The Ten-Mile Trials (3 page)

Maxine, seeing me standing in her driveway, opened the door of her house and asked, ‘What's going on?'

I told her what I'd just seen and she said, ‘I hate to wish anybody bad luck, but really I'll be glad if those people are gone for good.'

‘Have they been giving you trouble?' I was surprised by her comment. Maxine's been around some tight corners herself in her day and it's made her compassionate – she hardly ever criticizes anybody.

‘They've never said a word to me, but they're sure not anybody's dream neighbors. Noisy fights, and people coming and going at all hours.'

‘Dopers, you think?'

‘Who knows? Sometimes they seem to sleep all day, but when they're awake I feel like I have to keep an eye on my kids when they're out in the yard. I've been really hoping they'd move.'

‘Well, it looks like you got your wish.' I watched the third car peel off and disappear. ‘Did you know they had a child in there?'

‘Yeah.' She gave me an uneasy look. ‘I know what you're thinking, I should have reported it. But you know, around here' – she shrugged – ‘nobody's got much, and we all try to mind our own business. Who's got time to fight?'

‘I know.' I didn't have any time to spare either. I needed to help Trudy get Ben home before he got hungry. I went inside and began packing up and hauling out some of the elaborate gear required by my son for a day away from home. For one infant who couldn't sit up yet, it was really quite an amazing array. Fatherhood had intensified my interior debate about whether to hang on to my gas-guzzling pickup. The more things Ben needed, the more I wanted to keep the truck and the less I could afford it.

I packed Trudy's car and put the overflow in my truck. Trudy strapped Ben into his car seat while she repeated, for the hundredth time, all the instructions for Ben's first Monday alone with Maxine. When our expressions told her that she absolutely must not go over it one more time, she got into her car and headed for home.

Maxine's other day-care kids were being retrieved by their moms by then, and they both wanted to hear about what was going on at the end of the block. In the middle of all that talk Eddy and Nelly got bored with watching police cars, climbed down out of the tree, and came indoors. Nelly went in and lined up her dolls for a tea party, but Eddy, who had just turned eight, had begun to take an interest in cooking. Right this minute he had decided he should make fried potatoes for supper. As soon as he could get Maxine to listen, he began to tell her precisely how he planned to go about it. She was pretty dubious about letting him stand on a stool to fry potatoes in hot oil; but he said he was ‘absolutely positive' he could do it without burning himself.

She settled him at the sink with four potatoes and a paring knife. ‘If you can peel all four of them without bleeding,' she said, ‘then we'll talk about the frying.'

She followed me outside to say goodbye. On the step she blew hair out of her eyes and said, ‘Remember how hard I tried to get that kid to talk when he first came here?'

‘Yeah. I was just thinking, I kind of miss that speechless little stalker who used to hug my leg until I sat down and let him climb on my lap.'

Eddy was one of Maxine's most impressive successes. Three years ago, he'd been a silent wraith scared out of his wits by his father's insane destruction of their whole family. For a long time, after his social worker dropped him off here he would point or nod at what he wanted, but never talk. The first few words Eddy spoke brought tears to Maxine's eyes. He had had some tough days and nights in the years since, but with counseling and therapy he had mustered the nerve to go back to school. Now he'd finished second grade, was reading a little, and lately, to everyone's surprise, had begun to show an amazing gift of the gab.

I hugged her and told her she was my hero. ‘Your hero is thinking about getting some earplugs,' she said. ‘But it is good to see him bloom.'

As I turned to get into my truck, I saw that still more RPD vehicles had parked at the end of the block. Al Hanenburger must have driven one of them – he was out on the street now, walking from house to house, telling the several householders standing on their front steps that they would be wise to wait inside for a while.

He walked up to Maxine's step and said, ‘Excuse me, Ma'am, you live here?' Then seeing me, ‘Oh, hi, Jake.'

‘Hey, Al. What's happening?'

Hanenburger told us, ‘We've got a problem with that house down the street there. You probably want to stay inside,' he told Maxine, ‘till we get this situation squared away here.'

Eddy was in the doorway now, asking Maxine, ‘Do I have to take out all those eye thingies?' I told Maxine, as she turned to go in, ‘I'll go see what's up, and be right back.'

Walking back to the corner, Al told me, ‘The two people they took out of the house say they live here. They were using – there's meth and pipes on the table. But because of how it started, two guys yelling and running out, Ruskie asked if anybody else was in the house. The guy said no, just me and my old lady and her kid. But while they waited for the woman to get dressed, Ruskie went out in the kitchen and asked her through the bedroom door if there was anybody else in the house. She said somebody – some name he couldn't understand – might still be out in the garage, she wasn't sure. Ruskie said, “He live here too?” And she said, “Over my dead body. That guy's crazy.” So Ruskie went back and asked the tattooed man, “What about the crazy guy in the garage?” He shook his head and said, “Don't listen to my old lady. She's been tweakin', she don't even know what day it is.” Something about how he said it convinced Ruskie he was lying, so he phoned in for a search warrant to be faxed to him, and while he was at it he asked for more backup and a K-9 unit.'

Al gave a little grunt of laughter. ‘Everybody but me was already out on an emergency, so Ruskie's gonna have to manage with just me and the dog.'

‘Hey,' I said, ‘that should be plenty.'

‘Probably,' Al said, ‘if the dog can shoot.'

He was being unduly modest. Al Hanenburger got his spot on the Emergency Response Unit crew by being the best shot in the department.

I stood with Al and Ruskie, watching Darrell walk his dog across the front of the house. The dog was all business now, sniffing the air in a wide herring-bone pattern that grew narrower as he approached the attached garage on the far side of the house. As he reached the cement apron in front of the garage, the animal went noisily berserk. He flung himself at the big overhead door, scratching and barking at the top of his lungs. He was one big, bad, dangerous dog, he wanted us all to understand, and as soon as Darrell let him off the leash he was going to tear open the garage and eat its contents. I believed him – he seemed very sincere.

After a minute Darrell was apparently satisfied that he understood the message, and began telling his dog that was enough for now. He got him to switch gears by tossing him a white ball with a little leash of its own. They played tug-the-ball for a minute while he told this big snarling beast what a very good dog he was. It seemed a strikingly inaccurate description of the dog's behavior, but it matched the dog's opinion of himself, and the killer canine morphed into a romping pet before our eyes. Darrell rubbed the big hairy head and scratched the upstanding ears while he slathered the dog with extravagant praise, and then said ‘
Sitz
!' – which turned out to be German for sit (the unit's puppies were raised in Germany and the Czech Republic). I was fascinated to see that Darrell, who had never quite mastered English, seemed to have no trouble with German commands.

Sitting didn't appeal at all to the explosively energetic dog, but he managed it after a few seconds with just a little protesting butt-wiggle. Darrell spoke a quiet word to Ruskie and Al, walked up close to the garage door, and said loudly, ‘Whoever's in there, we know you're there and we're giving you a chance to come out with your hands up and empty. If you don't come out I'm going to send my dog in after you, and he
will
bite you. So you better use your head now, and come on out.'

He was answered by an implacable silence.

‘OK,' Darrell said, to the other two officers, ‘I'm ready to send in the dog.'

‘Uh . . . hold up one minute, will you?' Al said. ‘ERU just got a new gadget that might be just the thing for a situation like this and I'd like to try it.' He walked across the street to where his car was parked, opened the trunk and took something out. It looked like one of those dinky dumbbells people carry for arm exercise when they walk, except this dumbbell was black and had wheels front and back.

He walked quickly across the street and up the driveway to the garage that had set off the dog. Choosing a metal bar from among the many implements dangling from his belt, with one quick and brutal gesture he broke the small side window of the garage. He tossed his dark little device in through the broken window and trotted back to his car.

‘You want to see how this gizmo works, Jake?' he asked me. ‘It's called a Recon Scout. It's a robot.'

He pulled another device out of his crammed-full trunk and turned it on. It was the receiver for the little electronic spy he had dropped into the garage. As we watched the screen, he tried the joystick. The robot backed up a foot. He gave a little grunt of satisfaction. ‘There we go. How about that?'

I asked him, ‘How'd you get it to land on its wheels?'

‘It's got a . . . uh . . . widget that keeps it right side up.' We watched as his device pivoted away from the window. He hit a switch and the gadget grew night vision, an eerie green glow. ‘Oh, wait, though,' Al said. ‘I don't need this, do I? Hoo-ee! Lights all over the . . .'Then we both, said ‘Aah!'

Maxine's noisy neighbors had a grow house in the garage.

TWO

D
arrell told his dog to stay where he was, and walked over to see what we were looking at. He watched while the image scrolled across the crowded scene in the garage – leafy plants growing thickly out of identical plastic tubs, upward toward the big mercury-vapor lamps hung from the rafters.

‘Jesus,' Darrell said, ‘it looks like the forest crime-evil!'

‘The what?' Al's face got the puzzled look so common to people talking to Darrell. Then he went back to watching the monitor, smiling with satisfaction. My olfactory nerves had begun to twitch, in anticipation of the syrupy smell waiting for us in the garage.

‘Boy, Darrell, give your pooch there a couple of extra treats for me,' Al said. ‘He sure called this one right.'

‘Well, good.' Darrell was watching the monitor curiously. ‘Where is he?'

‘Who?'

‘What?' They were staring at each other, hurling monosyllables back and forth like an Abbott and Costello routine run amok.

‘Darrell,' I said, ‘all we can see in there is a grow house. Why'd you think your dog thought he'd found a person?'

‘Because all Sam goes after is people. He hasn't done his drug-detection package yet.'

‘Trained or not, he found us a grow house this time,' Al said. ‘Look at the monitor.'

‘I don't care what the monitor shows,' Darrell said, ‘and neither does Sam. He wouldn't know weed from my Aunt Fanny's fanny. What he does know is how to find a person when I say to do it. He's really good at it, too.' He looked at Al Hanenburger, standing there so proud of his electronic toy, and back to where his dog still sat anxiously in the driveway, grumbling in his throat. ‘If I was you,' he said, ‘I'd call for some more backup. Sam thinks there's somebody in that garage, and I never seen him be wrong.'

Al Hanenburger gave him a long, agonized stare and went back to watching the monitor. ‘There's nobody moving around,' he said. ‘I don't see anybody in there.'

‘I don't either,' Darrell said.

‘But you still think—'

‘Yup.'

Slowly, with every move betraying his reluctance, Al Hanenburger plucked his phone off his belt, dialed his duty sergeant, and initiated a complex conversation. He thought they might need backup to go after the human being the dog insisted was in the garage. But he also figured they'd need a drug-interdiction unit to deal with the marijuana plants. ‘And there was meth and paraphernalia in the kitchen, so does that mean I have to wait for those folks too before we go in?' He listened a minute and said, ‘No. All we can see in the garage is a forest of hemp.' He asked Ruskie, ‘Any sign of a meth lab in the house?'

‘Not in the two rooms I saw.'

Hanenburger repeated that into the phone and listened a minute, squinting in concentration. As soon as the voice paused, he said, ‘Well, but whoever's in the garage is probably not friendly, would you guess? He ain't gonna stand around and watch while a lab crew cleans up the— I'm not being smart, I'm just saying— Look, Sarge, the robot shows a grow house, that's all we can see. But Darrell's dog says . . .' He listened again, then raised his head and asked Darrell, ‘Dead or alive?'

‘Sam don't care,' Darrell said, ‘long as he gets to bite somebody.'

Hanenburger relayed that information, listened a minute longer, and said, ‘Gotcha.' He put the phone back in its holder. ‘Sarge says it might be quite a while before an ERU can get here. He's saying, if your dog is ready to go in there and get the guy, we should back you up while he does that. So what do you say?'

‘I say fine. You guys ready?' Everybody nodded. ‘Let's do it then.' Darrell looked around. ‘Let's see . . . Al's the best shot, let's put him here in the middle. Ruskie, you stand over there on the left, and—' he looked at me. He was pumped, enjoying being in charge of the scene. ‘Whaddya say, Jake, I guess this next part is a little below your pay grade, huh?'