Virgil didn’t wait to hear Jenkins answer but instead sprinted for the truck. The back door of the house was standing open, and he thought about the shell inside—no fingerprint, but the shooter still didn’t know that. He swerved to the door, yanked it shut, jumped in the Tahoe, and roared away.
—
They put Shrake in the front passenger seat; he was fully conscious, and Jenkins dropped the seat back as far as it would go, put him in, and said, “Lean on your back. Keep that shirt packed in the cut. You’re gonna owe me big-time for taking care of your ass.”
Virgil said to Jenkins, “Get in, get in...”
“Nothing I can do in the backseat,” Jenkins said. “You go. I’m gonna run back in the neighborhood and talk to people and find this motherfucker and kill him.”
“Jenkins...”
He was already jogging away, gun and flashlight in hand, when Shrake shouted, “Kill the motherfucker,” and then groaned, and said, “All right, no more yelling.”
Virgil shifted into gear, and they were gone.
—
The shooter was five blocks away, breathing hard, listening. Nobody out there. A siren started: they were moving the cop.
I’m okay... I’m safe.
19
There may have been faster runs between Wheatfield and Fairmont, but the driver would have been pushing a Porsche. The ten minutes to I-90 was done in six minutes, the fifteen minutes down I-90 to Fairmont was done in eleven. Virgil was steering with one hand and holding his phone, and shouting into it, with the other, and he almost lost it at the Wheatfield on-ramp to the Interstate. Shrake swayed in the seat, groaned, and said, “You’re gonna kill me. I don’t want to die in a car accident.”
Virgil, with the front grille lights and the siren going, was met by a highway patrolman at the Fairmont exit, who rolled them through town to the medical center in what onlookers agreed was probably another land speed record.
Three nurses were waiting with a gurney at the emergency room entrance, and Shrake was out of the Tahoe and gone in thirty seconds.
The patrolman asked Virgil, “How bad?”
“If they can get some blood in him, he’ll be okay, but it’s like somebody dragged a straight razor across his back.”
With nothing else to do, Virgil called Jenkins, who asked, “How’s Shrake?”
“Docs are looking at him. It’s the longest cut I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s got some meat on him, though, and I don’t think it hit his spine anywhere. He pumped a lot of blood. I’ll call you soon as I hear anything.”
“He’s not gonna die?”
“Jenkins... what do I know? He was still talking when they took him in, so I can’t believe... What happened with you?”
“We’ve got three deputies here now, we’re going bush to bush in these backyards, we got everybody turning on their lights, but he’s gone.”
“This is my fault,” Virgil said. “You all were right: it was stupid. I just thought...”
“It should have worked—though, you’re right, it was stupid,” Jenkins said. “Now we’re gonna have to listen to that fuckin’ Shrake bragging about getting shot with an arrow and how he gutted it out. Lunch is gonna be a total shitshow for the next six months.”
“Could be worse.”
“Yeah, it could be. By the way, we recovered both arrows. Maybe... Nah, there won’t be anything on them, except blood.”
—
An emergency room doc came out a half hour after Shrake was taken into an operating room and told Virgil that a surgeon had been called in to do the repairs. “There were no huge bleeders back there, and we zapped the bigger ones with a cautery. We’ve got some Ringer’s ready but haven’t had to hit him with it yet... Unless there’s something going on that we don’t know about, he’ll be okay. Though, his back will itch like fire for a few weeks.”
“I’ll take that,” Virgil said. “I need to call his best friend and tell him.”
Virgil passed the word to Jenkins, who said, “I never was very worried.”
