A Week In Hel

A WEEK IN HELL

by J. Walt Layne

Published by Pro Se Press at
Smashwords

This book is a work of fiction. All
of the characters in this publication are products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. No part or whole of
this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or
retrieval system, without the permission in writing of the
publisher.

A Week In Hell

Copyright © 2013 J. Walt
Layne

All rights reserved.

Tuesday

Call me Dicke.

It was hot for Christ’s
sake, damned hot. And it smelled like a corpse rotting in the sun.
The radio head reported that it was the hottest July on record, but
he could have fooled me. It didn’t feel like July at all. It felt
more like I went to bed in a furnace and woke up in
hell.

I woke up pissed and hot.
The fan spun on the dresser like it was going to take flight, but
the air conditioning was out and the stifled air didn’t move. I
drug my ass to the can to drain my lizard. I had to hold out a hand
to steady myself until my ballast drained and I could stand up
straight.

I contemplated my face and
raised the blade. When I was done the wolf was still there, but he
was a bit better groomed. I washed my hands and dried them by
brushing back my flat top hair.

I pulled on the uniform and
dabbed a little polish on my shoes. While the polish dried, I
cleaned my gun—an old school Smith Model 10. It belonged to my
Granddad when he was a flatfoot in this very district. He passed it
on to Dad, who got killed ‘cause he didn’t pull it fast enough, in
a trailer park out on Storm Creek.

As I rodded the bore and
chambers, I thought about her.

Her name was Candace Alice
Pinkerton, and for short I’d called her Candi Apple Pink. She was a
whole lot of woman and a whole lot of trouble in a little black
dress—a real cross way breezer, I swear. Dispatch called me out to
White Walls, this beer joint on Pleasant Hill, to wring out a
couple of brawlers. When I showed up the fight was long gone, but
she was there working the bar.

I took out my pad and pen,
and planned to take a report.

“
What’ll ya have?” she
purred in a seductive feline voice that screamed
trouble.

Cats aren’t really my thing,
at least not while I’m chasing the dime, so I said, “Gimme Joe
Kennedy.”

She poured a shot of
Bushmill’s best, and turned it into a coffee mug, followed by the
oily saint of sanity itself. She sat it in front of me, and leaned
over the counter just enough for me to get a peek at the
goods.

“
Dispatch sent me over
because of a fight,” I laid out.

She shook her head, and then
cautiously sneaked a glance around.

“
Bull McCaffrey was just
sittin’ here, pullin’ on a shorty, when a couple of guys come in
here to tear up the place.” She purred it, like maybe if she
sweetened the sound of it enough it wouldn’t happen
again.

I took a slug of Joe, and
made a couple of notes. “You see those guys before
today?”

She shook her head again,
and glanced around even less conspicuously than before.

A chair rattled in the back
room of the joint, as somebody got up quick.

I stood up sharp. “Who’s
that?” I whispered.

She shook her head again.
“Nobody.”

I heard steps on the creaky
floor, and snatched off the thumb brake on my holster.

“
Come clean,” I warned as
she started to back away.

She shook her head again. “I
can’t talk to no cop.”

Lightning quick, she reached
out across the bar. My hand went to my smoke wagon. As leather shed
cold steel, she took my pen and wrote something on my
pad.

She gulped as she stared
down the barrel of eternity. I exhaled hard and put old blue back
to bed, letting that hammer down slow and easy.

When I looked at her, I
could’a’ swore she was hot, but that wasn’t all.

She was pissed. “I told you
I can’t talk to no cops.” She took my pad, stuck the pen inside it
and tossed it at me. “Now get out of here.”

She glared at me and her
eyes darted to the door.

I shoved my pen in my pocket
and walked out.

In my cruiser, I opened the
pad to where she’d wrote, “pick me up at 7,321 S.
Center.”

I was stiff; I almost let
the air out of her, and all she wanted to do was come
on.

I made my report as far as I
could, having shown up too late to break up the fray, and leaving
out the part where I almost sent the barmaid to glory and got a
date.

After I signed back in to
service, I cruised around on patrol for the better part of an hour.
The cruiser was like a rolling tin can furnace; no air conditioning
and the blower had two temperatures. With the windows down it was
hot, with them up it was damn hot. Then dispatch called
again.

“
One-twenty-one Lincoln,”
the radio squelched.

I took the handset off the
dash and keyed in, “This is one-twenty-one Lincoln.”

I rolled up to a stop sign
and waited, then I turned right and headed north. It was another
minute and a half before the radio squelched again. I’d been
skirting my district. I liked to prowl it from the outside in,
making each loop from the opposite direction. When the radio came
up, I headed for the center of my beat to make it a short trip to
the call.

“
One-twenty-one, proceed to
five-ten East Grand. An elderly neighbor reported a suspicious
person.”

“
Affirmative,” I growled
into the mic and hung it back on the dash.

I put my foot on it and
rolled north on Lime Street, toward Grand Avenue. Braking, I took
the corner at thirty, but had to stomp the brakes to avoid turning
a game of street ball into a bowling alley with two-ton
balls.

When the crumb snatchers
scattered, I kicked my cruiser in the nuts and laid a little
rubber.

Twenty seconds later, I
rolled up in front of 510. I looked over the joint and up the
alley, waiting long enough for anyone nearby to get the wrong idea.
I grabbed my pad and went to the door. I gave it the business rap
and waited.

No answer.

I gave the door the business
again, and then cupped a hand and laid an ear on it.

I heard a thud, followed by
what sounded like a muffled voice. That was followed by another
thud, and the sounds of pots and pans clattering.

I gave the door the business
and announced myself. “This is Officer Dicke, Champion City
Police.”

Nothing again.

I glanced back at my cruiser
and thought about calling for backup. I heard another thud and
grasped the door handle. Just as I was about to give it the
shoulder, I tried the knob and it gave.

Another thud, followed by
glass breaking and a muffled scream.

I drew my sidearm and moved
through the house toward the sound, my pistol at the low ready. I’m
not a small man, and I made no effort to be quiet.

The house was like an
antique store, packed full and hard to move around in for a lug
like me. I entered the kitchen and saw an overturned chair. There
was water and a dishrag on the floor.

Another thud came from the
next room, and I heard a low whimpering voice, begging. I went
right for it.

She was on her back He was
on top of her, pants around his ankles. They must’ve wrestled,
cause their heads were near me, and his ass was waving hi to the
wall.

I kicked him dead in the
kisser with my size 14.

Lips split, teeth broke,
nose exploded, and blood flew.

He was stunned after my
five-toe sandwich, so I grabbed him by the hair. When I pulled the
scumbag off her, she rolled onto her side, cradled her head with
one arm, and reached into her nether region to protect it with the
other. I could see a cut on her breast and deep purple bite marks
on the other. It was just about then that my temper shot into
white-out. I got a hold of the sonofabitch and somehow vaguely
remember hearing her say something about, “There’s an officer here,
but he’s killing the man,” followed by terrified sobs.

It came to my attention that
we were no longer alone, when I heard a familiar voice coming from
someplace far off.

“
Officer Dicke,” the voice
said calmly.

I couldn’t place its origin,
so I didn’t move.

“
Thurman,” the voice said
again, still calm, but at a bit higher temperature. I recognized it
as my Patrol Supervisor, Sergeant Mark Spitz.

I heard it more clearly the
third time, coming from behind me.

It was then I realized that
I had been watching this scene as if from above, and suddenly I
slammed back into the here and now.

“
Thurman, put your sidearm
away,” he said calmly.

I looked down and realized I
had my piece pointed right for the unconscious scumbag’s jewels. I
let the hammer down easy, and holstered the pistol.

I slowly turned toward
Spitz, who stood in the kitchen doorway that led to the front room.
It was as if my cheese had slipped sideways off my cracker. Fuzzy
at the edges, with pissed off still faint on the screen.

“
You okay, man?” Spitz
asked.

I nodded a little, noticing
the woman was cowering in the corner between the fridge and the
sink.

Spitz started to step into
the room, sliding his nightstick back onto his belt and suddenly I
got all adrenal again. I stepped between him and her, and rested my
hand on my gun. “Far enough, asshole.”

I couldn’t believe what I
was doing. He couldn’t either—I could tell because he stopped right
away. He lifted his hands wide, and shifted his weight a
little.

“
Thurman, go easy man, it’s
all right. Mrs. Marshall called us to back you up,” he said calmly,
but I could tell his shot group was tightening up.

“
Don’t move,” I
growled.

I bent down to her and
offered her my hand. She cowered away, trying to shield her
nakedness, pressing a hand to her ruined breast and covering her
crotch. The pooled blood beneath her was very dark.

“
C’mon, let’s get you some
help,” I croaked.

She shuddered, looked at me
and then at Spitz, like one of us was gonna bust her
chops.

“
C’mon,” I held out my
hand.

She finally took my hand and
I helped her to her feet. She took two steps and collapsed into the
arms of two waiting medics.

All of a sudden I felt like
Atlas, as the world shifted into an uncomfortable spot.

Something moved in my
periphery, and I spun on my heel.

In the back room, two more
medics were loading the scumbag piece of shit onto a gurney. He
wasn’t wearing a rubber sleeping bag, so I guess the optimists won
this one.

I turned to Spitz who was
still watching me closely. “I gotta get some air,” I growled, and
brushed past him on my way to the door.

I sat down on the edge of
the porch, and watched one of the detectives slip up on the woman
from the house. The medic with her gave him the shoulder, and he
turned around and walked right into the rape counselor. I thought I
was having a shit day.

A minute later, Spitz joined
me on the porch. He handed me my notepad.

“
Here, you might want this,”
he said, in that same calm voice. Then he asked, “You
okay?”

“
Hell no I ain’t okay. How
the hell am I gonna be okay?” I growled like some kind of
animal.

“
Look out, here comes the
detective,” Spitz gave me the heads up.