by Emily James
She wriggled again. “Why?”
“It’s a grown-up thing.”
But not even grown-ups should have to see it. The Positivity Project column I liked to read in Lakeshore’s newspaper once featured a story about a man whose parachute didn’t open properly while he was skydiving, but he miraculously survived. Maybe that would happen here. The balloons were much lower than a skydiver.
Janie stilled. Dan clamped his hands over her ears. I looked away, but with my arms around Janie, I couldn’t cover my own ears.
I knew the moment the man hit the ground.
3
Everything that happened in the next few minutes blurred together. Dan launched over the rope and ran toward the body, people all around me were dialing 911, telling the story on repeat, and Janie was asking me what was happening. I hurried her back to Claire, who stood out front of our truck, her hands pressed to her mouth.
My stomach felt like it fell down a flight of stairs. I’d been hoping Claire had at least been spared, but the dazed expression on her face said she’d seen the man fall, even from this distance. She’d probably been able to hear the screaming too.
Why was it that every event I attended ended up with a dead body? First the birthday party for Claire and Dan’s grandfather, then the sandcastle competition, and now this. At least this time my contact with whoever had died was limited to being at the same event.
Claire lowered her hands, fisting them against her legs. “I told you those things were death traps.”
“What’s a death trap?” Janie asked.
I shifted my gaze toward Janie pointedly, hoping Claire would catch my not in front of the kid meaning.
“A death trap is a vehicle that’s risky to ride in,” Claire said. “Like a car that’s so old it doesn’t have seat belts.”
Janie wrinkled her forehead. “Is there one of those here?”
Claire could find her own way out of this one.
I slid Janie’s hand into Claire’s and headed back toward the scene of the crime…accident? Right now, it could be either, though based on the yelling before the fall, an accident seemed highly unlikely.
Going back was probably unnecessary. There wasn’t going to be anything I could do, but I’d learned my lesson about leaving. If a dead body turned up in your vicinity, it was better to stay put, whether you had anything useful to contribute or not. Leaving made police suspect you.
Even though it seemed unlikely that they could find a way to suspect me for this death, I wasn’t taking a chance. Hopefully they didn’t want to take a statement from me. I hadn’t seen anything that everyone else wouldn’t have seen, including Dan. And they could give their real names. I couldn’t.
Dan had spread the blanket we’d been sitting on a few minutes ago out over the man’s body. What had been a living person was now nothing more than a lump. A shiver trembled down my spine. Life was so fragile. And it was so easy to take for granted that you’d get a tomorrow when you might not.
A balloon touched down out in the middle of the field, and sirens wailed into the clearing. Two police cruisers. More sirens approached. Probably the ambulance, not that they needed to hurry at this point.
Dan flagged down the officers and showed them his badge, then headed toward where I stood by the edge of the rope. Many members of the crowd had already sneaked away, so I’d probably chosen to stay when I could have gone. It figured I’d make the wrong choice.
Dan stayed on the opposite side of the rope, indicating that he planned to help with controlling the scene at least until the detective who’d be taking over the case showed up. The female officer who’d arrived in the second cruiser moved toward the crowd, a notebook out, probably to take statements. A male officer joined her.
Dan’s hands wrapped around the rope next to where mine sat, as if he wanted to take my hand but wasn’t sure how I’d react. I wasn’t sure how I’d react either. Part of me wanted nothing more than for someone to hug me. I felt numb in a way that the survivor part of my brain told me could be shock. Another part of me knew that, if he touched me at all, I might start to shake and not be able to get myself back under control. I couldn’t have that happen.
Dan edged a hand closer. “Did Janie see anything?”
I shook my head. “She has no idea what’s going on. I told her there was a problem with one of the balloons, so they’d be closing the festival. Claire though…”
Dan nodded as if that was all the explanation needed.
“Is he dead?” a man’s voice yelled. The voice sounded vaguely familiar.
Dan turned around, and I moved to the side so I could see as well.
The short man I’d met before, wearing the Cloud Chaser Balloons t-shirt, huffed his way toward the younger officer standing next to the covered body. He’d lost his hat somewhere along the way.
My throat felt tight and dry. If he was coming to find out about the dead man, then it was likely the body under the sheet belonged to the sickly man who’d bought a cupcake from us an hour ago. They’d been heading up in a balloon together.
My mind spun with the idea that I’d seen the man alive less than an hour ago. He’d been walking and talking and eating. It didn’t seem real.
The officer blocked the balloon operator’s path before he could reach the body. “Are you the operator of the balloon the victim fell from?”
The man stumbled to a stop. “I knew he couldn’t survive the fall. I knew it. But there was no way I could land fast enough to stop him.”
The situation hadn’t looked to me like the balloon was trying to descend at all until after the dead man fell from it.
But, then again, the angle we were at meant I might have missed it. Or maybe balloons lowered so slowly that I wasn’t watching long enough. Once the dead man started to fall, I looked away. The operator might have been trying to bring the balloon down while the dead man was on board, but it didn’t start working until after I’d stopped watching.
The female officer who’d been writing down witness statements moved over to the officer standing next to the body. She turned her back to the hot air balloon operator and leaned close to her colleague. I could see her mouth moving, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. The male officer nodded once, and she moved away back toward the crowd.
“I’ll need to take your statement, sir.” The young officer held out an arm like he was directing traffic. “Why don’t we talk in the back of the car?”
The balloon operator stepped backward. “Am I under arrest?” He held his hands up in front of him in a back-off gesture. “I didn’t push him. He fell out. I swear it.”
I exchanged a glance with Dan, and Dan headed toward the situation. While he might not be on duty, he was clearly the person with the most seniority. He’d also likely dealt with the most murder suspects.
The balloon operator had jumped awfully fast to insisting that he hadn’t pushed the dead man. The words I’d heard right before the man fell could have been spoken by either man. They could have belonged to the dead man, begging the balloon operator not to kill him. Or they could have belonged to the balloon operator, horrified by what the other man was doing.
But what reason could there possibly be for the dead man to have jumped from the balloon? If he’d wanted to commit suicide, there were easier, less painful, and much less public ways to go. Given that the men didn’t seem to like each other much, this was probably going to be treated as a murder. Murder made the most sense of the evidence.
Dan had reached where the officer and the balloon operator faced off.
“I’m Detective Holmes.” Dan held out his hand. The balloon operator shook it tentatively. “Officer Mandela is just trying to protect the integrity of the scene and make sure that whatever you say is private. Why don’t you come with me instead? We don’t have to sit in the cruiser if you’d rather not.”
The balloon operator’s shoulders edged down some from their position approaching his ears. “I don’t understand what ha
ppened. We were talking, and then he was screaming about vultures trying to peck out his eyes, flailing around. I tried to tell him to stop before he upset the basket and killed us both. But then he…”
He made a motion with his hands, going up, then down, presumably miming the dead man falling out.
Dan was nodding along in a way that looked absolutely genuine. If I hadn’t known that Dan worked for years undercover, I would have believed every second of it.
“Vultures?” the younger officer asked. “You’re saying he jumped out of the balloon trying to escape imaginary vultures?”
The hot air balloon operator bobbed his head. “I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what happened.”
I’d heard the words shouted right before the men fell, but I hadn’t heard anything other than incoherent yelling before that. While it was possible that the original yelling had been about imaginary vultures, it sounded pretty far-fetched.
The story was so preposterous that I couldn’t blame the young officer for questioning it. Dan didn’t give anything away by his body language about whether he was annoyed by the younger officer’s reaction or not. No doubt he didn’t believe the story either. Nor would whatever detective officially caught the case or the district attorney. The balloon operator was likely going to end up arrested for murder, and it’d be up to a jury to decide whether the cause of death was hallucinated vultures or being pushed.
Dan led the balloon operator toward the car.
“I didn’t push him,” the man was still insisting. “I didn’t. I know how it sounds, but do you think I’d make up something so stupid if I did want to kill him.”
The more he argued, the more guilty it made him seem. He probably didn’t even realize it.
A text pinged in on my phone. It was from Dan.
Can you and Claire take Janie home with you? We need to hold him until the DA decides whether we already have enough to press charges. I can’t leave the suspect unattended.
So Dan did believe this was a murder. At the very least, he believed there was a strong possibility. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be worried about the balloon operator disappearing once he gave his statement.
How could an event that was supposed to be innocent and fun have ended with a murder?
Another text popped up from Dan. I’m sorry. I know you didn’t sign up to babysit today.
Dan always acted like asking me to watch Janie was an imposition. I paused with my finger over my phone screen and glanced at the body covered by our blanket. The obvious reminder of how short life was.
I’d never told Dan before that having Janie around brought me more joy than a perfect batch of cupcakes. I couldn’t even explain why I hadn’t. Maybe it was because Jarrod seemed to take pleasure in taking away anything that brought me joy.
But as Dan had proven time and time again, he wasn’t Jarrod.
And if I didn’t tell him now, who knew if I’d have another chance.
I love watching Janie, I wrote back. I want as much time with her as you’ll let me have.
Across the field, Dan glanced at his phone and then looked in my direction. I couldn’t read his expression from his distance.
My stomach tightened. Great. That was probably a huge mistake. Now Dan would think I was some sort of clingy, needy interloper. Janie wasn’t my daughter. This wasn’t my family. Dan was my friend—the best one I had—but that didn’t mean there weren’t still lines I shouldn’t cross.
I headed back toward my truck, sidestepping a funnel cake and coffee someone had dropped on the ground in the commotion. It was still so early in the morning that neither flies nor bees had come out to enjoy the feast.
A picture flashed into my mind of the dead man swiping at flies that weren’t there when he ordered a cupcake from my truck. Vultures were a lot different from flies, but also not so different if neither of them existed.
The flies that only the dead man could see might be the only piece of evidence that could corroborate the balloon operator’s story.
I glanced at where Dan was speaking to the balloon operator, to the lone male officer standing vigil beside the body, to the female officer working her way through the witnesses that had stuck around.
Don’t get involved, Fear hissed in my mind. Claire can tell them if anyone asks.
In a way, I could see Fear’s point. Making an official statement meant I’d be in the records. I’d be forced to either make a statement under a false name—which was a crime—or give my real name and risk Jarrod finding me. I didn’t need to add fuel to that bonfire. After my friend Eve had set up a website for me as a surprise, complete with a picture of me, Jarrod could already be on his way here.
The problem was no one would think to ask about hallucinated flies. They wouldn’t even think to interview Claire and I about the dead man. The only one who’d seen him come to our truck was the hot air balloon operator, and he wasn’t likely to think what the dead man had for breakfast was important.
If the hot air balloon operator was innocent, I couldn’t let him face arrest and possible prison time if I knew a detail that could spare him. But I needed to protect myself too.
I could think of only one way around it. I took out my phone and opened my text thread with Dan. My embarrassing words about how much I wanted to spend time with Janie stared back at me.
Heat burned along my cheekbones. I’d just pretend like I hadn’t said it. I’d take whatever time Dan gave me, and I wouldn’t be needy for more.
I typed in my message. Before anyone presents the case to the DA, ask Claire about the man who bought a cupcake from us this morning and his obsession with flies.
I slid my phone back in my pocket. With so many other witnesses, the police didn’t need me. I’d done what I could for this case.
Now it was time to get out of here and hope that, in the chaos of this case, Dan would forget about what I’d said.
4
Janie and I were on the floor building a tower of blocks the next morning when Dan came in. He’d gone to the station straight from the hot air balloon festival to pull an extra shift. The press was already throwing ideas and rumors everywhere, and his captain had wanted to get out ahead of it if he could. Claire and I had kept Janie at our house overnight.
Thinking of it as “our house” still felt strange. And not as uncomfortable as I’d expected it would. Yes, someone could follow me home. That said, my name wasn’t in any system. Claire and I had worked out the room renting privately. If she hadn’t needed the money, I’d gotten the impression that she wouldn’t even accept rent from me.
Dan swung Janie around and set her back on her feet. “Help Isabel clean up the toys, and then go give Auntie Claire a kiss goodbye and grab your stuff.”
Janie pouted out her lips, but she grabbed a handful of blocks and dumped them into the bucket. “Auntie Claire isn’t here. She’s at the gym again.”
Again was a good way of putting it. After the hot air balloon festival shut down yesterday, I’d dropped Claire and Janie off and went to see if I could sell some of what we’d baked for the day. When I got back, Claire headed off to the gym. Barely twelve hours had passed between when she went yesterday and when she set off this morning.
I widened my eyes at Dan and tilted my head toward Janie. “Claire said she’d done too much taste-testing and needed to burn off the calories.”
My big eyes and head tilt weren’t the most subtle, but I wanted to let Dan know that I suspected there was more too it. Claire worked out regularly. Her gym membership was the one “luxury” she’d kept even when she tightened her budget. Without some sign, Dan might not realize I had a concern I wanted to mention when Janie wasn’t around.
Dan helped Janie collect up the rest of the blocks. “Grab your stuff, and make sure to check everywhere, okay?”
Janie grabbed the bucket of blocks. “I’ll put these away too.”
Dan touched a hand to the top of her head. “Good idea.”
We watched her go until she
disappeared from sight.
“Is Claire not at the gym?” Dan asked.
“She’s at the gym, but I think she’d there because she’s struggling with what happened yesterday. She was up most of the night cleaning.”
I didn’t mention that the noise she’d made had kept me up most of the night too. I couldn’t shut off my hypervigilance enough to ignore it or to use something to plug my ears. Janie, thankfully, had slept soundly through it.
Maybe I should have had trouble sleeping for other reasons. Maybe I should have been more upset, like Claire. I’d just seen so much death in the past two years. It wasn’t that it didn’t matter to me anymore. It wasn’t that those lives didn’t matter. It wasn’t even that I still felt numb.
It was more that my mind seemed to adapt faster because of the practice. Life had to keep going. I had to keep going. Because I couldn’t change the past.
My friend Nicole would have been so proud of me for figuring that out. I’d once wondered how she could handle facing so much death and evil in her job as a criminal defense attorney, or how her husband could manage it as the county medical examiner, or how Dan could handle it as a police detective. I think I’d finally figured it out.
They handled it because they believed that they could make the future better than the past as long as they didn’t give up and let the past cripple them. Their hearts weren’t hardened by what they’d seen. They just felt that giving up wouldn’t fix what had happened. Working to prevent future similar tragedies would.
In this case, I wasn’t actively investigating the potential murder, but I still had things I needed to do. I needed to watch out for Claire. And I needed to support Dan by taking care of Janie.
Thankfully, he hadn’t mentioned my text. As long as he pretended like I hadn’t sent it, we could also pretend that I hadn’t overstepped my bounds and gone from family friend to weird lady who seemed to want to play Janie’s mom.
