“It's the police,” I said. Pamela turned to look, and I ran. I gave it no thought whatsoever; apparently the fight-or-flight reflex had switched on, and my body had chosen flight. I heard a popping sound behind me, and another one. In my haste to get away, I smacked into a telephone pole, hard. Behind me I heard scuffling and another pop. Pamela was shooting. As it was, my shoulder was throbbing from hitting the pole and what seemed to be a nail sticking out of it.
With a primal yell, I burst off the sidewalk and leaped behind my car, next to which stood Perez, pointing a gun at me.
I stared dumbly.
Did they both kill Logan?
I wondered in a mist of confusion.
“Get down! Get down!” Perez yelled at me.
I did, squatting behind my car. “What—” I managed cleverly before she interrupted me, running toward Pamela as I crouched in fear.
Tag-team races in hell
, I thought foggily.
She called as she ran off, “I've got back-up. You stay in your car, Madeline.”
I did. I got into my car and started the engine. I put my head on the steering wheel and tried to calm my breathing. Pamela killed Logan. Pamela tried to kill me. Pamela hurt Fawn. Pamela might now be killing Perez.
Summoning some courage, I drove up the street toward city hall. Already three police cars were lined up in front; from my vantage point, I could see nothing. Then, suddenly, I saw Pamela emerge from a cluster of police, her hands behind her in cuffs. She was looking around, probably to make sure Mayor Daley wasn't observing this slight gaffe in protocol.
Two uniformed officers escorted her to a vehicle; following them were Perez and another uniform, who were deep in conversation. I stopped my car, but a third police car pulled up next to me. “Move along,” called the officer into my open window. “No gaping. Move along.”
I wanted to tell him of my involvement, of my need to talk to Perez, but my fear of authority was too strong. I drove on. Before I left the street, I saw in one of the cop cars the pale face of Fawn Paley; she looked terrified, and her brother was sitting next to her, his arm around her, his face tender as he said something in her ear. I waved to her, indicating that I wanted to speak to her, but the policeman was signaling, so I kept moving. I was late for the concert. I would call Perez from the cell phone when I got there, I decided.
The pain in my shoulder was not abating, and when I glanced down at my black turtleneck, I saw a discoloration that might have been blood. “Dammit!” I yelled. If a nail had torn my skin, I might have to get a tetanus shot or stitches, or some other dreadful thing. In any case, I didn't have time to sit in some emergency room before I heard my brother sing. I grabbed a wad of tissues from a box on the floor of my car and shoved them down inside my turtleneck where I thought the wound might be. I got a glimpse of it, shadowed by my shirt, and it did indeed look like some skin was torn away. “Shit,” I added.
With the vague plan of having Jack look at it when I got to the campus, I began to drive.
The campus of St. Fred's was only five minutes away. I made my way there in a daze, feeling incredibly sorry for myself. Someone had tried to kill me. By the time I got there, though, I was feeling better, in the sense that I felt sort of drunk. Later, much later, I would understand that it was shock, and that my illogical behavior could be attributed—at least this time—to that.
I found a space in a very full lot, then made my way toward the bandstand through crowds of happy people. A lot of teenagers were already assembled, waiting for the next act, which was Fritz's. Some stage techs were running back and forth with microphones, cords, and instruments. I scanned the crowd for anyone in my family, but I couldn't locate them. I tried to ignore the throbbing in my shoulder. I briefly closed my eyes, there on the outskirts of the action. I felt cold despite the light jacket I'd donned over my turtleneck after I'd left Jamie's. I hugged myself.
The next voice I heard was Fritz's, booming into a microphone. “Hi, we're the Grinning Bishops,” he yelled, causing feedback. Undeterred, he stepped back a bit and continued yelling, scanning the crowd like a pro. “We're a local band, and we love Webley and St. Fred's!” This got the crowd going. Fritz seemed to revel in the cheering. I felt a vague, sleepy sense of pride.
Fritz went on. “We'd like to start with a number we wrote ourselves. It's called—” He stopped, and there was an unexpected silence. I opened my eyes, which I'd closed again, and found that Fritz was looking right at me. “Oh my God, Madman, you're dripping blood!” he yelled in horror.
The crowd screamed and clapped. I felt a bit insulted that Fritz would name a song that, but what with the music these days, I supposed it fit right in thematically. Fritz didn't play, though. He had thrown down his guitar and was running across the stage. The crowd's attention shifted, and people seemed to be pointing at something on the sidelines, where I had made my headquarters.
Suddenly Jack appeared, his face white and floating before me. “Madeline! Madeline!” he yelled. I couldn't seem to open my eyes anymore, but I heard the murmur of the crowd and the screaming of a woman that sounded like my mother in great distress. I wanted to reach her, to find out what was wrong, but the crowd grew louder and louder, closer and closer, trying to consume me. I began to fear that Pamela was among them, free of her handcuffs, hunting me down with her sharp nails.
I felt that I was falling, falling, back down the spiral staircase, but this time it had no floor.
twenty-three
The next thing
I knew I was in an ambulance headed for St. Francis of Assissi Hospital in Mosston, just outside Webley. A man in an orange jacket was hovering over me with a solemn expression. If he'd been wearing black, I'd have been nervous. He told me gently that I'd been shot. Jack's face appeared next to his, and Jack nodded to confirm what the orange man was saying.
I shook my head and explained in a trembling voice that I'd merely hit a telephone pole very hard while, granted, running like the dickens to avoid a bullet, but that I had actually torn my skin on a protruding nail. I added my theory about the tetanus shot.
The EMT, with a patronizing expression, said that my story, while interesting, didn't explain the little round hole in the back of my shoulder, or the slightly larger exit hole. Faced with the indisputable facts, I told him that the ambulance was drafty and tried to turn my back on him.
Pamela had shot me after all. Pamela. And she'd shot Logan too. I told this to Jack, whose face grew white with shock and disbelief. After that he wouldn't let me talk anymore, saying that I needed rest. In the meantime, I heard him making arrangements to give blood at the hospital. Jack and I were the same type. B positive.
At the hospital, my whole family appeared and began running next to my stretcher like Secret Service people. It made me a bit misty to see my brothers in this protective mode, especially because they too seemed near tears. My parents looked like I'd stolen about ten years from each of their lives, and my father was so nervous he kept trying to pat me on my wounded shoulder. The nurse and doctor who met me at the door advised my dad that he should hold my hand instead, which he did, and he didn't let go of it until the doctors told them all to remain in the waiting room. The last thing I saw was Gerhard consoling my mother, who looked as though she'd lost something very precious—or almost lost, maybe. I felt, ironically, quite contented when they wheeled me away.
The doctor told me I'd been very lucky. The bullet had badly bruised and slightly chipped my shoulder bone but had not come close to any major arteries. The whole experience was surreal, but that really made it seem like the happy ending of a sassy detective series. I was Mariska Hargitay, or that ass-kicking girl from
Hawaii
5-0.
At the end of the day I lay in a bed, my shoulder carefully bandaged, once in a while watching a bad sitcom on the hospital television, which was mounted on the wall at a crazy angle. Mostly I listened to our family tragedy told from the various points of view.
Fritz's tale, of course, was the most dramatic, because he'd spied me from the bandstand at his big moment and had run to my rescue. I apologized to my brother with genuine regret at the loss of his opportunity.
“No big deal, Madman. I called Larry from the pay phone down the hall—rip-off price, by the way—and he tells me that a guy from the
Sun-Times
was there, and he snapped shots of me in my moment of terror and of you doing your
House of Usher
routine. Larry thinks we'll make front page. Plus the event coordinator said he'll have some other gigs for us, because we seemed to have connected with the audience. I don't want to say it was my great looks, but…”
Fritz grinned at me, and his fox-like face held nothing but brotherly affection and a touch of relief. “The other element that makes it interesting is that you were, uh, attacked by the same woman who killed our former band member.” Fritz seemed to find this irony a ten on the cool scale in his mind.
“Pamela,” my mother said, from her chair in one corner. “I still can't believe it. I nurtured that girl, I believed in her, I showed her the ropes, I ate innumerable meals with her. And she was a murderess. All the while pretending to grieve for Logan.”
I shrugged as best I could with my getup. I was trying not to dwell on my moments of fear with Pamela. I was feeling much better ever since my mother had smuggled in her rouladen and some frosted apple slices. No one can hold a grudge with a stomach full of homemade food. Of course, I'd had to get shot to earn it.
“I think she did feel bad, in a way. I think she felt like it was Logan's fault and that he shouldn't have put her in that position.”
My mother and father snorted in their matching chairs, like talking bookends. “I told you it was her, didn't I?” my father said, almost smugly. “I told you it was one of his girlfriends, and it was.”
The fact that this was true kept us all in a stunned silence for a few minutes. In that time, I reflected upon Logan. The saddest thing about this entire scenario was that there had been so many people who might potentially have wanted him dead. He'd lived his life in a way that had alienated many of the people who loved him, and he created grudges in people who might otherwise have been his friends. No matter how I screwed up my life, I thought sadly to myself, at least I knew that people cared, as was evidenced by my full hospital room.
It got fuller just then when Jack walked in. He still wore an industrial-strength Band-Aid on his arm from the bloodletting. Why is it that hospitals always slap on the kind that you can't remove without crying?
“Jack,” I said, with a special smile for him. I saw my mother's antennae emerging from her unusually messy brown hair. “Did you call Bill and give him the lowdown for me?”
“Yeah. He said the USB drive is police evidence, but he can write up the preliminary story tonight. He's coming to see you later.”
“Okay.” I sighed deeply.
“I don't think anyone should come to see you,” my mother said. “You've sustained a terrible injury.” She scowled at what she considered Bill's rudeness.
“Mom, he has to get this information. And I'm sorry to tell you that it will put the final nail in Don Paul's corrupt coffin. He was going to send absentee ballots to the dead. He had one ready for Milly Baker, Mom.” This had the desired effect. My mother's mouth gaped, her fists clenched, and her eyes narrowed into what Gerhard called “the Delia Glare.” I had destroyed yet another city hall icon, and my poor mother would probably never be the same.
I decided it was time for the good news. “Listen, Mom,” I said. “Let me change the subject for a second. Are you doing anything on June third?”
I saw Jack's eyebrows hitch up a fraction, and a pleased smile appeared on his face. “Madeline, I don't have my calendar with me,” my mother snapped, still reeling from the bad news. “And you shouldn't be planning anything either. You'll still be recovering. From what the doctor said, it will take months. What's on June third?”
I gestured to Jack, implying that he should tell her. He stepped forward and put an arm around my mother. “That's when Madeline and I have decided to get married.”
There have been very few “Kodak moments” in my life, but this one would top the charts, had I been keeping track. My mother's eyes immediately filled with tears. Her relief seemed to be competing with her joy, but in either case it was a positive reception of the news. My father, in the meantime, clapped Jack on the back and walked over to pat my hair, making sure to get nowhere near my bandage.
Gerhard and Fritz linked arms and danced in alternating circles with ostentatious gaiety.
I decided to tease my mother. “Mom, if you really think we should put it off…”
She sent me a horrified glance. “No, no—I didn't realize what you were—no, I think it's a fine idea. A spring wedding. Really the best time to get married…new life…”
She babbled incoherently for a while, fearful that Jack and I might change our minds and obviously determined to keep me on the road to holy matrimony. Meanwhile, my brothers had begun singing their favorite wedding songs at the top of their lungs. They were currently on “We've Only Just Begun.” Fritz was singing lead, and Gerhard was doing a commendable job on background vocals. My father yelled over them, telling Jack about his wedding day, on which it had been ninety degrees. During the ceremony, as the story goes, three people fainted, one of whom was my father.
Into this scene of great hilarity and volume stepped Detective Perez. Fritz immediately stopped singing and tried to paste a suitable expression on his face. He looked like a pop star at a
Tiger Beat
photo session.
Gerhard simply stared in admiration. My mother didn't seem to register who the new arrival was; she was obviously seeing silk ribbons and white doves in her mind's eye. My father stopped his booming story (I thought Jack looked relieved), and we all stared at Perez.