Cry Havoc

by Baxter Clare

  Jogging down the stairs Frank glanced at a commotion in the lobby. A dreadlocked man with a striking resemblance to Dirty Old Bastard was trying to take on a knot of cops. Munoz and Romanowski were patiently talking him toward the door, the older cop placating, “Come on, Peter. Be a good boy, now. Don’t let’s piss off the nice policemen, okay? ‘Member what happened last time you did that?”

  Frank smiled, glad Peter wasn’t her problem. No one knew who he was, but he’d been coming into the station since Frank was in uniform, daring the cops to kick him out while he flashed whoever was on the desk. Hence the name Peter.

  Driving out of the lot, she turned into the traffic on Broadway. She passed the mini-mart and deli, the bail bond shops and botanica. She saw the pedestrians without really seeing them, until one made her stand on the brakes.

  “What in the goddamn hell?” she said lurching into Park. The car was still rocking as she jumped out.

  From its huddled heap on the sidewalk, the thing in rags grinned up at her.

  Frank groped for an arm through the blankets.

  “All right, buddy. You want to follow me around? Got more to say to me? That’s fine. We’ll talk. Let’s go upstairs.”

  She jerked the old thing up and it scrabbled to its feet. It scuttled after Frank like a crab. She half-dragged it toward the Honda, guiding the reeking mass into her back seat, using the back of her hand as buffer between its matted head and the car roof. She felt contaminated again, overcome with the urge to soak in a hot bath.

  Executing a U-turn she headed back to the station, wondering how long it would take to get the stink out of her car. Not the brightest move, she conceded, but she’d had it with this fucker. She should’ve cuffed it when it grabbed her outside the tenement, but the truth was she’d been too rattled. Now she wasn’t rattled, just pissed. And curious. Unless it was a trip to jail or the ER, homeless people didn’t usually travel too fast or too far. Especially blind and crippled ones.

  Frank reclaimed her parking spot, hustling her passenger into the station past the holding cells. Upstairs she shoved the stinking bundle into an interview room. Darcy’s voice startled her as she locked the door.

  “Who’ve you got?”

  “Cousin It. That bum that grabbed me the other day.”

  “Oh yeah? What for?”

  “Just want to talk. See what his trip his.”

  It was too embarrassing to admit that this thing made her nervous, that its sudden appearances were giving her the willies.

  Frank took her time in the bathroom, washing her hands, splashing a little water on her face. As she patted herself dry in the mirror, her higher brain argued with her lower, it’s just some old bust with a grudge. But her lower brain wasn’t buying it. She knew even as she dismissed it, that she was ignoring the primitive, irrational, information system that had evolved to keep her alive while her intellectual mind ran around on its fool’s errands.

  “Well, this time you’re wrong,” she whispered to the waiting, watching self in the mirror. “I’m just letting this thing wig me out.”

  Wadding up the paper towel, she hooked a rim shot over her shoulder into the garbage can. She ran into Donna from downstairs shuffling up the hall with a sheaf of papers. She handed a ream to Frank, sighing, “Inventory. You need to go through every item assigned to you and verify its condition. If an item’s missing, broken, or obsolete, you need to fill out”—she showed Frank a form—“one of these.”

  “And you need ‘em back tomorrow,” Frank guessed.

  “Wednesday.” Donna smiled tiredly. “Have fun.”

  The support tech lumbered on, her two-hundred-odd pounds looking as painful as they must have felt. Frank dropped the stack off in her office. Darcy was writing at his desk and Bobby and Jill were chewing the shit. She thought to remind Jill that she was late with a half-dozen follow-ups, but she knew.

  Before stepping back into the box with Cousin It, Frank peeked through the surveillance window. She looked around the tiny room. It was empty. Ceiling, corners, under the metal table, all empty. Frank stepped inside. The room was empty. She held the door open and tested the lock. It didn’t open from the inside.

  Frank ran back to the squad room.

  “Did you let that bum out?” she demanded of Darcy.

  “No,” he said, surprised. “Why?”

  “He’s not there. You see a pile of rags walk by?” she asked Bobby and Jill.

  They both shook their heads, following Frank into the hall.

  “Bobby check up here, the men’s room. Jill get the women’s room and help Bobby. Darcy you go look downstairs. I’m gonna look out back.”

  She trotted down the stairway, fuming over who’d let her detainee out. In eighteen years Frank had seen that happen a number of times and always over a miscommunication. There was no misunderstanding here, no colleague to assume or misinterpret whether they should keep him, it, whatever, in the box, no one to make a mistake with. Someone had deliberately opened that door. When Frank found that someone she was going to chew them a royal new asshole. With gusto.

  The good news was that it couldn’t go too far. Not on those feet. She checked the holding cells, asking the occupants if they’d seen anybody go by. Couple cops, that was all.

  “You missed the guy in the blankets?” she asked.

  “Weren’t no one in blankets,” a Hispanic man claimed.

  Frank stepped into the afternoon sunshine, sweeping the parking lot. A rooster crowed and she jogged to the entrance on the side street. It was the only way in or out other than through the station. She scanned the short street. It was empty. She sprinted to the corner. There were plenty of people on Broadway, but no one shambling around in rags. The 12-Adam-22 car was coming into the station. Frank flagged it and bent to the driver’s side. Sergeant Haisdaeck was behind the wheel and the 36-24-36 new boot rode shotgun.

  “Haystack, you see an old wino on your way in? All bundled up in blankets?”

  “Only thing I saw,” the old uniform boomed, “was a six-pack and an easy chair.”

  Frank shifted her eyes to the rookie who answered, “No ma’am.”

  She slapped the top of the car and it rolled on.

  “What the fuck?” she wondered.

  Frank backtracked, checking between each car on the side street. She glanced into the lot. Bobby and Jill were near the back door.

  “Did you find him?” she yelled.

  Jill shook her head and Frank swiveled at a sound in the bushes. It was a scrabbling noise, like someone clawing in the litter of old cellophane and dead leaves. Frank crouched, trying to see into the dark greenery. She reached to part the branches, instinctively pulling back when she heard the low growl. But too late. She saw the pit bull’s square head the instant she felt the flare in her arm. Frank’s left hand folded and smashed into the dog’s tattered ear. The blow made her grunt in pain, but didn’t faze the dog. Its teeth were buried in her wrist.

  Frank dropped her weight onto its thick chest, but the dog nimbly pivoted. She swung an ineffectual kick then tried prying the jaws apart. She only impaled herself deeper. Frank thought about shooting the dog, simultaneously gauging her backdrop, the chances of shooting herself, the paperwork involved in firing her weapon, and the prospect of an IAD investigation. She pulled at the jaws again, unable to believe she couldn’t get free of this fucking mutt.

  She heard the feet and saw the legs. Bobby, Jill, and the boot had run over from the lot. Haystack puffed up behind them. Bobby tried to get a kick in, missing as the dog wheeled around the fulcrum of Frank’s wrist.

  “No!”

  Bobby yelled and Frank glanced up to see Jill pointing her pistol.

  “Hold still,” she shouted at Frank.

  “Don’t shoot!” Frank shouted back. “Don’t shoot!”

  Frank saw the boot—what the hell was her name?—pull a 2x4 out of the back of a pickup. It ripped through the air into the dog’s back. The dog yelped and spun to confront its new at
tacker. Frank felt the teeth give and tried pulling free. Her movements made the dog forget the pain in its spine. It locked down on her wrist, eyes snapping back onto hers.

  “Hit it again!” Frank bellowed. The uniform swung again, harder. Frank winced at the shock of the blow, but the dog let go. Frank scrambled back on her ass and the legs around her jumped beyond the reach of the chain. Frank saw the hole the dog had made under the fence, wondering what would have happened if a little kid had walked by instead of her.

  She grayed out a little, thinking it was Haystack who said, as if from a distance, “That’s a lot of fucking blood.”

  Jill, equally distant, screamed for an ambulance. Frank tried to protest, but was stunned by the ferocity of a sudden memory. The remembrance was so vivid it cleared her head and erased the fire in her arm. The dog lunging on its chain, the pain in her bloodied arm, the feet shuffling around her, Jill screaming for the ambo—she was reliving it over again.

  “I’ve already done this,” she said to herself.

  Jill bent next to her and the deja vu vanished.

  “What’d you say?”

  “Nothing,” Frank mumbled. She was watching the dog. It danced on its rear legs, slavering and barking wetly. Its jaws were slick with drool and blood. Her blood.

  “It’s red,” she said.

  “What?” Jill asked, lifting Frank’s mangled arm over her head to slow the bleeding.

  “The dog. It’s red.”

  “Yeah, Frank, it’s red.”

  Frank’s vision darkened and tunneled inward. She felt queasy. The Mother’s honeyed voice teased, “Watch out for a red dog,” then Frank heard laughing.

  The Mother was still laughing, but farther away. She stood against a red sunset, trailing black and red and white gauze. The wind flapped her wrapping, unraveling her like a mummy. The Mother held a bloody sword above her head and a hand stretched to Frank. Blood dripped from the sword into pools at the Mothers feet. She laughed, beckoning Frank.

  Bobby was asking her if she could stand.

  “Yeah,” she answered, but didn’t try. She thought she was going to puke.

  “Let’s just wait for the ambulance,” Jill said.

  “I think we should get away from this dog,” Bobby maintained. “He pops a link we’re in trouble.”

  Frank felt hands under her arms, tried to help raise herself. Couldn’t.

  “Give me a sec,” she whispered. Her cops ignored her, dragging her across the street.

  “Wait. Wait,” Frank tried again, fighting the nausea and grayness. They hesitated and she breathed, “Let me sit a sec. I’m okay.”

  She slumped onto a fender and dropped her head between her knees, rushing the blood to her brain. Jill told Bobby to go get something for her arm. Jill was trying to support it in the air and at the same time keep Frank propped against the fender. Seeing the blood smeared on her pants and the arterial stream plopping steadily onto her shoes, Frank thought, I’m gonna have to throw these away.

  People from the station crowded around. Frank kept her head down, hoping she wouldn’t hurl. By the time Bobby raced back the shock had lessened. She was able to sit up with her good arm braced against her leg. Frank focused on the pain. It was deep and sharp, like her ulna was being forged of molten steel.

  Bobby tossed Jill a towel and a pack of gauze. Jill glared at her old partner.

  “Do you think I could get a little help?”

  Darcy had joined the knot of people and he grabbed the gauze. Frank bit against her teeth as he unrolled the spool around her wrist.

  “If we had some Saran Wrap we could package this up and sell it as hamburger.”

  He grinned at her and Frank asked, “Did you find him?”

  Darcy shook his head. “No one saw him. He just disappeared.”

  Frank corrected weakly, “People don’t disappear.”

  “This one did.”

  He wrapped her arm in the towel but the blood soaked through even before he was done. Looking into her face, Jill asked, “How you feeling?”

  “Fine,” Frank lied. “This is gonna fuck up my range marks.”

  “You should put your head back down. You’re really pale.” But Frank insisted, “I’m all right,” even as she felt herself slide onto the road and into darkness.

  21

  Yawning, Frank padded barefoot into Gail’s guestroom, which was really her home office. The doc twisted from her computer, pulling her glasses off.

  “Hi, poor baby. How do you feel?”

  “Pretty good, considering.”

  Considering it had taken the emergency room surgeon three hours to sew her wrist back together.

  “Have you taken any Vicodin yet?”

  Frank shook her head and bent to kiss Gail, holding her arm well away. It throbbed, and hurt if she flexed her hand, but over all the pain wasn’t bad. She had some minor nerve damage, but nothing that wouldn’t heal with time and therapy.

  “I don’t like it. Makes me feel flat.”

  “Well, you take it if the pain gets bad. And if you want I’ll get you something else. It’s a fact that people heal faster when they’re not in pain.”

  “It’s a fact, huh?”

  “Don’t get flip with me. Oh. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  Gail rummaged through the chaos on her desk, finally placing a stack of faxed pages into Frank’s left hand. It was Danny Duncan’s preliminary autopsy report. The doc made a face, saying, “It looks like he was still alive when they bled him.”

  Frank scanned the first sheet. Death was attributed to exsanguination due to a single incised wound. The anatomical summary listed obvious pallor and evidence of exsanguination, and one incised wound to the neck, resulting in gross transection of the left and right carotid arteries as well as gross transection of the left and right internal jugular veins.

  “Are you hungry?” Gail interrupted. “Can I make you something to eat?”

  “Coffee?” Frank asked.

  “That’s all?”

  Frank nodded and Gail admonished, “Your diet’s atrocious.”

  “Don’t start,” Frank warned, making herself comfortable on the guest bed. She skimmed the generalities: External examination revealed the normally developed body of an adult black male weighing 167 pounds and measuring 71 inches in length. Decedent appeared muscular and well-nourished. Rigor mortis was present and generalized; livor mortis fixed and posterior. Tattoos, abrasions, and scars were duly noted, as well as continuous, circular contusions around each wrist and ankle.

  Frank took the mug Gail handed her. Pointing at the remarks about the bruising, Frank asked, “Did Paul say anything about this?”

  “Uh-uh,” Gail scanned quickly. “Do you think he was bound?”

  “Appears that way.”

  Frank put the mug down and pushed the papers in her lap until she found the body sketch. Paul had only indicated the contusions with a slash mark. She checked the clothing and valuables section for anomalies, then scanned the systemic review.

  But for an absence of blood, Duncan’s insides were unremarkable. The trauma was localized to his neck. There, Frank read to Gail, “A deeply incised wound starting from the left sternocleidomastoid muscle stretches seven-point-five inches to the anterior border of the right sternocleidomastoid muscle. The wound is smooth-edged and gaping, exposing the larynx and vertebral column. The incision passes cleanly through the thyrohyoid ligament and hypo-pharynx and point-five inches into the C3 vertebrae.

  “Translated”—Frank looked up—“that means whoever cut Duncan was one strong motherfucker.”

  “Do you have to talk like that here?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Not only is he strong, but he’s probably left-handed, too.”

  “So it’s highly unlikely that someone the Mother’s size and age could slice so cleanly and deeply through a grown man’s throat that she goes half an inch into his neck bone.”

  “Highly unlikely,” Gail agreed.

&nb
sp; The opinion section of the report concluded that due to the incision’s cleanness, smoothness, and regularity, the decedent was likely immobile during infliction of the fatal neck wound. The lack of blood in his body indicated his heart had still been pumping when he was cut, but he probably lost consciousness within seconds, if he wasn’t already out. That would explain the immobilization, Frank thought, squaring the papers with one hand.

  Gail spied over the edge of her glasses.

  “Does that help?”

  She was wearing shorts and Frank admired her legs.

  “Some. What are you working on?”

  “I’m finally getting back to my friend in Canada. I told you about her, didn’t I? Tempe Brennan? The forensic anthropologist? She’s a neat lady.”

  Gail had a wide network of associates and colleagues. She’d put a lot of effort into her career, unlike Frank, who’d had it thrust upon her. Joe Girardi had taken her aside only three few months after Maggie died, outlining her advancement to command. Frank hadn’t wanted to climb the LAPD ladder; Detective Grade II was good enough for her. But she’d numbly accepted Joe’s tutelage, partly to fill the black hole inside her, but more to please Joe. He’d been her angel and she couldn’t let him down. In retrospect, he’d probably known that was exactly what she’d needed to distract herself from an alcoholic oblivion or swallowing a bullet.

  Frank patted the space beside her.

  “Come here.”

  Gail filled the indicated spot, carefully wrapping Frank in a hug.

  “You know something?”

  “I know a lot of things,” Frank said against the flat plane where Gail’s left breast used to be. She kissed the scar through Gail’s shirt as her good hand found warm skin underneath.

  “I was worried about you last night.”

  The doc pulled back to look at Frank.

  “It surprised me. I’ve never felt like that before. I felt so protective. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

  Frank was ready with a flip answer but Gail’s earnest expression stopped her. She nodded instead.

  “Do you ever feel that way about me?”