Spider's Web (8 page)

They were calm as they drove, knowing well that the majority of
shots fired
calls turned out to be kids lighting firecrackers, or cars backfiring. Even in the case of actual shots fired, the people involved were often far away by the time the patrol managed to arrive on the scene. They didn’t talk. Tanessa thought about her mother’s upcoming birthday. She had to come up with a good gift. Last year they’d blown it, buying their mother a handbag she never used. She would have to talk to Mitchell and Richard about it tomorrow morning, before she went to sleep.

They approached the corner of Cedar and Adams and as predicted, the street appeared to be empty. It was usually a quiet neighborhood, the residents a mix of young parents and old pensioners. The right side of the street was populated by two- and three-story houses, their walls wooden in various stages of neglect. On their left was a small park, dark and abandoned, a swing, and a small slide barely visible in the pale moonlight. In the day, Tanessa thought, this park was probably full of young mothers or nannies, and their children. But now the only occupants would be homeless people, asleep on benches. The road was cracked in numerous places, weeds sprouting on its margins.

Where had the shots come from? Tanessa looked around, alert to any movement. The windows were all dark. She could see no one.

“What do you think?” Tanessa asked.

Sergio shrugged. “There’s nothing here,” he said. “Let’s drive around a bit, make the residents feel safe.”

They drove slowly. The patrol car’s flickering blue lights illuminated the street, signaling to anyone who cared that the police were there, that everything was fine.

“Hang on,” Tanessa said. “What’s that?”

There was a tiny alley between two of the buildings, a place in which garbage cans resided. It was cast in shadow and, within, something moved. A silhouette of a man.

He stood still, facing away from them. As they came closer, the car’s lights partly illuminated him. He was moving animatedly, as if talking to someone. Sergio stopped the car and Tanessa got out, walking slowly toward the man, a hand on her gun.

“Excuse me?” she said. “Sir?”

“… such a long time together,” the man was saying. He sounded as if he was crying. “How could you? Two months’ work, down the drain.”

He was drunk, Tanessa thought. He was a bit wobbly, his stance unstable. She heard Sergio get out behind her as she got closer. Something about the man made her uneasy.

“You forced my hand!” the man said, raising his voice. “I didn’t want to do it! But did you really think this would go unpunished?”

“Sir!” Tanessa said. “This is the police. Please turn around very slowly.” She drew her Glock, her muscles tense.

He swerved drunkenly to face her, and the first thing she saw was the gun in his hand.

She didn’t even realize as months of training took over, her arms rising to point her own gun at his chest, aiming for center mass, her lips moving, shouting at the man. Shouting at him to
drop it
.

She was surprised by how much her mind registered in a very small fragment of a second. The bewildered, unfocused stare of the man as he looked at her, the blue light flickering on his face, blinding his eyes. The way his gun hand moved, rising higher, the fingers clutching the gun fiercely, unwilling to let go. Her ears heard her partner as he yelled at the man to let go of the gun, that he was about to shoot.

His finger wasn’t in the trigger guard, Tanessa realized. His five fingers were wrapped around the weapon’s grip, as if he held a walking stick, or a ball.

“Sergio, don’t shoot!” she shouted. “Don’t fucking shoot!”

The man froze completely, his hand halfway up. Only his lips kept moving, though Tanessa couldn’t hear a word.

“Sir,” she said, walking even closer, blocking the patrol car’s blinding lights with her body. “Put the gun down.”

The man stared at her and then looked at his hand. He seemed surprised to see the weapon clutched in it. Slowly, he knelt down and laid the gun on the ground.

She was already at his side, grabbing his arms and twisting them behind his back. He didn’t resist, quietly saying, “I had to do it. I had to. I had to.” Her handcuffs clicked, fastening around his wrist, the metallic noise a soothing lullaby in her ears. The suspect was disarmed and restrained. No one was about to get hurt. Except…

“I think he shot someone,” Tanessa told Sergio without looking back. She let go of the man, grabbed the flashlight from her belt, turned it on, and pointed it at the alley.

There was something in the dark. She aimed the beam of light at it, and caught her breath. A small, open laptop stood on the alley’s floor, its screen shattered, spotted with multiple holes. It was clearly beyond saving.

“I had no choice, I had to do it. Two months of work, gone! Just like that. BAM. Blue screen of death. No backup.” Kenneth Baker babbled in the back of their car as they drove toward the city jail. Tanessa half-listened to him, feeling exhausted. She was drained after the encounter, the adrenaline that had been pumping through her blood gone now. She wished for some peace and quiet, but it wasn’t meant to be.

“I mean, you could hear the hard drive spinning. It was definitely still working, but it just wouldn’t start! Do you know how that feels? The fruit of your toil consumed by a… a… machine? I was furious.”

Tanessa was sure he was. His breath reeked of cheap alcohol, and she’d spotted some white powder traces under his nose, probably cocaine. With such a fun cocktail running through his blood, it was no wonder he decided to go out to the alley and shoot his computer.

“This never would have happened forty years ago. A typewriter wouldn’t suddenly chew up your novel. Humanity is being enslaved by machines, and we don’t even notice. People need to open their eyes, before it’s too—”

“You know,” Tanessa said, turning around. “I’m not sure we read you your rights. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…” She recited the rest of the Miranda warning. “Got that? Remain silent?”

“My novel is gone!” the man said, his voice brittle.

“Well, maybe it could have been restored, if you hadn’t shot your computer eleven times!”

There was a moment of silence.

“I doubt it,” the man finally said.

“Yeah, well, you keep telling yourself that. Whatever helps you sleep at night.” She sighed and turned to face forward again.

“All units.” The dispatcher’s voice filled the patrol car. “There’s a hit and run on Ambleside Drive. Ambulance needed.”

“What the hell is going on tonight?” Sergio muttered.

“Turn right,” Tanessa told him. “We aren’t far.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“This is four fifty-one, responding,” she told Dispatch.

Sergio accelerated, turning on the car’s flashing lights.

“This is eight-o-one, on our way,” someone said on the radio. It was the medical emergency crew.

“Hey,” the drunk novelist called from the back. “Where are we going?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sergio said.

“You can’t just drag me along! I have rights!”

“It’s research for your new novel,” Sergio said sharply. “Now shut up.”

The car swerved onto Ambleside Drive, and Sergio slowed down. It was a small residential area at the edge of town. The street was narrow, cars parked on both sides, the streetlights dim. Tanessa looked intently ahead, her eyes scanning the area.

“There!” she pointed.

Someone was kneeling in the middle of the road. As they got closer, they saw it was a man, kneeling by a motionless body. Sergio stopped the car on the side of the road and they both leaped out. Sergio ran for the trunk to get the temporary roadblock gear. Tanessa dashed over to the body. It was a young woman, lying in a pool of blood. The man by her side was saying, “Hang on, just hang on, the ambulance will be here any moment.”

Tanessa knelt by him. “I’m Officer Lonnie,” she said. “Can you tell me what happened?” She looked at the woman on the ground, who was young—nineteen or twenty—her skin dark, her black hair braided into hundreds of thin braids. She stared upwards, her eyes blinking in confusion. There was a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth, as well as a gash on her forehead. Her body was positioned strangely, her torso twisted sideways. She wore a black tank top and black pants. Her lips moved slowly, opening and closing.

“I… I don’t know what happened,” the man said. “My house is across the street. I heard a large crash, and screeching tires. When I came outside, the car was driving away.”

“Can you describe the car?” Tanessa asked, bending over the girl’s mouth and listening intently. The girl was breathing.

“No… Square taillights. I couldn’t see anything in the dark. Is she going to be okay?”

“We’ll do the best we can.” Tanessa said, trying to sound much calmer than she felt. They were both kneeling in a growing pool of blood. She couldn’t see where it was coming from, but there was a lot of it. She didn’t dare move the girl, knew she should wait for the ambulance. She caressed the girl’s forehead gently.

“Hey,” she said, half whispering. “Hang in there, sweetie, you’re going to be okay. Can you hear me? You’re going to be just fine.”

The girl kept blinking. Her eyes turned toward Tanessa.

“What’s your name, sweetie?”

“Tamay,” the girl croaked, her eyes suddenly narrowing in pain.

“Shhhh. It’s okay. Don’t talk if it hurts. Tamay? That’s a beautiful name. Tamay, my name is Tanessa. The ambulance is on its way, okay, sweetie? They’re going to take really good care of you, don’t worry.” She put her hand on Tamay’s cheek, her fingers brushing the girl’s skin. She was cold, Tanessa realized.

“Sergio!” she called, “Can I get something to warm this girl up? She’s really cold.”

Her partner was by her side in seconds, handing her his uniform jacket. Tanessa spread the coat over the girl’s body, whispering reassurances the entire time. She heard the ambulance stop behind her, the men inside shouting at each other as they got their gear out of the vehicle.

“Move, Officer,” one of them said firmly. Tanessa got up and moved aside, grabbing the witness’s arm and pulling him back. They let the emergency crew work, checking the girl, immobilizing her, putting her on a stretcher, wheeling her toward the ambulance. It took only minutes, and the ambulance was already screeching away, not a moment to lose.

Tanessa looked at the witness. He had blood on his palms and on his clothes. She realized her own pants were drenched in blood as well. She stared at the pool of blood on the road in disbelief. How much blood had the girl lost?

“Will she be okay?”

“Do you know her?” Tanessa asked him. He was about twenty-five, stubble on his face, thin glasses on his nose. He looked dazed, confused. Tanessa couldn’t blame him.

“Yeah, I do. I don’t know her name, but she was a waitress in
The Wild Pony
.”

“The Wild Pony?”

“It’s the local bar. It’s a few blocks that way,” he said, pointing.

“Tanessa, check this out,” Sergio called.

She walked over. He stood near a dark lamppost, which leaned sideways, its base bent.

“The car crashed into it after hitting her,” Tanessa said.

“Sure looks like it.”

“So…” she said, trying to create a mental picture of the accident for her report. “It came from there, hit the girl over there, and then lost control, crashing into the lamppost. Then probably reversed a bit, and drove away in that direction.” She pointed.

“Sounds right,” Sergio said.

“Excuse me,” the witness called.

Tanessa turned. “Yes?”

“It didn’t drive away in that direction.”

“I’m sorry?” Tanessa said.

“It drove away in the other direction.”

Tanessa frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

“Maybe the car hit the lamppost first, then hit the girl and kept on driving,” Sergio suggested.

“Doesn’t look like it. Not the way the lamppost is leaning,” Tanessa said. “It’s leaning away from the spot the girl was lying in.”

“Sir,” Sergio said. “Was the lamppost maybe broken before the accident?”

“Well, it was fine a few hours ago.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I would have noticed if it was broken when I came home from work.”

Tanessa’s skin crawled. “That would mean,” she said slowly, “that the driver hit the girl, lost control, hit the lamppost, then reversed his car, turned it around… and fled down that way.” She pointed at the pool of blood.

They all stared at the narrow street. The pool of blood was surrounded by parked cars.

“There’s no way he could have gotten around her,” Sergio said.

“He drove over her,” Tanessa said, feeling sick. She thought of Tamay, lying motionless, her body twisted unnaturally.

“Jesus.”

“We should inform dispatch.”

This wasn’t a random hit and run anymore. This was beginning to feel like something much more sinister.

Chapter Eight

A blue Honda Civic pulled in and parked by the accident scene, and Tanessa didn’t need to glance inside to see who was driving. She knew that car well, had been in it numerous times. She’d ridden in the front seat to her first day at the academy, and after her graduation ceremony as well. She’d once sat in that car for forty-five minutes, crying, blowing her nose into one tissue after the other, as her brother consoled her, telling her there would be other guys. And, on a memorable night, she had thrown up all over the backseat after drinking six vodka shots on a stupid dare.

Mitchell got out of his car and walked over. Tanessa stood by the temporary roadblock they had raised, prepared to intercept any car that might want to drive through.

“Hey, Mitch,” she said, trying to sound casual.