Shattered Glass

by Dani Alexander

  If I thought about that. If I believed that. Would I try very hard to avoid a bullet?

  True Irony Is Lost on the Idiots

  I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Peter’s life reduced to piles of black dust. Just outside the door, I paused and took a breath. The fire marshal jogged up to greet me. I flashed both my badge and a forced smile at her. Her serious eyes were framed by a surgical mask and a bright yellow hard hat. She carried an extra of each in her weathered hands. “They told you not to go upstairs?”

  I nodded, and she held out the mask and helmet to me. “Can I see something in a red? Yellow isn’t my best color.” My joke fell as flat as my smile.

  “Can’t let you in there without them.”

  “Are you coming in with me?”

  “I’ll be inspecting next door if you need me. The homeowners are anxious to check for recoverable items.” She nodded to the townhome on the right.

  “What about here? Are there recoverable items?”

  “Nothing salvageable in the main room. Further to the back of the house, soot, ash and water damage are the most concerning. Upstairs it’s mostly water damage. Fortunately, the firehouse was close.” She gave me a quick rundown of safety measures and turned to leave. Her sneakers squeaked as she crossed the lawn. The sound faded as I stepped inside Joe’s front door.

  The smell hit me first. A mixture of chemicals and the acrid stench of smoke. The air was also moist and more than a little suffocating. My mouth opened to draw in sufficient air where my nostrils failed. It only grew worse from the living room to the back bedrooms.

  Along the hallway the drywall had burned, leaving exposed wires, cross beams and pipes. The remaining walls and furniture were black with soot. What wasn’t black was grey with ash. All of the painted memories were gone. The loss of those missing portraits and murals weighed on my soul. Images of Peter in his youth gone forever. It was heartbreaking.

  I turned away from the walls and took a step past Peter’s room, only to backtrack and push open what was left of the door. Maybe something was salvageable in this disaster.

  The carpet squished under my shoes, but the water wasn’t deep enough to wash Peter’s blood off the tips. It was just deep enough to make me grimace. Light from the broken window gave me more information about the destruction of Peter’s life than I could ever want. My grimace expanded.

  His bookshelf had imploded like a well-timed demolition. The bed’s wire frame survived, but the mattress was basically carbon. The computer desk had split; it and the monitor were now propped by what was left of a cat carrier that had been sitting underneath. Books, papers, bits of ceiling were strewn across the floor. Everything was wet and reeked. I turned my back on it all and prayed that behind the blackened closet doors, something was left.

  Tentatively, I slid the door open. My eyes rolled up to make sure the ceiling wasn’t going to crack and fall on my head. Satisfied that asbestos and stucco weren’t going to rain down, I crouched, examining the pile of shoes scattered at the bottom of the closet.

  I found the bunny slippers in the corner under a pair of canvas high tops and another pair of slippers I hadn’t seen before. The rubber from the high tops melted to the fuzzy brown toe of one slipper. It took a few minutes, but I pried the sneaker free and squeezed the water from the slippers. My phone rang as I hunted for something to wrap them in.

  I tucked the slippers under my arm and dug for the phone. “Glass.” Water soaked through my jacket and trickled down my ribs.

  “I thought you were going to send a video? How long does it take?” Darryl demanded angrily.

  “Wanna see what I see? Here!” I turned his volume down, pressed the video button and then put the phone back in my pocket. He could hear me, but I didn’t want him to see my attachment to the fucking slippers.

  Footsteps along the hallway caught my attention. “Hey, do you have a baggie or something?” I asked the inspector as I rounded the corner directly into the barrel of a gun.

  “Whoa, hello.” My hands jumped to my gun reflexively.

  “Don’t,” Detective Frank Marco ordered. “I got nothing to lose here, Glass.”

  I brought my palms up in front of my stomach. The slippers splatted to the floor. “Hey, Frank. What’s up?”

  Sweat dripped from his forehead. He blinked excessively and wiped at it with his arm, but another drop followed the same path. The hand holding the gun shook. “Where are they?” The tip of the barrel jammed hard into my forehead.

  “Ow. Where’s what?” I took a step back, using considerable effort not to raise my hands higher and rub the pain away. Any sudden movements could set him off.

  “Don’t fuck with me. Where are they?”

  “Look, Frank, man, I came in here to see if I could salvage some clothes.”

  “Don’t talk like we’re friends, Glass. You ain’t got friends. I count myself lucky that it’s you in here because anyone else would be hard to shoot. But not you. Give me what I want, and I’m outta here. Don’t, and I’ll find ways to encourage you to give it to me.”

  Ouch. Don’t argue with the desperate. “I haven’t found anything,” I said honestly.

  “This is the wrong room.” Frank squinted and tilted to look past me. “This is the other one’s room.”

  “Frank?” A voice called from what sounded like the entrance of the house.

  “Back here, Del.” Frank’s eyes never left me.

  A second later, Detective Max Delmonico’s movie star smile beamed behind Frank. “Martinez and the fairy are sitting in the car playing with their cell phones. Captain thinks we’re here to oversee CSU and this faggot. We’re good to go.”

  “Get his gun.”

  Del reached across and slipped my gun from the holster, tucking it in his jacket pocket. “Why are we in this room?”

  “Found him here.” They both glanced around the room. “Are they here, Glass?”

  I only hoped Darryl was still recording. I needed to buy time. “I don’t know.” I turned slowly toward the room. “I haven’t had a chance to look thoroughly. I’ve only been here once.” On Wednesday when one of you assholes tried to set me on fire. Wednesday. Why was I in Peter’s room on Wednesday? On Saturday, Cai had tried to lure me to his own room. On Wednesday Cai had pointed me to Peter’s. Cai had directed me here. It was in Peter’s room. The safe was in this room. “CSU will be here soon, and Luis is bound to get suspicious if I don’t check in.”

  “You’d better find it two minutes before ‘soon’ then, because a minute before that and there will be one less faggot rich boy staining the uniform.” Del stuck his gun against my nose and ripped off my face mask.

  “Did the irony in that statement make you laugh just a little?” My eyes crossed to look at the gun.

  “Fucking find them, Glass. We ain’t interested in your smartass remarks,” Frank said and pushed Del’s arm away.

  Del and Marco weren’t the brightest of pairs, but desperate, stupid men were more dangerous than the smart ones. The stupid ones acted first. I was just as likely to get shot in the head as I was to have a kneecap blown off. I decided to obey and scanned the room, turning slowly. What had I missed?

  One of them poked the back of my head with a gun. Why the head every time? Couldn’t they poke my ribs? My back? It was hard to concentrate with the headache starting to form. It was even harder to focus with fear punching my heart and crushing my lungs. But that was when things usually got worse for me. When fear controlled my mouth. For once, Austin, just keep your mouth shut. Don’t poke bears.

  What had Cai said? Where was he directing me? He had said I didn’t know who Peter was. He sent me to this room to learn about Peter. I went back to the crispy remains of the bookshelf.

  Too obvious.

  “Get moving,” Frank poked again.

  “I’m thinking. Let me think!” The one thing I was good at. The one thing every detective knew I was good at.

  What was the one thing here? The thing that Cai knew
I wouldn’t miss in this room? The one thing he knew I wouldn’t leave without?

  “I’m going into Strakosha’s room,” Frank said. “Keep an eye on him.”

  “We already searched that room.”

  I turned a full circle.

  Don’t look for Peter in this room. Look for Cai.

  “I’m searchin’ again,” Frank said. “Just watch him. And see if you can get Dillon and Fitzpatrick on the line. They were supposed to check in twenty minutes ago.”

  The moment I saw it, I knew. And apparently I gave myself away.

  “Wait,” Del ordered. Frank halted and flipped around. “He’s got something.”

  “I hope it’s not crabs,” Dave said, grinning as he stood in the doorway.

  And All I Got Was This Stupid Cat

  My gun was in Del’s pocket. Del’s gun was on me. Frank’s gun was on Dave. And Dave carried no gun at all that I could see. This was not a good day for Austin Glass. If I had one more surprise, there was a distinct possibility my heart was going to bounce right out of my chest and plop into the mush at Frank’s feet.

  “What the fuck you doing here, Buchanan?” Frank’s gun changed target from me to my best friend. “I told you to stay outside when you got here! How the fuck are we supposed to know who’s coming if you’re in here?”

  “Crotch stains are always a good indicator.” I couldn’t help myself. Fear brought out the smartass.

  Dave pinched his brows and lifted his lip, which told me that he was two seconds from a facepalm at my stupidity. “Frank, is that anyway to greet someone who came to give you good news?”

  “You,” Frank said, waving the gun at me. “Get—”

  “They found the Strakosha boy,” Dave interrupted. “And Mick and Dick. Just came over the radio.”

  “Fuck!” Del wiped his mouth frantically. “Marco, if they’re talking…”

  “Hard to talk with a bullet to the head.” Dave inched inside.

  “We gotta get outta here.” Frank stuck the gun to my forehead again and pushed me back against the wall. I threw my hands up against it and tried to look nonthreatening. It wasn’t difficult. I was scared shitless. The other men in the room were one tick away from trigger happy. Sweat rolled off Frank in rivers. Between that smell and the soot, I gagged. “Where. Is. It?” He jammed the gun into my head to emphasize each word. The fear, pain and fumes were making me dizzy. I couldn’t think clearly. I couldn’t decide what was in my best interest.

  If I told him, I was dead. If I didn’t, I was dead. I looked from Dave’s calm face to Frank’s sweaty one, to Del tapping his gun against his chin and muttering while he paced. These were not just worried cops, they were terrified. Something worse than the threat of jail time caused that kind of terror.

  Dave laid a hand on Frank’s shoulder. “Yo, man, that gun goes off and they’ll be in here in seconds. That doesn’t help any of us. We destroy the passports, and we take him with us.”

  Frank’s gun still imprinted on my skin. I tried to look anywhere but on his shaking trigger finger. Nothing Dave said seemed to placate Frank. And Del was hyping himself up. “Shoot that faggot in the balls! Press it close. They won’t hear a thing from way back here. He’ll fucking talk then.” My dread reached an insane peak.

  “Del, you’re not thinking clearly. Go watch the door,” Dave said quietly. When Frank didn’t contradict him, Del opened his mouth to argue.

  “Do it,” Frank said. Del lowered his gun and squished out of the room.

  “Okay, man, he’s not going to tell you anything with a gun to his forehead.” We all heard a door close. That’s when Dave brought his gun out and pressed it against Frank’s temple. “It’s over, Frank. I’m not going to let you shoot him.”

  Frank’s mouth slowly opened. A battering of breaths escaping in a wheeze. “Del?” He called out loudly.

  “Martinez has him now, Frank. It’s over. No one else dies. Give me the gun.”

  “You know I gotta get them papers, Buchanan.” The twitch of Frank’s finger caught my breath. “Bullet to the head is better than what they’re gonna do to me. To all of us.”

  “You and me, Frank, we can get protection. We’ll go in together. It’s the only way.”

  “Nah. Nah. There won’t be anywhere to hide if they find out what happened to that girl, Buchanan. I told you that. What they do to snitches ain’t half of what they’ll do to us. To everyone in our families. Marta? Your girls? We’re all dead. Destroy them papers and I’ll drop the gun. Turn myself in.”

  “Oz, man, where are they?”

  What the fuck was in that safe?

  Was I going to trust Dave? Maybe this was some kind of ruse to get me to give up the location. Then he shoots me and they grab the safe. Only three things wrong with that line of thought. First, he’d warned me they were after Cai. Second, he’d come in here rather than just calling Frank’s cell phone. Third, I was just as dead if Frank and Dave were working together, but if they weren’t? “The cat carrier. It’s in the cat carrier.”

  Frank’s breath eased out, his gun moving off my face. “Get it.” Neither he nor Dave lowered their weapons when I pushed off the wall and kneeled in the muck to get at the cage door.

  “The plastic’s melted around it. I need a knife or something.”

  “Is it in there?” Frank stepped forward, leaning in to look, his gun gliding across my vision. I grabbed his wrist and jerked down. A bullet fired into the floor, near enough to my knee that it frayed the fabric of my pant leg. I pulled his arm down further, trying to shove his hand under that knee. Frank’s fist slammed into my nose. I grunted as pain shot through my forehead and partially lost my grip. He leaned into me for leverage. We toppled over, both of us now locked in a struggle under the desk face-to-face. A piece of wood scraped through my jacket, my stitches ripped open, and my nose ached and bled; but I wasn’t letting go of Frank’s wrist.

  Another bullet fired. Behind me, someone grunted and fell with a muffled ‘thump’. Dave? Shit! I started to twist and roll my shoulder over Frank’s arm, but he jerked at my grip and pulled backward. I wound up half on top of him chest-to-chest, two hands around his wrist, gun flailing above our heads. Through blood, ashy water and sweat, I couldn’t see where Dave was in the room.

  Over all our grunting and swearing, several sets of feet sloshed down the hall. There was shouting, but with the blood pounding in my ears and my rough panting, I couldn’t decipher what they were yelling. I was too petrified to let go of the gun. With my nose already weeping blood and broken, I cringed in anticipation, right before I cocked my head back and slammed my forehead into Frank’s face. My nose gave another crack, pain shot up into my brain, and my vision went black. At the same time another bullet split through the air. Someone cursed in Spanish. I went limp. Lights out, Austin.

  Sleep. Sleep Would Be Good Here

  I wasn’t out long. A minute maybe. Long enough to get pulled off of Frank and jostled outside. The pain turned to an aching throb once I was set on the lawn. By the time the EMTs arrived, I just went with the flow. My eyes were flushed out, my nose and throat checked, butterfly stitches were applied to my lip. Like an intense sugar high, my adrenalin dissipated. The noise and chaos around me faded away. I passed out again in the ambulance.

  I was lying on my side. My ass felt like it was on fire. Bright lights and a brown, nearly bare leg greeted my awakening. I followed it up, past a section of bandaged calf, up over a plump belly, to meet Luis’s dark glare. He sat on the gurney across from mine.

  “What happened?” I asked groggily. My voice sounded nasal. I lifted a hand to my face. Thick bandages covered my cheeks and a metal splint encased my nose.

  “I got shot. Because of you. Again.”

  “Bad?” It came out ‘bah’.

  He shrugged. “Passed through muscle.”

  “Can’t even get shot right.”

  “You’re paying for my pants.”

  A hail of painful spikes kept my smile from forming. “
Peter?”

  “Still in surgery.

  “Fran—?” None of my hard consonants were sounding. My tongue refused to contribute to the pain in the roof of my mouth.

  “In custody. Del and Buchanan, too.”

  “Dave shot?”

  “Bullet hit his vest. He’s bruised, but fine.”

  “Cai?”

  “Last I heard, he was being treated at Mercy General.” I already knew what happened to Mick and Dick.

  “Where are we?” My lip had split, I felt it tug as my ‘w’ formed, and a trickle of blood dribbled into my mouth.

  “Denver General.” Across town. Not too far from Peter.

  “The safe? They said passports.” I was sore, but not so broken that I needed to continue lying down. It took effort to sit up, however, and to balance on one ass cheek. I figured I should get used to that anyway.

  “Just lie down, Glass. Doc has to reset your nose. We can talk about the case when we go in for a briefing.”

  “Lezgo.” Lying here meant thinking. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t let myself think. There wasn’t anything else I cared enough about to stymie the thoughts of Peter. Still in surgery. “Timezit?” I shook my head, thought I could feel my brain rattling around. “Time’s it?”

  Luis looked at his watch. “Quarter to four. I’ve been shot, Glass. This is as far as my statement goes tonight.”

  I nodded and immediately wished I hadn’t. This time my brain did rattle in my skull. Nearly five hours since Dave’s first phone call. I tried to construct a timeline up until they took Peter to the hospital. According to that timeline, Peter had been in surgery approximately four hours. I patted my pockets. “Where’s my cell?”

  “Evidence. You forget you recorded everything?”

  Shit. “I need to get out of here.”

  “Tinkerbelle is getting your car.”

  “Don’t call him that.” And that defense of Darryl should have convinced anyone that I wasn’t in my right mind.

  Luis shook his head at me and tossed me a cell. I caught it with one hand and frowned at it. “Strakosha’s phone. Haven’t had time to hand it in,” he explained.