Cooked Goose

shoulders. “Why doesn’t he have a pulse for cryin’ out loud?”
    “I guess he had a heart attack or maybe it just scared him to death,” Savannah said as she dialed 911 and requested an ambulance.
    Dirk knelt over his inert captain, listening for respiration, but, for all practical purposes, Bloss was as dead as his counter-part.
    Looking up at Savannah , Dirk said, “You know what this means?”
    “What?” Savannah bristled. No, don’t even think about it, she thought. No way.
    “If we don’t give him mouth to mouth,” Dirk said, “he’s going to die.”
    “And your point is...?”
    “You’ve got to do it. I can’t.”
    “What do you mean, you can’t? He’s your boss, your responsibility. Pucker up, babycakes, he’s all yours.”
    “I can’t. I can thump on his chest, maybe get his heart started. But I can’t do the breathing part. I just can’t.”
    “Why not?”
    “He’s a dude.”
    “Are you telling me that you’re such a friggin’ homophobe that you can’t give a dying man the breath of life? Is that what you’re telling me?”
    Dirk shrugged and looked miserable. “Maybe I could... if he was some other guy, but... Bloss. I just... I can’t. You do it.”
    “Hell no! I’m not touching him. I’d rather eat a maggot.” Then she thought of all the rotten things this man on the floor had done to her. The loss of her job, the time he’d had her falsely arrested for murder, all the snide remarks and...“ and the look that would be on Margie Bloss’s face when she heard her father was dead.
    “Come on, Van,” Dirk begged. “You gotta do it. If he dies, I won’t get to bust him for the vigilante shit!”
    Savannah dropped to her knees, pinched Bloss’s big, red nose between her fingers, bent over him and said, “Boy, oh, boy, Coulter. You are gonna owe me so big for this! There aren’t enough donuts or pizzas in the world to pay for this!”

    * * *

    December 21 — 3:39 a.m.

    Savannah sat at her kitchen table, sipping a mug of hot chocolate, wishing that she, like the rest of the world, was asleep.
    There was nothing quite like killing someone to keep you awake at night—someone whose home you had visited, whose barbecue you had eaten, whose sweetheart you had consoled. The mental picture of Titus lying on the floor, staring up at her with dead eyes didn’t lend itself to a peaceful night’s sleep.
    She wondered whose bullet, hers or Dirk’s, had actually killed him. Maybe both. Dr. Jen was good; she would find out during the autopsy. A ballistics test would tell them for sure.
    But did it matter?
    No. Not really.
    Titus was dead. He wasn’t coming back. And while that was, no doubt, a comfort to his many victims, their loved ones, and even the community at large... Savannah didn’t feel all that good about it.
    If she had it to do all over again, she wouldn’t change a thing. Titus had given them no choice.
    But it still sucked. And no amount of hot chocolate or soul searching was going to put it right tonight.
    In the living room, the children snoozed away on the sofa. Vidalia and Butch were in the guest room, the bedsprings having finished squeaking a couple of hours ago.
    Margie was nestled all snug in Savannah’s bed, having come home from the hospital where her father was still in Intensive Care, but his condition was stabilized. He had suffered a heart attack, but the damage appeared to have been minimal. Dirk could hardly wait for him to recuperate sufficiently so that he could place him under arrest. He had promised Savannah that she could be present for the auspicious occasion. She had already decided to wear rings on her fingers and bells on her toes.
    While at the hospital this evening, Savannah had dropped by Charlene Yardley’s room to find that she had been discharged. The nurse said she had gone home and would be spending time with her children. Savannah wondered if she had heard the news before she went to bed.
    If she had, at least she would sleep better.
    But Savannah wasn’t the only one having trouble counting sheep tonight, she realized when she heard footsteps for at least the fifth time in an hour, traipsing down the upstairs hall to the bathroom. At first she figured it was Butch, getting rid of the beer he had consumed this evening. But she heard a cough that sounded more female. Maybe it was Vidalia, and maybe she was sick.
    Leaving her hot chocolate, which had passed from lukewarm to decidedly cool anyway, Savannah quietly made