Authors: Dale Brown
“There’s a note saying something about sensitive and classified government information,” the obstetrician said, “but I need to know what has happened to your wife before I can treat her and the baby. You’re asking me to work in the dark, Mr. McLanahan, and that’s dangerous. Do you want that for your wife and new baby? Which is more important—national security or the lives of your wife and child?”
“My family, of course,” Patrick said resolutely.
“I’ll tell you anything you need to know. What about this oxytocin stuff, about speeding up labor?”
“The drug will supplement, then eventually take over, the frequency and intensity of her contractions—we’ll have better control,” the obstetrician said. “Things will happen fast after that. If they don’t, we’ll start considering our options …”
“Not a cesarean,” Patrick said emphatically.
“If you won’t consider a cesarean, then you risk the health, even the life, of the baby …”
“I said
no
C-section,” Patrick said, his voice hard, his eyes piercing the doctor’s. “I’m not going to risk Wendy’s life. Period.”
The doctor nodded. He saw the pain on Patrick’s face. “All right, I hear you. We’ll make that decision later—that probably won’t be for a few hours. But first, we need to talk. Sit down …”
T
he complex was called Sacramento Live! and it was the biggest thing to hit the downtown area in years: ten nightclubs and ten movie theaters, all in one location on K Street. Everything was in one place, from quiet, elegant, relaxing steak houses that served fine wine and cigars, to pizza places with games and cartoons for the kids, sports bars, jazz, rock and roll, funk, country-western, and Generation X. Patrons could do one-time parking or take Light Rail right to the mall, see a movie, then spend an evening in one place, or circulate among all of them, and never go outdoors. The place was packed all year long, but during the holidays it was
shoulder-to-shoulder, with mall-weary shoppers talking refuge in the movie theaters and then enjoying dinner and a drink before heading home.
The doors closed at midnight. It normally took the small army of cleanup crews less than an hour to straighten up, but during the holiday season they needed extra crews, and it took the seasonal workers longer to do the job of cleaning up the huge complex. The night managers of the clubs were usually finished counting the receipts, checking the time cards, doing a closing inventory, and preparing the books by one
A.M., SO
several cleanup crews were still inside when the day’s receipts were boxed up in large locked steel containers by each club’s manager and an armed private security officer and wheeled over to the bookkeepers and general manager in the cash room on the second floor of the complex.
Security was tight inside Sacramento Live!, especially when the cash was on the move. Off-duty Sacramento Police Department officers patrolled the complex when it was open, but all but one of them went home at midnight, leaving only private security forces on duty. A private elevator, guarded on the first floor by an armed security officer and controlled by the chief of security from the second floor, took the steel cash bins upstairs to the cash room. Other security officers monitored cameras mounted throughout the complex, keeping watch over the area around the private elevator while the cash bins were in motion. Watchmen armed only with radios and flashlights patrolled inside and outside until all the regular employees had left the building and the cash was secure. The lone off-duty police officer was stationed with the chief of the private security company on the second floor during the receipts transfer; the radio he carried was a standard-issue police radio, linked to Central Dispatch.
The private security officers and watchmen were connected to each other via radio, as well as to the chief of security on the second floor.
The elevator could only take three cash bins and their escorts at a time, so five boxes were left waiting on the first floor as the first group of three went upstairs; and three boxes had yet to come out of their respective clubs. The first three boxes had already made it to the second floor when the main lights dimmed, then flickered out. The battery-powered emergency lights immediately snapped on.
“Power failure procedures, power failure procedures,” the chief security officer announced over the emergency public address system. One guard blew a whistle, and the cleanup crews on the first floor instantly stopped what they were doing and headed to the front door, escorted by an armed security guard. He had the easy job. The other guards groaned, because the alarm meant that the elevator was shut down—and that meant they would have to lug the heavy cash bins up the stairs to be secured in the cash room until the main power was restored.
“First floor, all secure?” the chief of security radioed.
“Secure,” came the reply from one of the guards, signaling that the cleanup crews had been escorted outside and the doors were closed, locked, and checked. The chief of security opened the stairwell door on the second floor, which locked behind him, and walked downstairs. The door to the first floor was locked on the other side, so that occupants of the second floor could use the stairwell as a fire escape, but no one on the first floor could walk upstairs unless it was opened by security. The chief security officer knocked on the door three times, received two knocks in response, then gave one more knock before pushing it open. Carlson, one of
the newer security officers, was on the other side of the door. “Okay, boys, the sooner we get these boxes upstairs, the sooner we …”
A man in a dark outfit, a military-style helmet, and a dark face mask appeared out of nowhere. The chief of security had just enough time to register his shock before the intruder raised a gun with a thick suppressor fitted to the muzzle to his forehead. There was a bright flash of light, then nothing.
S
ecurity One-Seven.”
The off-duty Sacramento Police Department officer at the desk on the second floor of the complex retrieved his radio from the desk and keyed the mike: “Security One-Seven, go.”
“Are you 908 yet?”
“Negative,” the officer replied. It was common for off-duty officers to forget to report in to Dispatch when they completed an off-duty assignment, and since it was thirty minutes past his scheduled off time, Dispatch was checking up on him. “They have a power failure here. It’ll be another thirty minutes.”
“Check. You got a call from your sitter. No problems, just a status check. Let us know when you’re 908.”
“Roger.”
“KMA 907 clear.”
The exasperated officer tossed the radio on the desk with a thud. His life was heading down the shitter pretty fast these days. As if the holidays weren’t bad enough, his old lady had decided she didn’t want to be married to a cop anymore—or be a mom, or be a housewife—so she took off for L.A. with her new poke, leaving him with their five-year-old daughter and a mountain of bills. He had
already burned out one baby-sitter with all the overtime and off-duty jobs he had signed up for, and he guessed he was going to burn out another one before his folks could come from Montana to help him out. Before she left, his old lady had cleaned out the checking account too, so it looked like the only presents his little girl got this year would be charity stuffed toys normally reserved for the city’s homeless kids, or presents from his folks. Merry fucking Christmas.
There were three knocks at the locked stairwell door. The cop circled the security desk and knocked twice in response. There were two knocks in response, the correct reply. He pushed open the door … and was dead before he hit the ground.
I
n all the years Paul McLanahan had lived in Sacramento, he never even knew exactly where the new county jail was downtown. Now, on his first night on the job, he had been inside it twice. It was said that the new jail, looked like a luxury hotel and the Hyatt Regency downtown looked like a jail, but to Paul the place just looked bleak, sterile, and miserable.
He and LaFortier drove into the underground parking garage of the jail under a large steel roll-up door. After securing their weapons in the trunk of their car, they escorted their prisoner to the thick steel-and-glass door of the jail, which was guarded by a sheriff’s deputy sitting behind bulletproof glass.
Because this prisoner was suspected of carrying drugs, they donned latex gloves, escorted him to a secure bathroom, and conducted a strip search—including the unappealing process of ordering the prisoner to drop his pants, bend over, spread his cheeks, and cough several times so they could look up his anus for any sign of hidden drugs. One look at this guy’s ass made Paul want to take a steaming hot shower, and he considered double-gloving if the guy decided to fight. But the ten-block chase they did to catch him—he had started running as soon as he saw LaFortier and McLanahan slow down as they passed him on the street—had obviously taken the fight out of him.
“That law practice is looking better and better all the time, isn’t it, rook?” LaFortier asked Paul with a grin. Paul went on shaking out clothes and sneaker inserts.
For Craig LaFortier, booking a prisoner was a chance to meet up with buddies and swap stories, which was what he did while he helped Paul fill out the reports. There were at least three other city police officers in the booking room, along with eight Sacramento County Sheriff’s deputies, four California Highway Patrol officers, and a smattering of officers from other agencies that Paul couldn’t identify right off. The holding cells were full, so prisoners were handcuffed to benches around the perimeter of the booking room while the arresting officers asked them questions, filled out paperwork, and shot the shit. Since this was Paul’s second trip to the jail that night, he fell under the rookie officer’s basic on-the-job training schedule: first time, observe; second time, do it; third time, be prepared to teach it to somebody else. The learning curve out here, he decided, was as steep as Mount Everest.
Paul had managed to do much of the paperwork
at the scene of the arrest and in the car on the way over to the jail, so he finished it a few minutes later, with the prisoner handcuffed to a nearby bench. LaFortier checked it over. “Looks pretty good,” he said, “But only four bindles of low-grade meth, less than a hundred dollars’ worth—with the overcrowding they’ve got here, he’ll be released in an hour.”
“But he’s got priors, Cargo,” McLanahan said, waving the suspect’s computer printout rap sheet. “He’s been convicted before for possession with intent to sell …”
“But he wasn’t caught with enough to get him on a new intent charge this time,” LaFortier said. “Four bindles, no payo sheets, no wad of cash, not found in a high-crime area—although he was pursued into an area where his probation says he’s not allowed to go. Of course, that’ll be
our
fault, not his. He’ll get five thousand bail on a felony possession charge, his girlfriend or wife will put up the five hundred bond, and he’ll be free. I’ll testify as an expert witness that his intent was to sell, but if he’s got a good lawyer, they’ll plead it down to a misdemeanor possession long before his court date and he’ll skate with a slap on the wrist, maybe a month or two in jail for the probation violation …”
“Almost doesn’t seem worth it,” Paul said.
“Getting a little war-weary already, rook?” LaFortier asked, amused. “A few hours on the street and you’re already feeling frustrated? Welcome to the world. Don’t worry about the prosecution—worry about the arrest and the evidence. Cops blow more cases from sloppy field work than DA’s blow in court—or at least that’s what they like to tell us. Let’s get this guy booked and get back on the street.” Paperwork in hand, LaFortier and McLanahan escorted their prisoner through the booking
process. The place was packed, so it was a slow business.
First, a nurse did a quick medical examination. Old hypodermic needle track marks were found on the guy’s arms, so he had to submit to a blood test for HIV antibodies. After another twenty-minute wait, they escorted him to the booking window, where they presented the arrest and evidence reports to the booking sergeant. The prisoner was booked, strip-searched once again by sheriff’s deputies, and placed in a special isolation holding cell to await pictures, prints, and the results of his AIDS test to determine whether he’d be placed in a cell with other prisoners or segregated in a medical isolation cell. With that, LaFortier and McLanahan headed back out to the garage.
“We need to cut that booking time down to less than an hour, rook, and that includes driving time,” LaFortier said. His radio squawked. LaFortier listened, heard a familiar voice say something about a power failure at the Sacramento Live! entertainment complex, and turned his radio volume knob down so he could talk to his partner. “I’m taking time with you because you need to learn this stuff and do it right and develop good habits and all that shit. But we belong on the street, not in the jail. So we’ll be hustling from here on out to get our booking times down.” He noticed a faraway expression on McLanahan. “You okay, rook?”
“The jail gets me down a little, I guess,” McLanahan said. “Hauling them in like bags of garbage, strip searches, paperwork, putting them in the system like rats in a cage … it seems so dehumanizing.”
“Never seen the jail before, have you?” Paul shook his head. “That should be required for every applicant. It gets everybody down, rook. The only
alternative to processing them and putting them in the system is putting a bullet in their head when we catch them, and we don’t want that, do we, rook?” “No.”
The big FTO saw that Paul’s somber expression didn’t change. “Why’d you join the force, McLanahan?” LaFortier asked; “You’re a damned attorney, for chrissakes. Passed the California bar and everything. We got lots of guys on the force going to Lincoln Law School nights, and lots of guys who have even graduated, but you’re the only cop I know who’s actually passed the bar exam—and on the first try too. You could be an assistant DA, make more money, wear a decent suit, work in a nice office or do that telecommuting thing, and never have to look up a perp’s diseased bunghole. Is it because of your old man? Is it a family thing? Because if it is, you won’t make it one more friggin’ night on the streets …”