All Shots

multiple injuries, including the skull fracture. The hospital kept him until Labor Day. September fourth.”
    Holly reached into a leather briefcase and extracted a sheaf of papers. The one on top had a gigantic red “No” symbol, a circle with a diagonal line, boldly plastered across a picture of Winnie the Pooh. If Winnie the Pooh was a media character, then Piglet presumably was, too. And if Piglet, what of Pink Piggy? The name was one Steve and I had invented; there were no Pink Piggy movies or TV shows or computer games. Even so, were we arresting Sammy’s development and stifling his creativity by giving him a colorful pig invented by Dr. Noy instead presenting him with off-white fleece balls and other neutral lumps for his fertile mind to transform into creatures of his imagination?
    But Holly replaced the media-free material in her briefcase and read from a single sheet of paper. “ ‘Delayed presentation of a massive sub-capsular haematoma of the spleen,’ ” she intoned as if the medical report were sacred text. “This is a case report about a man who fell down a manhole. His chest X-ray was normal. He was sent home. Then he developed a painful lump, and three weeks later he was diagnosed with an occult rupture of the spleen.”
    Zach Ho, who was, after all, a doctor, looked a little perplexed, but I understood. I use the Web to look up diseases and ailments, too. I do it even after Steve has told me what’s wrong with the animal I’m worried about or after he’s told me that there’s nothing wrong except my hypochondria by proxy.
    “Thank you, Holly,” Al said. “It looks like that’s what happened. So, Grant was discharged on Labor Day. Meanwhile, Holly was staying here, and to be on the safe side, she was calling Calvin strictly from pay phones. She was careful. So, Calvin filled her in on Grant, and they were both worried that he’d rat on them or go after her. But she wasn’t so careful about the truck.”
    “I warned her,” Zach said.
    Al said, “Street cleaning was on August thirty-first. Thursday. On the even side of the street. She couldn’t have bailed out the truck without ID. It wasn’t her truck. Grant was still in the hospital. He got out the next Monday, Labor Day, and he went home, and the day after that, he got the impound notice.”
    “With an address,” I said. “On this street. Right near here.”
    “And he went apeshit,” Al resumed. “He must’ve. He was supposed to take it easy, and what he did was jump on his old Harley and beat it to the address on the notice. We don’t know exactly what happened then. He found this house. Maybe he looked through windows. When he got in, we don’t know what he did first. Tried to get her to tell him where his money was? And the meth she’d taken?”
    “And his dog,” I said.
    “That, too. He tore up the place. And he shot her. In what order, we don’t know. Everything was down the street at Mellie’s, of course. Cash, meth, all of it packed in those dog toys.”
    “Shooting her might’ve been what scared him away,” Zach said. “He sounds like a guy who wasn’t used to near neighbors. No one heard the shots, but someone could’ve. That might’ve occurred to him and sent him running. And there’s the ruptured spleen. He must’ve been in pain. Feeling weak.”
    “Well, he made it back home,” Al said. “Checked himself into the hospital the next day. Had his spleen out. Fie was there until this past Monday.”
    “And we know what he did after that,” I said. “And Calvin. Holly had been calling him. She must’ve told him where she was. Then she stopped calling. He was worried.”
    “Calvin’s not a guy who does a lot of reading,” Al said. “Basically, none. And a low-profile murder in Massachusetts doesn’t make the TV news in Washington County, Maine.”
    I asked, “But why did they show up at almost the same time?”
    “They didn’t,” Al said. “Calvin had been hanging around since Sunday, staying at a motel out on Soldiers Field Road. He thought she might’ve gone somewhere, and he kept checking to see if she’d come back. He must’ve heard Grant’s voice. Grant was shouting at Mellie just before Calvin came in.”
    “Mellie,” Zach said. “The worst thing I’ve done is to get her involved in this mess.”
    I feel compelled to leap beyond the narrative moment to comment that one of the things I liked about Zach Ho was his guilt, which was somewhat justified. Despite his