The Arraignment by Steve Martini Read Free Book Online Page B

hitting it, horns honking. Before I can focus entirely, the car disappears around the corner.
    I look back across Front Street to the main entrance of the courthouse. Two women are crawling on their hands and knees on the sidewalk. A guy helps one of them up, only to have her hands fly up to her mouth as she screams. I can hear it, a piercing high note, even half a block away. She is looking down at something behind her on the sidewalk.
    The gathering crowd has blocked my view. One of the marshals in his blue sport coat exits the courthouse door on the run. He disappears behind the small sea of onlookers, I suspect gone down to one knee.
    Within seconds, two other men in dark uniforms join him, both coming out of the courthouse door on the run. They have guns drawn. One of them is talking into a small microphone clipped to the shoulder epaulet of his uniform.
    Traffic has slowed on Front Street as drivers stop to rubberneck. I weave between cars, horns honking, as I cross over and make my way along the sidewalk toward the frontof the courthouse. Other people are running in the same direction now, everybody with the same thought, to see what has happened.
    As I come up behind the throng, I try to edge my way through, shoulders sliding sideways until I find a crevice in the crowd where I can see. There on the ground lying in a river of blood is a body. A man, dark hair, his face turned away from me on the concrete, part of it bloodied and gone. He’s wearing a sport coat gone sideways on his upper body as he hit the ground. His gray slacks are soaking up blood, legs tangled as if he were trying to flee as he was cut down.
    I look for Nick, but I don’t see him. By now at least a half dozen marshals are assembled, trying to gain control, pushing people back, making a path for the EMTs whose ambulance I can hear in the distance. Two city patrol cars pull up in front, their light bars flashing. One of them has a semiautomatic drawn. Then he realizes it’s over, and reholsters it, clipping it down with the snap strap before he starts pushing people back to clear a path.
    People are stumbling, being pushed. An old woman in a long coat and bandanna, nearly goes to her knees. A guy reaches out and grabs her. A look of confusion as she has no idea where these saving hands have come from. Delayed panic ripples through the crowd as stunned silence turns to agitation and people regain their bravado. Curiosity sets in. They press in for a look, and the cops push back, holding the line.
    “Did you see it?”
    “No. I heard the shots.”
    “Anybody hurt?” One of the cops is calling out.
    “Over here.” A man’s voice.
    A city traffic cop, still wearing his cycle helmet, cuts a swath through the crowd. It isn’t until then that I realize it’s not one gathering but two, each orbiting like constellations around their own black hole. There on the sidewalk I see Nick, sitting, his heavy-lidded eyes fixed in a half-closed sightless stare cast at the rivulet of his own blood running down the sidewalk and over the curb. There are little darkdots seeping into the fabric of his coat, too many for me to count. The bullet holes in his chest run downward diagonally across his body, not disappearing until they reach his waist. The impact has blown him back against a concrete planter box, where his body sits slumped like some child’s discarded puppet.

CHAPTER FOUR
    S tanding on the sidewalk, I can do nothing. Within seconds, a fire engine rounds the corner, followed a minute later by an ambulance. Two EMTs jump off the engine, and, before I can move, they are working on Nick. They hover over him, pulling equipment from their large emergency packs—needles and plasma, an oxygen mask connected to a small tank. I move through the crowd and realize that the other man is Metz. I can see the back of one of the emergency medical techs hunching over him, doing chest compressions.
    In less than three minutes, Nick and Metz are loaded onto