“Gun!” he yelled and shoved Camille to the ground. “Down!”
The crack came a second later.
The slug entered the man’s upper back and exited the hollow above his collarbone. Off balance, Tanner felt the man slipping from his arms and tried to compensate by stepping backward. His foot plunged into the pool, followed by his leg.
The man was lying on his side, head resting on the concrete. He was alive, Tanner realized, but not for long. Dark blood was pumping from the wound. Subclavian vein, he thought. Without help, he’d be dead in less than a minute.
The man reached toward Tanner. “Please…”
“Hold on, don’t move!”
“Briggs!” Camille called.
“Stay down!”
Tanner pulled himself out of the pool, crawled over to the man, rolled him onto his back, and ripped open his shirt. Tanner wiped the wound clear and shoved his index finger and thumb into the hole, searching for the vein. The bullet had destroyed everything in its path — veins, bone, muscle, ligaments — all gone.
The man gripped Tanner’s hand. “Help me, please…”
“I’m trying, I’m trying, stay with me.”
“God, it hurts….”
Tanner stopped working and looked into the man’s eyes. They were bulging with pain, but there was something else: aloneness. He was dying among strangers, and he knew it.
Tanner would never remember hearing the second shot.
The man’s forehead seemed to split open before Tanner’s eyes. The eyes and nose disappeared in a gout of blood. Tanner felt it splatter him. What little remained of the man’s head lolled backward onto the concrete. The body spasmed twice, once more, then went still.
Lying a few feet away, Camille said, “Briggs, are you—”
He wiped the blood from his face. “I’m okay,” he replied. He looked to the fence line. There was nothing. “You?”
“Uh-huh.”
One of the dead man’s fists had unfurled, revealing a small key; he’d been clutching it so hard it left an impression in the flesh. On yet another impulse, Tanner pocketed it.
In the distance came the wail of sirens. Then, from the lobby turnaround, an engine revved, followed by the screeching of tires. Headlamps pierced the fence. Tanner jumped to his feet.
“Briggs!” Camille called. “What’re you doing?”
Hunched over, Tanner sprinted to the fence and scrambled over in time to see a pickup truck accelerate around the curve. In seconds the taillights disappeared.
Ignoring the chattering guests loitering in the lobby entrance, Tanner walked across to the man’s car — a red four-door Nissan with an Avis sticker in the back window — which lay crumpled against a tree. Both doors were dented, as was the rear bumper. The trunk was riddled with pencil-sized holes, all in skillet-sized patterns. Shotgun, Tanner decided.
The sirens grew closer. Tanner reached through the window, opened the glove compartment, and found a sheaf of papers. It was a rental agreement: name: Umako Ohira… address, credit card number… In a blaze of flashing lights, three police cars screeched to a halt beside the wreck. Headlights blinded Tanner.
“Ya me te! Ya me te!”
Though his Japanese was limited, he guessed he was being ordered away from the car. The clack-clack of several pump shotguns convinced him of it. He raised his hands and walked toward the headlights. From out of the glare, three figures charged forward and tackled him to the ground.
It took Camille and the Royal Palms’s manager ten minutes to convince the Kagoshima Prefectural Police (Todo-Fuken Keisatsu) he was in fact a guest of the resort and an innocent bystander.
Under the watchful eye of one the officers, he was escorted to the bathroom to wash up. There was a small cut on his right cheek. Bone fragment, he thought dully. He plucked it from the wound and watched it swirl down the drain. He splashed water through his hair and did his best to ignore the bits of flesh dropping into the bowl. His hands were still shaking. Adrenaline.
He’d seen death before, but it was something to which he’d never become immune. He preferred it that way. Once it became easy, you had a problem. He’d learned to put his feelings on hold, but at best that only delayed the inevitable. If you didn’t deal with them, such feelings began to eat you from the inside out.
The officer escorted him back to the pool, where the body was being loaded onto the coroner’s stretcher. The concrete was stained with blood. Some of it had trickled into the pool’s aerator, and thin black tendrils of it floated on the surface like seaweed.
Camille was standing beside one of the tables. A few feet away, a plainclothes police officer was talking to the resort’s manager. Tanner walked over to Camille. “Are you okay?”
“I think so. Why did they shoot him, Briggs?” she whispered.
“I don’t know.”
“Mr. Tanner?” The inspector walked over.
“Yes.”
“I am Ishu Tanaka, homicide investigator for the Kagoshima Prefect.”
Camille was still staring at the puddle. Tanner put his arm around her and walked her away. “I’m sure he felt no pain,” Tanaka said, sitting down. “How are you feeling, then? No injuries to you or Miss…”
“Sereva,” Camille replied. “I’m fine.”
“Glad to hear it. I’ll take as little of your time as possible.” Tanaka opened his steno pad. “First, your full names, please.”
“Briggs Tanner.”
“From the United States, I assume. Vacationing?”
“Yes,” said Tanner. He was in no mood for talking.
“Ms. Sereva?”
“I am Ukrainian. Vacationing also.”
“Now, please, in you own words, tell me what you saw tonight.”
Tanner did so, leaving out mention of the key. Unsure if Camille had seen it, Tanner half expected her to interject, but she said nothing.
“Witnesses said there were two shots,” Tanaka said. “Where did they strike, can you tell me?”
“As far as I can tell, one entered his upper back, the other the top of his skull.”
“The shots came from the fence?”
“That’s correct.”
“You were hunched over the body when the second shot came. Why is that?”
“I was trying to stop the bleeding. I thought if I could—”
“Are you a doctor?”
“No.”
“A bold move, jumping over that fence.”
“I didn’t really think about it.”
“Mr. Tanner, why were you near the car when we arrived?”
“I was looking for anyone else who might have been injured.”
“Had you ever seen this man before tonight?”
“No.”
“Did he speak to you?”
“Nothing that made any sense. He was panicked, scared.”
“And you, Ms. Sereva?”
Camille shrugged. “I didn’t see much. I’m sorry.”
Inspector Tanaka nodded. “Mr. Tanner, you told the responding officers you saw the truck carrying the gunman. Can you tell me anything else?”
“As I reached the top of the fence, they were pulling away. It was black or dark blue, no license plate. There was a driver and the gunman—”
“You saw the gun?”
Tanner nodded. “A rifle, bolt action, medium length, with a scope.”
“Please go on.”
“The gunman and another man were in the back,” Tanner replied, then thought: How long from the time the truck left to when the police arrived? Thirty seconds, a minute? Surely they had to have passed the truck.
As if reading Tanner’s mind, Tanaka said, “We found some fresh tire tracks just inside the woods about a hundred yards down the drive. We believe the truck pulled off, doused his lights, and let us pass.” Tanaka stood up. “This was an unfortunate incident. You and Ms. Sereva may rest assured we will get to the bottom of it. You are both certain you are not injured?”