My Kind of Town
God’s own punishment
>> Queen's Medical Center
HPD solo bike officer Quinn Ah Sun told the two guys from Internal Affairs almost everything except the part about falling in love with his cousin Lily. Quinn told them he'd given his cousin a ride home because she'd had too much to drink. She invited him in, introduced him to her maid's daughter. She was showing him the pool and garden when they heard screaming from inside the house. Quinn pulled his short-nose Glock 9mm from an ankle holster, ran inside, found the perp trying to rape the maid with a butcher knife in one hand. Quinn shouted, startled the guy and he rolled off the woman. Quinn started to relax.
But the mutt -- name of Mickey Musselwhite, the IA guys said -- was concealing a .22 pistol in the other hand, and he got off a shot and hit Quinn in the leg. He went down and dropped his gun. Mickey was about to fire again when the maid slashed him with the knife. That gave Quinn a moment to grab his gun. Mickey backhanded the maid with his pistol and was aiming at Quinn to fire again when Quinn got off the luckiest shot of his life, shooting off the end of Mickey's you-know-what.
And then the maid's daughter ran into the room and distracted Quinn, and Mickey rolled across the bed and dove through the window. Quinn fired again but missed. He tried to follow, but blacked out on the lawn from loss of blood. He didn't mention that he passed out in Lily's arms.
Lt. Dennis Nakasone and Detective Lopaka LaCroix had seen it before. A tough cop reduced to tears by trauma. But what they didn't know was that the tears were for Lily, not last night's incident.
"That was a helluva shot," Lacroix said with a chuckle, trying to lighten the mood. "First time I ever seen that one."
"To tell you the truth, Officer Ah Sun," Nakasone said, "if he's trying to rape the maid, he deserved it. That's God's own punishment. Honestly, you did the world a favor. Your Mickey Musselwhite had 47 priors."
"Ding-dong, the mutt is dead," LaCroix said.
Quinn blinked hard, embarrassed to be crying in front of two fellow cops.
"But the question remains," Nakasone continued. "If you didn't beat the living crap out of him, literally, who did? We've got the media and some activists out there claiming police brutality."
"All I know is that I never touched the guy!" Quinn said. "And you guys, I gotta get back on that bike!"
It was bad enough to lose the love of his life. Quinn sure as hell didn't want to lose the only job he'd ever loved too.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com