Jon Talton - Powers of Arrest

“Is that your name, sweetie? I hope you have some lube in the house, because you’re going to need it. So is Cherry Beth.”

Will wanted to look at Cheryl Beth, intuit what she was thinking, but he kept his focus on the man with the gun.

Mike cocked his head. “There’s never one single reason. I went after Kristen to get back at my dad, but she let me down. It could have been perfect, but it was spoiled. With Jill-what a cute name-I saw her and wanted her. Same with the brunette on the bike trail, only I didn’t realize I’d get three for the price of one. That was close to perfection. I have a thing for girls on bicycles, what can I say? Those pumping legs. But that wouldn’t make great art, would it? I want models that look vulnerable on the outside and yet are strong inside. What’s the expression? Strong at the broken places? The man I took to the graveyard? It was perfection. That’s why I chose you, Detective Borders. You and your cane.” He paused. “That, and you got in my way.”

Will looked at him unimpressed. Then it was as if someone had inserted a key into his quads and they unlocked. His leg relaxed.

“Did the girl in Athens, Georgia, get in your way?”

“Very good, detective. She was my first. I made mistakes. But I learned. No, she didn’t get in my way. She was in one of my classes and I kept having a vision of killing her. One day I did. All the shrinks and medication my parents spent money on never changed me. Death is my art. I won’t be stopped.”

“But you’ve got to know when to stop.” Will started to wonder whose arm would tire faster. Mike looked very steady, those muscled arms doing well by him. Will was conscious of the instability of the rocking chair.

“You said it yourself, Mike,” he went on. “You’ve got to know when to stop. If you would have stopped with Gruber, we might never have caught you. Now it’s too late. How does that make you feel, Mike?”

Mike’s face tensed at the phrase he had probably been hearing from his father since he was three.

“Hand me the shotgun. Stock first.”

Mike’s face was growing redder with rage when Cheryl Beth said, “Mike!”

He swung his torso toward her, dropped the barrel of the shotgun forty-five degrees, and almost got out a reply. Then the room exploded and he lurched back, a red stain on the shirt where the polo logo once sat. Jill screamed. Mike screamed and struggled to regain control of the gun. It went off, an even louder blast, the load of shot hitting the floor. Cheryl Beth held out the.38, ready to fire again.

Two seconds had expired as Will shot him three times, nearly point blank, in the torso.

The shotgun dropped harmlessly from his hand as his body swayed backward and collapsed by the door. Will kept the gun trained.

His ears were still ringing even though the only sound in the room was Jill’s screaming. Cheryl Beth stood and started to the door. “I should help him.”

“No,” Will said. “Stand back. He might have other weapons.”

He was up, his legs miraculously working without the cane, walking slowly to the sprawl of a human being on the floor. Mike Buchanan lay face up, very pale. One leg was twisted beneath the other. His arms were clutching at his chest, which stuck out unnaturally because of the backpack he was still carrying.

Will bent down and got on his knees. He tried to ignore the sharp pain that immediately struck, patting down Mike’s shirt, pockets, pants legs, and shoes. He was clean. He nodded and Cheryl Beth was instantly on the other side. She checked his pulse and opened up his shirt. A blood pool was emerging from underneath him.

She said, “Stop screaming, Jill.” The young woman stopped. “Are you hurt?”

She said she wasn’t.

“We’re losing him,” she said. “If I had a surgical team here right this second…”

“Detective…”

Will looked at Mike’s face. It was turning alabaster and the premature wrinkles were fading. He struggled to breathe, the sound coming from his throat like the grinding gears of an old truck. Will had shot him close to the heart, into one lung, and probably near the aorta.

“What, Mike?”

He whispered. Will bent closer.

“Kristen…”

“What about her?”

“She…” He gasped, his speech slurred. “She was all ready…”

“All ready?”

“No…” And he repeated the word so softly that Will could barely hear it.

All ready for what?”

Will heard one last quick intake of air, and then the man’s eyes went black.

A month later, Will was back in the Homicide offices, and not as a visitor. Along with a medal of valor, he had gotten his old job back. Along with the medal, the chief had given him a dispensation for his physical condition in honor of solving the murder of Kristen Gruber. Fassbinder had retired suddenly and Skeen was taking the lieutenant’s exam. For now, she was the acting Homicide Commander. He sat across from Dodds, who was idly tossing a football in the air. The names of Gruber and Smith had been shifted to black on the white board. But plenty of other names were still written in unsolved red.

A folding knife had been found in Mike Buchanan’s backpack, along with duct tape, a gallon of gasoline, and matches. The knife had been sterilized, so it contained no blood or DNA evidence from the victims. After a search warrant had been executed on the house in Indian Hill, they found four pairs of women’s underwear, one pair of men’s underwear, and Gruber’s badge, keys, and wallet in a hidey-hole of the garage. The DNA matched the young woman in Georgia, Holly Metzger, Lauren Benish, and Noah Smith. There was more: photos of Lauren taken on the bike trail.

Kenneth Buchanan had been arrested and was being tried as an accomplice to rape and murder. They were working with detectives from Georgia to find out whether Buchanan had known about the Athens killing and had concealed Mike’s role in that, too. Buchanan’s former colleagues who went to Elder and Moeller quickly deserted him. Kathryn Buchanan resigned from the symphony.

Will passed his MRI with no new tumors. He had gained another year of bonus time. But, then, the one thing he had learned on this job was that we were all living on bonus time, only most people didn’t realize it.

The LadyCops producers moved their location to Florida.

“Pretty kinky about Kristen, huh?” Dodds tossed the ball hard at Will, who caught it. “Handcuffs, ball gags, sex toys. And such a wholesome face. No disrespect to a fallen comrade.”

“You have a dirty mind.” Will spun the football at his chest.

“Only thing that keeps me going.”

“I’m not a Cincinnati moralist,” Will said.

“Apparently not.” He fired a shot that hurt to catch.

“So are you going to Jimmy Buffett at Riverbend this weekend?”

“No,” Will said. “Cheryl Beth and I will probably take in a movie at the Esquire. And Grammers has reopened in Over-the-Rhine, so we’ll have dinner there. She’s going back to the hospital, you know.”

“Good. Give me back that ball.”

Will tossed it. “You’re the only black parrothead in Cincinnati.”

“That’s an unforgivable racial stereotype.” Dodds faked a pass, kept the ball. “There are at least four of us. You can’t really be a Cincinnatian unless you love Jimmy Buffett.”

“Why is that? We’re about as far from the tropics as you can get.”

The ball came his way, another expert pass. “Partner,” Dodds said, “That’s one of life’s mysteries.”

Skeen intercepted the next pass. She stood between their desks. “Don’t rest on your laurels, gentlemen.” She tapped the casebooks and files that rose several inches high. “They may not be exciting, but they need to be cleared.”