It wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have, talking about Scottie, yet I hurried as promised, parking the Cherokee in front of her place. Maybe you should get her out of the house, I told myself. Take her to an early lunch someplace crowded, where she’d be less likely to break down. I was considering a few spots as I walked up her sidewalk. I was halfway to the door when it opened abruptly. I expected to see her standing there, grieving for her lost love. Instead, I saw a man dressed in white coveralls and a black ski mask. That’s not what started me running, though. It was the handgun that I could clearly see when he pushed open the screen door.
I heard a single gunshot as I dodged to my left. I was accelerating quickly, pumping my arms the way I had been taught during my junior year in high school when I tried running track and playing baseball at the same time. I crossed Joley’s yard and her neighbor’s yard and the yard next to that. I had been a sprinter and proud of it, yet when I reached the hundred-meter mark I started doing the same thing I had done in school—I slowed down. A quick glance over my shoulder showed me that the man in the coveralls was still in pursuit. I couldn’t tell if he was gaining or not. He was carrying the handgun in his right hand. He brought the hand up as if he were going to try for a running shot. By then I had reached the street, and I cut hard to my right. If he fired the gun, I didn’t hear it.
I had no idea where I was going. I was just running, pumping my arms because Coach told me you can run only as fast as you can pump your arms. I was pumping them slower and slower. I had been slacking off for months now. Walking through my martial arts classes, watching TV instead of hitting the exercise equipment in my basement, finding something else to do other than Rollerblade five miles a day while carrying weights in each hand, like I used to. I told myself I’d get back in shape when I started playing hockey again. Well, good luck with that if you can’t even run a lousy half mile from a killer with a gun in his hand, my inner voice said.
I glanced behind me again. At least the shooter was struggling, too. He slowed, then stopped altogether, resting his hands on his knees and gulping oxygen. I took refuge behind a parked car and watched him, ready to begin running when he did. Only he didn’t, lucky me. He brought his gun up and sighted down the barrel. We were about a hundred yards apart. Even so, I ducked behind the car, although to hit me from that range with a handgun would have been miraculous. He must have thought so, too, because he didn’t fire. Instead, he spun around and half walked, half jogged in the direction he had come.
I hadn’t considered Joley until the shooter turned away, hadn’t given her safety any thought at all. It was me I was concerned about, which, I decided, made me some kind of a jerk. I felt the guilt as I went to my pocket for the cell phone and fumbled it—my hands were shaking. Fatigue, I told myself. The cell phone was unlike the one I had dropped into the Mississippi River, the buttons were in different places, and it took me a few moments to activate it. Eventually I called 911. “Shots fired,” I said, even though there had only been the one. I gave the operator Joley’s address as well as my name. She asked for my location. I had to walk up the street a bit to read the signs. She told me that the police were on the way. I told her that I would meet them at the house. She said that was unwise, and I agreed with her.
The St. Paul cops were already on the scene when I reached Joley’s house. ’Course, I had given them a big head start while I cautiously retraced my steps, leery that the attacker would jump out at me again at any moment.
Joley’s front door was open. I saw two uniforms inside, along with Detective Jean Shipman, Bobby Dunston’s young, beautiful, smart-as-hell partner. I opened the screen and stepped across the threshold. Joley was sitting in one of her immaculate chairs; Jeannie was interviewing her. The cops didn’t see me until Joley sprang from the chair and crossed the room.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she chanted as she wrapped her arms around me. “He made me call you, he made me. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. I was glad she was apologizing to me. It meant I didn’t have to apologize to her.
Jeannie was standing directly behind her. She was a tall woman and attractive, with freckles the same color as her hair. When she was a kid, everyone told her how cute the freckles were and she liked to hear it; not so much now that she was passing for an adult. She flashed a two-second smile at me.
“There you are, McKenzie,” she said. “I thought we’d have to send the dogs out after you.”
I told her that would have been nice, especially if one of the dogs had been carrying a keg of brandy around his neck.
