Authors: Derek Blass
“
I heard something else, Raul.”
“
I'm not taking my eyes of this corner. You deal with the other shit.”
“
Cruz?? Raul??”
“
Who is it?”
“
I'm not taking my eyes off it.”
“
It's Martinez.”
“
Martinez! Hey, what the hell happened to Alfonso and the Chief?”
“
Not sure, but we don't have time for that now. Give me thirty seconds to get back on the other side of the house and we'll charge in.”
“
There's no fucking deception anymore, Martinez. Something freakish just saw us from over there,” Cruz said, pointing to where Raul was transfixed.
“
Stick to the fucking plan, Cruz. It's what we got and we aren't changing.”
“
You two shut the fuck up and let's do this shit,” Raul stammered. His Spanish accent sounded whiny when emphasizing English swear words.
“
Thirty seconds.”
“
Okay, then I'll toss this into the house...”
“
Yes, thirty seconds.” Martinez bolted back to the other side of the house.
“
Twenty...ten...five...” Cruz pulled the pin, stood up and turned to the window behind him. He lifted his hand up just as someone's face moved back from the window. It was the same face he had seen peek out from behind the house. Pale skin, long black hair, egg-white eyes. There was no body, just a white face in the darkness.
“
Throw the fucking grenade!” Raul yelled.
Cruz threw the grenade. It crashed through the window and bounced inside the house. He knelt down just as the grenade exploded and burst light out onto the plains behind them. Raul ran to the front of the house with Cruz in tow. They both stopped next to the front door. Martinez and his group busted through a side door and were greeted by a chorus of bullets. Despite Martinez's orders, Raul shouldered his way through the front door and into the house. Cruz stayed perched on the front porch, his own gun rattling in his hands. He saw Raul backing out to him, dragging something big.
“
It's him, it's the freak we saw,” Raul gasped as he pulled the body through the threshold and next to Cruz.
“
Is he dead?”
“
Stunned. I'll be right back.”
“
Wait!! Give me something to keep him here!” But Raul was already back in the house. Cruz looked at the man. He was slender but muscular. Jet black hair fell over his face in a mess. A streak of blood from a wound on his head streamed down his cheek, a crimson ribbon down the otherwise pale canvas. The man's lips quivered and startled Cruz. He looked around and picked up a stone.
Several more gunshots rang out, followed by silence, then more gunshots and a deafening explosion. Cruz jumped up and peered down into the house. He saw a person stumbling down the hall toward him, banging into walls while moving. As the person neared, Cruz tried to pick out who it was. It didn't appear to be any of their people.
“
Who is that?”
The person kept stumbling down the hall. The moment Cruz realized who it was, Shaver opened his bloody eyes and raised his gun at Cruz. Frozen in place, Cruz could only draw what he thought would be his last breath. Shaver pulled the trigger and his gun clicked. Click, click-click. Then Shaver tripped over the doorway and fell onto the ground in front of Cruz.
And there he was, the man Cruz didn't know he knew.
P A R T T W O
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T H E T R I A L
T W E N T Y-N I N E
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S
andra stood behind Cruz rubbing his shoulders. Her face was nearly healed. Only upon the closest scrutiny were light pink spots visible.
The two had grown closer in the weeks following the raid on Shaver's home. After the run in with Shaver and Cruz's recognition of who he was, Cruz took some time off from work to unwind. Sandra stopped by his house, often bringing him little gifts of pastries or meals until he recovered his energy. The care they demonstrated for each other in those stressful times sparked the beginnings of strong emotion.
“
So who is Shaver?”
“
The same pig that beat me and Eduardo—you remember Eduardo—when I was a teenager.”
“
You're sure of it?”
“
Positive. Same face. Same eyes...same hate.”
“
Wow. He's always been like this then.”
“
A powerful one.”
Cruz also went to visit Martinez when he had the chance, and visa versa. Martinez recounted what happened once he kicked open Shaver's side door.
“
It was a hail of bullets. Something fully automatic and the bullets just tore through everything in the doorway. I was hit two times—once in the leg and the chest. The Kevlar vest is why I'm here. Two out of three of Raul's men were killed almost instantaneously. I ducked into the house and was basically immobilized. It was so dark I couldn't see a damn thing, to tell you the truth.”
“
So if Shaver had the upper hand, why'd he come out like he did?”
“
Raul—Raul flanked him. Shit, Raul saved the day. He grabbed that freak Tyler out of a side room...”
“
That part I saw.”
“
..and then went back in and flanked Shaver. I think Shaver was slightly disoriented from the combination of the flashbang you threw and our attack on the side of the house. Raul managed to land a shot on him before he charged. That's when he shot Raul...and...well, you know how that turned out.”
“
How's Carmen?”
“
Oh, she's hanging in there as much as possible. She's been by Raul's bedside night and day, hoping for some sign of life.”
“
Anything?”
“
Nothing so far.”
Their conversations vacillated between sharing bits and pieces of the joint trauma and the more mundane topics. They could only revisit those details so often and for so long before they were overwhelmed. Like any trauma, those moments were as vivid as life itself.
“
What happens next for Shaver?” Sandra asked, bringing Cruz back into the present.
“
Huh?”
“
Shaver...what next?”
“
He's sitting in the city jail right now awaiting processing.” Sandra stopped rubbing his shoulders and played with the tag on his shirt. He discounted this as hapless drifting off, fiddling, but he still felt blood rush to his face. As if she caught herself being too personal, she tousled his normally brushed back black hair, which was unkempt and disheveled. Cruz heard her walking around his office. Instead of turning around, he imagined how she moved. Her legs close together in her tight, black skirt. Heels clicking on the tile floor as she strolled around the office. She paused and he imagined her rubbing her soft neckline.
“
Did you go to Alfonso's service?”
“
No.” Cruz let his answer bounce around the room to get a feel of whether he felt guilty. “It was so soon after we caught Shaver—I wanted to get as far away from all of it as possible.” He felt her turn back around to him. He thought of them stepping close together. Warm breaths barely reaching each other. Slow, rhythmic breathing, tantric, in time. Absolution through touch.
“
Cruz?...Cruz?” A hand on his shoulder. He turned his head around to her. “Are you okay?”
Cruz let out a long, slow breath, pursing his lips and pushing air out. “I've hardly slept since we caught him. My head feels foreign, pressure from within pushing out. Weirdest dreams too. I see Shaver everywhere. Awake and asleep. I'm sorry.” She rubbed his shoulders again.
“
Don't be sorry. I understand what you're talking about.”
“
You do?”
“
Please.” The corner of her red lips quivered, shining in the overhead light, a small, celestial movement. “I see Shaver too, even though I've never seen him in person. I've been able to construct him from his voice, his actions. He's a newborn in my mind. I build him and then he hovers over me. They all do, light pressed close to my face. Just glare and hum as I feel my skin start to boil, literally ripple as it pulls away.” A glistening tear escaped from her long eyelashes and wound a black course across her cheekbone and to her chin where she wiped it away. “They wake me every night. Or, I wake and they scurry back into where they woke me up from...I don't think they'll ever leave.”
* * * *
Shaver slumped in the back of the squad car. His shoulders ached from being pinned behind his back. The trip from the hospital to the city jail was fifteen minutes, or about twenty-five with traffic. He'd run back and forth to that goddamn jail so many times when he was a rookie. Now, irony and shame drizzled over him as he made his own way there.
“
Could you roll your windows down some? It's hot as hell back here.”
“
Sure, Sarge,” the young cop answered. The over-filled city only added to the summer swell. Exhaust fumes plus engine heat plus thousands of swarming bodies. As Shaver jostled on the black vinyl seat he felt the range of his wounds. Each brought back the tumult of the last several weeks. The gunshot wounds he suffered at his house stood out as the most painful, but his whole body felt brittle and worn down.
He didn't know if it was Martinez or the other spic that had inflicted the wounds. He remembered hearing the explosion out in his driveway, figuring that had taken care of most of the ensemble. That's when he sent Tyler out the back of the house via a passageway in his basement. Shaver set up his M14 assault rifle in the only hallway leading to the back of his house. Down an offshoot to his right was the front door. Directly in front of him, probably six or seven man-length paces, the side door. He would cover both.
Tyler came running back in and shouted to him that there were guys on both sides of the house. Shaver noticed Tyler was frantic so he clamped a bear-like hand around Tyler's neck and slammed him against a wall.
“
You're gonna calm down because if you don't, we're fucked,” Shaver growled, an inch away from Tyler's face. “Now, go to the front room of the house and ambush anyone that comes in the front door.” And this was his mistake, Shaver recognized. Putting that prick in charge of something as significant as protecting a point of entry.
Although it wasn't all Tyler's fault, Shaver thought. Soon after Tyler took his position in the room, Shaver heard a bang and an artificial sun lit the front of the house. Shaver's ears rang and he soon inhaled the fumes of a flashbang. The side door burst open. Shaver remembered seeing black silhouettes pouring into his house. He pulled the trigger on his assault rifle and felt it recoil into his shoulder as it pumped out rounds. Bullets tore through men, splashing blood on walls as limbs exploded. The still night just outside the door swallowed bullets that missed their mark.
The first gunshot that hit him came from some sort of handgun. It shattered his left forearm, exited, bounced on the floor and ricocheted into his left shin. He continued to fire the assault rifle, trying to rotate to his right. That's when he felt the next bullet enter his body. This one was clean, quiet, into his right midsection. Shaver couldn't decide whether the bullet or the surprise of where it came from was more alarming. That bullet slid through ribs and punctured his right lung before coming to a rest in the inner sanctum of his body. Doctors said he was lucky that one didn't do the job. He told them it was a fucking shame it didn't. Next thing he remembered, he was toppled over on his front porch.
He spent a month in the ICU, although it was hard to tell time. There was nothing to distinguish the passing days. Today was a visit back to his doctor for a checkup of his wounds. Doctor called him bionic.
The squad car wound its way through the city. They passed vivid memories, places Shaver tried to lock in his mind. He figured he'd never see them again. His favorite Chinese restaurant polluting almost a whole block with its pungent food. The cigar lounge, where he'd spent hours upon hours with other cops. Every speck of matter in that place touched by cigar smoke. Rolling a Maduro in his fingers before sliding the tightly rolled cigar into his wet mouth. It was more painful than the wounds to his body—knowing this was it. His last view of the world. Forty-two years in this world soon to be gone, never touched or seen again. A shitty friend, but one he'd miss nonetheless.
“
If you turn to the right here, you'll cut off five minutes.”
“
All right, Sarge,” the officer responded mechanically. It was a lie though, and they both knew it. A right would add ten minutes to the trip. A small consolation for a dead man.
* * * *
Martinez sat alone in his living room. The television was on, but muted. He watched the news, making up his own headlines and reports in his head. That inner voice set up reports, bantered between newscasters, threw in the ubiquitous, “That's a great story.” Mournful voice for the stories involving violence against women and children. Resentful voice for the local robber. Happy voice for the one story in twenty dealing with something positive. Mournful, resentful, happy...lather, rinse, repeat.