Джеффри Дивер - The Final Twist

“Don’t move,” the voice instructed. It belonged to a large Black SFPD officer, uniformed.

“I won’t.”

“Don’t turn around.”

“I won’t.”

Shaw knew the drill. He’d been arrested before. Detained too, which was arrest lite. He’d never been convicted, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be a first time.

“I’m armed.” It was always a good idea to tell this to law enforcers when they were confronting or arresting/detaining you. In some jurisdictions it was required to so inform them.

“Okay.”

Police always said that. Every single cop who’d arrested or detained him had said “Okay” pretty frequently.

He lifted Shaw’s untucked shirt and plucked the Glock 42 from the Blackhawk holster. The gun would be tiny in his hand. The man was massive.

The cop wore a Glock 17, the full size, double-stack model, with seventeen rounds to play with. Nine-millimeter. Shaw’s was a .380, and had only six in the mag.

It’s never the number of rounds you have; it’s where you put them.

The gun, Shaw’s knife and the black velvet bag went on the coffee table.

Another cop — a short man, Anglo, with similar close-cropped hair, though blond in his case — was going through Shaw’s wallet.

“He’s got a conceal carry. California. Up to date.”

“Okay.” The big cop, named Q. Barnes according to the tag, was the one in charge. He un-holstered his cuffs and stepped closer. Shaw knew this was coming.

“I’m going to cuff you now for my safety and for yours.”

More or less exactly what he’d told Earnest La Fleur in Sausalito.

“Put your hands behind your back, please.”

Polite.

Shaw did and he felt the cuffs ratchet on. The man did a good job. They were tight enough so he couldn’t get free but there was no pain.

“You’re not under arrest at this point.”

Because I haven’t done anything that I can be arrested for. Shaw did not verbalize this, however. He said, “Okay.”

The man turned Shaw around.

That was when he saw her.

Consuela Ramirez.

The young woman was walking into the safe house suite with a policewoman, an intensely focused redhead, hair in a tight ponytail. Makeup-free, save for a little blue eye shadow. She was petite but stood perfectly erect, even with all the cop accessories she wore: gun, mags, Taser, cuffs, pepper spray. You needed to be in good shape to do public safety. The bulletproof plate alone had to weigh ten pounds.

“Consuela,” said Shaw. “What is this?”

She cocked her head with a faint frown. But she said nothing.

“This is the man you told us about?”

“Consuela...” Shaw repeated.

“Yessir,” she said.

“It’s okay, miss. Don’t worry. You’re okay. He’s not going to hurt you.”

“Hurt you?” Shaw said, frowning. “What’s going on? What did she say?”

“Ms. Ramirez filled out an affidavit saying that she saw you with a significant quantity of narcotics. She had a relative who overdosed and was doing her civic duty to get them off the street. Now, you can help yourself here by cooperating. And I’ll tell you, sir, it’ll go a long way if you do.”

“I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve never done drugs, let alone sold them.”

“Cooperation?” Barnes reminded, steering back to his theme.

“Of course. Sure.”

Barnes’s face registered some relaxation. “So,” he said. “The drugs?”

Shaw frowned broadly. “I don’t know anything about any drugs. I assume you’ve looked my name up in NCIC. Nothing there, right?” His eyes were fixed on the young woman’s, which were cast defiantly toward Shaw. She really was quite beautiful.

Barnes asked, “How do you know each other?”

Shaw beat her to whatever she was going to say, “I don’t really know her. We have a mutual friend.”

To Shaw, he said, “Tell me about the drugs.”

“There are no drugs.”

“Ms. Ramirez tells a different story.” Barnes sighed, as if autonomically responding to what he’d heard a thousand times before. The officer returned to his favorite subject with: “You should be more cooperative than you’re being.”

“Doesn’t get any more cooperative than this. I’m telling you the truth.”

“All right.”

A variation on “Okay.”

Shaw shrugged. The cuffs jingled.

Barnes asked Connie, “Where?”

She pointed to the end table beside the couch, where she’d sat earlier. “The drawer.”

Barnes jerked his head toward another patrolman, an underling, a short, uniformed cop with a shaved head and the complexion of mixed races. He fit the description of Roman, Tessy’s stalker former boyfriend. The man opened the drawer. “Got something.” After donning blue latex gloves, he removed the bag and set it on the table, near Shaw’s accessories.

The woman’s look of vindication was smug.

“About eight ounces, Quentin,” the woman officer said, eyeing the bag. “Way over felony.”

Barnes sized up Shaw, assessing the offense not of drugs but of failure to cooperate. He nodded to the underling who’d discovered the bag. The officer removed a folding-blade knife and cut a small slit in the top of the bag. From one of the many pockets in his service vest he extracted a small bottle. He broke a liquid capsule inside and added a bit of the white powder. He shook it. There was no color change.

“More,” Barnes said.

The young officer added powder. It still didn’t turn blue or green or red, whatever it was supposed to.

“What?” Connie whispered. Her expression registered a minor Richter number of concern.

Shaw said, “It’s not drugs.”

Barnes asked, “No? What is it?”

“Chalk. I rock climb. This is just a misunderstanding. I appreciate her concern. Drugs are terrible.” He looked into her lovely eyes. “I see why you’d think that, of course, but I’d never have anything to do with narcotics.”

Barnes took the knife and sniffed. He handed the blade back to the other officer. He looked from one to the other. “Whole room,” Barnes ordered. “Search it.”

The others — four cops in total — began searching. They were good. Every place where a four-by-eight-by-two-inch pouch of cocaine could be hidden was examined.

After the dining room came the kitchen then the two bedrooms, the living room. All of the closets, of which there were a fair number, and they were big ones. For a last-minute safe house, it really offered some nice features.

Barnes was frustrated. He snapped, “Dog,” to the patrolman who’d searched Shaw’s wallet.

A moment later the canine made his appearance with a young Latina handler. He was a lithe and focused Malinois, one of the four Belgian herding breeds, the others being the Tervuren, Laekenois and the Belgian sheepdog. The Malinois was smaller and wirier than the German shepherd and had largely taken over law enforcement duties from the latter around the country.

The dog — whose name was Beau or Bo — zipped up and down the floor twitchily. Nose up, nose down, turning corners fast, sticking the lengthy muzzle into cushions and the gap between cabinets. Everywhere.

But he never once sat. Sitting is the signal that police K9s learn to indicate that they’ve found what they were searching for: the drugs, the explosives, the body. They don’t point or bark and they never bring a treasure back to their handler in their eager and powerful jaws.

They sit.

But Beau or Bo didn’t.

Barnes was no longer relaxed. And he definitely wasn’t happy.

The handler gave the dog a dried meat treat. His confirmation that the suite was drug free was as much a win for the muscular animal as if he’d found a thousand pounds of smack.