The night had been damp. It was that odd time when day had not begun to return to the world, but one can no long delude oneself into believing the night had not passed. Light from the occasional functioning street lamp glinted off of puddles. Officer Noah Haynes sprinted through the rain slick streets as a hound after a fox. His quarry was no fox. It was a murderer.
Randal Jones had been a small timer, a two bit street pusher with a smart mouth and a thick skull. He’d been Haynes’s first arrest out of the academy. Jones dropped a dime on a bigger fish, and he got to walk, like every time the police leaned on him. The department had long ago written him off as relatively harmless.
Then he found a fallen drug lord's stash. He suddenly had a truckload of uncut blow, three crates of black market weapons, and $50,000 dollars cash. It had been meant as an emergency depot, but when the cops dropped the hammer on Cal Apone, no one else had been able to claim it. His trusted lieutenants had all been killed, and he couldn’t arrange anything from inside a maximum security prison.
Once he realized what he had, Jones swung into action. Rather than dumping the whole thing and retiring to a private island somewhere, the slime had started building a criminal empire. Classic Jones. Clever, but stupid. Never knew when to put his skin before his ego. He always wanted to be the big man. Now he could.
It took Jones less than a year to claw his way to the top of the local heap. He stood atop a mountain of corpses. Gang bangers. Junkies. Prostitutes. Rival gang lords. The old lady from upstairs who tried to borrow a cup of sugar at the wrong time. Jones didn’t discriminate.
As his body count rose, so did his priority within the department. The case against him was a few months from being completed. Then Jones slammed home the final nail in his own coffin. He killed a cop.
Lieutenant John Moore had been Noah’s partner since the younger had joined the force. Moore was forty-eight with more paunch than in his younger days, but he was a good cop and a good partner. He shouldn’t have died.
It was a stake out. It should have been routine. Somebody’d tipped off Jones. Just after the third hour of waiting a pipe bomb had rolled under their patrol car. The two had gotten out in time, but Noah had a concussion. Blood dripped into his eye from a deep cut on his brow. John was barely dusty. He threw Haynes behind a parked car and took cover with him. The bomber had already disappeared, but a black SUV pulled up. They’d spotted the pair get free of the car. They parked in the middle of the street, and five men with automatic weapons stepped out. Randal Jones was one of them.
“You might as well make it easy on yaselves,” he’d said. “We got ya’s outmanned and outgunned. This is what you get for pickin’ on me all those years, Moore.”
John had told them they were under arrest. When they didn’t drop their guns, he shot one of them to death and wounded another before they could respond. Noah fired several shots, but head trauma makes for poor marksmanship.
The thugs unloaded on full auto. Flashy and stupid, but one bullet managed to graze Noah’s temple. He dropped.
Moore took out the last two thugs expertly, and then stood from cover when Jones ran dry. Moore told the criminal to freeze. Jones went for his pistol anyway. As he pulled his weapon from his coat, John fired. The shot hit Jones in the left shoulder. But the veteran officer’s gun jammed. Jones staggered for a moment and then took advantage of the opportunity. He emptied his pistol into Lieutenant Moore. Noah could only lie stunned and bleeding as his friend fell dying to the cold pavement. Jones sped off in the SUV, and backup arrived a minute later. Two minutes too late.
The city gave John Moore a hero’s burial. The mayor gave a speech. There were floral wreaths and a shiny posthumous medal for valor. But it was still a burial. That’s the problem with a hero’s farewell. You need a corpse.
Less than a month later and Noah Haynes was chasing down his most hated of enemies. He’d gotten lucky, and Jones had gotten stupid. There was a cherry Randal was fond of, a whore who lived for her next fix. He always went to her alone. He was afraid someone would use her against him. He was right.
Jones would slip back to this apartment whenever he could spare a moment. It was a sleazy part of town. Randal liked sleaze. Jones wasn’t completely stupid. He’d managed to spot Haynes and take off before he got busted. So now it was a footrace.
Winding through the back alleys, Noah wondered idly if he was being led into an ambush. He wondered if he cared. When he reported spotting Jones, the dispatcher told to wait for backup. Hell to that.
The radio jockey doesn’t have to look John’s widow in the face and tell her Jones got away again. No more escapes. This ends.
Kelly Moore was the only person who had taken the loss harder than Noah. John had been the only thing keeping her going after their son had disowned them for his “new family.” He said the people at the Gay and Lesbian Center understood him better than a pair of useless old people could. Now Kelly had lost the only other family she had. Noah didn’t care who Daniel bedded, but once this Jones business was done he was going to have a serious talk with the kid about the pain he’d caused John and Kelly.
Noah was gaining on Jones. Fury and superior conditioning allowed him to erode the distance between them. Only Jones’s knowledge of the area’s back alleys had kept him ahead, allowing him to duck under fences and dart through obstacles Haynes had to climb over. Even that was just delaying the inevitable.
Jones rounded a corner and realized he was done. The alley was a dead end. No chain link fence to climb over. No dumpster to boost himself. Just a brick wall. He spun and saw Haynes come around the corner. They both went for their guns. Jones had a head start and came up with his first, but not quickly enough. His aim was wild, and his only hits didn’t stop Haynes. Noah’s three shots ravaged his circulatory system, piercing heart and lungs. He fell to the ground, as good as dead.
Noah fell to one knee. The wound hadn’t taken him out of the fight, but there was a hole in one of his kidney’s that was leaking fast. He called in his location, though he knew he would be dead by the time help arrived. At least he’d gotten Jones.
I won’t let it end like this. I’m not dying next to a scumbag in some filthy alleyway.
His eyes managed to focus on the building across the street. A small chapel lay perfectly centered in his field of vision. Probably there wasn’t even anyone there this time of morning. But it was someplace.
I die on my terms.
Applying pressure to his wound as best he could, Noah dragged himself upright and staggered towards the church. The sanctuary was unlocked. Noah collapsed in the middle of the aisle. Through rapidly tunneling vision he saw an incredibly surprised priest.
“Sorry about this, father,” was all Noah could manage before his injuries took him.
Noah came to awareness in an infinite darkness. He could see himself perfectly, but everything else was like a starless sky, black and empty.
“Noah Haynes. We have need of you.”
He rolled onto his back and saw a figure wearing a hooded cloak
Noah rolled to his feet and smiled slightly.
“Who’s we?”
