18
Jenkins called from his car at 9 o’clock, and said, “We’re in place. I’m down the block from the front of the house, and Shrake will set up on the street behind you. You got your radio?”
“Yes.”
“Tac light?”
“Yes.” Virgil had a LED flashlight.
Jenkins: “You got your vest?”
“Yes.”
“He’ll probably shoot you in the head,” Jenkins said.
“Listen, you moron . . .”
“I’m not the moron, you’re the moron for even thinking this up,” Jenkins said. “If you’re going to do it anyway, set your radio so we’re all getting the same thing at the same time. Stay away from your fuckin’ window. I’m looking over that way, and I saw the shadow of your head on the window shade. It looked like a gourd sitting on a fence.”
“All right, I’ll watch it. But I want him to see me moving around inside,” Virgil said. “I’ll walk out to the truck every fifteen minutes or so until midnight. He won’t come after that because he’ll figure I’m asleep.”
“If he knows where your bed is, where it is in the room, he could try a blind shot,” Shrake said.
“I don’t think so. He has to wait until he sees me because shooting me won’t be enough. He’ll want to get that print and the cartridge. He’s got to shoot, then he’s got to watch what happens after that, to make sure he’s alone, and then he’s got to come in to get it. He’ll have to be close. You should see him before he gets here.”
“We will if he comes on the street,” Jenkins said. “I’m a little worried if he sneaks down through the backyards. I’m looking down between the houses, and there are a lot of bushes in there, trees, fences; there’s a swing set and a couple of sheds . . . We should be there in the backyards with night vision goggles.”
“Too late for that.” Virgil told them to watch for somebody cruising the streets, doing recon, as well as movement in the backyard. “We’ll start at nine-thirty. It’s about eighty percent that nothing’ll happen, but we’ve got to give it a chance. Don’t go dozing off.”
“Talk to us,” Shrake said. “Put your goddamn vest on. If you don’t have your vest on, I’ll shoot you myself.”
Virgil had what was called a Level IIIA hybrid armored vest. The vest itself was made of Kevlar, and other composite fabrics, and would stop most pistol bullets. It also had two pockets, one in front, one in back, that held armor plates. The plates would stop rifle bullets up to a .30–06. The Level IIIA was thicker, heavier, and more uncomfortable than ordinary bulletproof police vests.
Highway patrolmen and street cops, who both make unpredictable stops, mostly need protection from concealed handguns. Their vests have to be comfortable enough to encourage the wearing of them for a full shift; that meant light vests made from soft, bullet-resistant materials.
Virgil didn’t make traffic stops in the rural countryside, where he usually worked. When he was confronted with a weapon, which had happened a few times, it was a rifle or a shotgun as often as it was a pistol. An ordinary urban cop’s vest, made to stop handgun rounds, wouldn’t stop a bullet from a rifle heavier than a little .22.
He got to think about all of that as he took his vest out of the truck and felt its weight in his hands.
At 9:30, Virgil called Jenkins and Shrake on the radio, and asked, “Anything?”
Shrake said, “Nothing. Darker than a pig’s asshole out here. Why doesn’t this place have streetlights?”
“Can’t afford them,” Virgil said. “I’m coming out.”
He pulled on the vest, slapped the Velcro tabs to keep it in place, and stretched a T-shirt over it. He wished, for a second, that he had a helmet, even though he knew it would be a dead giveaway. He tucked his Glock into the small of his back, picked up his radio, turned on the yellow bug light outside, and stepped out on the concrete-block stoop. Nothing happened.
He walked to the Tahoe, opened the door, fumbled around in the back, shut the door and locked it, walked back to the house and on inside. He could feel the pinch between his shoulder blades.
“Nothing moving here,” Shrake said.
“I didn’t see anything,” Jenkins said. “But, man, you are some target in that doorway, with the lights behind you and all. You look like a silhouette on a rifle range.”
Nothing happened at 9:45, and nothing happened at 10 o’clock.
“Starting to skizz out,” Virgil said on the radio when he was back inside after the 10 o’clock walk. Each time he took the walk, his feeling of vulnerability increased. He was totally dependent on Jenkins or Shrake spotting the shooter coming in, and Wheatfield, without streetlights and with residents who tended to turn in early, was a very dark place.
“It is stupid,” Shrake said. “We’ve all been telling you that all day.”
“We’ll quit at eleven,” Virgil said.
And they would have, if he hadn’t been shot at 10:15.
Virgil turned on the bug light and stepped out on the porch. A second later, he was hit with a hard thump—there was no sound whatsoever—and he looked down and saw an arrow sticking out of his chest.
He tumbled back inside, and shouted into the radio, “He shot me with an arrow. I’m shot with an arrow. He’s out there . . . He’s right here . . .”
Trap.
The shooter had moved silently across a dozen lawns to the back of the Vissers’ house. The basic plan was simple enough: noise outside that back door—thrown stones—should bring Flowers outside. Simple . . . but frightening. If the arrow missed, the cop would be right there with a gun, and the shooter was twenty yards away. There’d been a couple of stories on the internet that hinted that Flowers was not the best pistol shot in the world, but he could hardly miss at twenty yards when a body hit anywhere would be sufficient . . .
Then the back porch light came on, a yellow bug light, and the shooter’s arrow was already nocked. Flowers stepped out on the stoop and posed there like one of those range targets showing an ISIS terrorist staring at you with mad eyes . . .
The bow was up, the arrow on its way and flying true, and Flowers tumbled back into the house, and then the shooter stood up, and Flowers shouted, “He shot me with an arrow . . .”
Trap.
Virgil heard somebody shout “Going now,” either Jenkins or Shrake, and the other one yelled, “Are you hurt?” Virgil wasn’t registering which one, and he pulled the arrow out of his armor, sat up, looked out into the dark, and shouted, “I’m okay, I’m good. I’m coming.”
He could see nothing at all, but he did hear car doors slamming and the thumping footfalls from somebody running, and then more, and then Shrake yelled, “There he goes, he’s running west toward Sherburne . . . Jenkins . . . he’s going across the fences in the backyards.”
“You guys . . . be careful . . . You can’t see him, you can’t hear him . . . Be careful . . .” Virgil yelled into the radio. He rolled to his feet and ran out the door and saw Jenkins running in front of the light coming from a neighbor’s window, and he ran that way, shouting, “Jenkins, I’m behind you. I’m back here, don’t shoot me.”
Jenkins shouted back, “Virgil, go out to Westfall. Shrake, get up on the corner of Sherburne, he has to cross the street. I’ll push him out of these yards . . . I’m gonna put some light on him.”
Jenkins, who was carrying a superbright tactical flashlight, turned it on and lit up the backyards, as Virgil jogged out to Westfall Road, crouched behind a tree, and turned on his own light. He could still see Jenkins, on his knees, gun up, playing his light over the area between the houses. A block away, Shrake was lighting up a cross street. Unless the shooter had been moving very fast, he should be boxed in in the backyards.
More lights began coming on in the neighborhood as they called back and forth. Jenkins shouted, “Moving up one. This yard is clear.”
Jenkins was moving slowly back and forth across the wide backyards; the side yards, between houses, were mostly clear of bushes and didn’t have good hiding places. The backyards, though, were a tangle of fences, grape arbors, decorative grasses, and last year’s gardens, with their foot-high, now dead plants. The shooter, he thought, was wearing camo, and in the harsh shadows thrown by Jenkins’s flashlight, and with the snarl of folliage and fence, could be hiding almost anywhere.
If he wanted to shoot his bow, though, he’d have to come up at least to kneeling height, unless he were concealed behind a tree or hedge; and Jenkins’s light was designed to be blinding.
So Jenkins didn’t hurry; he sent the light into every nook and cranny, his pistol tracking with the light.
The shooter crossed a lot of fences and shrubs in a hurry, had to get south, to the Wilsons’ house. The Wilsons had a hedge that ran all the way out to the street. It would provide cover. And if the cops were out of sight for only ten seconds, then it would be possible to cross the street, and, once there, it should be possible to shake them free altogether.
The biggest threat would be if the neighborhood woke up, and it probably would, sooner or later. Once all the backyard lights and garage lights came on, getting lost would become impossible.
No time, no time, had to keep moving . . .
And a cop ran by in the street, carrying a flashlight that appeared to be as bright as any searchlight . . .
Shrake had run up to the first street corner and thought he’d gotten there in time to keep the shooter from crossing it. Not being absolutely certain of that, he lit up the spaces between the houses across the street as well.
A man called something to him, and he shouted back, “Police . . . Police . . . Go inside. Go inside, lock your doors.”
Virgil had gotten back on his radio, and said, “He could live in one of these houses, and he’s already inside.”
“That would cut down the possibilities,” Shrake said. “Basically, if he’s inside, we’ll get him.”
“Unless he’s inside somebody else’s house and he just killed them,” Virgil said.
Jenkins: “Virgil, keep moving up. I’m sweating like a motherfucker over here. We’ve got to be pushing him into a corner.”
“We need to get some deputies down here, wrap up the entire neighborhood, and wait until it gets light,” Shrake suggested.
“That’s seven hours away, but it’s not a bad idea,” Virgil said. “I’ll call Zimmer, get some guys started this way.”
Shrake said, “Jenkins, if he’s in there, he’s gotta move. You’re only a hundred feet out from me.”
Jenkins had come up to a white board fence separating the backyards of two houses. “I’m going to stop at this fence. If he’s not behind me, he’s got to be close, and I don’t think he got past me. Virgil, why don’t you walk up the street and shine your light between the houses up ahead of me. If that doesn’t flush him out, get between the houses and light up the two backyards ahead of me. Shrake, you stay where you are, watch both streets.”
“Got it,” Shrake said.
“Careful,” Virgil said. “He’s good with that bow—hit me right in the heart.”
The cop was standing in the street, thirty yards away. He looked huge, and fat—a bulletproof vest. The shooter was both frightened and angry. The broadheads could rip through a four-hundred-pound elk. They wouldn’t be slowed down by a man, but they wouldn’t make it through that vest.
Not unless the cop turned and opened up with a shot from the side. The cop was moving this way and that as he shined his light down two interesting streets, first this one, then the other. The shooter nocked another arrow.
Virgil moved up the street, shining his lights between the houses on his side. A woman came out, and called, “Who are you? What are you doing? I’ve called the sheriff . . .”
“Police. We’re looking for a man. Go inside and lock all your doors.”
She disappeared, and he moved on.
He was coming to the last pair of houses before he got to the next street, where Shrake was, and could see the beam from Shrake’s flashlight when its beam seemed to flip in the air, and Shrake screamed, “I’m hit . . . I’m hit.”
There was more, but Virgil didn’t hear the rest. He started running, and Jenkins shouted, “I’m coming.” Virgil ran between the last two houses into one of the backyards and saw Jenkins clearing the fence, and, at the same time, he saw a dark figure dart into the street on the opposite side, and somebody in another house yelled, “There he goes!”
Virgil saw Jenkins running up to Shrake’s light—he couldn’t see Shrake—and he decided to go after the shooter, running between the two houses opposite, vaulting the board fence, tripping on the top rail and falling facedown onto the hard lawn, got to his feet, ran on; he was wearing the cowboy boots and wasn’t as fast as he might have been, but he got his light and gun out in front of him and ran into the street, and a man on a porch, wearing a white T-shirt and white underpants, yelled, “He went there, by the gray house,” and Virgil ran past the gray house and saw . . . nothing. Nothing moving.
He jogged first one way, then the other, desperately flashing his light around, looking for something, anything, but the shooter was essentially invisible, and the backyards on the new block were even more clogged with shrubs, hedges, and fences than the last one, and Shrake was down, and Virgil moaned, “Ah . . . fuck it!” and ran back toward Jenkins and Shrake.
Shrake had been wearing the same kind of vest as Virgil, and Jenkins was struggling to pull it over Shrake’s head as Shrake groaned in pain, and Virgil saw that Jenkins’s hands were already red with blood. Virgil grabbed Shrake’s shoulders from the front and pulled him to a half-sitting position so Jenkins could get the vest free, and Shrake said, “My back . . . Got me from the side . . . Never saw him. Never saw him . . . Hurts . . .”
“You would have if he’d tried to cross the street without shooting you,” Virgil said, and to Jenkins, “Roll him on his side.”
They rolled him. Shrake was wearing a Patagonia jacket with a shirt beneath it; both were soaked with blood. When they tried to get the jacket off, Shrake said, “No, no . . . don’t do that, I feel like I’m coming apart.”
“We got to get it off in case there’s a big artery,” Jenkins said to Virgil. “We can’t move him without knowing.”
Shrake looked up at Virgil, and said, “Left pant pocket . . .”
Virgil went for his left pant pocket and pulled out a six-inch switchblade. He said to Jenkins, “Hold him up,” and Jenkins propped him up, and Virgil cut the coat off and then the shirt and the undershirt with the razor-sharp knife, and Shrake groaned again, and then said, “I’m puttin’ in for all the wrecked clothes,” and Jenkins said to Virgil, “Hold the light. Put the light on him . . .”
Shrake: “How bad?”
“Cut the T-shirt all the way off,” Jenkins said. “I need to sop up the blood.”
Virgil did that, pulled the shirt free. Jenkins used the unbloody part of the shirt to wipe Shrake’s upper back. The big man was bleeding profusely from a long, twisting cut across the middle of his back, at the level of his armpits. Jenkins said, “I don’t see any big pulses, so we got that. Twiddle your fingers at me, Shrake.”
Shrake twiddled, and Jenkins said, “Move your feet back and forth . . .”
Shrake did, and Jenkins said, “Looks like your spine’s okay. Of course, if we don’t get you to a hospital, you’re going to bleed to death, and we’ll have all that fuckin’ paperwork. It’s like you to do that to me, you inconsiderate fuck.”
Virgil told Jenkins, “Use the T-shirt to pack the cut. I’m going to run get my Tahoe. Back in one minute.”
“Go.”
As he stood and ran, Shrake said, “Tell me how bad . . .”
Virgil didn’t wait to hear Jenkins answer but instead sprinted for the truck. The back door of the house was standing open, and he thought about the shell inside—no fingerprint, but the shooter still didn’t know that. He swerved to the door, yanked it shut, jumped in the Tahoe, and roared away.
They put Shrake in the front passenger seat; he was fully conscious, and Jenkins dropped the seat back as far as it would go, put him in, and said, “Lean on your back. Keep that shirt packed in the cut. You’re gonna owe me big-time for taking care of your ass.”
Virgil said to Jenkins, “Get in, get in . . .”
“Nothing I can do in the backseat,” Jenkins said. “You go. I’m gonna run back in the neighborhood and talk to people and find this motherfucker and kill him.”
“Jenkins . . .”
He was already jogging away, gun and flashlight in hand, when Shrake shouted, “Kill the motherfucker,” and then groaned, and said, “All right, no more yelling.”
Virgil shifted into gear, and they were gone.
The shooter was five blocks away, breathing hard, listening. Nobody out there. A siren started: they were moving the cop.
I’m okay . . . I’m safe.