As the man turned to get in his seat, Lucas was clearing the first line of cars and the man saw him coming. Their eyes locked for a second and Lucas thought later that he may have thought, Oh, shit. He was both too close and not close enough: the red zone.

The man ducked down and a second later stood up again, Lucas now only three or four yards away, one hand on his gun, drawing it, and he heard Frisell shout, “Gun!” and the man’s arm came up over the car door with a gun; he flinched at Frisell’s shouted warning, but the hand kept coming up with the muzzle closing on Lucas when Lucas saw Frisell in the background with a pistol in his hand already leveled in line with both the gunman and Lucas, and Lucas thought later that he may have thought, again, Oh, shit, and dropped to the ground. The first of Frisell’s bullets sliced overhead even as he hung in the air on the way down.

Most of it had to be reconstructed later, but Frisell fired seven shots: one of his bullets hit the outer edge of the lower lip of a twenty-eight-year-old cigarette salesman from Mt. Pleasant, and another went through the brim of a cowboy hat on a nineteen-year-old stock boy at an Abercrombie & Fitch at the Lakeside Mall in Sterling Heights. One went through the back of Raleigh’s head, and came out just above his eye, another hit him in the back, ricocheted off his spine, exited under an arm, entered his triceps, exited again, and wound up a half inch into the car’s dashboard. Where the other three went, nobody would ever know.

Lucas was sprawled on the ground with his arms stretched in front of him, the .45 out too late but now ready to go, and the shooting was done. Laurent was off to one side screaming at the woman to put her hands in the air—she did—and Lucas got to his knees and then to his feet and ran toward the car and looked over the door. Raleigh had crumbled there, faceup.

The hole above his eye suggested that no ambulance would be needed; at least not for him. Frisell walked up, his .40 Smith pointed straight up in the air, looking past Lucas, and he said, “They kept telling me, ‘Watch the background, watch the background.’ I forgot, I just forgot.”

Lucas looked back over his shoulder. The crowd was running in every possible direction, although most of them were running away from where Lucas was standing. In the middle of the field, a man was sitting on the ground and a woman was pushing what looked like a white T-shirt into his face.

Lucas said to Frisell, “Eject the round from the chamber—don’t lose it—and give your gun and the round to Rome. I’ll be right back.”

He jogged across the field to where the man was sitting on the ground, pushed his way through the growing circle of Juggalos around him, squatted and said, “I’m a police officer.”

“I think he’s shot,” the woman said. What Lucas had thought was a T-shirt was actually a roll of toilet paper.

Lucas said, “Let me see.”

The man nodded, wordlessly, and took the roll away from his face.

“Not bad,” Lucas said. “But you need some stitches. We will get you there right now. Do you have somebody to ride with you, or follow us?”

“Me,” the woman said. She was absolutely calm. “I’m with him. I knew something like this would happen. I told him before we came. I said, ‘Andy, we’ll get in trouble.’ He said, ‘No we won’t, it’s just a goof.’ So, here we are, and sure enough, he gets shot . . .”

She was babbling. Lucas got on the phone and called Laurent, who said, “We got the girl. The guy’s dead.”

“I saw that,” Lucas said. “We’ve got a guy here who might have been nicked by one of the shots. He’ll need a ride up to Sault.”

“I’ll get a squad over there. One minute.” He was gone.

Lucas said to the man and woman, “A cop car will be here in one minute. He’ll ride you up to Sault Ste. Marie, and bring you back, if you don’t need to stay overnight.”

“What happened? Who was shooting?” the woman asked.

“You’ll read about it,” Lucas said.

•   •   •

HE JOGGED BACK toward the shooting scene, where a crowd had gathered in a circle around the dead man’s car. As he ran, he saw a squad car headed for the wounded man. When Lucas came up, Laurent asked, “How bad?

“Guy was nicked in the lip,” Lucas said. “If it had been a quarter inch the other way, it would have missed.”

“Of course, if it had been a quarter inch the other way, he might have lost his jaw.”

“Gee, you’re just like Father Christmas,” Lucas said. “Call Bennett and Barnes. I hope the hell they stayed with the other two, ’cause they’re likely to take off.”

While Laurent did that, Lucas glanced at the woman, who was now sitting on the front passenger seat of the car, and then walked over to Frisell, who tried to explain. “They kept telling us, ‘Watch the background,’ and I, shoot, I completely—”

“Man, you saved my life,” Lucas said. “He was ten feet from me when you fired and I was late with my gun. He would have shot me for sure, might have killed me.”

“He knew you,” Frisell said.

“Yeah. I don’t know why.” Lucas looked at him closely. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Frisell said.

“A lot of guys sort of lose their shit after a shooting.”

Frisell shrugged: “Maybe I would, if I’d killed somebody innocent, or a bystander.”

Sellers and Peters were there, and they both slapped Frisell on the back, and Sellers said, “Good shooting, dude.”

“Okay. Frisell, keep an eye on the woman,” Lucas said. “Get her out of the car, pat her down, sit her on the ground if you have to. I’d hate to have her pull another piece out from under the car seat. Sellers, Peters, keep the crowd off us.”

They all did that, and Lucas took another quick look at the guy on the ground, and his gun—a chromed .38 revolver. That would have done the trick, Lucas thought, if he’d gotten a shot off.

Laurent came over and said, “Bennett and Barnes are on the job. They said the two guys are still there, they’re standing up and looking over here, but they haven’t left. Neither one has made a phone call.”

“Gotta take them,” Lucas said. “They’ll find out soon enough. We don’t want them warning Pilate.”

“What should I do with Jerry’s gun?”

“I don’t know. Whatever department policy is.”

Laurent showed a thin slice of a smile: “Now you’re fuckin’ with me.”

•   •   •

THEY DRAPED THE dead man’s body with a car cover that somebody had in a truck, and Laurent called a photographer from a local portrait studio to come out and take pictures of the scene. “It’s not like we don’t know what happened,” he said.

“We still want lots of photos,” Lucas said. “Especially of the gun and its relationship to the dead man’s hand, and any other weapons you find. Bag anything like that. If you don’t have bags, have a deputy go to a grocery store and buy some gallon Ziplocs. You want to document everything that tells our side of the story, that this guy was about to open fire into a crowd. We’ll want some general crowd shots, too.”

“But we know—” Laurent began.

“Because the guy with the lip is gonna sue your ass,” Lucas said.

Laurent sighed: “Shoot. Man, if it’s not one thing . . .”

“Let’s go get the other two assholes,” Lucas said. “We’ll haul them all downtown and do the interview room trick again.”

“Maybe you better do that,” Laurent said. “I better stick around here until this whole . . . body thing . . . is taken care of. I already called the funeral home.”

“Okay,” Lucas said. And, “Rome: the posse’s done good. I’m proud to work with you all.”

Laurent nodded: “Thank you. I’ll tell them you said that.” His phone rang and he answered and listened for a moment, then said, “Those two guys have picked up the blanket and they look like they’re headed for Melody’s car.”

“Can’t leave Frisell by himself . . . need witnesses that he didn’t mess with the scene.”