And then there were two

It was my third month on the job as a city cop. I was unlucky enough to be working the 6pm to 6 am shift in one of the shittiest areas in the City. I was also unlucky enough to be partnered up with a training officer that was one of the biggest overtime whores the department employed. What that means is that toward the end of my shift. When the morning sun was rising in the east and my flesh felt like it was burning off my bones. He would still be hunting for that last minute dope bust or traffic stop that would most likely lead to a drug arrest. He had a nose for dope and he was one of the best police the department had to offer.

And if we did catch anything I would be the one to clean it. I would write the report, book the dope and book the body. This would guarantee us at least two hours of cash overtime. In those first days of being a boot/rookie/amateur it was grueling when I had to complete the aforementioned alone. Did I also mention that along with him being one of the best he also had a caustic tongue and nothing was off limits when it came to ridicule, my looks, my wife, my kids, my eating habits, anything and everything was fair game to this cocky 12 year veteran. There were more than a few times I pictured snapping his spine. Quickly and effortlessly so he wouldn’t feel too much pain. I mean after all I did like the guy a little bit and he did teach me a lot

He was the one responsible for teaching me how to sniff out the ungodly, the ones that lived in the sub-terrain while the innocent slept. He was the one that taught me how to hunt, to be that particular hunter tweekers feared. He was also an enforcer of area integrity. That means that when you are working a patrol unit you are assigned a particular area and you are or should be responsible for any and all radio calls that are generated in your area. He did not approve of other units encroaching in our area and would have me cancel any units that were assigned calls in our fife. So what I am trying to convey is that between his hunting and the non- stop bullshit radio calls we were busy like demons in a catholic girl’s school.

It was about 4 am on a Tuesday or maybe a Thursday I don’t really remember or care. The EBO came on the air and jabbered. “24A1, 24A1 prowler suspect there now, P.R. states he sees three to four possible male Hispanic suspects in his front yard, see comments for further handle code 2, R.D. 2418.” I acknowledged the call over the air and we went en route. As we drove the radio came to life again and the EBO moaned “24A1 further on your prowler call, P.R. states he is armed and will meet you out in front of his residence.” I acknowledged and advised to EBO to call the PR back and tell him to leave his gun inside his house.

I looked over at my Training officer and said “what the fuck?  are we gonna have to shoot this dummy?” Now most boots would not normally talk this way to or with their training officers. But I had prior law enforcement experience and I had already proven myself. (That’s a whole other story for another day,)

As we made the turn onto the street I hit the spotlight and began searching for the numbers. This in itself is a chore because in the bullshit city where I work no one keeps their addresses where they can be seen. Nor do they maintain the numbers that should be painted on the curb. Even if they did the numbers would be blocked by the four to five shit-box cars that most of the residents own and park on the street. And the city doesn’t give a shit so why should they?

I was able to find some numbers and when we arrived within about three houses we blacked out and parked. We crept up to the house and saw no movement outside and the inside of the residence was dark. Now bear in mind most of the houses in this particular area have big wrought iron fences supplemented by cinderblock or brick covering the perimeter and most, if not all have converted garages to the rear. These garages are rented out to families and can contain anywhere from 1 to 15 people inside. So you never know what you are getting yourself into when you arrive.

We stood in the dark for a few moments and silently watched. Nothing…no movement...no three to four male Hispanics creeping about. I got on the radio and quietly requested that the PR step out front to meet. Before I even had those words out of my mouth a sweaty male Hispanic came blundering out from the rear of the property. We lit him up with our flashlights and identified ourselves and told him to get his hands up. He responded by saying “hey guys, hey guys I was the one that called. It was me, man, fuck they were just here. Hey guys I got a gun, I live here man, but hey it’s cool.” Our lights illuminated a brushed nickel revolver with a black rubber grip sticking out of his waistband.

My partner had already broken leather since his position was a little closer to the idiot than mine was. I quickly followed my partners lead and broke leather as well and pointed my 9mm at his chest. I also got on the air and requested assistance for a man with a gun. My partner ordered him to turn around and lie on the ground blah blah blah the whole felony bullshit prone thing.

I killed my flashlight and approached the guy on right side as silently as possible; my partner approached him directly from behind. When I came within two feet I dropped all 220 pounds of myself onto his back as I grabbed is right arm and said “Don’t you fuckin move or we will put bullets in you, do you understand me?” I am not posturing. I am not exaggerating. I am not trying to impress. This is how we sometimes talk. It’s one of the best tactics we have. If you can scare a guy to death with just your words its better than having to hit him with a baton, taze or shoot him. Would you disagree?

The sweaty Mexican began jabbering “whoa I’m the one who called, it was me man fuck they were just here, fuck they ran off man fuck why the fuck are you handcuffing me?” As I was cuffing him my partner began talking to him. Asking him who he was and all the usual police Who? What? When? Where? Why? Questions. While these questions were being asked I removed a loaded .357 magnum from his waistband and rendered it safe. After this was done we cancelled our assistance call. Another unit arrived anyway and they checked mans residence to see if anyone was injured. It only took them a few minutes to check the small converted garage and they advised it was free and clear.

What we learned from this sweaty bastard was that he lived in the converted garage with his wife and two kids and he was sure he had seen at least 4 to 5 possibly Hispanic males creeping about his front yard. He said he grabbed his gun and went to confront them. He was sure that they were there to steal his cars or do some other bullshit. While he was telling his story to my partner I looked around the area he said he had seen them. There was nothing, no sign, no evidence that any of his cars had been tampered with.

I walked back to where my partner and the sweaty Mexican were. I looked at my partner and shook my head. He stepped closer to me and whispered “I think this guy is nuts. He keeps talking about his wife. I think they split up and he is freaking out a little bit.” We stayed there for about forty five minutes and made sure he wasn’t going to shoot himself or anyone else. He also stuck to his story about seeing someone in his yard. It may have been possible. Part of the yard was cement and it’s hard to see any tracks on cement right?

We had no crime. He did not fit the 5150 criteria. There wasn’t anyone dead inside his residence. The gun did not smell as if it had been recently fired. The check on the gun came back negative. He had no wants or warrants. There wasn’t much else we could do. So we left and moved on to the next adventure.

Our shift ended a couple of hours later and I was off I think for maybe the next three or four days. When I returned my training officer was in rare form. He suffered from back pain and I think the gods of sciatica had blessed him with reprieve. The first words out of his mouth as we left the station that night were “hey what the hell do you say we go get us a Dr. Pepper and Snickers?” “Jesus god” I thought. This fuckin redneck is going to be the end of me. One thing I didn’t mention is that this guy never ate. He never ate before shift, in the middle or towards the end. I think it was some sort of rite of passage to see if I, as a probationer could handle it. His only suggestion of eating was starting off the shift with a big jumbo snickers and a god dam Dr. Pepper.
I looked over at him and said “sure man, sounds good.” Thinking to myself I would have neither a DR Pepper or Snickers. The thought of eating all that crap disgusted me and I wanted no part of it or the ceremony that went along with it.

We drove to his favorite gas station where he quickly loaded up a huge plastic cup of that syrupy sugary filth, and grabbed extra large Snickers. I refused to go inside with him. I waited out by the car instead. I looked down at my watch and cursed silently, It was only 715 pm and I was already ready for bed. I couldn’t imagine driving around the entire night with this maniac. A few moments later he came back out to the car. In one hand was the big plastic cup loaded to the gills with his favorite drink and in the other hand was a jumbo Snickers candy bar. I looked at the candy bar and thought to myself “lord help us that entire thing must weigh two pounds.” I watched him as he shoveled that big fucking candy bar down his throat and followed it up with a Marlboro light. The entire process well it made me sick. I watched him smoke and I could tell he was waiting for me to talk. I knew he wanted to bait me into his sugar/nicotine rush.

He wanted to make me his victim. I knew as soon as I said something he would pounce on me. Berating me, reminding me what a dipshit probationer I was. I really wasn’t, like I said it was all ceremony. I stayed silent. I was in no mood to be on the receiving end of any of his verbal bile tonight. It was my Monday and I was on for three more nights and I knew he had the ability to wear me down in less than an hour.

As soon as he gobbled his candy bar he wiped his hands on his pants and with chocolate all over his front teeth said “c’mon let’s get outta here.” We jumped in the car and sped off into the dark. I could tell he was anxious, tweaking off his sugar and nicotine high. He wanted to get into some shit. But the radio gods smiled upon me that night. There were hardly any radio calls and no one seemed to be out walking the streets. We wrote a few tickets and talked for a while about bullshit. I was already picturing the end of my shift. It was a good feeling.

I remember we were driving north on a major north south street when the radio suddenly came to life. The EBO stated “North Valley units!!! North valley units!!! And 24A1 187 just occurred, PR states he has a body down from a gunshot inside the residence 24A1 handle code 3. My training officer sat up straight in his seat as if a 440 volt cattle prod had just been rammed straight up his redneck ass and screamed “that’s ours!!!! That’s ours!!! Tell her we are en-route lets go let’s go!!!!” I picked up the mic and screamed that 24A1 was certainly en-route. My training officer punched the accelerator and hit the lights and siren. In case you don’t know 187 is the California penal code for murder.

As we reached the street were the call was my training officer made a hard right. About three quarters of the way down the block I saw a Fire/Paramedic engine out front and two other police cars. We screeched to a halt in front of the location. We were met at once by two other police officers. All of us quickly began to walk toward the rear of the house. Something about this place looked so familiar. It was the typical house I had described earlier, a big 4 bedroom house out front with a converted garage to the rear. It also had a large iron fence surrounding the perimeter. I struggled to remember why it looked familiar to me. I was ignoring the conversation that my training officer was having with the other two officers. This is not a good thing when you are on probation. Because at anytime they can turn and start asking you to call the shots. As we reached the converted garage my training officer turned to me and said “Ok look, we have someone definitely dead inside, and there may be more, there may be two small kids in here that are dead as well. We are gonna clear the place, start a crime scene and wait for homicide to get here. The guy reporting is the father of the woman who is dead inside there. He heard gunshots and went inside and saw her on the floor inside one of the rooms. He tried to open the door but something was blocking it. He thinks it’s another body and he doesn’t know where the little kids are. ”

When he said the thing about the two kids everything went into slow motion. My breath was sucked forth out of my body and I stopped hearing what was going on around me. In the past I had read about things like this happening but never ever had I experienced it. I quickly looked toward the open front door of the converted garage. It was bright with light coming from within. Everything else surrounding that doorway was black. I couldn’t even distinguish the color of the house. I saw the future in that same second I saw that bright light. I was gonna walk in that fuckin room and see dead bodies and two of them were going to be kids. My Achilles heel. My weakness. My hesitation.

In the context of my job I can handle pretty much anything except for the smell of vomit or shit and the occasional stinker (dead body left to rot for over a week.) I’d only seen a dead child once before and It damaged me on the inside. So I know for a fact I cannot bear the thought of seeing two kids shot. I have young kids at home. My mind flashed to them for a second. I wanted to call my wife. I wanted to hear her voice telling me my kids were safe and sound and sleeping in their beds but it was close to 330 am and I wasn’t going to call her. I looked at my training officer and since it was our call he was putting an entry team together. He looked at me and told me I was to be the first in through the door… and I knew I was just about to wrestle with the devil. I drew my gun and everyone lined up behind me and we tactically approached the door. I would cross over the doorway first and move quickly to my right. My training officer would follow and cover left while the others followed. As I crossed the open doorway I moved slowly, or rather not as quickly as I should have. It was poor tactics but I was dodging the demons that I knew awaited for me inside.

At first glance the rooms looked normal, no bodies, just a very small blood stain on the far wall. I could see the kitchen as well as the door leading to the restroom. There were two other doors, one was partially open and I could see legs on the floor. The legs weren’t moving. The other door was closed. Fuck…I knew that’s where the kids were. Lying dead, both blasted with some fuckin gun. At that moment I realized where I was. I was in the home of the guy that had called us a few weeks back. The one screaming about men sneaking around his front yard. I looked around for my training officer and he was with another cop clearing the one and only bathroom. Two other officers were opening the other closed door and thankfully they yelled clear quickly.

I felt relief knowing that the kids weren’t in that room. There was however the one room left. The room where I saw the legs. One of the other officers approached the doorway that was partially open, where the legs were. He was having trouble opening the door. He made eye contact with me and as soon as he did my heart dropped to my balls. “Hey boot, get over here and help me get this door open.” I knew it was just behind that door. I knew the reason it wouldn’t open because there were more awful bodies. I looked around for my training officer and I saw him making his way toward me from the other side of the room. I motioned for him to come and talk to me as I went to assist the other cop with the door. My training officer and I reached the legs door at the same time and I said “ Partner, we were here a few weeks back, this was the guy that was flipping out because he thought there were Mexicans running around in his front yard. Do you remember? The gun. We took it off him, do you remember?” As I talked I could see in his eyes that he remembered. He didn’t say anything just stared at me. Our moment, if you will was broken by the other officer. He began pushing on the door and both my training officer and I covered him.

I was not the first into that last room that night. I was the second. I followed the other officer into the room and as soon as I did I scanned the room for kids. My eyes fixed on the legs, splayed with crimson painted toes pointed straight up. She was lying on her back. Black blind surprised eyes wide open and staring at ceiling. Her mouth was agape. She had a huge hole in the middle of her chest where the bullet had entered. The second thing I saw that in that room was the man we spoke with a few weeks earlier. He like the woman was sprawled on his back. He was not shot in the chest. He, after shooting the woman in the chest had aimed the gun at the side of his head and pulled the trigger. It looked as if someone had let the air out of his head. His unsighted eyes stared up at me as his brains leaked out of a huge opening on the side of his head. His blood and brains were in golf ball sized clumps. The clumps of blood-brain were all over the wall, the floor and at my feet. I did not quickly realize that I was standing in a small pool of his blood. I remember seeing it later in the daylight as it had already dried on the sole of my one of my boots.

On his stomach was the gun my partner and I had taken away from him just a few weeks earlier. It was lying haphazard and I remember staring at it for a long, long time. I thought for a second that my fingerprints were on that gun. I took my eyes away from the horror at my feet to scan for others bodies. There were none. No kids…just the two adults. Thank God.

I looked from the man to the woman then back to the man again. As I did this I could tell that the devil himself had been in that room. In my mind I felt like I could almost hear what the dead man’s devil sounded like. I could hear him laughing like some crazed Mexican gangster jackal. Goading that former man to do it...pull the trigger man…the bitch is cheating on you anyway… go ahead fool, blast that bitch…fuck her up fool. She is making you look like a punk.” Laughing inside the man’s head the entire time until he finally broke. Succumbing he pointed that fuckin .357 at her chest and pulled the trigger.

Do you think she died right away? Was it like a light being turned off? Quickly and without notice. Or did she linger, her throat rattling with that death gurgle that they all make just before they die? Did she feel the round pass through her as her head hit the floor? Or did she beg for her life? How many times do you think he pointed the gun at her before he jerked the trigger? Did he look down at her eyes as she died? Did she look up at him or was the last thing she saw the off white ceiling that had a brown water stain directly in the middle?

What do you think he did right after he pulled the trigger? Did the noise scare him? Did he cry? Did he scream? Did he yell for God? Do you think he said anything to her as she died? Did he stand over her and look in her face while the devil continued to whisper in his ear? Because you know the devil didn’t stop talking after he shot her. “Ahhh fuck fool look what you did now fool, you blasted her hahahahahaha fuck man what you gonna do now homes? Your kids don’t have a mama now fool…may as well join her homes eh? Damn fool just do it you fuckin pussy….And he did.

I found out later that they had two kids aged 4 and 6. They were staying at a relative’s house the night their parents left them.