Val endured a quiet drive to Fairview with Beth, broken up by occasional small talk and robotic directions from Val’s GPS. They stopped once for a bathroom break at a big-box shopping center, and Val checked messages while she waited for Beth. Nothing.
She called Jan. “Any luck on the warrant?”
“Not yet,” Jan said. “I’ll call you the minute I hear anything.”
Dammit. Val tried Gil again. Straight to voicemail. “Recharge your phone, silly man,” she chided him in her message. Fat lot of good that would do.
Beth got more chatty when they neared Fairview, a Bavarian-style suburb of about 40,000 people nestled into the Connecticut Berkshires outside Torrington. Its revitalized core featured two- and three-story buildings with whitewashed walls, blue shutters, and colorful flower boxes lined downtown streets. Street vendors hawked bratwurst and salted pretzels, and beer halls invited tourists in for a hearty late lunch.
“I used to love coming here at Christmas with my family,” Beth said, her tone wistful. “It’s decorated like the North Pole, with Santas and reindeer on every corner.” She paused, her eyes growing moist. “Someday, I’d like to bring my kids.”
“You will.” Val patted her knee. “And I’ll join you with mine.”
Beth smiled, hands resting on the slight bulge of her tummy, and gazed out the window.
The Planned Parenthood clinic resided in a three-story medical facility a few blocks from the central business district. Taller buildings, five- and ten-stories high, blended in with the Bavarian storefronts and created a bit of a wind tunnel down the city’s narrow streets. Val parked in a surface lot a block from the building after Beth refused Val’s offer to let her out in front. “I could use the steps,” she said.
“Me, too,” Val said, but what she really wanted was coffee. And lunch, which she’d skipped, thinking they’d get something on the way, until Beth announced she wanted to keep her stomach empty for the procedure. Val’s eyes watered when they passed a German bakery, the aroma of warm bread luring her inside. Somehow, she resisted. For Beth.
They stopped in front of the medical center at the bottom of a wide set of concrete steps leading up to the front door of the brick-and-glass building. Or, rather, Val took the first few steps before noticing Beth had stopped, gazing upward, the early-afternoon sun’s overhead rays reflecting off the upper-floor windows.
“You okay?” Val said.
“Yeah, I…need a minute. We’re a few minutes early, so, ah…” Beth didn’t finish. Instead she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Exhaled, did it all again. Opened her eyes. “It’s such a big decision.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No, I just…” Beth closed her eyes again and bowed her head, her brown curls taking on a reddish hue in the bright early afternoon sun.
Something flashed above Beth’s hairline. For a moment, Val thought maybe Beth had worn a hairpin that reflected the light into her eyes. The angle was wrong, though. It came from above and behind…a long way behind.
As in, from the top of the building across the street.
“Get down!” Val reached out to grab Beth, pulling her toward the ground.
Not quite in time. A wash of red spread across Beth’s left side a split second before the sound reached Val’s ears.
The sound of a rifle being fired.
The second shot ricocheted off the steps a foot away from where they landed on the warm concrete. A third exploded inches from Val’s head. A fourth hit a young white woman exiting the building, knocking her to the ground. A fifth hit a nurse in scrubs who rushed over to tend to her.
Heart racing, Val rolled over on top of her, placing her body between Beth’s and the shooter. “Beth! Can you hear me? Are you—”
“Aaagh!” Beth’s agonizing moan started low and rose to a fever pitch in two seconds. “Oh, Val. It hurts. It hurts so much! I’m bleeding, Val. I’m bleeding!”
“Stay with me.” Val fought to maintain control. Forced herself to breathe. Blood soaked Beth’s shirt and jeans, then Val’s.
Another shot rang out. Val ducked, though she couldn’t tell where it hit. She didn’t care. She glanced toward the reflection she’d spotted earlier. Nothing there now. She rose to a crouching position, grabbed Beth under the armpits, and dragged her toward the curb, on the passenger side of a parked Volvo.
Another shot shattered the Volvo’s driver-side window. Glass flew everywhere, one shard hitting Val’s temple.
Val fought for calm. She lay Beth down on the sidewalk and pried her friend’s bloody hand away from the wound for a quick peek. Blood poured from a long diagonal gash on Beth’s belly, and another hole bled several inches away. The bullet, she guessed, had passed through soft tissue and out the other side. God knows what it hit on the way through. “Keep pressure on that wound,” she said in the calmest voice she could muster.
“Okay,” Beth said in a hoarse whisper. “Val. It. Hurts.”
“Stay awake, please.” Val looked around for something to press on the wounds. She didn’t have many options, so…
Val pulled off her shirt, a blue Clayton-issue uniform cotton button-down. She’d left her jacket and weapon in the car. Luckily, she’d worn a thin camisole underneath her shirt. It covered…enough. And if not, oh well.
She folded up the shirt and stuffed it against Beth’s side. “Lay on that—put as much weight on it as you can.”
She wished she’d listened to Gil’s advice to wear Kevlar. And to keep the .22 pistol with her instead of in her car’s glove box. Not that she could hope to hit the shooter from her position.
More shots. People screamed—they’d been screaming, Val realized, all along. She’d focused so hard on Beth, she’d forced everything else out of her consciousness. An alarm bell rang somewhere. Footsteps pounded. Horns blared, tires squealed.
No sirens.
With one hand on Beth’s to keep pressure on the wound, she dialed 9-1-1 on her cell with the other.
“This is Clayton police officer Valorie Dawes. I’m at the corner of Washington and East Seventh Street in Fairview,” she shouted over the dispatcher’s greeting. “We’ve got an active shooter. At least three people injured. Send SWAT teams and ambulances!”
“Let me verify your information.” The dispatcher repeated Val’s data and promised that responders were “on the way.”
“Great,” Val said. “Make sure they’re armed.”
Another shot blasted the windows of a passing Toyota. It slammed into a mailbox twenty feet away. The driver, a balding Black man in a gray suit, jumped out of the car and ran down the street, away from the building. Another shot brought him down face-first on the sidewalk.
Four down. Shots still firing.
Val needed to do something. Other than hiding. But she couldn’t leave Beth unattended.
A series of shots, three or four in rapid succession, drummed the stairs behind them, the last one showering Val with shards of concrete. Val spun around to see a Black woman in scrubs zig-zagging across the sidewalk, dodging bullets, carrying a doctor’s satchel. The woman dove for cover next to them as the last shot exploded into the curb at the rear end of the car.
“Are you hurt?” the woman asked, still laying on her belly.
“My friend is. I’m okay. Are you a doctor?”
The woman scrambled to her knees and opened the satchel, nodding. “Dr. Freeman. I work in the podiatry clinic inside. Let me see her.”
“Podiatry?” Beth’s eyes widened.
The doctor smiled. “I spent two years in Afghanistan as a field medic. 5411st Medical Detachment. I know what I’m doing.”
“That explains the fancy footwork there.” Val helped pull Beth’s hand away from her entry wound.
The doctor tsk’d and shook her head. “It doesn’t look too bad, but we won’t know until we can take a peek inside. For now, let me dress this properly.” She removed Val’s shirt and covered Beth’s wounds with sterile gauze, wrapping white tape around her to hold it in place. “You want your shirt back?” she asked with a smile.
Val shook her head. “How can I help?”
Dr. Freeman tossed her head in the shooter's direction. “Take care of that guy. You wouldn’t happen to be carrying, would you?”
“Eleven weeks,” Beth said, gasping, misunderstanding the doctor’s intent.
“She came in for an abortion,” Val said. “I keep a sidearm in my car. I’m a cop in Clayton. Val Dawes.”
“Well, Officer Dawes,” Freeman said, “the sooner you and your Fairview colleagues can take this shooter out, the sooner we can get your friend inside for treatment. Until then, all we can do is dress the wound and hope for the best.”
Val ducked in response to another shot hitting the roof of the Volvo, the thud sound louder than any so far. She surveyed the pavilion in front of the building. At least four people lay on the pavement, two of them screaming in pain. With Beth and the Black man down the street, that meant at least six wounded.
And the shooting continued.
“Beth,” she said. “She’s right. I need to go stop this guy.”
“Don’t leave me! Val, it hurts. So. Much. And what about my baby?”
Val had no response.
“Val,” Beth said, crying. “You said you’d stay by my side, no matter what. You promised.”
“The doctor will stay with you. Right, doc?”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Freeman held Beth’s bandage in place with one hand, held Beth’s hand with the other.
“I don’t want her. I want you,” Beth said between sobs.
“If we stay here, he’s going to keep shooting until—”
Another shot interrupted her, and a woman’s scream followed. Val couldn’t see where.
He had to be stopped.
“I’m so sorry, Beth,” Val said. “It’s the only way.”
Freeman held Val’s gaze for a moment, then nodded.
Before she could change her mind, Val raced down the street toward her parked car. Toward the loaded weapon she kept in the glove box.
Away from her bleeding friend.