Last Breath (4 page)

But Fifty-fifth and Sloan wasn’t far from where they were cruising. C.J. looked at Brasco, who nodded and said, “Take it.”

“Thirteen-A-forty-three,” C.J. reported into the handheld microphone hooked to the dashboard. “We’ll take the four-fifteen.”

“Roger, forty-three. Monitor your screen, incident three-seven-one-four. Code Two High.”

Brasco flipped the toggle that activated the car’s light bar and accelerated through a yellow traffic signal. Storefronts flashed past, bearing signs in Vietnamese and Korean and Spanish. A blind beggar held up a cardboard sign at a street corner, in front of a brick wall spray-painted with gang
placas
.

Welcome to Newton Area division. Shootin’ Newton, as it was known among Officer Caitlin Jean Osborn’s colleagues in the LAPD. A few square miles of multiethnic slums bordered by five other high-crime divisions, a semicircle of blasted hopes: Hollenbeck, Central, Southwest, Seventy-seventh Street, and Southeast. The infamous Rampart Division, now synonymous with police corruption, was wedged between Central and Southwest, not quite touching Newton but close enough, perhaps, to spread its infection here. Crime rates might have dropped in both the city and county of LA, but no one could prove it in Newton.

C.J. kept her eye on the squad car’s computer until it displayed the address of the crime scene. She read it to Brasco, He turned left at the next intersection and pulled to a stop alongside a curb littered with fragments of beer bottles.

A crowd of two dozen was waiting in front of a converted garage that served as somebody’s home. Half the spectators were children with nowhere else to be on a school day.

Officers Osborn and Brasco got out, surveying the neighborhood. It was like so many in Newton, a barrio of one-story buildings that might have been nice once. Cars sat on blocks and faded in the sun. Graffiti webbed the walls and fences and even the tree trunks; there were gang names sprayed on and X’d out with what the gangbangers called “dis marks”; the number 187—the section of the California Penal Code that covered homicide—appeared prominently, a bright promise of death. Rap music blared from an open window down the street, and somewhere a dog wailed in counterpoint to the throbbing beat.

C.J. approached the crowd. The kids wore pants several sizes too big in the approved gangsta style, their sleeves rolled up to show off crude, malevolent tattoos. The adults glanced at her suspiciously and looked away.

“Who telephoned the police?” she asked in Spanish. Brasco was letting her handle it. He knew she was better at dealing with people.

A thin, frightened woman elbowed her way forward from the rear of the crowd, answering in uncertain English. “Me, it was me.”

“Okay, senora. What’s your name?”

“Maria Sanchez. It is my husband in there. My Ramon.”

“You had a fight?” The dispatcher had called it a 415—domestic disturbance.

“No, no fight.” Tears welled in the woman’s large brown eyes. “He lose his job. He get drunk, try to shoot me. He has a gun, he is crazy!”

Drunk and crazy with a gun, C.J. thought. Terrific. “What kind of gun?”

“It is, how you say, six-shooter.”

“A handgun? Like this?” C.J. tapped the Beretta 9mm bolstered to her right hip.

Maria Sanchez nodded. “Like that, but old, an old gun he got from no-good friend.”

“And he tried to shoot you with it?”

Frantic nodding. “Point it at me, and I run out the door. But he still in there. He got Emilio. I no have time to grab him.”

“Emilio?” C.J. asked, hoping it was a dog.

“
Mi nino!”

My boy. This was getting better and better.

“How old is Emilio?” C.J. asked.

“
Seis
—six months.”

“We’re gonna need backup,” Brasco said abruptly. Tension had pulled his broad, pockmarked face into a stiff mask. “This isn’t no goddamn four-fifteen. It’s an ADW that’s turned into a hostage-barricade.”

“Let’s see if we can talk to him first.” C.J. didn’t wait for Brasco’s reply. She asked Mrs. Sanchez if her husband spoke English, and when the answer was yes, she rapped on the front door, raising her voice. “Mr. Sanchez, this is the police. Open up, please. We need to talk to you.”

Silence from inside.

“Mr. Sanchez, we just want to talk.”

Nothing.

“Open the door, Mr. Sanchez.” She tested the knob and noted that it did not turn. Locked. “This is the police. Open up and let us talk to you, okay?”

Still no response.

“Fuck this,” Brasco said. “I’m calling it in. We need SWAT down here with a CNT.”

C.J. nodded, but she wasn’t happy about it She didn’t want to bring Metro SWAT into this. What had started as a drunken dispute could end up in a bloodbath.

She heard Brasco on the radio while she gathered additional information from Maria Sanchez. Layout of the house, possible exits, time elapsed since she fled the residence. Brasco came back and reported, “ETA ten minutes for another squad, thirty or more for SWAT and a negotiator.”

C.J. pointed toward the back of the house. “There’s a rear window. I’d better cover it. You watch the front door.”

“Okay. Hey, C.J., you’re just gonna
watch
the window, right?”

“Right,” she said, though she wasn’t at all certain what she would do.

And now it was decision time.

She could wait by the window until another A-car arrived, then wait much longer for the SWAT boys to get here with the negotiator. When Ramon Sanchez learned he was surrounded, he might surrender—or put the gun to Emilio’s head and pull the trigger.

And if SWAT went in ...

Five men with machine guns bursting into this tiny house, screaming orders, ready to fire at any shadow ...

The baby shrieked louder.

C.J. made up her mind. She tried to ignore the trickle of sweat down her back as she drew her Beretta and climbed through the window.

When she dropped onto the cot, the springs creaked, but she was pretty sure the sound was inaudible in the front room, drowned out by the baby’s cries.

C.J. shifted her service pistol into a two-handed combat stance. She didn’t want to use the gun. Only once in her three years on the force had she shot anybody, and even then, the injury hadn’t been fatal. She didn’t deserve the damn nickname the other Newton cops had given her, and she didn’t want to start living up to it now.

The baby began to sob.

She eased herself off the cot and planted both shoes on the floor. The bedroom was minuscule, and the front room couldn’t be much larger. She estimated the home’s total floor space at less than five hundred square feet. A few steps would carry her through the doorway, into the red zone.

The red zone. That was what Walt Brasco called it, Walt the football fan, in reference to the critical territory inside the twenty-yard line. As if going after the bad guys was no different from scoring a touchdown.

Shouldn’t be doing this, C.J., a small voice warned. This is cowboy stuff.

She silenced the voice. It was wrong. This was not cowboy stuff. It was cop stuff. It was what she did, what any cop would do who wasn’t a glorified paper pusher.

She advanced, treading silently, staying clear of the doorway. She reached the far wall and crept to the open door, the glow from the TV brightening as she approached.

The baby had quieted, its sobbing wails subsiding into hiccups. Hugging the door frame, C.J. listened for any other sound. She heard an electric hum—a fan or a refrigerator motor—and softly, a man’s voice.

“
Dios mio,”
Sanchez was murmuring, “
Dios mio, Dios mio ...”

The chant continued. The voice was low and close. Sanchez must be positioned near the bedroom. She couldn’t tell if he was facing her way or not.

There was only one way to go in, and she did it, pivoting through the doorway, staying low to make herself a smaller target.

Sanchez hadn’t seen her. He faced front, sitting in what looked like a rusty beach chair. No lights were on, and the only daylight came from the bedroom behind her. The room was illuminated solely by the shifting glow of a muted black-and-white TV resting on an apple crate. A car commercial flowed past in a ribbon of roadway vistas, and then a double-decker cheeseburger filled the screen.

The picture tube’s bluish light flickered over the sweaty nape of Sanchez’s neck, his loose shirt collar, and the curly-haired baby boy in diapers nestled in his lap.

C.J. took a quick survey of the living room. Mismatched odds and ends of furniture, an ironing table, a fake plant, a velvet painting of Jesus on the wall. No mirrors, no polished surfaces—nothing that might betray her by a reflection.

Her gaze circled back to Sanchez. With his left hand he stroked Emilio’s belly, calming the child. In his right hand he held his gun, a long-barreled revolver, maybe an old Colt or Smith—a six-shooter anyway, like a relic of the Wild West.

“
Dios mio ... Dios mio ...”

Emilio had ceased crying. It was Mr. Sanchez who was sobbing now.

C.J. almost called out to him, identifying herself again as the police, but if he panicked he might turn and fire, and she would be trapped in the doorway, unable to shoot back without endangering the baby.

She had to get the gun away from him.

The distance between herself and Sanchez was six feet. She could reach him in three short steps and snatch the gun.

Dangerous, but facing danger was what they paid her for, right?

C.J. moved forward, still bent low. She dragged her feet in a cautious slide-step, maintaining her balance, textbook high-risk-felony procedure.

One step. Two.

The revolver almost within reach.

Emilio screamed.

The baby had seen her coming, and his cry alerted Ramon Sanchez, who spun, rising, the revolver blurring toward her, and on pure instinct C.J. reached out with her free hand and grabbed it by the cylinder.

A revolver couldn’t fire if the cylinder was prevented from turning.

That was the theory, at least. The reality was that some revolvers—the ones that were old, damaged, defective—might fire anyway.

Past the gray shape of the gun she saw Ramon’s eyes, inflamed with weeping, big with rage.

“
Policia,”
C.J. snapped. “
Suelte la arma.”
Drop the weapon.

She could shoot him now. She could fire past Emilio, wrapped in Ramon’s left arm like a small pink shield—fire into the man’s abdomen or groin.

But if she did, he would try to fire back, if only in a reflex action. And his gun was pointed at her face from inches away, close enough for her to smell the lubricant on the muzzle.

An old gun, Maria Sanchez had said. A piece of junk, from the look of it. The kind that might fire even if the cylinder was immobilized.

She repeated the command taught to all recruits at the police academy. “
Suelte la arma.”
Even though Sanchez spoke English, it was a fair bet that he was more fluent in Spanish.

He must have understood her, but he still didn’t comply.

She and Sanchez watched each other over the barrel of his gun. C.J. waited for him to pull the trigger. Waited to find out what kind of luck she had.

But he didn’t try to shoot. Slowly he relaxed his grip on the revolver and let her take it from him.

“
Dios mio,”
he said again in a hoarse, defeated voice.

She snugged the gun inside her belt. “Put the baby down,” she ordered, “Put him down. All right, raise your hands. Now on your knees. Your knees! Lie on your stomach. Hands out, away from your body. It’s okay, Mr. Sanchez. It’s okay.”

She had her knee planted in the small of his back, and she was cuffing him while he lay in the felony-prone position. She didn’t relax until the second handcuff clicked shut.

She searched him for other weapons, found none. When she was certain he posed no threat, she bolstered her Beretta. Outside, Brasco was yelling something through the door. He’d heard her shouting inside.

“I’m all right,” C.J. called back as she stood up.

Emilio was crying. She took a moment to comfort the child and to stop herself from shaking.

Close call. For a moment there, staring into that gun and those red eyes, she’d felt she was facing her old enemy once more—facing him, maybe, for the last time.

But she’d been wrong. Ramon Sanchez was not the boogeyman.

The boogeyman, she knew, would have pulled the trigger.

Noah Rawls liked his job, even if half the time he was filling out paperwork, and most of his remaining hours were spent manually reviewing log files provided by the owners of violated computer systems. He liked the thrill of the chase—not the Hollywood chase of screaming sirens and weaving traffic, but the subtler game of hunting crackers and phreakers and code-thieves, sniffing out IP addresses, defeating firewalls, beating online criminals at their own sport.

He was a hacker-tracker, or more accurately a member of the computer crime squad in the FBI’s Baltimore field office. Some field offices had full-fledged Computer Intrusion teams of seven to ten agents, but here in Baltimore it was just Rawls and his partner, Ned Brand. They shared a small office with a view of an industrial park adjacent to Interstate 695, a view that rarely engaged their attention, since most of the time their windows were draped shut to prevent glare on the monitors. The monitors were, in fact, the only windows that mattered to either of them—the twenty-one-inch CRT screens that opened on another world.

“Hey, Ned,” Rawls muttered. “Take a look at this.”

Brand did not look up from his monitor. “I’m busy.” His fingers clacked on his keyboard with the monotony of falling rain.

“Are you? Sorry. Say, you want me to get you that chamber pot? I think Baltimore PD’s still got it in evidence.”

This obtained the desired reaction—the squeal of the casters on Brand’s office chair as he pushed away from his desk. “Okay, okay. Don’t go comparing me to Tomlinson, damn it.”

Rawls only smiled. Eddie Tomlinson was a phone-code thief who, in a remarkable feat of endurance captured by an FBI trap-and-trace, had remained online, typing continuously, for seventy-two hours straight. When his home was raided, he was found hunched over his keyboard, seated in a chair with a hole cut in the seat and an overflowing chamber pot underneath. Empty beverage bottles and discarded snack food wrappers littered the floor. Tomlinson put up no resistance to arrest, but it was observed that his fingers continued to go through the motions of typing even as he was led away in handcuffs.