Taylor and Matt had their doors open before she put the vehicle in park. They stopped along the street with their rear blue lights activated, already hearing curses from the people of the night gathered at the street corner. Peachtree Street was the melting pot of the slums. Section 8 housing brought every race together under the umbrella of poverty and crime. ‘The towers,’ as cops called them, were a series of aged and run-down apartment buildings that lined both sides of Peachtree St. and housed a combined four hundred and ninety families. Patrol officers did not need a GPS to get to these apartments.

Matt activated his body camera and confirmed it was on before he spoke into the mic of his radio attached to the chest of his uniform, “54-52, we’re 87. You can keep the air.”

“10-4,” dispatch radioed back.

They entered the apartment lobby, and a handful of men who were loitering outside pretended to take phone calls as they walked away from the building. The smell of cigarette smoke and marijuana clung to every surface of the lobby. A handful of homeless slept by themselves in the different corners against the wall. Their backpacks and trash bags piled around them like walls to their mobile life.

“Apartment 602, right?” Taylor asked, tapping the elevator button.

“Yeah,” Matt said.

The elevator button remained gray. Taylor tapped the button a few times to no avail. Matt stepped over and jabbed the button once more, again.

Taylor glared at him with an eyebrow raised.

Matt shrugged, “Just in case you were doing it wrong.”

Taylor snatched an upside-down crumpled piece of paper on the ground and read it aloud, “‘Elevators out of order.’ Great. Six flights of stairs.”

Matt pushed through a door into the stairwell and started up the first steps at a brisk pace as Taylor followed. The flickering florescent lights on each landing gave off an almost strobe effect.

“Could be worse,” Matt’s voice carried in the echoing stairwell.

“Don’t,” Taylor growled.

“Could be on the fourteenth floor,” Matt smirked to himself.

Taylor muttered something to herself that Matt imagined was a curse in a volume lower than their body camera could pick up. His long legs took stairs two at a time while he listened to the quick patter of Taylor’s feet jogging behind him. Reaching the sixth floor took a couple of minutes. It was easy to forget he was walking around with forty pounds of gear strapped to his gun belt until it was time to climb six stories. Matt had retained most of his athleticism from his years as a varsity basketball player in high school. Though he rode the bench through most of college, pickup games at the gym on his days off were still his favorite way to stay in shape. His long limbs, lean build, and tall height catered to the sport.

Taylor swiped sweat from her brow with the back of her forearm as the two entered the sixth-floor hallway. The beige walls were stained with varying shades of yellow to brown from years of neglect. Colorful stick figures were drawn along the baseboard in a corner.

“602…” Matt mumbled as he reached the door. Both he and Taylor drew their pistols from their holsters and kept them plastered to their thighs as they got into position. Matt carried the standard Glock 17 9mm handgun with the stream light High-Lumen attachment. While Taylor had the more compact Glock 19 that fit her hands better.

Matt passed over the door so they were on either side of it and pressed his ear to the door. There was music playing, but Matt heard nothing else. Taylor shook her head, indicating the same. Backing up, he pounded on the door with a hard fist.

“NYPD, open up!” Matt’s voice boomed. A silent pause filled the hallway as they waited for a response that never came. Beating his fist against the door a second time, he yelled, “Police, come to the door!”

After another second passed with no response, Taylor keyed her radio and spoke quietly, “54-52, can you do a callback, we’re not getting a response.”

“10-4,” dispatch replied.

“54-54, send me their call,” Officer Edwards radioed with an unnecessary sigh transmitted at the end.

Matt was about to look to his partner to roll his eyes at Edwards’ timing, but something happened.

There was a rumbling of commotion on the other side of the door. Matt couldn’t place it. Something between tearing cardboard and breaking glass. Before he could knock again, a high-pitched shriek screamed from inside the apartment.

“Get away! He’s going to kill us!” A woman’s voice cried.

A quick glance between Taylor and Matt provided all the information they needed about what was about to happen. Matt tested the door handle and confirmed it was locked before he shifted in front of it while holstering his pistol.

“Hold the air,” Taylor said into her radio mic. “Booting the door.”

Taking a long stance, Matt snarled as he raised his long back leg and smashed the bottom of his boot into the door beside the door handle. With one kick, the door broke open, and Matt could see the wood from the doorjamb splintering and flying down the long hallway.

He was still recoiling from the kick and drawing his sidearm when Taylor pressed past him and charged in with her pistol raised. The entryway was a hallway that stretched the length of the apartment, with two doors on both sides of the hall nearest them before it opened into a living room and kitchen area. One of the apartment’s internal doors had been snapped off its hinges and laid lopsided on an angle, blocking the middle of the hall.

“NYPD! Come out with your hands up!” Taylor yelled her usual light and flinty voice gone and replaced with a guttural tone. She swiveled right to the first door she came to. Matt hugged the left side of the wall, keeping his focus at the end of the hall when he saw motion.

“Hey, hands! Hands! NYPD, let me see your hands,” Matt said, pushing past Taylor, who had already cleared the first room.

Two young girls with tearful eyes sprinted into the hallway from the room with the broken door. Their tiny hands shot into the air at the sight of the two officers with guns drawn. They were no older than twelve years old by the look of them. One girl wore an oversized gray hoodie with white paint stains covering it, the bottom stretched beyond her knees, and the other a pink set of pajamas covered in cartoon characters.

“Come on, it’s okay. Keep your hands up; you’re okay,” Matt said, softening his voice and coaxing them toward him with his left hand while keeping his gun in his right.

They shuffled to him and awkwardly slid over the broken door between them. He bent over with a smile on his face as his left hand quickly patted down their pockets and waistband.

“Are you okay? You guys hurt?” Matt asked and received quick shakes of their heads in response. Satisfied having not felt any weapons, Matt started to ask where their mom and dad were when another scream came from the end of the hallway.

“Mommy!” the girl wearing pink shouted as Matt shoved her and her sister behind him. From his peripheral, he could see Taylor taking them into the apartment building hallway and shoving them out of the line of sight. Matt charged forward. His eyes washed over the dark bedrooms and bathroom as he passed them. There was a bloody smear along the cream-colored wall to his right.

“Look what you did. Look at this!” a woman screamed as Matt exited the hallway and saw the toppled-over TV and turned-over couch to his left. The suspect stood in the kitchen on the opposite side with a knife in his hand.

Distance is your friend in a knife fight; he recalled a combat instructor saying at the academy at the sight of the blade.

“Drop the knife, now!” Matt ordered.

“Fuck you, get outta my house!” the man replied.

He was a big man and nearly as tall as Matt was, but thicker. His gut stuck out with no shirt on, and the smear of blood ran down his round belly onto his gray sweatpants. Taylor’s profile filled the hallway as she trained her gun on the man’s chest.

“You cut me! You fucking cut me, you asshole!” the woman screamed from her backside on the linoleum kitchen floor.

She was in front of the suspect and lay beside a broken plastic card table that was on its side. The victim was a skinny woman with long black hair in a ponytail and a fierce look on her face. She held her right arm up as if she was reading something on her forearm, but what was there was a long laceration on top of her arm that dribbled blood.

“You cut me!” she repeated.

“Ma’am, come here. Crawl to me,” Taylor waved the woman to her, but the woman only turned her gaze to Taylor and jabbed her bloody arm in Taylor’s direction.

“Do you see this? Do you see what he did?” she screamed.

The victim was between the three of them but closest to the suspect. If he lunged at her with the knife, he could get her before they could stop him, even with bullets. With how cluttered the room was with furniture and appliances thrown about, they were too close to address a suspect with an edged weapon. They needed to get out of there. Create more distance in such a tiny apartment, but they couldn’t abandon the victim.

Taylor was pissed, “Ma’am, come to me! Now! We’ll help—”

“I can’t believe you cut me!” the woman screamed. The more she spoke, the more Matt could hear the drunken drawl on the woman’s words.

“Ma’am—Taylor, wait!” Matt’s eyes widened when he saw Taylor had lost her patience and moved into the kitchen to grab the woman from the ground. Snatching the victim from under her arms, Taylor yanked the woman to her wobbly feet.

The suspect inflated his chest as he hollered at Taylor. “Get the fuck back, hey! I said—”

Matt watched him raise the black steak knife in his hand over his head as if to stab, and Matt’s finger moved into the trigger guard of his pistol.

“Back up! Drop the fucking knife!” Matt ordered.

The sudden surge of the moment sent the suspect into a frenzy. Matt saw the whites of the man’s eyes as he took a large step towards Matt with his serrated knife held high. Matt pulled the slack out of his weapon’s trigger and was a touch away from firing when the victim’s body appeared in front of his sights.

Later, Matt would piece together the struggle he saw in his peripheral vision was the victim biting Taylor’s arm and squirming free.

“No! Don’t shoot him! Don’t!” the woman pleaded as she leaped onto the suspect and hugged his chest. Matt’s blood froze, and his throat dropped below his stomach as the fear of nearly shooting the victim in the back struck him. He withdrew his finger from the trigger, but the suspect charged forward, undeterred by the gun pointed at him or his girlfriend holding him back.

“Don’t shoot him! He didn’t mean—”

“Move!” Taylor yelled.

“Shoot me, mother fucker! Shoot me!” the suspect yelled as he stomped within touching distance of Matt. His girlfriend slipped from left to right, trying to stop him with her body. Matt backtracked, struggling to find a clear target to fire on until it was too late.

The suspect swiped the blade at Matt’s face, and Matt fell backward onto the turned-over couch, avoiding the strike.

“Robby, stop—stop it!” she screamed as she struggled with the suspect over the knife.

Taylor slammed the heel of her boot into ‘Robby’s’ butt and sent him and his girlfriend careening into the wall. Robby tried to catch himself, but in doing so, the knife was knocked out of his hand and danced across the messy floor. Scrambling to his feet, Matt holstered his weapon, stayed low, and tackled Robby to the floor, finally separating him from the victim. The suspect reached for his throat, and Matt parried the hand to the side and smashed his forearm into Robby’s face.

The victim tried to push Matt off her boyfriend, but Officer Taylor wrapped her arms around the girlfriend’s waist and tossed her across the room.

“Stay the fuck back!” Taylor ordered with a jab of her finger.

Taylor ran to Matt’s side, and the two managed to flip the suspect on his belly and pull his hands behind his back for handcuffs. The officers exchanged a wide-eyed expression between panted breaths that was a conversation of sorts.

‘What the fuck?’

‘So much for it being a stupid domestic.’

‘Fucking Edwards.’

‘Why’d you close us off that damn call,’ all went unsaid but understood by both as they caught their breath. Taylor went through the man’s pockets and found no additional weapons. Through gasping breaths, Matt pointed at the bloody steak knife a few feet away on the linoleum by the oven.

“Knife.”

Taylor nodded and sat back, taking a deep breath.

“Fuck you, mother fuckers, get off me!” Robby balked as he struggled at the metal cuffs.

“Alright, relax, man. It’s over,” Matt said after taking another breath. He and Taylor turned the suspect onto his side so he could breathe easier.

“Why’d you do that?” the victim said from the ground where Taylor had left her. “You didn’t have to be so rough with him. I called. I was the one who called!”

Matt and Taylor looked at one another and could only shake their heads in response.

“54-50 to 54-52, you 10-4?” their radios crackled to life with their sergeant’s voice.

Taylor nodded. Matt cleared his throat, trying not to sound out of breath on the radio. “54-52, we’re 10-4,” he replied. “Start me FD out here for a female in her twenties with a laceration on her arm, non-critical injury. We’ve got one in custody.”