“Hey, that’s a good story. I’ll put it at the top of my ‘Heard Around Town’ column.”
When she’d gone to post the news, Virgil locked the door, went out to his truck, got his armored vest and his iPad, and started reading all the news he’d neglected over the past few days. He checked a few wildlife forums and “The Online Photographer.”
He had nothing to do until news of the fingerprinting had percolated through the town and until Jenkins and Shrake got back.
How long would that take? In Wheatfield, everybody should have heard about it before nightfall, he thought. Jenkins and Shrake should be set up by then.
And finally he asked himself, how stupid is this?
18
Jenkins called from his car at 9 o’clock, and said, “We’re in place. I’m down the block from the front of the house, and Shrake will set up on the street behind you. You got your radio?”
“Yes.”
“Tac light?”
“Yes.” Virgil had a LED flashlight.
Jenkins: “You got your vest?”
“Yes.”
“He’ll probably shoot you in the head,” Jenkins said.
“Listen, you moron . . .”
“I’m not the moron, you’re the moron for even thinking this up,” Jenkins said. “If you’re going to do it anyway, set your radio so we’re all getting the same thing at the same time. Stay away from your fuckin’ window. I’m looking over that way, and I saw the shadow of your head on the window shade. It looked like a gourd sitting on a fence.”
“All right, I’ll watch it. But I want him to see me moving around inside,” Virgil said. “I’ll walk out to the truck every fifteen minutes or so until midnight. He won’t come after that because he’ll figure I’m asleep.”
“If he knows where your bed is, where it is in the room, he could try a blind shot,” Shrake said.
“I don’t think so. He has to wait until he sees me because shooting me won’t be enough. He’ll want to get that print and the cartridge. He’s got to shoot, then he’s got to watch what happens after that, to make sure he’s alone, and then he’s got to come in to get it. He’ll have to be close. You should see him before he gets here.”
“We will if he comes on the street,” Jenkins said. “I’m a little worried if he sneaks down through the backyards. I’m looking down between the houses, and there are a lot of bushes in there, trees, fences; there’s a swing set and a couple of sheds . . . We should be there in the backyards with night vision goggles.”
“Too late for that.” Virgil told them to watch for somebody cruising the streets, doing recon, as well as movement in the backyard. “We’ll start at nine-thirty. It’s about eighty percent that nothing’ll happen, but we’ve got to give it a chance. Don’t go dozing off.”
“Talk to us,” Shrake said. “Put your goddamn vest on. If you don’t have your vest on, I’ll shoot you myself.”
* * *
—
Virgil had what was called a Level IIIA hybrid armored vest. The vest itself was made of Kevlar, and other composite fabrics, and would stop most pistol bullets. It also had two pockets, one in front, one in back, that held armor plates. The plates would stop rifle bullets up to a .30–06. The Level IIIA was thicker, heavier, and more uncomfortable than ordinary bulletproof police vests.
Highway patrolmen and street cops, who both make unpredictable stops, mostly need protection from concealed handguns. Their vests have to be comfortable enough to encourage the wearing of them for a full shift; that meant light vests made from soft, bullet-resistant materials.
Virgil didn’t make traffic stops in the rural countryside, where he usually worked. When he was confronted with a weapon, which had happened a few times, it was a rifle or a shotgun as often as it was a pistol. An ordinary urban cop’s vest, made to stop handgun rounds, wouldn’t stop a bullet from a rifle heavier than a little .22.
He got to think about all of that as he took his vest out of the truck and felt its weight in his hands.
* * *
—
At 9:30, Virgil called Jenkins and Shrake on the radio, and asked, “Anything?”
Shrake said, “Nothing. Darker than a pig’s asshole out here. Why doesn’t this place have streetlights?”
“Can’t afford them,” Virgil said. “I’m coming out.”
He pulled on the vest, slapped the Velcro tabs to keep it in place, and stretched a T-shirt over it. He wished, for a second, that he had a helmet, even though he knew it would be a dead giveaway. He tucked his Glock into the small of his back, picked up his radio, turned on the yellow bug light outside, and stepped out on the concrete-block stoop. Nothing happened.
He walked to the Tahoe, opened the door, fumbled around in the back, shut the door and locked it, walked back to the house and on inside. He could feel the pinch between his shoulder blades.
“Nothing moving here,” Shrake said.
“I didn’t see anything,” Jenkins said. “But, man, you are some target in that doorway, with the lights behind you and all. You look like a silhouette on a rifle range.”
Nothing happened at 9:45, and nothing happened at 10 o’clock.
“Starting to skizz out,” Virgil said on the radio when he was back inside after the 10 o’clock walk. Each time he took the walk, his feeling of vulnerability increased. He was totally dependent on Jenkins or Shrake spotting the shooter coming in, and Wheatfield, without streetlights and with residents who tended to turn in early, was a very dark place.
“It is stupid,” Shrake said. “We’ve all been telling you that all day.”
“We’ll quit at eleven,” Virgil said.
* * *
—
And they would have, if he hadn’t been shot at 10:15.
Virgil turned on the bug light and stepped out on the porch. A second later, he was hit with a hard thump—there was no sound whatsoever—and he looked down and saw an arrow sticking out of his chest.
He tumbled back inside, and shouted into the radio, “He shot me with an arrow. I’m shot with an arrow. He’s out there . . . He’s right here . . .”
Trap.
The shooter had moved silently across a dozen lawns to the back of the Vissers’ house. The basic plan was simple enough: noise outside that back door—thrown stones—should bring Flowers outside. Simple . . . but frightening. If the arrow missed, the cop would be right there with a gun, and the shooter was twenty yards away. There’d been a couple of stories on the internet that hinted that Flowers was not the best pistol shot in the world, but he could hardly miss at twenty yards when a body hit anywhere would be sufficient . . .
Then the back porch light came on, a yellow bug light, and the shooter’s arrow was already nocked. Flowers stepped out on the stoop and posed there like one of those range targets showing an ISIS terrorist staring at you with mad eyes . . .
The bow was up, the arrow on its way and flying true, and Flowers tumbled back into the house, and then the shooter stood up, and Flowers shouted, “He shot me with an arrow . . .”
Trap.
* * *
—
Virgil heard somebody shout “Going now,” either Jenkins or Shrake, and the other one yelled, “Are you hurt?” Virgil wasn’t registering which one, and he pulled the arrow out of his armor, sat up, looked out into the dark, and shouted, “I’m okay, I’m good. I’m coming.”
He could see nothing at all, but he did hear car doors slamming and the thumping footfalls from somebody running, and then more, and then Shrake yelled, “There he goes, he’s running west toward Sherburne . . . Jenkins . . . he’s going across the fences in the backyards.”
“You guys . . . be careful . . . You can’t see him, you can’t hear him . . . Be careful . . .” Virgil yelled into the radio. He rolled to his feet and ran out the door and saw Jenkins running in front of the light coming from a neighbor’s window, and he ran that way, shouting, “Jenkins, I’m behind you. I’m back here, don’t shoot me.”