Short Fiction by Dal Distler

Hawk felt the phone vibrating in his pocket. He didn’t have to check, he knew who the caller was. He hesitated as his heartbeat accelerated, but then silenced the ringer. A month ago he would have dropped everything to answer her call, but things had changed and now it just seemed too complicated.

He returned his attention to the video of Saturday night’s concert. It had taken a day and a half for security at Brooklyn Coliseum to collect and deliver all the relevant surveillance to the precinct and now Hawk was combing through eight-and-a-half hours’ worth of footage from the second tier cameras where, according to witnesses, the fatal argument had begun. He had little hope the effort would yield results. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, trying to catch a glimpse of an orange-and-black-clad killer in a crowd of nearly two thousand people on Halloween night.

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Greg hung up the phone shaking his head.
“We got maggots and a strong odor, 816 Mercy Ave., multiple dwelling, Apartment 5-B.”
“A D.O.A. to start the day,” Mike said cheerfully.

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It was a beautiful day in the projects. The piles of wet garbage strewn across the compound and the unbearable stench coming off Desmond Two-tooth who’d gone a record hundred and ninety-six days without a shower, seemed less noticeable today as hopeful rays of sunshine filtered down into this godforsaken corner of Brooklyn from a typically stingy sky.

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The day they went into the Carrington housing project to pick up Tyrone Walker for armed robbery, the weather was so humid they could practically drink the air. Hawk was sweating in suit pants, t-shirt, long-sleeved dress shirt and tie, but at least he wasn’t one of those poor bastards on patrol in full uniform.

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By the time they arrived at the scene, the rain was coming down hard. Hawk observed Eduardo Garcia rolling from side to side on the pavement, the paramedics crouched over him. Dark blood seeped through fingers that clutched his stomach as if he could hold his life in with his hands. His panicked shrieks and the spasmodic jerking of his legs were making it difficult for the EMTs to treat his wound. Hawk could hear them trying to persuade Garcia to move his hands so they could see, but he was too hysterical to obey.

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Hawk rolled out of bed and made his way to the shower with his eyes closed. It was 4:00 a.m. Even if he opened his eyes it would still be dark.

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Hawk parked the car and ambled into the Stillwell projects on foot, alone, in direct defiance of the Chief’s orders, as usual. Nick was back at the squad, processing a collar for an armed robbery they’d caught early this morning, waiting for the ADA to arrive. The apprehended perp wanted to proffer some information, hoping to make a deal. Hawk intended to head back soon and see if they’d gotten anything interesting, but first he wanted to check if any of his confidential informants was out; there’d been a lot of activity lately in the Eight-two precinct, including a homicide, two shootings and four robberies, and he was hoping to catch word off the street.

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It was about six-thirty and already dark when they found Tanya Barrett trudging through the bone-chilling sleet precipitating what was expected to be the worst blizzard to hit the city in two decades. They had been searching for her for nineteen hours.

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  The detectives had to call in the Fire Department to break into Stewart Pierce’s apartment, because his parents lived in Moab, Utah, and the police had been unable to locate anyone locally who might have had a set of …

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