Nobody's Damsel

by E. M. Tippetts

“This could be quite a collaboration then?”

  “I’m hoping so. He just gets me. Like, I’ll try to demonstrate what I want to say with Clayborn and he’ll just nail it in the rewrites.”

  “Well, congratulations.”

  “Are you coming out when Jason’s back on the show?”

  “Probably on the weekend, yeah, if he stays in LA.”

  “We should meet up. Maybe go shopping or something.”

  “Get seen together?”

  “Yeah, basically. And hang out. I mean, Jason and I have been friends forever and if I want to keep it that way, I need to get to know you because he’s adamant, he’ll be yours forever.”

  “Shopping would be fun, yeah.” The paparazzi had been whipped into a frenzy after the show aired with Jason and Vicki’s on screen chemistry made plain for the world to see, but I’d been on too much of a high from Dina to care.

  Our conversation moved on to chit-chat, and then we signed off. We weren’t the best of friends forever or anything like that, but maybe someday I’d stop wanting to scratch her face.

  A couple of weeks after that, my friend in the white sedan showed up at my gate again. He flagged me down as I was returning from work. The sun was low in the sky, casting that gorgeous rose light over everything. He had a stack of pictures in his hands.

  Curious, I pulled over and got out.

  “I did not know I had these until I went into Photoshop and brightened up the midtones,” he said. “That’s the only alteration I’ve done.” He held up a picture of the original Esperanza Dominguez crime scene. Miguel was trying to flag down a passing car, which meant this was one of the series of pictures the photographer had taken just to annoy him. In the blue compact car, was Carl Eisner. “I’ve got four pictures of him. I swear, I didn’t know I had these. They were too dark in the originals for me to see his face.”

  I took the pictures from him, my hands shaking.

  “So I went and checked the pics I took from next to the last crime scene, the one where you found the little girl, before you guys drove me off. I’ve got these.” The pictures showed the car from the back, or, it looked like the same car, at least. “I’m sorry I didn’t get the license plate off the first one, so I can’t know for sure.” New Mexico only had rear license plates. Pictures of the front of the car would not show the plate number. “And I’m sorry. I was going through my stock and thought, what the heck? Might as well see if I can help like I did when your brother was harassing you. I didn’t think I’d actually be able to do it, but… now you see.”

  “He was still in town when we found Esperanza?”

  “And I know that was weeks ago. I’m sorry. Really.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. And listen, I’m sorry to tail you all the time. The pic of Jason’s proposal got me so much money, I figured I’d play the long game, follow you around until something else happened. I mean, you’ve done enough interesting stuff in your lifetime, I figured you’d do something amazing sooner or later.”

  “All you’re gonna get are pictures of me putting up crime scene tape and stuff.”

  “Well, even that was interesting. I got really into the case, I have to admit. Sorry how it ended.” His somber expression was sincere. He really was sorry.

  I noticed then that he wore a wedding ring and remembered what he said about putting his kids through school. “I’ll be in LA the day after tomorrow. Vicki and I are meeting up and going shopping. The idea is to be seen together, maybe quell a few rumors. Give me your number and I’ll text you our whereabouts.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Thanks.”

  “That’s gotta be paparazzi worthy, right? Me and her, theoretical rivals?”

  “Yeah, definitely.” He frowned a moment, then reached into his car and came out with more pictures. “I’m not sure if you already knew about this or what.” He held them out.

  Kyra and Zach Wechsler, sitting in Libby at a stoplight. “That was months ago,” I said. “We knew about it.”

  “These are from last week.”

  “Oh… right.”

  “And I sold them to People Magazine.”

  “Thanks for the heads up.”

  “So if you don’t want to tip me off about the shopping trip with Vicki-”

  I held up the photos of Carl Eisner. “I still owe you. Does People know the identity of the girl?”

  “I’m afraid so. It’s what made the pictures sale-able. They may or may not use her name. They don’t always.”

  “All right, I’ll warn her.” Poor Kyra, I thought.

  “Well, thanks for stopping to talk. If I catch anything else like that, I’ll let you know.”

  We shook hands.

  “My name’s Brad, by the way.”

  “I’ll be seeing you around.”

  “That threat about you telling the police I shot myself in the back of the head – that was a good one.”

  “I’ve got more.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be hearing them.”

  “Have a good evening.”

  “You too, Chloe.”

  Once I got back in my car, I dialed Detective Baca. “Hey, can you tell me who to call in homicide? I’ve got pictures of Carl Eisner’s car. Even shows the number plate.”

  “How’d you get those?”

  “You know, having a movie star husband means some interesting people show up on my doorstep.”

  “I can imagine. How’ve you been?”

  “Real good, actually. I’m still on a high from Dina Ramirez. Don’t know how long it’ll last.”

  “It never wears off, Miss Chloe. I can testify. Just make sure you see Miss Dina every now and again, and it’ll be like the day you found her each time.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “I’ll text you the number of who to call in homicide. You have a good evening.”

  We signed off and I pulled in the gate and headed up the driveway towards Jason and home.

  Remembering Daniel Pendergrass, the Dedicatee

  As you’ll note from the dedication, Daniel Pendergrass passed away last year. I don’t have the precise date because it was never published; only a short obituary came out in the papers that I ever saw. He was thirty-five and I hadn’t seen him in person since high school. Our only recent interaction had been through the wonders of the internet, messages back and forth on Facebook.

  Rewind thirty years, though, and Dan was my very best friend. Every year we made a pilgrimage to the school counselor to discuss all the flack we got for being friends of shockingly opposite genders. I still think it’s sick that anyone made an issue of this when we were in first grade. I’m not sure what other people’s six and seven year olds got up to, but Dan and I shared a passion for biology and wildlife and liked to hunt lizards and drink the nectar out of Indian paintbrush flowers. We once spent an entire recess examining a spider of a species we’d never seen before, until our classmate (who may or may not have also been my neighbor, not to point fingers or anything…) stepped on it.

  While it’s the norm to sing the praises of those who have left us, I’d rather just tell you about the kind of guy Dan was, because I that’s how I liked him: as he was. He was small for his age, awkward and uncoordinated, and so brilliant that he spent his childhood worrying about big social and environmental problems that we were far too little to solve. He was a voracious reader, toting around the Lord of the Rings books in second grade as he worked his way through, page by painstaking page, until he’d finish each one in a matter of months – remember, he was only seven. Back then I was still reading Beverly Cleary. He was fiercely competitive and hated to lose at anything, which made playing sports with him difficult because most of us were bigger and more agile. Even me, and I’ve always been the kind of person chosen last for teams in gym.

  One day after school we hiked down the Red Dot Trail, which residents of White Rock, New Mexico, will know is much too far for two children to hike alone. It goes in switchbacks do
wn one wall of White Rock Canyon all the way to the Rio Grande. You can imagine how tiny we looked, picking our way down the boulder strewn cliff, and to make the image even more ridiculous, you can insert his Irish Wolfhound, Tara, who was almost as tall as we were. She kept us safe and helped us get home again, even after we lost our way. (I’m not sure if I ever told my parents that little detail. Sorry if this is the first you’ve heard of it, Mom and Dad, but hey, I survived childhood, right?)

  One day during school something upset me so much that I cried during recess, only Dan kept distracting me by reading sections of James and the Giant Peach in silly voices. To this day, I don’t remember what had me so down, but I still remember his rendition of those pages. People who know me know it’s not easy to get me out of a bad mood once it’s moved me to tears.

  As you can probably tell from the tenor of the dedication, though, my friend’s story had a lot of sad chapters. He was a very lonely person much of the time and had several serious health issues, including epilepsy, malformed hip joints, and an underdeveloped nervous system that affected his spatial awareness and balance. He was the first person I ever knew who wore a Medic Alert bracelet and his ungainly, jerky walk made him the target of mockery and abuse.

  During middle school and high school he had various surgical procedures that required him to be in a body cast from the waist down, and it was after one of these that I heard about his first suicide attempt. I don’t know how often he tried to take his life, only that he succeeded last July. There was no memorial service to attend, and all I have left from this time are his Facebook messages, congratulating me on my writing sales and asking for advice on how to get an agent for his children’s books. Unfortunately, I don’t even know what became of his manuscripts.

  He left an indelible mark on my life, though. Whenever I pick up a fantasy novel, I think of Dan toting around Lord of the Rings. I doubt it’s a coincidence that I began my writing career in speculative fiction. While I grew up without any brothers, many if not most of my close friends over the years have been male. Nowadays this seems to be acceptable, but for a couple of decades I was definitely the oddball, the girl who’d just walk up and talk to boys as if they were people (and a good percentage of them are, I can attest). I’ve endured a lot of dagger stares from jealous girls and fielded a lot of rumors about being in relationships. The flipside to this is that whenever a guy friend wants advice about women, I’m useless. I don’t get them either.

  Dan taught me how cruel people can be to those who are different, and what it’s like to step outside of the box society puts each of us in. In short, it’s terrifying, isolating, and even painful, but the views are incredible. He taught me how hard work doesn’t always yield the desired reward. Despite his dreams of becoming a scientist and his many awards in school science fairs, his health precluded him from making this a reality. He taught me that loneliness isn’t all in the mind. Some people really don’t have anyone to turn to.

  In one of his last messages to me, he was upbeat, telling me his epilepsy was under control and his medication had been reduced, but sometime between then and last July, things took a turn for the worse. He felt he couldn’t endure any longer and overdosed on his pills. There’s no bright side to this picture, really. It’s pure tragedy through and through. He died alone, after setting out extra food and water for his dog. He was an animal person to the end.

  There’s nothing I can do to bring my old friend back, so instead I choose to tell the world that he was here. Nobody, after all, deserves to be forgotten. And if you’ve never gone up to say hello to someone while the whole rest of the room covers their mouths to keep from laughing, you’re missing out. Not because you’d be doing a great act of charity, but because it’s only when we step outside of our comfort zone that we stop skating through life and start living it in all its terrifying glory. Like I said, it can be painful, but the views are simply incredible.

  E.M. Tippetts

  December 4, 2012

  Author’s Note

  After seeing me mock television for what it gets wrong in criminal procedure, some of you likely wonder how accurate I was. The following are pure fiction: the location, jurisdiction, employment practices, size, and facilities of the lab Chloe works in. Albuquerque does have at least one crime lab, but I have no idea whether it is run by the Albuquerque Police Department, the county, the city, or any other number of political and administrative bodies that could run a crime lab. My goal was to write an engaging story, so I made stuff up to achieve that end. I chose to have the lab owned by the APD in order to get Chloe out onto crime scenes, though even this practice will vary from police department to police department.

  I made the lab relatively small and modest because this, in future, can be used for dramatic purposes. Nothing increases drama like frustration, feelings of powerlessness, and the sense that the bad guy’s got better resources. The real facilities in Albuquerque are likely much more sophisticated. I put the lab in a basement because that seemed bleak and mundane, and I didn’t put a specific address on said basement because it doesn’t really exist. Like all of my fictional locations, it sort of floats in a general neighborhood. I could draw you a picture of what it looks like, but it won’t correspond to any real location in Albuquerque.

  Crims do not go and help with interrogations. They do not, generally, sit down with police detectives and compare theories. They do not hold press conferences. All of these served the storytelling device to put the main character in the thick of as much action as possible. This is why television “gets it wrong,” because good programs put story first.

  Aside from the knowing liberties I took, I likely made a ton of mistakes. I had the help of Cordelia Willis, a crim who answered every question I could think to ask. She even answered a ton of questions I didn’t think to ask, but probably not all of them because, brilliant as she is, she is not psychic (that I am aware of). There are probably some ridiculous, glaring errors in here that it wouldn’t even have occurred to me to vet. I hope to get better at this as the series continues.

  Thanks, everyone, for reading, and no, you haven’t seen the last of Chloe and Jason. If you enjoyed this novel, please consider writing a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or Barnes and Noble. Reviews can make or break a book’s sales.

  Other books by me are the stand alone novels:

  Time & Eternity (out of print)

  Paint Me True

  Castles on the Sand (a sample of which is included at the end of this book)

  And:

  Someone Else’s Fairytale, the first book in this series.

  I’m currently working on a novel titled, Personal Demons, which is the sequel to Castles on the Sand. Now that I’ve had time to build up some momentum, you should see a few more releases from me this year as I’m able to go straight from one project to the next.

  For the latest news about me, head to www.emtippetts.com. I also write science fiction and fantasy as Emily Mah, and have a blog at www.emilymah.com. A sample of Castles on the Sand is after the Acknowledgements (about two page turns away).

  Acknowledgements

  First thanks goes to Cordelia Willis, my forensic science resource. She answered a lot of long emails full of questions and sent pictures of forensic equipment and links to articles. As someone who’s provided legal and other facts to writers, I know how tedious this can get. Everything I got right in this book is thanks to Cordelia, and everything I got wrong is my own fault entirely.

  I also must thank my beta readers who read the first draft. Char Peery features in all of my acknowledgements, and this time, she not only read my rough drafts, but also let me have Libby, the red Jeep Liberty that Kyra drives. Char continues to put up with countless in-jokes in my books in which various objects or locations of significance to her get trashed by my sick sense of humor. A huge thank you also to Suzanne Sullivan, who is not only a fast reader, but an English teacher who went through and corrected my grammar. The mistakes left behind are all m
ine, either done on purpose in dialogue, or for artistic reasons (or in other words, because I didn’t catch them). Thanks also to Cami Checketts, fellow author and distant relative, and Kate Seagrave, a vicar for the Church of England and friend since childhood. Both sent long emails full of extremely useful insights and perspective. And as always, Mary Mah did the copyediting and found reams and reams of typos. Thanks, Mom.

  A special thank you to my German translator, Michael Drecker. His translation of Someone Else’s Fairytale, titled Nicht Mein Märchen, has been steadily climbing the rankings on Amazon.de.

  And another special thank you to the friend who let me borrow Boots, the cat. Unfortunately Boots is gone from this world, so his character is still mourning the loss of his best friend and owner, but he’ll be well cared for by Jen and family.

  Last of all, I always need to thank my family for putting up with a mommy who stares at a computer screen for hours at a time, and a wife who agonizes over imaginary people and events. Though, thanks to the fans who’ve started buying my books, it now looks less like a weird obsession and more like a sensible business practice. You guys have changed my world, and I very much appreciate it.

  The following is a sample from the novel, Castles on the Sand, also by E.M. Tippetts. The dedication is included because it sets up the theme of the novel:

  for Jared Lyman

  (March 28, 1975-February 3, 2012)

  A man who knew how to love people. For his son's twenty-fifth birthday (sixteen years from now) he wrote:

  No Unlesses