Killing Zone

by Rex Burns

  “I guess you were right about not telling Wolfard, Gabe. I’m sorry.”

  Beside him, Stubbs looked out the window toward the lot and its vehicles sitting in the dimness. Stubbs’s apology wasn’t needed or wanted, and in fact it embarrassed Wager. “Remember it next time.”

  The man’s profile nodded.

  Wager, restless with the sense of time wasted, switched to the quiet frequency of the Fourth District and queried MVD for any report on Green’s missing automobile. He was spelling the man’s name and explaining once more that the automobile was material evidence in a homicide when Stubbs said, “Here they come.”

  “They?”

  “That councilwoman’s with her—Mrs. Voss.”

  “Crap.” The MVD said they had nothing; Wager flipped back to District Two channel and got out to greet the two women and the chief, who led them over.

  “Detective Wager, you remember Mrs. Green and Councilwoman Voss.”

  “Yessir.” He nodded hello and opened the rear door. “I’d like you to sit in back, please.”

  “That’s a good idea, ladies. It’ll be a little more secure.” The chief leaned to the window to say a few more things to the women, then he stepped away. “All right, Detective Wager. Keep your eyes open.”

  “Yessir.”

  He pulled slowly across the sidewalk and curb and onto the street while Stubbs showed Mrs. Green how to work the microphone. She looked tired in the gliding light of street lamps, and large circles of dark flesh hung beneath her eyes. But her voice was strong and unwavering, as if hers was a duty that only she could do, and she’d made up her mind to do it.

  “Should I start?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Any time.” Wager added, “Roll up your windows, please; and sit more toward the middle of the seat.” He explained, “It’s harder to see who’s in the car that way.”

  “But I want them to see me.”

  “Mrs. Green, you’re doing a brave thing coming down here. But your life’s already been threatened.” He didn’t have to add that her husband’s killer was still free—it was a thought he felt go through all their minds like a chill breeze.

  “He’s right, Hannah.” Councilwoman Voss gripped a dark hand in both her pale ones, but Wager couldn’t tell who was giving strength; Voss, too, looked worried and worn, and the taut curve of her body on the seat showed the nervousness she felt.

  “We’ll make a run through the Points,” said Wager. “And then circle around the neighborhood. Take your time talking, Mrs. Green—if you go too fast, the words get all tangled up in that thing.”

  “I understand.”

  The street ahead was empty under the pink glow of sodium lights, and the cars that normally would line curbs in front of rows of vacant yards and silent houses had been moved away from harm. A cat trotted across the pavement—its legs a quick blur—and then broke into a frightened, low run as the headlights glinted in its eyes.

  “This is … Everybody, this is Hannah Green. Horace Green’s wife.”

  The voice echoed back from the closed doors and the brick walls of stores and seemed to make the street even emptier.

  “Horace would not want this violence. Please don’t do something we will all be sorry for. We’re hurting only ourselves this way …”

  The coiled wire of the microphone trembled past Wager’s right shoulder to the figure leaning forward over the seat back, linking the tense, high voice with the metallic words that bounced around them a split-second later. But though Wager heard the voice, he did not really hear the words. His attention was focused on the street. There, shadows pooled at the foot of walls and the light broke into shapes under tree limbs and behind fences. He looked carefully as the cruiser glided past gaping darknesses between buildings, and when Mrs. Green paused for a moment to rest her voice, he heard the distant pop of weapons and the thin buzz of faraway sirens. “You don’t have to shout, Mrs. Green. That’s what the bullhorn’s for.”

  “I understand. Thank you.”

  As they neared the business district of the Points, many of the windows in the fronts of houses were dark, but glows of muted light down narrow alleys showed that life had drawn back away from the street and was waiting. A flickering glow of scattered fire and embers smoldered on the sidewalk in front of a darkened appliance store: the remains of a trash barrel that had been fired and rolled toward the doorway. But no one hovered near, and through the taped glass of the emptied display window, Wager caught a glimpse of a man’s silhouette peering out at the passing voice and holding the rigid blackness of a weapon.

  Ahead, a police car—lights flashing erratically—bounced quickly across an intersection and disappeared, and farther down they saw the flicker of fire-truck lights and the smoky orange of a large flame.

  “That must be another car they set on fire,” said Stubbs.

  “You see anything on your side?”

  “No.”

  He held the speed at about ten miles an hour, the car’s worn and ill-tuned engine beginning to heat up and lurch slightly. Behind them, he saw the headlights of the backup vehicle pace itself to their speed and relaxed a trifle. Mrs. Green was saying something about her husband again, and that she had faith the police were doing all they could to find the killer. Beneath that, the flurry of messages on the radio called for support on the corner of Marion and Thirty-third, where looters were reported breaking into a liquor store. Wager turned away from that area and they cruised a darker street that ran parallel to the business strip.

  “Please don’t choose violence—I’m begging you, in Horace Green’s name, not to do this to our people …”

  “Union six-nine.”

  Wager had to take the microphone to answer the radio’s call, switching from “Announce” to “Radio.” “Six-nine. Go ahead.”

  “How’s it going, Wager? Any trouble?”

  He recognized the chief’s voice. “No, sir. Everything’s calm so far.”

  “Ten-four.”

  He handed it back to Mrs. Green and switched the control back to the bullhorn.

  Stubbs muttered something and pointed toward a narrow driveway that led behind the whitewashed walls of an old wooden church. Christ the Redeemer African Methodist Church. It looked deserted and run-down, but Wager had seen services there last Sunday. “What’d you see?”

  “Looked like five or six people moving around back there.”

  He pressed down a bit on the gas.

  “This is Hannah Green, Horace Green’s wife. Please listen to me …”

  The sentences had started repeating. Her voice lost the high-pitched urgency and now had a clearer note of appeal as if the woman had begun to listen to herself and changed her tone for better effect. In the rearview mirror, he could see her eyes stare ahead, but they weren’t looking down the street; rather, she gazed at some vision of her own, maybe some picture of her husband’s response to the streets around them and, from that, gathered the conviction that strengthened her voice.

  “Smell that?” Stubbs asked Wager. “Smells like a body been lying around awhile. It always smells like that around here.”

  He caught the familiar odor, a kind of musty sweetness on the edge of being rotten, a smell that was sensed by the skin and tongue as much as by the nose. Stubbs was right: This part of the neighborhood—with its sagging houses and frazzled patches of lawn, its dented cars with flat tires, and the scatter of bottles and litter on curb and sidewalk—always smelled like that when the night air cooled and gathered over the pavement to draw warm odors through leaky walls. “It’s dirt. Unclean houses, unwashed skin.”

  “It’s the smell of poverty,” said Councilwoman Voss. “It’s why these people are so angry.”

  “Yes’m. Maybe so,” said Stubbs. “But when I first smelled it, I looked around for a body.”

  The radio called again for backup on Marion Street, and Mrs. Green turned from the microphone to Wager. “I want to go there—Marion Street.”

  “No, ma’am. We’re doing
fine here.”

  “But there’s where I’m needed, Officer. These people are in their houses—they’re not out on the street.”

  “And you’re helping to keep them there.”

  “I insist!”

  Stubbs tried to explain. “We’ve got orders from the chief to avoid hot spots, Mrs. Green.”

  “But I can be of some use there. More than I am here. I insist you drive me there!”

  Wager shook his head. “Not without the chief’s OK.”

  “She has mine.” Councilwoman Voss leaned over the seat back, too, a curling tendril of her long hair brushing Wager’s neck. “Hannah’s right—we can do more good where we’re really needed.”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Officer, people are being hurt there! Didn’t you hear them call for an ambulance?”

  “That’s exactly what I heard.”

  “Ma’am—Mrs. Green …”

  “Horace would want me to go. He would go himself.”

  Horace wouldn’t have to explain to the chief how she got injured. “I’ve got orders, ma’am.”

  “He would not surrender to fear. Neither will I!”

  “Get the chief on the radio,” said Councilwoman Voss. “Let me talk to him.”

  A city councilperson had the right to talk to the chief of police. Wager took the microphone from Mrs. Green and switched to “Radio.” A moment later the chief answered his call number. “Go to channel seven,” said Wager; there was no sense clogging up the district’s busy frequency with an argument between Voss and the chief. When the chief’s voice came up on seven with Wager’s call number, he showed the councilwoman how to use the mike.

  “This is Councilwoman Voss, Chief. Mrs. Green wants to go to the trouble on Marion Street. She can be of help there.”

  “I’d rather you and Mrs. Green avoid that area, Councilwoman. Detective Wager’s been told where to drive.”

  “I’m aware that the detective has his orders—he’s told us. But we’re doing no good at all here. There’s where we’re needed.”

  “It’s too dangerous, Councilwoman. There’s shooting over there.”

  “They can hear Mrs. Green’s voice from a block away. You know that.”

  “I have to tell you no, Councilwoman. In my judgment, it’s too dangerous.”

  “It’s either that or we get out and walk over there and talk to them up close.”

  “You can’t do that—you stay in that car!”

  “The only way to hold us against our wills is to arrest us, Chief. Are you willing to have Detective Wager arrest a councilwoman and Horace Green’s widow?”

  The chiefs microphone clicked off as he started to say “Damn—”

  Voss asked Wager, “What happened?”

  He stifled a grin. “Radio procedure. He’ll be back.”

  He was, this time talking to Wager. “What do you think, Detective Wager?”

  “Mrs. Green has the door open,” he lied.

  “… All right. But by God you don’t get any nearer than you have to. Understand? I don’t want those two endangered in any way. Understand? They are not to be left alone and they are to stay inside that vehicle. Understand?”

  “Ten-four.”

  “Thank you,” said Councilwoman Voss to Wager.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  2329 Hours

  On the way over, Wager asked Mrs. Green about one of the loose threads he had been mentally tugging. “Do you know where your husband ate supper the night he was killed?”

  She thought back as if there were so many things to get past before that day was reached. “I can’t say—I don’t remember him saying anything about it.”

  “The medical evidence says he had chicken, peas, and rice two to four hours before he died. But he didn’t make the buffet at the Brown Palace Hotel and the Vitaco reception, where he was last seen, only served these little meatballs and wieners and things.” He explained, “It could be important, Mrs. Green. We need to account for all his time on that last day.”

  “I understand, Officer.” She tried again, the effort to recall bringing lines between her brows. “I really can’t remember. He told me he would be eating at a function and not to save anything for him. That was probably the Brown Palace. But if he said so, I didn’t pay much attention.” It was her turn to explain. “It wasn’t unusual, so we didn’t make much of it when he missed supper.” She added softly, “It’s the little things like that: the last time we ate together … the last, quick kiss good-bye … the last bedtime story for our son …”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Wager nudged her back on track. “Can you think of any place he might have gone to eat? Any favorite restaurants?”

  “He had several.” She named them and Wager, steering with one hand, noted them in his little book.

  “Did you have anything to do with the furniture store’s bookkeeping?”

  “No. That was—” She caught herself before she mentioned Sonie Andersen’s name. “No.”

  “So you don’t have any idea how big a profit the store was making?”

  “It was doing well. Horace was very satisfied with it. But he ran the business. He and …”

  “But you’re not aware of the profit margin?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Just trying different possibilities.” And having equal luck with all of them.

  A patrol car blocked the street ahead and, Mrs. Green giving the bullhorn a rest, Wager coasted silently toward it.

  The two officers standing behind the car’s opened doors looked back at them with brief curiosity and then turned again to stare intently at the empty intersection.

  Blainey, called up from Colfax, leaned a heavy arm on the cruiser’s roof and squinted against the flash of its emergency lights. Wager stopped in the middle of the street, short of the blockade, and got out. “What’s going on, John?”

  “Heyo, Gabe—there’s a bunch just down there behind that shoe store on the corner. We think it’s the same ones that trashed out the liquor store.”

  “Waiting for them to come out?”

  “Sure as hell don’t want to go in after them. They back there getting liquored up.”

  The other officer, whose uniform still had the stiff, new look of recent issue, shook his head. “We ought to go in there and pop heads. That’s what the sons of bitches are asking for.”

  Blainey’s eyes caught Wager’s and he lifted his eyebrows slightly. “What you doing here, Gabe? Moonlighting?”

  “Green’s widow’s in the car—she came down to try and keep things calm.”

  “Mrs. Green?” Blainey turned to stare a moment at the car and then walked over to it and tapped on the rear glass. It rolled down and he leaned, hatless, to say something. A minute later he returned, settling his cap back on his round head. “He was a good man, Horace Green. It don’t do anybody good to lose somebody like that.”

  “You knew him?”

  “I met him a couple times, is all. It’s a shame. A real shame.”

  “Can we drive ahead? Mrs. Green thinks she can talk people off the streets.”

  “I wouldn’t. SWAT team’s patrolling down there somewhere. Over in them houses on that side.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t do it, Gabe. All shit could break loose.”

  He explained it to Mrs. Green.

  “Do you think they can hear me from here?”

  “That thing carries a half mile against the wind. They’ll hear you.”

  “All right.” She keyed the microphone and started again, “This is Hannah Green, Horace Green’s widow …”

  The first sign of life at the intersection was a loud pop that cut through the echoes of Mrs. Green’s voice: the hollow shotgun sound of a gas grenade fired somewhere out of sight. A moment later, they saw a steamy cloud spread past the brick corner, and another pop sent a second grenade into the night. Then they saw a blur of figures dart through the gas—rags tied over their faces and heads low as they ran—scattering like blown leaves
through the foggy street and darting for cracks between silent buildings. Then emptiness. A distant wail of shouting voices bounced up the pavement, and, first a pair, then a half-dozen, shapes followed by dark-uniformed figures in gas masks and baseball caps, sprinting through the thinning fumes. Blainey and his partner loosened their sticks and closed the doors to the police cruiser, and Wager started his car’s motor. “They’re coming this way.”

  “Wait—don’t go—wait!”

  “No, ma’am. We’ve got—” He didn’t get a chance to finish. A howl of shouts and curses exploded from a narrow driveway between two houses beside them. The yells overwhelmed Mrs. Green’s amplified plea and were followed by the clatter of stones and bottles thudding loudly on the car.

  “My God!” Councilwoman Voss stared wide-eyed at the charging wall of screaming faces.

  “You two get down—get down below the windows!” Wager backed the car like a weapon at the running figures and swung close to Blainey to offer what shelter he could. A club smashed the rear window, shattering flakes of glass into the car like a spray of ice chips, and one white-eyed, snarling youth swung a brick on the end of a rope to smash against the windshield. Wager stepped on the gas, swinging the fenders at the dodging shapes that danced wildly around the car in a storm of shouts and curses and rocks, then he lurched forward again as he saw Blainey and his partner swept over by arms that rose and fell with bats and chains, lashing at the two officers.

  “They’re killing them! My God, they’re killing them!”

  He thudded the bumper against something soft and then the swarm of arms and legs and hunched, jerking shoulders scattered into fleeing fragments as Blainey, his uniform ripped open above the badge to show his white T-shirt, rose above a tangle of writhing figures. His baton swung hard and repeatedly against jabbing clubs and flesh. Wager backed up and rammed forward again. His wheel lurched over something that howled, and he backed hard again and swung his bumper to snag what it could.

  The masked face of a SWAT officer loomed against the splintered windshield, bloodshot eyes wide behind the goggle lenses, and then a dozen blue shapes ran past the car toward the two policemen as the rioters fled. Blainey’s partner—stunned, hatless, blood smearing his face—staggered to his knees to look after the disappearing shapes as Wager’s backup car squealed to a smoking halt beside them and its two officers tumbled out of the vehicle and ran toward Mrs. Green and the councilwoman. Stubbs spilled out of the car and sprinted for Blainey and a SWAT member who struggled to hold a flailing rioter.