Chương 1
"The mop slid out of my hand before Sarah finished saying the word shooting.
It struck the courthouse marble with a wet slap that turned the head of a deputy coming through the security doors.
I left it there.
“Dennis, are you still there?” Sarah said through the phone.
“What hospital?”
“Mercy General.”
“Is he alive?”
Her breath caught, and for half a second I heard nothing except the floor buffer whining somewhere down the east corridor.
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes.
“Is he conscious?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who’s with you?”
“Nobody.”
“I’m coming.”
“Dennis.”
Something in her voice stopped me before I lowered the phone.
“They said Sheriff Barnes shot him.”
The deputy by the doors had stopped pretending not to listen.
I looked at him.
He looked away first.
Twenty-three minutes later, I abandoned my truck crooked across two spaces outside Mercy General and ran through the emergency entrance wearing my courthouse work shirt and rubber-soled boots.
Sarah stood beside a vending machine with both arms folded against herself.
There was dried blood on the cuff of her yellow cardigan.
I reached for her, but she grabbed my shirt instead.
“He was awake when the ambulance brought him in.”
“Where?”
“Trauma Three.”
“What happened?”
“They won’t tell me anything.”
“Who called you?”
“A nurse.”
“Sarah, what happened?”
“I don’t know.”
She said it too loudly.
A family sitting beneath the television looked over.
Sarah lowered her voice.
“I don’t know, Dennis, and everybody keeps asking me to wait.”
Waiting had always been harder for Sarah than bad news.
She could deal with broken pipes, overdue bills, Tyler getting suspended in eighth grade for punching a locker, and the winter my truck transmission died three days before Christmas.
Waiting made her come apart.
I put both hands around hers.
“Stay here.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That voice.”
I had no answer for her.
A nurse stepped through the secured doors and called our last name.
Sarah moved before I did.
The nurse led us into a consultation room containing four plastic chairs, a box of tissues, and a framed photograph of mountains nobody ever looked at unless something terrible had happened.
Then Harold Donnelly came in.
He had gained weight since the last time I had seen him, and what remained of his hair had gone almost entirely white.
For a moment neither of us spoke.
“Dennis,” he said.
Sarah looked between us.
“You know each other?”
“Long time ago,” Harold said.
“How bad is my son?”
Harold pulled a chair toward us but remained standing.
That frightened me more than anything he could have said.
“He has gunshot injuries to both knees.”
Sarah made a small sound.
“The rounds caused extensive damage to the patellae and surrounding structures,” Harold continued.
“We’re still evaluating vascular and nerve involvement, and I’m not going to make promises tonight that I may have to take back tomorrow.”
“Will he walk?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Sarah sat down.
I stayed on my feet.
“Can we see him?”
“For a few minutes before surgery.”
Harold watched me after Sarah left with the nurse.
His expression had changed.
“You need to keep yourself under control.”
“I am under control.”
“That’s what worries me.”
“Tell me what you know.”
“Medically?”
“About Barnes.”
Harold rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“I know the deputies who brought Tyler in were scared.”
“Of Tyler?”
Harold gave me a tired look.
“One of them kept repeating that the shooting was justified before anybody had asked him.”
That was the first thing that did not fit.
The second was waiting inside Trauma Three.
Tyler looked smaller beneath the hospital blankets than he had since he was twelve.
His basketball warm-up jacket had been cut open and pushed into a clear belongings bag.
One white sneaker lay beneath a chair.
The other was gone.
Sarah went to his left side.
I went to his right.
His eyelids fluttered.
“Hey, kid.”
His eyes found me.
“Dad?”
“I’m here.”
His fingers moved beneath mine.
“Mom?”
“Right here, baby.”
He looked toward the foot of the bed and tried to raise his head.
Pain folded his face before a nurse gently stopped him.
“Easy.”
Tyler started breathing faster.
“My legs.”
“They’re working on you,” I said.
“I can’t feel them right.”
“Tyler, look at me.”
His eyes came back to mine.
“Tell me what happened.”
The nurse glanced at me.
“Sir, this may not be—”
“I was coming home,” Tyler whispered.
“From where?”
“Evan’s.”
Sarah stroked his hair.
“Don’t make him talk.”
“I need to know.”
“No, you don’t need anything right now.”
Tyler tightened his fingers around mine.
“Barnes stopped me.”
“Where?”
“County Road Twelve.”
“What did he say?”
“I don’t know.”
His eyes squeezed shut.
“He kept asking why I was staring at him.”
“Were you?”
“I was looking at his truck.”
“What about it?”
Tyler swallowed.
“There was somebody in the back.”
Sarah stopped touching his hair.
“What do you mean somebody?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tyler.”
“I couldn’t see.”
His voice rose with frustration.
“He told me to get on my knees.”
I felt Sarah looking at me.
“What did you do?”
“I asked why.”
“And then?”
“He hit me.”
“Where?”
Tyler touched his cheek.
Only then did I notice the swelling beneath his left eye.
“He said I was resisting.”
“Did you run?”
“No.”
“Did you touch him?”
“No.”
“Did you threaten him?”
“No.”
His mouth trembled.
“He just shot me.”
Sarah turned away.
Tyler stared at me with the frightened concentration of a child trying not to cry in front of his father.
“Both times?”
I asked.
He nodded.
“What happened after the first shot?”
“I fell.”
“And after you fell?”
“He walked over.”
The monitor accelerated.
The nurse reached toward Tyler’s IV.
“He was laughing,” Tyler said.
“Sheriff Barnes?”
“He said I shouldn’t have looked at him wrong.”
His face crumpled.
“Then he shot the other one.”
May you like
I bent close enough that our foreheads almost touched.
“I’m here.”
