Crooked Halos

by Charlie Cottrell

  “Now sit. Roll over. Shake hands,” I said mockingly to Carmen. Pratt jabbed me in the gut with her gun, right where Crowder’d shot me two months ago. I grunted in pain.

  “None of that, Detective Hazzard. You’re better than that,” Pratt admonished. She jiggled the baby in her arm up and down and cooed mindlessly at the little lump. “You should especially watch your behavior in front of your newborn son.”

  I arched an eyebrow at her. “I must have ended up with a concussion during that last firefight, because it sounded like you said that bundle of crying and poopy diapers was my son.”

  “He is,” Pratt said, holding the child so I could see his face. The kid looked…well, like any newborn baby, all wrinkly old man face and quiet gurgles. The kid seemed to be asleep despite all the noise that had been going down just a few minutes ago.

  “Why the hell would you bring a baby to a gunfight?” I asked tersely, forgetting for a moment that I was currently surrounded and didn’t actually like babies all that much. Or at all, really.

  “We couldn’t find a sitter on such short notice,” Crowder said behind me, placing a heavy hand on my shoulder and forcing me back into a chair. “Now, we have just one or two pieces of business to attend to, then we can kill you all and get down to running this town.”

  “It’s all just been a long con, hasn’t it?” I asked Crowder. “Your time as a cop, those years of hiding out and lying low. You were just waiting for a chance to take over the Organization.”

  “Not even close,” Crowder said with an easy smile. “Genevieve came up with the plan to retake the Organization. Your gal-pal Vera Stewart had stolen it from her years ago, some sort of damned coup. We weren’t even cops anymore by the time that happened. But when she came to me a few years ago and offered me the chance to ruin your reputation and help her rule the city…well, I couldn’t say ‘no’ to that.” He took the baby from Pratt’s arms and held him close. “You’ve got a handsome son here, Eddie,” Crowder said. His tone sounded genuine, which didn’t make my skin crawl any less.

  “I still maintain something like this was always your goal. You were a crooked cop, Dresden. You were sure as hell no angel.”

  Crowder gave me an annoyed look. “Don’t forget, even Lucifer was an angel before he was cast out of Heaven and forced to suffer for eternity in Hell.”

  “So you’ve still got your halo, it’s just crooked,” I said.

  Crowder shrugged. “Something like that.” He pulled a small gun out of his pocket and pointed it at Genevieve Pratt. The thin woman stopped dead and gave Crowder a confused look.

  “Dresden, what are you doing?” she asked slowly.

  “Just tying up the last few loose ends,” he said casually before pulling the trigger. The gun had a silencer attached to the end of the barrel, a good one. The gun barely made a sound as Crowder pulled the trigger and buried a bullet in Ms. Pratt’s chest. The woman clutched at the wound, her eyes wide in betrayed surprise, and then she collapsed onto the floor, where she lay still as blood pooled around her rapidly-cooling body.

  “That just leaves you and your little coffee klatch,” Crowder said. He turned toward Miss Typewell, a blank look of mild disinterest on his face. This was a task that had to be completed, the look said, but not necessarily one he relished. “Sorry, Eddie, ladies. This is nothing personal.” He pulled the trigger.

  Ellen’s personal force field flashed a shimmering red as the bullet hit, the invisible wall bleeding the kinetic energy from the bullet. At the same time, Maya grabbed her captor’s arm and pulled the most amazing judo hip-throw I’d ever seen. The guy was at least twice her size, but he went down hard and Maya proceeded to grab his arm and twist it in a way that guaranteed he wasn’t going to worm his way out of the hold anytime soon.

  At the same time, Ellen elbowed her own captor in the gut, knocking the wind out of him, and brought her two hands down in a hammer blow across the back of his neck that laid him out. The guy didn’t move to get back up.

  I took advantage of the confusion and shoved my chair back into Carmen, who was lurking behind me with that knife of hers. I got a gratifying whoofing noise out of her and heard that knife clatter to the ground. Crowder turned to see what was happening, and I snatched the baby out of his hands.

  “Give it up, Dresden,” I said, retrieving the popgun from the ground and leveling it at him. Ellen and Maya had retrieved their riot guns, which from this range would probably leave some massive bruises and more than a few broken bones.

  Crowder laughed. It sounded unhinged; I couldn’t tell if he was genuinely amused or if he was somehow broken inside or what, but he threw his head back and the laughter came roaring out like a tidal wave of madness. “God, you kill me, Eddie. ‘Give it up, Dresden,’” he echoed in a mocking tone, waggling his head back and forth.

  The knife that flashed past my shoulder and buried itself in Crowder’s gun hand caught us all by surprise. Dresden cried out, dropping the weapon and clutching the wounded hand to his chest. I turned to see Kimiko leaning against the door frame, blood oozing from a wound across her forehead, chest heaving with the difficulty of breathing.

  “I’d say the odds are against you,” I said to Crowder. He gave me a wild-eyed grin, reached into a coat pocket, and produced a small sphere with a pin sticking out of it. He tugged the pin out with his thumb and dropped the sphere to the ground, whirled around, and started hobbling out of the room at his admittedly-slow top speed.

  “Everyone down!” I shouted, taking cover with the baby behind the nearest desk. The grenade went off, filling the space with light and sound. A flashbang. Better than it could’ve been, but still not great. I could hear the tap of Crowder’s cane on the stairs outside the office. I handed the baby off to Miss Typewell, grabbed Crowder’s gun off the floor and tucked it into my belt, and set off after my former partner, determined to end this once and for all.

  X.

  Crowder hadn’t made it very far when I caught up with him. I wasn’t doing so hot myself, but I broke into a trot and threw myself at him, tackling him and sending his cane skittering off into the gathering darkness of the evening. Crowder swung an elbow into my face, slamming it into my nose. I felt something go pop and my nostrils started gushing blood. I grabbed his arm and twisted, felt bones grind and snap as I put his arm into a position nature never intended. Crowder shouted in pain and managed to buck me off his back. I sprawled across the floor, the popgun spinning away from me and landing somewhere out in the darkness. I heard a loud crack as it landed, which didn’t bode well for my weapon of choice. I pushed myself up and got my feet under me, then Crowder was on me again. Even with a busted arm and a bum knee, he was still taller and stronger than I was. He threw a roundhouse punch with his good arm, catching me in the temple with his knuckles. Light exploded behind my eyes, and I saw stars and cartoon birdies for a moment. I staggered and shook my head to clear it, just in time to see his fist coming in for a sharp, vicious jab. He caught me in the left eye and knocked me down again, then dropped down onto my chest and continued the beating. My arms were pinned to my sides, and I couldn’t do anything to stop him as he proceeded to abuse every inch of my face.

  “Years of planning, Eddie!” Crowder screamed as he pummeled me. “Years! I convinced that old bitch Pratt to pay to fix my legs, I watched Vera Stewart and planned everything out. But I couldn’t account for the one fucking variable that always fucked everything up—you!” Blow after blow landed. My face had to be a mess by now; I could feel my eyes swelling shut. I was dazed, my head swimming with each concussive blow. I was having trouble understanding the words Crowder was shouting at me.

  “You were always a pain in my ass, Eddie,” he said, pausing in his beating. “A fly in the fucking ointment. And then you—you!—took over the Organization? It was insane. But here, at last, was my chance to achieve everything I wanted. I’d get even with you for ruining my career, I’d get even with Pratt for taking my legs, and I’d get even with the city by t
aking over the Organization and burning the whole fucking town to the ground. It was a perfect plan that you just kept fucking up for me.”

  “Language, Dresden,” I mumbled through busted lips. “You’ve got one hell of a potty mouth.”

  Crowder responded by punching me in the face again. His knuckles felt almost as ragged as my face. He was going to beat me to death if I didn’t do something, but I wasn’t in any position to do anything.

  That’s when I felt the grip of Crowder’s pistol in my waistband, mere millimeters from my hand. I grabbed it, pulled it out slowly, and managed to get the barrel pressed against his leg. I pulled the trigger twice; the first shot hit bone on the way through his thigh, while the second bullet punched clear through and lodged in his midsection. He fell back, freeing my hand, and I brought the gun up. I couldn’t see much and my thoughts were muddled, but I managed to pull the trigger twice more. One of the shots went wide, while the other hit him square in the chest. Crowder gasped in pain, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell back onto the ground, his breath ragged and uneven.

  “You?” he gasped, his voice thick with blood.

  “Someone had to stop you, you asshole,” I said, lying on the ground beside him. His breath became more and more irregular, thin gasps that took on a gurgling quality as blood pooled in his lungs and throat. With a final, thick-throated rasp, he died, his body settling into the concrete. I lay there, sucking wind myself, every inch of my body in pain, and I felt a sense of relief and sadness wash over me. It was over.

  XI.

  Except nothing was really over. There were all sorts of loose ends that would need to be tied up before we could even get close to approaching the end.

  First of all, there were all those dead bodies in the office, including Crowder and Ms. Pratt.

  The police showed up, and folks like Kimiko who were injured were hauled off to the hospital under APD guard. I wasn’t too worried about her, though, since she was a ninja and could probably escape from a locked room with a half dozen cops watching her. Carmen was dragged off to jail, as were the other enforcers who’d attempted to bust into the office. Miss Typewell and Miss Janovich were checked on and cleared by the EMTs on the scene but were taken down to the station to give statements, Miss Typewell clutching the baby the whole time.

  Then there was me.

  “You’re under arrest again, Eddie,” Captain O’Mally of the 4th Precinct said as Officer Higgins put the cuffs on me. I didn’t hold it against them: I was a convicted murderer who’d escaped from prison and then killed Dresden Crowder. There were bound to be complications.

  They took me down to the precinct house for questioning first. O’Mally conducted the interrogation himself.

  “What the hell, Hazzard?” were the first words out of his betusked mouth as he came into the interrogation room. “Why aren’t you in Pratchett? What the hell did you do to Warden Pemberton?”

  “Nothing he didn’t deserve,” I said wearily. “Guy tried to have me killed.”

  O’Mally’s walrusy jowls quivered in surprise. “What?”

  “Yeah. Someone—Crowder, if I had my guess—paid him to make sure I didn’t get out of Pratchett alive.”

  O’Mally sighed and sat down heavily in the chair across from me. “You’d better start from the beginning.”

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  O’Mally sat back and took a sip of his cold coffee. I’d told him everything—Ms. Pratt hiring me to catch her killer, Crowder’s role in my frame up all those years ago and more recently, Ms. Pratt faking her death and then actually getting killed by Crowder, and our final confrontation—and he was trying to process it. Especially the part where I’d told him I was technically the Boss of the Organization.

  “Eddie, it’s…” he said, trailing off. It occurred to me I maybe should’ve left that last part out of it.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I haven’t done anything illegal as the Boss, but…”

  “Right.”

  We sat in silence for a full minute before O’Mally spoke again. “Eddie, you’ll probably get a retrial, since the woman you were supposed to have killed was just found murdered in your office.”

  “It’s still gonna look awful suspicious, since she was killed with the same gun I killed Crowder with,” I said.

  O’Mally nodded, his whiskers drooping. “Yes. But you’ve got witnesses. I think things will go different this time. You’ll probably only have to spend a few years in Pratchett.”

  “Wait a second. The only thing I did was defend myself! Why the hell would I spend any time in Pratchett now?”

  “Well, you did break out of prison and instigate a full-scale riot,” O’Mally pointed out.

  “I didn’t start that riot! That was all Pemberton’s fault,” I protested.

  “I don’t think the jury is going to care much about that,” O’Mally said, standing. “But regardless, I am going to have to place you under arrest now.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, standing up and holding my hands out for the cuffs. “I figured that was going to happen.”

  XII.

  The second trial happened much faster than I thought it would. O’Mally said he used a few favors with the D.A.’s office to get things pushed up so I wouldn’t have to sit in the holding cell at the Fourth Precinct any longer than necessary. I appreciated the gesture, but it didn’t give me much time to put together my defense.

  Luckily, Miss Typewell and Miss Janovich were at my side, coming to visit every day and giving me all the support they could. Miss Typewell had contacts within city government and knew more than a few lawyers; she tapped into her bureaucratic network to help us plan my arguments. Even with the assistance, though, I still felt woefully unprepared for the trial.

  The first day of the trial rolled around after about two weeks, and I found myself standing before Judge Marshall again. I gave him an apologetic smile as everyone stood for his arrival. He wore a carefully-maintained blank expression, but underneath it I caught the hint of annoyance he was trying to bury for the public’s sake.

  The prosecutor was different: a woman named Carolyn Rodriguez, a tall Latina with a severe face and small, piercing eyes. She spoke in quick, clipped statements, and being asked questions by her was like getting shot with a verbal machine gun.

  “And why did you think it was a good idea to break out of prison, Mr. Hazzard?” she asked me. It was my second day on the stand, and I was feeling more than a little overwhelmed by it all. Her questions were relentless.

  “It was that or die, Ms. Rodriguez,” I replied.

  “You caused millions of dollars in damages, put the lives of Warden Pemberton and a dozen guards in mortal danger—several of them were severely injured in the riots, I should remind you—and allowed a few dozen dangerous criminals to escape. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “Well, erm,” I said, at a bit of a loss.

  “Let’s hold up for a fuckin’ second, huh?” came a voice from the back of the courtroom. A murmured susurrus of surprise spread across the audience like wind across a field. Every head in the place turned to the double doors at the back of the room, where a slight woman with bright red hair and dark glasses stood, a melting puddle of a basset hound lolling on the floor beside her.

  “LBG?” I said, surprised. The Little Blind Girl was one of my best informants; with her seeing eye dog, Rockford, there wasn’t much that escaped her notice, even if her own eyes were completely useless. “What are you doing here?”

  “Taking over your defense, you moron,” she said, making her way up the aisle. At that point, I noticed she was wearing a women’s business suit and carrying a briefcase. She tossed the briefcase on the defense table and sauntered up to the judge’s bench. “Hey, yer honor,” she said to the judge.

  “Ms. Epp,” Judge Marshall replied deferentially. “Are you sure you want to take on Mr. Hazzard as a client? It’s a bit of a shit show, if I’m being honest.”

  “Hey, I’m right
here,” I complained. They both ignored me.

  “Herman, I think we need to have a li’l sidebar,” the Little Blind Girl—Ms. Epp—said.

  Judge Marshall banged his gavel. “The court will take a two-hour recess.”

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  I sat in Judge Marshall’s chambers with the judge, LBG, Rockford, and Ms. Rodriguez, the prosecutor. Ms. Rodriguez had her arms crossed and a foul look on her face.

  “Judge Marshall, I’d again like to protest this whole ridiculous situation,” Ms. Rodriguez groused. “Ms. Epp should know better than to storm into courtroom proceedings like that.”

  “Eh, get your panties untwisted, Carolyn,” LBG replied. She was relaxed in a wingback chair, Rockford a slowly-expanding pool of fur and doggie farts at her feet. “This circus needed interruptin’, from what I can tell. You were about to send an innocent man up the river.”

  “He’s hardly innocent,” Ms. Rodriguez replied. “He started a riot! He freed a mass murderer—one who has yet to be recaptured, I remind your honor.”

  “Carolyn, knock it off. There’s no jury to impress in here,” Judge Marshall said with a sigh. He turned to LBG. “You do have a good reason for interrupting as you did, I take it?”

  “Of course I do, Herman,” LBG replied with a grin. She grabbed her briefcase and snapped it open. She rummaged around inside of it for a moment, then produced a folder filed with documents and tossed it onto Judge Marshall’s desk. The judge opened the folder and began to leaf through the documents. His eyebrows did a little gymnastics routine on his forehead, betraying surprise.

  “What’s in the folder?” I asked.

  “Shut up, Hazzard,” LBG said. “The grown-ups are talking.” I settled back into a seething, sullen silence.

  “This is…fairly damning evidence,” Judge Marshall said quietly. He looked up at LBG. “You’re sure it’s genuine?”

  “Hell yes, it’s genuine,” LBG snapped. “Why the fuck would I stick my neck out for this piece of shit if I didn’t have airtight evidence?” she gestured at me with a cocked thumb.