Bang…bang…bang…bang…bang…bang.
Were those gunshots? Firecrackers? Was that screaming?
If it was gunfire, there were so many shots–was someone on the rampage? I told CatGirl to get down and I locked the doors. I called the police but the dispatcher put me on hold. And kept me on hold. I finally hung up. It was obvious that something was going on.
I called Meryl and Tim to make sure they were all right, since they had left just minutes earlier. When the cops came with their flashlights, I stepped outside. There were at least a dozen of them, all with guns drawn and at the ready. One female officer asked me where the shots had come from. I pointed in the general direction and they hurried through the trees and the parking lot. I decided it would be wise to go back in.
Over the next couple of hours, the story unfolded, in our front yard, talking to huddled neighbors, hearing grunts from preoccupied officers, and reading on twitter and on Facebook–but not through the news and not through the UCI PD–at least not until much later. Someone had indeed been shot. A neighbor had a bullet hole in their window and another in the wall, over their heads. There was more than one shooter. No, there was only one, and they had been apprehended.
People began speculating. Domestic violence, they said. Our minds filled in the holes. A male partner. An angry confrontation. A woman, dying. No, the news corrected us, when it finally had its say. A victim dead.
We have more information now. We have names, knowledge of a divorce battle, custody concerns, child support payments and suicide attempts.
But what goes through my head are the remembered sounds, now overlaid with what they represent, interspersed with my questions:
bang.
Wait, you’ve already gone too far, but you realize that now, right?
bang.
Why is there any need to shoot more than once? The hot anger should have already turned to cold dread.
bang.
Is the screaming hers? A neighbor’s?
bang.
What earthly thing could she have done to deserve anything like this?
bang.
This is calculated. There is no way this could be a crime of passion. Are you making absolutely certain there is no way she could survive this?
bang.
Stop. Please stop.
bang.
