The Lesson of Her Death

cops with this sort of acronym). LaPorda called in too, saying that he’d had no sign of the perp but was on his way to the riverfront for further investigation. Then he dug into his jacket pocket for his Camels. He shook one out and put his lips around it.
    He was startled when a polite voice next to him said, “Need a match?”
    When LaPorda turned he didn’t see who was speaking. All he saw was a rusty pipe, four inches wide and about four feet long, as it whistled square into his face. The
ponk
echoed off the walls nearby. LaPorda collapsed in a large pile and began to bleed heavily. He did not lose consciousness at first and was aware of hands rifling his shirt. The hands were persistent but delicate; the man they belonged to didn’t seem very strong.
    Professor’s hands
, he thought then he passed out.
    Wynton Kresge caught him lifting the fallen patrolman’s service revolver out of its holster. Kresge wondered if Gilchrist had killed the officer. “Hold it right there.” He turned and their eyes met. The two were alone. There were no footsteps, no crackles of walkie-talkies. The rest of the teams had passed them by. “Don’t move,” Kresge said. He aimed at the darting, dark eyes then remembered the
Deputy’s Procedural Guide
. Rule 34-6.
The chest, not the head, is the preferred target in an arrest situation
.
    Kresge said, “Drop the gun.”
    The sunlight bounced off a high window and illuminated the men in pale light.
    “Drop it.”
    “Let’s talk about this.”
    Kresge nodded at the man’s gun. “Now!” It was a double-action revolver. All Gilchrist had to do was aim and pull the trigger. No safety, no slides. Rule 34-2.
Identify suspect’s weapon immediately
. “I’m not going to tell you again.”
    “Do you want some money? How much do you want? A thousand? No problem.” He nodded toward the cop. “That was an accident. He fell. I was trying to help him. You want two thousand?” He gestured casually toward his suitcase, which moved the muzzle of the revolver closer to Kresge.
    He remembered the silhouette targets on the Higgins range. He said, “I’ll count to three.”
    “Hey, why don’t you just count to ten and give me a chance to go away? What could be easier than that? Two thousand dollars cash. I’ve got it right there in my suitcase.”
    “If you don’t drop the gun immediately,” Kresge said, “I am going to shoot you.”
    “Oh, I don’t think so, Officer.”

“H e moved. He said something.”
    “Detective Corde?” the nurse said.
    “I don’t know what it was exactly,” he explained.
    “Telephone for you, sir.”
    Corde said to her, “He moved. He said something.”
    The nurse, who knew all about sleep-deprivation hallucinating, glanced down at Jamie’s immobile form. “That’s wonderful.”
    “He sat up.”
    She had also read Jamie’s chart and she knew that he was as likely to fly loop-de-loops through the room as he was to sit up and utter one syllable. “That’s wonderful.”
    “Don’t you want to tell the doctor?”
    She said, “It’s a policeman in Fitzberg on the line. He said it’s urgent.”
    “Okay.” Corde turned his red eyes to the phone. He walked groggily toward it.
    “No, sir, it’s out here. We don’t put calls through to the ICU.”
    “Oh.”
    Standing at the nurses’ station Corde accepted the phone and said, “Hello?”
    He heard Wynton Kresge ask, “How’s your son?”
    “He’s asleep now, Wynton. But he sat up and said something to me. I heard him. I don’t know what he said but I heard him.”
    “That’s good. Bill, Gilchrist is dead.”
    “Uh-huh. You got him?”
    “He was trying to get away. He had Sayles’s credit cards in his wallet. Some other people’s too. He’d stolen them or bought them. He was going to cover his tracks real well.”
    “What happened?”
    “Bill, I wanted to talk to you about it. About what I did. He had a gun. He was waving it around. I shot him. Four times.”
    “That’s good, Wynton.”
    “I couldn’t stop myself. I kept pulling the trigger. He just fell over and died. I shot him four times.”
    “You did fine.”
    “But the thing is, Bill, I wasn’t sure, I mean, not
really
sure he was going to use his gun. I just couldn’t tell.”
    “Did they give it to the Fitzberg DA? They’re not going to indict you, are they?”
    “No. But it’s not the law part I’m talking about. I killed him and he might not have been going to shoot me.
    “Wynton, he killed