Yours, Mine, and Ours (34 page)

In my head, everything is happening exactly the way it did, except I have foreknowledge of what will happen. It is a great deal like stepping outside myself and narrating the events of my life.

I see the muzzle flash.

I get Cadence out of harm’s way.

I sprint for the steps.

The gun is still coming up.

I run and run, but the steps slow me down.

A flash from the Kahr-K9. An excellent little pistol.

Then I am reaching for him, both arms outstretched. I want to kill him not only for the boys, but for his niece, and for his niece’s son.

You think you know pain, you ancient poisonous buzzard? You do not. But you will. I swear you will. I swear on

(poor, poor boys)

all of us.

Another flash, and I wonder if the old man had a baseball bat I could not see.

I wonder how he managed to hit me in the shoulder with an invisible baseball bat.

I fall for a long time.

chapter seventy-two

“Awwwww, fuck! Emma
Jan! Get your ass over here, I need pressure on this! Somebody find Gallo, I know that sneaky fuck is around here somewhere!”

George. I would recognize that shrill bitching anywhere.

I opened my eyes. I was at the bottom of those endless steps. The old man was also on the floor. He was lying very still. He was not moving his hands. He was blinking hard and not moving his hands.

He was doing those things because Michaela was standing over him and pointing her gun at him. I could tell he thought the barrel of that gun was his world. The barrel of the gun would appear to be at least twenty meters wide and might also contain his death.

I grinned up at George through monstrous pain. It felt like someone had laid firewood in my shoulder socket and then lit it to see it all go up.

Well. I could not lie around like this all day.

“No you don’t, Shiro, I know that look. Lie still. Listen, dumbass, we’ve got an ambulance on the way, so just sit still until—whoa!”

I sat up. Emma Jan grabbed for me and I used her arms as a ladder to get to my feet. “The woman. The JBK killer. Where—”

George jerked his head to the left. The JBK killer was in a sprawled heap not ten feet from where I was.

“Shiro, George is right, you’d better lie—”

“Don’t waste your breath, New Girl. She’ll lie down after she passes out from blood loss. Hey, wanna bet on how long it takes? Twenty bucks? No, wait: winner gets Shiro’s pain meds.”

I swayed on my feet, holding my shoulder. I had to see her. I had to see the niece’s face. I had to know if I was right. And if she was right.

I took a tentative step. The room was trying to go dark around the edges

(
do not do not DO NOT black out do not do not black out
)

Good advice.

“Emma Jan. George. Help me.” I ignored their shocked traded looks. So what if I had never asked for their help before? I could grow, could learn, could change.
She
had. She gave her life to save her boy. She broke through generations of conditioning, and not for herself. She gave up everything so her son could have something. Maybe even just one thing.

I had to. I
would
see. Nobody saw George Stinney; the whites looked and saw an uppity nigger. His family looked and saw death for them all. And in turn, they didn’t see any of the white boys.

One step. Another. Another. It was taking forever. It was taking forever. I would be here for the rest of my life—lungs burning, shoulder screaming, blood running from me like small red rivers. I would never get out. I would die in here and no one would see me, either. Another. And then

(
do not do not DO NOT black out do not do not black out think of the endless teasing you will have to endure from George do not black out do not
)

I was there. I was standing over her. I sighed in relief when I saw her face, when I realized I had been right. I had hoped to see her in life. But seeing her in death was not terrible.

She was smiling. There was a sizable hole in her forehead—the nasty old man had been a dead shot, as I was sure he would be. But she was smiling.

She had known it was over. And she faced it without flinching. She had known she was going to her death, and had dressed nicely for the appointment. As the old man could predict her moves, so she could predict his. She could not be fearless to save herself, but she became so to save her son.

“I will advise you again not to move,” Michaela was saying. “It will be the last time I so advise, sir, do you understand?”

“Old man.” I did not try to keep the loathing out of my voice. “Look at me, viper.”

He did it carefully, slowly, so as not to startle the woman who had him in her sights. A woman who was doubtless praying he would make a move. Any move. Michaela, I had decided, was probably a lioness in a former life. She lived for the kill like plants lived for sunshine.

“Your niece was ten of you, old man. Do you hear me? She was the only warrior you produced. Now do me a favor. Move. Do a handstand. Tap dance. Reach into one of your pockets. Move a
lot
. I promise: the agent drawing down on you will cure your ills.”

“Now, now,” Michaela said, mildly enough. “Let’s not try to goad our suspect into suicide by cop. Do I seem as though I would like more paperwork? Hmmm? And Agent Jones, will you kindly lie down before I shoot
you
?”

“That is really good advice,” Dr. Gallo said, materializing from … somewhere. He was all dressed up in a clean-but-faded dark denim shirt, clean khakis, and loafers without socks. (In this weather! Frostbite-seeking moron.) His fingers were sinking into my upper arm. “Here we go.” He was easing me down on my back. What the hell. I let him. “Nice and easy.”

“We knew you were here,” I said triumphantly.

“I’m so sorry for what happened to you,” he told the killer. One of the killers. He was kind to the dead woman who had killed his nephew. He had nothing to say to the old man, I noticed with inappropriate glee. “I don’t forgive you, though.”

“That’s all right,” I said, even though

(
DO NOT
)

he wasn’t talking to me.

(
DO NOT black out, idiot!
)

Good advice. And I took it; I did not black out. I vomited instead. Emma Jan would need a new purse.

chapter seventy-three

When a paramedic
says, without being asked, that you will be “just fine” (as in, “Oh, hey, you’re gonna be
just fine
”) within the first three seconds of wound assessment, it means you are going to die.

So I laughed at the boyishly earnest EMT (he had freckles, of all the silliest things) when he lied to my face. I had lost too much blood. I felt chilled, and sleepy. I would sleep and then I would die. Maybe it was the shock talking, but I was at peace with it. All of it. If George Stinney’s great-great-great-aunt (or whatever she had been to that long-ago executed child) could face death with a smile and her nicest outfit, could I do less?

Never!

“All right, let’s get her set up with—ow!”

George, for some strange reason, had insisted on riding with me to the hospital. The stressful day was getting to him; he seemed frazzled and unkempt. He had sacrificed his tie (bees stinging babies against a background of jack-o’-lantern orange) to try to control my bleeding. I could not help but observe that he and Dr. Gallo did little but get in each other’s way.

When the EMT, dodging both of them, tried to give me an injection, George grabbed the boy’s wrist.

“Don’t you lay a hand on her, pusbag. How long have you been an EMT? Are you even qualified to touch her? Show me your driver’s license; if you’re old enough to vote I’ll kiss you on the mouth. And if you’re not I’ll kill you and sink your body in Lake Calhoun. This is a federal agent! Why isn’t the boss EMT along for this ride? Gallo, will you for Christ’s sake do something?”

“B-b-because nobody told us any of that stuff,” the poor child stammered, terrified. “We just rolled when they told us we had a Code One. Please don’t sink me in Lake Calhoun. I can legally vote next month.”

“George, release him at once,” I ordered while Dr. Gallo seized the radio and told an unseen person on the other end just what to expect. I noticed he did not mention George, which was just as well.

“Hey, I don’t want just anybody messing with you. Enough shit’s gone on without something happening to you, too.”

Perhaps I was hallucinating from blood loss. I had never seen George evince concern for any living being save himself.

“George, everything is fine.” Enormous lie. “Let the boy work. Ouch!” I glared at the boy, who went even paler. “And I must say, I cannot help but be touched.”

“If you think I’m breaking in another partner the same year I had to get a prostate exam, you’re out of your fucking mind, Shiro Jones!”

“And now, I am not.” I had never wished so urgently to pass out from blood loss as I did just then. I was delighted when my body obliged me.

*   *   *

As it turned out, the EMT had been correct. I did not die. Though it was a bit of a trial, recuperating from a gunshot wound and forcing down hospital food. It was a while before I was back to myself. Pardon me … before the three of us were back to ourselves. My sisters and I.

In the meantime, I needed answers. And owed them to someone else.

chapter seventy-four

It took a
long, long time, but finally they left me alone. Michaela was gone, and so were Emma Jan and George (the latter had been “escorted” off the premises). My wounds had been treated—fortunately, I needed no surgery this time. I had been checked and checked and checked again, and had even managed to grab a nap between bouts of unconsciousness.

Now. I had twenty-seven minutes before the nurse came back to check my vitals. It would only be harder to find Max Gallo and tell him things he thought he needed to know. During first shift, there would always be too many people, both on my floor and in his blood bank. During third shift, I would be too exhausted.

Now. It had to be now: the middle of shift change, 10:55
P.M.
The nurses were giving their reports at the station; people were focused on leaving, or arriving. It was as chaotic as it ever got.

I slowly sat up, and carefully untangled and straightened the many tubes running out of or into my body. I would have to bring the IV pole; ugh. Hated,
hated
the benighted things. Like being on a leash. A leash that continually dripped things into my bloodstream.

I swung my legs over the side. Took a deep breath. Stood.

All right. All right! This … this wasn’t terrible. I was sore, yes, but it was distant soreness. I must be on a morphine drip, or still riding a shot. And I was in the sweet spot, too—pain was distant, but I wasn’t too fog-headed.

After I’d shuffled about twenty feet, I decided I had been wrong, entirely wrong: there was not enough morphine in my system for my midshift jaunt. Not by half.

Ah, well. Nobody said the life of an MPD-suffering, gunshot FBI agent with a dog and a baker boyfriend and stacks of paperwork would be an easy one.

I made it to the elevator without incident—it helped that it wouldn’t occur to the staff that I’d get the urge for a pre-midnight stroll. And even if I were spotted, I would be in no real trouble.

It made me think of Aldo Raine—Brad Pitt’s character from
Inglourious Basterds.
When Col. Landa snivels, “You’ll be shot for this!”, Raine says, just as calm as you please, “No, I don’t think so. More like chewed out. I’ve been chewed out before.”

The urgency of this mission was of my own making. If I were caught, I would not be shot, just scolded and escorted back to my room. But I owed Gallo an explanation. Barring that (could anything like this ever truly be explained?), I owed him the full story. I did not trust BOFFO to tell it. So I, Shiro Jones, temporary civilian, would tell him. If found out, I would not be shot. And I, too, had been chewed out before.

Of course, that was all contingent on my reaching the blood bank—assuming Gallo was even there at this time of night. I was making steady progress, but the hallway had started slowly pitching and yawing up and down, back and forth. I could navigate, but was spending an awful lot of time bumping into walls. When had they moved the hospital onto a cruise ship in the middle of a hurricane? Normally I was one to notice things like that.