Carla Neggers: Night’s Landing

She seemed singularly unimpressed with his argument. She crossed her arms on her chest and gave him a firm look. “You’re a very lucky man, Deputy Winter. I don’t think I’d be pushing my luck any more today.”

What she meant, Nate knew, was that the bullet that had ripped into the fleshy part of his upper arm had caused a superficial wound that would heal fast. No permanent damage. No surgery. A couple inches one way, the bullet would have missed him entirely. A couple inches another way, it could have nicked an artery or shattered bone.

Luck.

He agreed to sit tight for a few hours.

Dr. Ling handed him his pants and shoes-he’d track down Longstreet for his weapon-and an orderly and the deputy guard wheeled him upstairs.

Nate noticed the dried blood on the knee of his pants and the tops of his shoes.

Rob’s blood.

When he got to his floor, he understood the subtext of Dr. Ling’s stubbornness. Control and security. No media allowed, more armed deputies and a private waiting room for family members and any political, FBI, USMS, ATF and NYPD brass who wanted to check on the two wounded deputies.

No family members had arrived yet.

Thank God.

Nate didn’t think he could deal with Gus and his sisters right now. The politicians and law enforcement types in the waiting room stayed put when he was wheeled past the open door.

They wouldn’t want him off on his own too fast. A sniper had just tried to take out two federal agents in Central Park. All hell had to be breaking loose.

A nurse greeted him in his private room. Nate asked about Rob.

“He’s still in surgery.”

“Any word on his prognosis?”

She shook her head.

After she left, Nate ducked into the bathroom and put on his pants. He dampened a paper towel and scrubbed the blood off his shoes. Nothing to be done about the blood on his pants.

He checked his reflection and winced. “Hell.”

It wasn’t just pressure from his bosses that had compelled Dr. Ling to want to admit him. It was her medical judgment. He looked like shit. He was pale, he had dark circles under his eyes, he’d cut his lip from biting down too hard-no wonder she didn’t want him going home right away.

He washed his face, felt his stomach turn over, almost barfed and decided, okay, maybe he should take it easy. He staggered back out of the bathroom.

FBI Special Agent Joe Collins was waiting for him. “Thought I was going to have to go in there and scrape you off the floor. How you feel?”

“Like I look.”

“I was afraid of that. Up to talking?”

Nate knew Collins, although they’d never worked together. The shooting of two U.S. marshals was a federal crime that fell to the FBI to investigate, with the assistance of the Marshals Service, ATF and the New York Police Department. The marshals handled fugitive investigations and apprehension, prisoner transport, witness protection, the security of the federal judiciary and special operations-evidence gathering in federal criminal investigations was up to the FBI.

Nate nodded. “Sure. Excuse the outfit.”

“You’ve got someone bringing you a change of clothes?”

His uncle Gus and sister Carine would have been contacted by now in Cold Ridge, about a six-hour drive to New York unless they got a shuttle flight from Manchester. Antonia was in Washington. Closer. But she was almost eight months pregnant. Maybe she’d stay put.

Not a chance.

And his brothers-in-law would be at their wives’ sides.

Collins looked tired, but he always did. He had the kind of laid-back demeanor that made people think he wasn’t quite with it-their mistake. He was in his mid-forties, his wedding ring too tight on a knuckle-swollen finger, his stomach pushing against the buttons of his button-down blue shirt. He had a friendly face filled with broken capillaries.

Another FBI agent, straight backed, tense looking, maybe in her mid-twenties, stood silently in the corner by the bathroom.

“Any word on Rob?” Nate asked.

“He lost his spleen,” Collins said. “You can live without a spleen. It’s the blood loss the doctors are worried about. It’s still touch-and-go.”

Nate remembered the paramedics talking about internal bleeding at the scene. He didn’t respond. What was there to say?

“How’re you doing?” Collins asked.

“Fine.”

The FBI agent gave him a look that said they both knew better.

“We walked down to Central Park after the news conference. Rob-Christ, he wanted to see the tulips. Someone shot us.” Nate sat on the edge of his hospital bed. “That’s it. End of story.”

Except he knew it wasn’t. Collins would want to ask why they went into the park, who knew they’d be at the news conference, what they saw-and that was just for starters.

At this point, Nate doubted anyone thought it was a random shooting, a guy concealed somewhere in or around the park with an assault rifle and a silencer, waiting for the right moment, as opposed to the right victims, to shoot.

“He had to have an escape route,” Nate said.

“One thing at a time.”

Collins took him through the shooting step by step, minute by minute. Nate could feel his anesthetic slowly wearing off, the bandage heavy on his arm, the reality of what had happened earlier in the day hitting him. He’d been taking down fugitives for a long time, guys wanted for murder, carjacking, drug dealing, torture, rape and every other manner of violent crime. He’d been shot at before, but never like this-never a sneak attack, never with a fellow deputy collapsing, maybe dying, at his side.

“Deputy Dunnemore called his sister before the paramedics arrived?” Collins asked.

Nate pulled himself back to the matter at hand. “That’s right.”

“You dialed?”

“He had her number in memory. He wasn’t in any condition to talk. I think he just wanted her to hear what happened from him.”

“Then you talked to her?”

“That’s right. Rob couldn’t hold on to the phone. I took it.” Nate related his brief conversation with a shocked, frightened Sarah Dunnemore. “I told her I’d call her back, but I haven’t been able to. I’d need Rob’s cell phone. I don’t have her number.”

Collins wanted to know what Rob said to his sister. Nate told him.

There were more questions. The guy wasn’t leaving a stone unturned.

Nate’s head throbbed, and Special Agent Collins was getting on his nerves. Anyone would. He felt woozy from whatever crap Dr. Ling had pumped into him. A couple of Tylenol and directions to the exit would have suited him fine.

“They’re twins,” Collins said, “Deputy Dunnemore and his sister. You have two sisters, right? You call them?”

“Not yet, no. What the hell, Collins? You suspicious because Rob called his sister? For God’s sake, she didn’t shoot him.”

Collins ignored him. “Okay, you rest. Doctors say they might spring you later on, let you sleep in your own bed tonight. That must sound pretty good right now.”

“Just find the damn shooter. Never mind me.”

“Yeah. We’re on it. You’re not going to get in the way, are you?”

Nate said nothing.

“One last thing,” Collins said. “What were you and Deputy Dunnemore talking about before you got hit?”

“Tulips.”

The FBI agent managed a small grin before he left. Even the stone-faced female agent in the corner had a twitch of a smile.

Nate had his bed cranked up to a sitting position and was lying back against his skinny pillow, his shoes still on and his ankles crossed, when his family descended.

Gus, Antonia, Carine and their new husbands, Hank Callahan and Tyler North.

Collins had left almost an hour before. Since then, Nate had refused all company and stared at the ceiling, seeing Rob’s body jerking up as the bullet hit, hearing his sister’s shocked, frightened voice when Nate had talked to her. He saw the blood on the phone. Heard his own calm voice, as if he wasn’t really there, in the middle of chaos, shot, trying to save his colleague, trying to find the shooter. So much happening at once, but certain things stuck with him, wouldn’t recede.