RCC04 - And Every Man Has to Die

by Frank Zafiro

  More than that, she missed the camaraderie of roll call. Saylor’s confident leadership. Chisolm’s steady presence. The twins cracking wise in their terrible accents. Matt Westboard’s quiet diligence. Hell, she even missed Kahn’s gruffness.

  She looked down at her swollen, discolored foot. Six to eight weeks, minimum. That’s what the doctor told her. And that was if they didn’t have to operate. If she didn’t need a pin or two to hold things together.

  Katie frowned. She didn’t belong on the couch. She belonged in a police cruiser.

  On the television, a crew of doctors and nurses rushed to the bedside of a dying patient. They worked feverishly, the actors spouting jargon that Katie didn’t understand. But the sense of purpose and the unity of action that the entire team exhibited only made her feel worse.

  She reached for the remote and changed the channel. Maybe there was some sappy romantic comedy on one of the movie channels. At least there was nothing in her life she could compare that to.

  Katie MacLeod flipped through her cable stations, wondering how there could be a hundred and seven channels and nothing on.

  2304 hours

  Graveyard Shift

  The belch came out as a wet, flapping croak. Battaglia glanced over at Sully, his gaze a mixture of concern and disgust. “You feeling all right?”

  Sully shook his head. “My stomach is bugging me.”

  Battaglia sniffed the air. “Whew. Now it’s bugging me. Roll down your window.”

  Sully hit the power switch and slid his window down halfway.

  “You want me to drive?” Battaglia asked.

  Sully shook his head. “No, I’m okay.”

  “What you most certainly are not, brother, is okay. What’d you eat?”

  “Lasagna,” Sully answered.

  Battaglia scowled. “What?”

  “I had lasagna,” Sully repeated.

  “And you’re sayin’ that’s why your stomach hurts?”

  “Probably. Why?”

  Battaglia frowned. “You can blame it on my people’s food all you want. I think it has more to do with your delicate Irish tummy than anything wrong with the lasagna.”

  “It’s the lasagna,” Sully said, and belched again. His face pinched in discomfort. “That’s all I had tonight.”

  “Yeah, well, it was probably some cheap microwave dinner made by a Polish guy in Cleveland or something. Not real Italian lasagna.”

  Sully didn’t reply. For one thing, he was fighting down the nausea. For another, the lasagna had been leftovers that Battaglia’s wife, Rebecca, had sent home with him two weeks ago. It had smelled fine, but—

  “You sure you didn’t have any haggis?”

  Sully shook his head. “I told you this before, you stupid guinea. Haggis is Scottish, not Irish.”

  “Close enough.”

  “Not even close. It’d be like me calling you Sicilian.”

  Battaglia’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, there’s no need to get nasty.”

  “See? No fun to get miscast, is it?”

  “My people are from Tuscany,” Battaglia said, indignant. “We are not Sicilian animale.”

  Sully smiled in spite of his stomach. “You want to talk about close? You know how many miles it is from the Italian mainland to the Sicilian coast?”

  “About a million,” Battaglia said.

  Sully opened his mouth to educate Batts, then clamped it shut again as another wave of nausea rolled over him.

  “You all right, Sully?”

  Sully shook his head rapidly.

  “Adam-122, a burglary report,” chirped the radio between them.

  Sully turned the wheel hard, whipping the patrol car to the curb. He stomped the brakes, lurching the vehicle to a stop. The sway of the car as it came to rest made the nausea worse.

  “Dude, do not puke in this car,” Battaglia warned. “We’ll never get the smell out and—”

  Sully pushed open the driver’s door and tried to lean outward. His seatbelt caught him, jerking him to a stop and keeping him upright. The belt released as if by magic. He leaned forward and vomited. A solid spray of red liquid interspersed with white chunks of noodles splattered onto the asphalt.

  A moment later he heaved again. This time less came out, but the contraction hurt his stomach more. He let loose with a third round that was largely spittle. He felt Battaglia’s hand patting him on the back through his protective vest as he remained in place, spitting and letting out a small groan.

  After a few moments, Sully leaned back into the car. He glanced over at Battaglia, realizing now that it had been his partner who popped the seatbelt loose for him.

  “Adam-122?” the dispatcher called again.

  Battaglia grabbed the microphone and told her to go ahead with the call. Sully watched as Batts scrolled down the tiny orange screen, reading the details as the dispatcher recited them. Then he copied the call and looked up at Sully.

  “You all right?”

  Sully shrugged. “You got any gum?”

  “Nope. But you’ve got toothpaste in your locker at the station, which is where I’m taking you. Pull forward.”

  “Huh?”

  “Pull forward,” Battaglia told him.

  “Why?”

  “We’re changing spots and I don’t want to have to walk in your used microwave lasagna to get into the driver’s seat, that’s why.”

  Sully shook his head. “I’m okay. I just need some gum.”

  “You got some bad food. You need to go home.”

  “I can make it through the shift.”

  “That’s another seven hours.”

  “I can do it.”

  “So you’re feeling better, then?”

  Sully started to nod yes, but another surge of nausea hit him. He blinked and fought it down. Without a word, he dropped the patrol car into gear and rolled forward several yards.

  “Switch,” was all Battaglia said.

  Sully eased himself out of the driver’s seat and walked around the front of the car. He was amazed at how weak his limbs felt. By the time he made it to the passenger side and flopped back into the seat, Battaglia was perched behind the wheel. He goosed the accelerator and the patrol car leapt forward.

  “Easy there, crazy,” Sully said. Then he added, “This isn’t Rome.”

  “I hope it was the haggis,” Battaglia said. “I hope what you’ve got isn’t catching.”

  Sully smiled weakly. “Just don’t let the lasagna sit in the fridge too long,” he muttered.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing,” Sully said. “Just take me to the station before I puke again, goombah.”

  “You should stick to corned beef and cabbage, Sully.” Battaglia glanced over at him. “Seriously.”

  Sully’s stomach clenched again. He closed his eyes and groaned.

  “Tell Sergeant Shen I went home sick,” he told Battaglia.

  “Duh.”

  “Don’t forget.”

  “Double duh.”

  “I mean it. I don’t want him to think I went AWOL or something.”

  “Hey, who are you talking to here?” Battaglia affected a look of indignation. “One thing we Italians are good for is taking care of our family.”

  “Aye,” Sully replied, barely able to summon any brogue. “’Tis true.”

  Station, he thought, then home.

  Tuesday, July 15th

  0211 hours

  Officer B.J. Carson pulled carefully onto Monroe Street from Rowan and headed south. After four months of driving with a field training officer in the passenger seat observing her every move, it felt both strange and liberating for her to be on her own. She knew she was still under observation—perhaps even more so than before, with an entire platoon sitting in judgment—but she felt like she could relax a little bit now that she was alone in her patrol car.

  She still wore the blue nametag of a rookie, too. The one with “B.J.” emblazoned in bright white letters. Carson had loved having initials for a n
ame when she was young enough to wear pigtails. It set her apart. But by the time she reached junior high, the obvious sexual connotation became a plague. High school was even worse, as her initials became an excuse for boys to believe she was more likely to be promiscuous and girls to assume the same. And maybe it was even a little true, but she didn’t like people just assuming it. In her junior year she changed to a different high school, where she became just Billie. That helped her finally get free of the B.J. curse.

  Or so she thought. The day she graduated the academy, they handed her a dark blue River City Police nametag with her initials, and her stomach fell. Then she figured that since she was an adult now, working with other adults, the initials wouldn’t matter anymore. Maybe she could even be B.J. again, and like it.

  Not hardly. The police department was an older, grayer version of high school, which was, after all, just a crueler version of junior high. Whenever a male officer saw or heard her initials, she saw in his eyes exactly where his mind went.

  As she cruised down Monroe, she pushed away those thoughts and took stock of her platoon mates, instead. Some were easier to figure out than others. She was accustomed to the hard-sell come-ons of a guy like James Kahn. Since she was on probation and trying to fit in, she endured his clumsy, overbearing efforts. She had him figured for a guy who wouldn’t give up unless he ran into a hard stop, so she guessed that she would need to manufacture a fictional boyfriend soon in order to keep him at bay. It wasn’t a perfect solution but it was a better choice than some she’d made regarding male coworkers before.

  That’s in the past, she thought.Before I became a cop. Things are different now. I’m different.

  Being a cop. Already it was a job full of adrenaline and stress and powerful personalities. Inevitably, that led to a sexually charged environment.

  How did Katie MacLeod handle it? Since the rotation with MacLeod had been Carson’s first, they’d focused on much more basic things than the finer arts of dealing with men in the workplace. Still, while the men around the police department cast MacLeod an appreciative glance once in a while, they seemed to genuinely respect her as an officer.

  Of course, Carson knew the stories. MacLeod had exchanged gunfire with the Scarface robber several years ago. Another time, she faced a no-win situation on the Post Street bridge with a crazy man and his infant son. And there was her near-fatal encounter with the Rainy Day Rapist about two years ago. The story of how the suspect attacked her in her own home was told to her academy class during the Officer Safety course as an example of why awareness and precautions both on and off duty were so important.

  She’s almost a legend, Carson realized. And since that legend was the only other woman on the platoon, she knew very well what the benchmark would be for her, and she felt both admiration and resentment when she considered this.

  Still, MacLeod had been a good teacher when they’d ridden together. She’d shown patience and let Carson stretch her limits. Unlike the three male training officers she’d been assigned to, she never felt like she was being protected or that someone was waiting for her to fail. That was an attitude she’d encountered a lot since being hired. She’d hoped it would end as she made it through the field training phase, but she could tell that it wasn’t. She’d need to prove herself further.

  Take Chisolm, for instance. His flat, appraising gaze made her nervous. It wasn’t like he was waiting for her to fail, though. It was more like he simply expected she would.

  She wasn’t sure why he looked at her that way, but it wasn’t like Chisolm hadn’t earned the right if he wanted to. If MacLeod was almost a legend, Chisolm most certainly was a legend. He was the man who took down the Scarface robber, for one thing. His steely, steady gaze was supposed to give officers confidence and make criminals worry. It had an entirely different impact on Carson, though. It made her nervous.

  Carson touched her brake pedal lightly as she coasted down the Monroe Street hill, a short serpentine stretch that dropped from the upper north side of River City into the wide valley that extended north from the Looking Glass River. When she neared the bottom, she turned on Mona Street without thinking about it. A moment later, she realized why—this was where MacLeod had been attacked by the Rainy Day Rapist while acting as a decoy.

  She slowed to a crawl and scanned the sparsely populated block, wondering exactly where it happened.

  About two-thirds of the way down the block she spotted a long stretch of wooded area with no house. She slowed to a stop and stared at the ill-maintained sidewalk and the thick brush just off the roadway. She had visions of a goblinesque attacker leaping out of the bushes with a knife. She knew it was silly; she’d seen pictures of the Rainy Day Rapist after he’d been arrested. He looked normal enough, even with the sensational newspaper headlines above his photo.

  It had been that news story about Katie MacLeod that spurred her to apply to be a police officer. She distinctly remembered sitting on her couch, balled-up tissues in one hand and a vodka cran in the other, watching the news. The news station gave almost ten minutes to the piece, describing the attack and showing a photograph of a confident, smiling Katie MacLeod in her police uniform.

  Carson wanted to be that. The next day, she went down to civil service and filled out an application. Becoming a cop was going to be a complete reinvention for her. She could become a confident, skilled professional, just like Katie. She could leave her old life behind.

  Carson stared out the window and wondered what the attack had been like. She wondered how Katie handled it, how she bounced back from all of the things she’d encountered on the job. She wondered if she could do it herself now that she was on the job. Was her transformation complete, or—

  She heard the racing engine before she saw the approaching car. A small gold Honda flashed past the intersection, southbound on Post Street. There was no way she could estimate the speed in the brief glimpse of the vehicle, but it was well above the thirty mile an hour speed limit.

  Carson punched the gas. The V-8 engine of the Crown Victoria gave a throaty roar and surged forward. She hooked a quick right onto Post and buried her accelerator to try and catch the speeder. The taillights were already approaching the light at Buckeye.

  “Good God,” she muttered. “He’s flying.”

  She knew she should reach for the microphone and advise radio she was trying to catch up to a speeder, but she hesitated. What if the car got away from her? It already had a sizable head start.

  Carson gripped the wheel and swallowed hard. Adrenaline coursed through her body. She glanced down at the speedometer.

  Seventy.

  If she crashed her car right now, it would be lights out for her career. She was still on probation. They’d fire her, no question.

  It’s only a speeder, she thought. But losing a car on her first night out on her own was not the way to make her bones. Carson clenched her jaw and maintained her speed.To hell with that.

  The taillights went straight at Buckeye. Carson had the green light and zipped through the intersection, bouncing heavily on an uneven patch of pavement. She held her speed and quickly closed the gap. He must have been doing around fifty miles an hour.

  With half a block between them, Carson hit her overhead lights. For a long moment there was no reaction. She wondered if this might turn into a vehicle pursuit, something she hadn’t been involved in yet. Another shot of adrenaline kicked in, causing her fingers to tingle.

  Then the brake lights flashed twice, then came on steady. The car pulled to the right and stopped.

  Carson grabbed the microphone. “Adam-128, a traffic stop.”

  “Go ahead, Adam-128.”

  “Post and Knox with William Young Zebra Seven Seven Nine,” she recited, reading the license plate in front of her.

  “Copy.Adam-122?”

  Anthony Battaglia’s deep voice responded. “Adam-122, copy.Division and Buckeye.”

  Carson hung the microphone on its holder. Battaglia was close. Good. Look
ing at the three heads in the car silhouetted by her headlights, she was grateful for the backup.

  She scrambled to set her spotlight on the vehicle and grab her flashlight. Cautiously, but trying to project confidence, she approached the car. The driver appeared to be in his early twenties with closely cropped hair. His two passengers also wore their hair short. All of them watched her with flat, appraising eyes. The backseat passenger spoke into a cell phone.

  She motioned for the driver to roll down the window by twirling her finger. He complied, but stopped the window halfway down.

  “Sir, I’m Officer Carson, River City Police,” she began. “I need to see your driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance.”

  The driver looked at her coldly for a moment, then asked, “What for you stop me?”

  Carson recognized his thick accent. She’d only encountered Russians once before, on a traffic stop in her second training car. The elderly woman had been exceptionally nice, smiling the entire time, but she hadn’t understood a word of English. Carson received high marks from her training officer for managing to communicate via show and tell and body language, eventually letting her go with a warning.

  “I stopped you for speeding,” Carson told this driver. “Now, I need your driver’s license—”

  “I not speeding,” the driver interrupted.

  Carson paused. She’d been trained not to get into arguments with violators. Simply write them the ticket and let the merits be argued in court. “I need to see your driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance,” she repeated firmly.

  The driver shook his head. “No. I not speeding, so you have no right.”

  “Whether you think you were speeding or not,” Carson told him, reciting the traffic code that she had memorized from flash cards in the academy, “you are required to provide these documents upon request from a law enforcement officer.”

  “This bullshit,” the driver said.

  “You’re welcome to think so. But I need to see your documents.”

  “Or vaht?” the driver sneered.