“Didn’t see it if he did. When I entered, Mr. Smith was on the floor. The other man was punching him in the head. This one was kicking him. When I took this one down, his buddy ran out the back. I didn’t see a weapon.”

McIntosh grinned at Mendoza.

“Homie had your back, bro. Right out the door.”

Hydeck passed the gun to McIntosh, told him to secure it in their vehicle and call in a second EMS wagon. The victim and suspect would not be transported in the same vehicle.

Another patrol car and the second EMS ambulance arrived a few minutes later. The new officers took Mendoza out while Stiles and her partner brought in their gurney. Hydeck questioned Smith while the paramedics worked on him. Smith told her the two men asked for a sandwich, but he wanted to close so he could go to the bank, and told them to leave. He claimed the two men refused, and that’s how the fight started.

Hydeck appeared doubtful.

“So they didn’t try to rob you or anything like that? You got in a fight ’cause they wanted a po’boy and you wanted to leave.”

“I mighta said something. It got out of hand.”

The paramedics were lifting him onto the gurney when Pike saw her enter through the rear door. She hadn’t seen the ambulances and police vehicles out front, and now the uniforms crowding the small room stopped her as if she had slammed into an invisible wall. Pike watched her eyes snap from the paramedics to the gurney to the police—snap, snap, snap—sucking up the scene until—snap—her eyes came to him, and that’s where they stayed. She looked at him as if she had never seen anything like him. Pike guessed she was in her early thirties, with olive skin and lines around her eyes. She had smart eyes, and the lines made them better. She wore a sleeveless linen dress, flat sandals, and short dark hair. The dress was wrinkled. Pike liked smart eyes.

Then Hydeck and McIntosh turned, and her eyes left him for them.

Hydeck said, “May I help you?”

“What happened? Wilson, are you all right? Wilson’s my uncle.”

Smith shifted to see past the paramedics.

“That’s Dru. She’s my niece.”

Her name was Dru Rayne, and she moved between Smith and the police as they told her what happened.

“You were assaulted right here? Right here in the shop? They attacked you?”

“I was doing okay, then this guy here stopped it.”

Dru Rayne studied Pike again, and this time she mouthed two words, as if the officers and paramedics and her uncle could not see or were not there, creating a moment between the two of them that included no one else.

“Thank you.”

Pike nodded once.

Then she turned to the paramedics.

“Is he going to be all right?”