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"Sure."

He went to the phone, called in and took notes, then went back to the patrol car, called the shift sergeant and the watch commander on the tactical channel, then waited for her to get back.

"They didn't charge me," she said, exasperated.

"I know. Store policy. We drive in, show the flag, and it's safer for everybody. And we get fatter, too, and Coke all over the seats," he said, sighing.

She laughed as he backed out of the parking space and turned onto the street.

"What was the call about?"

"A suspicious person, but with a twist," he said.

"And?"

"Patience, Deborah."

"Okay."

He pulled back into the parking lot at Red Bird Airport, only now there were a half dozen patrol cars there, waiting. He pulled up to the group and got out of the car, then repeated what dispatch had just told him.

"There's a male, white, 43 years old, in a silver Dodge pickup, parked in front of the Sewing Center," he said, pointing down Camp Wisdom Road. "Just served with divorce papers, maybe two hours ago. Wife works in the store, called and advised he's out front, has a bunch of guns with him in the truck. He's alternately threatening and despondent."

The lieutenant and the sergeant looked at him, the the L-T spoke.

"Okay, you two swing by the parking lot, try to ID the truck on your pass, then report what you see. Stay on tactical."

"Yessir."

He got back in the patrol car, and Desjardins looked at him as he buckled in. "He's armed?" she asked.

"That's what the wife reports."

"Ex-wife, you mean."

"Nope. Not until the papers are signed by the judge, kiddo."

"Right. What if she's...?"

"Setting him up? Been there, done that. Or, this could be a suicide by cop. Or, he's about to storm a sewing shop full of little old ladies with an AK-47. Take your pick, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends..."

He pulled out onto Camp Wisdom Road and they drove by the shopping center.

"Did you see it?" he asked.

"I'm not sure."

He drove another block, then turned off the main road onto a side street.

"14 to 102 on 2."

"2, go."

"He's parked facing the store, two rows back, right in front of the main door. He's sitting on the passenger side right now."

"Okay. Two units are at the rear of the store, going in now. You and 10 are going to enter the lot at opposite ends, try to remain out of sight and close on foot at 45 degree approach angles. Start now."

"10/4."

He drove back to the little shopping center and pulled in, parked out of sight, then turned to Desjardins. "You take the shotgun, chamber a round here, keep the safety on. Follow me, one step behind, a little to my right. If the door opens you take cover, get ready to back me up if I have to close on foot. Sergeant will be to our left, so don't, for God's sake, shoot his ass. Got it?"

"Yessir."

"Okay. Let's do it."

They made their approach in low crouches, and he kept his eyes on the suspect by looking through the windows of parked cars; he saw the sergeant doing the same, and in less than a minute there were only a few parked cars between the suspect and the two of them --

-- then the man looked over, saw the sergeant --

-- then put the barrel of a shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger --

He heard a muffled boom, and the truck's cab filled instantly with blue-gray smoke -- and he stood, ran to the truck's door and peered through the blood-stained glass. He opened the door and the man's decapitated body writhed out, a fountain of blood spraying out the stumpy remains atop his chest.

He pulled out his hand unit and called in: "3114, we'll need the medical examiner's and CID at the scene for photographs, and call this a Signal 60 at this time, pending final investigation."

"Signal 60?" she asked.

"Deceased person."

"What do we do now?"

"Preserve the integrity of the scene until CID gets here, then we get information for our report and clear the scene -- hopefully in time for dinner."

"What? Dinner?"

"Fuck yeah, man. I missed lunch, and I'm starving."

"I hear that," the lieutenant said. "How 'bout Whataburger? And I'm buyin'!"

III

He'd figured out once, a long time ago, that Sean O'Malley wasn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, but his heart was always in the right place. They'd shared a dorm room the first six weeks of academy, and he'd helped O'Malley out with everything from simple math problems to the finer points of Vernon's Annotated Statutes, but while O'Malley was as strong as an ox, he just wasn't in the hunt when brainpower was called for. He'd played ball in school, football -- because in Texas no other kind of ball counts for much -- then he'd gone into the Army. O'Malley ended up, and he'd still never figured this out, flying helicopters over in 'Nam. Hueys, for the most part. Slicks and Chickenhawks. O'Malley told him once that they'd figured out he was all balls and no brains, so he was perfect for the job. He got injured grunts out of the tightest, hottest L-Zs, and he did so with a shit-eatin' grin on his face, no matter how tough the call was. If someone's life was on the line, O'Malley got the call, and his Huey was the most shot-up -- and beloved -- bird between Hue and Danang.

After the sixth week of academy cadets were cut loose, allowed to commute to school from home, and O'Malley called him their first night home, asked if they could car-pool, use the time to go over homework assignments, or just shoot the shit. He said "sure, why not?" -- and agreed to pick O'Malley up at five thirty the next morning.

He'd not met Micki O'Malley yet, Sean's wife, though Sean had talked about her non-stop for the last six weeks. He got to their rented mobil home a little early and went to the door, and Micki came to the door, told him that Sean was still getting dressed.

"Can I get you some coffee?" she asked.

"Yeah, you know, that'd be good," he said, but he was staring at the woman as she turned and walked away -- because she was just about the cutest human being of the female persuasion he'd ever laid eyes on. Blond hair and blue eyes, freckles all over her nose and forehead, and bodacious legs too, but it was the enormous sense of 'cute' that lingered as she walked away -- and he felt like he'd just looked into the eyes of every male's idea of the perfect girl.

And he wondered just how the hell O'Malley had pulled it off. What could she possibly see in him?

Her coffee, on the other hand, was godawful stuff -- not fit for the living.

Which, in the end, didn't matter all that much.

He picked O'Malley up and they drove in to academy together five days a week, and he did so, he soon realized, because O'Malley couldn't afford a car -- not yet, Sean said -- and anyway, Micki wasn't really the 'go to work' type. She was a born housewife, Sean said, and was already baking their second kid in the oven when Sean made it into academy, so her getting a job just wasn't in the picture, and that's the way they both wanted it.

He also figured out, in short order, that O'Malley lived with the most sensuous female God had ever put on this earth, and the poor guy never really had a chance. O'Malley loved Pearl Beer and Micki, and when he got off work neither was far from his face. And if Sean had a hard time studying, Micki was the reason. O'Malley dragged his ass out to the car every morning looking like she'd fucked his brains out all night long. Some mornings he smelled like it, too.

And yes, he was jealous.

Things developed into a pattern when he got to the mobil home. He pulled up and Micki met him at the door, and every now and then she reached up and pecked him on the cheek, then O'Malley would drag his ass out of the bedroom...

And Sean would say: "How's it hangin', Peckerhead?"

"Down to my knees. You?"

"Pointin' at the moon, Ace." And Sean would point at Micki with his thumb -- and they all laughed.

So O'Malley struggled, academically anyway, through academy, but he graduated -- at the bottom of their class -- but once he was on the street he became everybody's favorite. He was the class clown in briefing, cracking smiles wherever he went, and whenever he had dealings with the public, even as a rookie, his supervisors got calls telling what a great officer he was, and that he was an asset to the community, and to the department.

And it was the truth. He was.

But in time his stint in helicopters called out to him, and a few years after academy he applied to and was accepted in the department's Aviation Division. After Sean finished training on Jet Rangers, he moved downtown, to Central Division, and life for them finally seemed better than good. O'Malley bought a house and moved his family in, and they finally had a new car, a first in their lives.

He invited Sean and his family over for an afternoon Bar-B-Q after the transfer, and their kids played in the pool while the wives talked about babies, and he and Sean talked about their days together in Academy. And the thing was, he realized, he really liked Sean, missed working with him. He was a friend, despite their radically different upbringings, and pretty soon the O'Malley's were coming over most weekends. They came over for Thanksgiving, and there were Christmas presents waiting at his house for Sean's kids, and so over the next year they became best friends. Again, or maybe just for the first time.

One night Micki called him -- in tears, begged him to come over, and when he got there she took him to their bathroom. Sean was curled up in the bathtub, crying, and he smelled like a brewery. And urine. Sean was in a fetal ball, sobbing as recollections of hot L-Zs, going in for wounded troops, coursed through veins of memory, but it was apparent there was a whole lot more going on that just simple recollections.

He called his wife, who by that time was a resident in Internal Medicine, and he asked her to come over. After his wife examined Sean, she recommended he go see a psychiatrist, even a VA shrink -- if they wanted to keep the department in the dark, but in the end it didn't matter. O'Malley's episode that night wasn't his first, Micki sobbed, but this one, she said, was her last. Sean apparently grew violent as his episodes lagged, and Micki showed off bruising all over her body, and they loaded Sean's kids in his wife's car and she drove them to their house.

When it became apparent Sean wasn't coming out of this one, he took Sean to the ER, checked him in and then called Tom Anders, one of the assistant chiefs. Anders had been a light colonel in 'Nam, and he knew the score. He took over and arranged for treatment with the VA, and when that fell short the department stepped in, and O'Malley went onto so-called 'light-duty' after he was cut loose from the hospital. He landed in dispatch, taking 911 calls and sending them to the appropriate operator, but he came to work with dark bags under his eyes, and often smelling like he hadn't bathed in days.

Yet even the stress of taking calls proved too much, and one night Sean called him, in dire straits indeed. He got to the house just in time.

O'Malley was curled up in the bathtub again, a 45 Colt in his hand, the barrel in his mouth. He saw that and leapt on his friend, disarmed him, then called Chief Anders, and they carried him to the ER again. O'Malley spent almost a year at a psychiatric hospital after that, but Micki never filed for divorce. She and the kids stayed away, lived with he and his wife, but she never gave up on him.

When he was released this time he was put on disability, told he'd never work for the department as a sworn officer again, so Sean started applying with other departments in the region, and in the end, the County Sheriff took him on, baggage and all. After Micki agreed to move back in, they gathered all the kid's and Micki's belongings and drove her back to Sean's house, but it was an uneasy, uncomfortable reunion.

Still, a new routine developed, and weekend Bar-B-Qs featured in their lives once again. Sean was sober, he was off medication and feeling good, and he was enjoying the work over at the S-O -- the Sheriff's Office.

"So, what are you doing?" he asked.

"Serving paper, for the most part. Divorce, bad checks and evictions, but sometimes arrest and search warrants."

"Really? That sounds a little intense?"

"Only had to do a couple so far, and I think I'm dealing with it okay."

"Cool."

"What about you? What are you up to know?"

"Still on motors, but I just went to Tac school. The thinking is I can get to calls faster on the bike, maybe do a little recon before the rest of the team shows up, something like that."

"Still doing the FTO thing?"

"Yup."

"You give up on flying again?"

And he shook his head, took a deep breath and held it. "Nope," he said, letting out his breath, "and I don't suppose I can ignore the situation much longer?"

"Is it Annie?"

"Yeah."

"You know, you're a good cop, but this isn't what you were meant to do."

He nodded. "I know, but the thing is, it's as fun now as it was when I started."

"Fun? That almost sounds like the kid inside talking, ya know?"

"Maybe so. Micki looks good, Sean. Makes me happy to see you two together again."

"I couldn't live without her, you know?"

"I do. I think it's mutual, too."

And O'Malley nodded his head, looking across the yard at his wife, his 'bestest friend in the whole world.' "I worry about..." he started, then he stuttered to a stop, thought about what he was trying to say. "I worry about her, if something happened to me, ya know?"

"You don't have to."

And O'Malley looked at him. "You love her, don't you?"

"I love you both. We both do."

And O'Malley nodded. "I know. You've meant the world to us, too."

"Come on, we better check on the ribs..."

And so time passed, several months, anyway, then one night, when he was working traffic on a summer's evening, he got a Tac callout and rode over to a dodgy part of town, an area of run down bungalows over by Fair Park, and it turned out the Sheriff's Office was going to try and serve an arrest and search warrant at a so-called 'cook-house' -- a house where drugs were -- allegedly -- being manufactured. The warrant mentioned PCP and stolen automatic weapons, too, stolen from a National Guard armory, so a heavy Tac call-out was in progress.

He saw O'Malley standing in a group with patrol officers and other S-O deputies, and as he pulled up on his bike Sean turned and shot him the thumb's up. "See they finally took the training wheels off that thing," Sean said, grinning. "Do that mean you finally knows how to ride that thar thing?"

"I don't know. This is my first day without 'em."

"So, how's it hangin', Peckerhead?"

"Down to my knees. You?"

"Pointin' at the moon, Ace."

And they laughed at time, at their time.

He geared up when the Tac van got on scene, and then the team discussed how to take the house. They would surround it first, then monitor windows for activity, and when they had an idea of who was where, they'd storm all the doors simultaneously, so the team spread out while patrolmen blocked off the ends of the block. People in the houses around the suspects' house were evacuated, then the Sheriff's deputies and Tac team members moved to the doors and windows.

He and O'Malley were teamed up and assigned the back door.

When the main team shouted "Police!" and crashed through the front door, he and O'Malley went through the back door. The way ahead was a simple, narrow hallway, with two bedroom doors about ten feet down the narrow corridor, on opposite sides of the way. There was pandemonium in the front part of the house, and they eased their way down the hall with their backs on the walls, each covering the opposite side of their approach, with O'Malley a little ahead of him.

As Sean approached the first door he saw the shotgun blast before it registered, and he saw O'Malley fall to the floor as gunfire erupted all over the house. He had an H&K MP5 and he turned, emptied the 30 round magazine through the wall and dropped the magazine, then reloaded. Moving forward, and low now, he peered around the corner into the bedroom, saw a man holding onto his belly, but with shotgun still in hand. Then the shotgun was coming up again, and he emptied the clip into the man's chest and head. He darted into the room, checked to see no one else was hiding, then he dashed back to check on Sean.

O'Malley's neck and face were a tangled mass of blood and sinew; buckshot had penetrated his left eye and that was simply gone, now a pulpy mess, but blood was pulsing out of two neck wounds, and foamy blood was coming out his mouth and nose. He leaned close, called out "MEDIC!" -- and tried to staunch the flow coming from the neck woulds.

O'Malley grabbed him by the vest, pulled him close, and his last words were "Micki, Micki...loves you too..."

He took his friend's hand, held on tight. "Don't worry about her. I've got your back."

He felt a last squeeze, then his friend slipped away.

He sat in that hallway for hours, holding his friend's hand all the while, and people kept their distance.

Services were not quite a week later, at a Catholic Church over off Oak Lawn, and there wasn't room enough for all the cops and deputies and Army buddies that came, and the procession out Hillcrest to Northwest Highway was simply huge.

Micki O'Malley stood by his side all the while, dressed in black of course, but everyone looked at her, then him, and shook their heads. It was so obvious now, wasn't it? She'd been in love with him, and it had driven Sean to drink. That had to be it. Why else would such a great guy have had such a rough time?

IV

"241, are you clear for a call?"

He put his ticket book in the Harley's saddlebag and clamped it shut, then reached the radio.

"241, go head."

"Uh, 241, reports of a male, black, on the overpass, I-20 and Highway 67, witnesses advise they think he may jump."

"41, code 5."

"241, en route at 2245 hours."

He u-turned in traffic, rode as quickly as he dared to an on-ramp for 67 and got on the highway, drove the half mile to the bridge and saw a man sitting on the railing, his feet dangling over the edge, as he approached. An ambulance was already on scene, stopped just ahead of the man; the paramedics were standing back from the man -- and they were clearly agitated.

"41, show me code six, and let's get a few units out here to close the ramp."

"241 at 2248 hours."

He walked up to the man -- who turned out to be a kid, just a very big, black kid -- and the kid had a pistol in his hand. It looked like a Beretta, or a Brazilian knock-off of a Beretta, but he could see there wasn't a magazine in the stock, that it didn't look 'right' -- and he sighed.

"I told them," the kid said, waving the pistol at the paramedics, "and I'm tellin' you, mutha-fucka...keep the fuck away from me."

"Yeah. Sure," he said as he walked closer, but he stopped a few feet short and leaned on the heavy tubular rail, his back to the traffic roaring by fifty feet below. He looked at the kid for a minute, then slid down until he was sitting on the pavement -- and he could feel the kid staring at him, not sure what the hell was going on now.

"You know, my best friend died a couple months ago. A friend, here, on the force. He was killed, and I've been taking care of his wife and kids ever since."

The kid looked at him, still not sure what was going on, but he turned now, and looked down at the cop.

"You know what the real pisser is? She's pregnant again. She just told me, a couple nights ago. The problem is, well, I'm married."

The kid slid down to the pavement and sat next to him. "Whoa...is it, like possible the kid is yours?"

"Yup."

"Fuck...dude...what are you gonna do?"