Rape Read Free

patrolman’s uniform he made a strong impression. It surprised him to learn that most cops in the NFPD had not fired their weapons at any human targetslet alone killed these targets let alone felt good about it and though he would not tell anyone on the force about his Persian Gulf experience, for he was not a man to talk much about himself, somehow he exuded that air.
    Yet his first partner, an older, paunch-bellied cop who had not advanced beyond patrol after eighteen years on the force, requested another partner after only three weeks.
    â€œGuy like Dromoor, no question he’s smart, he’s a born cop. But he’s too quiet. He don’t talk, it makes you talk too much. And when he don’t answer you then after a while you can’t talk either, then you start thinking too much. That ain’t good.”
    In the NFPD he had bad luck at first. But usually balanced by good.
    He was hurt, sure. Pissed. That his first partner had dumped him. His second partner, a guy nearer his age, hadn’t lasted long either. Not Dromoor’s fault, just bad luck.
    He’d been on the force just seven weeks. It was a domestic disturbance call. Late one muggy August night on the East Side where the smoke haze from the chemical factories makes your eyes sting and breathing hurt. Dromoor was driving the patrol car. As he and his partner J. J. pulled up outside a bungalow, an individual looking to be a white male, midthirties, was pulling away from the curb in a rust-stippled Ford van. It was J. J.’s call to pursue the van. What was inside the bungalow would be discovered by a backup team. The chase lasted eight minutes involving speeds of sixty, sixty-five miles an hour along narrow, potholed residential streets in that partof the city of Niagara Falls few tourists have discovered. At last the van skidded, fishtailed, collided with parked cars, and the driver was thrown against the front windshield, lay slumped over the steering wheel. There was reason to think he was unconscious. Very possibly he was dead. The windshield was cracked, there was no movement inside the cab. There came J. J. and Dromoor behind him, both with guns drawn. J. J. was anxious, excitable. Dromoor perceived that this was not a familiar experience for him. J. J. called out for the driver of the van to lift his arms from the wheel, keep his hands in sight, stay in the vehicle but keep his hands in sight. The driver of the van was unresponsive. He appeared to be bleeding from a head wound. Yet somehow it happened, Dromoor would replay the incident many times afterward seeking the key to how precisely it happened, that the driver of the van stooped to retrieve a .45-caliber revolver from beneath his seat and opened fire on J. J. through the side window as J. J. approached; and there was J. J. suddenly down in the street, a bullet in the chest. Dromoor, approximately three feet behind his partner, was struck by a second bullet in his left shoulder before he heard the crack! before he felt the impact of the bullet which carried no immediate pain with it, no clear sensation other than a rude, hard hit, as if he’d been clubbed with a sledgehammer. Dromoor was on one knee as the driver climbed out of the van, preparing to fire again, except Dromoor swiftly fired at him from his kneeling position, upward at an angle, three bullets each of which struck the shooter in the head.
    This was John Dromoor’s first kill in the NFPD. It would not be his last.

The Friend
    P EOPLE YOU MEET, MOST of them make little impression. Others, they make a strong impression. Even if you don’t meet them again, if your paths don’t cross. Still.
    She recognized him from local TV, newspapers. His face, that is. His name she would not have recognized, though it was a strange name and one she murmured aloud, smiling: “Dro-moor.”
    At the Horseshoe Bar & Grill they were introduced. This was not long after Dromoor’s citation for valor, a