Soft Soap
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right, kiddo?”
Ridley stared out the squad car’s window. “Right.”
The rain-slicked street turned bloody. Morris braked and turned his attention to his passenger. “That was bad. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’m telling you that was bad. You’re holding up well, you can do it. But most of the time, you won’t have to.”
“Trial by fire?”
“Every day’s trial by fire.” The light turned green and Morris accelerated slowly through the intersection. “That was five alarm shit.”
There had been a lot of blood. Ridley was a rookie, not an idiot: he knew real life was messy, that television was filled with sanitized fantasies. But it was one thing to know that, quite another to see it illustrated so brutally.
The man and woman in the bedroom hadn’t been so bad. That was gruesome and tragic, and not just because of the deaths. Their blood had soaked the sheets and splattered on the walls. But Ridley had noticed that the sheets had been dirty even before the shooting, and the walls water-damaged. A sad, sordid place to live or die.
It was an old story wherein the boyfriend caught his woman in bed with her lover. Ridley felt pity for Keisha Andrews and Leroy Dobbs, since their lives had been cut violently short. But he couldn’t help feeling they sort of deserved it on the grounds of stupidity: Andrews’s boyfriend was Tucker Price.
“I know Price,” Ridley said. “I’ve seen his sheet, I’ve seen what ought to be on his sheet, I bet there’s a lot more. How did they not know he was dangerous? Jesus.”
“I guess Dobbs thought with his dick. Take a step back. Don’t get mad at the victims. It’s a dirty little domestic.”
Domestic cases were depressing, but this one was infinitely worse because Dobbs’s toddler son had wandered into the hallway outside the bedroom. Half of his head had been blown away. Ridley had almost lost it when he saw the kid’s body.
“How do you take it?” Ridley asked. Morris had two kids, blond cherubs with his blue eyes and their mother’s nose. He’d show pictures if asked, and occasionally mentioned a Little League game, but for the most part didn’t discuss his home life at work. Maybe that was the answer.
It was all the answer Ridley was likely to get at the moment. Morris clammed up, the way he sometimes did, and scanned the street. Catching Price tonight was a long shot, despite the tip from one of Dobbs’s horrified neighbors.
Certainly Morris didn’t think they’d find him now. He was a careful man, and wouldn’t like confronting an armed killer with only his rookie partner as backup. But eventually there would be an arrest. Hopefully Price would go away for a long time. Photos of little Jackie Dobbs would move prosecutors, juries, judges, and parole boards.
“A drug dealer you just keep arresting,” Morris said, “hope some of the charges stick. A drug dealer who’s shot some of the competition…you just hope he’s helping dig his own grave. Bad luck we haven’t had a solid link between him and some of the other corpses.”
Ridley nodded. Price’s name was penciled throughout several open homicide files. “He was smart before.”
“He’s careful about business,” Morris said. “Except this wasn’t business. This was your standard stupid crime of passion. Christ, he left footprints in the blood! You see that?”
Ridley nodded. It was comforting to imagine an easy conviction. It was also comforting to consider the blood as the subject of crime scene photos, not a fluid spilling out of a toddler’s body. “And this is the same guy who picked up the casings after he shot the Cole brothers.”
“He got emotional. Got stupid.” Morris shook his head. “Let’s make this a cautionary tale, huh? Waste your girlfriend, go down hard.”
“Yeah.” Ridley scanned the streets once more. “Do you think…was it a stray bullet?”
“The kid?” Morris shrugged, but his hands tightened on the wheel.
“It was just the one shot, not…he must’ve shot the other two dozens of times….”
“So you think the kid was just an accident, bad luck?” Morris said. “Maybe Price didn’t even know he was there? He sees the dead kid, he’s so horrified he gets even stupider, gets careless about the evidence?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Maybe. Does that make you feel better? He’s not a baby killing monster, he’s just a bad guy who normally only shoots other bad guys? And his girlfriend and anybody dumb enough to fuck her?” Morris shrugged again. “What way makes it easier to sleep at night?”
“I don’t know.”
“Figure it out tonight,” Morris said. “Tomorrow you can tell me if Price is a monster or just a bad guy.”
“What do you think?”
“I think it doesn’t matter to Jackie Dobbs,” Morris said. “I don’t presume to know intent or mitigation, I just see the final results. Call Price whatever you want: monster, bad guy, unlucky. In my book he’s the guy that shot a kid, no more, no less.”
“Yeah.” Regardless of how he cast Price, Ridley didn’t think he’d be sleeping well for a while.
“You see that?” Morris asked. “Middle of the block. Light on the first floor.”
Ridley turned his head. Most of the rowhouses were dark. As he recalled from daylight drive-bys, several of them were burned out or otherwise begging to be condemned.
Morris didn’t slow, turn the lights on, or pick up the radio. He just turned right at the end of the block.
“Just like the neighbor said.” Ridley licked his lips.
Morris made another right. “No way she’d have said anything if it had just been Andrews and Dobbs. The slut and the idiot.” He shook his head. “Maybe next time she has information she’ll share it with us before a kid gets killed.”
“It might not be him.” Ridley hated his own cowardice, no matter how justified. Jackie Dobbs’s death was an obscenity, Price was dangerous, and removing dangerous people from the street was Ridley’s job description. “Squatters, maybe.”
“Could be.” Morris turned, drove to the end of the block, and pulled over to the curb. “Take a breath, relax. It might not be anything. Remember, most days it’s boring.”
“Right.” Thank God he was partnered with Morris, who wasn’t likely to start rumors about how his rookie partner was a pussy.
“You know how you’re supposed to go into a building,” Morris continued. “You know it’s dangerous, but you know what to do. Training takes over, in situations like these. And most of the time it doesn’t have to. Probably there’s nothing. But it’s like the Boy Scouts, right? Be prepared.”
“Right.”
“And you’re prepared. Later on we’ll have a beer and you can bitch me out for giving you a damn pep talk before rousting some junkie.”
“Sounds good,” Ridley smiled. “Do we play it as a knock and talk?”
“Assuming it’s a junkie squatter, yeah. If it looks like maybe it’s Price, then not so much with the talking.”
“Okay.” Giving Price a chance to take aim at the door didn’t sound like a good idea.
“If it is him…we’re in pursuit. Lukewarm pursuit, at least.” Morris smiled, then reached under his seat and pulled out a bag. “This is for emergencies.”
The bag contained a pair of guns.
“They were seized as evidence a while back,” Morris said before Ridley asked. “They’re down as being sold at auction, but didn’t quite make it. Emergencies only.”
“Okay.” Ridley licked his lips. “Look, if it’s Price…like you said, we’re in pursuit. He’s armed, we’ve got witnesses that actually IDed him….”
Morris nodded. “Yeah, it looks like a pretty good case is shaping up. How many rounds did he fire in Dobbs’s apartment?”
“A lot.”
“You think he’s going to go quietly? Assuming it is him in that building, not a squatter?”
“No. I guess not.”
“Do you really want to take any chances? A guy like Price, it’s a shoot first situation. Trial by fire, kiddo.”
“On the shooting range, I’ve only used my gun…and, well, why these? I mean, it’s a knock and talk or, or lukewarm pursuit….”
“What color’s your skin?”
“White.”
“What color’s Price?”
“Black.”
“Right,” Morris said. “Just erring on the side of caution, because we both want to retire with our pension and no media uproar.”
“He killed a kid–”
“Erring on the side of caution,” Morris repeated. “Probably it’d all work out eventually. The good guys declared heroes, the bad guy locked up forever, no evidence thrown out, no convictions overturned. But why take the chance?”
Ridley took one of the guns. It was heavier than it looked. He remembered thinking the same thing about his service piece before he got used to it. He’d become casual, though not careless, about that gun.
“It’s loaded,” Morris said unnecessarily. “Just in case.”
“Have you…I mean, when you said emergencies….”
“He shot a kid,” Morris said flatly. “You see some terrible shit on this job, but that’s the worst.”
He opened the door and walked to the corner. Ridley hurried to keep up.
“Chances are it’s a squatter,” Morris repeated. “But if it’s Price, don’t hesitate. He won’t.”
The approach to the house was subjectively agonizing but objectively uneventful. Ridley tried to prepare himself for the possibility of Price, tried to ignore the fact that Morris wanted it to be Price. He was older, he had kids; his armor was thicker than Ridley’s, with a whole different set of weaknesses. The guns–the illegal, unregistered guns–were just a practical manifestation of those feelings.
Ridley positioned himself to the left of the door. The lock had been broken; Morris no longer needed to maintain the knock and talk charade.
He gestured. Ridley nodded and tightened his grip on the gun. The gun, not his gun. He imagined holding his own weapon might bring comfort in a situation like this, but probably his nervous mind was grasping at straws. Regardless of the gun he held, the man in the building was probably a killer who was shortly going to take aim at him. And regardless of the gun he held, Ridley was planning to point it at that man. He thought he would be able to pull the trigger.
He was certain Morris would have no compunction.
Morris pushed the door open. They proceeded through the front room and checked the back. The light came from the kitchen, a dingy room illuminated by a single naked bulb. A glob of soap, soft and wet, sat beside the sink. Junkie squatters weren’t known for their attention to personal hygiene.
Morris pointed at a garbage can. Based on the smell, some of the trash had been sitting there for some time. Based on the dampness of the paper towels on top of the pile, someone had added them very recently. The paper towels were stained, the bold color seeping into a soft pastel.
Blood.
Consistent with blood. That was the appropriate phrase until the scene was carefully analyzed. Ridley would never have to testify to the appearance of a substance consistent with blood, if Morris had his way. He followed his partner up the stairs, above all wanting this night to end.
Nothing in the room at the top of the stairs, aside from a bed with three legs. Morris emerged from a second room, shaking his head. That left two more doors. Ridley could hear his heart pound as he took up his position before one door. Morris probably heard it, as he slid past to the door at the end of the hall. Price could probably hear it.
Ridley opened the door, swept a shower curtain aside to reveal an empty bathtub, and stepped out of the bathroom.
A dark shape burst out of the door at the end of the hall. Morris shouted. Ridley had the impression of a trench coat barreling into his partner, a trench coat just like the one the witnesses had described, and the silhouette of a gun already used to kill three people today.
Morris had been right: Ridley’s training took over and he fired. A weight hit him, knocked him back against the wall, and he fired again. The dark shape vaulted onto the stairs; a moment later the front door slammed open and shut. No fear, no relief he’d survived, no frustration that Price had escaped. Just a rapid-fire series of events.
Ridley inhaled. There was the fear. Trial by fire.
Morris was still on the floor. Ridley started to say his name but he knew, for that one horrible moment he knew what had happened but knew also that he had to confirm it. He knelt beside his partner, felt the sticky wetness on his unmoving chest.
He found a light switch and illuminated the hall. He realized he was crying. Thought about the light switch, the three-legged bed, the soap, anything but the two blue-eyed cherubs. When that didn’t work, he turned back to Morris’s body.
No miracles had occurred. Morris was still dead. The wounds were still inconsistent with the weapon that killed Keisha Andrews and Leroy and Jackie Dobbs.
Ridley wanted to vomit. More than anything he wanted Morris to give him advice. What do you do after shooting your partner? With an illegal gun? After having conspired to murder a suspect? What clichéd snippet of wisdom would Morris have for this situation?
Be prepared. Trial by fire. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Christ.
And now he was mad at the victim, on top of everything else.
Morris’s eyes were open, sad or accusatory or just dead. He wasn’t going to see any more Little League games, wasn’t going to retire with his pension, wasn’t going to have much of a reputation if the business about the guns came out, wasn’t going to be instrumental in bringing a child’s killer to justice.
Well. Ridley couldn’t do anything about the first two. But no one had to know about the guns. Morris had been a good cop, and deserved to be remembered that way. And…if he’d been careful, if the guns were untraceable, who was to say they didn’t belong to Price? Tucker Price, baby killer.
Tucker Price, cop killer.
It wouldn’t take long before he was cornered. If Price had the opportunity to declare his innocence, who would believe him? In any case Ridley suspected it would end with a body bag, not a trial.
That would make Morris happy. And Morris was above all a practical man. He wouldn’t resent Ridley covering up certain facts. He’d understand. Hell, he’d probably offer advice on how to manipulate the scene.
Ridley couldn’t come up with much on his own. He drew Morris’s gun from its holster and set it down beside the illegal weapon he’d died holding. He fired his own service piece into the wall. He was a rookie, fired wildly, panicked when he saw his partner was dead, maybe hadn’t preserved the scene especially well. That scenario shouldn’t be too hard to believe.
He wiped the unregistered guns and tossed them into the room at the end of the hall. Other people would pick them up, tag them, perform ballistic tests, enter them as evidence if Price ever made it to trial. After that they might wind up auctioned off, might disappear again, might be used by some other cop in an emergency situation.
That cycle was either a comfort or a tragedy. Ridley didn’t know which, and wished he could ask Morris what he thought.
© 2005 Megan Powell
Written for the Going Twice blog story project