Deadfall

by Patricia H. Rushford

  Mac shook his head. Russ and Philly had been partners since Russ made detective two years ago.

  “All right, all right,” the range master interrupted the banter.

  “Can I get you ladies together for a few minutes so we can review?

  I have some real troops arriving at noon, and I’d like to get the range ready for them, if you don’t mind.”

  “Get the range ready?” Philly looked around. “It’s freezing out here. If you think I’m picking up my brass in this ice and snow, you got another think comin’, troop. Who picked this range date, Frosty the Snowman? I’m freezing my tail off.”

  “That’s senior trooper to you, Detective Johnson.” The instructor slapped his clipboard. “And you know darn good and well the captain sets up training for the quarterly shoot, one per season. The last time I checked, winter is still a season.” The instructor, an ex-Marine, glared back at Philly, almost daring him to complain again. “And yes, you will pick up your brass, Detective.”

  “My brass is frozen out here,” Philly mumbled, no doubt needing to get in the last word.

  The instructor glared at him again.

  “What?” Philly feigned innocence.

  “Okay, let’s review,” the firearms instructor continued, apparently deciding to ignore Philly’s whining. “First, let’s review our deadly physical force policy. Deadly physical force may only be used when you, or another, are in danger of serious physical injury or death. Any questions?” he asked before continuing. “Any of you guys want to give me the department force continuum?”

  “Shoot first; ask questions later.” Russ folded his arms, apparently bored with the review.

  “No,” the instructor growled. “Any other guesses?”

  “Better to be tried by a jury of twelve than carried in your coffin by six?” Philly said, not wanting to be outdone.

  “Good one, partner.” Russ elbowed Philly, offering his approval of the one-liner.

  “Come on, you guys,” Mac interrupted. He’d had his fill of their goofing off like a couple of high-school dropouts. Wanting to bring the training session to an end and give the instructor a break, he recited, “Officer presence is first, verbal commands is second, and empty-hand custody technique is third.”

  “Thank you.” The instructor looked relieved. “Go on, please, Detective McAllister.”

  “Chemical spray or cap stun is fourth, strikes and kicks is fifth . . .”

  “Teacher’s pet,” Philly grumbled as he blew into his cold hands. “And baton blows is next, followed by deadly physical force at seven on the force scale. Blah, blah, blah, the same thing every time. And the precursor for use of force is means, opportunity, and intent.”

  “Sorry to bore you, Detective Johnson, but this is required material.”

  Philly pulled a piece of Nicorette gum from his pocket and shoved it in his mouth, providing company to the two pieces he was already chewing. The gum and a nicotine patch were his latest attempts to stop smoking.

  “Any more words of wisdom before we shut this thing down?”

  Philly glanced at his watch.

  The instructor removed his safety glasses. “If I could leave you with just one thought. Did you all hear the verbiage Detective McAllister used?’ Something to the effect of, ‘Don’t make me shoot you; let me see your hands’? That was good material for possible witnesses. I’d rather be involved in a shooting and have the public hear that than the alternative statements I heard today.”

  He tossed a warning glance at Russ and Philly.

  “What? I got my point across, didn’t I?” Philly squatted to pick up a piece of spent brass.

  “I don’t think the captain would want a potential witness hearing a trooper say, ‘Eat lead, sucker,’ or ‘Say hello to my little friend.’ Do you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Philly pouted as he began to walk away. “Come on Russ, I can’t stay here a second longer and face this abuse.”

  “What about your spent rounds and brass?” the instructor barked. “You need to help clean up.”

  Philly raised his arm and waved the comments off.

  “I’ll get his casings,” Mac said, already picking them up. Philly had almost earned the right to be sarcastic, having been involved in two shootings in his career. The first had occurred when he was still a road troop, working 82nd Avenue outside Portland on the border of Clackamas and Multnomah Counties. This route was also State Highway 213, so the troopers worked the area often, giving it the nickname Felony Flats due to the high crime rate and the number of criminal interdictions in the area.

  Philly had been on patrol in the area when he stopped a Plymouth Duster for not having a front license plate. Since this was the late 1970s, police technology and budgets did not yet allow for portable radios, or Philly would have known dispatch was calling him to let him know the car he’d stopped was stolen out of Umatilla in a strong armed robbery. Philly walked up to the driver, only to be met by the business end of a snub-nosed revolver.

  Philly instinctively threw his ticket book at the driver. Shielding his face with his left hand, he drew his sidearm. The driver fired a round, blasting a hole through Philly’s left hand and tearing away his earlobe. The driver fared much worse. The single .357 round from the police revolver did its job, sinking into the guy’s temple. Philly lost some blood, but there was one less bad guy on the street.

  The second officer-involved shooting happened about two years ago. Kevin, Philly, Russ, and Sergeant Frank Evans were hitting the front door of a suspected drug dealer’s house in Molalla. While the sergeant and other detectives waited by the entrance, Kevin had made a cell phone call to the suspect, advising him that they had a search warrant. Kevin commanded him to come to the front door and give up. The suspect was believed to be handling large amounts of cocaine, in addition to having inappropriate relations with a twelve-year-old runaway who was staying at the house. The suspect came to the door all right, armed with an AK-47. The door splintered from the fire of the automatic rifle. Philly kicked in the door after the initial burst, just as the suspect was loading a fresh magazine. As the door exploded from its frame, Philly fired at point-blank range. Frank and Russ fired over Philly’s shoulders. As the dust settled, the trio backed out and called for the OSP SWAT team.

  Several calls were placed to the house, although there was no answer this time. The SWAT negotiators finally gave up, and the team decided on a dynamic entry on the house, firing flash bangs into the lower and upper stories of the home. The tactical team entered the home, only to find a dead suspect and a dead twelve-year-old girl. Ballistic tests showed the girl was killed by the suspect’s weapon, and the detectives were exonerated from her death.

  The medical examiner performed an autopsy on the suspect and concluded he was shot several times, although the fatal shot was a single round that severed the aorta. The suspect, who had a high level of cocaine on board, should have died immediately, but he lived long enough to continue firing through walls and kill the young girl in the next room. When the medical examiner asked the detectives if they wanted to know who fired the fatal round, they all agreed they didn’t want to know.

  Philly was front and center for the shooting and knew he connected on several rounds, but he would rather have the doubt than the assurance he was forced to take a second human life. Two lives were more than he signed on for when he joined this outfit. Mac hoped he’d never be placed in that situation.

  “Philly pulls this stunt every time.” Kevin helped Mac pick up the rest of the spent cartridges. “Sarge will probably get on his rear.”

  “If he ever gets out of his car.” Mac glanced to the top of the gravel slope at Sergeant Evans, who was seated in his car gesturing wildly as he talked on his hands-free cell phone. “He’s spent half the shoot sitting up there in his hammer wagon on the phone.”

  “Probably still working with Eric on that murder-for-hire case in Salem,” Kevin said.

  “The one where
the woman tried to hire someone to kill her husband by calling that company down in California?” The training instructor pulled down the paper targets to place in the burn barrel.

  “That’s the one.” Kevin stood up and rubbed his back. “This woman actually looks up a company called Hired Guns on the Internet and calls them at their Hollywood business, telling the manager she wants to hire someone to kill her husband. This company is a stuntman outfit that supplies guys to fall off roofs and jump out of cars for filmmakers. They think this gal is kidding, but she calls back several times and ends up sending pictures of her husband to the business and a couple of grand in front money.”

  “You gotta be kidding me,” the instructor shook his head.

  “Truth is stranger than fiction in this case,” Kevin said. “Anyway, this company calls the local cops and they hook us up on the case. Eric and Frank write a warrant for a body wire and call this woman, telling her they are in town to kill her husband and want to meet to go over the details. She agreed, and they’re planning to meet her at a motel in Oregon City to go over the plan to kill her hubby. Eric will be wearing a body wire so they can get the whole thing on tape.”

  The trooper shook his head. “That’s the darndest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Sure is,” Kevin agreed. “Let’s just hope their meeting with the wife goes as planned.”

  Mac and Kevin threw their spent shotgun hulls in the burn barrel with the paper targets, and they tossed their spent handgun brass into a large cardboard box for reloading.

  “Where’s Eric?” Mac asked. Ordinarily his cousin would have been in the training session with them.

  “Probably returning the ex parte warrant for the body wire at the courthouse and running down Frank’s last-minute orders.” Kevin sniffed and rubbed his nose.

  Mac stuck his numb fingers into his jacket pockets to warm them. Eric would have to make up the shoot later. “Looks to me like the boss is in overdrive up there—he’s gesturing all over the place.”

  Kevin groaned. “Try not to make eye contact with him when you walk up to our car, or we’ll be working on some goofy lead.”

  Mac and Kevin had earned a break, just ending a lengthy trial at Multnomah County Circuit Court on the Megan Tyson murder case. It had been Mac’s first murder case as an OSP detective, and finding Megan’s killer had given Mac a real sense of accomplishment.

  “Throw your eyes and ears up there on the table,” the instructor yelled after them. “I’ll wipe them down for the next crew.”

  “Thanks,” Mac replied. The two detectives removed their safety glasses and ear protection and set them on the large wooden table inside the range shack. The ten-by-ten cabin had two doorways, without doors, separating the gravel range lanes and the parking lot area inside the large rock quarry. The state police troopers and detectives from the Portland-Metro area qualified four times a year with their firearms at the small range near Clatska-nine, a small mill town along the Columbia River between Portland and the Oregon coast.

  Before going back to work, Mac emptied his Glock and his pockets of the range practice rounds. He didn’t want any of the full-metal-jacket hardball rounds getting mixed up with his duty ammo. Mac and Kevin walked up to their unmarked Crown Victoria, and Kevin popped the trunk. Kevin loaded their shotgun with slugs and secured the weapon in the bracket that was mounted on the underside of the trunk lid. Mac slipped out of the waist-length raincoat he wore when he was a patrol officer and tossed it in, the raindrops still visible in tiny beads on the Gore-tex material. Kevin was wearing a long yellow slicker that came down to his knees, making him look like an oversized kid on his way to school.

  “Did you actually wear that outfit when you were on patrol?” Mac grinned.

  “What, the old banana coats? Didn’t they issue these things to your academy class?”

  Mac laughed. “Not ours. I don’t think those things have been issued since the early eighties. I didn’t think anyone actually wore those ugly things anymore. What good is a long slicker that doesn’t let you get to your gear on your duty belt?”

  Kevin slipped out of his coat. His damp dress shirt showed evidence that his twenty-year-old raincoat wasn’t exactly the best for repelling water. “You have to remember that back in those days we didn’t have mace, portable radios, and asp batons. All we needed was that little slit in the hips that our revolvers poked through on one side and our cuff case on the other.”

  “I don’t think you’d catch any of the troops wearing them nowadays.” Mac pulled his tie out of his dress shirt and adjusted the knot. “It’d be like working in a dress.”

  “Ah, to the untrained eye.” Kevin smiled. “This coat’s been a lifesaver on more than one occasion.”

  “How so?”

  “When you were on patrol, were you ever on an accident or perimeter assignment and had to go to the bathroom, with nowhere to go in private?”

  “Yeah, the center lane of a freeway doesn’t afford much privacy.

  I don’t see your point.”

  “That’s the beauty of the long raincoat, my friend. It’s built-in privacy when you have to go to the bathroom. Just look like you’re busy and take care of business.”

  “I’ve heard far too much.” Mac shook his head. “And get that nasty coat off mine.” Mac grimaced, pushing Kevin’s coat over to the side of the trunk with a lug wrench from the trunk.

  “I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” Kevin laughed. “I’ve never done it, but I know a few guys who have.”

  “No way. Who would . . .” Mac glanced over at Philly, who had unzipped his slacks out in the middle of the parking lot to tuck in his shirt. “Never mind. I think I know.”

  Philly reached in the backseat of his car and grabbed his pistol, racking the slide to charge the gun with a fresh hollow-point round. After securing the gun in his shoulder holster, he turned to Mac and Kevin. While adjusting one of the widest ties Mac had seen in years, Philly said, “You guys want to come with me and Russ to that Mexican joint down on Highway 30?”

  “We all ate a huge breakfast on the way out here.” Kevin loaded his magazines with duty rounds, as did Mac. “You can’t be hungry again, Phil. How about something a little lighter?”

  “My blood sugar’s low, man. I’ve got to feed this high-maintenance machine.” Philly patted his ample stomach.

  “You hungry, Mac?” Kevin asked over the top of the car.

  “I could eat something, but I don’t know about Mexican,” Mac replied. “How about that deli in Scappoose? They have pretty good sandwiches.”

  “Hey, Mac!” Sergeant Frank Evans yelled through the open window of his beat-up Chevrolet Caprice, which he affectionately referred to as the “hammer wagon.” Come here.”

  “Uh-oh.” Kevin adjusted the brim of his cap. “We should have run while we had the chance.”

  Mac ambled the few feet to Frank’s car, placing his hands on the hood. Frank was still on the phone, and he gestured Mac to get in.

  Mac went around to the passenger side and folded his lean frame inside.

  “Look, I’ll call you back.” Frank frowned, his tone rough and louder than it needed to be. “I said, I’ll call you right back. You just get that thing sealed or we’ll have a media frenzy on our hands. I’ll call you back in two minutes. Let me know what the judge says.” Frank pressed a button on his cell phone, ending the conversation.

  “CAN I HELP WITH ANYTHING?” Mac asked.

  “No, just a glitch in the Salem case. This is my problem. You have another situation to take care of.”

  “What’s that?” Mac turned slightly in his seat, catching his pants on the ripped upholstery.

  “I got a page from dispatch. They got a call regarding a floater down at Kelly Point. I need you and Kevin to go out and take a look. Call dispatch and get some details, while I take care of this murder-for-hire case.”

  “You two coming or what?” Philly yelled from his car as he was pulling out of the parking area with Russ.

/>   Mac rolled down the window. “Sarge just got a call on a floater down at Kelly Point. Kevin and I got the ticket.”

  “Let us know if you need any help,” Philly hollered. “We’ll probably swing out that way after lunch and check in.”

  Frank opened the car door and stepped halfway out. “You and Russ are going to finish those judicial backgrounds for the governor’s chief of staff today, Philly. You aren’t going to do a single thing until those are on my desk.”

  “Come on, Sarge. Judge backgrounds? What a lame assignment,” Philly complained. “You can’t waste my level of talent on doing some stupid background on a judge wannabe.”

  “Ha,” Frank retorted. “You know good and well what level these backgrounds come from. Every detective in the back room got one, and you two are the last to get yours in. I’ll expect them on my desk by the end of the day.”

  Frank slammed his door shut and picked up his cell to make another call. He gave Mac a thumbs-up as he began his conversation.

  Mac headed back to the car, where Kevin was waiting in the passenger seat. “Sarge said dispatch sent him an alpha page on a body down at Kelly Point. Sounds like it may be a drowning victim or at least a body that’s been in the water. He wants us to get the details then go out and take a look.”

  “Didn’t I tell you not to make eye contact?” Kevin grumped.

  “Yeah.” Mac grinned at his partner. “Like that’s going to stop him.”

  “Well, make the call and let’s see what we’ve got.”

  Mac reached for his cell. “Hopefully this one’s not too involved. I’ve got plans for tonight.”

  “Seeing your fiancée?” Kevin raised an eyebrow.

  “Um . . . not exactly.” Mac was hoping to connect with Dana for some mentoring, but he didn’t want to elaborate. He’d been giving Dana pointers on making detective. Linda was another matter. He’d managed to sidestep any more premarital counseling sessions, but sooner or later he’d have to decide: stay with Linda or break up.

  11

  MAC SCROLLED HIS SPEED DIAL on his department phone until it read RDC, or Regional Dispatch Center, located in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The dispatcher answered, “State police. Is this an emergency?”