Old. He was an old man. Seventy. An old man who had lived alone too
long, who sorely missed his wife. If senility had crept up on him, who
was around to notice? An old, lonely man with cabin fever, imagining
things.
'Bullshit,' he said after a while.
He was lonely, all right, but he wasn't senile.
After stripping out of his hat, coat, gloves, and boots, he got the
hunting rifles and shotguns out of the locked cabinet in the study. He
loaded all of them.
Mae Hong, who lived across the street, came over to take care of
Toby.
Her husband was a cop too, though not in the same division as Jack.
Because the Hongs had no children of their own yet, Mae was free to
stay as late as necessary, in the event Heather needed to put in a long
vigil at the hospital.
While Louie Silverman and Mae remained in the kitchen, Heather lowered
the sound on the television and told Toby what had happened. She sat
on the foot-stool, and after tossing the blankets aside, he perched on
the edge of the chair. She held his small hands in hers.
She didn't share the grimmest details with him, in part because she
didn't know all of them herself but also because an eight-year-old
could handle only so much. On the other hand, she couldn't gloss over
the situation, either, because they were a police family.
They lived with the repressed expectation of JUSt such a disaster as
had struck that morning, and even a child had the need and the right to
know when his father had been seriously wounded.
'Can I go to the hospital with you?' Toby asked, holding more tightly
to her hands than he probably realized.
'It's best for you to stay here right now, honey.'
'I'm not sick any more.'
'Yes, you are.'
'I feel good.'
'You don't want to give your germs to your dad.'
'He'll be all right, won't he?'
She could give him only one answer even if she couldn't be certain it
would prove to be correct. 'Yes, baby, he's going to be all right.'
His gaze was direct. He wanted the truth. Right at that moment he
seemed to be far older than eight. Maybe cops' kids grew up faster
than others, faster than they should.
'You're sure?' he said.
'Yes. I'm sure.'
'Where was he shot?'
'In the leg.'
Not a lie. It was one of the places he was shot. In the leg and two
hits in the torso, Crawford had said. Two hits in the torso. Jesus.
What did that mean? Take out a lung? Gutshot? The heart? At least
he hadn't sustained head wounds. Tommy Fernandez had been shot in the
head, no chance.
She felt a sob of anguish rising in her, and she strained to force it
