by M. Z. Kelly
“That girl you’ve been working with, I take it.” Ted said.
I nodded. “Lexi Mills. Great kid, finally off the streets.”
We hit a pothole and my head hit the car’s ceiling. “Damn.”
“Sorry. We should be there in a minute.” Ted found my eyes again for a moment. “I’m thinking your charity work is bringing out your maternal instinct. You ever thought about having kids someday?”
I laughed. “I’d have to find a guy first.”
Ted knew that I was on the rebound from a divorce, followed by several failed relationships. I was, what Natalie and Mo called, a relationship Titanic; full of holes and taking on water.
Up ahead we now saw there was a clearing with a couple of parked police units. The sky opened up again, rain coming down in sheets as we pulled off the dirt road and stopped. A uniformed cop, who had been guarding the trailhead that I assumed led to the cave, came over to our car.
Ted rolled down the window as the rain pelted down and the cop said, “We’ve got two of our guys up ahead.” He pointed up the hill. “The body’s about a hundred feet up the trail at the back of a cave. Other than initially checking out the scene, we stayed out of the area to preserve any evidence.”
We thanked him and then removed our foul weather gear and equipment bags from the trunk. The sky continued to pour water, only darkening my mood, as we suited up. Despite attempts to keep the past images of murder victims at bay, an image surfaced of a teenage girl who had been murdered and dumped in an alleyway. I was a rookie cop at the time and the death notification had been traumatic, both for me and her parents. I hadn’t been able to sleep for a week afterward, unable to shake the images.
“Looks like the cavalry is coming,” Ted said, motioning to the convoy of police vehicles coming up the dirt road behind us. I knew it would be a matter of minutes before the department’s SID, or Scientific Investigation Division, and the coroner’s office would be trampling over the area. Despite all the best efforts and training, anytime you have dozens of people at a crime scene things get lost, missed, and sometimes key evidence is simply ignored. I was determined not to let that happen.
I cut my eyes up the hill and said, “Let’s get up there and see what we can make of things.”
As Ted and I headed up the trail with Bernie, the skies seemed to grow even darker. Maybe it was my imagination but as the trail turned and we saw the cave up ahead of us there was something about the place that seemed different from the surrounding area. Beneath us, the water from the reservoir shone in dappled patterns of raindrops, illuminated by the partial sunlight. But the area around the cave was dark and cold as though the cavern held the entrance to another world that was grim and ominous.
I glanced over at my partner as we approached the officers who were standing guard at the entrance. Ted Grady had lost a daughter in a drive-by shooting several years ago. The murder was never solved. That loss had cost my partner his marriage and most of his sanity, for a time. He had eventually recovered, finding his way back from the loss, and even using what happened as motivation to help other victims.
Ted had a theory that the world was divided between fear and love. The choices we make determine how we respond to the world. When we chose fear, we allow darkness and evil to enter our lives. Love, on the other hand, is the decision to choose compassion and understanding, even where there is loss. It all seemed good in theory, but I sometimes had trouble keeping it in perspective when I was at a murder scene.
As I stopped with Bernie at the darkened entrance to the cave, I knew that I was also making a choice. I could either choose to give into the darkness and evil of the moment or choose love; find a way to bring justice to the murdered girl and her family. I took a breath and made a conscious decision to choose that path as one of the officers came over to us.
“The girl’s about fifty yards back in the cave. There’s a white sheet and…” The big cop huffed out a breath and brushed a hand over his cheek. “You’ll see.”
We thanked him and then I asked if he’d take control of Bernie while we examined the scene. After he took Bernie’s lead, Ted and I snapped on our flashlights and entered the cave.
The passageway was no more than six feet across, maybe slightly higher at the top where the rocks were cut away. I wasn’t sure if the cavern was naturally occurring or had been carved out of the rocks when the reservoir had been created. All I did know was that the place we had entered was pitch dark, damp, and forbidding.
Ted and I were less than twenty feet into the cave when we heard a sound, something moving in our direction. Our hands instinctively went to our guns as there was a fluttering sound, some movement overhead.
“It’s a bird,” I said, releasing a pent-up breath. “Damn.”
We both ducked down as the small bird dove over our hands, moving from darkness into the light, before disappearing through the cave entrance behind us.
I took my hand off my gun, breathed, and said, “Let’s move on.”
I was shining my light on some footprints that led into the cave, wondering if they had been made by the boys who found the body, the responding officers, or the killer, when I heard Ted’s voice coming out of the darkness next to me.
“There she is.”
I glanced up, now shining my own light in the direction Ted was holding his flashlight. What I saw sucked all the air from my lungs. I felt light-headed and disoriented as I tried to come to grips with the image in front of me.
There was a wooden platform ahead of us. The nude body of a young girl was lying on the raised area beneath a white covering. The tableau of the girl, ashen in death on a white covering against the blackness of the cave, was overpowering. It gave the impression of innocence being consumed by darkness.
“Oh, God,” I said, at the same time forcing some air back into my lungs as we found our way over to the dead girl.
I bent down, unconsciously wanting to find a way to help her but knowing there was nothing I could do. The scene in front of us was heartbreaking. The girl’s arms were crossed over her breasts and her head was tilted up and angled slightly toward the back of the cave. Her eyes were closed and her hair was perfectly combed. Then I heard the sound and bent over closer to the dead girl.
“Do you hear that buzzing noise?” I said, looking over at Ted.
My big partner was right beside me now. He also bent closer to the body and held his breath, listening to what I’d heard.
“It’s coming from the girl’s body,” Ted whispered. “There’s something inside of her.” His dark eyes then found me. “And I think it’s alive.”
Copyright © 2014 by MZ Kelly
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