Fixer Redux

by Gene Doucette

  Dave had only just connected with the emergency dispatch when they both heard gunshots from deeper inside. They looked at one another.

  “Tell ‘em we’re going to need backup, while you have them on the phone,” Joe said.

  Janice’s keys were missing, but that didn’t end up being as much of an issue as it could have, once they discovered the first door was unlocked.

  They both drew their guns, and proceeded down the hall, to the second desk.

  It was also now unmanned, but without anyone unconscious behind it.

  “Maybe we should stop here,” David said. “You figure they have some robust processes in place to prevent this kind of thing from escalating, don’t you?”

  “A lockdown procedure.”

  “Yeah, exactly. Nobody’s making it back out to the street that isn’t supposed to, and even if they did, I mean, we’re in the middle of the city. How far can they get? Plus, this place is full of armed men dressed in uniforms, and neither of us are wearing a uniform today.”

  “You don’t want to get shot.”

  “Do you?” Dave asked.

  “Not really.”

  Another gunshot sounded.

  “That was just ahead of us,” Joe said. “I agree with everything you just said, but at the same time, I’m worried people need our help right on the other side of that door there. If we’re looking at an active shooter situation, maybe we should be the ones who tried to offer assistance, instead of the ones who waited outside for the cavalry.”

  Dave nodded.

  “Yeah, okay. Get your badge out.”

  He stepped behind the desk and looked around until he found the buzzer for the next door.

  “C’mon, I’ll buzz you through,” Dave said. “You hold the door open and don’t get shot.”

  It was an equitable division of labor only because Joe did not get shot, as requested. He held his badge out in his left hand and his gun in his right, and shouldered open the door.

  The next room was an anteroom to the gun locker, where they had been expected to check their weapons before proceeding. From this point, there were five additional doors, leading to different sections of the jail. The one they’d taken before ultimately led to the room where they spoke to Jenks. Joe didn’t know for certain where the other four went, but assumed the cells were at the end of at least one.

  Nobody was in the anteroom. Dave followed him through the open door, and confirmed this.

  “We were just here,” Dave said. “Where the hell is everyone?”

  There was a caged window at the other end of the room with a door next to it, so whoever got stuck pulling cage duty had a way to get in and out. Their last time through, they retrieved their service revolvers from the window. There were lockboxes on the other side, and a ledger to record who checked in what, so everyone got the right guns when they came back this way.

  A few minutes earlier, there were at least two people on the other side of the window.

  Joe peeked through the bars.

  “Hello?” he shouted. “BPD, is anyone back there?”

  He couldn’t see anyone, but the angles were terrible. That was made obvious almost immediately, when the door to the cage flew open, springing an officer with her gun out.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dave said, his badge up high. “We’re the good guys.”

  “Jesus Christ,” the officer said.

  Unlike the last corrections officer they’d seen—Janice—this one looked like she would be good to have around when assembling a posse. She was about five-nine, her brown hair in a ponytail. She looked athletically fit, which wasn’t something that could be said about a lot of people who worked full-time in a jail. It also didn’t describe Joe or Dave, really, but Joe tried not to think about that.

  On the other hand, she nearly shot them, so there was some room for improvement.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. “The alarms, why are the alarms going off? Who are you guys?”

  “Boston Police,” Joe said. “And I think we know as much as you do. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I was out back when the alarm started. Mike was supposed to be at the window, and I don’t know where he’s gotten to.”

  “Out back?” Dave asked.

  “Yeah, the…the john. Did you guys hear the gunshots? I thought they came from that way.”

  “No, we just came from there,” Joe said. “They came from here.”

  “Not this room. I’d know. Guessing wherever Mike went is wherever those gunshots came from, because it’s not like he’s lying on the floor back here. He’s a little too big to miss.”

  “What’s your name, officer?” Joe asked.

  “Sheila.”

  “Sheila, the place has procedures, doesn’t it? Nobody’s breaking out, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Honestly, detective, this is only my second day. I’m up to speed on the drills, but I haven’t been in one yet. I don’t think we drill for breakouts so much.”

  “Why is that?”

  “People in here are facing trial, sometimes for things where they aren’t the most important person. Informants, like.”

  “Possible informants,” David said. “Someone who might cop a plea to get a lighter sentence. I understand.”

  “Right, the worry is someone breaking in here to shut someone up.”

  “They still wouldn’t get out again,” Joe said.

  “Yeah well, we’ve gamed suicide runs,” Sheila said. “Who are you guys here to see, anyway?”

  “Dammit,” Dave said. “What cell is Bernard Jenks in? Joe? Do you know?”

  “Right now, I don’t even know which door leads to the cells. Sheila?”

  Sheila took a second to look at each door.

  “You don’t remember?” Dave asked.

  “I told you, it’s my first day.”

  “He buzzed us through, last time,” Joe said, pointing to the door he and Dave went through to get to the interrogation room.

  “Right, the buzzers are labeled,” Sheila said. “Hang on.”

  She disappeared to the other side of the cage, and after a short delay, one of the doors started buzzing.

  “Got it?” she asked.

  Dave found the correct door, and pulled it open, partway. He looked at Joe.

  “Maybe she should go first,” he said. “She’s the only one in uniform, and I’m growing increasingly uncomfortable with the likelihood of going down by friendly fire.”

  “Let’s just find Bernard and sit on him,” Joe said. “It’ll be all right.”

  “You think he’s a target.”

  “I can’t think of anyone else in here who could be, can you?”

  “It’s a big jail,” Dave said. “There’s no telling.”

  “Who’s this Bernard?” Sheila asked, stepping out of the back room. Dave was holding the buzzed-open door.

  “From the scene at the Pru,” Joe elaborated.

  “Ohh, him! Oh hey, you’re the guy. I knew I recognized you. I saw you on television. You arrested him, huh?”

  “Maybe we can hold a confab on this later,” Dave said. “After we figure out who’s shooting guns and all. Officer…Sheila?”

  “Binney” she said, tapping the nametag on her ill-fitting shirt. Day one uniforms never did fit well, Joe thought.

  “Officer Binney,” Dave said, “you want to take point?”

  “Sure, detective.”

  She stepped past him and into the hallway on the other side of the door. Dave went through next, with Joe in back.

  The hallway was long, with barred windows on one side, just high enough to make it hard to see anything other than the sky. The sunlight offered almost more illumination than the flashing emergency lights that were busy visually affirming the existence of an alarm in the building.

  There was a steel door at the far end, with a Plexiglass window that had bars on either side of it. It was a security door somewhat similar to the sort one saw on the back of armored cars, in
cluding a round opening big enough to insert a gun barrel.

  Sheila looked through the glass on one side of the door.

  “Hey,” she said, waving. There was a camera in the corner above the door.

  Dave took up a spot at the window, pressing his badge up against the bars. This left almost no room for Joe to get a good look at what was on the other side. He could see a desk back there, and a uniform behind that desk. It looked like he was holding a rifle.

  “We’re in lockdown,” the man behind the desk—Joe assumed—said, through an intercom. “What’s going on out there?”

  Dave stepped up to the camera, beside Sheila Binney.

  “We’re responding to gunshots,” Dave said, showing his badge to the camera. “BPD. We’re looking to secure our prisoner.”

  “Your prisoner is secure,” the man on the other side said.

  “You don’t even know who we’re here for.”

  “Doesn’t matter, all the prisoners are secure.”

  “What about the gunshots?” Sheila asked. “Pretty sure they came from down here.”

  “Hang on.”

  There was a delay, as the fellow with what Joe thought was a rifle got up from behind the desk to stand by the door. He heard a metal-on-metal sound that took him a few seconds to process.

  It was the security plate on the gun port in the door. The man on the other side was readying it in case he needed to fire his weapon through the hole.

  It’s probably a shotgun, Joe thought.

  Joe remained a few paces from the door, with an eye on the other end of the corridor. This all felt wrong. The guard on the other side of the door was acting appropriately to armed persons who declined to leave, during a lockdown; Joe couldn’t really begrudge him that.

  If they were wrong about the source of the gunshots, though…if they’d come from a different direction, it was possible they had managed to put themselves on the bad side of a dead-end, especially if that door stayed closed.

  They were in a position to be taken from behind.

  “There were no gunshots over here,” he said. He was still using the intercom, through a speaker in his hand. His other option would have been to shout through the gun port.

  “But you heard them?” Dave asked.

  “Just the alarms, sir,” he said. “You people need to return to your stations or evacuate the premises until this gets sorted out.”

  He looked at Sheila.

  “You should know this, it’s procedure,” he said.

  “I think you’d better open up,” Dave said. “We heard gunfire from this direction, and so did Officer Binney.”

  “Until that alarm is resolved, sir, this door stays closed.”

  Dave looked at Joe.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  “Something doesn’t feel right,” Joe said.

  “Yeah, I agree.”

  He looked at Sheila.

  “Do you know this guy?” he asked.

  “First day,” she said. “So no.”

  “What’s your name, officer?” Dave asked.

  “Sir, I’m going to say this again,” the guard on the other side of the door said. “There are procedures in place for this situation. Head back the way you came, because if I follow those procedures to the letter, I’m supposed to treat all three of you as hostiles, and I don’t think you want me to do that.”

  To illustrate this point, he held up the gun.

  Dave looked at Joe.

  “I don’t think he knows his own name,” Dave said.

  Dave appeared to be thinking the same thing Joe was: that the guy with the rifle might not belong in that uniform.

  “Tell you what,” the man said. “You head back down the hallway, and ask Binney what my name is, since he’s so sure the gunshot came from down here.”

  This got everyone’s attention. Dave pointed his gun at the guard’s head, which was at best a symbolic gesture given he’d never be able to shoot through the glass.

  “Who are you really?” Dave asked. “Who are you working for? Why are you here?”

  “I said—“

  “Ask Binney, we heard you. But Officer Binney is standing right in front of you.”

  He looked down as Sheila, who was a full head shorter.

  “Binney is a guy,” he said. “I don’t know who you are.”

  Sheila sighed, and turned around.

  “He’s right,” she said. Then she shot David Spence in the head.

  Joe reacted badly, which was to say that he had no reaction other than shock, and this was the wrong moment for that. She disarmed Joe with her second shot, which struck him in the shoulder and knocked him to the floor, his gun down the hall and well out of reach. Then she spun around and fired twice through the gun port, paused, and then fired again.

  She re-holstered the gun, and then turned back to Joe.

  “Tell me something, Detective White,” she said. Sheila’s demeanor had changed considerably in the past three seconds. It was as if something predatory had crawled into her skin.

  She knelt down next to him, and smiled, while he did his best to get off the floor.

  “When you had guns trained on the back of Corrigan Bain’s head, were you really going to take the shot? Do you think he would have let you? I’ve always wondered.”

  His mouth was moving, but no words were coming out. If she could lip-read, she’d realize he was attempting to Mirandize her.

  “You’re going to pass out now,” she said. She stood and pulled out a key ring that was covered in someone else’s blood. “Goodbye.”

  Joe was out for about fifteen minutes. He couldn’t be sure exactly how long, because he neglected to look at his watch before blacking out, but that seemed about right.

  He came to, in the hallway, right where he’d been shot, with the alarms still going off and the lights still flashing. The headless body of David Spence was still where he’d last seen it too, only now it looked as if part of Dave’s shirt had been torn off.

  Joe sat up. The room spun counter-clockwise when he did this, but tolerably slow.

  His shoulder was bandaged. That was where the parts of Dave’s shirt had ended up: somebody performed a quick battlefield dress on his shoulder wound. It was pretty expertly done, if only temporarily helpful. He thought he was probably not at risk for bleeding to death in the next hour, but should seek out medical attention after that.

  Sheila must have done it. He couldn’t imagine why, given she was also the person who shot him, but there weren’t a lot of other options, unless headless Dave managed it somehow.

  Joe’s gun was where he dropped it, and Dave’s gun was next to his body. This was another thing that made very little sense, but Joe decided he was in the middle of an afternoon where a whole host of things were going to stop making sense, so he may as well roll with it and move on. He got to his feet, wobbily, and fetched his gun. Dave’s he left where it was.

  His right arm was useless, so he stuck the gun in his pocket—the holster was in the wrong place, if he wanted to draw it lefty—and picked up his badge, thinking that it was more likely to save his life going forward.

  That it was possible to go forward at all was obvious as soon as he took a look at the steel door. It was ajar. Given this was the kind of security door that was built to self-close, the fact that it had not done so meant someone (Sheila, again, surely) had propped something in the jamb to keep it that way.

  “She wants you to follow her, idiot,” he said to himself. “Don’t fucking do it.”

  He immediately ignored his own advice, and went through the door.

  The guard’s body was just on the other side. Joe counted three bullet wounds: in the knee, the stomach and the head.

  She fired three times, he remembered, through the hole in the door.

  Only three shots. And they all landed.

  “Just lucky,” he said. “That’s all.”

  He stepped over the guard. The room on the other side consisted of th
e desk he saw from the window, a second desk, and a cabinet containing multiple rifles, riot guns, and gear. Joe didn’t know enough about what was supposed to be in the cabinet to be able to tell if something was missing, but there certainly did seem to be room for more guns than there were actual guns. Already, the one that could have been on the floor next to the guard’s body was missing, so that meant Sheila probably had it now.

  There was another door at the other end of the room, and two more dead bodies: more of the sheriff’s men. Joe checked one to confirm he was dead. The other one was self-evidently so; it looked like a bomb had gone off on his chest, which is what happens when you’re shotgunned at close range.

  On the other side of the far door—it was propped open as well—were two more doors, and another body. This one had her throat cut.

  Joe was having a lot of trouble processing all of this, in the context of it having been performed by the petite, young Sheila, who simply didn’t look physically capable of all of this, never mind mentally. It was clear by now that he was dealing with one of the accomplices they were certain Bernard was working with, but he just couldn’t jibe that fact with what he thought he understood about her, in the few minutes in which they interacted…before she blew Dave’s head off his shoulders. It was a good argument against profiling, he decided, because she would have been the last person he’d have associated with the word terrorist.

  There were more gunshots. He had three doors to choose from, but there was someone firing a gun behind only one of the three, so that was the one he decided to go through.

  It led, finally, to the cells. Joe was kicking himself for not already knowing more about the Suffolk Jail than he did—although he couldn’t have anticipated this particular need—but he knew not to expect a prison-like scene. It looked a little like slightly upscale single-occupancy public housing, with one wall replaced by bars on each of the rooms.

  None of the first cells he saw were occupied.

  He walked to the end of the long corridor and turned…and nearly had his head blown off. He fell back behind the corner of the wall again.

  Someone at the other end was in a shoot-first-ask-later mood.

  Joe stuck his badge around the corner.