The Accident

FIFTY-THREE

I’d already made up my mind, even before I’d left home, that I’d drop in on Belinda after I’d been to see Sally.

I felt bad as I stepped out her door. It looked as though I was going to lose her as an employee, and a friend. But I’d had to ask her what Theo could have meant when he wrote that he was sorry about Sheila.

It was not some token note of condolence. There was more to it.

I pondered at the connections as I walked back to my truck. It stood to reason that Theo might have gotten his electrical supplies through Darren and Ann Slocum-assuming Doug wasn’t the one who’d procured them. And Darren and Ann’s troubles were very much intertwined with Sheila’s and mine.

But how it all stitched together, I couldn’t begin to guess.

I figured I would go see Belinda, and then I’d pay a visit to Slocum. I didn’t know, exactly, the questions I was going to ask, or the approach I was going to take, with either of them. Particularly Slocum. The last time I’d seen him had been at the funeral home when I’d slugged him.

As I turned onto Cloverdale Avenue and approached the Morton house, I could tell right away something was not right.

A black woman had just come out the front door. Stumbled almost. She had her left hand pressed to her right shoulder and in her other hand was a gun.

I recognized her as Milford police detective Rona Wedmore. That was probably her car parked just ahead, on my side of the street.

About three houses beyond the Morton place, I saw a black Chrysler 300 at the curb, facing my way. It was the same kind of car Sommer had been driving when he came to the house yesterday morning, looking for the money. The driver’s door was open, but I couldn’t see anyone at the wheel.

Then I spotted a man kneeling on the grass, between the edge of the street and the sidewalk, only a short distance ahead of the Chrysler. As I nosed the truck into the curb, my lights splashed across him, and I could see he was crouched over something. It was another person, on the ground, apparently injured.

The kneeling man was Sommer. I couldn’t tell who the injured man was, but Sommer was searching through his pockets for something.

I threw the transmission into park and opened the door.

Rona Wedmore was looking my way and the moment my feet touched the pavement she shouted, “No! Get back!”

“What’s happened?” I said, still shielded by the truck door.

I had a better look now at Wedmore, standing under the porch light of the Morton house, and could see red oozing between the fingers of the hand she was pressing to her shoulder. She leaned up against a post, briefly, then started coming down the steps, taking her hand from her wound to use the railing.

I could hear a chorus of sirens.

Wedmore, now at the bottom of the steps, waved her weapon in the direction of Sommer and shouted at me. “Get out of here! He’s got a gun!”

At that moment, Sommer raised his and pointed it at Wedmore. I barely heard the shot, but the wooden railing she’d been holding a second earlier splintered.

Sommer went back to searching the man, grabbed something, and ran to the open door of the Chrysler.

I glanced back into my truck. There, just sticking out from under the seat, was the paper bag. I hadn’t yet gotten rid of the gun the boys had given me.

The smart thing to do at that moment would have been to throw myself into the truck and lie low until Sommer had driven off. But like that time I’d tried to put out the fire in the basement of the Wilson house and became lost in the smoke, I didn’t always do the smart thing.

I grabbed the bag, ripped it open, and grabbed the weapon.

I didn’t know a lot about this gun. I had no idea what make it was. I couldn’t have hazarded a guess when or where it was made.

And I certainly had no idea whether it was loaded.

Would Corey Wilkinson and his friend Rick have been dumb enough to bring a loaded gun to my house? They’d been dumb enough to take a shot at it, so I thought there was a chance the answer was yes.

I firmed my grip on the handle as Sommer got into the car. I heard the engine turn over. The headlights came on like fiery eyes. Rona Wedmore was running, somewhat haltingly, across the Mortons’ lawn, heading for the street. Her footing was off, like maybe she was going to lose her balance. She was raising her gun hand, pointing it down the street at Sommer’s car.

The Chrysler’s tires squealed as it started barreling up the street.

As Wedmore came off the curb and her right foot hit the pavement, it gave out under her. She stumbled and went down on her side into the street. Sommer steered the car toward her.

I came around my pickup’s open door and started running to where Wedmore had fallen. The black car was still approaching. I stopped, steadied myself, put both hands on the gun and raised it to shoulder level.

Rona Wedmore shouted something, but I couldn’t hear what it was.

I squeezed the trigger.

Click.

Nothing happened.

The car continued toward us.

I squeezed the trigger a second time.

The recoil forced my arms up into the air and I felt myself stumble back half a step. The windshield on the Chrysler spiderwebbed out from the passenger side. Sommer turned the wheel hard left, missing me by no more than ten feet as he screeched past. I threw myself out of the way, hitting the pavement and rolling to within a few inches of Wedmore.

There was a loud thunk, the screech of scraping metal, and then a crash.

By the time I’d turned around to see what had happened, the Chrysler had already bounced over the curb, driven into the middle of a yard, and slammed into a tree.

“Stay down!” Wedmore screamed at me.

But I was already on my feet, gun still in hand. My heart was pumping so hard, the adrenaline rushing through me with such speed, that I was immune to reason or common sense.

I ran over to the Chrysler, coming around it cautiously from behind, the way I’d seen cops do it on TV. I noticed a length of angled gray metal sticking out from under the car, and surmised that before Sommer hit the tree, he’d mowed down a street sign. Steam billowed out from beneath the buckled hood as the engine continued to run, but instead of the usual growl, it sounded more like nails in a blender.

As I got closer, I spotted a deployed airbag, and coming up alongside, I saw Sommer.

There wasn’t much need to train the gun on him.

The edge of a white metal sign reading SPEED LIMIT 25 had caught Sommer on the forehead and just about taken the top of his head clean off.