In Harm's Way

“No, no, no. Lose him. Return to post.” Brandon ended the call. Moron. The sin was not arresting the wrong guy, but leaving his post. He’d lost his backup.

He pulled the phone from his pocket and speed-dialed.

“Fleming,” came the sheriff’s voice in his ear.

“Your twenty?”

“Just passing the hospital. Five minutes.”

“I make my move and the front door goes unguarded.”

“Got it.”

“My backup vacated the back. I’m wide open here.”

“Do you see our boy?”

“Yeah. Could be one of two I’m looking at.”

“Does he see you?”

“It’s a work in progress, Sheriff.”

“Hold tight, Tommy. You hear me? For once, hold tight.”

“It’s about to go down. I’d love to be wrong about that.”

“Me, too. Two minutes away. I’ll take the front.”

“Out.”

He slipped the phone back into his pocket. Felt the bulge of his handgun in the holster. Remembered the vest behind the seat in the truck. Was that what was stopping him? he wondered. Had he allowed Gail’s warning to wedge into the cracks that held duty in place over the mortal fear that always existed? The noise of the place was getting to him. He found a mirror behind the bar that allowed him to monitor both men without facing them.

The man at the second table, the one farthest away, reached beneath the table, and Brandon’s right hand sought out his own gun up under the windbreaker. The guy held a wad of bills, not a weapon, and Brandon saw what appeared to be a neat stack of hundreds with smaller bills in the fold. The man peeled off a ten and a five and left them on the table, returning the money to his pocket.

The man stood, and Brandon saw it too late. The guy fired a single shot into the ceiling. Everyone in the room ducked at the same instant. All but Brandon, all but the one man trained not to duck. He was reaching for his own sidearm as the second bullet was fired.

Brandon was jerked to his left. It was a hot, searing pain, but not overwhelming, the way he’d imagined it might feel. He felt his breath catch, instantly light-headed. Heard a car door out there somewhere and knew it was the sheriff. Wondered if the sheriff had heard the shots.

The man who’d shot him-their mountain man-swung a chair through the window alongside his table, raked a leg of the chair along the lower edge clearing the shards of broken glass, and jumped through and out onto the sidewalk.

The sheriff came through the door, taking one step past him, and rose onto his toes, immediately seeing the broken window.

“Here,” Brandon coughed out, slouching toward the floor.

The sheriff spun around. “Damn it!” he said, holstering his weapon and reaching out to catch his deputy. “Some help here!” He reached for his radio clipped to his uniform. Brandon heard, “Officer down. Request ambulance…” He fought against the purple ooze at the edges of his vision, fought against the image of the muzzle flash from the handgun. That burst of light occupied his thought, had overtaken him.

“Stay with me!” he heard.

The sheriff? He wasn’t sure where that had come from. His brother? A priest? No white light. No journey through his lifetime memories. Only that dark purple rim flooding in from the edges like a spreading pool of blood. That, and a penetrating cold. A cold like no other. The cold of fear. The cold of the unknown. Of outright terror. There was no warm wash of love. No angels. Just that cold dragging him down and unrelentingly pulling him out of sight.

Walt was heading to the Jeep to follow the ambulance to the hospital, when he glanced back at the Casino and the swarm of deputies now involved in the crime scene. He thought it ironic and unacceptable that when a deputy needed backup, one local cop showed up on the scene; but when a deputy was shot and wounded, the place was lousy with law enforcement. He had to turn that around.

Climbing into the Jeep’s front seat, pushing Bea’s wet nose out of his way, he caught sight of the chair in the sea of broken glass out on the sidewalk. One of the bar staff, broom in hand, was just approaching the tossed chair.

Walt slipped out of the vehicle and shouted, “You! Stop! Yes, you!” He moved at a run toward the spread of broken glass.

“Stand back, please,” Walt said.

“I clean up broken glass all the time, Sheriff. I’m good,” the guy said. “I’ll be careful.”

“It’s not that,” Walt said, again amazed that a dozen deputies and local officers could be on the scene and none within shouting range, none paying any attention to the actions of their superior officer. Things needed to change.

“Deputy!” Walt hollered.

Three appeared within seconds: one from the other side of the broken window, and two from around the corner at the back of the club.

“Gloves,” Walt said, addressing the nearest, Kramer, on the other side of the missing window. “I want this chair collected and bagged. I want it handled by the edges of the seat-not the back, not the legs. Are you clear on that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“See if they have a clean garbage bag-”

“No problem,” said the Casino employee, leaning the broom against the exterior wall. “You want me to get one?”

“Better get two,” Walt said. “Go on.” He explained to his deputy how he wanted it done, how he was to treat the chair as a murder weapon. That the deputy would personally be responsible to log the chair as evidence and then to transport it to the Meridian lab the following day for a full fingerprint analysis.

“And I want every shard of glass collected by hand as well. The glass on the sidewalk, and the broken glass in the frame. I want it placed in a bag-plastic-and sealed and labeled. It goes with the chair to the lab and they’re to test for blood evidence.” Pointing through the window, he said, “There’s a toothpick in that food basket that may have come out of the mouth of our shooter. It’s to be DNA-tested at the same time. Anything they get is to be run through every database known to man. One of our own was shot tonight, and while it doesn’t look as bad as it might have been, we are on this. Cross every t, dot every i. No procedural screw-ups on this. You double-check everything you do before you do it. You do it right the first time. We owe that to Tommy. Are we good?”

“We’re good.”

“So someone pull some tape here and cordon off the crime scene inside and out. Somebody act like a sheriff’s deputy for a change, would you please?”

The two at the end got moving, as did Kramer. Walt considered apologizing for the outburst. It was born more of concern for Tommy Brandon than the failures of his men.

But he didn’t correct himself. He rushed back to the Jeep, hoping he’d put the fear of God into his team. Marveling at how Brandon’s being wounded had so deeply affected him.

37

From the moment Gail entered Emergency, Walt sensed she blamed him for the shooting. She didn’t say as much, but she didn’t have to. The first look she gave him he interpreted as, “How could you?” and the second, “I’ll bet you’re just loving this.” He didn’t need a translator. He’d lived with her for over a decade.

She sat down well away from him in the small waiting area. He gave her five minutes. It took her less than three to stand up and move closer to him, sitting just one seat away.

“Was he wearing his vest?” She looked straight ahead, as did he.

“No.”

“I told him to wear his vest.”

“And you were right to do so. He should have been. It was in his truck.”

“Did you catch the guy?”

“No. Working on it.”

“Working real hard, I can see.”

That didn’t take long, he thought. “It collapsed his left lung. Missed the major arteries and blood vessels. They’ll hold him a few days.”

“As if you care.”

“Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I know you’re upset. You want to take it out on me, that’s okay.”