The sergeant woke with a pounding pain, a head like a half-chewed caramel.
The bed beside him was empty. Light streamed in through the billowing sheers of the bedroom curtains and the phone was ringing. The wife was a fresh-air freak, but he was used to the chill by now.
“Ugh,” he said, making a grab for it. “Mmn. Hello.”
He grumbled as politely as he could through the thick fog of an hour’s sleep and a pair of double scotches. There was a dull ache behind his eyes.
“It’s Riley! We got another runner,” a voice bellowed excitedly into the phone.
“A wha—” gasped the sergeant. “A runner?”
“That Anderson kid,” began Riley.
Phil was awake now. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and reached for the glass of water his wife habitually had there.
“What happened?” he asked flatly and succinctly, more lucid-sounding, even to his own ears.
Calmly.
“As soon as they got him in the ward, he freaked out,” Riley reported as the sergeant jammed his feet into the slippers.
He bolted to the bathroom, and sat on the toilet, trying to save a second here, a second there. Like a race at times. Thank God for cordless phones. Riley’s cigarette-roughened, boozy voice kept droning in his ear, and pure adrenalin was making his hands shake.
“The guy tried to push back out, but they blocked the door. Then he was running around the halls with the guys trying to catch him, with all the nurses helping, and a couple of patients running around trying to stay out of the way,” Riley explained.
“So?” barked Oberon.
“So; he hit the panic door, the fire door at the far end. Down the stairs and out into the street,” advised the other shift supervisor.
Sergeant Oberon visualized fire alarms going off, noise and confusion, patients going all buggy…shit.
“So where is he now?” asked Phillip, knowing there would be questions, concerns.
“He’s dead, Phil.”
“Oh, my God.”
A sick pit opened up in the base of his guts, and it felt like his asshole was going to fall out. It was like being kicked in the nuts without the impact of a kick or blow.
“What did you guys do?” he barked. “Damn it!”
“Look, the guy holed up in a house on Knorr St. The two-hundred block. We weren’t even sure what house he went in. Some old folks say he went in their house, but that’s not where he stole the car from. Some guy was warming up the vehicle to go to work, and; well…he was headed right towards Gottschalk. He shot at the tires, but the car veered and hit a tree. Gottschalk called to him to come out, but he kept trying to start the engine. I guess it stalled on him. And then he shot him seven times.”
“Oh, Jesus, God, fuck, no.” moaned Phil Oberon.
“What kind of bozo shift you running here, Phil? I’ve never seen such a fuck-up, and two supposedly well-trained guys! You fuckin’ well put that dickhead Fry in for a fuckin’ award, didn’t you? You fuckin’ guys did the same thing a few months ago, didn’t you?”
Riley was livid with Oberon, who had never been spoken to like that by a fellow police officer in his entire life. The anger struck at his guts, a cold shot of adrenalin.
“Ease up, buddy! Let’s find out what happened here,” he retorted, neck bent over to hold the phone against his ear as he wrestled with the task of putting on his pants.
“Get your ass down here, Phil. You got a couple of young guys down here, they’re talking up a storm with the civilians, who are all over the fuckin’ place,” he was advised.
“Well. Tell them to use the ear pieces and tell them to back off the civvies! Then tell them to keep their fucking mouth shut!” he blurted at the other man.
He was practically falling over. One foot was hung up at the knee of his pants, the lower leg of the trousers was all twisted up or something.
“Christ! Tell them to turn down the friggin’ volume…”
“You fuckin’ cocksucker, Oberon! You never wondered why no one wants to make a mutual with you?”
“Hey, hey, hey,” protested Phil. “You’re getting way out of line, buddy.”
Momentarily he put the phone down to pull a T-shirt on.
“I’ll be there in twelve minutes,” he told Riley.
But Riley was already gone.
Chapter Forty-Eight
The giant mutant salamanders felt the heat of the sun…