“THAT DOG THAT’S NOT YOUR DOG is waiting for you on the front porch,” my landlady called through my bedroom door. It was 9 P.M., time for me to start thinking about heading to work.
My bedroom was located in the back ground level of a 120-year-old triple-decker. At first I’d been concerned about this. I would’ve preferred a second- or third-story unit, but those larger apartments were all taken and, frankly, out of my price range. It turned out, however, that my landlady, Frances Beals, was security savvy. She’d been born in this house, she’d told me the day of my interview. Good Irish Catholic family with eleven kids. Half the siblings were now scattered to other states; the other half were already dead.
Having lived her whole life in Cambridge, Frances wasn’t blind to its shortcomings. A university town, Cambridge featured an eclectic mix of multimillion-dollar grand old mansions and barely maintained brick apartment units. There were sprawling green spaces and quaint dining opportunities for upwardly mobile young families, as well as Laundromats, pizza joints, and trendy clothing stores for the college kids. Some of Cambridge’s residents, like Frances, came from families who’d lived here for generations. Most simply passed through for a summer or semester or four-year degree. Meaning the town offered interesting pockets of well-established security, surrounded by other pockets of petty crime, vagrant lifestyles, and drunken debauchery.
Before I could rent the room, I had to pass a two-hour interview with Frances, to determine which of these categories I fell into. When she ascertained I had no pets, no boyfriends, and most likely, no body piercings, I’d passed muster. My only requirement for her was a double-bolt lock on my door, and I asked permission to inspect all door and window locks on the lower level.
She seemed surprised by this request, then pleased. Like maybe that proved I had some common sense after all.
The most Frances and I had ever spoken was during the interview. I figured she was married once, because there was a wedding portrait on the mantel. Next to it was a picture of a baby, but Frances never mentioned kids and no family came for Christmas. Maybe that told its own story. I wondered, but I never asked.
By mutual agreement, Frances came and went through the front entrance, while I accessed my room via the rear, garden door. I tried to keep out of her way, which wasn’t too hard as I worked graveyard four nights a week, then slept till midday.
My room was small, but I liked the battered hardwood floors, the nine-foot ceilings, the historic bull’s-eye molding. A female professor had rented the room before me. She’d left behind an Ikea bookshelf filled with romance novels. So that’s what I did in my free time. I sat in my room and devoured Nora Roberts novels. I figured with everything I had going on in my life, I deserved at least a few hours a day with a happy ending.
Now I pulled on a bulky gray hooded sweatshirt, then reached under my pillow for my. 22. A year ago, I’d never so much as touched a handgun. I couldn’t have told a pistol from a revolver, a rimfire from a centerfire, a. 22 from a. 357 magnum.
Now, I gotta say, I’m a hell of a good shot.
A. 22’s not the best self-defense weapon in the world. Most people choose this gun as a “concealment” weapon-its small size and light weight make it easy to carry. Tuck it in your pocket or belt holster, or, as I’d been told, hang it from a chain around your neck like a true gang banger.
In public, I kept mine in my leather messenger bag, as Massachusetts frowned on citizens being openly armed. In private, however, and certainly on January 21, the semiauto would be in a holster on my left hip. I’d practiced many, many times, drawing it quickly and opening fire. In fact, I practiced that at least thirty minutes twice a week.
My Taurus semiauto had a nickel finish with rosewood grip. It weighed twelve ounces, fit snug in the palm of my hand, and I’d come to welcome the feel of the warm wood against my fingers. It was a pretty gun, if I do say so. But it was also reasonably priced, and inexpensive to arm.
A year ago, I wouldn’t have considered that either. Not just that firearms can be expensive, but so are boxes of ammo. And let me tell you, just because I feared for my life didn’t mean I had unlimited resources.
These days, I was a walking advertisement for safety and security on a working girl’s budget. Hence the real reason I had a two-hundred-dollar. 22, and not something much more commanding, such as a two-thousand-dollar Glock. 45. My instructor, J. T. Dillon, let me fire his one day. I thought the recoil was going to blow off my arm, but the hole in the target was something to behold. SWAT guys and Special Forces commandos often carry. 45s. I wondered how that must feel, confronting an unknown threat while surrounded by buddies you know have got your back and carrying a weapon designed just for a guy like you to get the job done.
For the past two weeks, I’d been trying to picture January 21. J.T. kept walking me through it-visualization as a form of preparation.
I stood in the middle of my charming little bedroom. Twin bed was pushed against the wall to the left, blond Ikea bookshelf behind me, old microwave stand topped with even older twenty-inch TV stationed beside the door. Room to move, fight, defend. Space to fully extend my arms, two-handed grip, my Taurus a natural extension of my body. My pistol was loaded with match-grade. 22-caliber long rifle, or LR, cartridges. The rounds may not pack the biggest boom, but I had nine shots to get it right.
During my twice weekly training sessions, J.T. ordered me to empty my clip every time. Never practice hesitation, he instructed me, over and over again. Evaluate the threat. Make your decision. Commit to defend.
I still couldn’t picture January 21. Mostly, I remembered the police reports-no sign of forced entry, no sign of a struggle.
You gotta see him coming, Detective Warren had said this afternoon. You gotta welcome him with a smile.
I holstered my Taurus, donned my heavy black coat, and headed for work.
THE DOG THAT WAS NOT MY DOG was waiting for me on the front porch. The rear of Frances’s narrow lot was barricaded by a five-foot-high wooden fence; otherwise I was pretty sure the dog would wait at the back door for me. She was that smart.
I called her Tulip. She’d started hanging around six months ago. No collar, no tags. At first she’d just followed me down the street when I went for my afternoon runs. I figured she was hungry, hoping for a treat. But back in those days, I never gave her anything. Not my dog, not my problem. I just wanted to exercise.
So Tulip started to run. All five miles, tongue lolling out, sleek white-and-tan body pounding out the miles. Afterward, it seemed cruel not to provide at least a bowl of water. So we sat together on the front porch. She drank a bowl. I drank a bottle. Then she sprawled beside me and put her head on my lap. Then, I stroked her ears, her graying muzzle.
She looked like some kind of hound. Harrier, Frances had muttered one day. When I looked it up on the library’s computer, the breed turned out to be a small to mid-sized English hound dog. Tulip shared many of the markings-a short tan coat with white stockinged legs and broad white collar. Wire whip tail, floppy ears, broad, handsome face. Tulip was definitely an older dog. A grand dame who’d been there and done that. The stories she could tell, I figured, and knew exactly how she felt.
Tonight, Tulip sat in the middle of the covered porch, away from the snow. She was a very patient dog; Frances said she sometimes sat there for hours waiting for me.
I hadn’t seen her for several days-that’s the problem with a dog that’s not your dog. I didn’t know where she went, or even if she had another home. Sometimes, I saw her daily; sometimes a couple times a week. I guess I got to practice patience, too.
She was shivering when I came around, and immediately I felt bad.
“You can’t keep doing this,” I told her, rounding the corner, watching her rise in greeting and wag her whiplike tail. “January is no time to be homeless in Boston.”
Tulip looked at me, whined a little.
I’d started buying bags of dog food five months back. She was just so skinny, and then when she kept running like that…The first vet visit was two weeks later. No fleas, no ticks, no heartworm. The vet gave her shots, gave me Frontline, then wrote up a bill that made my. 22 semiauto look cheap.
I paid. Worked some overtime. Kept running with the dog that was not my dog. Started pouring dry food into a bowl.
I had a Baggie of food in my pocket, had filled it when Frances had told me Tulip was waiting on the porch. Now I emptied the kibble on the front porch. Tulip advanced gratefully. She looked skinnier to me. I saw a fresh mark near her hindquarters, a tear on her right ear.
I’d put up posters in the fall, trying to see if anyone had lost a dog. I’d even spent precious cash on an ad in the local paper. Once, I’d called animal control, but when the officer started to ask me too many questions, I panicked. I just wanted to know if Tulip had a real home, somewhere where she was loved and missed and needed to get back to. Because I understood that sort of thing, felt it myself.
But I didn’t want her carted off to a pound, then killed, just because somewhere along the way she’d become her own creature instead of someone else’s.
“You need a coat,” I murmured to her now, smoothing back her ears and scratching the heavier folds of skin around her neck. She leaned against me, pressed against my legs, and I could feel her body shiver again. Nineteen degrees and dropping. Couldn’t take her inside, ’cause my landlady would kill us both. But couldn’t leave her outside, quaking with the cold.
I checked to see how much cash I had in my wallet. Enough, I figured.
Then I looked down at the dog that was not my dog, still leaning against me, her eyes closed as she exhaled her exhaustion and worry over some misadventure I’d never know.
“This has to be our secret,” I told her seriously.
I hailed a cab and both of us went to work.
“NINE-ONE-ONE. Please state the nature of your emergency.”
No response.
I studied my ANI ALI monitor in front of me, as the information started to scroll. “Nine-one-one,” I repeated, shifting slightly in my desk chair. “Please state the nature of your emergency.”
“I got a big butt,” a male voice said.
I sighed. Like I hadn’t heard that one before. “I see. And this enlarged gluteus maximus resides at ninety-five West Carrington Street?”
“Dude!” the voice said. Laughter in the background. Giggles really. This is what happens, I reminded myself, when you work graveyard shift.
I continued, in a professional manner: “And does this enlarged posterior belong to Mr. Edward Keicht?”
“Man, how did you know?”
“Sir, are you aware that when you dial nine-one-one, your name and address appears on our monitors?”
Awestruck silence. “No way, dude!” Apparently, Mr. Keicht had been imbibing a little more than just beer this evening.
“And are you aware that a prank call to nine-one-one is a felony offense that could land you in jail?”
“Cool!”
“Say hi to the nice policeman at your door, Mr. Keicht.”
“All right!”
“And remember, this is your brain on drugs.”
I clicked off line one, then contacted one of my officers to do the deed. All calls to nine-one-one required an officer response. Hence that whole felony offense thing. In approximately three to five minutes, Mr. I Got a Big Butt wasn’t gonna be feeling so grand about life.
One twenty A.M. My twin monitors remained blank, the phone lines quiet. Not too bad a night, but then it was only Wednesday. Call patterns had a tendency to pick up as the week went on. Friday and Saturday were madness, a deluge of domestic assaults, drunken disorderlies, and OUIs. Sunday around five was the second busiest time. The witching hour, we called it: five o’clock being the hour when most noncustodial parents were required to return the 2.2 children to the custodial parent. Except judging purely by call volume, feuding parents enjoyed screwing with each other more than being responsible caretakers. By 5:01, we’d have the first call and the first officer involved in the weekly game of “No, ma’am, you may not shoot off his balls just because he’s two minutes late,” to be followed shortly by “Sir, a visitation agreement is a legal document; I suggest you read it.”
I tried to avoid Sundays. Domestic disputes made everyone cranky-the callers, my officers, me.
Overall, the city of Grovesnor, all twenty-five thousand people, was tame compared to my time in Arvada. There, I’d worked in a major call center, handling hundreds of calls an hour. These days, it was me, sitting alone in a darkened room with the dog that was not my dog. I generally received between ten and forty calls a shift. Ten on a night like tonight, forty on a weekend.
Number one call I handled every night-wrong number. Number two call-Mr. Big Butt, or Mr. Pepperoni Pizza to Go, or whatever latest thing a bunch of bored kids thought was funny. And yeah, I dispatched a uniformed officer to each and every address. Hey, I didn’t make the rules.
Only a third of the calls to 911 are for actual emergencies. More typically, I got reports of reckless driving, a dead or injured animal in the road, the occasional complaint against noisy neighbors. Information came in on my ANI ALI screen-ANI standing for Automatic Number Identification, ALI for Automatic Local Identification. Landlines were the easiest calls, with name, phone number, and address winking across my screen. Cell phone calls and Internet-based phone carriers (think Vonage) automatically went to the state police for them to sort out location, as such numbers weren’t linked to a physical address, making it difficult for me to dispatch an officer.
In addition to my ANI ALI monitor, I had a second system, the Dispatcher Event Mask. I entered all the information from the call into this system-details of an accident, description of an intruder, whatever. Then, I could shoot this information straight from my computer to an officer’s Mobile Data Computer in his police cruiser. Push of a button and ping, we were all on the same virtual page.
Assuming the system didn’t crash. Assuming I had the wherewithal to multitask between two monitors while simultaneously soothing a distressed caller, asking all pertinent questions, and typing in all relevant answers.
But other than that, easy breezy.
My ANI ALI monitor blazed to life. Name, phone number, street address appearing on the screen. I put on my headset and hit the button.
“Nine-one-one. Please state the nature of your emergency.”
“I…I don’t know.” Female voice this time. Quivering.
“Ma’am? Do you need assistance?”
“My husband is angry.”
“I see. Are you at home, ma’am?” I rattled off the street address from my screen; she confirmed. “And your name, ma’am?”
“Dawn.” She didn’t offer a last name. My screen listed the number as belonging to Vincent Heinen. For the time being, I didn’t press her.
“Dawn, nice to meet you. I’m Charlie. Is your husband at home?”
“Yes.” Her voice had dropped to nearly a whisper. I took that to mean he was someplace close.
“Are there kids in the house?”
“No.”
“Pets, dogs?” Officers like to know about dogs.
“No.”
I settled in, got down to it. “Has he been drinking?”
“Yes.” Very soft now.
“Dawn, is he in the room?” Then, when she didn’t immediately answer, my own voice dropping low: “Are you hiding from him? You can hit a button on the phone. One beep for yes. Two beeps for no.”
I heard a beep, and I took a deep breath. Okay, so the makings of a genuine call. At my feet, Tulip stirred. She seemed to sense my tension, sitting up.
“Dawn, are you afraid of him?”
Beep.
Still monitoring the call, I got on the radio. “Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six,” I said into the radio.
Nine twenty-six, aka Officer Tom Mackereth, tagged back. “Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one.”
“Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six, I have a female party online,” I informed him crisply. “States husband is angry. States husband has been drinking. States she’s afraid of him.”
“Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one, location of caller?”
“Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six, sending through.” I updated my Dispatcher Event Mask with the extremely limited data I’d collected thus far and shot it through to Officer Mackereth’s mobile computer. “Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six, caller states they are at home, no kids or animals present.”
“Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one, can you get more details? Description of both parties, is the male party armed, are we talking alcohol, or also drugs?”
No shit Sherlock, I felt like saying. But our radio dialogue, plus the 911 call, was being recorded for posterity, so I kept to the script.
“Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six, will do.”
Back to my caller, who’d remained disturbingly silent.
“Dawn, it’s Charlie. You there?”
Beep.
All right, contact reestablished. I leaned closer to my event monitor, adjusting my headset. I could hear the woman better now, the rapid sounds of her distressed breathing as she tried desperately not to make a sound.
“Dawn, are you in the bedroom?” I asked quietly, wanting to keep her communicating.
Another beep.
“Are you locked in the bathroom?”
Two beeps.
Two beeps meant no. I pictured a bedroom, tried again. “The closet?”
Another beep.
I played the odds in New England colonial architecture: “Dawn, is your bedroom upstairs?”
Beep.
I added the details to the call profile, moving along. “Dawn, is your husband armed?”
Silence. Not a yes, not a no. Did that mean maybe?
I worked to clarify: “Dawn, Mrs. Heinen, is it you don’t know if your husband is carrying a weapon?”
Beep.
“Officer Mackereth is gonna love that,” I murmured to Tulip, who was sitting straight up and staring at me now. Situation unknown-an officer’s most typical and most dangerous kind of call.
I got back on the radio, summoned 926 and provided the short update: Caller was in the upstairs bedroom. Husband was within listening distance and may or may not be armed.
“Drugs?” Officer Mackereth wanted to know, because a drunk husband was bad enough, but a cokehead or meth addict was even worse-beyond the reach of logic and pain. Officers got tense about that.
I returned to Dawn Heinen.
“Dawn, does your husband do drugs?”
Beep.
I wasn’t surprised. I added to the profile.
“Dawn, has he done drugs tonight?”
Silence.
“You don’t know if your husband has done drugs tonight?”
Beep.
My fingers stilled on the keyboard and I closed my eyes, starting to feel the pressure. My job was to get information. I was Officer Mackereth’s eyes and ears. If I did my job right, he walked into a situation forewarned and forearmed. If I failed at my job, a lone officer got to approach a darkened house at one thirty in the morning, with nothing but his quick wits to save him.
I got back on the radio. “Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six. Caller states she doesn’t know if husband is armed. Caller states she doesn’t know if husband has done drugs tonight, but states he has done drugs in the past.”
“Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one, roger that,” Officer Mackereth replied. I felt the weight of his disappointment in those words. He was counting on me, and I was letting him down. He notified me that his position was one block from the address. He was cutting his sirens and going dark. Meaning I hadn’t given him enough information. Meaning he was approaching quietly, in order to assess the situation for himself.
“Come on, Dawn,” I murmured under my breath. “We gotta do better. For all of us, we gotta do better.”
I returned to my caller, listening to the sound of her shallow breathing and straining now for other noises in the background. A husband calling a wife’s name? Shattering glass from a man in the throes of a violent rage? Or maybe even a knock on the downstairs front door marking Officer Mackereth’s arrival. I heard nothing.
“Dawn, is your husband still in the room?” I asked now.
Beep.
“An officer is approaching. He’s almost there, Dawn. Help is on its way.” I hesitated, struggling. My next order of business should be to establish a description of the offending party. That way if he tried to flee the scene, Officer Mackereth could identify him and give pursuit. I didn’t know, however, how to engage in such a conversation with phone beeps.
The tension again, my shoulders creeping up, a low ache developing in the back of my neck. Officer Mackereth should be at the address by now. Opening his door, looking up at the residence, trying to get a bead on the situation.
“Dawn, is your husband still angry?”
Beep.
Then what’s he doing? I wanted to shout. What kind of enraged man didn’t make a sound?
Then, just like that, I knew. I could picture in my head exactly what kind of angry man could stand so quiet, so still, right outside a closet door.
I grabbed the radio. “Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six,” I nearly shouted. “Don’t ring the doorbell! Do not approach! Stop immediately!”
A pause, I didn’t hear Dawn anymore, just my own ragged breathing.
“Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one,” Officer Mackereth came over the radio, his voice as dry as mine had been heated. “Nine eight two?”
Nine eight two was our own code. The numbers corresponded to the phone digits for WTF. What The Fuck? Hey, in this job, you had to have a sense of humor.
I took a deep breath.
“Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six,” I said. “Please hold.”
“Dawn,” I whispered into my headset, “does your husband like pizza?”
Silence, then beep, then the first noise I’d heard in a while: Dawn, weeping. “One more minute, Dawn,” I promised her. “Hang in there for me. Just one more minute.”
Quickly, I ran Vincent’s name through my system and came up with a second number, a cell phone registered to his name. Keeping my fingers crossed, I picked up my prepaid cell and dialed those numbers. Not a move from the training handbook. One of those things that, in this job, you just knew when to do.
For a surreal moment, I got to hear ringing in stereo. My mobile ringing in my ear. Vincent’s cell phone ringing in the bedroom. One, two, three times.
I was clutching my cell too tight.
Then my radio crackling to life: “Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one-”
“Shut up!” I hissed, just as Dawn’s husband connected with my mobile.
“What?” he said, one word, loaded with menace and threat and the icy cold kind of rage that kept his wife sobbing silently in their bedroom closet.
“Dude,” I shot back. “Want your fucking pizza? ’Cause I’m not standing out here any longer. Been ringing your fuckin’ doorbell for five minutes now. We’re charging your credit card whether you take it or not, so get your fuckin’ pie, or I’m eatin’ it myself!”
I jabbed off my phone, then switched to my headset.
“Ass wipe,” I heard Dawn’s husband mutter, outside the closet door. Then, finally, sounds of movement. A distant door being yanked opened, pounding footsteps.
Belatedly, I grabbed the radio.
“Four sixty-one to nine twenty-six. You are pizza delivery. I repeat. You are pizza delivery. Male subject is most likely armed and coming to you in five four three two-”
“Fuck!” a male voice exploded through the radio.
“Police!” Officer Mackereth shouted. “Hands where I can see them, hands where I can see them!”
Sounds of a scuffle, more banging, another shout.
I stood up, couldn’t help myself. Grabbed my headset, squeezed my eyes shut in the middle of my darkened call center as if that would help my officer, somehow give him the advantage. Tulip started to whine. I bit down on my lower lip.
Then: “Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one.” Officer Mackereth, sounding out of breath. “Male subject subdued. Male subject disarmed.” Then, in a break from script. “He was carrying a Glock nine. How the hell did you know that? Holy shit, Charlie. Holy shit.”
I closed my eyes. That’s what I’d been picturing, what I’d just known. That Dawn’s husband was standing there, on the other side of the closet door, waiting for his wife with a loaded gun. And the moment a third party arrived, sirens at the scene, a uniformed officer, ringing the doorbell…
That’s what he’d been waiting for, good old Vincent. The final provocation to justify pulling the trigger.
Officer Mackereth came in over the radio. He’d pulled it together now, returning to script. I did my best to follow suit. “Nine twenty-six to four sixty-one, is it safe to enter the home?”
I got back on my headphones. “Dawn, it’s Charlie. A uniformed officer is at your front door. He has your husband detained and disarmed. You can come out now, Dawn.”
Then, for the first time since the call began, the sound of her voice. “Is he…is he okay?”
“The police officer or your husband?” Though sadly, I already knew the answer to that.
“My husband,” she said shakily.
“You know, Dawn, why don’t you go downstairs and see for yourself.”
“Okay. Okay. I think I can do that. Charlie…”
I waited. But she didn’t say thank you. Few of them ever did.
Dawn hung up the phone. She went to check on her drunken husband, who five minutes earlier had been prepared to kill her.
And I resumed my seat, my hand now on Tulip’s head, stroking her silky ears.
“Glad to have you here, girl,” I whispered. “Glad to have you here.”
She placed her graying muzzle on my lap, and I kept petting her head, until eventually my hands stopped shaking and both of us sat silently in the dark.
YOU’D THINK THAT WOULD BE ENOUGH for one night, but it wasn’t. Two thirty-three A.M., the other relevant call came in. I saw the info on the ANI ALI screen and was immediately agitated. Then, I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath, and answered.
“Hey,” I said, slightly surprised to be receiving the call through official channels and not on my prepaid cell.
Silence at first, for so long, I thought maybe the caller couldn’t answer. But then, finally, a voice. Small, quivering, scared. The girl then, not the boy. Too young to remember my cell number, so reverting back to the number of first contact: 911.
She was crying and at this stage of the game, I didn’t need her to speak to know why. Dispatch officers…we are more than backup for our men and women in uniform. We are Ma Bell’s version of social services, audio first responders to battered wives, overwhelmed new parents, drunken teens, and terrified children. We hear it all.
Then we transfer the call and walk away. Not our problem. We’re simply the messengers that yeah, life really sucks out there.
Now, here’s a question for you: If you only had four days left to live, what would you do?
Remain on the sidelines? Or get in the game?
And if, say, you’d spent the past year learning how to run, fight, shoot, how to stop being and start doing, would that change the answer? And if, say, you had insider’s knowledge of the kind of crimes the system can’t handle, where the perpetrator wins and the victim loses, would that change the answer?
I’d spent months contemplating this question. Then I’d arrived at a decision.
It helped me now, as I reached out and tapped my keyboard. As I deliberately and consciously broke the law, disconnecting my caller from the recorded dispatch system and picking her up on my prepaid Wal-Mart phone instead.
“Hey,” I said again. “It’s okay. It’s me, Charlie. I’m going to help. One more day, sweetheart, and you will never be hurt again.”