Excerpt
Britt’s trance, as he heard the din of the family’s voices, was broken by a sharp, foreign voice, and he stopped in his tracks.
“Get down! Get down!” A crack much like the rifle shots that had killed the steer and the hog, but not as loud, followed the shouted command. Britt looked up in time to see a young man with long blond hair pointing a pistol at two policemen peeking from their spots behind a squad car in the middle of the small parking lot that lay on the east side of the bank.
Britt saw a pudgy, gray-haired woman wearing white stockings and beige heels, sprawled on the grass at the edge of the parking lot. A new, dark green Volvo was parked to her right, beyond the police car. The squad car, which had driven up without its siren blaring, was forty or so feet from the rental car where Britt’s mother and wife had been waiting. But no one was visible in the car.
He stood paralyzed as he young gunman, clutching a canvas bag in his left hand, ran in the direction of the driveway feeding into the parking lot, where a faded sub-compact car sat, the scruffy-bearded driver revving the engine. The gunman looked back and fired several more shots at the policemen as he ran. He leaped through the open door on the passenger side, and the car squealed away in a mixed cloud of blue exhaust smoke and black smoke from peeled tires.
Britt whirled at the sound of pounding footsteps, and saw the bank security guard running from the bank to the scene. He yelled at the policemen that he would tend to the woman on the grass. The cops jumped in the squad car and tore after the bandits, the newer tires squealing but leaving no smoke. Both cars hurtled down the boulevard past Britt, the squad’s siren now screaming.
For a second, Britt watched as the cars disappeared down the hill, then ran toward his rental car. He heard another siren, growing louder, and saw an ambulance pull into the driveway and up to the Volvo. Two attendants jumped out and hauled a stretcher to the woman, but one hastened back to the ambulance. He returned and placed an oxygen mask over the woman’s face. Britt saw a dark stain on the woman’s powder-blue dress at the lower abdomen.