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Cold darkness swirled inward, throwing off Kate’s equilibrium and causing her knees to buckle. She lowered her phone from her ear, feeling it slip through her numb fingers and drop, her leaden body pulling her with it.
She caught herself and stepped back, her gloved hand instinctively covering her mouth and nose, as she furiously shook her head. She refused to believe this lifeless soul was her husband. It couldn’t be. Her legs wobbled as her head spun, but she fought the dizzying fog that tried to slip in and take her.
“No! Marco, no,” she sobbed, as she yanked open the car door.
“Renzo! Renzo! Where are you?”
The wailing in her ears sounded strange and distant, outer-body-like.
“Renzo!”
She pushed her head into the car, over Marco’s slumped body and near his gaping head wound in search of her child, tears now burning her frozen cheeks, her heart beating and fluttering and seeming to stop, all at the same time.
Kate leaned deeper into the car toward the passenger’s side, her knee on the driver’s seat in front of Marco’s thigh, as she fell onto him, her hand swinging in the darkness like a blind madwoman. She touched a puffy jacket sleeve and wailed again.
“No, no, no!”
She pulled herself out of the car and raced around the front of it, stopping short at the passenger door. She yanked it open. Renzo’s body slipped near the edge of the seat, almost falling into the street. She caught him and pushed him gently back in, his back and head resting against the back of the seat. With short, staccato breaths, she called out to her son in the darkness.
“Renzo! Renzo!”
She grabbed his shoulders and turned his face toward her. The silver moonlight lit a dark mass covering the front of his chest, his face and body spattered with blood. Her weak scream cried out his name.
“No, no! Renzo! Renzo, baby. It’s mommy. Can you hear me?”
She felt for a pulse, her hand moving up, down, and around his throat.
Nothing.
She stopped short and took his hand, pulling back when she felt his fingers twitch.
“Oh my God! Renzo!”
Kate knew Marco was gone, but she called out to him just in case.
“Marco! Stay with me! Renzo! I’m here baby. Hang on! I’m getting help!”
She pulled herself out of the car and fumbled into her coat pocket for her phone. It wasn’t there. She screamed, as she remembered she’d dropped it and ran back to the driver’s side. She fell to the ground with her flashlight searching for it. When she found it, she raised her shaking and bloodied glove and tried to slide her finger across the phone but was unable to unlock it. She ripped off the glove and pushed the word “Emergency.”
“911. What’s your emergency?”
“My husband and son have been shot!”
Kate’s voice cut through the darkness, tearing and shredding, echoing through the leafless trees.
“I think my husband might already be dead. I don’t know, they’re bleeding and unconscious! Please hurry! Please, please! Hurry!”
The male operator continued. “What is your location, ma’am?”
With the phone to her ear, she ran around the front of the car to Renzo’s side, her knee on the open door’s ledge, taking his hand. It felt icy.
“What?”
“Your location? Where are you?”
Kate looked around and down the road. No street sign could be seen in the darkness.
What was it? She took that third right.
“I—I’m not sure. Oh, no. Ah’, let’s see.” She sobbed and cried, her words breaking, but still, she tried to concentrate. “I took Minnehaha going east to Arcade. Yes, that’s it. Then, I took, ah’—oh, God. What did I take? I ah’, I took a right. Then, I drove right three different times, and then each time, I turned around, back onto Arcade. So, I’m at the third right off of Arcade ... south of Minnehaha. Yes, yes. That’s it. I’m sorry, I don’t know the name of the street.”
“Okay, ma’am, emergency vehicles are on the way. Stay on the phone with me, please.”
“Okay. Hurry, please! My son—”
“What’s your name, ma’am?”
“My name?” Kate didn’t know why she had to waste time with this. “It’s Kate. Kate De Luca. My husband’s name is Marco.” Kate began to cry hysterically. “And my son’s name is Renzo ... Lorenzo De Luca.”
Still kneeling on the open door’s ledge, Kate squeezed Renzo’s hand and brushed his hair away from his face. She leaned in and kissed his cheek, shouting at him to hang on.
“Ma’am. Are you in danger? Do you know if the shooter is nearby?”
Kate hadn’t thought of that. She looked around into the darkness and began to feel lightheaded. She thought she might faint. The dispatcher’s voice faded in and out. She wiped her forehead with her bloody hand.
“I ... I don’t know!” Heat rose up her face as more dizziness set her off balance. “I don’t know. I don’t see anyone. No cars. It’s so cold. Please!” Her own loud cries pierced through her. “Please hurry! He’s dying!”
“The ambulance is on its way. They’ll be there soon—”
“I hear them!”
Kate dropped her phone, pulled herself up, and ran around the SUV to flag them down, screaming and jumping as she waved her arms. Flashing lights rounded the corner coming up fast.
She ran back to the driver’s side door and leaned in, pushing and shaking Marco’s shoulder as if trying to rouse him from a deep slumber. She clung to the hope that he might still be alive.
“Hang on, Marco! Help is on the way, baby. I love you. Please don’t leave me, Marco. Please!”
She again ran around the front of the car to lean in next to Renzo. She used all of her might to rein in her hysteria, to appear calm, as she spoke softly.
“Renzo, baby, can you hear me?”
She heard her son’s quiet voice.
“Momma.” He pointed toward Marco, his eyes still shut. “Dad.” He let out a weak whimper. “Help him. He’s shot.”
Kate let out all available oxygen. This nightmare could not be real.
“I know, baby. They’re here now. Hang on. Help is here.” She blinked away her endless tears. “Who ... who did this to you? Do you know? Tell me, Renzo. Who did this to you and daddy?”
Renzo appeared to use all of his might to speak.
“Se ‘eh ...”
She shook her head. “Who baby? Who did this?”
Her vision blurred in the night’s darkness as one of the emergency vehicles screeched to a stop next to the SUV. She heard voices screaming, yet they sounded so far away.
As more blaring sirens approached, Kate left Renzo and ran, waving her bloody arms and hands.
“Over here! Hurry! Please—hurry!”
She returned to Renzo so he wouldn’t be afraid. She kept wiping her tears from her face, unaware of the blood on her hand, now all over her face.
“Stay with me baby. Momma loves you. Can you hear me?” She tipped his chin. “Renzo?”
Scooping her arm under his neck, she wiped the dark wetness away from his mouth and nose with the tips of her frozen fingers and wrapped her arms around him to keep him warm.
“Help is here, sweetie. Hang on. They’re here now.”
An ambulance and two police cars pulled up beside the SUV. Two paramedics, a man and a woman, jumped out of the ambulance. The woman jogged around and opened the back doors of the ambulance, while the man ran toward Kate and Marco’s cars, just as another ambulance approached.
“Please, hurry!” Kate swung her head back and forth screaming at whomever would listen. “Please hurry!”
“Step aside, ma’am.”
The paramedic then shouted orders to the woman near the ambulance, as Kate moved to the front of the car. Two more police cars pulled up behind the ambulance, sirens wailing and then shutting off, their echoes ringing in Kate’s ears. The female paramedic ran toward the car, a bag in hand, and ordered Kate to stay back.
Plumes of white clouds surrounded the mouths of so many strangers now running around. Kate held her hand to her mouth trying to muffle the screams pressing in her throat, as her weakened legs buckled.
Two male police officers, one white and one Black, both tall and muscular, approached the SUV, hands on their holstered weapons. Glancing in through the opened SUV doors, they passed the paramedics, and took Kate by her elbow, pushing her further from her husband and son, while the paramedics, now leaning deep into the vehicle, barked orders at each other, as the crew from the second ambulance jumped to work.
Kate fought the cops and tried to run, escaping at first, until the beefier of the two grabbed her in a bear hug and talked quietly near her ear.
“Okay,” he said, almost whispering. “Stay with me, now. I need you to stay with me, here, okay? They’re working on them. Come on, help me understand what happened.”
She nodded her head and relaxed a bit, so he released his grip. Looking down at her, he said, “Can you do that?”
She grabbed her head with both hands as tears rolled down her cheeks. She nodded again as she gasped for breath and let him guide her. She lost her balance under her shaky legs, and he hooked his strong arms under hers, catching her.
Then, with an arm around her shoulder, he guided her toward the squad car and sat her in the back seat. It felt warm inside despite the door remaining open.
They asked many questions and she impatiently answered them as she sobbed.
...“Yes. That’s my husband and my son. Marco and Renzo.”
...“No, I don’t know who shot them.”
She leaned out to look back at her SUV as the weight and reality of what was happening crept into her consciousness. Her heart felt destroyed.
The officers continued to pepper her with questions. Kate answered them with a quaking voice while straining to watch the paramedics as they dragged her husband and son out of the car and onto stretchers. She tried to get out, but the white cop put his hand on her shoulder, forcing her back into the squad car.
“Please,” she whispered, “I need to be with them.”
He looked at the other officer who nodded and helped her up and out of the car.
“I’m riding with them to the hospital,” she told the officer.
He nodded. “I’ll see you there. We’re not done talking.”
She ignored him and ran toward her husband and son. Her legs felt numb—as though she wasn’t moving at all. She finally came upon the two stretchers carrying the bodies of her husband and child and climbed into the ambulance with Renzo. Once inside, she watched as Marco was lifted into the vehicle next to them, motionless, his face and winter jacket stained black with blood.
