Rina put down the gun and ripped off her kerchief, wrapping it around his arm. Pressed the cloth hard against his wound. Deep-throbbing pain. But he could take it. What was bothering him most was Noam screaming. Rina must have read his thoughts. She yelled at the boy to shut up and his screams immediately quieted to tiny, sniveling gasps.
'That motherfucker shot me!' Decker grunted out. He was getting increasingly agitated. 'I don't fucking believe it! That motherfucker actually shot me!'
Rina didn't answer. Decker took one look at her face and knew he was in bad shape. He was cold, he was numb, he was slipping. And Rina, poor kid, trying so hard to hide her hysteria...
'You gotta tie above the wound,' Decker whispered. 'Fucker hit my arteryl I'm gonna fucking bleed out unless you fucking do something!'
Rina pulled off the bloody kerchief and tied it farther above the wound.
'Tie it tighter,' Decker said. He was starting to tremble badly. Swell, he thought. I'm going into voluminous shock. All those bleeding bodies he had tended as a medic in Vietnam. What a way to go 'Arm's gotta feel numb for the bleeding to stop.'
Ripping off the kerchief, Rina tried again. Peter was quaking violently. Oh, God, please don't let him die! She yanked the ends with all her might. It wasn't enough. Blood still leaked out.
'Get a stick,' Decker said, chattering. 'You gotta tie... the knot—'
'Yes, I know, I know,' Rina said. 'Don't talk, Peter.' Lots of scrap on the ground. She found a metal spike and tied the ends of the kerchief around the middle of the spike. Rotating the spike around its center, she twisted the cloth tighter and tighter. Blood spurted, then spurted again, finally sputtering to a slow leak, then nothing.
But blood was still flowing copiously from his shoulder. Rina took her jacket, wrapped it around his shoulder, and using all her weight, pressed down.
'Good...' Decker whispered. 'That's... good.'
Slowly, Rina eased the pressure. Blood came gushing out again. Once more she pressed down, desperately trying to staunch the flow. Counting to sixty, then one hundred twenty. Again, she eased pressure.
The wound still oozed blood, but the red river had turned into a rivulet.
'You're staring to clot,' Rina said. Either that or shock was shutting down his system. Oh, God, don't You dare let this man die!
'My arm's...' Decker bit his lips and tried to control the shakes. 'Try... loosen the tourniquet.'
Rina untwisted the knot a few turns.
'Better,' Decker's entire body was caught in a frenzy of palsy. 'How's... Noam?'
Rina glanced at the teenager, who was also shaking, and ordered him to lie down and put his knees up. He was in shock, but his condition was from fear rather than blood loss.
'He's OK, Peter.' She took his hand and rubbed it hard. It was as if she were rubbing a dead lizard. 'He's OK.'
In the background, the wail of sirens.
'Help's coming, Peter. I called in as soon as you told me to. I heard you on the radio, honey, but I couldn't figure out how to answer you. I blew it. I was nervous. I wouldn't even have come except I heard the shots.'
Decker didn't answer.
'I had your spare key ring, you know, the big heavy one...' Rina was babbling now. 'It had all your keys on it, including a copy of your handcuff keys. That's how I got out. I know you told me not to.' She tried unsuccessfully to blink back tears. 'I'm sorry, Peter. Please don't be mad to me.'
'I love you,' he whispered.
'I love you, too.' She wiped her cheek. 'Help's coming, honey. You're going to be fine.'
Decker continued to shiver.
'You're going to be fine, honey, just fine. The ambulance is getting closer, Peter. I've got to flag down the paramedics. They don't know where we are. You have a blanket in the car?'
'Trunk.'
'I'll get it for you. Just hang in.'
Rina ran to the unmarked.
Decker moaned, still trembling, his feet and legs as
inert as logs. His vision was completely blurred, so he closed his eyes. He could feel his arm throbbing, his shoulder engulfed in pain, and welcomed the sensations. It was a sign that blood was flowing through all of his body, down to his fingertips. He prayed there was enough plasma in him to keep him alive, enough circulation in his arm to keep it from developing gangrene. Even with minimal blood flow, his arm should be OK.
The sirens shrieked, then stopped. How long had it been? Three minutes? Maybe less?
Thank God Rina had heard him.
Rina.
All he wanted was to hold her. Please God, let him be able to hold her.
He tried to breathe. It hurt. It hurt bad. At least he felt something. That was good. Goddamn, that was good.
His gun, Rina's gun. Both lay quietly at his side. He had emptied his Beretta but Rina's gun was still loaded.
With heroic effort, he gripped the butt of Rina's.38, lifted his head and faced left, knowing he had pushed Hersh's body in that direction. He raised his right arm. Even moving his good arm caused pain to sear through his body. He was seeing double, but that was good enough.
But the shakes. He was trembling so fiercely, he couldn't support his head. It fell back down.
He didn't give up. Like a mesmerized genie harkening to its master, he forced his head upward. With all the strength he could amass, he aimed the gun a few inches from Hersh's head and fired. The force of impact at such close range caused the body to jerk.
Noam started screaming again.
Fuck 'im, Decker thought. Let him scream. He emptied the chamber into Hersh's head.
PART THREE
Tshuvah - Repentance
Initially, it was Peter's physical convalescence that worried Rina. But after it became clear he was out of mortal danger and on the road to recovery, she became increasingly concerned about his psychological welfare. Immediately after he was stabilized, Peter seemed to be functioning pretty well. He was in obvious pain, but his arm and shoulder had a good range of mobility.
On the emotional level, Rina knew he was keeping it all inside - refusing to discuss any details of the ordeal with her, with Marge or Mike, with the doctors, or even with the psychologist sent out by the department. If anybody wanted to know anything, Peter had said, just look it up in his report.
The paperwork was mountainous, the questions by his superior officers repetitive and insistent, but Peter fielded them well, wrote reports until his fingers swelled, until Rina insisted he stop.
The bulk of his labors went to securing Noam's release - a necessary diversion. As long as Peter concentrated on Noam, he was able to forget about his own problems. And there was a slew of work to be done on that front.
Peter worked not only as a cop but as a lawyer, devising defensive strategies, then penning police reports
that would support his conclusions. His contention was simple: Noam had been a victim, pure and simple. Though he might have left New York voluntarily with Hersh Schaltz, he had never intended to engage in criminal activity. Upon their arrival in Los Angeles, Hersh now felt comfortable enough to display his true sociopathological nature, because Noam was at his mercy - a minor cut off from his family and without any means of support. Noam had completely relied on Hersh for all the basics - food, clothing, and shelter. Hersh used Noam's total dependency on him and combined it with the constant threat of death to hold the boy in a Svengalian trance. Noam had been forced to abet Hersh, acting out of fear for his own life.
There had been prior cases in the books to support the defense. But luck was with the boy and any legal defense turned out to be unnecessary. The higher-ups in the department felt the same way Peter had. Without witnesses or physical evidence to link Noam directly to the crimes, the DA felt the case was too weak to try. Charges were dropped - not even plea-bargained down. Simply dropped.
But the boy's problems were far from over. In fact, it seemed to Rina, they were just beginning. She had stolen away for an hour and visited him before his parents came into town. No
am had become a shell, regressed to something only vaguely definable as human. Physically, he sat curled in his jail cell, shoulders to his knees, head tucked into his chest. He was unresponsive to her words, to her touch. Nothing - except constant prayer - held any interest for him.
Acting as a go-between for Peter and the police, Rina made the arrangements for the family to pick Noam up.
But as the hour neared, she knew she wouldn't come down and meet them at the station house. She told herself that it was Peter who needed her, not the Levines. And that was true. But she knew she couldn't bear to see the look on Breina's face once she had witnessed what her boy had become.
So Rina concentrated on Peter. On giving him pep talks, on making him as comfortable as possible. He didn't complain much. That was just Peter.
She expected him to be slow to open up and she wasn't surprised by his sudden, short-lived flare-ups of temper. When he refused pain medicine, she thought that he was just being stoic.
But she knew something was terribly wrong when Peter started acting illogical. Peter was the original rational being. If it made sense, you did it. If it didn't you didn't.
Weakened by loss of plasma and dehydration, he had adamantly refused any blood from the bank, ranting about AIDS and other infectious diseases. It was his body and he'd do damn well what he pleased with it. If he was meant to die now, then just get it over with. Better that than a lingering death.
The doctors reluctantly went along with his demand, figuring a man of Peter's size would be able to recover from the loss of two pints of blood. After the primary trauma had passed, he appeared to be settling down.
All illusion.
Having rested a meager two days, knowing that Noam was back in the womb of his family, he suddenly checked himself out of the hospital AMA - against medical advice - and booked a flight back to New York.
That was insane, Rina had insisted. There was no way
she was going to sit by and let him kill himself. He absolutely was not going anywhere.
But again Peter had shut her out. She had sat by helplessly, watching him bite back pain and throw clothes into a suitcase. -
He was going to New York, he had announced. Now that Noam was out of his hair, he felt strong enough to deal with the family. Might as well get the damn thing over with, say his good-byes and never see Brooklyn or any Levines again as long as he lived. Period! Discussion ended! And while he was back east, he was going to stop by and visit his parents in Florida. If she and the boys wanted to come along, OK. If not, he'd go alone.
His entire chest had been bandaged, his wounded arm wrapped in surgical gauze and stabilized by a sling. Still, he had insisted on doing his 'own packing, thank you very much.' His movements had been slow and painful, every twist and turn making him wince. His face was gaunt, his coloring ashen. Any second, Rina had thought he'd keel over. But he had plodded along, using stubbornness as a shield against logic. No amount of pleading, crying, screaming, or reasoning had been able to sway his muleheaded decision.
Peter's pathological denial finally caught up with him in New York. While riding to Brooklyn from the airport, his radial artery abruptly opened, blood gushing from the bandage, drenching him and the backseat of the cab. He was rushed to the hospital in dire need of blood, which he still refused to take from a bank.
Rina knew Peter's blood type - B negative - was uncommon. Then she remembered that Cindy had arrived in town, a new freshman at Columbia. Rina called her and Cindy rushed over to the hospital only to
discover that her blood was incompatible with Peter's.
Fortunately, there was a nearby donor with compatible blood. At first Peter refused. But Rina persisted, gaining a hard-fought victory. Finally, Peter relented and accepted a pint of blood from Frieda Levine.
He was dozing when he heard a knock on the door. He checked his watch, knew it wasn't time for Rina's visit.
Can't get any peace even in a friggin' hospital. He'd transferred himself to a small, private place about an hour away from Brooklyn, having given Rina firm instructions that only she, Cindy, and the boys were permitted to visit. But he knew it was only a matter of time before one of the Levines would make overtures despite his request. Guess that was human nature. And being a civilized person, he'd probably talk to whoever it was. But deep inside he wished they'd all disappear.
Might as well get it over with. Hadn't that been the reason for his rush to New York in the first place? And didn't Yom Kippur start tonight? They probably wanted to ask him for forgiveness.
There really wasn't anything to forgive. Wasn't their fault he'd been shot up by a maniac. Wasn't anyone's fault. Wasn't even God's fault. Bad things just happen sometimes.
And sometimes good things happen for no particular reason. Like how he met Rina, fielding a routine rape call.
Win some, lose some. No sense getting all bent out of shape. As soon as his body healed completely, as soon as the nightmares faded, he'd be just fine. So maybe there'd be a little twinge of pain now and then. He could live with that. Goddamn doctors trying to pump him up
with pain-killers. What'd they think he was? A goddamn girl?
Again, the rapping at the door.
Persistent bugger.
He adjusted the-tilt of his bed, trying to get himself comfortable. Truth be told, he felt as if he'd been flattened by a runaway John Deere. But hell, mending takes time. He told the caller to come in, his eyes widening when his brother opened the door and walked across the threshold.
Randy Decker was six one, his large frame pumped up to massive proportions by years of weight lifting. He was dark-complexioned, with black piercing eyes and shiny black hair, which he wore long and tied in a ponytail. His black and gray beard covered most of the keloid patch on the right side of his throat, the scar caused by a.38 slug through the neck. His left ear sported an iron-cross earring, his right forearm was tattooed with a naked lady. His universal sleazebag look - combined with his fluency in Spanish and Portuguese - allowed him to switch to any undercover detail at a moment's notice. But his primary bailiwick was Narcotics.
Randy had dressed for the occasion. His jeans were whole and he wore sleeves - a camouflage T-shirt to be exact. On his feet were canvas loafers without socks.
'I specifically told Rina not to tell you,' Decker said.
'She didn't tell me,' Randy said. He had a throaty smoker's voice. He pulled up a chair next to the bed and sat, the seat drooping under his weight. 'You think I'm a dumbfuck, Peter? Mom calls and tells me you broke your arm, you're coining for a visit.' He shook his head. 'That don't make no sense. You don't visit your parents when you just got married and had the good luck to
break an arm. You stay at home and fuck the daylights out of your wife. You visit your parents when you've seen your life flashing before your eyes, know what I'm talking about?'
'I know what you're talking about.'
'I ate it three different times and every single time I told you right away.' Randy hit Decker on his right arm - his good one. 'Whatchu keeping secrets from your brother, huh?'
'I didn't want to worry you.'
'You didn't want to worry me, huh?' Randy hit him again. 'What worried me is when Mom told me you were coming down. I didn't know where the fucker plugged you. When Rina told me it was only your arm and your shoulder, I was relieved. Hey, you got your three B's - your brain, your back, and your balls. You'll be fine.'
•What a guy!'
'Yeah, well, I'm not making light of it or anything. I'm just saying it could have been a lot worse.'
'You're right.'
Randy bounced his leg up and down, 'Guy's dead, huh.'
'He's dead.'
'That's good. Nice and clean. Otherwise, it eats you up, you know. You start thinking crazy. That don't help anyone.'
Decker nodded.
'Where'd you plug him?' Randy said.
'Between the eyes.'
'Where else?'
'What do you mean?'
'
You musta emptied the chamber in him.'
Decker raised his eyebrows. 'A chamber and a clip.'
Randy laughed. 'See, I know the story. Get him in the balls, Peter?'
'No,' Decker said. 'I probably would have if I'd been able to aim.'
'A chamber and clip, huh?' Randy said. 'Turned him into Swiss cheese. How'd you explain that to the department?'
'Department's been OK,' Decker said.
Randy said, 'That's good. Last thing you need is the department breathing down your neck. How you really doin'?'
Til be OK.'
'Department set you up with a shrink?'
Faye Kellerman - Decker 04 - Day of Atonement Page 35
