TASERED

By

Karen Lewis

Excerpt

SHOOT HIM AGAIN! Shoot him again!”

He was a giant of a man with a shaved head and goatee, fighting off the police officers who tried to arrest him. Deron took aim with the stun gun and hit him again. The foyer of the York Hotel was deserted, save for a couple of guests who watched the action from a safe distance. But that would all change in a few minutes when a tour bus arrived.

Sirens screamed in the distance, drawing closer. Against all odds, the man continued to struggle despite the best efforts of the two cops to pin him down. Deron kneeled on the back of the man’s legs and tried, unsuccessfully, to put handcuffs on him.

The call had come in from hotel security shortly after midnight. There was a man, they said, who was vandalising hotel property and threatening people. He didn’t understand English and was shouting in a foreign language. They thought it was Spanish.

When Deron arrived he spoke pleasantly to the man, who appeared deranged and was acting erratically. “Put your hands on the counter,” he instructed, using sign language. But the man refused to comply. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. He then faced off with the police, challenging them to come and get him.

Deron shot him with the Taser. But instead of falling down and becoming compliant, after the 50,000-volt shock, the man roared and flailed around like an enraged bull.

The effort of trying to subdue this combative goliath had left Deron sweating and exhausted. His partner, Curtis, kneeled with all his weight on the man’s shoulders, but still he struggled and fought like a lunatic.

Deron finally managed to handcuff the man just as the tour bus pulled up outside. Hotel security diverted it to another entrance.

Sirens screamed to a halt, as several more police cars arrived. Their lights flashed through the floor to ceiling windows. It was then that he noticed the man was no longer moving.

“He must be unconscious,” he heard one onlooker say.

“It’s a Code Red,” said Curtis.

Deron called for an ambulance. While they waited for it to arrive he monitored for vital signs. The man was breathing and had a pulse. But when the medics arrived his condition began to deteriorate and despite the use of a defibrillator, he could not be revived.

* * * *

“THERE’S A PROBLEM HERE,” stated Lieutenant Neil Slater. “Your version of events does not tally with that of the eye-witnesses.”

“I don’t know how that’s possible,” Deron shrugged. “It was all pretty straightforward.”

“Not according to them.” Stacked on Slater’s desk was a pile of newspapers decrying the actions of the police as an unnecessary degree of force. “They have taken their concerns to the media.”

Deron hadn’t slept properly since that awful moment when he realised the man was dead. Manuel Vega haunted his dreams. It had come as such a shock. Nothing even remotely similar had ever happened to him in all his twenty years on the force, just when he was thinking of retiring too.

The paperwork surrounding the event was monumental. Never had he seen such a stack of documents. He signed his name so many times – Deron James, Corporal, Vancouver Police Department – that he ended up with writer’s cramp.

“Look, I didn’t do anything wrong. Neither did Curtis.”

Slater nodded. “But proving it might be another matter entirely.”

* * * *

ACROSS THE DARK HARBOUR, Vancouver shimmered in the moonlight. Deron tossed his cigarette butt into the water and turned his collar up against the cold. It was at times like these that he almost wished he were married again. The loneliness could be torture.

The man, who died while resisting arrest, was Manuel Vega, a Mexican tourist. He had been a guest at the hotel for several days.

Deron cut through Waterfront Park, deserted at this late hour, and thought he might as well go home; Although he dreaded the moment when the silence of his apartment would reach out to shroud him. He decided to have a drink first.

The Raven Pub throbbed with the beat of a mellow jazz band. He downed two Scotches in quick succession and was about to reach for a third when a voice at his ear distracted him. “Feel like company, honey?”

She was an attractive blond, built like Venus. But her eyes – like so many of her kind – were dead.

Deron shook his head, finished his drink and left.

* * * *

“OKAY, WE HAVE TO go over it all again,” said Slater. “The commissioner wants a full report by tomorrow.”

“But what more can I tell you?” Deron felt weary beyond words and hung over from the night before. Unable to sleep he had got up and finished what was left of the whiskey.

Slater ignored him and pushed on. “What was your impression of Vega, when you first arrived on the scene?”

Deron ran a hand over his cropped black hair. “I thought he must be an addict on a bad trip.”

“Yet the autopsy showed no traces of either drugs or alcohol.”

“There must have been a mental problem then. I mean this guy was going nuts.”

“It seems he was just frustrated because his tour bus left without him. He had hung around in the hotel lobby most of the day.”

Deron shook his head and stirred a cup of sludgy coffee. “There’s more to it than that, Neil.”

* * * *

THE PRESS WHIPPED UP a frenzy of public feeling against the killing of a tourist who had merely been upset. The Morning Herald, a tabloid that catered to the sensational, was particularly savage. Vega, they said, was a law-abiding citizen, who had worked all his life in the family hotel. His trip to Canada had been a once in a lifetime dream.

Deron scanned the coverage, feeling horribly exposed and under siege. There was a photograph of Vega’s grieving mother, which had been dispatched to news agencies around the world, on the front page. “How could this happen to my son?” she wept. He was always a good boy. Never in any trouble with the police.”

There was also a photograph of a flower shrine, set up in the lobby of the York Hotel, at the spot where Vega had fallen. Deron felt as if he were in the grip of a nightmare from which he would never wake up.

“Wait ‘til you see the latest.” Curtis telephoned at dawn. “It’s gonna make the heat we’ve felt so far seem mild.”

“Oh god, what more can there be?”

“One of the onlookers at the hotel filmed a video of the incident and sold it to a television station.”

* * * *

“JUST LOOKING AT THE video, it looks bad, really bad,” Deron admitted. “Which goes to prove that although the camera may not lie, it certainly can deceive.”

Slater played the clip again.

It showed an agitated Manuel Vega picking up a small table and gesturing with it in a threatening way. He was panting and perspiring heavily. Hotel security, unable to communicate because of the language barrier, stayed at a safe distance, afraid to approach him.

Vega had barricaded himself behind a glass partition, which separated the main hallway from a small seating area. When Deron and Curtis arrived they asked him how he was and could be seen talking to him through the glass. A few seconds later Vega threw his arms up in the air and walked away from them. Then he stood with his back to the camera. He could be heard shouting something in Spanish and gesticulating. At that moment he is hit with the Taser.

“What was really going on can’t be seen from that angle,” complained Deron. “You can’t see Vega’s facial expression or gestures. I instructed him – with sign language – to put his hands on the counter, and instead he pulled out a knife and faced off with us. I told him to put it down and when he refused I pointed the Taser at him. But he would not co-operate, so I had no choice but to use it.”

Slater nodded. “But on account of this bloody video all hell’s breaking loose. It’s nothing short of a mob frenzy, screaming for blood.”

One of the most vocal was Manuel’s Uncle Pedro, who from his automobile dealership in Mexico City, vowed to avenge his “murdered” nephew.

“It’s made Curtis and I easy to recognise,” bemoaned Deron. The still shot of him, looking dark and brooding as he stared down at Vega, had been seen worldwide. Curtis hadn’t fared much better, caught for posterity kneeling beside Vega, his even features and fair hair clearly visible.

“I’ll reassign you inside, it’ll be safer.”

“Oh puleaze not that. I just couldn’t bear shuffling papers around for a twelve hour shift.”

Slater swivelled around in his chair and gazed out the window. The North Shore Mountains peaked in snow dominated the horizon.

“Well there’s always the Downtown Eastside?”

“You’re not serious? What have we done to deserve that?”

“It’s not a question of discipline,” explained Slater. “It’s just that the crowd you’d be dealing with down there are unlikely to keep up with the news. Therefore, they wouldn’t recognise you.”

“Let me run it past Curtis. If he goes along with it, you’re on.”

* * * *

“OH GOD, PLEASE LET me wake up,” moaned Curtis. “The deeper I get into this, the more like a nightmare it becomes. If only we hadn’t answered that fuckin call at the York.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” empathised Deron.

The Raven Pub had strung coloured lights around to acknowledge the season, and a lone pianist coaxed out a melody from a corner stage.

“I’m sick to death of being called a killer and a murderer. It’s so fuckin unfair.”

Deron nodded and ordered another round. He noticed the dark circles under Curtis’s blue eyes, and his hair looked uncombed. “Don’t worry, hang in there. The truth will come out at the inquiry.”

“Providing they don’t decide to throw us to the wolves.” Curtis looked cynical. “The brass is taking a lotta heat over this one.”

Deron knocked back a whiskey and followed it with a beer chaser. “So what’s it gonna be, buddy, a desk job or the hell of the Downtown Eastside?”

* * * *

SURROUNDED BY A GROUP of homeless drug addicts, the woman screamed, tore off her clothes and ran naked into an alley. Snow whirled down and sirens wailed.

Deron threw a blanket around her and guided her towards a waiting ambulance.

“Well, that was a bit easier than the last one,” commented Curtis, referring to a woman, spaced out on a bad trip, who had tried to kick, claw and bite them.

“Yeah,” agreed Deron, swinging the car into five o’clock traffic. “I don’t much fancy taking Anti-HIV drugs for months.”

“You were on this beat before, weren’t you?”

“Yes, when I first joined the force, and it hasn’t changed much.”

“The worst crime-ridden slum in Canada, according to the Morning Herald.” Curtis pointed to the article on page six. “Ten squalid blocks of fleabag hotels, filthy taverns, pawn shops and putrid alleys. Used condoms and hypodermic needles litter the gutters. Prostitutes ply their trade from every doorway, with some as young as eleven, known as the ‘Kiddie Stroll.’ Newcomers and adventure seekers, dubbed ‘Twinkies’ by the regulars, arrive every day.”

“This looks like one of them,” said Deron, when they answered a call at the Palace Hotel, a seedy dump that leased rooms by the hour.

“Yep, she’s a Twinkie alright.”

Just off the bus that morning from Toronto, Jenna had long brown hair and an elfin face. She looked terrified.

“You don’t belong here,” Deron said, as Curtis, dragged the druggie who had been causing the disturbance down the hallway.

“I’ve nowhere else to go. I can’t afford anything better,” she admitted. “I didn’t realise it would be as bad as this.”

“Get your things. I’ll drop you off at the Women’s Centre. It’s not fancy, but at least you won’t be attacked or raped.”

In the patrol car she told him that she was escaping family problems. Her mother had remarried and she felt unwanted, in the way.

“Go home and try to work it out,” he advised. “The city is no place for a girl alone.”

“Especially one with no money,” added Curtis. “Unless you want to end up turning tricks on East Hastings?”

The next night they saw her standing outside the Ovaltine Café, a local landmark that hadn’t changed much since the 1940s. It’s distinctive neon sign lit up the darkness.

“It’s not what you think,” Jenna smiled, with a mischievous expression. “I was waiting for you.”

She told Deron that she was leaving the next day. “But I couldn’t go without thanking you for getting me out of that terrible place.”

Once they were out of earshot of Curtis, she leaned closer and invited him into the alley. “I’d like to thank you properly,” she whispered. “Anything you want.”

He extricated himself from her grasp as diplomatically as possible. “There’s no need for that love. Besides I’m on duty.”

“Hey you should have gone for it,” Curtis laughed. “She’s pretty hot.”

* * * *

“THE TASERING DEATH OF Manuel Vega,” reported the Morning Herald, “has now taken on international proportions. The Mexican ambassador has expressed concern, and said his government intends to hold its own enquiry into Vega’s untimely death. While the Mexican community in Vancouver, plan to take to the streets, in an organised rally, to protest.”

Charges of racism were alleged in the tabloids.

“Hey you look like the Taser cops,” yelled a druggie shooting up with crack. He sprawled against a Dumpster in a rain-soaked alley. “You should be charged with fuckin murder.”

“Christ, it’s really coming to something when we’re judged by the likes of him,” said Curtis in disgust.

“The media’s to blame for most of it.” Deron kicked a half-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol off the sidewalk. Why only that morning the television news had reported a mountain of hate mail pouring into police headquarters, along with scores of abusive phone calls. “It’s trial by public lynch mob.”

“Yeah, and the way the local politicians are capitalising on it, makes me wanna puke.”

Deron nodded. “How many more enquiries can they announce? But it’s the promise that the guilty will be charged with manslaughter that really burns me up.”

“That’s us, man,” Curtis moaned. “I mean what the fuck did we do except try to arrest a madman?”

“Who has now been elevated to martyrdom,” added Deron.