All my police training nearly gave way. I wanted to scream, to cry out. It took everything I had to hold it in.
Two dark bloodstains were soaking through Chris’s shirt. My legs were paralyzed. Somehow I forced myself over to him. I knelt down. My heart was pounding.
Chris’s eyes were remote, his face as gray as stone. I checked for a pulse and felt the slightest rhythm of a heartbeat.
“Oh, Chris, no.” I stifled a sob.
When I spoke, he looked up, eyes glimmering as he saw my face. His lips parted into a weak smile. His breath wheezed, heavy and labored.
My eyes filled with tears. I applied pressure to the holes in his chest, trying to push back the blood. “Oh, Chris, hang in there. Hang in there. I’ll get help.”
He reached for my arm. He tried to speak, but it was only a weak, guttural whisper.
“Don’t talk. Please.”
I raced back to the patrol car and fumbled with the transmitter until I heard Dispatch. “Officer down, officer down,” I shouted. “Four-oh-six. I repeat, four-oh-six!” The statewide call for alarm. “Officer shot, rotunda of the Palace of Fine Arts. Need immediate EMS and SWAT backup. Possible Nicholas Jenks sighting. Second officer on the scene inside. Repeat, four-oh-six, emergency.”
As soon as the dispatcher repeated the location back to me with a “Copy,” I threw down the transmitter and headed back inside.
When I got to him, Chris was still holding on to small breaths. A bubble of blood popped on his lip. “I love you, Chris,” I whispered, squeezing his hand.
Voice
s rang out ahead in the rotunda. I couldn’t make them out, but it was the same man and woman. Then there was a gunshot.
“Go,” Chris whispered. “I’m holding on.”
Our hands touched.
“I’ve got rear,” he muttered with a smile. Then he pushed me away.
I scurried ahead, my gun drawn, glancing back twice. Chris was watching — watching my back.
I ran in a low crouch all the way down the length of the row of columns closest in, clear up to the side of the main rotunda. The voices echoed, intensified. My eyes were riveted.
They were straight across the basilica. Jenks, in a plain white shirt. He was holding one arm, bleeding. He’d been shot.
And across from him, holding a gun and dressed in a man’s clothes, Chessy Jenks.
Chapter 124
SHE LOOKED like a bizarre disfigurement of the beautiful woman she was. Her hair was matted and dyed gray and red. Her face still carried the marks of her disguise, a man’s sideburns and flecks of a red beard.
She was holding a gun tightly, pointing it directly at him. “I have a present for you, Nick.”
“A present?” Jenks said in desperation. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“That’s why we’re here. I want to renew our vows.”
Chessy took a small pouch out of her jacket and tossed it at his feet. “Go ahead. Open it.”
Nicholas Jenks knelt stiffly and picked up the pouch. He opened it, the contents spilling into his palm. His eyes bulged in horror.
The six missing rings.
“Chessy, Christ,” he said. “You’re out of your mind. What do you want me to do with these?” He held out a ring. “These will put you in the gas chamber.”
“No, Nick,” Chessy said, shaking her head. “I want you to swallow them. Get rid of the evidence for me.”