Stake Out……
It was a very long robbery surveillance….a very, very long series of nights on stake outs; days on end, of watching….and waiting…..for a gang to strike liquor stores that stayed open late or all night. Most of the time liquor store robberies were not tough cases because most stores had closed circuit cameras, but the stores in this area couldn't afford that. This was a depressed area of the city, most merchants could only afford a mock up of a camera and no video capture whatsoever.
The sidewalks were littered with cigarette butts, shards of glass from broken beer bottles and crack vials glittered like semi-precious stones on the ground. The stores themselves were covered in graffiti and bars covered the windows. Every telephone pole was papered with some advertisement for cheap cell phones, free condoms or some way to become a millionaire at home. It was depressing and at night sodium lights flickered casting everything in a sickly pinkish cast.
The crimes were vicious; the perpetrators merciless. They killed without compunction leaving no witnesses alive. The only lead they had was a crew of four men, they thought, dressed all in black, observed by a passerby, leaving one of the scenes in Barrack Obama masks. As a result they were looking for ghosts.
Everyone was strung out on caffeine and punchy from lack of sleep. All day long they worked leads on robberies. Pulling out all the stops before the media turned the story into a vigilante's dream, they were tracking down and interviewing priors where the perps wore masks, any robberies of area liquor stores, and all robberies where the MO was the perps killed everyone, but were getting nowhere. Reese wanted to shoot someone, perhaps even herself, she thought.
This was the third night she and Crews spent in the car.
Coffee cups and fast food wrappers littered the backseat floorboards. Thankfully most of what Crews brought to munch on was biodegradable and he dumped it out the window of the car, like apple cores or banana peels or the car would have smelt like a dumpster. It gave them a lot of time to talk, but Dani Reese was not a big talker
"What smells in here?" Dani said sniffing the air after rolling up her window to keep the A/C in.
"I think it's us" Charlie said chagrinned. After this long without sleep, Charlie had become even more nonsensical than usual. He'd run through every story he could think of from his three short years on patrol before his arrest and trial. Dani now knew more about Bobby Stark than she ever wanted to.
It was approaching 3AM and they both continued to talk just to stay vertical. The things they talked about ranged from the weather to locker room talk at the station, but they'd almost exhausted cop topics when Charlie broached the one he'd been avoiding for days.
"So…. What about the Bank of LA robbery?" he let the comment just hang between them.
"What about it?" Dani said non-committally "I was twelve, what would I know about it?"
Charlie turned in his seat and looked at her. He spoke her name in a long drawn out question "Reese…. Your father was the SWAT Team Leader. A SWAT Team that just happened to be on a training exercise less than a block from where the biggest robbery in the city's history went down and $18 million dollars vanished. I think you know more than you think."
"Do I now?" she said sharply and then after a few seconds - thinking aloud she said it again only this time softly almost inaudible "Do I?"
Charlie paused as the gears in her brain clicked and engaged. He could see her brow furrow trying to recall things that as twelve year old probably meant nothing to her, but now…. Well, now things that meant a lot to both of them.
He could see it the exactly moment when the piece fell into place for her, her brow eased from recollecting and a look of surprise crossed her face. She instantly realized that locked in the back of her mind was a detail that as a cop would have been glaringly apparent, but as a kid meant nothing.
"He came home with a bag. My mom was upset about all the shooting, but he was only concerned about his gear bag. Only thing is he never brought gear home before." She stopped for second. "Was that the money?" she asked herself quietly.
She shook her head and looked at Crews "did my father bring $18 million dollars to our house in a black SWAT gear bag?" Charlie just stared at her and shrugged. "Did he?" she asked again anxiously to no one in particular.
About that time four men rounded the corner, dressed in black, carrying messenger bags with masks in hand. They approached from behind their unmarked and had Charlie not been turned in his seat watching Dani, he'd have not detected them as they walked past on their way to another night of mayhem. The rest of the surveillance unit must be checking their eyelids for holes Charlie thought how the hell did they get that close?
'Heads up" he said motioning behind her. Dani slunk in her sit and became incredibly still in the darkened car as the men passed within ten feet of her window. She eased her pistol from its holster and carefully locked a round into the chamber. "Say when" she told her partner in a tense whisper.
Charlie held his breath until they were well past Dani. At that range, based on the axiom "action beats reaction" had the bad guys made them - Dani would be dead before he could break leather. "Be still, Dani, just be still" he prayed aloud hoping his partner would not get impatient and crack her door before he thought they were far enough away for a decent stand off.
He balanced the threat to Dani - who would be exposed the minute she opened her door - with the distance to the liquor store. He watched her fingers curl around the door handle as he coached "wait for it". When Charlie thought the perps were just over half way between them and the store, Charlie said "let me go first" knowing full well she wouldn't.
He got the car door open just a fraction of a second before Dani had hers ajar and heard her announced "Police. Freeze" clearly and unequivocally. The next few moments occurred in slow motion as the men whirled, guns already in hand and Reese stood behind the door of the car with her pistol aimed at them. He and Dani fired simultaneously and the middle two men were spun by the impact of their initial volley and went down hard.
There's never any time in a gunfight when you are outnumbered two to one to figure out who is going to shoot whom, to plan, to rehearse, to discuss in committee. It seems to happen slowly, but in reality is all occurs in the blink of an eye. Two or three bullets struck the windshield and he saw the muzzle flashes from at least one of the perps as he got off a string of wild shots.
Charlie flinched as the mirror on his door exploded in a mixed of plastic and flying glass, thankful that his emerging from the car first had drawn most of their attention. He had the engine block and most of the car in front of him, shielding him from the 9mm bullets' bite. The glass in his window shattered and he felt the heat from a bullet grazing his right side, under his arm, like a rope burn across his rib cage. He winced and teared up but stayed focused on the threat.
Charlie fired again, his well placed shots slamming into the remaining perps. He emptied his magazine, as the incoming fire stopped and the remaining shooters went down. He looked down briefly, reloading and hearing his empty magazine clatter on the pavement. He moved forward cautiously, rounding the front of the car in a high cover position kicking guns away from the sprawling bodies on the sidewalk. The whole thing had taken less than 20 seconds.
He turned expecting to see Reese right behind him, but she was not. Charlie's heart leapt into his throat. She was still behind the door of the car, but her window glass was also gone. Charlie couldn't remember if her window was up or down when the shooting started and then remembered her rolling the window up. The darkened street made it hard to make out colors and he squinted at her trying to remember if dark shirt looked wet before this started.
He spoke to her "Reese" anxiously, then again "Reese" more excited still.
Dani's mouth moved but no sound came out. As Charlie watched, Dani's eyes rolled back and she fell to the pavement, alert and upright until the threat had passed. He blinked as he took in his partner sprawled on the sidewalk in the cubed safety glass from her window, still gripping her pistol, always the cop.