SCHULTZ ROLLED OFF PJ and sat up, remaining under the table with her. He pulled out his cellphone, handed it to her, and asked PJ to call her son to make sure he was okay. She called her home phone and Thomas answered it upstairs.
“Everything okay?” she said, and listened briefly. She gave a thumbs-up sign to Schultz.
“Go in the bathroom, sit down on the floor, and stay put,” she said to her son. There weren’t any windows in the upstairs bathroom. The shots had come from outside, so there wouldn’t be an intruder upstairs.
Unless there are two working together.
“Yes, naked,” she said into the phone. “Don’t give me any flak.” She hung up.
Schultz crawled toward the hallway and took up a position where he could see both the front and back doors. Sitting alertly with his gun, he told PJ to call 911.
He’d heard most of the telephone exchange from the living room. It wasn’t PJ’s finest hour. She should have assumed she was talking to April and not wasted her two questions like that. If April was serious about giving two truthful answers, a couple of nice questions would have been “Who have you killed in the last two weeks?” and “Where are you going to be in an hour?” There was no guarantee a flake like April would live up to her promise to tell the truth, but what the hell, why not try? He was angry at the lost opportunity and angry that the killer was so arrogant she could take potshots at the police, lumping PJ into that category. Looking at the pockmarks in the wall where PJ had been standing made him afraid for her and Thomas. His new family was being threatened.
Anger and fear didn’t mix well in Schultz, like electricity and water.
“What the hell kind of questions were those?” he said. “Do you think you could have asked anything stupider?”
She glared at him from her spot under the table and said nothing.
“All right, that was harsh. Shit, I don’t know what I’m saying. Sorry, I’m upset.”
“And I’m not?”
Schultz was rescued from having to answer her question by the arrival of the responding patrol car, which must have been only a few blocks away. He went to answer the door. It was Officer Mel Leeds, who’d been first on the scene at the riverfront dump site.
“Keep this up, Detective, and we’ll have to put you on our frequent callers list,” he said. He bent down and spoke to PJ. “How’re you doing under there, Dr. Gray?”
“I’ve been better,” she said.
“You two stay put. My partner’s watching the outside, and as soon as backup gets here, we’ll set up a perimeter. Maybe the shooter’s still out there, or maybe just his footprints or shell casings. We’ll also make sure the house is clear. The ETU’s on its way.”
“My son is upstairs,” PJ said. “I need to check on him. Now.”
“Can’t let you do that, Dr. Gray. Sometimes it’s the family member who’s the shooter. Goes outside, does the shooting, goes back in. It’d be dangerous for you to go up. Wait till the backup gets here.”
“The hell with waiting,” Schultz said. “I’m going up to check on Thomas.”
Leeds frowned but didn’t make any attempt to stop him.
At the top of the stairs, Schultz took a good look around before moving down the hall. There was a shower curtain covering the doorway to Thomas’s room, since the real door had been hauled away as evidence against the gamer. The bathroom door was closed.
“You in there, Thomas?”
“Yeah. What’s going on?”
“There were gunshots fired into the kitchen. You need to keep away from the windows, so stay in there for a little while.”
“You’re both okay, right? Man, this shooting and slashing stuff is getting to be a pain in the ass. Especially my bare ass on this tile floor. Can you get my PSP and pass it in to me?”
“We really are okay. The cops are downstairs. It won’t be too much longer. What’s a PSP?”
“PlayStation Portable. It’s on the desk in my bedroom.”
“I’ll be a couple of minutes. You can sit on the toilet if that’s any better.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Schultz went through the upstairs rooms, checking the closets, under the beds, the attic storage accessible through a small door in the wall of each walk-in closet. When he went into Thomas’s room and flicked on the light, Megabite sat up, blinking. She stretched and jumped down from Thomas’s bed, looking reproachfully at Schultz for disturbing her nap.
He grabbed the portable game, plus a T-shirt and boxers that were on the floor in the vicinity of the laundry basket. At the bathroom door, he passed the items to Thomas.
“Do I want to know what you’re doing naked in the middle of the day?” Schultz said.
“Probably not.”
Turning to head downstairs, Schultz bumped into PJ, who was right behind him. She shoved the bathroom door open so hard it smashed against the wall, catching Thomas nude, one foot into his boxers.
“Hey! A little privacy here,” Thomas said. He quickly turned his back on PJ, preferring to bare his butt to his mom rather than his genitals.
“Sorry. I just wanted to see that you’re okay.”
“You saw more than that.”
Figuring that PJ was about to launch into “You weren’t born with underwear on, young man, I’ve seen it all,” Schultz tugged on her arm.
“Come on, let’s go talk to the officers,” he said. “Everything’s okay now.” He caught himself just in time before calling her babe.