Oh, my God.
Hadley collapsed back onto the ground, squeezing her eyes shut like a kid hiding from the boogeyman. She swallowed, dry-mouthed, against her rising gorge. I'm not going to throw up, she thought. I'm not going to throw up. With her eyes closed, she noticed the things she should have earlier: the bright copper tang of blood, the nose-wrinkling suggestion of human waste, the buzzing of full-bellied flies.
She could hear the timbre of Van Alstyne's voice floating on the heat-saturated air. I have to let the chief know about this. Of course, to do that she was going to have to move, which she didn't want to do, not now, not maybe ever. She didn't want to deal with yet another dead person. What was this? The fourth? Fifth?
With that, she had another realization. The chief's promise of thirty days in the county jail-a lie to begin with, since the guy had shot at a cop, for God's sake-wasn't going to seduce this man. He wasn't going to give himself up. He was already headed for Clinton. He had nothing to lose.
Hadley reversed herself, staying as low to the ground as she could, then belly-crawled back around the side of the house. The chief was focused on the man with the gun, who was ranting about getting ripped off and not being able to trust anyone. Hadley ignored him. She stuck her hand up in the air to get someone's attention. The chief's eyes never wavered from the window where the shooter was hunkered down, but behind the squad car's tail, Kevin Flynn poked his head up and nodded once. He had been the MKPD's least experienced officer before she was sworn in, and his persistent attempts to be helpful and friendly didn't lessen the gall of playing catch-up with a guy eight years her junior. She hoped he was good at charades-there was no way she could use her radio this close to the house-as she laid her gun on the grass next to her.
First she jerked her thumb toward the rear of the farmhouse: back there. She used two hands to make the universal feminine shape, out, in, out: a woman. She drew a finger across her throat: dead. She held one hand like a pistol and "shot" herself in the chest.
Flynn shook his head as if to clear it, then nodded again. His red hair disappeared, to pop up again moments later, behind the chief. The chief heard whatever it was Flynn said to him. His eyes narrowed and his skin seemed to stretch across his cheekbones. He murmured something to Flynn, who slid into one of the cruisers and grabbed a mic.
"What's going on?" the shooter asked. "What's he doing on the radio?"
"I just told him to ask the state troopers to stay back a ways." Van Alstyne held up one hand. "I want you and me to have the time we need to talk our way out of this thing. Can't do that with a bunch of staties with guns hanging around."
More likely Flynn was telling the SWAT team to detour its sharpshooters farther along the road leading to the Christies' half-mile drive. If they went the long way around and stuck to a narrow approach through the sheep pasture, they could make it to the barn without being seen. Once inside, they would have an ideal vantage point through the haymow and upper windows.
The same idea seemed to occur to the gunman. "You tell those bastards to stay away from us," he shouted. "Anybody tries to mess with us, they gotta go through one of these kids to do it." Within the house, a woman cried out. Hadley didn't realize the man had left his defensive position at the front window until the chief shouted, "Knox! What's he doing in there?"
She scrambled to her feet and peered into the window she had been crouched beneath. She got a beautiful view of the front hallway and the stairs. Useless. She covered the eight feet to the next window in two long strides. The sill was just low enough for her to see into a room in chaos, children scattering, a teenager clutching an infant, a woman struggling with the man as he yanked a little boy off his feet.
"He's holding a kid," Hadley yelled. "He's-oh, shit, no!" She watched, helpless, as the man clubbed the woman in the face with the butt of his gun. The woman dropped to the floor.
"Are there other shooters?" the chief yelled.
"I can't tell!" she screamed. "Maybe in the front-"
The man holding the squirming child turned toward the window, aiming the revolver at Hadley. She ducked and covered just in time. The window shattered. Shards of glass sliced into her hands, stabbed the back of her uniform, caught in her hair.
The chief was yelling for her and Flynn to get to the back door. She heard the muffled thud of footsteps against grass and then Flynn was beside her. He tossed her a Kevlar vest identical to the one he was wearing. She caught it, rose, and took off for the rear of the house, glass tinkling as it flew off her like water off a shaggy dog. She struggled into the vest as Flynn rounded the corner, taking the steps up to the porch in two bounds. He went high, holding the door open, while she crouched low, stepping over the body of the murdered woman-I'm sorry, ma'am, so sorry-shouting, "Police! Put your weapons down!" to the empty kitchen. She moved aside for Flynn to pass through and almost fired when a straggly boy appeared in the doorway. "Porsche!" he bawled. From unseen rooms beyond she heard Van Alstyne bellowing, a girl shrieking, and then, Holy God, the sound of gunfire, one, two shots and the.357 Magnum going off.
"Get in here!" Hadley shouted at the boy, as one gun and then another gun fired, and fired, and fired, too many shots, way too many. She and Flynn pushed past him into the doorway, low, high, her heart beating so fast she thought she was going to die.
She thought she was going to die.
The teenager screamed, yanking one of the kids out of the way. They rounded the big table dominating the space and approached the front room. Through the doorway, Hadley could see the other woman, out on the floor, bleeding from a vicious cut in her forehead. Beside her, the gunman was sprawled half on and half off a sofa, his eyes staring unseeing at the ceiling, his chest a bloody mess. A second man slumped in the far doorway, folded over like a stringless marionette.
Hadley thought she might collapse on the spot from relief. Instead, she and Flynn fanned into the room. She froze. Flynn let out a keening sound like a banshee. Omen of death. There was another body crumpled on the wooden floor.
Russ Van Alstyne.
Lyle MacAuley looked up from where he knelt beside the chief. "Call nine-one-one," he snapped at Flynn. He looked at Hadley. "Get me something I can use for compresses." His voice was as sharp-edged as ever. She and Flynn stumbled into the kitchen, where Flynn whirled and ran out the door, while Hadley stood stupidly, thinking, Compresses? Then she remembered the basket of laundry. She stepped over the dead woman, dug into the basket, and emerged with two bath towels.
"Hurry, Knox!"
She dashed back to the front room, holding out the towels. MacAuley snatched them out of her hands. While he folded them into thick pads, she looked down at the chief.
"Oh, Jesus," she said.
"Shut up!" MacAuley nodded toward the dining room. "Get these civilians out of here."
Hadley turned around. The door between the two rooms was crowded with crying kids. The teenager with the infant stood weeping-the scraggly boy's Porsche, she supposed-rocking the red-faced baby back and forth while it screamed. Best to start with her. Hadley stepped through the doorway, forcing the girl to retreat.