Low Tide (21 page)

She heard the echo of the shot in her ears, more than once. More muffled and further away, she heard Wyatt yelling the same word over and over, a word she’d never heard come out of his mouth. Then there was light and there was air, and the weight was gone as Wyatt pulled Ricky’s body off of her and dumped him to the side.

She saw Wyatt’s face as he bent over her. His voice sounded like it was underwater, but she heard him yell her name. She opened her mouth but all she could do was nod.

Then she heard another man, off to her left, say, “Miss! Miss, please move back.”

Maggie rolled her head to the left and saw Grace standing there on the other side of Alessi in her pale yellow sundress and worn sneakers. She was staring calmly down at Richard.

One of the SWAT guys came up behind her and gently put a hand on her arm.

It was then that Maggie looked down and saw that Grace was standing with one foot on Richard’s outstretched hand, and Maggie had her first noticeable thought in minutes.

Good for you
,
baby.

M
aggie pulled the tee shirt over her head, her back and shoulder muscles protesting as she did. She dropped it onto the floor by her shoes and socks. Her bra followed. Then she unhooked her belt and started to lower her jeans. As was standard procedure, Wyatt had taken both her back-up weapon and her service weapon at the scene. After making sure she was alive, he’d said very little to her. Pittman had taken her preliminary statement while the paramedics checked her out.

Maggie had watched her fellow officers work the scene, then watched as Larry arrived to announce Alessi, as Maggie overheard one SWAT member describe him, “pretty damn dead.”

Just before she and Wyatt had climbed into their vehicles, Dwight drove off with Grace and the children in his. They were going to Motel 6 overnight until the house could be cleaned up.

Maggie bent her left leg to pull her foot out of her jeans and her thigh screamed at her. It was going to be badly bruised, but nothing was broken.

Maggie was about to drop her jeans when she felt the weight of her cell phone in her back pocket. She pulled it out and kicked the jeans aside.

David answered on the first ring.

“Hey,” he said, sounding surprised.

“Hey,” she said, and her voice sounded hollow in the tiled shower area of the department’s small locker room. “I need you to go get the kids and take them home. They’re at the ball field, watching Sky’s new boy play.”

“You want
me
to pick them up?” They had a rule, Maggie’s rule, that David never went anywhere with the kids unless she was with them. Maggie didn’t want any of his associates associating the kids with their dad.

“David, it’s important.”

“What’s wrong, Maggie?”

“I can’t talk about it right now, just please take them home and wait for me to get there?”

“Yeah. Of course. Are you okay?”

“Yes. But please don’t let them watch the news or anything, okay?”

There was a pause for a moment.

“Okay,” David said.

“I’ll be there in just a little bit.”

Maggie hung up before he could say anything else, then she walked to the closest shower and turned on the water, as hot as it would get.

Maggie came out of the locker room, carrying her clothes in a plastic bag and wearing the smallest set of sweats that Wyatt had been able to find.

He was leaning up against the wall by the door to ensure her privacy. He pushed off the wall as she came out. She glanced up at him, then looked away as they walked to her office.

Terry, the investigator who shared her office, was sitting at his desk. He looked up as Maggie and Wyatt walked in. His kind face, more youthful than his forty years, was creased with concern, and he ran a hand over his receding hairline.

“You alright, Maggie?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks, Terry.”

Maggie walked to her desk and picked up her purse, tucked her phone into it, and pulled out her keys.

“Hey, why don’t you let me or Wyatt run you home, huh?” Terry said. “One of us can bring your car to you tomorrow.”

Maggie shook her head. “No. David’s taking the kids home for me, but I need my Jeep.”

“I’ll follow her home,” Wyatt said, his hands on his hips.

“You don’t need to. I’m fine.”

Wyatt was already turning to leave. “Let’s go.”

Maggie followed him out to the parking lot and couldn’t think of anything to say before they parted to go to their separate vehicles. She climbed in, started the Jeep, and backed out. Wyatt waited, then pulled out behind her.

It was a twenty minute drive to get to her road from Eastpoint. The sun was just thinking about setting as they crossed the bridge over to Apalach, and Maggie felt vaguely sad that she was too numb to appreciate it.

Every now and then, she looked in her rear view mirror at Wyatt behind her.

They were on Bluff Road, less than a quarter mile from her dirt road, when her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her purse and answered.

“Hello?”

“Pull over,” Wyatt said.

She looked into the rear view, saw him on his phone.

“What?”

“Pull over up there on that turnaround.” He hung up.

Maggie pulled into a small, circular gravel area underneath some trees. She watched Wyatt pull in behind her, and she shut off her engine when she saw him get out of his cruiser. She got out of the Jeep and waited.

He stopped a couple feet from her and took off his sunglasses. Maggie waited while he stared down at the ground for a second, then he looked at her and sighed. He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, gently but firmly.

She was startled at first, then she put her arms around his waist and held onto his back. After a moment, she put her head on his chest. He seemed angry with her, had seemed quietly angry for hours, but he felt like safety and strength and comfort.

They stood there for what seemed like several minutes. Then he got back in his car without a word, and she got into hers. He watched her pull out onto the road, then he turned and headed back to town.

When Maggie pulled up to the house, David was sitting near the top of the stairs, tuning his guitar, the one he’d given to Sky. He stood up, and Coco flew down the stairs, was overcome a few feet shy of Maggie, and collapsed into writhing. Maggie stepped over Stoopid, nearly tripping and/or kicking the rooster, and he let out one of his misshapen crows before running off to do something urgent.

Maggie knelt down and rubbed Coco, then looked up at David, standing there holding his guitar by the neck. She felt a twinge of déjà vu, like she’d left this morning and come back six years ago.

As she walked up the stairs, Sky opened the front door and she and Kyle looked out at her.

“Mom!” Kyle called.

“Is everything cool?” Sky asked.

Maggie made herself smile and raised a hand to them.

David stepped over to the door. “Hey, y’all, give your Mama and me a minute, okay? Sky, go stir that chili for me.”

Sky looked at Maggie for a moment, then shut the door.

“Sky saw it on Facebook,” David said.

“Ugh.”

“One of her friends posted something,” David said. “But they already knew you were okay.”

He studied her face and Maggie finally looked away and perused the yard.

“You are okay, right?”

Maggie nodded and started to say something, but then she smelled blood and cat pee, saw the little girl running back toward her, and she turned around and sat down on the stairs. David sat down on the step behind her, set the guitar down, and wrapped his arms tightly around her shoulders.

Maggie’s eyes heated up and filled with water. David kissed her hair, then rested his chin on top of her head. They sat like that for a few minutes, then Maggie sniffed.

“How long before dinner?” she asked.

“Ten, twenty minutes,” he said.

“Can you play me something?”

“What do you want to hear?”

“I don’t care. Anything.”

David let go of her and reached for his guitar. He lifted it over her head and set it across her knee, picked a few strings, then started playing. He sang a Dirk Powell song she’d always liked, folksy and old and quiet.

Maggie leaned her head back on his chest and listened.

David stayed for dinner and they ate out on the deck.

Maggie allowed the kids to ask her some questions, but when they started sounding like they were talking about a TV show, David deftly changed the subject.

It was nothing like TV. Maggie never watched movies or TV shows about cops. They dealt so casually with human life and death, and even when the human dying was someone without redeeming value, it was never as incidental as entertainment made it seem.

In ten years on the job, Maggie had been fired on and fired her weapon many times, but she’d never come that close to dying, and she’d never killed anyone in the line of duty.

There was nothing particularly triumphant about it. There was just the impersonal finality of death and the cold, flat feeling that came from knowing she’d been very close to being the one doing the dying.

That night, after David had gone home, Maggie talked the kids into piling onto her bed to watch a comedy. After the kids had fallen asleep, she turned off the TV and the light, and laid between them, cramped but not wanting space.