Ridley Pearson - Killer Weekend

A loud report of a gun.

Blood sprayed across Walt’s face. His father was spun around by the force of the gunshot. He’d taken a bullet to protect Walt, and the two met eyes briefly as Jerry went down. He coughed out roughly, “Go!”

Screams and cries as the crowd panicked. Walt checked the stage: Liz Shaler was pinned down by two agents.

As men and women stampeded toward the exits, he caught one last glimpse of Nagler: The man was still as a statue, his attention locked on the dog.

And there was the dog, nose to the carpet, as it roamed in illogical loops.

Sniffing…

Another look in Nagler’s direction, but he was obscured by the crowd. His father, bleeding at his feet. The dog hot on a scent. And now he knew…

“BOMB!” he shouted.

T he dog shied around a fallen chair. Walt danced through a field of people lying on the floor and crawling under the tables. He lunged for the dog, caught a back leg. She snarled, snapped at him, and rolled away. But Walt got a piece of her collar, lost his purchase, and found his fingers wrapped tightly around something firm and thin. The dog yelped and threw Walt off, her legs in the air as she rolled away from him.

Walt saw a hastily stitched incision running up the dog’s abdomen. Saw that he’d been holding a piece of lamp wire that ran from the incision to the dog’s collar.

An image of the discarded box in Nagler’s bathroom: ESS FENCE. He completed the crossword: Wireless Fence. A shock collar; a battery carrying enough voltage to trigger a blasting cap.

Trevalian’s hand inside his coat pocket…

Walt rose and dove again. A woman screamed, and the dog changed directions. Walt fell forward and hooked his fingertips around that wire. He pulled down hard. The dog cried out, twisted its neck, and bit Walt’s arm. The wire broke free.

Walt dropped his father’s gun and picked it back up.

Pandemonium as the two agents dragged Liz Shaler off the stage.

But for Walt there was only Nagler in the room as the man feverishly pressed a remote device that failed to answer.

A group of fleeing guests obscured his view.

He glanced over at his father, balled up in pain on the carpet.

He looked back for Nagler.

Gone.

T revalian’s plan had been to escape out the service corridor, but being so close to the main doors, as the stampede of terrified guests approached, he went with the flow, using it as cover.

He was carried out and past the metal detector. The service corridor would be to his right. He turned in that direction, separating from those headed for the exit. He peeled off the facial hair and ditched the sunglasses, worked his arms out of the sport coat and dropped it into a chair. Now in the bar, he spotted an unmarked door to his right and turned toward it. The bartender shouted, “You can’t go there!” But he did go there: through the door and a small room of two sinks and shelving, and from there, directly into the service corridor.

He headed out the first door marked EXIT.

The braying of angry protesters filled the air. They stood in the blinding sunlight behind sawhorse barriers marked SUN VALLEY POLICE DEPARTMENT. If there had once been cops there to support that line, they’d left at the sound of a gunshot.

He caught sight of black vehicles speeding off: Shaler and the Secret Service. The protesters charged forward, knocking down the barriers. Trevalian briefly stayed with the group, then broke away, hurrying across a patch of lawn toward his rental car, parked behind the adjacent dormitory.

He cut across the grass to the shouts of the protesters. “Free trade equals child slaves!”

He glanced back once instinctively. A man jumped from the loading dock. A blue uniform.

The sheriff.

I f Nagler reached the art fair, already crowded with shoppers, Walt knew he’d lose him.

He considered taking a shot, but the man had wisely put himself between Walt and the fair.

Lose him to the art fair, or risk hitting an innocent bystander?

Following the man through a crowded parking lot, Walt ran hard to keep up. To his right, a line of trees blocked the parking lot from the inn. To his left: tennis courts. Straight ahead, the art fair.

His only hope was to drop the man ahead of the art fair. He angled to his right, through a line of parked cars, a wall of evergreens, and out onto a wide strip of lawn cloistered between the inn and the parking lot. In doing so, he lost sight of the suspect. Nagler had started out of the blocks at an incredible pace, but that was not sustainable at six thousand feet above sea level. Not without weeks of training. Walt paralleled him.

At the end of the parking lot, also the end of the line of evergreens, was an access road that headed out of the lot to the southeast. It dropped down a hill. A shot taken in that direction presented the least chance of wounding a civilian.

He’d have one shot, maybe two.

Ten trees…nine…eight…

He envisioned each step, each motion. two…one…

He turned and slid on the grass. Lowered his right knee. Bent his left knee for support. Braced his left elbow on his left knee. Hunched forward to sight the weapon. He picked up the target, a running blur, led him slightly, and squeezed the trigger.

T revalian felt a burning in his right knee and then heard the shot. Too late. His right leg collapsed and he tumbled forward in an ungainly and painful somersault. His head dulled. He rolled, pulled himself up toward standing. He went down again. Blood everywhere. His leg on fire. He heard screaming.

Then the sole of a boot stomped down on his blown knee, and the pain darkened his vision.

He found himself looking up into the barrel of a gun. The sheriff was out of breath and looking down on him.

A t 2 P.M. Jerry’s eyes opened.

Walt sat in a formed fiberglass chair facing his father’s hospital bed. Like his nephew before him, Jerry was hooked up to every kind of wire and tube.

“You’re in recovery,” Walt said, not sure his father heard him. “They operated on you. Got the bullet. Cleaned you up. Your lung’s collapsed and your right shoulder’s going to need some physical therapy, but all in all you should be pretty happy that those private security boys can’t shoot for shit.”

He thought he saw the twinge of a smile and he realized Jerry had heard him, had understood. Jerry tried to say something, but it came out as more of a dry wheeze. Walt slipped an ice chip between his father’s lips. He’d never seen Jerry sick, had never seen him incapacitated. It felt as if this had to be someone else.

His father croaked out, “The shooter?”

Walt nodded. “Liz Shaler is fine. I’m fine. No guests were killed.”

His father shut his eyes. A moment later he was asleep.

“Sheriff?”

Walt turned to see Special Agent in Charge Adam Dryer’s acne-scarred face. “Suspect is out of surgery and has been moved to his room.”

“Thanks.”

“Doc says no visitors for four to six hours. But we’ll get a crack at him later tonight. FYI.”

“I’ll be here,” Walt said. “I’m going to stick around.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said.

“Hell of a thing your father did.”

“Yes, it was.”

“Maybe saved us all.”

“Maybe so.”

An apology hung between them, but it didn’t come.

“Later,” Dryer said. The door hissed shut behind him as he left.

“What a prick,” his father said, one eye creeping open and finding his son.

Walt laughed, surprised at how good it felt.