The Fence - Dick Lehr [65]
The arm movements only alarmed Ian Daley, who, seeing Mike’s handgun holstered on Mike’s belt, drew his own weapon. Daley held the gun in his right hand, supported at the wrist by his left hand. His index finger rested on the trigger.
Mike pulled at the parka’s zipper; he couldn’t believe this. Then something was different. The officer must have seen Mike’s badge and realized finally he was not one of the suspects. Mike heard the officer’s voice: “Oh shit. Oh my God.”
Mike took a step forward. But the officer just stood there. “He did nothing,” Mike said later. Mike took another step, but walking was too much. Everything around him was spinning. “I don’t remember falling but I remember being on the ground again.” His head hurt, and he held the spot on his forehead that was bleeding the most.
He knew he was losing consciousness. “I just wanted to like sleep.” He was alone again, struggling as he blacked out to fathom the unfathomable: How could this be?
While Kenny Conley was handcuffing Smut Brown, other officers arrived, including a patrol supervisor and a black officer who returned Kenny’s flashlight, which had fallen during the foot chase. Kenny didn’t know any of the officers—they were all from the immediate police districts while Kenny was far from his in the South End. He handed off the suspect to two officers who arrived in a police wagon.
Then he retraced his steps through the woods. He was checking for anything Smut might have discarded during the run, but he didn’t find anything. He made his way back across the street and up the short hill to the fence surrounding the dead end. The scene surprised him. The area was all lit up. “The whole street was just lined up with cars.”
He stood there and took it all in. Officers were all over the circle, including a bunch he knew: Dave Williams and Jimmy Burgio in uniform, and Gary Ryan and Joe Teahan, dressed in street clothes, from the gang unit. But what caught his attention was an ambulance, where paramedics were loading a black man strapped to a gurney into the back. The injured man was dressed in baggy jeans and a hooded sweatshirt.
“What happened?” Kenny asked.
“It’s a cop,” replied a security guard standing at the fence. The guard then recited the story already circulating around the dead end: “Hit his head on the ice.”
PART II
True Blue
CHAPTER 9
“8-Boy”
When Kimberly Cox approached her husband in the acute care unit of the Boston City Hospital, her first words to Mike had a clinical purpose: to determine his level of responsiveness. She found Mike able to talk, but he was groggy and only “semi with it.” Mike would try to speak, but he was unable to summon the words to complete a sentence. He complained about his head, with its swollen black mass, about feeling dizzy, about pain in his flank and in his abdomen. “He just looked very much out of it.”
Mike also complained about his right hand, and Kimberly noticed his right thumb had ballooned. It was determined Mike had torn a ligament and hyperextended the thumb and finger—injuries that most likely occurred as he tried to break his fall.
Kimberly watched as the more than three-inch laceration on his forehead, still bleeding when she arrived, was treated and stitched. Nurses wiped off the blood caked around his swollen nose and mouth. More sutures were used to close the deep cut inside his upper lip, while the many smaller cuts and scratches were cleaned and bandaged.
Mike kept clutching his midsection, saying he felt as if he needed constantly to pee. Kimberly found a portable urinal and supported him. “I noticed that the urine was really dark.” She sought out one of the attending physicians, showed him the urine, and asked that the doctor “dipstick it.” The test showed traces of blood, hematuria. The doctors ordered further testing