Twenty-Eight

“When you make the next left, you’ll see the store on your right,” Sandy Clayton Webb told Ms. Washburn despite the obvious presence of a Global Positioning Satellite device in the car and the fact that Ms. Washburn had driven to the Quik N EZ more than once before.

It had been my condition that Sandy accompany us in Ms. Washburn’s Kia Spectra; she had suggested using her own vehicle “in case it gets close to when I have to pick up the kids.” Given her recent record of falsehood concerning her children and my need to be sure she did not alert someone at the convenience store in advance, I had insisted.

Ms. Washburn made the turn without comment. As we approached the store, Sandy appeared to be getting nervous. It was difficult for me to see clearly because I would not turn around in the car and she was sitting in the rear seat on the passenger side, an arrangement Sandy had argued against. But I could feel the vibration from her leg, which was tapping on the floor in front of her, and noticed through the edge of my peripheral vision (I have never understood the “corner of my eye” axiom) her hand going to her head, presumably to adjust her hair in some way, which seemed odd.

“Is something worrying you, Sandy?” I asked. “Someone we should be careful about encountering once we get to the store?”

“No,” she insisted. “I don’t know anything about this. I don’t understand why I had to come.” She had made similar statements periodically throughout the ride, although the drive took less than two minutes.

“Yes, you do,” Ms. Washburn said as she parked the car directly in front of the Quik N EZ, which seemed to be experiencing a relative lull in business. “You knew it when we talked back at your house and you stood up to come here and face Billy Martinez.”

Sandy actually laughed. “Billy Martinez,” she said.

“What does that mean?” Ms. Washburn turned off the car’s engine and removed her safety harness. “Should we be worried about someone else in there? Here’s your chance to warn us, Sandy.”

“I don’t have anything to say,” she said, but it wasn’t until both Ms. Washburn and I had exited the car that Sandy unbuckled her harness and opened the door in the rear. She stepped out slowly, eyes on the Quik N EZ. I am not able to say she looked terrified but there was definitely an edge to her manner that did not inspire a relaxed attitude.

Ms. Washburn stopped me out of Sandy’s earshot. “How do we want to handle this?” she asked. “We don’t really know what we’re looking for or who we’re going to find in there.”

“We know Billy Martinez will be there,” I said. “What we are looking for is Sandy’s reaction.”

“Shouldn’t we have thought about defense or something? Maybe I should apply for a gun license.” She lowered her voice as Sandy approached.

“Ms. Washburn,” I said, reaching for the door handle, “it’s a convenience store.”

I held the door open for the two women, which is something I have been told is polite. In this case it seemed a bit odd, but I did want to make sure Sandy didn’t decide to walk away. She did not seem to consider such a move and entered the Quik N EZ with her head held high.

Inside, the store was indeed not very busy at all. There was one customer, a woman in her late sixties by my estimate, frowning in concentration as she perused the aisle devoted to household items. I did not get close enough to determine which type of product was causing her so much consternation.

My attention was focused on the counter, where Billy Martinez was indeed manning the cash register, and was alone. Clearly management was aware this would not be an especially stressful time of day for the staff; Billy appeared to be the only employee in the store. He looked up from a comic book as we approached and first looked slightly irritated. But then he saw Sandy and his expression become one of alarm.

“What’s going on?” Billy’s voice was slightly hoarse, as if his throat had gone suddenly dry.

“We are here to find out more about the shooting,” I said. “And we brought Sandy with us because we believe the incident was somehow connected to the black market operation you were helping to run from this store.”

I did not look at Sandy, but I could see that Ms. Washburn was being very careful about watching her face. She mirrored what Sandy must have been doing, and shook her head negatively in a very small gesture, as if wanting not to be noticed by anyone but the person she was signaling. That was interesting, but not unexpected.

“Sandy?” Billy attempted. “Who’s Sandy?” But he was staring directly at her.

“I have been diagnosed with a form of high-functioning autism,” I told him. “That is not a form of stupidity.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Ms. Washburn answered before I could. “It means you’re insulting our intelligence. You were selling cigarettes and handguns, among other things, off the books through this store and Sandy was somehow involved. You recognized her when we came in and you’re staring at her now because she just tried to tell you not to admit to anything. But once we call Detective Hessler and invite him here to question you, it’s going to be a different story. So why don’t you talk now, Billy, and maybe you can keep yourself from a long jail term.”

Billy had winced at a few of the words Ms. Washburn had used—black market, handguns, and jail, for example—and had glanced more than once at the woman in the household items aisle. For the minimum wage he was no doubt being paid, Billy was actually trying very hard to maintain the reputation of the business for which he worked.

He looked Ms. Washburn directly in the eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t see any proof. So go ahead and bring the cops here. Because I don’t think you have anything to tell them.”

“We know you did not fire the gun at Richard Handy,” I told Billy. “That’s the question we are actually attempting to answer. So if you can tell us who really did kill Richard, we will withdraw. It is the job of the police to investigate the related matters.”

“I didn’t kill Richard,” Billy said.

“I know. I just said that. Who did?”

He looked past Sandy toward the spot where the shooting had occurred. “I don’t know. I wasn’t looking that way.”

“Oh, come on.” Ms. Washburn shook her head in disbelief. “You’re standing at the counter. You have a clear view of the dairy case from where you are. Even if you weren’t looking in that direction before, you were going to look up when you heard shots. So who did you see holding the gun?”

“The kid they arrested.” Billy had been given his story. Even if it did not fit the facts or make any sense at all, he was going to repeat it ad infinitum. “The one who kept coming in to see Richard. The retard.”

Sandy’s face flinched at the last word. “Don’t ever say that,” she said quietly.

Billy appeared not to have heard her. “He was standing there, holding the gun over Richard’s body. Just making that noise he makes, like, ‘nnnnnnn,’ over and over. Something wrong with him.”

Sandy gave him a vicious look that needed no interpretation. “I said not to say things like that!” she hissed.

The moment was interrupted when the woman from the household products aisle walked to the counter and stood behind Sandy. She did not move.

We all stayed motionless and silent for eleven seconds until Ms. Washburn addressed the customer. “We’re not in line,” she said. “You go ahead.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely,” Ms. Washburn told her. “Please.” She gestured toward the counter, and the woman walked to Billy and placed a small bottle of glass cleaner on the counter.

No one said a word as Billy scanned the UPC code on the item, bagged it, took the woman’s five-dollar bill and gave her the necessary change. The woman thanked him, gave the rest of us a curious look, and left the convenience store. There were no other customers present.

“That’s it,” Billy said once the door had closed behind her. “I’m not talking to you anymore. Why don’t you just go home?”

“You’re not telling us the truth, Billy,” Ms. Washburn said. “We’re going to have to call the police and let them know about the black market ring you had here, and you’re going to go to jail. Is that what you want?”

Billy appeared confused by our refusal to leave the store when he had told us to do so. “Just go,” he reiterated. He looked past my head and his mouth twitched a bit. I did not look behind me, but saw Sandy also glance in that direction.

“The contraband merchandise and the shooting of Richard Handy are connected,” I said. “If we let the police know about your involvement in selling illegal goods, they will undoubtedly assume you are implicated in the murder.”

Billy, his eyes still looking at a point behind my right ear, gave a tiny nod. Clearly he had heard the truth in what I had told him and was making the decision to answer our questions. He walked out from behind the counter.

Then he went to the entrance to the convenience store and turned the dead bolt in the door. Having locked it, he turned the sign now reading CLOSED from our perspective inside the building to its opposite position, meaning the CLOSED sign now faced outside. And he lowered a venetian blind on the door to shut out any light—or visibility—in either direction.

“Billy,” Sandy said. Her voice was shaky.

“It’s not up to me, Ms. Webb,” came the reply. Billy walked back toward us but did not resume his position behind the counter. Instead, he went back to the dairy display where Richard Handy had died.

Next to the display, facing toward the counter, was a narrow door bearing a sign that read Employees Only. It opened and Raymond Robinson walked through it toward us.

He was carrying a shotgun.

“It’s so unfortunate,” he said. “You could have just accepted the story you were given. The young man with the disability was upset because he felt betrayed by someone he thought was his friend, and he snapped. He borrowed his brother’s gun and came here to take his revenge. Why was that so impossible to believe?”

I took a step toward him and Mr. Robinson leveled the shotgun at my chest. “Don’t do that,” he said.

I felt my head start to shake. I’m sure it was at most a slight movement from the perspective of the others (except perhaps Ms. Washburn, who knew me well) but from my viewpoint the frustration and anger at myself was palpable and made the reaction feel much more noticeable than it was. That led to feelings of embarrassment, which added to the frustration. This was not a helpful tactic but I was having difficulty controlling it.

“You shot Richard?” Ms. Washburn sounded both surprised and disappointed. “With all that money and all those businesses, you had to kill a kid because you needed to protect your little black market side deal?”

“It was the guns,” Mr. Robinson said. “Those made it a federal crime and that made it more dangerous. When Richard threatened to expose the operation, he became dangerous. He never really understood. And your brother … ” He smiled a smile without any amusement or warmth at Sandy. “Well, he presented the perfect opportunity, didn’t he?”

“You cold bastard,” Ms. Washburn said. Her voice was angrier than I’d ever heard it, which only made me think of how she would sound if she knew about her husband’s affair. That did not seem a productive thought at the moment. “Why did you even get involved in that sleazy business to begin with?”

But Mr. Robinson pointed the shotgun directly at her chest. “I’m not a Bond villain,” he said. “I have no intention of explaining my evil plan to you for so long that you can figure out a way to escape. There is no way to escape.”

Then he looked at Billy Martinez and gestured with the barrel of the shotgun. Billy, taking the instruction, said, “Move over here,” and pointed toward the dairy section. It was easy to see the advantage of leading us into that area—it was away from any windows. The security cameras appeared to have been removed, probably in anticipation of replacement that had not yet happened.

It was the perfect place to shoot people and not be seen.

Ms. Washburn did not move and neither did I. “We’re not fake victims, either,” she told Mr. Robinson. “If you want to kill us you’re going to have to do it on our terms. Where you can be seen. Where you’ll get caught.”

“I can easily cause you pain without killing you,” the entrepreneur responded. “And once you’re in pain, you’ll go where I want you to go.”

I decided it was best to stick to Ms. Washburn’s plan and remain standing in the spot nearest the door. Even the blinds on the nearest window would not provide total obstruction from view. It would be risky to do anything especially incriminating here and Mr. Robinson clearly knew that because he stayed in the narrow doorway from where he had emerged, shotgun in hand.

“You found a profit source in some off-the-books merchandise that you could funnel through a number of locations,” I said, basing my statement on the compiled data from Detective Hessler, our independent research, and the statements from those involved we had interviewed as well as some Internet searches. “Perhaps some of your other businesses were involved in cash flow problems, like the electronics chain you’re planning on closing. Tyler Clayton works at one of those stores, doesn’t he? And when you were doing one of your weekly visits as an employee, you met Tyler and found out that he liked to come here and considered Richard Handy a friend.

“Richard had been threatening to expose the contraband operation you had developed here, and you thought having his friend give him hush money in public every day would be an effective way to keep him quiet. So you made sure you met Tyler’s sister Sandy, and, perhaps by pretending to have some romantic interest in her, you gained her trust and by extension Tyler’s.”

“Pretending?” Sandy gasped.

I did not react to her question, as I saw no reason to answer. She was beginning to understand the truth.

“Move over there,” Mr. Robinson reiterated, but no one in the room moved. “Now.” He was alternating his aim at Ms. Washburn and me. “The four of you.”

Sandy’s mouth dropped open. “What do you mean, Raymond?” she sputtered. “You’re going to shoot me too?”

“Of course he is,” Ms. Washburn informed her. “He can’t afford to leave any witnesses alive.”

Ignoring the drama in the room and the frantic feelings of dread in my mind I forced myself to remain still, concentrating especially on my hands and head. I’m not sure my right foot did not begin to tap where I stood. “And things were going fairly well for a while,” I continued as if nothing had happened since I spoke the last time. “Sandy Clayton Webb provided Tyler, as well as a place to store some of the contraband merchandise you couldn’t afford to leave in your monitored warehouses.”

Sandy looked stunned, blinking, not necessarily processing the situation as it happened. “I should have stuck with Match.com,” she said, presumably to herself.

“But you had a problem. Richard Handy, who knew what you were doing, was worried. He had been arrested once for selling contraband cigarettes and did not want to be involved in the new operation. And the bribes he was getting, even though they were on camera and could be used to blackmail Richard, were no longer working.”

“I could have gotten some of that cash, then,” Billy Martinez said. No one responded to him.

“You kept Richard at bay for a while with Tyler’s daily ‘tips’ of one hundred dollars, but he was getting nervous,” I said. The longer I spoke, the longer Mr. Robinson was not shooting. “You couldn’t let him leave the business because he knew about your illegal activities and you couldn’t persuade him to participate again, could you, Mr. Robinson?”

It might have been a mistake to say the man’s name aloud; it seemed to wake him from the thoughts on which he’d been ruminating. Mr. Robinson looked up at me. And when he focused on me, the shotgun did the same.

“I said move over there,” he reminded me. Again there was the gesture with the shotgun.

“No,” Ms. Washburn said. “We’re not moving. Your best choice is to let us go and take your chances with the police. We don’t have a confession from you about the shooting and only have evidence about the black market stuff. Take the lesser sentence and consider yourself lucky.”

Mr. Robinson’s face contorted with anger and he turned his attention toward Ms. Washburn, who actually started at his movement. “Shut up!” he shouted.

To draw his attention back to me, I added, “It makes no sense to shoot the four of us. The police will find four bodies where Richard Handy died and you will be the only logical suspect. You are condemning yourself to the same fate either way. When Richard threatened to go to the police, you shot him and almost managed to get Tyler implicated. How did you get him to stand there holding the gun?”

“He used me,” Sandy said in a small voice. “Raymond told Tyler I would have to go to jail because of the stuff we were selling and that he’d make it look like I shot Richard. But he wouldn’t do that if Tyler played along.”

“How do you know?” Ms. Washburn asked her. “You weren’t here when it happened.”

Sandy shook her head. “No, that’s true. Tyler told me on the computer after it happened. I didn’t know anybody was going to get shot. I was supposed to get Tyler here to give Richard a five-­thousand-dollar bribe, and Raymond said he wanted the cameras painted because that would be suspicious, so Tyler got Molly to do it.” She turned toward Mr. Robinson. “You killed Richard and you shoved the gun into Tyler’s hand and threatened him with me. Then you slipped through that little door of yours and got out through the basement. But you never told me anybody was going to get killed.”

“Don’t be a fool!” Mr. Robinson hissed at her. “They’re both probably recording this for the police!”

“We are not recording the conversation,” I informed him.

But Mr. Robinson did not appear to have heard me. Apparently trying to avoid implicating himself in the imagined recording, he took on a more conversational tone. “I don’t know anything about the shooting.” Then his eyes narrowed and his voice became hushed again. “Now. Move. Over there. All of you.”

“Wait.” We hadn’t heard Billy Martinez speak for some time, so his voice was unexpected. Everyone turned. “You’re gonna shoot me?”

Mr. Robinson did not answer him. He stepped out of the doorway just enough to maneuver without being easily seen by the street. “Get over by the milk,” he said.

I decided to continue ignoring him and concentrate on Sandy, who was the one giving out useful information at the moment. “You didn’t know Tyler was to be used as the sacrifice to the police?”

“Of course not. I wouldn’t put him in that position.” Sandy appeared offended even as she was being prepared for execution. “He was just supposed to go and do his usual thing, give Richard the tip and then get Molly to paint over the cameras. I thought they were going to fake a robbery or something and frame Richard. When he got shot I was horrified.”

Mr. Robinson was not one to be denied. We had stalled beyond his patience. He fired a blast from his shotgun into the ceiling. As everyone else’s attention was riveted on the origin of the loud sound, I looked out the front window toward the street.

There was no movement. Apparently the Quik N EZ had better soundproofing than one would expect.

Still, Mr. Robinson’s voice did not rise above the level of typical conversation in volume. “Walk over to the dairy case or I will shoot you where you stand,” he said.

I did not see the benefit to carrying out his orders. Being shot where Mr. Robinson was less likely to be caught did not have any particular advantage from the victim’s standpoint over being shot in the open. It was more likely the police would catch our killer sooner if we did not move. The only possible upside to moving would be the extra few seconds of life that would afford, during which it could be theorized that a better plan might be formulated, but the statistical odds of that happening were not terribly attractive.

“I will not move,” I said. “Fire.” Mr. Robinson, the successful executive, must not have been accustomed to people he saw as subordinates disobeying his orders. His face registered anger and he turned toward me with one barrel of the shotgun smoking from the blast he had just fired. That meant one barrel was still full.

“No!” Even as Sandy and Billy, looking terrified, had taken two steps toward the dairy counter and now turned back, Ms. Washburn, standing her ground, shouted and distracted my intended murderer. “You can’t do that! You can’t just take his life because he’s smarter than you!”

I did not see the logic behind that argument, but Mr. Robinson sneered at Ms. Washburn and aimed the shotgun carefully toward her midsection. “If you were smarter than me, you’d be the one holding the shotgun,” he said. Ms. Washburn’s eyes widened in sudden fear and she looked at me.

Then Mr. Robinson pulled the trigger.

My grasp of emotional states is not always strong, especially at the intuitive level. Normally I require some context or explanation before I can determine exactly what feeling another person is expressing. That means it is rare that I can effectively analyze a situation and anticipate another person’s actions—particularly a person I do not know well—before they occur. It usually presents something of a disadvantage to me.

However, when Mr. Robinson turned the shotgun on Ms. Washburn, I did not spend any time trying to remember renderings of facial expressions or recordings of vocal modulations. My training in social skills, which had been painstaking in my teens and twenties, has helped me to some degree in such matters, but was not now being accessed. That was probably for the best, as it would have taken up too much precious time to act.

Instead, I acted entirely on instinct. I don’t actually remember considering the context or the logistics of the situation at all. I can’t honestly say I recall making a decision. I saw Mr. Robinson about to fire the shotgun blast at Ms. Washburn and I acted without thought.

I dove.

In retrospect, there must have been some calculation on my part, because I chose not to dive toward Mr. Robinson, who was the obvious danger in need for neutralization. Instead I took the faster and closer path.

I launched myself at Ms. Washburn and took her down in a flying tackle.

As I did I felt something in my lower left leg, not exactly pain but more akin to heat. It was not a major impediment immediately. Ms. Washburn landed on the floor next to some boxes of chocolate cake mix. I had aimed for her midsection, where Mr. Robinson had trained the gun, to better protect her from injury but had not been accurate in my dive, catching her higher up and causing her to fall backward. I landed on top of her.

“Samuel,” she said.

I could not speak. My hands had inadvertently ended up in areas that are not considered appropriate when touching a woman, and I stammered. Finally I managed, “I am sorry,” but it took a long moment, during which Mr. Robinson cursed loudly and reached into his pocket for ammunition to reload the shotgun.

In that split second I wondered what he would have done if we had lined up to be shot, since he could not have fired four times without reloading. Now Mr. Robinson’s plan seemed quite inefficient.

“Sorry?” Ms. Washburn looked astonished as I rolled from my present position to one next to her, which seemed considerably more like what a gentleman would do. “You saved my life.”

At that moment the glass in the entrance door to the Quik N EZ shattered from the force of a blow from outside and two uniformed police officers crashed their way in as Billy Martinez rushed Mr. Robinson. Billy pulled Mr. Robinson’s arms back behind him, in the process forcing the weapon to the floor. And he held them there while the officers, followed by four others, wrapped the plastic ties they call “zip strips” around Mr. Robinson’s wrists and ushered him out of the building, presumably to a waiting police cruiser. I did not hear a reading of the Miranda Rights, but I had no doubt Mr. Robinson would be receiving one very shortly.

“You tried to kill us!” Billy shouted as his boss was being taken out of the Quik N EZ.

“He tried to kill me,” Ms. Washburn said quietly, possibly to herself. I was the only other person who could have heard her.

I stood up and helped Ms. Washburn to her feet just as Detective Hessler was entering the store, surveying the activity as officers began taking statements from Sandy and Billy. That was when I noticed the continued sensation of heat in my left leg.

“Samuel,” Ms. Washburn said with a gasp, “you’ve been shot.”

“Yes.” I did my best not to look down. “That will require some attention.”

Sandy, standing very straight, folded her arms to communicate a certain lack of cooperation, while Billy, still explaining that Mr. Robinson had been trying to kill all of us, was telling as much of the story as he knew. He was explaining to the officer nearest him how he’d only been the person to store the contraband merchandise off the store’s premises and that he’d never stolen anything when Hessler walked casually over to Ms. Washburn and myself.

“Well, you were right,” he told me as soon as he was close enough. “It was Robinson after all. I never would have figured it, a guy that rich. What did he need with selling black market guns? It’ll get him twenty years easy.”

“Detective, Samuel needs medical attention,” she said, and pointed to my leg. I remained resolute in my determination not to look at the wound.

“Yeah, there’ll be an ambulance outside in a minute,” Hessler said. “That doesn’t look bad at all.” He turned back toward me. “So why’d he do it?”

“He is an entrepreneur and that is how he defines himself,” I answered. “If he wasn’t starting a new business he felt stagnant. When he saw Richard Handy’s small-time attempt at selling a few cartons of cigarettes, Mr. Robinson was intrigued and wanted to see if he could do his employee one better.”

Ms. Washburn stared at me. “Samuel, your leg … Wait. You knew it was Robinson?”

“I did not know. I suspected. After the interview we did with him and the statistics about the black market sales, it seemed logical he had some connection. What delayed my analysis was the participation of Sandy Clayton Webb. It wasn’t until Mike saw her at Billy Martinez’s house and then immediately calling someone on the phone that I considered the idea she was somehow connected to the only person we knew who could have gotten Billy involved in the contraband sales. That was Raymond Robinson.”

Ms. Washburn had not broken eye contact. “So you guessed.”

I shrugged. “An educated guess, perhaps. Certainly it was based on the facts we had available to us.”

“And you didn’t tell me,” she continued. “You had answered the question and you didn’t tell me.”

“I had not answered it,” I corrected her. “I had a theory. I needed to test it.”

“Well, your test turned out right,” Hessler interjected. “I think we’ll find that Ms. Webb and Mr. Martinez will be happy to take some plea deals in exchange for information on the guy who shot Richard Handy.”

“Sandy has two children and is recently divorced,” Ms. Washburn told the detective. “You have to find a way to keep her out of jail if you can.”

Hessler cocked an eyebrow. “It’s not up to me. It’s up to the county prosecutor and maybe the FBI. The Feds don’t like it when you sell guns, especially if any of the buyers were from out of state.”

“We don’t know that Sandy actually sold any of the merchandise,” I pointed out. “All we know is she provided housing for some of the items Billy could not store under his parents’ roof, and one hundred dollars a day, presumably to keep Richard Handy quiet.”

Sandy, protesting that she “had two children coming home from school in an hour,” was led out the door by two officers. She was not handcuffed but the officers did hold her arms as they walked.

Billy Martinez had already left, escorted by the other two uniformed policemen. He had said very little, reiterating only that Mr. Robinson had tried to kill him, which was not technically true but would have been if the scenario had been allowed to play out according to the entrepreneur’s plans.

“A lot of it will have to do with how much of the profit Ms. Webb was getting, I would guess,” Hessler said. “If she was getting rich off this business, prosecutors and juries are not going to look kindly on her. Using her brother, a kid with a disability … ” He said the word disability as if trying to sound it out phonetically. “That’s not going to help either. He could have taken the rap for the murder if you hadn’t shown us the evidence, Hoenig.”

I do not do terribly well with direct compliments. “You would have found it yourself sooner or later, detective.” I believed that to be true, although I would have probably wagered on “later” rather than “sooner” if bets were being placed.

“Wait a second.” Ms. Washburn, having listened to the conversation, was beginning to piece together some of the information she had not been given in advance. “How did you know to be here, detective?”

Hessler looked puzzled. “What do you mean, how did I know?” he said. “Your pal here called me two hours ago and said I should be outside with some cops in case the ‘scenario,’ as he put it, didn’t go as well as planned.”

Now Ms. Washburn folded her arms and looked at me, although I was not returning her gaze. “And how did you know exactly when to come in?”

I undid two buttons on my shirt and pulled the collar to the right to reveal a mechanism taped to my skin, which had been extremely uncomfortable throughout this visit. “I am wearing a wire,” I told her. “The detective came and put it on me when you were at lunch.”

“You waited until I was away? Why?”

I could feel myself blush. “It was necessary for me to remove my clothing,” I said.

“Samuel.” Ms. Washburn shook her head in what Mother would have said was disbelief. “You are in your own way quite the gentleman. But this was a dangerous situation and I was walking into it. You can’t not tell me that stuff.”

Detective Hessler raised his hands palms out as if surrendering or being robbed in a motion picture about the American West. “I’m not getting involved in this,” he said, stepping away. “I stopped doing domestic situations when I got my shield.” He went to the entrance and looked out, presumably surveying the uniform officers. I heard two car doors close. He turned toward me. “EMTs are here. Your leg.” He gestured to us to leave the store.

“I apologize for not keeping you completely informed,” I said to Ms. Washburn. I have been told that apologies are an appropriate (if often insufficient) tool for those times when a person does something for the right intentions but in doing so hurts another’s feelings. “It was meant to protect you. I did not expect the situation to become violent, and if you knew I was wearing the transmission device that could have made things less manageable.”

“Wait a second,” Ms. Washburn said, her face probably registering wryness. “You lied. You told Robinson you weren’t recording the conversation.”

That struck me as odd. “You have heard me say things that were not entirely true before,” I reminder her. “But in this case I was not lying.”

“You said you weren’t recording him,” she reiterated.

“I wasn’t. The police officers were recording. I was merely the transmission device.”

Ms. Washburn reached out to touch my arm and I instinctively flinched. She stopped her hand. “Sorry,” she said.

“It was an impulse,” I told her. “It should not be taken personally. I have a difficult time being touched.”

“I know. We should get out of here.” Ms. Washburn pointed toward the door. We started in that direction, careful of the broken glass on the floor. “So you called the cops two hours before we left, huh?”

We walked out into the sunshine and saw the remaining two police cruisers, with Sandy Clayton Webb and Billy Martinez in the two back seats, pull away from the street. Hessler was standing next to his unmarked car talking on his cellular phone.

“After all, Ms. Washburn,” I said. “It never hurts to have a little backup.”

She laughed, then pointed. “There. The ambulance.” She was supporting me a bit on my left side, although I was not aware of a serious limp on my part.

We walked to the waiting ambulance where a male Emergency Medical Technician was emerging from the rear of the vehicle. “You the one who got shot?” he asked.

I felt the beginning of some pain in the affected leg. “Yes, but I do not believe it to be—”

Then I made the mistake of looking at my lower left leg, and saw blood—not very much, but certainly a result of the wound—leaking through my trouser leg.

And I lost consciousness. I do not have difficulty seeing blood. Unless it is my own.