by Alton Gansky
“You gotta be kidding!”
That’s what Ellis wanted to say, but he only managed, “You gotta—!” before snapping the wheel to the right. The little vehicle responded, obediently skipping over the dashed white line that delineated the lanes. An eye-snap gaze at the rearview showed the trailing vehicle doing the same. Ellis doubted he would have time to change lanes again. The driver seemed intent on running him over, a coyote snatching a rabbit while on the run.
“Oh, God.” It was only the second time Ellis had prayed.
Nothing but headlights in the mirrors—eye-stabbing glare. Ellis narrowed his eyes and then, at the last moment, veered to the shoulder of the road. A yellow streak passed him on the left, its left tires just a foot inside the other lane.
It jerked to the left as if the driver had just now seen Ellis’s VW. The sudden motion turned the yellow muscle car sideways.
It hit the safety barrier with enough force to lift the tail end two feet in the air.
Ellis hit the breaks as the Camaro spun a half turn and rolled three times. Dust and bits of car flew in the air, reflecting Ellis’s headlights. He kept his car as far right as possible as he slowed, then stopped. The sight of the new car resting on its top, its tires still spinning, turned Ellis’s stomach and made his heart pound as if it were trying to shatter his sternum.
Then he saw movement near the front passenger window. He was out of his VW in a heartbeat.
His first steps were tentative. Images from movies and television shows of exploding cars strobed in his mind. Indeed, fuel dripped from the back of the car. Oil and antifreeze bled from the front. Bits of safety glass and shards of headlight glass and taillight plastic carpeted the black asphalt. These things he saw in the harsh rays of his headlight beams and the soft glow of a streetlight. Ivory light of a one-day-old full moon glistened in the car’s fluid and fragments.
Although he tried not to let them, horror-movie images of what must remain of the passengers pushed to the front of his mind. Dare he look? Yes. He had too. It was the right thing to do, to see if by some miracle someone survived.
He had taken only two steps closer when a hand appeared in the shattered passenger side window. A delicate hand. A woman’s hand with plum nail polish—a color he had seen before, but was too addled to remember where.
“He-help. Some . . . one . . . please.”
The sound of a young woman’s voice swept away his hesitation. Not even the sparking of something in the engine slowed him. Eight strides later, he reached the overturned Camaro and dropped to his knees. Bits of glass and pebbles of asphalt gouged up by the overturning car dug into his knees. Small pain, he figured, compared to what this poor woman was going through.
“Take it easy. Try not to move. Help is on the way.” He had no idea if the last statement were true.
The hand was followed by a wrist, then a forearm. The skin was scratched and the arm shook. Blood covered much of it. Still, Ellis could see it belonged to a someone around his age. He bent and peered through the narrow opening, an opening made all the smaller by the car rolling over and over at high speed.
Very little light made it into the passenger area. Ellis could make out a form, blonde hair tinted pink by blood, and something twitching beyond. To get a better angle, he lay on the debris-populated asphalt. Pointed things stabbed at his bare arm and tried to press through the McDonald’s uniform shirt.
“I have to get out. I have to get out!” Her voice wobbled with fear and wooziness. Her slurred speech made Ellis worry about a head wound. How could there not be a head wound?
“You need to remain still—”
The arm retracted. Then something dropped from the inverted seat. The woman had released her seat belt and fallen to the ceiling-now-floor of the car. She was coming out whether Ellis thought it was wise or not. Helping her might limit further injury. He didn’t know. Working at McDonald’s hadn’t prepared him for a situation like this.
“Easy. Take it easy.” Ellis smelled gasoline. He pushed to his knees.
He had no idea how she managed, but the passenger crawled on her belly through the opening, then pushed to her knees. Blood dripped from the tip of her nose, a nose that looked several degrees off straight. Her arms shook as if the air temperature hovered around freezing instead of in the fifties.
She looked up and Ellis gasped, first at the sight of the gash that ran from the hairline of her forehead to a quarter inch above her left eye. He could see wet, white skull peeking through the wound. Then he gasped again for another reason: he knew her. More than once in his high school career, Ellis had directed his gaze to the eighteen-year-old beauty. She never looked back. Bright, popular, the beauty of the senior class, she was the desire of every student with a Y-chromosome.
“Shelly?”
She tried to make eye contact. “I have to get out of here. Help . . . help me.”
The car jostled. A deep groan emanated from the dark interior.
“Please.” She held out a hand.
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s crazy. Please.”
None of it made sense, but the pleading in her voice did the impossible: making the urgent even more so. “How many people are in the car?”
“I have to leave. Please, please help me.”
“Can you stand?”
The car wobbled on the roof again.
Ellis was out of his depth. He rose to his feet, bent, and set a hand on her shoulder. “Okay, but move slow. You’re hurt—”
Something seized the back of his work shirt, yanking back with enough force to pull Ellis from his feet as if he weighed nothing. He stumbled back, landing on his rear. Pain ran from his tailbone to his neck. A man, wide in the shoulders with thick arms, hovered over Shelly.
He shouted at her, fire on his lips, his words rolling up the canyon walls.
The names he called her . . .
The fury he displayed . . .
The hatred in his wide eyes . . .
Shelly raised a hand. “Please, don’t hurt me again.”
“I told you! I told you not to mess with me. This is your fault. Your fault, you stupid—” He kicked her in the ribs, hard enough to lift her off the ground. She crumpled, her mouth open, gasping for air like a fish on a pier. The sight of the cruelty enraged Ellis. He scrambled to his feet.
“Hey!” Ellis charged.
It was a brave effort but short lived. The attacker spun, fire in his eyes, blood running from his mouth and nose. He looked demonic. Ellis hesitated. The man did not. The first punch caught Ellis square on the nose. Fiery pain filled his head. He had never been punched before, never felt such pain. Another punch landed just below his ribs sending the air pouring from his lungs. Ellis doubled over. More pain raced up his back as a granite-like fist slammed into the area over his right kidney. Colors flashed in his eyes. Three more punches. Ellis went down on his knees. Hard.
“When I finish with her, I’m coming after you.”
Madness draped the assailant’s face. What stood before Ellis was not a teenager, but a man long lost of his senses. A torturer. A killer.
Ellis sprinted to his car.
He never looked back.
After a night of sleepless hours, Ellis heard that the body of Shelly Rainmondi, student at Madison High School, was found along the side of the road. The police estimated her speed to be close to eighty as she rounded the corner. A tragic accident. An unfortunate result of teenage foolishness.
Ellis knew better.
6
Friday, March 29, 2013
The sun showed up for work at 6:41. As it did each morning, it waged war with the giant fir tree that dominated the tiny front yard of Carmen’s Mission Village bungalow home. The tree stood more than thirty-feet tall and had been planted by the home’s fir
st owners. That would have been in the early sixties. Carmen would have been a toddler back then, and her sister even younger. She closed her eyes and tried to force the image of Shelly from her mind. Shelly had been dead for going on three decades; shouldn’t she be over it by now? No. Shelly traveled with her, lived with her, slept in the same bed, and occupied the same house, no matter where that house might be. Shelly was no ghost. She was worse: a persistent, vibrant memory that could touch each of Carmen’s senses. Carmen could hear her laugh as a child and as a teenager who grew more restless and rebellious each day.
Carmen pulled her pillow over her face, a shield against the dim but unrelenting sunlight. A new day. Shelly loved sunrises more than sunsets. No matter how late she stayed out, she would rise early to watch the gold orb kick-start a new day. It drove Carmen crazy, then and now. Why leave a warm bed to watch something that happened every day? Carmen rose early only when her school schedule demanded it, or when she hadn’t finished her homework the night before. Any time she did get up early, she often found her sister by the east-facing window in the living room, bathing in fresh sunlight.
That was a different house. That was a different time. That was a different life.
Every sunrise reminded Carmen of her brutally slain sister. Every day at her job she dealt with the families of murder victims, people who would forever associate a day of the week, a month, a place with their loss. The worst were those who lost loved ones on holidays. How do you celebrate Christmas when some lowlife chose that day to kill the center of your world?
Carmen rolled on her back. It was no use. She couldn’t ignore that it was Friday. She pulled the pillow from her face and stared at a tan water stain that marred the spray on the “popcorn” ceiling. The house had a flat roof, something popular among mid-century subdivision builders, perhaps as a homage to Frank Lloyd Wright. At one time, the buyers considered the look modern. Today the style looked old and tired.
Just like Carmen felt. It was a good match.
She kicked the covers back, draped her legs over the side of the bed, and stared at her bare feet. The skin around the heels was dry and her toenails were bare. Every woman she knew painted her toenails. Carmen never painted anything on her body. She had makeup—somewhere in the house. Maybe below the bathroom sink. It didn’t matter.
She pushed to her feet, feeling the carpet beneath her soles. The padding beneath the wall-to-wall carpet was little more than dust. The house needed new flooring. The thought first came to her five years ago. Why rush?
Clad only in a pair of white cotton underpants and a large, gray T-shirt, Carmen walked from the master bedroom of the two-bedroom, 1,200-square-foot house, and into the small kitchen. The walls were yellow, the top Formica, the cabinets oak. She spent the next five minutes getting her drip coffeemaker ready to brew some Yuban. She returned to the bedroom and the master bath, brushed her teeth, stripped, threw her clothes into the dirty clothes hamper and made for the shower. In this house, it took several minutes before the hot water could be coaxed from the water heater, through the pipes, and out the showerhead. She used the time to retrieve her cell phone—the only phone she had—and set it on the lid of the toilet tank.
The water continued to warm as she slipped beneath the silky cascade, its liquid fingers tracing her shoulders, arms, and back. One advantage to living alone: you could be a hot-water hog. Most days she looked forward to going to work, but there were days when staying home and nailing the door shut from the inside sounded good. Today was shaping up like that.
It wasn’t the job. Being a cop proved more satisfying than she’d imagined; being a homicide detective was even better. Although a steady diet of cruelty, blood, guts, and violence took its toll. The gore was bad, but she’d been preparing herself for such sights since junior high school. Then, however, she was planning to be a doctor. She had it all figured out. She would work harder than anyone else, earn scholarships to college, and find a way into a prestigious medical school. It was all a matter of discipline and hard work.
Then Shelly was murdered.
That changed everything. It changed Carmen. It changed her thinking. It altered her values, and most of all, it changed her future. The murderer got away. The police seemed less interested than she thought they should be. Shelly fell through the cracks of justice. Carmen could think of only one way to fix all that: she’d become a cop herself. So she applied the same discipline and effort to making certain she would become one of San Diego’s finest. She would help others the way her family should have been helped. That was the goal.
Too bad reality tempered the illusion.
She still worked her sister’s case, not that there was much she could do on a twenty-eight-year-old cold case. That didn’t keep her from fabricating scenarios in which she recognized some clue, some detail, heard some idle remark that opened the doors to justice again. If that ever happened, then she’d be ready.
She turned and faced the spray, dipping her head beneath it and letting her hair soak up the warm fluid. This was therapy. On the bad days, the days of depression and futility, she would shower until the water ran cold.
Amid the sound of water splashing on the shower pan at her feet, above the gentle roar of the showerhead, rose a sharp, electronic trilling. It sounded again before Carmen attached the sound to the source. She directed the shower’s spray to the side, pulled back the shower curtain. The light of the smart phone blazed.
“Figures.” She shook the water from her hands and reached for the phone. Bud Tock’s number. She tapped answer and placed the phone to the side of her head, pulling her soggy hair back from her ear. “Yeah.”
“Yeah? Really? That’s how you answer the phone these days? Yeah?”
“Um, yeah.”
“There it is again. Listen, something has come up . . . What is that noise?”
“Water. You caught me in the shower.” There was a pause. “Careful what you say next, Bud, or the first thing I do when I get to the station is shoot you in the foot.”
“That, Detective, would be assault with a deadly weapon.”
She could hear his smile. “I’ll claim it was an accidental discharge. Everyone will believe me and think you deserve it.”
“That so? Okay. You’re probably right.”
“I’m always right. So what’s up? I’m not due in for another hour or so.”
“I came in early to see what you did with the jacket last night. The captain was here. We got another body and since I was already here . . .”
“That’ll teach you to show initiative. Where?”
“Corner of College Avenue and Cresita Drive.” He gave her the address. “White house. Fence and hedge block much of the house from the street. I’m sure I’ll get there before you. Bring a couple of Egg McMuffins, will ya?”
“Nope. You’re watching your weight.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You should. Everyone else is.”
“Funny. Now get out of the shower.”
When Carmen pulled her police-issued black sedan to the curb, she saw three patrol cars, the crime-scene van, and Bud Tock’s vehicle. Yellow crime-scene tape stretched across the driveway and front walk.
Dressed in her usual detective garb—a pair of black slacks, a gray blouse, and black blazer—she waved her badge at the officer guarding the driveway and walk. He nodded. Since she had seen this officer many times, the badge flash was unnecessary, but she did it anyway. The uniform pointed to the southern part of the property.
“Thanks.” Carmen ducked under the tape barrier then heard a familiar voice.
“Over here, Detective.”
Bud Tock stood a short distance from the front door and stared at the base of a tree that ruled the corner of the front yard.
“Whatcha got, Bud?”
“Male, Caucasian, thirty-three accordin
g to his driver’s license. Take a look. And, for the record, I no longer want the Egg McMuffins.”
That didn’t sound promising. Carmen followed Bud’s motion and made her way to a mound covered by a tarp. No question what made up the mound. She pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and donned them; then she bent, took a corner of the tarp, and pulled it back. Women on the police force often feel the need to hold back emotions. At least Carmen did. She had developed the habit of stuffing fear and repulsion into a dark corner of her mind, saving them until she could deal with them in private. This sight, however, tested that determination.
Her first instinct was to drop the tarp.
Her second, to vomit.
She did neither. Instead, she crouched and studied the mangled flesh more closely. The sound of footsteps approaching strengthened her determination to maintain composure.
“Quite a mess.”
She answered Bud without looking at him. “Well, I see what took away your appetite.”
“It takes a lot to do that these days. Maybe I’m just getting old.” He took a deep breath.
“No doubt about that. Help me get this thing off. I need to see the big picture.”
They removed the covering. The victim lay on his back, both eyes open—but his left eye socket was crushed, leaving the eyeball staring at what had once been a nose. His jaw hung loose, broken in several places. Carmen could see several holes in the man’s left check where his teeth had forced through the skin. The autopsy would give the detailed report, but Carmen could make out other injuries: right arm rested at an angle that indicated at least one break; collar bone looked busted too. The man wore a white shirt, and in several spots blood soaked through—although no holes or slices to indicate bullet or knife wounds. Both legs appeared broken.
“Tell me the guy was hit by a bus.”
“I don’t think so.” Bud took another deep breath. “My guess is someone, or someones—maybe a gang—beat him to death.”
“Was anyone home to hear the beating? It had to be noisy.”
