Maneuvering around the grill of the car, Delta stopped at the feet of her battered and bloodied partner and screamed in anguish at the sightless eyes staring into the heavens.
“No!”
Rushing to his side, Delta knelt next to Miles and picked him up in her arms. “No, no, no,” she cried, pulling his bleeding face to her chest. “Please, no.”
She knew he was dead. Shotgun holes riddled his upper body, arms, neck, and face. Most of the left side of his jaw had been shot away, and his hair was already a thick mass of blood and bone. Only his eyes and forehead were unharmed. Hugging him tightly, Delta looked at the pavement and watched his life blood slowly drain onto the unyielding cement below.
“No, no, no,” Delta murmured, feeling for a pulse. Struggling to maintain some tiny semblance of composure, Delta reached a bloodied hand across the seat for the mike. This wasn’t happening, she told herself. It couldn’t be happening to her Miles. Not Miles.
“Oh God,” she said, swallowing hard as she gripped the slippery mike. “Control, Stevens. Get some control.” Delta wiped her eyes, unknowing of the blood she wiped across her face. Inhaling deeply, Delta spoke hastily into the mike.
“This ...this is ... S1012. We have ... a 406 ... officer down. I repeat ... officer down.” The radio sputtered as officers radioed their locations and their estimated time of arrival. “Suspect vehicle ... Zebra ... Adam ... Peter ... 914. Heading . . . north .. . Wilde.” Letting the mike slip from her hand, Delta gently picked Miles up in her arms and cradled him close to her.
“Not you, God . . . please, not you.” Pulling Miles to her chest, unaware and unconcerned about the blood pouring from his wounds onto her uniform, Delta rocked back and forth stroking his wet, black hair. The night was so still, so quiet, it felt as if the end of time had come and left them behind. In the far distance of her fractured reality, Delta heard the radio voices yelling to her, asking her to answer, concerned for her welfare.
But she could not move. She would not move. Gently rocking and crying softly into Miles’s wet hair, Delta wrestled with the fear and anguish ripping through her tormented soul. She felt the long, slow bleeding of a love that knew no bounds being violently and cruelly torn away from her. A long, hollow, echoing “No!” resounded through her spirit, as she struggled to balance herself on the fine line between sanity and insanity, between fact and a grotesque mockery of fiction. This was her worst fear and nightmare coming to life and dying in her arms.
Holding Miles’s heavy body in her arms, Delta wept. “Please don’t leave me,” Delta sobbed, cradling Miles close to her. “Please.”
In another distance, she heard sirens blast their way to a scene that she knew had already come to its fateful conclusion. As the sirens pierced through the awesome stillness, Delta prayed a silent prayer to a God she wasn’t sure was listening. She lived a thousand lifetimes as she sat on the side of the road rocking, crying, praying, cursing. In those thousand lifetimes, in those millions of grains of sand, Delta Stevens knew what it felt like for the world to come to a halt—leaving her totally, utterly alone.
In those lifetimes, Delta understood just how empty the soul can become.
Connie handed Delta’s quivering hands a cup of hot tea and pulled up a chair for her. Wrapping both trembling hands around the cup, Delta was thankful for the warmth. It was the first real sensation she remembered feeling since she’d let go of the shotgun.
Around her, the squad room was abuzz as every available officer was put to task. Other than the heat from the mug, all that penetrated the gray, amorphous fuzz enveloping her mind was a dull murmur like the busy hum of angry bees. Staring down into the tea, she thought of Miles’s blood as it slowly, evenly spread across the pavement. Steam rose off it just like the steam rose off the hot tea. Quickly setting the cup down, Delta raced to the bathroom, barely in time to lower her head into the cold porcelain commode.
“Go ahead and get it all out, honey.” Delta heard Connie’s soothing voice before heaving a fourth time. Standing behind her, Connie was holding Delta’s hair back and pressing a cool towel behind her neck.
After the last empty lurch toward the water, Delta sunk her head against the toilet seat, spent, dry, and exhausted. She was not even sure she had it in her to raise her head. Licking her lips, Delta swallowed back the burning sensation stinging her throat.
“Not Miles,” she said hoarsely. “Not my partner.”
Sitting next to her on the floor, Connie put her arms around Delta’s jerking shoulders and pulled her closer.
“Oh God, Connie, it was . . . it was so . . . awful. He . . .”
“Shh,” Connie whispered, stroking Delta’s hair and rocking her. “Take deep breaths and try to relax.”
Drawing in jerking breaths, Delta tried to get ahold of herself. It was so difficult being real, when reality seemed to distort itself right in front of her face. Even Connie’s presence didn’t feel right.
“Come on, hon. Let’s get you out of these clothes.” Connie carefully unbuttoned Delta’s bloody shirt and slipped it off her trembling shoulders. The T-shirt underneath was also stained with Miles’s blood, so Connie pulled that off Delta’s body as well. Like a child, Delta allowed Connie to remove the rest of her clothes as the two women sat huddled together in the tiny green stall.
“I’ll get your civvies, okay?” Slowly, gently, Connie untangled herself from Delta and returned briefly with Delta’s jeans and sweatshirt.
“You okay to stand?”
Delta looked up at Connie, as if seeing her for the first time. The switch from a vacuum to a tangible existence was like a slap in the face. This really was happening to her. She would not wake up, as she had on a few occasions, to find herself in her own bed, drenched in sweat from some deathly nightmare; from a permanent photograph of some poor victim dancing spastically in her dreams.
Nodding, Delta stood long enough for Connie to slip the jeans on. When she finished, Delta slid back to the floor and leaned against the cold metal sides of the stall. She felt a hundred years old. Laying her face in her hands, Delta rubbed them back and forth across her face. Soon, the slow, jerking sobs returned, and she pulled her knees up to her chest and rocked back and forth. Connie sat cross-legged across from her and laid her hands on Delta’s knees. For forty minutes, the two women remained in this position with neither saying a word. Finally, after all of the tears had poured freely and the realness of the catastrophe settled in for its life long stay, Delta tried to speak.
“I . . . have ... to . .. report .. . to the ... Captain . . .”
Connie nodded. “He can wait.”
Delta shook her head. For the moment, her tears were dried up, and a new resolution started over her. She had to finish her duty. She had to get a grip on herself so she could be of some use in finding his killer. She certainly hadn’t been of any use to Miles. Swallowing hard, forcing the jerking movements and unsynchronized breathing back into the strange netherworld from which it came, Delta let go of her knees and squeezed Connie’s hand.
“No .. . he can’t. I want to nail the bastard who did . .. this to him. You gotta help me . . . get my shit together.” Throwing her arms around Connie, Delta hugged her tightly. “It never hurt so much in my life. It was . . . worse than anyone could ever imagine.”
“I know, honey.”
“He was just laying there-”
“He was a good cop, Del.”
Delta suddenly pulled away. “He was a great man, Connie, and deserved better than to die by the hand of a bunch of fucking low-life scumbags.” Rising unsteadily to her feet, Delta took a step out of the stall before Connie reached out to stop her.
“You know what you’re heading into, don’t you?”
Delta swallowed and blinked hard to clear her eyes of the remaining tears. “I’m not doing Miles any good by falling apart at the seams. I’m a cop, goddammit.”
Connie shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. You know this is just the beginning of what will most likely be a very painful and long procedure for you. Give yourself a break here, Storm.”
Delta did not respond. Even Connie’s pet name for her didn’t warm the hardening ice crystals surrounding her heart.
“Internal Affairs is going to ask you so many questions, you’ll begin to question whether or not Miles was killed by a shotgun or a pellet pistol.”
“I know.” Delta’s resolve did not waver.
Reaching out, Connie lightly held Delta’s arm. “You go storming in there in this condition, and they’ll bury you. Everything you say to them will come under close scrutiny. Think about it.”
When Delta first came to patrol, and she and Connie hadn’t even met yet, Connie nicknamed her Storm Stevens because of the way Delta rushed into everything. So great was her excitement of the job, Delta often dove headlong into trouble.
“They’ll pick apart every little thing that you and Miles did, and at times, it will appear as if they’re trying to prove that he simply fucked up.”
“He didn’t fuck up, Connie! That asshole blew his head off for no damn reason!” Tears she thought gone welled up in her eyes. “He did-n’t do anything wrong! He—” Suddenly, Delta heard herself and bowed her head. So many emotions bashed into each other inside her like pin-balls, she didn’t know how to feel. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m not ready.”
Connie nodded. “No, but I think there’s probably some other pertinent information that you may want to give to Captain Williams now. Do you think you can do that?”
Slowly raising her head, Delta inhaled deeply. Miles still needed her to be strong. For now, she could build a wall around the hurt and pain until she had completed her task. It was what he would have done. He would have been relentless in his pursuit in bringing down her killer. She had to do that for him now. Perhaps it was the only thing keeping her on her feet.
Nodding, Delta swallowed hard again. “Will you stay close to me? I swear Connie, this will be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.” Taking Delta’s face in her hands, Connie shook her head. “I’m afraid, my friend, that you’ve already done that.”
Captain Williams jumped out from behind his large desk and opened the door for Delta. The squadroom ceased humming as she made her way from the bathroom to his office. She felt all eyes on her, and if they were sympathetic eyes, she was too numb to notice.
“Please, St—Delta, have a seat.” Closing the door behind her, the Captain also lowered the blinds to the window facing the squadroom. “Is there anything I can get you?”
“No, sir.” Delta sat heavily in the chair and stared down at her hands folded neatly in her lap. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream and yell and pull at her hair, but she was a professional, and a job still had to be done.
Sitting next to her, and not across the desk as he always had, the Captain placed a large hand on her shoulder. “I know that sorrys don’t even begin to deal with the pain you’re feeling, but I am sorry. Brookman was a hell of a good cop.”
Delta’s eyes moved from her still trembling hands and riveted on two beady brown ones looking down at her. There was a growing anger sprouting within her; anger at Miles, anger at the lack of backup, anger at herself, and anger at this man who had never taken the time to tell Miles how good he really was.
“Yes, sir, he was.”
Captain Williams folded his own hands across his lap.
“Are you sure you’re feeling up to this? There’s no hurry.”
“Oh, yes there is. I want them caught and hanged for what they’ve done. And I won’t rest until I see that done.”
“I’ve got my best men on it already, Stevens. What I need from you is a clear head and as many details as possible. As much as I know you want to, you can’t go off half-cocked looking for Brookman’s killer.We work together on cases like these, you understand?”
Delta nodded, pushing her anger deep inside. “I’m alright, sir. I know what has to be done next, and I’m okay with that. Just don’t treat me any differently because I’m a woman. ”
Captain Williams smiled. “Have I ever done that? No, sir. And I don’t anticipate you doing it now.”
“Alright. I’ll tell you what we’ve got so far. If you have anything to add, or think of anything that we’ve forgotten, sing out. We’ve got a robin’s egg blue van, possibly four door, carrying at least three people.”
Delta nodded. She had been in such shock, she hadn’t remembered giving this information when backup finally arrived. She barely remembered the ambulance arriving on the scene. Only when the paramedics were trying to pry Miles away from her, did she realize she was no longer alone.
“The van was apparently stolen less than an hour before you made the stop.”
Delta rose in her chair. “When did you get the call?”
“Only minutes ago. Some guy was at a party and said that someone must have hot-wired his van.”
“License Zebra Adam Peter-”
“914, yes.”
“We haven’t located the van?”
Captain Williams shook his head. “And we’re checking the owner out as we speak.”
“Think he’s Iying?”
Captain Williams shook his head. “He has about one hundred witnesses to corroborate his alibi. The van was stolen. ”
“Then it’s still out there?”