James Born - Shock Wave

He opened the door to his old Toyota and retrieved his Ruger.22, then strolled over to his van and dug out his keys from his pocket and started it, not worrying about the men in agony on the porch.

He drove down his driveway, stopped at the gate, opened it and drove through like he did almost every day. The only difference was he didn’t bother closing it this time.

As he turned onto the unpaved road, he saw the gold Monte Carlo by itself near the corner of his property. He pulled up next to it and couldn’t resist leaving another little package for anyone who opened the door.

Stepping out of the van, he found he didn’t even need his slim-jim to pick the lock because the trusting cops had left the doors unlocked.

He took a plastic jar filled with a milky fluid out of the rear of the van and set it on the console between the front seats. He connected a thin piece of monofilament fishing line to a ring on the small detonator on the lid of the jar, then roped it through the passenger door. He took the other end and ran it out the driver’s door past the lock. He looped the line once and then shut the door, tightening the fishing line.

Unless they looked closely before they opened the door-and nobody ever did-they’d be in for another surprise.

He smiled, jumping back into the van and rumbling toward Homestead. He needed another place to stay for a few days until he was ready to make his move to The Guinness Book of Records for “Most Shit Caused by a Single Man.”

It took thirty seconds of screaming and rolling on the porch for Tasker to assess how badly they’d been disfigured. He opened his eyes past the intense burning and saw Sutter next to him, also holding his face. He also noticed that Sutter didn’t have a mark on him. He sat up, trying to check his chest and arms for wounds, but he was just damp.

He looked over to Driscoll, who was now trying to stand. He didn’t have a mark on him.

Tasker shouted, “It’s okay, you’re not cut. No blood.”

Sutter paused his wailing to examine himself more closely. Then after feeling the film of liquid on him, he started to yell, “Acid! Acid!”

Tasker stumbled off the steps and down to the side of the trailer, looking for a garden hose. He felt along the tin walls, occasionally snatching views with his eyes-every time they opened, it was like a fire on his cornea. He found the nub of a short hose and followed it back to the faucet. He twisted the knob and let the water splash up onto his face. There was instant relief. It still burned, but much less than during the initial contact.

“Here. Come down here to the water. This helps.”

The other two cops bumped their way to Tasker and shared the hose. Soon they had a system where any two of them could be washed at a time.

After three or four minutes, Tasker felt well enough to step back and consider what happened. He cautiously crept back onto the porch. He had seen the van leave, so he wasn’t worried about the inside anymore. The hanging pots were all cracked on the ground. He found in one a ripped plastic container that had held the chemical.

“Looks like it was CS. Old-fashioned Mace.”

Sutter barely looked up.

Over half an hour later, they had regained their composure enough to look in all the windows. They opened the rear door with a rope so no one was in danger and entered the double-wide.

Tasker, still red-eyed and blotchy around his face, walked through each room.

Sutter, his Glock in his hand, waited at the kitchen unless needed.

They still hadn’t called for backup. No one had mentioned it.

Sutter opened the subject. “Okay, it was Mace. We’re not gonna die. But the question is, Do we need to tell anyone?”

Driscoll was quick to answer. “Hell, no. My guys would never let me hear the end of this shit. Caught in an ambush and letting a fugitive escape. Fuck me, we can’t ever tell anyone. In fact, you can drop me at home and I’ll clean up before I go back to the PD.”

Tasker turned and looked at Sutter, who said, “I couldn’t agree more.”

They searched the house for any information that might help locate Wells. Twenty minutes later, they walked through the yard, then back to Tasker’s car. He was just starting to feel normal, except that his clothes were still soaking wet from his rinsing.

Sutter started yacking about how he wasn’t worried on the porch and that now he had a personal stake in Wells, too.

Tasker looked up and down the street, which was deserted. Something didn’t feel right.

At the same time, Tasker and Sutter opened their door and heard another bang. Tasker felt a fresh burning from the new booby trap.

He didn’t panic this time as the Mace burned his eyes and nose again.

As he stumbled back toward the hose near the trailer, all he heard was Sutter scream, “Fuck!”

Bill Tasker blinked hard, still clearing the CS from his eyes. CS was older and not used as much as the modern pepper spray, but not because it didn’t work. Police had moved to pepper spray because it was safer. CS was effective, lingered and was a bitch to clean up. Eight hours and five showers had cleared most of the irritant from his face, but every few minutes he’d feel a burning sensation and blink. It was probably as much psychological as it was physical. But the gallon of snot that had poured out of his head wasn’t psychological, just gross. Driving his personal Cherokee, because the CS had also made his issued car unusable for the foreseeable future, he turned off Pines Boulevard in western Hollywood into the new set of housing developments. The miles of new, similar houses caused the native Floridian in him to flash in anger. The houses were needed for New Yorkers escaping the cold and people escaping Dade County. It didn’t change the fact that the land had been a marshland next to the Everglades just a few years ago, and now it was a wasteland.

Camy Parks was a perfect example of a former Dade resident now living on what should have been a wildlife preserve. Tasker had been able to get her address in about five seconds on the Internet and was on his way to set her ass straight about this case. It was her investigation, and ATF needed to be involved. Tasker sure could use the help.

He found the cream-colored, two-story, zero-lot-line abomination of a home with no trouble. Camy’s ATF-issued Ford Crown Vic sat in the driveway next to a Saab that Tasker assumed was hers. There were several cars on the street near the house. No lights were on in front. It was only about nine, so Tasker wasn’t worried about waking her. He rapped on the front door, then rang the doorbell to be sure she knew she had a visitor. He had thought about bringing along Sutter, but after their little confrontation at the ATF office and Sutter’s lingering misery from the CS he’d decided to leave his partner out of this plan. Besides, after dark all he’d be interested in was getting the lovely lesbian ATF agent in bed.

Tasker heard Camy call through the door. “Who is it?”

“Bill Tasker.”

She opened the frosted glass door a crack, then said, “Billy, what are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you.”

She opened the door wider and looked at him. “What happened? Have you been crying?”

“Yeah. Most of the day, as a matter of fact. Can I come in?”

She hesitated.

“It’s important.”

Camy sighed and opened the door for him. She had on a terrycloth robe and her hair was loose around her shoulders. She looked almost wild like this.

“Thanks,” he said, stepping into the open room with high ceilings.

“First, tell me why you were crying.”

He explained the event at Wells’ trailer in decent detail, only leaving out that he and Sutter had fallen for the second trap in his car. He could see she was at least slightly amused by the story once she knew no one was seriously hurt.