Reaper III: Rookies Read online

  He carried with him an air of certainty and confidence and he was at least twice my age.

  His brown eyes sought me out and then turned back to the grey haired Captain. “This her?”

  She nodded. “Sergeant Phil Conner, let me introduce you to your new partner, Officer Samantha Bennet.”

  I looked at him.

  He looked at me.

  My green eyed gaze met his brown eyed one.

  As we were busy, sizing each other up, he was the first to crack a smile.

  “Aren’t we the combination,” he remarked, the grin not leaving his face.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Old black veteran like me teamed up with a young white Rookie like you?”

  I knew he meant no harm with the comment—certainly not with the warm smile he was offering me.

  It wasn’t a racist slam, so much as it was a teasing welcome.

  “Don’t tell me you have something against working with young white Rookies like me,” I replied in playful banter, smiling right back at him.

  “Hell no.” He took the only free seat in the room, next to me. “I don’t mind working with Rookies at all. I’ve certainly been through my share of babysitting. Trained a lot of greenhorns in my day. They turned out to be some of the best cops you’ll ever meet in this precinct.”

  “Only some?” I asked mischievously.

  Captain Briggs laughed and it was a pleasant sound. “If you watch closely and listen intently, you’ll learn a lot from Sergeant Conner. He’s been on the force for a number of years and has countless experiences from which you can be sure to draw a lot of knowledge.” Her blue eyes twinkled as she continued. “And I guarantee you, Samantha, so long as you can put up with Phil’s strange sense of humor, I’m certain that the two of you will get along just fine.”

  Phil rose from his chair. “Well, kid – ready to roll?”

  Ready to roll? It could only mean one thing, we were about to go out on patrol.

  Suddenly, my heart began to pound a staccato beat in my chest.

  This was it.

  I was really a cop now.

  This was going to be my first real act of duty.

  Was I ready?

  This was the culmination of all of my training, all of my years of waiting, my years in college—all of it had been in preparation for this moment.

  Yet, I was a nervous and worst of all, I knew it showed.

  My heart continued to hammer against the inside of my ribcage and my palms felt damp.

  Was I ready?

  “Sure she is,” Captain Briggs answered for me, her blue eyes shining. Then, there was an almost motherly affection in her voice as she said, “Don’t worry. You’ll do well.”

  I wondered if maybe she was a mind reader, or if she could smell my fear, or if maybe she just knew what it was like to be a Rookie with absolutely no experience on the job…

  “Thank you,” I replied simply and rose to my feet.

  We left the building through a side entrance, gaining access to one of the two parking lots on site. A few rows of black and white squad cars were left in the lot.

  All of the rest, I imagined, were out on duty, out on patrol.

  Which one was ours?

  I followed my partner, our footsteps sounding well matched on the concrete of the covered parking lot, as I tried to keep up with his long strides. The parking lot smelled of exhaust fumes, old and new and I found myself wondering if he would be expecting me to drive.

  I looked beyond the parking garage and at the light flakes of snow that were falling.

  I found myself hoping that he wouldn’t be expecting me to drive. I had only driven a few times in the snow and the roads were looking a bit sloppy.

  I didn’t want to make an ass out of myself with my lack of driving experience, not on my first day with the Sergeant.

  “I’m driving.” He spoke up suddenly, stopping in front of a black and white Chevrolet that looked clean, as if it had just been washed. “At least until you get a feel for the area.” He tapped the top of the car where our car’s number was painted. “We’re car nine-oh-five Tango. That is our call sign, that is who we are—got it?”

  “Got it,” I replied, feeling like he was testing me for something already, as he unlocked his car door with the key and then used the electronic lock to unlock mine.

  “We’ll do a quick equipment check and then we’ll be on our way—got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Now I know that you were in with Personnel and then the Captain today, instead of at the roll call, so I’ll fill you in on what happened in briefing. We’re patrolling Zone Two and Zone Seven today, which are mostly residential areas that lay on the Western outskirt of our division boundary.”

  He consulted his clipboard.

  I noticed that some of the papers he flipped past were regarding my training. The top sheet of paper—the one that he flipped back to—was his notes on the morning’s briefing in the briefing room.

  “What else should I know about Zone Two?” I asked him out of curiosity

  “It’s a mostly Jewish community—lots of synagogues—with some Hispanics and Pilipinos thrown in for good measure. They’ve also got a jewelry store that was knocked off twice last year and your usual run of mom an’ pop shops and restaurants. So even though it’s residential, we have to, of course, be prepared for anything.”

  “Of course.”

  “As you already know, this precinct is located smack dab in the middle of our 67th Division, in Zone Five, which is a mostly downtown area.” He put the key in the ignition and despite the cold air of the parking garage, the car thrummed to life. “So what we’re going to do now is head out west to Zone Two, keep our eyes and ears open and otherwise listen to the radio for calls—got it?”

  “Got it,” I said, feeling like a got it parrot already.

  Upon checking our equipment, he continued with the orientation.

  “On day shift, coffee break’s at ten o’clock, unless we’re otherwise preoccupied.”

  “Do you have a place in mind?”

  He put the car into reverse and pulled us smoothly out of our parking spot.

  “We’ll probably just hit a drive-thru somewhere, unless we need a bathroom break as well.”

  He drove to the parking lot entrance and then turned our car unto the street.

  “You’ll find that, being a cop, if people see you on your much deserved coffee break, they get all riled up, because they think that you’re slacking off, that you should be out fighting crime somewhere, catching baddies.”

  The car accelerated under his command, catching up with the speed of the street traffic.

  He continued. “What they don’t understand is that we often end up working through our breaks, that sometimes were just too damned busy to take one. There will be days, Samantha, that you won’t even eat until you get home, but when you do get home, you’ll be so beat, you’ll barely have the energy to microwave your Swanson TV dinner.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  I wondered if this was the strange sense of humor that the Captain had warned me about Sergeant Phil Conner.

  “You don’t know what you got yourself into, Rookie.” He smiled at me. “You here to change things, right…save the world?”

  “I’m here to help make our City…help make the world…a better place.”

  “Yeah, well I’ve heard that before. It’s always nice to hear a Rookie say that, before they become too jaded.”

  “Jaded?”

  “Let me put it this way, Samantha. We are extremely outnumbered by the bad guys and they know it. I wish John Q. Public knew it too.”

  I wasn’t sure if I heard him right. “John Q. Public?”

  “You know, the citizens. The taxpayers.”

  “Oh. Right.” I hadn’t known and was embarrassed by it.

  “I wish they’d cut us some slack for not being able to be everywhere at once.”

  “They seem happ
y enough when an officer shows up at the right place at the right time.”

  “Trust me, kiddo, that’s not the rule, that’s the exception.” He paused and I knew that he had much more to say. “You see, girl, life as a cop…it ain’t no parade. It’s a thankless motherfucker of a job. Getting cursed at, ridiculed, spit on, stabbed at, shot at, by everyone from little old ladies to ten year old gangster wannabes.”

  “That happened to you?”

  “Most of it, yeah. And worse.”

  “Wow.”

  “I don’t mean to scare you, I’m just telling it like it is.”

  “Telling it like it is?” I grinned at him. “Just like Dr. Phil, from the Oprah show.”

  “That’s me, Dr. Phil,” he joked. “You know, he got his own show, eventually.”

  “I know,” I told him, with clear distaste. “My mother used to watch it all the time.”

  “Does your mother approve of you being a cop?”

  “Hell no. She wanted me to be a lawyer, if I was going to be involved in law at all.”

  “After a few weeks of patrolling with me, you might end up wishing you’d taken your mother’s advice.”

  “Why, are you a hard ass?”

  “Me? Not at all. But these streets, they’re not so kind to sweet, innocent little Rookies like you. Especially pretty dark haired ones with a nervous grin and big, curious green eyes.”

  “Yeah, well after a few weeks of patrolling with me, you might end up realizing I’m not the sweet, innocent little Rookie that you seem to think I am.”

  “Ooh…Rookie has a dark side,” he sounded rather amused with me.

  “Rookie has a very dark side,” I replied, thinking of the Dark Thing and of the dark things that we did together.

  After that, neither of us said anything more.

  In fact, there was nothing but silence in the car, for a long, long moment.

  Finally, Phil said, “You’re not joking. You really do have a dark side to you, don’t you?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” I asked and tried to laugh off the topic.

  “Not like you do.” He suddenly sounded very serious.

  I glanced at him.

  He was glancing at me.

  And from the look in his face, he was as serious as a gravedigger.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can sense these things about people.” He dared to take his eyes off the traffic to look at me. “I can see it there, in your dark green eyes. There’s a taint there. A darkness of some kind. You ain’t no doe-eyed little school girl, I’ll give you that much.”

  “Well I was a bartender.”

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it. Those green eyes of yours… they’ve seen a lot, haven’t they?”

  “Are you always so dark, so brooding?” I asked him, trying to shift his focus off of me.

  “Hell no. I’m just telling you that’s what I read from you. I’m never wrong about what I read from people. Not ever. You’ve got a strong soul, Samantha Bennet.”

  “Should I take that as a compliment?” I asked him, gazing out the window, at the falling snow, at the apartment complexes we were driving by.

  “Take it any old way you want,” he replied, firmly. “I guess I’m just saying I’m glad that you’re on our side and not theirs.”

  “Our side?”

  “The side of the good guys. Of justice. Of the law.”

  “Well, why wouldn’t I be?”

  “A girl with an aura as powerful as yours is an asset to whichever side she chooses. I’m just glad you chose ours.”

  Aura?

  Once again, was this the strange sense of humor that Captain Briggs had been talking about?

  “A powerful aura?” I asked him, following up on his jest. “Now, I don’t know whether that’s a compliment, or if you’re teasing me—“

  “Just a statement.” He replied. “That’s all.”

  “So, you read auras?” I asked him, point blank.

  “But not minds – not really.” His brown eyes kept a steady watch on the traffic around us. “I’m psychic, yes, but not that psychic.”

  “So…” I tried not to laugh, tried to take him seriously. “You’re telling me that you’re psychic?”

  “Yes.”

  I tried not to grin. “That’s a rather personal secret to entrust a Rookie with. You just met me.”

  “And now, you probably are thinking that they hooked you up with a nut for a Training Officer.” He put the signal light on and we were soon turning left. “That, or you think that I’m joking. Pulling your leg.”

  “Well…” For some reason, I thought back to the night that my innocence died. The night of my first transformation into the Dark Thing. “I’ve had weirder things happen – trust me.”

  “You just wait,” he promised. “You’ll see over time just how psychic I am.”

  “Well your secret’s safe with me.”

  “It’s no secret, either. Everyone at the 67th knows.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “You don’t believe me?” He asked, as much in command of my attention as he was of the steering wheel of the squad car, even with the slush on the road.

  “I believe you,” I said, light of tone.

  I didn’t really believe his outrageous claim—at least not at that point.

  Yet, as I had told him, I had been witness to weirder things…

  If there were Dark Things in the world, lurking in await of discovery, I did not at all doubt that there could be psychic cops.

  “No you don’t. You don’t believe me at all.” He let loose with a loud laugh, a laugh so sudden and boisterous that it seemed to fill the car with its presence. “You just wait. I’ll prove it to you sometime.”

  After that laugh, we rode several blocks, again in silence.

  Finally, we crossed the invisible boundary between Zone Five and Zone Two.

  “Well, Rookie, this is Baron Avenue. Welcome to Zone Two. You will come to know these streets as intimately as the back of your own hands. Until you do know them, at least half-decently, I will be doing the driving, so that we get there quickly and in one piece. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I told him, observing our surroundings.

  Zone Two was mostly residential. A few high rise apartment buildings loomed overhead and modest homes lined the streets. Here and there were the occasional businesses which included a small grocery store or newsstand, but otherwise, Zone Two seemed pretty residential, so far.

  We cruised up and down the streets, chatting every so often about something either related to my training, or popular culture, which Phil surprisingly had quite the grasp of.

  I assumed that he either read a lot of the rag magazines and tabloids on celebrity gossip, or watched one of the tabloid shows on television.

  Whatever the reason, he certainly seemed to know a lot about what was going on in the love lives of movie stars.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t know about the Charlie Sheen thing,” he said to me, in awe. “Everyone and their dog knows about the Charlie Sheen thing.”

  “Well, make that everyone but me.”

  “You been hiding under a rock or something?”

  “I just don’t keep track of those things.”

  “Well how about that crazy cat, Mel Gibson?” Phil steered the squad car around yet another corner. “You heard the news on that one, didn’t you?”

  “All I know about that fiasco is what I saw on the covers of the magazines in the check-out aisle of my grocery store,” I replied, in complete honesty.

  “Then what do you read for pleasure?”

  “A bit of Dean Koontz.” I told him, though I hadn’t done any reading since my weekends in college. “A bit of Stephen King, Anne Rice, Laurel K. Hamilton, that sort of thing.”

  Phil laughed at me. “Oh, you like that spooky shit.”

  “Every now and then, I do.”

  In truth, reading a little horror fiction at bath time help
ed distract me from the horror reality that was my apparent destiny.

  The radio crackled, interrupting our pleasantries.

  “Base ten to nine-zero-five Tango. Copy?”

  Something lurched in the pit of my stomach and adrenaline began to course through my veins.

  The call was for us.

  This was it.

  My first call, on my first shift.

  This was what I had been trained for.

  Phil replied over the radio. “Copy base ten, go ahead?”

  “Domestic dispute call in Zone Two at apartment six, two-twenty-four Banner Street, Lilydale Apartments Complex. Land lord will be waiting at the front entrance to allow access to the building. What’s your position, over?”

  Phil continued. “Base ten, we’re on Stratton Avenue, approximately three minutes away from that location. Let them know we’re on our way now, copy?”

  “Copy that, nine-zero-five Tango. Over.”

  Phil turned the car around at a gas station near us and then flicked the switch that would turn on the sirens and lights on the roof of the squad car. Accelerating the car up to the highest speed that he dared with the slush on the road, we flew down Stratton Avenue in the direction of the dispute.

  Over the wail of the siren, Phil gave me a lecture. “Stratton Avenue will take us back to Zone Seven. It intersects with Banner street, just before the San Clara bridge. There are several crack houses, shooting galleries and a lot of meth use in that area, so be prepared to walk into anything. That neighborhood has a cluster of low-income housing tenements and if memory serves me correctly, the place we’re headed to is one of them.”

  He was right.

  The L-shaped Lilydale Apartment Complex was a low-rise apartment block, with gangland graffiti sprayed on the off-white brick of the building exterior. It was the roughest residential area we had driven through yet and the few people who lingered outside the building looked as dingy as the older-model vehicles that lined the parking lot of the complex.

  Not even the snow could disguise all of the rubbish on the ground and the snow itself looked not only grey but somehow dirtier than the rest of the snow in the City.

  Or was it just my imagination?

  “This is one of the more colorful neighborhoods in Zone Seven,” Phil told me, as though giving me an orientation. “The really colorful atmosphere is across the San Clara bridge, in the 66th Division. This is just a taste of what our brothers and sisters in blue find over there.”