In the driveway stood a dark green Chevy Blazer that bore the license plate of the vehicle that had driven away from the Alaska Fitness Club.
The lights were on in the house as he approached, so he simply walked up to the door and knocked, expecting to find a couple of college students who had stolen the truck for a free joy ride. Inside, he could see the dancing lights of a television filtered through white window curtains. The sound of an audience laughing to a late-night comedy show floated through the window to his ears.
Beed again rapped his gloved knuckles on the door and waited for the answer. Footsteps approached and a moment later, the door opened. Just as the occupants of the house came into view, Beed was startled by the unexpected sound of a voice over his radio.
“Unit 739, dispatch.”
The man who stood inside the door raised an eyebrow and waved permission to Beed to take the call. He was a tall, dark-featured man with Eastern European features, in his late twenties or early thirties. His face carried an indifferent expression.
“739,” Beed replied into his handset.
“10-12, be advised of possible 10-99 Adem, 10-32. 10-69 en-route.”
As the coded message came across the radio, Beed instinctively pressed the talk button and said in a calm, almost robotic voice, “10-4, 10-37 on scene. 10-68.”
Another man, shorter with blond hair and lighter complexion, joined the first. The two stood in the doorway as they heard the encoded words of the dispatcher and politely waited for the officer to finish his reply to the voice on the other end.
Beed thought, Great timing folks. The armed and dangerous suspects are standing right in front me. Hopefully that backup will arrive faster than the warning message did.
He let go of the transmitter button on the microphone and turned back to the two men. His expression revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Not wanting to make a scene that might spook them, he decided to go ahead and ask a couple of basic questions while waiting for the promised backup.
“Good evening, gentlemen.” He put his body in what is called by law enforcement trainers as “the interview position”. Body squarely set, feet shoulder-width apart, both hands in the center of the front of the body, fingertips touching, but not clasped. This position enabled an officer to quickly react to any multitude of attacks, as the hands were at center mass and could be quickly deployed in any direction to deflect a punch, grab a suspect, or reach for the ten-millimeter Glock semi-automatic pistol that hung in the black leather holster on his hip.
“Sorry to disturb you so late, but it seems some folks witnessed two men getting out of a stolen pickup truck a little while ago, and then leaving in that Blazer parked in your driveway.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about, officer,” said the tall one. Beed noted that the man had a strong accent.
He continued, “We have been home all day doing homework. We are university students. And tonight we’ve been watching TV.”
The blond man spoke clear English, with no noticeable accent. “Besides, how could someone have identified a person they saw in the dark, especially in this cold weather? Whoever was out of doors would have had a parka on.”
The accented one spoke again. “Perhaps someone stole our Blazer. We wouldn’t have noticed it, since we’ve been inside all day.”
“Hmmm,” Beed said. “Maybe. At any rate, I need to see your student IDs and immigration cards, if you have them.”
“Officer, umm,” the tall one looked at his nametag. “Beed. Officer Beed, please step inside our house. It is too cold out here.”
“No, that’s all right. I’ll stand out here. I’ve only got a couple more questions, then I’ll be going.”
“Well,” said the one with no accent, “it is cold for us.”
He handed a coat to the tall one, and reached for his own. Then he said, “By the way, your dispatcher was correct in her ten codes. We are armed and dangerous.”
There was a flash of movement behind the tall, dark European. Before Beed could react, the Albanian’s hand came up holding a semi-automatic pistol, a long, thick, sound suppressor extended from the end of the barrel. The policeman heard the quiet puffs and saw the bright flash in the dim light of the small incandescent fixture that hung next to the door. His body convulsed hard as two bullets smashed into his chest, piercing his body armor at close range. The shot sent him sprawling backwards over the steps. Beed landed flat on his back in the snow at the base of the porch.
His protective vest had slowed and deflected the trajectory of the bullets sufficiently so as not to kill him right away. The blond man took a step to the edge of the landing and looked into the rolling eyes of the shocked young officer. He raised the pistol again and fired a quick shot into the center of Beed’s forehead. The back of Officer Jimmy Beed’s skull exploded against the frozen ground. A slimy splatter of brains and blood burst against the white background of snow.
“We’d better get out of here,” Nikola said, a grim expression on his dark features. “They were sending backup.”
The two men grabbed a pair of daypacks from just inside the door and ran to the Blazer, carefully avoiding the gore on the snow. Adem, the blond, took a cell phone from his jacket pocket and pressed a speed dial number. He spoke quickly as they drove several blocks deeper into the residential neighborhood.
He hung up as Nikola pulled the Blazer off the road onto a snowy path on a tree-covered vacant lot. Pot-smoking teenagers frequently used the lot to get high away
