Free Red Line by Brian Thiem

back in the nineties. He was a tennis-shoe pimp who liked to pick up young girls, drug and rape them, then turn them out.”
    “Not a very impressive pimp if he had to make his rounds on foot instead of in a fancy Cadillac,” said Sinclair.
    “A year or two ago, the sexual assault unit conducted home visits on all two-ninety registrants on this beat after a rash of home invasion rapes,” said Braddock. “Hayesmean-mugged and threatened every male officer on our team but turned on his charm with me. Tried to impress me by saying that he branched out when in prison and found that young male asses were as good as girls.”
    “Sounds like a sicko,” said Sinclair.
    “The creep’s sick enough to do this,” said Braddock.
    Sinclair turned to Rose, “I’m guessing you didn’t spot the van.”
    “We cruised the area, but it was gone. The woman didn’t see the driver. I drove by Hayes’s house—the van was parked out front, but the house was dark. I ran him out. He’s still a registered sex offender and on parole. Didn’t see much value in knocking at the door and jamming him up, so we figured we’d keep a lookout for him rolling some other night.”
    “Do you want to go by and talk to him?” asked Braddock.
    Sinclair shrugged. “Can’t hurt. It’s not like we have anyone else to talk to.”

Chapter 12
    Sinclair stood at the corner of an old Victorian house on a street that fifty years ago was predominantly Italian. A few late-model German cars were intermingled with older American ones on the street, indicating gentrification was taking a foothold in the neighborhood. Braddock and Officer Rose’s beat partner, a bow-legged officer who wore black gloves with the fingers cut out, stood on the front porch. Rose covered the back. Since Braddock had history with Hayes, it made sense for her to make contact.
    Braddock rapped at the door. “Tyrone, this is Sergeant Braddock. I’d like to talk with you.”
    A door banged at the rear of the house.
    Rose yelled, “He’s coming out the back.”
    Rose ran around the corner, out of Sinclair’s view. Sinclair opened the chain-link gate and sprinted down the walkway. When he reached the backyard, he saw Hayes lumbering across the dark yard toward the back fence with Rose a step behind.
    Rose caught him at the fence, but Hayes shook him off like an annoying insect.
    Rose drew his expandable baton and snapped it open with a flick of his wrist. He swung low and connected with Hayes’s knee with a solid thud.
    Hayes howled in pain and rushed Rose, wrapping him up like a three-hundred-pound lineman does to a running back. He grabbed Rose’s baton and yanked it from his hand and flung Rose to the ground. Rose struggled to his feet as Hayes swung a fist the size of a ham hock at his head.
    Rose straightened and turned his shoulder into the punch. The blow knocked him off his feet and into a row of unkempt shrubs.
    Rose lay still. Sinclair’s first instinct was to rush to the downed officer to check on him, but it had been drummed into him during training exercises and reinforced on battlefields from Baghdad to Oakland that you had to neutralize the threat before you could attend to the wounded.
    Sinclair stopped ten feet from Hayes, his hand on his pistol, and yelled, “Police! Freeze!”
    Hayes stared at him. Black eyes inside a head the size of a bear’s. Drops of sweat dripped off his broad nose. His nostrils flared as he sucked in huge breaths.
    He threw Rose’s baton to the ground. “Go ahead, shoot me, motherfucker.”
    The threat of a gun only worked with rational people. It was of no value when the person didn’t care about living or dying or knew the cop wouldn’t use it.
    Hayes stepped toward him. Sinclair danced back a step.
    When a cop had to wrestle with a suspect, his gun was a liability. If the suspect got his hands on it, the cop was dead, so Sinclair knew he had to protect his pistol while trying to fight a monster that outweighed him by nearly a