Chalk Man

by Tony Faggioli

  But Napoleon’s cry of desperation told Parker differently.

  The dead body on the sidewalk was going to be Ruiz.

  Chapter 17

  In war, silence can be a blessing, no matter what the scenario, be it at base camp to take a break from all the combat or even when you are in the midst of that combat. Because silence means you can hear the enemy and get a fix on his position. Silence means you have a good chance of killing before you are killed. If, that is, you’re able to arrest your jangling nerves, slowly count the beads of sweat on your forehead and be willing to be the one who embraces that silence longer than your enemy.

  But snipers change all that. From their distance, all noise is muted, and worse still? They cannot be touched. At least not by you. By another sniper? Sure. By an air strike? Most definitely. But for the combat soldier they are the greatest terror because they have no respect for tactics, and you have no real fighting chance to defend yourself. So? You either get lucky or you die.

  The echo of Ruiz’s screams dissipated as Parker lay on the ground behind the car that had been his refuge, and silence filled the street like a balloon, the sound of the sirens on the other streets around them pushed off, far away, like a distant soundtrack.

  No one moved because no one knew what to do next. The frailty of their situation was now obvious to everyone. Someone had just died. Detective Solomon thought it was their suspect, but he evidently wasn’t sure about that enough to stand up or make a move. One of the patrol officers, his uniform said Peterson, was breaking all department protocol and texting like mad on his phone. Parker looked under his car to where Hobbs was lying, still bleeding, his eyes beginning to go glassy with shock. Officers Trenton and Benoit were holding their positions and both staring Parker’s way, as if he somehow had the solution to the jacked-up equation they were in. When Parker looked at the cap their eyes locked. The cap was a vet, too. He knew the gig. Sit still. Wait for help. It sucked. But panic was the true enemy now, and the cross hairs were waiting for you if you surrendered your patience.

  But, eventually, the reinforcements arrived. Parker could see them in the window opposite Trenton and Benoit. They came from either end of the street, hugging the buildings beneath the sniper’s perch, on his side of the street, where he had no angle on them, their AR-15s pointed upward as they moved in sequential groups of four, their faces filled with tension and their eyes wide. Parker was not surprised. They probably taught you a lot in SWAT training . . . but dealing with sniper situations? Probably not so much.

  The strategy was obvious: take no chances. Teams of eight went into each of the four buildings across from them. No doubt one would guard the main entrance and another would take any back exit, which would leave six to make a beeline for the rooftop. It’s how they would’ve done it in Afghanistan. At this point, the sniper was vulnerable. He’d lost his main tactical advantage: distance. And his weapon would be a bolt-action long gun, not meant for up close combat. There was no saying if he had other weapons with him, though, which would make the breach of the rooftops hair-raising, to say the least.

  It didn’t matter, though. They were already safe. Parker felt it instinctively.

  Before long, Napoleon confirmed it. He’s gone.

  Parker laid his head against the tire and sighed deeply. “I know.”

  Without hesitation, Parker stood with his gun pointed at the rooftop, just for show for the rest of them, and hustled over to Hobbs.

  The cap cursed under his breath. “Parker! Are you crazy?”

  Hobbs had bled out more than Parker thought. Out of habit he almost yelled “Medic!” Then, feeling like an idiot, he turned to the cap. “I had to. He’s bad.”

  The cap lifted his radio to his mouth. “We need medical help over here immediately.”

  The radio was silent for a few seconds before it chirped with a reply from a man with a deep voice. “We’ve almost cleared the buildings. Hold tight just a few more.”

  “The buildings?” Solomon said, bewildered. “Isn’t the dude on the ground in a puddle over there, somewhere?”

  Parker winced. How many times, for the rest of his life now, would Solomon remember those words when he found out who was really over there, on the asphalt, dead? He shuddered at the thought and then put the full pressure of his body weight on Hobbs’s wound for two reasons. The first was to help stop the bleeding even more, and the second came next. Hobbs cried out in agony, the sudden pain chasing the pooling shock from his eyes as adrenaline filled his body. “Hang in there, Hobbs,” Parker said with a nod. “You’re gonna be okay. Looks like a through and through. You a lefty?”

  Hobbs grimaced and shook his head.

  “Good. Won’t even effect your pitching on the softball team.”

  A weak chuckle escaped Hobbs as they all waited. Ten long minutes later the radio chirped again. “All clear!”

  The body language of everyone around Parker showed instant relief, except for the cap. “Dammit!” he yelled. “How? How did the sonofabitch get away?”

  Parker had no idea. That was a mystery to solve later. Right now, he had a bigger issue. “Cap!” he said. “We need those paramedics.”

  But there was no need to call for them again. The all clear signal had barely been given before Parker heard the loud rumble of a fire truck, the kind with two parts, come around the corner, sirens blaring. A paramedic truck was right behind them. They’d obviously been briefed by the SWAT team on how to do this, just in case. The larger fire truck pulled up and left just enough room for the paramedic truck to pull in between it and the lobby of the hotel. Two paramedics sprang out of the back of the vehicle and sprinted over to Hobbs. After assessing his wounds and determining that he was safe to move, they picked him up and shuttled him into the paramedic truck. Then, they pulled away at rapid speed. Parker didn’t know who was driving the larger fire truck, or the back tail, but kudos to them both as they would’ve been easy pickings if the SWAT team had gotten the all clear signal wrong and the sniper was up there playing possum somewhere.

  One by one, they all stood. Peterson abandoned all machismo, called whoever he’d been texting and began to cry.

  “His wife just had a baby,” Officer Trenton said out of nowhere.

  Benoit approached him and slapped Parker on the shoulder. “Thanks for telling me to get down,” she said bravely. But Parker noticed her hands were shaking badly. Solomon was the last to stand and when he did, he immediately began to call out his partner’s name. It was tragic, heartbreaking and stomach churning, all at the same time.

  The radio was squawking practically non-stop now. The rooftops were cleared but each unit, unable to find the sniper, was frantically working the stairwells and each floor of their respective buildings trying to find him.

  “Do you think it’s Roland?” Klink said to Parker.

  “It’s gotta be,” Parker replied.

  The cap nodded in agreement. “Yeah. I mean . . . what are the odds that it’s not?”

  SWAT trucks rolled down the street and took up positions in front of the buildings. After another twenty minutes, a half dozen cruisers joined them. At last, the final all clear was sounded.

  “Shit! You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Klink said, frustration saturating his voice.

  “What the hell is going on?” Solomon said.

  No one answered him. Instead, Captain Holland, Parker and Klink gathered themselves and began walking over to the building, with Solomon following.

  A group of police officers and two SWAT team members had gathered in a circle on the sidewalk below the Worldwide Imports building. As they grew closer there was no mistaking the mumbling and talking that was going on, each word tinged with either concern or confusion.

  Parker felt Solomon run past him and braced himself for what was coming next.

  Sure enough, as Solomon broke through the circle of his fellow officers, he froze. “Oh, my God! Ruiz? No! Oh, my god!”

  First one officer, then two, grabbed Solo
mon to support him as he nearly fell over. “That’s my partner,” he cried out, before having to be pulled away from getting any closer to Ruiz.

  “Get him away!” the cap yelled. “Now!”

  The officers that had Solomon began to pull him back towards the center of the street, but he was like a mad dog now. He spun away from them and ran up to the cap, grabbing him by the shirt, his eyes wide, wet and filled with dismay. “That’s my partner!” he screamed.

  “I know, Detective. I know,” the cap said, even though neither he, Parker or Klink had seen anything yet. “I’m sorry. He must’ve got up there, to the rooftop and . . .” His voice trailed off feebly.

  But Solomon was having none of it. His face became a mask of horror as he finally snapped. “No, man. You don’t get it. It’s that place, you see,” he said with a nod at The Hotel Clarke. “You didn’t see the shit we saw in there, man. It did this. It did.”

  “Calm down, Solomon,” Klink said. “Just take a breath.”

  “What?” Solomon said. “What did you say? Calm down? Calm . . . down? Easy for you to say, man, you don’t have to tell his wife what’s happened.”

  It was like a verbal punch that hit them all. The universal fear all cops had now become Solomon’s reality: losing a partner and having to be the one—because it was the code, it had to be you, it could be no one else—to tell their loved ones.

  The officers pulled Solomon away to a paramedic truck down the street with no small effort, before one of the SWAT team members spoke up. When he did it was in the same deep voice that Parker had heard over the radio earlier. This was the unit commander. “He was so stunned he didn’t even see it.”

  A dire silence followed before the cap replied, “See what?”

  The name patch on the commander’s shirt revealed that his name was Puckett. Instead of answering, he simply waved them closer.

  They were going to have to see Ruiz sooner or later, and none of them were strangers to seeing dead bodies. Still, they all hesitated.

  The cap got there first. “What the . . .”

  Klink second. “Is that a . . .”

  When Parker got there, nothing could’ve prepared him for what he saw on the sidewalk.

  It was Ruiz, all right. Or at least the splattered remains of him. But it was what was around him that completely took Parker’s breath away.

  “How?” Klink asked.

  “We been asking the same thing,” Puckett said.

  “It’s not possible,” the cap said. “The sniper couldn’t have gotten down from the rooftop, done this and still escaped.”

  Parker’s stunned amazement only grew larger, because . . . this time they could actually see what he was seeing.

  Which only made the moment more real and more horrifying.

  Beneath them, the shattered remains of Detective Ruiz were on display.

  And someone had drawn a chalk outline around the body.

  Chapter 18

  Two hours later and Parker was driving home, and not at all against his will. They’d all been sent home under the cap’s orders. Parker hadn’t known the cap that long, but he was growing to respect him a lot. He’d been transferred in and inherited a squad room turned upside down by the Kyle Fasano case, which had left Parker’s first partner, Napoleon Villa, dead on a baseball field in East Los Angeles. Then, he had stuck by Parker throughout most of the Hymie Villarosa case, even when Parker’s new partner, Detective Campos, was shot and wounded. He’d even tried to defend Parker when the chief and his lieutenants yanked him off that case, after Güero Martinez, the same demented crime boss that had been present the night Campos was shot, had then sent his thugs to kill Trudy.

  Now, twelve hours into the investigation of the disappearance of Charlie Henson, when most likely their lead suspect in the case had just tried to blow Klink’s head off, when most captains might hit the gas pedal and have everyone working overtime? The cap had assessed the aftermath of what happened at The Hotel Clarke and called a timeout. Because it was all too much and nothing, absolutely nothing, saps your energy like the tsunami of adrenaline your body endures when your life is genuinely threatened.

  So, once Hobbs was in the ambulance and on his way to the hospital, once Ruiz’s body was surrounded by CSI techs and after Solomon was emotionally led off with the watch commander from his station, the cap had looked around and ordered all the uniform officers present at the incident to file short reports and then to clock out, before turning to Parker and Klink and saying only four words. “Go home. No arguments.”

  They complied, agreeing to be back at the station in eight hours.

  Parker rubbed his eyes with his free hand as he wove in and out of early morning traffic, desperate to get home and get as much sleep as possible before he came back.

  If he could sleep. That would be the problem.

  His therapist had helped him with this, in many ways.

  The good news? The incident hadn’t triggered any of his PTSD symptoms, which seemed like a minor miracle, as the event had felt very much like a military situation from beginning to end, and Parker had more than a few sniper moments in both Afghanistan and Iraq when he had served.

  The bad news? The very thought of going home to take a nap while a little ten-year-old boy was quite possibly in the hands of a monster seemed not only counterintuitive but counter . . . instinctive. Like he was a bad human being for even thinking of doing such a thing. Then, to make himself feel even worse, he had a horrible thought: the odds were beginning to lean heavily towards the fact that Charlie might already be dead.

  Parker sighed. He didn’t want to think of this as a child abduction case. At least not one by a complete stranger. Because if it was? It was already too late. The cold truth of such cases was that eighty-eight percent of children abducted by strangers were dead within twenty-four hours. Worse still? Seventy-six percent of them were dead within three hours of being abducted. Those were the stats you didn’t tell the parents. Those were the stats you could barely tell yourself.

  No. Parker preferred to believe now that it was, indeed, Alex Roland who had taken Charlie, because that could very much change the odds. If so, the stats said they had closer to forty-eight hours to put a lid on this. It was still possible to pull that off. It was currently Friday. Charlie had disappeared sometime yesterday morning.

  “So? Does Roland have Charlie?” Parker asked the empty inside of his car, feeling frustrated. Nap had gone silent since he’d gone to help Ruiz.

  Napoleon did not respond.

  “Tell me or I won’t get a wink of sleep and we both know it.”

  Still nothing. Then, after a few minutes, and as Parker was about to turn on the radio, Nap finally replied. I don’t know.

  This was unusual. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  I know he took him. But I don’t know if he still has him because, again, something is blocking me from seeing. From knowing.

  “Like what?”

  I’m not sure. But the evil at work here is thick and vile. At this point all I want is proof of life. A vision of Charlie in captivity, a heartbeat, anything . . . but each time I try to reach out to him, I am repulsed by the effort.

  Parked sighed. “So . . . what does that mean?”

  I don’t know, Parker. It could mean that Chalk Man or his master are blocking me from knowing or it could mean there’s . . .

  “Nothing to know. Because, let me guess, if the kid’s dead . . .” And just saying the words caused a wave of nausea to hit him that caught him completely by surprise.

  Correct. There’s nothing to reach out and see, no heartbeat left to feel. Napoleon’s voice was drenched with worry.

  “Shit. Nap. C’mon. This could be—”

  Don’t you dare say it, Nap said firmly.

  Parker did anyway. “This could be Efren, man. This is somebody’s Efren, Nap.”

  I know that! Don’t you think I know that? Napoleon replied, his voice saturated with frustration.

&n
bsp; Nap wasn’t in the passenger seat. Parker took a quick glance over his shoulder. He wasn’t in the back seat, either.

  “Where are you?”

  Working.

  “Where?”

  Santa Fe.

  Parker was flabbergasted. “In New Mexico?”

  Yeah. Working my way through Jim and Martha Roland’s home. Alex’s parents. Both are decent people. He’s worked at the Ford plant thirty-three years. She’s been an admin assistant for Anheuser-Busch for twenty-seven years. Graduation pictures of Alex from high school and the military are up on the walls. The guy’s got two sisters and a brother. All married. The sisters have kids of their own, which makes Jim and Martha grandparents now. Pretty idyllic.

  “Yeah. Well. Pictures can be deceiving.”

  I know. For sure. But . . . I’m ghosting my way through this house and I feel not a shred of evil. They’re not Bible thumpers, but there’s a cross in the living room.

  “So, what? You can sense perps, now?”

  Not always. And we’ve already established that I can’t stop a bullet for you yet. Or put the whammy on a guy with a rifle from a hundred yards. And while we’re at it, I think you’ve just realized that I can’t see the future, either.

  Parker tightened his lips and nodded. “So, can you at least tell me what happened with Ruiz?”

  When Napoleon replied his voice sounded somber, falling headlong towards sad. I tried, Parker. I really did. But I couldn’t save Ruiz. I couldn’t . . .

  Parker instantly regretted bringing it up. “I’m sure you did your best.”

  Yeah. Exactly! That’s the problem. I DID do my best. I know I did. And it still wasn’t enough.

  The exit to Parker’s home, and Trudy, was just up ahead. He hit his blinker and merged his way over. “And?”

  There was a long stretch of silence before Napoleon finally replied. I made it into the building. Transported myself up the elevator shaft. But . . . I dunno . . . the demon he’s hosting . . . this Chalk Man . . . threw up some sort of force field. It felt like moving through a vat of maple syrup. I just couldn’t get there in time . . . Ruiz was ahead of me and he made it through with no problem. He actually drew down on Roland before . . .