“Shortly after Kolbert killed the Haswars, Mr. Kellaway entered Devotion Diamonds. She retreated into the office, they exchanged words, boom, boom, he fires two shots. One missed, the other caught her in the left lung. She went down, and he turned away to attend to Mrs. Haswar. Bob Lutz walked in and approached the shooter to see if she was still alive. Unfortunately for him, she was. Becki Kolbert shot him right between the eyes, military precision. At that point Kellaway disarmed her, but it’s pretty much over anyhow. She bled out shortly after Emergency Services arrived on the scene.”
Lanternglass was running up the stairs by then and was too out of breath to reply. She climbed twenty-four steps to where her editor sat on the concrete landing.
“You almost done?” Tim Chen asked. “You’re making me tired, and I’m only watching.”
“Why are you cutting the stuff about his military service?” she gasped.
He read her own article back to her: “‘Kellaway may have missed his chance at heroic distinction in the Gulf—his tour of duty was troubled, and he did not receive an honorable discharge—but following the events at the Miracle Falls he’ll be celebrated for his service at last.’ Why would you write that? His army record a decade ago isn’t relevant. You’re taking a perfectly satisfying feel-good story and stapling on this strange catty ending.”
“Catty?”
“I was going to say bitchy, but it isn’t politically correct.”
“He was dismissed from the army for excessive use of force as an MP. He routinely drew his firearm in nonthreatening situations and once punched a handcuffed prisoner. Look at the record. This guy is not a war hero, no matter how they made it sound on Telling Stories the other night.”
“Out of curiosity,” Tim Chen said. “This guy Kellaway punched, back when he was an MP? The handcuffed prisoner? Was he a black guy?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said, and ran back down the stairs to Wolff.
Wolff dabbed at the corners of his eyes with a white handkerchief. “I can show you some good stretches.”
“For what?” she said.
“For your glutes. You want to stretch them out before you abuse them like that.”
She slowed again as she approached the bottom of the steps. “You said something funny a minute ago. You said, ‘The way it looks,’ she slew the baby and Yasmin Haswar with one shot.”
“Yeah, and you made fun of me.”
“No, hang on. What do you mean, ‘The way it looks’?”
He wiped under his eyes. “That’s the only theory that fits the facts. They’re still digging around for the bullet. It went through a mirror and the drywall behind and disappeared into the bowels of the Miracle Falls Mall.”
“Slew. Bowels. Glutes. You’re full of interesting words, Shane. Can I make a suggestion?”
She started back up the stairs.
“What?”
“Verbally admiring a woman’s glutes isn’t the right way to lean into asking her out. Say something about her laugh.”
She was twenty steps up when he shouted after her, “You’d have to laugh for me to say something nice about it. I work with what I have.”
Chen was still sitting there at the top of the steps.
“Yeah. All right,” Lanternglass said. “When he was with the military police, Kellaway handcuffed a black private in front of his girlfriend and then punched him. And last year he pulled a gun on a black teenager who he thought was stealing from the mall. Turned out the kid was an out-of-uniform employee moving stock from one store to another. And what matters here isn’t that they were both black. What matters is that Kellaway has a history of going Rambo, acting violently without thought.”
“There’s nothing in the article about him harassing employees.”
She jogged in place in front of him. “No. My source asked me not to print that story. Point is, I don’t think it would be the worst thing for this paper to at least hint at the possibility that Randall Kellaway is predisposed to using excessive force. Just in case the cops recover the security footage on the conveniently destroyed iMac and we find out he shot Becki Kolbert when she was trying to surrender.”
“Like the way Colson got shot?”
She quit jogging and gripped her knees and lowered her head. When she inhaled, it felt like there was a cactus in her chest where her heart belonged, needles bristling against her lungs.
“Jesus,” she said. “That’s a low fucking blow, Tim.”
“Is it?” he said calmly. “You hear this story about Randall Kellaway harassing a black kid. You hear about him assaulting a black soldier in the army. Now he’s a hero and he’s got Jay Rickles hugging him on TV and calling him the good guy with a gun. If Kellaway’s story came apart, you could humiliate the both of them. You could take out two with one shot.”
“No, Tim. Words aren’t bullets. When Yasmin Haswar and her baby hit the floor, that was two taken out with one shot.”
Tim Chen firmly and forcefully tapped two keys. One of them was Delete. “Give me a reason to trash his military record and we’ll put it in the very next story. But your personal issues don’t count as a reason.”
She was surprised at the sudden deep stab of hurt in her stomach. It was on her lips to say, Fuck you, but she didn’t say it. It was on her lips to say, That’s so fucking unfair, Tim, but she didn’t say that either. She turned and ran away, ran back down the steps, because the thought was in her mind that it wasn’t unfair at all, and maybe if she moved quickly enough, she could leave her shame behind, up on the top landing with her friend and editor.
When she got to the bottom of the stairs, Shane Wolff said, “Smoke is bothering you, too, huh?”
“What?”
“Your eyes,” he said, and pointed. “You’re crying, too. Want my hankie?”
She snatched it away from him and wiped her face. “Thank you.”
“I know a pretty good rooftop bar,” he said. “It’s up five stories. I could take the elevator and you could run, and we could meet at the top for a beer. It’d be great exercise.”
“It’s hard to go out when you have an eight-year-old,” she said. “I can afford to pay you for the ballistics report or I can pay for a sitter, but I can’t pay for both.”
“So? The report’s on me, then. The beers, too.”
She very gently punched him in the chest. And turned. And started back up the stairs. “That’s sweet, Shane, but I don’t want to take advantage. And stop staring at my glutes.”
Lanternglass was a dozen steps up when she paused and looked back. Shane Wolff stood in the open door to the parking lot, covering his eyes to shield them from the sight of her glutes.
“So . . . wait,” she called down to him. She stopped running, stood there with her fists balled on her hips. “Four shots when she killed Lewis and the Haswars. A pause. Then two more when Kellaway enters the store and shoots her. Another pause. Then one more, when Becki Kolbert executes Bob Lutz. Seven shots in . . . what? Five minutes?”
“That’s about it,” he said.
“Huh,” she said, turning to climb on.
When she got to the top of the stairs, Tim Chen was still sitting there, back to the open fire door, holding her laptop.
“I want to apologize,” he said. “For what I said a minute ago.”
“Don’t apologize,” she said. “Just stick it back in.”