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“And you need to get Mrs. Campion down here,” Hawk added firmly. “She’ll want to hear what we have to say.”
Campion whipped around, pointed his SIG at Hawk’s chest, and squeezed the trigger. Bang.
Hawk’s face registered surprise as he looked down at his pink shirt, saw the blood.
“Hey,” said Hawk.
Didn’t these punks know that a man like him would have guns stashed everywhere? Campion fired at Hawk again, and the boy dropped to his knees. He stared up at the older man and returned fire, his shot shattering the mirror over the fireplace. Then Hawk collapsed onto the rug facedown.
Pidge had frozen at the sound of the shooting. Now he screamed, “You shit! You crazy old shit! Look what you did!”
Pidge backed out of the room, and when he cleared the library’s doorway, he turned and raced for the front door. Campion walked over to Hawk, kicked the gun out of his outstretched hand, lost his footing, and fell, hitting his chin against the edge of the desk. He pulled himself up using the desk leg, then stumbled out to the vestibule and pressed the intercom that connected to the caretaker’s cottage.
“Glen,” he yelled. “Call 911. I shot someone!”
By the time Campion reached the front walk, Pidge was gone. The caretaker came running across the yard with a rifle, and Valentina stood in the front doorway, her eyes huge, asking him what in God’s name had happened.
Lights winked on in neighboring houses, and the wolfhound next door barked.
But there was no sign of Pidge.
Campion clamped his fist around the grip of his gun and shouted into the dark, “You killed my son, you son of a bitch, didn’t you? You killed my son!”
Chapter 102
I ARRIVED AT the Campions’ home within fifteen minutes of getting Jacobi’s call. A herd of patrol cars blocked the street, and paramedics bumped down the stone steps with their loaded gurney, heading out to the ambulance.
I went to the gurney, observed as much of the victim as I could. An oxygen mask half covered his face, and a sheet was pulled up to his chin. I judged that the young man was in his late teens or early twenties, white, with well-cut, dirty-blond hair, maybe five ten.
Most important, he was alive.
“Is he going to make it?” I asked one of the paramedics.
She shrugged, said, “He’s got two slugs in him, Sergeant. Lost a lot of blood.”
Inside the house, Jacobi and Conklin were debriefing the former governor and Valentina Campion, who sat together on a sofa, shoulder to shoulder, their hands entwined. Conklin shot me a look: something he wanted me to understand. It took me a few minutes to get it.
Jacobi filled me in on what had transpired, told me that there was no ID on the kid Campion had shot. Then he said to the former governor, “You say you can identify the second boy, sir? Help our sketch artist?”
Campion nodded. “Absolutely. I’ll never forget that kid’s face.”
Campion looked to be in terrible pain. He’d shot someone only minutes before, and when he asked me to sit down in the chair near the sofa, I thought he wanted to tell me about that. But I was wrong.
Campion said, “Michael wanted to be like his friends. Go out. Have fun. So I was always on his case, you know? When I caught him sneaking out at night, I reprimanded him, took away privileges, and he hated me for it.”
“No he didn’t,” Valentina Campion said sharply. “You did what I didn’t have the courage to do, Connor.”
“Sir?” I said, wondering where he was going with this.
Campion’s face sagged with exhaustion.
“He was being irresponsible,” Campion continued, “and I was trying to keep him safe. I was looking ahead to the future — a new medical procedure, a pharmaceutical breakthrough. Something.
“I told him, straight up, ‘When you decide to act like an adult, let me know.’ I wasn’t angry, I was afraid,” Campion said, his voice cracking. “So I lost him before I lost him.”
His wife tried to calm him, but Connor Campion wouldn’t be soothed. “I was a tyrant,” Campion said. “Mikey and I didn’t speak for the whole last month of his life. If I’d known he had a month to live . . . Michael told me, ‘Quality of life, Dad. That’s what’s important.’ ”
Campion fixed me with his bloodshot eyes.
