Blindside

  “Yeah, right, real unfair.”

  Sarcasm was good, she supposed. She said, “I went to the women’s room in the park, tore off some of my sweatshirt, pulled down my jeans and wrapped it tight around my hip. Really, it looked to me like a flesh wound, the bullet went right through me. I’m not going to die, Miles.”

  “You’d better not or I’ll really be pissed. So would Sam. So would Keely.”

  “I don’t want them to know about this.”

  He gunned the Mercedes into the hospital parking lot, and swerved into the circular turnabout in front of the emergency room, figuring they’d get instant attention, and so they did.

  He held her hand when the nurse pulled down her jeans and untied the strips of sweatshirt she’d wrapped around herself. The piece of sweatshirt that was directly over the wound was soaked with blood. She didn’t touch it. Miles was ready to yell when Dr. Pierce came barreling into the cubicle in the next instant, out of breath. “Hey, I hear we got a gunshot wound,” he said, and looked down at Katie’s hip. “Would you look at that. I heard about the shooting, Mr. Kettering, but they said it had to do with the FBI. They didn’t say anyone was injured. I don’t understand why she didn’t see a doctor right away.”

  “We’ll talk about it later, Dr. Pierce,” Katie said. “Please, just clean me up.”

  “This is going to hurt a bit, Mrs. Kettering.” He managed to get the rest of the sweatshirt off the wound, but of course it had stuck and Katie almost yelled at the pain.

  But she hung in there, squeezing Miles’s hand really hard when the nurse used alcohol to clean off all the dried blood.

  “The bullet appears to have gone through the fleshy part of the side of your hip, Mrs. Kettering. You two know, of course, that I’ll have to report this.”

  “Yes, of course,” Miles said. “You wondered why we didn’t come to the ER immediately. Well, my wife didn’t want our children to know she’d been shot and that’s why we’re here now.”

  “Not very bright of you, Mrs. Kettering.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I just bet you’d choose to let your kids see you dripping blood if you had a choice.”

  Dr. Pierce paused a moment, then slowly nodded. “You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

  “A sheriff. I know when a wound is bad and when it can wait awhile. Nothing to hit here in my hip except fat, and that always grows back without a problem.”

  Miles said, “Call Detective Raven at DC Metro. He’ll tell you all about it. I’ll bet he’ll also want to smack my wife around a bit.”

  “Okay. Mrs. Kettering, I can see this hurts. We’re going to start an IV, give you some morphine. You’ll want to go to sleep on the examination table in just a minute or two. Then I can clean up this wound and stitch you together. I don’t think you’ll be needing any X rays. Hold on to your husband’s hand real tight. That’s it.”

  She sucked in her breath, and it was done. He left her for a moment; undoubtedly he was going to call Detective Raven.

  An hour later, Katie was walking slowly out of the hospital, supported by Miles.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he said, more for himself than for her, Katie thought, as he very carefully fastened her seat belt. “The doctor said you were lucky. Now, don’t move.”

  “I won’t.”

  When he was driving out of the parking lot, Katie said, “Thank you, Miles. I know this was a pain in your butt as well as mine, but, well, thank you.”

  “You’re my damned wife. You think I’d dab some iodine on your hip and go to sleep?”

  He was angry again. If she hadn’t felt so dopey, her brain cotton, she would have laughed. “Where are we going?”

  He turned to face her for a moment. “To the all-night pharmacy to get the Vicodin prescription filled. You’re to take a couple every four hours for a day or so.”

  “I really feel fine.”

  “That’s the morphine talking.”

  “I understand how you would get really upset what with all that dried blood on my hip.”

  “Don’t even start with me, Katie. I am so pissed at you—”

  “That’s all right, just so long as we keep this from the children.”

  Miles sucked in a deep breath. “Tomorrow, after I’m sure you’re up to it, we’re going to discuss who might have shot at us. I’ll bet that’s what Detective Raven is wondering. Count on him coming by tomorrow, along with half the FBI.”

  “Bring them on, Miles.” She closed her eyes and drifted off. She wasn’t aware that he’d stopped at the all-night pharmacy. She hadn’t awakened when he’d undressed her and tucked her into bed.

  She wasn’t aware that he held her hand until he woke her up at two o’clock and fed her two Vicodin. He held her hand the rest of that long night.

  The next morning, the lovely morphine was a hazy memory, the pain in her hip all too present. When Miles held out two big pills to her, she took them without a fuss.

  “Oh, no,” she said, “where are the kids?”

  “I’ll take care of the kids. It’s still early. When they’re up, I’ll tell them that you’ve got a bit of a stomach bug and to leave you alone until you decide to appear. Okay?”

  “I can tell you’re a parent. You’re good. Thank you, Miles.”

  He paced the room in front of her, then turned back to face her. “Katie, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this. I think you did the right thing. We don’t know how Sam and Keely are going to be this morning, how yesterday’s trauma will affect them, but I do know that if they knew you’d been shot, it would be much worse. So thank you. Now see that you heal while I think about how I’m going to keep the police away from you as long as possible.”

  “I’ll be just fine. Say early afternoon?”

  She fell asleep ten minutes later with just a pinch of pain in her hip.

  Miles stood a moment in the doorway, then looked down at his watch. It was only six-thirty in the morning. The kids would be up any time now. He hated lying to them, but not this time. He hoped they could carry it off. He didn’t want to see any more blank pain in Sam’s eyes for as long as he lived.

  39

  At eight o’clock that evening, only three hours after leaving Detective Raven down at Metro Headquarters in the Daley building, Savich came to stand in the kitchen doorway, watching Sherlock wipe spaghetti sauce off Sean’s mouth. Sean quickly replaced it with the next spoonful. What with all the excitement, they’d gotten home very late, and Sean was hungry, tired, and really hyped up. As for Sean’s parents, they both hoped some of Savich’s spaghetti would put him out. Savich said to Sherlock, not taking his eyes off his boy, “Are you ready for something you’re not going to believe?”

  Sherlock straightened midswipe. “I heard you talking on the phone to Miles. What’s going on?”

  “The shooter today. It seems he wasn’t after me. He was after Katie.”

  “After Katie? What do you mean?”

  Savich didn’t say anything for a moment as Sean clattered his spoon to his plate, climbed down from his chair, and made a beeline for his orange plastic ball in the corner. They both, for a moment, listened to him tell the ball that he was going to bounce it, good.

  When she looked up at him, Savich said, “He shot Katie.”

  “What? How? But that isn’t possible! She never said a word, she never acted wounded, she—”

  Savich leaned his head back against one of the cabinets, closed his eyes. “He shot her in the hip and she managed to hide it from all of us. The bullet went in and through. She’ll be okay. Miles called from the emergency room while the nurse was getting Katie into a robe. Turns out she didn’t say a word about it until after they’d gotten home and put the kids to bed. Then she tells him. He’s still so shaken up he could barely speak straight.”

  “She’s really okay?”

  “Yes, soon to be out with a smile on her face from the morphine. Just a couple days rest, and she’ll be fine.”

  Sherlock picked up a hot pad and hurled
it across the kitchen. It calmed her and didn’t make any noise to frighten Sean. “I don’t believe this, Dillon. It’s ridiculous, just plain dumb. She’s wounded and doesn’t even let on? No, that can’t be right, it can’t.”

  “She didn’t say anything because she didn’t want the kids any more frightened than they were. If you think about it, you can see Katie’s point. It was an adult decision, hers to make, I guess.”

  Sherlock’s heart was still pumping wildly. She threw another hot pad at the wall, calmed herself down. “It was brave of her.” She drew in a deep breath. “I hope I would have the presence of mind to do that. But wait, Dillon, if the shooter hit her—”

  “That means I wasn’t the target. Or, I really was the target, and he could have shot at her first, for the fun of it.”

  Savich straightened, shrugged. “Maybe he, whoever he is, just wanted to scare us. At this point, any guess is as good as any other. Who knows, it might have been a random shooting.” Neither of them believed that for an instant.

  Savich picked up Sean, who was tightly clutching his orange ball, and walked to the front window in the living room. He stared out into the calm dark night. A storm was expected to hit Monday, winter coming with a grand announcement. And the temperature would plummet. Sean dropped his ball, watched it roll under an end table. He then spoke in his father’s ear and patted his face, telling him things he understood, like good spaghetti—“I think Sean just said he wanted a puppy.”

  It was so ridiculous that for a moment Sherlock actually laughed and kissed her son’s sleepy face.

  She saw the strain on Dillon’s face, saw the restless movement of his hands, saw the scars on his hands and fingers from his whittling. She knew he’d been caught off guard by the same devastating feelings she had felt when that bullet had come so close to him and to Sean. It made her want to scream and cry at the same time. He said finally, as if he’d been holding the words inside but they now had to come out, “This was too close, Sherlock, far too close. Sean could have been killed.”

  Of course she agreed. The corrosive fear, the sense of absolute impotence—she nodded but didn’t say anything, just moved closer.

  Sean’s head now lay on his father’s shoulder. Savich lightly smoothed his back, cupped his head. She saw a spasm of fear cross his face. He said quietly, “I’ve been giving a lot of thought today to what I’ve been doing nearly all my adult life—being a cop. What if . . . what if, because of me, some crazy kills my son? It would be my fault, Sherlock, no one else’s, just mine, and it would all be because of what I choose to do for a living. I couldn’t live with that, I just couldn’t.”

  “No,” she said slowly, her eyes still on his face, “neither of us could.”

  He plowed forward, the words forcing themselves out of his mouth. “Maybe, just maybe, I should think about another line of work.” There, he’d said the unimaginable, and the earth hadn’t opened up and swallowed him. It was out in the open now, those words between them, and he didn’t say anything else, just let the unthinkable settle around him, and he waited. Sean suddenly lurched up against his palm, and smiled at his father. He patted his father’s face again with wet fingers.

  Sherlock closed in and put her arms around him, just as they had after the shooting, with Sean between them. Then she began to lightly scratch around the healing wound in his back. They stood there silently together for several minutes. Finally, she raised her face, patted his cheek with her fingers, hers thankfully not wet, and said, “Do you know, Dillon, I agree with you entirely.”

  He nearly fell back against the window with surprise. “You do?”

  “Yes, I do. But the only thing is, you’re the best cop I’ve ever met in my life.”

  “Maybe, but Sean—”

  She nodded. “This was so scary that both of us nearly went round the bend. But, you know, if you just stop to think about it, the solution to this isn’t difficult.”

  His head came up. “What solution?” He sounded irritated, and she was pleased. She could just imagine how deep he would dig in his heels if she argued with him, what with the worry and the guilt, worry and guilt that had nearly felled her as well.

  She went on her tiptoes and kissed him, and again hugged her boy and her husband tight.

  “Dillon, you’re a smart man.”

  “Yeah, well, what’s your point? What’s this easy solution?”

  She smiled up at him, kissed both him and Sean again, and said, “As I said, you’re smart. But here’s your problem; you’re just too much of a hero, Dillon; you feel too responsible, like you have to fix every bad thing that happens anywhere around you. It’s not just your job, it’s who you are.”

  “Yeah, sure, but—”

  “No buts. No more. You’re a cop, Dillon, one of the very best. It’s what you are, who you are. What happened in the park—it was scary, that’s for sure, but the fact is there are such things as random shootings. Would you have blamed yourself for being a cop then? I’ll tell you, there have been times when I’ve wanted to take you away to the Poconos, hide you in a cabin, and carry around six guns to protect you.”

  “And you don’t think I’ve felt the same way about you?”

  She gave him a big smile, reached up her hand and cupped his cheek. “I think we’re both doing exactly what we were meant to do. I plan for Sean to see us both well into old age. Get over it, Dillon. It’s time to move on.”

  He kissed her, pulled her hard against him again. Sean burped. “But—”

  “I know, there’s always a but. Let’s just work through this one day at a time, all right? You know as well as I do that the time to make a life-altering decision isn’t right after a huge scare.”

  Slowly, he nodded.

  “We’ve worked through everything else that’s come along and hit us in the chops. This is different because it’s the first time our jobs have come close to Sean, the first time our little tiger here could have been hurt because of what we do. It will be tough, but we’ll do the right thing. Don’t worry, we’ll sort it all out.”

  “Sherlock?”

  She lightly bit his neck in answer.

  “You want to spend some quality time with me?”

  She was laughing as she licked where she’d bitten. “Can I strip you naked and kiss you all over?”

  He swallowed hard, and nodded, looking at her smiling mouth. Sean burped again.

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON

  THE KETTERING HOME

  COLFAX, VIRGINIA

  Katie didn’t hurt if she stayed still, and that was a very nice thing. On the other hand, she wasn’t stupid enough to laugh or make any sudden movements. She was seated in Miles’s big comfortable leather chair, wearing sweats with a nice loose fleece top that hid the bandages under the sweats, her feet up on a big ottoman, her legs covered with a ratty afghan Miles’s mother had knitted many years before. She was wearing a pair of thick socks, no shoes.

  Cracker had taken Sam and Keely to a children’s movie matinee so they wouldn’t see or hear the cops. Both of them had seemed fine, thank God, neither suspecting that she had something other than the flu. She was thankfully spared enthusiastic hugs that would surely have brought a moan out of her. She smiled over Sherlock and Savich, who’d arrived a few minutes earlier.

  Miles brought in coffee and tea, and a plate of scones he’d picked up at Nathan’s Bakery just down on Cartwright Avenue.

  Detective Benjamin Raven said the moment he sat down on the comfortable sofa in the living room, ignoring both scones and coffee, “I am royally pissed, Mrs. Kettering. That was a really stupid thing to do.”

  To his surprise, she nodded. “I would agree with you, Detective, if I’d been wearing your cop’s shoes and not the victim’s.”

  It was Sunday, his buddies were waiting for him down at the sports bar with peanuts, beer, and the Redskins game. Then Mr. Kettering had called. He’d been nursing his snit for a good half hour now and he wasn’t about to let go without cutting loose on the woman who?
??d ruined his day. “You’re a cop, Sheriff, yet you pulled this stunt. You’ve come pretty close to obstructing justice.”

  “An interesting point, Detective,” Miles said, his voice mild, really quite reasonable now that he’d gotten over his own snit. He turned slightly in his chair and winked at Katie before he turned back. “I think it was pretty dumb, too, but we’ve already discussed why she did it. Can we move on to something helpful?”

  Detective Raven shouted at all of them indiscriminately, “Are all you people nuts? Your macho sheriff here could have bloody bled to death!”

  “I really prefer macha, Detective Raven.”

  “Don’t you try to jolly me out of this, Sheriff!”

  Miles said, “If she’d been shot bad, she would have yelled. She’s not stupid.” He paused a moment. “You would have yelled, wouldn’t you have, Katie?”

  “Oh yes. I’ve always believed you’ve got to live to fight another day.” She stared at Miles, then gave him such a brilliant smile he blinked.

  “Enough already,” Detective Raven said at last. He snagged a scone off the plate, poured himself a cup of coffee, and said, “If you guys are through praising this crazy woman, why doesn’t somebody tell me who you think fired at you.”

  Katie said, “I made a phone call back home to Jessborough just before you got here, Detective. Miles told you yesterday about all the hoopla we went through there. I asked about the congregation, about what was going on with them. Nothing, evidently. Interesting fact though. The place has been a disaster area what with all the storms, but once it started drying out, crews went out to the ruins of the McCamy house to start cleaning everything up and dig out the bodies. It’s still really slow going. There’s no word yet.”

  Detective Raven said, “You think one of the McCamys survived?”

  “No one could have survived in that house, Detective,” Miles said.