He might still be able to use his weapon-but Kate took care of that problem by kicking the gun away. Then she put her foot on Foster’s throat.
I shouted, “Crowell, help us, for God’s sake.”
He was no more than fifty feet away and yet was willing to let Jeff bleed out so he could capture the drama on tape.
Jeff’s eyes were closed, but he was still breathing. I pressed a hand against his chest wound and fumbled for the phone clipped to his belt. I flipped it open and started to press the number pad with my bloody thumb-God, there was so much blood-when I felt someone grip my shoulder.
I looked up and saw the investigative reporter who worked for God knew who-Mary Parsons.
“The police are coming,” she said. “Should be here any minute. And they’re sending an ambulance.”
“Thank you. Thank God.” I rested my face against Jeff’s cool cheek. My sister needed me, but I couldn’t leave him. I had to keep him warm, keep my hand tight against the hole where his life was leaking out. “My sister? Can you see her?”
Parsons, who was crouched near us, raised her head and looked through the driver’s-side window. “The man is still lying there on the grass. Your sister has her foot on his neck. And that asshole is still taping every second of this.”
The police came then. But not with sirens blaring. The SWAT team was upon us so quietly I nearly cried out in surprise.
After they assessed the scene, one of them radioed for patrol and homicide. But when I told them one of their own was down, the officer got back on the radio and said, “Where’s the fucking medics?”
The ambulance must have already been coming down the street, because it seemed like only seconds later when the paramedics pried me away from Jeff and began their work.
Then that helpless, hopeless feeling, the same one I’d had when I knew my sister was in danger, hammered down on me again.
I think I heard someone say, “Ma’am, are you all right? Have you been injured?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t speak.
27
There had been no hospital vigil when my daddy died. His heart attack had been brutally quick, with no chance for good-byes. Maybe that’s better, I thought, as I sat and waited for word on Jeff.
I wasn’t alone. In fact, so many other officers had come to wait, come to give their blood for their brother, that the hospital had put us all in a conference room; either that or we would have taken over the regular waiting area.
After Kate had given her statement to police, she insisted on staying with me. I held her cold hand tightly in my own as we sat in padded chairs around the long table, cold cups of coffee in front of us. Kate should be in the ER getting checked out, just like Aunt Caroline was. They’d both been bound, perhaps even hurt by Foster. But Kate had refused to be anywhere but here. We’d been told we’d get word on Aunt Caroline as soon as she was evaluated, but the Hermann Hospital ER we’d all been brought to was very crowded.
DeShay was pacing like a parrot on a perch, and White was with Harrison Foster at Ben Taub Hospital, where they’d taken him. Foster’s wound turned out to be minor. He was doing fine. Just fine. Had my decision not to shoot to kill been correct? Or would this be a regret I’d carry with me to my grave? It all depended on one thing-the one thing I did not know yet: whether Jeff would live or die.
“Why is this taking so long?” I said.
I’d been asking this question probably every ten minutes since they’d taken Jeff into surgery-like some terrible aberration of the “are we there yet?” children’s chant.
Kate squeezed my hand, and DeShay grazed his fingers across my shoulders on one of his passes. Earlier, Kate had told me what little she knew of Foster’s motive-something to do with his wife’s mental state after their baby was born fifteen years ago. But she’d been too terrified to listen carefully to his ramblings-and he had rambled, mostly about how it was over, how he’d be leaving behind plenty of money for his family, and that was why Kate had to transfer the funds to support his new life in someplace far, far away. A definite fairy tale, was all I could think.
“There may be more you don’t remember,” I said.
“Probably,” she answered. “Maybe he talked so much because we’d… shared a lot beforehand.” She’d gone silent then, lost in her own guilt. I wanted to tell her she had nothing to feel guilty about, but knowing her, she wouldn’t have agreed.
Someone knocked on the door, and everyone not already on their feet stood silently in one motion-like we’d all gotten orders from our drill sergeant.
A volunteer opened the door, not the doctor we were awaiting. “There’s someone out here named Emma Lopez,” the woman said. “She says she’s not the press, that-”
“Let her in, please,” I said.
All the other men and women waiting with Kate and me had no interest in this visitor. They returned to pacing or drinking coffee or resting their heads on the table.
Emma ran into the room and embraced me, pulling Kate into the hug as well. “I am so sorry,” she whispered. “This is all my fault.”
I withdrew and held her by the upper arms-too roughly, I suppose. “Don’t you ever say that. Don’t you ever blame yourself for wanting the truth.”
These were the words I wanted to say to Kate and couldn’t. Because that was what Jeff would have told them both. He hunted down the truth and made sure people paid for their crimes. For him it was simple, yet so important. And victims or family members taking responsibility for the crimes in any way? Well, that was simply wrong in his book.
I let go of Emma and apologized. “It’s just that Jeff wouldn’t want you saying that.”
DeShay mumbled, “You got that right, sister.”
One of the uniformed officers silently brought a chair over so Emma could sit by us.
She did. “I came here to Hermann Hospital as soon as I heard, but it was chaos in the emergency room waiting area, so many police and reporters. Someone from a TV station spotted me, started asking questions. I had no answers, and that’s when she told me this man Foster had exchanged my sister for a dead child, that he killed my mother. She said he’d been shot and was taken to Ben Taub Hospital, so I went there.”
“Why would you ever do that?” Kate asked.
“I don’t know-at least, my conscious mind didn’t know. I guess I thought I could walk in and ask him why. That’s all I wanted, really-to know why. Kravitz must have been hanging around there, because he found me. Before he could talk to me she walked in with her… daughter. A police officer whisked them away pretty quickly.”
“Who are you talking about?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew.
“Foster’s wife… and his daughter. She looks like Shannon. And so much like my mother.” Tears welled. “That one glance may be all I’ll ever get of my sister. And then I thought about you again and I had to come back here. You’ve paid such a high price for-”
I put a finger to her lips. “Quit that. Jeff’s the strongest person I’ve ever met, and he’ll pull through.”
Nods in the room, like silent amens.
Minutes that seemed like hours later, a woman in surgical scrubs appeared in the doorway. “Next of kin?” she said solemnly, scanning the grim faces in the room.
I felt sick, felt like I was falling off the earth.
DeShay took my elbow, lifted me from my chair, walked me over to face this tired-looking, sober messenger. “This is Jeff’s next of kin,” he said.
She didn’t question whether that was true or not. She just started talking. “We had to remove the spleen. And repairing his lung was delicate, but my team and I believe we have a decent outcome. The bullet passed between the ribs and lodged near the heart, so the length of the surgery-”