Mark Taylor Omnibus (The Mark Taylor Series)

by M. P. McDonald

  “I don’t know. I figured you guys would have that information.”

  “No, undercover operations are kept very quiet—for the cop’s protection.” She opened her desk drawer and dug around for something, pulling out a legal pad and a pen. “Can you give me descriptions of the shooters?”

  Crap. “No. I only heard them; I didn’t see them, they…they were in a car. I was on the other side of some bushes and they were parked on the curb. I heard them talking about it.”

  Her expression hardened and he knew he had lost her again.

  She tossed the pen down. “Are you serious? You come in here with news of a shooting, of a cop no less, but have no description of the shooters. All you have to go on is an overheard conversation from some guys in parked car? That’s not exactly hard evidence.”

  “I realize that. I have a description of the car though, and the guy who gets shot.”

  Sighing, she picked up the pen again. “Fine. Give me what you have.”

  He saw the car in his mind’s eye. “It’s a late ‘90s model Ford sedan. Dark colored.”

  “I don’t suppose you have a license plate?”

  Mark shook his head. “Sorry.”

  Jessica gave him a long look before sighing. “Listen, Mark. What’s your agenda?”

  “Agenda?” Totally confused, he could only stare at her.

  “This just doesn’t add up. For one thing, you stick out like…well, you wouldn’t go unnoticed at Cabrini-Green, so I’m a bit skeptical that you would get anywhere near a parked car where people are discussing a drive-by. I have a feeling you’re trying to, I don’t know, impress me maybe?”

  Mark’s face heated up but whether with embarrassment or anger, he wasn’t sure. “Listen, Jessica, you can doubt me all you want, and be pissed because I screwed up our date, but you remember I was right about the gas station, and I’m right about this. If you don’t warn this cop, he’s going to be murdered sometime around six p.m. How could it hurt to take a few precautions, maybe get in touch with the undercover guy and warn him?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for games.”

  Calm down. He told himself that becoming angry wouldn’t save the undercover cop. He blew out a breath and pushed his hands thorough his hair in frustration. “It’s not a game and I don’t have an agenda except to prevent the death of a police officer. I gave you accurate information before, and I’m doing the same now.” He remembered a detail, leaned forward and said, “The officer is African-American, young, good-looking, and has a scar on his left forearm. It appears to be a healed burn or something.”

  “I don’t know anyone like that in our precinct. Besides, even if I were to believe you, I wouldn’t be able to track the officer down by your vague description. In fact, your alleged victim probably isn’t from a precinct near Cabrini-Green. They wouldn’t chance him being recognized as a cop, so they’d bring in someone who has never patrolled in that area.”

  He couldn’t leave without a promise that she would do something to prevent the shooting. “But you could ask around. Even if he isn’t from your precinct, I know that you’ll be involved.”

  Standing, she put her jacket on and shot him a sharp look as she adjusted the cuffs. “And just how do you know that?”

  Mark’s mind went blank as he tried to form a reply.

  With a knowing look, she nodded. “I thought as much. Here’s what I think you’re doing. You were right before. You got lucky and overheard a conversation about the gas station robbery. You liked that feeling of power and you’re seeking it out again.”

  “You’re wrong.” Mark stood. “And I am sorry about our date. Especially now, since you’re too angry to listen to me. I hope someday you’ll believe me.” He turned and left.

  * * *

  Mark parked a few blocks from Cabrini-Green, his camera sitting on the passenger seat. It was his excuse for being there, but that was the extent of his plan. He drummed the steering wheel. He could leave right now and go back home. It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried his best to prevent the shooting. It wasn’t his fault that the police didn’t believe him. He had done his best and that was all there was to it. Yep. It wasn’t his problem. Mark turned the key in the ignition, but sat in the idling car unable to drive away.

  He slammed his hand against the wheel. Damn it! Why did guilt keep beating at the door to his conscience? What did he know of drug deals and drive-by shootings? Only what he saw on the news or on TV shows. The shadows on the street lengthened and he sensed time running out. If he hesitated long enough, he wouldn’t have to make a decision. Even if he went to the scene, he didn’t have to do anything. That was it. He would just go there and if he happened to see a chance to warn the undercover cop, he’d take it, but that was it. He didn’t have to go barging into the drug deal.

  With a savage twist of the key, he pulled it from the ignition and grabbed his camera off the seat. Five minutes later, he stood across the street from the projects. He removed the lens cap from the camera and pretended to take a few shots, but used the long lens to get a better view of the area. It only took him a few seconds to identify the corner depicted in the photos and dream. It was close to where he had taken photographs the day before. He lowered the camera and crossed the road. At the moment, the corner was empty, but a few guys were heading towards it from the other direction. He tried to see if one of them was the victim but Mark was too far away to see either man clearly, and he didn’t want to be obvious about it by looking through the lens right at them.

  The men reached the corner ahead of him, and a car skidded to a stop right at the corner. Mark flinched, certain it was the shooter, but the make of the car was wrong. A man exited the vehicle and sauntered to the corner. Mark caught a glimpse of a scar on the man’s arm.

  He picked up his pace, almost jogging to get to the cop before the man reached the corner. This was his only chance. “Hey!”

  The guy glanced over his shoulder, flashing a look of annoyance at Mark. “Get outta here, man.” He didn’t even pause, just shook his head and continued to the corner.

  A squeal of wheels sounded behind Mark and without looking, he knew this was the car. The dream played in his mind and even with his back to the vehicle, he could ‘see’ it fishtail around the corner. Any second, it would reach them and bullets would fly. Mark put on a burst of speed and shouted, “Get down!”

  The undercover cop turned back a split second before Mark barreled into him. The camera around Mark’s neck dug into his chest, the strap tightened and released as the camera hit the pavement. Fleetingly, he registered that it was a goner and he was glad it wasn’t the magic one. Shots sounded, men cursed and tires screeched. Mark’s flying tackle sent them both to the ground. A deep, bruising pain centered in his left thigh an instant before his right knee exploded with a hot flash of pain as his kneecap smashed against the pavement. Eyes clenched, he added his own foul language to the chaos as he tried to keep from puking. So intense was the pain in his knee, he almost forgot about the other pain in his thigh.

  The car sped past, more bullets spraying the air, some hitting the pavement. Mark ignored the pain in his knee and the growing ache in his leg, and huddled with his arms over his head. The cop held the same position, but as soon as the car was down the street, the cop jumped up, his weapon in his hand and ran for the cover of his car. Mark rolled onto his back, grateful the cop was still alive and the pain in his knee was easing. He must have just hit it in the right place. Gingerly, he bent his leg, flexing it a few times.

  He sat, becoming aware of a burning in his elbow, and turned it to examine the scrape, but a sudden wave of dizziness assaulted him and his stomach did a flip as he stared down at his blood-soaked thigh. Confused, he wondered if his elbow had dripped, but the slight scrape on that joint was oozing only a trickle of blood.

  A car door slammed and a radio squawked. Quick footsteps sounded on the sidewalk. Mark tore his gaze from the wound in his leg to see who was approaching, and a sh
iver shook him, increasing to a hard trembling that he couldn’t control.

  The undercover cop crouched beside Mark, one hand gripping his gun, the other a radio. He glanced over his shoulder and made a quick survey beyond Mark before he fixed his focus on him. “Who are you and what the hell are you doing here? Now I gotta call this in and my cover will be blown! Do you have any idea what you just did?”

  A reply formed in Mark’s mind, but he lost it before it reached his mouth. He blinked as the edges of his vision darkened.

  The officer fixed him with a glare, but then his eyes flicked down and widened. “Shit! You been shot! Lay down.” He pressed a hand against Mark’s shoulder, helping him lie back on the sidewalk.

  “Yeah. Okay.” The pain that had been muted in comparison to his knee now screamed through his leg as though it had been waiting its turn to make itself known.

  Mark licked his lips, suddenly thirsty. The dizziness persisted despite lying down, and the sight of the white puffy clouds floating overhead made his stomach lurch. He closed his eyes and draped his arm over them to try to block out the nausea along with the sky.

  Distantly, he registered the cop calling out on his radio and undecipherable chatter as the officer rattled off a bunch of numbers and asked for a bus. That confused him, but for some reason, he thought he should know what it meant. He forgot all about it when the cop leaned on Mark’s wound. With a strangled groan, Mark reflexively grabbed at the man’s hand to remove it.

  “Sorry, man. I have to hold pressure here before you bleed out on me.”

  Mark wasn’t sure if he lost consciousness but one second it was just him and the cop and the next, there were sirens and a multitude of voices. Mark struggled to keep his eyes open to see what was going on but the sirens and voices faded.

  * * *

  Absently twirling a pen through her fingers, Jessica puzzled through Mark’s story. It still baffled her. She hadn’t been aware of any officers operating undercover in the Cabrini-Green projects, but that didn’t surprise her. Undercover operations were always kept under strict secrecy. It was for the protection of the undercover officer. It only took one person with a careless remark to blow the cover. She wasn’t even sure who to ask. It wasn’t like she could repeat Taylor’s description because if by some chance, he actually had overheard that conversation, and there was someone who met that description, she could be putting the cop in danger instead of helping him. In the likelihood that Taylor hadn’t heard a thing, but was making up this story for some crazy reason, just by snooping around she could jeopardize the officer and the operation.

  Tapping the edge of the pen on the folder, she shook her head. The scar on the cop might not even be real if he was undercover. The pen froze. How had Taylor obtained a description of the cop? He hadn’t seen the officer, just supposedly overheard a threat against him. She doubted very much that thugs planning a hit would describe their target as young and good looking. That shed doubt on his story. The idiot.

  She hated to waste even more time dealing with Taylor’s story, but she thought she would pay him an official visit later, maybe threaten to arrest him for filing a false report. That would teach him to get his thrills somewhere else. Jessica pushed the papers back into the folder and sorted through various post-it notes looking for the one she had used this morning to jot down Taylor’s information. She found it, but she hadn’t taken his phone number. Stupid. Well, he was a commercial photographer, it shouldn’t be too hard to find. She pulled out a phone book and flipped to the yellow pages.

  Her partner Dan poked his head into their shared office. “Hey, we just got a call. Guess we didn’t make it out of here on time.”

  Jessica glanced at the clock. Thirty more minutes and the next shift would have been the lucky ones covering the call. “What do we have?” She removed her jacket from the back of her chair and slipped it on as she followed him out to the unmarked car.

  “A shooting at Cabrini.”

  The hair on the back of her neck stood on end and she came to a dead halt. “Are you serious?” Maybe Taylor had called Dan too, and now her partner was pulling her leg.

  He glanced over his shoulder with a puzzled expression. “Of course I’m serious. Come on— shake a leg. Time’s wasting.”

  She shook her head. It’s not like a shooting at the housing project was unusual. Any idiot could claim there would be one on any given day and the odds would be good they would be correct.

  Lights on and siren blasting, they approached an intersection. She checked her side for traffic and called out, “All clear.”

  It took them six minutes to reach the scene. A marked squad had beaten them, and they parked behind it. An officer was busy keeping onlookers from pushing too close. Jessica scanned the crowd, wondering if any of them had witnessed the shooting. They all would need to be questioned, but she turned her attention to the activity on the sidewalk where a man appeared to be aiding another who lay sprawled on the pavement. Blood pooled on the sidewalk and flowed like a river to the edge, darkening the dead yellow grass to a deep magenta.

  “Damn.” She quickened her steps. “What happened, and where’s the ambulance?” She wondered why the officer controlling the crowd hadn’t taken charge of the scene. He should have been the one at the victim’s side until trained help arrived.

  The man rendering aid glanced up, but kept a hand tight against the injured man’s thigh. “I called it in, but this isn’t exactly their favorite place to respond to a call.”

  “Who are you?”

  When the man shifted to look at her, she caught a glimpse of the victim and froze. Mark Taylor? Even with his eyes closed and his skin ashen, she was sure of it. What the hell had he gotten himself into?

  Dan, following close behind, bumped into her after her sudden halt. His hands gripped her shoulders to keep her from jolting forward. “What’s the problem, Jess?”

  She took the final few steps to reach Taylor’s side. “I know this guy.”

  Dan glanced at her in concern as he stepped up beside her. “Is he a friend or something? Should I call in a replacement for you?”

  With a shake of her head, she said, “No, I’m okay. I dated him once. He came to me with a tip about—” She stopped and closed her eyes for a moment, unwilling to admit that she had been given a tip she hadn’t acted upon. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  She made a sharp gesture towards Mark. “This! This is what he tipped me about, but he had no proof, no sources… nothing I could go on.” She knew she spoke the truth but guilt still slipped under her professional armor and poked at her conscience. Her anger at Mark for ditching her on their date last year shouldn’t cost him his life. If she was honest, it wasn’t just the bad date, it was the fact that she would have shot that boy with the fake gun if he hadn’t stopped her. Her ego and pride, in addition to denying her own infallibility, might cost Mark Taylor his life.

  Dan’s eyes narrowed as his brow furrowed in puzzlement. “He tipped you that he was going to be shot at Cabrini-Green?

  Shaking her head, she took a deep breath. “No, not that he would be shot, but that someone would be shot.” Now wasn’t the time to go into details with so many people around. She still had to sort it out in her own mind. Mark had never mentioned that he would be here. If he had, she would have warned him away. Damn him!

  “Interesting. Well, let’s see what the story is.”

  Jessica nodded. It was better not to jump to conclusions. The likely story was that Taylor somehow instigated the shooting to gain credibility. It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to organize a stunt to get attention and then had it totally backfire. She crouched beside the man assisting Taylor. “Did you witness what happened?”

  “Witness? Hell, no. I didn’t see a damn thing. This guy planted me face down on the pavement.”

  “Was he the shooter?” A part of her prayed the answer would be no. Taylor hadn’t stuck her as that desperate for attention and if he had done this, then
her cop instincts were about as accurate as a report from a drunk witness.

  “No. The shots were fired from a blue Thunderbird. Probably a mid-‘90s model.”

  Jessica took a long look at the man. His phrasing was more like a cop than a gangbanger. “Are you a police officer?”

  He turned and swept his gaze over the crowd, before nodding. “Yeah, but keep your voice down.” He gave a warning nod to the gathering onlookers.

  His eyes widened in surprise before they narrowed and his mouth set in a hard line while he swept a glance around. Quietly, he replied, “I was, but it’s blown now. Wade Phillips out of 12.”

  Dan pulled gloves from his pocket and snapped them on. “I’ll hold pressure.”

  Phillips nodded. “I think the bullet hit an artery or something. He’s bleeding like a son of a bitch.” They made the switch, and Taylor groaned when Dan took over. Jessica saw his eyelids flutter and his right arm moved as if to push at Dan’s hand, but it flopped back down before reaching its goal. She swallowed hard and focused on Phillips. She had to find out what happened now, while his memory was still fresh.

  Still kneeling, Phillips let out a sigh as he sank back, his forearms resting on his thighs, his bloody hands held awkwardly as though to keep them from staining his clothing. She hated to break it to him, but his baggy shorts had already soaked up a good portion of Taylor’s blood. Sirens sounded and she turned, relieved to see the ambulance finally make an appearance.

  “Come on, Phillips. I have some wipes in the car. I need to ask you a few questions, too.” She welcomed the chance to do something useful.

  He followed her to the car and she waited while he used the wipes, almost cleaning out their supply as he scrubbed his hands. A plastic grocery bag, tangled in a weed on the parkway, flapped in the breeze. Jessica ripped if from the weed and held it open for Phillips to toss in the used wipes.

  Knotting the bag, Jessica tossed it onto the front seat of the car and pulled out her notebook. She wondered if she appeared as shaken as she felt. “So, what happened here?”