Mortal Danger

said. “He was older, and balder, but I recognized him.”
    Kate hoped to talk to Randall Nozawa, the only survivor—so far—of the triple shooting in the early morning hours of March 30. For the moment, he was fighting for hislife, and it would be a long time before anyone could talk much to him.
     
    Despite all odds—multiple delicate surgeries, infections, and pneumonia—Randall Nozawa survived. He was totally blind. He’d lost his left eye in 2003 and his right eye on March 30, 2007. His tongue had been bisected by a bullet, but it was eventually reattached. His jaw had been broken, and he’d lost three teeth.
    Although he sometimes wished he hadn’t, he kept his memories of that tragic night.
    “When John left the room, he seemed so calm that neither Turi nor I was afraid,” Randall said, “but when he came back he had a gun in his hands. He stood by the refrigerator, pointing it at us.”
    They still didn’t know if he was serious, but neither Randall nor Turi said anything, staring down at the kitchen table, afraid to speak. But then, John ordered Turi to kneel in front of him, and she complied. But suddenly her mind wasn’t bending to his will any longer. She turned her head toward Randall and said, “He does this to make himself feel like a man.”
    “I didn’t know what to say,” Randall said, “and I just kept my head down and kept quiet. I thought maybe this was some ritual they practiced in their marriage. I mean, people have ways that they argue, but I’d never seen this before.”
    Randall was more embarrassed than he was frightened. He didn’t want to be this close to someone else’s privatebusiness, but he’d been drawn into it. Turi was kneeling close to the table, and he thought feverishly of some way to save her from John’s icy anger.
    “Tell him what happened in Oregon,” Turi said. “Tell him what you did to her—”
    Suddenly, John’s gun boomed. Turi fell sideways without a sound.
    Randall knew he shouldn’t move from where he sat with his head down. But he was able to extend his arm beneath the table far enough to touch Turi’s foot with his hand. He found no pulse there. She was gone without so much as a sigh.
    “He shot me next,” Randall said. “When someone is shooting at you, you don’t hear a very loud noise. My ears rang, but I felt no pain at all—so I knew that Turi hadn’t either. I was still looking down when he shot me, and then my sight went completely black. I went under the table—just kind of slid there. I was aware of bone chips and blood in my mouth, and I remember wondering how that happened, because he had shot me in my good eye. Later, I realized I’d been looking down at the table and he was standing over me, so the bullet must have gone in my eye at a downward angle, and it continued that path, splintering my jaw, and knocking out some of my teeth, and then cut my tongue in half before it exited.”
    Randall was surprised that he was still alive. He could hear John walking around the kitchen for at least five or ten minutes, but he couldn’t see him any longer. He stayed motionless under the table, barely breathing and hoping John would think he was dead.
    And then the gun sounded again, and he heard something or someone hit the floor. He could no longer hear John pacing or breathing.
    Randall Nozawa waited a while longer, then stumbled to his feet and went into the bedroom, where he fell unconscious for several hours. When he came to, he found a phone, but he couldn’t get a dial tone or a 911 call to go through. It was probably Turi’s cell phone and the charge had seeped out of it, so it was useless.
    He didn’t know if it was day or night, but he somehow managed to find the front door and get to the street. And that’s where Sanford found him.
    “I don’t know why I’m alive,” Randall said a year later. “I guess I must have a very hard head.”
    He probably does. Thick bone growth is one of the reasons that some humans survive a shot to the head. Old ammunition is another. And once in a while it’s just the angle of fire, when a bullet’s path hits no vital organs or arteries.
    Asked if he ever wondered if John Branden-Williams had deliberately shot him in his good eye, Randall paused. “Sometimes, I’ve thought about that,” he admitted. “But then I think he really meant to kill me, so it probably didn’t matter to him where he shot me—just so long as I died. I saw him shoot Turi, and he was also worried