Chapter 50: Rooftop

December 21, 2007

The rest of the year I simply prepped for the academy, worked at the police station, and ‘assisted’ Kelly with wedding planning. Assistance basically consisted of doing whatever I was told I was doing, regardless of my personal opinions. White and rose orchids? Whatever you say, babe, they look wonderful! The fact that I couldn’t tell an orchid from a dandelion meant nothing. White cake, yellow cake, or chocolate cake? They all tasted delicious, but even if they tasted like moldy onions, I was determined to smile and nod along. I didn’t need my nervous bride-to-be chewing my ass over that stuff.

We continued going back and forth on weekends, though with the holidays that changed a touch. She came home for a long weekend at Thanksgiving, and we planned an even longer two-week stretch at Christmas. My training at the academy in Athens was scheduled to begin Monday, January 7, with check-in and equipment inspection that day, and classes beginning the next day at 0800. Kelly had to be back at UGA the week before that and I planned to stay with her over the weekend. It was looking like an uneventful time.

That changed the Friday before Christmas. The day had been normal right through lunch, with me doing filing, and evidence retrieval from the storage areas. At lunch time I was in the break room, eating a sub I had brought in from Subway in the morning, along with a Coke. The break room was on the first floor, and there seemed to be a commotion out in the lobby area. Several Patrol officers moved out at once, like they were on a special assignment to go somewhere. I was curious, and when Senior Patrolman Briggsby came in, I asked, “What’s up? Where’s everybody going?”

Briggsby was generally a rude prick, but he was all I had available for information. As a Senior Patrolman he wore the two stripes I associated with a corporal. “Some fucking nut job is on the roof of the Matucket Bank building waving a gun and threatening to jump or something.”

“The Matucket Bank building?” That was one of the taller buildings in the downtown area.

“Yeah, he’s one of those fucked up vets bitching about something or other. I heard he wants to talk to death or some stupid shit like that.”

I got very still and cold as I heard him talk. Briggsby was an ignorant asshole, but generally a decent cop, though you wouldn’t want him talking to a reporter who would quote him on anything. “What do you mean he’s talking to death? Is he suicidal?” I was getting a very bad feeling about what was going on.

“How the fuck do I know what he wants? He’s one of those vets from Iraq or Afghanistan, thinks the world owes him something or other. I heard he wants to talk to the Grim Reaper! How’s that for some stupid shit? What the fuck’s it to you anyway?”

“Oh, crap!” I muttered. Briggsby turned to watch me stand up. “Hey, I’m one of those fucked up vets! Do you know this guy’s name?”

“No! So fucking what?”

“Officer Briggsby, my nickname in the Army was the Grim Reaper. Could he be asking for me?” I pressed.

“How the fuck should I know. Get lost, kid!”

I left my lunch on the table and went out to the desk sergeant. “Sergeant Castle, Senior Patrolman Briggsby just told me there’s a vet up on the roof of the Matucket Bank building. Is that correct?”

Castle was a much more human police officer, which is probably why he was on a desk where he had to deal with other humans. He nodded and answered, “Yeah, that’s right. Why?”

“Do we know his name? I might know the guy.”

“Yeah, okay...” He shuffled through some paperwork, and then said, “Gorsky, Mike Gorsky. You know him?”

A cold hand clenched my heart. Mike Gorsky was one of my battle buddies, and he had problems that made me look normal. He had done three tours in Afghanistan with the Marines and was not adjusting at all well to civilian life. He had a lot of nightmares, tended to medicate himself with booze and black market Oxy, couldn’t hold a job, and tended to go off on people. “Oh, shit! Briggsby said he was asking for the Grim Reaper, is that true?”

Castle gave me an odd look. “And if he was?”

“Oh, shit! Sarge, I’m the Grim Reaper! Gorsky’s a battle buddy. I need to talk to him!”

“You want to explain that?”

“Sarge, we’re in a vets’ group together. Some of the guys have some problems, you know, PTSD. We give each other our names and numbers, for when things close in. I left my phone in the car. I have to get over there!” I told him.

“No way! You’re a civilian!”

“Sarge, I can help with this! I hear he’s on the roof with a gun.” Castle cursed Briggsby quietly, but I continued, “Either he’s going to jump or he’s going to do something stupid with the gun and get his ass blown away. You know that’s what the TRT is lining up to do!” The TRT was the Tactical Response Team, Matucket’s SWAT team. “I can talk to him, get him to come down.”

Castle studied me for a second, and then picked up a phone. He pressed a number and got to the Dispatch Office. “Put me through to the site commander at the bank...” We waited a couple of minutes, during which time, Castle said, “Reaper, you better be straight about this.” Before I could say anything, he was on the phone again. “Hank, I got a guy here at the station who says he might know your nut job. He thinks he can talk him down. I’m sending him over to you ... He’s heading out now.” He hung up the phone, and looked around, to find Briggsby standing in the door of the break room drinking coffee. He pointed at him and motioned him over.

“What the fuck you want, Castle?”

“Take Reaper over to the bank and get him through the line. Turn him over to the on-site commander. That’s Hank Jenkins, but one of the lieutenants might be there, too.”

“Hey, this is just bullshit. I just poured myself this coffee!” Briggsby protested.

“Then it will still be warm when you get back in five minutes. Now run Reaper over there and don’t be a dick about it. I wasn’t asking, I was telling,” said Sergeant Castle.

“Fuck!” Briggsby muttered. I think he cussed every other word. He put the coffee back in the break room and said, “Get your shit together, Reaper, or I leave without you.”

I scrambled to grab my coat, and then ran out to where Briggsby was waiting in his patrol car. I hadn’t even buckled my seat belt when he was pulling out. Once we got out of the parking lot he hit the lights. He spent a large part of the drive bitching about crazy vets who needed to suck it up and stop complaining. (“Hey, you volunteered. It’s not like we made you go over there!”) Fortunately, it was only about a mile-and-a-half to the Matucket Bank building. There looked to be about a dozen patrol cruisers and unmarked police cars parked around the building, along with the ridiculous TRT Cougar off to one side. Most of the police officers were simply doing crowd control, keeping all the curious people away and getting people out of any potential line of fire. Briggsby got as close as he could to the Cougar, and then parked. “Come on, Reaper.” I climbed out of the car, and he hustled me over to the command post in the back of the Cougar. “Here’s the guy,” he told a sergeant in the back, and then took off. Maybe his coffee would still be warm.

I had seen the police officer before. He was Sergeant Hank Jenkins, a large and beefy cop with a buzz cut, and he was in charge of the MPD’s Tactical Response Team. Unlike regular Patrol officers, TRT officers wore black tactical gear. “You’re Reaper? You know this guy?”

“Yes, sir, I think so.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, I’m Graham Reaper. If it’s the Mike Gorsky I think it is, then I know him. Do we have a picture of him?” I asked.

He shrugged and motioned me inside the Cougar. “Bring up a picture of this guy,” he ordered an officer sitting at a computer mounted inside. A few seconds later a picture appeared on the screen. It was obviously shot from a distance, like a telephoto lens from a different building. It was Mike Gorsky, a battle buddy.

“Oh, shit,” I said dejectedly. “It’s him.”

“So? What’s with this guy? How do I get him off the roof without using a body bag? What’s his problem?”

I sighed. “Christ, I don’t know, Sergeant. He’s been pretty unhinged ever since he got back from Afghanistan. He sometimes still thinks he’s back over there, you know? Still, I’m pretty sure I can talk to him. Can I call him?”

Jenkins shook his head. “Good idea, but he got pissed earlier and threw his cell phone off the building.”

“Then I’ll go up there. How’d he get up to the roof? Is there some sort of maintenance door?”

He shook his head. “No way am I sending you up to the roof. Forget it!”

“Sarge, it’s the only way. You say he’s calling for me. Sooner or later, he’s going to get even more unhinged and do something worse. He’s got a gun?”

Jenkins nodded. “Yeah, a pistol, but we don’t have a good bead on it.”

“So, he’s going to shoot it at somebody and you’ll have to take him out, or he’s going to eat it and do your job for you.”

Jenkins rubbed his face. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “And you think you can talk the guy down?”

“He’s asking for me. I heard he’s been trying to call me, and I didn’t have my phone on me. Send me up there. I’ll get the gun from him, then we can calm him down,” I replied.

Jenkins looked at the guy operating the computer. He was an African-American Senior Patrolman, and also had on the uniform of a TRT officer. He had a name plate specifying his name was Washington. Washington looked up and nodded. “We get the gun away from him and we can let people get back to their offices, start calming them down.”

Jenkins nodded back. “Okay, but I want him rigged for sound. Get a vest out, too.” He turned back to me. “Get this straight, kid, your job is to calm this guy down. Get him to hand you the gun and then get the hell away from him. You just talk, nothing else. Are we clear on that?”

“Sarge, that’s all I want to do.”

Washington had me remove my coat and put on a ballistic vest, and then button my coat up over it. I just looked a little bulky. “As long as he doesn’t shoot you in the head, the neck, the femoral artery, the groin, or anything else important, you’ll live long enough that we can shoot him and maybe get you to the hospital,” he told me.

“Feeling the love, Officer Washington.”

“Don’t worry. It’ll probably be worse,” he responded. Then he put a small microphone in my pocket. “Now we can hear your dying screams.”

“Sure you don’t want a second? You know, stereo?”

“Enough of this crap,” interrupted Jenkins. He pushed me out of the vehicle and turned me over to another officer, with orders to escort me up to the roof.

We ran across the parking lot and into a side entrance to the bank building. Once inside I was taken to the elevators, which had been commandeered by the police, and we rode up to the eighth floor, the top floor. From there we went to the stairwell, which continued up a level. The officer put his fingers to his lips and indicated silence, so we snuck up the stairs. At the top were a couple of regular Patrol officers, Creighton Matthews and T’Shawn Davis. Creighton started as he saw me. “What are you doing here? You the designated sniper?”

“Get real, Creighton. I heard he was asking for me. I’m just going out there to talk to him. Where’s he at?”

“Go out the door and bear left. He knows we’re here, but he’s sitting on the parapet. We go after him he’s liable to jump, and maybe take one of us with him. No thanks!”

Shit! It kept getting better. I wanted to stay out of Mike’s reach. “Okay, let’s get this done.” I opened the door and stepped out onto the roof.

It was chilly up there! The temperature was in the high thirties, with a breeze, and it was overcast. I hunched my shoulders against the cold, which didn’t make me much warmer and simply reminded me I was wearing a ballistic vest. I wanted to stuff my hands in my pockets, but then decided that Mike might think I was concealing something. I moved slowly around the enclosed maintenance stairwell and looked out. The roof was standard tar and gravel, with a slight tilt towards a drain. Around the perimeter was a low parapet, crenelated to make it look fancy, I guess. Gorsky was sitting on one of the parapets looking out at the world. He had a pistol in his hand.

He turned to face me and smiled. “Hey, Grim, good to see you!”

I walked slowly across the roof, waving at him and keeping my hands in sight. “Hey, Mike, how’s it going?”

He looked around, and then turned back towards me. “I think I really fucked up this time, Grim.”

I kept moving forward, angling so I came up to the edge about five feet from where he was sitting. “How so, Mikey?”

“I don’t know, man. I tried calling you, but you never picked up!”

“Yeah, I heard that. It’s why I’m here. Sorry, but my phone was in my car.”

“We’re battle buddies! You’re supposed to help!” he whined.

Something about the way his eyes were tracking made me wonder if he was on something. I knew he had been getting fake scripts and buying Oxy. He had started out with them and booze to get to sleep, but it was beyond that now. “Mikey, that’s why I’m here. You know where I work. If you really needed me, you could call 9-1-1 and just ask for me. I’m here now, Mikey.”

“Yeah, shit, yeah...” He rambled something incoherent.

I was watching his right hand, which was waving around what looked to be an M-9, or more likely, the civilian version, the Beretta 92. He didn’t have a finger on the trigger, but you don’t wave weapons around like that.

“Mike, you know I’m here to help you, right? You know I’ll always be honest with you, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure, Grim, I know you.”

“Mikey, I have to tell you, when they sent me up here, they wired me with a mike. They can hear us talking.”

“You’re wired?”

“Mike, they wouldn’t let me come up here without it. It was either that or I couldn’t help you. I’m on your side, Mikey,” I told him.

“So, they’re listening?” I shrugged and nodded. “So, if I tell them they have to do something, they have to do it?”

I rolled my eyes. I raised my voice and said, “I know this sounds crazy, but if you can hear me, raise your right hand.” I wasn’t sure this would work, but I had to calm him down.

Gorsky was looking down and suddenly his face lit up. “Hey, look at that!” I looked over the edge down to the street. It was about a hundred-foot drop. Slowly about a half-dozen police officers had raised their right hands. “Hey, can we get them to raise their left hands?” I didn’t even have to say anything, but piecemeal they lowered their right hands and raised their left hands. Mike looked back at me, grinning. “Think we can get them to jump around on one foot?”

“Let’s not push our luck, Mikey. I have to ask you, Mikey, have you shot anybody with that gun?”

“What? No! This guy was giving me some shit earlier, and I smacked him and took it from him, but no, I wouldn’t shoot anybody! You know me, Grim!”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Mike, that will make this all a lot simpler. Why don’t you just give me the gun?”

“You’re not going to jump me or something, right, Grim?” He was still waving the gun around, though he kept focused on me, mostly.

“I thought you said you knew me, Mikey. Just do me a favor. Set the gun down right over there, and I’ll take care of it for you. Then we can talk. Nobody’s going to jump you, least of all me!”