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“Had the shooting stopped?” Perkins asked.
“No, but it seemed to be coming from farther away. Although, in truth, I wasn’t even thinking about that at the time. Only about getting to my child. The man who’d fallen over the stroller was large, tall. I couldn’t see Charlie at all. I was screaming his name and trying frantically to reach him. He… he was no longer crying.”
After a lengthy silence that was fraught with emotions forcibly contained, she resumed in a low monotone. “Suddenly I was surrounded by people who had rushed to my aid. The gunfire had stopped. Several men lifted the man off the stroller and laid him on the ground.” Abruptly she stopped and asked Compton, “Was he dead?”
“No. He survived.”
“That’s good.” Elle meant it sincerely, but her voice was faint because her mind had already returned to the most horrific moments of her life. “A man with elaborate tattoos on his arms helped me pull Charlie out of the stroller. The paramedics—a young man and young woman—appeared. It seemed they were there very quickly, but I could be wrong. Time seemed either to be suspended or racing like fast-forward.
“They worked on him. They worked on him even while in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Even when they knew there was no hope, they kept working on him. I could tell they were distressed because they couldn’t bring him back.”
She lost control then and began to sob, taking heaving breaths that racked her entire body.
She was aware of Glenda going into overdrive and ordering the detectives to leave. Even they deferred to Glenda. They stood.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Elle gasped, looking at them in turn. “I know it’s your duty. I want you to do your duty. I want to know why he did it. Howcouldhe? I’ll help you. I will. But I can’t talk about it anymore right now.”
“We understand,” Compton said. “We’ll be in touch, but for now we have what we need. Your account corroborated Mr. Hudson’s.”
Elle darted a glance toward Glenda and saw that she too was surprised to hear that name repeated within half an hour of hearing it for the first time from Shauna Calloway.
“Mr.Hudson?” Elle said to Compton.
“Calder Hudson, the man who was shot while trying to stop your son’s stroller.”
On a short exhalation, Elle said, “Oh. How awful of me. I hadn’t even thought to ask his name. You said he survived, but what’s his condition? Is he going to be all right?”
“He’s going to be fine. He was shot in his left arm. The bullet passed through.” Compton looked over at her partner. Perkins gave her a subtle nod. Then Compton came back to Elle and looked at her with empathy. “It was the bullet that killed Charlie.”
Chapter 6
Calder, before you have a knee-jerk reaction, hear me out, okay?” Shauna spoke quietly, but she was fairly shivering with pent-up energy, like a puppy who’d been ordered to stay.
She’d arrived ten minutes earlier. For eight of them, she’d hovered and fussed over him. Fluffing his pillow, offering him the lidded cup with the bent straw from which he had obligingly taken a sip of ice water, asking if his arm was miserable, if his headache was any better, if his vision was completely back to normal.
Over the past two days, she’d come to visit him three times, and he’d grown increasingly unhappy to see her. She brought too muchflutterwith her.
Television viewers who hadn’t known her before the fairground shooting had come to know her since. Her touted live coverage at the scene, practically as the tragic event was unfolding, had considerably increased her visibility on the local channel and had achieved network exposure as well.
She signed autographs for starstruck nurses and orderlies. She granted them selfies taken with her, usually offering before they even asked. Her Instagram and Twitter accounts must be melting from overuse.
He didn’t begrudge her this major feather in her cap. She’d earned it. He just wished she would bask in the glow of her new celebrity status somewhere other than his hospital room. At least during this visit, she’d kept the door closed and hadn’t invited into his room anyone seeking to take a picture of her and him together. Hell would be frozen over for millennia before that happened.
When he’d finally convinced her that he was as comfortable as he could possibly be under the circumstances, she’d dragged the room’s one chair closer to his bed, perched on the edge of the seat, and finally got down to what he suspected was the reason for the nervous intensity he’d sensed the instant she’d entered the room.
He turned his head on the pillow and looked at her. “What?”
Her chest expanded with a deep breath. “I brought a production crew here with me. They’re waiting downstairs for my signal. I have the hospital’s permission. Now that Detective Compton has your official statement, she gave me the green light.” She clasped her hands beneath her chin and gave him a pretty-please smile. “Let me interview you.”
While seconds ticked past, he merely looked at her, then said, “On camera? For TV?”
“Well, yes and yes.”
“Well, fuck and no.”
“You agreed to hear me out.”
“No, I didn’t. And this isn’t a knee-jerk reaction. If I pondered it from now till Doomsday, I’d still say no.”
