Dwayne said a few final words into the walkie-talkie, clipped it back on his belt. “Yes, sir. No problem.” He knelt by the body. Black Hoodie’s eyes were still open. He appeared to be conscious. “You got a gun, boy?”

There was no response.

“We don’t want nobody to get hurt now, right? So I’m just going to check here, see if maybe you have a gun here you might’ve forgot.” As he patted the front pocket area of the thick black sweatshirt, he frowned. “Feels like you might have something in there, boy. You want to tell me what it is, so nobody gets hurt?”

Black Hoodie’s eyes were on Dwayne’s face now, but he said nothing. Dwayne reached into both pockets simultaneously, grasped the concealed hands, and slowly pulled them both out into the light.

The left hand was empty. The right hand held an incongruously girlish pink cell phone.

The uniformed cop gave Gurney an exaggerated look of mock sympathy. “Oooh, that’s not good. You went and shot that little boy because he had a phone in his pocket. A harmless little phone. That’s not good at all. We got a serious ‘imminent danger’ question here. Hey, Dwayne, check the kid’s vitals, get a call in for the EMTs.” He looked back at Gurney, shaking his head. “Not good, mister, not good at all.”

“He’s carrying. I’m sure of it. You need to do a closer check.”

“Sure of it? How the hell could you be sure of it?”

“You work inner-city homicide for twenty-plus years, you get a good sense for who’s carrying.”

“That a fact? I’m impressed. Well, I guess he was carrying, all right. Just wasn’t carrying a gun,” he added with an ugly grin. “Which kinda changes the lay of the land in an unfavorable way for you. Be hard to call this shooting righteous, even if you were still a police officer—which, of course, you’re not. I’m afraid you’re going to need to come with us, Mr. Gurney.”

Gurney noticed that Hardwick had returned and positioned himself at the inside edge of the growing circle of gawkers, not far from Madeleine, who now appeared less frozen but no less fearful. Hardwick’s eyes had taken on an icy malamute stillness that signaled danger—the particular danger that arises from indifference to danger. Gurney got the feeling that if he were to give a small nod in the direction of the antagonistic cop, Hardwick would calmly put a nine-millimeter round in the man’s sternum.

It was then that a sound of humming caught Gurney’s attention—a humming barely audible amid the growing clamor of the fire and medical equipment moving in all directions through the fairgrounds. As he strained to make out the source of this incongruous sound, it grew stronger, with a more noticeable pattern. And then the pattern became recognizable.