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Shots Fired
A NOVEL / D. KIRK WOLGAMOTT
Delve into the thrilling world crafted by D. Kirk Wolgamott, a seasoned attorney and former criminal defense lawyer.
With a unique perspective on the justice system, Kirk weaves intricate tales of crime fiction that engage and challenge readers, transporting them through the complexities of the human experience.
What Our Readers are Saying
ROBERT STEIN, VA
Kirk Wolgamott has achieved something exceedingly rare: a novel that is at once an edge-of-your-seat thriller, a profound meditation on contemporary America, and an unforgettable study of the human condition.
Shots Fired combines the narrative propulsion of Michael Connelly, the moral complexity of John Grisham, the emotional insight of Jodi Picoult, and the sweeping social vision of Tom Clancy, while remaining unmistakably and triumphantly original.
Every character breathes with astonishing authenticity. Whether hero or villain, each is rendered with compassion, nuance, and extraordinary psychological depth. The pages turn effortlessly because the reader comes to care deeply about every life that enters the story.
Wolgamott's experience as an attorney lends the novel an authority impossible to counterfeit. His understanding of crime, justice, family, and human frailty elevates the work beyond entertainment into literature of genuine consequence.
The pacing is relentless, the dialogue crackles, the suspense never relents, and the emotional payoff is both moving and deeply satisfying. More than a thriller, Shots Fired is an important American novel—one that dares to ask difficult questions without sacrificing humanity or hope.
This is precisely the sort of book that deserves to be discussed in book clubs, debated in classrooms, and recommended enthusiastically among friends. It is that uncommon achievement: a novel that entertains completely while illuminating the complexities of our national life.
Kirk Wolgamott has written a landmark work.
CHAPTER 1.
Bushmaster
The new baby lay on the tattered green felt that had been removed from an abandoned pool table after the fire that started with a tipped over incense stick and ended with a burned curtain, a scorched pool table and a very upset mixed breed dog. It weighed in at 8.2 pounds and was 16.5 inches long at the barrel.
The cool black Remington Bushmaster XM-15, 5.56-millimeter, 36 inch long, 30-round magazine capacity marvel of weapon engineering, was on the table in its full glory, lit as best as Robert Lee Vinson could arrange using a desk lamp and a really cheap flashlight. It looked durable and deadly. Really deadly.
Robert, known by everyone as “Bobbie Lee”, generally pronounced as one fast word, “Bobalee”, could scarcely contain his joy. He gazed lustfully at the military assault rifle and marveled that he had it in his possession. Legally, too. Those seemingly unending, grueling, torturous shifts washing dishes, cleaning floors, hauling trash and being low dog for 6 months at Earl’s Steak House did, in fact, pay off for him. He took a handful of cartridges out of the box and neatly arranged them beneath the Bushmaster in a pattern that he thought looked cool.
He had bought it with cash at a gun show. A couple extra 20s tacked onto the purchase price and the seller swore on his mother’s grave that he had never seen Bobbie Lee, had never sold a Bushmaster, was never in town and was certainly not at that gun show. The 200 rounds of high-end ammunition were purchased from a separate vendor at the same show.
Bobbie lifted his cell phone and took a few pictures. “Glamour shots before what’s to come”, he thought. He then picked up the rifle, held it up in firing position and fake shot the poster of the bikini clad woman that was taped up in his bedroom - the spare room on his side of the double wide. Treating the Bushmaster as if it were porcelain, he gently laid the gun down, picked up a lined neoprene gun sleeve and gingerly slid it in. “That will do for safekeeping for now,” Bobbie thought, “I’m puttin’ ‘er under my bed until I think of a better place. I’m glad nobody knows that I got ‘er”.
At 22 years old, Bobbie Lee, named after the greatest general from the Lost Cause, Robert E. Lee, knew that he was a walking, talking, stereotype. Tall, at six foot three, he was very skinny. His hair, which he cut himself, was always long and looked unkempt no matter what he did. That is not entirely true, as he once razor shaved his head and it did not look unkempt; he rather looked like a madman. His beard, which to him was full, robust, and edgy, was actually scruffy and odd looking.
He spoke at the level of his 10th grade education, having bailed from the confines of school at age 16. He never worked much, just when he wanted something that mom either didn’t have or wouldn’t buy, like, let’s say, a Bushmaster. He was of average intellect, not mentally unstable, no drug or alcohol problem, and spent most of his time wearing JC Penney jeans, a concert t-shirt from a random metal band and a backwards ball cap, usually from a farm implement company. He had no tattoos, body piercings or natural biological flaws. He didn’t smoke and only drank on the weekends; he has passed out twice in his entire life. And yet, he didn’t fit in.
Perki. Perki is the reason he has always been the odd duck wherever he roams. Bobbie Lee is pretty sure her given name is Shannon Elizabeth Vinson but he wouldn’t bet on it. Everyone always calls her Perki; even the mail comes addressed “Perki”, no last name, like she was Cher or Madonna or Adele. He was 95% sure her last name is Vinson – but who the hell knows? Perki would always tell him that her name didn’t matter. That she was his mom and they had a place to live, clothes to wear, food to eat and money in her pocket. Didn’t much matter to Perki that she was Bobbie Lee’s mother.
Now 38, the woman known to most every guy within 150 miles and quite a few tourists as “Miss Perki”, has had both a dark and a colorful life. She got her sobriquet for two very impressive reasons – not quite Dolly Parton but up the scale from Kat Dennings. The back-in-the-day dark part was jump-started at 13 when, bullied into it by an older relative, either a brother or a cousin, she spent an entire afternoon and evening on her knees over by the baseball field. At $7 a pop, she had never seen so much cash money in one place. After it was over, her brother/cousin gave her $34 from the big wad of cash and pushed her in the creek while repeating over and over, “You’re a slut; you’re a slut; you’re a slut…”.
Obviously, word about an outing like that travels fast around middle and high school and the label stuck. “Perki the Tramp” a school yard taunt coined by the head of the PTA, was what led her to ditch school. The rest of the dark history is left to the imagination, if your imagination involves poles, rub‘n tug, sweaty dollar bills, VIP rooms graduating to bachelor parties graduating to high end escort services. Miss Perki is the sex trade.
Four years ago, tired of getting up off her back in random rooms across the tri-county area, Miss Perki hit a nice target. Josh Winters, a decent 42-year-old blue collar guy that had just inherited a nice old-time tourist motel called the Deck Inn on the side of the big US highway. Josh had quite a history of spending time and money on Miss Perki, once getting her in trouble at the club for gifting her a nice Bulova watch, contrary to Club rules. Once Josh saw Perki slide the pole, he was seduced.
Josh’s Deck Inn is so named because the theme is based on a deck of cards. There are no room numbers. Each room is labelled with a playing card. One might be in the Queen of Hearts or the Jack of Clubs. The Deck is one of those old drive-in motels that thrived in the heyday before the interstate and Holiday Inn Express arrived. It consists of four buildings: Hearts, Diamonds, Spades and Clubs. Josh’s parents inherited the motel back in the fifties and kept it nice. Consequently, it never attracted the riffraff. The old-fashioned neon sign depicting a card deck with cards floating away is still visible from at least a mile away.