Carsten Stroud - The Shimmer

The girl was lying on her belly on the ground, her hands cuffed behind her. She was swearing and screaming, spitting rage into the slick hot pavement under her chin.

The left rear door of the Suburban was wide-open and the other sister was sprawled in the open doorway, half in the truck and spilling out onto the ground, down on her knees, facing out, upper body thrown backward into the truck, head hanging sideways, painted lips slack. She had a bullet hole in her left cheek and another one in her neck just under her chin and a third one in her belly. You could see it on the exposed skin, where her T-shirt had ridden up as she slid down to the roadway. A little black hole, and blood oozing from it onto her jeans. The T-shirt had bright red cartoon words on it: I’m a Belieber!

Blood and brains and hair and bone shards were splattered over the side of the truck. Her eyes were wide-open, sightless, staring at whatever comes next after this life ends. Lying on the road below her right hand was a collapsible steel baton called an ASP. It was extended, and there was blond hair and blood stuck to the tip.

People, gawkers, were standing around in the dwindling rain, mouths slack, gaping at this scene, but no one had come in closer to help or shelter or comfort Julie Karras. She tried to sit up as Redding came to her, her eyes unfocused, shock setting in.

“She...she hit me. Pulled my baton out while I was helping the other kid out of the truck and...she hit me.”

Redding was saying something soothing as he gently lifted the Glock out of her right hand. He ejected the mag, checked it, put it back in, but he didn’t chamber a round. He slipped the pistol into the back of his belt. He lifted her face up by the chin, gently, assessed her eyes, his manner calm but his heart was hammering in his chest.

She looked back at him, both eyes the same—fear. Shock, anger—but no sign of brain injury, pupils the same size, reactive. Her lips moved in a whisper and then in a stronger voice.

“Is she alive?”

Marsh had been checking the girl out while Halliday was kneeling beside the other sister, on the ground, looking for injuries. And weapons.

Marsh glanced over at Redding, shook his head.

“No. She’s gone, honey,” Redding told her.

Karras started to cry, choked it back.

“Can you stand, Julie?”

“I...I think so.”

Redding did a quick inventory, decided she was not hurt in some way that he couldn’t see and she couldn’t feel, put his hands under her arms and got her to her feet, put her back up against the driver’s window of the Suburban, turned her head to the side and studied the damage.

It was a nasty wound.

The ASP was an impact weapon, two feet of solid steel when extended, with a little balled tip. It was meant to be used on muscle mass—thighs, calves, biceps. Never against bone. Bone shattered. Used like that the ASP was a killing tool.

Blood was still pulsing out of a three-inch rip in the flesh just above Karras’s right ear. Her ear had actually cushioned some of the impact. The upper part was crushed and flattened and ripped open. An inch higher and the blow could have punched through her temple. She’d be dead, or brain damaged. The girl had meant to kill her and had come damn close.

Halliday jerked the other girl to her feet and had her up against the hood of the squad car, spread out on it, facedown.

He was searching her pockets, putting whatever he found onto the hood of the unit—a wallet; an iPhone; a roll of candy; a small silver can with a breathing mask attached, presumably an asthma puffer; a small notepad with a unicorn on the cover. She was ferociously angry , her voice a birdlike screech, steel on slate.

“She killed her. That bitch killed Rebecca. You’re dead, you cunt , you’re so fucking dead.”

Halliday finished searching her, told her to shut the fuck up in a low growl and frog-walked her around to the rear door of his cruiser, not gently. He popped the door and shoved her in, ran her cuffs through a ringbolt and chain welded to the floor of the cruiser and slammed the door on her string of obscenities. He walked back, his face white, scalded by her anger.

He collected the items off the hood.

“Got ID there?” asked Redding.

Halliday flipped open the wallet, found a Florissant High School ID in the name of Karen Anne Walker, age sixteen, a couple of credit cards and a membership card for something called the Glad Day Assembly, with an address in Florissant, Missouri. Florissant was a suburb of St. Louis, Redding recalled.

“Check the other one, see if she’s got any ID on her, but don’t move her body if you can help it, okay?” Halliday stepped away, went over to the dead girl and carefully went through her pockets, looked back at Redding.

“Nothing.”

“See if there’s a purse or something in the truck.”

Halliday checked the truck, came back with a small lime-green leather wallet, flipped through it, found a Missouri driver’s license.

“Got a Rebecca Walker, seventeen, same address, picture matches.”

“Run the names, Jim. Let’s see what we get.”

Halliday went off to his cruiser to do that.

Redding turned to Marsh.

“Let’s get an EMT for Julie and bring some County units in here. We need to control this scene.”

“Still want the dogs?” Marsh wanted to know.

“Hell yes. Two units.”

Marsh stepped away to make the calls and then went back to his cruiser for a roll of crime scene tape, started to string it all around, from signpost to telephone pole, herding the people back as he did this, the rapidly growing crowd babbling and staring, their smartphones and iPads out, taking video, chattering into their phones, snapping shots.

Whatever they were doing, Redding could feel the electrons radiating out into the cyberworld, flashing around the town, the city, the state, the globe. Redding asked Karras if she could walk.

She said yes, and he walked her back to their unit, sat her gently inside on the shotgun seat, tugging a first-aid kit out of his glove compartment.

He put a sterile pad up against the wound and then wrapped it in place with a roll of gauze, making those pointless little comforting sounds parents make when their kids are hurt.

It reminded him of when he’d been a husband and a dad. That hurt to think about so he stopped thinking it and concentrated on what he was doing.

Karras was staring through the window at the Suburban, where Marsh was draping an aluminum foil thermal blanket over the dead girl’s body.

“She’s really dead, isn’t she?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

“She is. You okay to tell me how it happened, before all the official machinery starts up?”

She managed to look at him, one eye half-covered with the gauze strip.

“I did what you said. I checked them both for weapons, knives... They were crazy, panicked. I got them calm, but I searched them first, I really did, Sergeant Redding... They were both in shock. At least, that’s what I thought. I wanted to get them into the back of the cruiser, away from the truck, because it was now a crime scene, get them out of the rain...”

She went away for a moment and Redding let her. She’d have to tell this story over and over again. Let her remember it as it came to her.

He was thinking about the dash cam. It would all be on the dash cam. Not just on the dash cam either. It was likely that half the people in the crowd gathered around had already been taking cell phone shots when the shooting happened.

It was entirely possible that somebody was loading it onto YouTube right at this second. Or selling it to one of the cable networks.

He hoped to God it was a righteous shooting because if it wasn’t, they were both in the barrel, but especially her.