High Country Nocturne - [26]

Her move toward the bushes and her weapon caused me to pull my.38. Before I could even raise the revolver, she sprinted away, leaving her pistol on the ground.

It took me a few seconds to get my balance. She had nailed me good with that kick.

By the time the dizziness faded, she held a good head start and she was fast.

She ran east on Cypress.

I pumped my arms and hammered the asphalt across Third Avenue, over the curb, and across the uneven, eighty-year-old sidewalk. But she was younger and I couldn’t catch her.

Her lead extended. She wove in and out of palm trees on the parking lawns, making me momentarily lose sight of her.

Suddenly Lindsey stepped back inside the wall, headed back in the direction of home, and saw us.

Strawberry Death paused beside a palm long enough to reach toward her ankle.

A backup gun.

But she didn’t turn on me. Instead, she started running east again. She was thirty feet from the wall.

I shouted, “Lindsey, run! Go back! Run!”

Lindsey froze and stared at me, unsure of what she was seeing.

I tried to get a clean shot but the two women were aligned and now not more than a few steps apart.

“Deputy Sheriff, halt! Drop your weapon! I will fire!”

Hearing this, Lindsey instantly withdrew to the other side.

“What’s going on out there? Are you all right?” A man’s voice from a porch.

“Get inside and call the police,” I yelled.

Then I stopped, dropped to one knee, made my breathing slow down, and lined up the barrel on the back of the woman, the gold and red of her hair shining under the streetlight.

I slowly let out a breath and started the trigger pull.

But then she passed through the cut in the wall.

And three seconds later, I heard the shot.

Chapter Twelve

Lindsey lay face down on the pavement.

The back of her white blouse was red and wet with blood.

I swept the surroundings with my.38 but the woman was gone. Then I knelt beside my wife and gently turned her over.

“Dave…”

“I’m here.”

“Your face is bleeding.”

“I’m fine.”

“Bad time for a walk, huh?” Her lips tried to smile.

I looked around again, but the parking lots across the street were empty and the edges of the wall looked clear of any lurking killer. The half-smoked Gauloise was burning five feet away.

“Don’t leave me.” Her voice sounded groggy.

“No. Never.”

“It hurts. Hurts.”

The entry wound was in the middle of her chest.

I needed a trauma kit.

I needed a trauma team with surgeons.

Her breathing was rapid and shallow. I took her pulse. Weak, thready. Classic shock symptoms. She was bleeding out.

“Stay with me, Lindsey. I love you. Stay awake.”

She stared at me, tried and failed to speak while I shakily dialed 911 on my iPhone, gave our location, my badge number from memory, and called for help.

“My wife has been shot. She’s badly wounded.”

Fire Station Four, with a paramedic unit, was only five blocks away. I heard the sirens from McDowell. It took somewhere between forever and eternity for the first emergency lights to appear on First Avenue.

The memory of Robin dying in my arms was banging in my vision. I couldn’t let it happen again.

Couldn’t.

“Keep breathing, baby. In and out.”

She nodded.

“Hold my hands tight.” She did, but her strength was fading.

Then her eyes closed.

Stripping off the blazer, I carefully rolled her to one side and used it as a makeshift dressing against her back. I wouldn’t let the word enter my mind: useless.

Firefighters and cops were arriving. Red and blue lights bounced off the wall, doors opened and closed, and uniforms approached. I moved aside and let them work, giving a description of the shooter to an officer who broadcast it on her portable radio. A helicopter appeared overhead and blasted us with white light.

More sirens were approaching from the distance.

Chapter Thirteen

St. Joseph’s Hospital, a Level One Trauma Center, was half a mile away.

An hour later, Lindsey was still in surgery. “Critical condition.” That’s all a doctor had told me as I was sent into in a long, largely empty waiting room with a television at one end bolted near the ceiling. A Hispanic family, mother and three small children, sat near it, staring silently.

God didn’t owe me anything. That didn’t stop me from praying for Lindsey.

A man came in to have me sign paperwork as Lindsey’s next of kin. I had her Social Security number memorized. He seemed amazed that we had insurance. I remembered when St. Joe’s was a hospital for the elite. Now most of the patients must have been on Medicaid or nothing.

It wasn’t even connected to the Catholic Church anymore. After an abortion was performed to save the life of the mother, the bishop retaliated by cutting off church ties that went back to 1895. Now the local wags called it Mister Joe’s and the moneyed Anglos had long abandoned it for Mayo. But it still was one of the best hospitals in the Southwest.

After the doctor left, it was quiet except for the television and a page for “Trauma Team Two.” I assumed that “Trauma Team One” was busy with Lindsey.

My face was still burning from the scratches. My left cheek and eye felt swollen from where the woman’s running shoe had connected. I didn’t want to look in a mirror.