Cut to the Bone(112)

“Bitch shot Rancey, get her!” she heard Desert Eagle bellow.

She speed-crawled toward the cubbyhole where she knew Bubbles kept a gun. Glass exploded and booze rained, brown, blue, white, and clear. The shards deepened the ribbons in her knees and hands. She ignored it, kept crawling.

She reached Bubbles’s well-worn Glock and checked that it was loaded. She quick-glanced between two shattered beer pumps. Saw waitresses gasping for air, dozens of patrons writhing in agony, and the two remaining predators who caused it.

“Hasta la vista, creeps,” she hissed.

She rose to a combat crouch and laid the muzzle on Pistol, who was reaching for his dead buddy’s shotgun. He spotted her, jerked back from the twelve with a curse, and whipped his barrel her way. She shredded his heart just as he fired. He corkscrewed to the floor, his final rounds splintering the dense red wood of the bar.

She swung her muzzle onto Desert Eagle and fired. He jerked out of range, lips in a feral snarl. She ducked as forty-four magnums sizzled back her way, thwacking the bar like steam hammers.

She crawled to the end. Peeked around. Saw him looking for her. Bad angle to take him down. Looked for options. Saw an overturned table with steel legs and a three-inch granite top. Good cover, ideal firing angle.

Nine feet of air, here to there.

She coiled and sprang. He tracked and fired. She landed in a heap as his bullets carved chunks from the protective rock. She earthwormed across the tiles and stuck her head, hands, and gun out the right side of the table. His bullets sent tile chips into her face. She didn’t flinch. Her Glock jumped. Flames spurted. Bullets flew.

And Desert Eagle collapsed, bleeding from forehead to belly.

She jumped to her feet and hustled over, ready to resume firing if he was playing possum.

“Go, go, go!” Hanrahan roared as the team raced into the bar, muzzles up, triggers straining for release.

“Don’t, don’t, don’t!” Superstition shouted, waving wildly as her squad mates bulldozed through the doors. “They’re down, they’re down, they’re down!”

Hanrahan jerked his gun front, back, side, side. No bullets. No explosions. Just cries from the wounded and silence from the dead. He called for paramedics, crime scene, crowd control, and the medical examiner. “Are you all right?” he said, racing to Superstition, who was slumping down a blood-streaked wall, looking dazed.

She blew out her breath. Felt a sticky wetness penetrate her gossamer dress. She patted herself, found no holes. Somebody’s blood. Not hers. She grimaced, shifted away. Saw cell phone cameras waving like dandelions and tugged down the orange the best she could. Hanrahan handed her his raid jacket. He was so big that it fit her like a blue circus tent, but it kept the looky-loos from photographing her privates . . .

“I was coming out of the bathroom when they announced the robbery,” she said, voice squeaking from adrenaline. “The bouncer intervened, despite my warning him not to. They killed him, then started on the patrons. Gave me no choice but to open fire.”

Hanrahan was nodding vigorously. “You did an outstanding job, Detective Davis.” He said it loud for the benefit of the cell phone Tarantinos. “Your quick reaction saved a lot of people from dying tonight . . .”

She looked at the three gunmen as he continued in that vein. They’d been young and filled with energy. Now they were broken, a child’s doll abused till the plastic disintegrated. Their limbs were loose and floppy, their eyes dull. Blood rivulets sparkled against their cooling, espresso-colored flesh.

It made her sad, those meandering rivulets. She’d shot people before, and she’d undoubtedly do it again - that was the nature of jobs with guns. Unlike some of her colleagues, who relished the thought of kill-or-be-killed gunfights, she preferred cajoling suspects into giving up, or, failing that, “convincing” them hand-to-hand. But these three called the play, not her, and she wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. She hoped not, anyway. Logic didn’t always fall in lockstep with emotion.

“Go call Derek,” Hanrahan said gently. “Take all the time you need. I’ll deal with the shoo-flies till you’re ready.”

Officer-involved shootings were investigated by the police department’s internal affairs unit - the dreaded “shoo-flies” - then again by independent review teams. Superstition had no doubt she’d be cleared. There were a hundred witnesses led by Bubbles Frankenberg, plus the hair-radio recording. But it grated going through the drill at all. There were guns under the killers. Spatter on the walls. Bullets in the bouncer. Didn’t that explain what the hell had happened . . .