Officer Down (A Digital Short Story) Read online

An empty fast food cup popped under the cruiser’s tires as Dave rolled toward the combination gas station/convenience store. He was running silent. Lights off, no siren. No cars sat in the parking slots facing the store, none at the pumps. Not surprising, considering the time of night.

  He angled his approach so he could see through the 7-Eleven’s solicitation-filled windows. The circus was in town. Powerball was up to 12 million dollars. Milk was on sale for $1.79.

  A clerk stood behind the counter, his hands high in the air. He had shaggy brown hair and pimply skin, and his face shined oily and pale with fear.

  On the customer side of the counter stood a nervous, stick figure of a guy. Wearing a dark hoodie and stained blue jeans, he had on dark sunglasses and waved a small, dark revolver, first at the clerk, then at Kip Lawson facing him down at the front doors.

  The perp shouted. For Dave, it was like being at a drive-in, though the movie was silent.

  Kip stood with his gun in a two-handed stance, pointed at the perp. He yelled an order. Dave could lip-read the words—commands they were taught at the academy for situations like this.

  The clerk’s head swiveled back and forth, as if he were watching a tennis match.

  In the car, Dave sat and ran the back of his hand nervously across his wet mouth. Waiting to act.

  Kip took a step closer to the perp.

  The perp backed up, shouting, increasingly agitated. Dave read his lips. It wasn’t hard: GET BACK! STAY BACK!

  The small Saturday night special swung as if on a swivel between the clerk and Kip.

  BAM! BAM!

  The gun went off. Two shots—so loud Dave heard it through the cruiser’s closed windows. He’d expected it. Still, he jumped.

  Kip’s body convulsed with each shot, absorbing the bullets’ kinetic impact. He fell back, his arms pin-wheeling, and hit the glass door behind him. The top panel shattered in an explosion of gummy white safety glass.

  The door crashed open. Kip’s body hung up on the aluminum push handle. A minute passed, then gravity forced him to the ground. Kip sat, as if to rest, a stunned look on his face. Another minute and he keeled to one side, his body propping the door open about a foot.

  After the sharp crack of gunfire, the explosion of glass, the thump of Kip hitting the ground, an eerie silence followed. Dave listened, afraid to move, afraid to disturb the calm after the sudden violence, the split-second ending of a young man’s life.

  But he did.

  Then he forced the cruiser door open, shouting and remembering to key the mike. “Officer down! Unit four officer is down! Send backup! The 7-Eleven on Freeport Road! Hurry!”

  Dave ran across the oil-stained concrete, his shoes slapping the pavement, his pulse pounding in his ears. Clearing leather, his Glock was heavy in his hand. At the glass doors, he stepped over Kip’s body, quickly and smoothly.

  “Police! Freeze!”

  The perp, his eyes concealed behind sunglasses, swung his attention, and his gun, at Dave. Scraggily hairs sprouted along hallow cheeks, too thin to ever grow into a real beard no matter how hard he might try. His teeth were stained and his lips chapped.

  “Drop the gun!”

  “Wha—” the gunman stammered. “But…”

  “I said drop it!”

  A second passed, then the gun in Dave’s hand went off. That’s how he thought of it. He didn’t fire. It just went off. Twice. The perp fell back, crashing into a rack of packaged pastries. Then he tumbled to the floor in an avalanche of cellophane-wrapped cakes and candy and bags of chips. The Saturday Night Special bounced out of his hand and skidded across the tile floor.

  “Sorry, Stevie,” Dave whispered.

  One week prior

  After catching Karin and Kip during their tryst, Dave Powell sat bleakly nursing a beer at the Canyon surrounded by a few other degenerates—some of whom he knew. They lined the bar, their hungry eyes staring at the naked girls on stage: a skanky redhead and a dumpy little Hispanic tart. Neither one could dance a lick, but that was hardly the point.

  A hand landed suddenly on Dave’s shoulder. He twisted as a skinny guy wearing a soiled army field jacket threw a leg over the stool beside him and sat. The man, with hollow cheeks, scraggily facial hair and almost no teeth had the wretched look of a habitual meth addict. “Hey, long time, no see.”

  Dave knotted his eyebrows. Something seemed familiar about the guy, but Dave couldn’t place him. Maybe one of the regulars from one or another of the dives Dave haunted with great frequency these days.

  The guy ordered a beer and when it came he pointed to Dave. “It’s on him.”

  The barmaid snatched a wet twenty off the bar before Dave could protest.

  After a deep pull on his beer, the guy said, “You really don’t recognize me, do you?”

  Dave started to reply, shook his head.

  “Dave, it’s me. Steve Fletcher. Stevie.”

  “Stevie?” Dave sat back while it slowly came to him. But, still, he had trouble imagining that this wreck was Stevie Fletcher. The Steve Fletcher he knew had been the starting quarterback in high school a year ahead of Dave. They’d hung out a few times, got high together at a couple of parties.

  Stevie Fletcher had been like Gil. He’d had it all: good looks, good grades, all the best girls. And he came from an affluent family. Dave remembered that Stevie’s dad had owned a string of mom-and-pop hardware stores back in the day. Stores Stevie worked at on weekends and over the summers. Stores he was supposed to take over one day. He was set, Dave remembered. Had the world by the you-know-whats.

  Dave wanted to ask—

  And Stevie Fletcher anticipated the question. “What happened to me? Life happened, man.” He hoisted his beer mug. “To life. And she can bite me too.”

  Dave clinked beer mugs. “That bad, huh?”

  Stevie waved his hands over himself, as if to say: You tell me.

  In a nutshell, he said that he’d gotten his ass handed to him playing collage ball. “I sucked at that level and there went my dreams of a football career. Out the window. Then my parents went through a nasty divorce. Dad lost everything, all the stores, except the one over in Epping. Not too much later, Home Depot and Lowes did a number on him, he was forced to close it down. I ended up bouncing around for a while, but other than football, I had nothing and couldn’t do anything. Then I got this great idea. Why not join the Army?”

  Two stints in Iraq had finished the job of messing up Stevie’s life. He drained his beer, toasting Dave. “But, all’s not a total loss. I excel at my current vocation of homeless war vet.”

  Dave ordered the two of them more beers. And he told Stevie all about Karin’s affair. He hadn’t meant to, didn’t know why he did, but he did.

  “The thing of it is,” he said, wrapping up his alcohol-soaked tale of woe, “she’s still the best damn thing ever happened to me. Ever.”

  “She betrayed you, man.” Stevie slapped Dave’s shoulder and shook it, as if he was trying to shake some sense into him.

  Dave refused to see it that way. “No, you're not getting it. It’s not her. It’s him, that damn Kip Lawson. Kip, with his big muscles, and his twenty-five-year-old good looks, his youthful enthusiasm and his damn sports car. Kip’s got all the things I don’t have, all the things I’ve lost.”

  Stevie nodded like a bobble-head doll, nodded and agreed, with watery eyes. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s the rat-bastard cop’s fault. Usually is,” he added with a drunken grunt.

  “Yeah,” Dave said. And the idea struck him like a thunder clap. It was all Kip’s fault. If Kip Lawson were only out of the picture…

  The thought lingered for longer than it ever should have, then Dave smiled. “Hey, Stevie,” he said. “When was the last time you made two thousand dollars, cash?”

  “Two grand? All at once? How about never.” Stevie wiped his hand across his mouth, like a starving man who’d just been offered a T-bone steak.

  Dave told him what he had in mind. When he finished, he
asked Stevie if he was interested.

  Stevie mulled it over, washing the idea down with another beer. Finally, he said, “What the hell. Sure.”

  They shook on it, agreeing. One thousand up front, the rest when the deal was done.

  “Funny how life works.”

  “How so, Stevie?”

  Stevie tossed back the last of his beer. “If I hadn’t run into Gil last week—”

  “Gil? Gil Halley?”

  “Yeah, your cop friend.”

  Like Dave wasn’t a cop. Maybe after this he wasn’t, not anymore.

  “Yeah. Ran into him downtown. A chance encounter, you know? Anyway, we got to talking and he told me how you hang out here at the Canyon a lot. Said you’d be glad to see an old friend. And now look at us, doing business together. Lucky, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Dave said, wondering. “Lucky.”

  The Freeport Road 7-Eleven

  “Like whoa, dudes.” The clerk popped up from behind the counter, his eyes wide. “That was wicked intense.”

  Gil patted Dave’s shoulder. “You okay?”

  Dave stared at the dead gunman on the floor. He managed to nod. “Yeah.”

  Gil followed his gaze. “Any idea who he is?”

  The perp’s face was mostly covered by the hoodie. His sunglasses were knocked askew, but still concealed his eyes. Track marks could be seen up his arms and between his fingers. His cheeks were sunken, like a Halloween skull mask. He had a scraggily little beard.

  Dave frowned. “No. Just some junkie, I guess. Is Kip…”

  Gil knelt down and put his fingers to Kip’s neck. Siren sounds drifted in from the outside, an approaching ambulance and backup patrol cruisers. Nothing got them moving faster than an officer down call. Gil looked up from the body. He shook his head. Then crossed over to the perp, felt for a pulse. There wasn’t one.

  He pushed back the gunman’s hoodie, took off the shades. “Shit.”

  “What?” The word caught in Dave’s throat.

  “You sure you don’t know him?” Gil asked intently. His dark eyebrows came together, his forehead furrowed. Like, he knew.

  “I told you, no. Some stupid-ass junkie. How would I know who he is?”

  “You better look again, bud,” Gil insisted. When Dave wouldn’t push himself from the counter, Gil said, “Dave, its Steve Fletcher.”

  “Yo,” the clerk said from behind the counter. “Wait, dude. You said you didn’t know him. But I heard you. Just before you capped him, you said, Drop the gun. Then you said, Sorry, Stevie. WTF, man?”

  The cape on Logan Avenue

  A cold wind rustles the dry fall leaves, swirls them into a pile around the white signpost stabbed into the hard-packed front lawn of the small cape on Logan Avenue. The red FOR SALE sign is covered over with a blue and white SOLD sticker.

  Gil Halley parks his suburban and gets out. He looks at the house and wonders how he’ll tell her. He saunters up the brick walk and takes the front slate steps two at a time. He swings a shiny new house key around his finger. The key ring flashes in the light. The solitary key slaps into the palm of his hand.

  The porch light is on. He goes to stab the key in the front door lock, but the door swings open. Bright light spills out onto the porch, the interior ablaze with warm, inviting light.

  “Oh, baby. There you are. Thank God. I was so worried.”

  Karin Powell’s luscious, full-figure form fills the open doorway. Her soft blonde hair is pulled up and off her neck. She wears only a touch of make-up—the way he likes—and is dressed in a thick, white terrycloth bathrobe, and he hopes, nothing else.

  She leaps into Gil’s waiting arms, wrapping her full legs around him and smothers him with kisses. Her scent is intoxicating. “It’s over, Gil? Really over?”

  He nods. “Kip’s dead. Stevie’s dead. And I fed the investigators the whole story. Dave’s obsession over Kip, his thinking Kip and you were having an affair, his hiring Stevie to kill Kip. The whole thing. Dave’s been arrested. He’s charged with two counts of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He’s never getting out, honey,” he assures her.

  Everything had gone exactly as they’d planned.

  #

  If you enjoyed Officer Down,

  you won’t want to miss the first, full-length novel featuring

  bounty hunter, Grace deHaviland

  on sale now

  FATAL DESTINY

  David DeLee

  Read on for a preview…

  Chapter One

  God must hate me.

  Here it was, just the second week of October and a cold snap had moved into the area, plunging the temperatures to near freezing already. Unseasonably cold, the TV weather people said. A stalled Canadian cold front, they explained. Yeah, right. I knew what was really going on. It was God. I could hear him up in heaven, telling the angels with a laugh: Grace deHaviland’s doing surveillance. Let’s make it cold as a cadaver’s crotch down there.

  I cupped my hands and blew into them. Damn.

  Parked in the Grandview Heights section of Columbus, I’d been sitting for hours in my beat-up cargo van in the shadows of an overhanging elm tree down the road from the only working lamp post, my full attention on a dilapidated old colonial across the street. The house was one on a block of rundown homes earmarked for demolition, something the city never seemed to get around to. In the meantime, they became havens for drug dealers, users, crack whores and the homeless.

  This one had a large front porch. The paint on the wide steps was worn to the wood and the once-white railing had so many spindles missing it looked like a boxer’s punch-drunk grin. A rusted glider was set off to one end and an old, moldy couch sat under the large front window. The cushions on it were so worn out, they sank. Broken crack vials, fast food wrappers and a busted up tricycle littered the yard. An old box spring and rusted iron headboard leaned against the peeling siding. Junked.

  I covered the light of my cell phone and checked the time: 6:30 a.m.

  The darkness before the dawn.

  A lone figure rounded the corner, coming from Avondale Avenue, and walking in my direction. His hands shoved in his pockets, he had his hoodie pulled up over his shaved head to ward off the chilly, pre-dawn breeze. I checked him against the mug shot I had of Tyrell Parks. It was my guy.

  I opened the well-oiled van door without a sound. The dome light remained off because I’d removed the bulb months ago. The van’s decrepit appearance—I’d picked it up at auction about a year ago—its dings, dents and splotches of matte-black primer paint were deliberate, all carefully applied so no one looked twice at it. Yet mechanically, its care and maintenance was top shelf, as good as money could buy. The perfect decoy vehicle.

  Jogging across the street, I avoided the splash of piss-yellow streetlight, and carefully navigating my interception point, I jammed my hands into my jacket pockets too, returning the mug shot of Tyrell Parks to one pocket and wrapping my hand tightly the stun gun I carried in the other. My Colt .45 auto-loader sat snug and heavy in its holster, pressing into the small of my back. I didn’t have to check for my backup piece, either. The weight of the small .32 revolver strapped to my right ankle was hard to forget.

  I crossed in front of Parks, about an arm’s length away, blocking his path. “Tyrell Parks.”

  He snapped his head up. Dark, suspicious eyes stared at me. I grabbed for his arm but he bolted around me fast, dodging like a linebacker avoiding a tackle so that I ended up snatching air. He ran for the ramshackle old colonial.

  Shit.

  Up the worn steps two at a time and across the porch, he plunged through the front door, slamming it shut behind himself. Running close, two steps behind, I reached the decaying wood-and-glass door and paused, pressing my back against the clapboard frame. My heart pounded from the adrenaline surge, not the effort. I took a deep breath of cold, crisp air, drew my .45, spun and kicked in the old, weathered door.

  The latch splintered inward. The door banged agains
t the far wall with a sharp thwack and a rattle of glass. I rushed inside. Low. In the entryway, an absence of light greeted me save for the pale glow from the outside streetlamp and what little moonlight managed to leak in through the door and broken windows. Dust particles danced in the pale, ghostly hue.

  I faced a center staircase. Beside it, down the left side, ran a hallway. Open archways dotted the left wall. What had once been a living room lay to my right, and opposite that, a den. Wind whistled through windows where panes were broken or missing. The walls were graffiti tagged. Broken boards, cinderblocks and other building debris littered the floor and chunks of sheetrock and gravel crunched under my feet as I moved inside.

  A skinny Hispanic teen stood frozen in the den, watching me. Shirtless, he had his fly open. I’d caught him urinating in the corner. He stared at me with wide, fearful eyes as his breath puffed out quick plumes of cold air.

  I shoved Tyrell’s mug shot into his startled face. “Where is he?”

  He shook his head, muttering something I didn’t catch. I jammed the picture into the pocket of my leather coat and pressed the .45 to the kid’s forehead. His wide eyes grew wider. I wrinkled my nose. Ewww. He’d started peeing again.

  “Where?” I repeated. “In English.”

  His answer came out as one long, fast word. “UpstairsIdidn’tdonothingpleasedon’thurtme.”

  “Gracias.” I took the stairs two at a time.

  At the top of the stairs, an open bathroom faced me, reeking of feces and vomit and urine. I cleared a small room to the right with a quick glance and sweep of my gun.