T. Parker: Red Light

O’Brien smiled again and moved his feet apart just a little, into a more stable shooting stance. Merci’s ears were roaring and she wondered if he could hear them.

Think. Anything. Keep him talking.

“How do you explain a dead detective in your dad’s house?”

“Easy. You intercepted me on my way to work. True. Said you wanted me to supply the suicide note and videotape of dad. True again. I said the stuff was out here, so you said let’s go. True. When we got here, I couldn’t find the note. That will become true. But I showed you the suicide gun and you inspected it, must have assumed it was empty, and it went off. Sort of true. I administered CPR but it was too late. Then, just the obvious, I’ll wipe the gun off before I put it in your hands. Then I’ll help you shoot it through that window, but you’ll be dead so it won’t be difficult. I’ll replace the spent cartridge so it looks like only one shell went off. I’ll replace the glass with plywood so it matches half the other windows in here. Then I’ll hit my hands with a double dose of solvent to get the gunshot residue off. After that it’s my word against yours, but you won’t have much to say. Accidents happen.”

“Zamorra won’t buy it.”

“I’ll handle Zamorra. He’s so ditzed out right now, he probably will buy it.”

“Your prints were in Whittaker’s kitchen.”

“Hey, babe, I’m a CSI. I worked that scene. Mistakes happen.”

She dove behind the sofa, landing on her left side, hand already jammed under her coat. The room exploded with a roar and she felt something slam into her side. Two more booms then, the reports echoing through the room. Her leg seemed to burst into flames. She reached the nine over the couch top and fired twice but four loud detonations went off and the sheet over the couch puffed out and sprouted two holes. When the echoes died off she heard O’Brien curse, then footsteps fast away from her.

She labored to her knees with the H&K ready, saw O’Brien disappear into the kitchen, saw the smear of blood on the floor. She swung away her coat with one elbow, then reached down toward her bleeding holes. She poked her trigger finger in one and saw the tip come out the other. She almost fainted. The blood was already all over the place. There was a rip in her pants, down below the knee, but she couldn’t tell if the bone was shattered or not. She stood and dragged herself toward the kitchen.

Blood on the floor and on the doorframe. The outside door swung open, banging in the wind. She steadied herself on the counter, got across the room to the door and looked out.

A pool house to her left, garages to her right, the whole table dusted by the blowing sand. Eyes burning, the wind ripping at her face, a huge tumbleweed bouncing along and a few drops of blood leading to the pool.

She took a deep breath, got the nine steady in both slippery hands and limped across the deck toward the pool. She looked in. No water just a bunch of tumbleweeds trapped in the bottom. But she saw movement on the far wall, something rising up from the bottom, growing taller, the shadow of a man and all she could think of was jump out a turn midair and crank off three quick shots as she dropped straight down into an ocean of thorns.

She sank. She tried to stay upright but it was like treading broken glass. She got up against the near side and saw the gun barrel come over the lip of the deck, saw the hand behind it.

For a moment it seemed to watch her, one big black eye, then it moved right and left as if to locate her, and she was just about to roll one side when the black eye dropped and skittered down the gunite and slid under the tumbleweeds.

She could feel her breath coming short and fast but she couldn’t hear anything but the wind shrieking above her. O’Brien’s hand was twitching rhythmically. She rolled away from it, toward the shallow end, fighting her way through the thorns and dust and finally got to the steps, trying to keep the sights of her gun on the facedown body of Evan O’Brien.

He lay outstretched on the deck with one hand dangling in the empty air above the pool. She sat on the bottom step and leaned forward, resting the H&K on the deck, both hands still firm in spite of the blood and the sand and the thorns that had come off in her skin.

She got the sights lined up on O’Brien’s side and held them there. She rested her arms on the deck and her weight on her arms. She panted. She listened to the wind howl. She looked down at the steps and they were heavy with blood and she felt light and painless and oddly content.

When she tried to stand she faltered and fell back down the pool-side, boot toes scratching hopelessly for purchase, gun dropping from her hand.

Caught in the curve at the bottom, she looked forward and saw three things right in front of her face: one section of gunite and two bloody hands resting against it.

She wondered whose they were. Thorns everywhere, blood and sand. Must hurt.

She thought she heard sirens, but she thought she heard music, too.

Her sense of time was all off: Minutes dragged to eternities while hours shot past like hummingbirds. In and out of the world, a world of uniforms and sharp voices, of sirens and tubes in her arms and mouth, of bright lights and hovering masks and finally a room that was quiet active with the comings and goings of people she didn’t know and she didn’t just dream it, brief inquisitive appearances by her father Paul Zamorra and Sheriff Chuck Brighton.

Cold. Sleep. Thirst. More cold. More sleep. More thirst.

Then more sirens and helicopter blades and the blustery roof of UCI Medical Center where the Medi-Vac chopper circled to a stop shook the needles in her veins. And another room hushed with activity, monitors everywhere, more faces she didn’t know, more apparitional visitations by faces she did.

The first thing she noticed were her hands: swollen as if by a thousand stings, small dark shards lodged deep in the red flesh. They hurt. The worst were the pads of her fingers, and around her nails. Moving either hand was like sticking it into a prickly pear cactus.

The next thing she noticed was her smell: not good. She pulled herself up from the bed, which set off an alarm, which brought two nurses skidding into the room. They strapped her down to the bed and gave a whore’s bath when she stopped crying and thrashing around.

Her lower torso was wrapped with gauze. Her right calf wrapped with gauze. Her butt was wrapped in gauze then fitted loosely inside a large padded diaper. When her right hand began to boil with pus they added a sedative to her saline drip that made her feel like Joan Cash had hypnotized her. They pulled out the thorns. Then they left. She awakened some years later and held up her hands, mittened now in still more gauze but not throbbing like they were before.

She woke from a terrible dream in which she was shot up and filled with stickers, only to find it true. She screamed and strained against the bedstraps. A nurse added something else into her IV drip and the world got warm and fuzzy and humorous. Clark showed up with Tim. The Men!

She touched Tim with her white mittens then something like a soft hammer hit her. The next thing she knew she was sitting up in bed with a tray in front of her and a carton of orange juice with a straw steadied between the white bandaged clubs of her fingers.

Nobody was in the room but her father. He told her it was a whole day after he and Tim, Jr., had visited. Monday, the day before Christmas. He smiled and touched her forehead and told her everything was going to be just fine.

Medical news: gunshot to the right lower torso, flesh and muscle wound, lower rib chipped. Bone shards removed, remainder filed and shaped. Entrance and exit wounds sutured and stitched. Gunshot to right upper calf, no damage to bone or nerve, considerable localized destruction of flesh, replaced by tissue and skin graft from patient’s posterior gluteal area. Minor flesh wounds on both hands and fingers caused by repeated contact with tumbleweeds — thorns removed and punctures cleaned.