Cage of Night by Ed Gorman Page A

rushing here.
    Dark lawn. Two scared oldsters peeking out the window. Garrett in Clint Eastwood stance, gun drawn.
    Myles inside the car.
    I heard him say: "I want to see her."
    "Shut the fuck up and get out of the car."
    "You hear me? I said I want to see her. She can explain all this."
    "You're never going to see her again, asshole. I can promise you that."
    Sirens. Closer.
    Garrett raising his Magnum.
    Me wanting to shout out that Myles didn't have his gun anymore.
    And then Myles saying: "I want to see her, man. That's all I'm asking you. I want to see her."
    That's when the two shots exploded in the night.
    Right through the open window, they went.
    Right into Myles' chest.
    I'd never heard a man die before. The sound was kind of funny, kind of a cry and kind of a grunt, and then a slumping forward, and then a long deep silence.
    The silence scared the shit out of me. Then Garrett walked over to the car and looked inside.
    "Oh, Jesus," he said. "Oh, Jesus Christ."
    Then there wasn't any silence at all, not for a long time, not with the cop cars and the ambulance and the coroner's van and all the fascinated onlookers and then the weeping family of David Myles.
    They took me down to the police station and I was there for six hours and when I got out there were a bunch of reporters there and then Josh had me by the arm and he was pushing me through the crowd and out into the chilly prairie night.
    Garrett hadn't merely shot David Myles. He'd executed him.
    That was the only thing I could think of all that night as I lay awake still shaking from everything that had happened.
    He'd known Myles didn't have a gun. He'd executed him.

PART TWO

CHAPTER ONE

    "I'm sure he didn't hear you."
    "I said it real loud."
    "Spence, put yourself in his position," Chief Stewart said.
    Paul Stewart had been the police chief in this town ever since I was in grade school. He was generally considered to be fair, open-minded, and not at all impressed with his badge, the way some cops get.
    But he was protective of his cops to the point of obstinacy.
    He sat on the edge of his desk and looked down on me in my chair.
    "It's dark," he went on. "You've just seen a car crash up through a fence. You approach it with your gun drawn. And then in the front seat, you see somebody who has just murdered somebody else in cold blood. You don't think you'd be a little scared?"
    "Sure, I'd be scared but—"
    "You don't think you might be totally focused on the killer in the car?"
    "Sure, I'd be focused on the guy in the car but—"
    "And if somebody said something to you, don't you think there's a possibility that you might not hear them?"
    "Sure, there's a possibility but—"
    "And that's what happened last night, Spence. He's a young cop and he wanted to be sure he handled the situation the proper way—and he was also scared. It was real easy for him to imagine that Myles had a gun in his hand and was bringing it up to shoot him."
    I didn't say anything for a time, just sat in his sunny office with the four filing cabinets and the big desk with framed photos of his grandkids all over it and a wall filled with awards and plaques and a few pictures of the Chief with minor celebrities. The one of him shaking hands with Hulk Hogan struck me as pretty funny.
    "That's what happened, Spence."
    "He thought that Myles had a gun?"
    "Right."
    "And when he approached the car, he thought he saw Myles bringing the gun up?"
    "Yes."
    "And so he shot him?"
    "Right."
    "Twice?"
    "As any good cop would."
    "Good cops shoot unarmed citizens?"
    He looked at me a long hard time. He was in his crisp dark uniform as usual and his hair was white and his face was old-man fleshy. But the blue eyes were young and smart. And now they were just a little bit mean. He was pure cop.
    "You trying to piss me off on this thing, Spence?"
    "No, sir."
    "Good. Because I like you and I want to keep on liking you."
    I stared out the window. Thanksgiving was three days away and the sky was June