Blindside (29 page)

A
t
eight o'clock that evening, only three hours after leaving Detective Raven down at Metro Headquarters in the Daley building, Savich came to stand in the kitchen doorway, watching Sherlock wipe spaghetti sauce off Sean's mouth. Sean quickly replaced it with the next spoonful. What with all the excitement, they'd gotten home very late, and Sean was hungry, tired, and really hyped up. As for Sean's parents, they both hoped some of Savich's spaghetti would put him out. Savich said to Sherlock, not taking his eyes off his boy, “Are you ready for something you're not going to believe?”

Sherlock straightened midswipe. “I heard you talking on the phone to Miles. What's going on?”

“The shooter today. It seems he wasn't after me. He was after Katie.”

“After Katie? What do you mean?”

Savich didn't say anything for a moment as Sean clattered his spoon to his plate, climbed down from his chair, and made a beeline for his orange plastic ball in the corner. They both, for a moment, listened to him tell the ball that he was going to bounce it, good.

When she looked up at him, Savich said, “He shot Katie.”

“
What?
How? But that isn't possible! She never said a word, she never acted wounded, she—”

Savich leaned his head back against one of the cabinets, closed his eyes. “He shot her in the hip and she managed to hide it from all of us. The bullet went in and through. She'll be okay. Miles called from the emergency room while the nurse was getting Katie into a robe. Turns out she didn't say a word about it until after they'd gotten home and put the kids to bed. Then she tells him. He's still so shaken up he could barely speak straight.”

“She's really okay?”

“Yes, soon to be out with a smile on her face from the morphine. Just a couple days rest, and she'll be fine.”

Sherlock picked up a hot pad and hurled it across the kitchen. It calmed her and didn't make any noise to frighten Sean. “I don't believe this, Dillon. It's ridiculous, just plain dumb. She's wounded and doesn't even let on? No, that can't be right, it can't.”

“She didn't say anything because she didn't want the kids any more frightened than they were. If you think about it, you can see Katie's point. It was an adult decision, hers to make, I guess.”

Sherlock's heart was still pumping wildly. She threw another hot pad at the wall, calmed herself down. “It was brave of her.” She drew in a deep breath. “I hope I would have the presence of mind to do that. But wait, Dillon, if the shooter hit her—”

“That means I wasn't the target. Or, I really was the target, and he could have shot at her first, for the fun of it.”

Savich straightened, shrugged. “Maybe he, whoever
he
is, just wanted to scare us. At this point, any guess is as good as any other. Who knows, it might have been a random shooting.” Neither of them believed that for an instant.

Savich picked up Sean, who was tightly clutching his orange ball, and walked to the front window in the living
room. He stared out into the calm dark night. A storm was expected to hit Monday, winter coming with a grand announcement. And the temperature would plummet. Sean dropped his ball, watched it roll under an end table. He then spoke in his father's ear and patted his face, telling him things he understood, like
good spaghetti
—“I think Sean just said he wanted a puppy.”

It was so ridiculous that for a moment Sherlock actually laughed and kissed her son's sleepy face.

She saw the strain on Dillon's face, saw the restless movement of his hands, saw the scars on his hands and fingers from his whittling. She knew he'd been caught off guard by the same devastating feelings she had felt when that bullet had come so close to him and to Sean. It made her want to scream and cry at the same time. He said finally, as if he'd been holding the words inside but they now had to come out, “This was too close, Sherlock, far too close. Sean could have been killed.”

Of course she agreed. The corrosive fear, the sense of absolute impotence—she nodded but didn't say anything, just moved closer.

Sean's head now lay on his father's shoulder. Savich lightly smoothed his back, cupped his head. She saw a spasm of fear cross his face. He said quietly, “I've been giving a lot of thought today to what I've been doing nearly all my adult life—being a cop. What if . . . what if, because of me, some crazy kills my son? It would be my fault, Sherlock, no one else's, just mine, and it would all be because of what I choose to do for a living. I couldn't live with that, I just couldn't.”

“No,” she said slowly, her eyes still on his face, “neither of us could.”

He plowed forward, the words forcing themselves out of his mouth. “Maybe, just maybe, I should think about another line of work.” There, he'd said the unimaginable, and the earth hadn't opened up and swallowed him. It was out
in the open now, those words between them, and he didn't say anything else, just let the unthinkable settle around him, and he waited. Sean suddenly lurched up against his palm, and smiled at his father. He patted his father's face again with wet fingers.

Sherlock closed in and put her arms around him, just as they had after the shooting, with Sean between them. Then she began to lightly scratch around the healing wound in his back. They stood there silently together for several minutes. Finally, she raised her face, patted his cheek with her fingers, hers thankfully not wet, and said, “Do you know, Dillon, I agree with you entirely.”

He nearly fell back against the window with surprise. “You do?”

“Yes, I do. But the only thing is, you're the best cop I've ever met in my life.”

“Maybe, but Sean—”

She nodded. “This was so scary that both of us nearly went round the bend. But, you know, if you just stop to think about it, the solution to this isn't difficult.”

His head came up. “What solution?” He sounded irritated, and she was pleased. She could just imagine how deep he would dig in his heels if she argued with him, what with the worry and the guilt, worry and guilt that had nearly felled her as well.

She went on her tiptoes and kissed him, and again hugged her boy and her husband tight.

“Dillon, you're a smart man.”

“Yeah, well, what's your point? What's this easy solution?”

She smiled up at him, kissed both him and Sean again, and said, “As I said, you're smart. But here's your problem; you're just too much of a hero, Dillon; you feel too responsible, like you have to fix every bad thing that happens anywhere around you. It's not just your job, it's who you are.”

“Yeah, sure, but—”

“No buts. No more. You're a cop, Dillon, one of the very best. It's what you are, who you are. What happened in the park—it was scary, that's for sure, but the fact is there are such things as random shootings. Would you have blamed yourself for being a cop then? I'll tell you, there have been times when I've wanted to take you away to the Poconos, hide you in a cabin, and carry around six guns to protect you.”

“And you don't think I've felt the same way about you?”

She gave him a big smile, reached up her hand and cupped his cheek. “I think we're both doing exactly what we were meant to do. I plan for Sean to see us both well into old age. Get over it, Dillon. It's time to move on.”

He kissed her, pulled her hard against him again. Sean burped. “But—”

“I know, there's always a but. Let's just work through this one day at a time, all right? You know as well as I do that the time to make a life-altering decision isn't right after a huge scare.”

Slowly, he nodded.

“We've worked through everything else that's come along and hit us in the chops. This is different because it's the first time our jobs have come close to Sean, the first time our little tiger here could have been hurt because of what we do. It will be tough, but we'll do the right thing. Don't worry, we'll sort it all out.”

“Sherlock?”

She lightly bit his neck in answer.

“You want to spend some quality time with me?”

She was laughing as she licked where she'd bitten. “Can I strip you naked and kiss you all over?”

He swallowed hard, and nodded, looking at her smiling mouth. Sean burped again.

S
UNDAY
A
FTERNOON
T
HE
K
ETTERING
H
OME
C
OLFAX
, V
IRGINIA

Katie didn't hurt if she stayed still, and that was a very nice thing. On the other hand, she wasn't stupid enough to laugh or make any sudden movements. She was seated in Miles's big comfortable leather chair, wearing sweats with a nice loose fleece top that hid the bandages under the sweats, her feet up on a big ottoman, her legs covered with a ratty afghan Miles's mother had knitted many years before. She was wearing a pair of thick socks, no shoes.

Cracker had taken Sam and Keely to a children's movie matinee so they wouldn't see or hear the cops. Both of them had seemed fine, thank God, neither suspecting that she had something other than the flu. She was thankfully spared enthusiastic hugs that would surely have brought a moan out of her. She smiled over Sherlock and Savich, who'd arrived a few minutes earlier.

Miles brought in coffee and tea, and a plate of scones he'd picked up at Nathan's Bakery just down on Cartwright Avenue.

Detective Benjamin Raven said the moment he sat down on the comfortable sofa in the living room, ignoring both scones and coffee, “I am royally pissed, Mrs. Kettering. That was a really stupid thing to do.”

To his surprise, she nodded. “I would agree with you, Detective, if I'd been wearing your cop's shoes and not the victim's.”

It was Sunday, his buddies were waiting for him down at the sports bar with peanuts, beer, and the Redskins game. Then Mr. Kettering had called. He'd been nursing his snit for a good half hour now and he wasn't about to let go without cutting loose on the woman who'd ruined his day.
“You're a cop, Sheriff, yet you pulled this stunt. You've come pretty close to obstructing justice.”

“An interesting point, Detective,” Miles said, his voice mild, really quite reasonable now that he'd gotten over his own snit. He turned slightly in his chair and winked at Katie before he turned back. “I think it was pretty dumb, too, but we've already discussed why she did it. Can we move on to something helpful?”

Detective Raven shouted at all of them indiscriminately, “Are all you people nuts? Your macho sheriff here could have bloody bled to death!”

“I really prefer macha, Detective Raven.”

“Don't you try to jolly me out of this, Sheriff!”

Miles said, “If she'd been shot bad, she would have yelled. She's not stupid.” He paused a moment. “You would have yelled, wouldn't you have, Katie?”

“Oh yes. I've always believed you've got to live to fight another day.” She stared at Miles, then gave him such a brilliant smile he blinked.

“Enough already,” Detective Raven said at last. He snagged a scone off the plate, poured himself a cup of coffee, and said, “If you guys are through praising this crazy woman, why doesn't somebody tell me who you think fired at you.”

Katie said, “I made a phone call back home to Jessborough just before you got here, Detective. Miles told you yesterday about all the hoopla we went through there. I asked about the congregation, about what was going on with them. Nothing, evidently. Interesting fact though. The place has been a disaster area what with all the storms, but once it started drying out, crews went out to the ruins of the McCamy house to start cleaning everything up and dig out the bodies. It's still really slow going. There's no word yet.”

Detective Raven said, “You think one of the McCamys survived?”

“No one could have survived in that house, Detective,” Miles said.

“Then what's your point?”

Katie said, “I guess maybe I was just surprised that they hadn't cleaned everything up. It's just strange, all of it.”

“Basically, we ain't got anymore diddly than we had yesterday,” Detective Raven said, rising, and dusting off his jeans. “I've always hated too many possibilities. It sucks, big time.”

“Yeah,” Miles said, “I agree.”

Savich's cell phone played the
1812 Overture.
He held up a staying hand, listened, and when he hung up, he said, “That was one of my agents. The white Toyota Camry the shooter was driving was stolen two days ago from a Mr. Alfred Morley, in Rockville, Maryland. Right out of his driveway, during the night. He told the local police and they put out an APB on it.”

“I don't suppose the car's turned up?” Detective Raven said.

Savich shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Well, like my daddy always says, if things come too easy in life, you have more fun than you deserve. Okay, that's it then. Thanks for the scones.” He looked down at his watch. “Well, damn, I've missed a good half of the game.”