Winter Moon

The recoil induced a muscle spasm in his arms. All the strength went

out of his hands, and he lost his grip on the revolver, which clattered

onto the blacktop between his spread legs.

The killer loosed two-three-four shots, and Jack took two hits in the

chest.

He was knocked flat. The back of his skull bounced painfully off the

pavement.

He tried to sit up again. He could only raise his head, and not far,

just far enough to see that the killer had gone down after squeezing

off that last barrage, facedown on the blacktop. The round in the

chest had taken him out, though not fast enough.

Jack's head lolled to his left. Even as his tunnel vision constricted

further, he saw a black-and-white swing off the street, into the

station at high speed, fishtailing to a stop as the driver stood on the

brakes.

Jack's vision closed down altogether. He was totally blind.

He felt as helpless as a baby, and he began to cry.

He heard doors opening, officers shouting.

It was over.

Luther was dead. Almost one year since Tommy Fernandez had been shot

down beside him. Tommy, then Luther. Two good partners, good friends,

in one year.

But it was over.

Voices. Sirens. A crash that might have been the portico collapsing

over the service-station pumps.

Sounds were increasingly muffled, as if someone was steadily packing

his ears full of cotton. His hearing was fading in much the same way

that his vision had gone.

Other senses too. He repeatedly pursed his dry mouth, trying

unsuccessfully to work up some saliva and get a taste of something,

even the acrid fumes of gasoline and burning tar. He couldn't smell

anything, either, although a moment ago the air had been ripe with foul

odors.

Couldn't feel the pavement under him. Or the blustery wind. No pain

any more.

Not even a tingle. Just cold. Deep, penetrating cold.

Utter deafness overcame him.

Holding desperately to the spark of life in a body that had become an

insensate receptacle for his mind, he wondered if he would ever see

Heather and Toby again. When he tried to summon their faces from

memory, he could not recall what they looked like, his wife and son,

two people he loved more than life itself, couldn't remember their eyes

or the color of their hair, which scared him, terrified him. He knew

he was shaking with grief, as if they had died, but he couldn't feel

the shakes, knew he was crying but couldn't feel the tears, strained

harder to bring their precious faces to mind, Toby and Heather, Heather

and Toby, but his imagination was as blind as his eyes. His interior

world wasn't a bottomless pit of darkness but a blank wintry whiteness,

like a vision of driving snow, a blizzard, frigid, glacial, arctic,

unrelenting.

CHAPTER THREE.

Lightning flashed, followed by a crash of thunder so powerful it

rattled the kitchen windows. The storm began not with a sprinkle or

drizzle but with a sudden downpour, as if clouds were hollow structures

that could shatter like eggshells and spill their entire contents at

once.

Heather was standing at the counter beside the refrigerator, scooping

orange sherbet out of a carton into a bowl, and she turned to look at

the window above the sink. Rain was falling so hard it almost appeared

to be snow, a white deluge. The branches of the ficus benjamina in the

backyard drooped under the weight of that vertical river, their longest

trailers touching the ground.

She was relieved she wouldn't be on the freeways later in the day,

commuting home from work. Due to a lack of regular experience,

Californians weren't good at driving in rain, they either slowed to a

crawl and took such extreme precautions that they halted traffic, or

they proceeded in their usual gonzo fashion and careened into one

another with a recklessness approaching enthusiasm. Later, a lot of

people would find their usual hour-long evening commute stretching into

a two-and-a-half-hour ordeal.

There was, after all, a bright side to being unemployed. She just

hadn't been looking hard enough for it. No doubt, if she put her mind

to it, she'd think of a long list of other benefits. Like not having

to buy any new clothes for work. Look how much she had saved right

there. Didn't have to worry about the stability of the bank in which

they had their savings account, either, because at the rate they were

going, they wouldn't have a savings account in a few months, not on

just Jack's salary, since the city's latest financial crisis had

required him to take a pay cut. Taxes had gone up again too, both

state and federal, so she was saving all the money that the government

would have taken and squandered in her name if she'd been on someone's

payroll. Gosh, when you really thought about it, being laid off after

ten years at IBM wasn't a tragedy, not even a crisis, but a virtual

festival of life-enhancing change.

"Give it a rest, Heather," she warned herself, closing up the carton of

sherbet and returning it to the freezer.

Jack, ever the grinning optimist, said nothing could be gained by

dwelling on bad news, and he was right, of course. His upbeat nature,