Chapter 69

"132."

"132," Joyce answered.

"132. 10-43. 1541 Dixon Road. Signal 7. Black 2003 Grand Am. No tag available. Proceed Code 1." (Stolen vehicle. Perpetrator not on scene. Proceed to call obeying all traffic laws.)

Joyce looked at her dashboard clock. 2:12 A.M. Pulling to the side of the road, she typed the address into the GPS that Caitlin had given her for Christmas. As she backed out on the display to show the entire route, she thought, Oh, I remember where Dixon is, now. There are only a few houses on it and it's a couple miles from where Goodman lives. (The deputy that went with her to thank the Matthews.)

She started to erase the route from the GPS, but stopped. Ah, heck, I'll leave it on. I know where the road is, but it will help me find the house number in the dark. Besides, if I tell Caitlin that the GPS made it easier to find house numbers in the dark, it might get her mind off fussing about me being on nights again. Yeah, and if cows could fly.

A little later, her headlights flared off reflective numbering on the roadside mailbox. She flipped the alley lights on momentarily (lights on either side of the light bar on top of the patrol car) to check the yard and front porch. As she opened her door, the inside lights came on. Damn. If I'm going to use this vehicle on night shift I'm going to have to get the garage to disable the door switch. Nothing like lighting yourself up as a target. (Most night shift patrol vehicles have the switch in the door disabled so the officer/deputy isn't lit up as they exit their vehicle.)

While walking the fifty feet or so up the front walk, Joyce automatically checked her surroundings. It was obvious that the occupant frequently parked his or her vehicle close to the side of the house, giving a little more credence to the person having noticed that the vehicle was gone in the wee hours of the morning. Still, it was a little odd. She could clearly remember her training officer cautioning her to never accept coincidence at face value, to always look hard at things that didn't fall into the normal pattern. "Look hard — live longer," he told her over and over.

Maybe she was out somewhere with someone, then when she got home she discovered that her vehicle was gone. I'll find out, soon. Noting that the front porch light was on, she mentally thanked dispatch. It was standard procedure for dispatch to tell the resident to turn the porch light on and watch for the deputy. If the deputy drove past without stopping, the complainant should flash the porch light and call dispatch back. Addresses weren't all logical or in the proper order, if people bothered putting them out at all, or put out numbers large enough to read from the road, or put them in an obvious place. Sometimes there were a number of mailboxes standing in a group with numbers on them. It was anybody's guess as to which mailbox belonged to which house, yet the complainants always expected the deputy to respond in a hurry and be able to drive right to their house.

Joyce walked up the few steps to the porch. Standing slightly to the side of the door, she knocked — a cop knock. Nothing overly loud, but not tentative, either. More than one cop had found that standing in front of a door when they knocked was a great way to catch a bullet, so habitually, she stood to the side.

She remembered watching a video reenactment of an incident that happened to a cop. Two detectives had gone to a house, and one of them stood in front of the door and knocked. They found the guy with the sword all right. He rammed the nearly four foot blade through the door and completely through the detective. The other cop showed the sword-wielder that bullets would go through the door, too. Miraculously, the detective lived, although the injury was too debilitating for him to ever return to the force.

There was movement inside the house and the door opened to reveal a young, pretty woman, probably in her mid twenties with short dark brown hair, dressed in a wrinkled tee-shirt and jeans. She had apparently made a halfhearted attempt to brush her hair.

"Deputy Cramer. You called about a stolen car?"

"Uh, yeah. I'm Alesha Turcott. The one who called. Won't you come in?"

Joyce stepped through the door, her senses alert, but her stance and body language appearing to be relaxed. Her training officer had slapped a pad from her right hand on a call one time, embarrassing the crap out of her, but breaking a bad habit. "Appear relaxed, but use your weak hand for everything until you're absolutely sure that you're safe. There is no such thing as a routine call. Things can go to shit in a heartbeat."

"You didn't have a tag number for your vehicle when you called dispatch. Do you think you could find your tag receipt?" Joyce said as soon as she stepped through the door.

"Uh, I think it's in the glove compartment, but I believe I wrote the tag number down on my insurance papers. You can have a seat on the couch there if you like," she said indicating an old green couch by the door. "It will only take a minute for me to find my papers."

Changing her mind about the tag receipt for the time being, Joyce motioned for her to wait for a moment, "Could you please tell me why you noticed that your car was missing at this time in the morning? Just curiosity."

Turcott took a breath then looked Joyce in the eye. "I split with my old boyfriend a couple of weeks ago. This new guy asked me on a date, so we went out and danced a while tonight. When we got back about eleven, I came in and went to bed, but I had three or four beers while we were dancing, and they ran me out of bed. I usually park my car right by my window. The blinds were partway open and I just glanced outside when I got back in bed after the bathroom. There's plenty of moonlight. And well, I could see that my car wasn't there."

Joyce wasn't satisfied. Something still didn't ring true. "Let me get this straight in my mind. I'm going to have to fill out a report, so I need to get it right. You had several beers, were out with a new boyfriend, got home not late at all for a Friday night, but he didn't come inside..."

Turcott sighed. "He was okay. He was nice to me, but I really didn't know him that well. He wanted to come in, but I had made up my mind I wasn't going to bed with him. I mean, I, uh, helped him out a little in the car as we sat out front and necked, but I wouldn't let him come inside the house."

The woman's body language and demeanor suggested that she was telling the truth, but something wasn't right yet. "Forgive me," Joyce said, "but I'm still having a problem with your looking out your bedroom window at two o'clock in the morning..."

Turcott glanced down at the floor for a moment. Looking back up she said, "To be absolutely truthful, I guess I was sort of expecting it, or at least something to happen. I dated this guy, Crawford, for a while. He started out nice, but when he's drinking he gets really ugly. I finally broke it off with him, but he's come by twice during the last week looking for ... pussy, as he calls it."

The woman paused for a moment. "He slapped me once, hard enough to knock me against the wall. He said some things the last time he came over, but I wouldn't let him in the house. When I threatened to call the sheriff, he hauled ass. I guess I've just been worried that he would do something, though. He sure ran his mouth enough. I've been on pins and needles lately, and uh ... I hate to say it this way, but I, uh, just guess I need to. While I was giving Douglas a hand-job tonight in the car, someone drove by. I think it was Crawford. So I was worried. That's the reason I looked out the window. I was checking on my car. I was afraid he would do something to it. He has a violent temper."

Joyce smiled at her. "Thank you. Now we have a suspect." And now we have the truth, she added mentally. Damn, why don't people just cough it up to start with? It would save a lot of time. At least I'm no longer naive enough to start a report until I'm sure that I'm getting the real story. It pisses me off to finish a long narrative, then find out that I have to tear the report up and start over because someone has been bullshitting me.

"Uh, won't you please sit down? I guess I'm shook. I don't even remember if I invited you to sit or not."

"No problem," Joyce said, waiting for Turcott to sit first before she seated herself on the couch, not leaning back, but sitting on the edge so that she could quickly stand, as she had been taught.

Joyce balanced her pad on her knees thinking for a minute. "Okay. Thanks for the candor. But I need to get a little more personal in order to sort things out. Did your ex-boyfriend ever live here with you? Does he have any reason to think that the car belongs, even in part to him? Did he make any of the payments, loan you money? Anything like that?"

Turcott was shaking her head. "No. He never even spent the night here. I mean, I uh, slept with him, but I made sure he never spent the night. I tried that with a guy several years ago when I lived in Denver. I thought I had found Mr. Right, but it didn't work. In no time flat, he was running my life. So if I sleep with a guy, and there have been darned few that I have slept with, he goes home afterward. Or if I go to his place, I come home afterward. It's just the way I am. I mean, I'll give a guy a hand job on the first date if he is really nice to me, but I'm not going to spread for him that soon. And nobody is going to spend the night with me. Nobody is going to run my life," she finished, vehemently.

"What about money? Did he make a car payment for you or loan you..."

"Hell, no. The bastard can't keep a job. All he has is a big dick. When we went out, he was usually broke. He wanted me to loan him money, but he wasn't that good in bed. I work hard for what little I have. I'm not giving it to a drunk. I've been down that road. Never again."

"All right," Joyce said. "Look, I'm going to need his full name, address, description, everything you can tell me about him. I'll start on the narrative now while you go get the tag number of your car. And bring back your driver's license. If everything is current, I can just copy off it and save a little time with some of the information about you."

"Okay," Turcott said, as she left to go into the bedroom.

Joyce had gotten the first sentence done when she heard a loud noise from the other room as if a chair had been knocked over. Then: "Call the fucking cops on me you fucking bitch," a male voice yelled.

Her pad hit the floor as Joyce stood, her weapon coming out of the holster without conscious thought on her part. Before she could even take a step, a lanky, somewhat scrawny male, maybe five foot nine, about thirty, shoved Turcott into the room, his left arm hooked around her neck. He held a very large revolver with a six inch barrel against the side of her head. A chill passed through Joyce's mind as she realized that he had the hammer cocked back.

Even as Joyce's Glock came to bear on Crawford's face, she raised her left hand to her lapel mike. A memory flashed through her mind. She recalled one of the old timers telling her that when the shit hit the fan to press down on the lapel mike button, then shove it hard to the left. It would lock on. "Say double-aught twice (The call for help) then get down to business. Let dispatch figure out what's happening," he had said. "Keep every bit of your mind on the son-of-a-bitch with the gun. Nobody is going to get there in time to help you, but everything you do will be on tape. (All radio traffic is recorded.) They can't say you didn't do this, or did do that. It will all be there and the troops will be coming from hearing your double-ought and the shit go down on your radio. Warn the perp twice, if you have time, then shoot the motherfucker. Go home at the end of the shift. If you fuck up, better to be tried by twelve than carried by six."

The mike clicked as she pressed the transmit button, she shoved hard to the left and felt it hang there. Bet the manufacturer doesn't know that, some part of her brain thought. Leaning her head a little to the left so her mouth would be nearer the lapel mike, she quietly said, "132. Double-aught! 132. Double-aught!"

"Ain't gonna do you no good to call for help Little Miss Pussy. I'm gonna kill this bitch, no matter what you do."

Ah, shit. And I was off on comp time! I shouldn't have answered the fucking phone. Aloud, "Just take it easy. That gun is cocked. Please be careful with that gun, and please think about what you're saying. We can work this out."

"Shut the fuck up, Bitch," he said. "You're all alike. You want some dick when you want it, but then when the man wants a little extra pussy, you clamp your legs together. Fuck all you bitches!" he screamed.

Oh, fuck. Cocaine rage — crack rage. Some damned drug rage. There's no way I can take this guy out. When my round hits him, even right between the eyes, he's going to twitch his trigger finger, that Smith (Smith and Wesson) is going to do its thing, and Turcott is going to be dead. Shit! Shit! Shit!

Aloud, in as calm a voice as she could muster, she said, "Easy now. You haven't done anything so far that you can't get out of. Once you pull that trigger, you can't go back. You don't really want to kill her. You two might even work this out. Please don't go too far. If you pull that trigger, I'll have to fire and I guarantee you I won't miss at this distance. When you kill her, you'll die the same second."

Crawford pulled Turcott a little to the side causing both of them to turn some, giving Joyce a little different angle. Suddenly she saw the front of the cylinder of the gun and for a second the bore. Oh, fuck. He's got a fucking hand cannon. That's a damn .44 Magnum. The little shithead has got a damned Dirty Harry gun. Little man syndrome — gotta have the biggest gun. Oh double shit! She already said he has a big dick, but I guess that isn't good enough for him, he's got to have the biggest gun he could find. Sadness filled her soul. I'm gonna die tonight, and Caitlin and I were fussing when I left the retreat. I'll never get to tell her that I'm sorry.

Crawford clamped his arm tighter around Turcott's throat, partially choking her. As she struggled trying to move his arm enough to breathe, Crawford shook her. Glaring at Joyce he yelled, "Get the fuck out that door. Get in your car and get out of here and I'll let you live. I'm going to kill this bitch."

"Take it easy Crawford. Just calm down. Come on man; we can work this out."

Crawford waved the gun around for a couple of seconds, taking it from the woman's head, but now he was standing full behind her and Joyce didn't have a shot.

Come on you son-of-a-bitch, just stick your stupid head out for a second when you don't have that muzzle against her head, she thought, her mind becoming crystal clear.

Turcott struggled with Crawford's arm trying to breathe. His position changed but he had the barrel against her head again.

"It's time," he yelled. "Time to blow this bitch to hell."

Joyce whispered into her mike. "I'm going to try to make him take me on so he'll take the gun away from her head. He's going to kill her."

Joyce took a shaky breath. "You're not much of a man. You know that? Hiding behind a helpless woman with your great big Dirty Harry gun. Big bad man that you are, I'll bet you couldn't whip my ass in a fight. Nah, I'd kick your scrawny ass all over the place. Dirty Harry. Hah, you wouldn't make a pimple on Clint Eastwood's ass," she sneered, paraphrasing something she had heard Jeff say.

She saw the anger flare and the barrel snap around. Everything seemed to slow to a crawl. She had already pulled back enough to take the slack out of the trigger. Another two pounds and it would go. Her focus on her sights was oddly sharp, her mind resigned as the .44 Magnum fired and the Glock bucked in her hand. There was a sound so loud in the small room that words to describe it are totally inadequate. The concussion of the rounds going off in the enclosed space was almost enough to stun anyone there.

All that the deputies that were desperately trying to get there could hear on the open mike was a woman endlessly screaming.

Diana stood in the doorway watching her husband's pacing. She had never seen him like this. "What's wrong, Baby? Are you worried about Joyce, or something else?"