LITMIR.BIZ

      ONE

      “Stop! Please help me!” screamed a hysterical woman as she waved down a passing squad car.

      Dallas police officer Dane P. Thornton immediately hit the brakes and flipped on his red-and-blues. Pulling a U-turn, he screeched to a halt directly behind the woman’s sleek black Mercedes.

      He opened his door, and she reached out to him, begging and crying. “My babies! My babies!” she sobbed.

      Thornton wondered what a woman like this was doing in this older, tattered part of town. Even though her smartly tailored beige linen pants were creased and wrinkled, and her matching silk blouse was tearstained and smudged with makeup, she was clearly from someplace much more refined and affluent. She didn’t fit this bohemia of Deep Ellum, an eclectic mix on the edge of downtown clogged with trendy restaurants and after-hour bars. Within the blocks, hip young singles and black-garbed “Goths” filled neon-splashed sidewalks.

      “Slow down, lady,” Thornton instructed. “Just tell me what’s happened.”

      “You don’t know?” she screamed, her long brown hair wild around her tear-streaked face. “I’m Mary Jean Pearle! I called 911!” She turned and pointed to the red brick, four-story Adam Hats Lofts that stood ten feet away. “I’ve got two little girls up there. I heard a gun go off. Five times maybe. I was on the phone with them. My babies were shouting, ‘No, no, no,’ and the gun kept firing again and again. That’s when I called police. My little kids . . . ,” she trailed off, breaking into more frenzied sobs. She became incoherent and almost impossible to understand as each syllable came out in a shriek. She gulped for air and tried to talk to the officer. “Aren’t you responding to my call?”

      The cop had thirty-two years of experience, but he felt a shiver rush down his spine. Shots? Children? It never got any worse than that. As a traffic officer, he had his radio tuned to accident calls, so he quickly switched his signal to Channel One, which covered the Central Business District where they were now. Thornton repeated the woman’s story to his dispatcher, but no one there had heard anything about the shooting. Regardless, he decided to act. Giving the dispatcher his location, he barked, “Get someone over here right now. I’m going inside, and I’ll need backup.”

      He grabbed a twelve-gauge shotgun out of his car, then turned to Mary Jean. “Ma’am, this is my beat. I was just returning to District with a traffic report. No, I didn’t get any 911 call, but I’ll check it out.”

      Tears streamed down Mary Jean Pearle’s cheeks. Her voice barely contained her hysteria. “This doesn’t make sense,” she cried. “I called 911 a half hour ago from University Park. I can’t believe I beat the Dallas police down here! Oh my God, please hurry! You’ve got to get to them! Hurry!”

      “Lady, I know this is rough, but calm down. Now tell me, who lives here?”

      “My ex-husband, John Battaglia. He’s in 316. No, no, 418. He just moved. Only a couple days ago.” Each word she uttered was loud, shrill, and filled with panic.

      “Do you have a key?”

      “God, no! I have nothing to do with him.”

      The officer ran to the loft’s main entrance, where overhead hung a white wood awning supported by heavy chains. Forty lights tucked inside the canopy illuminated the area to daylight brightness despite the setting sun. Officer Thornton neared the door and the overhead lights glistened on his shaved, tan head. He reached the building’s front door and grabbed the handle. It was locked. A man stood nearby, smoking a cigarette and watching the officer jerk on the door.

      “Do you live here?” Thornton asked.

      “Yeah, do you want in?” The man took a card from his pants pocket and swiped it across a magnetic eye.

      The lock beeped and Thornton took hold of the handle, but the sound of another car screeching to the curb made him turn around. Two other policemen, Officers Zane Murray and Ray Rojas, dashed from their vehicle and ran toward him. Thornton grabbed a nearby flowerpot to prop open the door, and went over to the other officers.

      “I just got a call that someone heard shots coming from inside one of these lofts,” Officer Murray told Thornton.

      “I called,” Mary Jean said, then repeated the story she had told the traffic officer.

      Officer Murray snapped on his radio mike. “Get an ambulance over here!” he told the dispatcher, shouting over the traffic noise on Central Expressway, the elevated thoroughfare that divided downtown Dallas from Deep Ellum. “We have reason to believe that kids have been injured.”

      The three policemen ran inside, leaving Mary Jean alone on the sidewalk. She crossed her arms over her shaking body and paced back and forth. Everything was playing out in slow motion. This is what you hear about happening to other people, she thought as her stomach continued churning.

      The massive downtown buildings towered over her, and their interior lights began to flicker alive as the sky darkened.

      Mary Jean grabbed her cell phone and punched in a number for Melissa Lowder, the friend she had been visiting when she last talked with her daughters. Melissa picked up on the first ring.

      “Melissa, the police are finally here,” she said in a shaky voice. “They’ve gone inside.”

      “I can get someone to take care of my kids,” Melissa said. “Do you want me to come down?”

      “Oh yes, please, please. I really need you.”

      Mary Jean clicked off her phone and looked around the empty street. The last orange streaks of the sunset had left the sky, darkening her world all the more.

      The officers ran into the lobby. Thornton passed an abstract, four-story, yellow-and-orange sculpture in the core of the lobby, and headed for the elevator while the other two officers ran to the stairs. They believed that Battaglia was inside, and they were prepared.

      The elevator crawled to the fourth floor, and Thornton’s tension climbed with it. It jolted to a stop and the doors slid open. At the same time, the other two officers reached the fourth floor, panting.

      The three hurried along the hall, their rubber soles thudding on the concrete floor. When they arrived at Battaglia’s door, they knocked and stepped to the side. The man could be inside with a gun trained on them. When there was no response, they tried to open the heavy commercial door. They weren’t surprised to find it locked.

      They knew what they had to do next and were well aware of the risk they were taking. Because they suspected that someone was injured, they could legally enter the loft without a warrant, but once they kicked the door open, they’d be at risk from whoever was on the other side.

      They didn’t hesitate. Murray, who stood six feet tall and weighed 220 pounds, told the other two officers to stand back.

      Rojas and Murray drew their service revolvers. Thornton’s pistol was holstered, but he had already switched off the safety of his shotgun.

      Murray eyed the place on the door right by the lock, its weakest point. The burly, barrel-chested officer took a couple of steps backward, and with adrenaline pumping, powerfully kicked the door with his black leather boot.

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