فصل 04 - بخش 03

4

Ollie Peterson’s first bullet had only grooved the side of Terry Maitland’s head, a bloody injury but superficial, something that would have left Terry with a scar and a story to tell. The third one, however, had punched through the coat of his suit on the left side of his chest, and the shirt below was turning purple as the blood from the wound spread.

It would have hit the vest if he hadn’t refused it, Ralph thought.

Terry lay on the sidewalk. His eyes were open. His lips were moving. Howie tried to crouch next to him. Ralph swung an arm hard and shoved the lawyer away. Howie went over on his back. Marcy was clinging to her husband, babbling ‘It’s not bad, Ter, you’re okay, stay with us.’ Ralph put the heel of his hand against the soft springiness of her breast and pushed her away, too. Terry Maitland was still conscious, but there wasn’t much time.

A shadow fell over him, one of those goddam cameramen from one of the goddam TV stations. Yune Sablo grabbed him around the waist and spun him away. The cameraman’s feet stuttered, then crossed, and he went down, holding his camera up to keep it from harm.

‘Terry,’ Ralph said. He could see drops of sweat from his forehead falling onto Terry’s face, where they mixed with the blood from the head wound. ‘Terry, you’re going to die. Do you understand me? He got you, and he got you good. You are going to die.’

‘No!’ Marcy shrieked. ‘No, he can’t! The girls need their daddy! He can’t!’

She was trying to get to him, and this time it was Alec Pelley – pale and grave – who held her back. Howie had gotten to his knees, but he did not attempt to interfere again, either.

‘Where … get me?’

‘Your chest, Terry. He got you in the heart, or just above it. You need to make a dying declaration, okay? You need to tell me you killed Frank Peterson. This is your chance to clear your conscience.’

Terry smiled, and a thin trickle of blood spilled from either side of his mouth. ‘But I didn’t,’ he said. His voice was low, little more than a whisper, but perfectly audible. ‘I didn’t, so tell me, Ralph … how are you going to clear yours?’

His eyes closed, then struggled open again. For a moment or two there was something in them. Then there wasn’t. Ralph put his fingers in front of Terry’s mouth. Nothing.

He turned to look at Marcy Maitland. It was hard, because his head seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Your husband has passed on.’

Sheriff Doolin said dolefully, ‘If he’d been wearing the vest …’ He shook his head.

The new-minted widow looked unbelievingly at Doolin, but it was Ralph Anderson she sprang at, leaving Alec Pelley with nothing but a shredded piece of her blouse in his left hand. ‘This is your fault! If you hadn’t arrested him in public, these people never would have been here! You might as well have shot him yourself!’

Ralph let her rake her fingers down the left side of his face before grabbing her wrists. Letting her blood him, because maybe he had that coming … and maybe there was no maybe about it.

‘Marcy,’ he said. ‘It was Frank Peterson’s brother who did the shooting, and he would have been here no matter where we arrested Terry.’

Alec Pelley and Howie Gold helped Marcy to her feet, being careful not to step on the body of her husband as they did so. Howie said, ‘That might be true, Detective Anderson, but there wouldn’t have been a fuck-ton of other people all around him. He would have stood out like a sore thumb.’

Alec only looked at Ralph with a species of stony contempt. Ralph turned to Yunel, but Yune looked away and bent to help the sobbing blond anchor from Channel 7 to her feet.

‘Well, you got your dying statement, at least,’ Marcy said. She held out her palms to Ralph. They were red with her husband’s blood. ‘Didn’t you?’ When he made no reply, she turned away from him and saw Bill Samuels. He had come out of the courthouse at last and was standing between the bailiffs at the top of the steps.

‘He said he didn’t do it!’ she screamed at him. ‘He said he was innocent! We all heard it, you son of a bitch! As my husband lay dying, HE SAID HE WAS INNOCENT!’

Samuels didn’t reply, only turned and went back inside.

Sirens. The Camaro car alarm. The excited babble of people who were returning now that the shooting was over. Wanting to see the body. Wanting to photograph it, and put it on their Facebook pages. Howie’s coat, which the lawyer had draped over Terry’s hands to conceal the cuffs from the press and the cameras, now lay in the street, streaked with dirt and splotched with blood. Ralph picked it up and used it to cover Terry’s face, eliciting a terrible howl of grief from his wife. Then he went to the courthouse steps, sat down, and lowered his head between his knees.

d, now deceased.