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“What?” I speak into the radio. “Come again, Kelly?”
There’s an impatient sigh from the other side of the line before Kelly slowly repeats herself. “We received an emergency call from the Amherst Apartments. No one said anything, but then we heard some rustling and someone said ‘What the fuck is this?’ Then the call dropped. We think you should check it out.”
It’s probably someone’s kid who got ahold of their phone and accidentally called 911, but I have an obligation regardless. “Send me the coordinates.” Try as I might, I can’t keep the frustration out of my tone.
“Probably some kid,” my partner says from the passenger seat. He’s flipping through a magazine with an unimpressed look on his face. “Guess we’ve got nothing else to do though. Might as well tell the parents this kid is yanking our chain.”
When the coordinates come in, I direct the vehicle toward Amherst Apartments. “It could be worse,” I point out. “We could be heading into an active shooter scene or something.”
Gunther passes me a glare. “Yeah, because kids can’t be as annoying as an active shooter,” he shorts. “Give me a break, Mitch. I’d rather be doing something productive with my time than checking out an open and shut case of someone’s four-year-old who managed to get ahold of daddy’s iPhone.”
My partner is a decade older than me. He’s on his third marriage and a few months away from his third divorce. He says that the women he’s married have all assumed that one day he’d come around to being a father, but for as long as I’ve known him. Gunther Walden has never done anything he didn’t want to do.
I don’t counter his argument as we pull into the Amherst parking lot. Everything seems pretty calm, even the building that Kelly’s coordinates lead us to.
“What are we supposed to do?” Gunther scoffs as he chucks his magazine to the floor. “Go up and down all the hallways until we find someone in distress? Knock on all the doors? We’re going to be here a while.”
I climb out of the police vehicle and adjust, double-checking to ensure I have everything on my person. I’m done with the pat down before Gunther even bothers to get out of the car. “How about you take the first floor and I’ll take the third?” I offer. “We’ll meet in the middle of floor two and go get lunch after. Sound good?”
Gunther pats his belt to ensure he has his gun on him and then nods. “Sounds good to me. I’m thinking Chinese.” Sounds a little heavy for a hot day, but I don’t mind Chinese.
I head up the stairs to the third floor and by the time I reach the top, I feel a little winded. I make a mental note to work out a little more so this doesn’t happen next time. The last thing I need is people calling for emergency response and then seeing me panting because a few stairs got my heart racing.
The Amherst Apartments are on the nicer side. The interior of the building is well-lit and the carpets are kept clean and vacuumed. I can’t remember the last time I responded to a call here, which is one of the reasons I consider it to be a nicer establishment. But the floors remind me of hotels with a faintly chemical smell from the cleaning supplies and the nearly identical doors along the hallway. Sconces hang every few feet and the carpet makes you dizzy if you look at it too long. Not to mention the walls are a soothing taupe color.
I start making my way down the hall listening for anything abnormal. Knowing Gunther, he’ll knock on a few doors if he hears sounds from within and ask if anyone knows anything about the call. I don’t expect much, but I do my due diligence.
The first few apartments are relatively quiet. There’s one about five doors in which I faintly hear the sound of a television playing and I knock on the door. It takes a few seconds, but eventually, someone comes to the door. An older man opens the door with a glare until he sees my uniform, then the sour puss slides right off his face. “Howdy, officer,” he greets with a chortle, “what can I help ya with?”
He doesn’t seem like he needs any help. “We received a call from this location and then someone abruptly hung up. So we’re just checking out the apartment and seeing if anyone has seen anything or noticed anything suspicious.”
The elderly gentleman frowns a bit and reaches up to scratch his scraggly beard before pointing a few doors down. “I thought I heard some sounds down there a little bit ago. Cabinet doors slamming and stuff, the usual. But it could just be one of my neighbors checking their cabinets before heading to the store. I know sometimes I let my doors slam. Wish we had those soft close ones, ya know?”
He rambles on a bit, but he’s very genial. I take his information into consideration and tip an imaginary hat to him when he finishes. “I appreciate your help, sir. I’ll let you know if I need anything else.”
The door closes slowly behind the man as I take a few steps down the hall. I keep a sharp ear out for sounds, but not much seems to be happening. A baby cries off in the distance and I can hear steps from someone walking around in the apartment behind me. But it isn’t until I make it nearer to the door that the old man said he heard the cabinet slamming from that I finally get a glimmer of interest.
It isn’t much. I hear a couple of masculine voices inside calling someone baby and honey. For a second, I think it’s a couple getting frisky in the middle of the afternoon and I don’t want to interrupt their sexual congress. But then there’s a little whimper and my ears prick up like a dog that’s caught the scent. I step closer to the door and listen a little harder. The whimper is replaced with the sound of cloth tearing and that’s all I need to hear before I am knocking on the door.
Immediately, all the sound inside stops. I start thinking I’m crazy after a few moments when nothing else happens, not even the press of someone’s foot into the carpet as they cross their apartment. But something in the back of my head says to knock again, so I do. And this time I clear my throat and gird my loins for the most masculine voice I can muster. “This is the police. If there’s someone inside, please open up.”
That gets the movement going again, or at least it does after a woman tries to yell ‘help’ and then is stifled. My blood runs cold and I grab my walkie-talkie to tell Gunther where I’m at. Inside, I hear scuffling and suppressed cries for help. Holstering my walkie, I grab my gun instead and announce that I’m coming inside.
The door isn’t even locked. When I twist the knob, it opens right up to a precarious scene. A woman is partially undressed with her eyes widened in fear as the two men try to drag her toward the bedroom door. “Freeze,” I point my gun at one of the assailants. “Let her go.”
The ‘her’ in question is a dark-haired beauty. She’s wearing only a bra and a pair of panties, but I see her shirt discarded on the back of the couch and her shorts left on the floor. The look on her face tells me that I arrived just in time.
“Listen, man, this is just a scene,” the brunette tells me with an easygoing smile. “We’re her boyfriends. She likes to roleplay getting taken against her will.” His hand never leaves her mouth and I have a feeling that if it did, I’d hear an entirely different story.
I stall for a few more moments as I wait for my partner to arrive from the first floor. “I’d like to hear that from her if you don’t mind. If all is copacetic, I’ll be on my way.”
The two guys make eye contact, not once looking at the poor woman between them. It looks like they’re having a silent conversation between the two of them until she bites the hand over her mouth and the brunette yells out in pain.
“Help!” She exclaims when he drags his fingers away from her open mouth. “Help, please. They’re going to hurt me.”
Just then, Gunther busts through the door with his gun drawn and a heated look on his face. “Let her go, boys,” he takes charge of the situation. “More officers are on their way and you don’t want to get caught on the wrong side of a firing squad.”
I cringe as he says the words. Gunther is in his forties and he still maintains the ‘cops are badasses and can do whatever they want’ mentality that gives a lot of us a bad name. When he cocks the hammer back it makes an unmistakable sound.
