Page 2 of Hush

Mike could feel eyeballs peering down on them all.

A chain rattled and the deadbolt slid. The door cracked open. Stan Coffey—thirty-nine-years-old, rail thin, with the body of a meth addict and a face to match—leaned against the doorjamb. A cigarette hung from his wrinkled-paper lips. His face looked like his missus had hit him one too many times with a frying pan, and he’d never healed right. His greasy hair stuck up at odd angles, next to the bald patch spreading out from the center of his crown. “What you want?” Stan’s eyes narrowed as they swept over Mike.

Mike shoved his star-shaped badge into Stan’s face. “U.S. Marshals, Mr. Stan Coffey. We’re here to talk to you about—”

Stan took off, tearing back into his apartment.

“Shit.” Mike drew his weapon and followed, shouldering open the door and clearing the hallway corners quickly.

Shouting, from the backroom in the dark apartment. Women shrieking. Glass breaking.

He jumped out to the landing and found Silver and Gordon ready to move. “Backside. He’s making a run for the alley.”

Gordon took off. A rickety fire escape, more rust than metal, clung to the moldy walls of the tenement in the stinking alley. When they’d driven in, they’d eyed the metal ladders with wary eyes. Anyone thinking of making a run using that would have to be desperate. It looked like it was just shrugging up to the building and the slightest bit of weight would make the old bolts shear off from the brick siding and send the entire rusted structure to the ground in a puff of orange dust.

Silver radioed for the Fairfax police escorts waiting around the building to move in. They were there as a courtesy, “in case shit”, in the wisdom of the marshals. Well, “shit” had happened.

Mike ran back into the apartment, down the hallway, and burst into the living room. Three women were sitting on a sagging sofa, each wearing a tube top four sizes too small. Mismatched sheets were tacked over the windows, darkening the room like a cave. Daytime soap operas blared from the TV perched on an empty milk crate. In front of the women, stained crack pipes littered a broken coffee table, next to scraps of aluminum foil. Sticky burns covered the bottom of the crack pipes, and the stench of singed hair and melted plastic clung to the dank apartment.

The women screamed, each leaping back on the couch and trying to climb each other, trying to get away from Mike.

“Hands up!” he shouted. “Hands up!Up!” If one of their hands went under a couch cushion, or behind a pillow covered in burn marks, they could come out with a gun. He pointed his pistol at the women and shouted again, “Hands up!”

Cowering, they all raised their hands and turned their faces away, hiding against each other.

“Where did he go? Where is Stan?”

One of the women pointed to the back hallway, her finger shaking.

A narrow door was ajar, and a beam of sunlight pierced the dank living room. Chipped blue tile caught his eye. Stan had escaped into the bathroom.

He heard grunting, and then cursing. Glass breaking. Crashing, things falling to the floor, smashing against tile.

Mike ran for the bathroom, shouldering open the door and throwing his back against the wall. A filthy tub with a ratty shower curtain hanging by only a few hooks sat on the right, and on the left, Stan Coffey hung halfway out of the thin window above the toilet. The window was only a foot tall. Mike wouldn’t be able to get his shoulders through the damn thing, but Stan was doing his best to wriggle his meth-wracked body through the pitiful opening.

“Get the fuck down from there, Stan!”

“Fuck you!” Stan kept wriggling, his scrawny ass shimmying against the windowsill. There was no way his hips were getting through that window, no matter how skinny he was.

Sirens wailed outside. Tires screeched. Mike heard shouts from the street below and feet running into the alleyway. Fairfax police yelled up at Stan. Stan cursed back, a string of nonsense and spit as his legs kicked and thrashed. His foot knocked a toothbrush off the side of the sink. It flew across the bathroom and into the tub.

“Get the fuck down, or I’m going to haul your ass out of there.”

“Don’t you fucking touch me!”

He could grab his feet, but he’d have touch Stan’s nasty sweats, stained with God-knew-what. He could grab him and yank, twist him and slam him into the ground. Stan would get the wind knocked out of him, and that would help with getting him cuffed. “Stan, last warning. Get the fuck down from the window!”

“You touch me, I’ll fucking kill you!”

Bingo. Threatening a federal officer. Add that to his first threat. Stan was looking at a real bad day when this was all over. And probably some serious bruises, too.

Mike heard Silver and a police officer in the living room, ordering the women to stay seated. They were all whimpering, lost in some meth high and probably riding the shiny lights emanating from the TV screen or staring at the glint of Silver’s badge. “Silver! Help me pull this jackass down!”

Silver stomped into the bathroom and chuckled at Stan’s flailing legs and his grunting curses. He took up position next to Mike, but made no move to help. “I’ll cover you.”

“Thanks.” Mike slammed his pistol back in his holster. Silver smirked. Mike started for Stan, edging his way around the bathroom and avoiding Stan’s wild kicks. He’d have to grab Stan as close to the hips as possible, get his rail-thin thighs together, and then fling him down. It’d be like wrestling a cat.

Awesome.