Apprehensions & Convictions

by Mark Johnson

  Darby looks behind him, and I follow his eyes to see who he’s looking at. To my surprise, it’s the chief. But it shouldn’t be a surprise, since this is a pretty major incident, and he’s known to be out of the office a lot, riding around. I’ve seen him down this way several times. He lives down here off the parkway, in fact, right smack in the middle of my beats, not a mile from here. And besides, this is a cop convention. There’s gotta be a hundred cops in a double perimeter around us, and I think I hear a helicopter circling above.

  I nod at the chief, who doesn’t acknowledge. He’s looking very intently at Darby, kneeling next to me. I look back at Darby in time to see his eyes locked with the chief’s. Darby nods slightly, signaling some unspoken but understood accord between them.

  Then Darby speaks to me. “Good job finding him, Mark, but what the fuck took ya so long to get outta the line a fire? Could’ncha hear me and everybody yellin’ atcha to pull back? We got plenty a firepower here, we can fuckin’ strafe the blocks right out from under that house and bury him with it, but we couldn’t do a fuckin’ thing with you in the way.”

  “Sorry, Cap, but I got a little confused. My damn gun’s all blown up.” I show him. “All my rounds fell out, but I can’t switch out for a fresh mag.” I look around at the others nearby. “Anybody here got an extra gun for me? How ’bout one a you guys with rifles—gimme a Glock.”

  Captain Darby’s looking in disbelief at the gnarled-up grip and the bottomless mag, then looks at me. “Are you all right? Are you hit? You been hit, Mark, lookit all that blood on your hand. No, the other one,” he says. I had inspected my gun hand, figuring I must have caught a little shrapnel when my gun got hit. But that hand’s clean. Then I see the thick red smear down my left palm. I wipe the blood off, looking for the wound, thinking I probably just stabbed myself in the hand on one of those jagged, spikey twisty things at the top of the chain-link fence.

  But there’s no puncture or tear on my left hand. I pull back my sleeve and realize the blood on my hand has run down from somewhere higher up my arm. I unbutton the cuff and start rolling it up my arm, and there’s more blood, all over my arm, but still no wound I can see, although I now feel a kind of burn, or pinch, up past my elbow, but it’s on the back side, the underside of my arm.

  This makes zero sense to me, and I keep peeling back the sleeve higher until Captain Darby says, “Stop. Don’t go any farther. There’s a big bloody flap of skin you might pull off. Just leave it alone, Mark.” Then, turning to the guys at the rear of the carport, he yells, “I need somebody to get Mark to an ambulance. He’s been hit.”

  A couple guys I’ve worked with come toward me, but I wave them off. “Nah, it’s nothing. Just a little scratch, prob’ly just snagged myself on one a those fences over there. Somebody just give me a damn gun.”

  Darby shakes his head at me and tells the guys to walk me out to the Rescue wagon on D.I.P. because Daytona Drive’s so clogged with cruisers they’ll never get any closer.

  “Ahh, come on, Captain. Seriously. I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine, you’re hit, and we don’t know for sure how bad. Now, go with Fuller and Simmons. That’s an order. I’m done fuckin’ around with you.”

  At University of South Alabama Hospital’s ER trauma center (after a long, maddening ride through streets clogged with Mardi Gras crowds), they’ve got my shirt off and a couple of doctors and a nurse are inspecting my upper left arm. The senior doc remembers me from a visit to the ER several years ago that I don’t immediately recall. He tells the younger doc about it, trying to prod my memory.

  “He and another officer came in with a prisoner to get checked before taking him on to Metro,” he says. “I think it was a domestic you had arrested him for, and he had fought you,” he adds helpfully.

  “Well that really narrows it down, Doc.”

  “The prisoner only had a few scrapes and bruises, but I remember thinking you two looked like you’d gotten the worst of it because you were both covered in mud from head to toe,” he says, and then I remember, but too late to cut him off, “and you had accidentally tased your partner in the fight.”

  “Yeah, that was me and LD Jones,” I say. “Thanks for the memory, Doc.”

  They both have a chuckle, then he assures me that there’s no real damage, it’s just a flesh wound, I’m very lucky, and he’ll be back to sew me up after Nurse Betty cleans out the wound and preps it for stitching.

  Nurse Betty steps up, starts laying out bandages and sponges and little tools on a tray next to the bed, and says, “Have you called your wife yet? Believe me, you don’t want her to hear about this first on TV or anywhere else.”

  “You get really crappy cell signals in here, as I recall. Usually I can’t get out at all from back in here.”

  “Yeah, it’s something to do with all the equipment, they say. But you really need to let her know. Would you like me to call her for you?”

  “Nah, they said this wouldn’t take long, I’ll just wait till you’re done, and call her when I can get back outside for a good signal.”

  “You’re making a big mistake, Detective. What time is it now? A little after five? Now, you know, she’s probably on her way home from. . . . Does she work?”

  “She works for the County Commission, at Government Plaza.”

  “Oh Lordy, the poor thing’s probably stuck downtown in all that Mardi Gras mess, and you know she’s gonna be listening to the news on her car radio. Trust me on this, Detective, you definitely don’t want her to hear about all this, even if they don’t say your name over the air, am I right? Just sayin’.”

  She’s right. Nancy will shit a brick if she even suspects I’m anywhere near this cluster. “Yeah, I better not wait. How ’bout you just wheel me out closer to the door, or to a landline?”

  She laughs and maneuvers my left arm up and back to get a better angle for scrubbing it or picking dirt out of it or whatever she’s doing.

  “Now, this might sting a little, or kinda burn,” she says, not even acknowledging my request. “We’ll be giving you a local in just a minute, honey, so it won’t hurt for long.”

  “Oh, all right, I’ll give it a try.” I dig my phone out of my pocket and hit Aaanancell, the first one in my contact list. To my surprise, I get through, though it’s breaking up.

  “Mark?”

  “Hey, first of all, I’m really okay, but—”

  “Mark? You’re breakin’ up. You’re really what? Can you hear me?

  I raise my voice, as if yelling will strengthen my faulty signal. “Hey, I’m in a dead spot, but I’m okay . . . Nancy? You hear me?”

  “Whaddayou me . . . ur . . . kay . . . at ’eans you’re not . . . r . . . y . . . udn’t . . . e ’alling . . . ’ere. R . . . ou?”

  “Nancy, listen, listen to me, don’t talk. I’m at USA ER, but it’s no big . . . Nancy, can you hear me?”

  Nurse Betty can take it no longer. She snatches my cell from me and walks out saying, “Oh for heaven’s sake, I told you to let me do it for you. Lord only knows what she heard or what she thinks.” Her voice fades as she hurries down the hall to get out to a clear signal before the call’s dropped. “I just hope you didn’t go and make the poor thing have a wreck.”

  By the time Nancy arrives, she is a wreck. She walks into my bay while I’m yukking it up with my sarge, my captain, the chief, and hizzonner the mayor. I’m feeling sorta buzzed and manic anyway, from the excitement of it all, I guess. It’s definitely a giddy kind of high when it starts to sink in that you’ve cheated Death (yet again, in my case) and dodged a really close one; add to this the visiting Rank and Royalty, and it’s all gone like a pop bottle rocket straight to my already volatile ego, and Whammo! It’s like I’ve bumped a couple lines of quality flake and chased it with a slash of Jim Beam, or something.

  But then shit gets real. The wisecracks and joking stop when my poor, worried, scared sweetheart enters the room panicked and fearing the worst. She walks right on in oblivious to a
ll the brass and hizzonner, tears already streaking her pretty face, and when our eyes meet there’s this moment of stunned silence and then the tears really start flowing and she comes to me, and as abruptly as my jovial banter stopped, my own eyes overflow. I’m a weepy damn pushover anyway, but I’m absolutely without defense when I see her cry. We both just choke out unintelligible sounds to each other, helpless to do otherwise, and for a few moments the rest of the world melts away.

  28

  Face of Fury, Search for Sense

  Two police officers are shot every day in the United States. Every 54 hours somewhere in America a law enforcement officer dies in service to his community.

  —Mobile Police Academy

  The world reappears when Sarge clears his throat. “We’ll be getting out of the way here, Mark,” he says. The captain, the chief, and the mayor all smile and nod their good-byes to us.

  “Wait a second, Sarge, how’s the other guy? The one who got cut?”

  Their smiles vanish. “He didn’t make it,” Sarge says, his head slightly lowered. I look to the captain, the chief, the mayor, and only then realize they hadn’t rushed to the hospital to check on me.

  “Oh my God,” Nancy says softly.

  “What? He died?” I scan their faces, back and forth. “I can’t believe it! Who is it?”

  “Steven Green,” Sarge says. “He’s in the Fifth. Only been on a little over a year.”

  “But I thought he was just cut, they just said signal 17 on the radio, not 19! I had no idea. Why couldn’t they save him? I don’t believe it. Where’d he get—”

  “In the neck,” Sarge says. “Bled out at Metro. There wasn’t anything they could do.”

  “He has a wife and two young kids,” Captain adds.

  My wound tightly stitched, they wheel me to the ER door before they let me stand, and discharge me to Nancy’s custody and care. Just before I step out the door, Sarge informs me that I have to surrender my weapon to him, even though I haven’t fired a shot.

  “It’s procedure,” he says. “ID has to examine and log in the weapons of everyone involved at the scene.”

  It doesn’t make any sense to me, but I pull my weapon and lock the slide back, catching the ejected live round. I hand the single bullet and the now-safe Glock to Sarge. “Magazine’s empty, what’s left of it.”

  He looks at the torn-up grip and the gaping, mangled magazine. “Shit,” he says. “They’ll issue you a new Glock till they’re done with this one. But I doubt you’ll want this one back, ’cept maybe as a souvenir.”

  Nancy and I are walking to her car, when Sarge approaches from across the parking lot. He points to my empty holster.

  “You want some protection until you can pick up your loaner? There were some of his family tryin’ to bust through the perimeter down the parkway, making all kinds of noise and threats. I got something you can borrow if you need it.”

  “Sure,” I say.

  Out of the oversize pocket of his department-issue winter jacket, Sarge produces a holstered, chrome Smith & Wesson .357.

  I feel honored. “Is this your backup gun, Sarge?”

  “It sure’s hell ain’t my throw-down,” he deadpans.

  “Damn, Sarge, I don’t wanna take your backup.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I got others. Keep it as long as you need it, man.”

  Back home, we’re greeted by my daughter, Kate, and her husband, Dave. When she sees me walk into the kitchen she hugs me tight and cries, just as her mother had, producing the same reaction in me that her mother had.

  My cell rings, and of all people, it’s Mariah, my ex-whore snitch, and she’s crying, too.

  “Oh, Detective Johnson! I just saw your picture on the TV and I was so scared! Are you all right? They said you were wounded and that other officer is dead!”

  “I’m fine, Mariah, thanks for calling, but I’ve gotta get off now. I’m fine. I’ll talk to you later.”

  There’s a knock at the door. It’s Sarge.

  “If you’re up to it, they want you back at the scene. Internal Affairs wants to get a statement from you while it’s still fresh in your mind.” He turns to Nancy and Kate. “Shouldn’t take long, and I’ll bring him right back,” he says.

  Fifteen minutes later we arrive back at the scene. It’s almost 8 p.m. and cold. The house and its front, back, and side yards are floodlit like Friday night football. Everybody’s breath is visible, except for Lawrence Wallace’s. They’ve just pulled his body from under the house. I walk up close and bend over to get a good look at the man who had savagely thrust a shank into the throat of Officer Steven Green and tried to shoot me in the head from a distance of a dozen feet as I had peered blindly into his darkness.

  It had been a stalemated siege for more than two hours. Two Ferret projectiles were fired to blow openings in the loosely stacked bricks skirting the northeast corner of the crawl space. Twenty-five tear-gas cartridges were fired under the house, and eight gas grenades were lobbed in. Multiple rounds of 12-gauge tactical slugs and .223 assault rounds were fired. But there had been no surrender. Nothing had emerged from underneath the house except gunfire. There had been several lulls, some as long as a half hour, interrupted by short, aimless bursts from underneath the house. At about the ninety-minute mark, two take-down dogs were sent in, only to return moments later without their quarry. Finally, two heavily armored tactical officers with ballistic shields and assault rifles crawled through the breached brick skirting on the east side of the house. At the north edge of the crawl space, beneath the middle of the front of the house, their barrel-mounted light beams revealed a crudely fashioned barricade composed of discarded lumber and scraps of corrugated tin. Using the rear of the concrete front steps to cover his back, he had burrowed behind this makeshift scrap-barricade to stage his last stand. He fired once at the tactical officers, who returned fired with a sustained volley, peppering the scrap metal and plywood. Then there were no more shots. They waited another fifteen minutes for any sign or sound of movement, then crawled on in and dragged him out from under the bullet-riddled house at 1413 Daytona Drive.

  He lies on his back, shirtless and still, his brown skin mottled and smudged with the grayish clay soil of his earthen nest beneath the house. Though it’s too soon for rigor mortis to stiffen his features, Lawrence Wallace Jr.’s face is frozen in a fierce scowl, his teeth bared, his brow furrowed, his empty eyes narrowed to slits. His countenance has a feral look to it, a face contorted by fury, or pain. Or both. His upper torso, arms, and head are riddled with entry wounds, most of which are neat, nearly bloodless, perfectly round, and smaller than a dime. I stop counting at twenty. Somebody standing next to me points out the broken white band of adhesive tape on his upper left bicep. There’s an inch-wide gap in the band on the inside of the upper arm.

  “I’m guessin’ that’s where he had the blade that he used on Green.” It’s Hampton, one of the ID guys.

  “But how’d he get outta the cuff, I wonder?”

  “They found a cuff key in the backseat of Green’s car. Musta had it in his sock or shoe and used it on the way to Metro.”

  I gaze once more at the terrible fixed grimace looking up at me, trying to interpret its meaning, the emotion behind it. It could be hatred, or defiance, or horror. Whatever it is, it’s not feigned. It’s not playacting. It’s real. And I’ll never forget it.

  Back at work the following Monday morning, Devin, Lusty, and Earl are amazed that I don’t milk the moment for at least a week, whether or not my injury is minor.

  Devin calls his wife when I arrive. “Guess who just walked into our office, Honey? The man, the legend, right here in our midst. Who else do we know gets shot on a Friday and shows up Monday morning like nothing happened?”

  Lusty wants to see the wound. It’s still taped and bandaged up, so I show him a picture Nancy took with her cell phone at the hospital before they sewed it up. “Oh, that’s not so bad,” Lopez says. “Looks kinda like a little vagina, but with t
hicker meat flaps, y’know? Take a look, Earl, and tell me it doesn’t remind you of pussy.”

  “Jeez, Lusty. Do you have, like, sexual Tourette’s, or something?” Earl says.

  “I’m just sayin’,” Lusty says, then turns to me. “I gotta ask you something though, and don’t take offense, but—”

  “Lusty, after working with you, nothing offends me anymore.”

  “Okay. We all heard about the bottom of your mag bein’ blown off, and all you had left was the one chambered round. But you were right there, man! Just a few feet away, closer than anybody else. You had the best shot. And the scumbag had just killed a cop, man.”

  “Nobody knew Green was dead till after it was all over,” Earl interjects.

  Lusty brushes Earl off and leans into me, the way I’ve seen him do with a suspect. “Yeah, right, but you did know that the cocksucker had just tried to kill you, in fact he’d just carved that split into your arm.”

  “He didn’t even know he’d been hit, Lusty, till Captain Darby saw the blood on his hand. I was right there—you were somewhere on the outer perimeter. Quit yappin’ about shit you know nu’n about, dickhead,” Devin interjects.

  “Y’all don’t hafta keep answering for me,” I say to Earl and Devin. “Lusty’s got a good question. Why didn’t I just lean around that cinder block and pop the shithead at close range, with my one round? It woulda been an easy shot, and we never woulda had that standoff. Even if I’d only wounded him, or missed, it woulda given him something to think about, a taste of his own medicine. He mighta surrendered. Believe me, I keep asking myself that, too.”

  “But I know you wouldn’a missed, man,” Lusty says. “I been with you at the range. You’da taken him out, one shot. Bam. And you could be at Tattoo Town right now getting a teardrop on your cheekbone! Most of us will never get that chance, man.”

  “You’re right, Lusty. It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to kill a man, and one who needed killin’.”

  “Target acquisition, though!” Earl says. “The first rule of shooting.”