Chapter One

The Victim

Late Morning Eastern Time, Thursday, August 10, 2000

Mortified and with shoes in hand, Oma Mae paddled flatfooted to her office door, her burning feet smacking heavily on the tiled hallway floor. “WOMEN DO NOT HAVE HOT FLASHES!  THEY HAVE POWER SURGES,” flashed across her brain, the words throbbing in her head like a strobe light on the set of Saturday Night Fever.  What in the hell would Gail Sheehy know about hot flashes!  I’ll lay odds she was popping estrogen pills like they were M&M’s when she wrote that one, Oma Mae blustered hotly, her breath so hot she quickly sipped it back in to keep it from scorching the tender insides of her feverish lips.

Bumping through the door, she clutched the doorjamb in her free hand as the floor seemed to shift at a strange angle.  She waited until the room righted itself again, then steered drunkenly, coaxing her jiggling-like-Jello-in-their-sockets-knees to just hang tight until they got her to her dressing room sink.

Dragging her white Coach purse that was big enough to stow an accordion in, she dropped it with a thump when she approached the dressing room door, watching with total detachment as its feminine contents decorated the floor.  All she cared about at the moment was flowing splashing surging gurgling gushing cascading cold water, and if her legs wouldn’t get her there, her addled brain resolved, she would damn well crawl to the sink, if need be.

“Oma?” she heard, the sound too sharp against her pulsating inner ears, the sudden energy of his presence too strong for her fragile equilibrium to withstand.  “Oma? Are you all right?”  Lee Blakely, her manager and fiancé gently placed his cool palms on her cheeks, tilting her face upward.  Her watery eyes and sheen-slicked skin were his tip-off that she was getting ill again from a severe hot flash.  “Here, let me help you.”  He leaned down, carefully hiked her left arm over his right shoulder, pulling her weight in to him, and walked her into her private dressing room located off one end of her large office.  He held her arm as she sank into the barber chair facing an expansive mirror.  “I’ll get your purse for you,” he said, almost in a whisper, patting her arm.  He quickly filled a glass half full of water, and placed it in her hand before walking away.

Grateful that Andrè and Lily Tate, the husband and wife team who did her hair and make-up had gone for the day, she took a tentative sip of the tepid water, but both her hands and her stomach were too shaky to hold on to it.  She waited, rocking on her pelvic bones like a pressure cooker dancing on a red hot flame, willing her body to keep the lid on her symptoms until she could be alone.

“Thanks, baby,” she mumbled when Lee returned with her purse, its contents neatly organized, and zipped safely into its various pockets.  He placed the bag on the counter top beside the sink.  She handed him the glass, and implored his eyes, silently communicating to him her desperate need to ride this out on her own.

Understanding, he lowered his eyes, and cupped her shoulder lightly with his hand as he turned to leave.  “I’ll be right outside in your office if you need me.”  He proceeded to the door, closing it softly behind him.

The door handle clicked, the valve on the lid of her symptoms tilted, and her roiling hormones blew, the surge of heat driving her to her feet.  Careening to the sink, she steadied herself against the counter top.  She jerked a wad of sheets from the paper towel dispenser.  Turning on the cold water tap, she held her wrists under the faucet, letting the water flow onto the popping tangle of blue veins below her skin at their undersides.   The cool wet towels would feel good against the back of her neck where the muscles cramped with quivering tension, and douse, she hoped, another “power surge,” the episodes seeming to be ordering nearly every aspect of her life lately.

Reluctant to succumb to the allure of an easy, yet controversial hormone replacement drug therapy, she had opted to tough it out the way her mother, and all her female African ancestors had done before her.  Her only concession being the aid of herbal remedies that as yet were doing nothing for her, she huffed and puffed, and generally amused those within earshot with her laments about the hardships of menopause.

“Lordy!” she would wail in an imitation of her Grandma Omi Jean. “Da devil done set dis worle on fiyuh.  Ain’ no place fo’ any Christian ta be.”  Accompanied by the amused snickers of her companions, she would race to the nearest water source, and drench herself with cold water until the hot flash released its hold on her body.  Recently however the hot flashes had increased in intensity and duration, her humor flagging with each episode.

Worried lest the pooling perspiration would ruin her new suit, she stripped her jacket and brassiere from her saturated upper body, and with a fresh supply of wet paper towels, carefully swabbed her underarms, breasts and face.  Sinking back into her chair, she tilted her whining head into its high back, concentrating on her in-breath and out-breath.  In less than ten minutes, that seemed an eternity, her palpitating heart found its regular cadence, and her temperature flattened to normal.  Relief washed over her as thoroughly as the hot flash had done, a bottomless hollow fatigue following in its wake.  She yawned, a gaping jaw-locking throat-cording yawn wringing slippery tears into her eyes.  Too tired to reach for a tissue, she wiped them with the pads of her fingers.  Awake since 4:00 a.m., hauled into consciousness too early with yet another disturbing dream, her head ached with a drilling pain just above her left eyebrow, a stabbing rallying pain, tipping her mind back to the dream that had startled her awake, the strangeness of it, the scope of it.  Generally, she delighted in waking in the middle of the night, her rested brain spilling with ideas.  It was her best time to write, to plan, to meditate.  But it was aggravating to lose half a night’s sleep over a disquieting dream.  In mid-life, she was discovering, contemplating her mortality, like chugging Metamucil was becoming almost daily fare.

Oma Mae rose to the mirror again to assess the damage her latest foray into menopause had done to her makeup.  “Oh Lord,” she moaned.  She dampened a tissue and dabbed at the black smudges beneath her eyes where her mascara had run. “I’m going to have to start from scratch” she lamented aloud to her haggard reflection, her body once again sagging with a bone-deep weariness.  “Good God.  This can’t be me.  I’m still just a girl, aren’t I?” she quizzed the decidedly un-girl-like image. “Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “You stopped being a girl a century ago!”

Zooming in for a closer look, she placed her fingers and thumbs at her temples and jowls, tugging upward at the loosening skin, creating a mock face lift.  Sneering at her distorted face, she released her flesh, and eyes narrowing, pressed her nose to the mirror.  “Are you still in there, Oma Mae Adams?” she inquired ruefully, whispering through her clenched teeth.

Her image seemed to swim before her, and she saw herself in her many personas:  the forlorn little girl, alone in the church crying for her mother; the redeemed young woman laughing in the sunshine with her best friend; the idealistic Peace Corp volunteer; the resigned young wife and determined mother; the successful entrepreneur and inspired minister.  Oh Life, you fickle lover.  A pox on you for building me up so grandly, only to let me down again so crushingly with this cruel disconnect.  She felt as though her center were wearing away, cell by cell, context by context, yearning by yearning, even as her body exaggerated its boundaries.  Is it only menopause as everyone says, or is it the inevitable pay off for someone with my appetites?

With a flourish of hand, she swiped the mirror as if erasing the alien face before her, and stepping back from it, assessed her figure.  She smoothed the soft fabric of her jacket over the thickening about her waist in an attempt to camouflage the extra thirteen pounds, the extra weight a talisman of her life-greed, greedily attaching themselves there.  As she turned to the side, she also despaired that the bulge had crept a little lower, molding an annoying tummy mound, the bulge staying stubbornly in place even when she sucked in, as she now did.

You can suck in all day, Oma Mae and it won’t help! her inner voice persisted.  Enough, she bade, annoyed with her inability to bring herself out of her funk.  What was this seemingly endless preoccupation with herself - thinking about herself, poking, pulling, querying her image in mirrors, for God’s sake?  Preoccupation was too mild a term - compulsion, obsession were more exact.  She was becoming foreign to herself, foreign as some self-conscious gauche provincial place charming her to it with a fool’s gold vow, and binding her to it with her own vain assurance of its rough unborn promise even while knowing it was a promise of that which could never be.  She knew it for what it was:  purely, only and wholly, lived life, lived soft and hard and every texture in between, and she recognized its signature showing plainly in her wrinkles and sags and bulges. She knew plump ardent giddy joy expectantly quivered in waiting for her but the melancholy gatekeeper of her attitude too often muscled it at bay these days.

Exhausted by it, weary of it, she ached to fall asleep as soon as she crawled in the cool leather interior of her brand new DaBryan Lincoln Town-car that would transport her home.  She yearned for the thrumming of its tires against the asphalt roads that would croon her to sleep, croon her to sleep, croon her to sleep.  Her head, suddenly too heavy to hold upright, seesawed on her neck.  She had to lie down now, if only for a moment.  Still topless, she pulled herself to the sofa, snuggled on its down cushions, an antique silk throw drawn across her torso.  In seconds, she dropped into a deep sleep.

Mingled odors of plowed earth, animal droppings, corn whiskey, ashcakes, buttermilk and sweet potatoes[1] blanketed the air. Currents of powdered debris and lung-scorching heat waves slithered across the screen of Oma Mae’s vision, weaving into the coffers of her lungs.  She inhaled them full and smooth as if they were her familiars, as if her body were accustomed to receiving them.  She observed, captured and curiously euphoric because like an amnesiac regaining memories, she recalled every detail of the environment where towering and shawled with Spanish Moss, an alley of Live Oak trees, their laced branches arching aloft, hosted within their shade-chinked canopy, an old diminutive bent black figure.  Her hair covered with a kerchief or tignon, the woman lingered there, silent, attentive, posturing like Buddha at the base of one of the largest tree.  She saw the dusty yard where runny-nosed barefooted black children played a noisy game of Hide and Switch;[2] the rows of tilting rough-hewn sun-bleached pine log cabins where old crooked black men sat whittling sticks while lolling in the thresholds of their dark gaping doorways; where ancient shriveled black women knit and also mended threadbare clothes as they sagged under gnarled and wind-whipped shade trees, their tortured shapes mimicking the women’s distorted bodies.  She heard a chorus of field hand’s lamentations, their singsong words bemoaning the backbreaking work, their cries composed of mournful supplications to their creator for deliverance to a better world.  She loitered there, the niche in her mind where it all was stored, opening, revealing, speaking:  “I carried you into existence, child,” the ancient black woman said, “on the name of Oma, the Grandmother Spirit, whose legacy you bear.  We both suckled children at our breasts and grew them to a time of leaving.  Let go, Oma Mae.  Let go.”

“Let Go?  Let go of what, Great Grandmother?”  Oma Mae implored, the woman’s identity starting in her mind.  “What do you mean, let go?”

“Let’s go, Oma.  Oma, come on, honey.  Wake up,” Lee’s voice filtered through her thick fog of slumber.  His hand, gentling her shoulder with a slight nudge, guided her awake again.  “Let’s go, girl,” he said, smiling at her broadly as she opened her eyes.

“Yes.  Let’s go,” Oma Mae muttered, her tongue thick with the residue of her nap, her sticky eyelids fluttering.  “But give me a minute, okay?”

“Sure, baby.  I’ll just make one more quick call then,” he said as he shut the door after himself.

She stepped to the large mirror, quickly slathered on deodorant, and slipped back into her garments.  Combing her fingers through her spiky hair only the day before having been cut short and thinned, she admired the cooler updated style.  She adjusted her necklace, and running her hands across the waistline of the jacket, she sucked in again, but to her dismay, her belly still rose in a heap under the fine fabric.  Neither could she do anything about the dark haloes under her eyes, or the hallows in her cheeks, but she rubbed the skin under her puffy eyes with her index finger, trying again to erase the smudged mascara stubbornly clinging there.

Gently blotting the outer corners of her eyes where, at a maddening pace, crosshatch designs were tooling into the skin, then smoothing her upper lip where a swelling rank of teensy tributaries seemed hell-bent on reshaping it, she freshened her lipstick.  “Oh, well.  Who needs strong bones, wrinkle-free skin, and sex appeal when YOU can have POWER instead!” she avowed to her reflection.  She dropped her lipstick into her purse, and turned to go.  Entering her office, she formed her eyebrows into a question when Lee turned her way.  He was standing looking out a window as he talked on the telephone.  Nodding his head to acknowledge her query, he faced the window again, continuing his conversation.

Oma Mae eased into her desk chair, and riding the drone of Lee’s voice, her mind slipped back to the old woman in the dream, her great grandmother who had reminded her that their mutual name, Oma meant grandmother.  New to her however was that it referenced the Grandmother Spirit, the Nurturer, Teacher, avowed Protector of all children.  She wondered if it were true, she wondered also if perhaps she were realizing her destiny after all.  But, ‘Let go!’  What does that mean? she pondered, her musing interrupted by Lee’s closing remarks across the room.

“Okay then, so you’ll set up that interview for us, buddy?   All right, but don’t call me today.  I’ll be out of reach.  Talk to you soon.”  Lee finished, then motioned to Oma Mae to come to him as he hung up the telephone.

Thankful to be pulled into the present, Oma Mae asked, “Can we get out of here now, Lee?”  Reaching for her purse laying on the desktop, she got up from her desk and hooked the purse over her right shoulder.  She walked into his arms.

Lee noticed the muddy pools forming crescents below her eyes and in the sunken planes of flesh below her large boney cheekbones.  Like a gathering storm graying the sky, the charcoal spots on her face were her customary marks of agitation, telling him what her carefully constructed cheerfulness omitted from her behavior.  He knew she had been brooding about her depleting store of hormones and fretfully examining herself in the mirror while in the dressing room waiting out the hot flash, but he could see that something more was distressing her.  Was it the dreams besetting her lately, or was it the concern she had been voicing about the difference in their ages, exhibiting insecurity about being six years his senior?   Sensing the futility of easing her concerns, he stayed away from the clichéd response that if the age difference were reversed, it would be considered normal.  Irrational fears had their own masters with their own agendas that were too tenacious, too truculent to take on, especially when they belonged to someone else.  Sometimes he didn’t know how to comfort her, and now was one of those times.  He tightened his hug and kissed her on the forehead, inadequate to the situation, he knew.  “Let’s go home,” he said softly, smiling his inadequacy.  He released his embrace.  They left her office, walking hand-in-hand through the busy television station where she worked.  

“Hey, girlfriend, you finally got your Chanel suit!” Oma Mae’s friend and co-worker, Elizabeth Stewart gushed as she approached the couple in the hallway.  “Here, turn around.  Let me see whacha’ got.”  She winked at Oma Mae conspiratorially as she grabbed the large purse.  She hung it on Lee’s shoulder.  Playfully pushing him aside, she reached out for Oma Mae’s hands.  She swung their arms up high between them, then out to their sides, dropping her left hand and pulling the disoriented Oma Mae around in a circle as if she were leading her into a minuet.  Finally releasing her completely, Elizabeth stood back for a better look.

      The suit, custom fabricated in medium weight white Irish linen and lined in luxurious Egyptian cotton, featured a jewel neckline cut a little lower than normal.  Encircling her neck was an elegant three strand choker of lustrous pearls, a large green jade pendant residing at its center.  A fitted jacket, having the effect of slimming her thickening waistline, draped into graceful points below mid-hip.  It was accented at its lower edge and at the hems of its short sleeves with a flat braid trim, the color of the trim twinning the pendant.  The jacket topped a form-fitting skirt tapering in at the knees and flaring slightly at mid-calf.  A deep slit at the skirt’s back exposed shapely legs.

“It’s stunning Oma Mae.  The style is perfect for your figure, and it looks great with your coloring.  Good job, girlfriend,” Elizabeth decreed, a declaration Oma Mae took to heart, her young friend always looking as though she had just stepped out of the pages of Vogue.  “And I like your new do.  All short and sassy.  You look like Alfre Woodard.”  Elizabeth reached up and ran her perfect manicure through the spiky peaks of hair crowning Oma Mae’s majestic head.

      Lee’s groin quickened at Oma Mae’s queenly beauty, and his heart ached when he noticed the dark circles under her exotic eyes again, but he kept his face inscrutable.

      “Den I knows I be lookin’ goooooot,” Oma Mae responded in Ebonics, gratefully latching onto the distraction Elizabeth’s ebullience provided.  “I just be needin’ ta give Alfre-Girl a call ta tell her ta watch out ‘cause dis home girl be takin’ ovuh!”

      “You go, girl,” Elizabeth replied with a high-five.  “Where did you get that necklace, Oma Mae?  I’ve never seen anything so lovely.”

      Cutting a sultry hooded-eye glance at Lee, Oma Mae said, “My brilliant man here gave it to me last night.”

“Lee, have I ever asked you if you have a brother?” Elizabeth laughed at the rising color in Lee’s face.

“Only every other day for the last several years,” he returned, running his finger under his collar.  He loosened his tie and tugged at the waistband of his pants, a shift he hoped would disguise the bulge appearing below his belt.

“What are you doin’ here in the hallway?  Shouldn’t you be tapin’ right now?” Elizabeth asked as she raked her fingers through her straight chestnut hair in an attempt to fluff it.  She despaired of its extreme coarseness, a coarseness refusing to curl.  She had finally settled on its current style:  blunt cut to the shoulders with bangs pulled to the side just above her left eyebrow, the sweeping bangs revealing vulnerability in a soft wedge of fair skin on her broad forehead.

      “The person filling our guest slot today had to tape early this morning because he has to be in New York this afternoon.  When we found out about it a couple of days ago, Lee decided to take advantage of it, so he cleared our schedule for all the rest of the day,” Oma Mae explained, reaching up to adjust the heavy necklace that had shifted out of place during the modeling exercise. “We finished about an hour ago.  We’re headed home now where I suppose we’ll have to find something to do.”  A sultry smile slipped across her face, her eyes slanting to Lee’s as she designed in her imagination the day they would spend together.  She had noticed the bulge in his pants.  While she was at it, she also sent packing for the remains of the day, the heavy-hearted gatekeeper of her joy.

      Elizabeth reached out again to hold Oma Mae’s hands, and to emphasize her point, she pumped them up and down.  “That’s great!  I can’t remember the last time you took a full day off.  But I know how you are, Oma Mae.  Before you know it, you’ll get yourself embroiled in some project at home.  You and Lee just have yourselves a really fun day without any work.  You deserve it and you need it, Oma Mae.  Okay?  You promise me?” Elizabeth dropped Oma Mae’s hands, but continued to beg her eyes.

       “I promise,” Oma Mae complied although her focus had already shifted away from her friend and back to the day before her.

      Walking away and while waving goodbye, Elizabeth yelled back, “And if ya’ need anything, call me.  You have my cellular phone number, don’t you?”

      “Yes, Liz.  I have it but we won’t be needing it.”  Oma Mae and Lee both raised their hands and waved goodbye as they proceeded down the hallway.

      Resembling a Leviathan replica of Jesse Ventura, their bodyguard, Tommy Walters overflowed the contours of the lounge chair in the reception area where he sat waiting for them.  He greeted them in his usual relaxed and soft-spoken manner as they approached his chair.  “Good morning again, Miss Adams, Mr. Blakely.”  Closing his newspaper and placing it on a side table, the enormous man unfolded himself, and favoring a strained muscle in his back, gingerly telescoped to his full height.

      “Hello there, big fella.  Tommy, as soon as we get in the car, I want you to tell Eddie to drive straight home,” Oma Mae instructed.  “We don’t even want to stop for traffic lights if we can get away with it.”

      Getting on his two-way, Tommy chuckled as he told Eddie to pull the limousine to the curb at the foot of the long portico stretching over the deep-set entry to the building.

      “You just too purty ta be totin’ a pocketbook on yo’ shoulder, sugah,” Oma Mae teased Lee, speaking in the patois of her ancestors again.  “Don’ wan’ no papparazzi sneakin’ no pictures o’ you like dat.”  They laughed while Oma Mae took the bag from Lee.  She hitched its long strap over her right shoulder, adjusting it to rest on her back just below her right scapula.

      Tommy opened the double doors of the building for them, taking up his position on Oma Mae’s left side.  Lee flanked her on her right, drooping his left arm around her shoulders, his opposite hand holding the collar of his suit jacket he had removed.  The jacket draped his right shoulder.  They kibitzed and laughed at her quips as they leisurely walked the fifty feet between the building and the curb, where Eddie, sitting behind the steering wheel, waited in their limousine.  Having approached to within four or five feet of the car, Tommy stepped ahead of them to open the back passenger door of the vehicle.

      “Speak of the Devil!  There’s a paparazzi now,” Oma Mae remarked, as suddenly and without warning, a frenzied wild-eyed man tore out of the bushes, screaming, “Black bitch!  Black bitch!  Black bitch!”

      Pop!  Pop!  He fired a gun directly at Oma Mae and then Pop!  Pop!  two more times in the same direction as he rushed passed them.

      “What the hell...Tommy, Tommy...help...help!  Jesus Christ!  Shoot the mother fucker...kill him...kill him!”

      Pop pop pop!  Three more gunshots rang out in rapid succession.

      “Eddie get out of the car!”

      Pop pop pop pop!  Gunfire repeated rapidly as Tommy scurried sideways like a crab, and upon reaching her, crouched over the felled body of Oma Mae Adams.  Lee Blakely, who had fallen on top of her, rolled over to his side as Tommy approached, and sat hunched on the sidewalk beside her.

“Call 911!!” Tommy screamed, commanding Eddie who huddled alertly behind the opened driver’s door of the car, his hot gun still pointed in the assailant’s direction.  Eddie reached inside the limousine, grabbing the cellular telephone with his free hand.

She stood on the edge of something, sharper than a razor, a laser without beginning, without end - eternity!  It whipped up, forming an arc above her head, a huge reflective glowing ribbon of something like neon, beating like a heart, contracting and expanding like the pupil of an eye, vanishing to nothing, vanishing into a vast void, reappearing, and snaking into each of her palms, like a jumping rope in the hands of a ten year old.

“Jump!” something told her.  “Eternity is in your hands!”

“Hold on!” appetite, lust, greed for life demanded.

Her choice?  She had never bargained on that.  Free will went on?  It was too much!  Too hard!  Too brilliant!

Trust.  That’s what her entire life had been about, what she’d taught, preached, tried to live.

“Trust!  Jump!  Jump!”

A fly buzzed her eyes, nostrils, ears, an enormous fly gorged with the spilling blood from her body.  She slipped beyond seeing; smelling no longer informed her of the surroundings.  But still able to hear, she followed the fly’s buzzing sound, that damn fly, her nemesis since childhood, as it led her into utter unconsciousness.  “Let go!” its buzz seemed to say.  “Let go!” her brain echoed.

“Let go!”  Little Father said.

“Little Father?!”

***

Herky jerky, like the old-time movies she and her son had seen at the Center of Science and Industry; surreal as a Fellini movie; dreadful as a nightmare she could recall that had awakened her in a wash of sweat, the shooting played out in front of Bunny Ballard’s eyes, the plate glass wall of windows and doors providing the perfect vantage point from behind the desk sitting at a strategic position inside the reception area of the television station.

Screaming, she burst through the security door insulating the inner core of the television station from the reception area.  “Help!  We’re being attacked!  Call the police!”

Faces turned away from computer monitors, heads poked through opening office doors, feet shuffled and bodies lurched to restrain her as she ran, arms flailing, long hair sailing, yelling in red-faced bulging-eyed horror.

“What?” a man demanded as he grabbed her.  “What?  Are you going crazy?  What are you talking about?”

“Shooting!  Outside!  I think Oma Mae and Lee are hurt!  Maybe the shooters are coming in here!  It happened so fast!  Hurry!  Hurry!”

***

The paramedic partners manning the Columbus Fire Department’s Rescue 10 ambulance were in the kitchen of the fire station preparing their lunches when the announcement of the multiple shootings came over the P.A. system.  Turning on their heels, they darted for their vehicle and hustled into bulletproof vests as they ran.

  “Damn, that’s the TV station.  Let’s haul ass and be the first ones there,” Don, the in-charge paramedic yelled as he hit the priority button on the MDT bringing up the run report on the computer screen.  He hit the buttons on the radio to put it onto channel 12 F/P, the dedicated channel they would use to communicate with the police.  Chuck, the driver paramedic, hit the button, switching on the lights, and hit another button, turning on the siren.

“Wonder what’s going on.  Maybe Bob what’s-his-name got shot...you know, the big news anchor over there,” Chuck said quizzically.

“Bob Kingman,” Don replied.

“Yeah...Kingman.  Man, with three medics and two engines and two coordinators, you know this is gonna be a good run...maybe three or four people are wounded,” Chuck speculated as he picked up more speed.  “Guess we’re gonna miss lunch again today.”

 “Yeah.  We got a lot of that road construction over there with that 315 mess.  Can ya’ maybe think of a shortcut?” Don asked.  He bounced his pen onto the clipboard, his adrenalin-infused body needing the focus of the repetitive motion to keep himself contained within his seat.  They both thought for a couple of seconds, but couldn’t come up with a better route.

“Nah, we don’t need it...I’ll get us through it, but hold on ‘cause I gotta do some fancy drivin’ through this mess,” Chuck said, squaring his shoulders; scooting his pelvis back as if seating himself for a race at the Indy 500.

“I read in the newspaper the other day that Columbus has one of the worst traffic problems in the country now,” Don said.  “Did you read that?”

“Yeah...and what we need is some better mass transportation...some kinda’ subway system or overhead train system or somethin’.  It’d make our job a helluva lot easier.  Would you look at all them damn cars?” Chuck complained, his gaunt face severe with concentration, and one arm taut on the steering wheel, while the other pumped the horn.

Don bent forward at the waist to stretch his aching back.  He had pulled a muscle the night before lifting an elephant of a man onto a stretcher, and it was now singing with pain.  “Man, did you see the size of that guy last night on that Summit Street run?  He musta’ weighed 450 pounds.”  Don sighed as the pleasurable sensation of the stretch spread down his back.

“Yeah, I saw him but I was on the engine crew so I didn’t go in the rescue truck with you to the hospital,” Chuck explained.  “Okay, heads up guy, we’re comin’ up onto the scene now.”

“Looks like the cops are here in force,” Don affirmed as he quickly surveyed the scene.  The TV station had just come into view.  “Better get on the horn to see if we can go in.”

Approaching the location, Don quickly radioed into the police dispatcher and inquired, “This is Rescue 10.  Is the scene secure?  Is it okay to go in?”

The police dispatcher responded, “No, we’re not secure yet, Rescue 10.  Ya’ better get your guys together someplace and wait.”

“Man, this must be a bad one if they aren’t ready for us.”  Chuck shook his head and slowly spewed his breath, in an effort to relax his puffed tense cheeks.  “Wonder what the hell is goin’ down?!”

Getting back onto 12 F/P, Don announced to all incoming companies that they were going to rendezvous at the east entrance of the parking lot of the abandoned warehouse located several hundred feet north of the TV station, giving the cops time to secure the scene.

“You know these news types are always being stalked and shit.  One reason I wouldn’t want to be a celebrity.  No privacy.  Maybe it’s something like that,” Don continued their speculations.  The two men looked at each other conspiratorially, and settled their backs against the seat to await instructions.

                                                ***

“Manny, check over there in the bushes where the perp was hiding when you get done there,” Detective Esther Snow of the Columbus Ohio Division of Police said to Manny Trotter, one of the white coats from the Lab.  He was hunched over the shooter, dusting his gloves for fingerprints.  “Maybe this guy had an accomplice, and something will show up there.  Make sure you look real good for fibers that might be caught in the branches, and footprints that don’t match the shooter’s.  Arty, get some snaps of those bushes,” she said to the police photographer.  “And get pictures of that note, front and back, before we bag it.  Did you dust it for prints yet, Manny?”  Detective Snow paced and grimaced and pointed as she handed out her instructions.  She knew that the guys from the Crime Scene Unit would do their jobs properly without her supervision, but her usual cool detachment was giving way to the gathering heat of the day, and the amassing stress clenching the base of her skull.  The gravity of her job steadily mounted as the facts of the shooting materialized before her eyes through the evidence all around her.  My God! she screamed in her mind.  This guy has murdered Oma Mae Adams.  There can’t be any slip-ups on this one.

“Yeah, Es. We’re damn lucky he dropped the note long before he fell.  No blood on it.”

The Army-issue camouflage fatigues the perpetrator wore, and the fact that it appeared he had landed a perfect shot in the deceased woman’s heart while running, spelled possible sharp-shooter to Esther.  “I’ll bet anything this guy knows his way around a hand piece.  That looks like a pretty old gun to me.  Make sure to check it for prints, and then bag it for the lab,” she vented to Manny.  “Maybe a vet from Nam.  Nah, he’s too young for that and too old for Desert Storm.   Then, maybe an Army cop.  Or a regular cop.  He could be a retired cop supplementing his pension with a freelance gig or a rogue cop missing the action of the field.”  She made a note on her pad to run the shooter’s ID through the CPD and surrounding Police Department’s human resources files to see if anything showed up on him.

“I figure the shooter meant to send the boyfriend away in the meat wagon too, but only managed to land one in his arm when the victims fell.  He’s one lucky fella.”  She crouched down beside Manny to get a closer look at the perpetrator, and to take a deep whiff, knowing a person’s smell could tell a lot about them.  “You smell booze, Manny?”

“Yeah, Es.  I do.  The guy’s had a shot or two of some kinda rot gut.”

“Yeah, maybe he needed it for courage or maybe it’s just his normal breakfast.  Better get a blood sample from him before the medics scoop him up.  Be careful bagging those gloves.  The leather’ll have some good prints in ‘em.  The crazy SOB probably thought the gloves would disguise his fingerprints.  Damn, here comes that reporter.  Gonna have to give her a minute, Manny.  Make sure you get all your stuff before the wagons take anyone away.  Better hurry it up because I see ‘em coming in now,” Esther instructed Manny as she begrudgingly rose from her squat to greet the approaching reporter.  “In case I’m still tied up with the reporter when the medics are here, make sure you tell them the perp was shot with a Heckler & Koch 9mm.  That’s what the chauffeur, driver and boyfriend were packin’ also.  Let’s just thank our lucky stars they weren’t packin’ 45 USPs or this dude would be blown to smithereens.”

                                                ***

 “Okay Rescue 10...scene secure...you can go in now,” the police dispatcher announced again over 12 F/P radio where the cops and paramedics had been talking to one another.

Leading the way in, Rescue 10 pulled up to the entry portico of the two-story building, following the directions of an on-ground policeman. Grabbing the medical kit, they jumped out of the truck, as another cop directed them to the shooter.  One team of paramedics raced to the body of Oma Mae Adams, the other to Lee Blakely, he sitting beside her, her blood, a copious rusty Rorschach stain linking them for the final time.  An unruly crowd of vehicles and humanity, all jostling for the best positions, encroached menacingly.   The cops endeavored to keep it all under control as support law-enforcement personnel, reporters and photographers from other media outlets, as well as curiosity seekers, arrived.

“Get the hell out of there!” the policeman yelled as he grabbed a bystander who had broken ranks from the onlookers and had run up to the body of the woman in the white suit.  The bystander had fallen onto her hands and knees, and was picking up pearls scattered from the broken choker Oma Mae had worn around her neck, the bystander’s blood-covered palms and shoe soles creating a mishmash of cerise-colored designs surrounding the body.  The bloodstained pearls looked like deep red cherries swimming in a pool of their own juice.

Oma Mae Adams lay there, on her back, perfectly still, her slim skirt split completely up the back and hiked to mid-thigh, her right leg bent at the knee, its foot tucked in toward the opposite knee, almost in a ballerina pose.  Her pumps, perfectly dyed to match the jade green trim on the suit jacket, still covered her feet.  Her left hand, bearing a large princess-cut diamond engagement ring, clutched at her throat as if she had deliberately torn away the choking necklace in order to help herself breathe.  Its pearls lay scattered in a pool of blood leaching from her body.  Her right hand rested upon her chest where her splintered heart lay still beneath it, her manicured nails painted the exact color of the oozing blood coating her widespread fingers.  Ironically, glinting in the light, as though exacting the life taken from its bearer, a plain silver bracelet encircled her right wrist.

Oma Mae Adams lay there, seeming relaxed and peaceful, and if it weren’t for the blood and clothing upon her body and the white purse still absurdly tethered to her right arm, one would think she had fallen asleep while lying out in the sun, that ironic, active, obscene sun shining so brightly in a clear cerulean sky on that gorgeous August morning in Columbus, Ohio.

Her fiancé, Lee Blakely, sat beside her on the hot blistering sidewalk, rocking and sobbing, rocking and sobbing, his right hand clutching his wounded left arm, his eyes vacant and undiscerning as if he were lost in the deepest darkest regions of a mind overcome with shock and despair.  He sat there for a few minutes, wobbling in the sun, then keeled over to his right side, falling into unconsciousness, his head cushioned by his jacket rumpled on the sidewalk beneath him.

 The shooter lay several paces away, face down in a pool of blood, the irony completed in its bright color and petalled-outline akin to an enormous O’Keeffe-like poppy blooming through the hard crust of the pavement.

Yelling, Don instructed Chuck as they ministered to the shooter, “Let’s see if this guy is still breathing...see if we can get a pulse on him.”

Chuck, grabbing the scissors hanging from his belt loop, lamented as he cut away the shooter’s clothes, “Man, these look like genuine army-issue camouflage fatigues.  Maybe from Nam.  Damn, I hate to cut these up.”  He then plunged his hand into the kit, pulled out trauma dressings, pressed and taped them to the wounds to stop the shooter’s bleeding.

“Hey, this is the shooter,” a cop reported to the busy paramedics.  “He just killed Oma Mae Adams.”

“Get the cot.  Get the backboard.  We’re gonna c-spine this guy,” Don yelled at one of the men of the engine crew.  “Get over here ‘n take a manual c-spine.”

“Got a pulse...he’s breathin’...he’s breathin’ on his own.  Anybody know this guys name?” Chuck shouted, his busy face jerking toward the amassed crowd. 

“Wake up, sir.  What’s your name?” Don called out to the assailant who remained unresponsive.  “Let’s get fluid into this guy in case he needs meds.”

Rolling him over onto his back, they strapped him securely onto the backboard, inserting one large bore I.V. into each arm.

“Put him on a non-re-breather,” Don ordered.

“What do you want it set at?”  Chuck queried quickly in return.

“Put it at 15, guy,” Don responded.

Surrounding the backboard, four paramedics lifted it off the ground and onto the cot, settling the shooter into the back of the medic vehicle.

“Give me a driver!” Don yelled authoritatively.

Responding immediately, an engine crew paramedic jumped into the driver’s seat of the transport vehicle, joined by a second paramedic in the passenger’s seat while Chuck, Don and another engine crew paramedic jumped into the back of the truck with the shooter.

 “Come on, let’s go...it’s lights and sirens to MCH,” Don ordered loudly.  Metro Center Hospital was their choice because it was the nearest trauma hospital whose route remained unobstructed by highway construction.  They led the way for the second medic vehicle transporting the injured Lee Blakely.

During transit, the three paramedics inside the shooter’s transport unit busied themselves reassessing the patient.  They checked his respiration, his pulse, his blood pressure.  They hooked him up to the EKG, applying defibrillator patches to his chest and four limb leads.  Returning to the radio, Don called into the Emergency Room nurse.  “Metro Center Hospital-ER this is Rescue 10.”

“Go ahead, Rescue 10.  This is Metro Center-ER.”

“We’re en route with a 40-45 year old male...chief complaint...multiple gunshot wounds to the back by a Heckler & Koch 9 mm...two exit wounds...lower right abdomen and left shoulder...patient breathing on his own at this point.  BP, 60 palp.  Pulse 140.  Respiration  agonal.  Breathing’s agonal at 6.  We’ve got two large bore I.V.s established.  Attempting intubation en route.  We’ll see you in five,” Don instructed.

The patient choked and gasped as the tube was being inserted into his throat during the intubation procedure.  “He’s crashin’...he’s goin’ down!” Chuck shouted.                                  

“What’s goin’ on with the monitor?”  Don inquired in a loud voice.

“He’s in V fib,” Chuck called out.

Don yelled, “Charge to 200!”

Chuck charged it to 200, yelling, “Clear” warning the others to step away from the cot.  Immediately, he hit the button on the EKG to administer the electric shock.  There was a “bzzzt” sound.  The patient jerked.  Chuck checked the monitor again.  He shouted, “He’s still in V fib!”

“Bust him at 300!” Don yelled back as he quickly checked his watch to make a mental note of the time.  The “bzzzt” noise sounded again.  The patient jerked.  The monitor registered the hoped-for outcome.

“Okay, we got a rhythm.”  Chuck checked the patient’s pulse again, and finished the intubation very quickly.

Don returned to the radio.  “Metro Center Hospital, this is Rescue 10 en route.”

“Go ahead Rescue 10, this is Metro Center-ER.”

“Patient went into V fib on us...got a rhythm back after the second shock...patient is intubated and we’re one minute out.”

They drove onto the ER ramp, jumped out of the truck, pulled the cot out of the back of Rescue 10 and rushed the cot into the ER trauma room.  Luckily business was slow; only three other critical patients were there.  While his fellow paramedics ran to put the cot in place, Don yelled out updates to the ER doctor:

“Approximately 40-45 year old male...multiple gunshot wounds in the back by a Heckler & Koch 9mm...two exit wounds lower right abdomen and left shoulder...was breathing on his own on arrival...we got two large bore I.V.s....BP 60 palp on arrival...patient went into V fib en route...busted him two times...got a rhythm back after the second...this is the shooter at a multiple shooting scene.”

Leading the team designated to minister to the shooter was the attending on-call physician, Dr. Mark Wyatt.  Already into the fourteenth hour of his twenty-four-hour-long shift, that time, every time it came around again, he wondered why in the world he had decided to become a physician in the first place, when the longing for his place in his own bed beside his beloved wife and needing a hug from his daughter was about to kill him, when he was a breath away from bargaining with the Devil for a chance to close his eyes for just a little while, that time just before he caught his second wind and hit his stride, Dr. Wyatt roared, his adrenalin pumping and completely erasing any doubts about his choice of profession or prior fatigue, “Okay!  This is not a place for anyone who isn’t working on this patient or the one coming in right after this one!  I’m tired, I miss my wife and my kid and just give me a reason to get the hell out of here!  So get as busy as I am or heads are going to roll!”

***

 “Rescue 10 here,” Don said into the handset as he and his rescue team drove away from the hospital.

“Yes, Rescue 10,” the dispatcher responded mechanically.

“Rescue 10 available,” Don related.  Pulling his handkerchief out of his back pocket, he wiped his sweaty brow and bent forward at the waist again to stretch his aching back after reporting they were ready for another run as soon as they were needed.

“I wouldn’t wanna be that poor SOB,” Chuck asserted to Don. “There’s no way anybody in their right minds would wanna be the guy who killed Oma Mae Adams,” he reiterated.  “Unh, unh, no way man.  He might as well have murdered the Pope.”

***

 “We interrupt your regular programming to bring you this special bulletin,” a deep voice announced to the television viewing audience.  Outside the entry portico of the Channel 1 television station at ll:25 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, August 10, 2000, a slender chestnut-haired reporter struggled to position herself in front of the camera.  She seemed shaken, breathless and wrestling with a script whipping in the hot breeze while taming her hair with her other shaking hand.  Managing to hook her hair behind her ears, she grabbed a microphone from what appeared to be a disembodied hand reaching into the rectangle of the screen.  Her eyes were puffy and red, her lips swollen from crying.

“You’re my top journalist and I need you to do this!” was the ghoulish demand of the news director when the reporter had suggested to him that her relationship to the deceased and her obvious distress should disqualify her from going on camera.  In her heart she knew he was seeing dollar signs and awards and greener pastures as a result of this irony.  God, she hated most news people, piranhas that they were, almost to a one.  Yet, she herself was a newsperson, and she would do her director’s bidding, not because he demanded it of her, but to set a kind of understated, tasteful tone, rather than a sensational one to the initial reporting of Oma Mae’s death, a tone honoring her friend’s remarkable life.  Perhaps in that way she could stave off, at least for a time, the inevitable feeding frenzy to follow.

  Resolute, she began:  “Good mor...”  She hesitated for a moment, her voice waning to a whisper in her emotion-gorged throat.

In the periphery of her vision, her news director jutted his chin at her, the impatient upturned palm of his right hand conducting her reluctant words.  “Go on...go on,” he mouthed intolerantly.

His unbound perversity nauseated her, and she considered relinquishing her microphone, but chose instead to keep faith with her decision to pay homage to her friend.  She began again.  “Just moments ago, Dr. Oma Mae Adams, 51, Minister of the Parkside Unity Church in Bexley, Ohio, beloved televangelist and world-renowned philanthropist was shot and killed.”

The reporter’s firm ruddy skin, taut against a sweep of diagonally jutting cheekbones attesting to her Native American heritage, burst to an angry red flush, and for a fraction of a second, her brain free-floated in fuzzy unconnected thoughts.  Dizzy, her head humming as though she were standing in the center of a swarming beehive, she stumbled, nearly vomiting hot sour bile coursing up her throat and coating her tongue. Closing her eyes and swallowing hard against the sickening tide of horror washing over her, and summoning a will she didn’t know she had, she stabilized herself just as the microphone was about to slip out of her damp hand.  Again, she swallowed hard and spoke, her throat parched and crackling as though it were lined with ancient dried-up parchment paper.

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen.  This is Elizabeth Stewart of WSLS-1 TV, bringing you this exclusive report while I am standing outside our Columbus, Ohio studios where this tragic event occurred only a few minutes ago.  Dr. Adams was killed as she and Mr. Lee Blakely, who is, er, was, her fiancé and personal manager, were leaving our studios where her daily televangelical show is broadcast.  I had spoken with the couple here at the studio only a few minutes ago.  Dr. Adams told me she had just finished taping today’s show; that she and Mr. Blakely were headed for a rare and much anticipated day at her home alone...no other obligations...just an entire day and night off they were going to savor.”  Pent-up released copious tears, turning black in her running mascara, striped her cheeks as they cut rivulets into her pancake makeup.  Blotting her eyes with the tissues and taking some time to rally, she continued on.

“Dr. Adams and Mr. Blakely had just exited the building together, accompanied by a bodyguard who was escorting them to their limousine.  When their bodyguard stepped ahead of the couple to open the vehicle’s passenger door, allegedly, a man accosted them, shouting racial epithets, brandishing a handgun, shooting Dr. Adams point-blank in the heart. Apparently she died immediately.  Mr. Blakely was shot in one of his arms.  The extent of his injuries is as yet unknown.”

Again she halted, again she accepted a handful of fresh white tissues from the same disembodied hand.  Wiping her nose and eyes, and running them across her perspiring upper lip and chin, she composed herself.  She spoke into the microphone again.

“As we speak, Mr. Blakely is being transported to a nearby hospital by a medic unit.  The alleged gunman was shot by the bodyguard, and perhaps by the chauffeur, as he was attempting to flee the scene.  The alleged shooter, who is described as middle-aged and white, whose identity is yet to be determined by the police, apparently was felled by more than one bullet in the back of his body.  At last report, he was still alive, and being transported to a hospital in a separate medic unit.  It was discovered by the police investigating the crime scene that the alleged perpetrator had dropped a letter before he was shot down.  At this time, the police are not releasing information regarding the contents of the letter.”

“Hello, Elizabeth.  This is Bob Kingman.   I only just arrived at our news desk.  Do you know what hospital they will go to?”

“Hello, Bob,” Elizabeth responded, touching her earpiece where Bob Kingman’s flawless television-anchor voice vibrated in her head.  “No I don’t have that information yet.  I was told that the paramedics will radio in during transport and that we should know in a few minutes.”  She dabbed her eyes and nose with a fresh tissue.  Dropping the soiled tissues, she raised her free hand to the nape of her neck, gathering her heavy hair into its palm, and holding it in a bundle, its steaming mass lifted from her baking nape for a moment of cool relief. 

Responding to their director’s prompting to keep talking until they received updates from the field reporters who were chasing the ambulances, Bob related,  “Well Elizabeth, the way this works, if my memory serves me correctly, is that the paramedic will indeed radio into the nearest appropriate hospital during transport, meaning that it has to be a facility set up to handle this kind of trauma.  In this case, it probably will be Mt. Carmel West or Metro Center Hospital.  If indeed the alleged perpetrator has sustained life-threatening wounds, then he would be taken to one of those facilities.  It could end up however that Mr. Blakely and the alleged shooter are being taken to different hospitals.”

 “Yes, Bob and just to reiterate what I reported earlier, both of the wounded people are being rushed in separate medic vehicles to whatever nearest appropriate medical facilities can receive them.  And of course, they will be taken to the Emergency Departments where medical personnel are preparing for their arrivals.  And Bob, according to what one of the paramedics from the engine crew told me, the paramedic-in-charge will communicate with the ER nurse via the transport vehicles’ radio to the base radio at the hospital.  The paramedic will give the ER nurse the patient’s vitals, any interventions performed and the patient’s chief complaint or obvious problem.  This is done so the ER will be prepared to follow the correct protocol.”  The director had ordered a split screen set up enabling the viewers to see both Bob Kingman and Elizabeth Stewart on their television sets.

“Elizabeth, have you been able to talk to the police so we can get an on-the-scene report from one of the officers there?”

“Yes, Bob, as a matter of fact, the lead Crime Scene Investigator, Detective Esther Snow is here with me now, prepared to talk with us.”

Idling shark-shaped police cars and boxy emergency trucks, all with flashing rooftop lights still crowded the crescent-shaped parking area fronting the building, saturating the place with a discordance of metallic engine sounds and squawking mobile radio voices.  The stifling air was flatulent with noxious exhaust vapors, the vapors thickening and roiling, making a fermenting cauldron of the cul-de-sac.  Low in the sky, a helicopter, like an off-course giant Condor, dipped, then hovered, then circled, dipped, then hovered, then circled, round and round, the air ringing with the roaring racket of its clattering blades, the top branches of nearby tall and lush trees swaying and disjoining from the force of the whirlybird’s down-draft.  Contrasting the macabre death scene, on a super highway elevated high above the level of that tragedy, red, yellow, silver, blue, green, black, white, maroon, and gold vehicles cut insect-like streaks against the luminous blue horizon, the vehicles aggressively carrying on with their inhabitants life’s unvarying routine.  The piercing colors, the jangling noises, the reeking air, also holding a place in life’s continuity, bullied Elizabeth on, as did her news director, even against her will.

Elizabeth tilted toward the officer who stood beside her and said, “Detective Snow, I was told by one of your men that Dr. Adams died immediately.  How was that determined?  Were there eyewitnesses other than Mr. Blakely, the bodyguard and the chauffeur?”

The rookie officer, as yet unaccustomed to speaking into the microphone hastily fastened to her shirt lapel, lowered her chin into her chest, setting off rustling and popping sounds, the noise adding to the cacophony.  Aiding her, Elizabeth placed her own handheld microphone near the officer’s mouth.

The edgy detective responded, “Both the bodyguard and the chauffeur are coherent; neither of them were injured in any way, and they concur that they believe Dr. Adams died almost instantly.  They appear to have been the only eyewitnesses other than the receptionist inside the building.  We are conducting extensive interviews to find out if anyone else did see or hear anything.  So far, nobody has come forward, nor have we uncovered any other eyewitnesses.”

“Will there be an autopsy?” Elizabeth asked, and knowing the answer, she inwardly winced at the brutality Oma Mae’s slain body would necessarily undergo.

“Autopsies are mandatory in cases like this.  It is part of the statute.  We expect Dr. Adams’ report will prove to be somewhat routine, but it is always better to be prepared for some unforeseen circumstance that may have some bearing on the investigation.”

“Dr. Adams’ fiancé, Lee Blakely was also wounded, but not fatally.  Were you able to get any information from him?” Elizabeth asked hopefully.

  “Mr. Blakely sustained only one shot in his left arm, the wound appearing to be superficial, but it is yet to be determined whether or not he received head trauma or internal injuries from falling.  He seemed overcome by shock, and therefore unable to communicate with us,” the detective explained.

“Officer Snow, this is Bob Kingman from the news desk.”

Detective Snow placed her hand to her earpiece to listen to Bob Kingman’s question.

“We have been told that a letter was found near the shooter,” Bob Kingman continued.  “What is that all about?  What did it say?”

“Mr. Kingman, I cannot disclose the contents of the letter.  The legal requirement is that it remain privileged, at least during the preliminary investigation.”

  “Officer Snow, we are told that a gun was found near the body of Dr. Adams, but it was not the gun the alleged shooter used.  Is that correct?” Bob Kingman pressed on, hoping Detective Snow would inadvertently disclose some tidbit of privileged information.

“Apparently, Lee Blakely was carrying a gun and had time to pull it, but it is unknown whether or not he actually fired it,” the investigator replied.

“Well, why was he carrying a gun?” Elizabeth demanded, incredulity suffusing her mind. Her throat contracted into a gripping vice around her vocal cords.  “I didn’t see any gun on him.  Where did he carry it?”  She choked and fell into a spasm of coughing.

“He carried it in a holster under his trousers just above his right ankle.  We assume he had it for protection,” Detective Snow replied.  Elizabeth grabbed a glass of water handed to her by the disembodied hand.

“Had Dr. Adams been receiving threats?” Bob Kingman asked forcefully.

“That is definitely something we will be looking into, Mr. Kingman,” Esther Snow answered.

“Thank you, Detective Snow,” Elizabeth whispered, her voice weak and raspy from coughing.  The camera zoomed to her face for a close-up, allowing the investigator to move away from the site of the interview.  Fear and bewilderment registered on her grief-stricken face as she said, “Bob, Paula Mason will be reporting from the hospital the alleged perpetrator is being taken to.  Ken Stout will be following Mr. Blakely’s progress.  And now over to you, Bob.”

“That was Elizabeth Stewart who is outside our station reporting from the actual location where Dr. Oma Mae Adams was gunned down, a shooting resulting in her death this morning.  Wait a minute...”  Bob touched his earphone and listened for a moment.  “I have just received word that both Mr. Blakely and the alleged assailant are at our Metro Center Hospital.  Both patients are in the ER at this very moment.  Paula Mason is on the scene there.  Paula, have you been able to talk to anyone yet...the paramedics, police, medical staff, anybody?” Bob Kingman asked as the picture flipped to the field reporter at the hospital.

“Bob, the two separate emergency transport vehicles carrying the alleged shooter and Mr. Blakely arrived at virtually the same time...there were two teams of doctors and nurses waiting at the Emergency Department entrance...the patients were immediately wheeled out of the trucks on cots and taken to the Emergency Room...the press at this time is not permitted to enter the area...we have been told that a news conference will be held as soon as any vital information is available pertaining to the condition of the patients...all we know now is that both of them are in stable condition and are being treated for their injuries.  Now back to you, Bob.”

“Ken Stout, were you able to speak to Lee Blakely at all before he was taken inside the ER examining area?” Bob Kingman questioned the reporter assigned to cover Lee Blakely’s progress, the reporter on the screen fronting a group of other reporters, microphones abuzz, their photographers hovering.

“Bob, at the crime scene, Mr. Blakely was unconscious, and remained so during his transport to the hospital...but he awakened, and began screaming hysterically when he was wheeled into the trauma area.  Reporters are being prevented from asking questions at this time,” Ken explained.

“What was he screaming?  Were you able to understand his words?” Bob inquired.

“It sounded like he was screaming Dr. Adams’ first name, ‘Oma!  Oma!  Oma!’” the reporter answered.

“Thank you, Ken,” Bob Kingman said, and turned his attention to the viewing audience.

“That was Paula Mason and Ken Stout, both reporting live from the Metro Center Hospital.  We will continue to keep you informed of any developments as they occur, and of course Elizabeth Stewart and Richard James will be reporting to you again in just a few minutes at the noon hour.  They will be back again at our, “News at Five” program.  Then I will join Elizabeth at 5:30.  Toni Tyler and I will take over at our, “Six O’Clock Evening Report,” then again at our, “Late Night News” at 11:00.  We will break into your regular programming if anything comes through.  In the meantime, this is Bob Kingman bringing you this live report from WSLS 1 TV.  And now back to our regular program.”

Like a lewd, yet compelling wink in her direction, the reporter in Elizabeth walked over to the bloody stain in the sidewalk where her dead friend had earlier lain.  Oma Mae’s body had been moved to the morgue where it would undergo an autopsy, the outline of her body limned in dead white, its lines bordered with cerise-colored bloody footprints reminding Elizabeth of a badly rendered copy of prehistoric petroglyphs carved in mesa cliff sides in her native New Mexico.  She felt very homesick suddenly.  As she turned to enter the building, she noticed a small object glistening in the bright sunlight.  It was lying in the grass edging the walk near the outline of her friend’s body.  Walking over to it to investigate, Elizabeth recognized it to be Oma Mae’s antique green jade pendant.  Concluding that Oma Mae must have pulled the tight choker from her neck in a futile attempt to help herself breathe, then, in her panic, had thrown it, Elizabeth stooped down and picked it up.  She slipped it into her jacket pocket.  Its scant weight weighed weighty on her.