THE DUST FROM the outside wafted in thick and obscured the room, but not enough to hide the terror in the mother’s eyes.
“It’s okay, take it easy. I’ll help you find your baby. I’ll find him, I promise.”
“My baby,” she shrieked. “My baby.”
I climbed across chunks of the folded wall and over the couch to get to her. The dust now filled my lungs and I coughed as I hugged her trembling body. “It’s okay, I’m here to help.”
I let go of her to move the couch, but she glommed onto me. I couldn’t budge the couch. Her legs had to be compromised at least to some degree, broken or crushed. “Where’s the last place you saw your child?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure anymore. Over there, I think. What happened? Was it an airplane? Did an airplane crash into our house? My baby, please help me find my baby.”
“How old is the child and what’s his name?”
“Delbert Fawlkes, I named him after his daddy. Everyone calls him Del, jus’ like his daddy. His daddy works for Papa Dee. You know Papa Dee?”
In her hysteria she’d gone to jabbering to help bury the reality of the moment. Of course I knew Papa Dee; everyone in South Central LA knew him. He controlled all the rock cocaine in the projects—Jordan Downs, Nickerson Gardens, and Imperial Courts. Word went around that Papa Dee was on the move to expand. The poor bastards gunshot in the Impala—if they lived, it wouldn’t be for long, not once Papa Dee found out what happened to his people, driving a car into their house like this.
A child cried.
“My baby, that’s Del. Help my baby. Please, Lord God, help my baby, mister.”
Not ten feet away, the length of a car, six or eight deputies dragged the wounded suspects from the Impala and not too kindly. Their racket covered the baby’s cry.
I moved toward the direction of the sound and coughed some more.
Del cried again. I shone my light into the darkness. A toddler stood in the hall that led to the back of the house. He wore a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pajama top and a diaper, his chubby little legs slightly bowlegged. Tears glistened on his smooth black skin. Blood trickled from his lip and his nose, not much, not enough to worry about unless it came from internal injuries. He must’ve been in just the right position to be shoved into the hallway when the car came through.
One lucky little guy.
I made it over to him, cooing, saying his name. The poor child shook with fear, half-scared out of his wits. Who could blame him? I picked him up and carefully carried him back to his mama. Her legs were still pinned to the wall by the crunched-up couch. I handed him to her just as firemen climbed through the opening with a large light, tools, and medical boxes. I left them to it and went to find my other obligation, trainee Crews.
Crews stood off to the side with three trainees, in a separate group from the field-training officers and other patrol deps. I headed toward Crews, weaving in and out of the emergency vehicles now jamming up the street and blocking in our patrol car, just as Sergeant Foreman came out of the darkness. “Bruno, get your ass over here.”
Foreman always made it a point to go out of his way to make my life miserable. I deserved it. Not all that long ago, I’d gone to a call, one that always popped up in my memory tagged as The House That Bled. I found a gunshot child at the location and rushed him to the hospital in the patrol car against Foreman’s direct orders. He had wanted me to wait for paramedics. I should’ve been reprimanded, but instead, the station captain squashed the reprimand. He said to Foreman, loud enough for witnesses to hear, “Now, just how the hell do you think that would look if Bruno fought this reprimand and the press got a hold of it. The kid lived, you dumbass. Get the hell outta my office.”
Further rubbing salt in the wound, the training lieutenant made me a training officer.
Deputy Good stood among the other deputies gathered for Sergeant Foreman’s briefing.
Foreman looked at me when he spoke. “Okay, no guns were found in the car.”
Wilson, the new guy, who’d gone on scene of the robbery and started the pursuit, said, “How’d they get shot, then? Without any guns in the car, how’d they get shot?”
Good Johnson grunted, said, “Rookie.”
Foreman nodded in agreement to the rookie comment and said, “In all the excitement the guns discharged inside the car, and then when you got onto them, started the chase, they tossed the guns out the windows.” He looked from Wilson to me, “That’s why I want you, Bruno, to take all three trainees, divide up, and walk back the entire length of the pursuit. We gotta recover those guns. We can’t afford to let any kids get a hold of them or it’ll give the sheriff’s department a black eye.”
I wanted to say, “Right, and also endanger some kids as well,” but I held my tongue.
“Yeah, have a good time with that, Bad Boy,” Good said, “while us real deputies handle the tough calls.” He laughed, along with some of the others who held the same prejudices.
I left that group without further comment and went over to the three trainees. “Okay, follow me.” I kept walking right on by them and moved between the cars.
The pursuit hadn’t lasted that long, but at eighty miles an hour, we’d covered a lot of ground—ground that in reverse and on foot, would take hours to search. I moved out of the street and up onto the sidewalk. “You two take that side, one in the street and one on the sidewalk. We’re looking for guns tossed during the pursuit. Do a good job, because if you miss it, and it’s found later, there’ll be hell to pay. Me and Crews here will take this side. Keep your partner in sight and don’t separate for any reason. We’re still deep into Indian country, and you cherries don’t know your heads from your asses and you will get eaten. You understand?”
All three answered in unison, “Yes, sir.”
“Get to it.”
They moved out.
Crews and I started our sweep. The more I thought about what happened, the more I knew Foreman and the others were wrong. I thought I knew what had happened, only I couldn’t leave to check it out, not when left with the responsibility for the safety of three new guys.
We made it to the main artery we’d turned off of, Compton Avenue. I stopped. Crews looked up from scanning the ground with his flashlight. “What? You find something?”
“No, but this is ridiculous.”
“Why?”
“Never mind.”
He came over close. “How am I going to learn if you don’t tell me?”
I waved the two trainees across the street to keep going, then looked at Crews. “Okay, back there at the scene, inside the car, before anybody was moved, what did you see?”
He thought about it. “Two suspects with GSWs, both dressed like gangbangers. Two shot, two got away on foot, total of four. What am I missing here?”
“Entry, exit?”
He took a second to think about it. “I didn’t really look when—”
“Details, pay attention to the details, they’ll save your life one day.”
“Okay, I got that. What did I miss?”
“Both were shot from behind.”
He shrugged. “I’m still not following you. Oh, wait. Sergeant Foreman said he thought they were ADs, accidental discharges. I gotta tell ya that sounded a little screwy to me when he said that.”
“Why?”
“Well, I could see one AD, inside the car. The assholes get excited and the gun goes off. But not two.” He snapped his fingers. “And then you add in that they were both shot from behind and no way could that happen like that, especially in the car.”
I snapped my fingers like he did and pointed at him. “Give the rookie a cracker.”
He beamed. “So what are we going to do?”
“Foreman already hates my ass, but what’s right is right.” I yelled at the other two deputy trainees across the street. “You two, keep going, stay together and stay on your side of the street. We’re gonna be right back.” They nodded and kept looking, intent on being the ones to find the sought-after evidence that I knew wasn’t there and they believed would make them look good in the eyes of their FTOs, their Field Training Officers.
“Come on,” I said to Crews, and stepped into the middle of Compton Avenue to flag down a passing car.