Jenkins shouted back, “Virgil, go out to Westfall. Shrake, get up on the corner of Sherburne, he has to cross the street. I’ll push him out of these yards . . . I’m gonna put some light on him.”
Jenkins, who was carrying a superbright tactical flashlight, turned it on and lit up the backyards, as Virgil jogged out to Westfall Road, crouched behind a tree, and turned on his own light. He could still see Jenkins, on his knees, gun up, playing his light over the area between the houses. A block away, Shrake was lighting up a cross street. Unless the shooter had been moving very fast, he should be boxed in in the backyards.
More lights began coming on in the neighborhood as they called back and forth. Jenkins shouted, “Moving up one. This yard is clear.”
* * *
—
Jenkins was moving slowly back and forth across the wide backyards; the side yards, between houses, were mostly clear of bushes and didn’t have good hiding places. The backyards, though, were a tangle of fences, grape arbors, decorative grasses, and last year’s gardens, with their foot-high, now dead plants. The shooter, he thought, was wearing camo, and in the harsh shadows thrown by Jenkins’s flashlight, and with the snarl of folliage and fence, could be hiding almost anywhere.
If he wanted to shoot his bow, though, he’d have to come up at least to kneeling height, unless he were concealed behind a tree or hedge; and Jenkins’s light was designed to be blinding.
So Jenkins didn’t hurry; he sent the light into every nook and cranny, his pistol tracking with the light.
* * *
—
The shooter crossed a lot of fences and shrubs in a hurry, had to get south, to the Wilsons’ house. The Wilsons had a hedge that ran all the way out to the street. It would provide cover. And if the cops were out of sight for only ten seconds, then it would be possible to cross the street, and, once there, it should be possible to shake them free altogether.
The biggest threat would be if the neighborhood woke up, and it probably would, sooner or later. Once all the backyard lights and garage lights came on, getting lost would become impossible.
No time, no time, had to keep moving . . .
And a cop ran by in the street, carrying a flashlight that appeared to be as bright as any searchlight . . .
* * *
—
Shrake had run up to the first street corner and thought he’d gotten there in time to keep the shooter from crossing it. Not being absolutely certain of that, he lit up the spaces between the houses across the street as well.
A man called something to him, and he shouted back, “Police . . . Police . . . Go inside. Go inside, lock your doors.”
Virgil had gotten back on his radio, and said, “He could live in one of these houses, and he’s already inside.”
“That would cut down the possibilities,” Shrake said. “Basically, if he’s inside, we’ll get him.”
“Unless he’s inside somebody else’s house and he just killed them,” Virgil said.
Jenkins: “Virgil, keep moving up. I’m sweating like a motherfucker over here. We’ve got to be pushing him into a corner.”
“We need to get some deputies down here, wrap up the entire neighborhood, and wait until it gets light,” Shrake suggested.
“That’s seven hours away, but it’s not a bad idea,” Virgil said. “I’ll call Zimmer, get some guys started this way.”
Shrake said, “Jenkins, if he’s in there, he’s gotta move. You’re only a hundred feet out from me.”
Jenkins had come up to a white board fence separating the backyards of two houses. “I’m going to stop at this fence. If he’s not behind me, he’s got to be close, and I don’t think he got past me. Virgil, why don’t you walk up the street and shine your light between the houses up ahead of me. If that doesn’t flush him out, get between the houses and light up the two backyards ahead of me. Shrake, you stay where you are, watch both streets.”
“Got it,” Shrake said.
“Careful,” Virgil said. “He’s good with that bow—hit me right in the heart.”
* * *
—
The cop was standing in the street, thirty yards away. He looked huge, and fat—a bulletproof vest. The shooter was both frightened and angry. The broadheads could rip through a four-hundred-pound elk. They wouldn’t be slowed down by a man, but they wouldn’t make it through that vest.
Not unless the cop turned and opened up with a shot from the side. The cop was moving this way and that as he shined his light down two interesting streets, first this one, then the other. The shooter nocked another arrow.
* * *
—
Virgil moved up the street, shining his lights between the houses on his side. A woman came out, and called, “Who are you? What are you doing? I’ve called the sheriff . . .”
“Police. We’re looking for a man. Go inside and lock all your doors.”
She disappeared, and he moved on.
He was coming to the last pair of houses before he got to the next street, where Shrake was, and could see the beam from Shrake’s flashlight when its beam seemed to flip in the air, and Shrake screamed, “I’m hit . . . I’m hit.”
There was more, but Virgil didn’t hear the rest. He started running, and Jenkins shouted, “I’m coming.” Virgil ran between the last two houses into one of the backyards and saw Jenkins clearing the fence, and, at the same time, he saw a dark figure dart into the street on the opposite side, and somebody in another house yelled, “There he goes!”
Virgil saw Jenkins running up to Shrake’s light—he couldn’t see Shrake—and he decided to go after the shooter, running between the two houses opposite, vaulting the board fence, tripping on the top rail and falling facedown onto the hard lawn, got to his feet, ran on; he was wearing the cowboy boots and wasn’t as fast as he might have been, but he got his light and gun out in front of him and ran into the street, and a man on a porch, wearing a white T-shirt and white underpants, yelled, “He went there, by the gray house,” and Virgil ran past the gray house and saw . . . nothing. Nothing moving.
He jogged first one way, then the other, desperately flashing his light around, looking for something, anything, but the shooter was essentially invisible, and the backyards on the new block were even more clogged with shrubs, hedges, and fences than the last one, and Shrake was down, and Virgil moaned, “Ah . . . fuck it!” and ran back toward Jenkins and Shrake.
* * *
—
Shrake had been wearing the same kind of vest as Virgil, and Jenkins was struggling to pull it over Shrake’s head as Shrake groaned in pain, and Virgil saw that Jenkins’s hands were already red with blood. Virgil grabbed Shrake’s shoulders from the front and pulled him to a half-sitting position so Jenkins could get the vest free, and Shrake said, “My back . . . Got me from the side . . . Never saw him. Never saw him . . . Hurts . . .”
“You would have if he’d tried to cross the street without shooting you,” Virgil said, and to Jenkins, “Roll him on his side.”
They rolled him. Shrake was wearing a Patagonia jacket with a shirt beneath it; both were soaked with blood. When they tried to get the jacket off, Shrake said, “No, no . . . don’t do that, I feel like I’m coming apart.”
“We got to get it off in case there’s a big artery,” Jenkins said to Virgil. “We can’t move him without knowing.”
Shrake looked up at Virgil, and said, “Left pant pocket . . .”
Virgil went for his left pant pocket and pulled out a six-inch switchblade. He said to Jenkins, “Hold him up,” and Jenkins propped him up, and Virgil cut the coat off and then the shirt and the undershirt with the razor-sharp knife, and Shrake groaned again, and then said, “I’m puttin’ in for all the wrecked clothes,” and Jenkins said to Virgil, “Hold the light. Put the light on him . . .”
Shrake: “How bad?”
“Cut the T-shirt all the way off,” Jenkins said. “I need to sop up the blood.”