IMPACT

The Lincoln handled like a boat, loose and easy and relaxed. The road was wide and I could have floated endlessly among the green lawns and houses, but I’d reached my destination and the long drive up from Alabama was over.

I turned the wheel with two fingers and guided the car to a stop beside a clean curb. The automatic shifter nudged into the park position. I twisted the key back in the ignition and the engine hum fell off. The windows were down and the smell of fresh-cut grass and the faint odor of a two-stroke engine passed pleasantly into the car. Given the quantity of grass in view, I figured the mowing of lawns was a common occurrence in the town of Promise, Indiana.

I leaned forward in the driver’s seat and pulled my shirt away from the leather. My lower back had gotten a little hot and sweaty. I stretched. The street was empty. Both sides of it had medium-size houses separated by generous lawns. There was nothing going on that I could see. Nobody walking around either purposefully or aimlessly. Nobody visible at all. It was late afternoon and hot for early summer, maybe eighty degrees in the shade. Humidity was high and the air was close.

I ducked my head and looked to my right through the passenger window at 1250 Springhurst, my destination. Its only distinguishing feature was a sprinkler in the middle of the lawn, doing its rotation. The water hissed and the mechanism ticked as it cycled and spun back to start all over again.

I stepped out of the car and opened the rear door. The guitar case was in the back seat. I reached in and pulled it out by the handle. The sprinkler at 1250 was spitting water in my direction, so I waited for it to finish another circuit before starting up the lawn. White lace curtains were drawn across the two windows, one on either side of the front door. I didn’t know who was going to be receiving the instrument, but my job was almost done.

The sprinkler finished its turn and wound back with a rapid clicking sequence. I was about to step off when I heard two gunshots fired in quick succession. After a slight pause, the shooter squeezed a third shot.

The shots were small arms fire, probably a pistol. The triple booms bounced off the facades of the houses facing me, which didn’t mean that the weapon had been fired from that direction. Across the street was a good-size yard with bed linens hanging on lines. The white sheets caught whatever meager air currents they could hold, billowing ever so slightly to reveal a woman standing still, looking at something in front of her that I couldn’t see. She did not appear to be holding a weapon. There were no other sounds. Nobody was reacting to the shots, and not even an airplane was in the sky.

I opened the Lincoln’s rear door and returned the guitar to the back seat. The door clicked quietly shut. I glanced at 1250 again. Whoever this instrument belonged to could wait a couple of minutes, since apparently they’d been waiting for decades.

I turned away and crossed the street to the yard with hanging laundry. A jogger appeared, pounding pavement on the opposite sidewalk, oblivious and sweaty with a bare torso. When he came by, I could see his ears plugged with electronics. I waited for the jogger to pass. The heat was keeping everyone else inside, either in front of a fan or in a sealed, air-conditioned room within easy reach of cool beverages.

I came through the first line of drying sheets and got a good look at the woman before she noticed me. She was in her late forties and wearing a loose summer dress. Her glossy black hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She was slim and tall with dark-brown skin. Her hands hung empty at her sides. Her eyes were fixed on a point on the ground maybe fifteen feet in front of her. I moved forward and saw what she was looking at.

A second woman was face down, her body splayed in an awkward position.

I ignored the standing woman and moved to the casualty on the ground. She had a small pistol loosely held in her right hand, muzzle in the grass. Her fingers moved across the grip, which meant that she was alive. I had a moment’s hesitation before I touched the weapon. The police wouldn’t like that, but the police weren’t there.

I removed the gun from her hand and dropped the magazine. I cleared the chamber and put all the pieces down. Beneath the woman’s head, blood pooled among the rich green stalks and seeped into the black soil. Insects had already gotten involved, interested, hungry, insistent. She was breathing raggedly. Her body was moving in a repetitive way, slowly twitching, fingers grasping at nothing.

I turned to the one standing.

“What happened, ma’am?”

Her eyes shifted to me. “She tried to shoot me, then she shot herself.”

“Call 9-1-1.” The standing woman ignored me. I said it again, “Ma’am, please go inside and call 9-1-1.”

The woman on the ground made a sound, something between a moan and a howl, but with meaning and syllables. Two words. “No police.”

I examined her dispassionately. Definitely wounded, but conscious and able to express herself. I turned her carefully into the recovery position and took a better look. She’d blown a hole in the left side of her face from the inside out. The wound was engorged with blood, the exposed tissue scorched and inflamed. It probably looked worse than it was, but she might have internal bleeding or hemorrhaging inside her skull from the explosion.

She needed medical attention. I turned to the one standing, tried to figure out if she was in shock. The standing woman gazed into my eyes like she was looking for something.

She said, “Who the hell are you?”

“I was across the street and heard the gunshots.”

“That right? Normally people move away from gunshots, not closer to them.” She stepped toward the wounded woman. “And don’t call me ma’am. Makes me feel like a grandmother and I’m nobody’s grandmother.”

The wounded woman’s eyes were open, staring straight ahead, which for her was into the grass. Her breathing was shallow. She looked to be in her late thirties. Blond hair cut in a bob.

The tall woman knelt down to look. “She doesn’t want us to call 9-1-1. Maybe she’s got a reason.” She motioned to the ground. “She’s got a purse.” The wounded woman moaned again. This time not as loud. But her words were clear and there was no confusion. “No police. Please.”

Which made no sense. If you don’t want to attract police, why go out in public firing a weapon at another person, then yourself? But that’s exactly what she had done, which meant that her making sense wasn’t a reasonable expectation. As a veteran combat medic, I knew that I could provide some form of care right there and then. None of it would be enough if she had brain trauma.

I looked around at the scene, getting my bearings and visualizing what had happened. The younger woman had come up from the street. Maybe first to the front door, then over to the yard when she noticed the tall one hanging laundry. She’d pulled the pistol from her purse, fired twice and missed both times. After that she had inserted the barrel into her mouth and blown her face out.

I was operating under the assumption that the woman had hoped to put a bullet through her brain, not her cheek. It looked like a couple of teeth had been caught up in the blast, which made a tough day even worse.

The wounded woman coughed loudly and rolled into a seated position. She looked ghastly with half of her face shot off. She put out a hand to steady herself and moaned again. I could barely understand the words. “Help me.”

The tall woman said, “We can bring her into my house through the side.”

I said, “Okay.”

She looked surprised that I had agreed.

She said, “But then what?”

“Then you’ll see.”