Pulphouse Fiction Magazine #13 by Dean Wesley Smith

Author:Dean Wesley Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WMG Publishing

At two a.m., they pull up in two vans, one on each side of the house on Jordan Street. All are in jumpsuits now, even Karyn, and wear heavy flak vests. Baudier and Gautier reported they could see the flood line on the house, about two feet below the roof. The house is old, the only house on the levee side of the block with electricity. Many of the houses on the block have been cleared away, concrete slabs and or mud pits where single family dwellings once stood a block away from the Industrial Canal. Across the street, Brad Pitt’s reclamation project has a number of half-built houses going up on stilts. Several houses on the next block look occupied.

They’re in the lower Ninth Ward, crack cocaine capital of Louisiana. Unfortunately, a lot of decent, older folks used to live here along with the criminals. Folks without cars or other means of evacuating. The ones who didn’t drown when the levees broke were stuck in attics or on rooftops for days in blistering hundred-degree temperatures for a long damn time.

There are no cars parked at the man’s house. There’s a light on above the front porch and one in back. Beau’s heartbeat rises when two Fifth District NOPD marked police cars pull up in front of the house and everyone tumbles from the vans to hit the front and back doors simultaneously. Jackson uses a battering ram on the front door, Linda the first one in with Herrera her wingman. Linda first. It’s her warrant. Gautier smashes the back door and Beau’s in first, Karyn right behind with a shotgun and Baudier covering their backs. Beau covers the right flank, Karyn the left. It’s a kitchen with two exit points.

Voices shout up front. A movement to Beau’s left catches his eye as Karyn fires twice at a figure that goes straight down. Beau leaps forward, Glock trained on the figure on the floor, his heart stammering, arms itching, legs twitching as he focuses. The air is hot with the taste of gun smoke, smelling of gunpowder now and blood.

Gautier moves past Beau, calling out, “Police!” He steps to a hallway and calls out again.

“Federal Agents!” Linda calls back and they search the rest of the place.

Beau, down on his haunches, moves to the body, sees a stainless-steel semi-automatic Smith & Wesson next to the man’s hand. Karyn caught him dead center in the chest and face with two twelve-gauge double-aught buckshot rounds; the top of the man’s head is gone. It’s Hernan all right, same jawline, the right tattoos. He wears gray shorts and black socks. Beau looks back at Karyn, her eyes ovaled now, smoke drifting from the muzzle of her twelve-gauge shotgun.

A hand touches Beau’s back and Linda says, “The house is clear.” She steps around Beau and checks Hernan for vital signs, as if—with only half a head.

Beau stands, holsters his weapon and moves to his partner. Karyn stares past him at the body and says in a low voice.

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