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“Explain to me again why we took this one?” Dave questioned with a slight grin, shaking his head.
“Whatta you gonna do?” Tony shrugged, double-checking that he’d re-safety’d his weapon.
They were just leaving the scene after a frantic 911 call from a neighbor, certain that somebody was
bludgeoning somebody to death with a heavy object. When they’d arrived, hubby had already passed
out drunk, and wifey well on her way. She was bludgeoning all of his partially frozen steaks, which
he had bought earlier that morning. Something about a weekend barbecue. They had been shouting
and screaming at each other while she pummeled his food. She’d nodded off a couple times while
Dave the Tony were there. Dave and Tony were homicide detectives with the Los Angeles Police
Department. Normally, they didn’t respond to domestic violence calls, but the morning had been
slow. They’d thought, based on the radio dispatch, that they might have a chance to catch a perp fresh
at the scene. As it turned out, they couldn’t really do much, not even write her up for being drunk and
disorderly, as she wasn’t in public. Oftentimes in a case like this, a talking-to was about all they could
do. People were messed up, Dave mused. Sometimes it made his life interesting. Most of the time, it
was kind of boring. Messed up, but boring. The radio abruptly chirped, spitting out police language.
“I guess that’s us,” yawned Tony, flipping the light on, but not the siren, in their unmarked yet
obvious police sedan.
“Best is to left up on Rosecrans, then right on Fifth.”
“Yeah, I know. They’re doing that pipe thing over on Eighth for the fifteenth time this year.”
“This goddamn city is constantly under construction. As soon as they finish everything, they’ll decide
to invent some new asphalt and have to replace every goddamn thing again.”
Dave smirked.
“Unit 45 en route.” Yeah, probably a good idea to check it out, Dave thought absently as Tony called
in their RSVP. He was still disappointed from the last call. A husband bludgeoning a wife to death is
not an everyday occurrence. Not altogether uncommon, but it’s fairly rare for a drunken husband to
get so riled up he bashes his wife’s head in like it was some unwanted melon. And when someone got
riled up enough to murder the one promised “in sickness and in health” to by completely smashing
their brains into the carpet, one generally figured all was lost. Even when a couple of police officers
with drawn weapons approached, the tendency was to decide that you could take them as well with
your bloody bludgeoning tool, whatever it might be. Hammer, baseball bat, pitching wedge.
Adrenaline was useful, but usually not when committing crimes. It tended to cause people to make
mistakes, like charging two trigger-happy cops with a seven iron covered in brain matter and a
wifebeater shirt covered in blood. Dave had no misgivings about a situation like that. No danger to
him, an incoherently screaming, most likely temporarily insane target moving closer into range.
Three easy taps to the chest later, he’d have a pile of easily explainable dead “I do” at his feet.
Although the police are formally trained to shoot in bursts of three, many times, police fire their
weapons in bursts of two, six, whole clips. Another victory for adrenaline. Dave was one of the few
cops without combat experience to help guide his adherence to the three-shots-at-a-time rule. He
wasn’t sure why, though. The two times before, when he’d actually had to shoot his weapon in self-
defense, he seemed a lot more calm and collected that he’d anticipated. And for some reason, there
were no nightmares, no bouts of drinking to calm the nerves, nothing that the few others in the same
situation had faced.
Sometimes when he got a call, like the less-than-exhilarating one they’d just left, he had found
himself secretly wishing for another kill. If only the department shrink could see what was in his
head, they’d send him to prison, for sure, or at least give him a job waxing police cars.
“Roger that,” Tony said, clicking off the radio. Dave hadn’t been paying
attention.
“Some nutcase has taken an abortion shop hostage.”
Political correctness was not one of Tony’s strong points.
“How many?”
“Two.”
“Details?”
“Doc, forty-three, uninjured. Nurse, twenty-two, shot through upper left thigh”
“Status?”
“Not life threatening.”
“Source?”
“Perp.”
Great. One shot off already, maybe accidental. If the guy had meant to shoot, that meant that they had
some lunatic on their hands. If he hadn’t meant to shoot, whatever plan he’d had had already gone to
hell, and he would be completely unpredictable. Unpredictability was a cop’s worse nightmare.
They pulled up to the scene. It was already taped off. Dave didn’t have to look up to hear or
distinguish between the distinct chop-chop-chop of the four separate news helicopters and the sole
police helicopter. They had to walk a little ways to get to a semiprotected location, which was close
enough to the apparent “command center” that he could give his input if asked. This one was just too
messy to get involved with. There was already too much professionally masked testosterone in the
air. Dave wondered offhandedly what approach the hostage negotiator would take with this one.
“Stay back! This is a proclamation!” a voice shouted from inside.
Proclamation? Dave and Tony looked at each other.
“I am to do the Lord’s work!”
“Where the hell did he get a bullhorn?” Tony whispered to Dave, shaking his head.
“The Pharisees that hath persuaded and supported the evil ones shall promulgate no more! This
nation is nearing an apocalyptic cleansing to be felt by all! The Lord has spoken! The Lord has
spoken! The fruits of labor of the just shall not be shared with the unjust!”
Everyone waited, tension clearly rising. Minutes passed by without another outburst. This was
getting interesting. Dave decided to get a bit closer.
“Details?” Dave casually asked.
“Guy is all over the place with his demands. From what I can piece together from his ramblings, he
wanted to come in, get an audience, take out the doc and his staff, and become a martyr for humanity.
Problem is, he miscalculated.”
“Shot the nurse too soon?” Dave asked, a quizzical look on his face.
“Nah. The dumbass let the nurse go and shot a patient. She’s seventeen.”
“Ah. He shot the wrong evildoer.”
“Yeah.”
“So he wanted to kill two people, one got away, he shot an ‘innocent’ by accident,
and now . . .”
“Yeah, now he’s still intent on killing the doc, but since he messed up, he lost his chance at
martyrdom. Now I think it’s starting to sink in that we think he is just a regular lunatic.”
“Great.”
“SWAT?” Dave asked.
“Yeah,” came the answer.
When someone with a gun took a hostage, the first plan of action was to have whoever was the
superior officer try and talk the guy out of it. Most times, the guy was just confused and stressed and
thinking a billion thoughts at once. All it usually took was patience, understanding, and, most
importantly, the simple but not-always-easy concept of hold your fire. As soon as the guy started to
realize they weren’t going to start shooting at him like he imagined, he usually calmed down and
started to think a little bit more rationally. And if one could actually spend a few minutes exchanging
normal words with the guy, the chances of diffusion increased dramatically. These were guys that
went in mainly on impulse, or without any real plan or exit strategy other than take what they wanted
and get the hell out. The ones they had to worry about were the ones that actually thought about what
would happen if the police showed up, and then decided to do the crime anyway. Many
criminologists and psychologists spent countless hours interviewing criminals and deciphering and
decoding past histories and societal and cultural events that led up to such events. They hoped to find
answers so they could better understand the criminal mind, and possibly be able to prevent future
tragedies. Dave didn’t usually concern himself with such notions.
“Just put a guy with a rifle over there,” he said, motioning to the roof of an auto repair shop
specializing in Asian imports, “and shoot the fool in the head next time he starts babbling about
whatever delusions he’s imagining.”
“That’s the objective at this point, but so far, he hasn’t given us any windows.”
“Well, if we wait too long, he’ll probably shoot the doc anyways, and then
himself. Not much wiggle room.”
“Yeah. That’s the problem. His only real demand, as I see it, is we recognize
him as being some kind of martyr or savior or whatever before he kills the doc and
then himself.”
“Do we know anything about the doc?”
“Yeah, he’s, uh, hang on,” said the officer, checking his notes. “Yeah, forty-three,
married, two kids, elementary school, been at this clinic for, uh, six years.”
Dave muttered, clearly annoyed, “OK, who’s point? Who’s talking to him?”
“Wilex,” he said, motioning toward a brown unmarked police car parked several
meters away from the rest of the squad cars.
Dave slowly walked over, upright, not bothering to protect himself. Wilex noticed
him coming over.
“Traxton.”
“Lieutenant Wilex”
“Any ideas? I’m all ears. This is one messed-up situation.” Lieutenant Wilex was
a good cop, not full of himself when others thought it was more important to “be in
charge,” and let you know that you were the boss. Maybe that was why he became
lieutenant at such a young age.
“Yeah, this guy is obviously not coming out alive, so any ideas of talking him
down are out. The only feasible option, as I see it, is to convince him to let the doc
off the hook before he offs himself. He got any priors?”
“Nothing. Apparently, he’s some Bible-thumper that just cracked. He is connected
to Life First, but no, no priors.”
“Life First. Hmm. Talked to anybody there?”
“Yeah, but only what you’d expect. They condemn his actions, he is a member
but not active, etc.”
“Hmm.”
“Gimme that thing,” Dave said after a pause, motioning for the bullhorn. They
had yet to make contact over a landline.
“What’s this guy’s name?”
“Frank. Frank Sorensen. He likes to be called Franklin.”
“Well, Frankie’s gonna be dead inside fifteen minutes. We’ll see about the
doc.”
George Hutton’s Zapotec
