Authors: James Patrick Hunt
Hastings retrieved his cell phone, fumbled with the buttons.
Before he could finish dialing, he heard a voice, steady and authoritative. Its confidence chilled him as nothing ever had before.
The voice coming across the field, saying, “You shouldn’t have come after me.”
Reese stood behind a tree, on the other side of the fairway. The knoll was in view; the cop was not. If the cop came out from behind the knoll to shoot him, he would not know where Reese was and that would be the end of him. Reese steadied his body against the tree, the butt of the rifle in his right shoulder, his finger on the trigger.
He waited for the cop to say something back to him. Maybe beg for his life, say something about a wife and kids.
But he heard nothing.
Reese put his eye to the starlight scope and saw the knoll in the light green screen. Waited to see if the man behind it would stand and try to make a run for it. …
A flash of color coming into the screen—
Reese took his eye off the scope, looked across the park. Now he could hear the siren.
A police car, its blue and red lights flashing, coming around a bend in the road. A pause as the car got closer; then he saw two gunfire flashes as the cop fired two shots.
Reese stepped back behind the tree, taking cover.
Then he realized the shots were not directed at him. The cop was doing it to signal the police car. Shooting at the sky, as if to send up a flare.
It was working, the police car skidding and then coming onto the golf course, its spotlight sweeping across the field.
Reese stepped away from the tree and then ran south.
The police car reached the knoll and scrunched to a stop, leaving ruts in the close-cut grass. Murph got out holding the shotgun.
“Stay down,” Hastings said. “He’s got a rifle.”
The patrol officer continued to shine the spotlight across the dark, revealing nothing but trees and ground.
Murph bent over and ran to Hastings, dropped to the ground next to him.
“You hit?” Murph asked.
“Yeah,” Hastings said. “Shoulder. Get something pressed down on it, will you? Did you call for backup? I don’t want this fucker getting away.”
Murph’s focus was on the wet patch on the lieutenant’s shoulder. Murph had been shot before. Worse than this, he thought, but it’s never good being shot. And somehow it was worse when you saw another’s wound.
“Murph,” Hastings said. “Did you call for backup?”
“Yes, I did. Christ, George.” Murph turned and shouted, “Get a fucking ambulance here, you idiot. He’s been shot.”
The patrol officer hesitated, still manning the spotlight.
And Murph said, “
Never mind that shit
. Get that ambulance now.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Murph—” Hastings said, his voice gravelly and low.
“Shut up, George. If we don’t get the guy today, we’ll get him tomorrow. He’s not worth your life.”
Hastings fell back. He looked up at the sky again. Looking at dark blue night, stars …
“Murph?” the patrolman said. “The ambulance is coming. Is he…”
“He passed out,” Murph said.
Now there were more sirens.
Reese could hear them throughout the park. And he could see them in the distance. Police cars finding their way in, slipping in like snakes. Reese ran down a hill and crossed a road. As he did, he looked to his left and saw a police car come out of tunnel. It was at least a hundred yards away, maybe even two hundred, and maybe the officers inside wouldn’t see him as he moved up the hill on the other side, still carrying the rifle. But then the car approached, its siren piercing, and he could hear its motor, too, and he threw himself flat on the ground. The noise of the oncoming police car increased, then reached a pitch as it passed him and kept going.
Reese stood up and kept going, leaving the rifle on the ground.
They kept him in the hospital overnight. He vaguely remembered waking at six or seven in the morning, the room still dark but a hint of gray at the window, and a nurse came in and gave him a shot of something. He wanted to ask her to tell his daughter he was fine and that he would be home later, but then he fell back asleep. When he next opened his eyes, it was almost noon.
Eileen was standing there, tear stains down her cheeks, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“Yes,” she said, “it’s your ex-wife.”
Hastings said, “Ohhh. Does this mean I’ve died and gone to hell?”
Eileen laughed, emotion mixing with it.
“You idiot,” she said.
“Sorry. Bad joke.”
“No, not that. I meant going after that psycho by yourself. You want to leave my daughter without a father?”
“No. Eileen, don’t say things like that. Please.”
She was chastened by his words, which was not common for her. “Okay,” she said. “I won’t.”
There was silence between them for a while. Then Hastings said, “How is Amy?”
“She’s okay, I think. She’s downstairs. The doctor told her you had minor surgery. Just to clean out the wound. Something called an I and D?”
“Irrigation and drainage. Yeah, that’s what they told me, too, before they put me down. I guess they were telling the truth, huh?”
“Yeah.” Eileen shook her head. “Jesus, George, you scared me.”
“Sorry. Who notified you?”
“Joe. God, I haven’t spoken to him in years. He’s never liked me, has he?”
Hastings did not answer her.
Eileen said, “Anyway, when he called me, I knew something bad had happened. He said up front that you were fine but that you had been shot. Or ‘grazed,’ he said. Whatever that means.”
“It means there’s no bullet in me.”
“I guess he wanted to contact Amy through me. That’s something, isn’t it?”
“You
are
her mother.”
“Ted’s here, too. Downstairs with Amy. He wants to know if there’s anything he can do.”
Hastings thought about a transgression years past. Well … the man was here. Christ, modern family arrangements.
“Tell him thanks,” Hastings said. “Really. They told me last night that if the surgery went well, they would release me today. Is that what they told you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Listen, Eileen.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want Amy coming in here, seeing me like this. It may be a little much for her.”
“She wants to.”
“I know. But if I can get out of here in a couple of hours, see you down in the lobby, I think that would be better. For her, I mean.”
Eileen looked at her ex-husband and he looked at back at her. For a moment, he persuaded himself that he had fooled her and perhaps himself, too.
“Yeah,” Eileen said. “For her.”
Eileen agreed to let Hastings drive Amy back to school. Before that, Hastings took her to lunch at Blueberry Hill, where they both ordered cheeseburgers. Hastings didn’t have much of an appetite. But he didn’t want to worry the girl. He hoped he looked normal, though he winced in pain when he moved his arm to get into the booth. He was thankful the girl did not notice this.
Amy sipped at her soda while Hastings alternated between a cup of coffee and ice water. He felt the coffee go straight to his head, though not in an altogether bad way. The food arrived and she worked on it without engaging with him. Hastings ate a couple of bites and left it alone. The morphine had worn off and now he had entirely lost his appetite.
She kept watching him. But at the same time, she would not make eye contact with him. Like she was fearful he would leave her. The poor child. Hastings told himself to hold on. If he wasn’t careful, he’d start bawling in front of her, and that wouldn’t do either of them any good.
Hastings said, “Amy, it’s not that bad a thing.”
She looked up at him and for a moment did not say anything. Then: “But you could have…”
“I didn’t. It was like an accident.”
“You were shot accidentally?”
Hastings smiled, in spite of things. She could be a little smart-ass, like her mother.
“No, that wasn’t accidental. More police officers die in car wrecks than from anything else. It’s a very, very rare thing to be shot. Or even be shot at.”
“But you %
were
. ”
“Yeah. And now I’m fine.”
She continued to watch him, as if she feared he would fly away.
Hastings said, “Amy, look at it this way. The odds of being shot are, like, one in ten thousand. Now it’s happened and I’m fine. I’ve got another ten thousand chances.”
“I don’t think that’s funny.”
“Sorry. I’m sorry I frightened you.”
She looked away from him. “Why don’t you just quit?”
Hastings hesitated, then said, “I don’t know.”
“That’s not an answer,” Amy said. “You get mad at me when I say I don’t know.”
“Do I?”
“All the time. You say, ‘Don’t say you don’t know when you know.’”
“Sorry. Look, I can’t explain why I do this. I like doing it, I guess. Maybe I could do something else. Go to law school or”—he almost said
Christ
—“or sell real estate. But I wouldn’t be very good at it. I don’t think I’d like it.”
“You like this?”
“I think so.”
Amy said, “Jenny Novacek’s dad used to be a policeman. Now he owns a business.”
Hastings had met Jenny’s dad once while waiting to pick Amy up at school. Novacek had wasted little time telling Hastings that he had been a cop with County PD and left because there was no future for a dude who wanted to make some money. Now he owned a convenience store and gas stop on a well-chosen intersection in Alton and he had a house in Creve Coeur and a summer home on the Lake of the Ozarks. Hastings thought Novacek was a yutz.
Hastings says, “Well, that’s good for him.”
“Jenny said they got a bigger house and she’s going to Country Day next year.”
Hastings smiled. “So you want me to make more money?”
“I didn’t say that.” She looked at him, a bit ashamed now, but hurt, too. She said, “I didn’t say that, Daddy. That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
“I just meant it would be nicer. That’s all.”
“To have nicer things? A better school? I know that.”
“I’m not talking about nicer things. I’m not complaining. I’m saying it would be nicer not to have to be scared. Not to have you gone at night. You’re not the only one, you know.”
Her voice broke at the end and then she was crying. Hastings moved around the booth and sat next to her, taking her in his arms. She wept, and he stopped himself from weeping and held her and told her he was sorry.
After awhile, Amy said, “I’m sorry.”
“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” Hastings said. “I was being a jerk.”
“Kinda.”
Hastings said, “Maybe it is selfish of me, staying with this. Maybe if I’d known I was going to have a family, I would have chosen something else. But now I’m—now I’m a little too … old … to make changes.”
“You’re not that old. You just don’t want to.”
“Maybe that’s true, too,” Hastings said. “But we don’t get to choose who or what we are. Not completely. Your friend’s dad, he was probably a businessman who shouldn’t have been a cop. But I’m not a businessman. I’d die of boredom if I had to run a convenience store.”
“There are other things.”
“I know. But this is
my
thing.”
She looked at him and he said, “I don’t know if I can explain it to you. Even if you were a grown-up, you probably still wouldn’t understand it.”
“Does Mom understand it?”
“She does, actually. She always has.”
“Mom?”
Hastings shook his head. He knew Amy often had trouble respecting Eileen. And he knew that he had had a part in creating this. Now he made his voice firm and said, “You understand things she doesn’t. But there are some things she understands that you don’t. Okay?”
“…Okay.”
“When you get older, you’ll choose what you want to do. It won’t be my decision or your mother’s. It’ll be yours. And we’ll try to back you as best we can.” Hastings leaned back, his shoulders touching the booth. “Sorry, but that’s the best I can give you.”
They were silent for a while. Then Amy looked at his plate.
“You’re not going to eat that?” she said.
“I’m not very hungry,” Hastings said.
Amy said, “I’ll ask the waitress for a to-go bag. We shouldn’t waste it.”
The secretary told Hastings to go on in, and he did. He was somewhat surprised to see Captain Anthony in Deputy Chief Murray’s office, too. Captain Anthony stood to greet Hastings, and Fenton Murray was forced to stand also.
They took seats and Murray asked Hastings what had happened.
Hastings gave his side of it and said he had not talked with the guys on his team since he left the hospital, so he couldn’t speak for them. He told the story slowly and deliberately, as if he were typing out a report or his words were being recorded.
He finished and Murray said, “Did you get a good look at the man?”
Hastings said, “I can’t say that I did. I didn’t see him on the stairwell, just heard him. I saw the back of him in the alley, about forty to fifty yards from me. But if I were asked if I believed it was Reese, I would say that I do.”
Murray said, “Why?”
“I don’t know, exactly. The weapon he used. The way he ran. The position he took in the apartment building.”
Murray let silence fill the room. Then he said, “That’s it?”
“Well,” Hastings said, “no, that’s not all of it. It was also the way he spoke to me.”
“Spoke to you?” Murray said. “I thought you said you didn’t see him?”
“That is what I said. We didn’t have a conversation, no. But I heard him. He called out to me.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘You shouldn’t have come after me.’”
“‘You shouldn’t have come after me.’”
“Yes, sir.”
“He said this when?”
“After he shot me.”
“Anything else? I mean, did he say anything else?”
“No.”
“And these words, they make you think the shooter was John Reese?”
“Yes.”
Murray displayed another skeptical frown and said, “The senator thinks you overreacted.”
There was silence for a moment, Hastings waiting for some sort of elaboration. He didn’t get one.