Wednesday, April 6
Morning, The National Mall, Washington, DC
“At least you didn’t have to take a bullet for the guy.”
Renee Portnell heard the words but made no attempt to find
their meaning in the fog of pain that filled her mind. Rather, she watched in
numbed disbelief as a trickle of blood inched closer to a Washington Senators
baseball cap that sat on the sidewalk. She had to be ten yards away sitting on
a park bench and the sun was just beginning to crest the buildings ringing the
National Mall, but with a half-dozen Washington DC Metropolitan Police
Department cars now parked on the grass, all with their headlights blazing, she
could move another ten and the horror of the scene wouldn’t fade.
“Government, right?”
Portnell slowly turned toward the sound of the voice beside her,
an MPD officer, his name already forgotten. “What?”
“The guy? I heard he was a senator or something. Figured
you’d have to take a bullet for him if it came to that.”
“U.S. Representative Alan Barclay,” said Portnell, every
word drawn out like she was from the deep south rather than Connecticut.
“Although, that’s Secret Service, not private protection services.”
Portnell shook her head to clear it, each of her senses
slowly returning to the here and now, each becoming preternaturally acute for
an instant before succumbing to the next. She heard the murmur of voices filled
with urgency and authority all around. She registered the acrid smell of car
exhaust mixing with the sickly-sweet of cherry blossoms that had reached their
peak the week before. She tasted gunpowder on her tongue, her saliva no match
for its bitterness. But when her gaze fell on the woman lying on the sidewalk,
the round-robin of sensations ended. She couldn’t pull her eyes away. And all
the while she wondered, how could Barclay’s ball cap have landed so close to the
woman and so far from him?
The police and paramedics had already moved away from the
female. Portnell wasn’t surprised. She’d always been an excellent shot and any
of the four rounds she’d squeezed off could have been fatal. The only
difference between them and the thousand she’d fired before today was that the
previous ones had only penetrated paper. These last four had found flesh and
bone, blood and muscle. As she watched, the woman’s blood inched ever closer to
the cap.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Portnell knew. In her eight
years with the military police, she had never fired her sidearm in the line of
duty. And when she had retired, her recruitment into the private sector had
emphasized the fact that female body guards were often instrumental in
de-escalating violence. But when the threat is shooting at your client, gender
is not going to stop the onslaught. Only a bullet could.
“Renee, look at me.” The drop in his volume pulled Portnell’s
eyes to the officer’s face. “From what I hear, you got nothing to worry about.
The shooting was righteous. She shot first and you have the right to protect
yourself and others from deadly force. Only question seems to be, she get off
two shots or three?”
Portnell thought it could have been more. Hadn’t she stared
in disbelief for seconds? Hadn’t she fumbled with her firearm when drawing it
from her shoulder holster? The only thing that had gone smoothly was the Weaver
stance-aim-fire sequence, a routine that was burned into her muscle memory from
those thousand practice shots at targets that she couldn’t harm.
“Not that you need insurance, but she was obviously a
wacko,” said the officer. “I mean, what the hell was it she said?”
Portnell stared at the man’s face, wondering how many times
she was going to have to repeat those words? Of course, it wasn’t like she’d
ever forget them. “When she first approached, she said, ‘You must find it hard
to represent the folks back home.’”
There was nothing particularly memorable in that part of her
statement, but her voice was so melodic, almost childlike. Perhaps that was
why, when Portnell started forward to ask the woman to move on, Barclay had
given her “the signal”—a hand held low at his side, palm facing backward. Of
course, the woman’s physical appearance may have played a part in his decision
as well. Although Barclay had a reputation as a family man, even he could dream
and the woman was the stuff of men’s dreams—a dark, exotic beauty in a pure
white dress.
“Then, she said, ‘I mean, it’s gotta be tough for the spawn
of a Martian whore like you.’”
“Spawn of a Martian whore,” said the MPD officer, chuckling
and shaking his head. “Where the heck do these kooks get this crap? I mean, you
knew the guy better than me. There’s no truth to her words, right?” The officer
laughed again like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Portnell just
stared.
She suspected that it was the incongruity of the hate in the
woman’s words and the lilting tone that had carried them to her ears that had
caused her hesitation. She remembered thinking, could this be real? She knew,
of course, that this might happen one day. But in her mind’s eye, it was always
the silhouette of a crazed man. It was the practice target of the firing range
given life.
But while her response had been hesitant, the woman hadn’t
vacillated. A gun materialized in her hand where moments before there had been
none. The crack of her first shot brought Portnell out of her trance. She reached
for her handgun, but it caught for an instant on her jacket. The woman fired
again. Portnell saw Barclay spin to the ground out of the corner of her eye,
perhaps as a defensive reaction, but probably from the impact of the round. His
cap flew from his head, which now explained where it had landed on the
sidewalk.
Her handgun came free and from that instant on, she no
longer needed to think. Each of her four shots produced a new bloom of red on the
woman’s simple white dress. But unlike Barclay, she stayed upright, as if she
was one of the paper targets hung from the carrier at the firing range.
Finally, the woman crumpled to the ground.
“Two,” said Portnell, the words indistinct in her ears.
“What?”
“She fired twice.”
The officer didn’t say anything, but Portnell could hear him
moving. After a moment, the man crouched down in her line of sight. Her vision
dimmed and she collapsed to her back on the bench. The officer yelled, “Get a
paramedic over here. She’s going into shock.” It sounded like he was twenty
yards away, not standing over her.
Lying down helped, and Portnell’s vision and hearing cleared
a bit. She rolled to her side, watching as the trickle of crimson reached the
bill of the baseball cap. Now, the darkening fabric marked the slow march of
the woman’s blood. She stared at the woman’s face. Once, it had reflected an
energy to match her voice, but now, it looked more like frozen stone, her
naturally dark complexion faded from the loss of blood. Only her eyes seemed to
show signs of the person she had been; they twinkled with an inner light,
although Portnell knew that was impossible.
Another man appeared in her line of sight. “Stay with me, ma’am.”
He turned away. “Get that stretcher over here. Now!”
It was help, and Portnell thought she should feel relieved.
She didn’t. She knew no one could help her with what she needed most—getting
the image of the beautiful woman in white with the melodic voice out of her
mind forever.
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