Free The Woman by David Bishop Page B

drinks with friends. That night, two unrelated events, occurring within less than one hour, intertwined to destroy his plans for a big time career.
    While Ben stopped at an intersection, a kid rode up on his bicycle, leaning forward, his pencil-thin arms crossed over the handlebars. An NBA Nets tee-shirt creeping up his back revealed the handle of a gun jammed behind the waistband of his crack-revealing pants. At the next intersection, McIlhenny flashed his badge through the window and told the boy not to move. McIlhenny confiscated the gun, which still had bubble wrap on the barrel. The youth also had a box of bullets.
    The kid had no drugs on him and had not been drinking. He swore that he and some other kids had just found a canvas bag full of handguns and bullets in an empty lot about ten blocks away. At first, he said he didn’t know the other kids, but later admitted belonging to a gang that Ben had already identified from the tattoo on the boy’s forearm.
    A young nurse Ben had been seeing with some regularity had left a text message on his cell phone which he had read after leaving the restaurant. “I’m about to hop in the shower,” her message had said, “then I’ll be over. You’re forty-five minutes away from a night you will never forget.” He either had to let the kid go or call the nurse and explain, not tonight, honey, the job, you know. He wasn’t about to let that happen.
    He kept the weapon and told the kid to get lost. Tomorrow he would follow up with the boy’s gang to try and recover the rest of the weapons. This plan wasn’t according to the book, but he wasn’t about to blow off his date with this nurse, particularly with her in the mood her message had promised. As the kid stood up on his pedals and rode away, he looked back over his shoulder, smiled, and flipped McIlhenny the finger. Had the fabulous nurse not promised a dose of home health care, McIlhenny would have gone after the kid, explained the word ingrate, and run him in for felony possession. For even a child, this would have been a serious charge.
    After that, the rest of the night had gone quite differently because Ben McIlhenny had left his police radio on. Several blocks later, he heard a call reporting a domestic disturbance in an upscale neighborhood about two blocks west from his current position. He had to go. He could get there faster than any other officer. These complaints were often based on nothing more serious than a neighbor fed up with listening to swearing and breaking dishes, but other such calls involved out-of-control people who had turned violent. This meant a cop could walk into the middle of anything, anything at all.
    McIlhenny pulled to the curb, the situation was as he expected. He was first on the scene. The front door of the home stood open a few inches. He didn’t have his police issue. Rather than take it on his dinner engagement, where he expected he might do some heavy drinking, he had left it in his locker at the station. He loaded the handgun he had taken from the kid with the bullets he had gotten at the same place. Most likely, he wouldn’t need the gun, but domestic calls sometimes went sideways. He stuffed the confiscated weapon behind his belt, quietly closed his car door, and moved toward the house while stabbing his arms into the sleeves of his blazer.
    Through the bedroom window he saw a man pistol whipping a woman. The woman had collapsed down onto her knees. Her face was pulp, a bone protruded through her cheek. Still the man continued using the gun barrel to rain down blows to her head and neck. Then the man picked up a two-liter plastic Pepsi bottle and stuck the gun barrel into the neck of the bottle. McIlhenny considered breaking the window and ordering the man to stand down, but such a course might lead to a gun battle. Instead, estimating he had sufficient time, McIlhenny took off for the front of the house where he eased the door open. Inside, he hastened down the Persian