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Having heard all that, Perkins grabbed the receiver on the desk phone and began punching in numbers.
Compton asked Calder if he’d called 911.
“Just before I called you.”
“Are you all right? What about Elle?”
“Neither of us was hurt.”
“What in God’s name happened?”
“You’ll need a good crime scene unit to figure it all out. But the gunfire came from outside through the kitchen windows. I’d just seen Dawn in there, so I figure the shooter was aiming for her.
“Sims had posted himself in the central hallway. When the shooting started, he must’ve run toward the kitchen but only made it as far as the door. Multiple wounds but hard to tell how many. His torso is mush.
“Weeks was next, I guess. Last I saw him alive, he was in the living room. Now he’s lying dead in the hallway. He was hit in the throat. Lots of blood. Since he didn’t make it into the kitchen before he was shot, I’m guessing it was a rifle. Based on the rapid fire, it was the kind that means business.”
Perkins had been following the conversation while maintaining contact with the other sheriff’s office to whom Calder’s 911 call had been directed.
Perkins covered the mouthpiece of the desk phone. “Tell him they’re about ten minutes out. Not to touch anything. Keep his head down, and make certain he identifies himself when they arrive. They’ll be gunning for the individual who put two of their men down.”
“Did you hear all that?” Compton asked.
“Yeah,” Calder replied. “But I’ve already touched the bodies to check for pulses. I may have stepped in some blood and tracked it. I took Weeks’s phone and Sims’s pistol.”
Compton pressed her hand to her forehead. “Had it been fired?”
“Not when I took it. It has been now.”
“You returned fire?”
“Six shots.”
“Did you hit him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s back up. What about Mrs. Whitley? You say you and she were in the kitchen when it started?”
“She was. I was upstairs.”
“And Elle?”
“Upstairs.”
Compton looked over at Perkins to see if he’d caught that. His raised eyebrows indicated that he had.
Calder was saying, “First blast of gunfire, Dawn started screaming.”
“Was she hit?”
“I don’t know. More shooting. Lots of shooting. Windows exploding. It lasted, I don’t know, two minutes maybe. I’d stowed Elle in a bedroom closet and gone downstairs. The only light was coming from the open fridge. I found Sims, then Weeks. No sign of—”
“Are you certain they’re dead?”
“They’redead. No sign of Dawn, but she didn’t respond when I told her from the stairwell to shut the fridge door to kill the light. She was screaming like a banshee. And then she stopped. Chopped off. Like he’d gotten her with a clean shot once she went out the back door.”
“The back door?”
