Lightning Chasers

by Cass Sellars

  “You have a very dirty mind, Sydney Hyatt.” She watched as Syd bounded off the bed and headed naked toward the kitchen in search of the rumored meal.

  “I thought that’s why you loved me,” she called back down the hall while Parker padded across to the spare bedroom for TV trays. The room held a Murphy bed latched snuggly to the wall but predominately served as Sydney’s home gym since she rarely had guests. Parker peered into the large double closet along the back wall and dodged a punching bag suspended from the ceiling. She found the trays behind customary odds and ends routinely dumped in a closet, that no one ever used but everyone failed to get rid of. She stepped past the inversion bench and back to find Sydney.

  Parker knew the week would be busy with Sydney spending long days with her client going over her presentations and testimony. Parker had two new projects to prepare before breaking ground on office expansion in the fall, which would cost her the mundane moments she relished with Syd. She padded toward the kitchen where she found Sydney ladling soup into stoneware crocks, pouring slowly so as not to scald her naked flesh with the boiling liquid. She watched appreciatively from the hall as her faithful warrior smiled back at her.

  Chapter Five

  Independence Day found Sandy Curran piloting her black sedan into her familiar hiding spot. Because the industrial area saw very little night traffic, the lot was still and the railroad tracks would host no freight for hours.

  After ten o’clock, she wondered if the routine had been broken. Normally the nondescript truck had arrived by now and would have been unloaded and preparing to leave again, but so far nothing. Perhaps the holiday had affected their schedule. She listened idly as fireworks exploded in the distance. The fairgrounds hosted the legal fireworks display, but closer, erratic explosions told her the illegal festivities were in full swing as well.

  She returned her stack of reports to the passenger seat and draped her thin nylon raid jacket over her mobile computer terminal to dim its glow. She heard a helicopter above her just before her attention was drawn through the windshield. Twin streams of light completed a wide sweep onto the road and then the lot. A different truck than usual, this one with a logo, backed into the dock. She aimed her phone camera at the faded image through the dark. She jotted the license plate number onto her notepad and snapped a picture of the truck. The flash was bright and pierced the night’s calm. She cursed at herself for not remembering to switch it off. She send the image to Mia and a reply text came immediately.

  Stay safe, sweetheart

  Mia never told her to be careful—she was always careful.

  Sandy expected no further deviance from the routine but watched the action nonetheless. A jolt of excitement sparked in her mind, and she wondered if she might finally see the merchandise which she had never been able to identify before now. A dim light seeped around the edge of the box truck as the roll-up door was raised. The same sandy-haired man she’d seen before backed the truck a few more inches and sealed it against the rubber frame of the dock door.

  As he exited, she could now estimate that he was closer to his thirties instead of the twentysomething she had originally thought. He disappeared inside the windowless building.

  She rested her right hand reflexively on the butt of her holstered weapon, flicking the snap loose with her thumb before fastening it again. Something felt off, more charged than usual. She snapped a last picture of the warehouse and slipped the phone back into its home on her belt.

  The report of the gunshot found her ear a microsecond before the crush of gravel under shoes communicated the approaching danger.

  * * *

  Lab manager Darcy Dean glanced at her watch. It was just after midnight and the crime scene analysts in white Tyvek suits were scanning the empty lot for anything to collect. As they approached, Jamie Amana, a slightly built African American man, raised his camera and began taking careful pictures of the scene and the body. The lead technician’s attractive almond eyes were intense as he swept the area and squinted into the viewfinder.

  Darcy, sound asleep just an hour ago, was now laser focused on the body that lay in front of her. Neither she nor Jamie spoke as they processed the scene that held the lifeless body of their colleague which sat just inside her official vehicle. Her weapon sat securely in its fastened holster, her uniform pristine but for the fine red blood spray which had flowered across her starched blue shirt and pants.

  “Looks like an ambush to me.” Darcy broke the silence, speaking quietly to Jamie as she struggled to recreate the scene in her mind. She tilted the cap off her hair briefly and rubbed her forehead against her sleeve. She positioned herself outside the driver’s door in an effort to approximate where the shooter might have been standing. She unspooled a measuring tape and stood away when Jamie took several photos from outside the door.

  “Jamie, I’d like you to take some photos in the building if that’s okay.” She glanced at the hulking warehouse structure behind her.

  “I already asked, but they told me it was locked up tight. The major told me they had determined some drug runner got spooked during a deal. He said this one will be open and shut,” Jamie informed his newly minted supervisor, never disengaging from the viewfinder of his camera.

  “How about just from outside then?” She glanced back at the browning strip of weeds serving as landscaping along the perimeter of the warehouse.

  “Got those.” Jamie bent to photograph the door, capturing the fingerprint dust along its edge.

  “You do good work.”

  “Not exactly my first scene, Darcy.”

  “I know, but this is different.” She tried not to let the sadness in her voice belie the stern professional look she wore. “Have you ever…?”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head before obscuring his face with the camera again.

  Major Damon Williams approached them and Darcy regarded the sweaty man carefully. Supervisors like Williams typically dealt with the medical examiner, leaving her to the science of evidence and research she analyzed quite on her own. Since the ME, Dr. Alison Gray, was enjoying two weeks in Hawaii with her new husband, Darcy was the ranking member of the Silver Lake field office for now.

  “Dean, I hate to have you pull two in one night but I need you on the double homicide we got in earlier.” Williams spoke loudly and leaned in to be heard over the noise of an approaching helicopter. Darcy could smell his stale breath.

  “Really, sir?” She tried not to let her face betray the fact that she was loathe to leave the scene before she had exhausted every angle of investigation. She had only been in Silver Lake and on this job a few weeks so her approach was cautious.

  “Don’t you want us to wait for Homicide and Major Crimes?”

  “As much as I’d like to find the bastard and hang them for taking one of ours, we have to play fair tonight. Hear that helicopter? That’s your next major crime, Dean. Some dirtbag committed a home invasion robbery and killed two grandparents while they slept in their bed. You need to get your team to Parkside Village.” She had heard the call come in before they arrived, but this one was, in her mind, a priority. A dead on-duty cop always took precedence. “We’ll finish up as soon as we can.”

  Silver Lake might have been new to her, different from her larger lab in DC, but she knew an officer-involved shooting would be handled as a priority anywhere. A homicide where a cop was the victim always did. She had watched those scenes stay hot for days, and Darcy didn’t want to leave Sergeant Curran just yet. She let Jamie continue taking photos while she lifted prints from the door handles. She was certain that the more documentation she had, the better her boss would like it. She watched Williams walk away, his shoulders slumped in defeat.

  Darcy walked to the back passenger door, careful not to encroach on Jamie’s shots. She lifted the handle with one gloved finger and slipped inside, her knee denting deeply into the dusty black vinyl seat. The sergeant’s car was thankfully without a transport cage so Darcy could lean over betwee
n the seats. Curran’s MCT was covered by her black jacket and paperwork sat neatly stacked in the front seat. A steno pad also rested on the seat near the console, under a pen.

  The veteran officer’s corpse was leaning awkwardly against the steering wheel angled uncomfortably as her left shoulder pushed against the upholstered driver’s side door. Darcy scanned the compartment slowly trying to avoid focusing on the exit wound that glared at her from Sandy Curran’s head or the darkening red shade that bloomed along the exposed skin of her face. She made notes and sketches and tried to imagine what Sandy Curran was doing right before she was shot. She acquired temperatures and made notes of the state of the body to confirm time of death.

  She searched in vain for a cell phone or notation anywhere on Curran’s MCT detailing her reason for sitting vigil in the lonely lot. Jamie held a clear plastic container so Darcy could deposit the bullet she had plucked from the dash, the last piece of the puzzle she would reconstruct at her lab. When she believed she had collected as much relevant evidence as she could without appearing to dawdle, she turned to see the major swaying on locked knees.

  “Well, I guess we’ll head out then, Major.” She nodded at him when he walked back toward the car.

  “You get those?” The major pointed at some wadded and cloudy plastic close to the rear tire of the sergeant’s patrol car.

  Darcy crouched to study small sandwich bags on the gravel, grateful that they weren’t missed completely.

  “Sure.” She plucked them from the ground and sealed them in an evidence bag. She then added them to the form on her clipboard.

  “I just need your signature on the chain of custody please.” She thrust the clipboard at Major Williams. He seemed to be preoccupied, likely by the tragic scene and the sparse inventory they were bringing back. He scribbled his initials quickly as Darcy tried to imagine him as a rookie on patrol instead of the world-weary man who stood before her.

  “Oh, one question.” Darcy waited a beat before continuing. “Did anyone go inside the car before we got here?”

  “Nope. No one touched anything. Why do you ask?”

  “Just routine questions for the report.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Please let me know when everything is processed.”

  Jamie changed lenses and continued taking shots while she packed up the scene kits. She was loading the last of the equipment into their truck when the coroner’s van turned past her. “Major,” Darcy said, “the body bus is here. You’re sure you don’t need us to wait?”

  He smiled as she began removing her scene suit at the edge of the lot, revealing snug jeans and a form-fitting polo shirt displaying the SLPD logo.

  “I can assure you, I’ve been doing this a long time,” he said wearily. “But thanks for the offer.”

  “Yes, sir. I was just making sure.” Darcy turned back to the van and she caught him watching her walk away. She shivered when she felt his eyes on her as she returned to the van. Although she didn’t date men, she could appreciate the appeal when a handsome specimen crossed her path. Not, however, in Williams’s case. His six foot one frame carried at least fifty extra pounds which spilled over the waistband of the uniform pants he had likely outgrown years ago. His hair was composed of sparse outcroppings of black and gray strands corralled across a sweaty forehead which she bet had been expanding for decades. Some guys never stopped the chase even when the situation made it wholly inappropriate.

  “Check in with Foster and Hicks tomorrow, okay?” He continued to stare at her.

  “Of course.” She quickly backed the van out of the lot, secretly happy to be out of his field of vision.

  * * *

  Mack quickly silenced her cell phone when it shattered the quiet of her home. After a long evening with a cranky baby, Jen and Mack had hoped for a peaceful night of sleep.

  She swiped over the screen to accept the call but didn’t speak until she had closed the bedroom door and made it into the hallway, away from her sleeping family.

  “Sarge, we just got a call.” Detective Hicks’s voice sounded strained. “The watch commander is at a homicide at the old warehouses, Forty-Sixth and Lincoln.”

  “Okay. Nothing new out there. Homeless?” she asked knowing the unkempt pockets of trees were host to tents and shanties for the city’s neglected citizens and transients. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Why is the watch comm—”

  “Mack, listen. They think it’s Sandy Curran.”

  Mack stopped to lean heavily against the door frame, pressing her shoulder against the only support she could manage.

  She swallowed burning tears that she couldn’t afford when she heard her friend’s name, “How do you know?” She wanted to vomit. She pressed the phone to her ear and walked to the bathroom. She felt along the tile and perched on the side of the tub as she forced herself to listen.

  “Dispatch reported a 9-1-1 caller who said they heard a shot and saw someone slumped over the wheel. They apparently saw an SLPD uniform.” He breathed audibly before he continued. “They gave dispatch the unit number from the car. It’s hers, Mack. No one has been able to raise her on Channel 1 since the report.” He waited quietly.

  “I’ll meet you there in twenty.” She stared at her phone as tears stung her eyes. She dressed quickly and moved blindly through to the all but empty spare room where she kept her gear. She was glad she could avoid disturbing the rest of the house in situations like this. She paused. Not situations like this. No one ever wanted to imagine a situation like this, especially not in Silver Lake, not to her friend.

  She pushed her holstered gun onto her belt and thought about Mia. She wondered if she had been told yet, if the devastating news had been dropped at her door. They would need to go to her soon. An agonizing storm had just blown through Mia’s once peaceful life.

  She knew waking Jen wasn’t necessary—she had left in the middle of the night plenty of times in their years together—but she needed to feel her, if only for a second. “I love you, Jen.” Mack gently stroked a finger over her arm.

  “You okay?” Mack smiled. Jenny had been sleeping soundly but she could wake in an instant when duty called her spouse.

  “Yeah, I just wanted to hold you for a second,” Mack whispered as she stroked her fingertips through her wife’s long blond hair.

  Jenny curled against Mack who strained to stop her body from trembling. “I love you,” she offered sleepily before Mack forced herself to pull away.

  * * *

  Mack and Detective David Hicks parked quickly near the quiet lot as the crime scene van drove past them toward the main road. Hicks had barely managed to bring the car to a stop before the thick sole of Mack’s shoe wedged into the gravel.

  Mack’s jaw tightened as she marched at the uniform guarding the side of the lot. “What the hell, Perry? Why is the scene team already leaving? Tell me you aren’t moving my body already.” She couldn’t begin to process what was happening yet and her emotions were transformed into anger and frustration. Detective Hicks stood close to her as if poised to step between her and the uniform.

  Perry spoke quickly and nodded to a point beyond her. “Major’s running this one, Sarge—I’m just handling check-ins.” He held up the clipboard where he was logging names, hers now appearing at the bottom of the long list. Mack turned slowly and saw Major Williams staring in her direction.

  “What’s happening, Major?” Mack drove her short fingernails into her palms as she walked toward him. The large man looked sweaty and tense as he fiddled with his cuffs and straightened the bars on his chest, perhaps a reflexive reminder to Mack of his authority.

  “I hate you got called on this, Foster. I know you were close to her.”

  Mack toed the ground and reined in her emotions before she spoke. “Yeah, I was.”

  “Look, I got here right after and I tried to call in anyone else besides you. I was pretty sure you didn’t want that image of her in your head.” The major looked at her sympathetically. “I really tried b
ut no one else was available.”

  “I’m Homicide, sir. It’s my job.” Mack forced her voice to steady with concentrated effort, mentally conceding that she indeed wanted nothing less than to see her friend’s lifeless body.

  “I didn’t go inside the car but I would bet money Curran fell on some kind of a drug deal. Crime scene got some baggies near the car. There aren’t any cameras around here, already checked. Guess maybe she thought she could do this without backup.”

  “Do what without backup, Major?” She didn’t want to accept the obvious answer—in fact she was still intent on denying this was really happening at all.

  Mack seethed at the taking of any life, let alone of a fellow officer she admired as much as Sandy. She bit her tongue to keep her true thoughts on the situation from becoming words. Something felt off. Collecting plastic bags from the ground of an abandoned area adjacent to train tracks was not unusual but she wasn’t ready to rule a drug deal in or out.

  “Foster, drugs out here aren’t uncommon, in case you forgot. It’s been a while since you rode a beat.” He sounded stern.

  “I didn’t stop being a cop, Major.” Her voice was noticeably strained this time.

  “Look”—he seemed to police his own tone and softened for a moment—“I know you two were tight. None of us ever wants to be here but it’s part of the job, Foster.” His words were meant to soothe, she supposed, but nothing was helping.

  “Well, we’ll get started,” she said on a sigh before turning toward the unintended tomb of her best friend. “I’ll complete the field report here and add whatever notes you have when you send them to me, sir.” She could barely contain her fury. She had written a thousand reports, but never one detailing the loss of another officer.