Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard more scraping on the roof above her apartment. And then a cup fell from the sink in her kitchen and broke on the floor. And then all the dishes from the drainboard crashed to the floor, and her first thought was, Earthquake! Then she heard footsteps coming toward her bedroom.
The code 3 call came after the three warning beeps over the police radio. Then the RTO at Communications Division said, “All units in the vicinity and Six-A-Forty-nine, a woman screaming.”
When they heard the address of the call that was given to a Watch 3 unit, Viv Daley said, “That’s the Kroll address!”
Six-X-Seventy-six was very close to the location and jumped the call, arriving in less than three minutes. Georgie was out before Viv even brought the Crown Vic to a stop, and they both ran to the front door, standing in a wash of illumination from the security lights overhead.
The front entrance was well secured by a set of heavy wooden doors that opened out, and there was a small panel of double-glazed window in each door. The lobby inside was lit but there was no sign of the watchman that they were told would be there. They could see a door inside the lobby with a sign that said “Manager,” but it was closed.
And then they saw Cindy Kroll. She was staggering down the staircase toward the lobby, wearing only the T-shirt and cotton underwear. The T-shirt was blood-drenched and ripped open, and her chest bones glistened in the light. She reached the lobby floor, lurched from side to side, and dropped to her knees. A man wearing a black hoodie sweatshirt and black jeans ran down the stairs, a knife raised high over his head, yelling something unintelligible at the fallen woman as he tried to stab her again.
He may never have seen the orange fireballs coming at him or heard the explosions, but Viv Daley and Georgie Adams fired a total of thirteen rounds from their.40 caliber Glocks through the glass panels in the doors. Two of Georgie’s rounds hit Louis Dryden, one in the hip and one under the left eye. Three of Viv’s rounds got him in the shoulder and chest.
Lights went on all over the apartment building and in the building next door, as well as in a private residence across the street.
Viv Daley yelled through the broken glass, “Open this door! Somebody come open this door!”
“Police!” Georgie Adams yelled, kicking the double doors twice. Open it!”
Then through the broken window panels they saw an elderly man emerge in terror from the manager’s office. He stepped over the body of Cindy Kroll and yelled to the police, “Don’t shoot! I’m the watchman!”
He opened the door and began babbling. When he became intelligible, he said, “I heard her scream once and I called you right away! But you got here so fast, somebody on the third floor must’ve called first! And a few minutes later I heard her screaming again but this time it sounded like she was coming down the stairs and a man was also screaming curses and he was coming down and I got scared and locked my door!”
Georgie Adams shined his streamlight onto Louis Dryden’s face and saw the entry wound clearly. He holstered his pistol and grabbed his rover, calling for a rescue ambulance for Cindy Kroll. He also reported the officer-involved shooting that would bring dozens of people to the apartment building before the night ended.
Viv Daley turned Cindy Kroll onto her back in case CPR was possible. But the young woman’s chest was slashed wide open, exposing her breastbone. When Viv saw that Cindy Kroll’s eyes were open and her mouth was twisted into a rictus of violent death, she didn’t bother to feel for a pulse.
Viv looked at her partner, who averted his eyes from hers, and he said to her, “You better check on the babies. I’ll secure the scene here.”
Viv’s heart was hammering when she got to the landing of the third floor. She felt dry-mouthed and light-headed, and she could hardly believe that she had just fired her weapon outside the police pistol range. Though it was her first time, it had happened so fast and there had been such an adrenaline surge that she hadn’t had time to feel much fright. But she was feeling it now.
She held up her hand, and in the light from the third-floor hallway the hand looked palsied. She had a streamlight in her other hand, and when she got to the door, she found it wide open. There was no sound from within and she was suddenly more afraid than she’d ever been in her life.
Viv put her hand on her pistol grip, but it wasn’t for personal safety. The hand was acting reflexively, doing what a cop’s hand does in moments of fear. Any personal threat to her was past, yet she was weak and feeling nausea from the overwhelming fright sweeping over her, from dread of what she might find in there.
Viv Daley crept into the apartment. She stepped gingerly into the cluttered living room and was so instantly relieved that her legs almost buckled. The thirteen-month-old was safe in her playpen, her face tear-streaked but she wasn’t crying now. She wore a white jersey with a pink duck on the front, and a diaper, and she was sitting and staring at a brown teddy bear on the floor of the playpen as though in a daze.
“Hello, sweetie,” Viv said to the little girl, who turned and looked at her in confusion.
Then Viv rushed hopefully into the bedroom and found the baby boy. He was wearing only a diaper and was dangling from the upper rail of the crib from a cord to a cell phone charger that had been tied around his neck. His face was purple and his eyes were shut tight.
“No!” Viv shouted, not even aware that she’d spoken.
She jerked the cord from the crib and her fingers slipped twice before she untied it from where it was digging into the soft flesh of the infant’s neck, and she said, “I knew it! I knew it!”
And then she thought, This baby’s dead. What am I doing? This is a crime scene and this baby’s dead!
Still, she lifted the infant, thinking, He’s so light. He’s so small. She put the baby into the crib, and for no reason she could later fathom, she covered him to his wounded neck with his cotton blanket.
Viv stared at the dead baby and thought, All evening I imagined this. I knew Dryden could get in from the roof. I knew it. Why didn’t I act on it? Why didn’t I push the boss for a stakeout? What kind of cop am I?
The baby girl in the next room started crying then and was standing, holding on to the playpen rail. Viv went to her and picked her up, and she looked at Viv in shock and confusion and said, “Mommy.”
The toddler wrapped her arms around Viv’s neck, and Viv felt the silky blond hair against her cheek, and the child said it again: “Mommy.”
Viv said, “Hush, baby, hush.” And she began rocking her back and forth and didn’t hear Sergeant Murillo, who appeared behind her along with Snuffy Salcedo and Hollywood Nate, who remained in the hallway, looking in through the open door.
Viv was a lot calmer now and she said in a monotone to her sergeant, “In there. I found the baby hanging by the neck from the crib rail. I hoped he might still be alive so I took him down. But of course he wasn’t. I put him to bed.”
Sergeant Murillo looked at her and entered the bedroom for only a moment before he returned.
He said quietly to Viv, “Don’t touch anything else. A homicide team and SID will be here very soon to process the scene, and FID’s also on the way. They’ll separate you and Adams and it’ll be a very long night of questions, from FID especially, but this is obviously an in-policy shooting, so I don’t want you to stress over it. Just tell them exactly how it went down.”
“I knew this might happen,” Viv said quietly to Sergeant Murillo. “It’s almost like I could see him coming in from the roof.”