SHOOting

Darla Levine was prodding a broccoli and grated carrot salad with complete disinterest when the cell phone set on the dash of the Escalade trilled to life. She checked the number and groaned. It was the boss of the local 'schutzhund' association returning her call to arrange a photoshoot and short interview for the weekend edition of The Rockville Gazette, the local newspaper for which Darla worked.

Darla let the phone ring. She was supposed to be a busy reporter and busy reporters didn't hover over their phones praying for a story to come to them.

'You gonna answer that?' Chippy Gomez reached for it with his grease-smeared hands.

'Don't touch that!' Darla slapped his hand away and snatched up the phone.

'Ow.'

'What did I tell you about the phone?'

'Let it ring.'

'And?'

'Don't touch it.'

'Right.'

Chippy shook his hand and returned to his burger. The ringing stopped.

'Shit,' Darla said, staring at the message indicating a missed call.

'You shoulda answered.'

'Why don't you mind your—'

The phone began to ring again. This time Darla didn't wait.

'Darla Levine.'

'This is Andrea Wilson.'

'Mrs Wilson, great to hear from you!' Darla sang in her professional phone voice.

They exchanged pleasantries and got down to business. Darla forced herself to at least sound interested in what she was hearing, but it was hard work. Darla considered dumb men training dumb dogs as weapons to be spectacularly stupid, but her boss liked mutts and – inexplicably – schutzhund was becoming a popular pastime in Rockville. On any given Saturday, a person could find groups of grown men standing in fields, beating their padded arms, shrieking and threatening each other with sticks while German shepherds, rottweilers and Belgian Malinois strangled themselves into a foaming frenzy until their release, upon which they would sprint across the open ground and launch themselves at their padded assailant. If the dog took a man down the spectators whooped and hollered and clinked their beers together. Man's best friend, the greatest penis extension ever invented, Darla thought sourly as she hung up.

'That the dog woman?' Chippy asked, squeezing words out around his burger. Darla tried not to look at the congealed mass in his mouth. She tolerated Chippy's brain-dead conversations, his casual attitude to work, his rudeness and his inability to use deodorant, but she hated that he talked with his mouth full and had lost count of the number of times she had told him to stop doing so. Had she her way, she would have opened the Escalade and booted him out there and then. Unfortunately, Darla's boss, Popeye, paid Chippy cheaply and off the books, and he could at least operate a camera.

'Yes.'

'She say when we need to go see her?'

'Tomorrow at noon.'

Chippy looked worried.

'What?'

'I don't like dogs. Especially those big ones.'

'Too bad, it's a two-page spread in the supplement. We need the photos of them in action.'

'Those dogs, man, I seen them. They're real mean.'

'They're supposed to be mean. They're attack dogs.'

'Shit man, what if they attack us?'

'Then we'll have a different slant on the story.' Darla shot him a sneaky glance. 'But seriously, if I were you Chippy I'd wear good running shoes.'

'Me?'

'Sure, I like dogs, so I'm okay, but you … they can smell fear you know. Smell it like a shark smells blood in the water.'

'Oh Jesus, really?'

'Trained for it. You'll be like a big piñata to them.'

Chippy grew pale under his tan. Darla glanced out the window and thought about how much she really hated her life.

She had worked at The Gazette for four years. Four years of covering stupid drunks who crashed their cars into trees on payday, stupid cats trapped behind walls and stupid hick families who swore they saw 'something' in the woods while camping. But this, this stupid dog crap, seemed like a new low.

It was a joke assignment; she had become a joke.

Darla sighed. It hadn't started out like this. True, her father, Ted Levine, had been the one to get her through the door at The Gazette, but nepotism did not prevent her from working hard. It was just that nothing really ever happened in Rockville. Hell, even Denton, the next city over, had a decent football team whose players were constantly in the news for various stupid but entertaining pranks. Denton provided not just one, but two politicians caught with their pants down in bathrooms, swearing blind they had no idea foot tapping could be so suggestive, while their wives stood, stone-faced, behind them.

'Hey, ain't that the guy?' Chippy said.

'That's him.'

Darla watched Sam Villiers stroll down the street. His massive gut was cinched tight beneath a pink and green check shirt, which was tucked into gaudy mint-green pants that would not have looked out of place on a 1970s pop singer, assuming the pop singer was a small obese auctioneer with a brand-spanking-new addition to his police record which he hoped and prayed no one knew about.

'Let's try to get a shot of him with the bank in the background,' Darla said. She grabbed her recorder and fluffed her hair in the rear-view mirror.

'Aw, look, he's turned around.'

They watched Villiers pat his pockets and do an about turn.

'Musta forgot something.'

'You don't say.'

'Prob'ly his wallet.'

'Mm.'

'Funny how he always eats in the same place.'

'What's funny about it?'

'How come he don't get bored, man?'

'How come you don't get bored asking stupid, unanswerable questions?'

'Me, I get bored eating the same shit. Gotta change it up.'

'You've eaten tacos and burgers every single day we've worked together.'

'Different shit in 'em though. It ain't the same if the shit's different.'

The phone rang again. Darla offered a silent thank you to whatever saint covered mindless conversations.

'Darla Levine!'

'Where are you?'

It was Pip Lowe from the newsroom.

'Opposite Bunny's on Chadwell Street.'

'We're getting calls about an incident at Rockville High. Something's going on over there right now.'

'What kind of incident?'

'I don't rightly know. But it's big enough that the Sheriff has despatched two cars. They're en route.'

Darla sat up a little bit straighter. 'That all you got, Pip?'

'Hold on.'

Darla heard muffled sounds in the background before Pip came back on line. 'We're getting news that one of the kids might have been shot. But I don't have confirmation on that.'

'I'm on it.' Darla hung up. 'We need to get to Rockville High now.'

'What's up?'

'Shooting.'

Chippy gunned the engine while Darla dialled from memory the number of Vonda Kelp, a money-hungry shrew who had been 'temping' at the Sheriff's department for as long as Darla could remember.

'Vonda, it's Darla. What going on?'

'Oh my gosh,' Vonda's voice dropped to whisper. 'We've had a ton of calls in the last few minutes. Someone is shooting over at Rockville High.'

'What do you know?'

'Nuthin' 'cept that shots have been reported.'

'Shots? More that one?'

'I can't say for certain. Sheriff Dubray's gone over there himself to see what the heck is going on.' Incredibly, Vonda's voice dropped another octave. 'He looked real worried when he left here.'

'Anyone hurt?'

'I don't know,' Vonda said, 'but it sure can't be good if there's shooting though, can it?'