Bonnie Lamb recognized the other driver immediately. She gave a clandestine wave. So did the governor.
“What’s going on!” Edie Marsh was on her knees, pointing and shouting. “What’s going on! Who is that sonofabitch!”
She was more dejected than startled when the Jeep’s driver one-handedly raised a rifle. By the time Snapper saw it, he’d already heard the shot.
Pfffttt. Like a kid’s airgun.
Then a painful sting under one ear; liquid heat flooding down through his arms, his chest, his legs. He went slack and listed starboard, mumbling, “What the full, what the fuh-”
Skink said it was a superb time for Edie to assist at the wheel. “Take it steady,” he added. “We’re coasting.”
Reaching across Snapper’s body, she anxiously guided the Seville to the gravel shoulder of the highway. The black Jeep smoothly swung in ahead of them.
Edie bit her lip. “I can’t believe this. I just can’t.” “Me, neither,” said Bonnie Lamb. She was out the door, running toward Augustine, before the car stopped rolling.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Jim Tile once played tight end for the University of Florida. In his junior year, during the final home game of the season, a scrawny Alabama cornerback speared his crimson helmet full tilt into Jim Tile’s sternum. Jim Tile held on to the football but completely forgot how to breathe.
That’s how he felt now, lying in clammy rainwater, staring up at the worried face of a platinum-haired hooker. The impact of the shot had deflated Jim Tile’s lungs, which were screaming silently for air. The emergency lights of the patrol car blinked blue-white-blue in the reflection in the prostitute’s eyes.
Jim Tile understood that he couldn’t be dying-it only felt that way. The asshole’s bullet wasn’t lodged in vital bronchial tissue; it was stuck in a layer of blessedly impenetrable Du Pont Kevlar. Like most police officers, Jim Tile detested the vest, particularly in the summer- it was hot, bulky, itchy. But he wore it because he’d promised his mother, his nieces, his uncle and of course Brenda, who wore one of her own. Working for the Highway Patrol was statistically the most dangerous job in law enforcement. Naturally it also paid the worst. Only after numerous officers had been gunned down were bulletproof vests requisitioned for the state patrol, whose budget was so threadbare that the purchase was made possible only by soliciting outside donations.
Long before that, Jim Tile’s loved ones had decided he shouldn’t wait for the state legislature to demonstrate its heartfelt concern for police officers. The Kevlar vest was a family Christmas present. Jim Tile didn’t always wear it while patrolling rural parts of the Panhandle, but in Miami he wouldn’t go to church without it. He was glad he had strapped it on today.
If only he could remember how to breathe.
“Take it easy, baby,” the hooker kept saying. “Take it easy. We called 911.”
As Jim Tile sat upright, he emitted a sucking sound that reminded the prostitute of a broken garbage disposal. When she smacked him between the shoulders, a mashed chunk of lead fell from a dime-sized hole in Jim Tile’s shirt and plopped into the puddle. He picked it up: the slug from a .357.
Jim Tile asked, “Where’d they go?” His voice was a frail rattle. With difficulty he bolstered his service revolver.
“Don’t you move,” said the woman.
“Did I hit him?”
“Sit still.”
“Ma’am, help me up. Please.”
He was shuffling for his car when the fire truck arrived. The paramedics made him lie down while they stripped off his shirt and the vest. They told him he was going to have an extremely nasty bruise. They told him he was a very lucky man.
By the time the paramedics were done, the parking lot of the Paradise Palms was clogged with curious locals, wandering tourists and motel guests, a fleet of
Monroe County deputies, two TV news vans and three gleaming, undented Highway Patrol cruisers belonging to Jim Tile’s supervisors. They gathered under black umbrellas to fill out their reports.
Meanwhile the shooter was speeding up Highway One with the governor and the newlywed.
A lieutenant told Jim Tile not to worry, they’d never make it out of the Keys.