Linsenman looked up at him. “Are you everywhere?” It was an old joke between them. “This ain’t the same as a moose,” he added. Service saw the deputy’s hand shaking, carefully took his weapon, unchambered a round, slid out the clip, placed it on the dash.
EMTs hustled a stretcher up the rocky berm, slipping on the loose scree.
A Marquette County deputy stopped and squeezed Linsenman’s shoulder. “Afraid?”
“I was too damned scared to be afraid,” he said. It wasn’t a joke.
The words stuck in Service’s mind. Too scared to be afraid. Only people who worked in the shit would appreciate the distinction.
The EMTs came back down the gravel berm, juggling the stretcher in the bad footing. Two deputies were on either side, helping stabilize the patient. “Alive,” the front EMT called out, tapping his right shoulder. Suspect to patient, Service thought, a severe change in status. No cop would call the man a victim. That would be for lawyers to debate. Linsenman shook his head, sighed deeply. “I’m the worst shot in the department,” he said.
“Not today,” Service said.
The female Troop came back, looked down at Linsenman, stuck out her hand. “Thanks.”
She was young, Service saw. Her voice had remained relatively controlled throughout the situation, but a calm voice could sometimes betray or mask what was really going on inside.
Linsenman nodded, exhaled smoke, ignored her hand.
Service pulled her aside. “Why the pursuit?”
“I got a call to stop a green Ford. When I tried to get him over, he let one loose out his window.”
Service looked at the vehicle ahead of her squad. Its nose was askew in the left ditch, its ass sticking up like a feeding duck. It was a green Chevy, not a Ford. She’d tried to stop the wrong vehicle and gotten a violent response by sheer chance. “They give you a plate number?”
She shook her head. “Just a green Ford.”
He kept quiet. At some point somebody would ask questions, sort out the mistake, try to apply logic to it, fail. Serendipity sometimes had a violent side.
One of the county’s sergeants came forward. His name was Don and his deputies called him “Padre.” His shirt was wet with sweat, his hair matted. “Get somebody with Linsenman,” Service said. “He’s in shock.”
Padre said, “We have a procedure.”
Service bit his lip. There was also a procedure for identifying vehicles, and it had failed.
“Get help for him.” Shooting another person was not like a movie shooting. You couldn’t put a bullet into a human being and walk away feeling normal.
“Look,” a cop said from the growing knot of uniforms. He pointed across the small pond. A deer was floating in the shallows. Service saw a fan of blood staining the dark water.
“Write the fucker for a deer out of season,” a voice said. The cops laughed nervously.
Service didn’t laugh with them. He waded the perimeter of the pond, getting wet to his knees, got the fawn by a leg and dragged it to dry land. There was a gaping hole in the neck, unaimed bullets as lethal as aimed ones. In more than twenty years in law enforcement he had rarely pulled his weapon and never discharged it at another person. History aside, he knew the day might come when somebody would leave him no choice. He looked at Linsenman sitting with his head down and understood what he was feeling. In Vietnam he had done it too many times and it had exacted a price. He sat down on a patch of reindeer moss and lit a cigarette. Better him than me.
Why couldn’t he remember Linsenman’s first name?
Fern LeBlanc, Captain Grant’s secretary, looked disapprovingly at Service’s muddy boots and pants. She held out several callback slips, did not speak to him. Fern had worked exclusively for the captain for a long time and seemed to resent Service’s presence. Sometimes she seemed frazzled by his ways, all the calls that came in, his abruptness. The feelings were mutual. LeBlanc was chemically blonde and fifty-two years old with the figure of a thirty-five-year-old. Men and women around the office talked about her, but nobody challenged her. She was the captain’s gate guard.
Service sat in his cubicle. The captain stopped in the doorway and Service cringed, expecting a rebuke for being on duty and not at home, but the captain said only, “You’re bleeding,” and walked on. Service touched a tissue to his upper lip, found blood.
He set the slips aside, punched in the code for his voice mail. There were several messages.
Nantz: “Crazy schedule, honey. There’re two high schools down here, Everett and Eastern. I have to find out which one used to be Lansing High. Love you.”
Del Olmo: “The missing remain missing. Sorry I wasn’t there this morning. Something came up.”