He reached for his right boot and felt slime and cloth. He looked down. There was no boot or anything else below his right knee. A portion of his left leg hung there, smashed flat, connected only by nerves and muscle and the shredded fabric of his jeans. Most of it was gone. What wasn’t gone was red and wet.
Stewart screamed.
TWENTY-NINE
TROY PETERS HAD been shot in the right thigh. The bullet had exited cleanly, missing his femoral artery. The paramedics were able to stanch the flow of blood before loading him onto a gurney and into the van. The ambulance took Peters to the Washington Sanitarium, the Seventh-Day Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park, Maryland, not far from the Capitol Savings and Loan. Strange decided to ride with him and told Vaughn that he’d see him at the Sixth Precinct station, where he would give his official statement on the events.
A doctor who had been shopping at the A amp;P attempted to stabilize Buzz Stewart, who had gone into convulsions, as a second ambulance arrived. Stewart’s blood ran from the sidewalk down to the street.
Dominic Martini sat in the cage of a squad car, his hands cuffed behind him, a bruise darkening his swelling jaw. He had been tackled to the pavement as he got out of the Nova, his arms raised in surrender, by one of the young policemen who had been blocking the exit of the lot, who then punched him repeatedly in the face. The young policeman’s partner, a thirty-year-old army veteran, went into the bank and tried to calm the survivors, keeping them away from the corpses of the shotgun victim and Walter Hess.
Strange sat on a bench beside Peters’s gurney as the ambulance sped down Eastern Avenue, heading into Takoma Park. Against the orders of the paramedic, Peters removed the oxygen mask that had been covering his nose and mouth.
“Call Patty,” said Peters.
“Vaughn’s gonna do it,” said Strange.
“I want
Strange motioned to the oxygen mask, lying loosely around Peters’s neck. “You better put that back on.”
“I don’t need it,” said Peters. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look so fine to me. You got no color in your face.”
“That again.”
Strange chuckled and looked down at his friend. “Badass.”
“Go on, man.”
“Had to be the hero.”
“But I wasn’t.”
“You did okay.”
Peters shook his head. “I should have shot that sonofabitch where he stood. Instead, I hesitated. I didn’t have the guts.”
“Doesn’t take any courage to kill a man. What you’re talkin’ about, that ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of.”
“I’m not ashamed,” said Peters. “But if that guy had shot you because I didn’t shoot him first…”
“Forget about it.”
“I’m in the wrong profession.”
“Let me tell you somethin’, Troy: For a minute back there, I thought Vaughn was gonna order me to take out Martini. When he told me to hold my fire, I was about as relieved as I’ve ever felt.”
“So?”
“So, you’re not alone.”
The ambulance hit a bump and the gurney rocked. Peters winced, closed his eyes, then opened them and looked up soulfully at Strange.
“Derek?”
“What.”
“Hold my hand.”
“You ain’t even all that hurt.”
“Hold it anyway,” said Peters. “At least until we get to the hospital.”
“Aw,
Strange left Troy Peters, sedated and sleepy, in the ER of the hospital at around 5:30 in the evening. When he went out to the lot he found his squad car waiting for him, along with the two cops who had been blocking the exit of the parking lot.
“Hound Dog said you’d be needing your car,” said the older of the two.
Strange thanked him, got under the wheel of the Ford, and drove back into D.C.
STRANGE WAS CONGRATULATED by several uniformed officers and the desk sergeant as he arrived at the station, for what he did not know. He took the handshakes and the pats on his shoulder without comment but wondered why they were directed toward him. It was his partner who had gone beyond the call. He did not feel that he had acted with any particular heroism; rather, he had merely survived a dangerous situation by acquitting himself in a passable, cautious, and workmanlike way.
In the squad room, he found an open desk and phoned Peters’s wife at her job, assuring her that Troy was going to be okay. She was on her way out the door to join him at the hospital and thanked Strange for the call.
“Troy thinks so much of you,” said Patty, a touch of the South in her voice. “You need to get over here for dinner, Derek. We been talkin’ about it too long.”
“I will,” said Strange.
He vowed to make the effort. There were already too many things to regret.
Strange hung up the phone and began the process of filling out the necessary forms related to the event, in triplicate, which the prosecutors needed before they could begin to make their charges. He smelled cigarette smoke and looked up. Vaughn was standing in front of the desk, a butt burning between his thick fingers.
“Detective,” said Strange. “How’d we do?”
“We got a full statement from Martini. He cleaned up a hit-and-run I been workin’ on, too. He was a passenger in the car that ran down this young colored guy the other night on Fourteenth.”
“Who was the driver?”
“Walter Hess. Buzz Stewart was riding shotgun. Martini gave it up on one condition. I told him it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“What was the condition?”
“He wanted to speak with you.”
“Now?”
Vaughn nodded. “See me when you’re done.”
Strange went to the block of cells located on the right side of the station. A uniform standing guard let him into the cell that held Dominic Martini. Martini sat on a spring cot covered by a thin mattress, his upswept black hair disheveled, his eyes hollow. One side of his face was purple and misshapen from the punches he’d taken to the jaw.
