Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(62)

Maureen, two steps behind Detillier’s right shoulder, listened for voices, for sobs, for curses or commands. For any breathing that wasn’t her or Detillier. For any movement around or behind them. Every couple of steps she turned and checked their rear. She heard nothing but her own breathing, her own heartbeat, and the piped-in music and a fantasy football report on ESPN playing on a TV in the electronics department behind them.

As they closed in on Sporting Goods, they caught a scent in the air that led them closer to the shooters, the pungent iron-copper smell of spilled blood. Fresh blood. The scent and the quiet told Maureen what they would find. Bodies. She hoped they belonged to the Watchmen.

Detillier gasped and froze as he turned the corner into the fishing aisle. He held his free hand up behind him to stop Maureen from coming closer. He had lowered his gun. It hung loose in his hand by his side. Ignoring his command, Maureen lowered her own weapon and walked up beside him.

She had shrugged off Detillier’s “stop” sign on the assumption that its purpose was to protect her from what she’d witness in the fishing aisle. Poor man, she thought. Nice try. Wasn’t his fault that he had no idea what she’d already done when it came to death, never mind what she had seen. When she pulled even with him at the end of the aisle, though, she realized Detillier hadn’t been trying to protect her delicate feminine sensibilities. His motivation had been more practical. He’d simply not wanted her to step in anything sticky.

The brown-haired woman was seated at an angle, her legs open in a V in front of her. Her arms hung limp at her sides. Her body slouched against a rack of fishing rods, a handful of which had tumbled to the floor around her. A pistol lay on the floor by her right hand. An AK-47 lay across her lap. Except for the guns, she looked to Maureen like any number of drunks she’d seen sleeping one off in a doorway. Well, except for the guns and the fact that the back of the woman’s skull was missing. Pieces of it, and a good portion of what her skull had contained, now coated three shelves of heavy test fishing line. Without thinking, Maureen licked her lips. Then she wondered what foul particles she had drawn into her body. She wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of the hand that held her gun. She holstered her weapon. She turned and made eye contact with Detillier. He said nothing, turning away to speak into his radio.

That was when Maureen noticed the man.

He was prone on his belly, a few feet down the aisle beyond the body of the woman.

He wore a yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag tied around his neck as a cape, like a child playing superhero, over his body armor. A large pool of blood haloed his head. Maureen realized the pool was growing, spreading fast across the dirty tile floor. That told her the man’s heart continued beating. Not strong enough to keep him alive much longer. Minutes, Maureen guessed. Moments. His heartbeat was killing him, Maureen thought. Pumping his blood out onto the floor of the Walmart instead of to his body or his brain. She thought maybe she heard a quiet gurgle. She’d heard a similar sound just the night before. She knew what it meant. The man’s arms splayed at his sides. There was no weapon anywhere near either of his hands.

She drew her gun anyway, tapped it against her thigh, contemplating.

She glanced over her shoulder at Detillier. She saw that he continued talking into his radio, one hand held up in the air to direct the others to his location. People more important than her were coming to take control of the scene. The thing to do here, she thought, the thing I should do, seeing as this guy is alive, is tell Detillier, have him call EMS to the fishing department. Today we don’t have to wait for the crypt-keeper to come with the keys. Those glass doors slide right open. This guy would give the NOPD and the FBI a living witness to use against the Watchmen. If he could be saved.

Leaning forward, hands on her thighs, Maureen noted that the blood appeared to be leaking from under the man’s head or neck. She reached out her foot, with the tip of her boot moved the man’s chin a couple of inches. Ah, she thought, there it was. He’d taken a bullet, at least one, right at the base of his throat. I could, she thought, get in there, find and apply pressure to those wounds. She’d tried it for Leary. This guy, though, Maureen thought, he wasn’t going to make it, either. She didn’t have to be a doctor to see that, with the amount of blood he’d lost. She could see it laid out in front of her on the tile floor.

And, truth be told, she much preferred he died instead of lived.

She sniffed, watched as his feet twitched. His fingertips, too. The last primal circuits in his brain prodding his extremities to do something about the hole in his throat, Maureen figured. Was this guy one of the men who’d shot up her house a month and a half ago? Was he one of the cowards wearing masks and firing automatic weapons from a van in the street who had tried to kill her in her bed? Not enough nerve to get out of the getaway car to finish the job, not having the balls to meet me at my door. I bet that’s how you killed those cops today, she thought. A sneak attack. An ambush. Like the f*cking coward you are.

Maureen moved closer to the dying man. He didn’t seem to be breathing, she thought. She must’ve imagined that gurgle she heard. Standing over him, she could see one of his eyes. It was blue. It moved.

Surprised, she moved closer to him, not caring that she’d now stepped in the blood. She’d wash it off later. Wouldn’t be the first time. Detillier would be pissed, not that there was anything he could do about it. Crime scene integrity and all that.