Chuck Hustmyre - A Killer Like Me

The sound of stomping feet echoed through the apartment. A tight, nervous voice shouted, “Police. We have a search warrant.”

Murphy pulled the window closed and stepped to the side. When he turned around he was looking at a four-foot brick wall. He grabbed the top and half jumped, half pulled himself over and tumbled down the other side into the next-door neighbor’s back yard. As he fell he tried to get his feet under him, but he didn’t have time. He landed flat on his back and got the wind knocked out of him again.

He lay still, hoping no one had seen him, hoping there wasn’t a pet rottweiler or a pit bull in the yard with him. Next door there was lots of shouting. Then he heard, “Clear… clear… we’re code four.”

The dynamic search for the suspect was over. The meticulous search for evidence was about to begin.

If Murphy’s colleagues had found the kitchen window open, they would have suspected someone had slipped out the back. They would have called for uniform patrol units to set up a perimeter around the neighborhood and for K-9 assistance. Murphy had taken the time to close the window in hopes of avoiding that. His only chance to escape was if everyone on the raid team thought the house had been empty. Judging by the subdued sounds now coming from the apartment next door, it had worked.

After counting off sixty more seconds, Murphy pulled himself to his feet. The house in whose backyard he had fallen was dark. The owners had probably evacuated. Keeping below the top of the brick wall, Murphy flipped the hood of his raincoat over his head and crept across the yard. He checked his pocket and felt the crumpled utility bill. On the far side of the yard he turned toward the street and slinked past the dark house.

At the sidewalk he turned right and walked to the next corner. He circled the block until he reached Canal Street. To get to his car he was going to have to cross the end of South Saint Patrick Street, just a couple of houses down from the herd of cops who would be milling around the front of Jeffries’s apartment.

Traffic on Canal Street was almost nonexistent and there were no other pedestrians. Murphy felt like he had a flashing red sign strapped to his head that said LOOK AT ME. He stared straight ahead as he walked across South Saint Patrick. From the corner of his eye he saw several detectives standing in the rain, hunched under their jackets and hoods, smoking cigarettes.

Limping slightly from the pain of his two falls, Murphy shuffled past Saint Anthony’s church, then turned right and threaded his way along the far side of the building to the back parking lot.

Cautiously, he approached his car from the side opposite the apartment. He unlocked the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel. Through the rain-fogged windows he peeked out and saw that no one had noticed him. He slipped the key into the ignition and cranked the Taurus. Then he turned on his headlights and drove away.

Monday, August 6, 7:15 PM

Murphy drove through the nearly empty streets toward his apartment. The wind was blowing so hard it was difficult to keep his car on the road. The fat raindrops slamming into his windshield sounded like bullets. On Claiborne Avenue he saw an electric transformer explode. A few minutes later, he passed a couple of patrol cars crawling along with their blue and red flashers on.

His right shoulder hurt, but as far as he could tell it wasn’t fractured. He needed something for the pain, though. A megadose of ibuprofen would help. He also needed a change of clothes. His narrow escape from Jeffries’s apartment had left him wet and muddy. But what he really needed was another gun.

He was going to the address on Burgundy alone. Backup was not an option. If Jeffries was there, this wasn’t going to be an arrest. It was going to be an execution. Murphy needed a clean gun, one that could not be traced back to him, one he could shoot Jeffries with and then toss into the river.

At his apartment he had just such a gun, a two-inch. 38 revolver with a ground-off serial number. A few years ago, he had taken it off a small-time heroin peddler he and Gaudet arrested in the old Saint Thomas housing project. The dope dealer didn’t want to go to jail, so he ratted on everybody he knew. By the end of the night, Murphy and Gaudet had six felony arrests and two hundred grams of China white heroin. They cut the snitch loose. Since there were no charges against their informant, the. 38 wasn’t evidence, but Murphy hadn’t wanted to return it because the guy was going right back to selling smack. So Murphy had kept it just in case he needed it one day. That day was today.

Murphy pulled to the curb in front of his building, a onetime mansion that had been converted into a six-unit apartment house. It looked deserted. When he climbed out of his car, a wind gust hit him so hard it felt like it was going to peel off his raincoat. He hobbled up the steps and pushed open the front door.

He limped down the central hallway toward the stairwell at the far end. On the way, he passed a pair of two-bedroom apartments, one on either side of the hall. He climbed the stairs to the second floor, which had been remodeled into four single-bedroom units. From the top-floor landing, Murphy’s apartment was the first one on the left.

On the top step he caught his toe and stumbled. The light fixture mounted to the wall was out, leaving the rear half of the hallway in darkness. He grabbed the railing with his right hand. A sharp jolt of pain stabbed through his shoulder.

At his apartment door, Murphy pushed his key into the dead bolt. He sensed movement behind him. A shadow slid across the floor. Before he could turn around, he felt the cold steel of a pistol pressed against the back of his neck.

“Keep your eyes on the door,” Gaudet said.

Murphy tried to turn around, but Gaudet shoved the pistol deeper into his neck.

“What are you doing, Juan?”

“Open it.”

Murphy pushed open the door.

The pistol nudged him forward. “Inside,” Gaudet said.

They stepped into the apartment. Murphy felt the weight of his Glock on his right hip, but it was buried under his raincoat. The zipper was pulled up to his neck. An old firearms instructor’s adage popped into his head: You can’t outdraw someone else’s trigger pull.

As Gaudet pushed the door shut, Murphy kept walking until he reached the small bar that separated the den from the kitchen. He wanted as much distance between him and Gaudet as possible. When he turned around, he said, “Are you the mayor’s official hit man now?”

Gaudet kept his pistol leveled at Murphy. “I tried to keep you out of it.”

“Out of what, stealing money and killing cops? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, to kill me?”

“I put eleven years into this job. Next year I’m vested and can take early retirement. By then I’ll have enough money put away so I can do whatever I want.”

“So what’s stopping you?”

“You, you’re what’s stopping me,” Gaudet said.

“How’s that?”

“You threatened to go to the captain. If you make a complaint to Donovan, he’ll have to notify PIB.”

“So what?” Murphy said. “The mayor controls PIB.”

“But he doesn’t control the feds, and the feds have snitches inside PIB. If the feds get involved, everything comes apart. I told the mayor you weren’t serious, though. That it was just talk, but he didn’t believe me. He says you’re a loose cannon.”

“Why are you here, Juan?”

Gaudet waved his pistol around. Nervous sweat beaded his forehead. “What the fuck’s wrong with you, Murphy? You’ve got no life. All you’ve got is the fucking job, but no matter what heroics you pull on this case, DeMarco is going to smash you into little pieces over that newspaper article. Your only way out will be to make a deal, and now, because you saw that money, you have something to trade.”