Under a Raging Moon (5 page)

“Adam-116 and -114, Marc Elliot is in with a misdemeanor warrant, which has been confirmed. He has an extensive record, including two convictions for Domestic Violence assault and several controlled substance e
n
tries.”

So we’ll be arresting him no matter what,
Katie thought pleasantly. The way he was screaming at her, he needed to go to jail.

Katie listened for another long minute before she heard a female voice scream, “No, Marc, I’m sorry!” A cry of pain followed, though she heard no sound of strikes.

She clenched her teeth and debated whether or not to go in alone. Westboard was probably less than a m
i
nute away. Still, a minute in a fight is an eternity. Hart’s admonition following her lone pursuit of the guy through the construction yard still rang in her ears.

But if this woman’s been hurt . . .

Her decision became moot as a dark figure burst out the front door and hurried down the steps. In the glaring porch light, she could see that his hands were covered in dark red. Blood splattered his face and shirt. Katie immediately spotted a long hunting knife in his right hand. She drew her weapon and pointed it at him.

“Police, don’t move!”

The man turned slowly to face her. His face seemed askew and even at the distance of seven yards, she could see the craziness in his eyes.

“Put the knife down!” she ordered. “Now!”

He continued to stare at her.

Katie keyed her shoulder mike with her left hand. “Adam-116, have him step it up.”

“Copy. Adam-114, step it up. Adam-113?”

“-13, responding.”

“Adam-116.” Katie’s breathing quickened.

“Go ahead.”

“I’ve got the male half here at gunpoint. He’s bloody and armed with a large knife.”

“Copy.”

“I said put the weapon down!” Katie ordered again. She found herself wishing for that cold Pepsi.

The man’s trance-like stare ended and his face slowly broke into a grin. “I am going to carve you up, bitch.” He took a step toward her.

“Drop it!” she said, but her voice broke.

He took another step. His smile widened.

Oh God,
she thought,
I’m going to have to kill him.

In all the fights she’d been in, she could never remember thinking that someone would die. Wrestled down, punched, kicked, pepper-maced, but not die. She felt a stab of fear in her stomach as adrenaline washed over her. The roof of her mouth itched and beads of sweat popped out on her brow. For a moment, she thought she could smell freshly cut lumber. In the di
s
tance, she heard a car door shut.

Elliot took two more steps, reminding her of a lunatic E
l
mer Fudd.

Be vewwy quiet. . .

She almost gave into hysterical laughter at the thought.

Concentrate, goddamn it!

“Stop right there!” she screamed at him, injecting as much force into her voice as she could muster. “Drop your weapon or I will shoot!”

The man slowed to a stop. She breathed a short sigh of relief, but then he chuckled and waved the knife. “Shoot, bitch,” he taunted. “Shoot, you fucking bitch. Shoot me. Shoot me. Shootme, shootme!”

Katie stared at him, trying to gauge just how crazy he was. As if sensing her indecision, he tapped his chest with handle of the knife. “C’mon, you stinking gash! Shoot me! Fucking woman cop slit!”

Katie barely heard the crude insults. She moved her finger from its indexed position into the trigger guard and onto the trigger. She was going to have to kill him.

“
Adam-116, an update,
” crackled the dispatcher’s voice over her radio. Katie ignored the transmission. With a sure hand, she placed her front sight in the center of the man’s chest.

“Come on, you whore,” he shouted. “Shoot me!”

Could she?

“I don’t want to shoot you,” she said gently, hoping to talk him down. “Just put the knife down.”

He must have taken her tactic as a sign of weakness. His manic grin melted into a mean glare, his teeth gritting hard. He stepped towards her, raising the knife. “I am going to cut you up, bitch. I am going to stick this knife in your—”

He stopped and flinched, waving the knife at his eye as if brushing away a fly. A small red dot was dan
c
ing in his eyes.

“Over here.” The voice was flat and deadly.

The suspect looked to his left. Katie followed his gaze and saw Matt Westboard behind a car, his pistol pointed at the suspect’s head.

Westboard tickled his crazy eyes again with the laser sight then moved the small red dot down to his chest.

“You take one more step, motherfucker,” Westboard told him, “and you are a dead man.”

2226 hours

Officer Stefan Kopriva swung the car around the corner as if it were on rails, the roar of the big-block e
n
gine loud enough to pierce the sound of his siren as he powered down Nevada Street.

“Adam-116, an update.”
The calm in the dispatcher’s voice contrasted with Katie’s adrenaline-laced transmission moments earlier.

Kopriva whipped through the s-curves and cut the wheel hard to the right, turning onto Foothills Drive. He buried the accelerator.

“Adam-116 or Adam-114, an update.”

C’mon, Katie,
Kopriva thought, his knuckles white, his f
o
rearms rigid as he approached Ruby.

“Answer up,” he whispered. He slowed briefly for the flashing red light at Ruby, checking left for traffic. There were two cars. Both slowed and pulled to the side. He pushed his air horn and blasted through the interse
c
tion.

“Adam-114, one in custody, code four.”

“Copy. Code Four, one in custody at 2227 hours.”

Kopriva shut off his siren and let loose a long sigh. He continued on to the scene in case they needed any help.

As he drove, he flexed his fingers and his forearms, working out the tension.

Three

Monday, August 15th

1124 hours

James Mace rose sluggishly from the couch. His entire body felt itchy. The inside of his mouth felt like foul, dried leather. He scratched the side of his face. The stubble there had turned into a short beard. Sleep crust cascaded from his eyes as he rubbed them.

He glanced at the easy chair. Leslie lay curled into a ball with a blanket tossed over her. Where was A
n
drea? He lumbered to his feet and poked his head in the bedroom, only a few short paces from the living room in their small apartment. He saw her dirty blonde hair splayed across the pillow. She wore no clothing and used no blankets. He admired the curve of her back and buttocks, but averted his eyes before his gaze reached the needle marks on the back of her knees.

He plodded to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The wash of cold air from the fridge felt good against his bare chest. He stared at the wet, brownish leaves on a head of rotting lettuce. He wasn’t hungry, anyway, but you’d think with two women in the house, the place would be cleaner and there might be a few groceries in the cupboard.

Mace chuckled, a rasping cough that sounded decades older than his twenty-seven years.
If his Army bu
d
dies could see him now
. They used to tease him about being a virgin until after he turned twenty-one. Well, he took care of that on their first trip overseas.

They’d shut their faces now, wouldn’t they? He lived with two women and was balling both of them. And they both knew it. That had to top an
y
thing those guys ever did. Besides, they were squares for the most part, just drinking and women for them. They’d been afraid of the opium dens in Thailand. Mace hadn’t been.

The goddamn Army, anyway. Since when did you give elite troops like the Rangers a piss test? They a
c
cepted his claim of having eaten poppy-seed cake at the first failure. After the second one, his CO ordered him not to eat poppy-seed cake ever again. His third failure resulted in a dishonorable discharge. They had offered him that or a court-martial. It wasn’t much of an offer, but Mace recognized a parachute when he saw one.

So now what did he have for five years of service? No pension, his meager savings wiped out six months ago. His only trophy: a nice machete wound in the face, courtesy of a rebel in Panama.

Mace slammed the fridge door. Leslie stirred in her sleep. He stared at her. She was attractive, or had been, but still no match for Andrea. At least, that was the case before Andrea went to hell.

He needed a drink of water. Filling a plastic cup from Taco Bell with water, he allowed himself to gloat in his status as stud. How many men had two women? He did.

The tap water had a coppery taste to it and after only a couple of swallows he felt nauseous. He dumped the rest.

The couch beckoned to him. He flopped onto it and stared at the te
x
tured ceiling. He’d met Andrea before his hair even grew out after his discharge. She‘d proved to be the perfect medicine, accepting where others had rejected him. She soothed his pain over the Army, his family, ever
y
thing. Definitely the best lay he’d ever had, and she knew where to find the good stuff.

He remembered how firm and luscious her body had been the first time he’d had her. So supple and wil
l
ing. Over the months, though, it had deter
i
orated rapidly. Her breasts sagged, her athletic frame shriveled, and sores broke out. And, of course, the track marks.

They’d met Leslie at a party. No one would sell them anything until he started dancing with Leslie and kissing her. Andrea hadn’t minded once he told her Leslie knew somebody who was holding.

Leslie got the ‘H’ and they left. He remembered feeling excited about sex for the first time in months as they drove to the apartment. When they arrived and all three fell into the bed before shooting up, he could hardly believe his luck.
What a wild night!

So Leslie stayed. And for a while, it was great, but now, both of them were junkies. They couldn’t control their habit. Instead, it controlled them. Not him, though. He could thank the Army for one thing: discipline.

Mace decided to take advantage of the fact that both women were slee
p
ing. He went to the cabinet where he stored his works—and found the baggie empty beside the leather holder. He stared at it for a long moment, disbelieving, as if his gaze would cause the missing heroin to somehow materia
l
ize.

Fucking
bitches!
They raided his shit.

He flew across the room at Leslie, slapping her as hard as he could. The force of the blow knocked her from the chair to the floor where she lay, staring at him, blinking stupidly.

“You stealing, worthless bitch!” he shouted, slapping and punching without mercy. She covered her head with her hands, absorbing the blows without a sound.

Mace turned and headed for the bedroom. His rage subsided but his body had started to itch and shake. Na
u
sea swept over him, even though he knew it was too soon for that. He had to get some more.

He shouldered his way through the bedroom door. Andrea sat on the bed, staring at him, her breasts e
x
posed, the small tuft of hair below her belly clearly visible. The vision held no interest for him.

“Do you have any money left from your welfare check?” He asked her.

She shook her head.

“Any cash at all?”

Another shake.

No use asking Leslie, he thought. She wouldn’t have raided his shit if she had money.

He studied Andrea and knew immediately she’d be no good, too strung out to help him. That was the way of it, lately. She wouldn’t help, couldn’t help, but she’d be there for her share when the goodies arrived.

“Leslie?”

No answer.

“Leslie? Don’t make me come out there.”

“What?” she replied sullenly.

“Are you cool? Can you drive?”

“I can drive.”

Mace opened the bottom drawer of his dresser and withdrew a long black wig and a .38 revolver. Wor
d
lessly, Andrea watched him, a dull stare in her eyes. Mace suddenly felt a stab of pity for her. He sat down beside her on the bed, the gun and wig in his lip.

“Be back soon, baby.” He caressed her shoulder and tried to smile. “Be back with some medicine for what ails ya.”

Andrea smiled back, small and child-like.

God, she’d been such a beautiful woman. His baby. And now...just a shell. A junkie shell.

Mace called for Leslie and they left.

Tuesday, August 16th

2118 hours

Television.
Thomas Chisolm sighed.
The world’s most worthless inve
n
tion.

Fifty-seven cable channels, including movie channels, and yet he sat staring at the guide channel because he liked the music they were playing. Always a classic rock fan, before it was considered classic, Chisolm had slowly drifted towards country music over the past several years.

He drank a cold bottle of Coors. On his workdays, he rarely touched a drop of alcohol, but his night off, he sometimes had a few. Tonight, he’d made a considerable dent in the beer left over from the last shift party three weeks ago. He managed to achieve a steady buzz over the last couple of hours and now he’d hit his stride. The proper rate of consumption would keep him at this level of intoxication without advancing or retreating for seve
r
al more hours.

Goddamn Hart
, Chisolm grated inwardly. He raised his bottle in mock tribute. “Here’s to you, Lieutenant Alan Hart. Screw you, you pencil-necked prick.” He took a hearty swig of the cold-filtered brew.
Good stuff.

Hell, Hart wouldn’t have lasted a week in Vietnam. Never would’ve made it through Special Forces trai
n
ing, the pansy. Probably’d gone crying home to his mommy inside of three days. Even if by some miracle, he’d made it through the training, once in the bush, a prick like that would have gotten fragged by his own men inside of a week.

Vietnam. Chisolm sipped his Coors and shook his head. How alive he’d been then. And how dead.

“The police department has some unrealistic expectations on how to deal with crime,” he lectured the te
l
evision. “We are too nice. Criminals don’t respect that. They view it as wea
k
ness.”

Chisolm twirled the bottle, watching it turn and wobble on the coffee table. “As police officers, we’re e
x
pected to clean up crime. But our hands are tied.” He shook his head. “In ‘Nam, our company had free rein to do whatever it took to flush the Viet Cong out of their sector. My commanding officer took the hard line. If we even
suspected
someone of so much as lighting a cigarette for the VC, it was lights out for that poor sonof
a
bitch.”

He grinned.

Captain Mack Greene. Now that had been a commanding officer. Hart looked like a little boy sucking his thumb next to Captain Greene. About the only River City officer that came close to Greene on the department was Lieutenant Robert Saylor, Chisolm’s lieutenant on graveyard.

He wondered briefly if he should talk to Saylor about Hart, then dismissed the idea. Hart oversaw the FTO program. No use going to Saylor. Besides, Chisolm wasn’t about to whine to his superiors about something as inconsequential as Alan Hart.

“Fuck,” Chisolm whispered for no specific reason, repeating his father’s favorite curse phrase. “Fuck a duck and make it cluck.”

He glanced at the letter on his kitchen counter, where it had sat for a month. The ragged edges where he’d torn open the envelope stared back at him.

The letter came from his sister in Portland. She’d written to tell him that Sylvia had gotten married. She wondered if he had known.

He hadn’t.

Chisolm sighed heavily. He often wished he hadn’t blown things with Sylvia, but it wasn’t until that letter arrived that he realized how deeply those wishes went.

Well, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
He smiled bitterly.
And if worms had .45’s, birds wouldn’t fuck with them.

After receiving the letter, he’d promptly gone to Duke’s, picked up a twenty-five-year-old cop groupie, brought her home and nailed her. Afte
r
ward, he found himself wondering if his pulse had even quickened during the entire affair.

Sylvia had dignity, and with his reaction to her recent ma
r
riage, he’d proven he had none.

Chisolm finished the bottle and strode to the fridge to get another. The bottle hissed slightly as he twisted the top off. She got married. So what? She left River City two years ago. What did he want her to do? Brood forever, like him?

Besides, she wasn’t the only ghost threatening to visit him tonight.

The television guide channel suddenly annoyed him. He grabbed the r
e
mote and flicked the off button.

“You know,” he said to the small pinpoint of light on the TV screen, “the thing that bothers me the most about losing the FTO gig is that I am good for those kids. They come out of the Academy and can barely tell the difference between a bad guy and a magpie. I teach them what they need to survive.”

He took a hard swig of the beer, his eyes fixed on the fa
d
ing light on the screen. “Other FTO’s teach them other things,” he conceded, jabbing his index finger at the TV to stress each word. “But I concentrate on showing them how to stay alive. How to be a warrior in peace-time.”

Just like in ‘Nam, he realized. Try to jam in enough knowledge into in the short training time so that they learn how to stay alive. That way, their deaths aren’t on your conscience.

But Thomas Chisolm housed a vast cemetery in his conscience and all the beer in the fridge wasn’t going to wash it away.

Wednesday, August 16th

Graveyard Shift

0126 hours

The River City Police Department had a successful Reserve Officer program. Reserve Officers were su
b
jected to the same hiring process as commi
s
sioned officers and then attended a condensed version of the Police Academy. They always rode with a commissioned officer, except for a handful that graduated to a higher rank and rode in two-man reserve cars. All of them were volunteers.

Some officers resented the reserves, claiming their presence took the place of hiring another commi
s
sioned officer. Stefan Kopriva disagreed. He saw the reserves as a supplement, not a replacement.

Besides, Kopriva knew that the same people who complained about the reserves taking away jobs would grouse even louder if they had to field some of the calls reserves often took. Reserves fielded a steady diet of cold burglary reports, bicycle thefts, and found property calls, all things most cops considered boring.