You're spat out cold in your birthday suit and slapped good and hard, and it only gets worse from there. John Robin had been thinking that a lot this year, but the last place he needed that butt-naked feeling was at the wrong end of a gun, with his partner holed up God-knows-where.
After an uneasy fall and winter which the local paper had proclaimed "Open Season on the Richmond PD," his world was finally trying to right itself. No leads had ever panned out in either Bill Pride's shooting or his own brutal attack, something he swore would have been different if he'd been around to participate in the investigations. The lack of progress on the attacks hadn't looked good in the press, but nowhere did it sting more fiercely than within the walls of police headquarters.
John himself had spent nearly two months of that time in the hospital, and the doctors considered him amazingly lucky—a crossbow bolt through the torso generally killed you a lot deader than that. It had taken weeks of physical therapy just to stand up and walk again.
Getting back to work had been a personal triumph. However, the post "Open Season" PD and even his own squad room felt like a foreign country.
The Canal Walk mugging was a case in point. John worked Little over about it all the way out of the court building and into the car.
"For Christ's sake, Miguelito—" Mike Little had not a drop of Hispanic blood in him, but lately the diminutive fit—"what in hell were you doing stowing the cigarette butt in your desk?"
Little shook a headful of short red curls, freckles deepening in a flush of crimson. "It was only in there five minutes before I checked it into evidence, we knew this was coming, you've known about this for weeks, and there's nothing we can do about it now, so will you please piss off!" Avoiding John's gaze, he threw a hand up as if to toss the whole fiasco like a bomb into the crowd of pedestrians crossing Eighth Street at lunch hour.
"It was a slam dunk! Somebody from the French diplomatic corps, for Chrissakes! And we looked like idiots."
"I looked like an idiot. Everybody knows whose screw-up it was."
The light turned green and John turned east onto Broad. The tall roofs ascended like stair steps as they headed toward MCV Hospital. "The whole department looked like idiots," said John.
A dispatcher's honeyed voice broke a hollow silence. "One-two-five, respond to three hundred Virginia Street in reference to an armed mental party."
Vistas on the James. Right on the damn Canal Walk, where both these bumblefucks had happened. John turned the blue flashers on and had just thumbed the transmitter when—
"What are you doing?" whined Little. "Let the uniforms get that, it's their call."
"What?" John paused, mike in hand.
Little's eyes made two innocent green saucers in a bland baby face. "It's their call."
"It's a police call," John said.
From the radio a patrol unit squawked, "One-two-five. I copy. Code one. En route from Cary and Nineteenth."
John thumbed the talk button and said, "Unit seven-eight-one. We'll be on scene in thirty seconds. Hold the air!"
"Seven-eight-one, additional information on the call: Caller described a loud argument between her two neighbors. Male subject now has a gun and is threatening suicide."
"Aww, Jesus, John," Little exploded, arms flapping like a marionette's. "We don't have to take this call. Whyn't you let the harness guys pull the wagon?"
"One way streets, Little. He's gonna have to go all the way around his fingers to get to his thumb." John put the siren on and turned right. Signal lights came on ahead of them, but they still had to go around drivers who refused to move. "It's a police call. Are you a cop or not?"
Cobblestones growled in their ears and shook their green 2005 Crown Vic as they sped down Virginia Street and under the expressway. Four- to six-story buildings looked down on trendy shops and eateries.
On the riverbank, Vistas on the James's glass-fronted, high-dollar condos rose twelve stories above the floodwall. The building sported a multilevel parking garage and twenty-four hour security in the lobby. Former governor and mayor Douglas Wilder lived in a unit on the sixth floor. It was also home to "The Scudder Residence," "the most spectacular home in Richmond." Strange to be getting an "armed" anything here; it wasn't a place that got a lot of police calls.
The Kanawha Canal fountain twinkled by on the left. John pulled up in the cul-de-sac by the main entrance to the high-rise, snatched up the ignition keys, and jumped out. The entrance door showed him Little's reflection, dragging himself out of the passenger side. John waited a half second, shot Little a scowl, and strode into the lobby.
Polished beige tiles shone up at him. A rainbow of fish and sea plants gleamed in a crystal blue aquarium set into the opposite wall.
A pale, mid-forties woman with a lemon polka-dotted dress, a cinnamon-dyed coif, and a stricken look on her face turned toward him in the lobby. An unarmed guard, a short black woman in uniform, ran in from a side corridor. John flashed them both his badge.
"It's apartment sixteen-twelve, on the river side," said the guard. "There's a struggle over a gun."
"Any idea what's going on?" John flashed a glance at the woman in yellow. "It's Tyler Greenhouse and his daughter," stammered the woman. "Tyler's my neighbor. He had a stroke, and she moved in to take care of him."
Mike sauntered in, missing half of what the woman had just said. She went on. "They don't get along. I hear arguments over there a lot, but—"
"Stay right here. We're going to have more questions for you," John interrupted the older woman. He turned to the security guard. "Take us to the apartment, and then come back down here for our backup officers."
The elevator chimed behind him and the guard hurried past him to the door, which head-butted a plastic trash can tipped over on its side.
John had played basketball at Duke and wasn't a pound over his playing weight, but six flights of stairs were too many for him just now. He picked up the trash can as the security guard punched the sixth floor button. No Little.
"Unit seven-eight-one requesting backup..." Little's voice drifted in. Then footsteps slapped the polished tiles outside; Little pounding in from the lobby. The doors chimed and slid shut. John reached reflexively for the hold button, but stopped. No sense in a potential fatality just because of two minutes' wait. The doors opened again onto a corridor that looked like a posh hotel's.
"This way, Detective." The security guard sprinted off to the left. They swished down a tan, narrow tunnel, footsteps muffled on a plush beige carpet with a filigree design in chocolate. Tall cherry doors flashed past. They turned left again; bluish daylight spilled into the hallway from an open door ahead.
A middle-aged baritone half-shouted, half-whined into the padded silence, "—that bad a parent? I bent over backwards for you kids! If I'm such a problem, just say the word!"
John crowded the wall, peered into the open doorway, and brought his gun up. Two dark shapes silhouetted against the gleam of floor-to-ceiling glass. The subjects stood close and the room stretched deep, casting the scene in shadow.
"I know you're just waiting to get your hands on this place anyway," the man went on, "not that you'd ever be able to pay the mortgage!"
Faces and features coalesced in the bluish glare like phantoms from mist. Six feet tall and square of jaw, the subject jerked his arms in anger. At the end of one gesticulating arm, smoky daylight glinted off the barrel of a .44 Smith and Wesson revolver. A woman wavered on the left like a non-swimmer watching someone drown.
"Police!" John shouted. "Put the gun down! Hands in the air!"
A ringing scream burst from the woman on the left. Quick glance: Five four, round, younger woman, denim skirt, short brown hair.
"No! You can't kill my dad!"
She flew behind the kitchen counter—the nearest solid object—and cowered behind it. "If you shoot him I'm gonna sue you for every penny I can get!"
Tyler jumped at his daughter's sudden motion and half-turned toward the counter, showing John his left side.
Where the fuck is Mike? Mike Little had talked something like thirty people down off the Manchester Bridge, and somehow John had never caught a single suicide call in seven years of police work. Finally he tried, "Nobody's killing anybody. What's your name, sir? Put the gun down on the carpet and your hands in the air, and it'll be all right." A siren screamed on a nearby street.
The older man just stared past him, weapon half-raised, as if in a daze.
"I'm Detective John Robin. Sir, did you hear me? I said, put the gun down."
Tyler didn't seem to hear him. John didn't want to risk approaching him. "Sir? This is the police. Put the gun on the floor."
No response.
"Stop aiming at him! He's not going to shoot you! You can't kill my dad!"
"Ma'am, is your father hard of hearing, or under the influence of any—"
Mike Little chose that moment to lumber down the hall and catapult into the room. "Police! Drop the weapon or we'll shoot!"
His sheer volume broke Tyler out of his daze. The gunman turned and took a hulking step toward them, like an enraged bear. His weapon moved in an arc to point at his own temple. "What the hell!" he roared. "I'll do it myself! Nobody cares about me, anyway! Nobody ever has! They're all just waiting for me to die!"
"Put the gun down!" Little shouted. His bulky six feet loomed large in the bluish haze, weapon trembling at the ready.
John scowled at Mike's back and gave it another go. "Sir, you don't want to end your life. Whatever is going on here, there's some way to sort it out." He worked at getting a calm, compassionate note into his voice. "But you won't ever find that out if you pull the trigger. Put the gun on the floor." And don't shoot my partner. I don't know what the hell he thinks he's doing.
Tyler glanced at Mike Little. "You put yours down!"
John spoke before Mike could say anything. "We can't do that, sir. As long as you're holding a loaded firearm, you're endangering people in neighboring apartments. You put yours down, and then we can put ours down."
Tyler's eyes reddened. Mike said, "Just put the gun down, and we'll get you some help. Everything will be okay."
Tyler's brows rushed together over a nose that looked like a knife blade. "You're gonna get me help? Get her some help!" The gun swung to point at the kitchen counter. "Look at her! Gained sixty pounds in a year, got a business degree and a car I paid for and she's pulling espressos in a Starbucks. She's got that no-good boyfriend, and she's gonna tell me I've got problems?" The muzzle of the weapon pressed back into the man's temple.
Feet brushed on thick carpet beyond the open door. Knocks sounded in the corridor. The uniformed backups' voices drifted in: "Afternoon, Ma'am. We've got a situation on this floor, and we need to evacuate this section of the building."
Tyler's chest heaved. "I've got a Ph.D. from MIT. I make seven figures a year! I supported their lazy mother til she remarried and I put all of them through school. When she can do half of that, then she can tell me what a problem I am!"
From behind the counter came an exasperated, "Dad ... just give the man the gun."
Mike said, "Sir, you don't want to do this in front of your daughter. Put the gun down."
As pissed as he is at her, that might not be the best tactic. John glanced down, noticed the pristine white carpet underfoot, and tried, "Besides, you don't want to ruin this nice carpet."
Finally, the guy really looked at him.
John shrugged one shoulder and tried to add some gentle humor. "I mean, you'd never get it out. Suppose you didn't die? I don't even want to think what it'd cost."
The quick chin-tremble, poignant on such a chiseled jaw, showed that Tyler knew the jig was up. He wasn't going to do anything, and he knew the cops knew it.
"Come on, you don't want this to get any worse than it already is," John said. "Just put it down."
Tyler lowered the weapon on an arm that fell slack like a bungee cord. Mike dove for it and grabbed it before he could even lower it to the floor.
John darted around him to cuff Tyler's hands behind him. Tyler gave him a sullen, "You don't have to do that. I'm not going to hurt you."
***
John began the process of calling Crisis and getting an Emergency Custody Order and turned the rest of it over to the uniformed patrolman who had originally answered the call. He had another intervention to make, and that was with Mike. Little had ducked out by volunteering to go to headquarters for the paperwork. Chicken. The sun dropped toward the horizon as John pulled in to headquarters.
"C'mere." He caught Mike in the hall, grabbed him by the arm, and steered him into the floor broom closet. He hit the lights and shut the door.
"Hey!" Mike spun around.
John jabbed his finger in Mike's face. "I've about had it with you," he said, trying to keep his voice down. "I've worked with you for a year and I know you're a good cop, but ever since I was in the hospital your work has gone to shit. You apologized your brains out over me getting shot and it wasn't even your fault. Now you're lagging your ass behind and leaving me up there alone for a whole damn year?"
Little's fair skin flushed redder than his hair.
"And then standing there broadside like that? Next time you're gonna get your head blown off, and I'm not hanging around waiting for it to happen." John stepped forward, crowding himself into Mike's space. "I don't care what that department psychologist said. You're a danger to yourself and you're going to start endangering other people."
Mike's green eyes narrowed to slits and his jaw clenched. "What the hell are you talking about? You just got lucky up there! ‛They'll never get the carpet clean—?' What was that? You're just lucky the guy didn't shoot himself!"
"I'm gonna tell you this, and I'm gonna say it once. The next time I'm saying it to Arlene. You go on medical leave right now and get yourself some real help, or I'm not working with you."
"Like fuck! Psychologist says I'm fine, and I'm not driving a damn desk!"
"You're not fine, and that's what Arlene is gonna hear from me if you're not on leave as of tomorrow."
"Fuck you, Robin!"
John caught the punch just as Mike wound up for it, and wouldn't let go of his arm. Little pulled and struggled. Their two bodies heaved back and forth, jostling shelves full of cleaning supplies and sending a mop clattering out of a big yellow bucket onto the floor.
"It's not your fault something happened to me, Mike! Beating me up about it isn't going to help!" Finally, Mike pulled loose and his eyes bored straight through John, smoking with the defensive kind of hate that only came from deep embarrassment.
They stood there, panting and glaring at one another.
John turned, opened the door, and stepped out. He almost walked right into their new sergeant—Arlene, who stood, arms folded, in the hallway.
"Do you two want to explain what is going on?"
"Not really." John gave her a "trust-me-you-don't-want-to-know" headshake and headed for the squad room. "I'll tell you about it tomorrow."
"Robin!" growled Arlene.
John half-turned on his way down the hall. "Sarge, don't ask me til tomorrow. Really."
He hurried to his desk in the squad room, hoping to slip out the door before Arlene charged down the hall and caught up with him. He reached reflexively behind him, checking that he still had all his gear, and realized he did not; he'd used his own handcuffs on Tyler Greenhouse, and the uniformed cop—one-two-five—still had them, probably at the emergency room where they were no doubt still waiting for a bed at Tucker Psychiatric.
It was a perfect excuse to duck out. He checked the corridor. Arlene hovered outside the men's room, where Little must have taken refuge. John hustled out and down the back stairs.
***
At the emergency room Donna had toughened up—less shrill, more bulldog. She stood guard outside her father's cubicle, arms folded, and dove like a falcon for every white coat that approached. "Are you the psychiatrist? Are you the psychiatrist?"
John scanned the emergency department for one-two-five, whom he knew only as the amateur photographer cop who left amazing screensavers on all the squad car computers.
"Sir." John turned to find him beckoning from the reception desk, holding up his handcuffs. He walked over and took them, glancing at the officer's name tag. "Thanks, Campbell." He pointed surreptitiously at Donna. "What is this about?"
Campbell shrugged. "Hanged if I know. Those two have been at each other in that cubicle ever since she got here."
Donna's present target, a tall mid-forties woman with dark hair slicked back in a bun, stopped and said, "Yes, I'm Dr. Jenbeck. What can I do for you?" Donna planted herself right in her path.
"And you're on your way to cubicle thirteen, right?"
"Right."
Donna lowered her voice to a conspiratorial murmur, and John edged closer.
"I'm Donna Greenhouse, Tyler Greenhouse's daughter." Donna shook the psychiatrist's hand. "No matter what goes on in there, no matter what he tells you, I want you to do a diagnostic interview for BPD. I'm not leaving here until this is done. I mean it."
The doctor's expression went professional-blank. "Input from family members is always something I take into consideration," she said, "but my diagnosis and treatment decisions are confidential. I'd be happy to speak more with you after I speak with your father." She tried to walk around Donna, who swung into her path again like a battleship.
"This is our family's third trip through the mental health system," she grated. "I don't expect too many more chances at this." She bit her lip. "Don't make me chain myself outside your office or some goddamned thing. Please."