The young couple looked back at Diane and were about to say something when the sound of the police bullhorn reminded them of the urgency to leave.
“I appreciate your knocking on my door. Do you know if the landlady has a ride?” asked Diane.
“I called her,” said Leslie. “Shane and I are taking her to her nephew’s. She said she would check on the people on the ground floor.”
Diane nodded. “What about the basement?”
“Basement?” asked Leslie.
“Someone lives down there?” Shane asked.
Diane nodded. “You get the landlady, I’ll check on the guy in the basement.”
They heard the bullhorn again and Leslie, frightened, looked over at her husband, as though they had lingered too long. Diane thanked them and watched a moment as Shane helped his wife negotiate the stairs.
She closed the door and hurried to dress quickly.
Chemical explosion,
she thought, as she threw clothes into her duffel bag.
What kind of chemical explosion do you have in a residential neighborhood? Gas leak? Chem lab? Drug lab? Damn.
Diane had seen kids playing and riding their bikes on that street. It was a neighborhood that often had several students to a house. Diane shivered at the potential catastrophe. She hurriedly slipped on her coat and went out the door, locking it behind her. The old Greek Revival house that had been converted to apartments appeared empty and quiet. Diane locked the main door as she stepped out onto the columned porch.
In the street a line of cars was leaving the area. It was calm, not frantic. No blaring horns or angry shouts, just streams of headlights, each spotlighting the car in front, a necklace of cars.
Diane trudged around to the side of the house to where the basement entrance was located, down a short flight of stairs with wrought-iron bannisters. She was about to knock when she saw a note taped to the door. It was from Professor Keith, resident of the basement apartment, saying he had evacuated and could be reached at his office on campus. She turned and plodded back up and through the thick snow to her own car.
There was an acrid odor in the air and something that made her eyes burn. She wondered what she was inhaling with each breath. She pulled the wool scarf over her mouth as if that would help keep out the invisible fumes. Popping sounds of breaking glass grew louder and the explosion of paint cans, aerosol sprays, and all the other flammable things people keep in their houses added to the noise. A string of firecracker-like sounds made her want to run for cover. It sounded like a gun battle.
Traffic was thinning considerably, but the mass exit had turned the snowy street into a river of slush. Diane had to stand in thick ice water as she used her hands to clear snow from her windshield. By the time she finished, her hands and toes were freezing. She got in the car, started the engine, and turned the heater on high, hugging her arms to herself and blowing into her hands. She wished she had some hot coffee.
Before she pulled out into the street she saw Professor Keith’s Volvo several feet ahead, exhaust coming from the tailpipe. He must have just left the note before she got to his door. Diane put her car in gear and started to ease out into the street when she noticed a man standing next to a group of tall snow-covered shrubs. He was pointing a gun at the passenger side of Keith’s Volvo.
Diane grabbed her cell and started to punch in 911. NO SERVICE.
Shit.
She looked up at the Volvo again. The guy with the gun looked like a kid, the way he carried himself. He held the gun sideways like punks do on TV shows. He was shaking it at the car, obviously trying to make Keith let him in. He held the gun in his left hand, and looked as though he was favoring his right side. She tried to ease forward slowly. The sound of her tires spinning in the slush caused him to turn and look at her. Keith and his Volvo sped away, leaving Diane to face the young man now coming toward her pointing a gun and dripping a trail of blood.
Chapter 2
Diane’s heart beat hard and fast as the dark figure approached her. Her gaze darted around the car for a weapon. None. No gun, no knife, not a tire iron, or a baseball bat. Her mouth was so dry she doubted she could even muster harsh words for protection.
He stood in her headlights, pointing the gun at her. He was young, covered with soot, his eyes red-rimmed and swollen as though from crying. His hair hung in frosty wet ropes in his face. He was clad only in a flannel shirt and jeans. It was twenty degrees outside. He should have been shivering, but he wasn’t.
In his left hand he still held the gun in the same sideways punk-ass position. His right arm, the origin of the blood, hung at his side. He tried to raise it, squinting his eyes as if trying to keep back the pain. He shook the gun at her and dipped his knees slightly, as though readying to jump up and down. The gesture made him look like a child beginning a tantrum. She started to duck, in case the gun went off. That was when she saw his right hand was missing.
He started walking toward the passenger side of her car.
Think fast.
The car wouldn’t move on the ice, and he would probably shoot her if she tried. Even if she did manage to get the car moving, she knew better than to let him take her to another location. She couldn’t allow him in the car with her.
Words were her only weapon. Diane swallowed hard and cleared her throat. OK, what words?
Think fast, damn it.
She couldn’t reason with him. A grievously wounded kid in pain holding a gun can’t be reasoned with.
What then? What words would he respond to? He was almost to the passenger door when an idea hit her. She had to act quickly.
He might listen to what he wanted to hear. She turned off the ignition, swung open her door, and stepped out of the car, almost slipping in the slush. She caught the door to keep from falling. They faced each other across the car’s snow-covered roof. He jabbed the gun in her direction, skimming it through the layer of snow on top of the car, releasing flakes into the air. She spoke before he could say anything.
“You need help. Get in the backseat and hunker down so the police won’t see you.”
“What?” He squinted his eyes and looked confused. “I’ll shoot you,” he said, slurring his words.
Great,
she thought,
he’s probably drunk or on drugs, too.
“Can you drive like that? You need me to drive. You need help.” She was very careful not to use any negative words in describing what he could or couldn’t do. Something she learned from her former boss, the diplomat.
He stood staring at her for several moments. “I have a gun,” he said, as if she hadn’t noticed the silver-plated weapon he was waving at her.
Diane’s teeth chattered—either from cold or fear, she didn’t know. She was wondering if this was such a good plan after all. He was making no move to get in the car.
“Yes, I see you do. That’s all right. I’ll take you to get help.”
“I’m not going to any hospital.” He thrust out his chin, trying to look defiant, she supposed, but succeeding only in looking petulant.
“I know a private clinic where a doctor will fix you up and ask no questions.”
“I’ll ride in the front.” He waved his gun at the car.
“If you do, the police will see you. There’s not enough room to slide down out of sight. There’s a blanket in the back. Cover yourself. You have your gun,” she added, as if maybe he had forgotten.
He simply stared at her, not moving. The snow was falling again; large flakes caught in her eyelashes.
Just get in the car.
She looked up and down the street, worried that any approaching car might force him into rash action.
He made a move toward the back door, stopped and stared at it, then at his gun. He fumbled, trying to open it with his gun hand. For a moment she thought he was going to shoot the door. The smell of smoke from the house fire was getting stronger and it irritated her nose. A burst of cold wind swirled her hair and it stung her face like tiny whips.
He shoved the pistol into the waistband of his trousers, opened the door, slid into the backseat quickly, and shut the door.
Diane didn’t hesitate a moment. As soon as she heard his door slam shut, she pressed the DOOR LOCK button on her remote, slammed the driver’s door shut, and ran, thankful that just two days before she had three eight-year-olds as passengers in her backseat. The child safety locks were still on, and in his condition, by the time he managed to climb into the front seat, she would be halfway through the woods to the other street where there would be a swarm of policemen.
Twice she almost slipped crossing the road. The slush was turning to ice. It numbed her feet as it sloshed into her low-cut boots. She was passing in front of a parked van when she heard muffled gunshots from inside her car.
Shit, that was a new car,
she thought as she dove for cover, sliding to a stop behind the van. Several more shots rang out accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. For a moment she didn’t know if the sounds were from the gunfire in her car or the loud roar and crackle of the house fire on the opposite street.
The smoke from the fire was growing thicker. Diane pulled the neck of her shirt over her mouth, took a deep breath, and sprang across the nearest yard past a snowman. She stopped inside an alleyway and hugged the side of a house. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a blue light flashing on the street she had just fled. She turned and sprinted back in the direction of the light as fast as she could in ankle-deep snow.
She felt reasonably safe now from the one-handed kid with the gun. It was dark and she doubted he could hit anything from inside the car. If he ran out of bullets, which she suspected he was about to, he’d have a hard time reloading with one half-frozen hand. Why would he want to shoot her, anyway? She kept in the shadows and away from the streetlights just in case.
The smoke stung her throat and made her eyes water. As she ran toward the police cruiser waving her arms, she stepped off the curb and half fell into a pothole where the icy slush completely filled her boot before she could recover herself. The cruiser slowed, and an officer rolled down the window and shined a light in her face.
“Keep your hands were we can see them . . . ,” the driver said. “Is that you, Dr. Fallon? We got a report of an attempted carjacking.”
“Make that two attempted carjackings,” she said.
He turned off his flashlight, but Diane was left with the bright afterimage. She blinked a couple of times before she recognized the policemen as people she knew.
“He’s in my car,” she said, pointing in the general direction. She handed him her keys and quickly explained how she lured him into the backseat. “He’s missing a hand, bleeding, scared, in pain, and may be high on drugs or alcohol. He has a gun and has been shooting.”
“Dangerous combination,” said the policeman on the passenger side. “How about you? You all right?”
“I’m fine. Just wet and cold. Don’t worry about me.”
“You stay here, out of the line of fire.”
Diane was glad to let them deal with him. She heard the driver calling for an ambulance as they drove slowly toward her car. Diane moved out of the road, huddled near a pine tree, and watched the scene illuminated under the streetlight.
They stopped just a few feet from her car, opened their doors, and, their guns drawn, used the doors for shields. Diane saw the driver reach for the mike. She hugged her arms to herself and wiggled her toes in her boots. They had not been a good choice for stomping around in the snow.
“This is the police. Toss your gun out of the window and raise your”—he hesitated for a beat—“raise your hands where we can see them.”
Diane waited, watching her car. Nothing. The policeman repeated the order.
“Don’t make us come and get you,” he added. “We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Nothing.
The two crouched policemen moved slowly toward her car, one on either side, their arms outstretched, their guns aimed ahead of them. Diane squinted against the wind, trying to see inside her car. From that distance, she couldn’t see a thing. She huddled against the pine tree, partly for warmth and partly to make a smaller target.
The policemen stepped up to the car, shining their flashlights inside. They hesitated a moment, and one of them aimed the remote. She couldn’t hear the click of the doors unlocking over the noise of the fire and the wind. She saw one of them open a back door, reach in, and come out with a gun. She guessed that the kid had passed out in her backseat.
The ambulance arrived just moments after the police had secured her car. She walked over and stood with the police and waited as the EMTs gently pulled the kid out and onto the stretcher. With his eyes closed and face relaxed he looked so young, still a teenager, facing the rest of his life without his right hand. She suddenly felt pity for him—now that the police had secured his gun.
“Do you know him?” One of the patrolmen asked. Ben, Diane thought his name was. He was thirtyish, about ten years older and twenty pounds heavier than his partner. Bundled up in winter coats and earmuffs, they looked very much alike.
Diane shook her head, looking at his face again. “I’ve never seen him before.”
“Some guy—Shawn Keith—called it in,” said the other patrolman. “He said something about a woman being in trouble. Didn’t say it was you, Dr. Fallon.”
“Keith may not have known it was me. The kid tried to stop him first.”
As the EMTs worked getting him stable for transport to the hospital, Diane gave the police details on her encounter with the youth.
“You’re lucky he had only one hand. Punk kids are dangerous. He’s probably the meth cook who blew up the house,” the patrolman added, nodding in the direction of the fire.
Diane doubted it. Whoever was cooking the meth was probably dead in the explosion. But more than likely, the kid was connected in some way.