Red Man Down(7)

Leo Tobin, who had been on a hike far up in the Tortolitas when the call came, had just parked in front of the half-dozen other department cars. Getting out, he saw the entire detective squad lined up in a row, bending forward and occasionally straightening, like toy birds by a water dish. Curious, he strolled up to their backsides and said, ‘What’s going on?’

‘Oh, Leo, you made pretty good time down the mountain, huh?’ Delaney said.

‘Yup. This the alleged thief?’ Tobin peered at the weathered face. ‘Aren’t we being a little extra punitive on this poor hard-working wire stripper?’

‘He drew down on Officer Spurlock, who did exactly what he was supposed to do,’ Delaney said.

Beside her, Sarah heard Dan Spurlock suck in a breath.

‘But now, Leo,’ Delaney said, ‘stand over here by me and take a good look, will you? Jason claims he remembers this man – used to be a Tucson cop.’

‘Jason is right. Just this once, of course.’ Leo turned his crusty half-smile on Jason Peete, who flipped him the bird. Leo turned back to Delaney. ‘Come on, you remember this guy. Man, he’s really gone downhill, though, hasn’t he?’

‘Downhill from what? I don’t remember him at all. You’re sure he was in the department?’

‘Think a minute. You’d have been long out of training by the time he joined that crew. But before that, he worked graveyard out of East Side for years and years, so you must have known him there. Name is …’ he clasped his forehead, ‘… come on, brain, you can do it … Ed Something.’

‘Yeah!’ Jason said, lighting up again. ‘Ed Lawson … Lewis? No, Lacey.’

‘That’s right, Ed Lacey. Whose specialty on the training crew was putting on that red padded helmet and beating the bejeesus out of dozens of would-be street patrolmen.’

‘You see? Now I’m not so crazy, huh?’ Jason grinned around the circle of his fellow detectives. ‘That’s why I remember him! Because the year I trained, Lacey was a Red Man, one of several who beat my black ass around that gymnasium more times than I can stand to think about.’





TWO


Thinking about the first time she met the Red Man, the most feared and respected trainer in the academy, Sarah felt the wind grow colder. It was almost ten years ago – no, longer, closer to eleven. Man, time really rips along.

She’d been warned. Recruits in the class before had told her, ‘Watch out for the Red Man. He’s not kidding when he says you have to fight.’

But she was a ranch kid, raised to think townies were softies. And this was law enforcement, right? There might be some tough tests to pass, but they weren’t going to chain her in a dungeon and turn the ravenous dogs loose. And it wasn’t as if she’d never felt pain – growing up, she’d fallen off a horse plenty of times and, as her father always insisted, got right back on. A steer had knocked her down once, and she’d broken her arm calf roping on her junior rodeo team.

None of that had any malice in it, though – animals just did what they did and you learned to live with it. It was a whole different thing, she found out, to be attacked by somebody who really intended to hurt her. She’d held her own in her first fight test – paired off with another student, kneeling on the mats in the exercise room with gloves and helmet on, whaling on each other. Each of them secretly thought they’d won, and nobody got a broken nose.

But the man in the red helmet was a whole different can of worms – one of the elite. She’d walked into the gym and confronted him as she’d been told to do. The man on the door had said, ‘You’re in a fight for your life now, you understand?’ When she’d nodded, smiling, a little cocky, he’d smacked her lightly on the rear and said, ‘Good luck.’

She remembered walking across the mats, aware of the several observers standing around the walls. The Red Man had stood in the middle of the space, his face showing nothing through the mask. He hadn’t worn a red padded suit any more by the time Sarah did her training – just a padded red helmet and gym clothes. But they still called him the Red Man – partly, she suspected, because it made him sound more awesome. Playing policeman as she’d been told to do, she’d said, ‘Put your hands above your head and turn around!’

He’d hit her in the face. It hadn’t been a little tap; it’d hurt like hell. And the force of it had knocked her down. Lying on the floor at his feet, she’d felt her confidence drain away like water down a sink drain. It was all she could do at the time to get up, and as soon as she was back on her feet he’d hit her again. The merciless man with the toneless voice had landed two more solid punches and a hard shove before she’d suppressed enough of the fear to begin to fight back. She’d yelled, ‘Stop resisting!’ and swung a roundhouse. He’d deflected it and hit her again, in the ribs, hard. She’d kept punching at him, but it was like punching a wall, hard and unyielding. Soon she’d been on the ground again, with the hard man on top of her. A couple of ludicrous minutes had followed in which she’d yelled, from underneath him, ‘Stop resisting!’ There’d seemed to be no way to get at this monster, who’d clearly been bent on taking away the career she’d set her heart on.