"There is one alone, without a companion; yea he has neither
son nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labor; neither is
his eye satisfied with riches: he may say, For whom then do
I labor, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity;
indeed it is a sorry business." Ecclesiastics 4:8
"It's moments like this that make this job bearable," Tommy said as he rounded the corner.
"It's like a bandage on a bullet wound, but it's better than nothing. God, I really need this to go down right," Spider said, crossing her fingers as Tommy parked the car.
"Okay, but remember . . . why are we here?"
"Because they're hiding a fucking suspect in a double homicide in there."
"But we couldn't prove that, so they wouldn't give us a search warrant. So . . . Why are we here?"
"Because the sleaze-ball is here."
"Why are we going to break in without a search warrant?"
"Because the stupid fucking judge wouldn't grant one."
"Come on, Spider, work with me," he said with exaggerated patience.
"We heard a woman screaming for help," she said without any enthusiasm.
"Exactly." He looked at his watch. "And that should happen any time now, so . . . Comlinks on; it's show time."
They hung their comlinks around their necks and turned them on.
"We are staking out a warehouse where we believe Justin Kent may be hiding. He is a suspect in the shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend, Katie Cando, and a business associate, Bill Smith. The time now is eight o'clock," Tommy said for the comlink's sake.
"Was that a scream I heard?" Spider asked woodenly.
Tommy shot her a heated look, and she shrugged. A minute later the woman screamed.
"Yes, I did hear a scream."
The woman yelled for help.
"It seems to be coming from the building. Let's go," Spider said in the same wooden tone. She smiled broadly at Tommy and jumped out of the car.
Tommy was a few feet behind her when she burst through the front door, and he knew even before he saw the fifteen big hairy guys inside that this was a mistake. Spider was on the jazz, and when she was "rock'n" you couldn't expect anything but pure insanity from her.
"Where's the girl?" Spider screamed.
The fifteen men inside just froze in place. There were boxes everywhere. One man held a big bag of what could only be coke.
"You're under arrest for possession with intent to sell, and . . . " Tommy looked around till he found Justin Kent. "You're under arrest for the murders of Katie Cando and Bill Smith."
"Where's your search warrant fuzz?" a big man asked.
"We heard a young woman yelling for help, and . . . " he saw one of them move.
So did Spider. She didn't fire her gun. Instead, she landed a flying kick into the guy's head. As his gun spun out across the floor, she smashed her own gun and her abnormally large fist into the face of another man.
Tommy took a deep breath and started kicking some ass. He wasn't a big guy, but he was a martial artist of superb ability, and the way he figured it, the odds were in their favor even if the big shots back at the station wouldn't be. By the time the back-up units got there, all fifteen men were nursing serious wounds, and all the uniformed officers had to do was cuff them and put them into cars—some of which happened to be ambulances.
Tommy heard his comlink buzz and cringed. Spider walked up to him and smiled broadly with her badly bleeding mouth. He shook his head. The real problem with the woman was that she had a serious death wish and a great deal of tolerance for pain. Tommy answered his comlink while Spider ignored hers and walked over to talk to the other officers.
"Chan!" the lieutenant nearly yelled. "You and your partner get your asses down to the station right now!"
"Just our asses, Sir?" Spider asked over Tommy's shoulder.
"What's that, Chan?" the Lieutenant asked.
"Be there as soon as we can, Sir," Tommy said with mock enthusiasm.
"Spider!" Tommy turned to glare at her and she just smiled back. He turned off his comlink and made sure hers was off, too—which it was. "You're either going to get me killed or shit-canned. Come on, let's get back to the station."
Spider nodded. She knew the lieutenant wanted to scream at them. No big deal. It wasn't the first time, and it wouldn't be the last.
"They were all over me," the Latino girl cried to a uniformed officer taking her statement on his comlink. "Thank God the officers got here when they did."
Spider looked at her and winked.
She nodded back carefully. She knew they were good for the money.
"You better be damned glad that this all looks legit," the lieutenant said. He looked at Spider, and more pointedly at her swollen, bloody lip. "Do you think you could wash your face, detective?"
"Not just yet. I'm savoring the moment," she said, smiling broadly.
"Look at you two. Don't think I don't know what you did out there, because I do."
"We brought in a murder suspect who was right where we said he was. Just for gravy, we brought down one of the biggest cocaine rings in the city. Not bad for a day's work," Tommy said.
The lieutenant sighed. "I understand all that, but I think what we're talking about with you two is serious burn out."
Spider looked at her nails and picked at a broken one. "There isn't a cop that's been on the force for over ten years that isn't a burn out. And everyone knows why. You bust some poor shmuk for something you don't really think is a crime—but that the book tells you is—so you gott ah bust them. When you take them in it'll stick like flies to shit, and those poor bastards—who haven't really done a damn thing—will rot in jail, and the brass will all tell us what a good job we did. Meanwhile when we do something like we did tonight to bring some scum-sucking leaches a little justice, instead of saying those fuckers are as guilty as sin and however you got them is alright by me, you immediately start worrying about their fucking rights, looking for any reason to put them right back on the street."
Tommy buried his face in his hands and wished his partner could ever just think something without saying it.
"Everyone starts looking for little pockets of the law that they can hide in and save their fucking filthy little asses. You want less burn out? It's simple. Leave decent people the hell alone, and put the fucking bastards away for life, or gas them, or just blow their brains out. But don't waste my tax money and my time letting them dance out of the charges on 'technicalities.' If they had given us the friggin' search warrant that we asked for, there would be no questions asked right now. But to get a search warrant anymore you have to walk on fucking water, or be a cable guy and say someone's a terrorist. Screw that! Instead of berating us you ought to be praising us, because this time the good guys found a way around the system. This time we used the freaking loophole!"
Tommy could see the look on the lieutenant's face change from one of irritation to rage, and he knew what was coming next.
It was cold, and they were sitting in the middle of the park on a concrete bench that was apparently created for the sole purpose of giving hemorrhoids the size of grapefruits to anyone who sat on it for any length of time.
And they were sitting here for the third night in a row.
Tommy turned and glared at Spider. "I hate you," he said through chattering teeth.
"Me? Why me?" Spider asked innocently. "It's the friggin' lieuten . . . "
"All you had to do was sit there and let him bitch. Why can't you ever sit there and just listen, without saying anything?"
"Because he pisses me off."
"He pisses everyone off. That's his fucking job," Tommy all but shouted. "Hell, even his wife hates him. But you don't have to open your mouth. Just once couldn't you keep your mouth shut?"
"Laura still mad at me?" Spider asked.
"It's our anniversary, and I'm sitting on a friggin' bench on the coldest night of the year on some bullshit stake-out. What do you think?"
Spider shrugged.
"She thinks you are the friggin' anti-Christ."
"Is that bad?" Spider asked.
"It is to her," Tommy said. "I can't feel my hands. My toes are like frozen rocks in my shoes, and do you know why?"
"Well, apparently, if I understand your bitching correctly, it's because I don't know when to keep my mouth shut."
"Both of you shut up. The frigging suspect is in our sights," a voice inside their ears said.
"Ah! A voice from above," Spider said.
"See? That's what I mean. Talk, talk, fucking talking all the time," Tommy scolded her.
"Tommy, would you shut up? The suspect is looking at you," the voice in their ears said.
"Ah, ha!" Spider said triumphantly.
Tommy saw the suspect then; he was eyeing them. In fact, he had stopped walking. Shit! If they blew this on top of all the other crap, they'd be on shit detail for the next year. He grabbed Spider in an embrace and kissed her. They exchanged a long, passionate kiss, and the suspect started walking again. They parted and looked at each other lovingly.
"Where the hell did that come from?" Spider cooed.
"I was thinking about my wife," Tommy cooed back.
Spider smiled wickedly. "That's funny, so was I."
Tommy shook his head in disbelief. "You are a twisted bitch."
The suspect passed them. They waited a few seconds and then got up, clasped hands and followed him.
"Think he'll bite?" Tommy asked.
Spider nodded silently, watching every move the unsuspecting man made. She was like a predator stalking prey, ready to spring. As usual, she seemed to know when things would happen, when the guy was going to move and how. She knew which way the suspects were running before they did. It wasn't just luck; she knew. Tommy knew she did. He just wished he knew how.
"At least now the circulation is going back into my feet," he whispered lovingly.
Ten minutes later he felt Spider's grip on his hand tighten, and he followed as she pulled him into the shadows. Tommy watched the suspect. Another man was approaching, and he was looking around to make sure no one had spotted him. If he saw them he was doing a damn good job of hiding it.
"He's taking the bait."
"I've been waiting for you for three days! You got it?" the bait asked. They'd caught the weasel dead to rights, and he was giving up his partner in crime to cop to the lesser plea of accessory instead of murder one.
The suspect took an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to the stoolie. "Take the money and get the fuck out of town. I'd better never see or hear from you again."
The stoolie took hold of the envelope, but the other guy wasn't letting go.
"I mean it, jerk face. You try to black mail my ass again, and you'll be damned sorry." He finally let go of the envelope.
"You mean the way you made Eddy sorry?"
"That stupid fuck!" Spider hissed.
She started to move out fast, and Tommy followed instinctively. Tommy heard the suspect's voice in his earphone.
"You're fucking wired! You fucking set me up!"
Then Tommy saw the gun peel out of the suspect's jacket pocket. He pulled his own weapon and screamed without really being aware he was doing so. "Police! Drop your weapon!"
He heard Spider yell into the link. "Move in! Move in! The suspect's got a gun!"
The suspect, startled by all the commotion, fired wildly at the stoolie as he turned to face them. Before he could even finish turning, Spider had shot him once, twice, three times in the chest. She holstered her gun before the body fell and before the other officers could reach them.
Spider turned to look at Tommy, and he saw the fanatical gleam in her eyes. She grinned and then turned quickly away.
Laura rubbed at his tired shoulders. "You're so tense," and added in soothing tones, "Relax, Baby. Relax."
Easier said than done. Tommy closed his eyes, took a deep breath, found his center and let his breath out slowly. He did it again, and was finally able to relax a little.
"I don't know what's with her lately. She's like a friggin' hair trigger—a twitch and she goes off. It scares me. She shot that guy three times in the chest."
"It sounds like she did what she had to," Laura said, trying to work the kinks out of his shoulders.
It felt good. It felt better because he knew that she cared about him and that she cared about how he felt. It didn't hurt that he thought his wife was the most beautiful woman in the world. He loved her long blond hair and fine regal features. Her figure was perfect. Spider had once suggested that Laura's breasts were too large for her five foot four inch frame. Tommy had explained that a woman's breasts could never be too big. His first wife's breasts had been really small; she'd hated Spider, and she had been a cold, uncaring bitch. Laura was her exact opposite and in a lot of ways his, too.
"You don't understand, Laura. Spider Webb is a decorated war veteran. Decorated for sharp shooting among other things. I've seen her knock a penny off a fence post at a hundred feet without nicking the post. She could have shot him in his arm with enough accuracy to snap his arm in two. She could have placed a shot to the ball socket of the shoulder. She could have shot him once and incapacitated him. But she wanted to make sure the man was dead. Three times in the chest in a triangular pattern—that wasn't an accident; it's her training.
"True, he was scum, and he deserved to die. If we had taken him in, they probably would have found some way to cut him loose. At best, they would have given him a life sentence. He would have served a few years in jail and walked for good behavior. The justice system sucks. I don't like what it's doing to us. I especially don't like what it's doing to Spider. I looked at her tonight, and I could see her teeth shining. She was smiling. When I realized that she was standing there grinning over blowing a softball sized hole in a man where his heart should have been, I was actually glad that something could make her happy."
Laura rubbed at his shoulders harder, obviously trying to think of something helpful to say. Laura would not be giving him a long emotion-filled speech all geared at getting him to quit. She herself had been a cop until her routine physical showed that she was diabetic. They had put her on a desk job, and she had stayed there just long enough to work her way through college. Now she worked as a legal secretary in the prosecuting attorney's office. She didn't like it any better than he did when a crook walked. Laura understood Tommy in a way that no one else ever had.
"It's enough to wear anyone down, Baby. We work our asses off to get scum off the street, and some greedy lawyer sets them free again." She sighed. "Spider's breaking faster than the rest of us, because, face it, what the hell else does she have?"
"What do you mean?"
"What does Spider do? Does she have somebody in her life? Something besides work? Does she have family or friends, besides you?"
It was a good question. He'd known Spider Web from academy days. He'd spent more time with her than any other person he'd ever known. Not just from work, but hours spent fishing and bar hopping and sitting around in her apartment or his house staring at the tube. But while he often spilled his guts to her, she rarely did the same with him. Tommy thought for a moment. They joked about it all the time, but there had to be something in Spider's life.
"Her mother died when she was like—three. Her father was an alcoholic, so she was raised mostly by an older brother. She went into the service right out of high school. While she was in the service her brother died. She's never said how, but she must have blamed her old man because she hasn't seen him since her brother's funeral. As far as I know, there's no other family that she's close to. As for friends," Tommy shrugged and could feel that his shoulders were loosening up, "the only people she ever talks about are the guys we work with. So I don't know. If she's got friends outside of work she doesn't talk about them. She writes to a couple of her old army buddies, but that's about it."
"Does she have a girl friend?"
"I don't know. Like I've told you before, I'm not even a hundred percent sure she's gay. I think she is, but she's never really said one way or the other . . . "
"And of course you'd never think to ask. You're such a guy. Take my word for it; she's gay." Laura quit rubbing his back then and sat down across from him. "As you know, our new assistant DA, my new boss, is a lesbian. Carrie's worked in the DA's office for the last two years, and I always thought she was really cool, but now that I'm working with her . . . She's just a really nice person. She's in her late twenties, sharp looking, very intelligent, great sense of humor, and . . . Well, she would really like to meet Spider away from work . . . "
"No! Absolutely not!" Tommy screamed, laughing. He swung his hands in front of his face, stood up, and headed for the bathroom. "We are not fixing my partner up with one of your friends from work. It's just too creepy."
Laura followed him into the bathroom. "Why not? Spider needs . . . well, I don't know, something. And Carrie . . . well, she's like totally obsessed with Spider. She keeps wanting me to introduce them."
"No," Tommy said emphatically.
"Ah, come on, Tommy. What could it hurt? Carrie's my friend. Spider's your partner. It might be fun."
"Yeah, like fucking heart burn," Tommy said. "We don't even know for certain that Spider is gay. How stupid are we going to look if it turns out that she's straight, and we fix her up with a woman?" He looked from her to the toilet and back. "Now, do you mind?"
"Not at all." Laura crossed her arms across her chest, smiled and just stared at him.
Tommy laughed, shook his head, pushed her out of the room and shut the door.
Spider looked down at him. "I know it's late, Henry, but I had to talk to somebody. I couldn't just go home."
She fixed his pillows, sat beside him and took his hand. "I got wired tonight. I do that a lot lately. It's like my brain is on fire." She paused a moment, then continued in a whisper. "I killed the perp on purpose. I'll get off because it was a righteous shoot, but I didn't have to kill him. I did it because I wanted to, and I enjoyed it. It gave me a rush . . . Yeah, I know it's sick. But whoever said you could do the right thing and keep your hands clean? I am tired . . . and lonely."
She brushed the tears from her eyes and took a deep breath. "Look at me, would you? It must be PMS . . . In those trenches in Baghdad . . . the guys I was killing . . . they were just like me. They thought they were right . . . on the right side, you know? That was their only crime, and I killed them for it. But here on the streets . . . the scum out there. Their crimes aren't just that they're on the wrong side; their crimes are against mankind. But them I'm expected to let go . . . to just let them slip between the cracks. Sometimes I just can't.
"It's crazy, Henry. I'm damn near forty, and I haven't done a damn thing with my life. No partner, no kids. Hell, I don't even have dishes, and I can't remember the last time I used my fucking cook stove. I live on cold cereal, Ramen soup, and salad. What the hell for? I can't remember the last time I felt any joy, the last time I even really felt alive . . . Henry, you're lying here unable to move, to talk, and I'm the one who doesn't know how to live. Something's got to change, but I'm damned if I know what—or how to find out."
She'd driven around for an hour and finally wound up at a bar looking to pick someone up. But it was early in the morning, the pickings were slim, and when it came time to put up or shut up, she went home alone. She should have been exhausted, but she wasn't. She lay in her recliner and stared at the ceiling. The TV was on, but she wasn't watching it.
Her apartment was small. A tiny bathroom, a kitchenette, and the combined living/bedroom—that was it. She had it fixed up nice and kept it clean. Which was more than you could say for the hallways and the other apartments. The landlord wouldn't fix anything. But for the rent she was paying she didn't mind fixing things when they broke, or replacing the steam heater with electric baseboard heaters when the steam became erratic, or buying new appliances when the old ones died.
Usually just being at home, a place that was hers alone, made her more relaxed. Not tonight—or morning, rather. It just felt empty, as empty as her life. She looked at the clock hanging on the wall. It was five o'clock in the morning. She wished she was tired. She looked at the wall of shelves full of books, but couldn't make herself get up to go get one. She stared back at the TV. Mindless drivel. Eventually it succeeded in numbing her brain, and she went to sleep in the recliner.
She dreamt about her again, the woman without a face. About noon she woke up with a crick in her neck, feeling more frustrated and empty than she had the night before. She wished she had to go to work, but she didn't. Two whole days off, two days with nothing to do. If she had a life, that would have been great. Since she didn't, it was a living hell. At three o'clock she got a call from IAD asking her to come in so that they could run over the incident report one more time, and she was more than happy to go. Even though the whole thing was in the computer, and she knew damn good and well that all they wanted to do was get her to say that she killed the guy on purpose. Which she wasn't crazy enough to do—yet.