RSKNOTTS.COM

Chapter One: The Raid

The hammer was cocked. The warm metal of the barrel was pressed against the back of her head. Through the frizzy thickness of her dirty-blond hair, she could feel the heatand the intense pressure against her skull. He was pushing very hard.

He already had fired the gun several times, randomly through the open window toward the police. He also had critically wounded the mattress in her bedroom, for some reason clicking off a couple of rounds into the Sealy Posturepedic. Now the .38 revolver was aimed at her brains.

Outside the bedroom, the woman's two children huddled against the door, whimpering. The two girls - barely ages seven and five - wanted their mother and wouldn't leave.

SWAT teams from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Broward County Sheriff's Office and the Fort Lauderdale police surrounded the small home in the quiet, middle-class neighborhood of Coral Ridge, crouching and scampering among royal palm trees within the shadow of the grand, towering Presbyterian church on Federal Highway.

She was still on her knees. And he forced her to turn around now, to stare into his eyes and then into the short, dark barrel that looked to her like the portal of oblivion.

"Suck it!" he ordered her. "Suck it, God damn it! Just like you sucked him! Do it!"

Her head trembling, she placed her mouth over the gun barrel and looked helplessly up at him. Her sleeveless blouse was ripped and she wore nothing from the waist down.

He already had dragged her by the hair into the bedroom and forced her to remove her blue cotton shorts and black thong panties. Then he had raped her.

"Suck it good or I'll blow your head right off, God damn it!"

Tears streaming down her cheeks, she began to move her head back and forth along the warm metal, lips burning and twitching. And she closed her eyes and sniffed back the mucous from her running nose once and waited to die. More than anything, she wondered how much it would hurt to have her head splattered across the newly painted, white bedroom walls.

"Didn't I tell ya I'd come back! I told ya you'd never get rid of me!" he shouted as she swallowed the gun barrel.

"Mommy! Mommy! Let us in!" the two girls cried outside the bedroom door.

As the girls pounded tearfully on the door, two loud shots exploded. The woman heard the bullets go off and couldn't understand why she felt nothing. It hadn't hurt at all.

Then there was muffled groaning and she opened her eyes and found him laying face down on her new butternut bedroom carpet, bleeding from the shoulder and chest. Police officers in black bullet-proof vests burst into the bedroom and grabbed her arms forcefully, pulling her down the hallway and outside the front door. Her daughters waited there safely, crying and running into her arms.

The man had been her second husband, father to the youngest child. She had divorced him more than two years earlier but lately he had been hanging around, sometimes knocking on the door after her fiance left for work. And he had become threatening, demanding money and sex from her. She had known something bad was going to happen.

But no one would listen.

The police had said there was little they could do unless the man tried to harm her and a court restraining order had all the forceful effect on him of a raindrop against a sea wall.

And so on this Saturday morning, he had broken into the garage minutes after her fiance left to play golf, then smashed inside the house as she frantically tried to chain and bolt the kitchen door. He had held her hostage for more than four hours.

The woman explained all of this to me now slowly and calmly, arms around her children, sitting beside me on the front steps while police interviewed neighbors. A
Broward County sheriff's deputy walked by and told me to wrap things up soon - the other reporters were all long gone. And yeah, the ex-husband would live, the deputy answered. He'd moved just as the shots were fired, lucky for him.

By then I had already closed my notebook anyway, my pad filled with more quotes than I could use, and had been just listening quietly for a while, nodding sympathetically from time to time, smiling at the kids. I knew that my editors were expecting me back in
the newsroom before long. But the deeply shaken woman had begun to talk to me at a furious pace, spewing out details of her many past misjudgments about men and
relationships, apparently desperate for some type of emotional release.

An anxious glance at my watch showed that there was still some time before I had to worry about deadlines - what could a few extra minutes hurt? As a longtime cop reporter, I'd never been much good at the customary hit-and-run interviews anyway. Too often the people, the victims, got to me more than I probably should have allowed. I found myself wanting to help
them somehow, to provide a little consolation or encouragement or sometimes even simply a bit of money, whatever they needed most in their moment of crisis. But solace definitely wasn't in my job description and I never mentioned these suspiciously compassionate inclinations to my editors, of course. Excessive sympathy was just one of my many failings in this business, I had long ago concluded.

"So that was when I met Harold. You know, my fiance. But I told you his name already, didn't I? That's right, well anyway, Harold and I have been very happy but something like this makes you kinda gun shy about men and you wonder what could happen next time, ya' know? Still, it's not like this kinda stuff goes on everyday. I can't remember anything like this happening around Fort Lauderdale before, can you? Oh but yeah, that's right, you told me that you remembered some of these before, didn't you?
Sorry, I'm not thinking too clear right now," the woman rambled.

"Listen, don't worry about it. I'm just impressed that you can remember your own name right now, much less anything else. If I'd been through what happened to you today, I'd be a total basket case," I answered, smiling at her and then again toward the children.
The youngest was sucking her index finger. "It's like I said to you before - you're not the first woman in town whose ex-husband came after her with a gun. I don't want to get too graphic in front of the kids, but let's just say some of the other women weren't as lucky as you when things were all over. Fortunately, though, there's probably still a few nice guys left around South Florida somewhere who don't like playing with guns."

"Yeah sure, of course there are. I know you're right about that, guys like my Harold, I hope. Thanks, it's sweet of you to sit here and listen to all this. And ya' know something else? I have to tell you - you don't seem much like the other ones I talked to," the woman observed with a quizzical expression, pausing. "Reporters, I mean. I don't know what it is
but you're just a little different somehow. Maybe it's that you're one of those nice guys, ya' know?"

"Well, thanks, that's nice of you to say. But honestly, don't think too badly of the other reporters. Everyone's just busy today but most of them are pretty good people, not as different from me as you might think. Unless you mean I don't dress as well as the TV reporters and then I'd have to agree with you," I laughed, pulling on the half-untucked tail
of my frayed, once-white shirt. I glanced down toward my feet and chuckled again, shaking my head. "See what I'm talking about? One black sock and one gray one - I just noticed. Kind of a pathetic thing isn't it, a grown man who can't dress himself in the mornings? And I don't think these jeans have seen a laundromat for three weeks. I'm kind of like a Salvation Army version of a real journalist, I guess."

"No, don't be silly. All you need is the right girl in your life to help straighten up your wardrobe a little," the woman replied, relaxing a bit now despite the two children who began to squirm in her arms. "A big, handsome guy like you shouldn't have any trouble
finding a steady girl. And a woman's touch is all it's going to take, trust me about that."

"Believe me, no woman in her right mind would want me. Way too much trouble," I said with a grin, standing up to leave. I took one step down the front stairs and extended my hand. "Thanks a lot for all your time. I appreciate it. And good luck. I really hope things go well for you and your family from here on."

Then I walked down one more stair, felt my right leg tug violently backward and stumbled over the last two steps, grabbing the handrail awkwardly to keep from tumbling on to my nose. I looked down and saw that my right shoelace was untied.

"See what I mean? It's just a sad thing," I said with an embarrassed smirk, leaning down to re-tie the shoe. For the first time since her ordeal, the woman smiled without looking tense and unnatural about it. Even her children thought my acrobatics were most amusing - and their giggles made me laugh. "I can get this way every now and then. The klutziness kinda comes over me for no particular reason. It's like my dad used to kid me
sometimes, 'I'll just call you Grace.' It's hopeless, I'm afraid."

After leaving the home, I began to wander around the palm-lined streets of Coral Ridge to collect color and quotes from stunned neighbors. This was a good story,
especially for the Saturday shift. Almost certainly it would go on 1A - the front page. Fort Lauderdale Herald-Sun editors loved juicy crime news, nearly as much as they loved news about yesterday's weather or traffic. It was, they insisted, what readers wanted. And so my pieces often got better play than reports about government or the economy or scientific breakthroughs or things that really affected anyone's life. But at least the prominent attention for my stories provided me with some extra on-the-job
compensation, a little ego boost from seeing my byline so often staring out at me from newspaper vending machines.

That was one of the few perks of my job. Not that I ever saw any reason to complain about things very much at my newspaper. God knows, the pay was by far the best of my life, enough money to finally push me solidly into the middle-class income bracket for
the first time. Unlike my colleagues, I was actually grateful for our annual 2.5 percent increase. No, the only real drawback sometimes was the cop beat itself, and I tried not to complain about that much either. It was just that the reporting challenges seemed very few these days on my grindingly routine assignments. For some reason, I had managed to remain mired on this same beat during my entire six years at the newspaper. All the promotions to better reporting positions osmehow had eluded me.

As I stood at the front door of one Coral Ridge home, an old man started to hand me the quote I had expected to get about the ex-husband, the same comment spoken about every screwball neighbor anywhere in the country who goes haywire with a gun - "He always seemed quiet and polite to me." But just then, my cellular phone rang.

"Hi, this is Jack Hanson. What's up?" I asked with some relief.

"Hanson, you creep, you wasting time as usual?" a woman's voiced chimed lightly. "They need you for something else. How are you doing out there?"

I laughed loudly. The voice needed no identification. This was Joni Caroso, one of the paper's best photographers - and my closest friend, in or out of journalism.

"Caroso, get off the line and put a real newsperson on, will you?" I teased. "What are you doing calling me anyway? Don't we have any editors in the newsroom anymore?"

"You should be glad it's me, Jack. Everyone else is in a panic. Will Spyler popped into his office for something and saw the newsroom a mess and just hit the roof," Joni explained. "Things have gotten really busy today but all anyone can do is scramble to clean up their desks because the boss happened to stop by on a Saturday. Anyway, they asked me to let you know that we've got some kind of cop story to check on and I get to keep you company on this one, you lucky guy. Are you almost through out there?"

"I've got all the basics but still have a few neighbor interviews to finish. What kind of story is it, Joni?"

"All I know is that we got a call a few minutes ago from the Oakland Park cop shop. They're working on some big tip and they're going to let the Herald-Sun go along for the ride," Joni said. "You'd better wrap it up fast there, Jack, and get to the Oakland Park
p.d., ok? I'll scoot over there now and stall for time for you if you're running late. Some guy named Detective Ornthrow says they're going to raid a weird medical clinic they've been getting complaints about. It's probably no big deal."

______________________________________________________

Oakland Park police were stationed at both doors of the home, maybe seven or eight officers and detectives. Standing on the front porch with Detective Ornthrow and Joni Caroso, I could hear noise inside. Someone must still be in there, I thought.

Ornthrow knocked hard on the door.

"Police. Open the door!" he demanded. There was no reply and he pounded several more times. "Police! We've had some complaints. Open up!"

When no one answered, Ornthrow ordered Joni and I off the porch as a large uniformed officer with a sledgehammer stepped forward. I could still hear some kind of talking from inside.

"For the last time, this is the police. We have probable cause to enter these premises. Open the door now or face immediate arrest. This is your final warning," Ornthrow shouted.

While Ornthrow moved to the side, Joni squeezed as close to the porch as possible for the best angle of the door, unintentionally bumping lightly against one cop, apologizing but never turning from the viewfinder, totally focused on the job at hand. She always surprised everyone that way.

Joni Caroso was a petite woman whose waves of rich black hair, track-runner figure and wide, inquisitive, licorice-black eyes soon beguiled most men. The warm radiance of her broad smile and the gently mischievous lilt of her voice also charmed other women. Even the slight limp in her left leg, the remnant of a high
school car accident, somehow only added an intriguing imperfection to her girl-next-door appeal. Joni loved to talk about cats and needlepoint and baseball and jazz and her large Italian family, especially her parents. She seemed exactly like what she really was - a genuine, loving, passionate creature. But once a Nikon was in her fingers, Joni turned into a top-flight shooter who usually snagged the most revealing, newsworthy pics - a determined pro and, if necessary, tough as tree bark on assignment.

"Stay with me at first when we go in, Jack," Joni said, moving to her right. "Watch my back but point anything out if it looks like a good shot, ok? I'm going to try to follow the first cops through the door."

"Ok, Joni. Sure," I answered. "Just do me a favor and back off a little if there's crooks still inside this house, all right? I don't want to have to call the photo desk and tell them that I let my best friend get shot up just to snap some picture of bad guys running from a room."

The officer with the sledgehammer took a vicious swing at the edge of the wooden door, as if trying to ring the bell at a carnival. The door flopped open, almost falling off its hinges and Ornthrow and the other cops swarmed inside as Joni and I quickly followed.

The place seemed deserted, apparently abandoned in a furious rush. To one side, there were two metal desks with phones and electric typewriters, filing cabinets and a fax machine. Most of the desk and cabinet drawers were wide open and empty. A few papers and several clear plastic hoses were strewn around. A large oxygen tank stood in one corner.

It looked like a home converted into some kind of medical office. There was a strange scent everywhere in the air. A fresh odor but far too pungent to be pleasant, so thick it was almost nauseating, like the smell outside after a thunderstorm only much more
intense.

The noise was louder now and I could tell that it was only the droning of a television. I made out scattered phrases of a news anchor saying something about worsening problems between the United States and the Caribbean island nation of Isla Rublo. "Dozens more
rafters...out in the ocean...leaving the Communist country in search of freedom...intensifying Florida's immigration troubles," was all I heard.

Joni and I walked around the front office together, wondering what this place was all about. The cops had received an anonymous tip that something "very dangerous" was going on at the home. Lives were clearly at risk, the tipster had warned. This had
followed several complaints from neighbors about suspicious activities there - an endless parade of cars, people in and out all day. But somehow this operation didn't look like anything much to me.

Just as well, I decided. At least when we returned to the newsroom, I could concentrate all my efforts on writing up thehostage story.

But just then, one of the cops in a side room down the hall shouted for Detective Ornthrow. His voice sounded urgent and I hurried to see what was wrong as Joni
followed me, her camera poised to shoot anything that moved.

When we stepped inside the converted bedroom, I noticed two more large oxygen tanks, plastic hoses of various lengths and an examining table. On the floor beside the table, a man lay collapsed and doubled over, as if in unendurable pain. His face was
frozen in a wild grimace and his right hand had contorted into a claw that clutched at his
chest. He wasn't moving.

"Jesus!" I almost shouted.

"Oh Good Lord, no!" Joni exclaimed, her face horrified as she slowly lowered the camera away from her eyes. This was not the sort of shot the newspaper would want to publish anyway, a dead body served up for our readers' breakfast tables. But it certainly was not the kind of picture Joni Caroso felt justified in snapping. I had known her to refuse to take unusually ghoulish or intrusive photos in the past, even when that meant later facing the wrath of her editor.

"Man, oh man! Look at this guy," Ornthrow said, bending down to feel the victim's neck for a pulse. "Christ. He hasn't been dead long, has he? He's not even cold yet. What the hell could have happened to him?"

"Whatever it was, it looks ugly. God damn," a thin, young uniformed cop said, chewing the back of his plastic pen, his eyes wide and unblinking.

"My God, that's just awful. Whatever happened to him, it must have been excruciating. This poor guy had to be in agony when he died," I observed sadly, shocked
by the grisly discovery.

"Yeah, and whatever the hell did this is still out there," Ornthrow pointed out. "And I just hope it doesn't do the same damn thing to somebody else. Not even a dog should have to die in that kind of pain. I don't know what this joint was into, but it scares the hell out of me. Man, look at that dead bastard's face. Christ, it scares the hell right out of me."