Danica Williams

The Touch of a Cop

There were six of them, all armed with AK-47’s and they were brutal. Their heads were covered with balaclavas, the kind you see on TV on the cop shows. All of the bank employees, mostly young women, were shoved into one corner of the big room. A handful of clients had been inside the bank when the group of men stormed in leaving chaos and fear in their wake. The thugs treated them roughly, shoving them into a tight group with the women. The leader barked an order and two of them grabbed the manager and dragged her into the main office. Another went to secure the entrance to the office where they had gathered the hostages. He then grabbed a slender blonde with large breasts and yanked her from the hostage group, holding her up against himself as he moved away. The remaining thugs kept their assault rifles leveled at the rest of the hostages.

The blonde girl was sobbing hysterically, and the leader slapped her face, rocking her head back. He told her bluntly to shut up. He looked her over carefully, and then ripped her blouse open, tearing her bra in the process and leaving her breasts bared to his gaze. He pulled her to him, pawing one pale, full breast as he spoke for the first time to the hostages.

“Nobody moves!” he commanded. “If all goes well and nobody does anything stupid we will be out of here in just a few minutes and nobody will get hurt.” He started to speak and was interrupted by a call from the masked figure by the front door. “Shit, it’s a cop!” He raised his weapon and fired a burst through the door, sending the police officer running for cover.

He looked out the window, using the sobbing blonde as a shield, and could see what looked like twenty police cars outside surrounding the building. A single phone rang and after a minute or so, dragging the blonde along with him, he crossed over to it and answered. He spoke with them very briefly and slammed the phone down. The blonde became hysterical as he dragged her to the door. When he reached it, he pushed her through the glass. She fell to her knees with glass cuts all over her…and he shot her in the back of the head.

One of the hostages had remained calm and patient. He had seen such men before many times, and he hoped that everyone else would remain calm until the thugs could take what they wanted and leave. When the leader ripped the blonde’s blouse, he feared for the worst. But he knew perfectly well what was coming after the girl was killed. There was no longer any time left for patience. He had to act.

Only a few moments passed before the hostages began leaving the building, women first, their hands in the air. The first officer to reach a hostage received a strange and garbled message. “He’s in there,” she said, “and they are all dead.”

Cassie Taylor stood in the pouring rain directing traffic around the wreck on the bypass. She had no idea why they called it a bypass, it was used more by locals to get home than it was by travelers passing through. She glanced at her watch impatiently; her shift had just gotten off but she couldn’t leave until her replacement arrived, and today was the day she had to go to her mom’s house to pick up her daughter for the weekend.

The loudmouthed man who had hit the pickup truck in the rear end was gesticulating wildly while screaming into his cellphone. He threw his phone into the front seat and angrily approached the driver of the truck, who was standing quietly by the front of his vehicle answering the questions asked by Cassie’s partner. Cassie shouted a warning to her partner. Steve, holding a pen, a clipboard, and a flashlight while trying to write down the driver’s information, never saw the wild haymaker that decked him. The loudmouth was huge, one of those guys that smashes full beer cans on his forehead and lifts cars by their front bumpers to amuse his friends. Cassie was already in motion before her partner hit the ground, calling for backup as she ran.

She pulled her Glock as she ran…this guy was three times her size and mad. She could care less how many of the guys on her shift ragged her about pulling her gun instead of brawling with this kind of monster. As far as she was concerned, the guys could brawl all they wanted to, she was going to go home every night…without bandaids and casts. So far, every person she had threatened to shoot had believed her and let her put the cuffs on quietly. This one didn’t seem inclined to accept her authority, and grabbed quickly for her gun.

Neither of them ever saw the driver of the truck move. He snatched her gun away from her in one swift motion and smashed the handle of the weapon into the back of the troublemaker’s head so hard that the man didn’t stand a chance. He went down fast. Cassie blinked and accepted her Glock back from the man, stunned. The loudmouthed man lay out cold on the wet asphalt. She quickly knelt and handcuffed him, reporting to the radio that she needed a paramedic, but that everything was under control. Her supervisor, lights and sirens on, stopped and jumped from his vehicle.

Cassie managed to work through the following week without any major incidents. When the end of her shift came there were no surprises. “That figures,” she thought, “Tina is going camping this weekend with her Brownie Troop.” The thought of facing a long weekend alone did not hold any real joy for her without Tina’s company, but she could honestly use the rest. The last two years had really been a strain on her. Divorce from her asshole of an ex-husband, trying desperately to find a job that would support herself and her daughter had been ridiculously hard. The job with the Police Department had been an opportunity she had not really wanted, but in the final analysis had been her only real choice.