Striking Range

by Margaret Mizushima

  “I’ve got the sheriff here, Cole. He wants to talk to you. One second while I patch him through. Hang in there.”

  A click and then McCoy’s deep voice filled the receiver. “Cole, I’m heading there now. Is there anyone else with you?”

  “No, I left the others at the campground. Mattie, Stella, and Ken.” His breath formed a cloud of mist as he ran toward Johnson.

  “All right. We’ll notify them as well.” The sound of the sheriff firing his engine came over the phone.

  “I’m closer to town than I am to the campground. Tell that ambulance to be careful. Conditions are horrible.”

  “They chained up to get back from Byers County, so they’ll be okay.”

  Cole reached Johnson and sank down on his knees in the wet snow beside him. “I need both hands now to cover Ed. I’ll try to keep him as warm as I can.”

  “I’ll be there soon.” The sheriff disconnected the call.

  Cole shoved his phone into his pocket. He shook out the insulated coveralls first and placed them over Ed’s torso, tucking the edges into the snow gently. The kid was lying on snow and ice, but Cole didn’t dare move him. Spinal cord injury seemed likely with his body twisted this way. He opened the coat and laid it across Ed’s hips and thighs, not daring to tuck it around the mangled limbs. He spread the hoodies on Ed’s legs.

  He leaned forward to assess Ed’s breath and pulse, praying that the young man would hold on. If CPR became necessary, there would be no way he could protect the positioning of Ed’s spine and legs. The warm breath and rapid heartbeat against Cole’s chilled fingertips gave him some small measure of relief.

  He rocked back on his heels to wait, knowing that the three miles from town would take an eternity for the ambulance to navigate under these conditions. He had no idea if Ed had suffered a brain injury in addition to broken bones, but he supposed his decreased level of consciousness was a blessing in disguise. Because when he woke up, this poor kid was going to be in a world of pain.

  * * *

  When Brody came down from the campground, Mattie had transferred chain of custody for the package that Robo had found in the cave to him, so he could take it to the station while she went with Stella to talk to the Greenfields.

  Now she was following the two red dots of his taillights as they drove slowly toward town on the slick road. Warmed by the heater and tired from the long day of physical exercise out in the cold, she fought being hypnotized by the glare of lights on the ice. She couldn’t let her guard down, because one second of inattention could result in a slide into a ditch.

  They were still about seven miles from town when the announcement came over the radio: “Code 10-33. Location, three miles west of Timber Creek on Highway Twelve. Ambulance en route. All units, report your location.”

  She glanced at Stella and their eyes met, the detective’s brow lowered with concern. Code 10-33 meant officer in trouble—emergency. Mattie keyed on the transponder to report their location at the same moment that Stella’s cell phone rang. She missed the beginning of Stella’s conversation as she responded to the radio communication but tuned in as soon as she ended her own transmission.

  “We’re still a ways out,” Stella was saying.

  “About seven miles,” Mattie murmured, aware that she knew this area better than the detective, who’d moved to town within the past year.

  “Seven miles,” Stella repeated into the phone before pausing to listen. “All right. Brody’s just ahead of us. It’s slow going, traveling about thirty miles per hour.”

  Mattie glanced at Stella’s face, which had been taken over by a grimace.

  Stella was still talking to her caller. “The ambulance has arrived. Okay, Sheriff, we’ll get there as soon as we can.” Another pause as she listened. “All right.”

  Stella disconnected the call. “Cole found Johnson injured by the side of the highway three miles from town. Not sure about the extent of his injuries. Both legs look broken. He’s unconscious.”

  The description made Mattie wince.

  “The sheriff said to not take any chances trying to rush there,” Stella said. “The ambulance has arrived and Sheriff McCoy too, so Cole has help. We’re to take a look at the scene and see if we can find clues as to what happened.”

  Brody’s taillights were pulling farther ahead, so Mattie assumed he’d also been given the bad news. She focused on the road instead of the ache in her stomach. The thought of Johnson lying at the side of the road, his body broken, sickened her. “And no cars in sight when Cole arrived?”

  “Right.” Stella leaned forward in her seat, one hand on the dashboard as if that would speed up their arrival. “This has to be a hit-and-run.”

  “How so? What did the sheriff say?”

  Stella told her how Cole had found Johnson with his cruiser running and his overheads flashing.

  Sounds like a traffic stop to me, Mattie thought. “Johnson didn’t check in with dispatch before making a stop?”

  “Evidently not. He’d been out on patrol since he left the campground.”

  No longer sleepy, Mattie turned on her overheads and focused on keeping her vehicle on the road as she picked up speed. They drove in silence until she spotted flashing lights on the horizon.

  “There,” Stella said as she zipped up her coat.

  Despite their hurry, or maybe because of it, it seemed like it took hours to reach the scene. Mattie pulled up behind Brody’s cruiser, checking on Robo in the rearview out of habit. He didn’t even rise from his cushion, apparently still asleep from the exhaustion of his long day.

  She stopped and set the parking brake, bailing out of her unit a split second behind Stella. Worried about the ice rink beneath their feet, she couldn’t help telling Stella, “Be careful on this ice.”

  “Tell that to my boots.” Stella moved forward, keeping one hand on Brody’s vehicle while they approached Cole’s truck.

  The ambulance had already left, taking Johnson with it. Sheriff McCoy and Cole stood beside Cole’s truck, their grim faces lit by Brody’s headlights. Brody was already at Johnson’s cruiser, searching the road around it with a flashlight. Mattie turned back to retrieve hers from her unit, and Robo stood and yawned when she opened the door and the interior lights came back on.

  “It’s okay, buddy. You can lie down.”

  He stood and watched as she found the flashlight in the console.

  “You’re going to stay here.”

  Robo yawned again and sat, telling her he knew he was off duty. He would rest while he could. She shut the door, leaving him in the warm car while she made her way carefully back toward the others.

  McCoy and Stella were talking to Cole, and she searched his face as she approached. She’d never seen him look so ashen and stressed. Waiting for help with someone injured as badly as Johnson must have taken its toll. Their eyes met, and she reached out a hand to squeeze his. Her colleagues knew how she and Cole felt about each other, and there was no need to hide it. “How are you doing?”

  Cole returned the hand squeeze before letting go. “Relieved that Ed was still alive when the ambulance got here.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No, he roused, but he seemed confused. He was in a lot of pain.”

  “And did you notice anything that might help us determine what happened?”

  He gestured toward Brody, who was still searching the road in front of Johnson’s cruiser. “Some tire marks in the snow on the shoulder and possible skid marks on the ice that Ken’s looking at. There’s damage to the front of Johnson’s cruiser.”

  Mattie turned to McCoy. “I can work with Brody, unless there’s something else I should do.”

  “We need all eyes on the scene before any evidence melts and disappears. And we’ll need to look at it again in daylight. Cole has volunteered to stand guard, but he’s done enough for one day.”

  Their small department was already stretched to the max. With Johnson out of the picture, they needed more h
elp. The sheriff’s posse provided a pool of trained citizens, and maybe the sheriff would call on one of them to fill in.

  McCoy spoke to Cole. “Go ahead and go home. We’ll cover this.”

  Cole glanced at Mattie.

  “Go home,” she said. “Your day started a long time ago.”

  He nodded as he extended a handshake to McCoy. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  “Thanks, Cole,” McCoy said as the two shook hands. “Deputy Johnson couldn’t have been in better hands.”

  “I don’t know about that, but I hope it was enough.” Cole reached for Mattie’s hand to keep her from following McCoy as he turned away. “Call me when you’re done?”

  “We have a full night’s work ahead of us. Go to bed and get some sleep. Call me in the morning when you wake up.”

  Cole nodded, squeezing her hand again before they parted. She wished they’d had time to let him debrief after his terrible experiences tonight. He looked like he could use it. More often than not, their relationship took a back seat to their jobs.

  She set her thoughts aside as she approached her teammates. Stella and Brody had knelt to photograph tire prints in the snow, so she joined up with the sheriff.

  McCoy pointed to skid marks and scratches in the ice. “See right here. It looks like someone reversed and then sped up.”

  She trained her flashlight on the area and could see how he’d arrived at that conclusion.

  “They must have rammed into Johnson’s cruiser, possibly trapping him there,” McCoy said.

  His comment made her gut tighten.

  Lighting up the road, its shoulder, and the ditch, Mattie and the sheriff searched for signs and prints left in the ice and snow, though any footprints leading from the icy skid marks into the ditch had been obliterated by the ambulance and EMTs. They found slide marks where people had gone down into the ditch from the road, a couple of them near the place where Cole had parked his truck. She imagined him floundering down to the ground where he could gain better traction while trying to help Johnson, and an ache of sympathy formed in her chest.

  “Let’s photograph the skid marks, but I doubt we can capture an image very well under these conditions,” McCoy said.

  “I’ll get my pad and make a sketch of them.” Watching her footing, she trudged back to her unit while she pondered the marks left on the ice. It was always possible that a car could strike an officer out on the highway during a traffic stop—that was why parking a few feet to the left so the cruiser could act as a shield was so important. But the skid marks looked like someone had reversed and then taken off again.

  The tracks indicated someone had hit Johnson on purpose. Did they actually reverse to run over him? She hadn’t eaten since noon, but her empty stomach rolled.

  Why would someone try to kill a patrol officer that way? And could it be related to Tonya Greenfield’s death and her missing infant?

  FOURTEEN

  Eventually Mattie had asked Robo to work again, thinking he might turn up something in an evidence search by using his sharp sense of smell in the snow. But she’d been disappointed—if someone had exited the hit-and-run vehicle to check on Johnson, there was no trace of it.

  She led Robo back toward her Explorer, leaving Stella to creep along on the ice behind them until she reached the passenger side. Mattie loaded up her dog, removed his gear, and offered him a treat, which he swallowed after a few quick chomps. Her partner had not voiced a single complaint about having to work overtime in the ice and snow.

  After climbing back into her seat, she glanced at Stella to see how she was holding up.

  Stella’s head was tipped back and her eyes closed, but she heaved a sigh and turned her head toward Mattie, moving slowly as if the small movement required great effort. “This night is never going to end.”

  “How are you doing?”

  “Other than having a splitting headache, things are peachy.”

  Mattie didn’t reply, figuring her friend deserved some prickly behavior. She rummaged through her console until she found a bottle of Tylenol, which she handed to Stella along with a bottle of water.

  “Thanks,” Stella murmured, as Mattie turned on the engine and adjusted the heater.

  She plugged the Greenfields’ address into her navigation while Stella shook tablets from the container and swallowed them with the water. She emitted a breathy “Ahh …” after chugging at least half the bottle.

  “Four ought to do it.” Stella placed the pill bottle back inside the console. “I’ll call the Greenfields to let them know we’re on the way.”

  “Do you want me to call them?”

  “I’ll do it, so you can focus on your driving.”

  Mattie pulled onto the asphalt, steering around McCoy’s and Brody’s vehicles. Deputy Garcia and Frank Sullivan, the posse member who’d responded to their call for help, had parked on the opposite side of the road and were being briefed before the others left. A local rancher like Garrett, Frank responded to calls more often than not and was someone the sheriff could count on.

  After Stella made her phone call, she leaned her head back again and appeared to be dozing, so Mattie concentrated on her driving in silence, her thoughts pinging from Johnson to Tonya to John Cobb and back, making no firm connections. She also thought of the traffic stop she’d made yesterday, wondering if the hunters from Nebraska were involved with Johnson or Tonya in any way.

  Stella roused when they reached the Timber Creek streetlights, and Mattie was glad to see her alert so easily. She felt confident that even if Stella’s bump on the head had given her a concussion, it would be mild and she wouldn’t need to see a doctor. Stella would have to be hog-tied to get her to Dr. McGinnis anyway, so Mattie felt relieved that she could strike that job off her to-do list.

  Mattie followed her navigation system’s directions to the development outside of town where the Greenfields lived. The road took them up a forested hillside where new homes had been built on five- to ten-acre lots. Timber Creek had taken a turn toward population growth during the past year, bringing with it new families and new faces, and the Greenfields were among the many she’d not met.

  Stella took the band from her ponytail and shook out her hair, which tumbled down to a few inches below her shoulders. Mattie glanced at her to see her wince as she rubbed the back of her scalp.

  “How’s the headache?”

  “Better.” Stella massaged her temples before scraping her hair back to recapture her ponytail at her nape. “Sorry if I was a bitch.”

  Mattie snorted. “Quite all right. I didn’t take it personally.”

  “You shouldn’t.” Stella leaned back in her seat as a pleasant voice from the Explorer’s speakers told them to make a right turn in one hundred feet.

  Since navigation had led Mattie the wrong way more times than not out in these new developments, she hoped they’d arrived at the right place. But porch and yard lights filtering through the trees guided her up the long driveway to a house where most of the lights were still lit. At two in the morning, this had to be the Greenfield place. She pulled her unit into the driveway and ratcheted on the parking brake.

  Built of log and stone, the sprawling home blended into the surrounding forest, and the huge windows that graced its front would afford a gorgeous view during daylight. This house cost a pretty penny.

  A tall, lean man opened the door and stepped out into the spotlight on the front steps. Salt had been thrown onto the icy concrete of the driveway and sidewalk, and it felt good to have traction under her feet as she and Stella made their way to where the man waited.

  “I’m Corey Greenfield,” he said, offering a handshake. His face was haggard and drawn, reflecting not only a lack of sleep but also sorrow. “Thanks for coming.”

  Stella shook his hand. “I’m sorry for the delay, but it couldn’t be helped. Thank you for waiting. This is Deputy Cobb.”

  Mattie gripped his hand in a firm shake, and their eyes met. His were red rimmed, and the
light cast shadows on the planes of his face, the lower half covered with stubble from a long day’s growth. He wore his blond hair short, and he was dressed in sweats.

  A woman that Mattie recognized as Eliza came up behind him and opened the door wide. “Come in, come in. Get out of the cold.”

  As Stella and Mattie stepped into a slate tile entryway, warm air enveloped them. Faux logs flamed with gas fuel in an open hearth set in the middle of a great room with a vaulted wooden ceiling. Comfortable-looking sofas and chairs were arranged on one side, and it looked like the space beyond the fireplace served as both kitchen and dining area.

  Eliza’s eyes looked tired and her lids sagged at half-mast, but they didn’t appear swollen or reddened from shedding tears. Mattie made no judgment about that; it was just an observation. This family had received notice of Tonya’s death hours ago, and though Corey looked like he’d been weeping recently, tears might come and go during the hours after losing a loved one.

  “I’m Eliza,” the woman said, offering a handshake, which was brief and soft. She did a double take when she looked at Mattie. “We met yesterday at the vet clinic, didn’t we?”

  As Mattie confirmed that they had, the border collie Kip scampered into the room from a hallway off to the right, followed by a teenage boy. The kid resembled his father, except he wore his hair in a buzz cut. He appeared to have the broad build of a football player or wrestler, making Mattie think he might be into weight lifting, common enough among both male and female students involved in the local high school athletic program.

  Kip greeted Mattie with a great deal of tail wagging and smiling, and Mattie was relieved to see the dog safe and sound here where she would be taken care of until Tonya’s parents could take her home. The thought of it made her heart ache for them. Though she hoped the girl’s parents loved the dog as much as Tonya had, Kip would be no replacement for their daughter.

  Corey introduced the boy. “This is our son, Ben.”