Goody Goody Gunshots Read online

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?” I pulled my arm out of his grip and waved him back toward the stairs. “Get dressed,” I said again. “I’m going to call the police. I’ll tell you everything I can on the way.”

  “You want me to go with you to a place where a man just got murdered? Are you nuts?”

  “I’m going to have to show the police where it happened,” I explained, trying hard to hang on to my patience. “I’d kind of like to have somebody with me while I wait. Besides, he might still be alive, so hurry. What’s wrong with you, anyway?”

  “What’s wrong with me?” Wyatt barked a laugh. “Some guy’s out there shooting people, and you want me to drive you back there so we can get shot?”

  “I want you to drive me out there so we can make sure the poor man who already got shot gets medical attention if he’s still alive. Whoever shot him isn’t going to hang around waiting to get caught. He’s probably long gone by now.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “Would you hang around?” I marched into the kitchen, grabbed the phone, and punched in the number for the police. Wyatt trailed after me, still scratching. Before he could say something dumb like claiming he would hang around the scene of a shooting, Justin Cole picked up the dispatch phone at the police station.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d met Justin a few times, and I liked him. I filled him in on the crime I’d witnessed, and he promised to send someone to investigate right away. I promised to meet the officers on the scene and started to hang up, but at the last minute I asked Justin to let Pine Jawarski know what was going on.

  Jawarski’s a friend. Some might even say he’s more than a friend, but if you ask the two of us, we’ll both tell you that hasn’t been established yet. He’s also a detective with the Paradise Police, and if I had to go back out to Hammond Junction in the middle of the night, I wanted him there.

  With the phone call out of the way, I turned back to my conversation with Wyatt because, of course, he hadn’t moved an inch the whole time I was on the phone. He’s stubborn like that. “Let’s say you just shot somebody,” I said, still trying to hang on to my patience. “What would you do? Hang out in the bushes waiting for the police to show up, or hightail it to someplace safe?”

  I don’t know what Wyatt would have said to that, because Elizabeth chose that moment to join us. She was dressed for bed in a pair of flannel pajama pants and one of Wyatt’s T-shirts. Her sandy red hair hung loose to her shoulders, and her hazel eyes were dark with concern. “What’s this about a shooting?”

  Apparently, Wyatt and I hadn’t done a very good job of keeping our voices down.

  Wyatt jerked his head toward me. “Abby says she saw somebody get shot out at Hammond Junction. She wants me to go back there with her to make sure the guy’s okay and wait for the police.”

  The concern in Elizabeth’s eyes deepened. “He was shot? Are you sure?”

  “I heard the shots and saw him go down.”

  “But he’s not dead?”

  “I didn’t wait around to find out,” I explained. “My first instinct was to get out of there and call the police.”

  “Good instincts.” Oblivious to the need for a quick response, she dragged a chair from the table and sank into it. “Do you know who it was?”

  I shook my head. “I only saw him for a minute. I don’t think it’s someone I know, but I may have seen him around town. I didn’t see who shot him. Whoever it was must have been hiding in the trees on the side of the road. I didn’t even know he was there until I heard the gunshots.”

  Elizabeth gave a shudder and turned her gaze toward my brother. “You can’t let her go back there alone.”

  “I don’t want her to go at all,” Wyatt snarled. “Seems to me the smart thing would be to let the police come here to talk to her.”

  “Wyatt—”

  “No, Elizabeth. I mean it. If I go with her, it will only encourage her.”

  “Wyatt.”

  My brother jerked one hand through the air and glared at his wife. “She doesn’t need to be there, Lizzie. You know what she’s like. If I go back there with her now, the next thing we know, she’ll be up to her eyeballs in it.”

  “Hey!” I said, “I’m right here in the room, remember? And just for the record, I have no intention of getting up to my eyeballs in anything.”

  Wyatt snorted a laugh. “Yeah. Right. That’s what you say now.”

  “And that’s what I’ll say when the police meet us at the junction. No matter what you think, I’m not running around looking for trouble. Like I said, I don’t even know who the guy was.”

  “Yeah, but you’ll find out,” Wyatt predicted, “and then you’ll figure out some reason you need to get yourself wrapped up in the middle of it. And the next thing you know, you’ll be in some kind of trouble, and then guess who you’ll call.”

  Jerk. Just because that’s what had happened a couple of times in the past . . . I glared at him and patted my pockets, trying to figure out where I’d put my keys. “Fine. Don’t come with me then. I’ll go by myself. I’ve already been here too long.”

  “Abby, wait!” Looking stern and maternal, Elizabeth glared at her husband. “You can’t let her go back out there by herself, Wyatt. She’s your sister.”

  He growled low in his throat and turned away.

  “Don’t push him,” I insisted. “I’ll be fine. I’ve been hanging around here so long, the police are probably there already.” I gave Elizabeth a brief hug, promised to call when I was home safe, and let myself out onto the back porch. I’d just settled behind the steering wheel of the Jetta when I saw Wyatt come out the front door, his hunting rifle in one hand.

  He’d pulled on a pair of jeans and some boots, and he motioned for me to get out of my car and into his truck. Irritated as I was with him, I was also relieved. He put the rifle on its rack in the back window and climbed into the driver’s seat, while I hoisted myself into the passenger’s seat.

  With a pointed look at me, he started the truck, gunned the engine a couple of times to show me how annoyed he was, and shifted into reverse. “Damn pain in my ass,” he muttered as he backed the truck around the Jetta.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I snarled back, “but at least we’re even. It’s no joyride having you for a brother, either.”

  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw his lips twitch. He blusters and bluffs a lot, but like I said before, underneath it all, he’s got a good heart. It’s just that sometimes you have to dig really deep to find it.

  We carried on only desultory conversation as we covered the distance to the junction. There just wasn’t a whole lot we hadn’t said.

  When we finally reached the junction, Wyatt pulled to the side of the road just before the flashing red stoplight. Now that we were here, I was more nervous than I’d expected to be. I felt like there were eyes watching me from the side of the road, and I had no way of knowing whether the feeling was real or imaginary.

  Wyatt jumped from the truck and grabbed the rifle, looking like a page right out of history as he stood there with the rifle held firmly across his chest. “So? Where is he?”

  I came around the front of the truck to stand by him and scanned the opposite side of the road quickly. I pinpointed the spot where the man fell easily enough, but where I expected to see a body, I found only gravel and dry grass. “He should be right over there,” I said when I realized Wyatt was waiting for an answer.

  “Where?”

  “There. He fell just a little to the right of that rock.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m positive. My car was stopped right about there,” I said, indicating a spot just this side of the traffic light. “He fell almost directly across from me, there.” I started across the highway, determined to figure out where he’d gone. “He must have been alert enough to drag himself out of harm’s way.”

  Wyatt followed me and peered down at the ground wher
e the man’s body should have been. “You’re sure he was shot?”

  Fear was rapidly giving way to anger. I rounded on my brother and shouted, “How many times are you going to ask me that? Of course I’m sure. I wouldn’t have come to get you if I weren’t. The gunman fired three shots, and the guy went down like a bag of rocks right there.”

  Wyatt kept his eyes locked on the ground in front of him. “Then where’s the blood?”

  “What?”

  “If he was shot, there should be blood. There isn’t.”

  I looked again, but I didn’t need to. I knew he was right. There was no body, no blood. In fact, there was no sign that anything had gone wrong here at all.

  Chapter 3

  Wyatt and I didn’t say much to each other while we waited for the police to arrive. We’d climbed back into the truck where at least we had a couple of locked doors between us and whoever else might be out there. He sat slouched down on his tailbone, his head tilted back against the seat, eyes closed—or nearly so. He might look lazy and unconcerned, but I know my brother, and I knew he was aware of everything around him.

  I couldn’t tell whether he believed me about the shooting or not. Not that it mattered. I knew what I’d seen. Wind buffeted the truck, and cold air seeped inside from a crack somewhere. I could feel it brushing my neck every few minutes, but I refused to ask Wyatt to turn on the truck’s heater. No way I was going to let him think I was a sissy, and besides, he has strict rules against idling any motor vehicle for more than a minute or two. Something about fuel residue condensing inside the engine.

  Anyway, I had my rising fury to keep me warm. If this was some kind of joke, it wasn’t funny. What if the boys had been with me? What if I hadn’t been the one driving? What if one of Wyatt’s twin daughters had been behind the wheel? Danielle and Dara both had new driver’s licenses and drove every chance they got.

  After what seemed like forever, sirens sounded in the distance and grew steadily closer. A few minutes later, Wyatt and I were bathed in the surreal flashing of red and blue bubble lights.

  Wyatt sat up and cut a glance at me. “Well, come on. Let’s get this over with.”

  I opened the truck’s door, battled with the wind for a few seconds, and jumped to the pavement as Jawarski’s truck pulled up behind the patrol car. He glanced around quickly, spotted us standing there, and strode along the edge of the highway toward me.

  Jawarski and I might not have been able to figure out what’s going on between the two of us, but when the chips are down, there’s nobody I’d rather see. Knowing that I’ve started to rely on him to some degree bothers me a little, but I’m learning to cope.

  We made eye contact while the first cop on the scene got my story, but Jawarski made no effort to interfere with the process. He listened while I talked, made an occasional note in the notebook he keeps in his shirt pocket, and glanced at Wyatt several times, apparently trying to figure out what my brother thought about what I was saying.

  That annoyed me, but it didn’t surprise me. Wyatt and Jawarski knew each other only slightly, but they’d immediately formed a mutual admiration society—something that both pleased and annoyed me at the same time. Wyatt hadn’t ever liked my ex-husband, Roger, and it turned out he’d been right. I appreciated the fact that he approved of Jawarski. I just didn’t like it when they teamed up against me.

  It wasn’t until the uniformed officers had drifted away to search for evidence that Jawarski said anything to me at all. Keeping his voice low, he looked me square in the eye and asked, “You okay?”

  I nodded. “I’m fine. I was pretty shaken up when it first happened, but I’m calmer now. More angry than anything else.”

  “So tell me again,” he said, slipping easily from friend to cop in the bat of an eye, “you were driving home from Wyatt’s, and what happened?”

  I told my story again, while Jawarski made a few more notes. It’s irritating to answer the same questions over and over again, but I was an attorney in my previous life, so I know about interrogation techniques, and I understood why the police do what they do.

  When I finished, he nodded slowly. In his best cop voice, he asked, “You’re sure that’s what you saw?”

  “Of course I’m sure.” He looked at Wyatt over the top of my head, and I felt the slim hold I’d been managing to keep on my patience slipping. “Would you stop looking at Wyatt? He wasn’t here. I was. I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m not making things up, and I’m not overreacting.”

  Jawarski hadn’t exactly been smiling, but his expression sobered immediately. “I never said you were making it up, Abby, but you have to admit it’s a little strange that we can’t find any sign of foul play. If the guy was shot the way you say he was, seems like we’d find something.”

  “That’s what I think,” Wyatt said. “There’d be blood, signs of a struggle . . .” As if he was suddenly an expert in crime scene investigation.

  I growled at both of them and headed once again toward the place the body should have been. “Maybe the guy with the limp was standing farther from the side of the road than I thought at first.”

  Jawarski grabbed my arm and hauled me back to stand beside him like I was nothing more substantial than a rag doll. “Just stop right there, Abby. My guys’ll do the searching. They don’t need your help. Besides, if there is evidence in that patch of weeds, I don’t want you destroying it.”

  When he’s not playing cop, I like the fact that Jawarski’s bigger and stronger than I am. Just about any woman packing more pounds than she likes would feel the same way. But he was working, and I resented being manhandled. I jerked my arm away and put a few more inches between us. “You’re going to have them search, even though you don’t believe me?”

  “Lighten up, Sis,” Wyatt snapped. “He never said he didn’t believe you.”

  “Not in so many words, but I can see it in his eyes. Are you humoring me, Jawarski?”

  “I wouldn’t waste taxpayer dollars,” he said, as if that was supposed to make me feel better. “I’m just suggesting that maybe someone was pulling a joke,” Jawarski said. “Is that possible?”

  “Some joke, pretending to shoot someone in the chest.” I leaned against the bed of Wyatt’s truck and thought over the chain of events again. “It’s possible, I suppose,” I admitted grudgingly, “but who’d do something like that? And you didn’t see the look on that poor man’s face. He was terrified of something.”

  “Okay, then,” Jawarski conceded. “Tell me more about him.”

  I sighed in frustration. “I’ve told you everything I remember. He looked short for a man. I’m guessing maybe five four. He was dirty, and his clothes looked like he’d pulled them out of a garbage can.”

  “What about his hair color?”

  “Dark. Eyes the same. If he had any distinguishing marks or scars, I couldn’t see them under all the dirt.”

  “You’re sure the limp was real?” Wyatt asked.

  “I can’t be one hundred percent certain, but yeah, I think it was.”

  “And you’re sure he wasn’t limping because of the run-in with your car,” Jawarski said.

  I shook my head again. “No. I’ve been over and over that since it happened. I didn’t hit him, but I came close. I’m sure the limp wasn’t caused by me.”

  “And you didn’t see the shooter at all,” Jawarski said.

  “I didn’t see the shooter at all.”

  “If you had to guess, where would you say the shots came from?”

  I closed my eyes, relived the moment for the hundredth time since it happened, and pointed toward a grove of trees on my right. “If I had to guess, I’d say the shooter was hiding in there.”

  “You didn’t see or hear anything unusual?”

  “I didn’t hear anything, see anything, smell, taste, or feel anything unusual. I didn’t even realize there was anyone else around until I heard the shots.”

  “And when you heard the shots? What happened then?”

/>   Even though I understood why he asked, the questions were starting to wear on me. I kneaded my forehead with my fingertips and went over the same ground for the umpteenth time. “He was running in that direction,” I said, indicating a tangle of brush across the street. “I heard the shots, and he sort of stopped and then dropped. He just crumpled to the ground like a bundle of old rags.”

  Jawarski looked as if he was about to say something else, but one of the officers who’d been looking through the trees shouted, “Got some tire tracks over here, Detective,” and whatever Jawarski had been thinking was immediately forgotten.

  I jumped as if I’d been poked with a cattle prod and started toward the officer. Jawarski and his long legs passed me as if I was standing still, and Wyatt was only half a step behind him.

  Hoping that someone had finally found proof that I wasn’t hallucinating, I kicked myself into high gear and pushed through an opening in the trees I hadn’t noticed before. I stopped on the edge of a clearing about twenty feet square, and I could tell immediately that it had been flattened by more than one set of tires. “Anything?”

  Jawarski crouched to look at the prints the officer pointed out to him but shook his head as he stood again. “There’ve been cars here recently, but it’s impossible to tell how recently. We haven’t had rain in weeks.”

  “But they could be fresh,” I prodded.

  “They could be.” Jawarski tucked his notebook into his breast pocket and put a hand on my elbow. “We’ll check them out, but I don’t think they’re going to tell us anything. There are probably a thousand vehicles around here with tires like those.”

  “So now what?”

  Jawarski shook his head slowly. “We’ll keep checking, Abby, but I wouldn’t worry too much. If the man you saw had actually been shot, there would be signs of foul play. Whatever you saw, it wasn’t murder.”