The Summer House

Chapter 104

A number of years ago Sheriff Emma Williams saw a great crime movie in which Robert De Niro played one cool fellow robbing banks and armored cars, and there was one piece of dialogue his character stated that stuck with her:

Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.

Good survival advice, and she’s taking it, right at this moment.

The heat isn’t around the corner. It’s coming at her like a burst of fire from a flamethrower.

With the voices and shouts, and the judge hammering his gavel, Williams calmly gets up and walks through the gate of the bar, to the court side of the room, and starts walking deliberately to a door she knows will lead right outside.

Everything is gone.

No time to mourn.

Get the hell out, dump the cruiser somewhere on one of the unmarked dirt roads out there in her county, and pick up one of the three plain-looking pickup trucks she’s secured in different locations for just this purpose. Leave Sullivan County, lie low, and at some point, with a new driver’s license and passport and access to funds electronically hidden in the Cayman Islands, get the hell out to one of the lovely islands of Micronesia in the Pacific, which doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States.

She gets to the exit door, ignoring the courtroom noise, including the shouts calling out her name.

Captain Allen Pierce is standing next to Staff Sergeant Caleb Jefferson, intent on keeping the Ranger in one place, and he sees Sheriff Williams start to slip out the door.

No, he thinks, not on your life.

“John!” he yells, pointing to the sheriff as she goes through a door marked EXIT. “Don’t let her get away!”

Huang looks both frightened and confused, and Pierce yells, “Lieutenant, haul ass!”

The doctor starts running.

Outside now, in the blessed free air. Her cruiser is right in the RESERVED parking spot. There are some people out there, milling about, but it seems like the horrible news from Afghanistan that just dropped in the courtroom hasn’t reached outside yet.

When she’s a few feet away from the cruiser, a man starts yelling at her.

Huang pushes his way through a small cluster of courtroom officers and attendants, gets through the exit door and to a short hallway.

Left or right? he thinks, heart pounding.

Right.

Where a door leading outside is closing.

He runs down the hallway, bursts outside, and there’s the sheriff, just a few feet away from her cruiser. “Hey!” he yells. “Sheriff Williams, stop!”

The woman turns around and, spotting him, just laughs.

Huang is humiliated.

What the hell can he do?

“Don’t you dare leave!” he yells again.

The woman yells something obscene and opens her cruiser door.

Huang gets to the parking lot and, knowing she’s about to slip away in the next few seconds, does the only thing he can do.

Like she’s part of some dark comedy film, Williams hears that Chinaman yell out, “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

For real?

She looks back, and whaddya know, that Army doc is running at her, holding a pistol in both hands.

“Doc,” she yells at him, “put that away before you hurt yourself.”

He yells back, “I mean it! Stop right there or I’ll shoot!”

Williams pulls out her service weapon and yells, “I mean it, too, Doc,” and she fires at him, and there’s return fire and—

A heavy blow to her chest.

Huang stops, panting.

He shot her.

He can’t believe it.

He just shot her.

Huang saw her pull out her pistol and a bit of training came forth. He swerved and ducked and, for all that’s holy, heard the round whee! overhead as he fired back.

The sheriff is on the ground, writhing back and forth, clutching at her chest.

He steps forward, his medical training kicking in, but before the doctor part of him can get to work, the Army lieutenant works first.

Huang kicks away her weapon.

As an Army officer would.