G. Moffat - Blindside

‘Police,’ Armstrong said. ‘We need to speak to you.’

There was the sound of the woman ascending the stairs and a muffled conversation with someone. They couldn’t make out the voices from behind the closed door.

Armstrong turned to look at Irvine and she raised her eyebrows at him.

‘Probably trying to work out where to hide their gear,’ he told her, turning back to hammer on the door again.

They heard the lock being fiddled with and the door swung inwards. A woman of about twenty stood in the lower hall in a dirty bathrobe. Her eyes were hooded and her jaw muscles slack.

‘Come on,’ Armstrong said, stepping into the hall and taking the woman by the elbow to lead her upstairs.

Irvine followed, smelling ripe body odour and marijuana smoke. The carpet on the stairs was worn at the edges and threadbare. It looked like one of those patterned efforts that had been popular thirty years ago.

Armstrong reached the top of the stairs with the woman and pushed at the door leading to the hall inside the flat. He went through the door. Irvine was two steps below him when the first gunshot sounded.

The brain takes a little while to react when encountering something unexpected. Irvine stopped where she was at the sound of the shot.

Another one sounded.

A woman screamed.

Another shot.

Irvine ran up and into the hallway.

The woman who had answered the door was slumped on the floor with her back against the wall. Her eyelids fluttered. The wall above her was streaked with blood and matter where she had slid down it. An entry wound below her right collar bone pumped blood out, soaking the front of her robe.

Armstrong was not in the hall.

The door at the end of the hall opened and another woman of about the same age came out of the bathroom. She was wearing panties only. She saw Irvine kneeling by the other woman. Irvine wasn’t sure what her eyes registered, but the woman stepped back into the bathroom and closed the door.

‘Kenny,’ Irvine shouted.

Armstrong’s hand appeared out of the first doorway on Irvine’s right. She ran into the room at a crouch.

Armstrong was in a bedroom in a similar position as the woman out in the hall, sitting inside the door with his back against the wall. He raised his other hand and Irvine saw that his pinkie and the finger next to it were missing. Ragged stumps leaked blood. He was in shock, his skin pale.

Irvine pulled a pillow from the bed, took the cover off and wrapped it tight around his wound, tying it as securely as she could. The material was immediately soaked in blood.

She put her hands on his cheeks.

‘Butler?’ she asked.

Armstrong closed his eyes. She shook him and they opened again.

‘Kenny. Was it him?’

He shook his head. Irvine wasn’t sure if he was telling her no or that he didn’t know. Not that it mattered. There was someone in the flat with a gun.

Irvine turned and crouched in the doorway. She looked quickly out into the hall. The woman was now unconscious. Otherwise, it was empty.

She pulled her phone from her bag, dialled nine nine nine and explained the situation to the operator as quickly as she could.

‘I need an armed response team here now,’ she said.

The operator was good. Most of them were. She got right on it and kept Irvine on the line until she could confirm that the message had been relayed and would be actioned.

‘Do you want to stay on the line, Detective?’ the operator asked.

‘Yes. I’ll keep it open. That way you’ll have a record of anything that happens. But I don’t want to talk any more.’

Irvine set the phone against the open door so that the sounds from within the house would be heard over the line.

She took a breath and shouted, ‘Jack Butler!’

No reply.

‘I’m a police officer. There is an armed response vehicle on its way here now.’

She wasn’t sure what else to say so stayed quiet. There was no use trying to talk him out of any further violence. He was already in line to be charged with multiple murders.

A door opened down the hall and footsteps sounded, running towards Irvine’s position. She moved back from the door, tripped over Armstrong’s outstretched legs and fell on to her behind as the footsteps reached the door to the bedroom.

The woman from the bathroom hurtled past the door, still dressed in her panties and nothing else. Irvine heard her go down the stairs and out the front door where she started to scream incoherently.

More movement sounded from within the flat. Irvine held her breath.

‘Does that mean you’re not armed?’ a man’s voice shouted from somewhere down the hall. ‘That there’s an ARV on the way?’

‘Mr Butler?’ Irvine said loudly.

‘How’s your partner doing?’

‘He’s alive.’

‘Pity. But I can fix that, you know.’

She heard him moving again. It sounded closer than the first time but she couldn’t be sure. Armstrong reached out with his good hand and tugged at Irvine’s sleeve. She looked at him. He pointed behind her. Irvine turned her head and saw an aluminium baseball bat resting against the wall by the bed. Self-defence for the criminal fraternity.

She stood and backed away from the door, reaching down to grab the handle of the bat. She went forward again and stood beside the doorway with her back against the wall. Her breathing felt hot and shallow, as though she couldn’t get enough oxygen into her lungs. Sweat formed on her forehead and her heart thumped loudly in her chest.

Irvine put both hands on the handle of the bat and raised it in front of her. She saw that it shook in her unsteady hands, adrenalin buzzing through her system.

She bent her knees and pulled the bat around to the side, readying herself to swing at anyone who appeared in the doorway.

‘You’re out of options, Butler,’ Irvine shouted.

She heard him laughing.

‘I think you’re the one without options.’

The door frame splintered above Irvine as two bullets ripped into it. She turned her head away from it, feeling wood splinters bite at her cheek and head. She held that position as another shot sounded, the bullet thudding into the plaster of the wall outside the door.

He’s trying to shoot me through the wall.

‘You counting bullets?’ Butler shouted.

She had not been. Tried to remember how many times he had fired now.

‘Don’t bother,’ he called out. ‘I’ve got plenty more.’

The woman who had gone outside was still screaming. Irvine thought that she heard distant sirens. Then nothing. Maybe she had imagined it.

Three more shots sounded, the plaster of the wall outside exploding under their impact.

Irvine looked at the window. It was front-facing. She could climb out and lower herself down, dropping the rest of the way. There was a risk she might break an ankle or leg in the drop and she would be a sitting target for Butler. Plus it would mean leaving Armstrong there alone. She decided against it.

Where’s that damned ARV?

The pick-up truck and sedan stopped outside Union Station at the north end of Seventeenth Street in Downtown Denver. The big sign on the building — ‘Travel By Train’ — loomed above them.

It was close to four in the morning.

The driver of the truck got out and walked across the road. He looked down the street, three blocks from the diner at the corner of Market Street where Raines was going to meet Matt Horn. There was little traffic on the streets and the air was cool on his skin.

The man went to the sedan where the driver’s window slid down silently.

‘So?’ the driver of the sedan asked the other man.