Shadow Prey

edged sideways, like crabs, slowly, the shotgun pressing . . . . Twenty feet out from the car.
    “Billy? Billy? I’m the guy on the telephone. We’ve got a doctor here,” the negotiator called. The negotiator took a step away from his car and Lucas noticed that he’d taken off his sidearm. “We got a doctor, a registered psychologist, we want you to talk with her . . . .”
    Lily stepped out from behind the car and stood beside the negotiator, clutching her purse in both hands. She looked like a very scared public-health nurse.
    “We brought her in to see if you were okay. She says she’ll ride with the two of you, in case there’s any trouble, she wants to talk . . . .”
    “I don’t want any talk, man, I just want the car.” Hood prodded Lucas and Lucas sidestepped toward the car, his head twisted by the angle of the shotgun.
    “I can help you,” Lily called. She was fifteen feet away.
    “I don’t want you, man,” Hood said. He was sweating, and the odor of the fear sweat filled the air around him. “Just get the fuck out of my way.”
    “Listen, you’ve got to listen to me, Billy. Please? I’ve worked with a lot of Indian people and this is not the Indian way.” She took a step closer, and another, and with their movement toward the car, she was now less than ten feet away.
    “Just get away from me, will you?” Hood said in exasperation. “I don’t need no fuckin’ shrink, okay?”
    “Billy, please . . .” Lily said, a pleading note in her voice. Six feet. She let the purse drop to her side on its shoulder strap, one hand gesturing while the other plucked at her jacket. “Let me . . .” Her voice suddenly changed from persuasion to urgency. “Billy, you’ve got a problem. Okay? Let me tell you about this, okay? You’ve got a problem that you don’t know about. I mean it. Billy, there’s a wasp on your hair. Above your right ear. If it stings, don’t pull the trigger, it’s just a wasp . . . . We don’t want a tragedy.”
    “A wasp, man . . . where is it?” Hood stopped, his voicesuddenly tight. Lucas’ mind flashed to the box of antihistamine tablets in Hood’s medicine cabinet.
    “On your hair just above your right ear, right there, it’s crawling down toward your ear . . . .”
    Hood had his left hand around Lucas’ neck and Lucas felt the stock of the gun come up as Hood tried to brush the nonexistent wasp away with his gun hand. With his finger through the trigger guard, he couldn’t quite reach his ear; for just the barest part of a second, not thinking, he pulled his trigger finger out of the guard, reaching toward his head. As his finger came out of the guard, Lily went into her belly with her right hand, the hand that had been nervously plucking at her jacket button, and came out with the full-cocked .45. She thrust it at Hood’s head almost as if she were throwing a dart, and he saw it just soon enough to flinch. Lucas closed his eyes and started to turn away; the .45 went off and Lucas felt a hot stinging on his face, as though he’d been hit by a handful of beach sand. Hood kicked back onto the ground as Lucas fell to his knees and screamed:
    “Get it off get it off get it off get it off.”
    The negotiator knelt beside him and said, “You’re okay, you’re okay.” A hand grasped the shotgun barrel, held it, and Lucas, his breath ragged, groaned, “Get it off, get it off,” and there was a flat cutting sound and the muzzle was gone.
    Again, everything was sharp, the blacktop beneath his knees, the smell of tar and city garbage, the sound of the radios, an ERU officer running, Lily saying “Jesus, Jesus,” the team leader’s knee next to his face, Billy Hood’s gym shoe twisted in the dirt. Then Lucas’ breakfast came up, and he knelt outside Billy Hood’s apartment and vomited and vomited; and when he couldn’t vomit anymore, dry heaves shook his shoulders and racked his stomach. Members of the ERU team were gathering around the body, and from somewhere he could hear a woman’s wail over the shouting and the chatter. The team leader’s hand was on the back of his neck, warm against his cold skin. He heard somebody crack the shotgun and a green-cased shotgun shell flipped out.
    When the stomach spasms stopped, when he had controlled them, Lucas turned his head and saw Billy Hood’s face. The front of it was caved in, as though somebody had hit him with a claw hammer.
    “One shot in the ten ring,” Lily said.