Stagger Bay Read online

  The children were crowded against the wall, sitting or on their knees, many of them with their hands behind their heads like they were under arrest. They squirmed and cried; snot and tears streaked most of their faces.

  The school janitor, a small man with wavy black hair, lay on the floor in front of them. His mop was still clutched in his outstretched hand as he sprawled there, shot dead trying to defend them with it.

  The teacher gaped at my mauled remnant of a face, and several of the children whimpered even harder when they saw me. Hell, I looked worse than the Bad Guy here, with half my head a gory ruin. But at least I was becoming numb now.

  I held up my left hand to shield the bloody crater in my face from the children’s horrified view. I wrenched my single-eyed gaze away from all those staring little faces and turned toward the Weasel. Behind me, the dead skinhead’s steel toes stopped drumming against the floor.

  The Weasel was a barely contained bundle of nervous energy, bandy-muscled and intense; fully alive – as alive as me or any of these children. His previously hidden hand was now revealed, holding up a grenade rigidly akimbo. The pin was pulled – only the pressure of his hand kept the spoon from flying away and the fuse from igniting.

  He glared wildly at me, the bridge of his nose wrinkled rock hard like a marble bust. "Think you're bad, motherfucker? You back off, right now, or all these kids get splashed." He appeared on the edge of hysteria.

  Someone outside was barking something into a megaphone – the cops, of course. But they were out there. It was a whole different world in here.

  I limped robotic and stiff-legged toward this last threat, aiming dead-on at Weasel.

  "Stop. Stop right there or I’ll do it, man, I’ll do it,” he screamed, spittle flying from his mouth as he clutched the grenade like some sort of talisman guarding him from the reality of consequence.

  I did stop, the muzzle of the.38 about a foot from his sweating face. I was wobbling badly on my feet now, and I had to finish this before I fell down for good. Weasel would honor his threat and drop the grenade or throw it any second now.

  Without turning I mumbled to Teacher. "Down, get them down." My croaking voice didn’t sound human, even to me.

  At first she made no reply. Then realization must have dawned in her distracted mind: “Lie down children, lie down now,” she said.

  I could barely hear her voice through the growing roar in my ears. I sensed rather than heard all the kids stirring as they obeyed her.

  “What -?” Weasel began, staring at me in incomprehension as I carefully shot him, right between the eyes.

  Blood and brains squirted out the back of his head, his eyeballs bulged onto his cheeks from over-pressure, and he dropped like the sack of shit he was. His grip loosened as he fell brain dead, and the spoon flew off his grenade with a tinkle.

  I toppled forward atop him, fumbling for the grenade as if it were a loose inflated ovoid in some kind of team sport championship game. I grabbed it with my numb fingers and pulled it in tight to my stomach and landed heavily on my side, body curved to maybe shape the blast a little bit away from the children.

  Time slowed way down as I lay there and waited forever. When I finally realized the main charge wasn’t going to detonate, an epiphany sputtered and fizzled through my sodden brain: This is what it comes down to, I thought – a freaking hang fire, that’s all it was.

  I lay there for a moment on my side, stunned for the second time since the start of this whole thing by the mere fact of my continued survival. Then the last scraps of my strength gave way, and I lost my grip on the grenade and rolled onto my back.

  The cops were coming into the building now, baying at each other like hounds as they cleared the rooms in turn and by the numbers. Outside, ‘Gimme Some Lovin’ finally ended and the DJ began spieling an excited monolog about the hostage situation at the school. This whole fracas had lasted less than three or four minutes from beginning to end.

  Despite the growing cold seeping into my bones, I was mentally spry enough to wonder if they’d get an ambulance to me in time. To tell the truth I was getting pretty tuckered, and a dirt nap didn’t sound like that unpleasant of a prospect. I looked up at the darkening ceiling for a while and then I managed to peer around at the hysterical children, all of them unharmed as far as I could see.

  My eye lit on the wall clock, and I tracked the second hand as it swept round the dial. I seemed to be riding an eternal present here. How strange to lie here counting each new ‘now’ as it came into existence with every second ticked off by that ratcheting clock hand, surprised each time that I was still there to see it.

  I was still wondering what was going to happen next even as everything faded to black.

  Chapter 12

  I died on the way to the hospital but they weren’t willing to let me go, they insisted on bringing me back with their drugs and machines. I remember a dream wherein I bobbled balloon-like around the ceiling of the ambulance, looking down at my torn bloody body from outside as latex-gloved hands scuttling over me like crabs on a drowned corpse; hands doing hateful things to me. But the hallucination ended when I ectoplasmically burrowed back into that meat puppet shell.

  I remember frantic voices and bright lights, and the acrid medicinal stench of the E.R. I knew so well from my misbegotten youth. They’d successfully jump-started me back into the land of the living but I was living in pulses by then, fading in and out until it all went completely black again as they wheeled me into the O.R.

  I went away, for how long I couldn’t tell you. There was just enough consciousness flickering through me that I had a dim somatic self-awareness – but not enough to know my name or care about my situation.

  My ego was on hold. ‘I’ no longer existed. ‘I’ was a plant, a vegetable enjoying my unconsciousness.

  There was none of the pain of being a human, none of the burden of identity. Just sweet dreamless oblivion. It would have been nice to stay in that nirvana forever, but it wasn’t to be: my eye opened and I stared up at the plump pretty blonde nurse hovering over me.

  She was adjusting some piece of equipment out of my field of vision. Wires and tubes were stuck all over me, their coordinated beeps chorusing throughout the room. Half my head was cocooned in bandages, and there was an agony where my left eye had been.

  The nurse sensed me looking, and our gazes locked. She had beautiful hazel eyes that widened as she gasped; but she got her game face back on fast, gifting me with a smile.

  “The children,” I groaned.

  She shook her head, not understanding my gargling attempt at speech. I growled in frustration and heaved up off the bed. The nurse pressed my call button over and over and doctors, interns and RNs ran in like they had nothing better to do.

  “Relax, Markus,” the oldest doctor said, pressing my shoulders back down. “You need to rest.”

  I was too weak to fight the pin. And besides, the look he gave me wasn’t hostile. He was probably a pretty nice guy, a gray haired old veteran of the medical wars.

  “The children,” I whispered, all energy fading fast.

  He finally understood: “The children are all just fine, Markus. Not one has a scratch on them.”

  “Okay then,” I muttered, and sank into blackness again.

  Chapter 13

  “It’s a miracle, really,” Doctor told me, shaking his distinguished gray head; residents and nurses flanked him as if adding moral support to his expertise by their numbers. “A few millimeters to the right and you’d be dead, or a vegetable.

  “The bullet passed completely through the orbital bones of the left socket and out. The brain was physically untouched except for hydrostatic shock, but I’m afraid the eye is completely gone.”

  I reached up to touch the bandages swathing the left side of my head and face. Even through the excellent dope they had me pumped up with, I could still feel throbbing pain in the hole where my eye had been.

  “How’s about bringing me a mirror?” I said
.

  Dorcas, the same blonde nurse I’d first woken to, went and fetched one. I held it up to take a gander at myself. They’d done a good job; the bandages were wrapped pretty neatly.

  The right side of my face looked completely normal. I plucked at the clean white gauze concealing the left half, lifting the bandages away.

  Doctor raised a hand as if to stop me. “I don’t think this is a good idea, Markus.”

  I looked at him, and his hand dropped. Even though I was a convalescent Cyclops, I was still twice as wide as him and fully conscious this time.

  “Let’s just call it a self-diagnostic, Doc,” I said as I finished pulling the bandages off. “I’ll be my own second opinion.”

  I raised the mirror and studied my reflection: the angry red pit where my left eye had been; the stitches radiating outward from the weeping hole like the cracks you’d see fanning out around a bullet hole in a windshield after someone got shot helpless and terrified in their car.

  Slash had popped me at point-blank range so the muzzle gases had left a grayish stain surrounding the wound; the packing and un-ignited cordite had peppered into my skin. I’d be wearing that facial tattoo for the rest of my life as a sweet little additional embellishment.

  The empty eye socket and the gunpowder stain looked fake somehow, like something out of a horror movie. It wasn’t me, couldn’t be.

  But it was. My jaw clenched so tight the muscles thrummed a drum roll in my temples that wouldn’t stop; my teeth squeaked and ground together.

  Someone fumbled at me, holding me down as a needle slid into my arm and everything started feeling right again. As I slipped back home into darkness I opened my eye and spoke to the faces surrounding me.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s all good. I wasn’t much to look at before, so no harm done, eh?” I rolled my head on my pillow, closing my eye to shut them all out. After a short while I got to go to sleep again.

  Chapter 14

  When I came to the next time I was surrounded by cops; they filled my hospital room to overflowing. I cringed inside, flashing back to the day they took me from my family. I recognized a few of the veterans, seven years older now. But most of the cops in the room looked like rookies, their faces unfamiliar. There’d been a lot of turnover in the SBPD while I was away.

  A lot of these Badges were smiling at me, which wasn’t reassuring at all. The only times I could remember members of law enforcement being happy around me had been when they were about to put me in a major hurt locker.

  “Hello, Markus,” the cop with the most insignia said from a folding chair next to my bed.

  He appeared extremely young to be chief; he also looked somehow familiar. He had a bear-like girth; he could probably use a little cardio work. He was wearing makeup, which was none of my business of course.

  “I am Chief Jansen,” he said, palms together and fingers steepled. “How are we feeling today?”

  His eyes roved my maimed face boldly, paying close attention to the bandages concealing my wounds. I looked away toward the corner of the hospital room where a lanky horse-faced woman perched on the edge of another folding chair, typing on a court recorder machine.

  One cop aimed the mike of a tape recorder at me; another officer discretely clicked away with a digital camera, alternating his shots between me and the Chief. A third pointed a camcorder my way, making sure to include Chief Jansen in the frame as much as possible. I flashed then that Jansen was wearing the make-up so he wouldn’t appear as corpse-like as I was going to on the deposition video.

  “We will have your statement,” the Chief said. “We have many questions. We are very interested in hearing what you have to say.”

  “I want a lawyer,” I said.

  Jansen pursed his meaty lips, and then smiled. “We can supply representation if that makes you feel more comfortable. But why do you even think you need a lawyer, Markus?”

  My one remaining eye commenced with a nervous tic. Did he think I’d gotten a sudden case of amnesia? Did he think I’d forgotten that the last time I talked to the cops I’d done seven years for a crime I didn’t commit?

  But keeping my mouth shut would’ve been chicken-shit and useless. I was in the fish bowl just like inside, I couldn’t make this a safe place just by playing possum.

  “I’m ain’t copping to nothing, but obviously I was at the scene,” I said, as if grudgingly.

  “Yes, you were. Forensics has put most of it together. That was an incredible fight you fought, a true work of art. We just need you to fill in a few of the blanks for us.”

  “I’m not trying to play coy here, but let’s call a spade a spade: It was multiple homicide – not a ‘fight,’ as you put it. That’s a capital crime in most states, last time I looked.” I said.

  Jansen’s mouth quirked. He looked around at the surrounding officers, gestured regally at the stenographer, the camcorder, and the camera.

  “Your need to protect yourself is understandable,” he said. “For the record, we say the case will be closed as justifiable homicide.”

  “I’d like to hear that from a higher authority than you,” I said.

  Now the Chief appeared steamed. It was interesting to study the vein throbbing in the middle of his forehead, me keeping my face as stupid as I could while enjoying his discomfiture. He opened his mouth to say something I figured was going to be on the unfriendly side of things, to put me in my place as it were.

  One of the cops approached the Chief, managing to catch Jansen’s attention even while simultaneously doing his best to be invisible. Jansen calmed down immediately, nodding to him as if doing a tag team handoff.

  This new cop was tall and what most would call handsome, with broad shoulders, wavy black hair, and a uniform shirt tailored to accentuate his muscles. He seemed preoccupied with leather and cop paraphernalia; he was festooned with polished black straps and buckles, and had a lot more gear weighing him down than most of the other cops seemed to find necessary. He looked like a recruiting poster.

  “Hi, Markus,” he said with a boyish, plastic smile. His eyes didn’t quite meet mine. “I’m Officer Rick Hoffman.”

  He stuck out his paw and I touched it for a moment, then let go. He pulled out a cell phone and hit a speed dial number, waited.

  “Hello, Mister Gallico?” he said. “It’s like we talked about, he needs to speak to you.” He held out the phone to me, and I put it to my un-bandaged ear.

  “Who’s this?” I asked.

  “This is Tom Gallico, District Attorney. Do I need to prove it?”

  “No,” I allowed. “I guess you’re who you say you are.” Gallico had never spoken the times he was present during my courtroom crucifixion seven years before, but I recognized his voice from campaign commercials. Hell, I’d even voted for him.

  “Well, Officer Hoffman said I’d need to talk to you, and it looks as though he was right as he is so often. I just want to tell you, Markus, we have no plans to file charges against you in this matter. In fact, I’ll cut right to the chase: If you did violate any laws on that day, I’m prepared to offer you complete immunity. Put Chief Jansen on again, please.”

  I handed the cellie to the Chief and he listened as Gallico’s declamation issued tinnily from the ear piece. He handed the phone back to Officer Hoffman and looked commandingly around again at the stenographer, the camcorder, and the camera.

  “Formally entered into the record, the subject in question is hereby offered full and complete immunity from prosecution for any actions performed that day at the school, in return for his present cooperation with this inquest, said offer authorized by Stagger Bay District Attorney Tom Gallico.”

  He turned back to me. “Now it is in evidence. Satisfied?”

  “Fully and completely,” I said, and started talking.

  I tried to keep in control of my game, but it was harder than I thought to revisit the events of that day. The deposition might have gotten away from me a little bit in some parts; in a couple of
places the words may even have poured from my mouth like a runaway freight train of verbiage. But at least my war face didn’t slip all the way – I was damned if I was going to show punk in front of the Man.

  When I’d caught my breath after finishing my tale, I asked the Chief, “You going to tell me what it was all about?”

  He gazed into the distance. “Those suspects you took, they had just robbed the First National Bank at Stagger Bay Center. One of the tellers hit the silent alarm and was shot dead for it.

  “Officer Jerry Pino in Car A-11 responded while the perps were still inside, but they blasted their way out. You saw firsthand the weaponry they had – Jerry was outgunned, they took him too. Three customers and another teller were caught in the cross fire; the teller may survive.

  “We wanted them bad, Markus. They were not going to escape us, and you cannot outrun a radio after all. But then they wound up inside the school in a hostage situation, and you went and involved yourself.”

  “Have you identified them yet?” I asked, wanting to know something of these men I’d murdered.

  “One of them had just been released from Pelican Bay; one of your classmates. All of them had records as long as my arm – a bit like you, Markus, before you reformed and became a law abiding citizen.” Jansen chuckled at his own joke.

  “Only one of them was local, the one blown up by the grenade. Wayne Something, where did he live again?” the Chief looked around at his junior officers with brows raised.

  “In the Gardens,” one cop contributed from where he leaned against the wall in the corner.

  He said it like it was a phrase he wouldn’t use in mixed company. He punctuated it by spitting a brown dip-loogie into the soda can he held.

  He wore a battered non-regulation Stetson cowboy hat, pulled down to conceal the upper part of his face like he was trying to sleep. He had one leg pulled up so the heel was planted against the wall under his butt, as if ready to thrust himself into action at a moment’s notice. He had a Colt.357 Magnum in his holster rather than the 9mm-auto most departments favored for a service side-arm, and I didn’t figure his down-at-the-heel cowboy boots for any part of a regulation cop uniform neither.