Rape (2 page)

Weird a guy like him wearing a uniform! He had not the temperament for wearing a uniform. He had not the temperament for following orders, saluting. He had not the temperament for listening closely to others, designated as superiors. (
His
superiors? Bullshit.) Since grade school he'd had trouble with authority. Restless under the eye of anybody and looking to find his own private way, sullen and sly like a chimp hiding something behind his back.

What he liked was the idea of justice, though. Putting-things-back-to-right he liked. Such abstractions as law, good conduct, valor in service, eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth.

The U.S. flag had a powerful effect on him sometimes. Not if the damn thing hung down limp but if there was a wind, not too strong a wind but a decent wind, making the red-white-blue cloth ripple, shimmer in the sun.

Saluting that flag, he'd feel tears come into his eyes.

Also, he liked guns.

Now he was a cop and wore a gun on his hip, holstered up, liking the familiar weight of it, like an extra appendage. And the eyes of strangers drifting onto it. With respect.

The police service revolver he was issued, like his badge and uniform, he liked, and other firearms he would acquire singly, as a collector. Nothing fancy, he had not that kind of money. A cop with his shrewd eyes open, he knew there was money, different sources of money, available, if not immediately, then someday. He would pursue these sources. In the meantime, his purchases were modest. He liked handguns, and he liked rifles. He had not (yet) much experience with a shotgun, so he could not speak for that. (No one in his family had been a hunter. They were city people: factory workers, dockside workers, truckers. Dublin in the 1930s, Buffalo/Lackawanna in the 1940s. He was mostly estranged from them now, and the hell with them.)

A gun excited him. It was a good feeling. Quickened his pulse so he could actually feel it. Sometimes, a tinge in the groin. What that meant, he had little curiosity about knowing. He was not a man to examine his own mind or motives. Frowning into a mirror, he saw what had to be done, and done deftly: brushing his teeth, shaving, dampening and combing his hair, practice-smiling to flash the idea of a smile but not to show his crazy-crooked left canine tooth. He was a man of little vanity, though. Asked the barber to shave his head at the back, sides, keep the rest trimmed short so it more resembled wires than human hair, glinting like something that might cut your fingers if you touched it.

It wasn't 100 percent true, he didn't feel young. A gun in his hand, he felt pretty good. Cleaning a gun. Loading a gun, aiming a gun. Firing a gun (at the firing range) and never flinching at the noise or the recoil. Noting calmly if you'd struck your target (heart, head) and if not, how far off you were. And try again.

The thing about guns: you were always improving. A matter of discipline, progress. In school he had always been uncertain of his standing, sometimes he did all right and his teachers praised him (such a tall snaky-lean kid with moody eyes and a close-shut unsmiling mouth, his nervous teachers were quick to praise him), other times he fucked up. Hit-or-miss it seemed. Books made him uneasy, resentful. Damn words, numerals. Like stones shoved into his mouth, too many and he'd choke.

But guns. A gun is different. The more you handle a gun, the more expert you become. And the gun gets comfortable with you, too.

His NFPD uniform wasn't his first. He'd enlisted in the U.S. Army out of high school. In the army they'd taught him to shoot. Almost he'd been selected for an elite sniper team. But he hadn't been that good, for those guys were really good, awesome. He'd conceded it was probably just as well.

Might've liked it too much. Killing
.

They'd sent him to the Persian Gulf. Operation Desert Shield that became Operation Desert Storm. Only just a few years ago in his life but it seemed longer. In the life of his country, so fast-moving and not-looking-back, the Gulf War was nearly forgotten. He wasn't a man to look back, and he wasn't a man of regrets. What happens, happens. He'd
returned to the States with a medal for valor under fire and the exposed areas of his skin permanently clay-colored, lizardy. Ever afterward his eyes would appear lighter than his face, spook eyes some women would call them, shivering at his touch. In the Iraqi desert he had participated in killing an indeterminate number of human beings designated as enemies, targets. These had been Iraqi soldiers of approximately his age and younger. Some of them a lot younger. He had not seen individual enemies die but he'd smelled their deaths by frying, explosion. Inhaled the unmistakable burned-meat odor, for he'd been downwind from the action, either that or not breathe. Telling of the Gulf War to those few persons to whom he spoke of such matters he would say the worst that had happened to him was fucking sand-flea bites. In fact, the worst that had happened was diarrhea. And one bright hallucinatory morning in the desert he saw his soul curl up and die like an inchworm in the hot sand.

At first he'd missed it. Then he forgot.

Back in the States he learned to be a cop. He got married to a girl he'd known in high school. He wasn't ambitious careerwise but he had certain goals. He saw that the civilian police were a branch of the U.S. armed services and the same authority/rank bullshit prevailed. That was all right with him, mostly. If authority merited his respect, authority had his respect. Captains, lieutenants, sergeants, detectives. They liked him on sight. They trusted him. He was an old-style cop of another era. In his patrolman's uniform he made a strong impression. It surprised him to learn that most cops in the NFPD had not fired their weapons at any human targets
let alone killed these targets let alone felt good about it and though he would not tell anyone on the force about his Persian Gulf experience, for he was not a man to talk much about himself, somehow he exuded that air.

Yet his first partner, an older, paunch-bellied cop who had not advanced beyond patrol after eighteen years on the force, requested another partner after only three weeks.

“Guy like Dromoor, no question he's smart, he's a born cop. But he's too quiet. He don't talk, it makes you talk too much. And when he don't answer you then after a while you can't talk either, then you start thinking too much. That ain't good.”

In the NFPD he had bad luck at first. But usually balanced by good.

He was hurt, sure. Pissed. That his first partner had dumped him. His second partner, a guy nearer his age, hadn't lasted long either. Not Dromoor's fault, just bad luck.

He'd been on the force just seven weeks. It was a domestic disturbance call. Late one muggy August night on the East Side where the smoke haze from the chemical factories makes your eyes sting and breathing hurt. Dromoor was driving the patrol car. As he and his partner J. J. pulled up outside a bungalow, an individual looking to be a white male, midthirties, was pulling away from the curb in a rust-stippled Ford van. It was J. J.'s call to pursue the van. What was inside the bungalow would be discovered by a backup team. The chase lasted eight minutes involving speeds of sixty, sixty-five miles an hour along narrow, potholed residential streets in that part
of the city of Niagara Falls few tourists have discovered. At last the van skidded, fishtailed, collided with parked cars, and the driver was thrown against the front windshield, lay slumped over the steering wheel. There was reason to think he was unconscious. Very possibly he was dead. The windshield was cracked, there was no movement inside the cab. There came J. J. and Dromoor behind him, both with guns drawn. J. J. was anxious, excitable. Dromoor perceived that this was not a familiar experience for him. J. J. called out for the driver of the van to lift his arms from the wheel, keep his hands in sight, stay in the vehicle but keep his hands in sight. The driver of the van was unresponsive. He appeared to be bleeding from a head wound. Yet somehow it happened, Dromoor would replay the incident many times afterward seeking the key to how precisely it happened, that the driver of the van stooped to retrieve a .45-caliber revolver from beneath his seat and opened fire on J. J. through the side window as J. J. approached; and there was J. J. suddenly down in the street, a bullet in the chest. Dromoor, approximately three feet behind his partner, was struck by a second bullet in his left shoulder before he heard the
crack!
before he felt the impact of the bullet which carried no immediate pain with it, no clear sensation other than a rude, hard hit, as if he'd been clubbed with a sledgehammer. Dromoor was on one knee as the driver climbed out of the van, preparing to fire again, except Dromoor swiftly fired at him from his kneeling position, upward at an angle, three bullets each of which struck the shooter in the head.

This was John Dromoor's first kill in the NFPD. It would not be his last.

The Friend

P
EOPLE YOU MEET, MOST
of them make little impression. Others, they make a strong impression. Even if you don't meet them again, if your paths don't cross. Still.

She recognized him from local TV, newspapers. His face, that is. His name she would not have recognized, though it was a strange name and one she murmured aloud, smiling: “Dro-moor.”

At the Horseshoe Bar & Grill they were introduced. This was not long after Dromoor's citation for valor, a public ceremony covered by local TV, newspapers. Dromoor was credited with saving the life of his partner in a shooting and such events, though not rare in the sprawling city of Buffalo close by, were rare enough in the depopulated city of Niagara Falls to draw media interest. Yet Dromoor refused to talk much about what he'd done. You did not perceive him as a modest man, rather a man largely indifferent to others' opinions of him as he was indifferent to others' opinions of all things. When Teena Maguire congratulated him on the citation, Dromoor said, without irony, “That was back in August.” It was mid-September now.

The Horseshoe had once been a Falls supper club, glitzy, glamorous. In the economic recessions of the waning twentieth century it had devolved into a neighborhood tavern, favored by cops and courthouse staff. Martine Maguire—Teena to her friends—was known there. She was a widow with a young daughter. Many of the regular customers at the Horseshoe had known her husband, Ross Maguire. He had worked at Goodyear Tire, he'd died of a quickly spreading melanoma cancer several years before. A few of the men at the Horseshoe had dated Teena. Possibly there'd been some emotional entanglements. But no lingering resentments. Teena was well liked, admired. She was flirtatious without being aggressive. She got along with women as easily as she got along with men, single women like herself, dropping by the Horseshoe on a Friday evening after work.

By chance she'd met Dromoor that evening. He was new to the NFPD and to Niagara Falls. She would recall afterward that he'd said very little to her, but he had listened. She'd had the impression he was moved by hearing she was a widow, and so young. And she had a daughter to raise alone. When Dromoor offered to buy her a drink and Teena declined, he didn't insist. Though they remained together at the bar. There was no one else there who so interested them as they interested each other. Dromoor drank ale. Dark ale from the tap. His eyes were lighter than his face, which appeared mask-like, like baked clay. Near the end of the evening, as Teena was about to leave, she told Dromoor he should call her sometime, if he had the time. Dromoor frowned and told her in a lowered voice so that no one else at the bar could hear that he'd
like that, except he was married and his wife was having their first baby in about twenty days.

Teena laughed, and said she appreciated that. Being told.

“John Dromoor. You're my friend.”

She leaned upward to kiss his cheek. Brush her lips across his baked-clay cheek. Just a touch, a gesture. She'd really liked this guy, and she guessed he liked her, to a degree. But this was it. No more than this. The next time Teena Maguire and John Dromoor were in such close proximity to each other it would be nearly two years later in the boathouse at Rocky Point Park and Teena Maguire would be unconscious.

Luck

H
OW A LIFE IS
decided. How a life is ended.

Good luck, bad luck. Purely luck.

When your mother leaned over you to blow into your ear. “Bethie-baby! Let's go.”

It was a few minutes before midnight, Fourth of July 1996. You'd fallen asleep on the creaky outdoor sofa on Casey's front porch. After the fireworks ended on the river. Waiting for your mother to leave but the party wasn't showing signs of winding down.

Your face smarted from sunburn. Eyes burned in their sockets. It had been a long giddy day: like a roller-coaster ride. Momma was laughing at you saying she'd better get you home to bed, it was almost midnight.

You objected you were okay. You weren't a little kid. You didn't want to go home yet.

Casey said, sliding his arm around your mother's shoulders in a fierce-playful hug, “Bethie can sleep upstairs if she wants to. There's room. Stay a while longer, Teena? C'mon.”

Momma was tempted. She was having a good time, she loved casual neighborhood parties. And she loved Casey, sort of.

But Momma decided
no
.

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Y
OU WERE
B
ETHEL
M
AGUIRE
everybody called Bethie. Your childhood ended when you were twelve years old.

Always you would think
If
. If Momma had not said
no
.

You'd have stayed at Casey's that night. Both of you. And what would happen in Rocky Point Park would not happen and no one would have knowledge of the possibility of its having happened and so your childhood would not have ended that night.

Good luck, bad luck. Hit by lightning, spared by lightning.

Mostly you liked the neighborhood parties, summer picnics that began in backyards and spilled out into the street. Amplified music. Rock, country-and-western, bluegrass. Ray Casey favored bluegrass and if you were a friend of Casey's you got to like it, too. As Momma said either that or plug up your ears.