Officer Down (A Digital Short Story) (2 page)

Gil Halley was everything Dave was not: smart, ambitious, eager, athletic. A go-getter.

Over the next fifteen years, Dave’s waist expanded three belt sizes; he developed high blood pressure, and had cholesterol and triglyceride levels off the chart. Then, of course, there was his growing fondness for anything with alcohol in it. His safety net over all those years was that civil service employees couldn’t get fired for anything less than gross misconduct, like if they killed someone. And as a cop, maybe not even then.

Gil on the other hand, had studied and passed the sergeant’s test the first time out, gained his stripes after only four years on the force, made detective two years after that and had more arrests then almost anyone else in department history. Now, he ran the detective squad and was fast-tracking his way to the coveted chief’s post.

The only good thing to ever happen to Dave Powell in the last fifteen years was Karin Stetler, fourteen years now as Karin Powell, and going strong. Or so he hoped.

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m paranoid,” Dave said, but not convinced. “Can you blame me?”

Gil signaled for another round. “Blame you? No. Karin’s a hell of a woman. Best thing ever happened to an asshole like you.”

They drank their beers and watched the dancers—a different one had come on stage. The new girl was African-American. She had a decent rack and a flat stomach that undulated in time with the music, if you could call it that.

Two weeks earlier

A few nights later, after his heart-to-heart with Gil, Dave Powell came through the garage door of his house. He’d worked a double-shift—midnight-to-eight and an eight-to-four—followed by a few more hours at the Canyon, downing some brews. He came home tired and hungry. On the refrigerator, while going for another beer, he found a note. Written in Karin’s sweeping, precise handwriting, it read;

Thirty minutes later, Dave drove past a small cape on Logan Avenue. The lights inside were on though Dave knew the owners had moved out six weeks before. Karin’s assistant, Janet, had told him she had it on Karin’s calendar to show that evening.

Dave pulled under an elm tree two houses down. Dry leaves crinkled beneath his feet as he walked toward the cape. At the little picket fence, he stopped to survey the modest quiet neighborhood. All was quiet. He wiped his sweaty palms on the thighs of his pants. His service auto, concealed under his jacket, felt heavy in its holster.

Karin’s car was parked out front. So was Kip’s.

What would he find them doing? Afraid, but unable to stop…he had to know.

Resolved, he brushed past a weeping willow, plunged into the deep shadows between the cape and the neighboring house and trotted along a twelve-foot-high privacy hedge. The neighbor’s house was dark. The owners were probably out for the evening—at dinner, or the movies, having fun, enjoying life. Not sneaking through someone else’s backyard.

Dave stopped where several trashcans were set out beside the back door porch. The house had a bow window overlooking the backyard. White sheers covered the glass panes. Dave crouched below the sill and tried to see in by the haze of light from the windows that cast out over the slate patio. Inside, he detected movement, shadows crossing the ambient glow of light behind the sheers.

The sliding back door was opened a crack. From inside, Dave heard familiar voices. Kip. And Karin. Exchanging laughs. Karin giggled.

Dave felt as if he was going to throw up. Angry, and sick to his stomach, he slipped over to the door, eased himself close to the jamb. Careful not to make a soundly, he looked inside. And saw.

In the kitchen, Karin stood on the far side of a granite-topped island. Bright florescent lights glowed from underneath pine-wood cabinets. A hand on his arm, Karin faced Kip. She leaned in, brushed a kiss across his cheek. She drew him into her arms, hugged him tightly.

Dave rolled back away from the door, trying to breathe. He swallowed hard. His mind raced as he tried to think, tried to decide just what to do. He found his hand on the butt of his gun. It had moved there as if on its own. He cleared leather, held the gun up in front of his face, the dark metal gleaming in the soft amber light from the house. He rubbed the pad of his index finger over the textured trigger and cupped his gun hand with his support hand.

Two pounds of pull was all it would take. Two pounds.

Do it!
His brain screamed.
Do it!

The Freeport Road 7-Eleven

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.

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.

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.

“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.