0202 hours
“Hey, man. Whatcha doing?”
“Hey, Manny. Hang on a sec.” Jack shifted his cell phone to his left hand and turned down the radio, quieting the dispatcher as she gave a 53 car yet another alarm call in a seemingly unending string of alarm calls. “How are things down in 51?”
“Busy as always, dude. How about you?”
Jack groaned theatrically. “It seems everyone up here has a house alarm but none of them know how to use them. We’ve done about six alarm calls so far and they just keep coming.”
“It’s the weather, man. Any sudden change messes up the systems.”
Jack had to admit the change had been sudden. And drastic. After the warm start to the week, winter had come back, intent on punishing the city for daring to think spring was within reach. The temperature had plummeted, but at least there hadn’t been any snow.
“How’s your head?” Although their partnership had been short — getting shot can mess anything up — it had been long enough for Manny to learn Jack suffered from migraines and he knew sudden changes in the weather could start a painful chain reaction in Jack’s skull.
“Not bad. The pain comes and goes. I haven’t had to pop any drugs yet.” As if to let Jack know it was listening, the headache he’d had since waking up stabbed him through his right eye. Jack flinched at the sudden jolt of pain. Damn, I might end up downing some Fiorinal tonight.
“Who are you working with?” Jack asked to change the topic. Maybe if he ignored his headache it would go away. Yeah, right.
Sounding all smug and happy, Manny gloated, “I’m with Jenny.”
“Lucky prick.”
Jennifer Alton was another of Jack’s favourite people from 51. Jack had never had the pleasure of working with Jenny as she had been on the Community Response Unit, or Foot Patrol in old-time jargon, during his stint in 51. Despite not working together, they had gotten to know each other and had fallen into a very close, very comfortable friendship in a brief period of time. Although Jack had shared his marital problems with Manny, it was Jenny he had confided in, revealing his fear that Karen would divorce him if he didn’t transfer out of 51.
It had been strange talking to her about his marriage; he was attracted to her and could easily see himself falling for her had he not been married. What had Sy called her? A modern-day siren, unable to help herself when it came to attracting men. For some it was her smile, others her hair, her legs. For Jack, it was the total package. She was a beautiful, intelligent, fun —
Jack smacked himself lightly in the forehead. One mention of Jenny and his thoughts wandered off down this happy little trail. A siren, all right.
“You with Big Brett tonight?”
Jack groaned again. “Don’t I wish. No, tonight I’m stuck with the Earl.”
“The Earl? That the guy who gives people tickets for having their licence plates obscured in the middle of a snowstorm?”
“The one and only. I’m sitting in the back lot right now while he’s inside picking up a new ticket book. Would you believe he gave a guy on a bicycle a ticket for not having a bell?”
“Was the guy at least an asshole?” Manny asked hopefully.
“It was yesterday when it was so warm. The guy had his bike out for the first time this year and the Earl gives him a ticket. Just a regular guy out for a ride.”
“Man, that’s low. I can see giving that to an asshole but not someone who has a job.”
“Is it any wonder the public hates us? And you should have heard him talking about it. You’d think he had just pinched a guy carrying a gun or something. God, I hate it up here.”
“Why can’t you pair up with Brett? I mean, it would be better if you came back here but. . . .”
“The staff sergeant doesn’t allow permanent partners. I think it’s because he knows there’s about three guys on the platoon who no one would want to work with.” Jack grimaced. “And here he comes now. Gotta go.”
“Want to hook up for coffee later if it’s quiet?”
“Sure, but you just jinxed us by using the Q word.”
Manny laughed. “Take it easy, dude. Talk to you later.”
Jack hung up just as Richard “the Earl” Chalmers got in the passenger seat. Jack had learned the first time working with Chalmers not to let him drive, or they’d spend the whole shift pulling over cars for some of the dumbest tickets Jack had ever heard of. Chalmers’s defence was the chintzier the ticket, the more likely the person was to take it to court and court cards, those scheduled off duty, meant money for the Earl.
“All set,” Chalmers declared, patting his fresh ticket book. “Let’s go fight some crime.”
More like prong the public, Jack thought.
His headache twinged and he jerked at the pain.
“You okay to drive, Jack?” Chalmers looked more than ready to take over the wheel; his numbers were always low when he worked with Jack. Jack knew the Earl saw himself as the number-one producer in the station, with a reputation to uphold.
“Nah, I’m good. Just a bit of a headache. Let’s grab some caffeine before we clear.” Jack smiled as he dropped the car into drive. He knew the Earl hated not driving, not being able to pull over every car he wanted to. The Earl checked every car he wanted to pull over on CPIC — the Canadian Police Information Centre — first. He didn’t want to deal with someone who was on file for violence, would he? Jack had seen the Earl ignore suspended drivers — usually gold mines for tickets — because the driver also had a caution on him for violence against police. The Earl might have been 53 Division’s golden boy when it came to tickets and therefore the staff sergeant’s favourite officer, because high numbers on the platoon made the staff sergeant look good to the inspector. But the Earl was also a gutless coward. He’d shown his true colours the first night Jack had worked with him, near the end of January.
A woman had phoned 911 saying her husband was off his schizophrenia medication and was becoming aggressive. She said her husband, a loving and gentle man when on his meds, had a tendency for violence when he was off them and the violence was usually directed at people in positions of authority — namely, cops. She asked for at least four officers, if not more. In a perfect world, or a TV show, the police service would have been operating at full strength and would have had ample officers to send. The dispatcher sent Jack and the Earl.
The paramedics were waiting outside the condo building, looking up and down the street, when Jack and the Earl pulled up and joined them.
Jack looked around, puzzled. “I miss something?”
“There another car coming?” one of the medics asked.
“Nope. What you see is what you get.”
“But the call said —”
“Don’t worry.” Jack cut the medic off. “Chalmers here is actually a ninja in disguise.”
The medics didn’t look reassured.
The four of them took the elevator up, then paused outside the unit door, cops to one side, medics to the other. No sounds from inside, but the wife must have been waiting by the door because she had it open before Jack finished knocking.
She was an attractive blonde and Jack put her in her early forties, although stress and worry had added a few years. She looked questioningly at the four people at her door, then peered up and down the hallway. “Where’s the rest of you?” she asked, concern tightening her voice.
Jack hoped being asked that question twice wasn’t an omen. He explained that he and the Earl were the only police available for the call and said they would do their best to talk her husband into going to the hospital.
She paled at the thought. “You don’t understand,” she cringed. “Last time it took four police plus the ambulance people and he wasn’t that bad. He’s a lot worse this time.”
“He’s schizophrenic, ma’am?” a medic asked.
“He is,” she confirmed, glancing over her shoulder into the condo. “He stops taking his medication when he feels better. He thinks he doesn’t need it anymore.”
“How’s he acting right now?” Jack wanted to know.
“He’s very agitated, aggressive.”
“Has he hit you?”
“No,” she stated with a firm shake of her head. “But he has in the past when he got like this. Today I told him I thought he should go to the hospital and he started swearing at me, saying I was conspiring against him. He said he’d kill me if I didn’t leave him alone.” She started to cry. “Please help him.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Jack told her. “Where in the apartment is he?”
“But you don’t understand!” she protested in a strained whisper. “He doesn’t like the police when he’s like this and he’ll fight you if he thinks he can win. That’s why I wanted more of you.”
And that’s when Richard “the Earl” Chalmers, who had taken the oath to serve and protect the people of Toronto, suggested, “If he doesn’t like police, maybe we should send the medics in first.”
Needless to say, the medics weren’t impressed with the idea of going in to deal with the violent schizophrenic while the armed personnel waited out in the hall. Jack wasn’t comfortable with it either. Jack would have pushed the Earl out of the way had he not been edging his way to the back of the group already.
“For fuck’s sake,” Jack muttered under his breath as he stepped through the doorway. He didn’t know who came in next, the medics or the only other armed person at the call and really didn’t give a shit.
“My husband’s name is Nathaniel,” the wife said. “Don’t call him Nathan; only his friends can call him that.”
Nathaniel was in his office, pacing the floor. He was a good-sized man who obviously worked hard to stay in shape.
Why can’t the violent ones be small and weak?
Nathaniel stopped abruptly as soon as he spotted Jack, who stood just outside the office door, his can of pepper spray concealed in his hand. He had little hope the spray would work on Nathaniel as it rarely seemed to have any effect on the mentally ill, but if the situation ended up in a fight — and from the way Nathaniel was flexing his hands and hunching up his shoulders, it was headed that way fast — Jack wanted to limit the possible injuries to everyone involved. Especially himself.
“What do you want?” Nathaniel did not sound pleased to have visitors.
“We heard you weren’t feeling up to par.” One of the medics, an older guy with a fringe of grey hair, had come up beside Jack where Chalmers should have been. “We just wanted to see if there’s anything we can do for you.”
Nathaniel eyed the medic suspiciously. “You look old. Are you in charge?”
“Well, I suppose I’m the oldest here, so that kind of puts me in charge.”
“All right, I’ll talk to you, then.”
Nathaniel told the medic that the neighbours were conspiring against him but he didn’t know why. Jack watched in amazement as the medic talked Nathaniel into a chair and then into letting them check his vitals. Ten minutes after Jack and the medic had entered the condo, Nathaniel agreed to go to the hospital.
Jack rode in the ambulance with Nathaniel. “They have eyes everywhere,” Nathaniel confided to him. “No telling what lengths they’ll go to.”
That’s when Jack learned he was on his own when he worked with the Earl. But hey, the guy wrote a lot of tickets.
The Earl came from an English background, hence the nickname. The Duke would have sounded way too tough for him and his beard just couldn’t hide his weak chin and pasty complexion. He was tall, a couple of inches or so over Jack’s five-ten, and thin. Not thin like a runner or swimmer but thin like someone who uses a snow blower to clean an inch of fluffy snow off the one-car driveway.
Jack realized not everyone liked to lift weights. He himself had been more of a runner than a weight lifter until he had started working with Sy and really got into the heavy iron. In fact, Jack had gone from a respectable 185 to just shy of 200 pounds since getting out of the hospital last fall. Most of the new weight was muscle, but like Manny he had a load of laundry covering his washboard abs. Unlike Manny’s load of towels, Jack liked to think his was a small one of socks.
But in a job where you occasionally had to fight with people to get the cuffs on, wouldn’t it make sense to do at least a bit of training? But on the other hand, if you didn’t mind sending in the paramedics to do your job. . . .
Jack didn’t know how Chalmers had gotten the Earl nickname or whether it was supposed to be derogatory or not. If he had been labelled — and cops loved to slap on nicknames for good or ill — in sarcasm or jest, then it had backfired because Chalmers seemed to like the handle and never reacted negatively when someone called him the Earl.
After a quick stop at the nearest Tim Hortons, Chalmers wanted to sit at Yonge and Eglinton, the unofficial hub of the division and one hell of a busy intersection. For a change, the Earl wasn’t pestering Jack for traffic stops. He seemed content to sip his coffee and watch the women go by, although there weren’t many people out at this hour and those who were, were bundled up against the cold.
“5302, call for you at 3000 Yonge Street. Male calling 911, says he’s hearing voices and wants to kill himself. See attached CPIC. Time, 0215.”
Jack was about to pull up the CPIC hit for the male when Chalmers told him not to bother.
“It’s just Willy,” he explained. “He calls in about once a month saying he’s going to kill himself.”
“Bit of a frequent flyer, is he?” Jack caught a break with the light south of them and pulled a U-turn to head north up Yonge Street.
Chalmers nodded, then swallowed some coffee. “He’s a harmless little guy. I think he gets lonely and says he’s going to kill himself just so he can go to the hospital and talk to someone. This won’t take us long.”
The rest of the trip was spent in silence, Chalmers running licence plates, looking for an expired validation sticker, Jack sipping his tea. It was funny how he had been a major coffee drinker until Sy, who’d had coffee for blood, had been killed. Ever since then it was strictly tea for Jack. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, just something that happened. He wondered what a therapist would make of it.
Okay, Jack. That’s enough Sy for today.
He had to be careful. If he thought about his murdered friend too often, he started dreaming about that night in the alley. He couldn’t afford another stint of nightmares. What was the old saying? Beyond here there be dragons?
Number 3000 Yonge Street was an old apartment building just south of Lawrence Avenue, the division’s northern boundary. Beyond here there be 32 Division, the starting point of Jack’s career.
Six years up there thinking I was a cop and all it took was one night in 51 to teach me I knew shit about being a cop. And now I’m stuck in a division so fucking dead it makes 32 look like a war zone.
“I don’t know how much longer I can take this,” he told himself as he got out of the car.
“You’re talking to yourself, Jack. Can’t take what?” Chalmers joined Jack on the sidewalk, adjusting his uniform hat. That was another thing: a lot of the coppers in 53 wore their hats. The rule for hats in 51 was simple: they stayed in the trunk unless the media or the brass were about.
“Don’t you ever get bored working here? Don’t you get tired of doing alarm calls and medical complaints?”
“You kidding?” Chalmers asked incredulously. “This is a great division to work in. Nothing too serious, easy tickets and lots of hot women. They don’t call it Yonge and Eligible for nothing. You don’t like it here?”
As they headed for the building’s front door, Jack considered lying. But why bother? He wasn’t happy and he sure wasn’t obligated to walk around with a fake smile plastered on his face.
“I’m bored out of my fucking mind.”
“Then transfer. I’m sure you could get back to 51. You spend enough time down there anyway.” The Earl sounded as if he didn’t understand why Jack jumped on 51 calls in the first place. Or maybe he didn’t want to understand.
“I can’t transfer. My wife would kill me, even though I tell her there are days I’m so bored I could just quit altogether.”
“Maybe that’s what she wants,” Chalmers said as he yanked open the lobby door.
Jack stopped in his tracks. That couldn’t be what she was doing, could it? Jack knew Karen wasn’t comfortable with him being a cop. What wife would be, after a murdered partner, death threats and a home invasion? But he thought she was okay with him working in 53, a division so quiet it was driving him stir crazy, so crazy he told her he would rather quit than work there. Is that what she wanted? For him to quit on his own, so it would be his decision and not something she forced on him? She wouldn’t do that to him, would she?
“You coming, Jack?” Chalmers asked from the doorway.
“Yeah, right behind you.”
Would she?
“It’s at the end,” Chalmers said, gesturing down the hall after they exited the elevator on the eleventh floor.
“It’s always at the end.” Jack fell into step next to Chalmers and was a little surprised when the Earl moved ahead to knock on the door.
I guess when he knows the EDP isn’t violent, he’s willing to go first.
Chalmers rapped the corner of his memo book on the door. “Willy, it’s the police. Open up.”
Willy opened the door and Jack immediately saw why he wasn’t considered a threat. Standing all of five-two at best, he was a portly fellow with thin hair. Owlish eyes peered out from behind round glasses.
“Hi, Willy. You need a ride to the hospital?” Chalmers asked by way of greeting.
“No, I don’t want to go to the hospital. They never help me.” Willy held the door open. “Please come in.”
The apartment was a small one-bedroom and impeccably clean and neat. Willy ushered them into the living room, then offered them a seat on the couch. The pillows and a knitted throw looked so precisely placed and proper that Jack didn’t have the heart to sit down and he was positive Willy sighed in relief when they declined.
“So what’s on your mind today, Willy?” Chalmers hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and rocked back on his heels. Maybe this was his Officer Friendly stance.
If the Earl wanted to handle this, Jack was more than willing to let him run with it. He hung back, surveying the apartment. Everything was as orderly as the couch. The magazines on the coffee table were fanned out decoratively, the glass cabinet holding porcelain figurines gleamed, not a trace of dust existed anywhere.
“The voices are back,” Willy explained.
His home might have been tight and organized, but Willy was a ball of nerves. His hands couldn’t stop moving. If they weren’t smoothing the front of his beige sweater vest, they were patting down his already flattened hair. What was left of it. Willy was a definite candidate for a good toupée or a shaved head.
Willy leaned confidentially toward Chalmers, lowering his voice to a whisper, as if hoping the voices wouldn’t hear his confession. “They’re telling me to . . . to kill myself.”
“And how are they telling you to do that?” Chalmers asked good-naturedly, playing the role of an indulgent father to a troubled child.
Willy darted his eyes at Jack, licking his lips nervously. “I don’t know him. He looks mean.”
“He’s new to the division, Willy. He’s used to dealing with drug users, not nice people like you. That’s why he looks mean. He’s really okay.”
“Oh.” Willy licked his lips again while he adjusted his glasses.
“Doing a bit of drinking tonight, Willy?” Jack asked.
The way Willy jumped it looked like he expected Jack to hit him from the other side of the room. When he realized Jack wasn’t going to, he settled down. Except for his hands, which went back to smoothing his vest.
“Why . . . why do you ask?”
Jack pointed at the round table outside the small kitchen. Four empty beer bottles littered its surface. One of them was broken, lying on its side and missing its long neck. The bottles were the only sign of normalcy in the apartment.
“The . . . the voices told me to drink them. They said it would help.”
“Yeah, I hear the same voice sometimes, too.” Jack righted the broken bottle.
“It’s okay if you had some beers, Willy, it’s your house,” Chalmers soothed, glaring at Jack over his shoulder.
Jack held up his hands in an excuse-me gesture. Sorry for butting in on your big investigation.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital, Willy?” Chalmers asked, turning back to the little man. “If you’re thinking about killing yourself, it might be a good idea.”
Willy tucked his head between his shoulders, almost cowering and jammed his hands into his pants pockets.
If he pulls into himself any more, he’ll disappear. Jack’s grin turned to a grimace as an errant bolt of pain stabbed his eye. Fuck! Okay, Chalmers, if we’re going, let’s go. I need my drugs.
“Did the voices say how to kill yourself?” Chalmers asked. He seemed to be ignoring Jack’s scrunched-up face.
Willy nodded, almost reluctantly, but said nothing.
“It’s okay, Willy. You can tell me.” Chalmers placed a reassuring hand on Willy’s shoulder.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.
“The voices told me . . . told me to . . .” Jack was rubbing the heel of his hand against his right eye in a futile effort to squash the pain and almost missed the furtive glance Willy shot his way. “It’s not nice. It’ll hurt.”
“Well, let’s get you to the hospital, then. Okay? Do you need a coat? It’s pretty chilly out there. No? Okay, let’s go.” Chalmers started for the door.
Willy meekly followed, head bowed, muttering to himself.
It’s about fucking time. Jack was already waiting in the cramped front hall. His migraine was certainly kicking into high gear. He squinted against the suddenly too-bright light.
Then Willy was standing in front of him. “I’m sorry,” the meek little man said, freeing his left hand from his pocket.
Jack had time to think About what? before Willy swung at his face. Pain, sharp and instant, ripped by his right eye. He screamed and Willy was at him, slashing backhandedly, the jagged neck of the broken beer bottle clenched in his fist.
Jack got his arms up to protect his face and the glass tore through his jacket sleeves. He lunged at Willy, smashing him into the wall, then flinging him to the floor. Willy was screaming, thrashing and twisting beneath Jack. Almost blind — he couldn’t see to his right — Jack groped for Willy’s hand, desperate to get hold of the broken piece of bottle.
He felt Willy’s hand punch into his side, stabbing at him. Would the Kevlar vest stop the glass? Jack clamped his right arm to his side, pinning Willy’s hand between his upper arm and the vest.
“I want to die! Kill me! Kill me!” Willy screamed and went for Jack’s eyes with his free hand.
Jack was almost completely blind. He hoped it was only from blood in his eyes. He could barely see Willy and the nut’s left arm kept slipping away. Little or not, Willy was fighting Jack with a maniacal strength and it was only a matter of seconds before he tugged his left arm and the bottle neck free.
“Chalmers! For fuck’s sake, help me!”
Richard “the Earl” Chalmers stood in the hallway, staring into the apartment, his face a perfect sculpted expression of disbelief. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. What went wrong? Willy had been following him out the apartment like he always did, submissive and cooperative.
There had been a scream from behind him and Chalmers had turned in time to see Willy and Warren falling to the floor. What was that asshole Warren doing? This was supposed to be a quick, easy call. A short wait at the hospital — Willy always knew the right things to say to get admitted at least overnight — then back to the station for lunch, go out solo for the second half of the shift, get away from Mr. 51 Division Tough Guy Warren. Maybe take out the radar gun and set up on Mount Pleasant, no, Bayview would be better at that hour. Now Warren was messing it all up just to prove how tough —
Then Chalmers saw the blood pouring — no, gushing! — from Warren’s right eye. The blood was raining on Willy, who was twisting and squirming under Warren, flinging blood everywhere, painting the walls inside the apartment door with it. What the hell was going on?
“Chalmers! For fuck’s sake, help me!”
Willy might have been small, but the way he was thrashing about it was like trying to hold down a fucking greased pig. Jack’s right eye was gone, cut or full of blood, Jack didn’t know, but he couldn’t see a damn thing out of it. He was losing his left eye, too, as blood coated his face. He shook his head to clear his eyes, but there was just too much blood.
He finally managed to grab Willy’s right arm and pin it to the floor. He still had Willy’s other arm trapped against his side, but he could feel it slipping free. A couple more tugs and Jack would be in some serious shit.
“Willy! Stop fighting!” Jack could feel blood, his blood, hot and wet, fly from his lips as he yelled. He pictured his face drowned beneath a mask of red and suddenly it was Sy beneath him, Sy’s face covered in blood, Sy’s blood pumping out from his severed artery, Sy’s blood slicking Jack’s hands as Jack fought for his partner’s life, Sy’s life draining away in rivers of red.
No! I’m not going to die. I won’t let this little fuck kill me too.
Willy was still jerking his left arm, trying to free the hand holding the knife. Jack readied himself. Next tug, he was going for his gun.
Let’s see this little fucker cut my throat with a couple of rounds in his chest.
Willy tugged. Jack went for his gun.
There was an angry hissing noise from beside Jack’s left ear and the unmistakable smell — sharp, hot, abrasive — of pepper spray. Willy’s angry screams instantly became wails of agony and still Chalmers hosed Willy down.
The spray burned Jack’s throat. “Chalmers! Enough! Grab his left hand.” How Jack could hear the hiss of spray over Willy’s screams he didn’t know, but he knew the hiss lasted another brief second, then abruptly cut off.
Jack felt Chalmers fumbling behind him, tripping over their entwined legs.
“I’ve got it! I’ve got the bottle!”
Jack pulled away from Willy and stood up. He didn’t care if Willy wasn’t cuffed, he had to get away from the pepper spray. God, he hated that shit. Maybe it didn’t work all the time on the assholes, but it always worked on him. Just a whiff of it could double him up with hacking convulsions. His throat felt as if it was lined with fire. His left eye was burning but not as badly as it should have been. The blood must have somewhat kept the spray out of his right eye. Thank God for small mercies.
Jack fumbled his way into the hall and drew huge, cleansing breaths. His throat was still a column of fire, but at least he wasn’t hacking his guts out. He wiped at his eyes, steeling himself for a slash of pain from his right, but there was none. Another mercy. Willy must have missed the eyeball. The instant his eyes cleared, more blood, rushed back into the right, blotting part of his vision, but not before he glimpsed Willy huddled on the floor, pawing at his own eyes.
Serves you right, you little fuckhead.
Jack gingerly explored the area beside his right eye, wincing when his fingers touched raw, torn flesh. He gritted his teeth against the flare of pain as he pressed his hand to the wound.
There was a choked scream from down the hall. A neighbour, curious or concerned, had stuck her head into the hall and, seeing Jack, uttered a short shriek before slamming her door shut.
Jack looked down at himself with his one good eye. Blood drenched his uniform jacket and glistened on the black cloth. He smiled, then spat blood from between his lips, spraying the wall.
I must look like something out of a horror movie, but I’m alive. But Sy. . . .
Jack’s free hand went to his throat frantically checking for a cut, but there was none.
“Jack?” Chalmers slipped hesitantly in front of him. “Jack, you okay?”
Jack turned to him and smiled, a full, teeth-baring grin. “I’m alive, if that’s what you mean. Did you get the knife?”
“Um,” Chalmers held up the neck of the broken beer bottle. “I got the glass. There wasn’t a knife.”
“That’s what I meant, the glass. There was no knife.” Of course there was no knife. Willy had used a broken bottle, not a knife. Sy had been killed with a knife. Sy’s throat . . . Jack pushed that thought away. What’s done is done. The past is dead.
Chalmers was looking around uncertainly, almost nervously, still holding up the piece of bottle.
Yes, Jack could clearly see it was a bottle, thought he could even see a chunk of his skin impaled on one of the jagged stumps. He grinned at the idea.
Chalmers backed up from that grin. “Um, do you want to call for an ambulance, or should I?”
Still grinning but in an utterly calm, I’m-not-standing-here-covered-in-my-own-blood voice, Jack asked, “Have you cuffed Willy yet?” He couldn’t see Willy, who was behind Chalmers, but he could still hear him. His cries had deteriorated to pain-filled whimpers.
“Ah . . . no. I wanted to see how you were.”
“I’m good.” That same pleasant tone. “Why don’t you go cuff Willy before he decides to go get another weapon? I’ll call for an ambulance.”
Chalmers stepped into the apartment, casting uneasy glances back at Warren. That smile, with blood smearing his face and lips, outlining his teeth and gums, was the freakiest thing he had ever seen. And Warren didn’t even seem upset. If anything, he seemed happy! Happy that some nut had just carved up his face. Chalmers pulled out his handcuffs, wondering if he was cuffing the real nut.
“Dude, when I said we should meet up later, this isn’t what I meant.”
Jack smiled. A normal, true-to-its-depths smile. And bloodless, since he’d had the chance to clean up. “Manny, what are you doing here?”
“Here” was Sunnybrook Hospital. The emergency room, to be exact. While Chalmers had struggled to cuff Willy — the pepper spray might have knocked the desire to fight, to provoke an officer into killing him, out of poor Willy, but he hadn’t wanted to pull his hands away from his burning eyes — Jack had radioed for an ambulance and extra units. Willy had been hauled away after officers had gladly and none too gently Jack guessed, decontaminated him by shoving his head under the bathtub faucet.
The paramedics had bandaged Jack up and hustled him off to Sunnybrook. The Earl had followed in the scout car. And here Jack sat, or reclined, in a hospital bed waiting to be stitched up. The pain had subsided to a sharp ache and withdrawn to the area beside and above his right eye. Curiously, his migraine had taken a back seat to the cut, settling down somewhere at the back of his skull. He supposed the migraine didn’t want to share the pain spotlight and was willing to wait until it could have the stage to itself again.
Jack was stripped down to his T-shirt and pants. The pants had only a drop or two of blood on them and could be saved, but his jacket and shirt were history. He had been drifting off when Manny had come in.
“I’m here on official business, brother.” Manny held up a camera case. “53 doesn’t have a SOCO on the road, so I’m here to take some pictures. But we would have come up anyway, man, you know that. We heard you call for the ambulance but didn’t know it was for you until they called me for the pics.”
“Is Jenny with you?”
“Yup. She had to hit the little girls’ room first. Personally,” Manny said, fiddling with the camera, “I don’t think she can take the sight of blood.”
“Yeah, right.” Jenny Alton was one of the toughest cops Jack knew. “I see you’re still sporting that goatee. I can’t believe no one’s given you any grief about it.”
“It’s a beard,” Manny said defensively, pointing at the pencil-thin line of hair outlining his jaw. “And there’s been a few complaints,” he admitted.
“I still think with that cue ball you call a head it makes you look like a professional wrestler.”
“Yeah!” Manny whipped off his jacket and hit a Hulk Hogan pose. Thankfully, he still had the rest of his uniform on; Manny was a big guy and paid his dues in the weight room, but he was too much of a junk food addict to be posing.
“Know any good vets?” He pumped his arms in a double-bicep shot. “’Cause these pythons are sick!”
Jack laughed. He could always count on Manny to lighten things up.
“All I need is a good name.” Manny swung his arms down, back to the most muscular pose, quivering exaggeratedly. “Like Manny the Magnificent or Manny the Mighty.”
“How about Manny the Mental Midget?” Jenny suggested as she slipped into the tiny room.
Whereas Manny could brighten Jack’s mood, the mere sight of Jenny upped his pulse. Tall and slim with just enough muscle to give her curves, she was one of the few policewomen who looked good in uniform. Good? Hell, downright sexy. Her raven hair, done up in a tight French braid, offset dazzling crystal-blue eyes.
Manny the wrestler went back to his camera as Jenny leaned in to give Jack a kiss on the cheek. “That’s for being hurt,” she explained, then punched him, not playfully, in the ribs. “And that’s for getting hurt. How could you let someone get that close with a weapon?”
“Your concern is touching.” Jack pouted, rubbing his side. “I could have had broken ribs, you know.”
“You don’t. We got the story from the Ds when they called for pictures. Seriously, Jack, I’m sorry you’re hurt and I’m really happy it isn’t serious, but how could you let this happen? It doesn’t sound like you.”
Jack studied his friends. Beneath Manny’s joking and Jenny’s anger, he saw their concern and understood it. The Jack who had let a kid sneak up on him at a house party and let a nut dripping with warning signs get close to him with a weapon was not the same cop who had worked the streets in 51.
Jack shrugged, feeling a twinge in his right shoulder. Old pains, new pains. “I was careless, I guess. Getting stale, rusty.”
“Dude, you need to come back to 51.”
Jack nodded. “I know.” A sudden grin split his face. “And this,” he touched the bandage, “is my ticket out of here.”
Jenny crossed her arms, unconvinced. “You really think that will fly with Karen?”
“How can Karen say it’s safer for me in 53? She can’t. Not with this staring her in the face. So let’s get a look at it, shall we?”
Jack reached for the temporary bandage, but Jenny stopped him. “Shouldn’t we wait for a nurse or someone?”
“Nah. The doctor’s already cleaned me up. I asked them to hold off on stitches until pictures were taken. Come on, unwrap me.”
Jenny gently freed the tape holding a gauze wrap in place and began to unwind the material from around Jack’s head. As she removed layers, Jack could feel dried blood clinging stubbornly to the gauze. Jenny pulled it free with a wet, crinkling noise.
“Don’t take the dressing off yet, Jenny.” Manny moved in with the camera. “I’ll take some overall shots first, then some without the dressing. More dramatic that way.”
Jenny smirked at him. “Guy takes the SOCO course and suddenly thinks he’s an artist.”
Manny was unperturbed. “Some artists take pictures of people or landscapes. I photograph scenes of crime. My work — no, my art — allows the inarticulate to speak in eloquent volumes.”
Jack and Jenny groaned in unison. “How many others have you used that line on?” Jack asked.
“You’re my first,” Manny declared proudly. “I’m really looking forward to saying it in court. Now, get naked for me.”
Jenny gently pulled the dressing away, trying not to notice Jack wincing whenever the bandage snagged on clotted blood. When the wound was fully exposed, Manny whistled appreciatively. Jenny frowned.
“You better hope the doctor uses small stitches, man. Other-wise, you’ll end up with one big-ass scar.” Manny snapped a few final shots, then handed the camera to Jack. “Check it out.”
Jack studied himself in the digital display. Manny was right; it was going to be one hell of a scar. The jagged end of the bottle neck had made his wound messy. There was one deep gash, too brutal to be called a cut, starting on the outside of his right cheek, just below the eye. It slashed up on an angle through his eyebrow and faded out as it ran onto his forehead. Above this and beside the eye was a mass of smaller, shallower cuts, like veins branching out from a main artery.
An inch to the left and I would have lost the eye. Lucky.
“And you think if you show that to Karen she’ll agree to let you go back to 51?” Jenny was still frowning.
“She’ll have to admit that it’s not as safe up here as she thought.”
“So she and her parents, I bet, will use it as an argument to quit the job altogether.”
“It’s time I took Sergeant Rose’s advice and grew some balls.” Jack crossed his arms defensively. “I thought you guys would support me on this.”
“We do, man. We just don’t want to see you get divorced over it.”
“When were you thinking of putting in the transfer?”
Jack laughed. “Hell, I’m thinking of seeing the inspector before I go home today.”
A few hours later Jack was sitting in the scout car, his face freshly stitched and still numb from the anaesthetic, though he could already feel the freezing ebbing away, revealing the pain beneath it. He pictured a beach growing again as the tide slowly retreated. He touched the bottle of painkillers in his pocket appreciatively. He was going to need them soon.
“Did you want to stop anywhere before we go to the station?” Chalmers asked as he fired up the car. “Grab a coffee or something to eat?”
Chalmers had been hesitant, cautious even, around Jack throughout the time at the hospital. When Manny and Jenny had arrived, the Earl had disappeared entirely, supposedly to get some lunch. Maybe he thought Jack partially blamed him for what had happened. Whatever the reason, Chalmers was eager to please.
Jack checked his watch. “It’s almost eight. We’re already on the big clock, so why don’t we stretch the overtime a bit?” He tapped the thick bandage wrapped around his head. “I don’t think anyone will begrudge me another hour.”
“Sure, Jack. You want to get breakfast?”
“Nope. I was thinking we could drive down to 51. I need to have a word with the inspector.”