Free Don't Call Me Hero by Eliza Lentzski Page B

blood to make a swirly pink mess on the floor.
    The man turned toward us and howled. The animalistic sound made me flinch just enough that I wasn’t prepared when he charged David. The man had no weapon—only his body—but he threw his arms around David’s torso and tackled my partner to the ground.
    I launched myself into the fray and, together, David and I managed to wrestle the man to the ground and subdue him. I pulled my handcuffs out of their holder and cuffed him to restrain his arms behind his back.
    David flipped the man over. “You gonna behave now, Dennis?”
    The man—Dennis—nodded, momentarily mute.
    I shouldn’t have been surprised that David knew his attacker, but I’d never arrested someone I was on a first-name basis with.
    David and I pulled Dennis to a seated position and propped him up against a wall. He squiggled in weak protest but appeared to have lost most of his fight.
    “Gross.” I tugged at the front of my wet shirt and separated it from my skin. My clothes were soaked with a mixture of water and blood from wrestling on the bathroom floor.
    I took a moment to breathe out and survey the rest of the damage. Blood flowed freely from Dennis’s forehead and dripped down his face, but without taking a closer look I couldn’t be sure of the extent of his injury. Head wounds were notorious for looking worse than they actually were, so I wasn’t going to panic that he would bleed out while we stood here.
    The bathroom was demolished. The porcelain sink lay in fractured pieces, and the vanity mirror had been shattered. Large shards of mirrored glass were scattered on the ground. We’d been fortunate that none of us had rolled over the broken glass during our scuffle with Dennis.
    David reached for the radio attached near his shoulder. He pressed down on the handset to call in the arrest, but lifted his thumb to first address me: “Watch out. He’s a kicker.”
    “A what?”
    I groaned when the man’s foot connected between my legs. Even though I lacked the more sensitive genitalia of a male officer, it still stung and brought tears to my eyes.
    “A kicker,” David repeated. I would have smacked the shit-eating grin off of his face if I wasn’t occupied with subduing my assailant.
    I zip-tied Dennis’s ankles together to keep him from lashing out again. I stood up and made sure I pushed off his body a little rougher than necessary. “How did you know that was going to happen?”
    “It’s not the first time I’ve had to arrest him.” David wiped at his forehead. “I’m guessing he’s back on animal tranquilizers.”
    “You’re shittin’ me. PCP?”
    “It’s a small, remote town. People get creative about their drugs.”
    “Dennis?” A woman’s voice echoed down the hallway. I remembered we’d left the front door open.
    “I got this.” David stepped between the woman and the door to block her view of the destroyed bathroom and the bloodied man inside. “Mrs. Wagner, we received a call from a neighbor about a domestic disturbance. When Detective Miller and I investigated, we found your son in the bathroom, hurting himself. We’ve got him cuffed for his own protection.”
    “Oh, Dennis,” the woman sighed. “What have you done now?”
    “Ma’am, when we arrived on scene the bathroom sink had been torn from the wall,” I spoke up. “Do you happen to know where your shut-off valves are?”
    She eyeballed me for a moment before nodding. “It’s in the laundry room. I’ll go turn off the water.”
    “Was that his mom?” I asked when the woman left us.
    “Yup. Her name’s Tricia.”
    “What do we do with him now?” I asked, nodding in Dennis’s direction. His head wound had stopped bleeding, but his face and bare chest were covered in dried blood. He looked like he’d come straight from a Satanic ritual.
    “Let’s hose him down in the shower so he doesn’t get blood all over the back of the squad car, and then we can throw him in the drunk tank to sleep