10-33 Assist PC

by Desmond P. Ryan

  “Let’s pick up the pace, ladies,” Mike sang out, trying to sound encouraging.

  As Mike reached the rickety staircase they had come up on, the hallway began to fill with smoke.

  Shit!

  Then a bright light shone up at him.

  There was another loud bang, and pieces of the plaster wall to the right of them began to crumble.

  Then Mike saw a bright flash and heard yet another loud bang.

  *****

  “Emergency Task Force. We know you’re in there. We have you covered. Continue to come down with your hands in the air,” an authoritative voice shouted through a megaphone.

  “Jimmy! It’s Mike,” Mike tried to shout back but he started to cough instead.

  “Continue to come down the stairs with your hands in the air,” the unfriendly voice repeated.

  “Police!” Mike managed to call back. “We’re cops!”

  His words were muffled by the sounds of the collapsing building.

  “We cannot move forward. You must walk towards us,” the voice said.

  “Police!” Mike repeated.

  “Copy that,” the voice said after what seemed like a lengthy pause.

  “I’ve got…” Mike looked over his shoulder, unable to see behind him. It was only then realizing that he was in the least smoky part of the hallway.

  “Is that you, Mike O’Shea?”

  “Yes! With P.C. Roberts and four girls.”

  “Copy that. Any injuries?”

  “One dead. Unknown others,” Mike reported.

  “Copy that. Ambulances will be waiting. Can you get down the stairs?”

  “I… I’m trying,” Mike called back. He was gasping for air now and sensed that he likely only had a few minutes to get everyone out before they were overcome by the smoke.

  “Copy that. And Mike, you need to know: We cannot get to you.”

  For the first time since before Sal had been killed, Mike began to feel afraid.

  Shake it off, Mikey.

  “We will come to you,” he tried to call out, but his words came out as a broken whisper.

  He led the daisy chain as quickly as he could down the stairs through the kitchen, only to find that the doorway he and Ron had come through earlier was now engulfed in flames.

  This is it. If I can’t find a way out, we all die.

  The entire second floor above them from was now on fire, so it would be only a matter of moments before the first-floor ceiling collapsed completely, bringing the fire down with it.

  Mike could feel the girl behind him stumbling as she struggled to hold on to his shirttail. He was coughing almost continuously now and could hear the girls behind him coughing, wheezing, crying. He hoped that Ron was still bringing up the rear, still complaining that this was not at all like Traffic.

  He made a hard right, hoping that this would take them to the main entrance to the building.

  “Listen up!” he tried to make himself heard above the crackling of the flames. “Keep walking. We’re…” Cough. “…almost there. We’re going to be…” Cough. “… fine. Got it?”

  Just a few more steps and we’ll be out. I promise.

  Had he said those words out loud? He hoped he had, but thought it likely he had not. The increasing heat, the choking smoke, the exhaustion, the confusion, the despair. All of it was making any further pep talk increasingly difficult. And pointless.

  “We have ambulances waiting,” a voice bellowed through a loudspeaker. “The main entrance is inaccessible. You will not be able to exit. Repeat. You will not be able to exit through the main entrance.”

  Shit, shit, shit!

  Mike could feel the heat above him before he saw the ceiling collapsing in flames around them.

  Another way. Another way. Another way.

  But there was no time to find another way. The side entrance was gone. The main entrance was gone. They could not get past the smoke to the other side of the building.

  Mike reached over to the new drywall beside him. When he and Ron had first arrived, he had noticed some boarded-up windows across the front of the building. Where the hell were those windows?

  No windows. No light. No air. Just smoke and fire.

  Shit! We’re fucking dead!

  Mike angrily pounded on the wall beside him.

  The drywall broke open. Mike set down the body of the young girl he had been carrying on his shoulder and pulled the drywall back in chunks. The flashing lights from the firetrucks out front shone through the gaps in the thin boards haphazardly nailed to the outside of the rotted old window frames.

  Mike punched at the boards, his knuckles exploding with pain with each blow. Ron was trying vainly to keep the panicking girls away from the window to give Mike enough room to smash through the boards.

  Thank Christ for cheap wood!

  His adrenaline pumping, Mike broke the boards away from the window frame within seconds. He thrust his arm out through the hole he had made and began to wave, trying to draw attention to himself. His arm rubbed against something.

  Shit. Bars. The windows have fucking bars on them.

  “We see you. We will try to access you,” a voice boomed out over a megaphone.

  Try? What the fuck does that mean?

  “The building is now engulfed in flames. We are dousing the building with water, but it is insecure. The firefighters cannot get any closer,” the voice advised. “We are going to try to—”

  Fuck that!

  Mike took off his jacket and wrapped it around his hand. With a couple of sharp pulls, he dislodged what was left of the rusted bars that had covered the windows of the building when it was a working warehouse.

  Mike pushed the girl who had been behind him up through the window. He repeated the process with the rest of the girls until he got to Ron.

  “Want to pass her to me?” Ron asked, looking down at the dead girl at Mike’s feet.

  “Yeah,” Mike grunted, lifting the girl’s body as Ron climbed out the window.

  “Drop her. I’ll catch her,” Ron called out, raising his arms to receive the body.

  Mike had just carefully passed the body through the window to Ron and was preparing to climb out himself when he felt a blast that knocked him back down onto the floor of the building.

  No, I can’t die now. Not here.

  He estimated he had less than a minute before the old warehouse completely collapsed. Exhausted, he dragged himself back up to the window. His arms felt like rubber bands. He was spent. He had no strength left to save himself.

  The ceiling above him collapsed. A huge piece of wood, likely one of the support beams, engulfed in flames landed less than an inch from his foot.

  He pulled himself up higher, taking in a deep breath of smoke before trying again to hoist himself through the window. Then he began to cough uncontrollably.

  He was done for. It was over. As he felt the world beginning to fade away, he saw the lights of the firetrucks and ambulances beyond the smoke. Everyone had escaped. Everyone was safe. Even the bastard who had killed his partner.

  Fuck that!

  Mike summoned all his remaining strength. Gasping for air, he hauled himself up and out of the window and let himself fall onto the ground below.

  *****

  “Fuori dai miei piedi voi pigri bastardi!” Julia yelled, running towards the collapsing building.

  “What did she say?” a firefighter who was helping one of the girls into an ambulance asked as Julia flew by.

  “I don’t know, but I think it has something to do with us being bastards,” another one said as he helped a paramedic lift a stretcher into a second ambulance.

  “She said, ‘Get out of my way, you lazy bastards’,” a third commented as he secured an oxygen mask on Ron’s face.

  “Mikey! Listen to my voice. Run to my voice,” Julia yelled as the front walls of the warehouse started to collapse. “I’m coming to get you.” />
  “Julia!” Robby yelled. “Get back! Get back! The building is collapsing. It’s too late!”

  “Mikey! It’s Julia. I’m coming to get you!” she screamed again. Smoke engulfed her as she got closer to the building.

  “This is Duty Inspector Maurice Rowe,” a voice on the megaphone said. “Officer Vendramini, you must get back. I am ordering you—”

  Julia fumbled through the smoke, coughing, shouting Mike’s name, listening for Mike’s voice. Then she thought she saw something—no, someone collapsed against the wall.

  “Here!” she heard him call. “Over here!”

  Julia ran towards Mike’s voice. When she reached him, she pulled his arm around her shoulder in a heartbeat.

  “Stand up, Mikey. I’ve got you.”

  “I know,” he replied, putting his entire weight on her as he stumbled to his feet, gasping in pain before they both found their balance.

  As Julia half-guided, half-dragged Mike out of the smoke and away from the building, the warehouse collapsed completely, leaving just a mound of burning rubble behind. They paused for a moment to catch their breath, and Mike looked back.

  “What a fucking day…” he murmured, shaking his head and coughing.

  “What a friggin’ day,” Julia nodded in agreement. “C’mon, Mikey. We gotta keep moving.”

  “Officer Vendramini—” said the duty inspector as he rushed up to them.

  “Vai a farti fottere. We need a paramedic over here.”

  Mike looked over at Julia and gave a brief chuckle. “Did you just tell him to go fuck himself?”

  “Something like that,” Julia said, then called, “Medic! Over here! We got smoke inhalation and a broken ankle.”

  Blinding lights from a couple of television cameras hit them, one on either side. And then a tidal wave of reporters rushed at them, their questions washing over the two cops.

  “It appears the female cop has saved her partner!”

  “Is it true that this building was being used as a brothel, detective?”

  “Are there any more inside?”

  “Yes, Kevin, we are live at the scene and, as you can see…”

  “I need a paramedic!” Julia shouted over the babble, pushing the reporters’ mics back with one hand, holding Mike steady with the other until uniformed officers could form a barricade between the reporters and her and Mike.

  “Over this way, Julia,” Hoagie called to his partner.

  Julia helped the paramedics get Mike onto the stretcher and then ran alongside it as they bounced him over to their ambulance, eager to get some pure oxygen into his struggling lungs.

  Julia hopped into the back of the ambulance with Mike and one of the paramedics while the other closed the doors, shutting out the seasoned reporters and cameramen who knew that this was where the most candid quotes and shots were likely to occur.

  “Where are the girls? And Ron?” Mike asked as the paramedic placed an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, leaving him propped up in a semi-sitting position.

  “I’m going to have to ask you not to speak for a while, okay?” the paramedic directed, checking Mike’s vitals, scribbling something on his latex-covered hand. He reached for a bag of saline in one of the cupboards just above Mike’s head.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he keeps the mask on,” Julia said, smiling down at Mike. “Hoagie called in the other team, and the girls are on their way to Toronto General. From there, we’ll get them sorted out and find their next of kin and all of that. Don’t you worry. We’ve done this before!”

  “Is Chelsea Hendricks one of them?” Mike pleaded, pushing aside the mask.

  “I don’t know, Mikey. Too soon to tell.” She tried to replace the mask, but he brushed her hand away.

  “She’s not, is she?”

  Mike began to gasp as he choked smoke up from his lungs.

  “I don’t know.”

  “She’s the one Malcolm took with him when he jumped, isn’t she?” His coughing turned into choking and was now accompanied by retching. Mike frantically slapped at the sides of the stretcher, trying to find the buckles of the straps to release himself.

  “Mikey…”

  “Don’t lie to me, Julia,” Mike said, ripping the mask off his face.

  “Hey there. Careful.” The paramedic stepped in, readjusting the mask on Mike’s face before checking the tension on the straps that held him to the stretcher. “I’m going to have to ask you to keep the mask on, sir. Are the straps too tight?”

  “I’m sorry, Mikey. She’s gone,” Julia finally conceded.

  “How about Malcolm?” Mike said through the mask, ignoring the paramedic’s question as the man pulled the straps even tighter.

  “Gone.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll find both of them. Besides, you’ve got a few really big days ahead. You know they’re going to want you to carry Sal’s hat…” Her words hung in the air for a moment.

  “I know,” Mike replied with a shudder. He hadn’t had a chance to think about the funeral, about carrying that pillow with Sal’s hat on it ahead of the coffin, about standing in front of Sal’s mother.

  He knew the drill. Every cop did. The chief would say a few words to Janice Salvatore. She would then take the hat from the pillow, and on the arm of the chief, she would lead the recession out of the church, followed by every dignitary known to man, passing the thousands of uniformed officers from all over the world who would be lining the streets, five, ten, fifteen deep. Yes, he knew the drill.

  “Think you’re up to it? You don’t have to, you know.”

  “Yeah. I do. It’s the least I can do,” Mike choked, his throat burning from more than just the smoke. “For his mother.”

  “We won’t let him get away, you know,” Julia promised. “Sal’s murderer.”

  “I know,” Mike replied, taking a deep breath of oxygen.

  Julia looked away as her eyes began to well up.

  “And when all of this is over,” Mike continued, taking another deep breath. “We should grab a coffee. A really good cup of coffee.”

  -The End-

  About the Author

  For thirty years, Desmond P. Ryan began every day of his working life with either a victim waiting in a hospital emergency room, a call to a street corner, or a blood-soaked room where someone had been left for dead. Murder, assaults on a level that defied humanity, sexual violations intended to demean, shame, and haunt the individuals who were no more than objects to the offenders: all in a day’s work.

  It was exhilarating, exhausting, and often heartbreaking.

  As a Detective with the Toronto Police Service, Desmond P. Ryan wrote thousands of reports detailing the people, places, and events that led up to the moment he came along. He investigated the crimes and wrote synopses for guilty pleas detailing the circumstances that brought the accused individuals before the Courts. He also wrote a number of files to have individuals deemed either Not Criminally Responsible due to mental incapacity, or Dangerous Offenders to be held in custody indefinitely.

  Now, as a retired investigator with three decades of research opportunities under his belt, Desmond P. Ryan writes crime fiction. Find out more at RealDesmondRyan.com

  Book Two Coming February 2019

  Death Before Coffee

  In Death Before Coffee, the second in the six-part Mike O’Shea series, Mike, an inner-city police detective, struggles to balance his responsibilities as a son, brother, and newly single father with a homicide investigation and his sworn oath of duty.

  By 2:27 on a Thursday afternoon, the one-legged man from Room 8 at 147 Loxitor Avenue had been beaten to death with a lead pipe. Twenty-eight minutes later, Detective Mike O’Shea is testifying in a stuffy courtroom, unaware that, within an hour, he will be standing in an alleyway littered with beer cans and condoms while his partner flicks bugs off of a battered corpse.

  When a rogue undercover
copper leaves Mike balancing what is legal with what is right, an unlikely rapport develops between Mike and the lead homicide investigator, a cop’s cop in stilettos. At the end of his seventy-two-hour shift, three men are dead, and Mike O’Shea is floating in and out of consciousness in an emergency room hallway, two women by his side.

  For updates, out-takes, a sneak peek, and the inside scoop, sign up for the newsletter at RealDesmondRyan.com. To apply to be a beta reader, email Des@realdesmondryan.com.

  Desmond P. Ryan

  Real Detective. Real Crime. Fiction.