J. Gonzalez - They

“So how was the trip?” she asked, taking his hand in hers as they headed toward the baggage claim area.

“Exhausting,” he said. “You don’t know how glad I am to be home.”

He told her all about it as they stood at the baggage claim area waiting for his luggage. She listened patiently. He didn’t know whether he should tell her about his conversation with Reverend Powell and he almost let it slip out, but stopped himself before it could become fatal. Better not bombard her with too much at once. “That’s so terrible, all that happening at once,” she said as he stepped up to the conveyer belt and lifted his tan suitcase up and double-checked to make sure it was his; it was. “It’s also sad. That poor woman.”

“Lillian or my mother?”

Tracy playfully socked him in the arm. “Both, silly! I can’t believe you would say a thing like that! Your mother was murdered horribly! I know you were… well, estranged from her and all, but—”

“I know,” Vince said, dragging his suitcase along, the little wheels clacking along the tarmac. Tracy and Vince exited the terminal, heading down the airport toward the parking structure. “It is awful, the way she died. You should have seen it.”

“Did you see the body?”

“No.” Vince shook his head. “But I saw the room she was killed in. It was pretty gross.”

“Do the police have any idea why whoever killed her would, you know… do all that to her when robbery was the only apparent motive?”

“No, they don’t.” They were silent as they walked through the parking garage, holding hands, Vince dragging his suitcase along. It was a warm day, but it was a touch cooler in the shade of the parking garage. The sky was a clear blue, unusual for a summer day in Southern California, but there was a nice offshore breeze and that helped blow some of the smog away. Vince could actually see the San Gabriel Mountains fifty miles to the north. On a normal summer day it would be so smoggy, the air so still, that you couldn’t even see them.

They reached Tracy’s car, a black BMW, and Tracy disengaged the car’s alarm system and opened the trunk with the remote. Vince helped lift the trunk up and was just about to hoist the suitcase into it when he heard a clink of keys. “Oops,” Tracy said, her other hand fumbling with her purse, a small black pouch that hung by thin straps from her right shoulder. “I’m always so clumsy.”

“Poor baby,” Vince said as he bent down to scoop up the keys, hearing a sharp ping ! strike the metal of the open trunk and the tinkling of glass and feeling the whoosh of air over his head.

“What the…?” Vince stood half-bent over, hands clutching Tracy’s fallen keys, wondering what had just happened. He saw Tracy turn her head slowly toward the cars across the lot, a look of puzzlement on her face, and then he stood up, not knowing at first what to make of the small hole that had been punched through the hood of the BMW and the shattered glass of the car’s rear windshield until there was another pinging sound that winged past his left ear, followed by the sound of more shattering glass, and now his stomach leaped in his throat as he looked out and saw a man crouched behind a car four rows over, and his eyes opened wide in surprise and fear as the man raised the weapon in his hands and rose to his feet and Vince dove for Tracy, yelling “ Get down !”, the momentum of his body shoving her to the concrete just as the man let loose with a volley of rounds from a semi-automatic rifle, a rat-tat-tat-tat-tat of shells that were now flying with deadly accuracy toward them, blowing holes in the BMW, breaking windows, and as he pushed Tracy ahead of him down the side of her car toward the next row, the bullets seemed to follow them, sending up showers of glass in their wake and his heart was beating so fast, and the noise of the shots was so loud, that he couldn’t hear himself screaming, “ Get down, get the fuck down !”

Tracy was crawling on her hands and knees, scraping them on the concrete, and Vince was yelling for her to “ Move, fucking move, goddamnit !” and now there was a brief reprieve, as if the gunfire had suddenly died without warning. They darted out in front of a car cruising down the aisle, and all around them were the sounds of cars and people, some exiting the airport, some opening trunks to stow away luggage, and those in the immediate vicinity were all now standing with numb shock, looking at Vince and Tracy as they scrambled madly in a half-crouched position, weaving their way between parked cars as their assailant made one more try, this time having obviously come out of his hiding place to pursue them. They heard his footsteps running down the parking lot, then felt and heard the rat-tat-tat-tat-tat of automatic gunfire spray up concrete and glass as it showered around them, and then it suddenly stopped, only to be replaced by the sound of running feet, the slam of a car door and the squeal of tires as a vehicle raced out of the parking lot, and now there were a lot of excited voices but Vince didn’t know the danger was over. He was pushing Tracy under a parked car, telling her, “ We’ve got to hide, get under there !”, and by the time the police came Vince knew that the immediate danger was over.

WHEN THE AIRPORT police officers helped Tracy out from under the Datsun they had crawled under, she started to cry. Vince’s heart was still pounding, and he still felt in fight-or-flight motion—he wanted to get the hell out of there now ! But when he saw Tracy’s composure, that beautiful face crumpled in tears, his heart melted and he immediately went to her. She threw her arms around him, sobbing against his neck. “Wh-wh-why! Why was he shooting at us like that?”

Vince could only hold her, comfortable now that the danger seemed to be over. There were two or three cops with them, and he could hear police sirens growing louder as more raced to the scene. “I don’t know,” he said, holding her in his arms. “I don’t know, Tracy. I don’t know.” He closed his eyes, trying to retrace their steps, to recall the face of the man that had suddenly popped out of nowhere and tried to kill him. His mind flashed backed on that first single shot that had gone through the trunk of the BMW and smashed the rear windshield. If he hadn’t bent down to retrieve Tracy’s keys he might be dead now.

There was no question about it. Vince had been the target of this assault.

The next few hours passed quickly. They were questioned briefly by the airport police and then the Irvine Police Department. Detectives came and scurried about, retrieving shell casings and examining the damage. In addition to the tremendous damage to Tracy’s BMW, thirteen other vehicles had been hit, three of them severely. Some of the owners of those vehicles began showing up during the preliminary investigation, and they were made to wait behind the yellow crime scene tape that had been strung up until it was complete. In the meantime, after an initial questioning by Irvine Homicide detectives, they were whisked away to the police station.

They rode to the station in the same squad car and Tracy clutched his hand during the entire trip. He could tell she was deeply disturbed by what had happened. She stopped crying, but her eyes were dark, her brow furrowed with lines of worry. She kept telling him over and over that she just couldn’t believe what’d happened. He stroked her hand and told her he couldn’t believe it either. He tried to comfort her as best as he could, but the more he tried, the more scared and confused he became.

Once at the station, they were led to separate rooms. The room Vince was led in was small and barren, with a single table and two chairs. Unlike crime dramas on television, there were no two-way mirrors. He mentioned this to the detective that accompanied him in the room. The detective, a burly man in his forties with dark hair smirked. “Well, you aren’t a suspect, Vince. Just a witness. We save those rooms for guys like the ones that shot at you and your girlfriend.”