He checked his watch again, then looked out the window. He saw her come around the corner and jog in place for a minute, checking the time on her own watch. It looked like she was checking her pulse, trying to get a read on her heart rate or something. Trooper Burns didn’t know much about physical fitness anymore, but he knew about heart rates. Age and all.
He watched as she jogged in place for a few minutes, and then she did something she’d not ever done before. She waved at him. Barney sat up a little straighter in his seat and gave her a casual wave back, cool, a little detached. A fucking-A State Trooper, no matter his age.
Then he watched as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and started running again. Trooper Burns was so preoccupied with bouncing boobs, tight ass cheeks, board-flat stomach muscles, (not to mention his growing Johnson) he never saw the cargo van brake to a stop and park at the intersection a half block behind him.
He did see the Governor’s neighbor walking down the drive in his robe and slippers though to fetch the morning paper. Right on time, Trooper Burns thought. Like maybe Red and the neighbor had a little sumpin-sumpin going on behind someone’s back.
The thought of it sort of pissed him off.
Right on time, Sidney thought. She picked up the pace just a bit. Had to time it perfectly. And she did. She got to the end of the drive just as Franklin Dugan did. They smiled at each other and Sidney stopped and bent over to retie her shoe.
“Good morning” Sidney said.
“It certainly is,” Dugan replied. “You’ll forgive me for saying so, but I’ve noticed you’ve become somewhat of a regular, jogging around here in the morning.”
“I hope that doesn’t bother you,” Sidney said, looking up from her shoes.
“No, no, not at all,” Dugan said. “Just making conversation with a beautiful young woman.” He smiled at her. “Kind of a nice way to start the day.”
Sidney finished her shoe and picked up the paper for Dugan. When she stood up she wobbled slightly on her feet, dropped the paper back on the ground and said, “Whoa.” She stumbled away from Dugan as if she were about to fall, and when she did he stepped in close and grabbed her by the arms. “Hey, easy there. I think you stood up to fast.”
Sidney smiled and stayed close. “Yeah, you’re probably right. But I’m okay. I think I just need a drink of water.”
“I’d be happy to get you a glass if you’d like to come up to the house,” Dugan said.
“Oh, no, but thanks. I’ve got a bottle right here in my pack.”
Dugan smiled at her. It was the sort of smile that said, well, I’m not putting the moves on you or anything like that, even though under the right set of circumstances I might. Sid Jr. smiled right back with her best, bullshit, you are too and we both know it, circumstances or not smile. Dugan’s face reddened a bit. He bent down to get his paper and when he did, Sid Jr. took half a step sideways and slid her hand into her fanny pack like she was getting a bottle of water.
Trooper Burns watched the entire exchange. The whole thing made him sick. Sure, she was just a fantasy, but she was his fantasy. But now the fat cat across the street was ruining everything.
Fuckin’ with his mojo.
Barney thought the guy was a banker or something like that. Fucking bankers. Getting rich while the rest of the country starved to death. Barney was no bleeding heart leftie, but Jesus Christ, enough was enough already with the economy and all. How much steak could one guy eat anyway?
He saw the fat cat bend over to collect his newspaper-it had sort of scattered when the redheaded babe dropped it. Barney was secretly hoping she’d bend over and get it. Maybe give him a little ass shot or something. Didn’t happen though. Instead, the babe reached into her fanny pack. But she didn’t unzip it from the top. She pulled a Velcro flap from the side. Had sort of a stance going too. Feet planted firmly, knees slightly bent, shoulders square. If Barney didn’t know better, it looked sort of like a shooter’s stance. He thought, huh.
Then when he saw the redheaded babe pull out a gun, he thought Holy Shit.
It was the last thought of his career.
And his life.
Sid Sr. had a perfect angle. He was in the back of the van, a small tinted slider window open just enough for the barrel of his scoped and silenced bolt-action rifle. He kept the cross hairs of the scope tight on the spot just behind the left ear of the cop. But he could also see Junior talking to the banker across the street. Their plan was to fire as close together as possible. Didn’t want to hit the cop first and have to chase the banker around in a panic, and didn’t want to hit the banker first and deal with a trained cop and worse still, his radio.
But those type of plans rarely worked out, and Senior knew it. When Junior reached into her fanny pack, Senior tightened up on the cop. When she had the gun almost all the way clear of her pack Senior saw the cop start to wiggle, his door coming open. It was going to be close, but he had to do it. The cop saw what was happening.
Sid Sr. pulled the trigger.
Dugan had his paper all bunched back together and started to stand up and when he did he just happened to be looking across the street. He started to wave at the cop in the squad car, but before Franklin Dugan was even half way straightened up he saw Trooper Barney Burns’ head come apart. The bullet struck with such force and accuracy that Trooper Burns’ arm, the same fucking-A State Trooper arm he had used to wave at the beautiful young woman only moments ago raised up as if he were waving once again. Then his body slumped sideways and out of sight into the passenger side of his squad, his age and heart rate no longer an issue to him or anyone else.
That was the last thing Franklin Dugan saw before Junior flipped his switch.
She popped him right in the side of his head from about a foot and a half with a silenced twenty-two caliber semi-auto. Dugan dropped on the spot, dead before he hit the ground, his brains scrambled like a morning omelet. She put two into his chest just to be sure, then bent over to grab her brass. They were hot, but not overly so. Still, when she picked up the third casing-the last one fired-it burned her finger and thumb and she lost her grasp. It hit the pavement just right, did a little flip and a half moon roll then tinkled down the storm drain between the curb and the street.
The van was rolling up close. She swore silently, took a quick peek into the drain, didn’t see anything, swore again, then jumped into the van. She pulled the door shut and Senior drove them away going no faster than the posted limit, like maybe they were going to church or something. He zigzagged through a few side streets just to be safe and a few minutes later they were on the loop, lost to the world.
Gone, just like that.
CHAPTER TWO
Outside of the two years I served in Iraq One, I have worked in law enforcement my entire adult life. My father, Mason Jones had been the Marion County sheriff until he retired a few years ago, but I chose the state route and ended up as an Indiana State Trooper. Over the years I worked my way up the state ladder, putting in the time, getting the job done, and when the Governor of Indiana appointed a black female cop by the name of Cora LaRue as administrator of his newly formed Major Crimes Unit, she hired me as her lead cop. End result? From a political perspective, Cora LaRue was one of the most powerful women in the state and I, Virgil F. Jones wound up as her go-to cop.
I like Cora. Not only that, I respect her, as both an administrator and a cop. And, as a political appointee, I technically even outrank the superintendant of the state police. In theory, I can go anywhere in the state, anytime I need, to investigate and arrest criminals who fall under the state’s loosely defined rules of Cora’s Major Crimes Unit. In other words, there is scant little oversight, and for a guy like me, well, that was just about perfect. As long as I produced and made a reasonable effort to stay between the lines-blurry that they may be-no one gets in my way.
Usually.
The morning was clear, the sun was out, the temperature was warm and I was just about to turn into my parking spot at
the State Police building behind the courthouse when my cell phone started to buzz from the cup holder in the center console. The caller I.D. showed the cell phone number of one of my team members, Sandy Small. I grabbed the phone, fumbled it, then caught it in the tips of my fingers, upside down, but almost clipped a parked car in the process. I stopped in the middle of the street, threw the truck in park, turned the phone over-which by now was on its last ring before it kicked to voice mail-hit the little green talk button and said “This is Jonesy.”
I thought for a moment I missed it. It didn’t sound like Sandy was there. Just the empty background noise you get over a bad connection. But then, just like that, she was there. I could hear her in the background, and then there was a noise so sharp I winced and pulled the phone away from my ear. She wasn’t talking to me though. I could just barely hear her. It sounded like she was panting, breathing hard, and swearing all at the same time. She kept counting, one through five, over and over.
As a new team member, I had assigned Sandy to the Governor’s protection detail for the past week. My thinking was, it was a way to get to know the Governor on a more personal level. A better understanding of who you’re working for and all that. Today was Sandy’s last day with the Governor before she started catching cases.
I got that pit of your stomach feeling that something was really, really wrong. I dropped my truck into gear, hit the lights and burped the siren through the intersection. It was just past seven in the morning. She’d still be at the Governor’s mansion. I put the phone on speaker so I could have both hands on the wheel. “Sandy? Sandy, can you hear me?” I shouted into the phone but Sandy didn’t, or couldn’t answer me. I heard her grunt with effort, heard her swear again. I couldn’t quite make it out, but it sounded like she was swearing. Saying ‘shit’, over and over.
A few seconds later as I screeched through a corner and turned north on Meridian Avenue I heard her loud and clear. Her voice was coming through on the Motorola police radio under the dash of my truck. “Officer down. Shots fired. Officer needs assistance. Governor’s Mansion. Repeat… Officer… Down. Officer…needs…” Then that was all.
I dropped the hammer on the truck and blew the intersection. Didn’t think about, just went and went hard. I figured I was eight minutes out if I didn’t kill myself on the way there.
Sandy Small had a Bachelor’s degree in education, a Master’s degree in psychology, and was ranked as an expert in marksmanship on the shooting range. Translation: She could out think and out shoot just about every cop in the state and could also teach anyone how to do it if they wanted to put their bullshit on the back burner. Most didn’t, but that wasn’t on her.
She was on the last day of her protection rotation, covering the overnights at the Governor’s mansion. Her new boss, Virgil, had told her that they’d all had to do it, part of some getting to know the big guy routine, or something. As far as Sandy was concerned, protection was protection, simple as that. Getting to know someone in the process was neither a pro or a con. It was more of an inconvenience than anything. But no matter… this was the last day and she was almost done.
At seven in the morning Sandy stepped outside from the back door of the Governor’s mansion, walked across the deck, down the steps and headed out. Monday morning, last time of the last day to walk the wall. The Governor’s mansion was situated on a full acre of property at the northern edge of the city of Indianapolis. An entire acre, Sandy had discovered, covered 43,650 square feet, and in this case, said acre was surrounded by a nine foot high brick wall on all four sides. At about three feet per walking step around the perimeter, it was safe to say that doing one circuit per hour every eight hours over the last week had been a lot of walking. Good for the thighs.
Not to mention the ass.
She varied her routine-sometimes clockwise, sometimes counter-clockwise. She always paused at the gate at the front of the drive though, stepped out and waved to whomever had the uniformed duty street-side and then continued on back to the house. This last trip was no different. Barney Burns, that old coot, whistled at her every time she went by.
Sandy was about fifteen steps from the front entrance-in the middle of pulling her long blond hair into a pony tail-when she heard the sounds, three in all. Or was it four?. First a loud pop, like a car backfiring. She stopped and listened. Heard another noise, then a short pause, before two more. The sound was distinct, especially if you knew what you were listening for-a ratcheting sound almost like the cycling action of a semi-auto. Then she thought, no, exactly like the cycling action of a semi-auto. Muffled pops after the ratcheting sound. It took her a few seconds to process, but when she did, Sandy took off full tilt toward the gate.
By the time she got there it was over. She tried to push the gate open, then remembered she had to input a code into the box, which she did, then waited as the gate swung open with a slowness that made her blood boil. She ran to the street and tried to process what she saw: A white panel van as it turned the corner a half block away. Couldn’t get the plate. No more than a glimpse of the vehicle itself. A man across the street on his back, his limbs jutted outward at difficult angles, his paisley robe askew, a leather slipper missing from his foot, a pool of blood that seemed to grow darker the closer she got, glassy eyes staring at nothing. Gone.
A banker, she thought? Where did that come from? She let it go.
A look to her left. The squad car. Windows down. Engine off. Seat empty. Reddish tint on the front windshield.
She ran to the car. Pulled her cell out along the way, and hit Virgil’s number from the speed dial. At the first ring she was almost there. At the second ring she looked inside the squad. At the third ring she had the phone pinched between her shoulder and her ear. At the fourth ring she had the door open and pulled the trooper out of his vehicle, her hands wrapped under his armpits. She lost the phone then as it clattered to the ground, but she thought she heard Virgil answer.
Sandy pulled hard until she got Barney clear of the vehicle and flat on his back. No pulse. Not breathing. She began CPR, counting with each chest compression, then pausing to breathe her air into his lungs. Her hair hung in a pony tail over the front of her shoulder and every time she bent forward to give Burns mouth-to-mouth the ends of her hair landed in the pool of blood next to Barney’s head, like a paint brush. Eventually she gave up on the counting and began to swear as she compressed his chest…“shit shit shit.” Five shits then a breath. Every time she compressed his chest a few drops of blood seeped out of the hole in the side of his head.
When that didn’t work, she crawled to the cruiser and grabbed the microphone and started transmitting. “Officer down. Shots fired. Officer needs assistance. Governor’s Mansion. Repeat… Officer… Down. Officer…needs…” Out of breath. She dropped the microphone and started back in on Barney. She tried to remember something personal about him. Wife? Kids? She didn’t know. Couldn’t think. The microphone she’d just used dangled from Barney’s squad car, hung out over the edge of the bottom of the door jamb, smeared with blood. Sandy watched it sway back and forth as she worked on Barney. Somewhere in the back of her mind it registered as one of the saddest things she’d ever seen-Barney’s microphone hanging upside down from the door of his car.
He was gone-she knew it-but she kept at it anyway. Didn’t know what else to do. Heard the sirens. They sounded far away. The blood from her hair painted her chest as she worked on Barney.
Five shits, then a breath.
CHAPTER THREE
I am not a believer in God. Except, well, that isn’t quite right. I am not an atheist, not by any stretch. I do believe in something bigger than life…something bigger than myself, I just can’t quite define it. As a child, I was raised catholic, but it didn’t stick, and by the time I’d turned eighteen-a full twenty-two years ago-I’d never gone back to church at all except for weddings and funerals. And, I am hitting the age where I have begun to notice there are fewer of the former and more of the latter. Well… life.
Can’t live without it.
It seemed almost everyone wanted to believe that all they had to do was talk to God, ask for their prayers to be answered-which really, I think, amounts to nothing more than asking for stuff — and then God, in His wisdom, will either grant your request or not. The whole concept seems kind of selfish. A little too….feel good. Like comfort food. The idea that a group of people get together once or twice a week and listen while someone stands on the stage and waves a book at them and tells them how to live their lives seems all very….republican. Like it doesn’t matter if you wave the book or wave the flag, in the end it is all very much the same. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
So. I am a believer of something. What that something might be is just a little hard to pin down. But truth be told, believer or not, over the last eight minutes since I’d heard Sandy on the radio, I was talking to someone, asking…okay, praying, that she wasn’t hurt.
When I finally rolled up to the scene and saw her working on Barney Burns, saw her physically okay, I felt like my prayers had been answered.
And isn’t that, I thought, just a kick in the nut sack of belief.
I slid my truck to a stop at the south intersection, almost a half block away. It was as close as I could get. It looked like every cop car in the city had converged on the Governor’s mansion. I flashed my ID to the city cop and ran through. Sandy had moved over and sat down on the curb across the street from the trooper, her head down, her hands in her hair. I didn’t know who had the overnight duty so I didn’t know who the trooper was, but even as I ran, I could tell it wasn’t good. I detoured around the other cops already on scene and walked over to victim who lay at the end of the driveway. There was a pool of blood under the man’s head, and two entry wounds to his chest. Gone. I looked up and saw two news helicopters circling overhead, and when I crossed the street I saw the fallen Trooper was Barney Burns. That made something click in my chest with an instant heaviness. Barney had been my training officer when I joined the State Police.
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