he touched the bloodied cargo pants he could feel the broken glass inside the thigh pocket. The bullet had shattered the newly purchased pint bottle and then ricocheted down into the man’s leg. The blood-and-whiskey mix was now running a gravity trail out into the street and Hargrave made a note of it before standing and waving the arriving cops to the side of the buildings and pointing up. It only took seconds for the street to clear, but the officers continued to move up using the overhangs as cover until they were beside the truck and Hargrave stood up.
“Probably ought to call EMS,” he said to the first man. “You’ve got one gunshot victim down on the street. And you also better get on the tactical channel to the Secret Service guys and tell them they might have a sniper working north of the barricades.”
At that the officers all looked up at the same time as they crouched next to Walker. But Hargrave remained standing and answered a ring on his cell phone.
“Hargrave,” he said.
“Detective, this is Mullins. I’m gonna need some help up here.”
Chapter 34
Two weeks later, Nick was at home, lying on the couch on a Saturday morning, waiting to take Carly on a field trip. He’d had plenty of time at home, unemployed and without a deadline. At first he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to stand the open time, the lack of schedule. The slow cocktail of pressure and adrenaline and approaching deadline that had consumed his life was now over for good. But he quickly found that he did not miss it, or its hangover, at all.
On the morning of the shooting he’d called Hargrave on the cell for help and directed him to the top of the Marsh Storage Facility. Hargrave had come alone and in his own stoic way took command. While calling for paramedics on his cell phone, he simultaneously spun his handkerchief into a rope, put a knot in the middle and then stuffed it like a plug into the palm of Nick’s hand and then wrapped it in place. Then he crouched there and assessed the leg wound. He stripped his shirt and folded it to form a pressure bandage and then held it hard against the seeping hole and then watched as news helicopters filled the sky like carrion vultures until the rescue squad got there.
“Goddamn snipers aren’t such good shots after all,” he said.
The next day’s headline had read:
SECRETARY OF STATE SAFE, TWO CIVILIANS WOUNDED
DURING SHOOTING NEAR OAS CONFERENCE IN LAUDERDALE
The Daily News and other media jumped all over a speculation that the shooting had been an attempt on the secretary’s life gone awry and that when the sniper was interrupted by two civilians and sensed capture, he fled.
The Secretary of State immediately flew back to D.C. and a spokesperson issued a statement that the incident was “troubling” but that they would have no comment until the Secret Service had done a full investigation.
When Nick was interviewed by the feds he simply told the truth. On a news hunch, he was looking for someone on the roof when he inadvertently surprised the sniper, who turned and fired at him. The bullet was deflected when it sheared through his left hand and then struck his leg. He could not say that he heard another shot, and he saw no one else on the roof until Detective Hargrave arrived.
Later in the week it was directly from Hargrave that Nick learned that FBI crime-scene technicians had taken over the scene and confirmed his story after finding that the round that pierced Walker’s leg and his whiskey bottle matched that found in Mullins’s thigh.
Both the detective and the reporter had their own theories on what happened. If they ever sat down and compared scenarios, their versions would not have been much different, but they never did.
Hargrave only called Nick one more time. It was on the day that charges of violating probation were filed against Robert Walker for being in possession of and consuming alcoholic beverages. Hargrave had made sure evidence from that shooting scene was gathered by the Sheriff’s Office, including Walker’s blood-and-alcohol-soaked pants. He’d also called in a request at the E.R. and had them take a blood-alcohol test immediately. And he personally canvassed all the area liquor stores within a ten-minute radius of Archie’s until he found the clerk who’d been selling the whiskey to Walker, to use as a witness.