Shot Girl

by Karen E. Olson

  "Annie, be careful. I don’t know why Ralph had pictures of you—that I can definitely say—but he was into some very serious criminal activity. Please let Tom do his job and find out what was going on with those pictures." She paused, lifted her hand to my cheek. "You might want to keep Vinny close, just in case."

  I couldn’t stop checking my mirrors all the way to work. Even though Ralph was dead, someone was still calling me, so I couldn’t say for sure that I wasn’t being followed anymore.

  As soon as I walked into the newsroom, however, my mood lifted.

  "I’ve got bad news for you." Jane Ferraro was the weekend metro editor, and she truly looked upset. "The quilters had to cancel. The AC went out in the senior center, so they can’t meet today."

  Darn.

  "I’ll find you something else to do," Jane said, going back to her desk and shuffling through some papers.

  I went to my desk and booted up my computer. While I waited for it, I noticed the red message light blinking on my phone. Instinctively, I tensed up. Was I going to be like this every time I got a phone message? I shook myself out if it and hit my code, then listened.

  "Ms. Seymour, this is Reggie Shaw. I just wanted to tell you how lovely it was meeting you yesterday, and if you have any more questions, please don’t hesitate to call." Shaw rattled off a number and hung up. I stared at the phone. The number he gave me didn’t jibe with the one I had for him, so I replayed the message and scribbled this new one in my notebook. And what was up with the "Reggie"? He hadn’t introduced himself so informally the day before.

  Jane still hadn’t come over with an alternate plan for my afternoon, so on a whim, I Googled Ralph’s and Shaw’s names together. Nothing. I’d already tried Googling Shaw and came up with a big fat goose egg, so I Googled Ralph and scrolled through a bunch of links to the Colorado White River Rafting Association—they listed a Ralph Seymour as president. I didn’t think so. I saw the link to the story from the Herald about Ralph’s death, but nothing more.

  I stared at the screen for a second before Googling Jack Hammer.

  I had no idea how popular he was. He was the topic of quite a few blogs about recent male-revue shows, and one of the links would’ve gotten me in huge trouble with the company if I’d clicked on it, I was sure of that. One of our sports guys had been suspended after visiting porn sites after midnight, when he thought no one would know. It was the same sort of bullshit reasoning as thinking you might be indispensable.

  My phone rang, startling me out of my Jack Hammer reverie.

  "Newsroom," I answered, making my voice lower than usual so if it was someone I didn’t want to talk to, I could pretend it wasn’t me.

  "Annie? It’s Priscilla."

  "Hey, there," I said in my normal voice.

  "How are you? You never called me back. I talked to Ned. He said he saw you." Priscilla had a habit of answering her own questions, so I didn’t have to say too much. But when she paused, I realized it was time for me to participate in the conversation.

  "There’s been a lot going on," I said, realizing the moment it came out of my mouth how lame it sounded. "Sorry," I tried.

  "So what is going on?"

  Priscilla had actually known where Ralph lived, so she certainly knew more about him than I did. "Do you know why Ralph had pictures of me?" I asked, trying to keep my tone from getting too frosty.

  The silence could mean one of two things: She didn’t know shit or she did. I waited.

  "I have no idea what you’re talking about," she said. "What kind of pictures?"

  I told her what Tom had said. "You have to tell me if Ralph said anything about me or anything else," I finished.

  More silence on the line meant she was digesting this information, either that or she was having her morning coffee. A small sound indicated it was probably the latter.

  "Listen, Annie, I don’t know anything about any pictures. Do you want me to come out tomorrow?" she asked. "I’ve got tomorrow off. We can talk about this face-to-face." She paused. "Ned thought maybe we should all get together."

  "For what, a fucking wake for Ralph?" I asked, a little too loud because Jane looked up from her desk, frowning. I lowered my voice. "Come on, Priscilla. You guys can mourn all you want, but I really don’t give a shit one way or the other whether he’s dead."

  Okay, so maybe that was an overstatement. I did care, but only because I wanted to find out why he had those pictures, and if he were alive, it would be a helluva lot easier to find out.

  "You could ask Ned about the pictures, see if he knew about them. The phone calls, too," Priscilla said.

  That made sense, but before I could respond, the scanner started to screech. Priscilla was saying something, but I tuned her out as I listened to the report of a shooting. On the city’s Green at one of the bus stops. I glanced around the newsroom. I was the only reporter. Jane was the only other person in the newsroom. She was looking anxiously in my direction. Should she send me or would she catch shit?

  "Listen, Priscilla," I said quickly, "I’ve got to go. If you want to come in tomorrow, let me know."I hung up and jumped out of my seat, going over to Jane.

  "You have to send me," I said flatly.

  It was bigger than me, and she knew that. The city’s annual International Festival of Arts & Ideas had just begun. During the festival’s two weeks, there were events on the Green, concerts and theater productions and kids’ shows, stuff like that, in addition to events scattered throughout the city. I usually didn’t get involved because this was the features department’s baby.

  Jane was shuffling through the brochure with the festival’s events listed in it. When she raised her eyes to me, I knew it was bad.

  "There’s a kids’ concert scheduled there in half an hour," she said, her voice full of tension. "Some rip-off of Raffi, I think."

  We were both thinking the same thing: Families had probably been gathering for the last hour or so all over the Green.

  We could hear the pandemonium on the scanner. We couldn’t ignore this just because I wasn’t supposed to be covering the beat at the moment. I was the weekend reporter; I was it. That was all there was to it.

  Jane gave a slight nod. "I’ll get a photographer over there," she said, making a dash for the photo lab.

  I grabbed my bag and a notebook off my desk. Fuck Charlie Simmons.

  It was news.

  Chapter 19

  I had to park on Orange Street, near State. A couple of long blocks away. That was the closest I could get.

  I jogged up Chapel, the flashing red lights strobelike against bodies and strollers coming toward me, away from whatever danger was behind them. I shoved through the throngs and managed to make it to the intersection with Church Street. Cops were everywhere, the ubiquitous yellow crime-scene tape taut around the old-fashioned-looking steel bus stops that lined the south end of the Green, hugging Chapel Street across from the old Chapel Square Mall, which now housed a Starbucks, Ann Taylor Loft, and Caffe Bottega.

  A glance toward the northern end of the Green caught the huge stage, and colorful balloons filled the air like fireworks, floating on the wind.

  A cop with a bullhorn was trying to tell everyone to stay calm, but no one was listening. Piercing screams of toddlers and babies pounded against my eardrums as the mass of people scattered at the edges of the Green to try to reach their cars to get to safety.

  It was going to be a goddamn traffic nightmare.

  I’d never seen anything quite like it.

  I reached the edge of the yellow tape, which was slung from the concrete pillar in front of Starbucks across Chapel Street to a parking sign parallel with Church Street, then wound its way in back of the bus stops, and along the width of the Green.

  An ambulance sat in the deserted section of Chapel Street, its siren quiet. But even if it’d been blasting, I’m not sure anyone would’ve been able to discern that sound from the others.

  No one was watching me, and I ducked under the tape,
hoping that whichever photographer had caught this assignment was here somewhere, shooting this.

  "You’re not supposed to be here." A uniformed cop grabbed my arm and started pulling me away, but then a familiar face peered into mine.

  Ronald Berger. I nodded at him. "Hey, what happened here?"

  He looked at the notebook in my hand, cocked his head at the uniform, who let me go and scurried off to try to control the crowd.

  "You shouldn’t have done that," Ronald scolded.

  I shrugged. "It’s my job," I said. "What happened here?" I was in my element, and Charlie Simmons couldn’t take this moment away from me.

  Ronald looked over at one of the bus stops. Three cops were leading a guy to a police car. "Fired shots."

  I nodded at Ronald, scribbling. "Who is he?"

  "No ID. And he won’t say anything to anyone. It’s like he’s a fucking mute."

  I looked at the guy’s dark face, an earring glinting in one ear, his nose broad, his lips pursed tightly, his shoulders stiff. He wasn’t looking at anything in particular, just let the cops push his head down and into the car and allowed himself to disappear.

  "Not exactly Dog Day Afternoon, is it?" I asked, remembering Al Pacino’s loud shouting of "Attica!" "So what happened?"

  Ronald took a deep breath.

  "Witnesses say he was arguing with a girl, and she shouted ’Fuck you’ at him and turned around to cross the street. He pulled out a nine-millimeter Glock and took a couple of shots."

  "Jesus, no one was hit?"

  Ronald snorted. "A guy and his family were sitting on a blanket nearby, waiting for the concert to start. The guy heard the shots, came over, and fucking tackled the kid, took him down, got the gun. He was sitting on the guy’s back when the first cop showed up." He paused. "He was the only one sitting still. By then, everyone was running. Some people just ran over little kids. Little kids, for fuck’s sake." His arm swept across the air, indicating the Green. I saw more ambulances farther down Church and Temple streets, EMTs, and gurneys and all that shit you normally see on TV.

  The adrenaline rushed through my body as I took it all down. "Do you have the girl, the guy who took him down? Can I talk to them?"

  Ronald frowned. "We’re interrogating them now." I followed his eyes over to a small area to our left, cordoned off with three cop cars. A tall man wearing a Yankees baseball cap was talking to one officer. A little farther down the street, a young woman in a pair of shorts that showed off long, slender, muscular legs was also answering questions. Every cop was watching her.

  Something about her looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her.

  "What’s the guy’s name? The shooter?"

  Ronald was distracted. "It’ll be in the press release," he said, moving away.

  This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. And it wasn’t going to, if I had anything to say about it. But I also knew that I needed to give the cops a little more time to do their job.

  Some people weren’t fleeing, I noticed now. There were a few pockets of families huddling, talking among themselves, not wanting to miss anything. Maybe they’d even be on TV. The vans were congregated on Temple, the reporters and cameramen grim-faced as they taped their segment, showing their outrage and, of course, compassion.

  A group of young black kids was hanging out near the yellow tape behind the farthest bus stop. Two of them were straddling bikes.

  I had plenty of people I could get quotes from.

  I maneuvered under the tape. While I knew Jane would want a great story about the guy who tackled the guy with the gun, I’d start with those kids. They might know who the shooter was. This was a small city, and everyone knew everyone in his own world. I at least needed the shooter’s name; it would be easier to get information from Ronald later if I had something to start with. I wondered where Tom was. Maybe I’d missed him.

  As I turned to take a look, I caught the eye of the girl being interrogated, the alleged reason why the guy had started shooting. She wasn’t too far away, in front of the Ann Taylor Loft. Right away my memory kicked into gear.

  It was that shot girl. The shot girl at Bar whom Vinny was talking to when I went outside last night. What the hell was her name?

  She frowned at me, then turned back to the cops.

  I shrugged off a nagging feeling that this might not be a coincidence. Because what the hell else could it be? There are a lot of college girls in this town; Yale and Southern are not the only schools in the area. But on the off chance that my logic was wrong, I stopped amid the chaos and pulled my cell phone out of my bag.

  "Remind me of that girl’s name at Bar last night. Felicia’s friend," I said, without even saying hello, when Vinny answered. Hell, he knew who it was.

  "Ashley Ellis," he said.

  "Thanks," I said, but I didn’t end the call right away.

  "You’re welcome," he said, and then he was gone.

  He didn’t even ask why I wanted to know. He didn’t ask me shit.

  Damn. He was here somewhere. He had to be.

  I pushed it out of my head, concentrating on my job. As I approached the knot of young men, I recognized someone else. Jamond, the kid from the garden yesterday. A stroke of good luck, I hoped. Maybe it could get me in with the group.

  "Hey, fancy meeting you here," I said to him lightly.

  He still wore that do-rag on his head, the uniform of the day. All five were dressed alike in baggy jeans—worn so low I wondered how they stayed on—and white T-shirts that had to be extra-extra large. They were all pretty skinny, their clothes hanging on them like they each had been the Incredible Hulk and then suddenly shrank back into Bruce Banner and hadn’t had a chance to change yet. The bicycles were a reminder of a story I’d done the previous week about kids on bikes who’d been terrorizing people on the sidewalks, ripping purses and shopping bags out of hands as they sped by. I didn’t like to stereotype, and maybe these kids were completely innocent. No one had clear descriptions of the bike riders except that they were black kids. As if they all looked alike. Despite their clothes and slim frames, none of these kids resembled one another. Well, except for the scowls.

  If I was to place a bet, I’d say they weren’t here for that children’s concert.

  Jamond frowned at me. I ignored him.

  "I’m Annie Seymour with the Herald. Did you guys know the guy who was shooting?" I asked.

  They all shifted a little, taking quick looks at one another. Who was going to speak first? Was anyone going to?

  "We was jus’ waitin’ for the bus,"Jamond finally said when all eyes landed on him.

  On bikes? Oh yeah, I’d seen buses with bikes on the rack on the front grille. Not out of the realm of possibility. "With him?" I asked.

  More shifting. These kids sure as hell knew who that guy was.

  "How do you guys know Ashley?" I asked, indicating the girl and taking a wild guess that they did know her.

  This time the shifting was accompanied by some smirks and winks between them. My instincts were right.

  "Was she dating him?" I asked. "Is that why he shot at her? What did she do that pissed him off?"

  Jamond started chuckling. "Dating him? You mean, fucking him? Yeah, sure she was. And he was pissed, because she fucked him more ways than one."

  I knew he was trying to shock me, but he didn’t know me. "Fucked him how?" I asked.

  More shuffling, but no one said anything.

  "Was she cheating on him?" I tried.

  Jamond shook his head; the look on his face told me he thought I was an idiot. While yesterday he’d seemed almost friendly, today, among his friends, he wasn’t going to let on about our previous encounter.

  "How long have Ashley and your friend been together?" I asked. "What’s his name again?"

  "Listen, Michael don’t—"

  One of the other guys shot a look full of daggers, and Jamond stopped. Okay, so the guy’s name was Michael, but Michael what?

  "Michael doesn’t wha
t?" I asked, directly to Jamond, who looked me straight in the eye, but a wall had gone up and I knew he wasn’t going to say anything else. He was probably going to catch shit from his friends after, and I guess I should’ve felt bad about that, but I didn’t. This was my goddamn job.

  I took another shot in the dark. "Do you guys know someone named Felicia, a girl who works with Ashley?"

  Instead of smirking this time, each of them tensed, their shoulders raised, backs hunched, heads down, eyes skirting the sidewalk. I’d struck a nerve. "I’ve been looking for Felicia. Do any of you know where she is?"

  More silence.

  I sighed. I wasn’t going to get anything else out of this group. I pulled a few business cards out of my bag and handed them out. They took them, holding them tentatively as I said, "If you want to talk at some point, I don’t have to use your names. It can be off the record."

  I didn’t wait for a reaction. I knew there wouldn’t be one. They’d drop the cards on the ground, make a show of how stupid it would be to talk to me. But maybe, just maybe, one of them would hold on to his card and call me. It was my only chance.

  "That was interesting." The voice came from behind me, and I didn’t turn around.

  "So, how did Ashley fuck with Michael?" I asked. "Did she say anything about a Michael last night?"

  Vinny fell into step beside me, his hands in the pockets of his khakis. He was wearing a blue cotton blazer, which I knew without seeing it was covering his gun. He wouldn’t wear a sport jacket if he weren’t carrying. Even though it was about 110 degrees, he wasn’t sweating.

  "She got pretty friendly when you went outside," he admitted, looking at me apologetically, but I waved my hand in the air.

  "Why wouldn’t she?" I asked, and his expression changed; a smile took over his mouth. I wanted to slip my hand into the crook of his arm, but it wouldn’t be very professional at a crime scene. Instead, I touched his shoulder, hoping he’d know from that gesture I was happy our "fight" was over.

  "She said something about someone named Reggie, not Michael," Vinny said as we walked.

  I stopped.

  "What?" he asked.