First Offense

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  The road service could only tow her to the nearest garage if it was the starter as she suspected. She decided to walk home. It wasn’t that late, and David had probably snacked all afternoon anyway. In the morning she’d ask her supervisor’s husband if he would have someone look at her car. He was the service manager of a local car dealership and frequently had had Ann’s car repaired for free. Besides, she told herself, her house was only five blocks up Victoria. If she walked briskly, she could be home faster than if she returned to the building and called a cab.

  Ann began walking toward the exit that she normally used when driving and then changed course. She’d spotted an opening in the oleanders in the far comer of the lot that would place her right onto the sidewalk for Victoria Boulevard. From there she could walk straight up the hill to her house.

  Just as she reached the opening, Ann heard a loud pop and jerked her head around. It sounded like a gunshot. She scanned the empty parking lot and then peered through the foliage to the street. There was nothing. Steadying her nerves, she decided it must have been a car backfiring. People were always mistaking backfires for gunshots. As a cop, she’d responded hundreds of times to such false alarms.

  Bending down, she ducked inside the bushes. As her heels sank into the mud, she scowled, thinking her shortcut might not have been such a good idea after all. The automatic sprinklers had just gone off, and the ground was soaked. “Shit,” she said, squatting down even lower to inspect her shoes. Mud was oozing out around them. She’d have to remind herself to clean off her shoes before she went in the house, or the carpet would be ruined.

  Pushing back the branches of the tall shrubs, Ann was about to step out onto the sidewalk when she heard another loud crack.

  Her shoulder…her left shoulder.

  “Oh, God,” she cried. Her mind began spinning, and she couldn’t catch her breath. Instinctively her hand flew to the spot where the pain was, and she touched something wet. When she brought her hand to her face and saw the blood, she screamed. “I’ve been shot! God, help me…someone’s shooting at me!”

  She heard an engine roar, tires squealing, and smelled the distinctive odor of burning rubber.

  Get down, she told herself, but she was unable to move, paralyzed with fear. Stumbling forward, lashing out at the bushes with her hands, Ann fell forward onto the concrete sidewalk, her good arm cushioning her face from being badly scraped. “I’ve been shot! Someone help me! Please…get an ambulance…police….”

  Even though Ann was desperately trying to scream and draw attention to herself, she could hear her own words mumbled against the sidewalk. Like boiling water poured over her back, she felt the hot blood spreading, dampening her blouse.

  She tried to slow her racing heartbeat, tried to find strength inside the panic. The bullet could have struck an artery. Stretching her fingers forward, fighting against the pain and raging fear, she found them resting in a spreading puddle of her own blood.

  As her life pumped out on the sidewalk, Ann could hear her internal organs with unnatural clarity: her lungs straining for oxygen, her heart pulsating and pumping, pumping, like the sound an oil rig made. She was going to die. But she couldn’t die. It wasn’t fair. She’d already paid her dues in suffering. Her precious child…he needed her. She was all he had in the world. If there was a God, He just couldn’t let this happen.

  Cars were zipping by on Victoria Boulevard, the exhaust fumes choking her as she gasped for breath. Without success she tried to make her cries louder, attract someone’s attention before it was too late and she passed out. “Help me…please help me…I’ve been shot…”

  Her face fell back to the cement, the coarse surface scraping her chin. Black spots were dancing in front of her eyes. She was nauseated, both hot and cold at the same time. I can’t pass out, she told herself. If she passed out, she would bleed to death for sure.

  Gritting her teeth and pushing with all her might, Ann managed to get up on all fours. Then she collapsed again and had to struggle all over.

  Ann could hear noises: cars passing, people’s voices and laughter, a siren somewhere in the distance, a jet streaking over her head. I’m right here, her mind kept screaming. People were all around her. Why couldn’t they see her, hear her? “Help me!” she cried again, this time louder. “Please help me!”

  Turning her face toward the sound of voices, Ann realized the parking lot for Marie Callender’s was right across the divided parkway. People were walking in and out of the restaurant. She was so close—yet not close enough. The traffic, the wide divided roadway, and Ann’s position right outside the line of shrubbery made her all but invisible in the darkness.

  “Help me!” she called again, fixing her line of sight on a couple with a young child who were about to get into a dark blue station wagon. The woman was laughing and talking to the man, the little boy’s hand clasped in her own. Just then the boy turned and looked across the street toward Ann. “I’m here…over here!” she yelled, lifting her head off the concrete. “I’ve been shot. Get help!”

  While Ann watched in agony, the little boy’s mother jerked his hand. Not breaking stride, the family got inside their car and were soon pulling out onto the street. “No,” she cried, a pathetic wail. “Don’t…leave…”

  She was going to die.

  As the puddle of blood increased and the pain intensified, Ann tried to focus on the image of her son’s face, use it to fuel herself, give herself strength. Once again she tried to push her weakening body to her feet, blocking out the pain. It’s not an artery, she told herself. You’re going to be fine. Maybe it wasn’t even a bullet. Maybe she’d backed into a jagged metal wire…something sharp.

  “Stay calm,” she could hear her father say. He’d told her that right after she graduated from the police academy and had seen her first dead body—that of a child. She’d come home and told her father she couldn’t do it, wanted to resign. She was too young, too sensitive to be a cop. “Everyone is sensitive to death. If you weren’t sensitive to death, you wouldn’t be human. Take some deep breaths and call on your inner strength,” he’d said firmly.

  Ann suddenly found herself fully upright. Her vision was blurred and distorted, perspiration streaming from her forehead into her eyes, but she was standing. She knew now what she had to do. She had to make it across the street.

  “Are you hurt?” a concerned voice said from behind her. “Is something wrong?”

  “I’m…I’ve been…” She tried to hold on, to turn around, to speak. Help was here…it was going to be all right now.

  Ann felt her strength evaporating. As soon as she felt an arm brush against her side, felt the comforting warmth of another body against her own, she allowed the person to lower her back to the ground.

  “You?” Ann mumbled as a disembodied face floated in front of her. Gentle, caring eyes looked down into her own, the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen.

  “Get an ambulance,” a voice yelled so loud she was startled, “Quick, she’s hemorrhaging. She’s going into shock. And…blankets. Get blankets. Look in my trunk.”

  The next second, the voice was calm and soothing, and Ann saw a man leaning over her body, his shirt brushing against her face. “We have to apply pressure. The bullet struck an artery. Be still and relax. The ambulance is on the way.”

  The man moved to the other side of Ann’s body, and she felt his hands on her. She kept watching his face, lost in his eyes. From somewhere far away Ann remembered them, knew she had seen them. She was swimming now somewhere between consciousness and blacking out, awake but not really awake—a murky, wavy world, almost as if she were under water. She heard other voices, heard other feet pounding in her direction. All she could see was this face, hear this reassuring voice, feel the warmth of this person’s touch on her body.

  Through the fog Ann heard a shrill siren piercing the night. With his free hand the man stroked Ann’s forehead, gazed down into her eyes again. Hair brushed across her face. “Your hair…” An
n said. It was like a soft blanket.

  “You’re going to be fine,” the voice assured her. “The bullet entered near your shoulder.”

  Ann strained to see, hear. The face was becoming distorted. She felt a rush of emotion—love—mixed with a feeling of complete peace. “Hank,” she whispered. “I knew you’d come back.”

  Her eyelashes fluttered and then closed involuntarily. She felt an unknown force pulling her down into the darkness. She desperately held on to the image of the man in front of her, refusing to let it go. It was the only thing between her and the nothingness that was calling. Then she was sinking, unable to hold on. She heard Hank’s voice, smelled his body next to her own, recognized his firm touch. Hank was here. Her son would have his father. She could let go.

  A few seconds later, she let the darkness take her.

  Chapter 2

  At fifty, detective sergeant Thomas Milton Reed was still a fairly good physical specimen, even if he did say so himself. At six one, two hundred pounds, he had all his hair and only a few strands of gray. He bared his teeth in the mirror. Most of the stains were gone now that he’d kicked cigarettes. Watching Lenny Braddock die of lung cancer had finally done the trick. But the lines in his face would remain. Too many years in the California sun. People said it gave a person character, anyway. If he didn’t have anything else. Reed laughed, he certainly had character.

  He gave himself this little pep talk a few times a day in the can at the Ventura police department. This year he’d passed the big five-o, and it was every bit as bad as they say. He sucked in his stomach and vowed to go to the gym tonight. There were a lot of younger cops out there, though none of them necessarily tougher and certainly not better. Anyway, he said to himself, tossing the crumpled-up paper towel in the trash can, that’s the way I see it.

  As soon as Reed cleared the door, he saw Noah Abrams heading down the hall with an alarmed look on his face. Reed almost ducked back in the can, but then he stopped. No gym tonight, Reed thought, knowing he was about to catch a hot call.

  “Here,” Abrams said, throwing the keys to a police unit at the older detective. “You drive. I know you won’t let me drive anyway. Ann Carlisle’s on the way to County General. Gunshot wound.”

  The keys hit the linoleum floor with a ting. All the color drained from the detective’s face. By the time the younger officer had gone three feet down the hall, however, Reed had leaned over sideways in one fluid motion, scooped the keys up, and was flat-out sprinting down the corridor leading to the parking lot. “Where?”

  “Government center parking lot. Don’t know much…just came in,” Noah gasped, running alongside Reed now.

  “What’s…her condition?”

  “Dunno. Here’s the car. It’s the green one.” They both ducked into the unmarked police unit. Abrams slammed the portable light on top of the car and Reed gunned it, screaming out of the parking lot, skidding around the other police units while Abrams flicked through the police bands trying to get the fire department frequency so they could monitor the paramedics who were transporting Ann Carlisle.

  Tommy Reed was distraught. This was no ordinary person who had been shot. Ann’s father had been his training officer when he was a rookie, his mentor since the first day he’d become a cop. On his deathbed Lenny Braddock had called Reed in and made him promise he would look after his daughter, make certain no one ever harmed her. Ann was impulsive and headstrong, Lenny had always said. One day she was going to get herself hurt. Well, Reed thought, biting down on the inside of his cheek, her father had been right. He slapped the steering wheel, almost losing control of the speeding car, feeling that shaky, hollow feeling inside, the way he felt when things were beyond his control.

  “There they are,” Abrams yelled over the siren, hearing the medical lingo on the radio. “Watch it. Reed, you’re busting a hundred. On your right,” he quickly called out, advising the detective he had a side street coming up, a dangerous situation at this speed. If someone was approaching the intersection and didn’t hear the siren, there would be no way to avoid a collision and there would definitely be no survivors.

  The radio was blasting as the paramedics relayed information to the hospital. Once they cleared the intersection, Abrams killed the siren so they could hear. A few moments later. Reed let up on the gas and his speed dropped down to a more cautious seventy.

  Ann was alive.

  The bullet had struck an artery but bypassed her vital organs. She’d lost a lot of blood and would more than likely require surgery, but it didn’t look critical.

  “Siren on or off, Sarge?” Abrams asked, looking over at his partner.

  “Off,” Reed said. “Is patrol on the scene?”

  “Five of them and a lieutenant. They were right on top of it when the call came in. The radio room said there’s even a D.A. on the scene. They’re already calling it a drive-by.”

  “Fucking animals,” Reed barked, cutting his eyes to Abrams and then back to the road, his relief turning to outrage. Ann and her son had become Reed’s family, particularly since her husband’s disappearance. No one played target practice with people Reed called family. Acid rose in his throat. Reaching in his pocket, he found a Rolaid and tossed it into his mouth.

  What had begun as an obligation to a dying friend had ended up filling a void in the detective’s own life. Even though he’d dated many women through the years, Reed had never felt strongly enough about any relationship to marry. He’d yearned for a family, however, and in many ways he now felt he had one.

  Picking up the microphone, he raised the lieutenant at the scene. They were waiting for the forensic people and taking statements from witnesses. No one had seen a suspect or vehicle. All they had seen was Ann down on the ground and bleeding. By the time the paramedics arrived, she had been unconscious. “Make sure you get in touch with Claudette Landers ASAP,” Reed barked into the radio. “Get her to pick up Ann’s son. He’s probably at the house alone right now. Are the press there?”

  “What do you think?” Lieutenant Cummings said. “Like fleas on a dog.”

  “Take care of the situation with the kid fast, Pete, or he’ll see it on TV. Not the best way to hear your mother’s been shot.”

  Reed dropped the microphone. He was torn, thinking he should go to the house and pick up David himself. But Claudette was a woman with kids of her own and a very close friend of Ann’s. Women were better in this type of situation.

  “Look, Sarge,” Abrams interjected, “why don’t you go to the hospital and check on Ann and I’ll pick up the kid and drive him to this woman’s house? Turn around and take me to the station, and I’ll pick up another unit.”

  “We’re almost at the hospital,” Reed snapped, his voice harsher than he intended. “As soon as we know Ann’s stable, I’ll let you get started on the paperwork.”

  Having put Abrams firmly in his place, the detective rolled down the window to get some fresh air. Noah had been wanting to get in Ann’s pants ever since her husband vanished. If her name so much as fell off Noah’s tongue, however, Reed felt like snatching his head off. Why Noah was interested in Ann he had no earthly idea. She was appealing in a fresh-faced way but clearly no raving beauty, and certainly not the type of woman Abrams preferred. He went for flash in a big way: big breasts, stylish hair, sharp clothes. He also had three failed marriages under his belt, and Reed didn’t want him within ten feet of Ann Carlisle.

  At thirty-seven, Noah Abrams was a handsome man with chestnut-brown hair, hazel eyes, and a scattering of freckles across his nose and forehead. He had a penchant for hand-painted silk ties. He’d wear the same suit for ten years straight, but he’d cough up a hundred bucks for a single tie. Today he was wearing one with the image of Marilyn Monroe on it.

  “Let me ask you something, Noah, now that we’re on the subject,” Reed said, coming out of his thoughts. “Why are you always circling around Ann Carlisle like a damn shark? She’s not your type. I’ve seen the kind of women you take out.”
>
  “I resent that. Reed,” Abrams said. “Maybe I haven’t always had the best taste in women, but I’m not a total jerk. You seem to forget that I’ve known Ann almost as long as you have….” His voice trailed off and he gazed out the passenger window. When he continued, his voice was low and sincere. “I really care about Ann, Sarge. Hell, I used to work with her when we were both police cadets. We had some good times back then. Maybe one of these days I’ll settle down. If I do, she’s the kind of woman I want.”

  “Oh, really?” Reed said, shifting around in his seat. “She’s seeing someone anyway, so you can put that out of your mind.”

  In reality. Reed thought as little of Glen Hopkins as he did of Noah Abrams. Hopkins was too fast for Ann, with his fancy Rolls and his motorcycle. And the man was a damn cowboy, always bragging about his rodeo days as if anyone really cared. “After all this with her husband,” Reed said, “and now someone puts a slug in the poor woman. Isn’t life a bitch?”

  Abrams hadn’t heard a word. He was sitting forward in his seat, bracing himself against the dash, “Who’s Ann seeing? I thought she wasn’t dating yet. Why didn’t you tell me she was going out?”

  “Forget it,” Reed said. He turned into the parking lot for the hospital and cut the engine.

  “Will you just tell me who it is, Reed?” Abrams persisted.

  “Some D.A.,” Reed mumbled, exiting the vehicle and walking rapidly toward the emergency-room entrance.

  Abrams hurried to catch up to him. “What’s his name? How long has she been dating him? I mean, is she serious about this guy?”

  Reed stopped cold in his tracks, spun around, and grabbed the other detective by the collar. “Keep your swarmy moves off Ann Carlisle. Comprende? The woman was shot. Can I deal with that right now, huh? Can we forget about your wife-hunting problems? Hell, you’ve had three already.”