Shot Girl (15 page)

An ambulance sat in the deserted section of Chapel Street, its siren quiet. But even if it’d been blasting, I’m not sure anyone would’ve been able to discern that sound from the others.

No one was watching me, and I ducked under the tape, hoping that whichever photographer had caught this assignment was here somewhere, shooting this.

"You’re not supposed to be here." A uniformed cop grabbed my arm and started pulling me away, but then a familiar face peered into mine.

Ronald Berger. I nodded at him. "Hey, what happened here?"

He looked at the notebook in my hand, cocked his head at the uniform, who let me go and scurried off to try to control the crowd.

"You shouldn’t have done that," Ronald scolded.

I shrugged. "It’s my job," I said. "What happened here?" I was in my element, and Charlie Simmons couldn’t take this moment away from me.

Ronald looked over at one of the bus stops. Three cops were leading a guy to a police car. "Fired shots."

I nodded at Ronald, scribbling. "Who is he?"

"No ID. And he won’t say anything to anyone. It’s like he’s a fucking mute."

I looked at the guy’s dark face, an earring glinting in one ear, his nose broad, his lips pursed tightly, his shoulders stiff. He wasn’t looking at anything in particular, just let the cops push his head down and into the car and allowed himself to disappear.

"Not exactly
Dog Day Afternoon
, is it?" I asked, remembering Al Pacino’s loud shouting of "Attica!" "So what happened?"

Ronald took a deep breath.

"Witnesses say he was arguing with a girl, and she shouted ’Fuck you’ at him and turned around to cross the street. He pulled out a nine-millimeter Glock and took a couple of shots."

"Jesus, no one was hit?"

Ronald snorted. "A guy and his family were sitting on a blanket nearby, waiting for the concert to start. The guy heard the shots, came over, and fucking tackled the kid, took him down, got the gun. He was sitting on the guy’s back when the first cop showed up." He paused. "He was the only one sitting still. By then, everyone was running. Some people just ran over little kids. Little kids, for fuck’s sake." His arm swept across the air, indicating the Green. I saw more ambulances farther down Church and Temple streets, EMTs, and gurneys and all that shit you normally see on TV.

The adrenaline rushed through my body as I took it all down. "Do you have the girl, the guy who took him down? Can I talk to them?"

Ronald frowned. "We’re interrogating them now." I followed his eyes over to a small area to our left, cordoned off with three cop cars. A tall man wearing a Yankees baseball cap was talking to one officer. A little farther down the street, a young woman in a pair of shorts that showed off long, slender, muscular legs was also answering questions. Every cop was watching her.

Something about her looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her.

"What’s the guy’s name? The shooter?"

Ronald was distracted. "It’ll be in the press release," he said, moving away.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. And it wasn’t going to, if I had anything to say about it. But I also knew that I needed to give the cops a little more time to do their job.

Some people weren’t fleeing, I noticed now. There were a few pockets of families huddling, talking among themselves, not wanting to miss anything. Maybe they’d even be on TV. The vans were congregated on Temple, the reporters and cameramen grim-faced as they taped their segment, showing their outrage and, of course, compassion.

A group of young black kids was hanging out near the yellow tape behind the farthest bus stop. Two of them were straddling bikes.

I had plenty of people I could get quotes from.

I maneuvered under the tape. While I knew Jane would want a great story about the guy who tackled the guy with the gun, I’d start with those kids. They might know who the shooter was. This was a small city, and everyone knew everyone in his own world. I at least needed the shooter’s name; it would be easier to get information from Ronald later if I had something to start with. I wondered where Tom was. Maybe I’d missed him.

As I turned to take a look, I caught the eye of the girl being interrogated, the alleged reason why the guy had started shooting. She wasn’t too far away, in front of the Ann Taylor Loft. Right away my memory kicked into gear.

It was that shot girl. The shot girl at Bar whom Vinny was talking to when I went outside last night. What the hell was her name?

She frowned at me, then turned back to the cops.

I shrugged off a nagging feeling that this might not be a coincidence. Because what the hell else could it be? There are a lot of college girls in this town; Yale and Southern are not the only schools in the area. But on the off chance that my logic was wrong, I stopped amid the chaos and pulled my cell phone out of my bag.

"Remind me of that girl’s name at Bar last night. Felicia’s friend," I said, without even saying hello, when Vinny answered. Hell, he knew who it was.

"Ashley Ellis," he said.

"Thanks," I said, but I didn’t end the call right away.

"You’re welcome," he said, and then he was gone.

He didn’t even ask why I wanted to know. He didn’t ask me shit.

Damn. He was here somewhere. He had to be.

I pushed it out of my head, concentrating on my job. As I approached the knot of young men, I recognized someone else. Jamond, the kid from the garden yesterday. A stroke of good luck, I hoped. Maybe it could get me in with the group.

"Hey, fancy meeting you here," I said to him lightly.

He still wore that do-rag on his head, the uniform of the day. All five were dressed alike in baggy jeans—worn so low I wondered how they stayed on—and white T-shirts that had to be extra-extra large. They were all pretty skinny, their clothes hanging on them like they each had been the Incredible Hulk and then suddenly shrank back into Bruce Banner and hadn’t had a chance to change yet. The bicycles were a reminder of a story I’d done the previous week about kids on bikes who’d been terrorizing people on the sidewalks, ripping purses and shopping bags out of hands as they sped by. I didn’t like to stereotype, and maybe these kids were completely innocent. No one had clear descriptions of the bike riders except that they were black kids. As if they all looked alike. Despite their clothes and slim frames, none of these kids resembled one another. Well, except for the scowls.

If I was to place a bet, I’d say they weren’t here for that children’s concert.

Jamond frowned at me. I ignored him.

"I’m Annie Seymour with the
Herald
. Did you guys know the guy who was shooting?" I asked.

They all shifted a little, taking quick looks at one another. Who was going to speak first? Was anyone going to?

"We was jus’ waitin’ for the bus,"Jamond finally said when all eyes landed on him.

On bikes? Oh yeah, I’d seen buses with bikes on the rack on the front grille. Not out of the realm of possibility. "With him?" I asked.

More shifting. These kids sure as hell knew who that guy was.

"How do you guys know Ashley?" I asked, indicating the girl and taking a wild guess that they did know her.

This time the shifting was accompanied by some smirks and winks between them. My instincts were right.

"Was she dating him?" I asked. "Is that why he shot at her? What did she do that pissed him off?"

Jamond started chuckling. "Dating him? You mean, fucking him? Yeah, sure she was. And he was pissed, because she fucked him more ways than one."

I knew he was trying to shock me, but he didn’t know me. "Fucked him how?" I asked.

More shuffling, but no one said anything.

"Was she cheating on him?" I tried.

Jamond shook his head; the look on his face told me he thought I was an idiot. While yesterday he’d seemed almost friendly, today, among his friends, he wasn’t going to let on about our previous encounter.

"How long have Ashley and your friend been together?" I asked. "What’s his name again?"

"Listen, Michael don’t—"

One of the other guys shot a look full of daggers, and Jamond stopped. Okay, so the guy’s name was Michael, but Michael what?

"Michael doesn’t what?" I asked, directly to Jamond, who looked me straight in the eye, but a wall had gone up and I knew he wasn’t going to say anything else. He was probably going to catch shit from his friends after, and I guess I should’ve felt bad about that, but I didn’t. This was my goddamn job.

I took another shot in the dark. "Do you guys know someone named Felicia, a girl who works with Ashley?"

Instead of smirking this time, each of them tensed, their shoulders raised, backs hunched, heads down, eyes skirting the sidewalk. I’d struck a nerve. "I’ve been looking for Felicia. Do any of you know where she is?"

More silence.

I sighed. I wasn’t going to get anything else out of this group. I pulled a few business cards out of my bag and handed them out. They took them, holding them tentatively as I said, "If you want to talk at some point, I don’t have to use your names. It can be off the record."

I didn’t wait for a reaction. I knew there wouldn’t be one. They’d drop the cards on the ground, make a show of how stupid it would be to talk to me. But maybe, just maybe, one of them would hold on to his card and call me. It was my only chance.

"That was interesting." The voice came from behind me, and I didn’t turn around.

"So, how did Ashley fuck with Michael?" I asked. "Did she say anything about a Michael last night?"

Vinny fell into step beside me, his hands in the pockets of his khakis. He was wearing a blue cotton blazer, which I knew without seeing it was covering his gun. He wouldn’t wear a sport jacket if he weren’t carrying. Even though it was about 110 degrees, he wasn’t sweating.

"She got pretty friendly when you went outside," he admitted, looking at me apologetically, but I waved my hand in the air.

"Why wouldn’t she?" I asked, and his expression changed; a smile took over his mouth. I wanted to slip my hand into the crook of his arm, but it wouldn’t be very professional at a crime scene. Instead, I touched his shoulder, hoping he’d know from that gesture I was happy our "fight" was over.

"She said something about someone named Reggie, not Michael," Vinny said as we walked.

I stopped.

"What?" he asked.

"What did she say?"

Vinny shrugged. "Said something about how unless I was willing to pay for a little more than a shot, she was going to catch shit with Reggie." He snickered. "It was pretty obvious what ’a little more’ meant." When I didn’t respond, he frowned. "What? What’s going on?"

"It may have nothing to do with anything—it may just be a coincidence," I said slowly, "but Reverend Shaw’s first name is Reggie."

Chapter 20

The minute I said it, it sounded ridiculous. But Vinny wasn’t laughing.

"There has got to be more than one Reggie in this city," I said, trying to convince myself that it was stupid to even make the connection. I had been trying to find something ugly on Shaw ever since he came into town. This would be too easy.

But I didn’t have time to ponder it further, because the guy who’d tackled Michael was being escorted our way. He and the cop stopped at a woman holding a little girl who may have been around two or three, her hand on the handle of a stroller that was built like a fucking Hummer. I took a couple of quick strides.

"You’re the guy who tackled the shooter, right?" I asked the man, ignoring the cop.

The guy looked at me. He was big, bigger up close than I’d thought, with a thick neck and large shoulders. He smiled shyly, but the twinkle in his eye told me he was enjoying this.

His wife, however, was not.

"Can we get going now?" she asked him, ignoring both me and the cop.

As a good husband should, he addressed her first. "They said they’ve got some more questions for me." I was taking notes as he spoke. "Can you take Isabella home? They said they’ll take me home after."

She didn’t want to do it, but nodded, allowed him to kiss her cheek.

"Can I get your name?" I interrupted.

She glared at me, Isabella picked her nose, and he nodded. "Joe Minotti."

"You’re kidding." Vinny’s voice came from behind me, and he held out his hand. "It’s really good to meet you." Vinny turned to me. "This guy was all-American for Notre Dame High School in 1994."

A football player. Great. But I saw the potential for the story. Former high school football star tackles shooter. Fantastic headline.

"What happened?" I asked.

The cop tried to move between us, but I shook my head. "Listen, this’ll just take a few minutes. Detective Berger said it was okay." I crossed my fingers under my notebook. Ronald was too busy to keep track of me, and by the time he found out I lied about this, I’d be long gone and the story already filed, probably.

Joe Minotti took off his Yankees ball cap and ran a hand through sweat-soaked dark hair. I could see tufts peeking up over the collar of his T-shirt. "We were just sitting on the blanket, waiting for the concert. We got here late, Isabella was acting up, and we had to sit way back here." He paused, looking at his wife, who was still standing there but wasn’t interrupting. He took that as the okay to continue. "I saw them arguing. He was shouting." He leaned closer to me, cupping his mouth, and said, "He told her she was a fucking whore." After a second, he added, "Sorry."

I never understood why it was okay for guys to use the word "fuck" with one another, but they had to get a conscience with a woman. I shook my head. "It’s okay. Go on." Vinny was trying not to laugh.

"I saw him pull the gun out from under his T-shirt and take a couple of shots. I had a straight shot—he wasn’t standing behind the bus-stop enclosure, just off to the side of it. I was pretty fast in high school, and I haven’t slowed too much, despite a few pounds." He patted his stomach, which looked pretty flat to me. I bet he still did a hundred crunches a day. "So I went after him, got him to the ground, and took the gun. It was adrenaline, mostly. Like when I played, you know." He looked at Vinny like Vinny knew what it was like to play football. He didn’t know Vinny was a chess geek.