Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)(16)

He had pulled on a black trench coat and fingerless gloves to make his getaway. He moved with surprising speed and purpose for a man with so few functioning brain cells. He hurried around the front of the truck, pushing the remote starter button on the key fob. I heard the engine turn over.

I tumbled down the snowbank and jumped into the driveway. “Hold it, Spike!”

The Goth stopped in his tracks, his arms dropped to his sides, and his mouth fell open. For about ten seconds, he gawked at me. Then he reached for the driver’s door.

“Hold it right there!”

I sprinted forward as he climbed inside the running truck, and managed to catch the door handle before he could yank it shut. We played tug-of-war for a few seconds, and then he threw the truck into reverse. The pickup lurched away, forcing me to release my grip or be pulled along with it.

I would estimate that the backward-moving Raider hit the snowbank at thirty miles per hour—enough speed to fill the bed with snow and bury the rear wheels. Spike tried to drive forward, but he was stuck now. An acrid cloud of exhaust fumes and burning rubber gathered around the truck as he tried in vain to dislodge it.

I put my hand on the grip of my sidearm. I had reached the limits of my patience. The idiot might have dislocated my shoulder. “Step out of the vehicle!”

He stared openmouthed at me through the windshield as I got myself into position parallel to his door. Just as I was about to repeat my command for him to get out, he threw himself across the seat and pushed the passenger door open, shouting, “Go, Shadow! Go!”

The wolf dog gave a yelp when he hit the snow.

But instead of running off, the beautiful animal stopped. He stood there, looking back and forth between us with his luminous yellow eyes. He seemed to have no idea what was happening. I couldn’t blame him. This whole comedy had me shaking my head. Wait until I told Kathy how it had gone down.

“Step out of the vehicle,” I shouted again. “Step out of the vehicle now!”

It was then that a dark shape swooped into my peripheral vision. I was so focused on the ridiculous man behind the wheel that I missed Carrie Michaud running up behind me. I felt the knife between my shoulder blades before I saw it.





7

The sensation was like nothing I had experienced: somewhere between a sharp poke and a hard punch. At first, my mind couldn’t connect the peculiar pain to a recognition of what had just happened.

Then, as I turned, I saw the blade glint in the winter sunlight. And the neurons fired.

She had just stabbed me in the back.

Carrie Michaud lunged at me again. I brought my left arm up to protect myself and received a slash across the forearm. This time I felt the pain fully, knowing what it was. I staggered away, trying to get my legs under me, but I stepped on a patch of ice and went down on one knee. I fumbled for my sidearm but couldn’t find the grip.

She came at me again, this time from above. Her lips pulled back from her sharp little teeth.

All I could think to do was punch her. I jabbed with my left fist and hit her squarely between the eyes. Her head snapped back violently, the knife dropped from her hand, and down she went.

I spun around frantically for a few moments, trying to feel with one hand between my shoulder blades, certain it would come back wet with blood. But all I could feel was torn fabric.

The blade had sliced cleanly through my poncho and the parka underneath. My body armor had been designed to stop a bullet, not a knife. By all rights, the blade should have cut through my trapezoid muscle, severed an artery, and punctured a lung, if not my heart. Had I turned at just the right moment? I had no idea how I had been saved.

My other hand finally found the grip of my SIG and pulled it free of its holster.

Carrie Michaud lay crumpled on the ground. I had knocked her out cold, or maybe she had hit her head on the ice. Her body looked as delicate as that of a child. And yet this waif had come within inches of killing me.

Under the law, I would have been justified in shooting her dead. It didn’t matter that she seemed to be unconscious. She had stabbed me, and that was all that mattered. I knew I could pull the trigger and end Carrie Michaud’s miserable existence and the state of Maine would claim that I had been fully justified. The legislature had granted me an indulgence to commit homicide.

I lined up my gun sights at her narrow chest and slipped my finger inside the trigger guard. In shooting class, you are taught that is the point of no return. Out of the box, in single-action stage, the SIG Sauer P226 has a trigger-action pull rate of 4.5 pounds. The slightest squeeze and it would be done.

But I couldn’t.

Instead, I swung the pistol around on her boyfriend. If anything, the Goth looked even more helpless and pathetic. He was still sitting wide-eyed and slack-jawed behind the wheel of the immobilized Raider. Smoke from the exhaust continued to melt snow and fill the yard with oily fumes.

“Don’t you f*cking move!” I shouted.

But his mind was afloat in some other drug-induced realm.

I flipped Carrie Michaud onto her stomach and twisted her arms behind her back. I felt a cruel urge to snap her wrists but resisted the impulse. I reached behind my belt and found my handcuffs. When I heard the clasps click, I took a breath.

The harrowing reality of the situation was slowly beginning to take hold. I had almost joined the ranks of the police dead, only there would have been no video to show the cadets at the Criminal Justice Academy. Just a cautionary tale to frighten the new recruits: “Did you ever hear about Mike Bowditch? Poor guy got knifed because he tried to take away a drug addict’s wolf.”