Entropy and Sorrow's Kiss

He turned a corner and headed down another street, his eyes once again searching for something, anything out of place, but his stomach burned, his eyes too.

Then it hit again, he felt like some sort of autopilot was steering him through life, yet he realized he'd felt like he was somehow being guided most days, being pulled through life from one seemingly 'preordained' encounter to the next. He had arrived at a place in life where he no longer believed in coincidence, and he took that feeling to heart with each new day, with each passing landscape he visited, even if everything he saw was painted in undertones of hate and fear. He had, in fact, been feeling for some time that he was being put in situations that would allow him to atone for his sins, perhaps for having fallen in love with Debbie while having the audacity to even think he knew what love is, or may be.

No, that wasn't quite right, he told himself with more conviction than he felt. No, he thought of himself as being shoved into situations that would force him to relive his past, to confront the mistakes that had torn his life apart, because all he had held within his grasp was gone now. Debbie, Elaine, Henry... all of it. Gone.

And with each passing day, reliving each and every moment of that nightmare day after day, his soul had turned into a burned out landscape, and now he felt as if his life had been scorched by a horrible fire – and all that remained was a deadly, self-inflicted fatigue. He could barely sleep anymore; the final papers of his divorce had burned his eyes and still glowed in his mind, the last simmering embers of a promising life turned suddenly, terribly wrong. With sour consequences reverberating through his nights, he tossed through the darkness gripped by memories of her legs and her eyes and her mouth, stale anger bouncing around in the dark for so long he could no longer see the truth of his mistakes. Now his memories were hollow, the burned-out shells of better days that had withered in the sun, blanched echoes of bad dreams. And it was always Elaine he saw, and the way she had opened up to him, and her opening led into the fire, every time.

And this morning, as he cruised through one bleak suburban landscape after another, he realized he hadn't had a decent night's sleep in months, indeed, since Debbie filed for divorce, and the dreams he relived in this perpetual night were simply parodies of their shattered love, a shadow-puppet show of forces he didn't understand, his love lying dead in the gutters of his betrayal, the silent betrayal of an oath lingering in the wake of her passing. Her affair. Her new lover. Her new life, all the consequences of his own searing blindness.

Down another street, up another alley, each beige brick house looking like the one next to it, each standing mute as monuments to a life of cornered acquiescence. Endless broken dreams in neat ordered rows, Burnett thought, and not for the first time he felt these houses seemed to stand as silent enclaves to an endlessly vapid futility, and that preening vanity thrived behind all these closed doors. He thought about the lives he saw day after day, the lives that inevitably played out behind all these brick walls, the lives inside mundane and trivial, each and every one full of bad marriages, the despairing people trapped inside these self-made prisons already well on their way down the slippery slopes of dissolution. This was life cast in beige sandstones, he thought, dull, meaningless and uselessly fragile, all emotion walled neatly inside little brick containers so nobody could see inside and discover the meaninglessness. So that all these people wouldn't have to be reminded of their own meaningless existence.

He shook his head, tried to shake himself out of the blue funk he felt coiling around his soul like a snake, then thought about talking to one of the department shrinks. Maybe, he said to himself, maybe he was simply losing it.

But, really, what was the point. Another day on these mean street, another night on a never ending journey through an endless progression of memory, and he knew, really knew, that all he would see and hear out on the streets today would only reinforce his understanding of this meaningless sonata called life. He knew this was true because all he saw, day in and day out, was human pain and anger spilling out of these little beige containers, spilling out onto the streets in crimson hued agony. Everything eventually boiled over and ruined itself. There was no escape, because people simple couldn't escape their own greed.

He listened on the main dispatch frequency as another unit checked out for lunch, and he gazed reflexively at his watch. Perhaps he just wanted a break in the monotony more than anything else, something that might remind him that life wasn't simply preordained misery. He shook his head again, listened to The Doors sailing away on the radio, sailing away on their The Crystal Ship, and Burnett drifted along within days that were bright and filled with pain, enclosed in Debbie's gentle rain one more time. Then he saw an old man in his front yard waving at him, and he waved back – waved through Jim Morrison's pain.

But no – the old guy was motioning for him to stop, so he pulled his squad car over to the curb and rolled down the window. He turned down the radio and leaned out the window a little as the man drew near. "Good morning, sir. Something wrong?" Burnett said.

"There's a strange van parked in the driveway out back," the old man replied, pointing across the street. "Been there about ten minutes. Couple of rough looking customers went in through the garage."

"Right. Which house is it again; can you point it out to me?"

"The brown over there," the man said, pointing at yet another beige brick delusion. "Just to the left of that big pecan tree, other side of the alley."

"OK. We'll check it out," Burnett said to the man as he reached for the radio mounted under the dashboard.

Burnett switched the channel dial to the primary and turned down Jim Morrison's voice as he drove quickly to the corner. He stopped the car and got out, then paused and reached under the front seat and removed the Remington 870 pump shotgun from it's floor mounted rack. He craned his head a bit and looked at the back of the house in question, saw a beat up Ford Econoline van parked behind 511 Byron Court. "Ah, 21–14," he said into the radio.

"Twenty–one fourteen, go ahead," the dispatcher replied.

"Signal 53, possible Signal five at five–one–one Byron Court. Going to move in toward the back of the house. Send back-up." He'd reported this incident as a suspicious vehicle call, with a possible burglary-in-progress. 'Oh well,' he thought, 'might be an exciting day after all.'

"2114 at 1143 hours. 2118, respond to 511 Byron Court, Signal 53, possible five in progress."

"2118, Code five."

"2110, en–route," the shift sergeant replied.

"Units in route at 1144 hours."

Burnett moved alongside a tall, weathered cedar fence until he came to a hedge, and he looked through thick summer foliage at the van behind the house; he watched as a young man carried a television set from the house and put it in the back of the van.

"2114, I think this is a five; one male white 20s with black hair exiting house with a television. Vehicle is a primer and brown Ford van, license 2 Mike Paul 333."

"2118, received. I'm about 2 minutes out."

"2118, received at 1147 hours. Ah, 2114, 2118 is about two minutes out."

"2114, received. Have responding units take the front of the house."

"2114, 10–4. Units responding to 5–1–1 Byron Court, officer on scene requests units cover front of the residence."

"2118, received."

"2110, received, and get some more units headed this way."

Burnett turned down his radio, watched the house and listened. The young man with the television disappeared back into the house, then the old man from across the street poked his head into the alley. Burnett popped up and motioned to the old man, waved him to get away and he watched, concerned, as the old man withdrew down the alley. Burnett broke cover and moved closer toward the house; he racked a round into the Remington as he ran, then he heard the gunning engine of first one squad car, then another, then units checking out by radio near the front of the house.

Then... from inside the house...

"Fucking pigs, man, let's move!"

Burnett heard running in the house, then one man emerged carrying a pillow-case stuffed with goods in one hand and a scoped hunting rifle in the other. Burnett launched from his concealed position and yelled: "Freeze, Police!" just as a second man appeared in the garage. Burnett watched the first man drop the pillow case and raise the rifle; the second man had a pistol in his hand – and it was coming up, fast.

"Drop the gun, NOW!" Burnett yelled. He could clearly see both men, could make out both weapons; he was reacting now, not thinking, and time seemed to slow to a crawl. His right index finger snapped off the Remington's safety then slid to the trigger as he brought the shotgun up to his shoulder. The man with the rifle was the greater threat, so he moved the sights on the front of the Remington toward him. He could clearly see this man, see the rifle moving up to his shoulder, and Burnett aimed low, knowing that double–ought buckshot gained elevation when fired from this range, and he squeezed off a round. He racked the spent shell from the Remington and rammed a fresh round into the chamber as he sought out the other man, the man with the pistol.

Burnett heard "Signal 33, shots fired!" on his hand radio, then felt the air above his head rippling. He heard the gunshot next, saw the man with the pistol down low in a crouch taking aim, and he covered this man in his sights and squeezed off another round. As the gun roared and recoiled, he racked the shotgun again, readied to fire again, as he looked for the next threat.

Then the smoke cleared.

The first man, the man with the rifle, lay on the garage floor. Motionless. Burnett moved slowly in that direction, his shotgun still up and covering the area. He moved cat-like, slowly, on the outsides of his feet, towards the garage. Out of the corner of his eye he saw another man in uniform moving along the side of the house – towards his position. Burnett moved quickly to the driveway behind the house, and the man with the pistol emerged from behind some boxes and fired at him. Burnett fired again and saw his buckshot tear into the man's neck and shoulders; he heard another shot, and another, and turned to see that the other officer had exchanged fire with yet a third man, and each man's shot had hit the other. This third man was raising his weapon to shoot at the other officer, and Burnett racked another round and fired at this man, then he chambered another round as quickly as he could.

Burnett moved quickly into the garage. Three suspects were down and quiet, and he moved to the stricken officer. "2114, officer down in the alley, need ambulance code three this location." It was Charlie York, an almost sixty year old man, a thirty-plus year veteran of the department. "Shit, Charlie – you OK?"

"2114 received at 1155 hours."

"Yeah," – gasp – "think so. Side hurts like Hell."

Burnett moved to York's side, it was a bloody mess above his left hip, and the unseen wound was bleeding profusely. Burnett felt another presence; it was the old man from across the street. He dropped to his knees beside Burnett and ripped open a pack of gauze and slapped it on the wound. Then he heard another set of footsteps running up the driveway.

"You OK, Alan?" he heard 2110, the shift sergeant, asking, then he saw York.

"I haven't checked the house. Or the van. Hell, I haven't even checked the guys in the garage."

"Yeah, well, not much anyone can do for them right now, Alan. Three down in there."

Burnett heard sirens wailing in the distance, then a rough sounding engine drawing near. He turned to see an ambulance stopping behind the house, in the alley, so he stood and ran into the garage to secure the area for the medics. Then the sergeant was standing next to the door that led inside the house from the garage, his pistol drawn. He pointed at his ears, then his eyes, and held up two fingers. He had heard and seen two more people in the house. Burnett took three shotgun shells from the elastic band on the shotgun's stock and slid them into the gun's tube, then he felt the safety to confirm it was still off and moved up to the door. Then he heard it.

The sound of a hammer being pulled back on a firearm.

Both Burnett and the sergeant jumped back from the door as it exploded. Two men bolted from the shattered door then skidded to a stop as they confronted Burnett and the sergeant. The first man raised his weapon, a sawed off rifle of some sort, while the second started screaming "don't shoot, don't shoot!" Burnett simply said "Stop" to the man with the rifle; the end of the barrel of his Remington was poised about six inches in front of this man's face. Little else needed to be said. Check and mate.

The man with the rifle dropped his weapon, looked at Burnett, and said "OK, Pig, you win."

"On your knees, hands behind your head," Burnett said.

As Burnett and the sergeant handcuffed the two suspects, Burnett tried to recite the Miranda warning: "You have the right to remain silent...the right to a lawyer, yada, yada, yada," but that was as far as he could get. All of the tension and adrenaline of the last few minutes flooded into his consciousness, and he felt his knees giving way – he went to lean on the garage wall.

"You all right, Alan?" the sergeant asked.

Burnett felt light-headed, and now there was the growing awareness of a burning sensation on his left forearm, and with an absent-minded gesture he reached for it. He felt warm, slippery stuff on his arm and looked down to see a thin stream of deep, red blood pulsing down his arm. "I think I've been shot," Burnett said to no one in particular. "I will be dipped in shit!" he said as he slid down the wall and sat on the garage floor.

+++++

About an hour later detectives from CID and Internal Affairs had finished photographing the entire house, and Burnett looked down at the tightly bound wound on his arm with a mixture of disbelief and annoyance. He watched a small cluster of detectives laughing and cracking jokes, and he walked over to them, listening as he approached.

"Man, that's some weird shit in there. Never seen that kinda stuff before," one of the men said as he laughed and shook his head.

"Strange–ranger, that's for sure. Looks like a goddamned vampire."

"Wouldn't want to run into that bitch in a dark alley, ya know what I mean?"

"Man, if my wife dressed up like that, I don't know what the fuck I'd do!"

"You'd cream your jeans, Pencil Dick!" The group laughed as they walked off, leaving Burnett with a few dozen unanswered questions hanging in the air. The burglary was his call, so he was going to have to get the basics for the initial incident and arrest reports, and then he'd head down to the ER at County and get his arm looked at. It wasn't too bad, or so a Paramedic had said, and it could wait. Interviews with CID and IA would round out the rest of his day.

He walked inside and immediately sensed this wasn't your generic suburban ranch-style house; the floors were a deep gray berber, the kitchen had a black slate floor and black laminate cabinetry. Other walls in the house were either painted dark gray or wallpapered with rich, dark fabrics, but now there were papers strewn all over the house, and appliances knocked around by the burglars sat at odd angles on the countertops and floors. Drawers stood open everywhere, the floors littered with things that couldn't be sold quickly by junkies looking to score their next hit of heroin.

He had his aluminum clipboard nestled under his good arm, and walked into the living room. He looked around at well kept leather furniture, all dark colored and very elegant, then he heard a woman's voice in another part of the house, and moved in that direction.

The voice he heard was calm – maybe too calm, he thought. There was a crisp edge to the words he heard, something vaguely menacing that ran under the surface of her voice, like a knife leaving it's scabbard. The woman, he could tell, was talking to her insurance agent; she was asking questions and he guessed she was writing down instructions, asking about coverage and where to get a clean up crew to help her get the house back in some kind of order. Burnett listened for a moment then knocked on the woman's bedroom door.

"Just a minute," the voice said. "Be right out."

Burnett heard the woman finish up the call, and he watched as she came out into the living room, and when she entered the room, it was all Burnett could do not to stare. The woman was tall, very tall, and her skin was preternaturally white. Her straight hair was quite long, and was an oddly attractive jet-black that stood in stark contrast to her alabaster skin, while her eyes were a vivid electric blue, almost a cobalt–blue, and they were set off by heavy black and blue eye mascara. Her long fingernails were painted black, and looked razor sharp. She was, it seemed, dressed almost entirely in blackest black; an open black leather vest revealed a studded corset underneath, her short black skirt barely hid black stocking tops, and she walked confidently about the room on black leather high heels that had to be at least six inches tall.

Burnett looked at the delicate black choker around her neck as he unconsciously bit his lower lip. His eyes went down to her ankles; there he observed a bracelet – under her stockings – around her right ankle. He suppressed a sigh as his eyes lingered on the woman's legs and shoes.

"Are you the officer who was shot?" the woman said, looking down at his left arm.

"Not really, Ma'am," he said. "This is just a flesh wound; Officer York was taken to Parkland before you got here."

"How is he?" she asked.

"Haven't heard, Ma'am, but it looked pretty bad. So, sorry, but I've got to get some basic information for the main report. You'll need our service number for your insurance claim as well. I'll need to go room to room and get an inventory of the stuff those 'scrotes tried to take."

"Scrotes?"

"Oh, sorry. Slang for scrotum. Bad Guys, I guess you'd say, in cop-talk.

"Oh. Do we have to do this today?" the woman asked.

"Yup, 'fraid so. Won't take too long if we get right to it. Where would you like to start?"

They made their way from room to room; Burnett wrote on his clipboard and looked furtively at the woman every chance he got – while she grew more and more impatient and, it seemed, nervous. They came to a locked door off the main hallway.

"Uh, this door was locked; those guys never made it in here," she said.

"I'll still need to take a quick look in there, Ma'am."

"Why? I mean, really, if they didn't..."

"I have to, Ma'am. Report has to be completed; this is a four bedroom house, and I'll need four bedrooms accounted for in my report or the DA will roast my tail for the next month..."

Exasperated, the woman took out a key and unlocked the door. "Help yourself, Officer," she said in a voice thick with barely contained anger – and no little amount of sarcasm.

Burnett entered the room – and he entered another world. The room had stone walls, and leather restraints were set into the stone on one wall at heights for wrists and ankles. A black and red padded-leather crucifix stood against another wall, restraints attached to this as well. A rolling cart stood in the middle of the room; it was stocked with toys and equipment to give enemas and electric shocks.

"Everything in this room accounted for, Ma'am?" Burnett asked, his face a blank mask.