Harts Shooting
Copyright© 2025 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 1: The Shooting
Tamara Hart stood under the shelter at the Salmon Creek Park and Ride, huddling deep into her parka on a dark, cold, rainy morning in early December in the state of Washington. Tamara was on the tall and thin side, her shoulder-length dark brown hair done up in a ponytail, her blue eyes looking around her curiously.
For two months now, she’d been sixteen. Her dad had offered to teach her to drive, but Tamara had turned him down. There was little prospect of getting her own car anytime soon, and she had little desire to commute on her own to her high school, more than a half hour distant, in the heart of downtown Portland.
The few others present a few minutes after 6 a.m. were locked into their own private solitudes, the only sound occasional gusts of wind rattling the plastic roof of the structure. Tamara was glad her skirt was long; she hated skirts, but the school had a uniform policy, her choice each day consisting of how far below her knee the skirt would reach. She usually opted for longer skirts.
Tamara’s curiosity was focused on a man under the dripping hemlocks a few feet away from the shelter running through a series of exercises.
She wasn’t entirely sure what it was she was watching; it looked like some form of martial arts exercise, but performed in slow motion with what looked to be very fluid and stylized movements. So, in another sense, it looked more like some sort of dance routine. Still, it was an odd thing to be doing, even wearing sweatpants and a shirt, standing in the dark and chill drizzle, the even colder wind.
The bus drew up, and everyone waiting inside the shelter lined up to board. Tamara kept one eye on the man who was doing the exercises, watched him finish without appearing to hurry, stand still, facing straight ahead for a long moment before he moved.
She sat, as she normally did, in the front seat on the left-hand side of the bus, facing the driver. Most days, she would have ridden on the bus that ran an hour later. Today, she had to help set up a display for a class project and wanted to arrive at school early.
She watched the man walk towards the bus and board. “You’re a minute early this morning, Jim,” the man said as he waved his pass at the driver. He was in his mid-thirties, dark-skinned, looking Hispanic or Mediterranean. He had a short haircut, although at the moment, his hair was dripping down onto his sweats. He seemed to pay it no attention.
The driver smiled. “Curtis was late checking the bus out. He still had the motor running. I wanted to see you jump.” The driver flipped a thumb’s up at the rider, who grinned and walked along the aisle and sat down on a seat halfway back, not near anyone else.
After a few more seconds, the express bus rumbled into motion and headed for downtown Portland, a half hour away. The bus was warm, so Tamara shrugged out of her parka, wearing a long-sleeve white blouse, atop her dark skirt.
Tamara took out a schoolbook from her backpack and started reading tomorrow’s assignment for literature, making occasional notes about the story. A couple of times, the bus would slow or change lanes, and she would look around. The man who had been doing the exercises was reading a magazine.
Curious, Tamara knotted her brows. It wasn’t one she recognized. Time or Newsweek she could tell at a glance. This one was double columns of dense print. He turned another page, and she saw the title on the front, “Economist.” It must be a work magazine, she thought, then turned back to her own book. She finished the Thomas Mann short story and reviewed her notes. She was sure that she had all the high points, but to be sure, she went over everything again in her mind.
The bus pulled off the freeway and stopped at the first stop downtown. Two women got off, and a young man climbed up the steps to the bus. Not many people ever got on the express buses downtown in Tamara’s experience, and she looked at him curiously. Homeless, she thought, then was immediately sorry to have stereotyped the young man. Still, he was dirty, unshaven, his hair wasn’t combed, and his clothes were ragged and dirty. What was she supposed to assume?
In the downtown area of Portland, you didn’t have to pay to ride the buses, and the young man simply sat down across from her, in the seat right behind the driver. He gave her an intense stare that didn’t sit well with Tamara. She wished she could get off at the next stop, but hers was the very last. She didn’t care for the way he looked at her at all.
The bus stopped again to let off another passenger, and Tamara saw the young man stand up. Even though she instinctively hadn’t liked him, she was unprepared for what happened next. The man reached into a fanny pack on his waist and pulled out a large black object, a gun, she realized belatedly.
Tamara stared at the weapon with horrified fascination. An image seared into her brain long ago: her mother’s face, lit by a bright flash. And as always, the flash was followed by blackness. Before, there had been awful dreams as well; now she was sitting, staring at the gun. It wasn’t a dream.
The young man pointed the weapon at the driver. “Give me your money!”
The driver paled, started to speak, stopped, and cleared his throat. “Man, this is an express. Everybody has passes. Only one person paid in cash. Two bucks, and it’s in the meter.” He waved at the fare box.
“I want some money!” the young man screamed. Tamara couldn’t help noticing that the young man’s hand holding the gun was trembling like a leaf in a strong breeze. Was that why she was alive? Her mother’s hand had been shaking?
“Guy, I just don’t have any!” the driver repeated, sounding nervous himself. “This is an express. No one pays cash.” The driver’s eyes were wide, staring at the gun. “Look, I got twenty bucks in my wallet. I’ll give it to you.”
There was a stir behind her, and Tamara turned to look for a brief second, before turning her gaze back in horrified fascination to the man with the gun in his hand. The man who’d been exercising had stood up and was walking to the front of the bus. “Need some cash, Jim?” he said as the young man saw him. “I have a hundred in my wallet.”
The young man brought the gun to bear on the man approaching.
“Hold it right fucking there, asshole! Drop your wallet on the floor.” He gestured with the pistol, in front of him.
Tamara wasn’t sure if her fellow passenger was crazy, stupid, or trying to be a hero. Maybe all three. She hadn’t known enough to be afraid before; maybe he didn’t understand either?
The man of the odd exercises took another step forward. “Is that a Walther PPK? I’ve always admired it; James Bond carried one, you know.” The voice was like a TV announcer’s, clear and vibrant. The man sounded like he really cared, like he really wanted to help.
The robber took a step back, but there was no place to go. “Drop the wallet, mister! Don’t come any closer!”
Her fellow passenger stopped in front of Tamara, and the movement of air brought her a slight smell of sweat. For some reason, she didn’t associate that with this, but with his earlier exertions. Had he sat by himself to avoid offending others? No one she knew was that thoughtful of the people around them. Her attention on the gun had never flagged.
The passenger reached into a pocket and pulled out a wallet. Tamara could see him wave his wallet out of the corner of her eye. It was like he was waving it in front of the robber’s nose, Tamara thought. Then the man tossed the wallet about a foot short of the robber’s outstretched hand. Instinctively, the robber went down on one knee to pick it up.
The passenger moved abruptly and had a knee pressing the other’s wrist, the one holding the gun, to the floor of the bus. “Call it in, Jim,” the man told the driver, as he bent down, twisting the gun away from the young man’s grasp.
Tamara felt a little faint. What if he’d been shot? That hurt! A lot! She knew! Oh, how she knew!
As if reading her mind, the man holding the squirming would-be bandit down rapped the pistol on one of the poles. “It’s plastic, just a toy! Everyone relax.” It did sound like plastic.
Tamara relaxed, just a little. Her attention now went to the robber, now lying on his back on the deck of the bus.
He tried to get his arm free and when he couldn’t, aimed a punch with his other hand at his captor. Tamara wasn’t sure what happened, but a second later the man from the Park and Ride was sitting on top of the robber, his knees pinning both the other’s arms to the deck of the bus. Tamara could see that the trapped man was making a great effort to move, to buck the man sitting atop him off, but it wasn’t working. She kept waiting for karate chops or something, but there weren’t any. The man just kept sitting on the struggling would-be robber.
The driver said, “One minute, Jose. They’ll be here.”
Tamara contemplated the name she’d heard. It sounded Mexican; that didn’t matter. He was a brave man! Jose. She studied him intently; curious about him.
The trapped man continued to struggle futilely, cursing and swearing loudly. He tried to kick, but his legs were obstructed by the bus entrance way. Every time he tried to buck off the man holding him down, nothing changed.
There was a screech of tires, and a second later a policeman came running up, gun drawn. The man from the bus, the one the driver called Jose, held the toy pistol away from his body, his hand on the barrel, the pistol grip facing the policeman.
Without a word, the policeman took the proffered object and without a second glance, put it in his waistband. “Let him up.”
Jose said softly, “Careful, he’s stronger than he looks.” He moved carefully to one side, and for a moment the young robber lay there, staring at the policeman, who was looking down at the robber, his own gun pointing at the man lying on the ground.
After a second, the policeman looked back towards the others in the bus. Like a snake, one of the robber’s feet kicked out, and connected with the policeman’s fist holding the pistol. The sudden explosion startled everyone, and for a moment the only sound was the pistol falling, clattering on the deck of the bus. The young man slammed into the policeman, knocking him backwards, out of the bus. The robber was off like a jackrabbit, running.
Tamara blinked at the shot. She’d never heard the other one. Once, after a bad night, she’d asked her Dad. “You never hear the one that gets you,” he’d said, holding her in his arms. Again, there was the flash, the short glimpse of her real mother’s face. Here it was cloudy morning bright, not dark.
Tamara turned to follow the running robber, looking out the window; if she hadn’t been quick, she’d have missed it. Another policeman was there and with a studied ease he flicked out his baton and tripped the fleeing man. Then, with bored indifference, slammed the baton in the young man’s back when he attempted to get up. A second attempt to get up brought a blow to the man’s head; the young man slumped to the concrete, inert.
Again, with practiced ease, the policeman pulled out a set of handcuffs, and did something Tamara had never seen in the movies, he latched them to one hand and one foot, before turning to the bus. “You okay, Dennis?” he said to his younger partner, still lying on his backside, stunned, on the sidewalk. The other was collecting himself and said nothing but nodded.
Movement inside the bus caught Tamara’s attention. Jose, the brave man with the weird exercises, was pressing something against the driver’s side. He saw the second policeman approach. “We need an ambulance here; we have a man down,” Jose told him. Again, his voice was calm, conversational, not loud or rushed, but firm and confident. Tamara saw that there was blood on his hands as he pressed a handkerchief down on the driver’s side.
For a second, Tamara was confused; the driver was still sitting in his seat, stock still, his knuckles white against the steering wheel. Then she realized the driver had been shot too!
“Just a little zing, Jose,” the driver said, his voice strained. “I’ve cut myself worse shaving.”
He wasn’t down, Tamara thought. Why had the man said there was someone down? She’d gone down when she’d been shot. She hadn’t talked, she hadn’t made any attempt at a joke, then or later about what happened to her.
The older policeman glanced at Jose, then spoke into a walkie-talkie, before helping his partner to his feet. “Go there,” the policeman pointed to the bus bench, “and stay until you are called. Do you need help?” The younger policeman shook his head angrily, stalked over to the bench, and sat down.
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