After we bound Goatee with the twine we removed from Darcy, Patricia knotted my shirt tight above my gunshot wound. Thankfully, McAllister had done nothing to Darcy other than tie her up.
Patricia stood next to me, her face and clothes caked in mud.
“Thanks for the gun,” I said.
“I knew you’d hit him.” She took out her phone and called the police. The mayor received the next call and it was not pretty. Needless to say, he would not be getting her support in the next election.
McAllister had kept Darcy alive to find out how much she knew. Patricia and I had interrupted him when we showed up. Help arrived in the form of police cruisers. They got blocked in behind Patricia’s Mercedes. Two four-wheel-drive ambulances, one for McAllister and one for Darcy and me, got in past the lot of them. Patricia sat in the back with us.
Chauncey had caught a ride in one of the ambulances through the mud and watched the medics treat our injuries. “Everyone going to survive?”
Patricia took Darcy’s hand and mine. “I think we’re going to be just fine.”
“Good,” Chauncey said. “Detective Wilson asked me to give you a message.” He took a piece of paper out of his pocket, unfolded it, and read. “An Asian-American male, Lo Chong, was apprehended an hour ago when the Trans Am he was driving collided with a tanker truck carrying septic-tank waste. The police estimate his speed in excess of ninety miles an hour. The driver and passenger in the truck were injured but in stable condition. Mr. Chong was not so lucky. The police are not sure if he will make it.”
I didn’t say anything. Justice was served.
Chauncey said, “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the citizen’s arrest at the underground brothel, would it?”
None of us replied.
McAllister was strapped onto a gurney and lifted into the back of the other ambulance. Somehow the bastard was still breathing.
Chauncey sighed and waved. “So long, Radar.”
I sat up, gritting my teeth against the pain. “Radar?”
“McAllister,” Chauncey said. “We called him Radar in Vietnam because the glasses he wore made him look like the guy from M.A.S.H. The movie came out while we were over there.”
My ache subsided ever so slightly. “I thought Uncle Reggie said Ray shot him. I guess he was trying to say ‘Radar.’ ”
Two police officers slammed the doors to the ambulance after McAllister had been loaded.
“We got him,” Patricia said. She looked at Darcy, her eyebrows pinched. “Did you call in a camera crew?”