promised her. “Hang in there for me. Just one more minute.”
Quickly, I ran Vincent’s name through my system and came up with a second number, a cell phone registered to his name. Keeping my fingers crossed, I picked up my prepaid cell and dialed those numbers. Not a move from the training handbook. One of those things that, in this job, you just knew when to do.
For a surreal moment, I got to hear ringing in stereo. My mobile ringing in my ear. Vincent’s cell phone ringing in the bedroom. One, two, three times.
I was clutching my cell too tight.
Then my radio crackling to life: “Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one-”
“Shut up!” I hissed, just as Dawn’s husband connected with my mobile.
“What?” he said, one word, loaded with menace and threat and the icy cold kind of rage that kept his wife sobbing silently in their bedroom closet.
“Dude,” I shot back. “Want your fucking pizza? ’Cause I’m not standing out here any longer. Been ringing your fuckin’ doorbell for five minutes now. We’re charging your credit card whether you take it or not, so get your fuckin’ pie, or I’m eatin’ it myself!”
I jabbed off my phone, then switched to my headset.
“Ass wipe,” I heard Dawn’s husband mutter, outside the closet door. Then, finally, sounds of movement. A distant door being yanked opened, pounding footsteps.
Belatedly, I grabbed the radio.
“Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six. You are pizza delivery. I repeat. You are pizza delivery. Male subject is most likely armed and coming to you in five four three two-”
“Fuck!” a male voice exploded through the radio.
“Police!” Officer Mackereth shouted. “Hands where I can see them, hands where I can see them!”
Sounds of a scuffle, more banging, another shout.
I stood up, couldn’t help myself. Grabbed my headset, squeezed my eyes shut in the middle of my darkened call center as if that would help my officer, somehow give him the advantage. Tulip started to whine. I bit down on my lower lip.
Then: “Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one.” Officer Mackereth, sounding out of breath. “Male subject subdued. Male subject disarmed.” Then, in a break from script. “He was carrying a Glock nine. How the hell did you know that? Holy shit, Charlie. Holy shit.”
I closed my eyes. That’s what I’d been picturing, what I’d just known. That Dawn’s husband was standing there, on the other side of the closet door, waiting for his wife with a loaded gun. And the moment a third party arrived, sirens at the scene, a uniformed officer, ringing the doorbell…
That’s what he’d been waiting for, good old Vincent. The final provocation to justify pulling the trigger.
Officer Mackereth came in over the radio. He’d pulled it together now, returning to script. I did my best to follow suit. “Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one, is it safe to enter the home?”
I got back on my headphones. “Dawn, it’s Charlie. A uniformed officer is at your front door. He has your husband detained and disarmed. You can come out now, Dawn.”
Then, for the first time since the call began, the sound of her voice. “Is he…is he okay?”
“The police officer or your husband?” Though sadly, I already knew the answer to that.
“My husband,” she said shakily.
“You know, Dawn, why don’t you go downstairs and see for yourself.”
“Okay. Okay. I think I can do that. Charlie…”
I waited. But she didn’t say thank you. Few of them ever did.
Dawn hung up the phone. She went to check on her drunken husband, who five minutes earlier had been prepared to kill her.
And I resumed my seat, my hand now on Tulip’s head, stroking her silky ears.
“Glad to have you here, girl,” I whispered. “Glad to have you here.”
She placed her graying muzzle on my lap, and I kept petting her head, until eventually my hands stopped shaking and both of us sat silently in the dark.
YOU’D THINK THAT WOULD BE ENOUGH for one night, but it wasn’t. Two thirty-three A.M., the other relevant call came in. I saw the info on the ANI ALI screen and was immediately agitated. Then, I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath, and answered.
“Hey,” I said, slightly surprised to be receiving the call through official channels and not on my prepaid cell.
Silence at first, for so long, I thought maybe the caller couldn’t answer. But then, finally, a voice. Small, quivering, scared. The girl then, not the boy. Too young to remember my cell number, so reverting back to the number of first contact: 911.
She was crying and at this stage of the game, I didn’t need her to speak to know why. Dispatch officers…we are more than backup for our men and women in uniform. We are Ma Bell’s version of social services, audio first responders to battered wives, overwhelmed new parents, drunken teens, and terrified children. We hear it all.
Then we transfer the call and walk away. Not our problem. We’re simply the messengers that yeah, life really sucks out there.
Now, here’s a question for you: If you only had four days left to live, what would you do?
Remain on the sidelines? Or get in the game?
And if, say, you’d spent the past year learning how to run, fight, shoot, how to stop being and start doing, would that change the answer? And if, say, you had insider’s knowledge of the kind of crimes the system can’t handle, where the perpetrator wins and the victim loses, would that change the answer?
I’d spent months contemplating this question. Then I’d arrived at a decision.
It helped me now, as I reached out and tapped my keyboard. As I deliberately and consciously broke the law, disconnecting my caller from the recorded dispatch system and picking her up on my prepaid Wal-Mart phone instead.
“Hey,” I said again. “It’s okay. It’s me, Charlie. I’m going to help. One more day, sweetheart, and you will never be hurt again.”
Chapter 6
“BAD NEWS,” D.D. informed Alex over dinner. “In the war over sanity in the city, the lunatics are winning.”
She’d done the honors of picking up Jack from day care at five forty-five. By six thirty Alex had made it home, where, being an enthusiastic cook, he’d put the finishing touches on a Crock-Pot version of chicken cacciatore he’d started that morning.
Now they were seated across from each other at the kitchen table. Alex had a glass of red wine; she had a glass of water. Alex had two hands for eating and drinking. She had one hand cradling Jack against her shoulder, the other wielding a fork.
Jack was currently asleep, half of his chubby face smashed into the curve of her neck, where he was making the most ridiculously adorable snoring sounds. This was probably as close to domestic bliss as she was ever gonna get, D.D. figured. Her baby snuggled against her chest, while she and Alex enjoyed a leisurely Italian dinner and talked shop.
“First I was wrapping up a shooting that may or may not be part of a broader vigilante crime spree,” she was telling Alex now. “Then I end up chasing down a suspicious woman, who claims she wants me to investigate her own murder, four days from today.”
Alex paused with a forkful of chicken in a midair. “She’s planning ahead? I don’t remember ever seeing a spot for appointing your own homicide detective on the estate planning forms.”
“Oh, they’re there. The beautiful young trophy wives just white ’em out before having their husbands sign on the bottom line.”
He thought about it. “Makes sense.” He resumed eating, then paused again. “Seriously, this woman is planning on being murdered?”
