Mistress

Chapter 48

The paramedic completes her tests on me and announces that I’m going to be okay, whatever that means. I’m seated in the back of an open ambulance in the middle of 12th Street, which has been shut down following the shooting.

“Probably just a concussion from the impact when the air bag deployed, Mr. Casper. You’re lucky.”

Luckier than my friend Ellis Burk.

“You might want to spend a night in the hospital,” she says. “I know these police officers are eager to talk to you, but we can have you put under observation if you’d like-”

“That’s okay,” I say. “They need to talk to me.”

She looks over her shoulder. There are probably a dozen squad cars and some unmarked vehicles as well. “Yeah, it’s bad. Y’know, losing one of their own. That’s a pretty big deal.”

I figured out the pretty-big-deal part all by myself. News vans are lining the police perimeter, and copters are flying overhead. It’s not every day there’s a shoot-out at a populated intersection in the middle of the nation’s capital, at least on this side of town. It’s not every day a cop is murdered.

I close my eyes and try to wish this whole thing away. Ellis was my friend, someone who was trying to help me beyond what his job required. And look what it got him.

“Mr. Casper, Detective Liz Larkin.”

I open my eyes. Detective Liz Larkin is my height, over six feet tall, and wider than me. She has a towering presence on a bad day, and judging from her expression, this is one of those days.

“Get down off that ambulance, turn around, and place your hands behind your back,” she says.

I comply. “You’re…cuffing me?”

“Give the man a prize.” She places the cuffs over my wrists about as gently as she would rope a steer.

“I’m under arrest?”

“You’re two for two.”

“What’s the charge?”

“I’ll think of something,” she says. She leads me to a car, pushes down on my head, and shoves me into the backseat.