Lucas said, “This is gonna hurt,” and he pulled Santos’s shirt loose and pressed it into the wound as far as he could, packing the cotton in to nearly the full depth of his index finger. Santos groaned, again said, “Shot.”
Lucas shouted, “Get me some help. Get me some help over here.”
A moment later, a woman hurried up, said, “Nurse,” and looked at the wound, then said, in what seemed to be an unnaturally calm voice, “You did what you could. I don’t think there’s anything else to do here until we have paramedics.”
“Stay with him, would you?” Lucas asked, and the nurse nodded.
* * *
—
SANTOS SEEMED TO have passed out. Lucas picked up the green shopping bag, put the two FedEx boxes in with the other two, looked around, turned away from the nurse, pulled his own shirt loose, wrapped a finger in the fabric so he wouldn’t leave prints, and ripped one of the boxes open.
Money. Lots of it.
The nurse was holding Santos’s hand, and Lucas stepped over to Bob, who’d cuffed the man who’d shot at Deese and then Lucas. The man was bubbling blood from his nose. Bob had propped him up against the wall, and the man kept saying, “Active shooter . . . active shooter . . .” Bob said, “Yeah, but you shot the wrong guy.”
To Lucas Bob said, “This guy shot that guy when he tried to shoot you.” Bob pointed across hall. “I thought he might have been backing up Santos, so I swatted him.”
Lucas turned to see a man leaning against the wall with two women working on him in a professional way, maybe doctors or nurses. Down the length of the mall, most of the people had cleared out, but small groups had gathered around the three other people lying on the floor in puddles of blood. One of the cops who’d come with Harvey was crouched over the first woman Deese had shot, Tremanty was still applying pressure to the facial wound of the woman who’d been standing next to him, his face, hands, and shirt splattered with purple blood.
Lucas asked Bob, “Did you fire your weapon?”
“No, no. I never could. Too many people behind him.”
Rae had come up next to Lucas. “Neither did I. I never had a clean shot. I’m going to jog around the mall, see what I can see. Check that parking structure, even if he isn’t there. Maybe I’ll kick him out.” She ran off toward the hallway to the structure.
Lucas called, “Careful, Rae. Careful,” and she waved without looking back at him. Lucas looked around, didn’t see anybody who looked like a paramedic, and said, “Somebody must’ve called for help by now.”
Bob said, “Oh, yeah. I called 911 and they told me everybody was already on the way. They’re coming . . . And I . . . My God! My God!” He walked away, one hand on the top of his head.
* * *
—
HARVEY SAW LUCAS and ran over and shouted, “Jesus Christ, what did you do?”
“None of us ever fired a shot,” Lucas said. He looked up to the mall’s second level. “Deese had a lookout up there. He saw you guys coming, he yelled, and Deese started shooting. At anybody he saw. He must’ve planned that escape route.”
“Ambulances on the way,” Harvey said. He ran a hand through his thinning white hair as he scanned the chaotic scene. People were coming back again, peering at the wounded. “What a mess. What a fuckin’ mess.”
Lucas started stepping between bodies: a man shot in the chest, almost the same place that Lucas had been hit; a woman was shot in the upper leg, the bullet apparently breaking the bone. She was the first one Deese shot, Lucas thought. Nobody dead yet. The woman Tremanty was hovering over had been shot in the cheek, the bullet exiting behind the bone and passing through her ear.
Bob came over and said, “The man who shot at you, I left him with a security guard. He’s some concealed carry guy, thought this was his big chance.” He looked around. “How many dead?”
“None yet.” Lucas looked at his phone. Seven minutes after seven o’clock. “It’s been seven minutes from when the shooting started.”
“Seems like a week,” Bob said. “This is fucked up. Where are the ambulances?”
“We gotta go up, see if anybody saw the guy who yelled,” Lucas said.
“Gotta ask about cameras is what we need to do,” Bob said.