by Mark Nolan
“It wasn’t my tablet, forensics will prove that.”
“I know, but it will take time to prove it.”
“Wait, now that I think about it, the tablet might have been stolen from the Far Niente when somebody broke in and stole some vodka and cigars.”
“You’d better get going, Denton is down here too. I sent her in the other direction but she could be coming this way at any moment.”
Jake frowned at the mention of Denton’s name. “I already lost one dog to that sociopath, and I’ll fight her before I let her hurt this one.”
“Never talk that way about cops, but I understand how you feel, and that’s why you need to get going.”
“I thought you were hell bent on taking me into protective custody.”
“It’s not safe now that Denton is here, but once you get in the clear we can try again.”
“Thanks Grinds. I hope I’m not getting you into serious trouble here.”
“You’re always getting me into trouble. I’m used to it by now.”
The two friends gave each other a grim smile. It was the same smile they’d used in worse situations far from home. In war battles when they weren’t sure if they’d both make it out alive. They shook hands and Jake went through the door along with Cody, closing it behind them.
“Good luck brother, keep your head down,” Terrell whispered, and he turned and walked back the way he had come. He was half the distance back to the open manhole when he met Denton coming toward him from the other direction.
“Did you find any tracks?” Terrell said.
“No, did you?” Denton said.
“Nothing here either.”
“I smell wet dog fur.”
“You smell wet rats. I’ve seen several of them.”
“You swear you didn’t see Wolfe down here?”
“Cross my heart, all of that.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Feel free to search for yourself.”
“You’re damned right I will.”
“Have fun. I’ll see you topside. I’m out of here.” Terrell walked away toward the ladder and the shaft of sunlight.
Denton started jogging down the dark tunnel, with her flashlight in one hand and her pistol in the other hand.
Terrell hoped that Jake and Cody were moving fast. He worried that if Denton attempted to shoot Cody like she’d done to Jake’s other dog Gracie, Cody would defend himself the way he’d been trained as a war dog. Jake would also fight to protect his dog, and he might do something that everyone would regret.
Chapter 83
Terrell climbed up the ladder and back into the fresh air and daylight. He took a deep breath and said, “Remind me—never go into the sewer again.”
One of the uniformed cops was waiting for him with a small spray can of Ozium air freshener. He grinned as he sprayed it in Terrell’s direction and said, “What is that smell? Oh, it’s just you lieutenant, never mind.”
“Nothing to smell here, move along,” Terrell said.
Most of the police were gone, but a few remained, including Beth Cushman, and Denton’s partner Ray Kirby.
“Let me guess, Wolfe gave you the slip,” Kirby said.
“He gave all of us the slip,” Terrell said. “But Denton is still searching the sewer. Why don’t you go down there and help your partner? Or are you just all talk and no walk?”
Kirby studied his fingernails. “Everett sent you two on that search, not me.”
As Terrell walked away, he spit on the street and lit a cigarette to get the foul smell out of his nose and mouth. He inhaled smoke through his mouth and retro exhaled through his nose, sending twin streams into the air.
Beth said, “Don’t smoke too close to the person-hole. You might ignite all of the methane from the entire city’s collective ass gas.”
“Now I’m tempted to toss this cigarette in there just to see if it might torch Denton. She’d look funny with no hair or eyebrows, right? And what exactly is a person-hole?”
“It’s a non-sexist name for a manhole.”
“Feel free to call it a woman-hole if you want. That has a catchy ring to it.”
“I was just making a gender joke. Don’t get your boxers in a bunch.”
Terrell frowned and pretended to adjust his boxers. Beth laughed.
Down in the sewer tunnel, Denton was getting a full understanding of what it meant to be alone in the dark. A large rat ran across her path, and she almost yelled in surprise and fired her pistol. She gritted her teeth and told herself that it was better to be alone, that way if she shot both fugitives there would be no witnesses to contradict her police report.
She made her way along the tunnel until she found a metal door. In front of the door were twin sets of wet footprints made by a man and a dog. She tried the doorknob, but it was locked from the inside. The door was designed to open inward toward her, so slamming her shoulder against it wouldn’t help.
Denton tried to call Kirby and tell him to bring a sledgehammer and crowbar, but her phone was not getting a signal underground. For a moment she considered shooting her pistol at the door knob, but she reconsidered because a ricochet bullet in a concrete tunnel could be deadly.
She took out her knife and wedged it in between the door knob and the doorjamb, moving the blade up and down and wiggling it. After some effort, the latch moved and came free of the strike plate. The door then flew open in Denton’s face as if it had been pushed hard by someone on the other side. It hit her shoulder and knocked her backward, causing her to drop the knife and the flashlight.
Denton fell on her backside, and she saw a tall stack of large, plastic, five-gallon water cooler bottles rolling down through the door in her direction.
She tried to stand up and move out of the way, but the first rolling bottle crashed into her and knocked her back down. Another bounced up and hit the wall behind her, bursting open and spraying water on her. Several more bottles cascaded down the steps and into the sewer tunnel, knocking her around and causing her to yell and curse at Jake Wolfe.
Once the water bottle onslaught ended, Denton struggled to her feet. She was soaking wet, filthy from rolling around on the sewer floor, and she had sustained a few bruises. The largest bruise was the bruise to her ego. She put her knife in her pocket, grabbed her flashlight and drew her pistol. She ran up the steps with her pistol up in front of her, ready to shoot the fugitives.
She found herself in a dark basement storage room filled with office furniture. There were desks, chairs, cabinets, more of the five-gallon water bottles, and endless shelves stacked with white cardboard file boxes.
Denton made her way to the other side of the room, went out the door and saw wet shoe prints and paw prints leading down the hallway. Her phone display was now showing a signal, and she called Kirby.
“I’m inside an office building. I found the footprints of Wolfe and his dog and followed them in here.”
“Which building is it?”
“I don’t know yet, but get in the car and start the engine. I’ll find the address and call you in a minute.”
She ran down the hall and followed the two sets of footprints until she came to a service elevator. She pushed the call button, but the elevator didn’t make a sound. Wolfe must have blocked the door open or pushed the stop button. Next to the elevator was a door to a stairway. She went through the door and sprinted up the stairs. She ran past a door that said “Parking” and up to the next floor to a door marked “Lobby.” She went through that door and came out into the lobby with her pistol in hand. Several people were milling about, and a woman saw the gun and screamed. Denton took her police badge off of her belt, held it up and yelled at the people there.
“Police! Put your hands on top of your heads.”
Everyone put their hands up, and Denton looked around but didn’t see any sign of Wolfe or the dog.
“What address is this? Did you see a dog in here?”
The frightened people all just stood
there, not saying anything. They stared in surprise at the wild-eyed woman in her filthy clothes who was asking crazy questions.
Denton cursed and went back to the stairway. She ran down one flight and through the door to the parking area. In the garage, the service elevator had the door blocked open by a trash can. There were faint wet dog paw prints on the cement, leading toward the street. She ran in that direction but the prints dried up and she couldn’t tell if the two fugitives had kept going straight or had changed direction.
When Denton reached the street, she looked at the signs on the corner and called Kirby to report her location. She holstered her pistol and ran up and down both sides of the street asking people if they’d seen a man with a golden-haired dog. Nobody wanted to talk to the angry woman with the badge and the jacket that said POLICE. They just shook their heads and walked away as fast as they could.
Kirby drove up in the unmarked police car and parked illegally with his flashing lights on. He got out and met up with Denton.
“They came up an elevator in that parking garage,” Denton said, pointing her finger. “Then they headed in this direction. Their footprints ended so I don’t know which way they went from here.”
“Do you think they’d risk taking a taxi again?”
“I doubt it but call it in just in case.”
Kirby went to the car and used the radio. Dressed as a plainclothes detective, he wasn’t wearing a radio clipped to his shoulder like a uniformed cop.
Denton saw an older woman who was selling cheap t-shirts on a rickety folding table. The woman was watching her and then she quickly looked away in fear. Denton ran over there and shoved her badge in the woman’s face. “You saw something, didn’t you?”
The gray-haired lady shook her head. “No, I not see,” she said in halting English.
The woman appeared to be an immigrant from an Eastern European country, and frightened of police and government officials.
“If you don’t tell me what you saw, you could go to prison for the rest of your life.”
The woman started crying.
“No please, I have a daughter. No prison. I tell you.”
“I’ll send your daughter to prison too if you don’t tell me everything. Did you see a man with a dog? Answer me.”
Denton put her hand on her pistol and glared at the woman.
With a trembling arthritic hand, the woman pointed at a bicycle taxi cab on the corner. It was a three-wheeled bike with a rider on the front and a wide seat in the back that could carry two tourist passengers on a leisurely ride for several blocks.
“Man and dog, go on… bicycle,” the woman said.
“Which direction did the bicycle go?”
The woman pointed out the direction and nodded her head.
Denton started running toward the bicycle cab. She called out to Kirby, “Bring the car.”
Kirby was standing next to the vehicle, talking on the radio. He got in and did a quick illegal U-turn.
When the pedi-cab driver saw an angry woman running toward him, he got on his bike and started to pedal away as fast as the contraption would go. He had no idea who she was, but her intention was clear. Denton ran up and tackled him and knocked him off the bike. She wrestled him to a facedown position on the pavement and pressed a knee onto his lower back while grabbing his arms and twisting them behind him.
“Stop resisting!” Denton said.
“I’m not resisting, you’re crazy,” the man said. “Somebody help me, call the police.”
“I am the police, shut up and stop resisting or I’ll break your arm and put you in prison.”
“I’m not resisting. You never identified yourself, you just attacked me. I have witnesses.”
“I’m looking for a murder suspect, a man with a retriever dog who got into a pedi-cab a few minutes ago.”
“It wasn’t my cab; can’t you see that for yourself?”
“What cab was it? Where did it go, tell me.”
“A rider named Lennie. I saw them go that way,” the man said and motioned with his head to his right. “That’s all I know.”
It was the same direction the old woman had told Denton that the man and dog had gone. Kirby stopped the car next to Denton and said, “Let’s go, get in.”
“I’ll be watching you from now on you scum bag,” Denton said, and she ran to the car.
The man on the ground groaned in pain. “I think you dislocated my shoulder.”
Denton got in the passenger seat, and Kirby hit the gas before she had the door all the way closed. Kirby had wanted to have more turns driving the car, and now he was going to be driving it in a chase. This was what he’d been waiting for. He turned right at the corner and took off down the street at high speed with the lights flashing.
Chapter 84
Katherine sat up in her hospital bed and listened to Daniel having a phone conversation. He was calling every doctor he knew in California and Washington DC. To ask advice and call in favors for Katherine. A nurse came into the room and brought a tray of food. Katherine had no appetite and she set the food aside. All she could think about was her baby and the possible removal of her breasts.
Daniel looked over at Katherine and saw her staring out the window. He ended his call and thought that he’d never felt as helpless in his entire life as he did now, seeing the painful emotions on his wife’s face.
Katherine began to rock back and forth, and Daniel put his arms around her and held her close. He wished there was something more he could do. When problems came along, it was his instinct to try to fix them and make things right. He knew Katherine would say it was a guy thing, but he wanted to get to work on fixing the problem rather than discussing how they both felt about it. He wasn’t a big talker. He leaned toward less talk and more action.
The information he’d gathered from his phone calls and online searches told him that approximately one out of every three thousand pregnant women got breast cancer. Hopefully, the biopsy test might find out that the lump was only a blocked milk duct, and there was no cancer to worry about. Then again, it might be far worse than they both feared. The hardest part was not knowing.
Katherine sighed. She wanted to get out of bed and out of the hospital. She was fed up with the doctors and nurses and Secret Service agents. Most of all, she was fed up with her husband trying to fix the situation like he was Superman. “Would you stop with all of the phone calls, you’re driving me crazy.”
“I need more information. Why go into this blindly?” Daniel said.
“You always think you can take action and fix things, but this is out of your hands. The doctors are in charge, not you.”
“All I’m trying to do is to learn more about what might happen to my wife and baby.”
“We’re going to go through a very painful ordeal, that’s what.”
“Yes and I want to be by your side the whole time, and be informed and supportive.”
“You don’t know anything. You’re not the one carrying our baby inside you, and possibly facing chemotherapy treatments too.”
“I understand it isn’t easy being pregnant. Your body is flooded with hormones, and you experience all kinds of symptoms like mood swings and fatigue. When you add the worry of breast cancer it’s an incredibly difficult situation.”
“No, you don’t understand what I’m feeling right now. You can’t even begin to know. Not even another woman can really know how it feels unless she has been pregnant and has had breast cancer at the same time. And no man can ever know.”
“That’s true, and I didn’t say I know how you feel. I don’t know. All I said was I understand that it isn’t easy. I’m just trying to be an understanding partner here.”
“I heard two nurses talking about a mastectomy. I feel like they’re going to make me choose between my baby and my breasts.”
“Doctor Brook said she recently treated a woman who got chemo while carrying a baby to term. She survived, and the baby did too.”
“Y
ou’re just a bystander in this right now. Don’t make things more difficult.”
“Fine, if I’m nothing but a useless bystander and sperm donor then I’ll just go outside while you take these difficult steps without me bothering you,” Daniel said, and he walked out the door.
As Daniel was leaving, Katherine burst into tears, held a pillow up to her face and cried into it. “I’m sorry Daniel. I didn’t mean that. Why did that awful man shoot a paintball at me?”
Daniel heard what Katherine said just before he closed the door. He felt like his heart was being hit by a brick, because he knew the answer to his wife’s question. Someone named Agent McKay at the US Secret Service had called him and briefed him about the shooter. He’d have to tell Katherine sooner or later, but right now she was too upset and confused. It was not a good time to talk about it.
Doctor Brook had come into the room just in time to hear the last part of the conversation and see Daniel walk out the door. Katherine looked at Doctor Brook and shook her head. “Well my husband and I handled that like two mature adults, didn’t we?”
“This is a highly emotional situation, and it is perfectly normal to get into an argument,” Dr. Brook said. “Daniel loves you, and he can’t stand to see you suffer and not be able to do anything to help you.”
Katherine hung her head and nodded at these words of wisdom from her friend.
“Can you ask Daniel to come back in here please?”
Dr. Brook looked out into the hallway and said, “I’m sorry Kat, but he’s gone.”
“Please have someone find him and ask him to come back. I need him here by my side.”
Dr. Brook nodded and took out her phone. She sent a text and received a reply, then left the room and walked down the hallway and around a corner. She saw a Secret Service agent talking to Daniel and explaining that Katherine was asking for him to return to her room. Daniel disagreed and started to walk away, but Doctor Brook showed up and put her hand on Daniel’s shoulder.
