The Best New Horror 2 (42 page)

Well, months of sweaty work in the dance studio and the department gym healed my shoulder. I’ve always been able to handle the physical demands of life. It’s my head that keeps giving me trouble. If I could only banish the image of that poor child . . . poor Carmelita, from my dreams.

The guys on my squad welcomed me whole-heartedly into the unit when I came back to work. I was no longer considered an irksome political placement to bolster the department’s image.

Lieutenant Fred Zaluta, who was also wounded during the raid on 302, became my champion. He still insists that I saved his life, but I don’t know—I was just doing my job. He knows I live alone in a coldwater flat downtown, so he and his wife invite me over for a home-cooked meal with them and their three kids at least once a month. I love watching the Zalutas together. They’re a volatile group, always fighting and bickering, but you can feel the love radiating from every cluttered corner of their home. I was raised an only child. My parents’ house was cool and hushed, the corners immaculately bare.

My squad leader, Lieutenant Brophy, and the other two men on the team, Parks and Channing, treat me equitably, but we don’t socialize. While we’ve become an extremely tight working unit, the prevailing wisdom is that it’s dangerous to become emotionally involved. I guess Zaluta and I are just asking for trouble, but I can’t imagine losing those wonderful evenings with his family. I’m willing to risk it.

When I first started having the dream about the raid on 302, I asked Zaluta if he thought I was going crazy.

“Naw,” he said. I could tell by the way he wouldn’t look me in the eye that discussing it troubled him. “We all get dreams. I heard once that the only way to get rid of one entirely is to replace it with something even worse.”

“You have one, too?”

“Aw, sure. There was a raid back in seventy-two. A psycho twisted some pitiful old lady’s head around two full turns while I stood there with my mouth hanging open. I always thought maybe I could have saved her if I hadn’t been so green and scared. I don’t dream about it as much as I used to, though. It gets better little by little, Larkin. You’ll see.”

I nodded, disturbed by the way his shoulders sagged and his broad face had grown pinched. I decided not to mention the subject again.

These past two years since the raid on 302 have rocketed past. I divide my time between police work and ballet and, usually, that’s enough . . . until I key the lock to the dreary little closet I rent downtown. At some point, even cops and ballerinas have to go home. Maybe someday I’ll buy some curtains, or a cat . . .

Detroit is often referred to as “Murder City” by the press, and from my own vantage point, the inner city resembles a monstrous, diseased organism that seems to grow exponentially by feeding on its own overabundance of poverty and rage. I don’t know if a cure exists—I just help fight the symptoms: teenage gangs warring over drug turf, crazies strung out on crack and PCP, plus the usual family violence. Automatic weapons like Uzis and Baretta handguns equipped with 100-round banana clips are common in the rougher projects downtown. Drug turf battles are dangerous, but I would much rather respond to a gang war barricade then a nut barricade. Gang members usually surrender quickly—they’re willing to trade their machismo for survival. But the whackos, they just don’t give a damn, which makes them infinitely more treacherous.

Whatever the particular scenario happens to be, each assault is virtually the same, a tightly choreographed dance that never becomes routine. It’s the part of my job I dread the most and love the best. The sweats and the jitters I experience seconds before an assault are indistinguishable from the butterflies I get backstage just
before dancing in front of an audience. It’s thrilling and terrifying at once.

When poised for an assault on a barricaded house or apartment, my heart is always in my mouth right before the door goes down. We never know what we’ll find inside. When the door gives and we rush in, I go dead cool. Instinct and training kick in and, one way or the other, it’s all over in a matter of minutes. Afterward, just like after a ballet performance, I experience an intensely gratifying rush of physical and emotional satisfaction we call the “afterburn” back in the squad room. It’s what drives me, makes me push myself to the very limit of my capabilities, what clouds my judgement at times, but always, always satisfies . . . for the moment.

Zaluta says everyone is chasing the afterburn in one form or another, and I think he’s right.

Sometimes I worry that I have some kind of weird attraction to brutality. Violence is integral to police work, of course, but not many people recognize the inherent self-inflicted violence of the ballet. Ballerinas look like fragile, fairy-like creatures who rest on satin pillows when not dancing—that’s the illusion. Pink satin toeshoes and opaque tights usually conceal feet that look like raw hamburger and ugly surgical scars criss-crossing sprung knees and ankles.

Personally, I’m terrified of injuries and pain, but I keep running head-on at the possibility, nonetheless. I don’t know, maybe there’s something wrong with me. I’ve never been a particularly introspective woman, but after what happened last night . . . everything has changed. I’ve changed.

I had just showered up and was busy stowing gear in my squad locker yesterday evening when the call came in. It’s unusual for an off team to get called back on duty since there are three other teams working on rotating shifts. When we arrived at the scene, it was already dark and cruelly cold as only a Detroit winter night can be. A large crowd of spectators had gathered across the street from a five story tenement building, brilliantly hideous against the black winter sky lit by rows of huge, smoking kleig lights. The crowd was clearly agitated, surging behind the phalanx of uniformed police officers who were having some difficulty keeping them in order.

“They’ve got my Momma!” A young black man wearing a flimsy grey sweatshirt shouted, trying to break past the sawhorse barrier.

An elderly woman shrieked, “Help me, God!” and collapsed in a faint, disappearing into the rippling sea of bodies.

It struck me as odd that none of the people who had assembled across the street were behaving like the usual gawkers who always turn out for a barricade. Instead of the typical good-natured spectators looking for a little excitement, each appeared to have something personal at stake.
Most of the women and a good number of the men were sobbing and moaning; none took their eyes from the floodlit building.

I knew then that it was going to be bad. Very bad.

When I heard Lieutenant Brophy summoning our squad for a briefing, I almost didn’t want to hear what was going on. Christ, I thought, just let me do my job and get out of here. Then, as I was turning to join my team, the crowd stopped their frantic milling and shoving all at once. It made my flesh creep the way they stood like zombies, faces pale and distorted as they stared up at the building.

When I turned, I entered a waking nightmare.

Wailing in terror, little Carmelita Esposito, my nightmare child, was being dangled three stories above the sidewalk by a wild-eyed man. There was no doubt in my mind that the man was her father, Ralph Esposito, the man I’d killed two years before.

I went hot all over despite the frigid night wind. I felt like I weighed a thousand pounds, petrified.

I might still be standing there if Zaluta hadn’t gripped my arm and started shouting, “Holy Jesus, Larkin! It’s the old woman I told you about! Mother of God, her head’s on backward and she’s still alive! Oh, Jesus!”

I swung around and looked at Zaluta. His face was twisted in anguish as he watched the building. I shook his arm hard and he looked at me. I don’t know how long we stood holding onto each other, but when we turned our eyes back to the building, whatever it was we’d seen had vanished.

All hell broke loose. The crowd behind us became a hysterical mob, screaming and pushing against the barriers, demanding that something be done. A two-way radio in a nearby squad car squawked something about assembly of a riot control unit. Curling clouds of frosty vapor rose before our faces as we breathed into the numbingly cold air, my own lungs pumping fast and heavy. A couple of teenage boys broke through the police barrier and made a run at the building, but were stopped and strong-armed back behind the line by one gigantic uniformed officer.

“I don’t see any of the other assault teams around,” I remarked to Zaluta as we headed for the equipment truck to pick up our gear. “I thought we were all supposed to be out here.”

“I overheard the Chief telling Brophy that the other units were getting in place and ready to go. They’re just waiting for a signal from the point team.”

“Who’s on point?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m glad it’s not us.”

I nodded as we pulled on our armor. “I’d like to know what the
hell’s going on. We’re hallucinating or something worse. I feel like I’m dreaming.”

“I
wish
you were dreaming,” Zaluta said, hoisting his Heckler and Koch 9mm submachine gun, a real brute of a weapon that was just too heavy for me to handle. “If you were dreaming, we’d all be at home.”

While we were adjusting our radio headsets, the rest of our team, Brophy, Parks and Channing, climbed into the back of the truck and joined us, their faces grim and pasty behind frosty crimson lips and noses.

“This is the deal,” Lieutenant Brophy said, rubbing his hands together. “Something fucking weird is going on in that building.”

Everyone snickered but Brophy, who cracked a sideways grin. Having successfully loosened us up, his mouth fell into a frown and his eyes narrowed. “Nobody knows what we’ve got in there. I guess I don’t have to tell you that whatever is happening, we’re all witnessing some pretty strange stuff.”

Everyone nodded.

“Okay. Here’s the plan. Earl Cook’s unit is the point team. They’re going to make an assault in a few minutes. We’re last up, so we’re just here for backup. We won’t be called out unless the other teams fail to resolve this situation.”

We all fell silent for a long moment.

“Here’s what I know,” Brophy continued. “Around six this evening, the department started receiving frantic calls from a number of hysterical people, all claiming to have seen a different event occurring at this address. Four uniformed officers entered the building shortly after six-thirty. Evidently, they never came out.”

Carefully adjusting the armor protecting his groin, Brophy said, “Let’s not bust our nuts worrying until we get a reconnaissance report from the point team, okay?” He looked up at me. “And you, Larkin, don’t bust whatever it is you got to bust.”

We laughed and shook our heads, then slowly filed out of the truck. Parks went to get everyone some hot coffee, and the rest of us took positions behind the rows of squad cars parked in a semicircle in front of the building. Then we waited. And waited. The tension was bone-crushing. There was a lot of fidgeting, shifting, and dry-throated coughs.

Behind us, the crowd rumbled like thunder, their collective growl a continual roar that rose and fell, punctuated by shrill cries and hoarse shouts. At the time, I considered that unruly throng as much of a threat to life and limb as the situation inside the building.

As it turned out, I was very much mistaken.

Then things started popping. The first team went in like gangbusters, detonating a number of small, grenade-shaped devices called Thunder
Flashers that explode harmlessly, but mimic miniature atomic bombs. You can’t help but be disoriented momentarily, even when you know it’s coming. Under cover of this diversionary blitzkrieg, they entered the building.

When the sound of the flash-bombs finally stopped reverberating in my ears, I could hear what was going on inside through the command radio hooked into the teams’ two-way sets. There was gunfire mixed with the most gut-wrenching shrieks and screams I have ever heard, and which I suspect I’ll be hearing in my head for a long, long time. I clenched my fists so tightly my fingernails punctured my palms. Wedged in between the screams were a few frantic words that I could just barely make out:

“. . . outta here!” one of them yelled in a high-pitched squeal.

“. . . fuckin dogs! . . .
No
! . . .
Jesus
! . . .”

The gunfire finally ceased, but the screams continued for at least another minute. Then there was a crackling silence.

After that terrible pause, everyone starting talking at once, and Brophy had to shout us down to make himself heard. Once we quieted, he said simply, “Unit Two is preparing to enter,” and turned away.

Whispering close to my ear, Zaluta said, “That was Kellerman screaming about dogs on the radio. He’s been scared shitless of dogs since a crack dealer holed up in a motel released a doberman on him a few years back.”

We stared at each other. Everyone in the vicinity was experiencing his or her own private nightmare.

“Are we being purposely manipulated? Is this even
real
?” I asked, hearing my voice becoming shrill.

Zaluta shrugged his shoulders wearily and patted me on the arm. He was only in his late thirties, but he already looked like an old man. “I don’t know, Larkin. I don’t know.”

The crowd was working itself into another frenzy when the second assault team silenced them by plunging into the building amid another round of booms and flashes.

Again, the radio crackled with shouts and gunfire. But this time, when the chaos died down, one distinct voice rose out of the background hiss, a trembly but jubilant voice declaring victory.

“I got the murdering bastard!” he cried. “I’m bringing him back alive, folks, so don’t blow my ass off when we come out. And send in the medics stat, people. We’ve got a slaughterhouse in here. Okay, hold your fire now, we’re exiting the building.”

Hot relief swept over me. I spun around to face the building and began to cheer and clap with the others when two figures emerged.

“It’s Delroy Stanton,” Parks said.

The wild applause dwindled and died away slowly when it became apparent that something was amiss. Instead of driving a suspect at gunpoint, Stanton was dragging an inert, profusely bleeding man by the tattered collar of a midnight-blue shirt—an assault team shirt.