Wendy Hornsby - The Color of Light

I never saw movement, never heard a sound. Strong arms grabbed me from behind and spun me off my feet. Before I could yell, a hand clamped over my mouth and pressed my head back against a broad, hard chest. The smell of scotch and sweat got stronger as I struggled to get free. I pulled at the arms confining me, bit and scratched and kicked, feeling impotent, panicked, trapped, as I was carried into the far dark end of the den. I couldn’t scream, I could hardly breathe, but I could flail my bare feet, hoping to topple anything I could that might rouse Max and Jean-Paul. I sank my teeth into the fleshy palm over my mouth and felt my captor wince, but he would not loosen his grip.

We were pressed into the corner behind a door, his back against the wall, when he put his lips on my ear. I thought he was going to bite me back, but he whispered, “Shh. Maggie, stop fighting. Please. It’s me, Kevin. Stay quiet, I beg you. Someone’s in the house.”

When I stopped struggling, slowly, gently, he set my feet on the floor, uncoiled his arms, and turned me to face him. I moved my jaw back and forth-it was sore. I was still terrified; why was Kevin in the house? He mouthed, Sorry , and put his finger to his lips, a plea to be quiet, and then he kissed the top of my head as apology, the way he would when we were kids and he had been an ass. I held up my palms, asking what was happening, but he only shook his head.

Under the murmuring wind, I heard a floorboard creak and knew exactly where the intruder was: on the far side of the closed dining room doors. I also knew how he had gotten into the house without a key. In the dining room floor there was an access hatch for the gravity heater under the house. A determined intruder could get into the heater area by getting into the crawl space under the house. Once he reached the heater, he could come inside through the hatch.

I grabbed Kevin and started toward the door to warn Jean-Paul and Max, upstairs sleeping. He raised a hand in front of me, an order to stop, and waited until I nodded agreement that I would stay put before he began to move on stocking feet along the edges of the room, headed for the hall. By then, the intruder had already put his weight on the creaky floorboard at the base of the stairs: he was headed up. I panicked and bolted forward. Kevin turned and pointed at me. I saw the gun in his other hand and stayed where I was.

The intruder was on the third step, where the banister makes a sound like a bird peep when anyone steps on the riser, when Kevin went out the door.

“Police,” I heard him say as the hall lights blazed on. “Stay where you are. Put your hands where I can see them. Stay where you are, stay where you are. Drop the weapon.”

Gunfire cleaved the night quiet. I hit the floor and started crawling toward the telephone. Kevin’s bulk suddenly blocked the light streaming in from the hall, but he didn’t make it into the room before he fell to the floor. Lying on his side, facing me, with a bloody hand he pushed his weapon toward me before his eyes closed. Whoever was out there was now running up the stairs. I knew Max and Jean-Paul had heard the gunshot and would probably be on their way to investigate. I held the gun at combat-ready with one hand as I punched 911 with the other. I laid the phone down and tried to pull Kevin further into the den, to get him behind closed doors. When I heard the dispatcher connect, I yelled, “Officer down, officer down. This location. Officer down. Active shooter.”

“Bitch!” The shooter pounded back down the stairs headed toward us. “Shut the fuck up.”

He’d reached the door, a looming blackness backlit from the hall. I was ready to fire when a gun blast spun him. I heard him swear, saw him grab his arm, saw him turn and raise his weapon before a second shot dropped him on his back.

Lying in the middle of the entry hall, Khanh Duc met my eyes and managed to say, “Bitch,” before he lost consciousness.

I kicked Duc’s gun into the den, well out of his reach, before I ventured to look into the hall. Jean-Paul, as naked as the day he was born, stood on the top step holding the smoking Colt.

“Merde,” he said, coming down the stairs. “I didn’t have an opportunity to zero in the sight. The gun pulls right. First shot only winged him. You okay, chérie ?”

“Yes.” I turned on the den lights and knelt beside Kevin. There was a bloody mess on the right side of his chest and he was having trouble breathing. I ripped open his shirt and put pressure on the bleeding wound. He began to cough blood.

Still holding the Colt, Jean-Paul knelt beside Duc, felt for a pulse. After a moment he looked up at me and shook his head. “Fini.”

Max called out from somewhere upstairs, “All clear?”

“Come,” Jean-Paul said, kneeling beside me. “Bring towels and a blanket. A lot of towels.”

Max came down at a rush carrying an armload of towels from the hall bathroom and dragging the duvet from his bed. When he saw that Jean-Paul was naked, he took off his bathrobe and threw it over Jean-Paul’s shoulders.

To help Kevin breathe, Jean-Paul elevated his shoulders so that Max could place the rolled duvet under him. Kevin’s eyes fluttered open, saw us, managed a wan smile, before they closed again.

The sound track to this entire enterprise was the 911 dispatcher trying to get someone’s attention. Max picked up the phone and demanded to know where the hell the paramedics and police were.

“I don’t give a great goddamn about a barricaded shooter in the Marina. I have an officer down here. Detective Kevin Halloran of the Berkeley PD has a sucking chest wound so you damn well better get someone here now. Do you hear me? Now?”

Again, Kevin managed a little smile. Max kept the connection open, but he set the phone on the floor beside him.

As we kept pressure on Kevin’s wound, the bleeding seemed to be under control, at least externally. With his shoulders raised he breathed a little more easily, but he needed more help than we could give him and he needed it very soon. The three of us stayed on the floor beside him, taking turns applying pressure. Watching the clock, hoping for sirens.

Duc’s black sweats were covered with dirt from under the house. It made sense that he knew where the outside access to the crawl space was because he had spent a lot of time in the backyard with Dad, and probably would have used the faucet that was right next to one of the grated openings. Kevin’s clothes were a bit rumpled, but they were clean.

“Max, I heard you bolt the front door when you came home,” I said. “How did Kevin get in here?”

“I brought him home with me,” Max said.

“Home from where?” I asked. “I thought you were having dinner with Father John.”

“Father John invited Kevin along.”

“Why? I thought you were having scotch and confession.”

“Yeah, that was the agenda,” Max said.

The towel under my hands was saturated with blood. When Jean-Paul took over from me, he put a fresh towel on top of the other and pressed. I wiped my bloody hands on my shirt and turned to my uncle.

“So?”

“Father John is dying, Maggie,” Max said. “He has some unfinished business he wants to take care of before it’s too late, but he’s stuck behind the seal of the confessional so there isn’t much he can do by himself. When you think of all the people who have unburdened themselves to John, the secrets that he carries around-how he can look some of his parishioners in the eye knowing what he knows about them is a mystery to me. The thing is, he’s heard the confessions of your parents, the Bartolinis, Kevin’s folks, the Rileys, Quynh, Larry Nordquist, and I don’t know who all. He’s a smart man, our Father John. He couldn’t help but put some of it together. Other than advising his parishioners to do the right thing, his hands were tied.”