Sam seems to take that into consideration for a moment before nodding. He is inspecting my knee. Even through the pants, I can see it is swelling. The fact that I haven’t moved my leg since he showed up probably gave him a heads up, but now he places his hands on it and squeezes gently. I cry out, and the two officers turn back toward us. I wave them on.
“It’s not broken,” he says. “Can you walk?”
“I think so,” I say. “It might be more like hobbling, but I can go.”
Sam helps me up, and I grab a stick nearby to help me hobble down the path of bloody snow. The blood seems to increase as it goes along, and then seems to disappear right as we stumble onto a dilapidated shack. It looks as though at one time it was a fairly decent cabin but has been left to the elements for a long time.
“It’s been at least twenty minutes since I shot him,” I whisper to Sam as we surround the building. “If he’s in there, he might be out of it. The bullet went in his shoulder pretty close to his neck.”
There is only one window in the back, and the darkness inside makes it impossible to see anything. That only leaves one way in. The front door.
I see little droplets of blood return, scattering near the steps leading to the door. Then a small puddle right at the doorframe. The knob is covered in it. I lean against one side of the wall and Sam stands directly in front of the door, ready to dive sideways. The two officers flank us, and I look at Sam and nod. I take a deep breath.
Sam shoves the door open and drops to one knee, his gun aimed out. I sweep over him, aiming into the darkness. The two officers rush past us, taking up positions on either side of the door on the inside and we are all shouting for everyone to get down, despite not being able to see anyone.
Then I hear it. A groan in front of me. The voice isn’t male, though. And it’s familiar.
I reach over, slapping at the wall, praying that the shack has electricity. I feel a switch and pull it, and a tiny yellow light turns on, just over the center of the room. It casts a sickly pool of light in the middle of the floor, and in the center of it is two bodies. One I recognize immediately as Les Harris, covered in blood. Far more than should have come out of him from the bullet wound, in fact.
My eyes scan through the blood to the other body, and I see a hand twitch. Just one hand. The other is a bloody stump, wrapped in white bandages.
“Oh my god,” I gasp. “Julia!”
I dive down to her, temporarily forgetting the pain in my knee, and shake her. She rouses slowly, her eyes falling on mine and taking a few moments to recognize me. When she does, her face lights up, and she collapses into me, tears streaming down her face as she sobs.
“Emma!” she cries. I rock her, stroking her hair while the officers sweep the rest of the building. When they give us the all-clear, I look up at Sam, who frowns. I follow his eyes and see Julia’s one still-functional hand. In it is a knife.
It takes some time for Julia to finally calm down. When she does, Sam helps us both up, away from the slowly coagulating blood on the floor and to a far wall. One of the officers has pulled out his phone and set it on a windowsill, leaving the flashlight on so we can see each other.
“Julia, what happened?” I ask. “How did he die? Was it the bullet?”
“Sort of,” she says, her eyes returning to the dead body. One of the officers is taking pictures of the scene with his phone, while the other takes notes. Sam is instructing them the details to make sure they capture, and then helps one of them find a sheet to put over the body.
“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?” I ask.
Her eyes return to me, and there is a coldness to them. A pleading desperation for me to hear the words she is going to say and to believe them. In my experience it means they aren’t true, but I listen.
“He came in with the bullet lodged in his neck and shoulder. He screamed at me that I needed to cut it out. I had to cut it out of him so he could bandage it and we could leave. He handed me a knife, but I couldn’t.” She pauses for a moment, then seems to steel herself. “I wouldn’t. So, he took it back. He yanked it from my hands and swiped at me. I moved away just in time.”
“Then what?” I ask. She should be delicate, like most victims in this situation, but she isn’t. She isn’t distant, either, as if trying to convince herself it was a bad dream. She is clear. Concise. Almost rehearsed.
“Then, he took the knife and tried to dig the bullet out himself. He kept digging, and he slipped. He cut his neck. The blood went everywhere. It sprayed and sprayed. He looked at me, Emma. He begged me to help him.”
My pulse beats in my ears as I listen. I realize I am holding my breath.
“He begged and begged. Then he gurgled and fell. He flung the knife at me, and I grabbed it. What else could I do? I grabbed it, and I waited for him to get up again. But he didn’t. He didn’t, and I must have passed out.”
She goes silent, and I realize that her story is done. Whether it is the truth or not, I don’t know, but she is done speaking. Instead, she uses the stump of a
