivan racked the shotgun. Fired off another quick round.
Missed.
The others jumped for cover and returned fire. Smoke filled the trailer.
Sullivan hit the dirt. Inches above his head, bullets ripped through the wall like tinfoil. His ears rang. The exit holes grew closer. He flattened in the dirt. Bullets cut over his head.
The onslaught paused. Everyone reloaded. Sullivan stumbled to his feet and ran around to the front of the trailer.
It was three and a half against one. He had to play it safe. He slid into the dirt behind a rusted-out Ford, swung the shotgun over the trunk, and took aim at the door. For a few moments, all he could hear was the ringing in his ears and the muffled pounding of his heart.
Then, something else: a lock, turning.
Sullivan climbed to his feet, took aim, and unleashed blast after blast into the trailer door, sending splinters of wood and plastic flying every which way. He kept firing until the shotgun was empty, then he tossed it and pulled his .45. He followed it toward the destroyed door, used the barrel to swing open what was left. The bouncer fell through onto the dirt. Dead as nails.
Sullivan stepped inside. Gun smoke and dust burnt his throat. It was empty. The rear window open—they were gone.
Fuck.
Sullivan stepped over the bouncer and out of the trailer. He saw something in the corner of his eye.
Too late.
A bullet slammed into his shoulder and sent him flying to the ground; dust kicked up around him. He leveled the .45 with his good arm and sent three bullets in the opposite direction. All three hit the mark. Mick Evens cracked his skull on a rock when he fell, but he was dead long before that.
Somewhere in the distance, a car roared to life. Sullivan peeled himself off the ground and limped onto the path. The car skidded around a corner and came at him. Warren, behind the wheel, floored it.
Sullivan raised the .45. It felt like a brick. He fired off five rounds.
The first two shattered the windshield.
Another buried itself in the passenger-side headrest.
The fourth hit Warren in the shoulder, and the last buried itself in his neck. But the car kept coming. At the last moment, Sullivan jumped out of the way.
The car rolled aimlessly past. There was no foot on the gas, no hands on the wheel. It pulled to the left, flattening what used to be somebody’s flowerbed, and came to a stop in the lounge of some poor bastard’s home.
Sullivan climbed to his feet and eyed the .45 in his hand: one round left. But before he could even think about his next move, Rayburn appeared out of nowhere and tackled him to the ground. His weapon bounced out of his hands. He reached for it. Dug his nails into the dirt: too far.
With each blow Rayburn dished out, Sullivan saw a flash of white light. His nose broke in a different place than before. His right cheek caved in from three consecutive left hooks, and somewhere along the way, Sullivan’s right eye swelled up and closed over.
He threw up a punch. Missed. Threw another. It bounced off Rayburn’s chin.
Sullivan’s arms flailed about.
He needed something.
Anything.
Then his hand latched onto the badge on his belt. Rayburn was too busy making mincemeat of his face to notice him unclipping it. Sullivan squeezed the badge and swung.
The tip of it slammed into Rayburn’s cheek. Sullivan swung again and hit Rayburn’s temple. And again and again. Eventually Rayburn’s punches slowed until he stopped throwing them altogether. He moaned; it was a God-awful sound. He fell facedown into the dirt, and everything went quiet.
His badge and fist covered in blood. And that’s where Sullivan lay for a very long time.
It took even more pain and effort for Sullivan to make his way back to the bullet-riddled trailer and climb over the corpse of the bouncer. The duffle bags in the middle of the floor were nothing special, just a pair of generic green bags that can be picked up at most army disposals across the country. The two in front of him looked as if they were only a couple of days old. The folded creases from their packaging were still present, but they weren’t as clean as they could be.
He pulled back the zips and found the fifteen million dollars in carefully wrapped plastic.
Chapter Forty
Sullivan stumbled out of the trailer with a bag in each hand. His body was failing him, and he pushed the pain out of his mind in the same way he did when he was a boy and copping a beating from his old man. It worked, but not as well as he would have liked.
He shuffled along the dusty path for a few steps before he heard something behind him and stopped. Slowly, he looked over his shoulder and saw Patrick Wilson.
The bags slipped from his fingers. ‘Pat?’ Then he saw the revolver in Wilson’s hand. ‘Oh, Pat.’
‘I’m sorry, kid,’ Wilson said. ‘This wasn’t how it was meant to be. I wanted to bring you in. You were just too honest to be trusted.’
‘Or too clean,’ Sullivan said.
‘There is no clean and dirty, not anymore. Only smart and dumb.’
Sullivan had trouble breathing. ‘And, you’re the smart one, are you, Hailstrum?’
The word hung in the air, and once it was out, the reality of it set in.
‘It didn’t start off as . . .’ Wilson motioned around at the dead bodies around him. ‘As this. I tried to make things better for us. We have to look out for our own, and you should understand that. When Sam Williams copped one in the gut, who kept his kids in school? Or when Aaron Burke passed away, his
family were put out on the street. We have to look out for ourselves. The city’s not going to do it. They can’t even pay us. We’ve got to look after ourselves.’
‘Not like this.’
His voice filled with aggression, he pointed his tobacco-stained finger. ‘You’ve got blood on your hands too, don’t you forget about that.’
‘Trying to expose you.’
‘Look,’ Wilson said. ‘I begged you to leave, I begged you, and now look, everything’s a great, big, mess . . . But, I can help.’
‘You can help, can you?’
‘How many times did I tell you to lay off? How many fucking times? But no, Angus Sullivan just does whatever the fuck Angus Sullivan wants.’
‘I just wanted to be good. To do the right thing. Like you taught me. Like it was meant to be.’
‘We are doing the right thing.’
‘By killing all those people? That isn’t the right thing, Pat. That’s the wrong thing, and you know it. We have to protect people. Not kill them.’
‘You’ve done your fair share of killing today, Angus. You’re no different.’
Wilson stooped his head and saw the revolver in his hand. He tossed it aside and held his open palms toward Sullivan. ‘We can still fix this, you and me.’ He pointed to the duffle bags. ‘Fifteen million dollars can solve a lot of problems.’
Sullivan thought about the Patrick Wilson who pulled him out of protective services when he was a kid. The Patrick Wilson who forced him to finish school, coached him into the department. Patrick Wilson, the man Sullivan had aspired to be. Then he looked at the man in front of him and realized he didn’t really know him at all.
‘You and me together,’ Wilson pleaded. ‘It’s only us left. With that money, we can go back to being good cops.’
Sullivan took the .45 from his waistband and let it dangle by his thigh. ‘Is that what you are, a good cop?’
‘Now Angus—’
Sullivan raised his weapon and put two in Wilson’s chest.
The shots faded into the afternoon, and everything fell silent. The .45 slipped from his fingertips to the ground.
He didn’t need it anymore.
Then Sullivan heard the call for help.
Chapter Forty-One
He followed the calls to the trunk of Rayburn’s car, circled it once, and then opened it.
Jim Jones rolled over and squinted up at him, his face a montage of purple bruises and bloody cuts. ‘Jesus, Sullivan,’ he said. ‘You look like shit.’
In the twenty hours since Sullivan last saw Jones in the car park of the mall, gun in hand, fending off Rayburn, he had been in the back of various vehicles, slapped around, belted, and kept only as insurance.
It wasn’t until Jones had stumbled out of the trunk that he saw the carnage around him. The trailer destroyed by gunfire, the bodies of Mick Evens, his bouncer, Warren, the bloody mess that was Rayburn, and the body of Chief Inspector Patrick Wilson slumped awkwardly over itself with two rounds in his chest.
Jones limped through the bloodbath and repeated the word ‘Christ,’ under his breath. He stopped when he came to the old man. ‘Patrick Wilson was Hailstrum?’
Sullivan painfully leaned against the wall of a trailer. ‘Looks that way.’
Jones was amazed. ‘Christ, you did it.’
‘Yeah,’ Sullivan sighed. ‘I’m just a regular Turner and Hooch.’
Jones cocked his head. ‘I think your memory and my memory of that film are two different things.’
The sky turned black on the drive over to the evidence warehouse on 8th. The streets were deserted, and the painkillers had stopped working. Sullivan took three more anyway as Jones brought the car to a stop in front of the boom gate. The security guard leaned out of his booth and asked for a badge number; Jones gave it and drove through into the department’s evidence warehouse.
Tired. Beat. Exhausted. Neither of them moved fast, and the duffle bags slowed them down even more. The lobby was empty except for Officer Grey, who saw them coming and climbed to his feet.
Grunting at the pain it caused him, Sullivan swung the bag up onto the counter.
‘Fifteen million in cash from the armored car robbery two days ago,’ Sullivan said. ‘Log it.’
Grey looked down to find Jones had a weapon aimed at his gut. ‘We’re not asking.’
There was no stopping it now. Once the money was logged as evidence, it was in the system. Fifteen million dollars created a paper trail too large to ever be covered up. The notes are scanned, the serial numbers sent to countless departments as well as to all the banks and Treasury. It took three hours in the evidence room for Grey to scan all the notes and, when he finalized the log, only then did Sullivan let go. The last few days caught up with him in a matter of seconds. Standing was a little more than he could handle; he swayed, used the wall to hold himself up.
‘I’ll call an ambulance,’ Jones said with his hand already on the telephone.
‘No,’ Sullivan grunted as he pushed himself off the wall. ‘But, I think I’ll be heading off now.’
Jones put the phone down on the desk. ‘Sullivan, you can’t leave.’ His face pulled to the side as he shook his head. ‘I need to put you under arrest.’
Sullivan paused at the door. A vein throbbed in his forehead as he stared Jones down. ‘So, arrest me.’
He thought about it. He thought about it for a hell of a long time, but in the end, Jones lowered his weapon and smiled. ‘Maybe later.’
Sullivan stumbled into the lobby and, a few weak steps later, he was out of the building and in the car park.
Sirens.
Lights.
A patrol car came to a sliding stop in front of him, and two uniforms climbed out, weapons drawn.
Sullivan knew the drill. He pulled his badge, held it high. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’m a cop.’
The uniforms swapped a glance, and Sullivan knew he was in trouble. They opened fire so fast that the succession of bullets sounded like firecrackers.
His body slammed to the ground.
One of the uniforms held his radio to his lips. ‘10–108,’ he said. ‘Officer down.’
Sullivan held on tight to the badge and let everything else go.
Chapter Forty-Two
Then Sullivan opened his eyes.
THREE YEARS LATER
Chapter Forty-Four
There were five of them on the parole board, and Sullivan had forgotten their names by the time the first one opened his mouth. Words like violent, brutal, and excessive were thrown around, and after fifteen minutes, Sullivan’s twenty-seven-year-old lawyer finally climbed to his feet.
‘Angus Sullivan has been decorated with the Valor Award and the Medal for Excellence. He was a hero cop.’
‘You’re speaking in the past tense.’
‘Three years ago, the Detroit Police Department was plagued with corruption. Bribery, armed robbery, prostitution, murder. All headed up by a high-ranking member, who called himself ‘Hailstrum.’ Angus Sullivan exposed this man as Chief Inspector Patrick Wilson. If it wasn’t for Sullivan, Hailstrum would still be active. You should be thanking this man for what he has done.’
A woman with a hard face shifted in her chair. ‘His actions led to the deaths of seventeen people. How much evil can one man do in the name of good before he becomes evil himself? I find it hard to believe that there is any redemption for this kind of person.’
One of the men pushed his rimless glasses onto his face and hunched over the desk. ‘Mr. Sullivan, if released, what would you do for employment?’
‘I’ve only ever been a cop,’ Sullivan said.
‘Obviously, that career path is no longer open to you.’
‘I don’t know how to do anything else.’
The man pulled the glasses from his face, leaned back in his chair, and sighed. ‘Mr. Sullivan, do you believe you belong in prison?’
Sullivan scratched the back of his shaved head and thought about the question long and h
ard. ‘Yes, sir, for the things I’ve done. For the lives I’ve taken, I do.’
His lawyer let out a long sigh the whole room could hear and sat down. His mind was already shifting to the next case on his docket.
There was a knock at the door. A man opened it and produced a badge. ‘Detective Jones from Ethical Standards,’ he said.
‘We’re in the middle of a hearing.’
‘I need a word with Angus Sullivan.’
The guards led Sullivan down the hall while Jones limped behind.
In the aftermath of the Hailstrum scandal, Jones seized the opportunity to become a star again. Together with Mayor Adams, he had conducted an inquiry into police corruption that spanned the entire department. From the traffic cops, all the way to the top, no badge was safe. It resulted in over three hundred and fifty members being arrested or pensioned off. The media had dubbed it ‘The Cleanout’ and Jones positioned himself as a hero charged with bringing honor, integrity and truth back to the police force. He was the golden boy once more.
They reached a small interview room that reeked of disinfectant and stale piss.
Jones sent the guards out, took a seat across from Sullivan, and stretched his leg, easing his pain a little. ‘How’s the hearing going?’
‘I think they’re going to let me out.’ Sullivan patted down his shirt, took out a pack of cigarettes, and set one on fire. ‘I’ve been on my best behavior.’
‘I’d prefer you didn’t smoke.’
‘I’d prefer you got to the point.’
Jones smiled. He opened a manila folder and laid out a ledger in front of Sullivan.
‘Three months ago, Brandon Lewis from Fraud found some irregularities in the DPD’s budget. I set up a meeting, but he didn’t show. Two weeks later, his body washed up in the Detroit River. Autopsy revealed a belly full of beer, and the death was ruled accidental.’