The Accident (43 page)

Darren didn’t want anyone looking for an accomplice.

Of course, it was also possible Belinda or George had been shot in whatever mayhem had taken place inside that house. And the absolute worst-case scenario, Slocum concluded, would be if Milford police detective Rona Wedmore had been shot.

By Sommer.

Which would mean Slocum was waiting out here for a cop killer.

Again, not good.

Slocum thought,
Let it be Sommer
. It’d be for the best, really. If Sommer was dead, he wouldn’t be doing much talking. He wouldn’t be able to tell about his involvement with Darren and his wife. Sommer was, even to Darren, who’d dealt with some pretty scummy people in his time as a cop, scarier than hell. Darren knew he’d sleep better at night knowing the guy was dead.

He stood there by the car, thinking all these things, debating with himself. Stay with the car? Go up to the house? Just take off? He could make it from Cloverdale Avenue to his place on Harborside Drive in ten minutes on foot.

And then? What if his fellow cops put it all together? When they showed up at his door, would they slap the cuffs on him, even if Sommer was dead and hadn’t said a word?

When he got home, should he pack up Emily and make a run for it? And how far could he expect to get, realistically? He wasn’t prepared for anything like this. He didn’t have another identity set up. The only credit cards he had were in his own name. How long would it take the authorities to track him down? A man on the run with a little girl in tow?

A day? If that?

He couldn’t decide what to do. He needed to know what had happened in that house before—

Someone came out the front door.

It was Sommer. Holding a gun.

The man ran down the walk toward the car. Slocum started running toward him. “What the hell happened in there?” he shouted.

“Get in the car,” Sommer said, not quite shouting, but firm. “I got the money.”

Slocum stood his ground. “What was that shot? What happened?”

Sommer was nose to nose with him now. “Get in the damn car.”

“I saw Rona Wedmore go in there. A cop! And you coming out, alone. What went down in there?” Slocum grabbed hold of the lapels of Sommer’s jacket. “Goddamn it, what did you do?”

“I shot her. Get in the car.”

In the distance, the sound of approaching sirens.

Slocum gently released his grip on Sommer’s jacket, let his arms settle by his sides. He stood there, shook his head a couple of times, as though some kind of peace had come over him.

“Now,” Sommer said.

But Slocum didn’t move. “It’s over. All of this. It’s over.” He looked to the house. “Is she dead?”

“Who cares?”

Slocum surprised himself when he said, “I do. She’s a fellow cop. A lot more cop than I am. There’s an officer down, and I have to help.”

Sommer pointed his gun at Slocum. “No,” he said, “you’re not.” And pulled the trigger.

Slocum clutched his left side, just above his belt, and looked down. Blood appeared between his fingers. He dropped to his knees first, then fell onto his side, still holding himself.

Sommer went over to the car, closed the passenger door, then went around and got in behind the wheel. He went to turn on the engine.

“What the—”

The keys he’d left in the ignition were no longer there. He opened the door to activate the overhead light to see if they had fallen down onto the floor mats.

More sirens.

“Goddamn!” he said. He got back out of the car and strode over to Slocum, who was still clutching his stomach, as if he could somehow hold himself together.

“The keys. Give me the keys.”

“Fuck you,” Slocum said.

Sommer knelt down, started feeling around in Slocum’s pockets. His hands became smeared with blood. “Where are they, damn it? Where are they?”

He happened to glance up at that point, at the Morton house.

Staggering out the front door, one hand holding a gun, the other pressed up against her shoulder, was Rona Wedmore. She glanced back into the house and shouted, “Stay in there!”

Sommer was thinking things couldn’t get any worse.

Then a pickup truck turned the corner and started driving up the street.

FIFTY-THREE

I’d already made up my mind, even before I’d left home, that I’d drop in on Belinda after I’d been to see Sally.

I felt bad as I stepped out her door. It looked as though I was going to lose her as an employee, and a friend. But I’d had to ask her what Theo could have meant when he wrote that he was sorry about Sheila.

It was not some token note of condolence. There was more to it.

I pondered at the connections as I walked back to my truck. It stood to reason that Theo might have gotten his electrical supplies through Darren and Ann Slocum—assuming Doug wasn’t the one who’d procured them. And Darren and Ann’s troubles were very much intertwined with Sheila’s and mine.

But how it all stitched together, I couldn’t begin to guess.

I figured I would go see Belinda, and then I’d pay a visit to Slocum. I didn’t know, exactly, the questions I was going to ask, or the approach I was going to take, with either of them. Particularly Slocum. The last time I’d seen him had been at the funeral home when I’d slugged him.

As I turned onto Cloverdale Avenue and approached the Morton house, I could tell right away something was not right.

A black woman had just come out the front door. Stumbled almost. She had her left hand pressed to her right shoulder and in her other hand was a gun.

I recognized her as Milford police detective Rona Wedmore. That was probably her car parked just ahead, on my side of the street.

About three houses beyond the Morton place, I saw a black Chrysler 300 at the curb, facing my way. It was the same kind of car Sommer had been driving when he came to the house yesterday morning, looking for the money. The driver’s door was open, but I couldn’t see anyone at the wheel.

Then I spotted a man kneeling on the grass, between the edge of the street and the sidewalk, only a short distance ahead of the Chrysler. As I nosed the truck into the curb, my lights splashed across him, and I could see he was crouched over something. It was another person, on the ground, apparently injured.

The kneeling man was Sommer. I couldn’t tell who the injured man was, but Sommer was searching through his pockets for something.

I threw the transmission into park and opened the door.

Rona Wedmore was looking my way and the moment my feet touched the pavement she shouted, “No! Get back!”

“What’s happened?” I said, still shielded by the truck door.

I had a better look now at Wedmore, standing under the porch light of the Morton house, and could see red oozing between the fingers of the hand she was pressing to her shoulder. She leaned up against a post, briefly, then started coming down the steps, taking her hand from her wound to use the railing.

I could hear a chorus of sirens.

Wedmore, now at the bottom of the steps, waved her weapon in the direction of Sommer and shouted at me. “Get out of here! He’s got a gun!”

At that moment, Sommer raised his and pointed it at Wedmore. I barely heard the shot, but the wooden railing she’d been holding a second earlier splintered.

Sommer went back to searching the man, grabbed something, and ran to the open door of the Chrysler.

I glanced back into my truck. There, just sticking out from under the seat, was the paper bag. I hadn’t yet gotten rid of the gun the boys had given me.

The smart thing to do at that moment would have been to throw myself into the truck and lie low until Sommer had driven off. But like that time I’d tried to put out the fire in the basement of the Wilson house and became lost in the smoke, I didn’t always do the smart thing.

I grabbed the bag, ripped it open, and grabbed the weapon.

I didn’t know a lot about this gun. I had no idea what make it was. I couldn’t have hazarded a guess when or where it was made.

And I certainly had no idea whether it was loaded.

Would Corey Wilkinson and his friend Rick have been dumb enough to bring a loaded gun to my house? They’d been dumb enough to take a shot at it, so I thought there was a chance the answer was yes.

I firmed my grip on the handle as Sommer got into the car. I heard the engine turn over. The headlights came on like fiery eyes. Rona Wedmore was running, somewhat haltingly, across the Mortons’ lawn, heading for the street. Her footing was off, like maybe she was going to lose her balance. She was raising her gun hand, pointing it down the street at Sommer’s car.

The Chrysler’s tires squealed as it started barreling up the street.

As Wedmore came off the curb and her right foot hit the pavement, it gave out under her. She stumbled and went down on her side into the street. Sommer steered the car toward her.

I came around my pickup’s open door and started running to where Wedmore had fallen. The black car was still approaching. I stopped, steadied myself, put both hands on the gun and raised it to shoulder level.

Rona Wedmore shouted something, but I couldn’t hear what it was.

I squeezed the trigger.

Click
.

Nothing happened.

The car continued toward us.

I squeezed the trigger a second time.

The recoil forced my arms up into the air and I felt myself stumble back half a step. The windshield on the Chrysler spiderwebbed out from the passenger side. Sommer turned the wheel hard left, missing me by no more than ten feet as he screeched past. I threw myself out of the way, hitting the pavement and rolling to within a few inches of Wedmore.

There was a loud thunk, the screech of scraping metal, and then a crash.

By the time I’d turned around to see what had happened, the Chrysler had already bounced over the curb, driven into the middle of a yard, and slammed into a tree.

“Stay down!” Wedmore screamed at me.

But I was already on my feet, gun still in hand. My heart was pumping
so hard, the adrenaline rushing through me with such speed, that I was immune to reason or common sense.

I ran over to the Chrysler, coming around it cautiously from behind, the way I’d seen cops do it on TV. I noticed a length of angled gray metal sticking out from under the car, and surmised that before Sommer hit the tree, he’d mowed down a street sign. Steam billowed out from beneath the buckled hood as the engine continued to run, but instead of the usual growl, it sounded more like nails in a blender.

As I got closer, I spotted a deployed airbag, and coming up alongside, I saw Sommer.

There wasn’t much need to train the gun on him.

The edge of a white metal sign reading
SPEED LIMIT 25
had caught Sommer on the forehead and just about taken the top of his head clean off.

FIFTY-FOUR

Two ambulances were dispatched to the scene. Darren Slocum, whose condition was deemed more serious than Rona Wedmore’s, was taken away first to Milford Hospital. The bullet had gone right through him, on his far left side, and while no one was able to say anything with certainty at the scene, it looked as though it had missed any vital organs. Wedmore’s shoulder had been grazed, and while she’d lost some blood, she was standing on her own before the paramedics forced her to lie down on the stretcher.

The Mortons were more or less unharmed, although George’s head had been cut open when it was slammed into the television. For sure, they were both traumatized. Belinda told me what had happened inside the house. Wedmore had burst into the study, then dived for cover as Sommer took a shot. Sommer had grabbed the money-stuffed envelope and fled. He must have figured the detective had already called for backup and he didn’t have much time to get away.

For the longest time, I could not stop shaking. I wasn’t actually hurt, but the paramedics wrapped me in blankets and sat me down to make sure I was okay.

The police had plenty of questions for me. Fortunately, before she was taken away, Wedmore put in a good word for me.

“That stupid bastard just got a guy who tried to kill two cops,” she told them as they loaded her into the ambulance.

They wanted to know about my gun.

“Is it yours?” they asked.

“More or less,” I told them.

“Is it registered?”

“Not to my knowledge,” I said.

I had a feeling I was going to get some sort of slap on the wrist for this, but nothing more. I didn’t think the police would like the optics—hassling someone who’d saved one of their own from getting run down in the middle of the street.

But even though they took a conciliatory tone with me, the questioning at police headquarters went on until dawn. Around seven they drove me back to my truck, and I found my way home.

And went to bed.

I woke up around three. The phone was ringing.

“Mr. Garber?”

“Hmm?”

“Mr. Garber, Rona Wedmore here.”

I blinked a couple of times, glanced at the clock, totally discombobulated. “Hey,” I said. “How are you?”

“I’m okay. Still at the hospital. They’re going to let me go home in a few minutes. I just called to tell you that what you did was one of the stupidest, dumbest, most moronic things I’ve ever seen anyone do. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. What have you heard about Darren Slocum?”

“He’s in the ICU, but it looks like he’s going to pull through okay.” She paused. “He might be sorry he made it after the department’s through with him.”

“He’s in a lot of trouble,” I said.

“He came with Sommer to the Mortons’. He may face accessory charges and God knows what else.”

“What else do you know? Anything about my wife? Or Darren’s wife?”

“There’s still a lot we don’t know, Mr. Garber. Sommer’s dead, so we’re not going to learn anything from him. But we’re talking about one very nasty son of a bitch here. We can’t assume anything, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn he somehow arranged the deaths of both your wife and Mrs. Slocum. And early indications are he killed a private investigator named Arthur Twain, as well, at the Just Inn Time hotel.”