A Good Kill

by John McMahon

  “I guess I’m not like most people.”

  He nodded, staring at me like I was a part of some science experiment. “And what do you attribute that to?”

  “My first C.O. taught me to view violence as a zero-sum game,” I said, thinking about my commanding officer when I was a rookie. “Like this guy with the gun at that school . . . he made a choice to put lives in jeopardy. If we can get to him before he gets to someone innocent—like Avis Senza—then the life he exposes becomes his own.”

  “An eye for an eye,” the doctor said.

  I didn’t answer. ’Cause it wasn’t like an eye for an eye. And maybe I’d walked into the therapy session feeling a little chesty. Like I didn’t need to be here.

  But that came from the knowledge that the Jed Harrington shooting was a good kill. The ruling wasn’t official yet, but I’d been all but told.

  “Are we here to talk about other options I had, Doc?” I asked. “’Cause I assume you know there was a man with a gun to a woman’s head. A man who turned that gun on kids. Was about to kill them.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “Let’s talk about something different. What do you want to get out of these two sessions?”

  This was a standard Cavendish question, and I’d been thinking about it since I woke up that morning. In fact, I liked the question for its simplicity and purpose. It was good to have a goal after all, rather than just show up and bullshit.

  “I’d like a lay of the land,” I said. “Symptoms. Stages. What do your studies say I should be feeling? So I can see it coming. Work on it.”

  Cavendish sat up taller.

  “The whole idea is that we work on it together, P.T. I don’t hand you a playbook.”

  I went quiet then, and Cavendish scrutinized me a minute. He knew me well. He also knew I was already working, and would be out of his sight after the next session.

  “Tell me what you’re feeling, Detective.”

  “Okay.” I leaned in a little. “Honestly, at first when I shot him, I felt relief.”

  “All right,” he said. “That’s good. You wanted to know about symptoms. We call that first period ‘the impact phase.’ A lotta cops feel a sense of survival. Relief is part of that.”

  “I mean, I know it’s a righteous kill,” I said. “But nobody wants to take a life. Right?”

  Cavendish shrugged at me. “If that’s what you’re feeling . . .”

  “I am,” I said. “I mean, I was. A few hours after that, I guess I got a bit sensitive. I went back to work. Got a lot of ‘atta-boys.’ Friends and neighbors heard about the shooting. It’s on the news.”

  “And how did you feel?” he asked. “About the ‘atta-boys’ . . . ?”

  “Maybe I bristled a little.”

  “Okay,” Cavendish said.

  “Then I felt a little remorse.”

  “Remorse?” Cavendish blinked. “Specifically what . . .”

  “Guilt.” I shrugged. “Self-questioning. Regret. I mean, he’s a scumbag school shooter, but he was somebody’s son, right? He’s got a mom. A sister.”

  Cavendish was staring at me funny.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he answered, shaking it off.

  “And now I feel like it’s gonna be okay,” I said.

  “Acceptance?”

  “You could call it that,” I said. “Like I’ve realized this was the only way things could’ve gone down.”

  A chime sounded from atop Cavendish’s desk. Our time was over.

  The doctor stood up. “Well, this sounds better than I thought, Detective.”

  I cocked my head. “I thought so too. I mean, I know it’s only been a couple days,” I said. “But I feel solid.”

  I grabbed my phone from where I’d placed it beside the chair. Stood up. “I know we have a time on Monday. Can we pick it up then?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “I’m glad you’re feeling so confident.”

  I got up then and walked out. Took the stairwell two steps at a time. When I got to the bottom, I checked my phone to see if Remy had finished prepping for the stakeout at Tandy’s.

  I also closed the browser window that I’d been studying before Cavendish showed up in the hallway.

  It was an article about the “five stages” a cop goes through after a shooting.

  There was the impact phase, which Cavendish mentioned. Followed by recoil. Then there was remorse, bargaining, and eventually acceptance. Below the headline was the author: Gary Cavendish. And I knew that the doc was wondering whether I’d read it and was bullshitting him.

  But at the same time, if he’d asked and was wrong, he knew he’d be sending me looking for it online.

  A catch-22.

  I crossed the street and opened the back door of the precinct.

  I was fine, and it was time for real police work.

  17

  In my first three years as a detective, I was a part of five stakeouts, and my then-partner, Miles, who later became chief, was most in his element on a sting.

  But Remy had only been a part of one operation of this type, and I felt like I’d done her a disservice by not getting her into more of these scenarios.

  While I was in with the head-shrinker, my partner had gone home and changed into a casual outfit that consisted of black tights and a torn white UGA sweatshirt. Her straightened hair fell to her shoulders, and she was back in contacts.

  As she met me outside, Remy motioned at a beat-up green Ford 250 Ranger parked at the curb.

  “I picked it up from impound,” she said proudly.

  “These are great trucks,” I said, starting a three-sixty around the old beater. “They’re worth cash too, Rem,” I added, trying not to reveal what a shit-kicker I could become around trucks.

  By the time I made my way around the old beast, I was eating my words. The passenger side featured an un-matching door. It was blue in color and the rest of that side had rusted from water damage. “’Course, the ones that have been underwater in lakes . . .”

  “Are worth considerably less?”

  I laughed at myself. “Does it run?”

  “I got it up to fifty. Engine made a racket, but it seemed solid.”

  “You get me that jacket?”

  My partner tossed me an old jean jacket and a T-shirt. She’d swung by my house and grabbed a couple things, to help me dress down.

  “Let’s do it then,” I said.

  I got up into the cab and Remy hopped in the passenger side. I fired up the Ranger with a deep thrum and headed toward SR-914, which zigzagged north from the west side of Mason Falls like some wild artery.

  In most stakeouts, you’re in one of two situations. One, you’re trying to collect information to get a warrant. Or two, you already have that warrant and you’re trying to catch a suspect.

  But we weren’t surveilling some drug hole or trying to catch a bunch of license plates on camera to work our way through a network. We were searching for a suspect, but didn’t even know his name.

  “Carlos finished his search of the Caprice,” Remy said as I drove.

  “And?”

  “No secret stash anywhere in the engine.”

  “He find anything?” I asked.

  “There was a semicircle,” Remy said. “Burned or torn into the carpet in the trunk. It could’ve been there for years.”

  “Well, it was worth a shot,” I said.

  The sun was starting to fall, but according to the bartender, Isaac McGulden, Tandy’s would be empty still. The early patrons didn’t arrive ’til after seven.

  “Let’s go over the basics,” I said as we drove. “Egress and ingress.”

  “Ingress is just the front door at this place,” Remy said. “Egress is the front door, plus a fire exit into the alley. And then there’s the ma
nager’s exit. Through the back office and out that rolling door. Locked unless he opens it.”

  “Where should we be?” I said, quizzing her.

  “You’re gonna hold down the booth inside the door,” she said. “You’re playing drunk and alone.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m gonna sit halfway between the pool tables and the entrance. Booth by the window. Gattling’s gonna come in an hour and join me.”

  I smiled at her. “Me a drunk and you hanging with Gattling like you two are dating. Wonder if we can pull off these scenarios.”

  Remy didn’t answer, and I turned off at an exit, pulling into a QuikTrip along the roadside. Told my partner I’d be back in a second.

  Inside the convenience store, I grabbed a sixteen-ouncer of apple juice and used the restroom to change into the T-shirt and jacket. I walked back out to the truck, balling up my dress shirt and tossing it on the back seat.

  I headed up 914 for another mile until we saw the three storefronts—the package store, the novelty place, and the bar. It was a quarter to seven, and the neon sign was lit, shining a dull orange glow that read Tandy’s in curving scroll on the tin roof.

  I pulled the old beater behind the bar and parked. Rapped on the emergency exit like we’d agreed with the barkeep.

  A minute later, Isaac McGulden opened the door and waved us in. He’d taken off his Ohio State sweatshirt. Under it was a white cotton T-shirt. His biceps were thick and defined.

  “Anyone here?” Remy asked.

  “One regular came early. Already drunk and passed out at a table. Pool of drool under his face.”

  “Let’s get situated,” I said to Remy, and we moved inside.

  Up on the bar, McGulden had a can of potted meat with a plastic fork sticking from it. Redneck caviar, my father would call it.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

  There are a couple types of stakeouts when you’re on the hunt for a suspect. But this particular one was what we call a “dynamic” in Mason Falls. Which means that the rules can change as we go.

  In a dynamic stakeout, there’s a decision matrix that runs through one senior cop, who’s charged with looking at a series of variables and making live decisions. Like, if we saw what car the little guy showed up in, we might decide to hang back and get his license plate. Have patrol pull him over a mile down the road. Which was why Remy had a patrol car parked just south of the bar, ready to intercept.

  If we felt like we could strike up a conversation with the guy, we might try that instead. The most likely person to do that was Remy, who I’d seen hit on guys as part of interviews and interrogations for eighteen months now.

  The last option was—with a click of a walkie, which I’d keep hidden in my booth—I could have the black and whites outside in a minute. We could spook the little guy on purpose, flushing him out to a pair of unis, who’d arrest him on the spot.

  Remy took a soda water from the bartender and walked over to a table. Placed it there and sat down.

  I walked behind the bar and took out four shot glasses. Broke the seal on the apple juice and filled each of four cups, positioning them on a waitress tray and sliding it under the lip of the bar.

  “You recovering?” McGulden asked.

  “I’m on duty,” I said.

  I walked away. Half the bartenders I knew were ex-drunks. In and out of the bottle at some stage while they worked the bar. Maybe this McGulden guy could smell it on me.

  We dug in then, and this is what I remembered most about stakeouts from my early days. The waiting. The waiting with nothing friggin’ happening for hours. Sometimes even days.

  An hour passed, and the place began to fill up. At eight-thirty, Darren Gattling arrived in casual clothes. He gave Remy a hug. They looked good together, and I wondered whether last night was, in fact, the first time they’d hooked up, like she said.

  It’s not uncommon for cops to date other cops, although the ratio of women to men in most departments is pretty one-sided.

  Plus, it seems safer. The people you meet at work understand the drill and the toll it takes. So you avoid the badge bunnies who are more interested in telling their friends they’re dating a guy who carries a gun. Or the women that Remy calls “holster sniffers.” Which, if I understand the term correctly, means a woman who flirts a lot, especially with married cops, but has no interest in anything at all.

  At half past nine, I heard the rapidly alternating noise of a police siren, and I hoped no speeder was getting pulled over in front of Tandy’s. Not when the little guy was headed here and could easily be spooked.

  The sound passed us, and the bar noise took over again.

  A husky older guy in an army jacket and a white beard came in after that. Looked around and headed over to the pool table. Two college kids were playing, and the guy sat off to the side, watching them.

  McGulden took a phone call and then walked back to the bar. Someone had brought a bag of boiled peanuts into the place, and the smell of the salt and garlic powder used in the cooking brine floated over in my direction.

  Another ninety minutes passed, and I thought about the amount of time I’d spent in bars in my life. A girl fell over drunk by the jukebox and was helped up by a friend.

  I walked over to the bar and leaned in to McGulden. “You said he’d be here by now.”

  McGulden shrugged while cleaning a glass. No eye contact. I slid over a five spot on the bar. In exchange for it, he handed me the third shot from the tray below the counter.

  Bill Withers’s “Lovely Day” was playing over the sounds of cracking billiard balls, and there was a haze of smoke that hung a foot below the ceiling.

  I walked back to my booth with the apple juice. The tables around Remy and Gattling had filled in with couples and friend groups. Mostly blue-collar types, but a couple peckerwoods from the farms north of here in Shonus County.

  By the top of the next hour, it didn’t look like our guy was coming, and the real possibility surfaced that he took a night off, and we’d wasted time and resources. But other questions arose in my head.

  Had the bartender tipped him off? Called him in the time since Remy and I were here earlier? Maybe the call McGulden got a minute ago was from the short guy.

  I slid the walkie closer along the worn red leather of the booth, ready to hit the mic. Tell everyone to call it a night.

  And then the door opened, and in came a Latin man.

  He was four foot ten or so and good-looking, his thick wavy hair still wet and combed toward the back of his head. The bouncer at the door checked his I.D., since he was the size of a child.

  As the man pulled out his wallet, my eyes moved to his left hand, which was wrapped in an Ace bandage. Streaks of dried blood stained the gauze haphazardly, as if it had been wrapped and rewrapped a couple times.

  My partner sat more erect, and the man approached the bar.

  McGulden shook his hand. They exchanged a few words and then the bartender brought the guy his regular. The short man turned then and faced the place, his back against the counter and his eyes scanning the far wall. He threw back the Cuervo with his left hand, but as he did, the bandage began to unwrap.

  The short man cursed something inaudible from my distance, trying to tuck the bandage strap under itself, but the thing was a mess. He started unwrapping it as he headed toward the far side of the bar, where the bathroom was.

  Once he was out of sight, I slumped into the darkest area of my booth and brought the radio to my lips.

  “All right, people,” I said. “Gattling, hang back at the table. Rem, it’s go time.”

  Remy stood up and pocketed her earpiece. She moved across to the bar and waved McGulden over for a drink, in a ready position for when the man returned from the bathroom.

  I’d trained Remy from the first day she’d left patrol, and there was no bet
ter cop to have in this position. This wasn’t just because she was beautiful and strong, but because she was smart and knew how to play a man.

  I laid the radio down on the seat and watched as Remy put her elbows along the counter, her butt leaning against the stool, but not sitting on it. She positioned herself right where the short guy had left his beer, which would force a conversation when he returned.

  The song changed, and a familiar guitar riff kicked in. George Thorogood and the Destroyers.

  I felt excitement move through me. Two hours ago, there was an outside chance of coming face-to-face with our murder suspect. Now he was here in the bar.

  But before the man could return from the can, a loud noise came from that direction.

  Pop, pop, pop.

  A woman screamed, and a man ran toward me from the far side of the bar. Gattling rose from his seat. He took a gun from his boot, and the three of us—me, him, and Remy—flew across the bar. Customers streamed around us, running the other way. The old guy. The drunk girl. And the bass of the music pumped.

  Gattling flipped open the door to the men’s room, and I scanned the small space, my Glock 42 out.

  Both stalls were empty, but lying across the dirty linoleum was a body.

  It was one of the college kids who I’d seen playing pool. Bleeding now from his gut.

  “Jesus,” I said to the kid. “What the hell happened?”

  The kid’s breathing was shallow, and his eyes were giant spheres of white that moved up to the window. A space that was probably two feet by four and missing a screen. Laid out in the sink was a mound of Ace bandage.

  “Darren,” I said to Gattling, looking at the kid’s stomach wound. “Get me some clean bar towels.”

  I looked to Remy—and then to the window.

  “I got him,” Remy said, and took off. Racing across the bar.

  I crouched, grabbing the kid’s hand. “What’s your name?”

  “Jacob.”

  “All right, Jacob,” I said. “You want the good news or the bad news?”

  “Good,” he muttered.