The Unremarkable Heart

it had been wired shut. Slowly, she sat up. There were drops of blood on the concrete in front of her. Her eyes followed the trail going to the kitchen door. To the bloody handprint.
    Emma was locked in the shed. Evelyn’s gun was missing. There was a blood trail to the house.
    Faith stood, facing the unlatched kitchen door. There was no sound but her own labored breath.
    Who had turned off the music?
    Faith jogged back to her car. She took her Glock from under the driver’s seat. She checked the magazine and clipped the holster to her side. Her phone was still on the front seat. Faith grabbed it before popping open the trunk. She had been a detective with the Atlanta homicide squad before becoming a special agent with the state. Her fingers dialed the unlisted emergency line from memory. She didn’t give the dispatcher time to speak. She rattled off her old badge number, her unit, and her mother’s street address.
    Faith paused before saying, ‘Code thirty.’ The words nearly choked her. Code 30. She had never used the phrase in her life. It meant that an officer needed emergency assistance. It meant that a fellow cop was in serious danger, possibly dead. ‘My child is locked in the shed outside. There’s blood on the concrete and a bloody hand print on the kitchen door. I think my mother is inside the house. I heard music, but it was turned off. She’s retired Blue. I think she’s—’ Faith’s throat tightened like a fist. ‘Help. Please. Send help.’
    ‘Acknowledge code thirty,’ the dispatcher answered, her tone sharp and tense. ‘Stay outside and wait for backup. Do not – repeat – do not go into the house.’
    ‘Acknowledged.’ Faith ended the call and tossed the phone into the back seat. She twisted her key into the lock that kept her shotgun bolted to the trunk of her car.
    The GBI issued every agent at least two weapons. The Glock model 23 was a .40-caliber semiautomatic that held thirteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. The Remington 870 held four rounds of double-ought buckshot in the tube. Faith’s shotgun carried six extra rounds in the side-saddle attached in front of the stock. Each round contained eight pellets. Each pellet was about the size of a .38-caliber bullet.
    Every pull of the trigger on the Glock shot one bullet. Every pull on the Remington shot eight.
    Agency policy dictated that all agents keep a round chambered in their Glocks, giving them fourteen rounds total. There was no conventional external safety on the weapon. Agents were authorized by law to use deadly force if they felt their lives or the lives of others were in danger. You only pulled back on the trigger when you meant to shoot, and you only shot when you meant to kill.
    The shotgun was a different story with the same ending. The safety was to the rear of the trigger guard, a cross-bolt slide that took lithe muscle to move. You didn’t keep a round in the chamber. You wanted everybody around you to hear that round racking, setting up to blast. Faith had seen grown men drop to their knees at the sound.
    She looked back at the house as she disengaged the safety. The curtain on the front window twitched. A shadow ran down the hallway.
    Faith pumped the shotgun with one hand as she walked toward the carport. The action made a satisfying tha-thunk that echoed against the concrete. In a single fluid motion, the stock was against her shoulder, the barrel straight in front of her. She kicked open the door, holding the weapon steady as she yelled ‘Police!’
    The word boomed through the house like a clash of thunder. It came from a deep, dark place in Faith’s gut that she ignored most of the time for fear of switching something on that could never be shut off.
    ‘Come out with your hands in the air!’
    No one came out. She heard a noise from somewhere in the back of the house. Her vision sharpened as she entered the kitchen. Blood on the counter. A bread knife. More blood on the floor. Drawers and cabinets gaping open. The phone on the wall hung like a twisted noose. Evelyn’s BlackBerry and cell phone were smashed to pieces on the floor. Faith kept the shotgun in front of her, finger resting just to the side of the trigger so that she didn’t make any mistakes.
    She should’ve been thinking about her mother, or Emma, but there was only one phrase that kept going through her mind: people and doorways . When you cleared a house, these were the biggest threats to your safety. You had to