Chapter 22

I'd managed to do all the right and necessary things to get the hunt for Ramos – it had to be Ramos in that car – moving, but now that I'd done those things I didn't know what to do. My place now was back at the office, doing what the city had hired me to do, which was mostly administration. My insistence on doing police work was my idea, not theirs.

Or perhaps my place was talking to the reporter I now saw approaching. I knew she wouldn't get to the scene – between the crime scene tape which had gone up sometime when I wasn't watching, and the edginess of cops who've just had one of their own shot, that reporter would either stay back or wish she had. But a lot of police officials would rush over to a reporter, just to get their picture and name in the paper, or on TV, or whatever it might be. In this case it would be print – this reporter was Sam Sowell, the owner, publisher, reporter, and accountant for what passed for a newspaper in Red Hawk. Sam had just one other employee, who laid out the paper on the computer, saved it to a disk – the modern version of putting a paper to bed, and took the disk up to Woodward to the printer. Dewey County was smaller than a lot of small towns, and if Sam hadn't had her own money she'd have had to close down the Red Hawk Reporter for lack of funds.

I didn't care one bit, just then, for whether the paper folded, or became nothing but ads, or flew away to Mars. I turned back toward Cecelia's car. The line of scowling officers had broken up, and as I pushed between two of them I saw that Cecelia had her shirt on again – untucked, but on. Her vest was on top of the car, draped over the light bar. She'd gotten most of her color back, and she wasn't sweating now ... I remembered the scene in For Whom the Bell Tolls, when Pilar described the execution of the Guardia Civil troops. She said that they sweated heavily from fear in the cool of the morning, and that's what Cecelia had been doing. Though I've never been shot, I knew exactly that kind of sweat – I've had people shoot at me twice, though both times they missed.

"How are you, C?" I asked.

She looked at Morgan. "Apparently I am going to be very stiff and sore for a week – he's already written an order for me to go on light duty for that time, and instructed me to see a doctor. As far as we can tell I have no internal injuries, but he is not a physician and would prefer that we be certain. I'll set up an appointment before the sun sets today." She took a breath – but couldn't make it deep, for her soreness caused her to wince and stop the inhalation. "I am frightened, though that is wearing off, and I am furious at the person who shot me. That will moderate in time, I presume, but right now if I were the arresting officer I would hope that he resisted arrest. I am not in a Christian frame of mind just now, Darvin."

"I ain't either," I said. "Not only did that scumbag shoot one of my officers, he shot my wife. That's one reason I ain't out there huntin' him – I'd be likely to shoot him instead of hook him up." My breath was deep, for I hadn't gotten hit with a couple of bullets. "But we neither of us is goin' huntin'." I looked at Morgan. "She needs to go home, right?"

"Unless she goes directly to the doctor. Or I suppose she could wait here for the ambulance..."

"Which do you want, C?" I asked.

"I think I'll wait. Perhaps the paramedics can give me a better evaluation regarding my vital organs – I said I would make an appointment today, but if I can avoid the trip I prefer to do so; resting at home will be sufficiently strenuous for now; getting in a car and riding to the doctor's office would be, I suspect, unpleasant." I've never known anyone else to speak in semi-colons, the way Charlotte Bronte wrote her dialogue in Jane Eyre, but Cecelia was doing it even under stress.

"Okay, we'll wait. I'll get in the passenger seat. Has anyone got a report from you yet?"

"No – I've been busy receiving the admirable first aid of Officer Morgan."

I looked at Morgan. "I ought to've said thanks already," I told him, "but I'm not as civilized as I like to think I am. I do appreciate it – an' don't tell me you were just doin' your job. I know you were doin' that, but you were takin' care of my wife too. Anytime I'm around, you won't have to pay for your beer from now on."

He smiled. "I'm a good Baptist, Chief – I don't use alcoholic drinks as a beverage."

"Right out of the church covenant," I said. Though I'm not one now, for years I'd been a Southern Baptist and still had a Bible somewhere with a copy of the church covenant pasted inside the front cover. "Okay, then, thanks – an' whatever you need, call me. If I can get it to you, it's yours." I looked at Cecelia. "Get ready to report, Officer Carpenter – I'm gettin' my notebook out as we speak."

I did exactly that as I walked around her car, which was only half on the shoulder. During a traffic stop an officer stops with his car sticking further out in the road than the car he's stopping, to provide protection for both himself and anyone he might have to pull out of the other car. I slid into the passenger seat of her car and flipped to a clean page. "Okay, tell me what happened."

"I was driving south on Main when I saw a car approaching which resembled the one Fidel Ramos had been driving." She had learned some cop jargon during her time on the force, but she still spoke actual English. "I U-turned and got behind the vehicle. It was the same license number, and the same make, model, and year." By now Cecelia knew more about cars than I did, since she patrolled a lot more than I did. I've never been a car guy, and the only reason I'd ever learned anything about cars when I was a cop was that I had to. "I called in, as you no doubt heard – you are here, after all – and turned on my light bar."

"You didn't engage your emergency equipment?" I asked with a chuckle.

"I am not testifying before a New Mexico grand jury," she said, our old joke still working. I have been a grand juror, and quickly got tired of the stilted copspeak so many officers used instead of plain English. "To continue: I approached the car and asked for the driver's license and proof of insurance. He looked like Ramos, and I was already planning to pull him out if there with the slightest excuse. I glanced in the back seat while he reached toward the glove compartment, to see what might be there – and out of the corner of my eye I saw him jerk toward me. I looked back at him. There was something shiny in his hand, there were two small pops – gunshots, I knew from my experience shooting – and two blows on my abdomen. I staggered back, more out of surprise and fear than because of the force of the bullets, and he took off in a cloud of dust. You can see," she said, pointing, "where his tires chewed up the shoulder. Then I called it in – rather unprofessionally, I seem to remember."