He and his partner, Gil Herrera, were only four blocks away on Bryant. It was almost eight; their shift was over in ten minutes.
“You want to take it, Gil?” said Davidson, glancing at his watch.
His partner shrugged. “Your call, Artie. You’re the one with the wild party to go to.”
Some wild party. It was his seven-year-old’s birthday. Audra. He had called in on break, and Carol had said if he got home by nine-thirty, she’d keep her up for him so that he could give her the Britney Spears makeup mirror he had picked out. Davidson had five kids, and they were his life.
“What the hell.” Davidson shrugged. “It’s what we get paid the big bucks for, right?”
They hit the siren, and in less than a minute, Mobile 2-4 pulled up in front of the dismal and dilapidated entrance to 303 Seventh, the tilted sign of the defunct Driscoll Hotel hanging over the front door.
“People still camping out in this dump?” Herrera sighed. “Who the hell would live here?”
The two cops grabbed their nightsticks and a large flashlight, and stepped up to the front door. Davidson pulled it open. Inside, the place smelled of feces, urine, probably rats. “Hey, anybody here?” Davidson called out “Police.”
Suddenly, from above, they heard the sound of shouting. Some kind of argument.
“On it,” Herrera said, bounding up the first flight.
Davidson followed.
On the second floor, Gil Herrera went down the hall, banging his flashlight on doors. “Police, police…”
In the stairwell, Davidson suddenly heard the sounds again—loud, frantic voices. A crash, as if something had broken. The noise came from over his head. He headed up two flights of stairs on his own.
The noises grew even louder. He stopped in front of a shut door. Apartment 42. “Bitch…,” someone yelled. The sound of a plate shattering. A woman seemed to beg, “Stop him, he’s going to kill me. Stop him, please…. Somebody help me. Please.”
“Police,” Art Davidson responded, and drew his gun. He yelled, “Herrera, up here. Now!”
He threw all his weight against the door. It opened. The inside was dimly lit, but from an interior room, more light and the arguing voices… closer… screaming.
Art Davidson clicked his gun off safety. Then he barged through the open door into the room. To his amazement, no one was in there.
There was dim yellow light angling from an exposed bulb. A metal chair with a large boom box on it. Loud voices coming from the speakers.
The words were the same ones he’d heard earlier. “Stop him, he’s going to kill me!”
“What the hell?” Davidson squinted in disbelief.
He walked over to the stereo, knelt down, and turned off the power. The loud, blaring argument came to a halt.
“What the fuck…?” Davidson muttered. “Somebody playing games.”
He looked around. The pitiful room looked as if it hadn’t been occupied in a while. His eyes were drawn to the window, then beyond it, across an alley, to a facing building. He thought he saw something. What was it?
Ping…
His eye caught the tiniest pinprick of a yellow spark, so quick it was like the snap of a finger, the blink of a firefly on a dark night.
Then the window splintered and a blunt force slammed into Art Davidson’s right eye. He was dead before he hit the floor.
Chapter 32
I HAD JUST ABOUT GOTTEN HOME when the distress call crackled in: “Available units, proceed to three oh three Seventh, near Townsend.”
1-0-6… officer in trouble.
I pulled my Explorer to the curb. Listened to the call. EMS’s to the scene, the district captain called in. The quick, urgent exchanges convinced me the situation was critical.