”I’m Not Surprised”

Dogger and I were in the DMV parking lot when I heard the sirens, RRRrrrrrr I hear them all the time, I don’t even look up to see, it’s RRRRrrrrrrrRRRRRRrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRR until it’s out of ear shot. RRRrrr, it ended too soon. They were close by. Another round of sirens RRRrr. They were stopping before they got to my street, selfishly, I was relieved. The sirens aren’t for me, my house or my neighbors.

The Fire Marshals SUV roared past, and then an ambulance. And I’m thinking Rrr I thought “a fire” . But it would have to be close and wasn’t any smoke in the air. I thought “heart attack or trip and fall”. Dogger and I went to find the sirens. I wasn’t going to do that, but they were right there. There was a large crowd of neighbors. And a crowd of cops. It wasn’t a heart attack. Dogger and I joined the crowd. A man called from across the street that he was going to call Dogger “Beethoven” another woman asked what kind of dog Dogger is. I asked what happened. The cops watched the people ask me questions and answer mine. The cops watched me. Dogger wanted to go. We left, so did the ambulance. RRRRrrrrrRRRRRRRRrrrrrRRRRRrrr.

As we were leaving a man was walking towards me looking quizzical, another neighbor. I told him what I had learned. I told him a man who lived in the house behind him had been shot. He said “Tsk. I’m not surprised”. I was surprised that a man who lived two blocks from my house had been shot and I didn’t hear anything. This both comforts me and makes me nervous. Shouldn’t I have heard something? Dogger and I would have been walking down my street when it happened.

The good news was that the ambulance arrived very fast and left fast. They didn’t spend a lot of time working on him and they used the sirens as they left, so I took from that he was alive when they took him away. Dogger enjoyed the show, but wanted to go home now. Dogger doesn’t like siren bearing vehicles. I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to go to the post office.

Dogger didn’t want to go to the post office. I let her take us back towards the house for a bit before we went to the post office. We walked past a house were I think the people who lived there knew the shot guy. There was a car in the yard and another car in the drive way and neither of the cars had happy people in them. They were all barking into cell phones. I got a bad vibe.

We went to the post office.

On the way back from the post office we went past the shot guys house. There were seven cop cars in the street - No sirens for them , seven cop cars rolling in should have sounded like Armageddon - and up closer to where I live, an unmarked car. Have you ever seen an unmarked car that didn’t look like an unmarked car? They can’t give detectives VWs? I mean really, I half way expected to see Lenny Brisco and Andy Sipowitz sitting behind the wheel. There were a couple of detective looking guys scattered around the shot guys yard , but they didn’t look like Andy Sipowtiz, they looked like Jethro Modean.

All the cops were just standing around in the shot guys yard. The guy had been shot for 20 minutes and they were just standing around.

Dogger and I went home. I checked the local news online. Nothing. This both comforts me and makes me nervous.

edited to add - I checked the local newspaper this morning. Nothing. Not a word. Seven cop cars, detectives and a gun shot wound and nothing.