A World the Color of Salt Read Free Page A

shone on the walls. It was a tight place, lots of open food boxes there containing the stuff Jerry or his dad would put in the microwave for us. White boxes marked “Hamburg.” In one corner, the soft-ice-cream makings. Jerry Dwyer’s father was going to lose more than a son here. More than his heart, I mean.
    Joe said, “We know they had a twenty-two auto up front: six casings on the floor. One slug in the Lotto machine, one in the post by the register. Three in the wall. One slug must have caught him, and then he ran.”
    He paused, pulling his hands onto his hips and talking down to the floor, a move he makes when something’s got to him. I knew .22’s could do funny things—kill you in an instant, if placed in the right spot, or merely drill a hole in you like a paper punch, swell the tissue like an allergic reaction, and that’s about it. One case I knew of, the victim took a round in the top of the heart, in and out. He ran two blocks home, lay on his sofa for fifteen minutes before paramedics arrived. Today he sells health insurance down the street from my bank. You can get whapped with a .22 round in the back of the head, the shell will fly apart, the pieces burrow under your scalp like worms trying to find the sun, but you live.
    He said, “The one in the head, if I had to guess, would be a five-seven.”
    My throat went tight. I started to walk to the back door, and then felt Joe beside me. The rook was staring at us as we passed, as if he wanted to ask Joe a question.
    Joe said, “The kid was holding the door, trying to keep them out. Looks like he was a big guy. Was he?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHe might have been able to do it, except he kept slipping in his own blood. You can see that, with the smears. I think with that first shot they must have got him somewhere in the face or head, the amount of blood there was. See the spatter inside the door?”
    I had. Blood on the cooler door, like on the door up front, only more of it, and lots at the bottom.
    â€œIt runs down on the floor while he’s trying to keep them out,” Joe said. “He slips, keeps sliding, can’t hold it. See the skids?”
    I nodded.
    Joe went on. “Victim’s pushing, pushing. They get the pistol barrel in—there’s tool marks on the edge and frame; Billy’s got shots of it—they get the gun in, shoot him in the leg. He goes down, whoom! It’s all over.”
    Joe stepped closer, lightly leaned his shoulder against mine. I didn’t move.
    He went on. “We know there were two.”
    I managed to say, “There’d be blowback from where they got him in the head.”
    â€œSomebody’s sailing around with dirty clothes. Shoes’d be good, too. We got definite sole prints.”
    â€œTransfers anywhere?” I asked. This would be blood transferred from clothing, say, to another object. Often there are identifying fibers or other trace evidence to be found.
    â€œWe got five red fibers off the outer-door frame near the floor, don’t know what they mean, could be old. We got boot-heel and sole prints. A half-palm transfer on the register. I think it’s got some gunpowder residue in it. We’ve done about half the latents.” Latents are fingerprints not readily visible to the naked eye.
    He looked around him and said, “It’s going to be tough in a place like this. And no video, of course.” Video cameras in the regular chains might have captured something. Dwyer’s Kwik Stop was a mom-and-pop without the mom, the mom doing something or other in the Midwest after a divorce. I remembered Jerry saying once that his mom was a good businesswoman.
    â€œOne more ‘we got,’ please,” I said. “Say we got a witness.”
    â€œDon’t I wish,” he said.
    â€œYou say it happened when?” How could there be no witness, a store near a freeway? We were outside now, and the