The Seventeen Series Short Story Collection (Seventeen Series Short Stories #1-3)

by AD Starrling

  Johnson and Tolino glanced at the black Volvo parked at the curb.

  Johnson frowned. ‘No. His is the Toyota behind it. There are no other vehicles registered at the address.’

  More sirens sounded from the west and south as other patrol units raced toward their location.

  ‘Have you heard anyone scream or shout for help since you got here?’ said Reid quietly.

  ‘Negative,’ Johnson replied. ‘And 911 hasn’t received any calls from this address either.’

  Reid studied Johnson and narrowed his eyes. We all know this doesn’t look to be a hostage situation with a barricaded gunman. There are dead or injured people in that house. And God only knows how many spare magazines the guy has.

  ‘Broadcast our assessment of the situation to all responding units, tell them the safest approach, and get a secure perimeter established,’ Reid said curtly.

  Johnson reached inside the car and grabbed the radio handset.

  Reid twisted on his heels and indicated their Ford Victoria at the crossroad. ‘We can establish a temporary command post there until S.W.A.T. arrives—’

  ‘Oh fuck,’ Lockett whispered.

  Reid whipped his head around and followed his partner’s frozen gaze. His mouth went dry.

  A girl in her late teens had come out of a house one hundred feet up the road. She had headphones on and was leading a small white terrier on a leash. She turned and headed along the north side pavement toward them, eyes cast down and head bobbing along to whatever music she was listening to.

  She was fifty feet from the front porch of the gunman’s house.

  Johnson swore and jumped to her feet. ‘Hey! Hey, you there! Stop!’ She waved her arm frantically above her head.

  Reid caught motion at the window of the gunman’s house. ‘Get down!’

  He yanked Johnson by her belt. She gasped and dropped back to his side.

  The terrier started barking. The girl gave him a puzzled glance, picked him up, and carried on walking down the road. The dog squirmed in her arms.

  They were now twenty feet from the gunman’s porch.

  Reid felt his pulse accelerate. With S.W.A.T. not yet on site, they would have to move in to save the girl.

  ‘Lockett, you and I are point. Johnson, you’re rear guard. Tolino, tell Control and responding units we’re moving in to rescue a potential victim, then cover us.’ He glanced at the tense faces around him. ‘Just remember your training. On the count of three.’

  Reid inched to the edge of the bumper, gripped his Glock in both hands, and started the countdown. ‘One.’

  Lockett and Johnson moved into position next to him. Tolino grabbed the radio and started talking in a low, urgent voice to dispatch.

  ‘Two.’

  The gunman’s front door opened. Suarez stepped out and raised his gun at the girl.

  ‘Three!’

  Reid shot up and sprinted toward the property, arms straight out and finger moving on the trigger of the Glock. His first shot went wild. His second smacked into a wooden post next to Suarez’s head. The man whirled around and jumped back into the cover of the doorway.

  The girl stopped. Her head snapped up. Her eyes widened.

  ‘Get down!’ Reid yelled.

  She stood frozen, color draining from her face.

  ‘For God’s sake, drop to the ground!’ Lockett shouted.

  The girl cried out and crumpled to the pavement, the barking terrier clasped tightly within the cover of her body. Her broken sobs were drowned out by the sound of gunfire from the house.

  Reid cursed and angled toward a rhododendron bush to the left. There was a gasp behind him. He looked over his shoulder.

  A bullet had found Lockett’s right arm. The detective dropped down by a picket fence and gripped his limb.

  Acid burned Reid’s throat when Johnson cried out and stumbled. She clasped the bleeding gunshot wound to her outer thigh and fell to one knee.

  He scowled and shot repeatedly at the dim figure in the doorway of the house. Either this guy has some serious beginner’s luck or he’s a regular on a firing range!

  Johnson’s shout made him look around.

  ‘No! Get back!’

  She waved violently to where Tolino hovered by the bumper of the patrol car, struggled to her feet, and hobbled to where Lockett squatted by the fence.

  Reid opened his mouth to shout the same command just as three shots shattered the muggy afternoon.

  The only reason Tolino didn’t die that day was because it was that much harder to hit a moving target. The first two bullets struck the front wing of the car as he dove for cover. The third one went straight through his left shoulder.

  The girl with the terrier screamed, scrambled to her knees, and crawled hastily backward the way she had come, the dog struggling in her grasp. She was under cover a moment later.

  Lockett darted out into the road and pulled Tolino to the safety of the fence. Suarez disappeared from view and slammed the front door shut.

  A distant crash came from the rear of the property seconds later.

  Reid moved swiftly toward the house and caught a glimpse of Suarez as he legged it across his backyard. He turned and eyed the three wounded officers behind him, his heart pounding in his chest.

  ‘Go get him!’ snapped Lockett.

  ‘We’re fine!’ said Johnson. Tolino bobbed his head jerkily next to her.

  Reid twisted on his heels, vaulted over the picket fence fronting the property, and sprinted in the direction where Suarez had disappeared.

  He stopped near the backend of the building, changed the magazine in his Glock, and stole a look around the corner.

  Suarez was climbing over a wooden fence at the bottom of his garden.

  Reid rounded the building and bolted across the grass. He reached the palisade within seconds, jumped up against it, and grabbed the top with both hands. He peeked carefully over. An empty plot of land lay on the other side. Suarez was already halfway across it.

  Reid scaled the fence and went after him. He emerged onto a road and saw the gunman vanish over a cinder block wall ahead and to the left. He bit back a curse.

  The guy was headed for the water.

  Two patrol cars squealed into view some five hundred feet to the left. Reid signaled them to go north and dashed across the street. His breaths came hard and fast as he climbed the brick wall. He found himself facing the deserted parking lot of an abandoned warehouse. Suarez was a rapidly disappearing figure on the cracked, overgrown asphalt.

  Christ! For a large man, the guy sure knows how to run.

  Sweat was pouring freely down the back of Reid’s neck by the time he exited the lot. Suarez had crossed yet another road and was climbing a chain-link fence overlooking a wide expanse of derelict land.

  The noise of rotors punctuated the rising cacophony of sirens as he chased after the running gunman. He caught the flash of lights out the corner of his eyes and glimpsed the small, blue and gray body of a Massachusetts State Police helicopter in the sky to the north just as he reached the chain-link. Reid clambered rapidly over the barrier and dropped down hard on a strip of chipped asphalt. The shock of the landing jarred his knees. He gritted his teeth and took off after Suarez.

  The gunman was running toward the shimmering green waters of a channel some thousand feet ahead. The piers and terminals of the Port of Boston rose beyond it, with the harbor to the east.

  Reid cursed. The last thing he wanted to do was go for a swim if Suarez decided to jump. He had to stop the man before he reached the water.

  He raced past rust-covered shipping containers and dilapidated metal sheds. Asphalt gave way to dirt. Four hundred feet later, the outlook opened out onto overgrown grass and scrubland. A flicker of hope darted through him.

  Suarez’s speed had dropped. He was now some two hundred feet away and running toward an abandoned dock out on the water.

  Reid scanned the structure as he pounded the ground after the gunman.

  A
crane sat atop a metal tower to the right of the platform. To the left stood an abandoned cabin. Walkways connected the dock to the mainland and two small landings on either side.

  Suarez reached the closest gangway thirteen seconds ahead of him. He stumbled over some uneven boards, faltered for a moment, and kept on going. Sweat formed a growing dark patch on the back of his shirt.

  Wooden planks juddered beneath Reid’s feet as he bolted onto the walkway.

  Suarez stopped twenty feet shy of the dock, whirled around, and fired in his direction. Reid didn’t even flinch. The shot went wild. Suarez turned and dashed toward the platform.

  Movement to the left caught Reid’s gaze. He slowed a fraction, his stomach plummeting. You gotta be kidding me!

  The cabin had obscured the far left side of the dock from the mainland. Now that he’d gotten closer, the area beyond it was visible.

  A figure was rising from the corner of the platform. A man. He teetered slightly and righted himself inches from the water’s edge. Sunlight glinted on the beer bottle in his hand and the half dozen empty ones littering the ground by his feet.

  Reid groaned. A drunk. That’s all I goddamn need!

  Suarez had reached the tower. He ran past it and staggered to an almost comical stop when he spotted the man who stood facing him across the dock.

  The drunk said something and offered his bottle to Suarez, a friendly if inebriated smile dawning on his face.

  Reid’s jaw sagged. That moron!

  He opened his mouth to shout a warning to the intoxicated man.

  Suarez took three steps toward the stranger, raised his gun, and shot him point-blank in the head.

  The bullet entered the man’s skull just above the bridge of his nose. It exited the back of his head a microsecond later in a small spray of blood. He fell to his knees and thudded side down onto the dock.

  Anger squeezed Reid’s heart. There would be no reasoning with Burt Suarez.

  The gunman twisted on his heels and backed across the dock past the dead man, his face a pale, blank mask as he swung his gun around and fired toward the walkway.

  Reid bolted onto the platform and dove behind the tower, blood pounding in his ears. Bullets pinged off the metal framework and whizzed through the gaps between the steel struts. He moved into the cover of one of the posts.

  Black-clad S.W.A.T. officers appeared in the gaps between the shipping containers on the other side of the deserted strip. The helicopter was a growing shape in the sky to the right.

  Fifty feet ahead of him, Suarez reloaded his Smith & Wesson and raised the gun once more. A noise stopped him in his tracks. Small and innocuous, it was staggeringly shocking under the circumstances.

  Although he didn’t know it at the time, that noise would forever alter the path of Reid’s life and challenge everything he had come to accept as reality.

  The sound was that of a man groaning.

  Suarez’s head moved mechanically as he looked to his left.

  The dead man blinked and released the beer bottle in his hand.

  It rolled across the deck and came to a stop by the gunman’s feet, spilling some of its contents across his left shoe.

  The dead man sat up slowly. Blue eyes narrowed beneath the trickle of blood marking his skin. He touched the hole in his forehead gingerly.

  ‘That hurt,’ he said accusingly to Suarez. He climbed unsteadily to his feet.

  Suarez gaped, took a step back, and swung the Smith and Wesson at the dead man once more.

  Reid walked out of the cover of the tower with his Glock raised and pulled the trigger twice.

  The bullets struck Suarez in the chest. He jerked back with a short cry and fell heavily on the platform. The Smith & Wesson clattered out of his hand and pinwheeled across the dock. It hit the dead man’s right foot.

  He glanced from the weapon to the red stains blooming across Suarez’s chest, looked over to Reid, carefully raised his hands in the air, and kicked the gun toward him.

  ‘Hey there,’ he said in a slightly embarrassed voice.

  Reid stared, unsure how to respond.

  ‘I could have sworn you died,’ he said finally.

  The man hesitated. ‘What, from this?’ He indicated the wound in his forehead. ‘It’s just a scratch.’

  ‘I saw the bullet exit the back of your skull,’ Reid countered dully.

  The man blinked.

  ‘What bullet?’ he said innocently.

  Reid looked past him. The shell was nowhere to be seen. Shit. It must have hit the water.

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘Your chest wasn’t moving for a good while there, pal.’

  The man shrugged. ‘I’m a shallow breather.’

  It was at that point that the cavalry arrived.

  A shadow fell across the desk. Reid looked up into the stern face of Lieutenant Reginald Brooks, his direct superior in the Homicide Unit.

  The man placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of him. ‘How’re you doing?’

  Reid thanked him for the drink. ‘Fine.’

  Brooks furrowed his heavily-lined brow. ‘You know this investigation is just routine, right? Your service records from the military are spotless. This is the first time you’ve discharged your weapon since you joined the force and it was an active shooter situation at that. The whole thing was resolved pretty damn quickly, considering.’

  Reid sighed. Two days had passed since the deadly events in South Boston.

  On the day of his untimely death, Burt Suarez had been relieved from an early shift at the toll bridge by one of his colleagues. He came home to surprise his wife, spotted his brother’s car parked outside, and walked in to find them in bed together. Suarez had reportedly been a devoted Christian who cherished his spouse above all else. He was said to have been kind to man and animal alike.

  As in almost every case of homicide, love and hate were the primary emotions involved on that hot summer’s day. Burt Suarez lost his senses when he witnessed this ultimate betrayal, leading him to commit the violent acts that took the lives of his wife and brother, and wounded three police officers.

  In the aftermath of what happened, Reid was placed on administrative leave, as per standard practice. Whenever a police officer used his gun in the line of duty, irrespective of intent, circumstances, and whether the action resulted in someone’s injury or death, the department’s Internal Affairs had to carry out an investigation into the incident. He would have to wait for their final decision and that of the department’s psychiatrist before he could resume active duty. With Lockett out of action for at least another week, he’d spent his time writing reports and had started to work his way through the backlog of paperwork sitting in his in-tray.

  Brooks patted him on the shoulder. ‘It’ll fly by. You’ll be back on the streets in no time.’ He turned and headed toward his office.

  Reid watched him leave, grateful for the talk. The support his colleagues and fellow officers had shown him in the last forty-eight hours, including their Superintendent, had also been welcome. Still, it sucked to be stuck behind a desk.

  His gaze landed on a file next to the computer. The papers inside had started to curl at the edges from the number of times he’d read it. It contained a copy of the statement from the drunk Suarez had shot at the dock, as well as a detailed background investigation he himself had carried out on the man.

  His name was Lucas Soul. Born in Brooklyn in 1966, he moved to Boston at age twenty-four, after completing a degree from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and gaining investigative experience with a PI firm in New York. He now owned his own detective agency in Bay Village. He had no known next of kin, was single with no dependents, and had no criminal records.

  Reid frowned. The guy is just too…neat.

  He hesitated before flicking the folder open. Soul’s face stared back at him from a copy of his driver’s license, his gaze as inscrutable as it had been that day on the dock. Reid leaned back in his chair and linked his hands behind his
head.

  There was no denying what he had seen that day on the dock. Although they hadn’t recovered the missing slug, and despite the medical report stating the guy had suffered a non-life-threatening head injury, Reid knew Lucas Soul should be six feet under right now.

  The fact that he wasn’t weighed heavily on Reid’s mind. It was all he’d been able to think about in the last forty-eight hours, something that didn’t escape his estranged wife when he visited her and their two children yesterday, at the house they used to share in the suburbs of Boston. Although their relationship had cooled somewhat in the last three years, he still got along with Samantha and she knew him well enough to know when something was troubling him.

  Reid frowned. He didn’t believe in miracles, medical or otherwise, not when he’d seen Soul die as clearly as he had. He drummed his fingers on the table and glanced at his in-tray.

  The paperwork could wait.

  He took his own car and headed across town to Bay Village.

  Poseidon Security was located in a quiet side street with antique gas lamps. He parked around the corner from the address and strolled along the sun-dappled pavement to a pretty, red-brick Victorian building. A flight of steps led to a communal front door. The nameplates on the wall next to it indicated that Poseidon Security was on the second floor. There were three other offices in the building; an accountant, a financial advisor, and an architect. He pressed the buzzer for the PI agency.

  Twenty seconds passed. The intercom remained silent.

  Reid pushed the button again.

  The door opened. A beautiful blonde with long hair in a ponytail and close-fitting gym wear stepped out with a sports bike.

  ‘Oh.’ She stopped and blinked at him.

  Reid smiled. ‘The architect?’

  Her cheeks dimpled, lips parting to reveal a dazzling smile. ‘The accountant, actually. Who are you here to see?’

  ‘Poseidon Security.’

  The woman’s eyes brightened and a slight flush stained her cheekbones. ‘I haven’t seen Lucas yet this morning. He shouldn’t be too long. Do you want to wait outside his office?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Reid paused in the doorway and watched the blonde get on the bike. She cycled down the road, golden hair fluttering in the breeze. He spotted at least three men who turned and stared at her.