street, including Miller who was busy trying to restrain the crazy guy's big friend. Diaz had a small cannister of pepper spray in his hand as he came up behind him. Diaz shouted something at him, and as the man turned to see, Diaz gave him a good shot of the stuff right in the face.
"Good shot," I shouted. I still wasn't a fan of the cops, but at that point I would cheer anyone who took that freak down. At least the cops weren't breaking their faces open trying to reach me.
The crazy man was stunned for two seconds at most, almost as if the chemical had no effect, or he was just too worked up to notice. He turned his attention on Diaz, stumbling toward the young cop, and for a second I saw the same fear that I'd felt seconds before take hold of him. He put his hand on his gun.
Before he could draw his weapon, the big guy broke loose from Miller, ran past Diaz and tackled his friend up against the car. The move surprised me, but as the two men wrestled up against the window, smearing the blood around, I realized something about the fight that I had missed, and probably everyone else had, too.
The big guy wasn't protecting his friend from the crowd- he was protecting them from him.
Officer Miller was on them in a second, prying the two men apart, but the big guy tossed him aside like he was a rag doll, something that was pretty impressive given Miller wasn't a small man himself. It was crazy to say it, but in doing so he saved Miller from getting hurt, because no sooner than the cop hit the street, the crazy man was biting his once friend on the forearm.
I watched teeth sink into flesh in front of me like it was happening in slow motion. I was only distantly aware of the big guy's screams as the skin tore open. A horrible deja vu filled me, mirroring what had happened to me a few hours earlier almost exactly, from the violence to the hemorrhaging eyes to the bite. It wasn't any better from this angle.
A gunshot rang out. The crazed man fell to his knees, his leg shot. He lunged again for his friend, but another shot came. It struck him in the chest. He still didn't go down. A third shot, this time to the head. He paused a moment, as if deciding whether or not to go down, then finally fell to the side. As he slid down the car door, I saw Diaz just past him, his gun raised, the barrel smoking from being discharged.
His face was pure terror.
CHAPTER FIVE
After cuffing the big guy with the same plastic ties that were digging into my wrists, Officer Miller sat him on the curb and got the first aid kit out of the trunk. He came back and began roughly wrapping the bleeding wound with what was left of the gauze as he started in with some typical cop questions.
"What's your name," he asked, squeezing the arm too hard. Diaz had spread a tarp over the dead body and was busying himself with crowd control.
"Jeremiah," the big guy said.
"Jeremiah what?"
"Church." He winced at Miller's grip on the wound.
"Hey, how about a little bedside manner," I shouted through the window.
"You shut your mouth," Miller replied. "Alright, Jeremiah Church, what was your friend on?"
Jeremiah stared at the shape under the tarp. "Nothing."
"Come on, no one takes that many bullets unless they're cranked up. What was it, Dust? Bennies? Liquid?"
"I told you, he wasn't on anything. He was just sick."
"If he was so sick, why were you going to a strip club?"
"We weren't. I was taking him to get help. He got worse on the way, and that's when he attacked the bouncer."
Miller clearly didn't believe the story. "We'll just have to wait and see if the tox report agrees with you. But if you and I are going to get along, you should rethink defending a junkie."
Jeremiah brushed off the comment, but I could tell it bothered him to have his dead friend's name dragged through the mud, even if he had been bitten so recently by the guy. Miller pushed the big guy into the backseat with me. He got