by Lee Lamothe
Ray Tate said, “Dog food,” and put the Taurus in gear.
The Taurus and the Chrysler sped up the block and screeched to a stop side-by-side behind the four-by-four. The two men from the taxi took up positions with a view to the east and west side of the house, with their shotguns to their shoulders.
Comartin went to get out of the Chrysler. Ray Tate called, “Wait, just wait. Let them do a census.”
They all pulled on evidence gloves and waited.
A woman in black, her full utility belt swinging, ran from the house with a screaming child in her arms. She lit off a whistle in her teeth and a grey Dodge van marked Children’s Protective Services came up the block.
Djuna Brown bailed and ran to the child. “You okay, honey? You’ll be okay.”
The child, a beautiful blond boy with gaps in his teeth, screamed spittle into her face. “Black bitch.”
The female resident of the bungalow had gone to the Sector, the male resident was absent, and the suppression team had the perimeter of the house secure. Children’s services had left; the animal control had removed the pit bulls’ bodies, leaving a pair of long wide smears in the entryway to the house. A police department wrecker had removed the Reliant. Neighbours were milling on their porches and lawns.
A bomb guy came out and gave a thumbs-up. “The place is clear, attic, first floor, and basement.” He chuckled. “Probably.” He held up a digital camera. “We got pictures. Call me when you’re done and we’ll take after-shots. I’ll be a block away with my fingers in my ears.”
They trooped up the steps. The front door opened to a long hallway that ended with a kitchen at the rear of the house. The floor was original wood, scuffed one-and-a-half hardwood that had been oiled and buffed. The walls were plaster, creamy, original, and lined with religious pictures, as well as pictures of a couple and the child who’d been carried out of the home, with two pit bulls in the foreground. To the left an arched doorway showed a living room with a widescreen television. On shelves were books. Juvenilia, history, biographies. Nothing political or violent. The windows were dressed with lacy curtains. To the right of the front hall was another arched doorway, this one into a family room with a worn but tidy couch that had dog- bite marks on the wooden legs. In the kitchen was an old-style table and matching chairs. The chrome legs had been persistently chewed. The pit bulls. Through two doors at the back of the kitchen, Ray Tate could see into side-by-side bedrooms. One was a child’s room with a crucifix on the wall, and under it a single bed with a lit lamp beside it. The other room contained a double bed with a larger crucifix on it and lit lamp on a low table.
He told Marty Frost to take the living room, Comartin the family room, and Djuna Brown the kitchen. “Bring anything you find to the kitchen. Anything really stinky, call the guy with the camera before moving it. We’ll do the bedrooms, two by two, after.”
The door to the basement, between a wall pantry and the refrigerator, was at the bottom of the basement stairs; the doorframe was splintered. A deadbolt was on the floor.
“Djuna, I’m going downstairs. Call if you find something.”
He descended slowly. The house had already been searched and secured but he felt unaccountably spooked and took his gun from his ankle. Half of the cops that came out of the police academy were, by mathematical certainty, in the bottom half of their graduating class. He appreciated the bomb guy’s dry sense of humour, but he didn’t know him at all and the man could actually be a moron.
At the bottom he stepped over the door. The basement was low but long, with cement-block walls that showed no sign of leakage. A furnace was partitioned off by whitewashed particle board at the north end. A fuse box was mounted beside it. Washer and dryer facilities were on the east side beside a deep double sink. A workbench made of four-by-fours and one-inch plywood was on the left with a stool under it. Tin cans had been nailed to a sheet of plywood above the bench; they held an orderly array of screws, nails, nuts, and bolts. There were spools of wire, hinges, opened cans of paint, brushes in turps, and a full line of tools. The bare cement floor was swept immaculate.
Trash was kept in a big green rubber bin with the house’s address neatly painted on the side with stencilled letters that read, HOUSEHOLD RENO WASTE, HEAVY, PLEASE RETURN BIN TO SIDE OF HOUSE, THANK YOU. Inside were elbows of wood, little cut-out pieces of half-inch-thick soundproof drywall sheets, empty packaging, carpet ends, a paintbrush crusted with light blue paint, and the detritus of a home project.
It was a workingman’s home. A home handyman. A man with pride in his surroundings, in control of his environment.
Over his head were the lines of wiring for the place, carefully run through perfectly round holes in the eight-by-fours.
He could hear the rest of the crew moving around, banging drawers and doors, their feet sliding and thumping.
Ray Tate poked around the various shelves and closets. Sandpaper in various grits, a drill set with the bits in a vinyl wallet, a set of screwdrivers with yellow plastic handles in descending order in another wallet. A heavy leather woodworker’s apron with deep pouches and splotches of light blue paint. Engraved in the leather was the lettering, DO IT RIGHT FOR AMERICA.
Ray Tate, when he was married and living in the suburbs, had a basement just like it but not nearly as neat and clean. A refuge, a hideout from domestic life.
There was nothing of the racist radical or the crackpot. He took a copy of the warrant from his pocket and made sure they had the right address.
He went upstairs. Having seen the basement, he was surprised at how big the ground floor seemed. In his mind he eye-measured the two bedrooms, the living room, the family room, and the kitchen. He went back downstairs, then came up again. No way, he decided, would all the rooms fit in the dimensions of the basement. He went to the foot of the stairs and looked around until he felt the hair standing up on the back of his neck.
Upstairs, he silently signalled the others, touching his finger to his lips and hooking his thumb at the front door. They tiptoed out and stood on the lawn while he told the suppression-team leader something was stinky. He punched in the chief’s squad coordinator and identified himself and gave the address. “We need a home wrecking crew at this crime stage, downstairs in the basement. Maybe up in the attic, too. Measure the place off. There’s a stash room down there, one end or the other. We gotta get it ripped up. I want the whole fucking house on the lawn. My people are out and someone could be having free-run in there. The suppression team is going to have to do it again by the numbers. And keep that idiot from the bomb squad on standby.”
Chapter 16
Waiting for the home wreckers, Ray Tate told the suppression-team leader they were going to drive around the neighbourhood and they’d be on the air.
Parked in the Chrysler a block away, they cracked beers, limiting themselves to one each. He told them about the sheets of soundproof drywalling. “Someone’s been doing a reno. There were cut corners in the garbage, stud ends, blue paint. I didn’t see any sign in the house of soundproofing and nothing’s been painted blue. Those walls are beautiful, real old plaster. Nobody who cares about their home would hang sheets of soundproof. And this guy loves his house. Plus, the basement is too small. You don’t notice it until you look at the ground floor, then go back down again. Someone’s built a trap down there. He might be in it, hiding and waiting us out, or he’s stashing in there.”
“Ray Tate,” Djuna Brown shook her head in mock wonder. “Ray Tate, beatnik detective.”
“Naw. Ray Tate, former suburbanite and home handyman. You guys find anything?”
She shook her head. “Nada, Dada.”
Marty Frost said, “Zero, Nero.”
Brian Comartin thought for a moment. “Fuck all, Paul.”
Marty Frost patted him on the shoulder. “Nice try, guy.”
They sat in comfortable small talk until the rover squawked.
“We got the Homicide hammers on the way, Ray, although it looks like a
classic suicide. Hanging. To my amateur eye the rope scrape on the neck is consistent with a body drop. His hands are tied in the back and he used a slipknot so if he changed his mind, he couldn’t, even if he wanted to. Tipped himself off a stool. Door was bolted from the inside. Goodbye and see you later. That’s all I saw before I backed my guys out. The body hanging. And the porn on the walls. And the stash of DVDs. He really liked Black Buxom Babes with Bodacious Butts. He had a blow-up of the DVD cover above the widescreen. A true fan. But me? I thought it was poorly lit, the dialogue forced, and the character development was inferior.” The squad leader of the suppression team shrugged. “I mean, I’m no critic, but …”
“I guess he did it when we served the warrant.”
“I think so, Ray. It all looked fresh.”
“You see a note?”
“Nope. But it could’ve been in his pocket, or out of sight.” The squad leader circled his fist over his head to gather his team to him. “Think this is your guy? Fuck, be nice to close the Chinatown case and your dead women, all in one day.”
“Dunno. Our guy didn’t bang them, didn’t go for the bodacious butts. He just pulverized them.”
“Maybe that’s how he got himself up. Kill one, then go home and whack off to the bodacious action.”
“Yeah, I guess. Maybe. Too deep for me. We’ll see what the hammers find in there.”
“Okay, we’re rolling. Ah, look, I’m sorry my guys went in and didn’t figure it out. It could’ve gone real bad for you guys if he’d jumped out with an Uzi and started strafing bodacious butts. We owe you one, okay? Somebody pisses you off in a bar or cuts you off in traffic, you just call, we’ll roll a team, lay waste.” He pulled off his leather glove and held his hand out. “We okay?”
Ray Tate shook his hand. “No problem. Who knew?”
“You guys hanging around? Want to go get a beer before we head out?”
“Naw. We’re going to wait until the search team finishes scavenging.”
He watched six cadets, led by a sergeant, gather at the foot of the stairs to the house. The sergeant stood on the top step. “We’re only doing floor one. The basement is a homicide scene, so don’t go wandering. I’ll assign you to rooms and you get every piece of paper, every notebook. If you see drugs or a firearm or a cellphone, call me. Don’t touch it. Put your fucking mitts in your pockets and sing out. You guys are lucky. You’re starting your career with the biggest mass murder in the city’s history. You all get a good jump up. But if you fuck up? Apply to the fire department. They need more meatheads to run into fires.”
Three teams from Homicide pulled up at the curb: two unmarked sedans and an unmarked van. They stepped out and stood on the curb, staring at the house. They were in no hurry. One of the team consulted a diagram of the house, the doghouse, the fence line and the porch, then disappeared up the side of the bungalow. The other five waited, holding satchels.
Ray Tate heard one of them say, “Bobby, you go in with the video camera. Call on the cell when you’re done. Take your time. It’s all time and a half.”
Ray Tate wandered over. “Hey, Tate, Ray.”
The hammer held up his hand. “Don’t tell us nothing, okay? We’re spooky that way.”
“Not a problem.” He wrote his cell number on a business card. “Call if you need us. We’re cruising, or we’ll be at the Jank.” He stepped away, then turned back. “Hambone tell you how things are? What we’re looking for? On our thing?”
“I got it. Now let us do our work, okay? We’ll call.”
Martinique Frost and Brian Comartin casually said they were going to cruise up to the Projects, maybe get a bite to eat. They’d be on the rover and available. They didn’t invite Ray Tate or Djuna Brown to join them. They got into the black Chrysler and headed off the street. At the end of the block, without signalling, the Chrysler turned right, away from the Projects and toward Marty Frost’s apartment.
Djuna Brown laughed. “I like those guys, Ray. Marty’s all cop and Brian’s just a teenager in love.”
“She’s got him eating salad already. Funny, huh? Talk about a mismatch.”
She smiled, “Yeah, funny.”
They walked to the Taurus. “It’s going to be a long night,” he said. “We should stay out. Ride the radios.”
He drove downtown, the radio melodious. As a cop, Ray Tate’s favourite time was the dead zone, when nothing was going on but something was going to happen. It had to. It was the nature of things. As a sergeant he could cruise relatively freely through the Sectors and cherry-pick calls to drop in on, notebooks to sign, share a coffee or a sandwich, collect gossip and funny tales. He loved the young cops out there, carrying the water, being faced with new situations that had to be parsed for them. There weren’t many cops in his age range. A few older guys who wouldn’t leave their streets and a lot of younger guys finding the tradition. He was, he felt, in the best of places, still learning subtleties from the old road sergeants and mentoring the kids.
Djuna Brown kept her eyes on the sidewalks on his side of the car, and he scoped the passenger-side pedestrians. Occasionally, creeping the curbs, they glanced at each other and smiled. It was the perfect date. They’d miss this part, when they were living in Paris. No matter what, he decided, he couldn’t live another year like this past one.
There was a voice-out for a sergeant to attend a high-dollar commercial burglary. There was a voice-out for a supervisor to attend a collision at the foot of Erie Street. Both were scooped up by Sector cars.
There was a yawning voice-out from a lonely for a disturbance in Stonetown. “Desk. Urban Two lonely, I’m on view of a bar fight, several male individuals going hand-to-hand in front of the Stone on Drewry. I’m disembarking to referee.” Then: “Windows are going in.” Then, screaming: “Everybody.”
The Sector cars dropped the burglary and the collision and responded.
“We’re rolling that one, Djun’.” He swung a sharp U-turn and accelerated toward Stonetown while she responded, “Chief’s special plainclothes two on board with a shotgun we’ll take that one, Desk.”
He slapped the Hello light on the roof.
“Okay,” the dispatcher said, a busy waitress reading back a complex order for a party of twelve. “We got the chief’s special two with shotgun, we got Sector Four Adam lonely, Sector Four Bravo lonely, Scouts three, six, seven, eight, Sector Five visiting units Five Charley, Six Foxtrot lonely, Sergeant Four Niner lonely, and … Thank you … Mounted Units four and five on training closed band monitor only.”
The Taurus shuddered as a chain of five Sector cars screamed past it, almost close enough to adjust the side mirror. Ray Tate got in line but dropped way back. He fishtailed into Stonetown, two blocks from Drewry. Two dozen Chinese teenagers in T-shirts were running the streets, throwing garbage receptacles through windows, jumping up and down on cars locked in traffic. A taxi driver revved ahead and a Chinese kid flew through the air, over the taxi, and was run over by a panel truck. Some motorists got out of their cars and went at it hand-to-hand with the youths. Ray Tate saw one of the rampagers go into a kung fu pose then launch himself into the air, swinging a graceful airborne kick at a balding middle-aged man wearing a sports shirt over a white T-shirt. He missed, and when he landed the man swung a tire iron and the kung fu artist went down with blood spouting from his head. The middle-aged man dropped to his knees, stripped off his own shirt, and immediately started staunching the wound. As Ray Tate stopped the Taurus mid-block beside the bleeding Chinese youth, he heard the middle-aged man say in a remarkably calm voice, “You’re okay, kid, you’re okay. We’re with you.” He said something in what sounded like singsong language. He looked up into the strobing red light on the Taurus, keeping strong pressure down on the head wound. “Ambulances, I’m from St. Frankies’ Heart, call them and say Bronstein in Emergency said, ‘Everybody Stat. Set a stage at Soldiers’ Park.’”
Car alarms were screaming. Windows smashed in a regular cadence down the block, whomp sm
ash whomp smash whomp smash. Entry alarms whooped in a building chorus. There was a gunshot, then a scream, and someone yelled, “Got you, fucker slant cocksucker,” in a thick Eastern European accent. Ray Tate got out to see if he could identify the shooting site.
The dispatcher was talking steadily but breathy. He couldn’t make it all out, but it chilled him a little that she’d lost the edge of control in her voice, was a little overwhelmed.
When there was a break in the air he passed on the request from the doctor and said, “Chief’s squad special, Tate, Sergeant. We need brass down here. We got gunshots.” A shotgun blast came from farther down the block. “More gunshots.”
There were five evenly spaced pistol shots and glass from five streetlight bulbs tinkled on the roadway. Ray Tate moved away from the Taurus, peeking up over the hood of an abandoned courier car, trying to spot the gunner.
Djuna Brown called out, “They’re calling everybody in. Spot riots outside the zone. Equipment Supply will be at the command post at the east end of Stonetown with riot gear.” The Taurus was door-locked on the passenger side by an abandoned pizza delivery car. She climbed out by scrambling across the seat and out the driver’s door. Her eyes were huge and beautiful in the stuttering lights and he loved her and saw she looked tiny.
A young man in a T-shirt with characters printed on it ran screaming between rows of abandoned cars, swinging a set of nunchaku over his head. Djuna Brown turned, saw him, and pulled her gun in a smooth jerk from her hip and centred on him in stance. Her voice was in full rising panic when she yelled, “Stop stop stop stop,” and zoned in on him.
