Anno Luce©

Ants (Sneak Peek)
Sweat. Blood engorged hearing, his eyes in a tunnel. Calm Down, Joe. With one hand he popped the belt, the other tugged on the door handle. He never put his belt on unless he was topping sixty. The last time he looked at the accelerator, it read one-thirty. That was a minute ago. Now the suspect vehicle was off of the road, and he had his side-arm muzzle-down in a tight firing grip.
The call came in while he was on his way back to the station. Neighbor’s call; two shots, ten minutes of silence, then the screech of tires. They got a description of the vehicle, but no plate. The caller knew the car, said the owner was a drunk with a temper. He didn’t live there; dispatch was still looking up info on the occupant. Or occupants; caller said something about kids living there.
All that was coming through the radio when Joe was nearly hit by the car in question as it flew past him. ‘78 Bonneville Landau, 2-door sedan, just like the car Jimmy had when they were in high school. Black with a dark tint on the back window; illegal by itself, but nothing compared to the speed Joe had to do to follow it.
One-hundred-and-ten. Flying. Joe threw on the lights immediately, no effect. Not even a little jolt; just a bounce up to one-thirty. Traffic was dead, thank God, but the guy was weaving in and out of lanes. If the guy was trying to throw off the tail, he wasn’t making much of an attempt. Joe saw something spray out the passenger’s side window. He didn’t get a good look; beer, maybe. Why not toss the can? The car jerked again, then it started to slow down.
Steadily, it moved off to the side of the road and came to a full stop. Almost a safe stop. Eerie. Joe flipped the buttons off his holster before he parked the cruiser. Back-up was coming, but he didn’t know what to expect. The guy could take off again; he had to chance a felony stop. He may have to take a shot at the back tire to keep someone from getting killed. He took a deep breath and approached, service-issue in one hand, mini-Maglite in the other.
“Put your hands out the window!” He shouted, “Slowly!”
No answer. No movement. The drivers’ side window was down. The tint was all-around; Joe’s view was shit. His finger was like a steel spring, caught on four years of training and ten years on the Albany force. It wasn’t the first time he had a Glock between himself and the unknown.
“Put your hands… out…the window!!” Joe screamed it. He was scared. He learned a long time ago to understand and appreciate fear, even his own. He took slow, even breaths to still his heart-beat. He had to get the blood out of his ears. He couldn’t see the guy; he needed to hear him, but he couldn’t hear anything. His arm cocked straight as he got close enough to the window to catch a glimpse of the inside. He didn’t see the guy at first; didn’t hear a sound. But he damn-sure knew the smell.
Blood.
As a cop, Joe was an expert on six smells; marijuana, alcohol, urine, feces, decay and blood. Whether fresh or old, in the same room or on somebody, Joe could tell a whole story with his nose. As he got within smelling distance of the car, he had a pretty good idea that what he saw sprayed out the window wasn’t beer.
The driver; eyes bulging, lips traced in foam. Blood dripped in a fine line down his forearm from where the needle stuck out. He had the belt wrapped around like a tie off; maybe why he swerved. Joe shined the light around the interior.
Maybe not.
She was a lump, her head lifeless, pressed against the glove-box. The hole was small, but the stippling made her whole temple a mess. Joe shuddered; he knew that was the clean side. But that wasn’t it. His flashlight found the rest of the crime scene. They weren’t alone.
Piled in the back were two kids; one boy, one girl. They had to be between eight and twelve. Hard to tell; Joe could barely make out their faces. He put the Maglite in his teeth, pulling a latex glove from his pocket to check needleman’s pulse. Zero. He grabbed the light, hit the radio key on his vest to report to dispatch, and walked back to the trunk to get some flares.
The first time he ever threw upon the job was an unattended death, three weeks dead. The second time was on patrol, flu. Third time was right there in the trunk; he was thankful for not contaminating the crime-scene.
That was three years ago, six months before he was promoted to Homicide Detective. In the time since, no case had been as dramatic, as heart-breaking, as utterly shocking as that. He’d worked a couple drug cases, domestics; helped to solve them all with a neat efficiency that told the force he’d be there ‘til retirement.
He walked in after lunch one day to a plain half-stuffed manila folder with a post-it note. The note held two things; a name, Darius Platt, with an address and one cryptic piece of advice:
Smelly. Bring Vicks.