Dress Blues (Permanence)

Officer Rueda and I received the call over the radio: two African-American males in their late twenties had been detained for questioning by Officer Davis after being pulled over fleeing from the scene of a homicide. Davis was outnumbered two-to-one and was requesting backup from any available officers in the area. Despite having clocked out for the day after finishing our own respective 12-hour graveyard shifts we responded to her call for assistance; Rueda hit the siren while I punched the gas. The sun was just beginning to clear the San Bernardino mountain range, awakening the city from its slumber when we arrived on-scene.

Officer Davis was still clutching the radio in her hand when we met her on-scene. I sized up the individuals in question while she filled us in: two African-American males, twin brothers in their late-twenties, both with beards, backwards-facing baseball caps, pullover sweatshirts, blue jeans and tan boots. Both individuals were meticulously dressed, the urban-hipster vibe notwithstanding. Both were short - 5'6" maybe - but neither were unathletic. Despite being six feet tall and 150 pounds of lean muscle, it was obvious that Davis was outmatched with no easy way to detain one without losing the other in a foot chase through the sleepy city streets.

By some miracle she had managed to engage both individuals at the scene without spooking them. "These two need to be patted down and cleared for weapons," she whispered as Officer Rueda and I stepped up. "I would have done it myself but..."

I understood her apprehension. With all of the anti-police sentiment permeating the mainstream media she thought it better to standby for backup at the expense of her own safety then risk some grainy and misconstrued cellphone video making its way onto the six-o-clock news for the talking heads, political pundits and opportunistic activists to tear apart.

Officer Rueda began advising the first individual of his rights and of the pat-down procedure while I drew a bead on the second individual at the scene. He never took his eyes off of me.

After finishing the pat-down Officer Rueda stepped aside and while reaching for his radio the individual he had just cleared began backing away slowly, as if preparing to make a run for it.

"Now that that's over," he proclaimed loudly while staring at his brother as if searching for a cue, "I'm just going to..."

"No," I said, polite but firm, the way I was trained. "You are going to hang tight until this situation is resolved. Do you understand me?"

"Nope," he muttered, the thin veneer of civility slipping away.

He broke eye contact with me, the false smile slipping from his lips. The expression that replaced it can best be described as murderous and in that moment it became quite clear that these two brothers were indeed the two associated with the homicide in question that had brought us here to begin with.

Attempting to regain control of the situation I moved around and grabbed him by his forearms, bringing them behind his back and moving to cuff his wrists. A moment later his brother stepped up
to me and leveled me with a look that stopped me cold.

This man has killed before, I remember thinking in the moments before everything went to shit. So have I, but I'll bet this guy enjoyed it.

"Hey Officer, how you feeling?"

"Likewise," I began to say, the adrenaline slipping into my veins and narrowing my vision, "you are going to hang tight until this situation..."

In one horribly efficient movement his fist came flying up like a boxers, the syringe held in place between the middle and ring fingers of his right hand. The syringe sank itself into my neck all
the way to the hilt, penetrating in a spray of arterial blood just beneath my lower jaw while tearing through my windpipe into my esophagus. With an equally efficient follow-up movement he depressed the plunger of the syringe with the fleshy part of his palm and stepped away, letting the emptied syringe fall to the ground.

I managed to yell out before everything went black.

The coroner's report listed the cause of death as an intravenous injection of an as-of-yet unidentified and highly toxic substance(s).