Heartless: a Derek Cole Mystery Suspense Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thriller Book 1) (25 page)

“Leave me alone,” a muffled voice was heard screaming from inside the bank. “These bastards took everything from me.”

“Why don’t you put your gun down, walk outside, and you and I can have a conversation about what happened to you? I promise that no one will hurt you, and if someone in the bank did something to hurt you, I’ll promise to give you justice.”

The front window of the bank exploded as the gunman fired three shots from his Glock .40 caliber into it.
 

Derek could see that the gunman was moving closer to what remained of the window, screaming words that Derek couldn’t understand.

As the gunman reached the unbroken windowpane, his human shield’s face became clear.

“Captain,” Derek yelled. “that’s Lucy!”

“Stand down, Cole. Our sharpshooter is clear to take the shot as soon as he can. Stand down.”

“Captain, I can be in that bank in twenty seconds without him knowing.”

“Cole, are you seriously suggesting that I allow you to go freelancing into that bank and risk having you screw up and getting yourself and your wife killed?”

“He’ll never know I’m there until it’s too late,” Derek begged, his eyes now locked with Lucy’s. “Please, Captain. I can end this.”

Before his Captain could talk, the gunman screamed. No words, just a primal sound at the top of his lungs. Derek could see the fear in Lucy’s eyes. She stood, her faced pressed against what remained of the cool window pane as the gunman began grunting, breathing in heavy pants, and sending his spit onto the window pane.

“Captain,” Derek said, his eyes never leaving Lucy’s, as the gun fired.
 

He watched her fall to the ground in a lump of death, her head exploded out on one side, and her eyes instantly glazed over.

He never heard the next few shots. The gunman turned and opened fire on his hostages before then turning the gun on himself.

No one tried to hold him back as Derek sprinted across the parking lot and in through the shattered glass of the bank. He knew she was gone before he fell beside her and held his dead wife in his arms. He cradled her, saying nothing. Gently rocking her and whispering “shhh” into her ear.

“It’s all quiet now,” he said as he kissed her bloodied forehead. “No more questions.”

No one asked Derek to release his hold of his wife. They worked as silently as they could around him, as he sat cradling her body. He sat holding her for nearly two hours before someone told him it was time to let her go.

“Derek, we have to get Lucy cleaned up. She wouldn’t want to stay out in public like this. Come on, let me help you up. I promise that we’ll take great care of her.”

Derek could never remember who convinced him to let Lucy go. As he softened his hug, he gently rested her back on her side, the way she always slept. He brushed the blood-soaked hair away from her face, kissed her then collapsed beside her.

The days following Lucy’s death were a blur of wakes, funerals, impossibly silent nights, and a slowly diminishing stream of friends parading through his front door. The days blended into weeks before Derek’s bereavement and personal time had expired, and he was expected to return to duty.

“There’s no rush, Cole,” his Captain told Derek on his first day back. “If you need more time, say the word.”

“Didn’t think you cared about what I had to say, Captain,” Derek said.

“Come again, officer?”

“You know what I mean,” Derek said as he brushed past his Captain and into the officer’s dressing room.

Though his Captain never said, Derek knew that he felt that he had wronged Derek. While Derek was desperately trying to save his wife and put an end to the bank robbery, his Captain played it by the rule book.

It was no more than three months after Lucy had died that Derek’s life began to spiral out of control. His performance while on duty was becoming “reckless and haphazard.”

“You’re behavior of late is putting yourself and others at risk, Officer Cole,” his lieutenant told him. “I understand, the whole department understands what you must be going through, so if you feel you to take some more time, just let us know. We’ll work something out for you.”

“What about my behavior specifically concerns you?” Derek asked.

“Last Thursday, it was reported that you ran into a home with a reported domestic situation. You know that domestics are the most dangerous calls we receive.”

“Does your report say what happened after I ‘rushed in?’”

“Just because you prevented the husband from causing more harm to his wife, doesn’t justify your actions. We have protocols and procedures to follow.”

“Like those we followed that day at the bank?”

Three weeks after his conversation with his lieutenant, Derek was placed on “temporary leave with full pay and benefits.” The department knew that Derek was a quality officer, who had shown tremendous potential from day one. They also knew that his errant and dangerous behavior would eventually get him or another officer killed.

“How long am I to stay away?” he asked the Chief of Police when told about his temporary assignment.

“Until you feel fully ready to be a part of this department again, or our counselors believe you are ready to return to active duty.”

All departments make occasional mistakes. Some forget to process paperwork correctly. Others make the mistake of not reading an arrested person their rights. Other departments neglect to ask an officer placed on leave for their service weapon. Derek left the department, drove to the nearest bar, then took himself and his modified Glock home.

The tears were streaming down his face as he sat holding a picture of Lucy in his arms. Beside him, on his nightstand, sat a bottle of Johnny Walker black and his fully loaded service pistol.

“I need you here. With me,” he cried. “I promise to be more quiet. And I promise to never let anyone hurt you again.”

He pulled hard from the bottle of black and danced his fingers over his pistol.

“I can’t see your face,” he sobbed, dropping the framed picture to the floor, sending shards of broken glass sliding across the hardwood floor.

He reached for another tug of black. As he slammed the near-empty bottle back on the nightstand, his hand held firm to the bottle as his gaze held firm to the gun.

“I can’t see your face.”

He released his hold of the bottle, grabbed his Glock, and shoved the barrel into his mouth. Between his sobs and desperate cries, he began to squeeze the trigger. Two pounds of pressure, his eyes closed, hoping to see her face. Three pounds of pressure, his mind was filled with the horrible images of her face pressed against the bank window. Four pounds of pressure, he saw a flash in the corner of his eye. He quickly turned his head as his finger delivered the full five pounds of pressure needed to fire the Glock.

He remembered nothing when he woke. His ears still held the ringing and his left side of his jaw and face felt as if they were on fire. He saw doctors and nurses standing over him, assuring him that “everything will be okay, Derek.” He slipped in and out of consciousness, each time trying to remember what he had seen that made him turn his head as the bullet left the chamber and blasted its way through his left cheek.

He woke again to see his mother sitting by his hospital bed and his father leaning against the far wall.

“Oh Derek,” his mom said. “Everything is going to be just fine. Mom will see to that.”

Derek was in the hospital for only four days until he was released. His parents willingly agreed to have Derek stay with them until he was fully recovered and assured the hospital that they would make absolutely certain that Derek attend everyone of his sessions with his psychologist. Beyond having three of his molars blasted out of his head and an exit wound scar on his left cheek, Derek was amazingly uninjured.

“I know you don’t feel it son,” his father told him the afternoon they brought Derek to their Columbus Ohio suburban home, “but you are one lucky buck. Now, you know I’m not good at talking about feelings, but if there’s anything you want to talk about, you just let me know. Anytime. And that goes for your mom, too.”

The sessions with the psychologist were an embarrassment for Derek. He knew full well that he was inches away from killing himself and survived only because of a slight head turn.

“I don’t know what I saw,” he said to his psychologist. “Maybe I didn’t see anything and just chickened out. I don’t know.”

“Do you wish you hadn’t turned your head?” she asked, slowly twitching a pen held in her hand.

“I don’t know yet, but I think I’m still here for a reason.”

“Let me help you find that reason, Derek.”

Three months of sessions later, and Derek was cleared to return to the police department.

“I know this won’t be easy on you, Cole,” his Lieutenant said on Derek’s first day back to the police department. “But I can tell you without question that everyone here is on your side and is as happy as hell that you’re back. Now, if there’s anything you need, you just let me know.”

“I quit,” Derek said, finding his lost smile as the words effortlessly came from his mouth. “I came back today just to let you know that I quit.”

“Cole, Derek, hold on a minute. Maybe you need some more time. Time to think this through.”

“I had all the time I need, Lieutenant. What I don’t have is my wife. And though I know that your protocols and procedures didn’t put that bullet through her brain, they allowed it to happen. I can’t work for a place that puts policy before people.”

“Now Cole, you are starting to sound like someone that we need to be careful of. You’re not planning…”

“I’m not a criminal, and I’m not insane,” Derek interrupted. “I won’t bother you or this department at all. I know what I want to do with the rest of my life and believe me, I won’t be any concern of yours, this department or any of your policies or procedures. I have no issue with anyone in this department, or on any police force across the country. I just can’t be a part of one anymore. I can’t be part of something that I blame for Lucy’s death.”

He was very good at keeping things in their proper places. Didn’t matter what needed to be put into place; tools, information, or people: everything needed to be in their right place. The moment after the shock and disbelief of what Michelle Mix had told him had worn off, he started putting things where they belonged.

The first matter to attend to was to understand how something like this, something like his son, could have happened.

“Explain to me,” he said to a trusted doctor friend of his, “to what extent genetics can play in the development of a baby.”

“A tremendous extent,” the doctor answered. “Be more specific.”

“I’ve read about children being born missing limbs or organs. Does some birth defect like that indicate a weakness in the gene pool?”

“Not always. The human genome is fragile. Many things can go wrong during the fetus’s development. Many things. In fact, the vast majority of us are born with an alteration from the original genes. Fortunately, most deviations are not severe enough to be called a ‘defect.’”

“So my twins, being born with only one heart, that doesn’t necessarily indicate that my genes are faulty?”

“Nor does the condition of their birth indicate that your wife’s genes are damaged. What are you getting at?”

“Is it possible,” he continued ignoring the question asked, “that the other baby born alongside my son, Thomas, was nothing more than a genetic error?”

“I would have a problem calling the other baby an error.”

“But is it possible?”

There were so few
 
people he trusted and even fewer that he felt were strong enough to warrant his trust. He had built his empire, though considered small to some titans, based from his uncanny ability to read people. To judge them worthy of his trust. Weaknesses were quickly identified and, if needed to strengthen his position of leverage, exploited. When he discovered a strength in someone, strength in a trait or skill that exceeded his own, he formed a partnership.

His wife, strong as she was in her compassion, was little more than a convenience for him. She agreed that her place was beside him, smiling, supporting, looking her best, and keeping quiet when she should. From her, he drew comfort knowing that his son was being cared for and shielded from the mass of morons that filled the earth. But she could not be trusted beyond what she had been vetted for.

He had no reservations about telling her what he had learned from Mix’s wife. He expected her to allow her emotions to direct her actions, but he also knew that he could easily control her expressions.