Without preamble, Mary Riley's son told her:
"The guy from the upholstery store said you need to get back to the shop—now."
And so Mary got in her car and returned to the one and only shop her son could have been speaking of: the Bahnna Bird Farm. Where, on the block just north of Nellis Boulevard and Washington Avenue, her husband of 27 years, Hyke Riley, had been selling birds and batteries and golf carts for the past two decades. Where a faithful clientele dropped by every day of the week, just to say hi, or to enjoy one of the last true familial atmospheres in the northeast region of Las Vegas. And where Mary herself had just concluded her workday, departing at 4 o'clock into the brilliant vernal evening, still clear and bright and bathed in sun dust, leaving behind her husband and her stepdaughter, Karen, to close the shop at its typical hour: 5 p.m.
She drove back to that shop, which isn't very far from where she and Hyke live, trying to figure out what could have possibly made Joel, the man with the upholstery business next door, call with such an imperative command for her to return. Her husband, Hyke, who at 64 years old was in durable health and had never even needed a doctor, seemed fine when she left 30 minutes earlier. And his business had never experienced any serious criminal activity in the 27 years she had been married to him. In fact, the shop had been so untroubled that Hyke and his employees had long dropped the habit of refreshing the surveillance camera videotapes. Years of placidity in that small Eden of lovebirds and yellow canaries and white doves (and car and motorcycle batteries) had suggested the daily exercise to be futile.
Then Mary arrived back at the shop—and she nearly lost it. There was the yellow caution tape. The police. The ambulances. The onlookers. The heads shaking in sympathy for Hyke and his daughter and the two young boys who happened to be in the shop that day, and the eternal sighs for the crime which never seems to end in certain sections of our town. And the air of confusion, encapsulating it all.
Because Mary had had the good fortune of leaving the store at 4 o'clock—a half-hour before two unidentified gunmen stormed in and wreaked havoc—she would not know exactly what had happened until after that long evening had passed, when the ones who had been shot told her themselves about the travesty that had unfolded.
Bahnna Bird Farm is a single-story business split into four sections: batteries are sold in the front; various bird cages stand in the anterior middle; birds sing and chirp and chatter from sunrise to sundown in the rear middle; and those birds and their accessories are sold in the back. It all sits flanked by other modest shops and Nellis Boulevard. Behind the shop is a long alleyway.
Hyke Riley, a husky and affable man who had managed to make an honest living in small business there, had seen his wife off from his post behind the counter at 4 o'clock with no presentiments as to the horror to follow. How could he? It all seemed like another day. He had sat behind that counter, which is the first thing customers see upon entering and the last upon leaving, for more than a quarter-century, working seven days a week, every week, without fail, and he had no reason to believe that today, Thursday, April 6, was different from any other. As ever, people had come in to admire the exotic little birds and drift about in their vocal splendor; had come in to exchange batteries; or had come in just to talk shop, because everyone knows Hyke was willing to chat it up with just about anyone who passed through. (That's just the type of guy he is, his friends and family say, and that's the reason there has been, since Hyke was shot, an endless and diverse line of men, women and childrencoming by the shop to offer their cards, flowers, prayers and condolences.)
No: Nothing was out of the ordinary. With his daughter Karen, 40 years old and 6 feet tall, unloading new birdcages in the small warehouse behind the shop's middle sections, and a family of four browsing for bird toys to bring home to their beloved cockatoo, and with just 30 minutes to go before the end of yet another business day, everything seemed normal.
But then Hyke looked up from his post behind the counter and saw in swift and formidable motion a body, encroaching with a gun turned 90 degrees and pointing forward, its face dark and ominous under a hood, shouting: "YO MUTHAFUCKA—" It was all instantaneous and it was all startling and it was all definitely out of the ordinary, and it delivered Hyke without recourse into that state in which all animals, determined by nature to preserve themselves, must either fight or flee. And because Hyke has never been the combative type, has never wanted trouble with anybody, he fled, just like a bird. A big, awkward bird. He turned his aged body and scrambled toward the quickest escape. Later, he would rationalize this to his wife by saying: "I just didn't want to get shot in the face. If I was going to get shot it was going to be in the back." Yet, in the end, it was neither his face nor his back: Hyke was shot in the side. As he turned and tried to scramble from out of the counter area, congested by plants, African masks, old televisions, filing cabinets and all sorts of miscellaneous items accrued over years of running his own business, the bullet from the gunman's 9mm pistol pierced through the incessant love songs of the shop's myriad birds and then straight into Hyke's left side, rupturing his spleen.
Yet, he continued to scramble. Continued trying to flee out of harm's way. Continued into the warehouse behind the shop's front section, an open garage crowded by batteries and tall birdcages, where one of Hyke's employees, Robert, was sitting on the forklift, maneuvering freight. And then—BAM!—he was shot again. Straight through his left hand. The bullet would graze Robert's leg and lodge itself in the garage wall across the alleyway. Some eight hours and an intense surgery later, Hyke would tell his wife what he had been thinking then: They have come to kill me. For he had not heard anything about money, which cops would later determine to be the two gunmen's motive. Hyke had not heard a "GIVE ME YO' MONEY," but only a "YO MUTHAFUCKA—" and at no point did his assailant take the cash from either his store or his pockets.
Blood effusing from his side and hand, Hyke slumped against a cage full of small birds driven mad by the commotion, with his assailant standing less than 10 feet away from him. Then Karen appeared. She had been in the adjacent warehouse unloading birdcages with the garage-door open, to let in air on that warm evening, when she heard pops. Instead of going through the store, which would have been the long route, she went out the garage, into the alleyway, and then to the front of the warehouse in which her dad was slumped in blood, and a young black man, probably less than 25, with braided hair scarcely protruding from his hood, pointed a gun toward him.
Karen wouldn't know she had been shot until Joel had settled her down and she saw the blood running in torrents. For, as soon as she had processed the unfathomable scene—her bleeding father, his villainous assailant now pointing the gun at her—she ran back through the alley, barged into Joel's upholstery shop, and locked the door behind her. They called the cops. Then she realized that a bullet had gone straight through her left shoulder.
When she returned to check on her father, he was gone. His assailant had jetted, and Hyke had gathered the strength to make one final dash. He stumbled to the warehouse next door, where his daughter had been unloading cages five minutes earlier, shut the garage door behind him, and passed out. The sound of police sirens brought him back to it, and with the remainder of his strength he staggered toward the front of his shop, and that's where the police found him, amongst the cacophonous shrieks of parrots and parakeets and sulphur-crested cockatoos, barely staying afloat in his own blood.
The police would not let Mary into her shop after she arrived on the scene. "My family is in there," she said, almost hysterical. Sorry, ma'am, officers told her, holding her back. You might disturb the investigation.
But then she saw her husband protruding from the shop on a stretcher, and she rushed to him. Paramedics said they did not have enough time then and there to tell her about her husband's condition, but that she should jump in the ambulance with them. She did. And before they took off to UMC she saw Karen also coming out of the shop alive, attended to by emergency medical response personnel.
It wasn't until later that Mary, like everyone else in the Valley, would discover that there was a second gunman in the store, and that there was a family of four from California there, too—a man and his wife and their two boys, 11 and 14—and that while his partner was putting bullets through Mary's husband and stepdaughter, the second gunman was punching, robbing and shooting the family. And it wasn't until seven days after that nightmare passed that Mary received a phone call from the wife, who from the comfort of her home in Northern California said that her husband and her boys, though scarred by bullets and eternally devastated, were better now, and that everything would be okay.
But Thursday evening never seemed to end. For it wasn't until a little after midnight that she finally got to see her husband, who had just endured an emergency surgery in which doctors took out his spleen, damaged beyond repair by the impact of the first bullet, and who now had a hole in his left palm and a shortened middle finger as a result of that wound.
Karen was in a little better shape. Her shoulder had been shattered, and the destructive impact of the bullet extended down her chest region; but after doctors attended to her in the ER, she was given a sling and a supply of pain medication to endure her wound until she is to go back for surgery this week.
Eight days after that atrocious turn of events, Mary was still looking for answers. Why had it happened? The two gunmen had made off with only the California man's wallet, and when Hyke's pockets were emptied in the emergency room there was only a wad of 51 singles, and $40 in fives. Who did it? The two gunmen have yet to be either apprehended or identified, and while detectives have made public a $5,000 reward to anyone with information leading to their arrest, little is known of the perpetrators. They fled the scene in a white Toyota Tercel without plates, and detectives told Mary that they were most likely gang-affiliated.
Mary has been hounded by those questions ever since that horrific Thursday evening, and if they have not driven her crazy it's only because she is too busy thinking about Hyke, and trying to run the store without him.
With sleeplessness in her eyes, Mary had reopened the shop the following Monday, out of economic necessity. She had spent the weekend at Hyke's bedside at UMC.
The Bahnna Bird Farm, just north of Nellis Boulevard and Washington Avenue, remains open and operating, and the melodious chatter between the birds that fills the air has never sounded more splendid.
Business has, in actuality, picked up a little bit. Not only because the news coverage of the past two weeks has brought the small mom-and-pop store unprecedented attention, but also because Hyke and Mary have made many friends over the years, and they all want to help.
Nine days after the atrocity, one family who lives nearby came into the shop to buy feed for the bird they bought at the Bahnna Bird Farm long ago. And, of course, they came to say that we saw what happened here on the news and we couldn't believe it, came to say that we're sorry, Mary, we hope Hyke is going to be okay, and came to say that this was the final straw: We can't tolerate this area any longer. It's just not safe. We've put our house up for sale and intend to move to Green Valley. But don't worry, Mary, we'll continue to come back here to buy feed for our bird. There's no other shop like yours.