Dead Past

her low-cut boots. She was passing in front of a parked van when she heard muffled gunshots from inside her car. Shit, that was a new car, she thought as she dove for cover, sliding to a stop behind the van. Several more shots rang out accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. For a moment she didn’t know if the sounds were from the gunfire in her car or the loud roar and crackle of the house fire on the opposite street.
    The smoke from the fire was growing thicker. Diane pulled the neck of her shirt over her mouth, took a deep breath, and sprang across the nearest yard past a snowman. She stopped inside an alleyway and hugged the side of a house. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a blue light flashing on the street she had just fled. She turned and sprinted back in the direction of the light as fast as she could in ankle-deep snow.
    She felt reasonably safe now from the one-handed kid with the gun. It was dark and she doubted he could hit anything from inside the car. If he ran out of bullets, which she suspected he was about to, he’d have a hard time reloading with one half-frozen hand. Why would he want to shoot her, anyway? She kept in the shadows and away from the streetlights just in case.
    The smoke stung her throat and made her eyes water. As she ran toward the police cruiser waving her arms, she stepped off the curb and half fell into a pothole where the icy slush completely filled her boot before she could recover herself. The cruiser slowed, and an officer rolled down the window and shined a light in her face.
    “Keep your hands were we can see them . . . ,” the driver said. “Is that you, Dr. Fallon? We got a report of an attempted carjacking.”
    “Make that two attempted carjackings,” she said.
    He turned off his flashlight, but Diane was left with the bright afterimage. She blinked a couple of times before she recognized the policemen as people she knew.
    “He’s in my car,” she said, pointing in the general direction. She handed him her keys and quickly explained how she lured him into the backseat. “He’s missing a hand, bleeding, scared, in pain, and may be high on drugs or alcohol. He has a gun and has been shooting.”
    “Dangerous combination,” said the policeman on the passenger side. “How about you? You all right?”
    “I’m fine. Just wet and cold. Don’t worry about me.”
    “You stay here, out of the line of fire.”
    Diane was glad to let them deal with him. She heard the driver calling for an ambulance as they drove slowly toward her car. Diane moved out of the road, huddled near a pine tree, and watched the scene illuminated under the streetlight.
    They stopped just a few feet from her car, opened their doors, and, their guns drawn, used the doors for shields. Diane saw the driver reach for the mike. She hugged her arms to herself and wiggled her toes in her boots. They had not been a good choice for stomping around in the snow.
    “This is the police. Toss your gun out of the window and raise your”—he hesitated for a beat—“raise your hands where we can see them.”
    Diane waited, watching her car. Nothing. The policeman repeated the order.
    “Don’t make us come and get you,” he added. “We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
    Nothing.
    The two crouched policemen moved slowly toward her car, one on either side, their arms outstretched, their guns aimed ahead of them. Diane squinted against the wind, trying to see inside her car. From that distance, she couldn’t see a thing. She huddled against the pine tree, partly for warmth and partly to make a smaller target.
    The policemen stepped up to the car, shining their flashlights inside. They hesitated a moment, and one of them aimed the remote. She couldn’t hear the click of the doors unlocking over the noise of the fire and the wind. She saw one of them open a back door, reach in, and come out with a gun. She guessed that the kid had passed out in her backseat.
    The ambulance arrived just moments after the police had secured her car. She walked over and stood with the police and waited as the EMTs gently pulled the kid out and onto the stretcher. With his eyes closed and face relaxed he looked so young, still a teenager, facing the rest of his life without his right hand. She suddenly felt pity for him—now that the police had secured his gun.
    “Do you know him?” One of the patrolmen asked. Ben, Diane thought his name was. He was thirtyish, about ten years older and twenty pounds heavier