“What about patient confidentiality?” Beth said.

“HIPAA doesn’t matter if a life is in danger,” Jayla answered. Her eyes suddenly swam with tears.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Nathan said. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.”

The second policeman stepped forward and handcuffed Beth’s right arm to the rail of the hospital bed.

—

HELP.

Daddy, help.

Wren must have written fifty times to her father, but he wasn’t answering.

She knew he would save her. He always did. There was the birthday party at the bowling alley when her hand was about to be crushed between two balls, and he pretty much leaped over a table, a metal divider, and a bachelorette party to stick his own hand in the gap. There was the month she was certain there was an alien living in her bedroom closet, when he diligently slept on the floor beside her bed. There was the banana bike race she had competed in at age eight, when her brakes failed and she was careening down a hill into a street with traffic. Somehow her father had caught up and plucked her off the seat with one arm a hot second before it became a pretzel.

Dad reflexes, he called it.

She just thought it was love.

Help, Wren wrote again.

—

ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES after his impromptu birthday party, Hugh was called to Chief Monroe’s office for actual business. He leaned back, already knowing where this conversation was going. “I’ve got to leave for lunch in fifteen minutes,” the chief said. “With Harry Van Geld.”

Hugh raised his brows, playing dumb. “The selectman?”

“Yeah. I understand his kid was picked up last night? What can you tell me?”

“Well,” Hugh said. “He’s an asshole, for one.”

“That’s not going to help me explain to his father why he was written up.”

“DUI,” Hugh said. “But he refused to blow.”

“How come he was stopped?”

“He took the corner too fast and hit the curb. It was two A.M. Kept saying his dad was going to have my job. I didn’t even know who the hell he was, at first, until I put two and two together.”

The chief steepled his hands on the desk. “So we could amend the charge to reckless operation, if we don’t have enough for a DUI?”

Hugh grimaced. “If you want to go that route.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He was drunk, Chief.” Hugh shrugged. “He reeked of alcohol. And he’s got a reputation.”

He felt his phone buzz in his pocket, and silenced it with the push of a button.

“What about video?”

Hugh shook his head. “It’s been down in the cruiser for a week. Still trying to get it fixed.”

“So no breath test, no video, and we know that Van Geld is a dickhead who’s going to be pissed if we charge his kid with a DUI.” He frowned at Hugh. “What.”

“What what?”

“What’s the look for? You’re acting like I just said I’m going to drown your puppy. If the kid had blown a 3.0, that would be one thing. But he didn’t, and you don’t have a BAC. He might have been drunk. He definitely was reckless. Consider it erring on the side of caution. We don’t need heat from the select board. It’s not worth it. Do me a solid here, Hugh. Amend it before the arraignment.”

“Because he didn’t kill anyone last night?” Hugh asked. “How about tomorrow?”

His phone vibrated again.

Chief Monroe stood up and grabbed his sports jacket. “Consider yourself lucky that you don’t have to have lunch with his father.”

“Guess that’s why you make the big bucks.” Hugh leaned back in his chair.

“Keep the town running smoothly for me, will you?” the chief said. He had a habit of taking his lunches with the radio chatter turned low, trusting the daily run of the station to Hugh when necessary.

Hugh shook his head. “The guys are going to feel like you sold them out,” he said as the chief walked through the door.

“Not if you explain it to them,” Monroe called back over his shoulder.

Hugh shook his head. “Definitely above my pay grade,” he muttered. He stood up and reached in his pocket for his phone.

Stand by for a Code Red message …

The voice of the dispatcher piped through the intercoms of the building. Hugh let his phone drop back into his pocket. From the window of the chief’s office, he saw Monroe’s car pull out of the lot.

Be advised, we have an active shooter incident taking place at the corner of Juniper and Montfort. All sworn members are to report to the Command Post at 320 Juniper, the Pizza Heaven parking lot, and await further instructions. All responding members are to ensure they have their body armor. This is an active shooter situation. I repeat, all sworn members are to report—

Hugh didn’t hear the rest of the announcement. He was already running out the door.

—

LOUIE WAS WRITING DOWN NOTES in Joy Perry’s file when Harriet came back into the procedure room. She had settled the patient in recovery and had moved the products of conception to the lab room, where she would do a second review. Now she started stripping the paper from the examination table, getting it ready for the next patient. You could never say that their nurses didn’t work their asses off, that’s for sure. “You got any Halloween candy?”

Harriet laughed. “If you keep taking my stash there won’t be any by the time it’s Hallo—”

Whatever she said faded away as a rain of bullets exploded outside the procedure room.

Louie grabbed Harriet and pulled her down to the floor behind the examination table. He put his finger to his lips, for silence. He should have closed the door. Why hadn’t he closed the door?

He knew, right away, what was happening. This was the nightmare that he couldn’t remember when he woke up in a cold sweat; this was the bogeyman, all grown up; this was the other shoe dropping. It was not that he had obsessed about violence as an abortion provider, but he had been aware of the possibility. He had had colleagues who were hurt. Louie couldn’t let himself worry over what might happen to him if he was going to keep doing his job. He knew abortion doctors who wore masks to work to conceal their identities; he had never wanted to be one of those people. What he did was honorable and just. What he did was human. He wasn’t going to hide.

It was not that he had na?vely believed this day might not come. In 1993, an arsonist had burned down the Center, and Vonita had had to rebuild. In 1998, after the abortion clinic in Birmingham was bombed by Eric Rudolph, Louie had gone to offer his support. He remembered the ATF mapping out the trajectory of the bomb, which had been full of nails: pink string, pulled tight from where the bomb had been placed to every chair in the waiting room and the receptionist’s desk, a spider’s web of intended damage. And yet he had listened to the phone ring as new appointments were made and had watched women march right past news trucks to have their abortions. After that, Vonita had contemplated putting bulletproof glass around the reception desk, like her husband had told her to do, but if the patients were strong enough to push past the protesters who told them they were going to hell, shouldn’t the staff be brave enough to meet them face-to-face?

Now, Louie was shaking, hard. He tried to hear where the shots were being fired—if they were getting closer—but there was a strange distortion in the sound. It wasn’t, he thought, like the movies made it out to be. On the heels of that: this was a fact he wished he had never had to learn.

On his first day at the Center, Louie had arrived early. He walked across the parking lot, where he ran into a little old lady carrying a chair. May I? he asked, taking it from her. She thanked him, and a few hundred feet later said that this was her spot. Louie unfolded the chair and realized he was smack in the center of a group of protesters. He walked away and ducked into Lenny’s Sub Shop across the street, where he ordered a chicken salad sandwich and a Diet Coke and sat at the counter. A few minutes later he realized that someone was standing at the window taking his picture—the old lady he’d helped. Do you know her? the waitress asked, and Louie said no, he had never been in Mississippi before today, but that he worked across the street at the Center. The waitress rapped on the window. If you ain’t buying anything, stop loitering, she said. She turned to Louie. Those people need to mind their own business, she said.

When Louie finished his sandwich, the old lady was waiting for him. She followed him across the street, shouting the whole time. You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re not a real doctor. You’re a butcher.