The Homecoming (17 page)

“That’s very impressive,” Kara said, “that you know all that.” Until tonight, her knowledge of Tchaikovsky had been limited to seeing
Swan Lake
with her mother in Portland, and performing as one of the snowflakes in Shelter Bay Elementary School’s Christmas performance of
The Nutcracker
when she’d been in the sixth grade.

“I got myself a full scholarship to study music at UC Berkeley after graduating high school,” he reminded her.

“But you dropped out.”
Damn
. She could’ve bitten her tongue. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. Believe it or not, I was doing really well there and enjoyed learning all the different kinds of music and the history and all, but then nine-eleven came along and, well, playing tunes just didn’t seem like what I should be doing, so although my mama wasn’t real happy with the idea of her baby boy going off to war, I turned the rudder and changed course for the Navy.”

Yet another surprise. When Cole had shown up in Oceanside to help her bring Jared’s body back home to Shelter Bay, he’d mentioned that Sax had left school to become a SEAL, but she’d guessed that he’d gotten bored in the staid confines of academia. Or more likely—and didn’t this make her feel guilty for thinking so?—been expelled for bad behavior.

Which apparently hadn’t been the case. It was obvious that he still loved music. And although she knew how much he hadn’t wanted to go through with this celebration the town council had forced on him, by doing so, and inviting Trey to participate, he’d enriched the experience for her son. And for that she was hugely grateful.

“But it’s too nice a night to be thinking about all that,” he said over an earsplitting whistle as a rocket shot into the air. Watching him as carefully as she was, Kara saw Sax flinch, then stiffen as every atom in his body appeared to go on full alert. She’d seen that happen enough times with Jared to recognize it as a lingering reaction to war, when rockets weren’t something meant to entertain, but to kill.

A second later, as sparkling white firework stars cascaded downward, she watched him relax again. But she could still sense a simmering discomfort just beneath the surface.

“So”—he doggedly continued the story of the overture—“just in the nick of time, God intervened, sending a winter freeze colder and deeper than any Russia had ever experienced. And let me tell you, I’ve been there, and that is one cold place.”

“I hear the wind!” Trey began bouncing up and down with an enthusiasm Kara hadn’t witnessed since Jared had first returned from Iraq. Before everything had gotten so tense and strained.

“I do, too,” she said.

“Music, done right, can conjure up some pretty fierce images,” Sax said. “Now those French guys try to retreat, but their guns got stuck in the ground. Which is when the Russian people grabbed them up and began to fight back. . . .

“In a minute you’re going to hear all the church bells ringing and guns firing across the land as people thank God and celebrate being delivered from their enemy.”

“Mr. Thompson told me that the composer originally planned for sixteen cannons to be shot during this part.” Kara was pleased to be able to add something to the conversation. That had been the persuasive deejay’s argument for shooting off the ancient cannon.

“He’s right,” Sax said. “Tchaikovsky designed an electric board with buttons to push for each cannon. It was really complicated. Too complicated for the time, so nobody ever let him try it.”

Although she didn’t like thinking of herself in that way, Kara would reluctantly admit that like all cops—hell, all people—she tended to stereotype. The world—and her job—was easier when things were more black- and-white, good guys, bad guys, and everyone wore labels like they used to put on you back in high school. Those “most likely to” tags she and Sax had talked about earlier.

But Sax Douchett had never fit tidily into a box. She knew that some people in Shelter Bay, including her mother, had seen only his bad-boy persona. But because of that deal he’d apparently made with Jared, she’d witnessed another, more tender, caring, even protective side.

Of course, both sides had been sexy as sin. Not that she’d ever allowed herself to think about that.

Except for that one night.

“That’s too bad,” Trey interrupted her turmoiled memories. She hadn’t thought about that kiss for years. And now it kept replaying in a seemingly endless loop over and over again in her mind. “That he didn’t get to use the cannons.”

“Yeah.” Sax reached over and ruffled her son’s hair. “I always thought so, too.”

An instant later, the town’s single cannon boomed. Kara was relieved when it didn’t take off anyone’s hand. The muskets were all shot in impressive unison as the music soared in jubilation and the sky exploded in the finale—a dazzling display of red, white, and blue pyrotechnics.

The crowd, as if holding one collective breath, was silent. Then, as the last light twinkled out, they began to applaud.

As the old Jim Croce song pointed out, there were some things you just didn’t do.

Such as spitting into the wind.

Tugging on Superman’s cape.

Pulling the mask off the Lone Ranger.

And the one thing every law enforcement officer knew was that you damn well didn’t tempt fate by making the mistake of saying—or even
thinking
—how quiet things were.

Nonetheless Kara was just congratulating herself on getting through the largest public event during her tenure as sheriff without a serious incident, when a scream shattered the still smoke-filled air.

It was bad. Not as bad as it could’ve been.

But not good, either.

Danny Sullivan, who, according to witnesses, had packed up his uncle’s carvings and been sitting on a folding lawn chair during the fireworks, was lying facedown on the grass. His face, what she could see of it, was bloodied, and more blood was slowly oozing from a wound at the back of his head.

The good news, according to Kara’s mother, who’d checked his airways and pulse and elevated his bloody head, was that he was breathing. The bad news was that he was unconscious. As she pulled on the gloves she’d gotten from her cruiser, Kara gently pushed away damp hair and—
damn
—viewed a bullet wound.

The flickering Victorian gaslights in the square, while charming, provided scant illumination. What she wouldn’t give for bright-as-day klieg lights. The alternative had been to turn on the spotlight on her patrol car, which was casting eerie shadows over the park.

Reaction to the shooting was mixed. Several gawkers stood around, watching the action surrounding the victim as if it were merely an episode of
CSI Shelter Bay
.

Others, as word rippled through the crowd, quickly gathered up their blankets, coolers, and children and headed off for their cars, just in case a would- be killer was in their midst, targeting them as the next victims.

“He’ll need to be airlifted to the trauma department in Portland,” Faith said as she continued to examine him while his uncle took her place, holding Danny in his arms. “ASAP.”

“I’m already on that,” Kara said as she punched in the emergency number on her cell.

“Can’t think of anyone who’d want to shoot Danny on purpose,” John, obviously shaken, said. “Gotta be random. Some idiot shooting up in the air in a lame-brained attempt to celebrate.”

“That’s more than likely,” Kara agreed as she stood up, took out the camera she’d brought along to take pictures of her son, and began snapping photographs. Needless to say, Shelter Bay’s budget didn’t allow for a police camera, let alone an official photographer.

“Do you have to do that?” John complained. As she’d want to do if it were Trey who’d been shot.

“Even if it
was
an accident, since it’s still a crime to shoot a gun within city limits, that makes this a crime scene,” she said gently.

If Danny Sullivan had been shot at close range, there’d likely be gray matter all over the booth. On the other hand, she’d once been called to the scene of a shooting on the beach at Oceanside on the Fourth of July. A seven-year-old girl building a sand castle had been hit in the arm by a bullet shot into the air nearly a mile away.

“When the hell are idiots going to realize that what goes up always comes down?” John muttered.

Not sure what her digital lens was able to pick up, she took a few shots of the crowd, just in the unlikely event she might get lucky and pick up the shooter. Sometimes bad guys enjoyed hanging around watching the drama they’d created. She had the feeling she was going to need all the luck she could get in this case.

Damn if she didn’t have a logistics problem. Unlike California, where by now a parade of black-and-whites would have already arrived on the scene, lights flashing, sirens blaring, her manpower was a joke.

She knew that if instructed, John would stay here, follow orders, and interview bystanders. But Danny was his family. And family belonged with their own at a time like this. No way was she going to keep her deputy from going to the hospital with his nephew.

But if
she
stayed here, that would mean John would be the one questioning Danny when he woke up. She couldn’t allow herself to believe that the man who’d so charmingly asked her out earlier would not wake up.

It wasn’t as if John O’Roarke wasn’t a good cop. But she’d always been a control freak. And besides, John would be the first to admit that she was far more experienced.

Yet, with her mother going in the evac copter, if Kara flew to Portland, what would she do with her son? Who was currently being kept away from the scene by Cole Douchett and his fiancée.

“I can take Trey home with me,” Sax volunteered, making her wonder if he’d been able to view the internal conflict in her expression. Or, more unsettling, read her mind.

“It’s already past his bedtime.”

“No problem. He can sack out at the house.”

Only two days ago there was no way she would’ve just handed her only child off to this man. Tonight she was grateful for the offer.

“I don’t know how long I’m going to be.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He shrugged. “Tomorrow’s Sunday, which means no school. If he ends up having to spend the night, I’ll just feed him breakfast and take him with me to the lumberyard to buy some Sheetrock and stuff for Bon Temps.”

“He’d enjoy that.”

Since they’d never owned an actual house that wasn’t on base, Jared had never been much of a handyman, even when he was home. And her own skills were pretty much limited to changing a lightbulb. On the rare occasion she’d had need to wander into a Home Depot with her son, Trey had, like most boys, proven enthralled with power tools.

Sax nodded as if there’d never been a question of her refusing. “Then it’s set.”

Kara knew it was the logical answer. She also knew it was what Jared would tell her to do, if something like this had happened when he’d been deployed and unable to care for their son. But then again, when she was married, she’d never had the kind of thoughts she’d been having toward this man.

“I want to tell him myself,” she said, throwing in the towel. “Let him know everything’s going to be okay.”

She’d no sooner said the words than Danny’s eyelids fluttered open. “I know this is a cliché,” he said. “But what the hell happened?”

“You don’t remember anything?”

He frowned, obviously in pain. “I remember talking to you. And doing a piss-poor job of asking you out.” Despite the seriousness of the situation, his lips quirked just a bit at that. “And the fireworks. Until the finale.”

He shook his head, then flinched. No wonder, given that he had a hole in it. “After that it’s a blank.”

“Retrograde amnesia’s perfectly understandable with a head wound,” Faith assured him as she took his pulse for a third time.

“So, I’m okay?” he asked.

“Your pulse is thready,” Kara’s mother reported. “But you’re not only holding your own—you’re doing amazingly well for someone with a bullet wound in his skull.”

“A bullet?”

“Probably an accident,” John said. “Some yahoo shooting off a gun along with the fireworks.”

Damn
. Even as John had been reassuring him, Danny’s eyes began to roll back in his head and he looked on the verge of passing out again.

Kara held her breath as her mother rechecked his signs. Then Faith turned toward her. “So far, so good. Go tend to Trey; then do whatever you have to do here at the crime scene. Then you can drive to Portland. Although I doubt he knows anything that would prove helpful to your case, you won’t be able to talk to Daniel until he’s out of surgery.”

It wasn’t the best solution, but it was the most logical. But it was also yet one more reason to be in Sax’s debt.

“If you remember anything, however seemingly unimportant . . .” she began to tell Danny.

“I’ll tell Uncle John,” he assured her. “Don’t worry about me.” Even as his eyes glazed with pain, he managed a weak grin toward Faith. “I’m in great hands.”

“I’m not going to argue with that,” Kara said.

Leaving John and her mother with Danny, Kara wove her way through the crowd to where her son was eating an ice-cream cone.

“Your son,” Cole Douchett said, “appears to have a hollow leg.”

“Tell me about it.” She forced a smile even as part of her mind was still fifty yards away at the crime scene.

Having already had one possible murder tossed into her lap with that bone and skull found at Sax’s camp, Kara wasn’t at all eager for another.

She had, after all, come home expecting to play Officer Friendly during safety talks at the school, hand out the occasional barking-dog warning, break up a few bar fights. Mailbox bashing and jaywalking were supposed to be major crimes in Shelter Bay.

It
had
to be an accident. A random shot fired by someone who might not have even had a clue what he’d done. And once he (and experience had taught her such shootings were usually done by males) learned what had happened, unless a witness had been present to testify against him, the odds of the shooter turning himself in weren’t all that strong.