Savage Rage (25 page)

“You sure?” Manny asked seriously. “Maybe we're looking for a guy matching your description.” The man's smile faltered. “Relax, bud. We aren't here for you.”

Jack gritted his teeth.
Fucking crackheads are everywhere. Probably coming from the apartment we're heading to or waiting to head up.

He and Manny headed for the elevator. Manny's enthusiasm ended at taking the stairs to the seventeenth floor. Had Manny suggested it, Jack would have smacked him; they'd had a pretty heavy leg workout before shift.

Only one of the two elevators was working. They waited patiently.

“You think tomorrow's going to work?” Manny asked as he tugged his new leather gloves on. The ones soaked in the woman's blood had gone straight into the garbage.

“Depends what you mean by ‘work.'” Jack flexed his fingers to smooth out a roll in the Kevlar lining of his gloves. “It'll get a reaction, that much I can tell you.”

Manny suddenly smiled. “Hey, maybe it'll give Greene a heart attack.”

“Our luck it'll give Johanson the heart attack and Greene'll do us all with manslaughter.”

“You're not telling the sergeants?”

“Nope. Where the fuck is the elevator? If the sergeants don't know, they can't get in trouble for it.” Jack thumbed the call button a few times. He knew it didn't do anything, but it felt better than doing nothing.

“You think Boris will do it? Here we go.” Manny stepped forward as the floor indicator hit Ground, but the car headed for the basement without stopping.

“We may end up taking the stairs after all.” Manny blanched at Jack's suggestion. “Boris better join in.”

“Would Paul really go to the staff about . . .” Manny quickly looked around. The paper reader was listening intently. “About that search thing?”

“Of course not. But Boris thinks he would because it's something Boris would do. Finally.”

A weary
ping
— more like a
pang
— announced the elevator's arrival and the doors wheezed open. An elderly lady stood huddled in the far corner, her small purse clutched protectively against her stomach. She relaxed her stance and the death grip on her purse when she saw she was going to be sharing the ride with two policemen. Jack and Manny nodded hello, then turned to face the doors for the long, slow trip to the seventeenth floor.

“Think we'll find anything?”

Jack shrugged. “It's a crack house. We could find nothing, or the fecal matter could hit the oscillating blades, as my training officer used to say.”

Manny cocked an eyebrow at Jack before understanding blossomed on his face. He smiled and tented his gloved fingers in front of his face. “Ehhh-xcellent,” he hissed.

Jack snorted. “That's got to be the worst Mr. Burns I've ever heard. But I'll tell you this, if we get a body, we're taking the stairs down.”

There was a horrified gasp behind them and Jack quickly turned to the elderly woman. “No, not that,” he reassured her. “I meant if we arrest somebody. Not a dead body.”

She edged past them when the doors opened on her floor, not looking completely at ease with Jack's explanation. Manny waved goodbye.

A man's hoarse yelling and a woman's harpy-like screeching greeted them as the doors sagged open on their floor.

“Please, not a domestic,” Jack groaned, but it sure as hell sounded like one.

Manny, ever the optimist, chimed in. “Maybe it won't be a domestic. Remember what we got last time for a call about a woman screaming?”

“What? Oh, right.” Visions of a self-mutilated woman flashed through his head. “Okay, I'll take a domestic.”

The apartment was at the end of the hall — naturally — and they were met halfway there by the complainant. His door was open and he was leaning against the frame watching the end of the hall. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips.

“Thought I heard the elevator.”

He appeared to be in his forties, but his raspy voice sounded twice that old. Jack figured the cigarette wouldn't be unlit for long.

“You heard the elevator over that?” Manny asked. The screeching could have drowned out a buzz saw.

“Oh, yeah. My vents rattle when the doors open.” He snapped open a beat-up Harley-Davidson lighter and touched the flame to the cigarette. He flicked the lighter closed with an unconscious snap of his wrist and blew a lungful of blue smoke over his shoulder into his apartment. “You guys made good time.”

“We were in the area.” Jack hooked a thumb down the hall. “This been going on for a while?”

“Nope,” Mr. Harley-Davidson said, spitting out a bit of tobacco. “The fight I called about ended a few minutes ago. Couple guys tore outta there like their asses were on fire. This one's new. Girl with a shitty green dye job went in not too long ago and started screaming like some wild she-bitch.”

“The two that ran out,” Jack wanted to know. “Were they running to get away from something or being chased out?”

Mr. H-D scrunched up his face in thought and the cigarette's tip bopped up, spewing a cloud of greasy smoke into his eyes. He didn't seem to notice. “Being chased, I'd say. Weren't carrying nothing either.”

“One of them a skinny white guy in a big black army jacket?” Jack was thinking of the crackhead in the lobby.

Mr. H-D thought for a moment. “Nope. Does it matter?”

“Just someone we passed on the way in.”

“Customers low on cash?” Manny suggested.

“Probably,” Mr. H-D agreed. “The guy in there don't seem too friendly.”

“But a lot of buyers?”

“Oh, yeah. Day and night. 'Round the clock. You guys be careful. And could you do me a favour? Don't be letting him know who called.”

“Anonymous call,” Jack assured him.

Manny added, “Happens all the time.”

“Then I'll bid you fellas good day.” Mr. H-D saluted, fingers to forehead and stepped into his apartment.

Manny checked the stairwell; then he and Jack took up positions on either side of the door. They could make out the words perfectly.

“I don't care who your man is, bitch,” a male voice roared. “No money, no rock. Now get the fuck outta my face 'fore I kill you.”

Who could ask for a better trafficking utterance? And a death threat. Well, a quasi-conditional threat but good enough.

Now, if only he's left his door unlocked.
Jack turned the knob and the door clicked open.
Sometimes the gods of policing smile on us.
Manny's thinking must have been along similar lines; his grin just about split his face in two.

Manny tapped his gun butt and looked the question at Jack. Jack nodded and rested his hand on his Glock but didn't draw the pistol. Luck had been with them so far, but there was no need to push it. Someone inside could hear the safety clasps popping open now that the door was ajar. Walking into a crack house blind was bad enough. Giving the occupants a heads-up was just plain stupid. And stupid cops ended up dead cops.

Of course, technically, they weren't allowed to draw their guns anyway. Under the Police Services Act, police officers couldn't even unholster their guns unless faced with serious bodily harm or death to themselves or someone else. Obviously, whoever had made the rules for policing had never been a cop, let alone gone through a door not knowing what was on the other side.

Manny flung the door open hard, slamming it against the wall in the narrow entryway. Jack was through the door and drawing his gun before anyone inside knew what was happening.
Anyone
turned out to be two people: the green-haired girl Mr. Harley-Davidson had seen and one very angry black guy.

They were in the living room and the woman was on her knees, but not by choice. The male had her right wrist in his hand and was wrenching it at an awkward angle. His free hand was cocked as if he was getting ready to slap her head from her shoulders. And judging from her twig-like arms, that was a real possibility. But what caught Jack's eye was the handgun tucked into the waistband of the man's jeans.

“Police! Don't move!” Jack's Glock was up and targeted on the man's chest. “Move and you die. Your choice. I've got him, Manny. Check the apartment.”

“I'm on it,” Manny called, moving into the apartment.

“Let her go and put your hands over your head. Do it now,” Jack ordered, never taking his eyes from the man.

With a contemptuous sneer, the man tossed her away as if she was a piece of trash. She scurried on her hands and knees as far as the room would let her and huddled against a wall. They stood, or cowered in her case, at the points of a triangle.

Jack thought they all looked like actors out of a bad remake of
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. If she's the Ugly, then that makes this guy the Bad. All we need now is a soundtrack.

And as in the movie, Bad's hand was ever so slowly drifting toward his gun.

“I said put your fucking hands up. Now.” Jack's words were calm, strong.

Bad had a look in his eye that Jack didn't like, as if he was calculating the odds on drawing down on Jack before Manny finished clearing the apartment. It made sense; if Bad was going for a shootout, he had to do it before he was outnumbered.

“If you reach for that gun, you die.” Jack's voice turned hard. “I got news for you, bud. I'm going home tonight. I don't care where you go. Jail, hospital or morgue. Makes no difference to me.”

Bad smiled and Jack knew he was going to go for the gun.

“Apartment's clear,” Manny announced from behind Jack, then ducked into the little walk-through kitchen to face Bad from a different direction.

The triangle had grown a fourth point and Bad had to deal with two guns.

“Hands up. Now.”

Still Bad hesitated, his eyes flickering between cops.

There was a scramble of motion to Jack's right as the woman bolted from the room. Seconds later the stairwell door slammed open and the frantic clacking of her heels on concrete quickly faded.

Guess that makes Manny the Ugly now.

And still Bad hesitated. The sneer on his lips — why did that sneer look so familiar? — had reached his eyes. It was the look of a man who had nothing to lose and was willing to gamble it all.

“Think about it, man,” Manny said, sounding much calmer than Jack felt. “Two cops, one bad guy, no witnesses. Who's to say you didn't go for that gun after all?”

The silence stretched out and no soundtrack was needed to build the tension. Hours were squeezed into heartbeats. Finally, Bad raised his hands above his head, then spat his disdain on the floor.

Jack heaved a relieved sigh; Manny had the last word. “Spitting aside, that's the first smart move you made today.”

“I don't believe it. I don't fucking believe it.” Jack deposited Bad in the caged back seat, then slammed shut the car door. “Charged with attempted murder on two cops, not to mention a shitload of gun and drug charges and an outstanding warrant for sexual assault and he gets bail? Can you explain that to me?” he beseeched.

Manny shrugged. “Welcome to the Canadian legal system,” he offered and actually, that summed it up quite well.

Bad's sneer had seemed familiar because Jack had seen it over the barrel of a gun once before. Bad, or James Dwyer, had shot through a bedroom door at Jack and Detective Mason with an assault rifle last fall. Only bad ammunition had prevented someone, cop or criminal, from dying that day.

And here he was, out on bail and back in business, self-employed and doing rather well, considering the wad of cash Jack and Manny had found on him during the search.

“What does it take to get someone held in custody? I just don't get it.”

“We deal in real life, dude, but lawyers work with technicalities and judges live in, well, I don't know what world they live in, but it sure ain't this one.”

“Maybe we should have shot the fucker and been done with it,” Jack muttered as he climbed into the passenger seat. They were heading to the station with the body — the elevator had been surprisingly prompt and the stairs hadn't been necessary — while Morris and Goldman were up at the apartment. Sergeant Rose was on her way over to make sure they didn't fuck anything up.

“We could have taken the stairs. He could have tripped somewhere on the walk down,” Manny proposed.

All it took was a single glance at Manny's stern expression — about as natural on his face as a smile was on Staff Greene's — and Jack burst out laughing. Manny joined him and both laughed out the tension left from the arrest.

“No, thanks,” Jack managed at last, wiping away a tear. “Two investigations by the SIU are enough for my career, thank you. Let's get buddy here to the station.” Jack picked up the mike. “5106, heading to the station with one.”

“10-4, 5106. Time, 1537.”
The dispatcher paused, then came back at them.
“5106, I know you have a prisoner on board, but could I get you to take a look at the parkette at the southeast corner of River and Oak on your way in? I've got a call on my screen that's about ten minutes old for a male abusing a pup. Could you just spin the area, see if he's still there?”

“10-4, dispatch. We're on our way.”

Jack didn't have to check with Manny. Most cops were able to distance themselves from the tragedies they encountered every day, usually by developing thick calluses on their souls, but even the most hardened coppers had a weak spot, an Achilles' heel. For some it was children. For others it was animals. And dispatchers were no different.

“Thanks, '06. The male you're looking for is short with red hair, wearing a jacket. The dog may be a German shepherd. The complainant saw him kicking the dog. Last seen by the playground.”

“10-4. We're right around the corner.” Jack cradled the mike. “It sounds like that asshole again.”