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“You son-of-a-bitch!” She kicked the base of the file cabinet. “That hurt! Damn, damn, damn!”
“If you’d join the Twentieth Century and put all that in a computer, that wouldn’t be necessary, Sandy.”
Detective Jackson hollered from his desk at the wiry, five-foot-seven-inch, lady currently trying to beat the hell out of one, four-drawer, scarred green metal file cabinet.
“Why don’t you punch another button on your keyboard and all this will not have officially taken place!” She screamed back.
Sandra Norris drew back her foot for another assault and let fly with a body twisting whopper. The kick glanced off the cabinet and twirled her around. Sandy’s chrome-plated Colt .45 automatic popped out of her shoulder holster and hit the floor.
“Boom!” The shot was deafening. The concussion rattled the “IN” boxes on the desks.
The half glass door on one side of the room flew open and a shiny baldhead with eyes wide sprang out.
“What the hell? Anybody hurt? Whose weapon?” Captain Haynes had his priorities straight even in the face of total surprise.
Sandy did a quick body check. No blood, no pain. There was a bumping sound coming from beneath a desk. Grady Jackson was too slow, too fat, and too old to be diving under a desk. He was now trying to get out.
“I’m all right, Captain!” First a bald head then an arm and shoulder struggled from under a worn wooden desk. He was hitting the side of his head with an open palm in an attempt to stop the ringing in his ears.
“Norris, you’re one lucky bastard!” The captain shook his head. “Write it up.” He pulled the door shut.
“Where’d it go?” Sandy began looking around and noticed a neat bullet-sized groove running along a stack of old telephone books and then disappearing into the middle. There was some more bumping, grunting, and cussing folding out from under the desk. Detective Jackson resumed his place in a chair that must have been passed along from World War II. As was his want in life, he again hid his head behind the computer monitor.
“Grady, you remember a case about ten years back, about the same time I came on, where that crazy woman killed a couple of people by biting them?”
Sandy pushed a button on her file drawer and it slid right open. She just glared at it and mumbled.
“If I don’t remember, you gonna shoot me or kick me to death?”
“Very funny!”
“Hell, I don’t remember what I had for breakfast. I do remember that was one weird broad. I think old Sarge handled it. She’s still in the funny farm as far as I know.”
Sergeant Max Willis, who was known from the day he made the grade as just ‘Sarge,’ had been with the department for forty years. He got tired of young rookies and paper work, so he retired soon after that case, but not before he had trained Sandy for case work in the CID of the Dallas Police Department. Sandy had fond memories of the old veteran. She had faced and overcome so many sexist and prejudice conditions in her career that when she met Sarge it was like a breath of fresh air. In his mind, there were only two kinds of people: those who broke the law and those who were about to.
Sandy had used Sarge‘s techniques in a number of areas, but there was one that really stuck out in her mind. Sarge took her out on her first late night homicide case. They inadvertently confronted a guy in the house where the body had been seen through the window by a neighbor. Old Sarge got the drop on him and backed him up against a door. As calm as a cucumber, Sarge unsnapped his handcuff case. He removed the bracelets, pointed his weapon directly at the nose of the suspect, and tossed the handcuffs to him. In a very intimidating voice he commanded, “Put them on!”
“What brought that up?” Grady continued his hunt-and-peck typing.
“There was an inquiry on the net this morning asking about any cases having to do with animal deaths.”
“Now who would ever think that you of all people would have anything to do with animal deaths? Haven’t you killed just about one of every kind of critter that breathes? I thought you suspected that Internet was a term fishermen used! Will wonders never cease?”
“Yeah, I’ve shot everything but a human. Wanna make my record?” Sandy laughed.
She kept a special file drawer of all the cases she deemed of high interest during her ten years of homicide investigation. She planned to write a best selling novel some day. As she flipped through the folders her mind wandered. She paused to think of her love for hunting and her father. She absent-mindedly ran her fingers under her hair behind her left ear and across a high-ridged scar that started at her hairline and disappeared into her scalp. They both almost died.
It was back in the spring of 1971, and she finished third in her police academy graduating class. Her father, who had an obsessive love for the great outdoors and an even greater obsession for hunting for game trophies, had rewarded his daughter with a real African safari. Near death situations have a way of burning in memories.
It was spring and the father and daughter team had signed up with Smith,
Willaby, and Geiger Safaris, Ltd. Sandy remembered the preparation because her father, Willard, (you had better call him Will) was a perfectionist. He had made these African trips for many years and had experienced almost all of the dangerous situations that could be had. The only one left was death, and he was not quite ready for that one. He believed that all the factors involved in tracking and killing large game animals that could be controlled must be. He also overdid most things, because as much as he loved his daughter, she was still a girl, his little girl.
Sandy spent many hours on the rifle range learning all there was to know about the firepower that was a must in the jungle. She became up close and personal with a Parker-Hale, .243 bolt-action rifle. She was convinced that this weapon could control any living thing that found itself anywhere in front of that muzzle. A point of pride with her father was that she could not only out shoot him but she could better just about everybody he knew. When the kidding and playful ridicule about his daughter got serious, he would just challenge the loud mouth to a shoot out. Even better, Sandy had become a master of more than one form of the Martial arts. If they wanted to fight instead of shoot, she would still beat them. Deep in her heart she felt that her father would have been much happier with a son.
They made camp on the shores Okavango swamp deep in
Ngamiland, Botswana. Sandy could still remember all the chatter from the trackers and bearers about the fact that the big white bwana had chosen to let his daughter hunt
Simba. There had been many women on safari in the past few years but none, which they could remember, which had the intent of killing one of Africa’s most dangerous animals.
The camp was on the site of an old elephant control area. She and her father had opted for the mud and pole huts that dotted the area. They seemed to be a bit more secure than the flimsy canvas tents used by the professional hunters. They were certainly a lot better than the bear ground where the trackers and bearers slept. There had been lions entering the camp for three nights straight. Just the night before, one of them had killed and eaten a chicken that the native bearers had brought along because he just loved chicken soup. They were in a protected national park so there was not anything they could do about these humans-be-damned lionesses. All had turned in early in preparation for the hunt the next morning.
The lioness bounded through the window of the hut and landed straddling Will, at the same time biting into his shoulder. The crunch was sickening. Sandy awoke to her father’s scream; shock made her stare and hesitate. Will hollered for her to run. She instinctively rolled off her cot and dashed out the door of the hut. All she could think of was her dad being eaten alive by a lion. She ran about fifty yards to the land rover, pulled the little .243 from the boot and grabbed a handful of cartridges. She ran, screaming for help and loaded all at the same time.
Back at the hut she leaned quietly into the window and whispered her father’s name. The crunching stopped. The hut was dark so she made the big mistake of sticking her head in the mud window for a better view. The lioness was waiting. With one quick slap, one giant razor sharp claw cut a gash completely across the side of Sandy’s head. She fell back and the lioness returned to her father. Will was gagged with blood and although he tried to speak it was impossible. He saw the lioness returning and he put both hands up in front of his face. The big animal again straddled his body and began crunching on what she probably though was his face and head. Will’s fingers and knuckles were being chewed away.
Covered with gore from her wound and a big chunk of her scalp hanging across one eye, Sandy jumped through the door of the hut. She believed that her father was dead and the anger made her determined to pay that cat for the crime. She saw only the dark silhouette of the lioness and the bobbing head as she chewed on her father’s lifeless body. Shock and rage made her lift the rifle and squeeze the trigger. The big cat had Will’s hand all the way to the back of her mouth and was crunching away. The bullet entered from the back of the lioness’s jaw, passed through Will’s wrist and blew the lion’s forehead away. The cat fell to one side. Will yelled, and Sandy sank to the floor.
The efforts of the company doctor who was in camp at the time prevented Sandy from bleeding to death. The doc not only saved Will’s life but also saved enough bone and tissue for him to have a reconstructed hand that still had a trigger finger. He loved to tell the story in later years of how his daughter shot off his hand but saved his life.
There were two more African adventures before Will retired. Sandy became reluctant to hunt but her father wanted one clean killed lion. Sandy accomplished that on her last safari.
The tracking and stalking of wild animals throughout her life had given her the above average success in her criminal investigation career. She and Grady, over the last ten years had won many commendations and had the best case solved record in the department. Only Sandy knew her secret to apprehending the perpetrators of murder. She knew these were humans turned animal and she had learned to think like an animal.
Just then Captain Haynes came bustling through the hall door. Sandy snapped and caught a glimpse of a huge man striding across the room. He was carrying a stack of file folders, as usual, and was in a hurry, as usual.
“Sandra, Grady.” That command meant drop what you are doing and come in my office. The captain always called her Sandra because he still could not bring himself to refer to anyone in his command as Sandy.
“The M.E. just called and says he has one on the slab that I thought you guys might have a go at.”
The good captain stood six-feet-three-inches tall and weighed about 280 pounds. He was solid muscle and his neck was clearly bigger around than any part of Sandy’s body. He had shaved his head and had a face that looked like an unsuccessful boxer. He looked dumb. He was currently working on a Ph.D. in criminology at the University of Dallas. His IQ was off the charts and when you heard him speak for the first time you automatically looked around for the source. It could not be this huge man doing the talking.
“They picked up a high school kid in a room on the 37th floor of the White-Hilton last night. Prelims showed he died of strangulation. The ME says something or somebody squashed his throat. Northeast station is swamped and there is nothing here to follow up so they have to get on those cases that are going somewhere. Sandra I know you like these puzzles.”
“Well captain, thanks for the thought but we have more bubble gum than we can chew right now.”
“Don’t put it in priority but check out the circumstances. Keep me posted.”
The captain was a man of few words and both Sandy and Grady knew it was best to smile and leave. They did.
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