The Fort (Aric Davis)

the same, pleading with Dispatch for backup at the address Tim had given him, as well as asking for any available information on one Matt Hooper. He was driving the Caprice at speeds on suburban streets that he would have happily seen another officer fined over, if not outright suspended, and he couldn’t have cared less. He figured there was a small window he could land in. It was still early in the day. There was always the possibility that Luke had been out getting breakfast, or running around some other part of the woods, or even that Hooper wasn’t the man he’d been looking for. Van Endel found that last part impossible to convince himself of, however. He wished there was some way to get his partner, Phil, in the car with him, or if not, a couple of veteran unis with shotguns.
    He was there after just a few streets of unsafe driving, and parked the Caprice in front of Hooper’s house. Dispatch hadn’t gotten back to him on whether or not Hooper had any priors or was a registered firearms owner, but Van Endel didn’t care. Tempering his racing heart, or at least attempting to, as he hurried to the door, Van Endel reminded himself that he had no warrant, and nothing more than circumstantial evidence that Matt Hooper was doing anything wrong at all. Keeping that in mind, Van Endel took the Glock from its place in his jacket. Using the butt of the walkie-talkie in his other hand, Van Endel tapped twice on the door, hard, and stepped to the side of the doorway. There was no response. Feeling a moment of déjà vu from the trailer, Van Endel tapped again and peered through the small window in the door. A shoe that looked too small for a man lay on the floor near the door, and Van Endel decided the shoe was worth risking his career over. He backed up, took a deep breath, and charged the door.
    The door opened on the third charge, and Van Endel all but fell into the house. The shoe he’d seen had a match: it was on the right foot of a boy Van Endel was fairly certain was Luke Hutchinson. In addition to the shoe, the boy was also wearing a gunshot wound in his chest, and blood covered the floor. His chest was rising and falling in shallow breaths, and for a very brief moment, Van Endel was unsure of what to do. Then he flattened himself to the wall and checked the first corner. He could see through the kitchen. The sliding glass door at the rear of the house was open, as was the gate at the back of the property. Hooper was in the woods.
    Van Endel dropped down next to Luke and placed his gun on the floor, then felt the boy’s throat for a pulse. It was there, but weak, and Luke’s eyes fluttered at his touch.
    “Dispatch, I need backup and EMTs now!” Van Endel screamed into the walkie. The police code that he had known and used for years was gone. It was hard to even form the words. “I’ve got at least one gunshot wound in a minor. The shooter’s looking like he’s headed off into the woods behind the house.”
    “Sending over additional units right now.”
    “They need to hurry! This kid is bleeding out right now!”
    Van Endel set the walkie-talkie down. He could hear sirens over the radio, coming from the trailer park, Van Endel assumed. Guilt powered through him along with the adrenaline. A lot of this was going to come down on him, and that was OK. They’d all made mistakes, but the pale boy on the floor wasn’t going to get to complain about them if the EMTs didn’t hurry up and get there.
    Less than two minutes later, an impossibly long time to sit beside a seemingly doomed boy, the first officers arrived, and as Van Endel had expected, they were from the trailer park scene. For all Van Endel knew, they could even still have a suspect in the back of their squad car, not that he cared either way. The cops came in with guns out, and one of them knelt by Luke. Van Endel knew the cop had been a medic in the service, so at least that much help for the boy had arrived.
    Van Endel stood, grabbing his Glock from where he’d left it on the floor. “The suspect is in the woods,” he said. “I’m sure of it. The house isn’t clear, so proceed with caution.” The shell-shocked officer whose partner was attending to Luke just nodded, and then Van Endel was out the back door and running, charging toward the woods with his pistol in his hand, the shame of being so wrong slowly being replaced with rage.

54
    Hooper had no choice but to abandon the position at the house. He’d struggled with the