J King - Angel of Death

My body was suddenly heir to all the pangs, twinges, and mortal frailties of any flesh. I trembled. She shifted, her knee still on my back, and pulled one of my feet up toward her. Through the thin knit of my dress sock, I felt the broad band of the ankle cuff snap into place. With a jangle of chain, both my legs were bound.

There were other boots around hers, now, and the long shadows of sniper rifles fell in bars across me.

“This is Squad Four, Detective Leland. We’ve got our suspect. Bring in the ambulance crews, Phil – he’s got gunshot wounds.”

Only then did I feel the injuries – two slugs in my back, just below my right shoulder blade. The ache was dull and ragged. It hurt less than the place where Donna had knelt. How strange that these human bodies are at once so fragile and so insensate. It would have been easy enough to die without ever feeling it or knowing it.

“…yeah. We’re all breathing a sigh of relief about that. Still, he got two others. Yeah, notify the coroner. There’ll be a set of death investigations. No, no officers down, but two civilians, and a bunch of remains, in various states of-” She stopped talking, staggered away, and was sick over a set of crates.

I could only lie there and breathe. If I had been an angel still, I would have risen and enwrapped her in my arms. But all I could do was lie there and breathe and know she was more sickened by me than by all those skulls.

“Sorry, Phil. Yeah, I’ll be okay. Yeah, it’s just a bad sight down here. Yeah. Leland out.”

Someone else approached, knelt beside me, and set a metal kit next to my head. “Sir, I’m going to be looking at your back. You’ve been shot. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

He shifted and cut my shirt away. After a pause, he flipped open the kit and brought out a small bottle, some cotton swabs, a roll of gauze, a roll of tape, and a small pair of scissors.

As the man set to work sealing the outer wounds for the ride to the hospital, Donna stared down bleakly.

“So, Azra, explain this.” Her voice quivered. She was pleading. “Mother of God, Azra. Explain this.”

I breathed raggedly. “I cannot.”

Her voice rose in intensity. “You know what it looks like, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

The man who was gently dressing my wounds said,

“You do have the right to remain silent.”

And then, I was not just still, but silent.

The warehouse doors barked open, and the EMTs charged out, rolling the gurney that bore Azra Michaels. Detective Donna Leland rushed alongside, followed by a crowd of small-town cops. At the curb ahead, civilians clustered around an ambulance. Its flashing lights and the flashing Nikon of Blake Gaines painted the scene in carnival colors.

There should be a barker, Leland thought. She could almost hear him: “Come one, come all! See Azra, the Incredible Killing Machine! He can chop off heads! He can chop off hands! He can kill in Wisconsin and Illinois and Indiana! For one lucky fan, he’ll kill again, tonight!”

She could almost see the barker dip his tanned hand into an old bowler and draw forth a slip of paper and read it and shout, “Congratulations, Donna Leland!”

The EMTs slid the gurney into the back of the ambulance and climbed in alongside. One of the young men shot a freckled look toward the detective and asked,

“You want to ride along to the hospital?”

Leland heard the question only after the EMT had stopped speaking it. “Um, you think you – you think you need me?”

He laughed. “Nah. Between the shackles and the straps and the gunshot wounds, he’s not going anywhere. ’Sides, I got first at State as a Demon wrestler.”

Detective Leland nodded numbly. Demon wrestler? It was hard to make small talk when everything was so big.

“Oh, you mean the BHS Demons – the wrestling team.”

“Well, yeah.”

Leland nodded. “Sorry. You just seemed more of a Catholic Central kid to me.”

“Kid?” His eyes popped wide, and he pointed at her.

“Hey, didn’t you used to be Officer Friendly?”

“Yeah. Used to be.” Enough small talk. Leland turned and began walking toward her squad.

“Woo! You kicked ass tonight, Officer Friendly!” he shouted, sounding just like the barker. “Look out, world! It’s Officer Kick-Ass!”

The other cops cheered briefly before going back to their excited chatter about the murders, the suspect, the newsman, the hospital escort. Leland wished she could hand out balloons and kettle corn.

The detective opened the door to her squad, sat down, closed the door, turned off the scanner, turned down the radio, breathed in the silence. Insanity.

I’m in love with him, but he’s a… I don’t even know what. Killer? Accomplice? Liar? Lunatic? All I know is I love him, and he – I thought he loved me…

God, was he going to kill me?

The ambulance began to pull away from the curb, and squad cars jockeyed for positions around it. Sighing deeply, Leland shifted into drive and pulled out onto the street and joined the rear of the procession. And what a procession! It was as if the Chocolate City Parade had come early. With lights flashing and sirens blaring, the ambulance and its escort of six squads rolled through the heart of Burlington. Storefronts reflected the strobing lights, and the windows of second-floor walkups produced amazed faces that flashed blue and red and white. A few kids came from an alley and ran along the sidewalk, maybe hoping the cops would throw Crunch bars.

And the festival didn’t end when they reached Memorial Hospital. The emergency room was crowded with edgy paramedics, doctors, deputies, and the occasional reporter. These last were as violently ejected by Blake Gaines as by the police. In the midst of blood and bandages, there were thousands of questions, thousands of non-answers, the staring blanks in the booking form matching the staring blanks of Azra’s eyes. Leland gave up. She listed his aliases – Azra Michaels and Samael – beside the name John Doe. She’d thought she’d known him. She didn’t even know his name. Donna arrived home at 3 a.m. She kicked the latest Gazette off the doormat, fought a swarm of moths away from the porch light, unlocked the door, and staggered alone into a cold, dark house.

Keys on the counter, gun on the table, clothes on the floor – she crawled into bed. It felt small, as if it had shrunk, never again to admit the man who had shared it with her, and only begrudgingly to admit her. Not that she could sleep. Thoughts of Kerry and Azra warred in her mind. Two lost souls – one gone forever, and the other receding quickly into oblivion. Didn’t you used to be Officer Friendly?

Yeah. Used to be.

She’d followed McHenry in the job, just after Kerry’s suicide. She’d hoped to counsel troubled kids, to let them know they had someone they could talk to, never had to feel alone, never had to do anything desperate. Donna’d tried to be a one-woman juvenile crime-prevention unit, but not a single troubled kid had come to her. Apparently, she hadn’t been cool enough – just a mascot, like Sergeant McGruff. She hadn’t known how to reach them.

Or how to reach him…

Azra. Talk about a troubled soul. But what was he, really? A sociopath – calculating, unfeeling, manipulative, incapable of recognizing another person’s humanity, incapable of love? Or a psychotic – delusional, schizophrenic, unable to distinguish reality from fantasy, ill and alone in a brutal world?

That’s what Kerry had been.

“He needs me.” Tears pooled in her eyes and ran down her face and onto her pillow. “I can’t just let him go. I can’t lose him like I lost Kerry.”

The next morning, Detective Leland turned into the alley off Jefferson and pulled her squad into her parking space by the police department only to nearly run over a giant, horseshoe-shaped arrangement of flowers that bore the banner “Leland” and beneath it the slogan,