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.”

Virgil did that, pulled the shirt free. Jenkins used the unbloody part of the shirt to wipe Shrake’s upper back. The big man was bleeding profusely from a long, twisting cut across the middle of his back, at the level of his armpits. Jenkins said, “I don’t see any big pulses, so we got that. Twiddle your fingers at me, Shrake.”

Shrake twiddled, and Jenkins said, “Move your feet back and forth . . .”

Shrake did, and Jenkins said, “Looks like your spine’s okay. Of course, if we don’t get you to a hospital, you’re going to bleed to death, and we’ll have all that fuckin’ paperwork. It’s like you to do that to me, you inconsiderate fuck.”

Virgil told Jenkins, “Use the T-shirt to pack the cut. I’m going to run get my Tahoe. Back in one minute.”

“Go.”

As he stood and ran, Shrake said, “Tell me how bad . . .”

* * *

—

Virgil didn’t wait to hear Jenkins answer but instead sprinted for the truck. The back door of the house was standing open, and he thought about the shell inside—no fingerprint, but the shooter still didn’t know that. He swerved to the door, yanked it shut, jumped in the Tahoe, and roared away.

* * *

—

They put Shrake in the front passenger seat; he was fully conscious, and Jenkins dropped the seat back as far as it would go, put him in, and said, “Lean on your back. Keep that shirt packed in the cut. You’re gonna owe me big-time for taking care of your ass.”

Virgil said to Jenkins, “Get in, get in . . .”

“Nothing I can do in the backseat,” Jenkins said. “You go. I’m gonna run back in the neighborhood and talk to people and find this motherfucker and kill him.”

“Jenkins . . .”

He was already jogging away, gun and flashlight in hand, when Shrake shouted, “Kill the motherfucker,” and then groaned, and said, “All right, no more yelling.”

Virgil shifted into gear, and they were gone.

* * *

—

The shooter was five blocks away, breathing hard, listening. Nobody out there. A siren started: they were moving the cop.

I’m okay . . . I’m safe.

19

   There may have been faster runs between Wheatfield and Fairmont, but the driver would have been pushing a Porsche. The ten minutes to I-90 was done in six minutes, the fifteen minutes down I-90 to Fairmont was done in eleven. Virgil was steering with one hand and holding his phone, and shouting into it, with the other, and he almost lost it at the Wheatfield on-ramp to the Interstate. Shrake swayed in the seat, groaned, and said, “You’re gonna kill me. I don’t want to die in a car accident.”

Virgil, with the front grille lights and the siren going, was met by a highway patrolman at the Fairmont exit, who rolled them through town to the medical center in what onlookers agreed was probably another land speed record.

Three nurses were waiting with a gurney at the emergency room entrance, and Shrake was out of the Tahoe and gone in thirty seconds.

The patrolman asked Virgil, “How bad?”

“If they can get some blood in him, he’ll be okay, but it’s like somebody dragged a straight razor across his back.”

With nothing else to do, Virgil called Jenkins, who asked, “How’s Shrake?”

“Docs are looking at him. It’s the longest cut I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s got some meat on him, though, and I don’t think it hit his spine anywhere. He pumped a lot of blood. I’ll call you soon as I hear anything.”

“He’s not gonna die?”

“Jenkins . . . what do I know? He was still talking when they took him in, so I can’t believe . . . What happened with you?”

“We’ve got three deputies here now, we’re going bush to bush in these backyards, we got everybody turning on their lights, but he’s gone.”

“This is my fault,” Virgil said. “You all were right: it was stupid. I just thought . . .”