“Barely, when he left here. Not gonna lie to you, Silas,” she says. “The lead EMT told me that the blood loss basically has him in a coma already.”
“He’s as tough as anybody I’ve ever known,” I say, almost as if I’m the one talking to myself.
“Tough doesn’t do shit for you in an ambush,” she says, spitting out the words.
She walks us away from the car, probably just to get us away from having to look at the blood all over it, and on the asphalt.
“Now this really is a fucking war,” she says. “They just shot a fucking cop.”
She turns to face me and says, “He’s my friend, too.”
One more time she takes in the whole scene. Parking lot crawling with police, hers and from the town PD. Traffic being stopped and turned around on Old Cross Highway, coming from both directions. Even this far outside of town, there’s a decent crowd forming, people having had to park their cars up and down the road and walk from there, held back by more yellow tape, the kind of which I’m thinking there’s been a run on lately in Cross Rivers.
She turns to face me again. She shouldn’t be tall enough to stand eye to eye with me. But somehow in this moment, she is.
“I’m gonna tell you my real philosophy of policing, not that you asked, but especially now that we are in a war like this,” she says. “Go fast. Hit them with every fucking thing you have. Repeat.” She pauses and says, “For as long as it fucking takes.”
Then: “You fixing on heading over to the hospital?”
I nod. “And probably about to break a lot of records for speeding on the way, I’ll just give you a heads-up in advance.”
“No need,” she says. “You’ll be in a police escort with me.”
For some reason, I take one last look across Old Cross Highway then and see Roof Crockett standing there.
“Gonna need a minute,” I say to Helene Mayes.
SEVENTY
“WE REALLY DON’T have time for this,” I hear Helene say from behind me, now that she’s spotted Roof, too.
“Maybe you don’t,” I say.
Roof Crockett is about twenty yards from everybody else over there. No Lynyrd. None of his other boys that I can see. Just him. Looking right at me the way I’m looking right at him. Waiting there for me.
When I get over to him, I ask, “You come to gloat?”
“Just to pay my condolences.”
“He’s not dead,” I say.
“Well, heard he wasn’t all that much alive, either.”
Maybe it’s his tone. Or a look on his face almost like he’s doing his best to hold back a smile. Or, more than likely, it’s the whole damn thing.
But I hit Roof Crockett with all the left hook I have in me then, the one I’ve only ever used on the heavy bag in the corner of my home gym. I go with my left hand because I know I’ve got more power from that side, a lot more, now that my shoulder—throwing shoulder, even for punches—has turned to shit.
The punch catches him square on the jaw and lifts him up andinto the air and then puts him on his back in the dirt on the side of the road.
He lands hard, his head bouncing off the dirt.
I stare over at the rest of the people in the crowd and maybe it’s the look on my face, or what just happened, but no one moves.
Roof Crockett is dazed from the shot he’s just taken, that’s plain enough when he opens his eyes to let me know I haven’t knocked him out cold. But not so dazed, or confused, that he doesn’t immediately start to reach for the front pocket of his jeans, to reach almost by reflex for the gun he likely has in there, before he seems to think better of it.
Doesn’t matter one way or another because I’m on him fast and already have a knee on his chest.
“I had nothing to do with this,” he says, fighting for air. “Wehad nothing to do with it.”
