In the same moment, the body of a gray-haired woman in a blue flowered housedress flew out of the window and sprawled across the flowerbed below. A man in green shorts and a gray T-shirt appeared at the window, then jumped out and grabbed the shotgun the old woman was still clutching in her arms. He took the end of the barrel, spun around and threw the gun across the lawn, sending it sliding and scraping its way across the street, to bang against the curb on the other side.
“Stanley!” Paula Lemoore screamed. She ran across the street and into the arms of her husband running toward her.
The old woman lay motionless in the juniper bushes. From all directions, police ran into the yard. A half-circle of men in blue blocked Cole’s view of Annie Clark. An ambulance pulled up in front of the Clark house. Two paramedics hopped out, opened the back doors, and removed a gurney. Stan Lemoore, his arm around his wife’s shoulders, walked across the street to the curb in front of his house and sat down.
Cole crossed the street. The paramedics stood over the body of Trevor Varney, and the police got Annie Clark up and on her feet. The blast of the shotgun hit Varney just above the jaw line; his handsome face was gone. The sight of the jagged flesh and shattered bone made Cole feel lightheaded.
“God, I never,” one of the paramedics began, then finished the thought to himself.
Cole approached the group of police officers. Annie Clark now faced one of the officers who was reading her rights to her. The other officers seemed to have lost interest in her and were turning their attention to the body on the lawn.
“Do you understand what I have just read to you, ma’am?” The officer, a tall red-haired policeman whose name tag read “McClaron”, paused. “Do you understand what you have done?”
“Yes, but he shouldn’t have been on my lawn. Alex never let the children cut across our lawn, ever.”
The old woman who moments before, so brutally and violently, ended the life of Trevor Varney, now stood small and frail. Her hair and the bun she wore on the back of her head had come undone. The rayon housedress that hung on her small frame was torn and exposed the yellowed fabric of her undergarments. Her shoulders were bowed, and the curving of osteoporosis gave her neck a strained, pulled look as she gazed up at the policeman. McClaron was in violation of department procedure, but didn’t have the heart to handcuff the old woman.
“Is there someone we can call for you, Mrs. Clark?” the officer asked gently.
“My Alex is gone, and Stanley Lemoore has killed Mr. Pip.”
“Mr. Pip, ma’am?”
“My Persian.”
“I see. But is there anyone, your children or other relatives, we can call for you?”
“No, we never could have any children. Alex, you know, meningitis in the Army, couldn’t...you know...”
“Mrs. Clark, do you know what you have done here?” McClaron spoke as if he were talking to a young child.
“I was scolding Stanley from across the street for killing Mr. Pip, and he pushed me out of the window! Pushed me! I turned to see what the loud noise was and he pushed me right out the window! I want him arrested and in jail. Why is he gone? He pushed me. He attacked me in my own home.”
“What about the gun, ma’am? What about shooting the gun?”
“Oh dear, I don’t like guns. Alex always kept that nasty shotgun in the closet. But I never would touch it. He kept it loaded, you know,” she said in almost a whisper. “Now that he’s gone, I don’t know what to do with it. Would you like to have it? I have no use for it.”
McClaron acknowledged Cole’s presence for the first time. In a stern expression, he shook his head, as if to say “stay back.” But in his eyes, there was a deep sadness. He turned to Annie Clark once again. “Mrs. Clark, we are going to have to take you down to the police station.”
“By all means, I want to file a complaint. Imagine being pushed through a window. I am an old woman. I could have been hurt badly, maybe even killed, why of all the nerve. And now all this!” Turning to the police and paramedics gathered around Varney’s body, she shouted in a high crackling voice, “You there, get off my lawn! Alex might come back soon, and he will be furious!”
“Can I get a female officer over here?” McClaron said into the microphone clipped to his shoulder epaulette.
“Officer, I want those people off my lawn.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Olson is on her way,” the radio scratched.
“Let’s wait over here, ma’am.”
“Oh, I need to lock up and get my things. Oh! I must look a fright. I’ll just go in and change.”
“No, I’m afraid we don’t have time for that. See, Officer Olson is here to give you a ride.” McClaron pointed to the black-and-white that had just pulled into the driveway.
“I must leave a note. Alex will be worried if he returns and I’m gone.”
“I’ll stay to make sure he knows.” Cole thought McClaron’s voice seemed to crack.
“This her?” a raspy voice female officer asked.
“This is Mrs. Clark. Please transport her downtown.” McClaron turned to Officer Olson and said something Cole couldn’t hear. Then McClaron turned his attention back to the old woman. “Okay, Mrs. Clark, this is Officer Olson. She will take you downtown.”
“A lady policeman? I never heard of such a thing! No wonder people think they can kill your cat and trample your lawn.”
“Please come with me, ma’am,” Olson barked.
“Remember what I said, Olson. Nice,” McClaron snapped.
Officer Olson guided Mrs. Clark to the patrol car. Cole approached McClaron.
“I’m Cole Sage with
The Sentinel
.”
“Harris’s friend, right?”
“Right.”
“I got nothin’ to say,” McClaron growled.
“What, you have a problem with Harris?”
“No, I got a problem with you. I hate newspaper people. They always get it wrong.”
“You ever read my stuff?” Cole asked.
“Nope, why should I? It’s all the same. Liberal blather.” McClaron turned and walked away.
Cole chuckled and turned to cross back to where the Lemoores were sitting. The paramedics covered Varney’s body with a white cloth, and the police taped off the area six feet in all directions around the body. Two detectives were watching as a police photographer took pictures of the shotgun laying in the gutter. About 10 feet away, Paula and Stan Lemoore sat side by side on the curb, holding hands.
“How you doin’, Stan?” Cole said, reaching out to shake the man’s hand.
“Fine, I guess,” Stan said, reciprocating the shake.
“This gentleman stayed with me while you were...” Paula stopped and looked at Stan.
“My name is Cole Sage. I’m with
The Sentinel
. Do you want to talk about what happened?”
“Man, I don’t
know
what happened. One minute I’m flat on my back, the next I’m looking down the barrels of a double-barrel twelve gauge. Annie said I killed Mr. Pip and she was going to show me how it feels. She made me go in the house and sit on the couch. I kept saying, ‘Annie, put the gun down, you’re just excited.’ She said that Alex was going to be very angry when he got back. Alex died about five years ago. So I said, ‘Annie, Alex is gone.’ She started talking about all this stuff I did to her. It didn’t make any sense. Hell, I mow her lawn for God’s sake. This is crazy.”
“What made her shoot?”
“She just kept talking about Alex this, and Alex that, and how he didn’t like people on the lawn. She was talking about how Mr. Pip was her only friend and I had taken him from her. About then, the guy started talking on the megaphone thing. That really set her off. She started yelling. Then she just whirled around and fired...” Stan’s voice trailed off.
“And after that?” Cole prompted softly.
“She had her back to me, and the window was mostly gone, you know, so I just rushed her and gave her a real hard push. I had no idea she had shot the policeman until after I was outside.”
Stan put his head down between his knees and started to wretch. Paula gently rubbed his back. “You’ll be okay, honey, you’re okay, breathe deep.”
“Do you want the paramedics? Maybe they can give you something.”
Paula looked up at Cole and smiled. “We’ll be fine, thanks. Maybe you should go. Thanks for stickin’ with me, you’re a nice man, but we need to be alone now, okay?”
“Of course. You take care,” Cole looked down at her and smiled back. He stepped down into the street and started back to the police barrier.
“Hey,” Stan called to Cole, “don’t make Annie out to be crazy or anything. She’s a nice lady, just old and confused. I don’t think she knows what she did. All right?”
“I’ll do my best.”
The fire trucks were pulling out and the ambulances started their engines. Many of the police cars were already gone. Natoma Street almost looked back to normal. A young cop removed the yellow tape he’d strung up the hour before. Harris was on the police radio. Cole waved as he walked past him.
“Got a story?” Harris shouted.
“Think so. See you later.” Cole waved, but didn’t slow his pace.
THREE
Cole stared at the words on his monitor. “Annie Clark, 81, shot and killed Trevor Varney, 29, a police negotiator.”
Those are the facts,
he thought,
but they don’t tell the story. Eighty-one years, and it comes down to one article in the paper? All over a damn cat? When does a person step across the line between sanity and this kind of madness?
Cole glanced up at the sound of laughter in the next cubicle.
“He just snapped. Started throwing stuff at the City Council. Binders, blueprints, yellow pads, then his briefcase!” The voice in the cubicle again broke into laughter. “Yeah, yeah, cops and everything. Hauled him out screaming and swearing. Walker banging the gavel, what a riot!” Cole recognized the voice as that of Lionel Chun, one of the three who had been at the water cooler earlier.
Why is slipping into madness so amusing,
Cole pondered. How close was
he
? Maybe he wasn’t at all if he had the presence of mind to wonder about it. Chun irritated Cole, always did.
“Hey Chun, you want to keep it down! Some people actually work around here!” Cole shouted toward the florescent lights.
“Gotta go, Uncle Grump is feeling grouchy again. Okay. I’ll see you later,” Chun hoarsely whispered into the phone. He never thought Cole could hear his little barbs and slurs, but Cole always did. “Having a bad day...again, Sage?” Chun said in an affected, bored tone.
Cole ignored Chun’s sarcasm. He repeatedly hit the delete key on his keyboard and watched the cursor methodically remove the letters on the screen. There was so much more to say than just reporting the shooting. The TV news would handle all the gory details just fine. He wanted to tell the other story: the story of the old widow who, losing her cat, let slip her last thread to reality. The woman who lost her husband and couldn’t let him go.
There were no words to explain how she pulled the trigger. None to explain how she went to a closet, and got the “nasty old gun” that had terrified her for so many years, and in one inexplicable moment, took away someone else’s husband; someone’s father, son, uncle, and friend. All the years of cookies and banana nut bread, all the little Christmas presents for the neighborhood kids, the Easter candy, the Halloween treats and graduation gifts, blown away forever. The little lady in the funny straw hat working in her beloved flower garden was gone, born anew as a murderer. A crazy killer with a shotgun, a babbling old woman led away by the police. Did she even know what she had done?
Cole began to type. Slow at first, then with feverish intent. The story began to flow, the people came to life, and the old Cole was coming out. He began with the young hostage negotiator, father of three little boys, who had such pride in his job at being able to defuse volatile situations. He told of Paula the wife, her torment at the thought of losing the husband she loved and the unresolved disagreement of the morning. He wrote of Stan, the good neighbor, who, in trying to help, killed a cat, and nearly himself. He’s taken hostage, then becomes the hero who stopped the madness. He told of the policeman who looked beyond the tragic violence and saw a little old lady much like his own grandmother. Then Cole began to describe the loneliness of age and the frailty of the mind. He danced around the fine line between Annie as victim and murderer. He couldn’t excuse her deeds but was compelled to open a window on an explanation. On a pad next to the keyboard, he was jotting down ideas for expert witnesses, psychologists, social workers and advocates for the elderly when the phone rang.
*
*
*
“Cole, I got a weird call for you a minute ago. The person wouldn’t identify herself. I think it might be personal. Didn’t want to use a runner.”
“Thanks, Olajean, I’ll be right up.”
The bubble was pierced. Most of the story was completed, though. He could easily finish later. The important thing was that he had captured his feelings. That was something he hadn’t done in a long time. He felt good. Cole loved writing; he loved the zone he got into when he was on a roll. This story could make a difference. This was what he needed, and had needed for a long time. Maybe he could write again, write stuff that mattered. He pushed his chair back and hit Save. “Save”- maybe that’s what this story was all about. Maybe Cole had been saved.
*
*
*
Back up at the front desk, Olajean handed Cole a pink message. It read “Call Ellie. She needs your help. It’s URGENT!” Cole just stared at the number near the bottom of the message. The area code was right, but...it couldn’t be.
“Ola, what did the person say, exactly?” Olajean did not answer, already preoccupied once again with her own work. “Ola!” Cole said excitedly as he reached over the desk and punched buttons until they all went dark.
“What in hell you doin’? You lost yo’ mind!”
“The person who called—what did they say? Please.”