Due to the design of the structure, a low wall and cable barrier separated Ben from them. He was still running up the incline and would need to hook around the end before he would be within close enough proximity to confront the situation. He still had several feet to go before he could even make that turn.
My mind raced as I wondered whether or not we should have come at this from the next level up, but it was too late for that now.
“Sir, your location?” the voice barked from the phone.
“I’m sorry… The old Peerless-Cross department store parking garage, orange level,” I replied.
“Is the detective injured?” she asked.
“No. He’s trying to stop a carjacking, or a mugging or something, I’m not…”
I was interrupted by yet another scream that sounded vaguely like ‘help’, and I watched as the young woman broke partially free and suddenly lurched forward. Her attacker managed to maintain a grip on her arm and yanked it hard, knocking her off balance. She fell backward against the car, and as she came to rest against the fender, the man swung around in front of her. Without hesitation, he drew his arm back and landed a fist square into the young woman’s face. Her head snapped back, and even at this distance, I could see crimson blood running from her nose.
“Damn!” I exclaimed and then remembering that the phone was still to my ear added, “He just hit her in the face!”
He drew back and hit her a second time then grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to the back of the vehicle. In a rough motion he rolled her into the trunk then slammed the lid shut and raced back to the open driver-side door.
“Sir, can you tell me what is happening?” the operator asked.
The audible thunk was still fading as Ben’s authoritative voice boomed outward, ricocheting from the angular surfaces of the garage. “POLICE! STEP AWAY FROM THE VEHICLE NOW!” He was just reaching the corner and beginning to make the turn as he shouted, running with his weapon hand extended and trying to draw a bead on the man next to the vehicle.
“Sir, are you still there?”
“Gods! I think it’s a kidnapping!” I exclaimed aloud, making the statement to myself as much as to the 9-1-1 operator.
The attacker had been pre-occupied with the struggling woman and only now noticed Ben barreling around the corner. He ducked quickly into the driver’s seat, audibly wrenching the vehicle into gear and gunning the engine even before closing the door.
Tires squealed as the car sped forward, climbing up the incline toward the level above us. Ben slipped out of view behind a support pylon then reappeared on the opposite side, pistol stiff-armed before him and taking aim at the vehicle. I saw him snap his head in disgust as he realized it was too dangerous to take a shot with the victim in the trunk. He followed the tail of the car with his eyes as it screeched into the turn then whipped his gaze around and darted to his right toward the downward corkscrew of the exit lane on the corner of the building.
“Sir?!” I heard the faint but frantic voice issue from the cell phone and realized that I had allowed my hand to drop away from my ear.
I brought the device back up and began speaking, “He just shoved her into the trunk and sped off. Ben is chasing after them.”
“Are you still in the parking garage, sir?”
“Yeah,” I responded, realizing suddenly that I had to be her eyes. “Yeah, he was heading up, so Ben took off for the exit spiral. He’s on foot.”
“Sir, we are on the line with dispatch, and they have units responding to your location. I need you to stay with me.”
I could hear the roar of the vehicle crossing above me on the next level, revving up then fading as it passed. My view of Ben was obscured by a row of cars occupying the spaces near the center of the level, so I began running up the incline. I was moving slowly at first then began increasing my pace as I tried to get in a better position to see the exit ramp. There was a squeal, another roar, and then the crunch of metal against concrete. Following that, there was nothing.
I broke past the line of cars and stumbled to a halt, directing my gaze through an empty parking space. In the distance, I could see Ben’s form in a three-quarter silhouette as he stood at that level’s opening to the exit, weapon at the ready.
I started to wonder if the vehicle above had crashed into one of the dividing walls, but then the relative silence was punctuated by the protests of its overtaxed engine as it started down the spiraling ramp.
The car suddenly came into view at the opening, and the tortured wail of scraping metal filled my ears. A pair of bursts from Ben’s pistol abruptly punctuated the grating noise as he fired into the windshield of the vehicle.
I watched in horror as the front fender clipped my friend and sent him flying backward. The scrape of sheet metal against concrete began to fade as the vehicle continued down the ramp.
“He’s been hit!” I shouted into the cell phone as I began moving once again, breaking into a run toward my downed friend. “Ben’s been hit!”
I knew the operator was asking me something because I heard her voice issuing from the speaker, but I no longer had the device to my ear. I pumped my legs and arms as hard as I could, pushing myself up the incline and hooked around the parked vehicles at the end of the row. I had a lot of distance to cover, and I wasn’t going to be setting any records for sprinting. By the time I was within forty or so feet of the arc, the exit came once again into view.
Not knowing how hard he had been struck or the extent of his injuries, I was fully expecting to see my friend in a crumpled heap. Instead, I was greeted by the sight of him on his feet, fully upright and very pissed off.
“Fuck ME!” he shouted across the lot as he limped forward. “Sonofabitch!”
“Ben!?” I barely managed to call out against my rapidly shortening breath.
He looked up and saw me running toward him. “Backup, Row. Fuckin’ tell me I’ve got backup comin’!”
I waved the cell phone in the air then sucked in a quick breath and called out to my friend as I continued toward him. “The operator said units have been dispatched.”
Below us, the fading sound of the scraping metal had now transformed into the clamor of squealing tires, and out on the streets, angry horns were beginning to blare.
The wail of emergency sirens in the distance was so faint they may as well have been a lifetime away.
CHAPTER 5:
“No, I don’t wanna go to the freakin’ hospital,” Ben’s voice carried across the lot as he shouted. He continued walking away from the paramedic but looked back, pointing his finger as he added, “How many times do I hafta tell ya? Now leave me alone and let me do my job.”
My friend was disheveled and still moving about with a limp, but other than that, he didn’t appear to be seriously injured. But then, this was Ben Storm we were talking about. I’d seen him lie through his teeth to avoid going to a hospital, all because he had a phobia about needles, go figure.
Even though he had relayed a description of the vehicle to the 9-1-1 operator, it had all come down to placement and timing, neither of which factored in our favor. The car was gone before the first police cruiser even arrived on the scene. Between Ben, the parking attendant from the booth downstairs, and me, we had been able to provide miscellaneous details about the sedan as well as a license plate number. Since the car had Illinois tags, officials from that state’s patrol division were already in the loop.
I was keeping my ears open for lack of anything else to do. Thus far, from what I had been able to pick up from the various conversations I overheard, there was presently an alert out on both sides of the river but still no sign of the vehicle.
I felt like I should be doing something. I’m not sure what, but that wasn’t the point. I hated the idea of being useless with regard to everything that had transpired. But, I suppose being ordered to ‘wait over there until we need you’ can tend to do that to a person. All in all, I was starting to feel like an extra in a B-movie but without the
paycheck or catered buffet lunch.
At the moment, I was watching from the stairwell, sitting on the third step up from the bottom and trying my best to stay out of the way. So far, I had been managing to do so but not without some shifting and shuffling to allow the occasional cop to pass. From what I could see going on in front of me, this was probably the only spot where I was going to have any success whatsoever in the endeavor.
I looked away from the scene long enough to glance at my watch. Somewhere around an hour and a half had slipped past us since this all began: ninety minutes disappearing into history only to be relived by eyewitness accounts, repeated over and over to the point of tediousness. And then repeated again.
Still, even though I had only been asked to tell my accounting a half-dozen times so far, it felt as if I had been in this parking garage just shy of forever. On the other hand, it seemed like the span of interconnected moments had gone by in a sudden blur. I suppose it was yet another of those peculiar stress-induced dichotomies that blindsides you following an unexpected adrenalin rush.
As I watched, I took particular note of the fact that the number of warm bodies occupying the parking garage had increased several fold over what it had been just thirty minutes ago. Now, while I was no expert, unfortunately, I was also not a stranger to crime scenes. The ratio of cops to the singularity of the crime seemed to me like it was already moving beyond overkill. On top of that, something told me there would be even more by the time it was all said and done. There was something more to this than met the eye; even the eye of a witness, or so it seemed.
For the time being, it looked like I was stuck here. Ben was still limping around angrily, but now he was heading in my direction. He had been barking at anyone in a uniform and even some who weren’t. This was far from the first time I had ever seen him agitated, but there was something different this go around. It wasn’t that this scene felt any more tense than any other I’d been on, just different. There was an overtone of urgency that went beyond any I’d felt before. To me at least, there was even a palpable sense of personal fear coming from the cops on the scene. Not just for the victim but for themselves as well. That was something I had never before experienced at a crime scene, and it bothered me.
I already knew my friend wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. His day off had ended the moment he heard the woman scream. As for me, even if I wanted to get myself a taxi home, I was a witness and I’d already been told that I would need to give a statement. I had thought I’d already done that when I told them what I saw the first six times, but apparently that was not official. When they would be getting around to me again was anyone’s guess.
“Hey, Row,” Ben greeted me sullenly as he drew himself up against the stairwell railing.
“Hey, Chief,” I returned, starting to pull myself to my feet. “You need to sit down?”
He motioned for me to stay seated. “Sit, sit. I’m good.”
“You sure?” I asked, stopping mid-rise. “It looked to me like you had a pretty serious limp there.”
“I’ll live.”
I lowered myself back to the step and regarded him for a moment. “The paramedic threatened you with a hypodermic, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.” He let out something between a laugh and a sigh. “The words ‘tetanus booster’ got mentioned.”
“You probably need one.”
“We’ll see. Nothin’s broke.” He gave a slight nod as he spoke, but the expression on his face was saying ‘hell no.’
“So much for lunch, eh?” I offered after a moment.
My friend was looking out across the lot, massaging the back of his neck and lost in thought.
I spoke again, “Ben?”
He started and glanced over at me, “What? Oh, yeah. That’s a bust for sure. Maybe dinner depending on how this goes.”
He brought his hand up to smooth his hair then allowed it to fall back down to his side. He huffed out a heavy breath then addressed me with an added seriousness, “So listen, Row, the Major Case Squad is gonna be runnin’ this one.”
“Okay,” I acknowledged. “That’s not a big surprise.”
“What I’m tryin’ to tell ya’ is that Bee-Bee is on her way,” he emphasized. “Hell, she’s probably downstairs already.”
“Bee-Bee,” I repeated and rolled my eyes. “Just what I need.”
The moniker struck home. It was short for Bible Barb, which was probably the least offensive of the nicknames given to one Lieutenant Barbara Albright. She was a cop and a self-serving bureaucrat all rolled into one package, and she was in command of the MCS.
Like most of those her rank and above, she spent the majority of her time pushing a pencil. But that is where the similarity ended because unlike the others, she had a penchant for getting directly involved. Unfortunately, her involvement was not always a plus.
What had garnered her the various epithets was her self-righteous attitude. That, combined with the fact that she not only wore a badge but also a prominently displayed gold cross around her neck, had earned her the reputation of ‘God’s Personal Cop.’
She consciously built upon that distinction as well. She wore her badge like a shield and wielded the cross like a sword, using its symbolism like a heavy-handed weapon with which to mete out her own interpretation of justice. To Lieutenant Albright, the laws she was sworn to uphold were but secondary suggestions to the commandments held within the Holy Bible; and she was more than happy to tell you so in no uncertain terms.
While this didn’t necessarily make her popular among the ranks, she still had her supporters, and there were enough of them to make a difference. She managed to skirt around various departmental policies and flaunt her religion without reproach. Still, none of this would really matter at all were it not for one simple fact: she absolutely despised me.
While her initial hatred of me began simply because of my Pagan roots and religious practices, my being a Witch was not the only reason for her disdain. Unfortunately, I had no choice but to accept responsibility for a portion of it, as I had been partly responsible for sparking an Internal Affairs investigation of her.
Just a handful of months ago, I had been the object of a madman’s quest to eradicate WitchCraft from the face of the earth. Eldon Andrew Porter had taken the lives of several innocent people in the process, two of them my friends. Before all was said and done, I had come close to losing my own more than once.
During a single day that had been spawned by nothing less than hell itself, far too many things had gone horribly wrong. Information had been leaked; potentially dangerous mistakes had been made, and events that could have only been deliberate sabotage had occurred. All of these things had placed my life in jeopardy at every turn and had almost allowed Porter to escape. I, among a few others, believed that ‘Bible Barb’ had been responsible for it all.
While in the end she had admitted to using me as the bait to draw Eldon Porter out of hiding, she had been officially cleared of any other wrongdoing and was given nothing more than an administrative slap on the wrist. As for me, I was never fully convinced of her innocence and didn’t know that I ever would be.
At the same time, her own convoluted thinking made her believe that I was the root of the problem. She had even commented during a newspaper interview that had it not been for me, at least two of the victims would still be alive. I was already torturing myself over that very fact on a daily basis, and I sure as hell didn’t need her fueling the fire for me. I was doing a fine job of that all by myself.
“Look, Row, if it was up to me, I’d get you outta here right now before she gets here,” Ben offered. “But we both know that ain’t gonna happen.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “It’s okay.”
“If it’s any consolation,” he added, “I ain’t exactly one of her favorite people either.”
“Yeah, I know.”
He wasn’t lying. He had gone toe to toe with her for the sole purpose of defending me and had done serious ha
rm to his career in the process. While my friend was still a homicide detective, Albright had seen to it that he was no longer allowed to work as a member of the Major Case Squad as long as she was in command. That serious blow to his advancement was yet another thing I held myself responsible for, even if he didn’t.
“So, I don’t want to sound crass,” I said. “But what’s so important about this particular case that she feels like she needs to get her fingers in it?”
“Nice try,” he returned. “But it ain’t funny.”
I shook my head and looked back at him with a puzzled expression. “What are you talking about?”
“C’mon, Row,” he chided.
“No, really.”
He arched an eyebrow then cocked his head to the side, squinting while looking at me hard. “You aren’t friggin’ serious are you?”
“Serious about what?” An audible note of annoyance crept into my question.
“Do you have any clue at all what you just witnessed?” he asked.
“I’m guessing a kidnapping.”
“Yeah, and?”
“And what?” I asked, growing more impatient.
He shook his head and gave me an incredulous look. “Don’t you ever watch TV?”
“Sometimes. So what?”
“You watch the news, right?”
“Ben, will you just spit it out?” I demanded.
“You’re gonna sit there and tell me you didn’t recognize the woman who was grabbed?” he asked.
I flashed on a quick memory of the blonde victim and remembered having had a passing thought that I should know her.
I shook my head and shrugged. “Not really. She looked a little familiar, but other than that…”
“She’s all over the news,” my friend returned, shaking his head as well. “The Gateway Club Telethon, all kinds of charity events… You know, anything with a cause and a donation jar.”
“I’m sorry, Ben,” I barked the words. “But I still don’t know who she is. Now, would you please quit trying to make me feel stupid, and just clue me in?”
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