Gil Mason/Gunwood USA Box Set

by Gordon Carroll

  He smiled and kicked into high gear.

  The night-time smells and the heat reminded him of the dessert which wasn’t a bad comparison since Colorado and Afghanistan are roughly the same altitude.

  A steady breeze pushed at him from the west, but it wasn’t cool or refreshing, it felt hot like the panting breath of a large dog. The comparison wasn’t random; he’d spent the first part of the shift sitting in front of the dog half of the Gunwood Police Department’s K9 unit. The human half of the team sat next to him, driving. He looked huge, with biceps the size of cantaloupes. The dog and handler were introduced at briefing as Timmy and Rex. Dominic thought Rex an excellent name for the dog, which the handler claimed to be a German shepherd, but Dominic didn’t think it looked much like a shepherd; it didn’t look like any breed of dog Dominic had seen. It more closely resembled some kind of over muscled Bully Whippet with a head like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The giant K9 Officer had given him a look and shook his head like Dominic was some slow witted grunt. “No, Rook,” he said. “I’m Rex,” he thumbed back at the dog, “he’s Timmy.”

  The rest of briefing hadn’t gone much better. The man in charge, Sergeant Chuck Creed had grinned at him as he chewed an unlit, worn out cigar, shuffled papers and slipped on a pair of bifocals. He’d had Dominic stand while he ran down his military record complete with medals and meritorious promotions. It was embarrassing.

  After that the sergeant had gone on to talk about all the memorable crimes from the night before including a couple of burglaries, a vandalism of a strip club, three domestic violence reports, a fatal car accident, two stolen cars, a cat mutilation and a strong-arm robbery of two drug dealers from a guy they’d been having trouble with for a long time dubbed the Vigilante Clubber. Last but not least he’d held up a little laser flashlight with a pig face on the front. A new toy they were handing out at a strip joint called “Pig Shooters”. The manager of the place had recently been arrested for DUI and the piggy flashlight was a passive-aggressive attempt at revenge. When activated the laser light beamed a giant smiling pig face and at the same time a recorded gunshot sound echoed out from the plastic handle, complete with a ricochet ‘beowwww’ sound. Everyone laughed and made comments. But Dominic didn’t consider it funny. Authority should be respected.

  Once briefing finished Sgt. Creed had set Dominic up with Gunwood’s K9 Unit, Timmy and Rex, so he could get a feel for the city. He wouldn’t start with his real Field Training Officer until tomorrow night.

  The suspect stumbled, almost fell, but caught himself and kept running.

  After his discharge from the Marines he’d feared his days of excitement were over, but here he was, his first night as a police trainee and already in a foot pursuit with an attempted theft of a motor vehicle suspect.

  Timmy, Rex and Dominic had met up with a Denver K9 Officer named Elias and set up in some bushes overlooking the Super Bulls Eye Store parking lot. Elias, the blackest man Dominic had ever seen and nearly as enormous as Rex, knelt next to his dog, Saber. Elias hugged the beefy animal around the neck, making Elias’s bicep bunch and knot, swelling like a purple cabbage. Dominic thought maybe the two K9 officers should open a produce store. Timmy, the dog, wasn’t there.

  Fifty yards to the north and below them sat a bright red, totally pimped out Dodge Charger; the only car in the lot.

  The clock had just passed midnight when below two tall, skinny white guys approached the bait car. Both jangled across the asphalt in the stiff, brittle way of the long time meth addict, their eyes scanning, their heads and necks jerking constantly like birds looking for a meal. They sidled up to the car, one to a side, did a quick head check, then opened the doors and hopped in.

  Dominic started forward, but stopped as Rex touched his shoulder, shook his head and wagged a finger at him.

  “Wait for it,” the big man whispered.

  Suddenly a shriek sounded from the car and the passenger front door popped open. The taller of the two men fell to the parking lot. He kicked the door shut while still lying on his back, then jumped up and took off running to the north.

  Without thought Dominic sprinted after him. He heard more shrieking and sounds of a struggle as he passed the car, but saw the two K9 officers converging on it from behind, leaving him free to chase the passenger.

  A last burst of speed and Dominic drew almost close enough for a flying tackle. He prepared to jump when a blur flew past him on the left, hitting the man high on the right shoulder and bowling him over to land with a hard slapping sound on the gritty asphalt.

  Saber, growling and shaking his head like a great bear, dragged the man, knocked dumb by the double impact, backwards away from Dominic.

  At a shouted command from Elias the dog released the passenger and flew past Dominic in the opposite direction toward his master.

  “Cuff him up and drag his butt back here, Rook,” yelled the black man. “And hurry it up or you’ll miss all the fun.”

  By the time Dominic got the passenger handcuffed, patted down for weapons and half dragged, half carried back to the car, the screaming had mutated to a gurgling pleading sound that turned Dominic’s stomach.

  “What do you think?” Elias asked Rex.

  “Yeah, I guess,” said Rex. “We best stop it here before Timmy has to poop him out for us to book him.”

  Both K9 officers laughed.

  “Open the door, Rook,” Rex commanded.

  Hesitantly, Dominic moved forward and opened the driver’s door, noting the splatters of blood that decorated the windows and windshield. Inside he saw the shorter of the men sprawled across the front seats. Timmy’s giant head was latched to his side up under the left armpit.

  “You stop that fighting, suspect,” said Rex in a casual voice. “I mean it now. You stop fighting and put your hands up so I can see them.”

  The man continued his whimpering, while making a feeble attempt to show his hands.

  Rex gave the release command and Timmy let go, jumping into the backseat and lying down as if waiting for another victim. Slobbery red drool puddled on the seat from his floppy jowls.

  Rex grinned at Dominic. “Now that’s what I call a bait car!”

  Comprehension finally dawned on Dominic. “You mean Timmy was in the backseat all along?”

  “Taking a nap,” said Elias with a big grin. “How was we supposed to know someone would try and steal the car?”

  Rex looked at Dominic. “Well, Rook, get him out of there.”

  Dominic looked inside. Blood smeared everything. He looked at Rex — he looked at the monster dog sitting in the backseat, eyes glowing — he looked at the suspect. Dominic pulled out his gun and pointed it at the suspect. “Get out here, hands where I can see them.”

  The suspect continued to groan but otherwise showed no signs of having heard.

  “Out!” commanded Dominic in his best Marine NCO voice. “Now! Or the dog brings you out.”

  The groaning and moaning stopped. The suspect wiggled his way until he flopped out of the car. He staggered to a standing position but then swooned and started to fall. Dominic jumped forward and caught him, coming between Timmy and the suspect in the process. Like a striking cobra Timmy shot out of the car and bit him, taking a mouthful just above Dominic’s boot, about mid-calf.

  Dominic felt the pain and pressure instantly. Like having his leg caught in an electric fence — coated in barbed wire — inside a hydraulic press. He dropped the suspect who fell in a loose heap. Dominic thought he might join him, but then the pressure released as Timmy let go and came back to a heel from a single command by Rex.

  “First lesson in K9, Rook, never get between the dog and the bad guy.”

  “That’s right,” said Elias. “Think of it just as you would a gun. You never want to get between the muzzle of a gun and the suspect, because the muzzle is the dangerous end.”

  “Sometimes Timmy’s other end can be pretty dangerous too,” said Rex.

  Both handlers laughed.

 
Rex looked down at Timmy and rubbed his big melon. “See what you did, boy? Good job. You are so strong. What a good boy. Did that stupid rookie get between you and the bad guy? Did he do that? Oh yes he did, he sure did.” He looked up at Dominic. “That there Rook is what we in the K9 world call a self-correcting problem. Bet you won’t do that again.” He gave the dog a big kiss and then grinned at Dominic. “Will you?”

  Perhaps it was the pain or the fleeting effects of shock, but in that instant, Rex and Timmy looked like twins.

  9

  The Detective

  * * *

  Colors

  * * *

  Detective Lieutenant Sammy Rothstein first heard the word savant at the age of four, the day he died. Tonight he worked late, but then he always worked late. The stack of papers on his desk never seemed to dwindle, no matter how hard he labored. Five other seasoned veterans worked under him in the Detective Bureau, but they were all home with their families. Sammy took his responsibility as their boss seriously and so the late hours. That and the fact that he had no family, not here in Colorado. At thirty-nine, he’d never married, had no children or siblings and his mother and father lived far away in New York’s diamond district.

  Sammy looked at his watch, eleven-fifteen, stretched, yawned, took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. He’d been working the John Doe case for months. The City of Gunwood had more than its share of assaults, even murders, but this was something else; mutilation on a horrendous scale; whacking off a man’s hand, his private parts and almost his head. He sighed. The case was a dead end.

  He went to close the folder when something caught his attention. He paused, looking at the typed words and drawn geometric equations from an altered angle. The gift sparked, altering his perception. His mind sort of glazed over as words and concepts floated three-dimensionally like physical pieces of a puzzle, rotating as they shifted and merged together. Time slowed as the shapes morphed into musical notes chiming discordantly until the pieces fused into a cohesive unit that harmonized into a perfectly balanced chord flowing melodiously throughout his being.

  Pieces of the puzzle that made up John Doe shifted and whirled and inverted, turning to colors and sounds and smells, blending in and out of one another, trying to merge, to join, to become whole. The crime scene photographs, the lifted prints, the one unidentified bloody fingerprint from the handle of the chainsaw, the strange tracks in blood and plaster dust — John Doe’s and a myriad of others — work boots, cowboy boots, tennis shoes, street shoes — the placement of the tools and slabs of sheetrock — John Doe’s height and weight — his reach measured from fingertip to fingertip — 72 inches — the major support beam soaked and splattered — the pulled cord that had stopped the chainsaw from cutting completely through his neck. All of them, along with the statements, medical reports, interviews, canvass results, blood tests, diagrams, angle of attack, angle of severance, size of the chainsaw blade and the dimensions of its frame, variance of temperature between inside and outside, building access, and dozens of other factoids pushed and prodded and nudged, trying to fit into a coherent picture that would coalesce into perfect harmony.

  It didn’t happen though—not completely, but something tried to take shape — something. Vague, blurry, unformed — but he could tell that his mind had tricked to some clue or combination of clues, and he knew his brain would continue to work on it until the picture became crystal clear. He just needed to let it go, push it back into his subconscious where whatever his firing synapse did back there — could do.

  Savant. He knew his gift, his power, how he’d obtained it and the cost.

  He’d been swimming in a lake in upstate New York while staying with his cousins and aunt and uncle. His parents were on a business trip. The day shined bright with just a few puffy clouds way up high. A steady breeze blew through setting little caps to break on the waves, but it was welcome in the August heat and the air felt almost as heavy with humidity as the lake itself.

  The inner tube he floated in swelled fat with air and only his bottom touched the cool water beneath. His arms and legs and head sat exposed to the warming sun as he closed his eyes and watched the dark red on the insides of his lids.

  Around him, his cousins — all older than him — splashed and yelled and dove, and then something hit the side of the tube and it flipped, dumping him face first into the water.

  Sammy remembered every detail of that event. He could see it as though it were happening this very second. He saw the murky water, with bits of vegetation and minuscule dots of sand and dirt that flashed and winked as they passed through the rays of sun, burning their way through the cloudy liquid. He lashed out with his arms and legs, flailing like a baby bird pushed from its nest. He spun about, seeing the yellowish ball of the sun even higher than the puffy clouds.

  The water swirled and shoved him, pushing him deeper. He saw Lori splash above him, her eyes green and her hair dark, a spattering of freckles thrown across her nose and cheeks. A smile beaming across her face, he at first thought she’d seen him and was going to save him, but then she passed out of his field of vision and his lungs were starting to hurt. He hadn’t been ready when the tube upended and had only managed a little breath before he plunged into the depths; and besides he’d never been very good at holding his breath, anyway. His chest felt like it would explode.

  A small stream of bubbles slipped past his lips and nostrils. He tried to hold them in but the rest erupted in a gush and he sucked in without thinking. The water rushed into his lungs, he could feel the cold of it as though it were a dead thing trying to steal the life from him. He coughed, pushing water back out, but the action had a counteraction and he sucked in even more. He could smell the water as it surged up his nose, ripe with rotted vegetation and decaying fish. Gritty sand crunched and ground between his molars, the taste reminding him of the sardines his mother used to eat from a tin can.

  Now he was in sheer panic, his body reacting on its own in survival mode. His hands and fingers groped for the surface, while his legs kicked frantically, trying to gain purchase. He screamed; the sound muffled and pitiful as it passed his ears. A flash of lightning raced across the inside of his eyes, like the red when he’d looked up at the sun with his eyes closed, only a thousand times brighter. There and gone. Another and this time he felt it jolt his body from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, stopping him cold.

  The pain in his chest vanished, but his eyes remained open and he could see everything. Another bolt of inner lightning jerked through his frame and the last few bubbles dribbled past the corners of his lips.

  Sammy felt himself falling, and it wasn’t just his body now, but his mind as well. As though he were somehow separate from his physical body. And suddenly the events began to take three-dimensional form, dancing before him.

  What happened now he no longer saw visually or felt physically. The sensations converted to a strange language of geometric shapes and colors and musical tones and chords with shifting frequencies that meshed and vibrated and shifted as they coalesced into a single focal point of knowledge.

  He felt his body dying, and the flashes of light were the circuit breakers of his mind shutting down.

  Every feeling was preserved; the panic, the pain, the cold, the numbness, the closing off of the senses — vision, hearing, smell, touch, taste.

  Sammy floated, like the shapes and it felt so nice, so good and right and peaceful. He opened his eyes and he was no longer in his body, he wasn’t even in the water. He hovered above it all, watching as his cousins pulled his little body from the lake and screamed and ran about. He wanted to tell them not to worry — that he was okay and there was no reason to be upset, but he couldn’t talk and he soared higher and higher. The sensation of flying felt very similar to floating on the water, only he felt lighter — weightless. He rose above the puffy clouds that had seemed so high, marveling at their beauty. He rolled over to his back and now he looked at the sun again. So bright, but he could
stare at it with no pain, and in that strange new way he knew he wasn’t really seeing it with his eyes anymore. His eyes were far below, still in his body.

  He continued to float up for the longest of time, past the sky and into space. He used to love to watch the astronauts as they worked on their rockets in those big white suits and those cool glass helmets. But his father had always told him that space was cold, colder even than the big freezer in the garage. It wasn’t though. It was nice, warm, soothing. He wanted it never to end.

  FLASH!

  That terrible lightning.

  And then he fell — fell so fast — so fast that it hurt his mind. Down — down — down. The stars disappeared and the clouds whooshed by. But he didn’t fall back to the lake, no he fell over a city and through a tall building — a hospital — and then he slowed and turned back to his stomach and hovered above his body. There were doctors and nurses and his aunt and uncle. His aunt cried and held onto his uncle as though she couldn’t stand on her own.

  There were tubes coming from his mouth and his swim trunks were lying on the floor, they had been cut down the sides and he wondered how mad his mother would be about that because she had bought them new for this trip.

  The doctor rubbed two shiny paddles together and then put them on Sammy’s body’s chest and…

  FLASH!

  …and pain. He opened his eyes. He took a great shuddering breath. Sammy no longer swam above his body, he was back inside. He coughed and gagged; the tube down his throat hurt and made him want to throw up. And that special knowledge he knew while floating in space faded…faded… faded… only… not completely.

  Sammy’s brain had been without oxygen for over forty minutes. The doctors all said he should be dead. They said the coolness of the water must have been a factor, but they had never before seen a case where seventy-degree lake water could stop cell death.