A Good Kill

by John McMahon

  “The good news is you’re gonna be fine. It takes two hours to die from this kinda wound, and our EMTs are gonna be here in five minutes.”

  “What’s the bad news?” he asked through labored breathing.

  “It’s gonna hurt like hell,” I said.

  Gattling came back with a stack of seven or eight clean white bar towels, and we peeled back the kid’s shirt. Saw the entry wound in his stomach.

  “My dad,” the kid said. “He’s, uh—”

  “Shhh,” I said. “We’ll call your dad on the way to the hospital. Don’t worry.”

  Gattling held the towels down with direct pressure, and I stared at the open window. The room smelled like a mix of Lysol and vomit.

  “Ambulance is three minutes away,” Gattling said to the kid.

  “What happened?” I asked, and the kid looked from Gattling to me, his breathing fast.

  “The old man,” he said. “He just st-st-started shooting.”

  “The guy watching you play pool?” I asked, and the kid nodded.

  Son of a bitch. He’d run right past me on my way to the bathroom.

  “The little guy,” Gattling said. “He made it out that window?”

  “He pushed me into the old man,” the kid said. “Knocked us both over and jumped to the sink.” The kid looked down at his own blood, and his eyes went wide again. “Some parkour move. Jumped out the window headfirst.”

  “The old man was the one who shot you?” I asked.

  The kid nodded, and I made eye contact with Gattling. There were two men out there in the night, and Remy didn’t know it. The old guy, whoever he was, was after the short guy.

  “Go,” Gattling said. “I got this.”

  I stood up. “Direct pressure,” I said. “Keep it up.”

  I left Gattling with the kid and took off toward the fire exit.

  I was out back in five seconds and saw Remy, halfway up an incline behind the bar that headed into the woods. She heard the back door slam and turned.

  “Little guy’s gone,” she hollered. “But I saw something.”

  “Wait.” I ran up a slope full of kudzu, my calves burning as I hustled.

  “Old white guy from the bar,” I said, half out of breath. “Shot at the little guy. That’s who hit the kid.”

  Remy nodded, not at all out of breath.

  “Makes sense,” she said. “I saw two figures, not one.” She pointed at the woods, and we took off, with me following her lead.

  My partner ran five miles every morning, and she moved effortlessly around vertical stripes that marked the shapes of ironwood and hickory in the dark.

  Up ahead, she came to a stop, and we listened.

  There were movements in the forest, but it was dark. The sounds of animals and twigs creaked. Or maybe it was the sound of men.

  Clack, clack, clack.

  Three shots lit up the forest, but weren’t aimed at us. By the third one, we saw there was a man about thirty yards west of us. And no fire came back from where he’d shot.

  We moved left, trying to outflank the shooter, but in a minute he saw us coming.

  Bam, bam, bam.

  Spits of dirt flew up in front of us, and I dove to the ground.

  But Remy was frozen. Standing there, right in the glow of the man’s flashlight.

  “Who the fuck are you?” the old guy hollered. He stared at Remy, who looked like a college kid in her UGA sweatshirt.

  The man was twenty feet away, but he didn’t see me, hidden behind a pile of fallen logs.

  I saw the shadow of an arm pass the beam, and I rose up, unsure if he was lowering or raising his weapon.

  “Freeze. Mason Falls Police.” My gun was trained on the old guy’s body, center mass, but I could only see his shape silhouetted in the light.

  Click.

  The light went off, and I dove for Remy, crashing her to the forest floor.

  I heard footsteps fading. The crashing of brush. And in a minute, silence. The old man was gone.

  Remy and I got up slowly. Behind us by a few hundred feet were the sounds of sirens. Police cruisers. Ambulances.

  Sometimes a shoot-out is clearly defined like in a movie. Good guys on one side and bad guys on the other. But most of the time, it’s chaos. Gunfire coming in, and you’re not sure who’s shooting who.

  “Was that his gun that clicked or his flashlight?” Remy asked.

  “You’re still here, aren’t you?”

  She took this in, shell-shocked.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “For freezing.”

  “You’re okay,” I said. “That’s the important thing.”

  Remy walked back and got a flashlight from a blue-suiter. We searched the area then, scanning to the east, in the direction the old guy had shot.

  An eastern screech owl flew over our heads, landing on a branch above us, its yellow irises glowing in the night.

  “Oh geez,” Remy said.

  She’d found the short guy, and he’d been hit twice in the chest.

  Remy took off her sweatshirt and tried to stem the blood loss, but it was useless. I got on my phone, calling patrol. “We need a stretcher up here fast.”

  I leaned over the short guy, while Remy held his hand. His eyes were piercing, and he smelled like mint chewing tobacco. “He didn’t get it,” he mumbled, patting at his leg. Searching for his wallet maybe. “The old fucker. He didn’t get it.”

  He almost smiled then, and his chest shook.

  “Hold on, bud,” I said. “Just hold on. An ambulance is coming.”

  “C-café,” the short guy stammered.

  Remy pressed hard, but the blood was soaking through her sweatshirt fast, and no ambulance was in sight.

  A moment later, there was no shaking, and his body was still.

  “Shit,” Remy said.

  When we finally came down the hill a good thirty minutes later, we saw Gattling sitting on the edge of an ambulance. A tech was checking him out, and his body was rocking back and forth.

  “What’s wrong with Darren?” I asked one of the patrolmen.

  “A kid died in his arms at the bar.”

  “What?” I said, incredulous.

  I hustled over, and Gattling’s face was gray. “What the hell happened?” I demanded.

  “I put direct pressure like you said,” he mumbled. “But by the time the bus came, the kid was barely speaking.” Gattling stopped talking and took his big hands, wiped at his eyes.

  Jesus, what a mess.

  I saw the chief’s Audi pull up, and I exhaled loudly. Everything had been running perfectly at the stakeout, until it wasn’t. Until I’d crapped in the oatmeal real good.

  The passenger door to Senza’s Audi flipped open and out came Gary Cavendish. The police shrink.

  What the hell was he doing here?

  In Mason Falls, the officer-involved protocol kicks in when one of two things happen: one, an officer discharges his or her weapon. Or two, when someone, a cop included, is injured or dead.

  But neither of those things had occurred.

  “Doc,” I said, but he barely looked at me. He headed over to talk to Gattling.

  I looked over at Darren. As the shrink talked to him, he nodded, wiping at his face. I wondered whether this is the reaction I should’ve had after the school shooting.

  Chief Senza was by my side, and I hadn’t realized he was talking.

  “Do you know Timothy O’Neal?” my boss said.

  I blinked. The name was familiar. A patrolman. Older. Near retirement.

  “I think,” I said. “Why?”

  “The dead boy is Officer O’Neal’s son, Jacob.”

  “Christ,” I said. A cop’s kid had been killed. On my stakeout.

  And Gattling must’ve known.

&n
bsp; “I need some air,” I said, and walked away from Senza. When I came back, I made my report to Abe, who’d come by to help. I was tired and asked for a ride home from patrol.

  But before I got in the car, Cavendish met me by the cruiser.

  “Did your gun jam out in the forest?” he asked.

  “I didn’t have a shot,” I said.

  “You know, Paul.” Cavendish used my first name. “You were having so much fun earlier today in my office. Quoting me back to me.”

  I stared at him.

  “I guess it threw me,” he said. “I didn’t think until now about how impersonal it was.”

  “I don’t follow,” I said.

  “You taking that shot,” Cavendish continued, “at that school from a hundred feet away. It’s almost like target practice. Or some video game. It’s not like when a guy’s ten feet from you in a forest and threatening your partner.”

  I looked over at Remy, who was talking to the chief.

  Her shoulders were turned up, unable to answer a question that I couldn’t hear.

  “I thought my problem was that I shot too many people, Doc?” I said. “Now I’m not pulling my gun enough?”

  “Oh, you don’t have any problems, Detective,” Cavendish said. “In fact, I’m considering this our second session. So go on—just do what you wanna do. We can all see what’s coming for you. You’re the only one who can’t. But you’re the smart one, right? The clever guy, quoting someone’s article to the one person trying to help him.”

  “Doc,” I said. “I’m sorry that—”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me, Marsh. I’m just the one who’s gotta counsel a cop’s family tonight about their dead son,” Cavendish said. “Straight-A student on scholarship to Vandy. Came home to surprise his dad for his birthday.”

  I swallowed, and Cavendish stormed off. I stumbled toward the patrol car.

  Ten minutes later the cruiser slowed outside my house, and I made it up the porch. Opened the door and let Purvis out.

  My bulldog climbed into my lap, and I thought of the conversation with Cavendish six hours ago. About that cop, Terry Willard, who quit the force.

  Firing a gun just does something different to each person. For some guys, they don’t want to touch the steel again.

  I ran the night back in my head. From when the short guy arrived to when we got back down and saw the ambulance.

  But mostly I thought about that moment in the forest.

  The click Remy heard wasn’t the sound of a flashlight going off.

  The old guy had fired a single shot at Remy, but his clip was empty.

  And I hadn’t returned fire. I imagined that Remy had guessed at that in conversation with Chief Senza and Dr. Cavendish. After all, how else would the doc suspect it?

  I wanted a drink, and it was good that the house was empty. Dry of the poison.

  I laid back on the top step of the porch, my back on the cool concrete. What was the first stage called again? Of an officer-involved shooting?

  Impact?

  I felt flattened. Out of breath, and I didn’t want to go back to work. Didn’t want to talk to another soul, especially anyone who was a cop.

  18

  Wednesday, September 11, 1:56 p.m.

  At first Allie D’Antone didn’t understand what she was witnessing.

  A smear of red paint.

  A mahogany-colored handprint that slid along the white wall. Revealing a hand that grabbed at one of the art smocks.

  The bell had just gone off, and the words of Ms. Borland were ringing in her ears.

  Always use an art smock, Ms. B would say. I don’t want to hear someone’s momma telling me they ruined a perfectly good blouse in art class.

  Then it was like slow motion.

  Mr. Tanner. What was he doing here?

  And why was he covered in paint?

  From behind her, Allie heard a noise.

  It was Avis screaming, and some part of Allie knew that something was wrong. Because Avis knew things that the other girls didn’t know. Avis’s dad told her stories. Stories of crime and violence.

  Mr. Tanner grabbed at the hook that held the white smocks, and yanked it off the wall, landing on the ground with the pile of smocks atop him.

  And then she saw the man.

  Standing as if he were catatonic.

  He looked like the dad of a cute boy in her French class.

  Except that he stood over Mr. Tanner with a gun, as the science teacher fell to the ground, his chest leaking red all over the art smocks.

  19

  I woke up the next day, still fully clothed in what I’d worn during the stakeout. I loosened my legs from around Purvis’s body and rolled over to see the clock by the bed: 10:21 a.m.

  I found my phone and looked at my “sent” mail. Confirmed what I’d remembered from last night. That I’d gotten up at two a.m. and sent a note to the chief, telling him I needed to take leave for a couple days.

  Of course, his response at eight a.m. read. Get lost for three days. Then check in with me.

  I moved into the shower and let it run until the water went cold.

  Getting out, I threw on some old jeans and a black Bulldogs T-shirt. I grabbed my cell and rang up my father-in-law, Marvin. Which is to say, my dead wife’s father.

  His voice was hoarse as he picked up. “What’s going on?”

  Marvin had been my roommate for two months this summer after an accident, living in Jonas’s old room. But he’d recovered now and moved back into his own house.

  “I’m taking the day off,” I said. “Was thinking of driving up to Schaeffer Lake. Fish for a couple hours. You up for it?”

  “Does the pope shit in the woods on a camping trip, like the rest of us?”

  I cocked my head. I was pretty sure that wasn’t a saying, but I was suddenly unable to not see the pontiff in bright white, squatting among a patch of kudzu.

  “Pick you up in a half hour,” I said.

  I got my rod and reel from the garage, along with my fishing vest and a pair of waders. I probably didn’t need those if we were going to rent a speedboat. Marvin certainly wouldn’t have any. His waders were called blue jeans, but mine were high-quality Frogg Toggs with stocking feet that Lena had bought for me three Christmases ago.

  I pulled off 906 at 20th Avenue and coasted into my father-in-law’s neighborhood.

  Marvin was waiting at the curb in a double flannel and old Lee jeans, a belt pulled tight around his scrawny twenty-nine-inch waist. He laid his rod in the back of the truck and opened the passenger door. He had on clodhoppers, but they didn’t have a spit of mud on them.

  “Morning, Pop,” I said, motioning at a coffee I’d picked up for him along the way.

  “Morning, Paul,” he said, taking a sip.

  His hair, which was normally trimmed short, looked like it hadn’t been cut since I brought him back to his house over a month ago.

  “What are we working on?” I said, pointing at his curls. “This is like a Questlove look? André 3000 in the Outkast days?”

  Marvin blinked. “I’m not sure what those words mean.”

  “Let me pick something from your time period,” I said. “Sly Stone? Pam Grier?”

  Marvin chuckled, leaning in to the rearview mirror to stare at his dark skin and thick curls. “I guess I could use a trim.”

  I pressed down on the accelerator and pointed my truck northeast.

  As a kid, I’d learned to fish on a trip with my dad to Lake Rabun when I was eight. We had such a good time that we went for the next five years, until Dad left home. We’d fished across the whole northern part of the state, a few times along the Soque River in Habersham County, but most other times on the Chattahoochee, hunting wild trout.

  Last summer, while I was off of work and Marvin was recove
ring, he and I went back to some of those places. They were great, but nothing beat the simplicity of Schaeffer Lake in September. Forty minutes from Mason Falls, but it might as well be a million miles away.

  As we drove, I found the number of a guy we’d rented a boat from before, and called him up. He told us a dock to meet him at, and I handed the phone to Marvin, who listened for directions.

  When I was five minutes away, I pulled into a QuikTrip and grabbed some supplies. A bag of ice. Two bags of jerky. A sixer of Dr Pepper and some Doritos. Man food.

  I dropped Marvin by the boat dock with our gear and found parking farther down the road. By the time I walked back, I saw Harry Glavis, who owned the boat, helping Marvin aboard.

  “Harry.” I nodded, motioning at the eighteen-foot aluminum speedboat with two swivel-seats. “This is nice.”

  Harry was in his late sixties and bald, a former dentist. The boat was a Tracker Pro Team, and was newer than anything he’d rented us before.

  “Same price as last time, Detective Marsh,” he said.

  Harry had an adenoidal accent, and every word was thick and seemed to emanate from deep within his nose. “It’s available,” he said. “So I figured—what the hell. Law enforcement discount, right?”

  Marvin sat down in the seat beside the helm, and I stepped aboard. My father-in-law was wearing what his daughters used to call his high-water pants.

  “I got a credit card on file for you. Want me to use that?”

  “That’s perfect,” I said.

  The boat was black with a silver pinstripe, and it sported all the bells and whistles. A fish finder, dual rod boxes, and a deep tackle storage area. Stuff that usually didn’t come with the boats we rented.

  Harry took a duffel that was on the boat dock beside him. Tossed it onto a houseboat that was parked just the other side of the dock. I pressed the button, and the speedboat’s engine purred. A hundred-and-fifty horsepower, but whisper quiet.

  “That yours too?” I motioned at the houseboat.

  I’d heard grumbling that Harry was sort of a boat-carpetbagger in the area. That he’d retired with money and bought vessels from folks for a song when they hit hard times.

  “Just got it last night.” He smiled proudly. “Some tourist from New York bought a house up here on the lake, but never moved in.”