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Full dark was hours away.
They would bring boats to search the swamp but that would take a while. They might call in police dogs but Selena had learned that police dogs were no threat to her. They would set up a perimeter with their cars, a few blocks out, and then wait for her to move. If they caught her, they would put her in a concrete box for the rest of her life.
No. Not right. This was the South.
They would kill her.
She suppressed a sudden flaring of rage, and the fear that shivered underneath it. She couldn’t just die, she couldn’t just be ended. Not before she had accomplished her mission, her reason for being alive. It wouldn’t be fair.
It wouldn’t be right.
So...be still.
She lowered her face into the reeds, made herself go limp, sinking deeper into the little island, becoming a part of it. She visualized herself as a shapeless patch of black mud in a cluster of reeds. And soon that was what she was. It was one of her particular gifts, to blend into the background, to seem to disappear. To vanish.
She ignored the clouds of mosquitoes and the leeches that were crawling on her flesh and feeding on her, and all the tiny fish that had come to nip at her, and the fat white snake that was staring at her from his nest in the clump of marsh grass. She ignored the miasmic reek of the swamp itself. She went inward and shut down. She waited.
—* * *
Halliday was right beside Redding and Marsh as they broke through the trees and came out onto the roadway. Julie Karras was sitting on the ground beside the Suburban, leaning back against it, blood running down the side of her face. She had her Glock out and was holding it on one of the teenage girls who had been cuffed in the back of the truck.
The girl was lying on her belly on the ground, her hands cuffed behind her. She was swearing and screaming, spitting rage into the slick hot pavement under her chin.
The left rear door of the Suburban was wide-open and the other sister was sprawled in the open doorway, half in the truck and spilling out onto the ground, down on her knees, facing out, upper body thrown backward into the truck, head hanging sideways, painted lips slack. She had a bullet hole in her left cheek and another one in her neck just under her chin and a third one in her belly. You could see it on the exposed skin, where her T-shirt had ridden up as she slid down to the roadway. A little black hole, and blood oozing from it onto her jeans. The T-shirt had bright red cartoon words on it: I’m a Belieber!
Blood and brains and hair and bone shards were splattered over the side of the truck. Her eyes were wide-open, sightless, staring at whatever comes next after this life ends. Lying on the road below her right hand was a collapsible steel baton called an ASP. It was extended, and there was blond hair and blood stuck to the tip.
People, gawkers, were standing around in the dwindling rain, mouths slack, gaping at this scene, but no one had come in closer to help or shelter or comfort Julie Karras. She tried to sit up as Redding came to her, her eyes unfocused, shock setting in.
“She...she hit me. Pulled my baton out while I was helping the other kid out of the truck and...she hit me.”
Redding was saying something soothing as he gently lifted the Glock out of her right hand. He ejected the mag, checked it, put it back in, but he didn’t chamber a round. He slipped the pistol into the back of his belt. He lifted her face up by the chin, gently, assessed her eyes, his manner calm but his heart was hammering in his chest.
She looked back at him, both eyes the same—fear. Shock, anger—but no sign of brain injury, pupils the same size, reactive. Her lips moved in a whisper and then in a stronger voice.
“Is she alive?”
Marsh had been checking the girl out while Halliday was kneeling beside the other sister, on the ground, looking for injuries. And weapons.
Marsh glanced over at Redding, shook his head.
“No. She’s gone, honey,” Redding told her.
Karras started to cry, choked it back.
“Can you stand, Julie?”
“I...I think so.”
Redding did a quick inventory, decided she was not hurt in some way that he couldn’t see and she couldn’t feel, put his hands under her arms and got her to her feet, put her back up against the driver’s window of the Suburban, turned her head to the side and studied the damage.
It was a nasty wound.
The ASP was an impact weapon, two feet of solid steel when extended, with a little balled tip. It was meant to be used on muscle mass—thighs, calves, biceps. Never against bone. Bone shattered. Used like that the ASP was a killing tool.
Blood was still pulsing out of a three-inch rip in the flesh just above Karras’s right ear. Her ear had actually cushioned some of the impact. The upper part was crushed and flattened and ripped open. An inch higher and the blow could have punched through her temple. She’d be dead, or brain damaged. The girl had meant to kill her and had come damn close.
Halliday jerked the other girl to her feet and had her up against the hood of the squad car, spread out on it, facedown.
He was searching her pockets, putting whatever he found onto the hood of the unit—a wallet; an iPhone; a roll of candy; a small silver can with a breathing mask attached, presumably an asthma puffer; a small notepad with a unicorn on the cover. She was ferociously angry, her voice a birdlike screech, steel on slate.
“She killed her. That bitch killed Rebecca. You’re dead, you cunt, you’re so fucking dead.”
Halliday finished searching her, told her to shut the fuck up in a low growl and frog-walked her around to the rear door of his cruiser, not gently. He popped the door and shoved her in, ran her cuffs through a ringbolt and chain welded to the floor of the cruiser and slammed the door on her string of obscenities. He walked back, his face white, scalded by her anger.
He collected the items off the hood.
“Got ID there?” asked Redding.
Halliday flipped open the wallet, found a Florissant High School ID in the name of Karen Anne Walker, age sixteen, a couple of credit cards and a membership card for something called the Glad Day Assembly, with an address in Florissant, Missouri. Florissant was a suburb of St. Louis, Redding recalled.
“Check the other one, see if she’s got any ID on her, but don’t move her body if you can help it, okay?” Halliday stepped away, went over to the dead girl and carefully went through her pockets, looked back at Redding.
“Nothing.”
“See if there’s a purse or something in the truck.”
Halliday checked the truck, came back with a small lime-green leather wallet, flipped through it, found a Missouri driver’s license.
“Got a Rebecca Walker, seventeen, same address, picture matches.”
“Run the names, Jim. Let’s see what we get.”
Halliday went off to his cruiser to do that.
Redding turned to Marsh.
“Let’s get an EMT for Julie and bring some County units in here. We need to control this scene.”
“Still want the dogs?” Marsh wanted to know.
“Hell yes. Two units.”
Marsh stepped away to make the calls and then went back to his cruiser for a roll of crime scene tape, started to string it all around, from signpost to telephone pole, herding the people back as he did this, the rapidly growing crowd babbling and staring, their smartphones and iPads out, taking video, chattering into their phones, snapping shots.
Whatever they were doing, Redding could feel the electrons radiating out into the cyberworld, flashing around the town, the city, the state, the globe. Redding asked Karras if she could walk.
She said yes, and he walked her back to their unit, sat her gently inside on the shotgun seat, tugging a first-aid kit out of his glove compartment.
He put a sterile pad up against the wound and then wrapped it in place with a roll of gauze, making those pointless little comforting sounds parents make when their kids are hurt.
It reminded him of when he’d been a husband and a dad. That hurt to think about so he stopped thinking it and concentrated on what he was doing.
Karras was staring through the window at the Suburban, where Marsh was draping an aluminum foil thermal blanket over the dead girl’s body.
“She’s really dead, isn’t she?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
“She is. You okay to tell me how it happened, before all the official machinery starts up?”
She managed to look at him, one eye half-covered with the gauze strip.
“I did what you said. I checked them both for weapons, knives... They were crazy, panicked. I got them calm, but I searched them first, I really did, Sergeant Redding... They were both in shock. At least, that’s what I thought. I wanted to get them into the back of the cruiser, away from the truck, because it was now a crime scene, get them out of the rain...”
She went away for a moment and Redding let her. She’d have to tell this story over and over again. Let her remember it as it came to her.
He was thinking about the dash cam. It would all be on the dash cam. Not just on the dash cam either. It was likely that half the people in the crowd gathered around had already been taking cell phone shots when the shooting happened.
It was entirely possible that somebody was loading it onto YouTube right at this second. Or selling it to one of the cable networks.
He hoped to God it was a righteous shooting because if it wasn’t, they were both in the barrel, but especially her.
Although, now that we’re on the topic, he was the dickhead who left a rookie in charge of two kidnapping victims while he raced off like some dumb-ass greyhound chasing a mechanical rabbit. No, whatever happened, this one was on him, not her.
“I was helping the younger one—Karen. I think she said Karen was her name. I was helping her out of the truck, she had trouble walking and I remember holding her up and walking along with her—she was holding on to me like she was drowning, I was half carrying her...and then she looked back over my shoulder, like behind me, back at the truck, where Rebecca was, and I saw her eyes get big, and she—”
Karras went quiet, remembering it.
“She smiled, a big happy grin, and I turned to look and I felt a tug at my belt—Karen was holding my arms down, wrapping me up tighter, like she was holding me? I threw her off, I was turning—and my head exploded—I went down—I was trying to get my weapon out... Rebecca was right over me with that baton and Karen was screaming, ‘Kill her kill her smash her skull,’ and Rebecca started to swing it down at my head and I had the Glock in my hands and I shot her. Saw the rounds hit her. I don’t know how many I got out—”
“Three rounds.”
She thought about that.
“Three? Okay. I don’t know.”
Redding had already checked her mag. She had fifteen rounds left in the seventeen-round mag. And she’d had one already chambered, as she’d been trained to do. Which was good because, if she’d had to take the time to rack the slide and chamber a round and then aim and fire, she’d probably be dead now. So three rounds out, and all of them hits.
“Three is pretty damn good, Julie. Most cops would have emptied the mag into her. Or tried to.”
“I...was thinking about the backstop. About ricochets. About all the people standing around.”
“Good. Good for you. That’s trigger control. All three shots were right on target, center of the visible mass. That’s textbook fire discipline. Remember that, when they ask later. The shooting board.”
Karras took a moment to absorb that idea—the shooting board—and then shook it off.
“Anyway...she was going back and down, back into the rear door. I pivoted on my hip and Karen was coming right back at me—I could hear her coming, her shoes scraping—and I figured she was after my weapon because that was what she was focused on. I put the gun on her and I said... I have no idea what I said. She lay down on her face, I went over and cuffed her...and next thing I knew my legs gave out and my ass was on the ground and my back was up against the side of the truck and there was blood in my eyes.”
She looked down at her hands.
“My first day,” she said, mostly to herself. “I can’t fucking believe it. I’m on the job five hours and I’ve fucking killed someone.”
Tears close but not there yet, her blue eyes wide, blood in the right eye and on her cheekbone, a little blood on her teeth as she tried to find the words. Redding put his hand on her right shoulder, feeling the warm wet blood on her uniform shirt, the red stains on her gold braid.
“If the dash cam shows the same thing—”
She hardened up.
“It will.”
“Then it was a good shooting. Take a deep breath. You did just fine. Better than fine. I’m proud of you, Julie. Remember that.”
The EMT bus had arrived, complete with sirens and lights, and now there were County cars rolling in from both ends of the street, along with two K-9 units of the Highway Patrol. And right behind them, Mace Dixon in his Supervisor truck.
Redding leaned in close to her, speaking low but urgently, making the point.
“It’s going to get real intense real fast, Julie. You’re not to talk, got that? Not to anyone. You can answer health questions for the EMT people. Everybody else, you have nothing to say. Got that? Nothing. Not even to the CO. You’re just confused. Your head is killing you—”
“It really is,” she said, trying for a smile.
“You’re too shook up to talk right now. Mace will understand. You don’t talk until you’re discharged from the hospital and you’ve had a good night’s sleep, and we’re back at Depot, and your Patrol Advocate is sitting beside you. And I’ll be right there too. It’ll take a couple of days before that happens. They’ll be taking you to Immaculate Heart to look at that head wound. Our guys will be around everywhere and they’ll keep you safe. They won’t ask you about the shooting. They all know better. But you don’t talk about the shooting to Flagler County. Or any city cops. Or to the medics. Basically, not even to Jesus Christ Himself if He appears in your room with a six-pack of Coronas and a box of Krispy Kremes. Not to anyone.”
She managed to laugh at that, and then the tears finally came, and she was looking at her hands, at the blood on them.
“I killed a living person,” she said. “That girl was alive just a few minutes ago, and now she’s dead, and she will be dead...forever.”
Redding put a hand under her chin, lifted her head and turned her to face him.
“Yes, you did. It was your sworn duty to do that, and you did it. You put the aggressor down and you stayed alive and no civilians got hurt. It was your job to protect the public, and you did that. You killed a crazy bitch who was trying to kill you. And when you were dead she’d have taken your gun and then what could have happened? She could have started firing into the crowd and killed a lot of innocent people. But you stopped her. Stopped her dead. And you know what you need to think about, every time you think about this?”
“What?”
“Fuck her. Better her than you.”
She looked up at him, trying to take that in.
“Really?”
He put a hand on her shoulder, a thin smile.
“Yeah. Really. Welcome to Cop World, Julie.”
* * *
A few minutes later Redding and Marsh and Halliday watched the EMT wagon roll away with Julie Karras, lights but no siren, as Mace Dixon, who’d been speaking to a Flagler County staff sergeant, came across to talk. To listen, actually.
They laid it out for him in the most basic terms, and he took it all in without a comment, other than one or two clarifying questions.
Dixon made sure he got it all straight, and then he lit up an Old Port, using the brim of his Stetson to shelter the match from what was left of the rain.
