“Who’s hurt?”

“Unknown. They’ve switched to a tactical channel that we can’t get.”

Trout felt a momentary flash of panic in his chest. Please don’t let it be Dez, he thought.

Marcia, insightful as ever, said, “I’ll call Flower over at the station and see if I can pry anything out of her. Dez probably beat someone up because he looked like you.”

“Nice.”

“Seriously, Billy, I’m sure everything’s copacetic,” Marcia laughed.

“Thanks. You rock, Marcia.”

“You have no idea,” she said with a wicked laugh and hung up.

Goat was grinning as Trout put his phone away.

“What?” asked Trout.

“When are you going to tap that?”

“She’s a coworker.”

“Uh-huh. Not after hours and not between the sheets. She’s a wild woman.”

“How the hell would you know?” growled Trout.

Goat’s grin broadened. “The only way there is to know.”

Trout looked at him. “Is there anyone you haven’t screwed?”

“In Stebbins?”

“In North America.”

Goat considered. “I haven’t screwed that cop with the tits.”

Trout shook his head. “You’re not her type.”

“Why? ’Cause I’m Jewish?”

“No. ’Cause you’re sane.”

He turned the key and put the car in drive.

“Aunt Selma’s?” Goat asked.

“Aunt Selma’s.”

Billy Trout cut through the parking lot, bullied his way into traffic, spun the wheel, and kicked the pedal down toward Selma Conroy’s farm. He didn’t care at all about the speed limit. All of the cops were busy.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

HARTNUP’S TRANSITION ESTATE

The gunshot echoes bounced around under the low ceiling of storm clouds. Dez whirled, instinctively pushing JT out of the line of some imagined fire as she reached for her gun. It was all reflex and it was very fast.

A long, high piercing shriek ripped through the air, muffled by humidity and flattened by distance. There were two shots. Then three more. Then continuous fire until a second scream rose higher and sharper. The scream disintegrated into a wet gargle.

Then silence.

“There!” JT barked, pointing toward the tree line, but Dez was already running.

“Shanahan!” she yelled. “That was Natalie Shanahan. She went into the woods with that kid, Diviny.”

JT caught up with her as they pelted along the path that lead past the mortuary. Officers came spilling out of the building, running in the same direction. Chief Goss waddled along in the center of the pack, but the fitter cops were outstripping him, racing toward the trees. Everyone had guns drawn, but Dez didn’t like what she was seeing. Most of these guys were as inexperienced in combat as JT, and the academy training was far from enough and, for most of them, too long ago. Or too recent. They ran with panic on their faces. Someone was going to get shot, she thought, and it wasn’t going to be the bad guy. It was going to be another cop, or maybe a civilian.

She poured on the steam and cut left to get ahead of the pack, waving one arm in an attempt to slow them to a safer pace. But those screams still seemed to echo in the air.

“JT … watch my back.”

“Got it,” he said. “Go.”

Dez reached the tree line first and then slowed to a careful walk as she stepped from gray daylight to purple shadows. JT broke right and brought his gun up. They fanned their barrels back and forth in overlapping patterns. They saw nothing except tree limbs and bushes shifting in the breeze.

As the other officers reached the tree line, Dez stepped clearly into view and raised a fist. Most of them spotted it and skidded to a stop. Two officers collided and fell, but JT was there to help them up and warn them to silence.

Dez turned to look at the cops. Two from Stebbins and seven others. Three of them, she knew, were combat vets. Dez saw them watching her, and she hand-signaled them to advance in a wide line. She waved the others back.

“What do you need, Dez?” whispered JT, coming up on her flank.

“Keep them back. Line of sight with each other, but spread out. Make sure Simmons keeps his fucking finger out of the trigger guard. I’ll take the others with me.”

He nodded and faded back to close on Officer Simmons, the youngest officer in the county.

Dez checked left and right to see that the vets were formed up in a wide line but behind trees. Two of them—Schneider and Strauss—had pistols in two-handed grips, the third—Sheldon Higdon from Barnesville—carried a FN self-loading shotgun.

Dez pointed forward with a slow movement of her hand and she broke cover and began advancing at a quick walk-run from tree to tree, zigzagging to alternate her route and deter possible return fire. She heard the crunch of shoes on dry leaves as the others kept pace. After three hundred yards, Dez stopped to assess the terrain. She saw two sets of footprints and off to the left, a third. The third set was Doc Hartnup’s, she was sure of that. One set of prints diverged to follow the Doc, and from the size she figured it for Andy Diviny. The smaller set was Natalie’s, and they broke right to follow a downland path. That was odd. Why wouldn’t she have accompanied the other officer to follow a clear trail?

She waved Mike Schneider over and showed him the upland trail. Schneider got it and nodded, and he peeled off to follow that, jerking his head for Strauss to follow him. Dez flagged Sheldon and pointed downland. He nodded and as she began creeping forward, he followed along on her wide right flank, his gun steady, his eyes narrow and hard.

As they moved down the shadows grew deeper. There were boulders, left behind by a glacier thousands of years ago. Natalie Shanahan’s trail was easy to follow through dirt or moss, but soon it vanished as the ground became rockier. After another hundred yards Dez lost it completely.

Two minutes later Sheldon gave a sharp, short whistle, and when Dez turned, he waved her over. She saw why before he even pointed it out. Natalie’s trail reappeared in a different spot than Dez expected to see it. It looped around one of the big boulders and headed uphill in a straight line. The shoe impressions were deeper on the balls of the feet.

“She went running up that hill like a bat out of hell,” murmured Sheldon.

Dez nodded. “I’ll go up the hill. You go around and come up the east slope.”

“On it,” he said, and he was off, running low and fast. Dez watched him for a moment, nodding approval. Like her, Sheldon had dropped the veneer of “cop” and was back in the Big Sand.

The hill was too steep to climb without using both hands, so Dez holstered her gun, grabbed some roots, and pulled herself up. She was surprised Natalie managed to haul her ass up this way. Natalie was the queen of Weight Watchers but she snarfed down two Big Macs every lunch break.

As she reached the top of the hill, Dez took a firm left handhold and drew her pistol. She couldn’t hear Sheldon, but she knew he would be coming up the slope. It was a longer route but easier, so they should be hitting the same spot at the same time.

Dez took a breath, pulled herself up, peered briefly over the edge, and then ducked down, letting her mind process what her eyes had seen in that flash look.

The green forest was red.

“Christ,” Dez said aloud as the data splashed across her mental screen. Leaves and grass painted a dark crimson. Something lying there. Pale and streaked with dark lines of red. An arm. She was sure of it. Was there a figure standing there? No. It was a tree. She was sure of that, too.

Dez’s heart was hammering as she tightened her grip on the root and the gun. Then, with a grunt and a curse, she was moving, her feet scrabbling and slipping on the mossy stones of the hill. Up, up and then she was over the edge, swinging her Glock around into both hands, fanning the barrel from point to point, checking everything, making sense of shapes, putting everything into order.

Except that it wasn’t orderly. None of this was going to fit into a picture that would make sense. She knew that at once, and for a disjointed moment she couldn’t even feel the gun in her hand.

Natalie Shanahan lay sprawled on the leaves and moss. Her eyes were open. So was her chest. The vest was torn open. Shirt and bra in rags. Ribs stood up jagged and white through the torn meat of her breasts. Her body was bathed in blood, her face was splattered with black mucus. The skin around the wound was ragged, the ends pulled and torn. Steam curled upward from the burst meat. Smoke curled from the barrel of the pistol that was still clutched in Natalie’s hand; the slide was locked back. Brass cartridges lay scattered among the leaves and stones and dropped pieces of flesh.

Nothing else moved in the clearing. No perp. Nothing.

“Jesus God Almighty…”

Dez didn’t even turn as Sheldon Higdon spoke. She couldn’t. She was unable to move.

“Officer down!” yelled a voice. “Officer down!”

Dez looked up. Sheldon glanced at her and then they both turned and stared off to the east. The cries were coming from farther up the slope. She recognized the voice. One of the other two combat vet cops. And with a sinking dread, Dez knew that they had found Andy Diviny.

“God,” she murmured. “God…”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

HARTNUP’S TRANSITION ESTATE

“Jesus…,” breathed Sheldon. “Look at her!”

“I know,” said Dez.

There were more shouts and then the hollow pok-pok-pok of pistol fire.

“Dez…” began Sheldon, but she cut him off.

“I know,” she barked again, and that fast she was charging up the slope. Sheldon was right there with her.

“The fuck is happening?” grunted Sheldon as he ran.

Dez said nothing. The day was all wrong and it was spinning away out of her reach. Even as she ran forward she felt like she was shrinking back, retreating within her own mind. This was all impossible.

She tore the shoulder mike from its clip and yelled into it. “We have officers down, repeat, officers down. We need backup right fucking now!”