Dead Boyfriends (2 page)

Baumbach shook the woman fiercely. “What did you do?” He shoved her backward. The back of her head thudded against the Audi, and she slid slowly to the ground. She didn't make a sound.

“What are you, nuts?” I pushed myself between them. “Stop it.”

“Don't interfere,” he shouted back, shoving me hard for emphasis.

“Do it by the book. Secure the scene. Call CID. Then get the hell out of the way. What's the matter with you?”

“Did you see that guy? Did you?” From the look on his face I guessed the closest Baumbach had come to real tragedy was watching driver's ed films in high school.

“He could have died of diphtheria, you don't know,” I said.

Baumbach grabbed the woman's collar and dragged her away from the car.

“Why did you kill him?” he said.

The woman didn't say.

“Answer me!”

When she didn't, Baumbach gave her a quick backhand across the mouth. It wasn't a vicious blow, but it certainly got my attention.

“That's enough,” I said.

I chopped hard at his wrist with the edge of my hand, and Baumbach released the woman. He stepped back and rubbed the spot where I hit him, his breath coming hard, an expression of utter astonishment on his face.

“I'm a cop,” he said.

“Really? How long have you been on the job? Six minutes? Kid, you're out of control. Think about what you're doing.”

Baumbach rested his hand on the butt of his gun.

“No one is going to hold it against you if you just sit tight and wait for the adults to arrive,” I said.

“I'm the police officer,” he said. “I'm in charge. Now turn around,” he ordered.

“Look, pal, I'm trying to help you. I really am.”

His fingers tightened around the butt, and for a moment I thought he was going to pull it.

“I said turn around.”

I turned. He shoved me hard against the Audi.

“Assume the position.”

I assumed, pressing my hands on the hot roof of the car.

“You're under arrest,” he told me as he wound the cuffs around my wrists, pinning my arms behind me.

“What's the charge?”

“Assaulting a police officer. Obstruction of justice.”

“Oh, for chrissake.”

“You think this is funny?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

“You won't think it's so funny when you're locked in a cell.”

“Seriously, kid. How long have you been on the job?”

“Three weeks, if you must know.”

“And they let you out alone?”

“Three weeks since my probation period ended.”

Somehow I didn't think his field-training officers had given him a lot of sevens.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You're bored, right? You thought the job was going to be like
Law & Order
or
CSI,
or maybe even
NYPD Blue,
right? Yet all you do most days is sit on the shoulder of 169, shooting your
radar gun at passing motorists, hoping you can find just cause to make someone blow into the PBT. Right? Only now you have something worth doing. You're thinking, yeah, the guy in there, probably he's just a medical—someone who woke up dead—unless maybe, just maybe, you caught yourself an honest-to-God homicide. Only real homicides aren't like TV. They're not neat like TV. You weren't prepared for it. You blow chunks. That's embarrassing enough, but you do it in front of the woman and me and now you're pissed off. Well, welcome to the real world, kid, only stop behaving like a jerk. You don't touch the suspect. You don't violate her rights like that.”

The woman was still sitting on the grass, watching us. I don't think she heard a word we said.

“She could confess to whacking the guy in there, to killing a hundred more, and most likely you won't be able to touch her because you violated her rights.”

“Shuddup.”

“Look, kid, be smart. You can still fix this, you can still make it go away. Start by removing the cuffs. Think about it.”

He did. For about ten seconds. Then he said, “You're going to jail.”

 

I tried to reason with him some more after he locked me in the back of his squad, but he wasn't listening.
Fine,
I decided.
I'll talk to whoever takes command.
That turned out to be a sergeant from the City of Anoka Police Department who looked too old for the job, thirty pounds over what the diet-hucksters consider his ideal weight, with hair that was more gray than brown. I watched him from the backseat as he moved about, directing his officers to secure the scene, something Baumbach had failed to do. We locked eyes a couple of times, but he never approached the car. I wished he would have. The engine—and thus the air conditioner—was off, and it was unbearably hot. I had to lean forward to avoid sticking to the seat. Sweat trickled from my brow into my eyes;
the cuffs prevented me from wiping it away. Baumbach had left a small crack at the top of the driver's side window, but it offered no relief. I felt like a small dog trapped in a locked vehicle in the parking lot of a shopping mall. It was all I could do to keep from panting.

The sergeant was soon supplanted by still another sergeant, this one in the uniform of the Anoka County Sheriff's Department. I wasn't surprised. Jurisdiction was always an iffy thing in a small community, and at about eighteen thousand people, Anoka was considered a small community. Its twenty-nine-man police department didn't have the resources to investigate a possible homicide even if it wanted to and readily gave way to the county's Criminal Investigation Division. Which didn't help me any. I was locked in a
City of Anoka
police car, and when the
Anoka County
deputy made a gesture in my direction and the sergeant shook his head, I knew I wasn't getting out anytime soon.

While the deputy directed his officers and a few plainclothes technicians, a couple of paramedics worked on the woman, checking her pulse, flashing a penlight in her eyes, asking her questions and receiving no answers. If they were curious about the swelling at the corner of her mouth, they kept it to themselves. Eventually, they loaded her in a car and drove away. I guessed that they were transporting her to the hospital, although it was a deputy that accompanied her, not a paramedic.

A few moments later, Baumbach returned to the squad and started it up. He switched on the air conditioner. It didn't work quickly enough for him, and he stepped back outside, waiting patiently for the interior to cool before he drove off. I didn't complain. What was the point? When he slid behind the wheel and put the car in gear I said, “Kinda odd that the deputy didn't want to interview me, seeing how I was the one who discovered the body.”

“I told you. You're going to jail.”

I swear to God that right up until they locked me in the holding cell, I thought he was bluffing.

 

 

The dream returned later that evening.

I didn't know what time it was. They had taken my watch along with my keys, my wallet, the cash in my pockets, my cell phone, my belt, and the laces to my Nikes. What they didn't do was book me. They didn't take my fingerprints or photograph; I couldn't even testify that they ran my name through CJIS or the NICS to check for wants and warrants, to learn if I had a record. This was payback, pure and simple. Supposedly, they're only allowed to imprison a suspect in a holding cell for up to four hours before transferring him to the county jail. When those ticked by, I figured I was in for the entire thirty-six—in Minnesota you can hold a suspect for thirty-six hours before you have to charge or release him.

Payback is a bitch, and I was plotting my own as I rested uncomfortably on a one-inch-thick blue mat stretched over a two-foot high concrete bed in an eight-by-six concrete room, my fingers locked behind my head, drifting in and out of sleep . . .

Twelve-fifteen
P.M.
I received the call. The two-second alert tone preceding the call told me it was trouble.

“Four forty.”

“Four forty, go.”

“Four forty, possible robbery in progress at the Food & Fuel convenience store.”

The dispatcher gave the address at the same time as the information appeared on the squad's MDT screen, along with
RE-MARKS
: alarm tripped, attempting callback at store.

I fingered the button on my shoulder microphone. “Four forty, copy.”

Eighty seconds later I slowly drove past the store, lights and siren off, hoping my arrival had gone undetected. I could see no
one through the store windows. The parking lot was deserted. My own windows were rolled down, yet I heard nothing. I drove another fifty yards and parked where I could see both the store and the lot without being clearly visible myself, taking up a position of observance, just like I had been taught at the skills academy.

“Four forty, arriving.” I spoke softly.

“Four fourty, copy,” the receiver crackled.

I slipped out of the car, surprised by how quiet it was. The Food & Fuel was located kitty-corner to the campus of the College of St. Catherine, yet there was no traffic, no pedestrians, no music or TV sounds coming from the houses and apartment buildings. I could hear crickets, and in the distance a dog barked twice and then was silent. It was as if they were whispering to me.

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Now it was just a matter of staying put and watching until dispatch found a sergeant to call the store and determine if there was a robbery in progress or if some clumsy cashier had tripped the alarm with his knee, which happened only once a day and twice on Sundays. True, I could have ridden the hammer into the lot and kicked open the door, gun drawn, but then I would have been stupid. Probably dead, too. Always better to wait. Always better to take the bad guys outside instead of forcing a possible hostage situation inside. If there were bad guys.

“Four forty, the parking lot is empty, I see no movement inside the store.”

“Four forty, copy.”

I unholstered my nine-millimeter Glock, then thought better of it—I was never comfortable with the grip. Instead, I opened the door and leaned back inside the squad, hitting the button that released the standard-issue Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun
from its rack. I liked the heft of it. That and its eight rounds of double-aught buck, four in the magazine. After activating the shotgun, I set it on the trunk lid of the car, the barrel pointing away from me, and waited some more.

Moments later, a late-model sedan turned into the parking lot of the convenience store, heading into harm's way.

“Oh, no.” I lifted the shotgun from the trunk lid. “No, no, no.”

I activated the radio.

“Four forty, we have a car heading into the lot. I'm moving up on the scene.”

I jogged down the street and into the parking lot, carrying the shotgun in the port position.

The car stopped to the left of the entrance. Two doors opened. A couple emerged—a black man, maybe thirty, from the driver's side and a black woman, same age, from the passenger's side.

“Police. Get back in the car.” My grip tightened on the shotgun. “Get back in the car.”

The couple froze, deer in the headlights.

“Get back in the car.”

The glass door of the convenience store swung open. A man was backing out fast, butt first, holding the door with his hip. His eyes were fixed on something inside the store, and he didn't see me. I pivoted toward him as he cleared the doorway. I was shouting before he could turn.

“Police. Police.”

I braced the stock of the shotgun against my shoulder and sighted down the barrel. “Police. Drop the gun. Put your hands in the air.”

The suspect turned his head just so. Then his body. He was
facing me now, and for the first time I noted the caramel color of his skin. I guessed his age at around twenty.

“Get your hands in the air, get your hands in the air, I want to see your hands!”

The suspect let his hands hang down below his hips. In his left was a paper bag with the store's logo. In his right was a Smith & Wesson .38. The man didn't move. He was considering his options.

“Don't think.” I was surprised by how calm my voice sounded. “Drop the gun. Drop it now.”

I had trained for hours and hours with the firearms training simulator, going over shoot/don't shoot scenarios until they all blurred together. This was different. My hands trembled. They had never done that with FATS. And my vision—I could see only what was directly in front of me. It was like looking down a long tunnel.

“For God's sake drop the gun.”

The suspect raised his hands.

I fired once.

A spread of double-aught buck hit the suspect squarely in the chest. The impact from the blast lifted him off the pavement and hurled him against the glass door of the convenience store. He caromed off the glass. His legs folded and he pitched forward onto his face. He was still holding the gun and the bag shoulder high, away from his body.

The woman screamed.

The man shouted an obscenity.

I moved forward slowly, still pointing the shotgun at the suspect. When I reached his unmoving body, I kicked the Smith & Wesson out of his hand.

“Four forty, shots fired, suspect down, officer requires assistance.”
I was shouting. I didn't mean to shout. I simply couldn't help myself.

“You killed 'im, you killed 'im,” the woman railed.

“He had his hands up,” the man added.

“You killed 'im while he was trying to surrender.”

“Racist pig.”