Bagley had two things going for him. The shotgun was loaded with birdshot, and his coat was thick enough to prevent the cloud of low-powered pellets from penetrating. It still hurt though.
Bagley rolled over, winced and exhaled a ragged breath. “Good god, McMorn,” he muttered, his eyes closed in a tight squint. “What’d you shoot me for?”
I knelt beside him and set the gun down an arm-length away. “You broke into my house in broad daylight,” I said. “What did you think would happen.” I ran my hands under his coat to make sure he wasn’t bleeding.
Bagley pushed me away and tried to sit up. “I’m alright, he said. “I’m sure I’ll have a hell of a bruise this time tomorrow, but I’m alright. Help me up.”
I stood, offered him a hand and helped him to his feet. “Don’t act pissy with me, man,” I said. “You’re the one who broke into my house. You’d better explain yourself.”
Bagley stood, bent at the waist, with his hands on his knees, like a man who’d just sprinted the length of a football field. I pretended not to notice him eyeballing the shotgun. “I didn’t think you were home,” he said, his breath still coming in harsh gasps. I suspected that the shotgun blast or resulting fall had broken one or more of his ribs.
I shook my head. Bagley was one of my best informants, and I knew that he was a lot smarter than he let on. “You know that I work at night,” I said. “And that I sleep during the day. Where else did you think I’d be?”
“Your vehicle wasn’t in the driveway,” he said.
It was in that moment, from somewhere in the distance, there came the faint sound of a faraway ambulance siren. My neighbor had called 911, and responders were on the way. More than likely, they’d been told to expect a gunshot victim, which meant the police would also respond, the same police force that had been searching for Bagley since yesterday. Things were about to get interesting.
Just then, Bagley wavered on his feet. I put my hand on his shoulder to steady him. “They’ll be here any minute,” I said. “Tell me what you were looking for in my study. Whatever it was, why didn’t you just ask me for it?”
It was then that I thought of the photo he’d given me earlier in the park. Our eyes met, almost as if he’d read my thoughts. An instant later, he looked over my shoulder, and his eyes grew wide with fear. Darkness followed.
----- 0 -----
“Sir?” a voice said. “Can you hear me? I need you to say something if you can hear me.”
I opened my eyes and looked into the face of a young man with a stethoscope draped around his neck. A glance at his uniform told me he was a paramedic, and it took me a few seconds to remember where I was. I could feel the stiff grass beneath me, and my head throbbed from where I’d taken a blow to the back of the head.
I looked around. “Where’s Bagley?” I asked the medic, who pulled a blood pressure cuff out of his aid bag. “There was another man here. Where did he go?”
The medic gave me a confused look. “What are you talking about?” he asked.
“There was another man here,” I said. “Is he already in the ambulance?”
The medic shook his head. “Sir, you were the only one here when we arrived,” he said. “Now just relax while I get some vitals on you.”
----- 0 -----
Fast forward to three hours later. I was back downtown in the same interrogation room, deep inside police headquarters. Detective Jones sat across from me, his fingers in the shape of a fleshy steeple on the tabletop between us.
“So let me get this straight,” Jones began. “Your neighbor’s out doing yard work, and he watches a man that he doesn’t know run out of the back of your house. You follow him out of the house with a shotgun, fire one round into the man’s back and then you tell your neighbor to call 911.”
“That’s right,” I said. “That’s exactly how it happened.”
“But while your neighbor’s out of sight, Bagley gets the upper hand, knocks you out and manages to run away before the ambulance boys show up.”
“No. After I told my neighbor to call 911, I then realized that the man was Bagley. I immediately began to access him for any injuries. While I was doing that, someone came up behind me and clubbed me on the back of the head.”
Jones sat back in his chair. “Did Bagley see whoever it was coming?”
“I think so.”
“Then why didn’t he warn you?”
“I think it happened too fast.”
Jones leaned up and checked his small notebook. “Maybe it was somebody that he was working with, someone who’d entered the house with him to find whatever he’d been looking for.”
“Possibly,” I said. “But I doubt it.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because of the look on his face.”
“Right before you were knocked out?”
“Yep.”
Jones used his pencil to scribble down a note. “Did Bagley say what he’d been looking for?”
I’ve been wondering when we’d come to this. Do I lie or tell the truth?
“He didn’t say,” I replied. “He didn’t deny being in the house, but I got knocked out before Bagley could say much of anything.”
Jones nodded. “So what do you think happened to Bagley? Did he and his accomplice run off together? If so, where?”
“Not sure,” I said. “Did you check the bars?”
Jones grinned, and I got the impression that he knew more than he was letting on. “Not all of them,” he said.
“I don’t think he went anywhere with the person who knocked me out,” I said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Just a hunch, based on the look on his face when he realized that there was someone behind me.”
“Maybe so.” Jones checked his notebook. “So if he wasn’t buds with your attacker, who was he?”
“Maybe it was someone looking for the same thing that Bagley was looking for,” I said. “Maybe he’d been inside the house when Bagley arrived and had hid out until the last minute.”
“What do you think Bagley was looking for?”
“Who knows,” I said. “The only thing I can think of is the copy of the photo he’d given me. You know, the one I turned over to you.”
Jones shifted in his seat. “I remember.”
“So, just in case you didn’t, you might want to secure that photo. It might be an important piece of this puzzle.”
“I doubt it,” Jones said, shifting in his seat again.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“I think it was a fake,” he said.
“What makes you say that?”
“We have reason to believe that Bagley was the person dressing up in a black coat and harassing women.”
“What sort of reasons?”
“We have evidence to indicate that he was almost always in the vicinity when the ‘attacks’ took place,” Jones said.
“How do you know that?”
“Evidence.”
“Evidence like the photo?”
“Something like that.”
“Can I see the photo again?” I asked.
Jones looked down at the telephone book-thick case file on the table. “I don’t have it with me right now,” he said. “It’s locked up in the evidence vault downstairs.”
“Can you go get it? I don’t mind waiting.”
Jones shifted in his seat. “That won’t be necessary.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’m not walking down there to get it.”
Jones took a long look at his notepad, flipped the cover shut and put it in his breast pocket. “I think that’ll be all the questions for now,” he said. “You’re free to go.”
----- 0 -----
Like a replay of the day before, Jones stood at his office window and watched as McMorn exited the police station. The young reporter walked down the front steps and paused on the sidewalk. The sun was just peaking over the horizon in the east, and the old city was waking up to another day. McMorn looked in the direction of his home and then in the direction of The Herald as if trying to determine which way to go. He glanced down at his watch and then struck off towards the newspaper.
Jones glanced down at the shredder that was against the wall at his feet. He could just make out the remnants of Bagley’s photo on top of the pile inside the shredder’s catch can. Jones stooped, removed the shredder from the top of the can and pulled out the liner. He glanced up at the wall clock and knew that there would probably be no one out back to see him put the plastic bag in the trunk of his patrol car. He’d build a roaring fire in his fireplace tonight and dispose of it once and for all while enjoying a stiff drink. Jones hoped that that final act would be the end of it, but somehow he doubted it.
(All rights reserved. This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.)
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