“Jesus Christ, Fisher,” he says. He pulls her toward the door and yells again, and this time she can hear him. “Jesus Christ.”

Hurt steps out onto the sidewalk and backs Kateri up against one of the huge pillars holding up the second-floor balcony on the house. “Stay there,” he says to her. She watches him pace the sidewalk and then go back into the house, calling for medical, for backup.

Kateri’s arm shakes clear up to the socket, her teeth on edge, her mouth filled with metal and blood from biting her tongue. Her hand, sore and cramped from clenching the gun, is spattered with a fine spray of blood.

Around them is nothing but open lots, poured basements, phases of construction, all of them stalled. Razed land and stubbled grass. The cellars are like graves, waiting. Foundations behind orange plastic fences. Beyond that the cornfield, moving in the breeze, a sound like paper crinkling.

She doesn’t know if he’s dead.

From the back of the house, the dog comes bolting toward her, stuck with burdocks, his mouth stained with blood. He leans down and barks at Kateri, but when she crouches, he comes slinking forward, his head low, and his whole backside wagging.

She can hear sirens from town.

“Fucking Christ, Fisher,” Hurt says from the doorway, the hot smell of gunshot lingering inside.

Kateri stands and keeps petting the dog, to stop him from going inside to Bear. She tries to answer Hurt, but she cannot unclench her teeth, and her insides vibrate like a motor. She stays there while Hurt goes back inside, and she hears an animal wail from Bear.

“Where did I hit him?” she whispers when Hurt comes back out. Her head is so filled with static she doesn’t know if the words have any voice to them. She hates herself for bringing her own fear, her own feeling into it. She thinks, I would have shot him anyway. I wanted to shoot him.

Hurt looks down at the dog, slumped against Kateri’s leg.

“Where should you have hit him?” he asks, and then adds, “Fisher, you’re not a rookie.”

“I know,” she says.

“Your arm jumped,” Hurt says. “You hit his neck.” He spits blood onto the grass and watches behind her, at the activity in town.

She gasps hard, all at once, like she has not been breathing for a long time.

She takes the dog home. She asks Hurt if he thinks anyone will notice or care, and he says no, not in the face of everything that has happened. She takes the dog home first, lets him into her apartment, and leaves him with a bowl of water and a soft blanket, which he seems to settle down with in a patch of sun coming in her back window.

The ambulance sped off toward Mercy Hospital. The voices a blur of commands. Blood pressure. Oxygen. Intubation. Kateri stood on the sidelines, dazed.

In the office, a mountain of procedure. Interviews, paperwork. Statements.