Beasley looked at me. “I told you when we started that I wanted to say two things.”
“You did, that’s right.”
“We’re treading close to the second one now.” A look of grim determination settled on his face. “You sure you want to do this?”
“Yes.”’
“Then I’m going to walk you through the sequence of what we think happened. Let me get through it, and then I’ll answer your questions as best as I can.”
“Sure. Okay.”
“We believe your father was shot first. That’s based on the way he was found positioned on the floor. And it makes sense, if you think about a man trying to defend his family. He would have tried to put himself between the gun, and your mother and you. So the shooter would have hit him first.”
I shuddered. Took a breath to steady myself. Then nodded at Beasley to go on.
“Your father, as you may know, was shot in the head. Shot at close range, ten feet or less. The bullet passed right through. It came out the back of his head and lodged in the wood of the doorframe. But the shooter dug it out and took it with him. The wood was splintered and broken from where he’d hacked at it.”
I frowned. “That doesn’t sound like something a random burglar would do.”
“What do you mean?”
“The old newspaper articles, the ones that Leland Brett wrote.” I motioned at the closed door of the conference room, and the newsroom beyond. “He quoted a cop who thought the shootings were an accident. A burglary gone wrong. But wouldn’t a burglar have panicked and run?”
“And not stuck around to dig a bullet out of a wooden doorframe?” Beasley completed my thought. “You’re right; it’s odd. But people are odd. They do all kinds of things that don’t make sense.”
“At any rate, you never recovered the bullet.”
“We never did.”
“And my mother. She was shot in the chest?”
“She was,” he said carefully. “She was trying to protect you, too. She had pushed you down behind her.”
Tears sprang again to my eyes. I tried and failed to keep my voice steady. “So . . . you’re saying . . . what, that the guy shot her and then pushed her aside to get to me? What kind of person does that? What kind of a person shoots two people and then aims a third bullet at a -defenseless three-year-old child ?”
“No, Ms. Cashion.” Beasley leaned forward and folded my trembling hands into his. “There was no third bullet. The bullet that killed your mama passed right through her, too.”
“I don’t—I don’t understand.”
“The reason you didn’t die was that bullet was going slower by the time it got to you. Your mama did protect you. She slowed it down.”
I blinked at him.
It took a moment for the full, sickening significance of what he was saying to hit home. Then my hands flew to my neck, and I began to claw.
Seventeen
* * *
In the wild, a mother tiger will fight to the death to defend her young. She will knock down an animal four times her size, will attack and kill even a male tiger. When she senses a threat to her cubs, she growls. Then she flattens her ears and bares her canines, the corners of her open mouth pulled back. That snarl is the last thing a would-be predator ever sees.
Human mothers share the instinct. Most of us know at some raw, unspoken level that our mothers would fight like a tigress to protect us, would give their lives to save our own. But it is one thing to believe, in the abstract, that your mother would take a bullet for you. It is quite another to learn that she has literally done so.
Beasley had to pin my arms to my sides to prevent me from opening my skin. He must have been twice my age, but he was still strong, and I was no match for him. I thrashed for a minute, then went limp.
The bullet throbbed. A hot, white pulse through my neck and shoulders. It defied belief: the same bullet. The very same piece of metal had passed through Sadie Rawson’s breast, through her heart, on its way to me.
“I want to rip it out,” I whispered.
“I know.” Instead Beasley made me focus on taking shallow, jagged breaths. He held me upright.
Gradually, my breathing slowed. When I could speak, I asked, “Was that the second thing you wanted to tell me? Please say there isn’t more. I don’t think I can take it.”
“That’s the worst of it.” He extended a handkerchief and I blew my nose.
“Thank you. I’m sorry. Sorry for going crazy like that.”
“No need to apologize.”
“Just that every time I think I’ve heard the worst of it, there’s some new revelation that knocks me flat. The bullet that’s in my neck is the same one that killed my mother? That’s—that’s—I don’t even know what it is.”
“It’s gruesome.”
“Gruesome. Yes. That it certainly is.” I shivered. Pain was shooting down my wrist now, too. I folded my right arm tight across my chest and cradled it, hunched over like a broken bird.
“Ms. Cashion.” He was looking at me sideways. “I have to ask. Has coming back here triggered any memories? Going back to look at your old house? Or hearing me describe the details of what happened that day?”
“No. Nothing. I’d hoped it might.”
“Probably wouldn’t have been admissible anyway. In court, I mean, if you’d remembered anything relevant. But I had to ask.”
A thought occurred to me. “Were you one of the detectives who questioned me? After I was shot?”
“Yes.” His voice was neutral, quiet. “You were heartbreaking. Tiny little girl, all bandaged up. The doctors didn’t want us anywhere near you, but we had our jobs to do. I didn’t talk to you myself. They brought in a child psychiatrist, a lady trained to deal with kids who’ve experienced trauma. But they allowed a couple of us to watch from the corner.”