Emily Locke 01 - Final Approach

appeared below his shoulder, and before he lowered his eyes to look at it, the stain spread to the size of a grapefruit.
    I squinted toward the tree line. Vince slid down the side of the car until he was sitting on the ground next to me. He pushed his gun up into my hand.
    On the other side of the car, Scud leaned beside a tree, his abdomen dark with blood. His face, once so striking, was cadaverous and pallid in the diffuse headlights. He kept his gun raised, but trembled as if the effort were exhausting. His eyes flashed and locked on mine. Suddenly his aim steadied.
    I leveled the gun and fired until it was empty.

Epilogue
    In seventh grade, I asked my dad if he ever shot anyone in Vietnam. We were walking through a parking lot, on our way into a grocery store. He tucked his sunglasses into his front pocket and said, “If they shot at me, I shot back.” We entered through automatic doors, he picked up the weekend sales flyer, and that was that.
    It took twenty years, but I finally appreciated his brevity. Strangely, I gave little thought to having killed Scud.
    In the days following the shootings, I spent many hours in interview rooms, dutifully remembering specifics. Then I spent even more hours trying to forget them. Kurt, I was told, bolted when he heard the sirens and helicopter that night. A boat launch a mile further into the woods offered the best explanation of how he’d gotten away. He’d left Casey and Annette alone in the cabin, probably unwilling to jeopardize an escape by slowing himself down. Reinforcements intercepted him a few miles down the shore. Difficult as it was for me to believe, prosecutors considered him a low level offender. They used that as leverage in exchange for information about bigger fish in his organization, namely Trish Dalton. Only a subset of his resulting story interested me, the details about what happened to Jack and Annette.
    Claiming no involvement in the crime that destroyed my family, Kurt gave up the few facts he’d gleaned from Trish on the day of the shootings. Jack’s boat—the one I should have been on—was ambushed on Lake Erie, far enough off shore that no other boaters saw what happened. His attackers took Annette, who’d be profitable on the black market, before killing Jack and damaging his boat, making the death look accidental. The explanation validated my suspicions and should have provided closure, but instead only made my heartache worse.
    Prosecutors were building a case against Trish. Vince’s shots had been damaging, but not fatal. He told me bone fragments had damaged his cousin’s spinal cord in the lumbar region, leaving her unable to walk and suffering persistent neuropathic pain. After the requisite stay in a guarded hospital room, Trish would be released into federal custody, where it seemed she’d spend the rest of her life as a “special needs inmate.” I often wondered if it was better or worse for Vince that she’d lived.
    No one I asked would speculate on what Trish’s capture meant for their racketeering ring. I concluded from vague, open-ended answers that folks were sparing me the truth. Clement had described the size of the underground organization that he and so many other agents tirelessly worked to bring down. I imagined that when one leader got incarcerated, another probably got promoted to fill the empty seat. Maybe the beast had been wounded, but I figured it was still very much alive.
    Jeannie and I made frequent visits to Vince’s hospital room. Once, on our way up the elevator with Richard, Jeannie suggested we try her hospital pick-me-up porn idea. She said we’d missed our chance with Clement, but Vince was a better sport anyway.
    I’d never heard Richard laugh before. His laughing with us, clowning around that day, felt like amends for things I’d left unsaid, or poorly said, in the aftermath of all I’d misunderstood about him years ago. Before we said goodbye, he passed me an envelope. Karen Lyons had written to thank me for my part in bringing back her son. She included a picture of the two of them. I’d never seen Ms. Lyons before; the dimples I loved so much on Casey were from her.
    Four days passed before a DNA test confirmed Annette was mine. Not that I’d had any doubt. In the interim, I couldn’t have her, and neither could the Fletchers—the couple she knew as parents. My parental rights were ambiguous without a test result, and the Fletchers were deemed a flight risk. Annette was placed in