"One shot to the heart. Killed him instantly. Looks like a .38 cal.", Mike noted quietly, as he bent over the body of their male suspect, Al Mulligan, lying halfway down the wooden stairwell in a puddle of his own blood.
The call about shots fired had come in shortly after they'd hit the road. The location being the 400th block of Lombard right near Stockton had made the blood freeze in his veins, as he sped the Galaxy down the busy Columbus Street corridor, nearly running over a pedestrian on the way to the crime scene that he knew would somehow involve his partner.
"Sounds like Steve to me. He must have figured out a way to escape…", Lenny muttered, as he followed the Lieutenant upstairs. The building, located just three houses down from another one they had checked on few days ago, had a large foreclosure sign on the front door. The fact that it was in the process of changing ownership to the lending bank could have been the key parameter for it to be overlooked on the initial R&I report.
"Let's wait until we see the whole place before coming to any conclusions…"
Carefully stepping around the top of the stairwell, Mike saw a white wooden door with the apartment number 5 slightly ajar, a set of bloody handprints on it, as if their owner was trying to close it but failed to do so.
Reaching for his .38 and gesturing for Lenny to stay back, Mike slowly approached the scene, trying to glance through the small crack in the door, his eyes falling onto another body on the ground.
As he used his foot to pry the door open even farther, he immediately recognized the figure on the floor as their female suspect, Susan Hamlin, shot three times in the chest, her blood splattered against the nearby wall.
"Steve?", Mike called out, but everything inside remained perfectly still.
With his gun at the ready, he slowly gained access to the small apartment that was barren except for a few kitchen cabinets and a deteriorated bathroom to the left. Straight ahead laid a large empty room with boarded up windows, barely letting in any daylight. The wood beneath his feet creaked in protest as he made his way across, taking one slow step at a time.
Unable, or better yet, unwilling to yield his direct order, Lenny appeared behind him, his curious eyes taking in the disturbing scene.
Noting a discarded set of handcuffs as he passed the small kitchen table, Mike ducked the ill-placed cabinet right near the doorframe to the large room, before entering what he figured was torment central.
And it didn't disappoint.
The room was a mess between different sets of silk rags and cotton cloths scattered all over the place. Small puddles of blood stained the compromised wooden floor below, and a lonely radiator nearby seemed to have been the token item to keep their prisoners tied to.
Mike sighed as he bent down near the scene, his worried eyes racing across the fins of the radiator, noting another set of handcuffs that still dangled carelessly nearby.
And then he saw it.
"Lenny."
Using his fingertips to brush across the skid marks that formed a perfect half circle against the wood, he waited until the Psychiatrist bent down next to him.
"Looks like some sign of struggle.", Lenny speculated, his eyes trying to meet Mike's.
"Looks to me like leather Cowboy boots going back and forth along this floor. I bet he was tied up right here…"
"I bet you're right. This could be some sort of signal. Or him thrashing in pain. Because look, there are a few smaller ones over there."
Pointing at several black marks closer to the radiator, Lenny sighed, before falling silent again.
When nothing more was said, the Psychiatrist got back on his feet, and walked over to the kitchen. Mike could hear from the commotion of glass bottles being moved across the counter that Lenny was busy examining the meds he'd seen as he walked in.
"Hey…Mike?"
Standing back up, even though his eyes remained glued on the signs of his partners disheartening struggle for the longest time, Mike followed the Psychiatrist into the kitchen, only to see his face flooded with worry.
"I am looking at these medications here…", he explained, his fingers nervously clenching one of the smaller glass bottles half-full with clear liquid, "They were just picked up two days ago. Even if Susan divided the doses up between both Randy and Steve, there is a lot of medication missing."
"What do you mean?", Mike pried, growing increasingly frustrated at the riddles and arbitrary facts thrown at him.
"I mean that this cocktail, for a lack of a better word, mixed with the ACE sitting on the dining room table back there is…it's a really bad combination. Under the wrong circumstances, it could drive Steve into such a psychosis; he won't be able to remember who he is, or the difference between right and wrong, Mike. He's going to be so bent, there's no telling where in the world his mind would take him."
"He's gotta be around here someplace. The shots were reported 45 minutes ago. We're going to start canvassing the area for him now."
"Well, for what it's worth…", Lenny started and reached for a packaged syringe from the counter, before unwrapping it and filling it with liquid from one of the bigger bottles, "Let's be sure that he gets apprehended safely."
Noting Mike's silence, Lenny finished drawing up the exact amount of liquid, before placing the plastic cap back onto the needle and sliding the syringe into the Lieutenant's coat pocket.
"This is enough Diazepam to render him unconscious for several hours. When you find him, and tackle him, which I am certain you're going to have to do, inject that into his thigh or upper arm, whatever is easiest at the time. In his heightened state of agitation, it may take up to fifteen minutes to take effect though, so you gotta keep him restrained until he passes out."
"What are you talking about?", raising his voice in anger, Mike reached into his coat and surfaced the syringe again, eyeing it suspiciously, "I am not going to drug my partner after everything he's just been through! He's not some wild animal that needs to get darted."
"You may not have a choice, because there's a damn good chance that this is how this entire fiasco will unfold.", Lenny countered, his voice stern, as he pointed outside, "With the mix of these drugs in his system, he's going to be a ravaging lunatic, for all we know. Think about it Mike; he's got his gun, he's already used it to kill our two suspects- and he may use it to try and shoot you if you appear as a threat to him. But what if he pulls it at another police officer? What if they shoot back? Think long and hard about that. Right now, you are the only one who still might be able to get through to him, and get close enough to inject him with the sedative. Once he's down, I'll take him to Franklin and we'll keep him heavily sedated for a couple of days, enough for his system to flush out these meds and for him to return to normal. That's the most humane and safe thing to do at the moment. But until then, for all we know, he's a ticking time bomb. There's no telling what horrific nightmares that disturbed mind of his is going to create under the influence of these toxins, and far worse, what they will make him do. From my professional experience, I guarantee you; he will do anything he can to get away from those visions…even kill others- or himself."