The Other was nowhere to be seen, either. Marty was alone on the
street.
In the next block south, too far off for him to recognize the make and
model, a car was speeding away. In spite of the fact that it was moving
too fast for weather conditions, he doubted it was driven by the
look-alike. He was still hard-pressed to believe the injured man had
been able to walk, let alone reach his car and drive away so quickly.
Surely they would find the son of a bitch nearby, lying in shrubbery,
unconscious or dead. The car turned the corner much too fast, the thin
squeal of its protesting tires was audible above the plink, plop, and
susurration of the rain. Then it was gone.
From the north, the banshee shriek of sirens abruptly swelled much
louder, and Marty turned to see a black-and-white police sedan negotiate
that corner almost as fast as the other car had rounded the corner to
the south. Revolving red and blue emergency beacons threw bright
Frisbees of light through the gray rain and across the blacktop.
The siren cut off as the sedan fishtailed to a stop twenty feet from
Marty in the center of the street, with stunt-driver dramatics that
seemed excessive even under the circumstances.
The siren of a backup cruiser warbled in the distance as the front doors
of the first black-and-white flew open. Two uniformed officers came out
of the cruiser, staying low, sheltering behind the doors, shouting,
“Drop it! Now! Do it! Drop it right now or die, asshole!
Now!”
Marty realized he was still holding the 9mm pistol. The cops knew
nothing more than what Paige had told them when she’d called 911, that a
man had been shot, so of course they figured he was the perp. If he
didn’t do exactly what they demanded, and do it fast, they would shoot
him and be justified in doing so.
He let the gun fall out of his hand.
It clattered on the pavement.
They ordered him to kick it away from himself. He complied.
As they rose from behind the open car doors, one of the cops shouted,
“On the ground, facedown, hands behind your back!”
He knew better than to try to make them understand that he was the
victim rather than the perpetrator. They wanted obedience first,
explanations later, and if their positions had been reversed he would
have expected the same thing of them.
He dropped to his hands and knees, then stretched full length on the
street. Even through his shirt, the wet blacktop was so cold that it
took his breath away.
Vic and Kathy Delorio’s house was directly across the street from where
he was lying, and Marty hoped Charlotte and Emily had been kept away
from the front windows. They shouldn’t have to see their father flat on
the ground, under the guns of policemen. They were already scared.
He remembered their wide-eyed stares when he’d burst into the kitchen
with the gun in his hand, and he didn’t want them frightened further.
The cold leached into his bones.
The second siren suddenly grew much louder from one second to the next.
He guessed the backup black-and-white had turned a corner to the south
and was approaching from that end of the block.
The piercing wail was as cold as a sharp icicle in the ear.
With one side of his face to the pavement, blinking rain out of his
eyes, he watched the cops approach. They kept their guns drawn.
When they tramped through a shallow puddle, the splashes seemed huge
from Marty’s perspective.
As they reached him, he said, “It’s okay. I live here. This is my
house.” His speech, already raspy, was further distorted by the shivers
that wracked him. He worried that he sounded drunk or demented.
“This is my house.”
“Just stay down,” one of them said sharply. “Keep your hands behind
your back and stay down.”
The other one asked, “You have any ID?”
Shuddering so badly that his teeth chattered, he said, “Yeah, sure, in
my wallet.”
Taking no chances, they cuffed him before fishing his wallet out of his
hip pocket. The steel bracelets were still warm from the heated air of