Her Last Scream

by J. A. Kerley

  “This officer is new to the force,” Kavanaugh said. “Meet Reinetta Early.”

  Chapter 21

  “No way,” Harry said. “Not a chance. None, nada, nyet. officer Early is young, unproven and without any experience.”

  We surrounded the conference table, the Doc and Reinetta on one side, Harry and me on the other. Tom was at the head, quiet, weighing the presentation. Tom had no idea Rein and Harry were related, Kavanaugh equally in the dark. I was starting to regret my pledge of silence.

  The Doc said, “Let’s listen to what officer Early has to say. She has –”

  “She has three months’ experience,” Harry interrupted. “It’s not an assignment for on-the-job training.” He started the none, nada chorus again.

  “I agree there are experience considerations,” Kavanaugh said. “Detective Nautilus, it sounds like you think she’s way too green for the job.”

  “She’s not even green yet. She’s, she’s …” Harry sputtered, trying to think of a pre-green color.

  “Excuse me,” Rein said quietly. “While I’m not fully familiar with everyone in this room, I am aware of their achievements, since successes are taught at the academy.” She raised an eyebrow at Harry, tapping a finger on her cheek as if recalling something from a textbook.

  “Tell me, Detective Nautilus … Didn’t you once pull a suicidal man’s wife from a burning house as he shot at you? Were you not wounded while doing so?”

  Harry waved it off. “A flesh wound,” he said, referring to the slug that had blown through one thigh to lodge in the other. “Nothing important.”

  “Nevertheless, did you not achieve this as a raw rookie, only sixty-seven days on the force?”

  “I don’t recall how long I’d been a cop, but –”

  The warm browns shifted to me. “Detective Ryder, didn’t you, while in uniform and new to the force, risk your life to apprehend the insane killer Joel Adrian, saving one child for certain, and many others had Adrian continued his spree?”

  “Future killings are a matter of speculation,” I said.

  “Did you do it, Detective? As I basically detailed?”

  “Basically like that, yes.”

  Rein appeared to think deeply about the answers elicited from Harry and me, giving the perfect four-beat dramatic pause before continuing.

  “So it appears training at the MPD Academy is on an extremely high professional level. A level that enables graduates to handle themselves with distinction from the moment they hit the street. Is that not the clear lesson here, detectives?”

  You would have been a helluva lawyer, girl, I thought, unable to counter her argument without dissing myself, Harry, or the Police Academy. I looked at Harry, jaw clenched, equally unable to object.

  “A compelling point, officer,” Tom Mason said. “Please continue to present your qualifications.”

  “I received top grades at the academy, Lieutenant. I was in the uppermost percentile physically. My shooting scores were in the top five per cent. I also understand that the assignment requires acting ability. My experience there includes –”

  “Oklahoma doesn’t count,” Harry interrupted.

  “Oh?” Rein said, shifting her gaze to Harry. “How about My Fair Lady?”

  “Not that either,” Harry grumbled.

  Rein did the cheek-tap reminiscence again. “Didn’t you once go into jail undercover, Detective Nautilus? Gaining the confidence of an infamous drug kingpin within a week and thereby solving two murders? And weren’t you selected for the assignment because you were so new to the force he wouldn’t have known you?”

  She recited as if recalling an academy text, but I suspected she’d heard the story at Harry’s knee. Harry turned away, but had to nod yes.

  “And what was your acting experience prior to this stellar performance, Detective Nautilus?”

  Harry muttered under his breath.

  “Pardon me, Detective?” Rein said.

  “None. No experience.”

  “My goodness,” Rein said, feigning perplexation. “Not even My Fair Lady?”

  Tom dismissed Reinetta after her curriculum vitae had been presented and thought for a minute before speaking.

  “Ordinarily, I’d put a thumbs down on the idea. But I’ve looked over officer Early’s records. If anything, she’s underplaying her abilities. The idea of putting her undercover scares me, but every time a cop is undercover, it scares me.”

  “She’s too new,” Harry protested.

  “Her case was well made, Harry. You guys kicked ass coming out of the gate for several reasons: one, you were smart; two, you had gut instincts along with the training; and three, you had mentors giving you inside skinny from day one. You came up under Zip Johnson, right Harry?”

  “Zip built me into who I am today.”

  “And Carson, you had Harry. I want the three of you to spend the next few days together, talk out the assignment. Hit perils more than possibilities. If Early goes in, it’ll be you guys handling her. We clear there?”

  I looked at Harry. Misery was printed in bold across his face.

  “We’re clear, Tom,” I said.

  Tom nodded and stood, knuckles rapping the table like a gavel. “I’ll call Early’s commander and get her assigned to Homicide for the next few weeks. Get that girl up to speed, guys. Teach her every trick, because I’m holding you responsible for keeping her safe.”

  Chapter 22

  “You missed the target entirely!” Harry roared as Rein stood from the floor, the firing range echoing with the sound of her rounds. It was the second of what Harry had turned into sixteen-hour workdays. “What kind of shooting was that?”

  I shouldered off the wall and stepped in. “Uh, Harry …”

  Rein held up her hand to cut me off. “It was lousy shooting, Carson. My fault. I’ll try again.”

  Harry shook his head in disgust and reset the protective headset on his ears. “From the beginning!” he yelled, moving to the target-control button, zipping the outline of a human torso thirty yards down the range. “You’ve got a perp running at you and firing. You’re on the ground with no cover for miles, only one chance in the world, hit him while you’re rolling. Here he comes.”

  Harry pressed the button, the target racing toward us.

  “Go!”

  Rein dove to the floor rolling and firing, an almost-impossible piece of marksmanship, trying to keep the target in her sights while tumbling across a dozen feet of floor.

  The target zipped up. Harry rolled his eyes. “One hit,” he said. “You hit him in the love-handle, officer Early. He’s still shooting and you’re dead.” He turned to me, bellowed, “Carson!”

  I rolled my eyes. “What now?”

  “Can you show officer Early how it’s done?”

  “I think it’s time we took a break and –”

  “She needs to learn this.”

  I took a deep breath. “Look straight up at the ceiling, Rein,” I said. “Point your weapon at that light up there. What I do is lock my shoulders, elbows and wrists into a solid unit and roll mainly with my hips and legs. The top of my body out to my weapon – the firing unit – is stable. Keep your head in the same position as you roll. Fire when you hit your belly, roll away.”

  She aimed at the light, did as told. “Like this?”

  I didn’t have time to answer, Harry sending the target down range.

  “Here comes your killer,” he yelled. The target flew toward us at ten miles an hour. I hit the floor, my body a straight line to the gun sight, cranking off four shots during five rolls. The target zipped to a stop as I stood. One hit in the kill zone, one on the line, two close enough to have done damage in a real-life situation.

  “Wow,” Rein said.

  “OK, but not great,” Harry sniffed. “officer Early, your turn.”

  Rein stepped into position as Harry reset the target, brought it racing to us at top speed.

  “Go, dammit!”

  Rein hit the gro
und rolling and firing. The target was within reach within five seconds, Harry leaning close. “Two hits outside the zone,” he snarled. “You’re dead again. Set up for another.”

  “I have to reload,” Rein said. She walked to a nearby bench and opened a new box of bullets. I pulled my cap from my back pocket and snapped it on my head.

  “Where you going?” Harry said.

  “Out for something to eat. You guys coming?”

  “You’re kidding, right? We’re gonna stay until she gets it right.”

  I stared at him, shaking my head.

  “What?” he said.

  “Stop being an asshole,” I said, turning toward the door. “It doesn’t look good on you.”

  Treeka lay on a single bed in the guest room of a woman named Marge, her first stop on the railroad. Marge had left for work, saying she was sorry she couldn’t stay with Treeka.

  “I’m just happy there are people like you,” Treeka had said.

  The night before last, Meelia, the black woman with the owl glasses, had driven Treeka west for an hour. She was funny, making Treeka laugh and mostly forget that Tommy would go crazy when he saw Treeka had run away. Meelia volunteered at the center to pay back for what everyone there did for her when her boyfriend would smoke crack and kick her around their apartment. She said the people at the center saved her life. Treeka heard the woman’s serious voice, the one that was glad to be alive and proud to be part of a system that saved others.

  The scariest part came when Meelia pulled into a truck stop at one a.m., the air smelling of diesel fuel and fried food. Treeka was to walk from the car side of the rest stop across to the truck side and stand beside the phone booth, waiting for two rings on the phone, which meant Get ready to move fast.

  “Won’t it look weird,” Treeka asked, “me carrying a suitcase?”

  “It’s a truck stop at one in the morning,” Meelia laughed. “Everything’s supposed to be weird.”

  Treeka stood in the hard light beside the phone watching a tractor-trailer rig being fueled, a bearded, bear-sized driver beside the cab in stained overalls and shooting over-the-shoulder glances at Treeka. The driver wiped his windshield and disappeared into the huge black cab. Treeka jumped as the phone rang …

  Once, twice.

  She picked up the suitcase and held it tight with both hands. A rumbling diesel roar and the truck swept from the fueling bay to turn directly toward Treeka. It squealed to a stop at the curb, the passenger-side door swinging open.

  “Climb up,” the driver said. “Quick.”

  Her heart in her throat – was this how it was supposed to work? – Treeka pushed the suitcase up until the man pulled it inside the cab. Treeka followed, setting herself into the seat.

  “Don’t be afraid, miss,” the driver said as he turned back to the steering wheel, his voice soft and tender, like talking to a lost child. “Sit back and relax and in a couple hours my wife, name’s Marge, will fill you with sausage and eggs and tuck you into bed. We’ve got a nice place for you.”

  And away they had run.

  I ate supper at a po’ boy joint, buying an extra shrimp-stuffed model and a six-pack. Harry called two hours later, wanting to meet on the Causeway, a slender strip of dirt and concrete binding Mobile to the eastern shore of Mobile Bay.

  He arrived after fifteen minutes. I was leaning against my truck and watching the jewel-like running lights of small craft as they crossed the dark water. Low waves pressed into the shoreline reeds and, though many months had passed since the disaster, I could smell oil, but a lot of times I knew it was in my head.

  Harry walked over and leaned beside me, taking his turn studying the boats.

  “You eat anything?” I asked.

  “My stomach’s been knotted last couple days.”

  I reached in the window for the spare po’ boy, handed it to him alongside a can of beer.

  “You think I’m being too tough on Rein, right?” he said.

  “You’re trying to squeeze a quarter-century of experience into a few days’ training. How much time did you spend teaching her to shoot while rolling?”

  “I keep seeing her outside without cover, the perp running at her shooting as he –”

  “How much?”

  “Counting the hour after you left, maybe three. We quit when she got dizzy and puked. Thing is, I close my eyes see every psycho we ever faced, Carson. I want Rein ready to stop them all.”

  “We’ve got two days till Boulder. It won’t happen.”

  “I can try,” he said.

  I watched the dark shape of a freighter slip from the river into the bay, preparing to cross the vast waters. I turned to Harry. “Would you act like this if the person going into the system wasn’t your niece?”

  “I’m tired of all this talking,” he said, turning to watch the ship.

  Chapter 23

  Our training days passed in what felt like minutes, Harry trying to jam experiences and responses and procedures into Rein’s head, me trying to add insight into the psychology of misogynist killers. There was a fair body of literature on these sad boyos, not exactly a rare species.

  Tom Mason called Harry, Sal and me into his office the final morning. “The Chief and I talked to the Colorado State Police …” He riffled a sheaf of reports. “It’s a joint operation and we’re good to go.”

  “How’s Amica Cruz fit in?” I asked.

  “Detective Cruz is your primary contact. She said she was ‘down with the situation’.” Tom puzzled a moment and looked at Harry. “That’s a good thing, right, being down with something?”

  Tom was old school, amazed the word “text” had turned into a verb and “killer apps” were desired features on cell phones. Harry was only five years younger than Tom, but had become the Lieutenant’s contemporary linguistics advisor because, being black, Harry was supposed to know hip things.

  Harry nodded. “Down is currently up, Tom.”

  Sal said, “How do I fit into this?”

  “I want you digging into the cases from every angle. Putting officer Early into the system is a crapshoot, and if it doesn’t pan out we’ll have to crack this nut from the outside.”

  Sal nodded, miffed at being replaced as the undercover operative, but knowing it was the right play. “I’m gonna ride Krebbs. Check out every piece of his alibi.”

  “Do it carefully. I don’t need Nate Bromley howling at me for harassment. Where’s our undercover girl?”

  “With Doc Kavanaugh,” I said. “Getting some last-minute grounding in anti-fem types.”

  “Best get officer Early back here,” Tom said, looking at his watch. “You’re leaving in two hours.”

  From an approaching jet, Denver airport looks like Salvador Dalí’s idea of a circus tent. I suppose the white multi-pronged pinnacles were symbolic of snowy mountaintops, but all I saw was a weird tent. Then we were down and watching bags ride the carousel. Amica Cruz had wondered about holding a sign, but I’d told her to look for a big square black guy bookended by a lovely light-complected black woman and a six-foot, dark-haired Caucasian guy with a limp.

  We were grabbing the final bag when intersected by a petite Latina with shoulder-length auburn hair and brown eyes the size of saucers. She wore a white blouse over khaki pants and looked as fit as a gymnast.

  She said, “I take it you’re the –”

  “The Early Show,” I affirmed. “One star, two supporting players.”

  We did formal introductions. Cruz looked at me and nodded toward the door. “I’m parked right outside, you won’t have to walk very far.”

  “I’m good,” I said, slinging my bag over my shoulder as we started for the door. Cruz frowned at my suddenly normal stride.

  “You’re not …”

  “It was possible for another trio to look like us,” I said, “but I figured the odds of one of them limping were astronomical.”

  Cruz shot a look at my companions. Rein giggled, Harry sighed.

  “Maybe you’ll
get used to it, Detective Cruz,” he said. “I haven’t.”

  Boulder was a half-hour’s drive, crossing brown and rolling desert, the magnificent Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in the distance. A wide-eyed Rein pointed at a skeletal orb of brush rolling across the highway.

  “Is that a real tumbleweed?”

  “Welcome to the Wild West, officer Early,” Cruz said into the rear-view mirror. “Of course, some days it’s wilder than others.”

  Cruz pulled into Boulder, crossing Pearl Street, a draw for tourists and townies alike. “Anyone hungry?” she asked.

  We headed to one of Cruz’s favorite lunch joints, happy to move cramped legs. Boulderites spent a lot of time outdoors, every third vehicle boating a rack: bike, kayak, ski or multi-tasking. Bicyclists were everywhere, from students on Wal-Mart cheapies to full-spandex Lance Armstrong wannabees on featherweight road machines. I watched someone’s great-grandfather blow past on a recumbent bike, grinning like a madman as wind parted his white beard.

  “Everyone looks like they just stepped out of a vitamin catalog,” Rein noted with a smile of approval.

  Cruz said, “Boulder’s the fittest town in the country as determined by weight, hours of exercise a week, time spent outdoors and so forth.”

  “You look like you spend a goodly amount of time exercising, Detective Cruz,” I said. “Part of the culture?”

  A rueful smile. “I grew up in Denver, where my aunt owns a popular taquería. Thanks to her cooking I used to weigh twenty pounds more. When I got assigned to the Boulder post I wanted to break all my mirrors. Then I bought a bike. I’m baselining at two hundred miles a week.”

  “Two hundred lovely miles,” I amended.

  Harry shot me a look. “This is all real nice, but how ’bout we grab some chow and get working. I want to go over everything with Rein one more time.”