When he hit “one,” they scrambled to their feet and ran up the checkout aisle, Maureen hard on Detillier’s heels. She could hear him shouting information into his radio as they sprinted through Housewares. She was grateful for Detillier’s narration of their location and progress, “Bathroom, Dining Room, Kitchen.”
With the shots fired, SWAT, Tactical, and everyone else would come crashing in with guns drawn, and there’d be heavy weaponry involved. The description of the shooters, she recalled, mentioned a man and a woman in matching outfits. A white man and a white woman, that was true, and dressed quite differently from how Detillier and she were attired. But considering what had gone down that afternoon, those trigger fingers would be extra-itchy. Maureen didn’t even want to think about how far ahead of the brains that commanded them those fingers might run.
Borrowed FBI jacket or not, Maureen thought as she ran, after everything she had survived in her life, she was in no mood to get cut down by friendly fire.
21
Using the direction of the gunshots, Maureen and Detillier tracked the shooters to Sporting Goods, located in the far back corner of the store. Detillier turned down the sound on his radio, in case anyone hiding in the store tracked their approach. They moved through Electronics at a brisk pace, crouched and cautious, guns drawn, held low in two hands in front of them. They breathed hard. They didn’t speak. They didn’t see any other people.
Maureen, two steps behind Detillier’s right shoulder, listened for voices, for sobs, for curses or commands. For any breathing that wasn’t her or Detillier. For any movement around or behind them. Every couple of steps she turned and checked their rear. She heard nothing but her own breathing, her own heartbeat, and the piped-in music and a fantasy football report on ESPN playing on a TV in the electronics department behind them.
As they closed in on Sporting Goods, they caught a scent in the air that led them closer to the shooters, the pungent iron-copper smell of spilled blood. Fresh blood. The scent and the quiet told Maureen what they would find. Bodies. She hoped they belonged to the Watchmen.
Detillier gasped and froze as he turned the corner into the fishing aisle. He held his free hand up behind him to stop Maureen from coming closer. He had lowered his gun. It hung loose in his hand by his side. Ignoring his command, Maureen lowered her own weapon and walked up beside him.
She had shrugged off Detillier’s “stop” sign on the assumption that its purpose was to protect her from what she’d witness in the fishing aisle. Poor man, she thought. Nice try. Wasn’t his fault that he had no idea what she’d already done when it came to death, never mind what she had seen. When she pulled even with him at the end of the aisle, though, she realized Detillier hadn’t been trying to protect her delicate feminine sensibilities. His motivation had been more practical. He’d simply not wanted her to step in anything sticky.
The brown-haired woman was seated at an angle, her legs open in a V in front of her. Her arms hung limp at her sides. Her body slouched against a rack of fishing rods, a handful of which had tumbled to the floor around her. A pistol lay on the floor by her right hand. An AK-47 lay across her lap. Except for the guns, she looked to Maureen like any number of drunks she’d seen sleeping one off in a doorway. Well, except for the guns and the fact that the back of the woman’s skull was missing. Pieces of it, and a good portion of what her skull had contained, now coated three shelves of heavy test fishing line. Without thinking, Maureen licked her lips. Then she wondered what foul particles she had drawn into her body. She wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of the hand that held her gun. She holstered her weapon. She turned and made eye contact with Detillier. He said nothing, turning away to speak into his radio.
That was when Maureen noticed the man.
He was prone on his belly, a few feet down the aisle beyond the body of the woman.
He wore a yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag tied around his neck as a cape, like a child playing superhero, over his body armor. A large pool of blood haloed his head. Maureen realized the pool was growing, spreading fast across the dirty tile floor. That told her the man’s heart continued beating. Not strong enough to keep him alive much longer. Minutes, Maureen guessed. Moments. His heartbeat was killing him, Maureen thought. Pumping his blood out onto the floor of the Walmart instead of to his body or his brain. She thought maybe she heard a quiet gurgle. She’d heard a similar sound just the night before. She knew what it meant. The man’s arms splayed at his sides. There was no weapon anywhere near either of his hands.