Shock Wave

seventeen

Donna Tasker looked at the computer screen in the main office. She had checked the entire district, trying to see if any of the names that Billy had given her were registered. There were a lot of Wellses, but when she looked deeper, none came close to the ones he was looking for. It was six in the evening. Between phone calls to her friend in Broward County, and then to another friend in Martin County, she had blown three hours on this.

It really didn’t bother her; in fact, quite the opposite. Billy had never asked her for help before. She had to admit she felt a little thrill helping him put together a case, even though she had no idea what the case was about. But if he thought it was important enough to ask for help, it was important enough for her to do. She hadn’t done that when they were married, and she regretted it. She’d got so wrapped up in her own problems and worried about so many little things that she’d missed his attempts to get help.

After he’d shot his friend, the corrupt West Palm Beach cop, things had just unraveled. Billy had done what he had to do, but it had still haunted her ex-husband. He’d drift off sometimes, and she just knew what he was thinking about. Maybe someday she could make it up to him. Set things right. He was such a good guy, she hated to see him unhappy.

She made one last check of the system, then grabbed her cell phone and hit the first speed dial.

“Hello.”

She recognized his voice and smiled.

“Billy, it’s me.”

“Hey, everything all right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You don’t usually call out of the blue like this.”

She smiled to herself, feeling like a teenager with a crush. “I wanted to see if you’d recognize my voice if I just said, ‘It’s me.’ ”

“Promise I’ll never forget. How’s that?”

“Great.” She paused for a second. “I wanted to tell you that I couldn’t find Wells’ kids listed anywhere in Palm Beach County.”

“Damn.”

“And I checked Broward and Martin, too.”

“You did all that for me?”

“Of course.”

“I’m touched.”

“Don’t be a dork.” She smiled again and said, “I gotta go.”

“Thanks, Donna. You saved me a lot of time.”

After she hung up, she found herself thinking about her ex-husband for another five minutes.

Wells was exhausted. The late-night planning and work he’d done around his trailer were catching up with him. It was only noon but he needed some sleep.

He almost crawled up the low, shaky steps and then pushed his flimsy front door open. He immediately turned back to the door and looped the small wire that activated his front-door security system. He ran his fingers along the wires to the pulleys, making sure everything lined up and would work if someone tried to surprise him.

Satisfied he was secure from the front, and not real worried about the back, Wells stretched out on the soft couch left in the trailer by some previous tenant. The stained flower design and slight smell of urine didn’t really bother him as he quickly drifted off to sleep.

Tasker had swung by Sutter’s apartment on South Beach to speed up his partner. This was the break he’d been waiting for. The Homestead cop he’d spoken to, Mike Driscoll, had apparently stumbled across Wells living in the western part of the town. Now Tasker intended to use the information immediately.

Sutter came out of the historic old apartment building still buttoning his shirt, his Glock with silver-painted handles exposed on his hip, and opened the car door. “Yo, what the hell, man? What’s goin’ on? You tell me on the phone to be ready in fifteen minutes and that’s it? No explanation? Can’t I take a day off once in a while?”

“We found Wells.”

Sutter froze, then in a more subdued tone said, “Where? How?”

“Homestead. The cop that I talked to down there, the one that wrote him the ticket, was at a firehouse mooching food and saw a report about a minor fire at a trailer. The firefighter was sharp enough to write down the vehicle tags. Just for his report-he didn’t run them. Anyway, this cop, Driscoll, is pretty sharp himself, and he asks a few questions. He’d been on the lookout since our talk.”

“So your patrolman put this all together?”

“Sure did.” Tasker accelerated west over the Julia Tuttle Causeway, swerving through traffic like a grand prix racer.

Sutter calmly strapped on his seat belt. “Does Wells have any idea we know?”

“No way.”

“Then slow this vehicle down before I have to write you.”

Homestead patrolman Mike Driscoll didn’t want anyone else coming on the arrest. He made his point that three cops should be able to grab a guy from a trailer.

Tasker hesitated. “I can call for some agents from Miami.”

Driscoll leaned in from the edge of his chair. “I’m tellin’ you that the place isn’t that big. We slip in quiet and snatch his ass up before he knows we’re there.”

Sutter added, “He’s got a point. More men, more noise.”

Tasker kept thinking about it. “It’s still a probable-cause arrest. I didn’t get a warrant yet.”

Sutter said, “No problem. This guy was a pussycat last time. The three of us are plenty.”

Tasker nodded and they headed out, all crammed into Tasker’s state-issued Monte Carlo.

Daniel Wells couldn’t get used to taking naps during the day. When the kids were around, he never tried to sleep. Always afraid he might miss some segment of chaos they’d create. They loved it as much as he did. He worked a lot at night, when it was cooler, finishing his van and getting everything ready. He wasn’t going to pass the big rig test, but he knew how to get around it. He only needed to drive the thing twice, and after the second time he’d never go near a big truck again.

He picked up his Popular Mechanics and laid his head back on the soft pillow of his sofa. The old material felt like corduroy. He didn’t know if they used that on couches back in the sixties, when this thing was made. All the furniture was old but comfortable, and he couldn’t beat the price. Free with the trailer. This wasn’t too bad, as long as his money held out.

He wasn’t comfortable with the silence of this place at times. In one respect it was new and different, so he didn’t mind experiencing it, but it was not his natural element. He’d never been around peace and quiet. When he was a kid, if it was peaceful he and his brothers would change all that. No wonder his dad was deaf now. He and his brothers set off thousands of firecrackers and cherry bombs. Then, as Wells got more experience, he’d make his own kind of fireworks. Often he’d slice open firecrackers for their tiny amount of black powder. Storing up jarfuls. Then he’d make his own explosive devices. Float model ships filled with powder, then detonate them with a long waterproof fuse in the pond near his childhood home. When that got dull, he’d set things where others would see them and react. His best was a giant firecracker he’d been able to secure inside a plastic jar. He’d glued a clear plastic tube down the middle so the firecracker and fuse wouldn’t get wet, then filled the rest of the jar with a mixture of milk of magnesia, red food coloring and red raspberry syrup. He placed the jar on the newspaper box of the busiest convenience store in Ocala and waited across the street. The fuse smoked more than he thought it would, but nobody took the time to look for the source of the smoke. When that thing went off, his red sauce splattered eight people. They looked like slasher victims. They ran around in a panic, holding their nonexistent wounds to stem the bleeding. Then the fire department and cops showed up. It was on that day, when he was eleven years old, that he realized what was really important. At least to him. He also realized that the fact that it was fake didn’t matter to him. He could have put nails in that jar and really hurt people and would have felt the same way. This wasn’t a joke or a phase, this was a drive.

All these thoughts rushed through his head as he dozed off again on the flowered couch near the bay window of his rented trailer. Then something woke him. He didn’t know what. A noise out of place, something man-made.

He sat up and looked out onto his wide front yard with the winding lime driveway. He could see all the way to the gate, and it was all in order. The gate was closed and nothing moved. Then he froze. On the edge of the driveway closer to the road, he saw a line of disturbed pine needles. The thick carpet of needles had ruts through it and was patchy in places where he’d walked, and then there was the giant burnt swath. But they always had a certain look when newly turned over. The black on the bottom had a different color until the sun baked it for a few hours. That was what caught Wells’ eye as he looked outside. Then, while he was still motionless behind the tinted window, he saw movement. Someone had entered his yard and was crouching on the far side, slowly making his way toward the house. He looked around. The gun was under the seat of the Toyota. He had two cheap nine-millimeters in the van, but they were in pieces right now, waiting to be cleaned. He slid off the couch and into his kitchen, reaching up onto the counter and snatching his keys as he slid along the cheap linoleum.

Whoever was coming would get a surprise at the front door. He looked over his shoulder at the cable that ran from inside the house out to the roof and into the canisters in the dead hanging plants lining the porch. He cursed himself for not having anything as spectacular in the back.

He could run now or wait to see the bedlam. He slipped out the rear door and settled into the bushes. Then he worked his way around in the bushes and scrub pines until he could see the porch. There were three men. He was too far away to recognize any of them, but one was in a blue uniform. They were crouched behind his van, surveying the house. They had no idea he was already outside. He started to tingle inside. This was always the best time. The expectation. This was going to be great.

“Bullshit. I don’t want to go ’round back. The redneck probably has a dog or something,” said Sutter in a harsh whisper.

“Did you hear any dogs?” asked Tasker, confused as to why his normally kickass partner was hesitant.

“I’ll go in the front with you guys. This place is so far out west he can’t run nowhere. We go in fast enough and it won’t matter.”

Tasker didn’t like having this sort of discussion at the scene of an arrest.

The Homestead cop, Driscoll, kept a former Marine’s eye on the trailer, unconcerned about the spat between partners.

Tasker leaned into Sutter and said quietly, “I don’t see why you can’t cover the back. You’re still on the arrest.”

Sutter replied even quieter, “Snakes.”

“What?”

“Too many woods. I can’t handle the idea of snakes.”

Tasker just stared and decided not to pursue the issue. He spoke a little louder so the Homestead cop could hear now. “We don’t have the warrant yet, so we gotta see him or get him to come out.”

Now Sutter looked shocked. “You tellin’ me that if he don’t answer, you’re leaving without him?”

Tasker knew his partner was right.

The three men low-crawled to the end of the van and waited. Tasker casually looked in the small rear windows and saw the van was empty except for a box in the rear. He looked closer at the welded box and saw that it was a gas tank of some kind. He forced himself to concentrate on the trailer for now and shifted his attention back to the task at hand. After waiting a few minutes, the three men walked quickly at an angle to the edge of the trailer. Tasker had been careful to find an approach with no windows in direct line. They paused at the edge of the metal steps that led to the porch which covered twenty feet of the front of the trailer.

Tasker cringed as their weight on the porch made the trailer shake. They fanned out, with Driscoll covering the bay window and Sutter and Tasker on either side of the door.

Tasker knocked once. He looked at Sutter.

Sutter said, “We gotta move.”

Tasker tightened his hand around the lever that operated the front door. He cranked it down and felt something click on the other side of the door. Before he could determine if it was the handle or not, he heard a sound above them and saw three separate flashes above the hanging plants. Then the deafening boom. He was on the ground with Sutter when the burning sensation ate its way up his face and over his eyes. Even with his ears ringing from the explosion, he could hear the other two men screaming.

Wells stood slowly and surveyed his trap. All three men were down and yelling obscenities and gurgled coughs. This was technically perfect. It’d had the exact consequence he had intended.

He opened the door to his old Toyota and retrieved his Ruger.22, then strolled over to his van and dug out his keys from his pocket and started it, not worrying about the men in agony on the porch.

He drove down his driveway, stopped at the gate, opened it and drove through like he did almost every day. The only difference was he didn’t bother closing it this time.

As he turned onto the unpaved road, he saw the gold Monte Carlo by itself near the corner of his property. He pulled up next to it and couldn’t resist leaving another little package for anyone who opened the door.

Stepping out of the van, he found he didn’t even need his slim-jim to pick the lock because the trusting cops had left the doors unlocked.

He took a plastic jar filled with a milky fluid out of the rear of the van and set it on the console between the front seats. He connected a thin piece of monofilament fishing line to a ring on the small detonator on the lid of the jar, then roped it through the passenger door. He took the other end and ran it out the driver’s door past the lock. He looped the line once and then shut the door, tightening the fishing line.

Unless they looked closely before they opened the door-and nobody ever did-they’d be in for another surprise.

He smiled, jumping back into the van and rumbling toward Homestead. He needed another place to stay for a few days until he was ready to make his move to The Guinness Book of Records for “Most Shit Caused by a Single Man.”

It took thirty seconds of screaming and rolling on the porch for Tasker to assess how badly they’d been disfigured. He opened his eyes past the intense burning and saw Sutter next to him, also holding his face. He also noticed that Sutter didn’t have a mark on him. He sat up, trying to check his chest and arms for wounds, but he was just damp.

He looked over to Driscoll, who was now trying to stand. He didn’t have a mark on him.

Tasker shouted, “It’s okay, you’re not cut. No blood.”

Sutter paused his wailing to examine himself more closely. Then after feeling the film of liquid on him, he started to yell, “Acid! Acid!”

Tasker stumbled off the steps and down to the side of the trailer, looking for a garden hose. He felt along the tin walls, occasionally snatching views with his eyes-every time they opened, it was like a fire on his cornea. He found the nub of a short hose and followed it back to the faucet. He twisted the knob and let the water splash up onto his face. There was instant relief. It still burned, but much less than during the initial contact.

“Here. Come down here to the water. This helps.”

The other two cops bumped their way to Tasker and shared the hose. Soon they had a system where any two of them could be washed at a time.

After three or four minutes, Tasker felt well enough to step back and consider what happened. He cautiously crept back onto the porch. He had seen the van leave, so he wasn’t worried about the inside anymore. The hanging pots were all cracked on the ground. He found in one a ripped plastic container that had held the chemical.

“Looks like it was CS. Old-fashioned Mace.”

Sutter barely looked up.

Over half an hour later, they had regained their composure enough to look in all the windows. They opened the rear door with a rope so no one was in danger and entered the double-wide.

Tasker, still red-eyed and blotchy around his face, walked through each room.

Sutter, his Glock in his hand, waited at the kitchen unless needed.

They still hadn’t called for backup. No one had mentioned it.

Sutter opened the subject. “Okay, it was Mace. We’re not gonna die. But the question is, Do we need to tell anyone?”

Driscoll was quick to answer. “Hell, no. My guys would never let me hear the end of this shit. Caught in an ambush and letting a fugitive escape. Fuck me, we can’t ever tell anyone. In fact, you can drop me at home and I’ll clean up before I go back to the PD.”

Tasker turned and looked at Sutter, who said, “I couldn’t agree more.”

They searched the house for any information that might help locate Wells. Twenty minutes later, they walked through the yard, then back to Tasker’s car. He was just starting to feel normal, except that his clothes were still soaking wet from his rinsing.

Sutter started yacking about how he wasn’t worried on the porch and that now he had a personal stake in Wells, too.

Tasker looked up and down the street, which was deserted. Something didn’t feel right.

At the same time, Tasker and Sutter opened their door and heard another bang. Tasker felt a fresh burning from the new booby trap.

He didn’t panic this time as the Mace burned his eyes and nose again.

As he stumbled back toward the hose near the trailer, all he heard was Sutter scream, “Fuck!”