Could it?
Chapter Fifteen
Botanists tell us that the tiny red flower in the center of the blossom of Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota, aka wild carrot) is there to attract pollinators. But storytellers have other explanations. Some say it is a drop of blood from the royal finger, pricked when the queen was making lace. Others say it represents a sapphire from Queen Anne’s crown, lost when she was walking in her garden.
But still others (and more ominously) say that this tiny red floret is the devil’s spit and that the blossom carries a curse. If you pick it and take it indoors, your mother will die. This dire warning explains two of the plant’s folk names: Mother-May-Die and Stepmother’s Blessing. These names may also be the remnants of an oral tradition that cautioned women against the careless use of seeds thought to be wild carrot and taken as a contraceptive or an abortifacient, because they could be confused with the deadly seeds of poison hemlock.
“Anne’s Flower”
China Bayles
Pecan Springs Enterprise
“Omigod,” Ruby breathed, when I called her from the hospital to tell her that I wouldn’t be able to get to the shop until later in the day. “You really shot somebody, China? Over a couple of chickens?” She sucked in her breath and rattled on. “You’re okay? You’re not hurt?” Another breath, then, anxious: “They’re not going to throw you in jail, are they?”
“Yes, I’m okay,” I said, omitting the bloody details. “Yes, I shot somebody, but I didn’t kill him. No, it wasn’t over chickens. And no, they’re not going to throw me in jail—at least, not if I’ve got anything to say about it. But I have to meet with the sheriff’s officer-involved-shooting team. And that may take a while.”
A twelve-gauge shotgun packs a wallop, even at fifteen yards, so my victim’s wounds were not inconsequential. After the surgeon finished digging nine double-ought buckshot pellets out of his belly and patching the holes, Gibbons would be charged with aggravated assault of a police officer, assault with a deadly weapon, possession and cultivation of marijuana, and the felony theft of two roosters. There would probably be more charges after the deputies finished searching the premises. A man who steals chickens probably has a few other violations under his belt. They would throw the book at him.
Thankfully, the officer involved in the shooting—Tom Banner—was alive to back up my account of what had happened. The bullet had torn through his upper arm, shredding the muscle and just missing an artery. In fact, he was in the curtained ER cubicle next to me, where the doctors were working on him while I (less seriously injured) waited in the adjoining cubicle. Somebody had given me a couple of thick gauze pads and I was holding them to my head, trying to stop the bleeding—without much success. My blood-soaked T-shirt was already ruined, of course.
Finally, a young doctor came in. “Looks like you’ve got a gusher,” he said, sounding mildly interested.
“Glass splinter,” I said.
The doctor parted my hair and took a look. “Glass spike,” he said. “How do you feel about brain surgery?”
“Just take it out, Hawkeye,” I gritted.
“You need to work on your sense of humor,” the doctor said cheerfully, and patted my arm.
My scalp didn’t hurt as much after the local went to work, but it took a while to pull out the shard (about the size of a shark’s tooth), disinfect the wound, and sew it shut. The whole operation cost me twelve stitches and an earmuff-sized patch of hair on the side of my head, covered by an earmuff-sized bandage, held on by wraparound gauze. I didn’t ask for a mirror.
When the doctor was finished, two sheriff’s deputies from the officer-involved team escorted me to a small conference room where somebody fetched me a cup of cafeteria coffee and the three of us sat around a table. The Adams County sheriff, Curt Chambers, is one of McQuaid’s fishing buddies—law enforcement types tend to stick together—but these two were men I didn’t know.
The situation required some explaining, because this particular officer-involved shooting involved a civilian: me. Tom hadn’t had time to get a shot off. The deputies were carefully polite and coolly professional, one asking questions and recording the interview, the other taking notes. I mentally lawyered up and walked them through the somewhat bizarre steps that had led to the exchange of gunfire: discovering the chicken theft at the fairgrounds and identifying the thief by the dropped badge and the images on the thumb drive from Caitie’s camera; getting the address from the fairground office and the warrant from JP Maude Porterfield; finding and repossessing the roosters and discovering the marijuana; and being fired on. The interview felt rather déjà vu, although when I had sat in on similar interrogations, I had been the shooter’s counsel, not the shooter. I knew it was routine, of course—it had to be done, even though I had a pounding headache, the local was beginning to wear off, and I might not be entirely coherent.
But I also knew that I had to make the case that I had fired on Dana Gibbons in order to protect the officer Gibbons had fired on—and that my action had been necessary and unavoidable. The team would interview Tom, then compare our stories and weigh both against the forensic and ballistic reports and the accounts of the other officers on the scene. The full report would go to the Adams County district attorney for review and possibly—since I was a civilian ride-along with a reserve deputy on a criminal investigation—to a grand jury. I expected that, in the end, the shooting would be ruled justified and I could get on with my life. Until then . . . well, I was just a little nervous.
