"Help me!" she cried, coughing blood. "Somebody, help!"
Weir managed to pull the weapon out of her holster but Welles, thinking of her children, kept a vise grip on his wrist. The muzzle swung around the empty corridor, past Hank, on his hands and knees, retching and struggling for breath.
"Help! Officer down! Help!" Welles cried.
There was motion from the end of the corridor as a door opened and someone came running. But the hallway seemed to be ten miles long and Weir was getting a better grip on the pistol. They rolled to the floor, his desperate eyes inches from hers, the muzzle of the gun turning slowly toward her. It ended up between them. Gasping, he tried to get his index finger to the trigger.
"No, please, no, no," she whimpered. The prisoner smiled cruelly as she stared at the black eye of the weapon, inches from her face, expecting it to fire at any instant.
Seeing her children, seeing the girl's father, her own mother. . . .
No fucking way, Welles thought, furious. She planted her foot against the wall and shoved hard. Weir went over backward and she fell on top of him.
The pistol went off with a stunning explosion, the huge kick of recoil jarring her wrist, the sound deafening her.
Blood spattered the wall.
No, no, no!
Please let Hank be okay! she prayed.
But Welles saw her partner struggling to his feet. He was unhurt. Then she realized that she wasn't fighting for the weapon. It was in her hand alone; Weir no longer had a grip on it. Quivering, she leaped to her feet and backed away from him.
Oh, my God . . .
The bullet had struck the prisoner directly in the side of the head, leaving a horrible wound. On the wall behind him was a spatter of blood, brain matter and bone. Weir lay on his back, glazed eyes staring at the ceiling. Blood was flowing down his temple to the floor.
Shaking, Welles wailed, "Fuck me, look what I did! Oh, fuck! Help him, somebody!"
As a dozen other officers converged on the scene, she turned to look at the guards but then saw them freeze and drop into defensive crouches.
Welles gasped. Was there some other perp behind her? She spun around and saw that the corridor was empty. She turned back to see the other officers were still crouching, holding up their hands in alarm. Shouting. Ears deafened from the shot, she couldn't understand what they were saying.
Finally she heard, "Jesus, your weapon, Linda! Holster it! Watch where you'
re pointing it!"
She realized that in her panic she'd been waving the Glock around--toward the ceiling, toward the floor, toward them--like a child with a toy gun.
She barked a manic laugh at her carelessness. As she holstered the pistol she felt something hard on her belt and pulled it off. She examined the splinter of bloody bone from Weir's skull. "Oh," she said, dropped it and laughed like her daughter during a tickle-fest. She spit on her hand then began wiping her palm on her pants. The scrubbing grew more and more frantic until the laughter suddenly stopped and she dropped to her knees, consumed with wrenching sobs.
Chapter Thirty-six
"You should've seen it, Mum. I think I wowed 'em."
Kara sat on the edge of the chair, cradling the tepid Starbucks cup in her hands, the warmth from the cardboard perfectly matching the temperature of human skin--the temperature of her mother's skin, for instance, still pink, still glowing.
"I had the whole stage to myself for forty-five minutes. How 'bout that?"
"You . . . ?"
This word was not part of an imaginary dialogue. The woman was awake and had asked the question in a firm voice.
You.
Though Kara had no idea what her mother meant.
It might mean: What was it you just said?