front door and to the safety of my car, I'd be home free.
As I reached to unbolt the front door, I saw Derrick spring around the
corner of the dining room with his gun in front of him. He must've
watched TV as a kid, too. What he should've been doing was practicing
at the firing range, because he was a piss-poor shot. I heard the
mirror behind me crash as a bullet ripped into it.
I fired off two shots as I jumped across the hallway, over the top of
my sofa, and into the coffee table. I muffled a cry as pain shot
through my left side where I landed against the oak edge. I scurried
backward to get myself out of the pool of blood that was quickly
forming beneath O'Donnell and my Mission chair. The noise was blocked
out by the sound of the back door sliding open, followed by tires
squealing down the street.
I don't know how long I lay there, listening to myself breathe, trying
to convince myself that I couldn't hear anything else. Even Vinnie was
quiet now.
I finally mustered up the courage to crawl around the back of the sofa
and sneak a quick peek into the dining room. I'd done right by the
firing range. Derrick Derringer was on his back, two bullet holes
squarely in the middle of his chest. Apparently, it was OK for me to
move while I was firing, as long as my target stood still.
Based on the trail of blood through the dining room, into the kitchen,
and out the back door, I guessed that Frank had fled when he saw his
brother go down. More blood outside suggested that Frank was long
gone.
I freed Vinnie from the pantry as I dialed 911. Then I sat in a ball
on the kitchen floor holding him and my gun close to my chest until I
heard sirens pulling up to the house and fists pounding on the front
door.
Sixteen.
When I finally woke up the next morning, my whole body was on fire. I
was also sleepy and had a sore throat. By the time the police finally
left around two in the morning I'd related my entire story three
different times. First, I had to tell the patrol officers who
responded to the 911 call, so they wouldn't shoot me when I answered
the front door with a gun in my hand, two dead bodies behind me, and
bullet holes all over the place.
Then I had to give it to Walker and Johnson, who drew the MCT call-out.
They offered to page Chuck for me. I guess once your sex life's on the
front page of the newspaper, it's considered public knowledge. They
apparently didn't know the whole story, because they seemed caught off
guard when I asked them to call my dad instead.
Then I had to explain it all a third time to Griffith, who showed up
just as the medical examiner was zipping the body bag closed around Tim
O'Donnell's corpse.
"The Chief called me," he said. "He thought I should know that two of
my deputies were involved in a shoot-out."
By then, my narrative skills had gotten pretty proficient. The
Derringers' involvement in street-level prostitution. O'Donnell's
extracurricular interests, which led him from what he thought was a
staged fantasy with an underage prostitute to the murder of Jamie
Zimmerman. How Kendra's assault arose from the same scenario, but this
time with Travis Culver as the not-so-innocent dupe. Culver's lies
about Frank's car. O'Donnell's fabrication of the Long Hauler letters.
My night of shoot-'em-up action. I dumped it all on him. Except the
part where I'd given O'Donnell my resignation.
"You should've come to me with this, Samantha," he said. He looked
tired, and, in the light of my kitchen, the wrinkles that usually
seemed distinguished just looked old.
"I thought I did the right thing at the time. I knew O'Donnell was set
on killing the case, and I assumed you'd listen to him unless I had
some leverage."
He stood to leave. "You should give me more credit, Sam. I'm an
independent thinker, and now I'm going to go home to think." As he
headed out the door, he gave me a wave over his shoulder. "Nice house
you got here. See you in the morning."
I had assumed from his comment that I was supposed to go to the office
this morning, regardless of my sleep deprivation, sore throat, and
aches. It definitely beat being dead, though.
And at least I was safe from the Derringers. At my insistence, Walker
had dispatched patrol officers to watch Haley and Kendra while police
began their search for Frank Der ringer. I thought about doing the
same for Travis Culver, but as far as I was concerned, he could fend
for himself. The warning call I placed to Henry Lee Babbitt seemed
courtesy enough.
Around the time Griffith left, Johnson snapped his cell phone shut and
announced they'd found Frank.
"Was he dumb enough to go home?" I asked.
"Wherever he was headed, he never got there. Traffic responded to a
major one-car accident on I-Eighty-four. The car burst through the
railing at an overpass and flipped head first onto the concrete below.
Driver was dead by the time they cut the car open. They were searching
the car for holes, trying like hell to figure out where the bullets in
the driver's shoulder and ass came from, when they heard the APB for
Derringer on the radio."
"His butt?" Walker said.
"Yeah. Looks like that second bullet of yours went straight into the
man's left cheek, Kincaid. Must have hurt like a mother fucker when he
was driving on the freeway. He was probably squirming around trying to
take the weight off his bony ass when he lost control."
I hadn't been able to laugh with them about it then, but in the morning
shower, as I rubbed a bar of Dove on my own left bum, I could see the
humor, and I laughed until I started crying again.
A strange bubble of silence followed me through the courthouse as I
walked to my office. I guess no one knew what to say to me. This
morning's news had featured vague reports of a fatal shoot-out at my
house involving the Derringer brothers and O'Donnell. The reports
didn't explain that they were all trying to kill me, only that "police
were investigating."
When I got into my office, I checked my voice mail, hoping for a
message from Chuck. No luck. He hadn't called my home or cell,
either. I did, however, get a message from Griffith, summoning me to
his office.
When I got there, he handed me a piece of paper and asked me what I
thought.
It was a letter from Griffith to Governor Jackson, supporting the
pardon requests of Margaret Landry and Jesse Taylor. It explained that
all currently available evidence indicated that Frank Derringer and Tim
O'Donnell had killed Jamie Zimmerman during a rape arranged through a
teenage prostitution ring managed by the Derringer brothers. O'Donnell
had pursued the case against Landry and Taylor based upon the