Murder Mountain Read Online Free Page B

to play out. Telling the smelly mental to stay put, I kept my left hand on my Taser and bent sideways to pick up the license with my right hand. I straightened up and held it up in front of my face so I could look at the license and still see what the man was doing.
    The license said his name was Robert Delphy, thirty years old. I called his social security number into Dispatch to see if he had any arrest warrants or was a wanted serial killer—which would be just my luck. I read his name out after reading his number so Dispatch wouldn’t make a mistake.
    As soon as I took my hand off the mic, another officer screamed across the radio, “Seven-thirty-nine to seven-twenty-seven, did you advise you have Bobby Delphy there?”
    “Affirmative,” I answered, thinking, oh shit, here we go.
    “Seven-twenty-seven, use extreme caution with that subject. He’s usually high on meth. I’m on my way down.” Then I could hear his sirens going off, which meant he was breaking the sound barrier to get down here.
    Meth is methamphetamine, a very powerful and addictive drug. That would explain Bobby Delphy’s appearance and demeanor, but I hadn’t heard of meth being this far south in the county yet. Now I knew I was in deep shit. Other than my backup being at least ten to fifteen minutes away, even running lights and with a siren, Bobby Delphy had just heard all the radio traffic. He took a step towards me and I jerked my Taser out of the holster, flipping the switch, and putting the little red dot of the laser right on his forehead. I was not going to mess around with this guy for one more second.
    “Don’t move. Stay right where you are,” I said quite calmly, considering the circumstances, which included sweat literally pouring into my eyes.
    I began backing, or more precisely, sidestepping, towards my car. As I did this, another beautiful piece of information came over the radio for me.
    “Seven-hundred to seven-twenty-seven, be advised subject has an active warrant out of this department for felonious assault, entered with a caution.”
    Well, my day was getting better and better. First, the dispatcher was supposed to ask me if I am “signal 58,” which means out of earshot of the suspect, before they give me information like that. Obviously, this time they didn’t. The signal 58 was meant to prevent incidents like the one that was about to happen from happening.
    I didn’t even get a chance to respond, because as soon as that useful tidbit was announced for Bobby to hear, he started a dead run right at me. I immediately pulled the trigger of my Taser, anticipating the “pop” sound that occurs once the darts are deployed, but instead heard nothing. The back of the Taser was flashing two letter Es. E as in error.
    Oh no!,
I thought, and that was all I had time to think before Bobby got to me. He engulfed me in his arms, still running, slamming me against the side of the cruiser so hard that I almost blacked out right then and there. Unfortunately, I wasn’t that lucky. He went from slamming me against the car to slamming me on the ground. All I could think of at that point was reaching my mic.
    Once he’d slammed me onto the ground, he fell on top of me (he felt like he weighed three hundred pounds) and started punching me. The first blow hit just below my left ear and it felt like my eardrum exploded. The second punch went into my jaw. I was fighting hard, scratching and punching back, but I knew I wasn’t doing any damage. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Where was my backup?
    I was thinking all of these things when I took a brief opportunity to grab my mic and scream, “Ten-three,” an officer-down code that would bring cops from my department, and probably even other counties, to my location.
    I didn’t care. This guy was going to kill me and I knew it. The last blow I took was driven right into my left eye socket, and I was positive that my eyeball had just exploded.
    I had a ringing in my head and