The Hanging

Chapter 17

I was just locking my classroom, heading off for lunch and to see if Ida had arrived, when my cell phone buzzed.

“Maggie, I think you should get over here.” It was Lew, voice quavering, sounding upset. Behind him I could hear a cacophony of voices, several very excited people all, it seemed, talking at once.

“What happened?” I asked, flashing on Sly and his workers and the system of scaffolds and ladders erected around his massive sculpture. “Anyone hurt?”

“Just come and see.”

I was only a few steps beyond the door when I felt the first whiffle of something zing past my ear; I didn’t see or hear anything. I spun-a reflex-looking for the source when the second projectile creased like a firebrand across my chin. As I dropped to shelter behind a concrete planter a third projectile hit the point of my shoulder, grazed my sweater, tearing it, slicing a path into my flesh.

Lying on the wet sidewalk, I pulled out my phone and dialed Lew.

He started to say my name but I cut him off.

“I’m outside my classroom. Someone is shooting at me. Lock the gallery and don’t let anyone leave.”

“Dear God, what-”

“Please call campus security and 911. I’m calling Roger.”

“Who was-”

I heard footsteps running away toward the parking lot and ventured to peer over the planter; I saw no one. No one shot at me again, either.

Crouching, I made my way toward the gallery and saw immediately what had so upset Lew. Spray-painted in red across both sides of the big metal double doors: SLY IS A STONE KILLER LIKE HIS MOTHER.

I called Sly. “I’m outside the door. Let me in.”

“You saw it?”

“Hard to miss it, kid,” I said, snapping a photo. “Let me in, it’s wet out here.”

His thin face was pale, his brown eyes as big as Frisbees when he cracked the door open for me. I put an arm around his shoulders once I was inside.

It was drizzling again. I worried that any fingerprints that the graffitist might have left behind would be washed away. The choices were to open the doors wide to protect the fronts from the elements, or lock them tight in case someone with a gun was still out there. I closed the doors after me, and turned the bolt.

The eyes of five upset youths were on me.

“Anyone see who painted that?” I asked. There was a chorus of No ways, and promises that if they had seen the painter they would have pummeled him, or her.

“Maggie, you got some paint on your chin,” Sly said.

I swiped the back of my hand across the gash and it came away red.

“It isn’t paint,” I said, dialing Roger.

When he picked up, I said, “It’s Maggie. Someone took a couple of shots at me and sprayed some ugly graffiti on the gallery. Can you send someone with a fingerprint kit?”

“Are you hit?” he asked.

“Grazed twice. Can you hurry? It’s raining again and if there are prints I don’t want them to wash away.”

“Do you need paramedics? A doctor?”

“No. I’ll probably be able to talk Lew out of a Band-Aid and be just fine. Are you coming?”

“I’m half a block from campus now.”

If possible, Sly’s eyes grew wider when he heard me say I was hit. I dropped the phone into my pocket.

“It’s just a scratch, Sly,” I told him. “Do you think you could find a first-aid kit? I’m going down to the faculty lounge to clean up before Roger gets here. For a homicide detective he’s a big baby when it comes to blood.”

I looked at my chin in the door of the microwave on the faculty lounge counter. There was just a scratch. After I daubed the blood off with paper towels, I looked at it again, daubed it again and decided that a bandage would only make it more noticeable. After a few minutes, the bleeding stopped altogether.

Sly brought me a first-aid kit. I pulled off my sweater to look at my left shoulder; already it felt stiff and sore. The shoulder of the blue shirt I wore underneath was saturated with blood. I unbuttoned it enough to pull the arm free.

“Dear God,” Lew said, walking in at that moment. He opened the first-aid kit, ripped open half a dozen packets of gauze, made a thick compress and pressed it against the wound.

“Sly, take over here,” he said, gesturing toward my shoulder. “Hold this. Put pressure on it.”

Lew put a chair behind me, and I sat, suddenly feeling light-headed, reaction setting in. The first compress was quickly soaked through. Lew put together a second and told Sly to put it on top of the first one and to keep up the pressure. Then he called 911, told the dispatcher that he had already called about a shooting on campus, and now he needed paramedics at the gallery ASAP-one of the faculty had been shot.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” I said, thinking about Ida and her news camera showing up hot on the heels of the paramedics and that graffiti going out to the world on the five o’clock news. “Lew, let’s not make a big deal about this.”

“We’ll see,” was his answer as he hurried from the room.

When we were alone, I looked up at Sly. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I just decided that the graffiti isn’t such a big deal.” He flicked his chin toward the bloody mess under his hands. “Not now.”

“I have a feeling it was the same person who did both,” I said, looking up at him. “Do you have any idea about who it might be?”

He shook his head, reached into the first-aid kit, took out the last packets of gauze and gave them to me to open. Then he pressed again on my shoulder with both hands, one atop the other.

As I handed the new wad up to him, I asked, “How many people on campus know about your mother?”

“Everybody by now. I was telling Lew about her, about you going to visit her. There were lots of people working in the gallery. Bunch of big mouths, including me.”

He added, “I’m not ashamed of her. I don’t even know her.”

Roger came in at a run with Kate on his heels. He saw blood and stopped at the door, as I expected he would, but Kate walked straight to me.

“Holy Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” she swore, lifting a corner of the mess under Sly’s hands for a look underneath. “Margot Eugenie Duchamps MacGowen, what the hell have you gotten into this time?”

“Don’t yell at me,” I said. “It’s not my fault. And you forgot Flint.”

She looked up at me, puzzled.

“Margot Eugenie Duchamps MacGowen Flint.”

Roger chuckled. “She’s okay, Katie. You’re doing a good job there, Sly.”

He left the room and I heard him shortly afterward talking with Lew, heard the big gallery doors open and the voices trail off.

“Kate, I’ll need something to wear.”

“Why? Where are you going?”

“I’m giving an interview to the network this afternoon.” I picked at the bloody shirt. “I can’t go on camera like this.”

“Are you sure?” She had a tooth-sucking smile. “It would make a dramatic statement.”

“Yes, of the wrong kind. And it would certainly send all those newsies straight over here to film that graffiti. Let’s do our best to keep them away.”

Sly said, “Thank you, Maggie.”

“All right,” Kate said, giving Sly a pat on the back. “I’ll see what I can find.”

Sid Bishop, the fire captain I had met Friday night, and Gus, one of the same paramedics, came in and took over for Sly. Gus took away the compress and felt the wound. He pressed against one side of it and something fell out of the hole in my flesh and rolled across the floor. Bishop retrieved it and held it on his latex-gloved palm for me to see.

“Pellet gun,” he said.

“It didn’t penetrate very far,” Gus said. “It hit you right over the bone, and my guess is the bone stopped it. But anytime you break skin over bone, it bleeds like a sonofabitch. Getting the pellet out will help.”

He cleaned the site with antiseptic wipes, waited to see if it was still bleeding.

Sly hovered.

“You did a good job with the compress, kid,” Gus said as he taped a bandage over the wound.

As he cleaned the gash on my chin, Gus asked, “When did you have your last tetanus booster?”

“Last spring.”

“You’re probably good to go, then. You should see your own doctor and have the shoulder looked at. He’ll probably put you on antibiotics as a precaution. But if you keep it clean, I don’t think you’ll have any problem unless you got clothing fibers in the wound.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Sorry to bring you out on such a miserable day.”

Gus looked at Bishop and they both chuckled.

“Our pleasure,” Bishop said, glancing at the wall clock. “Later this afternoon we’ll be busy with fender benders on the freeway-doesn’t anyone in California know how to drive in the rain?-so if you could hold off on finding bodies and getting shot at until after rush hour, we’d appreciate it.”

“I’ll do my best.”

When they were gone, Sly and I agreed that we would keep the gorier details to ourselves. When Kate came back with a very nice black cardigan she found somewhere, Sly excused himself, and she helped me clean myself and button up the sweater.

“You should go home, Mags, put your feet up.”

“I’ll do that, but after I get this interview out of the way. And I told Guido I’d meet him at the studio for a bit. Oh yeah, Mom asked me to take her to the grocery store and I promised to take her to dinner. So, after that.”

She started to dissuade me, then stopped. “Just be careful, Mags.”

“Don’t worry about me. I doubt I was the planned target.”

“I saw the gallery doors,” she said. “Do you think someone is after Sly?”

“Looks like sour grapes,” I said. “In a week, Sly’s beautiful piece will be hung. And there is a brass bowling pin that will be consigned to oblivion.”

“Franz von Wilde?”

“It wouldn’t hurt for someone to go talk to him.”

“For instance, someone who is not officially investigating a murder?”

I patted her cheek. “You always were the smartest one in class.”

Ida called for the second time-the first time I was with the paramedic-and informed me they were waiting for me in front of the administration building.

Roger came into the lounge and stuffed my torn and bloody clothes into a brown paper evidence bag.