* * * *

  I can’t believe this. I’ve been to Cape May at least one week a year for my entire life and never once have I been to the police station. Now I’ve been here two times in half a dozen hours.

  Once it was established that I hadn’t run down the girl with a Rambo knife that no one could find, they let me go after another statement. Now, as I try to find my way out to the sidewalk, still not exactly sure where I am and not getting any offer from the men in uniform to transport me back to the scene of my awesome heroism, I see a couple other people nursing bloody wounds in the waiting room. An old man cradling a metal detector is holding a handkerchief to his scalp and muttering something about a “damn bird.” A mother is holding her toddler, rocking the child back and forth, a large bandage wrapped around a tiny forearm.

  “What the hell is going on?” I ask an officer in passing.

  He stops, scans the room. “Seagulls.”

 
Shawn Hopkins's Novels