John Sandford - Shock Wave

Shepard: “I’m outa here.”

Block: “Hey, Pat. Have a good day. Keep your fuckin’ mouth shut.”

Good Thunder said, “He is so implicated. We could talk conspiracy to commit murder.”

Wills nodded: “We will. The thing is, if we agree to drop that charge, but leave jail time up in the air for the bribe… we could flip him, too, and get him talking to Geraldine. Man. We are looking. .. What’s that asshole doing?”

“He’s talking to himself,” Thompson said.

Shepard was standing outside Block’s office, looking through the window into the office, making an incoherent growling sound, like a nervous collie. Every once in a while, a word would pop out, but it didn’t sound good.

Virgil said, “I’m gonna go reel him in,” and he popped his truck door.

Good Thunder said, “Wait. He’s moving.”

Virgil stopped and looked over at Shepard. Shepard walked around to the back of his car, looked across the street at them, and lifted a hand.

“Got a flat tire?” Thompson suggested, as Shepard rummaged around in the trunk of his car.

“I don’t…” Virgil began.

Then Shepard straightened, and in his hand he was holding a largeframe chrome revolver. A Smith, Virgil thought, vaguely, as Good Thunder said, “Oh, no,” and Wills said, “Holy shit,” and Thompson said, “Uh-oh, got a gun, Virgil?”

Virgil thought about his gun in the lockbox, turned to say something about it to Good Thunder, who was essentially sitting on it, but Good Thunder, still looking through the windshield said, “He’s gonna…”

Virgil looked back in time to see Shepard turn the gun toward his own chest, and pull the trigger.

And Shepard went down.

Virgil got to him first.

Shepard was lying flat on his back, his eyes open and focused, and he was making the growling sound, his breaths short and harsh. His arms lay down his sides, and the gun was a few inches from his right hand. Virgil pushed it out of reach, heard Good Thunder shouting into a cell phone, calling for an ambulance. People were shouting on the street around him, and Wills was telling them to stand back, as Virgil pulled open Shepard’s shirt, saw the wound just to the right of his breastbone, a small hole through which bright red, frothy blood was seeping.

Virgil looked around, for something soft and plastic, didn’t see anything, shouted at Wills, “Keep them away,” jogged back to his truck, got a trash bag out of a seat-back pocket, ran back to Shepard. Good Thunder was kneeling over him, saying, “Ambulance on the way, Pat. Ambulance is coming…” Virgil elbowed her aside, ripped a square of plastic out of the bag, and slapped it across the bullet hole and pressed it down.

The audio gear had been tucked under Shepard’s belt line, and Virgil pulled it loose, and then ripped off the tape that held the microphone to his chest.

Shepard made another growling, coughing sound, and the first of the deputies arrived. Wills organized them to push back the rubberneckers. The ambulance was there a minute later, probably five or six minutes after the shooting, which was great time; the paramedics put oxygen on Shepard, moved him onto a gurney, and they were gone.

Virgil walked back to his truck and gave the audio gear to Thompson, got some Handi Wipes and washed the blood off his hands as he went back across the street. Good Thunder asked, “What do you think?”

Virgil shook his head. “Hard to tell with a gunshot. Depends on what it hit. If it hit a major artery, he’ll die, and in the middle of your chest, that’s easy to do. If he didn’t, he could be walking around tomorrow. Bullet didn’t go through…”

He went to the pistol and knelt next to it: the frame was big, longbarreled, a Smith amp; Wesson, as he’d thought, but in. 22 caliber. A practice gun for the bigger calibers.

“I’ll let the deputies pick that up,” he said, getting to his feet. “It’s a. 22. He’d have to be fairly unlucky to die.”

“I wonder if he wanted to?” Good Thunder said. “You’d think he would have shot himself in the head.”

“I’m not a shrink, but a shrink once told me that suicidal people will sometimes try to kill themselves in a way which isn’t disfiguring,” Virgil said. “They want to look good.”

Wills, the County attorney, was walking around in circles, talking into a cell phone. When he got off he came over and said, “I want to take Block as soon as we can get him alone. People are going to be talking about this all over town. We need to bust him, get him to the courthouse, get him with an attorney, and make a deal about Geraldine and the guy from PyeMart.”

Good Thunder nodded. “I agree.”

“I’ll leave you guys to that,” Virgil said. “That’s attorney stuff.”

Virgil was bummed: they’d taken an obviously distraught man, who’d said several times that his life was over, and they’d pushed him too hard.

Virgil hauled the others back to the courthouse, where they had a quick conference with Ahlquist, who agreed to send a couple of deputies to pick up Block. “He was looking out his office window, and saw me, so he might have figured out that something’s going on,” Wills said. “When the docs find that wire on Shepard, the word’s going to get out even faster.”

“Nah, I took it off him,” Virgil said. “But people were all over the place, some of them saw me take it off. I think we have to assume that Block will know something’s up.”

“Might make him more interested in a deal,” Wills said. He said to the sheriff, “Earl, you gotta move now.”

Ahlquist left to get the deputies moving, and Wills said, “Wasn’t that just the damnedest thing? Damnedest thing I ever saw.”

Virgil had thought Wills was a jerk; and he might still be, but at the moment, he was pretty human, and he’d been cool enough at the scene of the shooting. People, Virgil thought, were hardly ever just one thing: only a jerk, only a good guy.

As she left, Good Thunder asked Virgil what he was going to do.

“I’ve got to talk to Sarah Erikson-that’s the main thing,” he said. “There are a couple of questions we need answered in a hurry.”

When Ahlquist came back, Virgil told him that he needed to talk to Sarah Erikson: “When are we going to do that?”

“We left it indefinite,” he said.

“Do you know where she is?” Virgil asked.

“Last I heard, she was at her house. Want me to check?”

“If you could.”

Ahlquist called one of the deputies still at the bombed house, who said that Sarah Erikson was in the house, along with her mother, a brother, and a couple of friends. Virgil said good-bye to Ahlquist, asked him to call when Block had been busted.

“No point in calling you,” Ahlquist said. “Unless he ran for it, it’s any minute.”

A deputy came in, looking for Ahlquist, and said, “Hey, Sheriff, Randy called from the hospital, they’re taking Shepard into the operating room, but the docs say he’s likely to make it.”

Virgil left for Erikson’s, and on the way, took a call from Willard Pye.

“There’s a rumor going around that you’re investigating my bidness,” Pye said.

“Can’t talk about rumors,” Virgil said. “So, how’re you doing, otherwise?”

“Cut the crap, Virgil,” Pye said. “You think something was going on between my boy and this fella that shot himself?”

“Can’t talk about stuff like that, Willard. I’m here basically to catch the bomber,” Virgil said. “That’s my number one priority, and I’m on the way to talk to Erikson’s wife, right now.”

“I’ll take your evasions as a ‘yes,’ you are investigating PyeMart. Goddamnit, Virgil, we’re clean as a spinster’s skirt on this thing. I just talked to my boy who handled this whole issue-”