She shook her head again.
“He’s with the police,” she told him, shocked her voice was so weak. She knew no one had heard her, and so she tried again. “He has a badge.”
The young officer, jumping to a false conclusion, grabbed Isabel’s upper arm and jerked her up. His grip was tight and painful. Then he pulled out handcuffs, and all hell broke loose.
A crowd poured out of the apartment building across the street, and they were incensed. They shouted at the policeman to leave her alone as they pushed forward to try to protect her. The sound of their voices became a deafening roar.
“That girl saved that man,” a woman yelled.
“Get away from her,” another demanded.
“She saved him. Now leave her alone.”
“She could have run, but she didn’t. She stayed to protect him.”
“Take your hands off her,” an angry man in the back of the growing throng bellowed.
A riot was brewing. Within a minute, two at the most, the crowd had grown to three times the number. Men and women were rushing toward her from every direction, and all of them were fighting mad.
The shouting was getting angrier, and Isabel, in a daze, tried to focus on the poor injured man, but the instinct to panic was nearly overwhelming.
“Let go of her, Officer Morris,” an older policeman shouted, clearly exasperated. He had to repeat the order more forcefully before the young officer obeyed the command. Isabel staggered back and suddenly found herself in the middle of a thick circle of strangers at least five deep. Several patted her shoulder and her back. Confused and disoriented at first, Isabel suddenly realized the group was trying to shield her.
A heavyset woman wearing a brightly colored muumuu and a matching bandanna handed her phone to the older policeman and said, “I got all of it on my phone. Watch it and you’ll see this girl wasn’t doing nothing wrong unless saving someone is a crime.”
“He’s wearing a badge. He’s a cop,” a policeman called out as he moved closer to the paramedics preparing their patient for the gurney.
Someone had finally noticed the badge, Isabel thought. She glanced at her watch and blinked. It didn’t seem that any time had passed. It was crazy. Or she was crazy. At this point she couldn’t tell.
A woman with long blond hair nudged her, asked her for her cell phone number, and then sent her a video. “Send this to as many people as you know before the police have it. You’ll have your own proof of what happened.”
The woman obviously had trust issues with the police. Isabel didn’t argue. She pulled her phone from her pocket, but her hands were so bloody, and she was shaking almost violently now. Texting was impossible. The only thing she would accomplish would be getting blood all over her phone. She decided to wait until later to send the video.
Now that the trauma was sinking in, her shaking increased. Was she a criminal now? Morris, the policeman who had shouted her rights at her, thought she was... and she had killed a man.
“What happens now?” she asked the person standing closest to her, a middle-aged man wearing a T-shirt with a faded Marine insignia across the front.
“They’ll take you to the police station to question you. I’d have a lawyer there before you talk about what happened.”
A teenager with low-slung pants and tattoos across his bare chest chimed in. “I think she ought to get out of here now while she can.”
Another youth next to him agreed with a nod. “Yeah. That’s what she should do.”
The woman in the muumuu put her hands up to calm the growing tension. “She hasn’t done anything wrong. Let the police sort it out.”
An elderly man leaning on a cane edged forward. “Young lady, I haven’t seen you around here. Are you new to our neighborhood?”
“No, uh... ,” she stammered. “I’m visiting Boston. I’m staying at the Hamilton.”
“My word, that’s a long way from here,” the old man said.
“I wasn’t paying attention,” Isabel admitted. “And I got lost.”
Glancing at the officers who had turned their attention to the victim, the marine said to her, “Hurry and tell your family where you’re going before they take you in.”
Nodding, she called her sister. She was still so rattled she didn’t know how she was going to explain what had happened.
Dylan answered. “Where are you? My brother’s at the hotel looking for you. You didn’t rent a car, did you? Oh God, you didn’t... did you?”
“No... I didn’t. Dylan... I...”
“Yes? What’s wrong?”
“I just killed a man.”