“Stef? It’s all right.” She squeezed his hand again. “I’m here. It’s Katie.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I’m here.”
Chisolm drove his knee downward toward the nape of the suspect’s neck. He was rewarded with a sickening snap. The man went motionless.
Chisolm grabbed a handful of hair and rotated the man’s neck. The floppy, circular motion told him all he needed to know. He took a deep breath and yelled, “Police! Don’t move! Don’t resist!”
Forcing the suspect’s limp hands behind his back, Chisolm keyed his mike.
“Adam-112, I’ve got a suspect at the south edge of the field-” he let the mike button up and counted two seconds. “He’s resisting.” He let the button up again and cuffed the dead suspect with his second pair of cuffs.
His report would read that the suspect had resisted arrest as he attempted prone-cuffing. Everyone in the department knew that prone-cuffing was the proper procedure to use with a dangerous felon. Sometimes the felon was injured.
He keyed the mike, forcing himself to breathe heavily as he spoke. “Adam-112, one in custody. I’ll need medics here, too. Injured suspect.”
Radio copied his transmission. Chisolm looked down at the motionless suspect.
Sometimes the felon even died.
Chisolm thought about Bobby Ramirez and he thought about Karl Winter and he resisted the urge to kick the unmoving robber until there was nothing recognizable left.
Kopriva slowly blinked. He tried to say her name but could only mouth it.
“I’m here, Stef,” she told him over and over. “I’m here.”
The sound of her voice gave him strength, and he held her hand tightly. Medics arrived and worked on him at a frenetic pace, tearing and cutting clothing, bandaging, applying pressure. Kopriva would not let go of her hand, and she seemed to be doing her best to stay out of the medic’s way as she held his grip.
A second ambulance arrived and began to work on Morris. He heard medics ask her to unlock the handcuffs. She handed them her cuff key, refusing to leave Kopriva’s side. He stared at her as they slid him onto a backboard, ignoring everything around him. She walked with him to the ambulance and got inside with them. His eyes never left hers, oblivious to the work the medics were doing. He didn’t feel the I.V. go in, didn’t see anything they did to him.
The ambulance doors slammed shut and he heard two hard taps on the back door. The ambulance lurched forward. The medics did not pause in their efforts.
He continued to stare at her until everything melted into a gray mist and his eyes closed.
TWELVE
Friday, September 2nd
Day Shift
0603 hours
The police officer sat in his living room, staring at the television but not seeing it. The service pistol in his right hand felt heavy, but his grip on it was firm.
Several art books adorned his coffee table. He wondered fleetingly if any of his co-workers or family knew about his knowledge when it came to the subject of art. Probably not. Everyone thought they knew exactly who and what he was, when in reality they had no idea at all.
Just as she had no idea.
He found it oddly humorous that he sat alone in his living room holding a gun, and it was a woman who had eventually put him here.
“Who the fuck cares?” he grumbled, staring at the white ceiling above him. He thought of Da Vinci, of Giotto, of Botticelli. He thought of Michelangelo. He wondered how they would have felt about modern art.
Well, he would create a masterpiece for them to ponder.
He put the gun under his chin, closed his eyes and painted the ceiling red.
1257 hours
Lt. Robert Saylor rubbed his eyes, trying to remember the last time he’d slept. Well, after he prepared the press release, he could go home and get a few hours of sleep before he had to come back for the night shift.
What a night. At least Kopriva would make it. The doctors said that Chisolm’s light tourniquet probably kept him from bleeding out.
Chisolm. He saved Kopriva and managed to catch Scarface, now identified as James R. Mace. Kopriva’s shots hit him twice in the belly, but Mace still crawled away. According to Chisolm’s report, Mace had struggled when Chisolm tried to cuff him. He told Saylor with a straight face that he’d been unaware that the man’s neck was broken until medics had told him.
Saylor decided that Chisolm was telling the truth. Even if he wasn’t.
Matt Westboard caught the accomplice only a block and a half from where Chisolm found Scarface. He took her straight to Major Crimes, where she spilled everything. Westboard had confirmed hearing Chisolm’s commands and the struggle with Mace, but he hadn’t actually seen anything because he’d been covering the accomplice.
Units were scouring the city for T-Dog, Morris’ accomplice, and an arrest warrant had been issued based on Kopriva’s radio traffic. Detective Browning showed the injured officer a photo line-up as soon as the kid woke up. Kopriva identified Trellis, positively.
Later, Saylor informed Kopriva that Morris remained on the operating table and that he may or may not make it. Either way, he would be a cripple. Kopriva hadn’t even tried to suppress a smile before he’d gone back to sleep and the doctor ushered Saylor out of the hospital room.
The lieutenant felt bad for Kopriva. Before he even had a chance to recover from his wounds, the newspaper would question his actions in scathing editorials. Worse yet, Internal Affairs had to begin their mandatory investigation. And the questions they asked were never pleasant.
Saylor wrote his press release carefully, only giving away what information he knew he had to release to satisfy the media.
Goddamn piranhas, he groused.
He’d almost finished when the phone rang.
1428 hours
Anthony Giovanni and Mark Ridgeway stood at the door of Sergeant David Poole’s residence. Technically, because it was a crime scene, one of them should have been in the rear, guarding the back door, but Ridgeway locked the back door from the inside and came around front. Neither man wanted to be left alone while the County detectives investigated the death of a City officer.
Lieutenant Hart had left moments earlier and both men were appalled at his lack of emotion. He’d behaved the same way as on any dozen other suicide scenes. Officious and overbearing, he talked to Gio and Ridgeway as if they were rookies who didn’t know how to secure a crime scene. If he’d known that no one was guarding the back door now, it would’ve tipped him right over the edge.
They were glad for his presence, however, when the media arrived in force. He quickly extended the crime scene out to the middle of the residential street. This allowed only one lane of traffic, which the media vehicles could not block. With all the County cars parked on Poole’s side of the road, the closest media vehicle set up shop almost a block away.
They were even happier for Hart’s presence when Sherrie, Poole’s ex-wife, arrived and tried to enter the house. Hart escorted her away from the scene. She’d been distraught, which was understandable, but it had surprised both of them. Everyone knew she’d divorced Sergeant Poole for another man.
Neither Gio nor Ridgeway said anything, but both knew what the other was thinking. Suicide. The policeman’s disease. Both suspected the other had probably sat in his own living room and stared at the black metal sitting on the table in front of him. Sat and stared and thought. Thought of the woman he had lost. How much of himself he had lost. In her and in the job.
Both wondered if the other had tasted the cool metal that smelled of gunpowder and lubricant. Had his finger slipped into the trigger guard? Had it touched the trigger? Had he shut his eyes, silent tears streaming down his face and wondered what waited on the other side? Was it courage or cowardice that made him release the trigger and set the gun back down with a shaking hand?