Wendy Hornsby - The Color of Light

“Did he unburden himself to you and Kevin?” I asked.

“He couldn’t, could he?” Max checked the clock on the wall; where were the paramedics? “When I showed up at the rectory, Kevin was already there. It didn’t take long to figure out what was up. John used an old lawyer’s ploy; I do it all the time when I’m at trial. If I can’t get evidence in one way, I’ll get it in another. And that’s what John was doing. He got Kevin and me together, directed the conversation onto Trinh’s murder, and except for some occasional nudging, he left the rest to us. We had dinner, and then Kevin and I went over to the PD to go through the murder book and the paltry evidence that exists. We put together what he knew, what I knew, and the information you came up with, and made a couple of phone calls.”

“Did you get anywhere?” I asked. Kevin’s eyelids fluttered; I put my hand along his cheek and he grew still.

Max glanced over at Duc’s corpse. “Looks like someone thinks we did.”

I picked up the phone; the dispatcher was breathing on the other end of the line. “Where the hell are you people? It’s been ten minutes.”

“Responders are on the way,” she said.

“How long?”

“They are on the way.”

We did not hear sirens. Max said, “Maybe we should put him in the car and take him to Emergency.”

“Moving him could be dangerous,” Jean-Paul said. “It’s a tough call.”

Max puffed out a long breath, glanced at the clock again; the hands had hardly moved. To be useful, I got up and unbolted the front door. On my way back, I spotted Duc’s gun where I had kicked it. I grabbed a tissue from the box on the desk and used it to pick up the gun. It was a Colt Commander, identical to Dad’s.

“Jean-Paul,” I said, taking the gun to show him.

“What’s the serial number?” he asked, gesturing for Uncle Max to take over with Kevin. I turned the gun over and found the engraved numbers. As I read them off, Jean-Paul compared them to the numbers on Dad’s Colt. When I finished, he held out his hand for the gun. “Both came from the same shipment by the manufacturer to the Armory.”

“How did Duc get that gun?” I asked, thinking aloud, not expecting an answer. Mr. Loper told us that Chuck Riley showed him four new Colts, still in their boxes. How many did he actually have? And who all had he given them to?

Sirens and flashing lights, at last, raced toward us, coming from both ends of the street.

Paramedics swept in with their gear and went straight to work on Kevin. One of them pulled me aside, looked deep into my eyes and asked, “Are you injured?”

“No.” I was covered with blood, as were Max and Jean-Paul. Pointing to Duc, I said, “I think that one is beyond your help, but the rest of us are fine.”

He bent over Duc, put a stethoscope to his chest, felt his wrist for a pulse and shone a light into his eyes. The sergeant in charge checked on Kevin first before he asked about Duc.

“Goner,” the paramedic said, draping his stethoscope around his neck as he got to his feet. “Call the coroner, have him send the meat wagon.”

Within a surprisingly short time, Kevin was on a gurney with an IV in his arm, a blood pressure cuff and a heart monitor attached, and a wide pressure bandage around his chest. Everyone inside the house stopped what they were doing and made way for the paramedics to wheel Kevin out. Jean-Paul and I followed them as far as the front door.

“Is that Kevin?” Chuck Riley, out on the lawn with a clutch of other neighbors, rushed toward the gurney but was pushed back by an officer wearing riot gear. “Is that Kevin? How can that be Kevin?” He appealed to the cop to let him through. “Hey man, that’s my boy. Let me-please let me-”

The cop didn’t seem moved by Chuck’s plight. But Chuck kept at it until the ambulance doors slammed behind Kevin’s gurney and lights and sirens started up again. As the ambulance drove off into the night, Chuck seemed near collapse.

The sergeant let out an ear-splitting whistle to get the crowd’s attention.

“There’s nothing to see here, folks,” he yelled out. “Please go back to your homes and let us do our work.”

The neighbors, roused from their beds, some still in pajamas and slippers, drifted off home. Chuck stubbornly stayed behind. He took a step toward the front porch, saw me in the bloody shirt, froze for a moment, and then screamed out, “What did you do to Kevin?”

The sergeant stopped him cold, got in his face and ordered him to go home or he’d be arrested for interfering with an official investigation. I was curious to see what Chuck would do next, but after hearing murmurs riffle through the crowd: “Maggie’s covered in blood”, “I heard Kevin’s practically living here now”, “Is Lacy out of rehab?” I took Jean-Paul’s arm and stepped back inside.

Most of the policemen took off when the ambulance pulled out. Two stayed to watch the front of the house, and four more, counting the sergeant, were inside protecting the crime scene. After all the chaos of the last half hour, the house settled into an eerie silence. There was nothing to be done until the scientific teams and the detectives showed up, except wait. Staying at a distance, I looked around at the rubble the paramedics left behind: the clothes they cut off Kevin, a heap of bloody bath towels and used dressings, and the disposable wrappings torn from various medical paraphernalia. Amid the mess, I saw the butt of a gun, one of the Colts. I leaned close to Jean-Paul, nodded toward the gun, and asked, “Is that Duc’s or Dad’s?”

“Duc’s,” he said.

I went up to the sergeant and asked, “You’re in charge here?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “You’re the resident, right? We’ll get to you when we can.”

“I thought you’d like to know that the shooter’s gun is there on the floor.” I pointed at it.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“And I would like to know, what the hell kept you? For nearly fifteen minutes you had an officer down and bleeding. Where the hell were you?”

He blushed a furious red. “We got swatted.”

Jean-Paul came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “What is ‘swatted’?”

“It’s been going around and I guess it was our turn,” the sergeant said. “We got a couple of calls that there was an active shooter at the Marina, hostages taken. There was a big party down there earlier tonight, the Chamber of Commerce, so all the bigwigs in town were there. We called up SWAT, paramedics, fire, put the hospitals on alert, and…” He didn’t finish the list. “It was all a prank. Probably some fraternity guys having a kegger.”

I nodded toward the still uncovered corpse of Khanh Duc. “You might want to check that man’s phone records.”

“You think he made those calls?”

“All I know is, in the middle of the night, a man dressed in black and carrying a gun crawled under my house to get inside. And you guys were busy somewhere else when he did it.”

“Do you know him?”

“I met him once,” I said. “His name is Khanh Duc. He grows roses.”

“Sir, if you please.” Jean-Paul opened his arms wide to show his blood-saturated front. “May we clean up a bit?”

Max, listening in, scowled but didn’t say anything.

The sergeant looked at the three of us and at the bloody bath towels and the rolled up duvet. “You get all that on you taking care of Halloran?”

“For fifteen minutes,” Max said crossly.

I leaned closer to the sergeant and said, “There are a lot of men here. I’d like to put more clothes on.”

He shrugged. “Go ahead. We’re setting up the crime scene now so it would be better for you to be somewhere else. The detectives will be here soon to talk to you, so don’t be too long. And don’t wash the clothes, okay?”