Free Speak for the Dead by Rex Burns Page A

one. “X-eighty-five. Go ahead.”
    “We have a discharged-weapon report to be filed. Corner of Quitman and Seventh.”
    One of the phony things about TV detectives was that they were given all the time they needed to work a single case. The television cops never juggled two or three new cases and as many old ones; they never came off the night shift with an hour to shave, shower, and shit before sitting through a long morning and even into the afternoon trying to stay awake to testify in court; they never reported two hours early to do the paperwork to meet a court deadline, or sat on their own time through the weekly closed-channel telecast that covered the latest court rulings which brought changes to police procedure. And they never got turned around when they were headed for a victim’s residence. “I’m on my way,” Wager said.
    The shooting was at the west edge of Denver near the city-county line and in an area he wasn’t completely familiar with. He crossed above the street on the Sixth Avenue Freeway and saw the red flashers of the blue-and-white unit two or three blocks distant. But it took another five minutes to thread his way off the freeway and in and out of dead-end streets to the scene.
    “You Detective Wager?” The officer sitting in the yellow glow of the roof-mounted flashlight peered out of the squad car at him.
    “Yes. What’s the story?”
    The officer turned off the whipping glare of the red flashers to leave the street dark except for the living-room lights of a small house with a deep porch. “We had a ten-sixteen at this address—husband drunk and wife not drunk enough, you know the kind.”
    “I know.” Domestic-disturbance calls were always bad news.
    “Well, she phoned in the request, and when we come around that corner there, our headlights picked him up chasing her down the street with a pistol in his hand.”
    “You saw the weapon?”
    “Son of a bitch, we did. As soon as he saw us, he opened up.”
    “How many shots?”
    “Two or three. My partner heard three. I was on the radio and heard only two.”
    “Where’s your partner?”
    “Inside, still talking to the broad.”
    “The husband?”
    The officer’s teeth flashed. “We fired back and the fucker took off into Martinez Park. Right down there.” He pointed to the dark end of the short street. “It’s blacker’n shit in there—he ran smack into a tree and knocked himself silly.”
    “Injuries?”
    “None. The fucker missed and so did we.”
    “How many rounds did you fire?”
    “My partner fired one. I fired two.” He added modestly, “He was driving—I got out of the car faster.”
    Wager glanced over the shooting report filled with the officer’s square printing. “This looks pretty routine.” The word was becoming more and more accurate to describe an officer’s getting shot at; but a report like this would usually be filed at the end of the shift. “What do you want with me?”
    “The wife is screaming police brutality.”
    “What?”
    “She thinks we shouldn’t have fired at hubby just because he was trying to blow our fucking heads off. She says it was our fault he ran into that tree.”
    “After he chased her ass down the street with a pistol?”
    “Yeah. She says he does it all the time and never fired a round before tonight. She’s right—we’ve had three or four domestic calls at this address in the last couple years. But she lays it on us that the dumb son of a bitch cold-cocked himself.”
    Jesus. And for that two cops stuck their necks out. Wager began taking notes on a clean page of his little green book. A policeman really had to like the job for itself; it was harder than hell to like the people involved. “All right, let’s start with the names and addresses.” The patrolman was right to call for an investigator as soon as possible. Weaker charges than this had been known to stick like shit on a shoe, and it didn’t take more than one or two such incidents to make a man