The punk in the red bandana jumped to his feet and charged onto the platform. In remarkably short order, Wesley had the punk upside down and was banging his head against the floor. She’d seen Wesley perform a version of this dangerous move in his matches.
She turned off the video. “Stop it, Wes!” He could lose his job or face a lawsuit over this, or both. “I need a picture.”
Wesley uprighted the punk, whose gaunt cheekbones and sparse goatee suggested malnourishment or perhaps drug addiction. The glittery eyes dimmed into confused grogginess. Casey took a headshot and full-length photo, right down to his bright green shoelaces.
“Okay,” she said. “Got it.”
Wesley tossed the guy out the door, causing him to hit the road in a spectacular face plant. The guy with the baseball bat charged forward. He might have done some damage if the dumbass hadn’t tried to enter with the bat raised. The bat smacked against the doorframe, jarring the Bandana Boy backward. Wesley wrenched the bat from him and tossed it on the bus floor. Casey kicked the weapon under the nearest seat, but Dumbass was undeterred. He leapt onto the platform, only to have Wesley kick his shin. The guy yelped. His black bandana slipped down to reveal a boy who looked about sixteen. The kid stumbled backward, fell off the platform, and landed on his ass.
“Anyone else?” Wesley demanded, scowling at their obscenities and threats. “Didn’t think so.” He stepped back and closed the door.
Casey snapped more pictures of the punks until the rude woman shouted, “Don’t you dare!”
Oh lord, she was smacking a Bandana Boy with her purse as he tried to climb through the broken window. The punk’s cap fell off, revealing light blond hair. The woman yanked the green bandana down to reveal a kid who appeared even younger than the others. Casey marched down the aisle.
“MPT Security.” She flashed her ID, then took his picture. “What do you think you’re doing, smart guy?”
“What’s it look like, bitch?”
“That you’re cutting your hands up pretty good there.” She nodded to the blood oozing between his fingers. “Just how messed up are you, Junior?”
“Fuck!” Junior released his grip and dropped to the ground. He stayed there, gaping at his wound. “There’s glass in my hand! Call an ambulance!”
Shouts and screams several yards beyond the bus drowned him out. Three shirtless guys were jumping on the roof and hood of a sedan parked in front of a computer repair shop. One of them lost his balance. His arms pinwheeled and he fell off the car. Cheers rang out. Raised phones recorded the incident.
An ambulance turned onto Glen Drive and eased up behind the stopped police cruiser. Horn honking and siren blaring, the ambulance driver attempted to veer around the cruiser without hitting pedestrians apparently oblivious to their arrival.
Two officers stood near the vehicle, attempting to move people off the road, but it was slow going. Casey shook her head. No one seemed to care that they were trying to get to an emergency. Mob mentality had turned these folks into deranged nut jobs.
“Casey, look behind you,” Wesley said.
She turned and gasped at the riot squad moving with militaristic precision toward the crowd milling about behind the bus. The formidable uniforms, batons, protective gear, and raised shields sent some people scurrying away. Too many others, though, decided to taunt the squad, as if daring them to attack. Adrenalin shot through her. A couple of morons began throwing objects. The riot squad pressed on, maintaining the same methodical pace. It was hard to tell if things were about to improve or become much worse.
“See what they’re carrying?” Wesley mumbled. “Tear gas, pepper spray, flash-bangs. This could turn into one hell of a shit storm.”
Casey swallowed hard. She turned away, fearful of the brutality that could come from both sides. Paramedics emerged from the ambulance and threaded their way through the crowd. As they edged closer to the bus, Junior intercepted them.
“I’m bleedin’! I need help!”
Wesley opened the door and leaned out. “That asshole busted bus windows and his buddies tried to take over the damn bus! He can wait! We got a girl with a head injury in here.”
“Screw you!” Junior shouted, holding out his dripping hand.
“Shut up or I’ll really give you something to whine about!” Wesley bellowed.
“He’s a lunatic!” the kid yelled to the wary paramedics.
One paramedic stayed with Junior while his partner stepped onto the bus. Casey provided an update on the girl’s condition until cheers, shouts, and screams from behind the bus sent her and Wes rushing down the aisle. Flames and smoke rose high.
“The punks just torched a car half a block down,” Wesley said. “Maybe to distract the riot squad.”
The squad was pushing back the crowd and now marching past both sides of the bus. More cops appeared from side streets. Judging from the variance in uniforms, officers from different jurisdictions were now assisting the Coquitlam RCMP. No surprise there. A multi-level command structure existed for all kinds of situations and disasters. Why hadn’t they arrived sooner, or had they been busy with the mayhem in the park? The altercations had skewed Casey’s sense of time. She actually had no idea how long they’d been stuck here.
Yelling erupted from all directions. Casey’s heart pounded as cops clashed with the crowd around the flaming car behind them while the riot squad made their move on the crowd in front. Tempers were unleashed in a tangle of beating, kicking, and bashing. Blood poured down a woman’s arm as she ran. Rioters shouted obscenities and threw beer bottles and placards at the surging squad. Batons struck arms, legs, backs, and shoulders. A few people managed to dash for cover. Others seemed frozen in place. Some people were simply dragged away.
“It’s all goin’ to shit,” Wesley muttered.
One heck of an understatement. Flames and strobing lights from arriving emergency response vehicles cast an ominous light. Casey caught sight of a helicopter hovering above. Probably the media, observing and reporting the debacle. A reminder that she should be doing the same.
Casey fetched the backpack she kept under a seat and removed her notebook. As she wrote, she worried about Lou. Was he still at the stadium?
Casey rang his cell. Sweat made her T-shirt cling to her skin. Why wasn’t he answering? She left a message, asking him to call.
“I really need to know you’re okay.”
The second paramedic appeared and helped his partner assist the injured teenage girl off the bus. Wesley started the engine and opened the driver’s window.
“What are you doing?” Casey asked.
“Getting us out of here. Riot squad’s moved the crowd far enough away to make turning onto Pacific easier.”
“But there’s still people on the road.”
“Not as many.”
“Then at least close your window till we’re out of the danger zone.”
Ignoring her, Wesley eased the bus forward. Casey spotted a Bandana Boy darting out from a cluster of people, his arm raised.
“Wes, watch out!”
A beer bottle soared through the window and struck Wesley on the side of his head. He recoiled, slamming the brake. “Goddamnit!”
“Gotcha, dickhead!” Bandana Boy shouted.
Stepping forward, he swore at Wesley. Casey recorded the guy’s behavior until Wesley reached out the window and grabbed his hand. He yanked the guy so hard that his body thudded against the bus. He pulled down the black bandana and rammed his fist into the guy’s face. Bandana Boy yelped and collapsed onto the ground.
“Wesley! What the hell?”
“He had it comin’.”
Two more Bandana Boys pounded on the windows and shouted, “You’re dead!”
“Back at ya, losers!”
Casey gripped the pole by Wes’s chair and gulped down air. Her stomach roiled so fast she thought she’d be sick.
Wes blasted the horn and eased the bus forward. “We’re out of here, folks!”
A
couple of passengers clapped.
“About bloody time!” the angry woman shouted.
She’d been on her phone the past few minutes, complaining about MPT’s “incompetence.”
Wesley started a left turn onto Pacific Avenue until a crash erupted behind them on Glen Drive.
Wesley again hit the brakes. “What was that?”
Casey hurried to the back. “A Smart car’s been turned upside down.”
“It’s on fire!” a passenger yelled.
Rioters who’d managed to avoid the officers up to this point tossed whatever they could find onto the conflagration. The Bandana Boys dashed toward the commotion. Soon, the car was completely engulfed in flames. The riot squad swarmed them.
“Whoa,” Casey said. “That sure went up in a hurry.”
“Somebody probably poured gasoline on it,” Wesley replied, edging the bus forward once again.
A firetruck blasted its horn. Sirens wailed as the truck crawled toward the fire. Once more, people were slow to move out of the way. An older man in a white dress shirt and black pants ran toward the Smart car. Arms flailing, he screamed at the crowd. One idiot shoved him toward the flames. His arm caught fire.
“Oh my god!” the angry woman shouted. “Can’t we do something?”
Anxious passengers glanced at her before turning back to the horror before them.
“Maybe.” Casey marched up to the supplies kept behind Wesley’s chair and grabbed the fire extinguisher. By the time she was at the door, firefighters had reached the screaming man.
“Stay,” Wesley said to her. “They’ve got this. Like you said, it’s safer for everyone if we’re inside.”
She had to admit that mob behavior had deteriorated from belligerent to unhinged at a startling rate. A few morons were now attacking the firetruck with sticks, hands, and feet. Law enforcement swarmed them and the melee escalated into frenzied fighting, cussing, and screaming.
Defiant thugs threw anything they could get their hands on, but they were no match for the pepper spray. Anguished cries filled the air as injured people stumbled into one another like out-of-control bumper cars. Some collapsed to their knees. Others were already on their butts, kicking at officers who were swinging batons with frightening speed.
Casey’s breath caught in her throat. Arrests were made. Both law enforcement and spectators were recording everything, as was she.
Wesley eased the bus forward, braking every few seconds to avoid hitting someone. In slow motion, he finally completed his turn onto Pacific Avenue while Casey headed down the aisle, recording as much as she could of the mayhem. Looters poured through more busted windows with the eagerness of starving rats who’d just whiffed a huge buffet.
“Thank god we’re out of there,” the angry woman remarked.
At the corner of Casey’s screen, a man fell among the pushing and shoving crowd on the sidewalk. In the fray, no one paid attention to him and Casey lost sight of the guy. She stopped recording.
A right turn took them toward Johnson Street, a normally busy four-lane street that was now empty. As they reached Johnson, a traffic cop waved Wesley through. Casey looked up and down the road, not surprised to see the barricades. She slumped into a seat and looked at her phone just as the battery died. Why hadn’t Lou returned her call?
“Hey, Wes, can I borrow your phone? I need to call Lou, see if he’s still at the stadium.”
“He’d better not be,” Wesley replied. “Heard everyone’s gone bat-shit crazy there too.”
Casey sighed. Adrenalin was fading away, exhaustion settling in. “At least the worst is over.”
Wesley snorted as he handed her his phone. “Ya think? There’s gonna be major blowback from all this, and we’ll be stuck in the middle of it.”
TWO
Seated on the comfy cushion in the bay window of her third-floor apartment, Casey let her fingertips dance over the laptop’s keyboard perched on her thighs. Her thoughts were working faster than her hands, thus all the typos. She was too tired to care. They were only notes for the incident reports she’d have to write tomorrow.
She’d never experienced so many altercations and events in a single night. Molotov cocktails, broken bus windows, physical confrontations, an injured passenger, and an irate passenger would require a lengthy, accurate report. She’d been home for over two hours and it still wasn’t easy to process everything that had happened. She needed sleep, but she was too wound up.
As soon as she returned to MPT’s administration building tonight, she’d spoken with Stan who’d been monitoring the situation in the communications room all evening, as were supervisors and a couple of executives. She felt a little guilty for not telling her supervisor everything, but she didn’t know how much to reveal about Wesley’s actions. Casey hated the idea of creating trouble for a coworker, but neither could she lie or omit incidents that could cause legal problems later on. Stan wanted her report by 4:00 PM tomorrow. She’d figure out what to do after she had some sleep.
Casey rubbed her eyes and tried not to be overly concerned about her growing headache. She hadn’t had a migraine in a long time, but tonight’s disaster had catapulted her stress level, and stress was a major trigger. That it was two-thirty in the morning didn’t help. Maybe she should give up waiting for Lou and go to bed. Even her guinea pig, Ralphie, nocturnal critter that he was, had gone to sleep. She gazed at his cage on the bottom shelf of her bookcase. The cage needed a good cleaning. Another thing to add to the to-do list.
Casey turned to the window and peered down at the front yard of this big old Victorian home. Three hours had passed since Lou finally returned her call. He’d taken his coworker Mitch and Mitch’s wife to the hospital, after the wife was struck in the eye with a rock. Lou was reluctant to elaborate, but promised to fill her in when he got home.
Casey had gotten ready for bed and watched a news report showing the huge brawl and conflagration that had taken place at the stadium in the park. She’d squinted at the images, looking for Lou, but hadn’t seen him among the throng of confused, frightened, and agitated people. When the footage turned to the action on Glen Drive, she switched the TV off. No need to relive that debacle.
Casey closed the laptop and was drinking the last of her chamomile tea when Lou opened the door and trudged inside. Sliding the laptop off her legs, she got to her feet. Relief swept through her and she grinned at the way his thick brown hair stuck out in all directions, as if gelled without the benefit of a mirror. The beer stench on his damp-looking hoodie caught her up short.
“Good lord.” She crinkled her nose. “How many beer were dumped on you?”
“Dunno. A few, I guess.” He lifted the hoodie over his head. “You didn’t have to wait up.”
“I wanted to.” The circles under his gray eyes were expected. The dark red mark on his right cheek was not. “Did somebody hit you?”
“There was a fair bit of punching going on.”
“Why didn’t you tell me on the phone?”
“You already sounded anxious.” Lou groaned as he sat on the sofa. “Didn’t want to make it worse.”
Hmm. How much had he kept from her? “Is Mitch’s wife okay?”
“Yeah, there’s no major damage to her eye. Glad I had my truck. They took the bus to the rally and an ambulance would have taken too long.” He sighed. “Emergency room was so packed that people were sitting on the floor.”
Casey sat next to him. “What exactly happened out there?”
“Some jerks started a bonfire next to the bleachers,” Lou said. “When the cops showed up, the jerks threw alcohol on the flames and that’s when things really went off the rails.” Shifting his weight, Lou grimaced. “By the time the firefighters arrived, there were fistfights and people getting hurt. Different groups of guys seemed to have issues with one another. Some assholes were just out to create chaos for fun. It was gross.”
Lou slowly sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees. As his T-shirt rose up, Casey spotted
a large red welt on the right side of his lower back.
“You were struck on your back too?”
“Probably. Gave as good as I got, though.” He kept his head lowered. “I’ll be fine.”
An uneasy feeling wriggled through Casey. At five-foot nine, Lou wasn’t a large man, but regular gym workouts had made him lean and strong. He also knew how to fight. Something told her that tonight’s brawl was nastier than he wanted to admit.
“Did a doctor take a look at you?”
“No. Plenty of people were worse off than me.”
“You should go tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday. We’ll see how I feel on Monday.”
Casey didn’t like it. She saw how pale he was beneath the spray of freckles. “Lou, are you sure—”
“Did you see the guy who was stabbed to death on Glen Drive?” He turned to her. “Must have happened right near you. Heard it on the news while driving home.”
“What stabbing? Nothing was said on the eleven o’clock news. I turned the TV off after that.”
“It happened around seven. Suspect’s not been caught.”
Images flashed through Casey’s brain. “I saw a man being beaten for trying to stop people from looting his store, but I didn’t notice anyone with a knife.” She picked up her now fully charged phone and scrolled through the videos she’d taken.
“Witnesses described someone in a black hoodie and ball cap who’d been behind the victim.”
“Tons of guys were wearing that. Wesley tussled with a few of them.” She had no doubt the Bandana Boys would have brandished a knife if they’d had one.
“Wes doesn’t tussle, he pulverizes,” Lou remarked. “What happened?”
Too exhausted to provide a detailed account, she gave him the abridged version.
“What the hell was he thinking?” Lou responded. “Someone was killed tonight and Wes was daring strangers onto the bloody bus?”
“I’m not sure anyone had died at that point, and you know Wes can’t be calmed down when he’s riled up.”
The Blade Man Page 2
