Out of Nowhere, page 30
“How did you plan to escape?” Elle asked.
“As Mom and I followed Calder through the entrance, I noticed the game tents off to the right. I’d told Mom to make her way toward the first one in the row as soon as all hell broke loose and that we’d look for each other somewhere near there.
“In the panic, I doubted anyone would notice me passing the pistol and the windbreaker off to her. No one did. Everyone was trying to save their own skin. I trusted her aim. She was supposed to injure me, but not too bad.”
“You planned all along to be shot?”
“Well, yes. Our success depended on it.”
“I see.”
“We decided my calf was a safe place for me to be injured.”
“You could have been crippled for life, Dawn. You took a huge risk.”
“The whole plot was a risk. But one worth taking.”
Elle said nothing.
“Anyway,” Dawn continued, “after Mom saw that I was down but not seriously injured, she ran into that tent. There stood the dopehead.” She laughed. “Mom told me later that he about scared her to death. He didn’t say anything, just gave her this stupid, glazed stare. When she realized he was stoned, she walked straight up to him and shot him in the head. He never flinched, she said. The cops figured he’d saved the last bullet for himself, but, actually, it was sheer luck there was one left for poor Levi. Seems like it was meant to be, doesn’t it? I mean, he was a wasted life.”
Jesus, Calder thought.
She continued to babble. “Anyway, Mom had the presence of mind to put the gun in his hand. She stuffed the ruined windbreaker up her sweatshirt, then slipped through the back of the tent and went yelling and screaming toward an exit like everyone else.
“Later, she played out the whole ‘I can’t find my daughter’ thing. Frantic-like. Hysterical. You know. When Frank got to the emergency room, even he was convinced that both of us had been traumatized.”
“Getting yourself shot was quite a sacrifice,” Elle said.
“A necessary evil.”
“Explain that to me.”
“Well, it couldn’t appear that Calder Hudson had been targeted.”
Upon hearing his name, Calder’s gut tensed.
“Because then they’d begin looking into his background for someone holding a grudge, and that might have led to us. It had to look random.”
Elle was slow to respond. “But, Dawn, you thought you’d killed Calder. You said you’d got off a lucky shot. So, after you saw that he was down, why did you continue firing into the crowd?”
“Calder never cared how many people he hurt, did he? I’ll bet he never gave a thought to secondary victims like Mom and me. We were collateral damage. He didn’t give us any regard, so why should I care who suffered because of him?
“Besides, Elle,” she added as though speaking to an ignoramus, “to qualify as a mass shooting, there have to be four or more people shot. I had to make it look good.”
Appearing sickened by Dawn’s callousness, Elle turned her head aside. When she did, she spied his reflection in the mirror. In involuntary reaction, her body jerked. He shook his head and held his finger up to his lips.
She glanced quickly at Dawn, but apparently Dawn was oblivious.
Calder leaned forward slightly to get a better view into the living room through the mirror. Before making a move, he wanted to know the layout. Dawn was seated on a sofa, her back to him. She had her head turned away from Elle, toward the television, he supposed.
In the interview, Elle was saying, “I blame only the person who pulled the trigger.”
Sounding pleased, Dawn chortled, “You were talking about me and didn’t even know it.”
Shauna said, “Let’s assume the assailant at the safe house was the Fairground shooter. It was awfully brazen of him.”
“Notice that she refers to the shooter as him?” Dawn said with scorn. “Everyone does. As though a woman couldn’t do it.”
“Brazen but not brave,” Calder heard Elle say.
“What?” Dawn screeched. “What did you mean by that?”
Calmly, Elle said, “I meant exactly what I said, Dawn.”
“Can you expand on that?” Shauna asked.
“Brazenness requires only a warped ego. Whether inflated or trampled, that ego is controlling the individual’s actions.”
Dawn lunged to her feet. “You called me warped? How dare you.”
“You think it’s this warped ego that’s driving the unknown suspect?”
“Well, I’m not a psychiatrist, but what does bravery have to do with firing a semiautomatic handgun into a dense crowd of people who are defenseless? Nothing. That’s not bravery; that’s depravity. To kill a two-year-old doesn’t take courage. It’s the epitome of cowardice.”
“You bitch!” Dawn screamed. She hauled off and struck Elle hard across the face with the pistol.
Calder launched himself into the living room, hurdled the sofa, and knocked Dawn facedown onto the floor, then fell on top of her.
But he fell short.
She’d stretched her arm far out in front of her along the floor, putting her gun hand out of his reach. She got off three shots before the whole house seemed to implode as all the doors burst open and SWAT officers swarmed in from every direction.
Using that nanosecond of distraction, Calder pushed himself higher up on Dawn’s back, reached as far as he could, and managed to grip her wrist. He anchored her hand to the floor and kept the shots she continued to fire aimed only at the baseboard.
She was screaming like a demon and trying to buck Calder off. A booted foot planted itself on the back of her gun hand. “Let go of the weapon! Let go of the weapon!”
Another SWAT officer pulled Calder off her and shoved him out of the way as others surrounded Dawn to disarm and subdue her.
Calder staggered over to the chair where one of the men in full gear was removing the duct tape from Elle’s arms. As soon as she was free, she threw herself against Calder. He didn’t see any blood on her, but as he clutched her to him, he asked if she’d been shot.
“No. You?”
“No.” They clung to each other even as they were rapidly ushered through the front door and out into the yard, where EMTs rushed forward to assist them.
“She’s been hurt,” Calder told the first to reach them.
“I’m all right,” Elle said. But there was a red welt across her cheekbone, and it had already begun to swell.
“This way, ma’am.” The EMT took her arm to lead her toward the ambulance, which was just one of the emergency vehicles parked haphazardly in the street. Reluctantly, Calder released her into the medic’s care and fell into step behind them.
“Calder!”
He stopped and turned. In long strides, Compton and Perkins were closing in on him. Compton was huffing. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, but Dawn hit Elle in the face with the pistol. May have broken a bone. I don’t know.” He turned and started jogging toward the ambulance.
“Calder!”
He stopped and turned again. Compton said, “What I said about you acting impulsively at the fairground? I owe you an apology.”
He divided a look between her and Perkins. “Save it. You were right.”
Chapter 41
After the dramatic takedown of the Fairground shooter, Calder was hounded by the media. He was unable to leave his apartment building without having to run a gauntlet of microphones and cameras. After five days of it, he cleared himself with Compton and Perkins and struck out for California by car.
He told himself that he was going for his parents’ sake, to show them in person that he’d survived the ordeal, that he was well and whole. But in actuality, he was running home like a child with a skinned knee, seeking comfort and reassurance, needing to hear that a scab would form, that what ailed him would eventually hurt less and get better.
He’d needed them to tell him that he wasn’t to blame.
They were thrilled to have him. He and his dad, whose latest scans were clear, spent a lot of time in the loungers on the back terrace that overlooked the ocean. One afternoon, Calder bounced off him an idea he’d been contemplating.
“It’s a new business plan. Rather than going in and weeding out borderline employees, I would evaluate their weaknesses, coach them on how to improve, or suggest a task within the company that’s more suited to their strengths.
“By doing so, I’d help create a happier and therefore more productive workforce, which would result in increased revenue, which would please the bigwigs. I don’t know. It’s still on the drawing board. You’re the first person I’ve shared this with. What do you think, Dad?”
“I like it. Positivity, not negativity.”
Calder grinned. “That might be the tagline on my new business card.”
That was as serious as they got. Most of the time, they talked about nothing consequential. They used the silliest anecdotal recollections as excuses to laugh until their eyes leaked tears.
Ponderous things, such as how they felt about life and its often-cruel vagaries and the depth of their feeling for each other were communicated more subtly during companionable silences when they’d exchange a look and smile with mutual understanding.
His mom was more demonstrative. She fussed over him and fed him, having pledged she would put five pounds on him before he left. She was even more affectionate than usual, hugging him often for no specific reason, holding him close and whispering in a voice made ragged by emotion, “Oh, Calder, we came so close to losing you, our baby, our boy. I feel for that poor woman.”
Elle. Elle who had lost her baby, her boy. He thought constantly of her and of the pain she still experienced. Knowing that it would reside in her for the rest of her life anguished him.
He spent hours each day walking alone on the beach, staring out across the undulating Pacific, or lying on his back in the sand, gazing at the nighttime sky, seeking absolution, asking the heavens: Am I to blame?
To the consternation of the media, Elle was even more reclusive than she had been following the Fairground shooting. She declined every request for an interview and kept to her house. After a few discouraging days of getting nothing from her, one by one the journalists camping out on her street packed up their vans and left.
Her parents came to spend a weekend with her. As usual, it was intended as a caring gesture, but Elle was relieved when they departed. Her agent, Laura, had called every other day or so to check on her. Given the circumstances, the publisher had extended her deadline by several months. Therefore, Laura was surprised and delighted when Elle told her she was ready to get back to work.
“Thank them for the gesture, but I won’t need the extension. I’ll get the book in ahead of its original deadline.”
She had a voice mail from Jeff, telling her how glad he was that her ordeal was over. She called him back and congratulated him on the birth of his son.
Other than returning the calls of established friends, she maintained a low profile and spent long days at her computer and drawing board. Closure had freed her mind and jump-started her creativity.
However, she couldn’t entirely escape the specter of Dawn Whitley. She’d had several meetings with Compton and Perkins, giving her account of the erratic events leading up to her confrontation with Dawn and recounting for them everything Dawn had told her. Her recollection skill was of tremendous help to them in filling in the blanks.
The detectives told her that the death threat voice mail had already raised the eyebrows of their audio specialists. “They said it was ‘hinky.’ They were in the process of analyzing it when we got the frantic call from Calder that Dawn was our culprit.”
Elle was also told that Dawn had initially remained silent and defiant during their interrogations. But after they played for her the recording that Calder had surreptitiously made on his phone while hiding in the dining room, her staunch avowals of innocence had begun to weaken.
In that dialogue with Elle, she had practically reconstructed her crimes and boasted of her cleverness. After hearing the recording, her court-appointed attorney impressed upon her that if she was tried and convicted of even one of the capital crimes for which she was accused—for instance, the murder of Charlie Portman—she would be eligible for the death penalty.
At her arraignment, she entered a guilty plea for every charge.
“Dawn’s sentencing hearing is pending,” Compton had told Elle at their last meeting. “Because of her homicidal tendencies, she’ll probably be sentenced to spend the rest of her life in the psych section of a penal institution, where she’ll be kept in solitary confinement. Prior to sentencing, you can address her and the court if you choose to.”
“No, thank you,” Elle had said.
Compton also had told her that the judge had denied Shauna Calloway’s request to interview Dawn from her jail cell, even via video. “He put it in the form of a chastisement for her even proposing it, telling her that a mass murderer shouldn’t be elevated to celebrity status. To quote, he said, ‘The perpetrators of such wanton criminal acts as mass shootings should instead be ground into obscurity. Request denied.’”
At the conclusion of their meeting, Perkins had passed Elle a business card. “From the president of an advocacy group for victims of violent crimes and their survivors. He asked that you call him. He’d like to invite you to speak at a conference this summer. I know you shun publicity, but think about it, Ms. Portman. You could do some good.”
For Perkins, it was a long speech. Elle became emotional as she took the card and thanked him for passing it along. “I’ll think about it.”
This evening, she related that exchange to Glenda, who’d brought carry-out Thai for their dinner. They were lingering over a glass of wine in her living room.
“As I said my goodbyes,” she told Glenda, “I realized that, in an odd way, I’m going to miss them.”
“They’re like the counselors at summer camp,” Glenda said. “Over a short period of time, you form a bond and then never see them again, but you also never forget them.”
Elle smiled over the analogy.
“And if you do make an appearance at that conference,” Glenda continued, “I’ll get Daddy to contribute lots of money to the organization. You’d be terrific.”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“What happened to the other two?”
“The other two what?”
“Key witnesses. You told me there were five of you.”
“Oh. The older lady got a new pacemaker. She’s out of the hospital and doing fine. The young widower had been taken to relatives in Arkansas, where he’s decided to stay.” She looked wistfully into her wine. “I hope he recovers, finds happiness. Peace.”
“I hope you do.” Glenda hesitated, then said, “Elle, Calder has been conspicuously absent for the past three weeks. As you know, I was leery of him and of the two of you together. But I’ve come around. As men go, he’s okay.”
Elle laughed. “High praise indeed.”
“So, where’s he been keeping himself, and what’s your status? I hope that for some reason I’m unaware of, you’re not about to burst into tears because I asked.”
“No, it’s all right. Mutually, we decided to stay apart until things settled down. There were spotlights on us, and things were complicated enough. We didn’t need another issue to explain or try to conceal.”
“Hmm, that sounds dense, and I don’t have time for density tonight.” She drained her wine and shouldered her purse.
“What’s your rush?”
“I’ve got a date.”
“Oh, someone serious?”
“Yes. He’s seriously rich.”
They laughed as they hugged goodbye. “Thank you for bringing dinner.”
“I’m glad you liked it.”
“And, Glenda, thank you mostly for being my friend.”
When Elle set her away, Glenda said with all seriousness, “Not a problem. You’re the one who has to work at being mine.”
They held gazes for several seconds, then Elle walked her to the front door and waited to see her off. Just as Glenda was getting into her car, an unfamiliar Jeep pulled up behind it.
Calder climbed out. Elle’s heart began turning cartwheels.
He acknowledged Glenda with an absent-minded wave. She shot Elle a cheeky look over her shoulder, then got into her car and drove off.
Calder started up the walk. “Like it?” he said, hitching his thumb over his shoulder at the Jeep. “It’s new.”
“You traded in your Jag?”
“No. I still have it. We just needed space from each other.”
She laughed. He joined her on the porch, and then they just looked at each other. Eyes on her bruised cheek, he said, “Does it still hurt?”
“No. It only looks like it does. It’s been slow to fade, but it will.”
His eyes reconnected with hers, and he asked softly, “Are we still talking about the bruise?”
She gave him a wistful smile. “It’s no longer a shooting pain, just a dull ache.” He nodded understanding. “Come in.”
“Thanks.”
She turned and entered the house. He followed her inside. She asked, “How was California?”
“We had a great visit.”
“Lovely. Your dad?”
“The poster child for curing cancer with early treatment.”
“That’s wonderful!”
“Yeah. I talked to him about a new business venture. He came up with a great slogan.”
“Really? What?”
“Later.”
“You look excited.”
“I am. It feels good, Elle. Honest. Work I can actually talk about.”
“I’m glad for you.”
“Me too.”
“When did you get back?”
“This is my first stop.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I left something here that belongs to me.”
“Your signed Betsy book.”
He shook his head. “You.” He moved in, backing her into the wall, and, gently cradling her face between his hands, kissed her. Kissed her softly but ardently.
