Crisis Shot

by Janice Cantore

  8

  One week after her interview, Tess found out exactly how the Rogue’s Hollow city council was leaning. She read the offer of employment over again. Nearly two months since the grand jury decision and the associated fallout—including several conferences with the mayor, who bluntly suggested she retire but stopped just short of firing her—she had a place to go if she accepted.

  Finally someone wanted her to work for them, to start right away. They gave her time to tie up loose ends, which for Tess included selling her condo—if she was leaving she wanted the break complete—and putting most of her belongings in storage. She sipped coffee and opened Google Earth. She’d spent only a day in the town when she’d flown up for the interview and hadn’t seen much, but then there wasn’t much to see of the small town. She typed in Rogue’s Hollow, Oregon, and watched the program zoom in to a tiny forested dot on the Rogue River, in the southern part of the state, population 5,083. The closest metropolitan area was Medford, with a population not quite reaching eighty thousand. In comparison, Long Beach was the seventh-largest city in California, population over four hundred thousand. Her salary would shrink as much as the population she served.

  She picked up the letter again. They wanted her as police chief. In a backhanded way Tess would be getting her promotion to the top spot. But she’d be chief of a department of twelve, counting herself, in a backwater town in Oregon, a far cry from leading a department of over eight hundred officers in a large metropolitan city.

  But I don’t want to be frozen out of law enforcement. Maybe this small town will be free of mistrust and bloggers who distort the truth. At least the council was unbiased enough to offer me the job. She remembered Steve Logan, the deputy she’d met. If he was any indication, the sheriff’s department would be supportive.

  She turned to her computer to compose an acceptance letter. I’ll be the best chief I can be and make a difference. That should shut up people like Connor-Ruiz.

  9

  ROGUE’S HOLLOW, OREGON

  AUGUST

  Oliver ran a hand through his hair and yawned. He’d gotten a late start on his sermon notes and now, Friday night, the clock was ticking toward midnight and he wasn’t yet done. He knew a lot of it had to do with Anna. They’d had some bad news: the results from her last round of tests showed that the chemo wasn’t working. Anna was depressed and angry, and it was so unlike her that he was at a loss as to how to help.

  Earlier, they’d had the new police chief, Tess O’Rourke, over for dinner and things seemed good. It had been a warm, companionable evening. But right after the chief left, Anna’s mood went from calm and amiable to angry, hurt.

  “God is just not listening. He’s turned a deaf ear,” she’d cried in frustration.

  He kept hearing those words echoing in his thoughts and he hated that part of him believed them. This trial with cancer had been with them for fifteen years and it had taken so much. It had taken Anna’s ability to have children, removed the sparkle from her eyes more times than Oliver could count, and now if the doctor was correct, it would take her life.

  God hadn’t been silent all this time or distant. Oliver and Anna had reveled in the feeling of closeness to God they’d felt at times. At each of the four rounds of chemo, and the four times doctors had declared the cancer beaten back, they’d felt complete and safe in the hand of God.

  But this last round of chemo had no effect. The doctor had mentioned other possible alternative treatments, but he was not at all hopeful. He came close to squashing all hope.

  But with God there is still hope when there seems to be none. That was what Oliver preached often to his congregation. He’d tried to preach it to Anna but had only succeeded in raising her ire, not her hope. Her words had pierced Oliver deeper than he’d ever thought possible. He felt the fear of losing her so deeply it anchored him. In one sentence his own weak faith was thrown back at him with the force of a 100 mph fastball.

  “God has turned a deaf ear, and you need to think about life without me.”

  Those few words acted like gasoline thrown on the smoldering flames of his doubts, and now he had a scorching fire of unbelief raging in his soul.

  Where are you, Lord? We really need you now. I need a touch.

  Oliver believed the hope of heaven was real, but the truth was that the thought of life now without Anna was unbearable. He stood to pace his small office, mindful that it was well past the time he should be home in bed, home with Anna. Oliver paused at his blank page. He couldn’t think straight enough to write anything for Sunday.

  He dropped his hands to his sides and looked heavenward, the years of tears and disappointments flashing through his mind’s eye. They’d had hope fifteen years ago when the chemo helped. Anna was sick and lost weight, but they’d beaten the disease—so they’d thought. Four years later it was back. The treatment took a greater toll that time but still, when they made it through, they’d won another battle. But the cancer kept coming back. And now the treatment was doing nothing.

  Deaf ear.

  They’d always prayed the tough things through together, always trusted God. Why the doubt and anger now?

  Taking a deep breath, then letting it out slowly, Oliver didn’t even have the words to pray now. He rubbed his tired eyes, turned off the desk light, and prepared to lock up for the night. His office was above the fellowship hall. He had a short walk downstairs and across the parking lot to the small house behind the church that he and Anna called home. But before he could lock the door to the church office, he heard a knock.

  A spark inside flared. Maybe it was Anna, come to apologize and walk him home.

  The door opened, and his heart leapt—it was Anna.

  “Oliver?” She held a large paper bag in her arms, full from what he could see. But it was her expression that froze him.

  “Yes?” He stepped toward her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Glen . . . Glen was here.”

  Oliver frowned. “Your cousin? This time of night?”

  She nodded. “He gave me this.” She pushed the bag toward him.

  He took the bag from his wife and set it on his desk, flicking the light on again. The pungent, stale odor of cigarette and marijuana smoke wafted toward him. Was it pot? he wondered. Growing pot for recreational use was now legal in this state, but its sale was not yet legal in Rogue’s Hollow. But why would Glen give something like that to Anna?

  Peering inside the bag, Oliver didn’t see drugs. He saw money, lots of it. Fist-sized rolls of twenties and tens secured with rubber bands filled the bag. It was more cash than Oliver had ever seen in one place in his whole life.

  “What . . . ?” He looked at Anna, astonished.

  When she saw the contents, she whispered, “What in the world?”

  Her bewildered expression matched his.

  “All Glen said was ‘Only God can make this clean.’ Then he left. What’s he done, Oliver? What on earth has my lost cousin done?”

  10

  “It’s always too soon to quit.”

  Dad’s favorite rule blared in Tess’s mind like a siren. His favorite rule had not made it onto her list. She’d compiled her list with a mind toward successful leadership, while her dad’s list had a more military flavor to it, the never quit applying primarily to combat or competition. Tess had never seen her job as combat. But recent events had her reconsidering.

  While she wrestled with demons who told her to do just that—quit—her father’s voice echoed in her thoughts, a lecture he’d given her one day, though she couldn’t remember why.

  “Always follow through, Tess; always follow through. The world is full of lazy people who quit when things get tough. It’s only the ones who stick it out and finish the job who get anywhere in life.”

  For the first time she could remember, Tess so wanted to quit.

  Like stepping out of a hot Jacuzzi and falling headfirst into a pool of ice water—that was the level of shock she’d felt during her first weeks on the
job in Rogue’s Hollow. It was not the job that overwhelmed her. Police work was police work. But the transition from crowded, diverse asphalt jungle to small, semirural enclave . . . well, it was quite a change. It was like being a rookie all over again but without the camaraderie of her academy classmates. Even though her badge said Chief, taking charge of this small-town department was more like diving back into patrol. She was sworn in early in June and now, two months later, still felt as though her feet hadn’t hit the ground.

  “You won’t have anything to do but put your feet up on the desk. You could stay in California and do that working security somewhere.”

  The voice of her ex-husband, Paul, a sergeant in personnel, reverberated in Tess’s thoughts, mocking her choice to leave. As soon as he’d heard her decision, he’d shown up at her condo as she was packing, making sure she knew what a stupid decision he thought she was making.

  “I guess if you want to hide out, then you picked a good place for it. Are you going to be like Barney Fife and only carry one bullet in your shirt pocket? I predict you’ll want to slink back to Long Beach with your tail between your legs before long. I know you too well.”

  Tess didn’t toss anything back, didn’t want to give him any ammo. It was because of Paul she’d sold her condo instead of renting it out. She didn’t want anything remaining in LB that could pull her back, give her an excuse. This was her last chance as far as she was concerned. And the idea that he thought she couldn’t do it or wouldn’t like it was added impetus for her to try all the harder to make it work.

  Now, sixty days into her job, Tess hated to consider that maybe Paul was right about one thing: she yearned to run back to Long Beach. Tess felt like there was barely a thin thread holding her here in this river town. While it was a strong thread, the last thing Tess wanted to do was something that proved her ex-husband right. She’d kept in touch with Jack O’Reilly in his search for the three shadowy figures who ran away that night, fantasizing that the missing guys, once found, would tell some fantastic truth that would clear all the controversy from Tess, right the universe, and enable her to get her job and position back.

  Tess knew in her head that the door to return to LB was solidly closed, politics being politics. But in her heart, she couldn’t accept it. Long Beach was home. Here, she felt like a square peg in a round hole. The officers who worked for her were standoffish. Few people in town seemed happy to have her there: “How’s someone who doesn’t know the difference between a ranch and a farm gonna serve this community?” And the majority of stuff she dealt with were annoying nuisance crimes.

  That in itself was a problem. How much should she step in? In Long Beach there was plenty of patrol coverage, no reason for her to step out of her administration shoes and do police work. As commander, most of her work was done behind a computer or speaking in front of community groups. But here, with one officer per shift and some overlap by her only sergeant . . . well, Tess couldn’t sit still and watch officers handle calls alone when she felt backup was needed. It just so happened that she often ended up being the backup.

  And this strange conundrum was about the only positive in her life at the moment. Because she was always helping, she rarely had time to sit with her feet up on the desk. It was good for her to stay busy, but was she being a micromanager?

  When she did have free time, the small town became a claustrophobic prison and she didn’t hang around. Thursdays had become her favorite down day. There was a growers’ market in Medford, forty minutes away. It had become a habit for Tess to head down there early in the morning. She’d wander around, buy a cup of coffee, then order breakfast from one of the vendors. The Thai food truck was her favorite. There was a small table in front of the wagon where she could sit, eat her breakfast, drink her coffee, and watch people.

  The people here in southern Oregon were different than in Long Beach, or at least the people she watched at the growers’ market were. There was less rush in their steps, less impatience in their movements. They smiled a lot. They smelled flowers, examined fruits and vegetables, placed purchases in bags they brought with them, and chatted with growers. Often she saw women buy whole flats of berries. Anna Macpherson had shown her the market, brought her the first time.

  “She’s probably going to make jam or preserves with all of that,” Anna said after Tess asked about a woman weighed down with three flats of blueberries and raspberries.

  “Really? Isn’t that a lot of work?”

  “Canning and preserving are big pastimes here. I do a little myself. Strawberry freezer jam is Oliver’s favorite.”

  “I love strawberry jam.”

  “I’d be happy to show you how to make it.”

  Tess remembered the conversation fondly. She’d never been on the organic, homegrown food bandwagon in Long Beach, but she used to like to cook, make things from scratch. When she and Paul were first married, she cooked all the time, loved surprising him with a new meal and seeing the pleasure in his eyes when he took his first bite. It was only when her career began to take off that she had no time for cooking. But by then they were both busy. The last few years of their marriage, it seemed as though they never had time for one another.

  An odd, random thought wove through her mind: Does a woman who makes freezer jam hang on to her husband?

  Watching people and avoiding thinking about what had happened to her life and career kept her slightly sane. But today her normal Thursday routine had been rudely interrupted.

  As was her habit before leaving town, to make sure her presence wasn’t required for anything, she’d walked across the street to the station. This morning, with her mind a million miles away, the whine of a revved motorcycle engine barely penetrated her thoughts in time. She nearly got run over by a local teenage delinquent on a dirt bike. Leaping to get to the curb safely, she estimated Duncan Peabody raced through the middle of town at sixty-five in a twenty-five-mile-per-hour zone.

  Faced flushed with anger and a bit of chagrin that she’d not heard the cycle’s motor sooner, Tess stormed into the station, vowing to climb into her car and—sirens blazing—head to Peabody’s house, cite him, and explain to his parents what a danger he was. It wasn’t her first run-in with the boy.

  But before she could deal with him, her attention was demanded by a red-faced roofing contractor with a tiny pink scratch on his face.

  “That idiot almost killed me!” He pointed to the mark on his face. “He’s shooting at me! Bullets are flying everywhere.”

  11

  Tilly didn’t know what to do. The gunfire had scared her more than she’d ever been scared in her life. It had scared her sober, and she wasn’t even the one who’d been shot at. She’d almost run with the first boom of the gun, but the scene across Midas Creek froze her in place momentarily. Tilly stayed hidden in the bushes on one side while the man with the gun was killing her friends on the other side.

  The shooter stood over her friend and fired again. There was another person there—a woman who tried to grab the gunman’s arm. They struggled but the man was too strong. He flung the woman off his arm and into the creek, the roar of the water smothering her scream.

  Horrified, Tilly jerked in her hiding place of scrub brush, fighting the urge to scream. Then the man looked up, across the creek. She was certain their eyes met. He fired in her direction and finally Tilly did move. She stumbled back, fell on her bottom, then struggled to her feet.

  The terrain was hilly, thick with trees and brush. The natural trail took her downstream along the creek, even as the gun boomed again. But she kept running downhill, putting the scene behind her.

  Midas Creek dropped steeply here, which created the waterfalls it was known for. There was no natural crossing at the point where the shooting occurred, so Tilly realized he could not have followed her.

  Breathing hard, Tilly wasn’t certain how much time had passed when she had to stop. Now the ground was level, the crashing waterfalls spraying the trail with moisture. And the fear eve
ned out as the terrain did and no bullets struck.

  Catching her breath, Tilly tried to process the fact that Glen was dead and there was nothing she could do for him. Then she remembered the woman, the horrific sound of a scream muffled by tumbling water. Could she help the woman who went into the creek?

  Glancing back the way she’d come, the spray of water from the falls wetting her face, Tilly felt her fear flee and purpose fill its place.

  Help the woman in the creek. As Tilly stumbled over wet rocks to the very edge of a large pool the creek dumped into, she squinted in the low light, searching for the woman. She could hear only the roar of the water and for a second feared the gunman was across the creek doing the same thing she was.

  I have to hurry. She continued searching the churning water. Amazingly, there was the woman, her friend, struggling in the frigid swirl. Clarity flashed and Tilly knew what to do.

  She looked back, but no more shots rang out; no monster was after her.

  She turned to the creek and jumped in. The cold water caused an intake of breath and kept her thoughts lucid. The rocks cut into her skin, and she very nearly didn’t make it to the woman before the current took them both farther downstream.

  But Tilly was driven. She’d failed Glen; she couldn’t fail this woman. Mostly by instinct and a sense of self-preservation, she grabbed hold of an arm and fought to pull them both from the water.

  And then the angel appeared.

  Tilly firmly believed in angels; she used to pray to them. He appeared at her side and helped her to keep a grip on her friend. This heavenly creature was more than help; he was an inspiration. She and her friend were free of the water, and then the angel helped them both into the shelter.