They all drew their weapons, and headed for the lot next to Alessi’s. By arrangement, Wyatt and half the team went in the direction of the front of the house, the rest of the SWAT guys headed for the middle of the property, and Maggie and two SWAT guys toward the shed.
The two guys with Maggie were supposed to go through the back door. Maggie had been ordered by Wyatt to stay by the shed with Grace and the kids if they were there. If they weren’t, they were to get Plan B from Pittman.
They weren’t there. Maggie and the SWAT guys rounded the back side of the shed and found no one. From there, they had a clear view across the yard and back of the house. Two windows, one door, no kids.
Maggie swallowed hard as one of the guys depressed his mic button and whispered.
“This is Stephens. No one here.”
Pittman’s hushed voice came through Maggie’s earpiece, too. “How’s the back?”
“Nothing,” Stephens answered.
“Get in position and await my order.”
The two SWAT guys bent over and ran across the yard soundlessly, beneath the two windows and to the tiny back stoop. They positioned themselves on either side of the door.
Maggie was about to wipe the sweat from her forehead before it hit her eyes, when a child’s legs appeared out the window, and then he was dropped the couple of feet down into the grass. It was the little boy.
The SWAT guys both looked, and Maggie stood a bit straighter, held up her hand. She depressed her mic button. “I’ve got a kid coming out one of the back windows,” she said, her voice hushed.
“Copy. Await my order,” Pittman said.
She stepped to the very edge of the shed and waved the boy over as he stared at her, confused. He ran toward her in his bare feet. She grabbed him as he reached her, and sat him down up against the back wall of the shed. When she looked back again, the little girl was already standing in the grass, holding her hands up toward the window.
The baby carrier was coming out. The little girl grabbed the handle with both hands and lowered it to the ground.
Maggie saw the two SWAT guys look at each other and then look back at the carrier. The closer one looked ready to move. The little girl was trying to carry the carrier without letting it drag on the ground.
Maggie held up her hand again, then bent over and started across the grass. As she crossed the side yard, she saw Wyatt and the other men running across the grass at their end of the house. The quick glimpse she got of Wyatt’s face as he saw her told her that she was in trouble, but she had no time to think about it.
She had just reached the little girl when Grace’s upper half appeared through the window. She looked like she was going to try to slide out. Maggie ran to her, put Grace’s arms around her neck, and pulled her out, grateful that it was almost noiseless.
She shoved Grace toward the baby and the little girl and waited underneath the kitchen window while Grace ran with the carrier in one hand and the little girl’s hand in her other.
They had just cleared the other window when the little girl twisted away and turned around. She ran a few steps toward Maggie.
“Binky!”
The world stopped for just a second. Maggie heard nothing but the blood pounding in her ears, then, from inside the house, very close, “Shut the hell up!”
The next ten seconds or so passed so slowly and yet they were so fast that Maggie was unaware of thought. There was only the adrenaline and the blood in her ears.
She ran toward the little girl, who had frozen in place, just ten feet away. As she took her first step, she heard the back door as the SWAT guys broke through it, and further away, she heard the front door breached.
Maggie saw Grace put the carrier down and start to run back toward Maggie and the girl. Maggie saw her mouth open wide, but she didn’t hear her make a sound.
Just as she reached the little girl, Maggie heard a sound above or behind her. Maggie grabbed the girl’s arm near the shoulder and slung the child toward Grace. She landed on her butt in front of Grace, and Maggie saw Grace bend over to pick her up.
Then Maggie heard glass shattering, and she turned around and started to raise her service weapon. Alessi was already in the air, his legs pumping
He came down on top of her, and they both went down, Maggie on her back and Alessi on his knees. Maggie felt one of Alessi’s knees grind into her left thigh as they landed. His other knee made a sickening sound as it hit the ground. The earth seemed like it would punch right through Maggie’s back and, as her arms hit the ground, her weapon flew out of her hand and skittered a few feet away.
Maggie vaguely heard thumping and yelling inside as Alessi leaned over her, his hip bone pushing the air out of her, and reached for her .45. Maggie pulled her right knee up and reached down.
It seemed like slow motion to Maggie, as Ricky straightened up and moved to pull the slide on her gun, looking down at her with hate and meth and fear on his face.
Maggie raised her right arm and shot him in the chest.
He bent backward, then fell forward on top of her, and his chest blocked all of the light from her vision. He smelled of copper and gunpowder, soap and cotton, cat pee and adrenalin.
She heard the echo of the shot in her ears, more than once. More muffled and further away, she heard Wyatt yelling the same word over and over, a word she’d never heard come out of his mouth. Then there was light and there was air, and the weight was gone as Wyatt pulled Ricky’s body off of her and dumped him to the side.
She saw Wyatt’s face as he bent over her. His voice sounded like it was underwater, but she heard him yell her name. She opened her mouth but all she could do was nod.
Then she heard another man, off to her left, say, “Miss! Miss, please move back.”
Maggie rolled her head to the left and saw Grace standing there on the other side of Alessi in her pale yellow sundress and worn sneakers. She was staring calmly down at Richard.
One of the SWAT guys came up behind her and gently put a hand on her arm.
It was then that Maggie looked down and saw that Grace was standing with one foot on Richard’s outstretched hand, and Maggie had her first noticeable thought in minutes.
Good for you, baby.
Maggie pulled the tee shirt over her head, her back and shoulder muscles protesting as she did. She dropped it onto the floor by her shoes and socks. Her bra followed. Then she unhooked her belt and started to lower her jeans. As was standard procedure, Wyatt had taken both her back-up weapon and her service weapon at the scene. After making sure she was alive, he’d said very little to her. Pittman had taken her preliminary statement while the paramedics checked her out.
Maggie had watched her fellow officers work the scene, then watched as Larry arrived to announce Alessi, as Maggie overheard one SWAT member describe him, “pretty damn dead.”
Just before she and Wyatt had climbed into their vehicles, Dwight drove off with Grace and the children in his. They were going to Motel 6 overnight until the house could be cleaned up.
Maggie bent her left leg to pull her foot out of her jeans and her thigh screamed at her. It was going to be badly bruised, but nothing was broken.
Maggie was about to drop her jeans when she felt the weight of her cell phone in her back pocket. She pulled it out and kicked the jeans aside.
David answered on the first ring.
“Hey,” he said, sounding surprised.
“Hey,” she said, and her voice sounded hollow in the tiled shower area of the department’s small locker room. “I need you to go get the kids and take them home. They’re at the ball field, watching Sky’s new boy play.”
“You want me to pick them up?” They had a rule, Maggie’s rule, that David never went anywhere with the kids unless she was with them. Maggie didn’t want any of his associates associating the kids with their dad.
“David, it’s important.”
“What’s wrong, Maggie?”
“I can’t talk about it right now, just pl
ease take them home and wait for me to get there?”
“Yeah. Of course. Are you okay?”
“Yes. But please don’t let them watch the news or anything, okay?”
There was a pause for a moment.
“Okay,” David said.
“I’ll be there in just a little bit.”
Maggie hung up before he could say anything else, then she walked to the closest shower and turned on the water, as hot as it would get.
Maggie came out of the locker room, carrying her clothes in a plastic bag and wearing the smallest set of sweats that Wyatt had been able to find.
He was leaning up against the wall by the door to ensure her privacy. He pushed off the wall as she came out. She glanced up at him, then looked away as they walked to her office.
Terry, the investigator who shared her office, was sitting at his desk. He looked up as Maggie and Wyatt walked in. His kind face, more youthful than his forty years, was creased with concern, and he ran a hand over his receding hairline.
“You alright, Maggie?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks, Terry.”
Maggie walked to her desk and picked up her purse, tucked her phone into it, and pulled out her keys.
“Hey, why don’t you let me or Wyatt run you home, huh?” Terry said. “One of us can bring your car to you tomorrow.”
Maggie shook her head. “No. David’s taking the kids home for me, but I need my Jeep.”
“I’ll follow her home,” Wyatt said, his hands on his hips.
“You don’t need to. I’m fine.”
Wyatt was already turning to leave. “Let’s go.”
Maggie followed him out to the parking lot and couldn’t think of anything to say before they parted to go to their separate vehicles. She climbed in, started the Jeep, and backed out. Wyatt waited, then pulled out behind her.
It was a twenty minute drive to get to her road from Eastpoint. The sun was just thinking about setting as they crossed the bridge over to Apalach, and Maggie felt vaguely sad that she was too numb to appreciate it.
Every now and then, she looked in her rear view mirror at Wyatt behind her.
They were on Bluff Road, less than a quarter mile from her dirt road, when her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her purse and answered.
“Hello?”
“Pull over,” Wyatt said.
She looked into the rear view, saw him on his phone.
“What?”
“Pull over up there on that turnaround.” He hung up.
Maggie pulled into a small, circular gravel area underneath some trees. She watched Wyatt pull in behind her, and she shut off her engine when she saw him get out of his cruiser. She got out of the Jeep and waited.
He stopped a couple feet from her and took off his sunglasses. Maggie waited while he stared down at the ground for a second, then he looked at her and sighed. He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, gently but firmly.
She was startled at first, then she put her arms around his waist and held onto his back. After a moment, she put her head on his chest. He seemed angry with her, had seemed quietly angry for hours, but he felt like safety and strength and comfort.
They stood there for what seemed like several minutes. Then he got back in his car without a word, and she got into hers. He watched her pull out onto the road, then he turned and headed back to town.
When Maggie pulled up to the house, David was sitting near the top of the stairs, tuning his guitar, the one he’d given to Sky. He stood up, and Coco flew down the stairs, was overcome a few feet shy of Maggie, and collapsed into writhing. Maggie stepped over Stoopid, nearly tripping and/or kicking the rooster, and he let out one of his misshapen crows before running off to do something urgent.
Maggie knelt down and rubbed Coco, then looked up at David, standing there holding his guitar by the neck. She felt a twinge of déjà vu, like she’d left this morning and come back six years ago.
As she walked up the stairs, Sky opened the front door and she and Kyle looked out at her.
“Mom!” Kyle called.
“Is everything cool?” Sky asked.
Maggie made herself smile and raised a hand to them.
David stepped over to the door. “Hey, y’all, give your Mama and me a minute, okay? Sky, go stir that chili for me.”
Sky looked at Maggie for a moment, then shut the door.
“Sky saw it on Facebook,” David said.
“Ugh.”
“One of her friends posted something,” David said. “But they already knew you were okay.”
He studied her face and Maggie finally looked away and perused the yard.
“You are okay, right?”
Maggie nodded and started to say something, but then she smelled blood and cat pee, saw the little girl running back toward her, and she turned around and sat down on the stairs. David sat down on the step behind her, set the guitar down, and wrapped his arms tightly around her shoulders.
Maggie’s eyes heated up and filled with water. David kissed her hair, then rested his chin on top of her head. They sat like that for a few minutes, then Maggie sniffed.
“How long before dinner?” she asked.
“Ten, twenty minutes,” he said.
“Can you play me something?”
“What do you want to hear?”
“I don’t care. Anything.”
David let go of her and reached for his guitar. He lifted it over her head and set it across her knee, picked a few strings, then started playing. He sang a Dirk Powell song she’d always liked, folksy and old and quiet.
Maggie leaned her head back on his chest and listened.
David stayed for dinner and they ate out on the deck.
Maggie allowed the kids to ask her some questions, but when they started sounding like they were talking about a TV show, David deftly changed the subject.
It was nothing like TV. Maggie never watched movies or TV shows about cops. They dealt so casually with human life and death, and even when the human dying was someone without redeeming value, it was never as incidental as entertainment made it seem.
In ten years on the job, Maggie had been fired on and fired her weapon many times, but she’d never come that close to dying, and she’d never killed anyone in the line of duty.
There was nothing particularly triumphant about it. There was just the impersonal finality of death and the cold, flat feeling that came from knowing she’d been very close to being the one doing the dying.
That night, after David had gone home, Maggie talked the kids into piling onto her bed to watch a comedy. After the kids had fallen asleep, she turned off the TV and the light, and laid between them, cramped but not wanting space.
She breathed in the scents of Sky’s too-sweet body spray and Kyle’s freshly shampooed hair, and let them push back the faint aromas of copper and burnt powder and cat pee.
For the next two days, Maggie shuffled her kids from ball games to pool parties and finally, to church summer camp for a week. She’d worked in her garden and around the yard. She’d had dinner with her parents to reassure them that she was, in fact, alive and intact, but she’d stayed to herself for the most part. She’d done what she could to not think too much.
Wyatt had called twice to check on her and fill her in on the news during the first two days of her required week’s leave.
Maggie had shored up the fencing on the south side of the chicken yard, planted coral and lilac begonias in the boxes hanging from the deck, done seven loads of laundry, cuddled Coco within an inch of insanity, and cleaned out and scrubbed the fridge.
Now, late in the afternoon on Friday, she was headed into town to buy herself some of the foods that she loved and the kids couldn’t stand. Overhead, clouds the color of newly-paved road filled the sky, and Maggie looked forward to curling up with a book and listening to the storm.
She had just stopped at the red light at 98 when her cell phone rang. Maggie looked at the number, then grabbed the pho
ne.
“Grace?”
“Ms. Redmond, they’re taking my children!” Grace sobbed. “They’re just takin’ ‘em!”
“What? Who?” Maggie could hear one of the kids crying in the background, and people talking.
“Children’s Services! They just came and said they’re taking my kids!”
The light had turned green and a car behind Maggie inched forward. Maggie ignored it. “Are you back at the house?”
“Yes, we came back yesterday,” Grace said. Then she yelled to someone else. “You just wait! I got the law on the phone! You don’t go anywhere!”
“Grace, I’ll be there in three minutes. You tell them I’m coming and they are not to take those children off the premises.”
Maggie reached over and turned on her dash light, then gunned through the light and turned onto 98.
She got to Houser Street in fewer than three minutes. She pulled up to the edge of the yard, and parked behind an Apalach PD cruiser. Mike Waddell was standing by the open passenger door. In front of his car were a tan sedan with its passenger-side doors open, and a white SUV with a man waiting in the driver’s seat.
Maggie grabbed her ID out of her purse before jumping out. “What’s going on, Mike?” she asked, as she headed for the yard. He opened his hands and shook his head.
Maggie walked past the tan sedan. Baby Rose was in the back in a car seat, a young blonde woman in the seat beside her. Maggie walked past them and into the yard, and hurried toward the group of people collected there.
Grace was in her same yellow sundress and bare feet. She still had her phone in one hand, and she had the other arm wrapped around the shoulders of the little girl who was standing in front of her, hiccupping and gulping air.
A short, doughy woman stuffed into beige trousers and a silk blouse was holding a finger up at Grace and talking. Next to her stood a blond man in his fifties, who was holding a file folder in one hand and the little boy’s hand in the other.
“Ms. Redmond!” Grace yelled as Maggie came to the group. “Tell them to get my baby out of that car!”
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