PROLOGUE
It was a presentation that Charlotte “Charly” Becker and her proud father—retired homicide detective Jake “The Professor” Becker—would remember for the rest of their lives.
The unforgettable moment began when a burly, broad-shouldered man named Eddie Janovik pinned a gleaming blue ribbon and a gold medal to the front of Charly’s Chicago Police Department uniform jacket.
“Patrolman Becker,” said the unsmiling and stern-faced Janovik—aka the “Chicago PD Superintendent”—“it’s my proud duty to present you with the 2000 Harrison Award for Outstanding Bravery in the Line of Service as a Chicago police officer. Your act of courage in disarming an assailant who threatened the life of your partner with a lethal weapon was only the latest act of valor in a long and honorable tradition of heroic service by the officers of the Chicago Police Department.
“Being a police officer is one of the hardest jobs in the world, and it often requires the kind of heroism you displayed during that incident last year.”
A few seconds later, the Superintendent was carefully affixing the golden disk with the familiar Latin motto (Fortitudo et honoris) to the blue serge fabric of Charly’s jacket.
Seated in the first row of the PD Central Auditorium, the retired homicide detective was blinking back tears . . . and then lifting his right hand to his forehead in a loving salute to his daughter.
Watching him, Charly smiled back.
At that moment, she was remembering a rainy summer afternoon—about eight months earlier—when she and her partner crept into position beside the door that led into No. 801 at the Pleasant View Housing Complex in South Chicago. . . .
***
Showdown.
Patrolman Becker—a 28-year-old Chicago PD rookie street cop—placed the palm of her left hand beneath the butt of her Smith & Wesson 9mm semiautomatic.
Stone-faced with total concentration, Charly was “steadying the muzzle”—just as she’d been taught a few months earlier at the Police Academy.
On the other side of 801, an intoxicated male adult suspect was at that moment screaming with rage: “Get the fuck outta my face before I kill you, bitch!”
Listening hard, Charly took a deep breath, while her calm and cool partner sent her a nod of confidence-building approval. “You looking good, Charly,” said veteran Patrolman Reggie Carter, who’d been “working the street” for the past 11 years and had survived dozens of these “domestic dispute” police calls. “You ready to go?”
“All set,” said Charly.
“Fine and dandy,” said Patrolman Carter. He was whispering now. “We’re gonna be fine and dandy. Just follow my lead, got it?”
“Roger that,” said Charly. She was doing her best to sound calm and unemotional, but the two words wobbled a bit as she spoke them. Her hands shook a little, too, as they did their best to steady the S&W.
This was Charly’s fourth day on the job at the Chicago PD.
The two of them were crouching at both sides of the door now, with their weapons trained and the safeties off. The trouble with these domestic disputes was their unpredictability; one false move and an unlucky cop could end up taking an ambulance ride—or maybe even a ride to the morgue on downtown Jackson Street.
But there was no turning back now.
It was a humid, drizzly afternoon on 78th Street, deep in the violence-torn South Side of Chicago. Patrolman Becker and Patrolman Carter had taken this call ten minutes before, while eating bean burritos with guacamole dip at a Taco Bell located eight blocks to the east.
Six-niner, this is Dispatch—got a DD at 78th and Causeway, Pleasant View Apartment complex. . . 911 caller in 801 says her boyfriend is armed and threatening her with a gun.
They’d left their bean burritos on the table.
Now Patrolman Carter was holding his right hand in the air.
“On my mark,” he whispered.
“Gotcha,” whispered Charly.
With that, the older patrolman used the knuckles on his left hand to rap against the door. Then they waited. They could hear Fleetwood Mac singing in somebody else’s apartment, about four doors down the hallway. It was one of their classics, an oldie called “Dreams,” from way back in 1977.
Thunder only happens when it’s raining
Players only love you when they’re playing. . . .
Reggie Carter rapped his knuckles again. He also said in a loud voice: “Chicago PD, open up.”
Nothing. Just the radio going down the hall.
Now here I go again, I see the crystal visions;
I keep my visions to myself. . . .
Charly was holding her breath.
Then two things happened close together.
First, she heard a scream of tires racing down 78th Street eight stories below—probably some stupid hot-rodder showing off.
Second, right after the squealing tires, the battered apartment door swung open.
Behind it, like a scowling jack-in-the-box still quivering at the top of his spring, loomed a huge man with a gun.
For a moment, the three of them stared at each other. Then the gunman shouted something—Charly thought she heard: “I don’t talk to no poh-leece!”
His pistol was up and cocked. It was also pointed directly at Charly’s partner. Behind him, a weeping woman was kneeling on the floor and holding two terrified children in her arms.
They were frozen in place. If they’d been a marble sculpture, it would have been named: Terror.
The gunman’s finger was on the trigger. It was trembling. And the muzzle was pointed directly at Charly’s partner’s chest. But nothing happened for a while . . . as the distant radio played on and on.
It’s only me who wants to wrap around your dreams,
And have you any dreams you’d like to sell?
Charly took the leap.
She dove forward. Like a middle linebacker exploding into a ball carrier’s ribcage, she went head-on into the gunman’s midsection. He flew backwards and his pistol flashed. The round went sizzling away into the sound of Fleetwood Mac. Another moment passed—or was it a year?—and then the suspect was flat on his back and Patrolman Carter had the S&W against his skull.
“Another move, you dead,” said Carter.
The suspect didn’t move. Within a few seconds, Reggie Carter had turned him over and was kneeling on his back while he applied the handcuffs. Soon there was a loud clicking sound which told them the assailant had been restrained. But Charly was still sitting on the floor.
She was staring at her left leg, four inches above the knee, where the blood was now pumping from her femoral artery. Her eyes were wide with fear. Shuddering with the effort, she crawled up to a kneeling position. She was still studying the left pants leg of her blue uniform, watching it turn redder with each beat of her heart.
“Fuck!” screamed Patrolman Carter. “Aw, fuck! Charly?” He was also staring at the reddening pants leg. It was arterial bleeding, and he’d seen it before; if it kept up, he knew she’d bleed out within a few minutes.
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