Heartshot by Steven F. Havill Page A

unevenly illuminated by the bright sodium vapor lights of the park, was soft and puffy, like that of a man just jerked out of bed. I couldn’t see much of the victim at first, but then I saw the ankle holster, and tasted the bile that welled up in my throat as I bent over.
    “Ah, no,” was all I managed to say. Art Hewitt lay on his back, arms outflung. By his right hand was the stubby Magnum.
    “Where the hell is that ambulance?” the paramedic muttered. “There ain’t a thing we can do until he gets here.” In the distance, we could hear another siren building.
    “How is he?” I said, dropping to my knees beside Sprague.
    “His pulse is good. Breathing is ragged. There’s no way of knowing where the bullet went. But I think he’ll be all right.” He was holding a pad made from Hewitt’s own T-shirt against the young officer’s right flank. “He’s conscious.”
    Hewitt’s features were rigid, and his eyes were staring wildly up into the night, shifting first one way and then another as if he were searching the heavens for an answer. “Art?” He looked over at me, obviously having trouble focusing his eyes. “Art, what the hell happened?”
    He wet his lips and swallowed hard. “Damned if I know,” he whispered. “I was talking with some kids and…and…”
    “And what?” The ambulance screamed up to the curb. “And what, Art?”
    “He was talkin’ with some guy over by the corner.”
    “Who was talking? Fernandez?”
    Art Hewitt nodded slightly and swallowed hard. “And then he just came over and jumped me.”
    “Jumped you? You mean he threatened you with the gun?”
    “No. He just…he just charged me, pushed me real hard. I tripped and fell backward.”
    Footsteps pounded toward us, and I looked up. The ambulance crew was sprinting across the grass. I put a hand on Hewitt’s shoulder. “They’ll get you fixed up, Art. Just lie easy.”
    “I’ll be okay, Gramps.”
    Sprague, an internist by training, and far from being a trauma specialist, stood aside and let the well-equipped EMTs take over.
    I moved to give them room to work and gasped aloud, so vicious was the combination of pain and pressure that suddenly and relentlessly clamped me in a vice. “Holy shit,” I breathed, and stood bent over with my hands on my knees.
    “Are you all right?” It was Sprague.
    “I think so,” I said, slowly straightening up. Air came a little easier and the pain subsided. “Too much running around.”
    Dr. Sprague’s eyes narrowed as he looked closely at me. “Chest pain? Pressure?”
    Everything was coming back to normal, and I knew that if I answered the doc truthfully, there’d be complications that I couldn’t afford just then. “No. Just a little dizzy. I’m all right.”
    Sprague had me by the wrist, and it was only after a few seconds that I realized he had been expertly but unobtrusively taking my pulse. I pulled away. “I’m all right.” They were loading Art Hewitt into the ambulance. “I need to get to the hospital.”
    “Probably for more reasons than you think,” Sprague said dryly. “Who’s your doctor?”
    I looked at him impatiently. “None,” I said truthfully. I had been ill so rarely that I had never seen the need for a regular physician.
    “Find one,” he said cryptically. “If you make it through this night, find one. I mean it.”
    I nodded and said, “Sure. And I’m going to need to talk to you. You saw this?” I nodded at the flattened spot in the grass. Even as we talked, a second unit arrived and Fernandez’s corpse, covered with the usual white sheet, was loaded.
    “No. I heard the shots. That’s all. As you know, I live just over there.” He indicated a row of town houses that had been built on the east side of the park. “I didn’t even have time to put together something for my bag. I haven’t been in active practice for some time.”
    “All right. We’ll want a statement.”
    “Certainly.”
    I saw that Bob Torrez and the village