by Jesse Reiss
Chapter 16
As they approached the tree, to their great relief, Paula and Lee spotted Angelina walking up the trail with her backpack over her shoulder and something in her arms. The two police cars came to a stop and Paula jumped out.
She met Angelina at the road’s edge and gave her a big hug, “Oh God, I’m so glad you’re safe.”
Angelina hugged her mom back, but seemed distracted. Paula placed her hands on the sides of her daughter’s head and pulled back, inspecting the bleeding scratches on her face. She saw the scratches on her arms and legs and was about to inquire, when Angelina spoke. “I’m fine Mom. I can tell you all about it, but I’m fine. Really. We need to get Virginia to a vet right away!” Paula looked down at the owl lying in the burlap sack, its eyes closed. She was about to ask where Angelina found him when Officer Stanley approached.
“We thought you had been kidnapped! I’m glad to see you’re okay.”
Angelina spoke with urgency. “No, there was a man here with a gun and he tried to take me to his car, but the owl attacked him and he shot it and now I need to get her to a vet!”
“Excuse me?” he asked in surprise, raising his eyebrows.
“Yeah, remember Virginia, the owl? As the man was pulling me to his car, parked where yours is now, the owl swooped down and clawed the man’s face.”
Blank faces from Paula and Lee stared at Angelina in disbelief. “Could you describe the man and the car?” Lee asked incredulously.
“Yes, but I have to get the owl to a vet right now! The man shot the bird and shot at me while I was trying to escape into the tree. Her wing is broken and she is losing blood!”
“Christ,” was all Officer Stanley could say, putting his hand to his head and looking around him. These people’s lives were getting increasingly bizarre. “So this owl swooped down and clawed the man as he was bringing you to his car?” Stanley asked slowly.
“Yes!” Angelina insisted, not understanding why she was being doubted.
Jacqueline pulled up at this point, looking relieved to see Angelina standing in one piece.
“And the man is now gone?”
“Right. He drove off when I hid in the tree.”
“And it wasn’t the bird that scratched you?”
Angelina rolled her eyes. She could see Officer Stanley was trying to be understanding, but having a hard time getting his wits around the incident. She couldn’t stand there all day. She had to get the bird to a vet. “There is a bullet hole in the tree and the man’s blood — not mine — is all over this bird’s talons. And I have other…” Angelina stopped herself from saying she had other witnesses. “I have to get this bird to a vet right now!” With that she began to storm over to Jacqueline who was standing by her mother’s car.
She takes after her mother, Stanley thought. “Hold on miss. You can’t just walk away. If what you say is true, this is now a crime scene and we need to use proper procedure.”
Angelina stopped and turned around, staring coldly at the police officer.
“Let’s think things through here for a second,” he continued, holding up his palms in defense. “Okay, you’ve been through a lot recently as we know and you’re probably a little stressed right now. If the bird has the assailant’s blood on its talons, as you say, we need to attend to it right away, get the bird fixed up and get DNA testing done to try to identify this person. You need to get your scratches looked at and we need to do a full inspection of this area and get all the data. We also need to get the Metro cameras rewound to try to find that James character and…” speaking rhetorically, “I am going to have a lot of explaining to do to my superiors when they hear all this.”
Paula saw Lee’s predicament. He wanted to believe Angelina and not put her through any more stress, but likely evidence says the bird scratched her and she was making the story up about an assailant. But, she had been told that they had Angelina kidnapped in the park and why would her daughter make up something like this? Her daughter wasn’t a liar — that she was sure of. Angelina would humiliate herself utterly if it meant telling the truth over a lie. And what if her daughter was going crazy like she had worried earlier? The thought scared her and she didn’t want others suggesting the same thing. “Honey, did the man take a picture of you?”
“Yes! And with a gun to my head!” Angelina yelled in exasperation, her eyes tearing.
“I saw the picture,” she confirmed to Lee. “The man had tattoos over his arms, right?”
“Yes!”
Paula turned to Lee, “My daughter isn’t lying. I was shown the picture myself. This man was here and she wouldn’t lie about this.”
“Okay, hang on.” Lee spoke briefly to the other cops who were standing there and he made a phone call on his cell phone out of hearing range. Angelina stood there with the bird, stamping her feet and pleading with her mother, who did her best to try to calm her down. After a couple minutes Lee hung up his phone and walked over to them. As he did the sound of a siren came up the hill and around the corner came an ambulance followed by a Park Ranger truck.
“You,” he said pointing to Angelina, “are going to get patched up right here in the ambulance with your mother. The bird is going with the Park Ranger to the animal hospital. We are going to start trying to piece this confusion together. A detective and a CSI unit will be here shortly to take over and get this whole thing unraveled.”
Angelina reluctantly turned the bird over to the Park Ranger, a Hispanic man named Javier who said he had seen injured birds before and would go straight to the hospital to see that the bird was cared for. He had orders from Lee for clean blood samples from the talons.
Paula and Angelina walked over to the ambulance, which now had the back door open. As the Park Ranger pulled away, Lee scratched his head and looked over the trail leading towards the oak tree. So this is the place she found a million dollar gold coin and where an owl supposedly saved her life? Something sure didn’t make sense to him. The girl seemed so genial and rational and yet her story seemed so bizarre and irrational.
Jacqueline and Paula fussed over Angelina as the EMT cleaned her scratches and placed ointment on them. A few scratches on the arms needed bandages, but none were serious. They were surprised to find tiny bark fragments embedded in her scalp. They were placed on a gauze pad in a clear bag for transport to the forensic lab.
She hated the attention and kept pressuring her mother to get out of there. She had scratched herself many times in the past while hiking around the park and could have easily cleaned herself up at home. All this fuss and paperwork and waiting was killing her. She wanted to go to the animal hospital to make sure the bird was being taken care of.
When they were done with her and she stepped from the ambulance, the scene was very different. Several different law enforcement vehicles had arrived and yellow tape had been stretched around bushes and trees circling the large oak and the trail towards the road. It looked like something from a late-night cop movie.
Officer Stanley came back over and told them they weren’t allowed to leave yet, but not to worry about the bird as he had got confirmation it was at the animal hospital being treated and was going to be okay.
Jacqueline went off and brought back Subway sandwiches and water, which they ate as they waited. People with cameras and various instruments were standing around or patrolling the area, like tourists and shell hunters on a beach.
As they finished up their mid afternoon meal, a man in a gray ill-fitting suit approached and introduced himself as Detective Marley. He smacked chewing gum as he talked and had a friendly smile. He offered a piece of Wrigley’s to Angelina and Paula, which they accepted gratefully. Must be how he gets himself warmed up to the people he interrogates, Paula thought. As the detective assigned to the case, he wanted to interview Angelina and Paula and any witnesses involved to get the full story, starting from the beginning.
Angelina began, telling him everything she could remember, excluding the parts about the tree’s other worl
d, feeling that any mention would discredit everything else she talked about. It would be like a fiction storywriter insisting that the images and stories flowing from his mind had actually occurred. Talking about it with anyone else would be so insulting of reality it would instantly label her insane. A bird saving her life was insane enough. Though to her, the whole tree was something as real as the sun above that lit the world and the ground below.
The detective was easy to talk to and made it safe for her to discuss the incident and its entire trauma, taking notes as she went. During it she shed a few tears and when she was done she felt some relief. He had her repeat some details several times as he listened with a frown, finding it hard to believe, but he didn’t invalidate her or try to get her to question her judgment.
The sun was reaching the horizon by that point and long shadows covered the ground. The CSI unit was preparing to wrap up their day’s work and would continue tomorrow. Officer Stanley approached them with a weary look on his face.
“The detective has given word that you may go home now. This place will stay sectioned off overnight with someone on watch and they’ll be back tomorrow to go over the ground again, but most of the work is done. It looks like quite a dramatic incident you went through here Mrs. Russell. A bullet was found in the tree, the man’s footprints were all over the ground and from the size 14 he wears and your description, a big guy. He left a blood trail going up to where his car was and if it matches the blood on the owl’s talons, you’re gonna have a story to tell for the rest of your life.”
Angelina nodded; glad her story was starting to be believed.
“And,” he continued, “blood samples from the owl’s talons have been taken to the forensic lab already and are being worked on right now. I’ve received word that the owl is being treated and will be fine. They’ll keep it in the animal hospital overnight and transfer it tomorrow morning to the Glendale Wildlife Sanctuary.”
“Thank you,” Angelina said. “I’m sorry I yelled at you back there when you first showed up,” she added.
“That’s quite all right,” he responded with a smile.
“Jacqueline will take us home and we’ll be in touch with you tomorrow, right?” Paula asked.
“Well, the detective has taken over the case and the forensic labs will do their work and likely they will get an identification on the assailant and go from there. As a patrol officer, my work doesn’t extend into detailed criminal investigation.”
Paula was visibly dismayed to think she might be saying goodbye to Lee when she was just getting to know him. She tried to think of a reason to contact him. “Will this story, like, go in the media and stuff?”
“Hard to say. Police reports become public record easily and if a reporter gets wind and wants to do an article on it, there isn’t much we can do to stop it.”
Angelina thought about going home and leaving the safety of the law enforcement people and she became worried. “Mom, I don’t think I want to go home tonight. That man told me he had seen the photos in our house, which means he was the one that broke into it. He was really, really mad when that bird clawed him. I’m worried he’s going to come back to our home.”
Paula nodded, feeling the same worry herself. “Maybe we’ll go to a hotel or something.”
“These criminals are highly unlikely to come back to you”, Lee said. “They got what they wanted. They have the coin. They’ll sell it and try to disappear with the money.”
Paula took a deep breath and gasped, putting her hand to her mouth.
“What?” Lee asked.
“No, they don’t have the coin. They have a coin that looks like it, but is a different one.”
“What do you mean? You said you gave it to that James character in the subway?”
“When I stopped at the coin shop before going to the subway, the owner convinced me to switch it out with one that looks the same. He was obsessed with the coin. I should never have listened to him,” she said with a shake of the head.
“So where is the coin now?”
“He’s holding it for me there. Guess I owe him a couple thousand, which is the value of the coin he gave me.” She looked up at Lee, scared. “What are these people going to do when they discover they have the wrong coin?”
Lee took a deep breath and exhaled. “Considering today’s events, your guess is as good as mine. Best thing is to be prepared for the worst.”
“Oh, God.”
“Do you have any family in town you could stay with?”
“Not in the city. My mom lives in San Diego and I’ve got a sister in Sacramento.”
The thought had been in Lee’s head since the conversation started and now was the time to mention it, if any was. He nodded solemnly. “I’ve got an empty guest room at my house. You guys could stay there until this thing blows over. It’s five minutes from here and probably the safest places you could be.” His heart started beating harder and he steeled himself to act calm and normal if she rejected the idea.
Paula looked over at Angelina for her opinion. Angelina gave her mom that little head nod and open-eyed glare of “duh”, like she would be a fool to say anything but yes. She knew they needed male protection around them more than anything right now and there was something about this good looking officer she liked.
“Sure Mr. Stanley, that’s very kind. Thank you.” Paula said, containing her great relief and avoiding eye contact, should he read something else into her acceptance.
Lee likewise hid the elation inside him and nodded solemnly, keeping a professional face. “Okay, why don’t you follow me down to your house in your car where you can pack some of your things and we can head over.”
They nodded in agreement. Paula asked Jacqueline to drive so she and Angelina could sit together in the backseat.
