Creekers (4 page)

“Then why were you using them?” Noyle asked.

The question fell on him, like a wall collapsing. His temper had begun to simmer. He wrung his hands in his lap.

“I was not using quads,” he affirmed very slowly. If he didn’t speak slowly, he’d get mad, and one thing he didn’t want to do was pitch a fit in front of three IAD investigators. These three poker-faces were the department’s ball-cutting crew. Instead, Phil took a breath, exhaled, and repeated, “I was not using quads. I’ve never loaded quads on duty or off. And if you want to know the truth, I’m getting really confused right now. I can’t make any sense out of this line of questioning.”

“Nor can we,” Noyle inserted, “make any sense out of your testimony today, Lieutenant Straker. It seems to us that you’re lying.”

Phil leaned forward across the conference table. “Pardon me?”

“Lieutenant, isn’t it proper protocol for an officer to be placed on administrative leave after a shooting?”

“Yeah,” Phil answered, “just as I was placed on administrative leave after this shooting.”

“And what else did you do? Isn’t it also protocol for an officer to turn in his or her service weapon upon such an instance?”

“Yeah, to the next ranking officer on the site. I did this, too. Immediately. And if you think I was using quads on the night of the shooting, just check my service revolver. It’s locked up in the property room. Open it and look in it, check the ammo.”

Noyle cleared his throat—for formality, not because he needed to. “We did exactly that, Lieutenant, and we found one expended cartridge in the number one chamber. Chambers two through six were loaded with 38-caliber  quads.”

“That’s bullshit!” Phil stood up and yelled.

“No, Lieutenant, it’s
evidence,”
Noyle informed him. “And so is the autopsy report filed by the district medical examiner.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Phil asked as though each word were a stone being expelled from his throat.

“That boy you shot?” Noyle paused a moment to adjust his tie. “According to the autopsy report, he was shot in the high chest area, just above the right lung. Upon impact, the projectile dispersed as, and I’ll quote, ‘four point-three-eight inch fragments, two of which exited the body from a high-right anterior position. A third fragment tumbled down the dorsal-side of the spinal column and lodged in the left calyx cavity of the left kidney. The fourth fragment penetrated the aorta.” Noyle cleared his throat again, then looked back at Phil. “The Special Operations armorer positively identified the referred-to fragments as ‘dispersed missile debris’ from an unauthorized bullet known as a quad, Lieutenant. Records and Ident verified that the weapon which fired this bullet was your own. And the district medical examiner concluded that the victim’s death can be directly attributed to the particular ammunition that was used. In other words, Lieutenant if you’d been using standard, department-authorized ammunition on the night in question, that eight-year-old boy would still be alive…”

Still be alive.
Noyle’s final words reverberated in Phil’s head now, months after the fact. At first he’d tried to fight IAD’s findings, but it didn’t wash; Phil knew he’d somehow been framed by Dignazio, but how could he prove it? A week later, Phil was standing before the commissioner himself, and was told, “You’ve got two choices, Straker. You can stick with this ridiculous story about being framed, in which case the district attorney’s office will charge you with negligence, premeditated use of dangerous and unauthorized ammunition, and at the very least, second-degree manslaughter.”

“What’s my other choice?” Phil grimly inquired.

“You can resign. The incident, of course, will go on your department record, but no charges will be brought against you. Use your head, son. Turn in your papers.”

Which Phil did. The comm was right—there was no other choice for him. If he challenged the accusations, he’d be formally charged and prosecuted. And since he had no solid proof that Dignazio had framed him, he’d be found guilty. He’d get sentenced to a year at least, and if there was one thing he knew, cops rarely lasted a month in the joint.

So here I am,
he thought now, standing in the middle of a textile factory at two in the morning. Blackballed. Washed up. No police department in the country would touch him, not with the bullshit in his metro personnel file. At age thirty-five, his blazing career in law enforcement was over, his degree useless, and over a decade of hard work had been reduced to nothing more than a small pile of ashes.

He almost laughed.
All right, so my cop career is over. Now I’ve got a new career as a security guard working midnight-to-eights and pulling in $7.50 an hour It’s better than being in the joint…

The job itself required very little in the brain department; a well trained chimp could do it, he supposed. Security work was about the only thing he could think of that was relative to his education and interests, and Preventive Security, Inc. was the only company in the state which offered him a job despite his rep with the metro cops. The job was simple: he punched a Latham roundclock every hour in the factory. The rest of the time he sat in an office, drank diet Pepsi, and read novels. “It’s a cinch,” his new boss promised. “We haven’t had a break-in at this place in twenty years.”

Interesting work.

Then the perimeter alarm went off.

“So much for the boss’s twenty-year record,” Phil mumbled to himself.
Probably an alarm malfunction.
He checked the jack plate on the Sparrow/Jefferies alarm system. ZONE TWO, the light blinked. ENTRY BREACH.

I don’t believe it! I’ve got someone busting into the place!
He cut the office lights and screwed the red lens on his Kel-Lite. Then he grabbed his GOEC Mace—Preventive Security was an
unarmed
company, no gun permits—and slipped out into a secondary transport aisle. He kept his light low; he didn’t want to scare anyone away, he wanted to catch them, if only to relieve the boredom. Walking through the dark factory, though, put him on edge. What if the intruders were armed?
Just be careful, skillethead.
Flanks of nameless machines led him around the production area. At the other end of the building (designated ZONE TWO) he could see the exit door ajar.

Someone’s in here, all right,
he realized.
But who would want to break into a freakin’ textile factory? What’s to steal? Spools of thread?

Down the aisle and another turn, and his question was answered.
How stupid can crooks be?
he wondered. Someone had turned on the lights in the automat, and right this instant he could see a shadow leaning over one of the machines.
A coinbox jockey,
it seemed obvious to him.
Why work a job when you can make a living busting into vending machines?
On Metro, this would’ve been an easy collar, but Phil’s new boss reflected some very serious sentiments for situations that actually involved a burglar. “Remember, Phil, you’re not John Law anymore, you’re just a guard. You see anyone actually break into that place, you call the county cops and get out. No playing hero. Christ, in this state if a guard injures a crook during a crime, the crook sues and wins. I don’t need any lawsuits or liabilities.” Phil saw the man’s point, especially given the fact that he didn’t have a gun or police powers any longer. But—that didn’t mean he couldn’t have a little fun…

“Freeze! Police!” Phil shouted. “Don’t move or I shoot!”

“With what? A paper clip and rubber band?” the “intruder” replied and casually turned away from the vending machine. Then he smiled. “How’s it goin’, Phil? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Crick City’s favorite son. I guess you’re not too keen on keeping in touch.”

Phil couldn’t believe it. The man who faced him stood short and fat. The bald pate glimmered in the automat’s buzzing fluorescent light, and his mustache was like a stout caterpillar on his lip. Those features, plus the tidy, starched municipal police uniform, were all Phil needed to recognize.

“Lawrence Mullins,” Phil identified, “Chief of the Crick City Police Department. Would you mind telling me what in the hell you’re doing here?”

“What’s it look like? I’m getting a cup of coffee,” Mullins said and raised the steaming Macke cup.

Phil closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Calm down,
he commanded himself.
Don’t blow up.

Then, as was usually the case, he…blew up.

“You broke into my factory just to buy a goddamn cup of coffee!”

Mullins chuckled approvingly. “Still got that temper, I see. Good, good. And, you know, you sure got some cheapie locks on this place. Shit, I had that door open in less time than it takes to use the key. Oh, and how about reholstering that 44-magnum can of Mace, huh? What, you get a lot of mean dogs around here?”

Phil sighed. “Please, Chief. Don’t screw with me. I’ve had a bad day—or I should say, a bad
year
.”

“So I’ve heard. Back in town, we all heard about that shooting when you were with Metro. But we can talk about that later. That was a smart move, resigning voluntarily instead of fighting them. You fight with any big city IAD, you lose your ass. Then you really would have been washed up. Shit, a former cop with
convictions…
You
wouldn’t have been able to get a job cleaning the greasehole at Chuck’s Diner.”

One thing Phil didn’t need to be reminded of was the Metro frame. And another thing he didn’t need was a load of wisecracks. “Chief, look, it’s good to see you and all that, but are you going to tell me why you’re here, or are you just trying to piss me off while you stand there sipping coffee?”

Mullins sipped more coffee, just barely smiling over the steam. “Oh, is that what you want to know? You want to know why I’m here?”

“Yeah, Chief, I do.”

“Well, we’re friends, right? From way on back? Shit, I practically raised you myself. And when I heard about the Metro thing, and you taking this pissant security job, well… I was a little concerned, that’s all. I mean, it’s not like you’ve seen fit to stop by your old hometown once in a while, you know, just to say hello to some of the folks you grew up with. But of course I guess you been too busy for the last ten years, what with the highfalutin’ big city job with Metro. A narc lieutenant, ain’t that what you were?”