The Basement

by Tom Clarke

  While Stevie was closing the gap the rest of the cover team started sliding into their body armor, making sure that their Police markings were visible.

  They had been sitting on them with the vest behind their backs so if anyone walked by they did not see a bunch of guys sitting in a rig with police written across their chest. All discussion in the cover vehicle stopped, everyone knew that if Keith was telling them to tighten up things with me were getting a little weird.

  As soon as I saw Desie start clenching her fists and grinding her teeth I knew that this was about to turn into a bad deal so I got out of the car and yelled over the hood, “Desie!”

  She looked at me and I could see for the first time a look of anger and hatred flash across her face. Desie did not say a word, she reached inside her jacket pocket and pulled out a small paper bag, she tossed it into the front passenger seat of my car. She then looked at me and said “Hi JT, can I have my money?”

  “Yeah you can” I said as I walked to the front of the car.

  “Shit girl you were freaking me out, are you okay?” I asked as I handed Desie the $750 dollar in pre-recorded police buy funds. Desie took the money, did not count it, and put it in her front pants pocket.

  While this was going on Keith was radioing updates to Stevie and the cover team, “Okay the UC is out of his vehicle and in contact with the suspect, they are talking, sounds like a good deal.”

  After taking the money Desie started looking around, like she was looking for someone. Her voice then turned from the confident business tone she had been using to that of a scared child. “Kings inside, he’s with Lone Wolf Ripper, he wants you” she said.

  “What?” I said, the change in her tone throwing me off.

  Desie’s voice then changed again, it went a few octaves up and then down like she was singing in an opera, “He wants you, I mean, he wants to do some business with you JT. Come inside, he’s waiting for you.”

  I could see Desie start to sway back and forth again and the look of anger had come back to her face. “Come inside JT, come inside, come inside.”

  “Hey Desie, I think” I started to say. “Come inside!” she yelled completely overpowering my sentence.

  Across the street the wire that Keith and Rick were monitoring was suddenly overpowered with static and then went dead. They were still receiving a signal but all they heard was ‘come inside’ and then static and some sort of white noise.

  Keith immediately relayed to the other units, “Cover be advised that suspect was trying to get the UC to go inside with her, she stated that King and Lone Wolf Ripper were inside, the wire then dropped.”

  “Cover team copy” Stevie replied.

  Keith then came back on the radio, “Stevie we have no wire and no visual, get eyes on the UC.”

  “Cover copy,” Stevie replied as he pulled out from around the side building across the street where they were parked. “Keith, we have eyes on the UC, he is talking with the suspect in the parking lot, be advised that the suspect looks agitated.”

  “Wire copy” Keith replied.

  It took me a second to overcome the force in Desie voice with which she had commanded me to go into the building. “Desie, I got to get going, tell King that I will get with him tomorrow or the next day.”

  I then looked over at the building and in the darkness of the doorway leading to the entrance to Rocket’s I saw it, the same form that I had seen in the basement of the house on Hollow Crest with Danny and Keith.

  “What the fuck?” I started to say, transfixed by what I was seeing, and the fact that my brain could not accept the fact that I was seeing it.

  My focus moved back to Desie as she called my name. “JT, he marked me” she said like a little girl. She then flexed her hands open, making her fingers almost claw like, opened her eyes wide and yelled, “On ceka na vas!” and then charged right at me.

  “Keith this is cover, the suspect just attacked the UC, did he come out of role?”

  “We still don’t have a wire Stevie!” Keith replied.

  “Do we role or wait?” Stevie radioed back. Before he could let go pf the transmission key on the radio Darrel yelled, “What the fuck is that!”

  Stevie, Darrel and the rest of the cover team could see, standing in the darkness of the entryway, a formless shape that was darker than the surrounding darkness. “Are you guys seeing that?” Darrel asked.

  Stevie barked into the radio, “Keith be advised we may have eyes on a second player in front of Rocket’s! Cover is rolling!”

  “Copy, we are right behind you” Keith replied.

  As Desie screamed at me in a language I had never heard and ran at me with her hands outstretched, I stepped back with my left foot and pivoted on my right, moving out of the way and allowing Desie to run right past me and into the front of my Tahoe. She hit the front of my Tahoe with a lot of force, creating a dull thud and denting the front of the hood. It didn’t even faze her, she turned and looked at me. I could see the anger and hatred raging through her eyes and facial expressions.

  “Desie, stop!” I yelled, she hunched her shoulders forward and curled her upper lip as if she was snarling. “Desie, you crazy bitch, stop before I hurt you!” I yelled again.

  Before I could react Desie lunged forward. I started to move in the same manner but she reached out and grabbed me about chest level by the front of my jacket. I again stepped my left foot back, except this time I rolled my right hand over the top of her forearm, leaned my right shoulder towards her, brought my right hand up and under her arm. I then stepped into her with my right foot so my hip was against her. “Eat this you crazy bitch!” I yelled as I executed a hip throw that sent Desie flying ass over tea-kettle.

  As Desie’s feet went flying over the top of her body I continued to follow through with the throw, just like I had envisioned doing numerous times in my pre-operation mental preparations. I slammed Desie to the pavement so hard it made my teeth rattle.

  I disengaged, letting go of Desie, and stepping back into a fighting stance ready to hit her again if I had to. Instead of just lying there in a crumpled ball of martial arts induced pain and sadness, Desie jumped up and again snarled at me like a feral dog.

  “Holy shit!” I said out loud as I took a few steps back. But instead of coming at me again she turned and ran away from the parking lot into a wooded area. Breathing heavy I suddenly remembered the second form I had seen standing in the entry way to the bar. I looked up back at the entrance to Rocket’s as I was running to the far side of my SUV for cover, drawing my handgun on transit. I didn’t see the form in the shadows I had seen right before Desie attacked me.

  Right then I looked over and saw that Stevie and the cover team had broken their positions and come to help. They had seen that Desie had run off and that I was not in danger so they kept on driving by. As they drove by I could see that all of them had their hands over their heads with their first finger, pinky, and thumb extended making the universal rock and roll sign...cops, they are the worst.

  I took one last look at the entrance to Rocket’s, got back into my Tahoe and hauled ass out of there.

  As I pulled out I reached inside my jacket and switched the wire off. I then called Keith on my cell, “Jesus Jimmy what the hell was that?”

  “I’m good bro” I replied to a very frantic sounding Keith. “It was a good deal, let’s get back to the office before someone calls the real cops on us.”

  “I hear that” Keith replied, “by the way Jim, Rick wants you to teach him that ass buster of a move you just punished Desie with.”

  “Let’s just get back to the office.” I then hung up with Keith, what the hell just happened? I had been training martial arts for a long time, I had two black belts and training in several different styles. The throw I used on Desie was flawless, but I should have been able to throw a 135lb female like Desie with no effort whatsoever. She should have gone flying like a kite!

  When I tossed her dumb ass to the deck it was the total
opposite.

  It was like throwing a 300-pound adult, it took every ounce of muscle power I had to pull that off. And then there was that black mass of a figure again, and what the hell did “On ceka na vas” mean. During my years in law enforcement I had seen some very weird shit, but my brain was having a real hard time processing what I had just experienced.

  When I got back to our office the rest of the team was there unpacking their gear. When I got out of my Tahoe a couple of the crew started clapping.

  As I started walking into the office I didn’t say anything to anyone, I walked past Keith and Darrel who both could see that I was rattled. I did my best not to show it but they could tell, Keith because he had been my partner for a little bit now and Darrel, well I think it was because he had seen something that he could not explain and was feeling a little rattled himself. He had also been around the block a few times and just had a sense for when a stoic front is covering something shaky.

  I walked into our office with the bag of drugs that Desie had dropped in the front seat of my car. I didn’t even bother to photograph, weigh, or test any of it. I just walked straight to the evidence locker and locked it up. I then went to my office and sat down on a small couch that I had in front of my desk. My entire contact with Desie had lasted 5 or 10 minutes at the most, yet I felt like I had been up all night, I felt weak.

  Rick came into my office, “Jim you okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah boss I’m good, I guess you just never know what you’re going to see when you’re out to buy some dope.”

  My false front was not fooling Rick. He may have been new to drug enforcement but he was not new to police work. He knew that the most experienced officer still gets shook-up, “Jim, are you sure, you look a little bit on the rattled side.”

  I didn’t look up at Rick for fear that the deep down unsettled feeling I was experiencing would betray me, “I just was not expecting that crazy Desie to come charging at me like that, caught me off guard that’s all.” I did not tell Rick about the shadow figure I saw, or that Desie was yelling at me in some weird alien language gibberish, or that she went from weighing around 130 to feeling like she was weighing 300 pounds when I did the take-down.

  “Hey Rick if it’s okay with you I’m just going to lock the evidence up in the one of the lockers, I will download the recorder tomorrow, I would like to call it a day.”

  “That’s fine Jim” Rick replied. “We lost the wire when you got out of your car anyway so.”

  My demeanor changed, no one had said that the wire dropped and they couldn’t hear what was going on, “You lost the wire, did Keith try and call me?” I asked.

  “Yeah, he did” Rick replied, “a couple of times, your phone just went straight to voice mail as though it was turned off.”

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at it. My phone was on and fully charged and showed no missed calls. “Well since the receiver failed my body wire should have picked it all up internally, Ill check it later, not to worry Rick.”

  Rick smiled, “Never do Jimmy, nice moves out there today by the way, I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Thanks boss” I replied, “remind me next week and I will teach you that throw.”

  “Ha! No way in hell am I letting you toss me like that, shit, she looked like some sort of a circus act flipping through the air. Get some rest Jim, I will check with you in the morning” Rick said as he walked out of my office.

  As he made his way down the hallway I heard him tell the rest of the crew “no debrief today boys, wrap up what you have to and let’s all get out of here for the day.”

  As I sat there in my office I could hear the other office doors closing and the rest of the crew leaving for the day. I heard Mike ask Becky if he could walk her out to her car, and then the front door closed.

  Keith and Darrel then walked into my office, “Man Jimmy are you alright, that was pretty sweet how you dumped the pill princess on her head” Keith said.

  As Keith was sitting down and Darrel was helping himself to some of the coffee I had in my office curtsey of my one-cup machine, I asked, “Keith did you guys lose the wire out there?”

  “We did” Keith replied as he motioned for Darrel to make him a cup too. “It was weird, as soon as you got out of your car and got close to Desie we lost the transmission, but not the signal.”

  “What does that mean?” Darrel asked as he handed Keith a cup of coffee.

  Keith took a sip of his coffee, grimaced, glared at Darrel for a second, and then said, “Well we started getting like heavy static and some weird white noise I guess I would call it, I have not ever heard it act like that before.”

  “Did you call me?” I asked as I waved off an offer of coffee from Darrel.

  “Yes sir I did, see check it out.” Keith showed me his cell phone which registered two calls to my phone.

  “When I called you, it went straight to voice mail as through your phone was turned off.”

  “Bro my phone was on. Check it out. On and fully charged but with no calls from you” I said as I tossed my cell phone to Keith. He just sat there and looked at my cell phone somewhat perplexed.

  “Keith, right before that crazy bitch attacked me, I saw that shadow figure in the door way to Rocket’s. The same one from the other day.”

  Keith tossed my phone back at me, “Jimmy, please don’t tell me that, I don’t want to hear that shit! What the FUCK!”

  As Keith squirmed in his chair Darrel spoke up, “Keith, Jimmy, I saw it too.” You could have heard a pin drop in my office. Both Keith and I looked at Darrel and I said “say that again Darrel.”

  “I saw that, whatever it was, a shadow figure in the entrance to Rocket’s. I asked the other fellas what it was, but as they were trying to focus in on it is when all the kung-fu fighting started.”

  “Did any of the other fellas see it?” Keith asked.

  “I don’t think so” Darrel replied, taking a drink from his coffee. “They were too busy watching Jimmy beat the piss out of that poor pill addled Desie.”

  All of my frustrations from the day boiled over at that point. I looked right at Darrel and barked, “Okay Darrel, no bull shit, I saw the expression on your face this morning when I showed you the pictures that Keith and I took in that basement. I want to know what the hell is going on!”

  “Jim, bro take it easy” Keith said, it was then that I realized that I had my hand in a tight fist and was looking at Darrel, my friend, like I was going to jump out of that chair and kick his ass.

  “I’m sorry D, I’m still just wrapped a little tight I guess” I said in an apologetic tone of voice.

  “No problem Jim” Darrel replied as he took another sip from his coffee.

  I took a deep breath and rocked back in my office chair. In a much more controlled, and polite, tone of voice I again asked, “So, what’s the story, have you seen that shit before or not, and I’m not talking about the LW tags.”

  Darrel looked at me and Keith, then he pulled the door shut. “Jim, you know my grandmother is Croatian and I can speak and read it, to an extent. Well about a year ago I was sent to the Seattle field office to help out with an investigation there that the FBI had going.”

  “Ah come on man, if you tell me that this shit is going to involve the FBI I am going to start banging my head against the wall” I interjected with a very sour look on my face.

  “No” Darrel continued, “the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were working on a case with several dead Croatian immigrants found in a shipping container with their heads chopped off. Anyway, written in blood on the inside of the shipping container was a large circle with some very similar markings and writing, the agent in charge out there was a friend of mine and he asked me to take a look at it.”

  Keith stood up and started to pace in my office, “Keith be cool bro” I said.

  Darrel went on, “I didn’t recognize the symbols or some of the writing, so I took pictures of it to my grandmother, who als
o lived out there in Kent, not far from the port where they discovered the shipping container.”

  “And what did she say about the markings?” I asked in a guarded tone.

  Darrel looked right at me, set his coffee cup down and said, “Jimmy she lost her fucking mind!”

  “She started yelling some shit about a demon! She sent me to chat with a priest who was living and working in Tacoma.”

  “Did you chat with him” I asked in a very somber voice.

  “Yes, I did” Darrel replied. “The cats name is Father Andrej, he was running the church, Holy Trinity I think it was called, not far from the Point Defiance Zoo if I remember.

  Anyway, he took a look at the pictures and said that they looked like some sort of a protection spell against something evil, he was not certain because some of the characters had been smudged and wiped away when they were removing the bodies from the container.”