Kinsmen of the Dragons
Copyright© 2013 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 12: Raining Cats and Dogs — Mainly Dogs
The group broke up and Sam went back to his desk and wrote some quick notes about what had happened in the interrogation. Again, Sue Ellen sat down in his chair.
“Old man,” she started.
“You don’t have to keep rubbing that in,” Sam said in a surly voice.
“Hey, quid pro quo, old man. I’ll drop you off at your place tonight and pick you up tomorrow morning to get you here by eight — that’s if I can watch the girl’s interrogation again tomorrow.”
Sam contemplated the drive home. His car had a clutch — hey, it saved gas! Pushing the gas or clutch pedal with his right foot was not going to be a trial. Even once. But stopping was going to be interesting.
“Okay, I’m ready to go,” he told her. She grinned, and he got up when she did.
She had, he found, a tiny Mini Cooper. He was tempted to balk, instead of trying to bend down far enough to get into it. Still, the alternative was driving home by himself ... so he grit his teeth and got in.
She started the engine and glanced at him for a second. “For your information, Detective, I’ve 75,000 miles in this car and I just put in my third engine. In theory, so they say, I have the best engine they make. In truth, the stock engines are puny. I am not going to race to your apartment, as you would probably knock another ten thousand miles off this engine if I get it over six grand.”
Sam chuckled. “I wondered what your interest in the girl was. You’re not a girl perv, you’re a car perv.”
She laughed. “Got it in one, old man! I know they make better engines than what I’ve seen so far, and I want one!”
“Would you stop with the old man, shit?” he asked her.
“Why? It’s not like you are ever going to get in my panties.”
“Woman, I’m just a cop, doing the job. I’ll get my twenty in and I’ll retire to a cabin in the mountains where I’ll fish and drink beer for six months until my liver croaks. Please don’t inflict your personal drama on me.”
She laughed and in about six seconds was going sixty miles an hour, having blurred through the gears.
“I am ever so glad,” Sam said sourly, “that you are taking it easy on that poor engine of yours.”
Still, the half hour trip was done in nineteen minutes, and his leg hadn’t been battered enough so he couldn’t walk. He sketched her a sarcastic salute and headed into his apartment complex.
Normally, Sam parked in back and then came up the steps behind the building to his apartment. This time he came in from the front. Little things can save you; this time it was the fact that if he’d been coming the other way, he would have reached his front door first and it would have opened towards him. This direction, he had to walk past his living room before reaching the door, and the door opened away from him.
As he got even with the living room window of his neighbor’s apartment, he felt his scalp prickle; once again shivers ran up and down his spine. He’d been winded coming up the steps; he’d been walking slowly. Now he stopped; his weapon coming out and up instinctively. He took a hasty step backwards and then another.
The neighbor’s living room drapes were open; they’d been watching TV. He saw Jack Keesler, who was sitting with his wife on the sofa, staring at him in shock, Sam standing near the open screen door. “Call 911,” Sam called to him, suddenly even more terrified. Jack and Ellie Keesler had a five year old daughter and another, younger, toddler. “Tell them, officer needs assistance!” He backed up another step, even with Jack’s door. “Close and lock your front door! Lock you, Ellie and the kids in the bathroom!”
He’d hardly said the last word when his front window exploded, and he saw the dark shape lunging towards him. He fired once, letting the recoil knock him backwards; he rolled to one side, listening to scrabbling claws inches from his head. He rolled over onto his belly and brought his piece up into position again. He saw the dark shape stop and saw it look his way. Sam fired again; a fraction of a second after it spun and lunged down the steps.
Sam stayed down, his weapon ready, breathing heavily, and once again more afraid than he could ever remember before in his life.
It took a couple of minutes before people started poking their noses out their doors, looking to see what was going on. Sam took another deep breath, and then levered himself to a standing position, keeping his back to the cinder block wall. He let his weapon fall to his side, but he wasn’t certain enough to put it away.
Jack came out and stared at Sam, with his back against the wall, clearly still concerned. “What the hell was that?”
“A dog.” Sam remembered the red glowing coals earlier in the day; he’d seen the same hate-filled glare just now. He shivered again, in spite of the comfortable evening. He added under his breath, “I don’t think.”
He focused on Jack. “Did you call it in?” Jack nodded. Sam took another deep breath and glanced around. Maybe twenty people were close, looking at him.
In the distance was a siren, joined by another almost at once. Sam reached down, pulled his cell phone out and dialed James.
“Yeah, what Sam?” his friend answered, reading his name from the caller ID.
“Where are you?” Sam asked.
“Home, why?”
“You might want to think about that. Dog Boy left me a little something in my apartment. I found it when I got home just now.”
There was a moment’s silence. “You know how big a can of worms you just opened up, Sam?”
“You should have seen the worm waiting for me,” Sam replied.
“I’ll call the lieutenant. Watch yourself,” the other told Sam.
A few moments later a single patrolman came up the steps, his hand on his weapon. Sam held out his badge, “I fired two rounds. Call your supervisor.”
The patrolman was in his thirties, and he simply nodded, got on his lapel radio and talked. A few seconds later the patrolman walked up to Sam’s window, peered inside, but stayed well back.
After a minute, the patrolman looked hard at some of the people crowding close. “Earlier this evening, a civilian got killed at scene just like this,” he told them. There were sudden looks of concern, and a general rearwards movement.
The patrolman turned to Sam. “My little brother was there this afternoon. He said he’d never seen anything like it. Quick as a bullet, but one hell of a lot smarter and mean as the blazes.”
“Yeah.” Sam walked down the walkway, to a spot where there was a gouge in the concrete, made by his second round. Sam looked carefully, and then cursed mildly. “I thought I might have got a piece of it, that last shot.”
The patrolman looked at Sam steadily. “Gutsy move, with so many people around.”
“The first time you see one of those things...” Sam shook his head, “There are big risks and little risks. A big risk is letting it run around loose. A little risk is missing and hitting something else.”
“Like I said.” The two of them were talking in bare whispers.
Sue Ellen came boiling up the stairs, her weapon ready. She saw Sam, and in that instant, Sam saw that maybe, possibly, there were things in life beyond sex with a woman — friendship for instance. He’d been friends with James for a long time; time, he thought, to branch out.
Sue Ellen walked down the sidewalk and stopped in front of Sam’s apartment. “Wow!” she exclaimed, looking inside.
“Double wow!” Sam said. “At least this time I got off two shots; one of them almost righteous.”
She looked at him and Sam laughed at her expression. “If it had stayed still another sixtieth of a second, it would have been righteous.”
The patrolman nodded at Sue Ellen, “You’re Godwin’s kid, right?” Sue Ellen nodded. “Stuffy bastard, but he’s good at what he does.”
“He’s still alive,” Sue Ellen replied laconically, “So he’s lucky, too.”
More patrolmen arrived, then James, and then Lieutenant Abbott. Sam, Sue Ellen, James and Lieutenant Abbot stood in Sam’s living room, while forensics went over his apartment with their fine-tooth comb and pounds of fingerprint dust.
“The captain’s on his way,” the lieutenant informed Sam, “It’ll be his call whether or not you go off duty for a while, on a shooting investigation.”
“My choice,” Sam agreed, “I’d do it again in a second; I’ll take my lumps.”
“How did Dog Boy know who you are, much less where to find you?” James asked, not wanting to be swayed from the straight and narrow.
Sam shrugged. “I have no idea.” He looked at James. “If he made me, he should have made you. We’re like the Bobbsey Twins.”
“Tell me what happened again,” the lieutenant asked. Sam was tempted to flip him a bird; the captain was now six feet away, watching them talk.
“Evening, Captain Strong,” Sam said mildly.
“You fired your weapon?” his superior asked coldly.
“Self defense,” Sam answered, and then explained what happened, including the prickles and shivers.
The captain stared at him for a long second.
Sam just grinned.
“You’re going to have to come in tonight,” the captain told him, “and talk to Internal Affairs.”
One of the forensics techs laughed, getting a serious glare from the captain. The tech beckoned and led the way to Sam’s bedroom.
Even Sam was shocked. Something had torn up his bed. Not into a few pieces, but thousands of pieces of padding, sheets and foam from his pillows and mattresses. Further, there was a patch about six feet long and three feet wide at the foot of his bed, were the carpet was simply shredded.
“I don’t know what kind of claws that ‘dog’ had,” the forensic tech said, making air quotes, “but they are sharp. There are even slash marks in the plywood of the floor.”
They all looked at it.
It was, Sam thought, a stroke of luck. The others were closer to his bedroom door and all but Sue Ellen left. He started towards the door, but his leg had been still too long and it was now stiff as a board. He nearly fell on his face.
Sue Ellen was there and kept him from falling.
“It’s just stiff,” he told her, knowing it sounded weak.
She laughed. “Once, in the ‘Stan, some noob private called me, saying he wanted to show me something. He’d been searching a room and I was sure if there had been any booby traps there, he’d have tripped them. I started walking forward and just then the room blew. I took his rifle on the inside of my right leg. It was almost flat, hitting between my crotch and calf.
“How that mother hurt! Still, I could walk and when the corpsman asked me to drop my drawers, I laughed at the little fucker. That was never going to happen! Still, I had a few cuts and things and someone whistled up a medevac bird and I went out on it, whether or not I wanted it.
“Twenty minutes, old man. That’s all the time we were in the air. When it came time to dismount, I couldn’t move my leg. They had to cut my cammies off and sure enough there was a bruise from my groin to my knee. My leg was back to good-to-go in a couple of days, but gosh! Do I know about how fast you can stiffen up!”
“I don’t want to go off duty,” Sam told her quietly.
She laughed. “I know. So, let me drive you to the substation.”
“You don’t have to.”
“No, I don’t. But I will. I made a promise and I keep my promises. Hell, I’ll even throw in a trip to your favorite Motel 6, ‘cause you won’t be sleeping here tonight!”
A while later a bored IA officer asked Sam a half dozen questions. Sam was aware that he was the last stop on the man’s list for the day and the whole thing was pro forma.
He finished the interview and the IA sergeant pointedly didn’t ask for Sam’s badge and weapon, nor was he told he was on suspension.
When Sam came out of the interrogation room he saw the captain and lieutenant huddling with the desk sergeant. Sue Ellen saw him and beckoned to him. Sam was reluctant to move forward, but he did.
Sam could see the desk sergeant was wearing a headset with a built-in microphone. He was their liaison between dispatch and the radio cars. “Sergeant Jensen reports that a car deliberately swerved and hit one of the dogs, Captain. He gave the license plate of the suspect vehicle as Golf Tango Romeo seven one nine,” the desk sergeant said.
“He is code two now.” Lights and sirens, in pursuit, Sam translated.
“What dogs?” Sam asked.
It was Sue Ellen who spoke up. “Patrol Sergeant Jensen was en route to south Phoenix on the 51, near Thomas Road, when he saw a pack of dogs — they look like Dobermans, he says, running north on the shoulder of the southbound lanes of the 51. They are, he reported, all black. Some civilian swerved and ran over one deliberately.”
Sam let his jaw drop. “How many?” he asked breathlessly, his left hand rubbing frantically, trying to loosen up his left leg.
“Fifty, give or take,” Lieutenant Abbott said, getting a sour glance from Captain Strong.
Sam paled. One at a time had been bad! Fifty? Oh my!
The desk sergeant turned to his superiors. “Sergeant Jensen reported that a couple of dogs were trailing the main pack. They attacked the suspect vehicle. A few moments ago, Jensen yelled something and now he doesn’t respond.”
“Get every car going to assist!” Captain Strong said.
“No!” Sam said vehemently.
“Shut the fuck up, Detective!” the captain told him. “We don’t leave our people without backup!”
Sam held up his hand, palm forward, all five of his fingers extended. “Thomas and the 51,” he said and touched his thumb with his other index finger. “The 51 at Indian School, Camelback, Bethany Home, Northern, Sixteenth Street.” After each street name, he folded his fingers away until there were none left.
“And what’s at Sixteenth Street and Northern? Why, that would be us,” he concluded.
“Are you saying Code 99?” the lieutenant asked Sam.
“That’s about it. At worst — an exercise. At best ... we might survive.” Code 99 was the Phoenix Police code for an attack on a police station.
Sea serpents, disappearing perps and crazy dogs? Why did Sam think there was a fair chance they were related?
James came into the main office and saw them. He walked quickly over to them.
“You okay, Sam?”
“James,” Sam replied softly, “this was a hell of a night to stay late.”
Captain Strong finally made his choice. “Sergeant,” he said talking to the desk sergeant, “call downtown. Tell them Code 99. Call in everyone who can be here in fifteen minutes, tell everyone to be careful. See if we can secure all the doors.”
There was a moment’s hesitation and then people began to move.
Sam in turn was staring at James. Fifty of them! One had taken six cops, knocking five of them on their asses and killing one civilian. Fifty of those beasts? Three hundred officers would be touch and go — and they didn’t have three hundred officers. It was Saturday night; most of the officers on duty at eight thirty in the evening were on the streets. Maybe they could muster thirty or forty police officers at the station.
It’s a terrible thing to contemplate your imminent death, but Sam lifted his chin. He wouldn’t be easy, bum leg or not!
It was James that had listened to the explanation and who cut through the crap. “They have to be coming for a reason. That would be Amanda Feather and/or Sam Holland.”
Sam could only swallow, knowing there was nothing at all wrong with that logic. Clearly they didn’t want James.
Lieutenant Abbott surprised him. “Holland, you and Godwin gather the young woman and take her up to the helipad. Bolt the doors behind you. There’s bound to be a chopper up tonight! You two take her downtown! Keep her safe at all costs!
“The rest of us will defend the building.”
Sam spoke; it was something he’d thought about a long time ago, having seen too many zombie movies in his life. “Put some officers in the holding cages with repeating shotguns. Lock the cage doors behind them.”
Lieutenant Abbott nodded. “Get your ass out of here, Holland. Keep the young woman safe, you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” Sam said, knowing full well that the lieutenant wasn’t going to be one of those in a steel cage. He turned to James. “James...”
James grinned. “See Amanda safe, Sam — you promised me a long, long time ago, that you’d see her safe.”
Amanda Feather was sleeping fitfully and woke as soon as Sue Ellen entered her holding cell. She sat up and glared at the corporal. “You weren’t supposed to wake me up until tomorrow. Is it tomorrow?”
“Shut up, girl. In a few minutes, if you stay here, you’ll likely be dead.” The restraints had been removed from Amanda and Sue Ellen waved a pair of handcuffs in front of the young woman.
“It’s like this. We’re getting out of here. You can give me your parole — that is, you tell me you won’t make trouble and promise me you will do what you’re told and I’ll leave these off. Promise and I will leave them off. Lie, and I’ll shoot you dead if you try to take off.”
The last surprised even Sam. Amanda however had no trouble believing Sue Ellen. “I’ll be good, I promise.”
Sam led the way down the hall to the stairwell that led upstairs. There wasn’t much of a lock on the downstairs door, but on the third floor, on the door that led to the roof, the door had a bar. Sam set it, and then another door was locked behind when they were on the roof.
“If those dogs are smart,” Sam said sourly, “they’ll be through these in a couple of minutes.”
Sue Ellen looked at him, and then looked around. Nothing was visible that they could use to secure the door. They stood together, the girl between them, their weapons in hand.
“You’re not shitting me, are you?” Amanda asked.
“Nope,” Sam told her economically.
There was a beep on his radio and Sam picked it up. “Sam, James. We’ve got about five more minutes. There’s a chopper inbound, due in three.”
“You’re safe, right?” Sam asked.
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