‘Looking for this?’
Light poured down from the ceiling. Darnell squinted to adjust his sight. Before him was his nemesis. He was a white skinhead with large tattooed arms, exposed through a tank top which barely covered his torso. He stood next to the light switch, his hand still over it. In his other hand was a gun.
‘Chuck Cunningham.’
‘We meet at last, Detective Jackson! It’s been short but sweet.’
Cunningham pulled the trigger and the bullet blasted into Darnell’s stomach. He curled over and lay at the bottom of the stairs as blood gushed from the wound. The fleeting fugitive jumped over Darnell’s body and ran out of a fire escape.
Darnell survived that day despite his intestines pouring out onto Cunningham’s cold stone floor. Since then he’d had a colostomy bag attached to his belly and his nerves were severely shaken. He returned to work much sooner than advised but he needed to take his mind off the trauma of that day and the guilt that he carried for leading his nephew to his death. If he could ever forgive himself, his sister certainly wouldn’t. She hadn’t spoken to him since.
Since that day his work had suffered. He over-thought every decision and his nerves got the better of him, which led to clumsy mistakes. Now, as he stood before this two-storey brick fortress in Champaign’s suburbia, he once again worried over his decision to burst into the house.
‘We’re waiting, Detective Jackson.’ his radio called.
He took a deep breath and looked over the array of shrubbery, beautifully presented outside of the house, which he’d been informed was Chuck Cunningham’s latest address. He was surprised by how green-fingered he’d become, but drug lords would do anything for their reputation. This house looked no different from the other suburban retreats which neighboured the detective’s own home.
‘Go for it.’
The officers broke down the door and stormed the house. What was left of his digestive system gurgled. He waited patiently from his car for feedback on the raid. Within minutes, an officer returned with a woman in tow, wrapped in a towel. She was no bigger than five feet, a frail skinny little thing, and whatever colour she’d had in her face had been drained as the officer’s gun pressed into her back.
‘Who is this?’ Darnell quizzed. He looked to his notes; he hadn’t been briefed about any other residents living with Cunningham. She looked too old to be his girlfriend, nearly twice his age. Was she perhaps his mother or his aunt?
‘We found her in the shower, sir.’
‘May I have your name please, ma’am?’ Jackson probed the trembling lady.
‘I’m Rebecca Fortune. What have I done?’ she replied with a quiver in her voice. Her chest convulsed and she shivered within the cold November breeze. The Land of Lincoln had beautiful summers but bitter winters, and the air was beginning to turn; they could already smell the arrival of the imminent snow.
‘Do you live at this address?’
‘Yes,’ she said with a whimper in her voice. ‘I’ve lived here for twelve years. What is going on? What have I done?’
‘Do you know a Chuck Cunningham?’
The lady nodded her head slowly, trying not to alarm the armed officer to her right.
‘Yeah, he lives next door.’
Darnell lowed his head and waved his arm to the officer, encouraging him to lower his weapon. He held his head in his hands as he absorbed yet another mistake before turning to his team.
‘You heard the woman. He’s next door. Go, go, go!’
The officers left the half-naked woman in Darnell’s company, who took off his jacket, wrapped it around her and escorted her into her home, profusely apologising for the mistake. He filled the coffee machine with beans, while she ran upstairs to get dressed. Within minutes an officer returned to the house.
‘He’s gone, sir,’ the police officer confirmed. ‘He must have heard us and escaped out of the back.’
‘Shit! Boy, am I in trouble.’
*
An hour later Darnell returned to the station, where he was called in for a meeting with his manager. Commander Larry Hill had a face of thunder as his subordinate entered his office. Hill was a big man with a wide bald head, drooping red jowls and piercing grey eyes, which Darnell swore could see through people. It was hard to believe that his superior once walked the Springfield streets chasing criminals, as now all he ran for was his take-out delivery, but that’s a fate which befell all officers as soon as they entered office jobs.
Darnell had faced some of the most dangerous criminals in the world, but no one scared him as much as his boss. His booming voice carried and everyone knew about it if you were in trouble; they could hear him shouting on the other side of the precinct. They used to say you could hear Commander Hill before you saw him and he was true to form as Detective Jackson entered his office.
‘So I hear you’ve let the team down once again, Jackson. Cunningham is nowhere to be seen and we’ve upset some fifty-year-old housewife on Prospect Street. I sincerely hope this doesn’t end up in the papers for your sake, Jackson.’
Darnell responded with a silent nod.
‘What the hell happened down there?’
‘I was given some bad intelligence, sir. My notes clearly say its number forty-five, not forty-seven.’
‘The only bad intelligence round here is yours, Jackson.’
‘What happens now?’ Darnell asked, squinting as he considered his bleak future.
‘I’m taking you off local projects for now. You can say goodbye to catching Chuck Cunningham. That dream is over.’ Darnell sighed and lowered his head. ‘I wouldn’t be too disappointed, however, I’ve put you on a national assignment.’
‘A national assignment. With
