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Cooper checked the baby—crying, but not hurt.
Melton had 9-1-1 on the line and the operator asked, “Is this an emergency?”
“Yes! Yes! A crazy man is trying to shoot us.”
“Is this the home of Ann Melton? Is this Ann Melton?”
“Yes, I—”
“Your neighbor called. Patrol cars are on the way,” the operator said. “Remain in your house, stay below the windows. We’re coming. Less than two minutes now.”
“Tell the officers to be really careful, this man shot a lot,” Melton said, breathing hard. “He’s got a high-capacity gun and I think he must have shot at us twenty times...”
“I will pass that along,” the operator said. Her voice was cool, the most routine thing in the world. “No injuries in your house?”
“No, we’re all okay.”
Melton heard the operator say to someone, “No injuries.” Then, “Stay on the line while I pass your information to the patrolmen...”
Cooper, staying low, crawled out of the bedroom to the back window, peeked. Lights were coming on down the block and the elderly woman in the house across the backyard came out on her back porch and shouted, “I called 9-1-1.”
Cooper shouted, “Thank you, thank you.” And she turned and shouted to Melton, “The cops are coming.”
—
And the copswerecoming. Lots of them. Hess never saw them. He made it back to the car. He kept jabbing the key at the ignition, kept missing, because he was shaking so hard. Couldn’t believe that Cooper had apparently emptied a gun at him. She must have been waiting, must have had a gun in her hand. Couldn’t believe that he’d actually stopped to shoot back: “Stupid stupid stupid,” he said to himself.
He pulled the car out of the driveway and headed into the night,following narrow streets to a traffic light, then into the stream of cars. He was wearing a blue shirt, and at the next stoplight, he pulled the hoodie off and threw it into the back, in case the cops were stopping Subarus, looking for a man in a hoodie.
But if the cops were coming, he never saw them.
—
As they saton the floor, waiting for the police to arrive, Cooper said, “I had the most ridiculous thought, halfway through the shooting, after I ran out of ammunition.”
“And that was?”
“I saw this dumb bumper sticker on a pickup truck that said ‘Point and Click Means You’re Out of Ammo.’ That just happened to me! I pulled the trigger and it went click and I was out of ammo.”
“Sounds like a life lesson,” Melton said. “Believe bumper stickers.”
They began giggling and didn’t stop for a minute, then Cooper said, her voice gone dark, “I’m hysterical as shit.”
—
Cooper called Lucas.
Lucas answered on the third ring, and he must have put her name in his contacts list, Cooper thought, because he answered with, “Maggie: what’s up?”
“Lucas! The killer was here and he tried to kill us!” She was loud, but not shouting.
“What!”
“Oh my God, oh my God, I just shot at him and maybe I shot him—”
“What!”
“Pay attention, pay attention,” Cooper now shouted. “The killer was here, he tried to shoot me...”
