The Eighth Day

Chapter 11

Sam stood guard in the hallway outside of Jason's room, pistol clenched in his hand, listening for the sound of intruders in the house. He checked the windows. Outside, a night wind stirred the branches of the trees and the bushes, but nothing else moved. Even his neighbors remained behind locked doors. Sam wasn't surprised.

When at last the echo of police sirens drifted through the night in a strange and artificial requiem, Jenny opened the door, and he wrapped his arms around her and his son. They held on to each other as if letting go meant forever.

A procession of police cruisers rolled to a stop at the curb, and a whirling strobe of lights lit the night in a chaos of color. Sam went outside to greet them, hands raised in a plaintive gesture of surrender.

"I'm Detective Sam Harrington, Midtown North. I called in the shooting. I'm gonna reach into my pocket and show you my ID."

"Is anyone hurt?"

"It's nothing serious."

The neighbors had begun to emerge from their homes, eager to help now that the danger had passed. Hesitant treads carried them across sloping lawns toward the street, and uniforms moved to intercept them.

A fire engine and ambulance arrived, and one of the paramedics cleaned and bandaged the gunshot wound on Sam's neck.

"An inch to the right, and we wouldn't be having this conversation," he told Sam.

"Let's keep that between you and me," Sam said, glancing at his wife and son, who were giving their statements to the police. Jenny caught his gaze and smiled, and he smiled back.

Sam thought he'd killed at least one of the men, maybe two if the guy hit by the energy grenade hadn't made it, but there were no bodies. There was plenty of blood, though, and forensics cordoned off the area and went to work.

When his wife and son finished with their statements, Sam said to Jenny, "Why don't you and Jason wait by the car? I'm gonna see how it's going inside."

Jenny nodded and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. He turned and trudged toward the house. Inside, crime scene investigators from the 120th Precinct sifted through the ruins like archeologists at a dig site, using laser trajectory kits and 3-D imaging cameras to capture every angle of devastation. Sam stood in the doorway. The anger had faded and left him numb.

The destruction was absolute. The bullets had reduced the walls and cabinets to splinters. Deep grooves marred the wooden top of the kitchen table, and the force of the slugs had tossed the chairs that surrounded it to the ground. The refrigerator door swayed, and rivulets of milk streamed out of bullet holes in the carton and spattered onto the floor in opalescent pools. Shattered dishes and glasses littered the countertops and floor. The carnage consumed everything.

Sam took it all in, shattered furniture and appliances and memories lost—the vase that had belonged to his grandmother, Jenny's treasured collection of china, the painting he'd bought her during their vacation in Venice. The sons of bitches had taken it all.

One of the investigators glanced in his direction, eyebrows raised in alarm. "Sir, please stay outside until we're finished."

"I've been on the force for thirty-two years. I know the drill."

"Oh. I didn't realize."

After recreating a digital version of the wreckage, the investigators began collecting the slugs. Instead of a surgical extraction, they cut out whole chunks of drywall, the jigsaw snarling as it tore through the wallpaper, and plaster dust drifted to the floor.