City Problems

by Steve Goble

  “Me, too. Thanks.”

  I dashed out to my truck and opened the locker in the back. I removed the Kevlar body armor and strapped it around my torso, thighs, and upper arms. Then I tossed the helmet and radio into the cab and climbed in after it. I’d grab the Remington Model 700 rifle from the SWAT command center vehicle at the scene. For now, it was time to pop the flashing light on top of my truck, fire up the siren, and get north to Nora as quickly as possible.

  I took back roads to the two-lane highway, then gunned it. Even as I focused on not side-swiping any of the cars and trucks that pulled off to the shoulder so I could pass, I kept seeing a pretty blonde girl in my head. Sometimes it was Megan Beemer, but sometimes it was Briana Marston. Bree had died at the professor’s hands while we New York cops were busy doing other things, working other cases. I could easily imagine Megan Beemer being killed right now, while I was driving north to perch on a rooftop and maybe shoot a guy who was threatening his wife.

  Intellectually, of course, I knew my job at the moment was to help save lives in Nora and that cops weren’t supposed to pick which lives to prioritize. But my own little version of the classic Trolley Problem was rolling through my head, because I was human and humans do that shit. Should I let the runaway trolley car continue down the track and kill five people lashed to the rails? Or should I pull the lever and divert the trolley to a different track, where just one person would die?

  Should I go to Nora and do my job there, or should I rush to the trailer park in search of Megan Beemer?

  My head said one thing, duty said another, and all the while I was aware that my mind was not really in the game.

  The radio, set to the SWAT band, gave me an update while I was still two minutes out. “Negotiator in contact with suspect,” said Captain Jim Bowman, the Ambletown PD officer who commanded our merry band of highly trained experts. “If you are coming in hot, I want sirens off, flashers off.”

  I turned off the noise and lights. I could see Nora in the distance, a small collection of homes surrounding a crossroads, with a gas station and a diner that used to serve really good hamburgers before the owner died and the place shut down. I noticed the church steeple, too, and figured it had a commanding view of the whole village. That would be my perch.

  I stopped briefly at the intersection to make sure no bicycles, tractors, trucks, or dogs were crossing my path, then bolted on through and banged a left on Oak Street. At 726, I braked to a halt behind an ambulance, on standby. The command vehicle was across from the two-story dirty blue home with the big picture window that was going to be the center of my universe for however long it took us to get this situation resolved.

  I donned my helmet and rushed to the command van. An officer handed me a Remington, and I did my safety checkdown. Muscle memory and training seemed to be kicking in, I told myself—but Megan Beemer peered at me from the mind shadows.

  Captain Bowman trotted up. He ran his finger and thumb against his hawk beak of a nose, as if he had a headache. “He’s talking to Millie, Ed, but he hasn’t surrendered yet. S.O. has no prior calls here, so we have no idea what to expect. Young couple—he’s laid off and she’s a part-time waitress. No kids, thank God. I want you up yonder,” and he pointed to the church steeple across the intersection. “He seems to be sticking to the lower floor, near as we can tell. You train on that window,” and he pointed to the picture window, “and hope for the best. Pastor is expecting you.”

  “Aye.” I jogged toward the Nora Congregationalist Church.

  A man in a cardigan and faded jeans met me at the door. “This way, Officer, this way.”

  He did not tell me his name, and I did not ask. He pointed me toward a side door. “Ladder in there, it is old, but do not worry, it is solid and it will hold. I will be praying you don’t have to shoot, Officer.”

  “Pray for a girl named Megan, too.”

  He looked confused, but nodded. “Of course, Officer.”

  “She’s missing. I am supposed to be looking for her.” I started up.

  “I will pray for her and for you and for everyone involved here today,” the reverend said.

  I hoped that would help.

  I strapped the rifle across my back and climbed up through the dust and streams of sunlight pouring from above. On the way up, I thanked God that I was a good shot and thus working from a distance. I was not one of the guys who might be ordered to approach the home to spy through a window, or storm the house, or even crouch behind a squad car close by and get hit because sometimes bullets find a way to rip all the way through a squad car or ricochet from a utility pole or some other damned thing.

  It was an odd prayer of thanks, I guess, and certainly more selfish than the pastor’s. I was feeling blessed because I can shoot people in the head from a distance, and I felt a bit guilty at having those thoughts. But if there is a God, he is smarter than me and I trusted him to sort it all out. I kept climbing.

  At the top, I opened a hatch and clambered out. I was under a roof mounted on four sturdy corner posts, with a large gray bell hanging in the center. I freed my rifle, took my position, and peered through the scope.

  Things were not good.

  My radio crackled. “Report, Ed.”

  “Angle is good, for picture window, and OK for upper floors. Light is bad, Captain. I can make them out through the picture window, two figures, moving around, but indistinct. Some window glare. Thin curtain, too. I think that glass is mighty damned thick, enough to deflect a shot.”

  “Roger.”

  He would not order me to shoot under such conditions. Still, my vantage was a good one, and I could serve as an observer. I could see the front, side, and most of the back yard. And if the guy bolted and needed to be shot, I could do it from here unless he ran west, behind the house. Other guys were positioned there. We had the place surrounded, and there was nowhere for this guy to go. Except hell.

  But the odds of me taking the guy out through the window if it came to that? Zero. I prayed Millie Martin, the hostage negotiator for our county and two adjacent counties, would be able to talk this bastard down from whatever the hell had ramped him up.

  I peered through the scope. The window glare would clear up in a few minutes as the world turned. Part of Millie’s job was to play the fish, give us time to assess and overcome such obstacles, and I had no doubt the captain had passed my report along to her.

  Wind was minimal. That was good, if I had to shoot.

  Beyond the glass and curtains, the two shadowy shapes were close together. I could not be sure, really, which was the crazed man and which was the female hostage. I knew, though, that neither one of them was Megan Beemer.

  “Fuck,” I said, cursing myself. It was not my duty right now, right here, to worry about Megan Beemer. It was my duty to concentrate, observe, and be ready to shoot this son of a bitch dead if needed. A million things could go wrong here. He could shoot the woman. He could start shooting through the window at the cops surrounding his house. He could come outside, gun to his hostage’s head, and try to coerce his way through the net we had him trapped in. He could just come out, guns blazing, and attempt “suicide by cop.” Or he could come up with some new wrinkle we’d never seen, because why should everything go by the book? Have you ever seen the book? It’s a fucking thick book, and the one thing you know for sure as a cop is that not everything is in it.

  I was supposed to be ready for anything.

  I tried focused breathing, something a counselor had taught me after I’d been bullied into seeking real help in warding off the mental paralysis that followed the Marston case. In through the nose, out through the mouth, don’t force it, just be.

  That started to feel like a distraction itself, so I spat a gob into the air and told myself to make sure the crazy guy inside didn’t rush out the front door and kill one of my fellow officers.

  This went on for two goddamned hours.

  “Still talking with Millie,” the captain said. “He seems to b
e calming down a bit.”

  “Go, Millie, go,” I whispered. Millie Martin had a psychology degree and could shoot like a pro, so it was good to have her on hand no matter which way this went down.

  If I had wanted, I could have looked around and predicted what I would see. Cops, blocks away, keeping the curious at bay. People craning their necks, maybe looking through binoculars, definitely lofting their cell phones and shooting video. Farkas, from the Gazette, would be out there somewhere, too, hoisting his own cell phone and definitely shooting video. If I had to shoot the guy inside this house, it might very well end up on goddamned Facebook Live.

  But I did not look around. I peered through my scope, watching the shadows inside the house, trying not to peer into the shadows of my mind.

  Time kept unfolding. Once the earth had turned a bit, the window glare vanished. I could now see two figures, close together, and now I could tell that one was a man, holding a gun to the head of the other, a woman. The man, the taller of the two, was talking. Maybe he was talking to a phone lying around. He did not have a phone in his hand. He had a gun.

  “Captain, better sighting now. I have a shot. Still worried about the thick glass, but if they separate, I have a shot. If we can break the glass first …”

  “Roger, Ed. Stand by.”

  A part of me just wanted to shoot this asshole and get back to searching for Megan Beemer, but I did not say that aloud. I am a professional.

  The shapes inside the home separated.

  “Stand by,” the captain said.

  The woman rushed to the front door.

  “Hold your fire.”

  She came out, a shaking, shambling, disjointed brunette mess.

  The man inside turned about, slowly, like a merry-go-round winding down.

  “Hold your fire.”

  Two officers emerged from behind a squad car and gathered the woman up. They led her to cover, quickly. They practically had to carry her.

  Inside, the man spun faster and faster until he whirled like a dervish, his long dark hair streaming. He was shouting, kicking furniture, waving his arms.

  Then he ended the situation. He bit down on the barrel of his gun, and his head burst open.

  The woman screamed when she heard the gun’s thunder, and tried to tear herself away from the officers restraining her. She tried to run back in there.

  “Jesus,” I said to myself.

  They finally got her behind the command vehicle.

  “Hold your positions,” Captain Bowman said.

  Two officers crept, slowly slowly slowly, toward positions on either side of the picture window.

  “Woman confirms, no one else inside,” Bowman said over the radio.

  “I had a good view,” I told the captain. “No way he survived.”

  “Roger.”

  One of the officers by the window risked a peek inside, then he signaled with a thumbs-up.

  It was over.

  I closed my eyes, and tried to control my breathing. I was not very proud of some of the feelings battling in my head. I was relieved that I did not have to kill anyone today, but I was angry at this guy. I had lost four goddamned hours in my search for a missing girl, just so this asshole could kill himself.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Wednesday, 7:30 p.m.

  I KNOCKED ON the trailer door three times before the gray-haired gent answered. He leaned on a cane, and smiled at me. “Can I help you?”

  l flashed my ID. “Detective Ed Runyon, Mifflin County Sheriff’s Office. I am looking for a missing girl, and we have reports that she might have been in this area.” I put the ID away. “Can you look at a photo for me?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Come on in. I am Dave Gentry. The kitten is Thomas Skittles. Coffee?”

  I was checking the trailer park south of Jodyville because few people had been around during the day when road patrol tried. Ally Phelps had told us she had seen Megan Beemer not far from here, and Buzz and his friends played what they called music behind the last trailer in the row. I had missed a lot of legwork time because of that SWAT call, and this seemed like the most promising way to make it up.

  “No thanks,” I said in reply to his offer of coffee.

  “Your SWAT friends had some trouble up in Nora today,” he said.

  “They sure did.” I did not mention I was there, because that would just take time. I took Megan Beemer’s photo from the folder I carried. “Have you seen this girl around here?”

  He sat in a rocker, and the gray kitten leapt into his lap and stared at me as though I were the least consequential thing in the universe. I did not really care what the cat thought. I had lost a perfectly good girlfriend in high school just because I didn’t like cats, and I still held a grudge.

  Mr. Gentry took the photo from me and stared at it, while I looked around at the photos and souvenirs that dotted his crowded trailer. This guy was a Vietnam War vet. A much younger version of him smiled at me from a bridge over a jungle river.

  “I see you are a veteran,” I said. “Thanks for your service.”

  “Thanks,” he said, pointing at another photo. “That’s my plane there, F-4 Phantom II. Did a lot of air support missions, landed more than once with bullets in my fuselage. I do not miss those days.”

  His gaze returned to the photo I had given him. “I have not seen her, no,” he said, after a long look. “Pretty girl. Read about her in the paper. So sad.”

  “Heard any of your neighbors talk about seeing her?”

  He chuckled. “Oh, they leave me alone. Me and Thomas Skittles here, we’re mighty dull.” He stroked the cat.

  “Did you happen to step outside yesterday morning, about the time kids were headed to school? We have a witness who puts the girl in this area about then.”

  “No,” he said. “I sleep in, most days.”

  I nodded. “You ever go outside to yell at the band down the row here, Buzz and his friends? Maybe they have girls around sometimes?”

  “No, I don’t bother them. They are just having fun, and I don’t hear all that good anyway. I take the hearing aid out of my ear and I can’t even tell they are playing.”

  “It ain’t exactly music, so you are not missing much.”

  “I suppose not. But hell, my mom and dad hated the crap I listened to, you know? That’s how it should be, I guess.”

  “Seen any strange vehicles lately, heard anyone come or go at odd hours?”

  “No, not really.”

  “OK, well, thank you for your time, and again, for your service.” I pointed at one of the photos, him hoisting a can of beer with other guys wearing flight jackets.

  “Vietnam was a shithole.” He shook his head. “Total shithole. Things are better now.” He smiled.

  “If you recall anything that might help me find the girl, call me here.” I held up one of my cards and placed it next to his phone.

  “I sure will, Detective. Thank you for your service, too. And if anything bad happened to her, that girl you’re looking for, why, when you catch the fucker, you call me. I still remember a trick or two. I’ll make the fucker squeal like a pygmy goat.”

  I looked at him. He was grinning. But he looked serious, too. Deadly serious. The guy who had dropped bombs in Vietnam while taking enemy fire was back, and I wondered if the hands that gently stroked Thomas Skittles were strong enough to strangle.

  “I know how you feel, sir. I know how you feel. Have a good evening.”

  There was no answer at the second trailer, or the third. I was working my way toward Buzz’s place. Apparently, the band was taking the evening off.

  At the fourth trailer, a woman opened the door seconds after I knocked. She had a pistol in her hand, aimed at my face. But she moved it, aiming for the sky, before I could even touch my own gun.

  I raised my hands and remembered to breathe.

  “You’re not Dave,” she said.

  “The old guy over there?” I nodded toward her neighbor’s trailer.

  �
��Fuck no. Sorry.” She tossed the gun away, somewhere behind her, then spun around and vanished within the trailer.

  I drew my gun, crouched, and peered inside the trailer. She seemed to be alone. She had her back to me, leaning on a countertop next to an open bottle of vodka and a pitcher of what probably was orange juice. An empty glass sat precariously close to the counter’s edge. Her shoulders quaked, and I guessed she was sobbing.

  I stepped inside, and the scents of tobacco and vodka hit me immediately. Everything was dusty, and it smelled as though she had a dog, but I didn’t see a dog. I saw her Cobra Arms Freedom .380, though, on a couch that showed springs poking through the fabric. I moved to place myself between her and the gun.

  “I thought you were Dave,” she said quietly.

  “No,” I said. “I am Detective Ed Runyon, Mifflin County Sheriff’s Office.”

  “Well, shit. Knew this was coming.” She spun around and faced me, her reddened eyes wide and staring.

  Now that I wasn’t staring at a fucking gun, I noticed that she was blonde, skinny, wearing a huge T-shirt and nothing else. She probably was between forty and fifty years old. I saw no needle tracks on her arms, and no drug paraphernalia anywhere within sight. But she was trembling, and her lower jaw shook like a flag in a brisk wind. The scent of warm screwdrivers rode on every exhalation.

  “You came to bust me, right? Dave say I was hooking?” The words were heavily slurred, with incomprehensible noises inserted between the words I could understand.

  “No,” I answered. “I don’t know Dave. I came to ask you questions about a missing girl who was seen near here.”

  “Jesus.” She shook harder, closed her eyes tight, and slumped against the counter, almost disrupting the pitcher. I holstered my weapon. “Can you tell me your name, please?”

  “Don’t wanna.”

  “You aimed a gun at me, so I am going to get your name one way or another.”

  “Tess Baldwin,” she said. “OK? Guilty. Blowing guys for money, OK?” She poured vodka into the glass, then tipped orange juice into it. “Because why in fuck should I grab some extra money, right? Use the one goddamned skill I have to make a living, right?”