9/15/05c

3:15 p.m. I see Det. Grizzly leaning against the hood of his vehicle. He's writing something down on a clipboard. We were already told that he is the lead on this case. When he sees us coming, Grizzly lifts a hand and walks toward us. He shakes Dr. Forrest's hand and greets me with a gentle punch on the arm. "How ya doin', kid?" I smile. I haven't worked a case with Grizzly in a while. I was kinda missing him.

Grizzly tells us the story. Apparently, Det. Blue was (rightly) concerned that the man standing in the middle of morning rush hour traffic would either get himself killed or somebody else. Blue pulled onto the inside shoulder and backed up a hundred feet or so, so that he was closer.

He got out of his vehicle and began walking toward the man. "Hey! Get the hell out of the middle of the road!" (Blue isn't one to mince words.) When he heard Blue's voice, the man turned, pointed to himself and said angrily, "I'm Jesus Christ!" Then he ran toward Blue. Blue had left his gun on the passenger seat of his car. And since he didn't know if Mr. Christ had a weapon either, he felt it prudent to get back to his vehicle as soon as possible.

Blue dove into the driver's side just as he hear a deafening crash of glass. His back windshield had shattered and Blue was certain at this point he was being shot at. Blue scrambled for his gun as Mr. Christ continued to proclaim himself the Son of Man and ran toward the driver's side door. Using his elbow and forearm, Mr. Christ had almost smashed through the driver's window when Blue let off the first shot. Then the second. Then the third.

When I talked to Blue later, he told me that the sound from the gunshots was so loud he thought he'd permanently lose his hearing. He sat in the car for serveral minutes, shaking off the adrenaline, before he called in the Code 15. Then he tried to open the driver's side door but Mr. Christ was slumped against it and it wouldn't budge. Blue pushed again, harder, and the body finally fell back against the concrete barrier, coming to rest partially underneath the vehicle.

Forensically, speaking, this is a fascinating case. Blue's story appears to jive perfectly with the evidence on scene. The back windshield is broken in an oblong pattern and the interior and trunk are showered with flecks of safety glass and blood from when Mr. Christ's elbow smashed through it.

"Whoa!" Dr. Forrest says almost reverently, "He must have been on some serious drugs. The force he needed to punch through that window probably broke every bone in his arm." Grizzly is writing as he leans against the concrete barrier and doesn't even look up when he says, "Well, he WAS Jesus Christ."

"If that's true then I'm damned disappointed.", Dickie says as he kneels in front of the body.

I check the sky for random lightening bolts.

"Look at this," Dickie says. "Blue is one hell of a shot. That was pure instinct. Head, chest and trunk. Classic cop training."

I glance at the body and grudgingly acknowledge that they were damn good shots. Then I roll my eyes. "Dickie, he was a foot from the guy. He'd have to try NOT to hit him."

Dickie steps over the body so that I can take photographs. "You just don't like Blue." I say nothing as I begin snapping pictures.

The man was about 30-years-old, thin, pale, dirty, wet. He had no shirt on. There were light scrapes on his face, arms and chest. I inspect the wounds. They were from before his encounter with Blue. I imagine this man panicking or caught up in some state of euphoria that compelled him to run from someplace safe and warm and light into the night...through brambles and over fences at full tilt with rain and lightening cascading down all around him. But why? I reach in his jeans pocket and pull out his wallet. John. His name was John.

When I spoke to his father later that morning I was told that John was mentally ill and refused to take his medication. He ran out of the house the night before without saying a word to anybody and the father had no idea what had happened to him until he watched the news this morning and put two and two together.