I Shall Not Want

  The girl and her baby ran screaming into the dining room. Russ hit a brown corduroy chair, the weight of his body skidding it across the floor. He stumbled upright, swung toward where the shooter’s body had fallen, saw Isabel Christie sagging, unconscious, against the couch. And then a baseball bat smashed into his chest.

  Russ turned, not understanding, and another bat struck his upper thigh, white-hot pain streaking along his hip, and he slipped, his leg useless, and saw him in the doorway to the front hall, the second man. Russ saw the gun pointed at him, tried to raise his Glock, too slow, too slow. Russ squeezed off a round but the next shot punched him in the chest and blew him over.

  He heard more shots, three, four, like a movie playing in a different room. His awareness burrowed inward, as if all the universe were six feet three inches long and contained within his skin. Labored breathing. Sluggish heart. Burning hip. Throbbing chest.

  Lyle’s face dropped into view for a moment. He didn’t bother Russ with a lot of talking, just turned and started ripping his uniform blouse open. Lyle. His friend. Why hadn’t he forgiven him? Instead of carrying his grudge around like an old set of keys. He closed his eyes.

  “Call nine-one-one,” Lyle said to someone. Russ’s skin was clammy. He shivered convulsively. The wooden floor beneath him was winter-cold.

  “Get me something I can use for compresses,” Lyle said.

  He tried to breathe in, but there was a bubble blocking his throat, like swallowing inside out. He gurgled and hacked.

  “Hurry, Knox!” Lyle’s hands were cradling his skull, turning his head so he could spit. Liquid gushed out of his mouth. He could breathe again. Lyle’s hands went away.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Knox said. She didn’t sound so good.

  “Shut up,” Lyle said. “Get these civilians out of here.”

  There were noises, children, but they seemed increasingly far away. The pain was everything. The only thing. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want that to be the last thing. He opened his eyes. Lyle was on his knees, stripping his belt out of his pants. “Didn’t know . . . you felt that way,” Russ managed.

  Lyle’s hands stuttered for a second. “You should be so lucky,” he said. He finished pulling his belt free. “I’m gonna tourniquet your thigh, slow down this bleeding. It’s gonna hurt like a ring-tailed bitch.” He bent over, out of Russ’s line of sight, and then a five-thousand-volt electrical shock went through his leg.

  “Je . . . fu . . . Chr. . . .” Russ gasped. The pain curled him forward, as if he could rise and escape it. He caught sight of his own chest.

  “Lay back,” Lyle said. He did. Lyle laid something over his chest. “I’m gonna compress you until the EMTs arrive. Won’t be long.”

  He lifted his hand, stopping Lyle with a strengthless motion. “Lyle.” He could feel another bubble rising in his throat. He wanted to say this before it choked him off. “I’m sorry.” He opened his hand. “Friend.”

  Lyle took his hand and squeezed too hard. His face pinched. “I don’t wanna hear any goddamn last words or deathbed apologies from you, you hear?”

  He tried to say something, but the rushing liquid filled his throat, his mouth, his nose. He turned his head and retched, coughed, spluttered.

  As soon as his mouth was clear, Lyle leaned on him, crushing him, hurting him. Russ tried to bat him away but he didn’t have anything left. It was heavy, so heavy, like cold concrete burying him. He heaved for air. Lyle was going to suffocate him trying to save him. “Can’t . . . breathe . . .” he got out.

  “I think you’ve punctured a lung,” Lyle said. “The EMTs will set you to rights. Listen.” He heard his breath, his heart, his blood taking its last few trips around the system. “They’re almost here.”

  It wasn’t Lyle. It was him. He was dying. He thought of Clare. Oh, love. I wish we had had more time. He was going to die, and she would be left with hateful, angry words as their last good-bye. Already forgotten, he wanted to say. I always knew what was in your heart. Now, right now, the slate was wiped clean.

  “Lyle . . . tell Clare. . . .” He struggled to get enough air to push out the words. “Tell her . . .”

  “You can tell her yourself when you see her,” Lyle said.

  He inhaled again, but it wasn’t enough. His lungs burned. His head buzzed. She would know. She would have to know.

  “Russ?” Lyle’s voice receded into the distance, with the children and the gunshots. “Don’t you die on me, Russ!”

  So, how do you pray? he’d asked her once.

  She’d thought about it a long moment. She always listened, always took his questions seriously. Say what you believe, she said. Say what you’re thankful for. Say what you love.

  He’d never been one for prayer. But there was a last time for everything. “Clare,” he said. Then everything stopped.

  XV

  No official church involvement, that was the dictat. Volunteers, on their own, could work with the migrant farmhands. That’s what they had agreed on. Well, it was her day off. She could do what she wanted on her day off. And if she wanted to drive to the Rehabilitation Center and pick up Lucia Pirone for a sedate drive around the countryside, that was her own business. If they happened to stop in at a few farms and check in with the Spanish-speaking workers, that was her own damn business, too.

  “You’re sure this isn’t going to get you in trouble with your bishop?” Sister Lucia shifted in the passenger seat. The pin in her hip was healed enough for the center to release her for the afternoon, but it was plain it hadn’t healed enough to be comfortable.

  “Absolutely sure,” Clare said. “If he doesn’t find out.”

  Sister Lucia laughed. “I like the way you think.”

  “We’re going to have to find a better solution, though. Sooner rather than later. I’m away one weekend out of four as it is. Smuggling you out of the center three days a month doesn’t cut it.”

  “You know Christophe St. Laurent? From Sacred Heart? He’s willing to drum up volunteers, but he’d like to talk to you at some point and see if any of your people would consider continuing on, even if the outreach isn’t sponsored by your church.”

  In the rearview mirror, a whirl of red and white bloomed. She glanced at the speedometer; caught up in conversation, she had eased off the gas. She was now going the legal speed. She steered for the shoulder.

  The first car blew past her at a speed that rattled her windows. A second car, and then an SUV, flew in its wake. State police. No sirens. Responding to a call.

  Her chest squeezed, as if someone had wrapped an unfriendly hand around her heart.

  Then she heard the whoop-whoop-whoop of an emergency vehicle. She stomped on the brake, grinding her front wheels into the dirt at the shoulder. “What on earth?” Sister Lucia threw out a hand to brace herself on the dashboard.

  Clare turned around in time to see the ambulance crest the rise behind her, blue lights beating in time with the pulse of her blood. From the corner of her eye, she could see Sister Lucia cross herself.

  The vehicle blazed past, almost too fast to read MILLERS KILL EMERGENCY on its side.

  “Do you think—” Sister Lucia started. She read the papers like everyone else. “Could they have found another body?”

  Clare shook her head. “Those weren’t Millers Kill police cruisers. They don’t normally get the state police involved, unless they need one of their special units, like crime scene or a dive team or”—the penny fell as she said the words—“tactical response.”

  “Which is?”

  “The men who show up if there’s a hostage situation or officers under fire.” Clare released the brake and tromped on the gas, jumping her Subaru back onto the road, sparing a glance for oncoming traffic only after it would’ve been too late to avoid it.

  She accelerated down the country highway. Sister Lucia kept one hand wedged against the dash and grabbed her armrest with the other. “Perhaps,” she shouted—the open windows that had let in a pleasant breeze
at forty miles an hour were shrieking wind tunnels at sixty-five—“they’ve found the killer!”

  That’s what Clare was afraid of. Oh, God, please be with them. Please let the ambulance just be a precaution. Please let nobody be hurt.

  She reached an intersection. “Which way?” she asked. “Where’d they go?”

  Sister Lucia’s hand, soft and powder-dry, settled over her arm. “Wait,” she said. “If they came along this road, chances are good they’ll return this way as well.”

  “But it might be too late!”

  The nun looked at her, a twist of a smile drying her face. “My dear, what do you think you’re going to do?”

  “Not sit here and wait to see what happens.” Clare spun the wheel, and the Subaru squealed onto Seven Mile Road. Sister Lucia whooped and grabbed for the door handle.

  “What if this is the wrong way?” the nun shouted.

  “Fly or die,” Clare yelled.

  Sister Lucia rolled her window up, shutting off half the rush of air. “Remember what I said about fearlessness?”

  “Sure do.”

  “I take it back.”

  A wail from somewhere, rising, falling. Clare glanced in her rearview mirror. A whirl of blue and white. Another ambulance. She took her foot off the gas and let the Subaru roll, half on, half off, the narrow dirt shoulder. The Corinth ambulance screamed past them, followed by a Millers Kill squad car. Clare caught the driver’s blocky outline, but it could have been almost any of them. She kicked the car back up to speed and then some, racing after the emergency vehicles, bombing over the low hills, bouncing into the hollows, slanting way over the lines as she powered through curves.

  The ambulance and the cruiser had turned up a skinflint country road and she followed too fast; she skidded, lost her grip on the road, the whole car sliding toward the ditch. She cursed and gave the wheel some slack and trod on the gas, and the tires caught, spinning a shower of shredded Indian paintbrush and buttercups as she surged back onto the asphalt.

  She took the turn onto the dirt road a little slower. Roared through a wide-open gate, up and up until she crested and saw the carnival from Hell, ambulances and cop cars and uniforms and guns. Children and trees and peeling clapboards and broken glass. Dust hanging in the air, loud voices, weeping, and the electric-burr sound of radios demanding information.

  She hit the brakes and skidded, heeling her car onto the grass at the side of the drive. She leaped out, spun in place, and pointed to Sister Lucia. “Stay here!”

  State SWAT team members, ominous in black and armor, stalked across the dooryard and around the house and barn in patterns that made sense only to them. She slowed down, uncertain what was going on, where the center was, the thought dawning that maybe the ambulances were just a precaution, like she had hoped, and she was going to look pretty silly when—then she spotted Kevin Flynn. Standing alone at the bottom of the porch steps. Crying.

  Her feet moved her forward even though her head was howling, Run! Run! She had been here before, at this moment. No going back to before. There would only be after. After the diagnosis. After the accident. After hearing whatever terrible thing Kevin was going to tell her.

  Hadley Knox ran onto the porch, followed by Eric McCrea. “Flynn!” she yelled, then stared, open-mouthed, at Clare. Movement, voices, behind the officers. McCrea shoved Knox out of the way, and the paramedics emerged, carrying their burden with controlled speed. One of them was rapid-firing unintelligible information into her radio. One of them held a trembling IV bag aloft, and the third balanced a portable heart monitor against the side of the cart, its beep-beep-beep counting out the seconds.

  The rest of it she saw as fragments: his sandy hair, the oxygen mask, one boot lolling off the stretcher. Khaki sleeve, blue surgical bandages, red blood. So much blood.

  Kevin was sobbing beside her, but she couldn’t make a sound. It felt as if her chest was bound and locked.

  “Careful, now.” Karl, one of the Millers Kill EMTs. “Careful!” They descended the porch stairs, quick and smooth, and as they passed her, she saw his hand, tan, limp, still wearing his wedding ring. Her voice tore free in a wrenching, animal cry.

  She lunged after the pallet and Lyle was in the way, more blood, soaked in blood, reeking of it—and he caught her and held her, saying, “Stop it! Stop it,” wrapping her and smearing her and marking her with Russ’s blood while she howled like a dog.

  The steady beep-beep-beep turned into a single warbling alarm. The breath caught in Clare’s throat. One of the EMTs swore. They dropped the pallet. Annie ripped a syringe off a Velcro pack and tore it open. Karl threw himself to his knees and began chest compressions, sharp fast pumps that looked like they would snap Russ’s already-wounded body in two. The third paramedic moved in, blocking Clare’s view, leaving her with only the high, piercing alarm to tell her that Russ was dead.

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

  Dead. How long? Death was a process, not an on-off switch. She knew that.

  For thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

  The EMTs communicated in short harsh bursts, microwave information. Annie broke open another syringe.

  Thou spreadest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.

  Kevin’s sobs fell to gasps. Silence spread around them like ripples from a pond.

  Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup overfloweth.

  Was it a minute? Two? The alarm began to sound like an inconsolable cry. A wailing for the dead that will not return.

  “Surely”—her voice cracked—“thy goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life?”

  The alarm blipped. Blipped, beeped, paused, beeped, and settled into a steady rhythm. Clare sagged against Lyle, whose fingers she finally felt cutting into her arms.

  “Go, go!” the third man said. They heaved the pallet up and surged toward the open ambulance doors.

  And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

  “Christ Jesus Almighty,” Lyle said, his voice shaking.

  “Amen,” she said into his shoulder.

  He released her. “You fit to drive to the hospital?”

  She nodded. “Where are they taking him? Glens Falls?”

  “Washington County. One of their ER docs used to work in New Orleans. He’s seen more gunshot cases than anyone else in the area.”

  The ambulance doors slammed shut. The lights and siren started up.

  “Go on,” he said. “I need a word with the rest of ’em, then I’ll be along.”

  She took a step toward her car. Turned. “Lyle,” she said, “what happened?”

  “I had a vest for him. Right in my hand.” He stared at the gore running down his fingers. “It was right in my hand. But he had to be a goddam hero.” He wiped his face into his upper arm. “If he lives, I swear to God I’m going to kick his ass from here to Fort Ticonderoga.”

  XVI

  They were at the scene all day: him and Hadley, Eric and Noble, and four state CSI technicians. Two mortuary vans arrived for the dead gang members and the body of the Children and Family Services caseworker. An assistant DA and a plainclothes investigator from the NYSPD were checking out whether the chief and MacAuley had fired their guns lawfully at the gangbangers. They made Hadley talk to the suit; the rest of the MKPD had bad feelings about state investigators. Emergency counselors from CFS were teary-eyed over the death of their colleague. Relatives came to claim the kids. By phone, an agent from the First District Anti-Gang Task Force and the mayor reminded them they were all eligible for free mental health services after traumatic events. They made Hadley talk to the mayor, too; she had lived in California for fifteen years, and Californians believed in that sort of stuff.

  The deputy chief kept them updated with calls to Kevin’s cell phone. “He’s gone into surgery.” That was good. “His heart stopped again.” That was bad. “He survived surgery.” Hadley and Noble thought that was g
ood. Eric thought it was pretty thin gruel. “Survived?” Eric said. “What’s that, the minimal? Like batting .100?”

  Kevin didn’t say much. Thinking about the chief dying made him feel sick to his stomach. His head was stuffed with death: the sprawled and bloody bodies of the Punta Diablo gang members, the slack-mouthed corpse of the CFS woman, and the mutilated remains of Amado Esfuentes. He couldn’t seem to stop tears from rolling down his cheeks at odd moments. One of the staties made a crack, but Eric McCrea dragged him aside and said something to shut him up.

  Eventually, they finished. One after another, the counselors and investigators and technicians and morticians rolled away down the drive, until it was only the MKPD and it was time to go.

  “Get in the car,” Hadley called from behind the wheel of her cruiser.

  He was standing in the spot where his squad car had been. “MacAuley took your unit,” she went on. “For God’s sake, let’s get out of here and get something to eat. I’m starving.”

  He got in. He wasn’t sure he could eat anything. He looked out the window while she drove, the green fields, purpled with loosestrife and thistles, the indigo mountains standing against the long western rays of the sun. It didn’t seem right, that everything went on, beautiful and oblivious, while people who had been alive this morning lay on cold slabs this evening.

  “What was the last word from the dep?” Hadley’s voice was quiet.

  “He’s on a ventilator. He hasn’t regained consciousness.”

  Hadley worried her lower lip. On another occasion, he would’ve thought it was hot. “Sometimes, that’s good,” she said. “You know. Like a healing sleep.”

  “Yeah.”

  They both watched the countryside unfold as they rolled up and down the Cossayuharie hills. Suddenly, she said, “You got anything to eat at your place, Flynn?”

  “Uh . . . yeah. Frozen meals. Leftover pizza.”