I Shall Not Want (43 page)

She accelerated down the country highway. Sister Lucia kept one hand wedged against the dash and grabbed her armrest with the other. “Perhaps,” she shouted—the open windows that had let in a pleasant breeze at forty miles an hour were shrieking wind tunnels at sixty-five—“they’ve found the killer!”

That’s what Clare was afraid of.
Oh, God, please be with them. Please let the ambulance just be a precaution. Please let nobody be hurt
.

She reached an intersection. “Which way?” she asked. “Where’d they go?”

Sister Lucia’s hand, soft and powder-dry, settled over her arm. “Wait,” she said. “If they came along this road, chances are good they’ll return this way as well.”

“But it might be too late!”

The nun looked at her, a twist of a smile drying her face. “My dear, what do you think you’re going to do?”

“Not sit here and wait to see what happens.” Clare spun the wheel, and the Subaru squealed onto Seven Mile Road. Sister Lucia whooped and grabbed for the door handle.

“What if this is the wrong way?” the nun shouted.

“Fly or die,” Clare yelled.

Sister Lucia rolled her window up, shutting off half the rush of air. “Remember what I said about fearlessness?”

“Sure do.”

“I take it back.”

A wail from somewhere, rising, falling. Clare glanced in her rearview mirror. A whirl of blue and white. Another ambulance. She took her foot off the gas and let the Subaru roll, half on, half off, the narrow dirt shoulder. The Corinth ambulance screamed past them, followed by a Millers Kill squad car. Clare caught the driver’s blocky outline, but it could have been almost any of them. She kicked the car back up to speed and then some, racing after the emergency vehicles, bombing over the low hills, bouncing into the hollows, slanting way over the lines as she powered through curves.

The ambulance and the cruiser had turned up a skinflint country road and she followed too fast; she skidded, lost her grip on the road, the whole car sliding toward the ditch. She cursed and gave the wheel some slack and trod on the gas, and the tires caught, spinning a shower of shredded Indian paintbrush and buttercups as she surged back onto the asphalt.

She took the turn onto the dirt road a little slower. Roared through a wide-open gate, up and up until she crested and saw the carnival from Hell, ambulances and cop cars and uniforms and guns. Children and trees and peeling clapboards and broken glass. Dust hanging in the air, loud voices, weeping, and the electric-burr sound of radios demanding information.

She hit the brakes and skidded, heeling her car onto the grass at the side of the drive. She leaped out, spun in place, and pointed to Sister Lucia. “Stay here!”

State SWAT team members, ominous in black and armor, stalked across the dooryard and around the house and barn in patterns that made sense only to them. She slowed down, uncertain what was going on, where the center was, the thought dawning that maybe the ambulances were just a precaution, like she had hoped, and she was going to look pretty silly when—then she spotted Kevin Flynn. Standing alone at the bottom of the porch steps. Crying.

Her feet moved her forward even though her head was howling,
Run! Run
! She had been here before, at this moment. No going back to before. There would only be after. After the diagnosis. After the accident. After hearing whatever terrible thing Kevin was going to tell her.

Hadley Knox ran onto the porch, followed by Eric McCrea. “Flynn!” she yelled, then stared, open-mouthed, at Clare. Movement, voices, behind the officers. McCrea shoved Knox out of the way, and the paramedics emerged, carrying their burden with controlled speed. One of them was rapid-firing unintelligible information into her radio. One of them held a trembling IV bag aloft, and the third balanced a portable heart monitor against the side of the cart, its
beep-beep-beep
counting out the seconds.

The rest of it she saw as fragments: his sandy hair, the oxygen mask, one boot lolling off the stretcher. Khaki sleeve, blue surgical bandages, red blood. So much blood.

Kevin was sobbing beside her, but she couldn’t make a sound. It felt as if her chest was bound and locked.

“Careful, now.” Karl, one of the Millers Kill EMTs. “Careful!” They descended the porch stairs, quick and smooth, and as they passed her, she saw his hand, tan, limp, still wearing his wedding ring. Her voice tore free in a wrenching, animal cry.

She lunged after the pallet and Lyle was in the way, more blood, soaked in blood, reeking of it—and he caught her and held her, saying, “Stop it! Stop it,” wrapping her and smearing her and marking her with Russ’s blood while she howled like a dog.

The steady
beep-beep-beep
turned into a single warbling alarm. The breath caught in Clare’s throat. One of the EMTs swore. They dropped the pallet. Annie ripped a syringe off a Velcro pack and tore it open. Karl threw himself to his knees and began chest compressions, sharp fast pumps that looked like they would snap Russ’s already-wounded body in two. The third paramedic moved in, blocking Clare’s view, leaving her with only the high, piercing alarm to tell her that Russ was dead.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil
.

Dead. How long? Death was a process, not an on-off switch. She knew that.

For thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me
.

The EMTs communicated in short harsh bursts, microwave information. Annie broke open another syringe.

Thou spreadest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies
.

Kevin’s sobs fell to gasps. Silence spread around them like ripples from a pond.

Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup overfloweth
.

Was it a minute? Two? The alarm began to sound like an inconsolable cry. A wailing for the dead that will not return.

“Surely”—her voice cracked—“thy goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life?”

The alarm blipped. Blipped, beeped, paused, beeped, and settled into a steady rhythm. Clare sagged against Lyle, whose fingers she finally felt cutting into her arms.

“Go, go!” the third man said. They heaved the pallet up and surged toward the open ambulance doors.

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever
.

“Christ Jesus Almighty,” Lyle said, his voice shaking.

“Amen,” she said into his shoulder.

He released her. “You fit to drive to the hospital?”

She nodded. “Where are they taking him? Glens Falls?”

“Washington County. One of their ER docs used to work in New Orleans. He’s seen more gunshot cases than anyone else in the area.”

The ambulance doors slammed shut. The lights and siren started up.

“Go on,” he said. “I need a word with the rest of ‘em, then I’ll be along.”

She took a step toward her car. Turned. “Lyle,” she said, “what happened?”

“I had a vest for him. Right in my hand.” He stared at the gore running down his fingers. “It was right in my hand. But he had to be a goddam hero.” He wiped his face into his upper arm. “If he lives, I swear to God I’m going to kick his ass from here to Fort Ticonderoga.”

They were at the scene all day: him and Hadley, Eric and Noble, and four state CSI technicians. Two mortuary vans arrived for the dead gang members and the body of the Children and Family Services caseworker. An assistant DA and a plainclothes investigator from the NYSPD were checking out whether the chief and MacAuley had fired their guns lawfully at the gangbangers. They made Hadley talk to the suit; the rest of the MKPD had bad feelings about state investigators. Emergency counselors from CFS were teary-eyed over the death of their colleague. Relatives came to claim the kids. By phone, an agent from the First District Anti-Gang Task Force and the mayor reminded them they were all eligible for free mental health services after traumatic events. They made Hadley talk to the mayor, too; she had lived in California for fifteen years, and Californians believed in that sort of stuff.

The deputy chief kept them updated with calls to Kevin’s cell phone. “He’s gone into surgery.” That was good. “His heart stopped again.” That was bad. “He survived surgery.” Hadley and Noble thought that was good. Eric thought it was pretty thin gruel. “Survived?” Eric said. “What’s that, the minimal? Like batting .100?”

Kevin didn’t say much. Thinking about the chief dying made him feel sick to his stomach. His head was stuffed with death: the sprawled and bloody bodies of the Punta Diablo gang members, the slack-mouthed corpse of the CFS woman, and the mutilated remains of Amado Esfuentes. He couldn’t seem to stop tears from rolling down his cheeks at odd moments. One of the staties made a crack, but Eric McCrea dragged him aside and said something to shut him up.

Eventually, they finished. One after another, the counselors and investigators and technicians and morticians rolled away down the drive, until it was only the MKPD and it was time to go.

“Get in the car,” Hadley called from behind the wheel of her cruiser.

He was standing in the spot where his squad car had been. “MacAuley took your unit,” she went on. “For God’s sake, let’s get out of here and get something to eat. I’m starving.”

He got in. He wasn’t sure he could eat anything. He looked out the window while she drove, the green fields, purpled with loosestrife and thistles, the indigo mountains standing against the long western rays of the sun. It didn’t seem right, that everything went on, beautiful and oblivious, while people who had been alive this morning lay on cold slabs this evening.

“What was the last word from the dep?” Hadley’s voice was quiet.

“He’s on a ventilator. He hasn’t regained consciousness.”

Hadley worried her lower lip. On another occasion, he would’ve thought it was hot. “Sometimes, that’s good,” she said. “You know. Like a healing sleep.”

“Yeah.”

They both watched the countryside unfold as they rolled up and down the Cossayuharie hills. Suddenly, she said, “You got anything to eat at your place, Flynn?”

“Uh… yeah. Frozen meals. Leftover pizza.”

“Good. Give me directions.” She looked over at him. His confusion must have been plain. “I just… I can’t face my kids and my granddad yet. And I sure as hell don’t want to hang out someplace where anybody can gawk at my uniform.” She was right. The word had probably already gotten out. Whoever didn’t know about the shooting already would get the news tomorrow, when the
Post-Star
hit the doorstep. “So let’s go eat at your place.” She glanced at him again. “You don’t live with your parents, do you?”

He wheezed a laugh. “No.”

He told her how to reach his duplex in Fort Henry. He had the top half of a Depression-era workingman’s house, plain as crockery, but the street was quiet and shady and he had garage space for his Aztek.

“Nice.” Hadley parked in front of his space and dropped her rig in her cruiser’s lockbox. Upstairs, he showed her the kitchen and excused himself to secure his own gun. “Get changed,” she said. “Believe me, if I could get out of this damn outfit, I would.”

He locked up his .44 and traded his uniform for baggy shorts and a T-shirt. It felt weird, stripping with her right down the hall in the kitchen. By the time he got back, she’d turned on the oven, found his stash of Miller’s amber ale, and unwrapped four packages of frozen stuffed potatoes. “You know,” she said, “these aren’t that hard to make from scratch. Takes six minutes to nuke a potato.”

He held out a T-shirt and a pair of gym shorts. “You want to borrow these? I mean, they’ll be big, but the shorts have a drawstring.” She stared at the clothes. He felt his face heat up. It had seemed like a good idea in the bedroom.

“Yeah,” she said, finally. “I do.”

He showed her the bathroom. Got the potatoes in the oven. Tried very hard not to imagine her undressing. Opened a beer. At least he wasn’t feeling so stone-cold miserable anymore. It was hard to be depressed and awkward at the same time.

He heard the toilet flush. She was laughing.
Oh, shit
. The bathroom door opened. “Flynn,” she said, “you’ve got the rules of admissible evidence taped to the inside lid of your toilet seat.” She laughed some more. “That’s about the geekiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“It was from a long time ago,” he protested. “I was studying. I forgot to take it down.”

She picked up her beer. His T-shirt hung off her like a beach cover-up. “I bet you put a new topic there every week.” She grinned at him. “Maybe I ought to try that with Hudson. He’s been having trouble with his fractions.” She wandered out the other end of the kitchen, where a table and four chairs divided his small living room from the enclosed porch. “Wow. You have a ton of books. Maybe I should just send Hudson over here. Let you tutor him.”

“Sure,” he said. “I like kids.” He rolled open the glass door to the porch.

She rested her bottle on one of his bookcases. “That’s because you are one.”

He picked up her beer. “Come out to the porch. It’s cooler.”

She sat on the rattan couch that used to be his parents’ and he stretched out in an Adirondack chair that had been his oldest brother’s shop project. They propped their feet up on the rattan coffee table. The early evening breeze sighed through the screens. They sat in silence, drinking their beers. Hadley studied the beads of condensation rolling down the amber glass.

“I’m going to quit the force,” she said.

He stared at her. “What?”

“It hit me, today.” She looked at him. “What the chief told me. This isn’t like working at an insurance office or a restaurant. This is like signing up for the army. People get killed.”

No officer on the MKPD has died on the job since 1979.“

“Thank you, Kevin,” she singsonged. Her voice hardened. “That statistic’s about to change.”

He pushed himself out of his chair. He couldn’t sit still and talk about this at the same time. “The chief will be fine.”

“We don’t know that! Even if he lives, he could be disabled, or have brain damage from his heart stopping so many times, or—”