“Come on over here,” I call out.
He advances, stopping about twenty feet off, blading his body sideways, his pistol on the far hip.
“Can I help you with something?” he asks.
“Open the gate.”
Cropper lifts one foot, then hesitates, like he’s not sure whether to move forward or back. If I tell him it’s the warehouse we want to see, he might make a stink about seeing a warrant, so I try a different tack.
“We need to have a talk with you, Mr. Cropper. Open up.”
He squints at me, feigning recognition. “Oh, it’s you. I didn’t recognize you at first, Detective.” But he still doesn’t move toward the gate.
I grab the padlock and give it a shake. “If you don’t mind, we’ve got other stops to make, so I’d like to get through this pretty quick.”
“Well,” he says, digging through his pocket. “All right, then.”
His hands shake so bad that he has trouble sliding the key into the lock.
“You nervous about something, Mr. Cropper?”
Once he pulls the padlock free, I walk through, pushing the gate wide as I advance, motioning Cavallo to drive through. As she does, Cropper moves to block her path. I take him gently by the arm.
“Don’t get yourself run over,” I say.
She parks just inside the gate, then gets out. The security guard backpedals, positioning himself between the car and the warehouses. I follow. When Cavallo joins us, she stands on his opposite side, forcing him to backpedal some more just to keep an eye on us both.
“Is something wrong?” I ask him. He’s got that wide-eyed fight-or-flight look, and he’s still blading his strong side away from us. I flick my jacket back, revealing my holstered gun, just to test his reaction. His hand twitches slightly, then relaxes. Cavallo catches the movement, too.
“Put your hands on your head,” she says, resting hers on the butt of her pistol.
Cropper looks at her, aghast. He doesn’t move.
Over his shoulder, the metal warehouse door trundles upward. As it rises I glimpse the back end of a black Ford pickup, an enclosure covering the bed. On the opposite side of the entrance a pair of legs advances toward the vehicle. The door lifts and I see a box held in two hands, a lidded file box like we use in the office. Then a muscled torso and the tanned face of Tony Salazar. He glances over, casually surveying the scene, then sees us and stops in his tracks. The box hits the ground.
“It’s him,” I say.
As soon as the words are out, Cropper makes his move. His hand flashes to his side arm, the gun clearing leather, the muzzle coming up. Cavallo’s nearest, so he points her way.
Training takes over, years of muscle memory. I draw in a smooth, single motion, not waiting for the sights to come online. Instead, I let the first round go at his belt line and the second, aided by recoil, hits just below the sternum. The third is in the upper chest, and then the empty brass lands at my feet and Cropper’s staggering backward, his Glock in midair.
Next to me, Cavallo stands flatfooted with her hand still on her holstered gun, shoulders hunched by the loud reports.
“Get back to the car!” I yell.
She draws and turns toward the fallen security guard, kicking his gun clear. But Cropper’s not a threat anymore. I grab her sleeve with my free hand, yanking her back, just as the first muzzle flash erupts from the warehouse. The shot whistles through the air at head level, a near miss. After a pause, Salazar keeps shooting, and I fire back while beating the retreat, hoping to throw off his aim.
A gouge opens up in the hood of the car as I’m pushing Cavallo down behind the tire. I hit the pavement in a slide, skinning my elbows and knees. My pistol’s slide is locked back, meaning I’ve burned through thirteen rounds already. Three in Cropper and ten downrange at Salazar. As I reload, Cavallo returns fire. I’d rather she stayed behind cover. I grab her arm again and pull her back.
“Don’t give him a target.”
She shrugs free. “If somebody shoots at me, I’m shooting back.”
“You won’t hit anything at this range,” I say, but she’s not listening. As she fires I try to pinpoint Salazar’s position. He’s tucked alongside the truck bed, using the vehicle for cover. All I can see is the muzzle flash from around the enclosure.
It’s hard to think clearly when you’re taking fire. Either you go to ground or you keep pulling the trigger. It says something about Cavallo that she chooses the latter, but that kind of bravery won’t turn her side arm into a rifle. I open the passenger door and crawl over the seats, fumbling for the button that pops the trunk. When I hear the dull thunk, I slide out, grabbing the keys from Cavallo and moving around back. Inside a locked box in the truck, there’s a shotgun and an ar-15. With the latter, I can reach out and touch him, something I’ve been itching to do.
“March!” she yells, her voice shrill. “He’s starting the truck.”
I raise myself into a crouching position in time to see the reverse lights illuminate. It took him a while, but he’s done the arithmetic. All we have to do is keep him pinned. Backup is on the way. But he has to fight his way out, which means the sooner he moves the better.
“Keep shooting!” I say, grabbing for the rifle. I fumble with the charging handle, chambering a round of 5.56 nato. I’ve manipulated the controls a thousand times on the range, but now it’s like my fingers are disarticulated, one clumsy mass of flesh.
I hear the squeal of tires, smell the rubber burning, and when I look up again the Ford is out in the sunlight. Salazar accelerates backward, cuts the wheel, then rocks to a stop. I lift the rifle, hunting for his silhouette with the iron sights. The truck accelerates, picking up speed, heading straight for us. He would have been better off going the other way.
The front post lines up over his head. I take a deep breath and squeeze off a round. The windshield shatters into a spider web of glass, but the truck bears down on us.
“Move, move, move!”
I jump clear just as the Ford hits, smashing the front of the car, dragging its crumpled shell into the street before slinging it aside. My sights come up again, but before I can fire, the truck hauls across the road, rumbling over the curb, heading straight into the curtain of trees separating us from the houses on the other side. It crunches into a thick oak, sending up a cloud of smoke and steam.
Cavallo limps up beside me, clutching her elbow.
“Are you okay?”
She nods quietly, advancing across the street. I follow, ready to fire. We reach the far curb just as the backup units roll up.
“Stop.” I put a hand on her arm. “Let them take it from here.”
I toss the AR-15 to the ground and pull my badge out, just so we’re clear on who’s who. Cavallo holsters her Beretta and sits down on the curb, burying her head in her hands. The uniforms rush up to us, then creep steadily across the grass toward Salazar’s mushroomed truck, weapons drawn. They haul him out of the cab. I hear him screaming as they push him to the ground, twisting his wrists back for cuffing. I slump down beside Cavallo and try to catch my breath.
I tell the story a dozen times, first to strangers and then to friends. Amazingly, when they haul Salazar to the road on a backboard, he’s still breathing in spite of the hole in his upper chest. Wendell Cropper isn’t so fortunate. His body, covered by a tarp, lies where he fell. Numbered markers sit next to my shell casings and his unfired Glock. Inside the box Salazar dropped, Lieutenant Bascombe, one of the first detectives on the scene, discovers the cocaine and the printed photos described by Balinski. The bed of Salazar’s Ford is full of more boxes, some stacked to the brim with coke, some with dog-eared bundles of cash.