Damage

by Mark Feggeler

  The driver, an enormous man whose oversized uniform shirt was too small to contain the bottom roll of belly fat that hung down over his belt, breathed heavily from the effort of exiting the vehicle. From the passenger side, his minuscule partner had to scoot herself as far down the side of her seat as possible and leap the rest of the way to the ground. She quickly made her way to the patient and shooed Ray away while her partner chugged around the ambulance, opened the back doors, and struggled to remove a stretcher. Once he finally managed to get it out, he dragged it behind him through the gravel and across the grass.

  The squat female technician cursed loudly when she got her first sight of Correen Wallace. She looked doubtfully at the two men. "You tellin' me she's alive?"

  "Jesus Christ," Ray muttered under his breath.

  "Ma'am, can you hear me? Ma'am?"

  "Yes, she can hear you," Ray barked. "Everybody within a fucking mile can hear you. Now that you've tested her hearing, can you actually do something other than yell at her?"

  The woman's fat partner let the stretcher drop and advanced toward Ray, his sweaty face turning even redder.

  "You watch that mouth, friend," he puffed, stopping short of Ray only when Billy awoke from his trance and stepped into his path. He pointed at Ray. "Tell him to watch his mouth."

  The medics got to work, which involved several trips to the ambulance for additional equipment and prolonged discussions that involved the female technician asking her partner far too many questions using words such as "should we" and "how do I" to reassure Ray they might actually know what they were doing. They eventually extricated their patient from under the bushes and positioned her face up on a board. Several times, Correen Wallace was jolted to consciousness and shrieked in pain. Ray couldn't watch. He was certain they were going to finish her off before getting her into the ambulance. Only when they lifted the board and placed their patient atop the stretcher, the female medic failing to control the motion of Correen's twisted legs, the fat man dripping sweat despite the cool morning air and the light breeze, did Ray step in to help.

  For his part, Billy was useless. He stood around staring at Correen in disbelief for several minutes after they realized she wasn't dead, while Ray called for the ambulance and tried to comfort the poor woman. The unflappable sheriff's deputy who had given Ray a hard time inside the house about overreacting to Evan Wallace's trip through rigor mortis seemed to mentally check out when it came time to deal with a victim who wasn't dead. He didn't even call for additional support from the Tramway County Sheriff's Department until Ray prodded him to do it.

  "Don't you need to get a detective out here?" Ray had asked. "Or a forensic unit, or something?"

  After unsuccessfully attempting to maneuver the heavy stretcher through the sandy soil, the medics decided to retract the wheels and carry the stretcher to the ambulance. The site of the them trying to hold their patient level was enough to set Ray in motion again to lend a hand. The driver stood at the head, hoisting up with a jerk before his partner had a firm grip on her end of the stretcher. Correen Wallace's eyes shot open and scanned her surroundings as she began to slide down toward the foot of the stretcher.

  "Put it down!"

  The female medic shot her partner a nasty look.

  "You wait for me this time. You, loud mouth! Where's your friend, the cop?"

  Ray called for Billy who was already in motion heading toward them at a brisk pace.

  "You two take the head," she told Billy when he reached them. "Me and loud mouth will take the feet. Everybody grab a corner and lift only when I say so."

  They carried the stretcher across the lawn and along the path to the back of the ambulance. The metal bar drove tiny splinters of broken glass further into Ray's palm. He thought about mentioning it to them, but he didn't want to delay their efforts to get Correen Wallace to the hospital. The fat man returned to pick up what equipment he could find and chugged back to climb into the driver's seat. His partner closed herself into the back of the vehicle with their patient. Ray watched the ambulance disappear into the canopy of trees, it's flashing lights and screeching sirens announcing to the squirrels and hibernating box turtles in the surrounding woods to stay clear of the road.

  "They should have grabbed your gun and shot her for all the good they did," Ray groaned, but when he turned to continue complaining he just managed to catch a glimpse of Billy disappearing into the house.

  Monday, Part V

  The stocky detective in the snug grey suit from the break room was first to arrive, almost five minutes before the next deputy and nearly twenty minutes before Sheriff Redmond. He climbed out of his unmarked vehicle and took in his surroundings. Ray waited on the porch with Billy, ready to follow his cousin to greet the detective, but Billy didn't move.

  "Is the body gone?" the detective asked.

  "No," Billy replied.

  The squat man then walked the length of the gravel path to the porch, his nose pointed down and eyes scanning the ground as he went, before he stopped at the foot of the steps and surveyed his surroundings. He looked up into the house through the open front door behind Ray, then over his shoulder to where shafts of sunlight breaking through the low clouds lit the barn, then right to the driveway from where he had just come, and left to the matted grass and trampled camellias in the courtyard beyond the porch. His attention finally came to rest on the mix of tan soil and clay in patterned clumps on the porch steps.

  "How much of this dirt was here before you two entered the house?" he asked, looking up.

  Ray stood at the top step staring down at the detective's shiny, bald head. A glance at his sneakers revealed they were caked with red clay along their sides. Billy lifted his foot to find he also was guilty of contaminating the crime scene. The detective shook his head.

  "Stay where you are," he ordered.

  Perhaps pent up nervous energy was finally getting the better of Ray, because he had to stifle a laugh when it dawned on him how much the detective sounded like his Aunt Cecelia, Billy's mother. He distracted himself from the similarity by trying again to recall the detective's name. Mitchell? Willard? He simply could not dredge it up from his memory.

  "Is that where the body was found?" the detective called when he reached the far corner of the porch. He pointed in the general direction of the spot where Correen Wallace had landed.

  "No," Billy said. He pointed over his shoulder at the door. "The body's in there."

  "That's where we found Mrs. Wallace," Ray added when he realized Billy wasn't volunteering information about the shattered glass and ravaged shrubberies in the courtyard. "It looked like she fell from that window on the third floor."

  The detective cocked his bald head and stared at Ray like he was trying to reach a conclusion about him. He continued studying the scene from its periphery, then turned and looked at them with wide eyes as though he'd had an epiphany.

  "Who was in that ambulance I just passed?" he asked.

  "She was," Billy said.

  "Mrs. Wallace," Ray said.

  The detective craned his neck to look at the window and his head followed what must have been the woman's trajectory down into the bushes. He took several cautious steps closer, carefully choosing where to place his feet.

  Ray leaned close to Billy. "What's his name?"

  "Detective Daniel Pritchard," Billy answered.

  "Pritchard!"

  It came out a little more loudly than he intended. The detective gave him a quizzical look.

  "Nothing," Ray said dismissively.

  When it seemed the detective had collected all possible data, he stepped away from the shards of broken glass glistening like dew in the grass, carefully removed his polished wing-tip shoes, placed them side by side below the bottom step, and joined the other two men on the porch.

  "Did you two come straight here after you left Whitlock?" he asked.

  With a slow start, Billy explained how they were responding to a complaint about excessive noise the
dispatcher had handed him when he went on duty. He detailed the route he had taken and, by Ray's recollection, gave an accurate accounting of their activity since arriving at the Wallace farm.

  "Is that correct?" Pritchard asked Ray.

  Ray nodded.

  "There's nothing you want to add?" Pritchard said.

  "No," Ray answered, surprised by the question. "Deputy Merrill covered it all."

  All three men turned to face the driveway as two more police cars emerged noisily from under the trees. A woman in a beige uniform stepped out of the passenger side of the first vehicle holding an unwieldy camera that, by comparison to Ray's new digital model, looked like something out of a 1950s sci-fi movie. She loaded a roll of film into the back of it, gripping it by the thick shaft connecting the ridiculously oversized flash. Pritchard called instructions to her from the porch. She immediately set to work photographing the alcove where they had found Correen Wallace.

  The remaining two deputies were ordered to walk single file toward the barn, following in each other's footsteps. Pritchard wanted them to look for anything out of the ordinary in the barn and then conduct a search of the vehicle. One of the men retrieved latex gloves from his cruiser and handed a pair across to his partner. He tossed another pair to the woman, who almost dropped her camera trying to catch them. The two male deputies proceeded toward the barn as the woman with the camera clicked her way along the gravel path from the driveway. Crunch, crunch, click. Crunch, crunch, click.

  Ray looked down at the camera hanging around his neck. Pritchard seemed to take notice of it, as well.

  "Did you take any pictures after you arrived here?" Pritchard asked.

  "Um..." Ray had to think about it. "Yes. Some inside, then a few out here before I realized she wasn't dead."

  "Can you show me, please?"

  With the strap still looped around his neck, Ray held out the camera and pulled up its contents so the detective could view them on the small screen. He scrolled through twenty-seven pictures, starting with the most recent of Correen Wallace in the bushes and working backward until reaching the pictures from Sunday's groundbreaking. Pritchard leaned in uncomfortably close as he watched.

  "I'm going to need copies of any pictures you've taken," the detective told him. He leered at Billy. "Especially since the two of you did such an excellent job of stepping all over my evidence. We can go through the necessary formalities, or I could seize the camera now as evidence, but it would be much easier for everyone if the Citizen Gazette simply emails hi-res images to me by the end of the day."

  "I can send them now from the camera," Ray said. "It has wifi. Give me your address and I'll get it to start sending you the pictures."

  Pritchard spelled out his email address which Ray scribbled on the notepad he took from his back pocket. The detective then ordered Billy to remove his shoes and lead him to Evan Wallace, leaving Ray outside to scan through the pictures on the camera, selecting those he had taken that morning. As he scrolled through, a chill shot down his back when he came to the last photo from the day before. He had taken it as the handsome couple left the groundbreaking tent hand in hand, backs to the camera, stepping out into the blinding sunset. He knew it was probably the last picture anyone would ever take of the Wallaces together before whatever happened later that evening to leave one of them dead and the other clinging to life. He included that last picture with the rest. Just before sending the email and its many attachments off to Pritchard, he added his own email address in the blind copy field. It took several minutes for the message to register as sent, time Ray spent catching glimpses of the two deputies in the barn as they came in and out of sight and watching the female deputy with the camera meticulously go about her job photographing every last shimmering shard of glass.

  The sound of another vehicle approaching caught Ray's attention. A sleek white sedan emerged from the trees and parked in the clearing between the house and barn, close to the fence enclosing the pasture. Following closely behind was a yellow minivan with an aerial antennae mounted on the roof and the words "WGRC -- News You Can Count On" in gigantic purple lettering across the driver's side. It came to rest a short distance behind Billy's cruiser with the engine running. The passenger door opened and a stocky man with perfectly parted black hair sprang out of the minivan. He sported a dark blue blazer over a stiffly pressed white shirt that hung down over wrinkled pajama pants. The strange outfit was complimented by worn out flip-flops.

  Garry Vincent began covering Tramway County for WGRC-TV short after Ray joined the Citizen-Gazette, nearly seven years ago. He received all the same invitations to events and meetings as Ray and the rest of the local media, but he was sure to be a no-show unless there was the promise of a major story, such as the random killing of a community leader.

  "Get off your ass and get the gear ready, Daryl!" Garry yelled into the minivan as he scrambled to tuck in his shirt and affix a crimson red clip-on tie.

  Daryl popped out of the driver's seat and, in a blur of neatly orchestrated panic, managed to fix his reporter's collar, unload a large video camera from the back of the van, set up two background lights, and run a quick sound check before handing over the microphone. The reporter commented on the process impatiently while his eyes bounced between Daryl, the house behind him, and the police car that had pulled in ahead of them in which the passenger and driver were deep in discussion.

  "Come on, come on, come on," Garry grumbled.

  The lights came on. Daryl silently counted down from five with his fingers as the reporter buttoned the blazer to hide his plaid pajama pants. With only one digit remaining before the camera rolled, Garry turned and hollered, "God dammit, Waugh, get out of my shot!"

  Ray quickly ducked into the foyer out of sight of the news camera. He could hear Detective Pritchard and Billy talking in the great room on the other side of the dividing wall as they reviewed the scene. Pritchard, apparently still perturbed at the way in which the deputy and his guest had disturbed evidence, was mostly asking questions clarifying what items might have been moved or handled. Ray thought it best to remain out of that conversation. Through a gap in the curtains, Ray could see Garry Vincent standing ramrod straight in his ridiculous outfit. The television reporter's forced baritone voice carried over the grounds.

  "Former county manager and local business leader Evan Wallace was found dead this morning at his luxurious estate here in the quiet horse community of Wilkston Creek, just north of Glen Meadows..." Not bad, Ray thought. Straightforward. Better than usual. "...Local police are not issuing any statements at this time as to whether foul play is suspected..."

  Watching the two man TV crew work jogged Ray's brain into recalling he, too, was a reporter who had an obligation to submit a story by today's deadline. He lifted his arm but found he had forgotten to put on a watch before leaving his apartment. The time on his cell phone read quarter past eight. He also noticed he had seven missed calls, three new emails, and his ringer was silenced.

  "Shit," he yelled.

  Pritchard and Billy stopped talking. The detective popped his head around the corner.

  "Something the matter, Raymond?" he asked.

  "Oh, um... No," Ray said. "I just noticed the time. My deadline is in fifteen minutes."

  Pritchard looked at his watch. "You'd better call your boss. I don't think you're going to make it." He disappeared back into the great room.

  Ray mimicked Pritchard's effeminate voice in a quiet whisper as he unlocked his phone and placed a call to the Citizen-Gazette. Through the window he saw Garry Vincent had paused to fuss at his cameraman about something. From the passenger side of the police car that had pulled in ahead of the WGRC minivan stepped Sheriff Redmond. He looked pissed off, but then he always looked pissed off. Deputy Dean, the wiry deputy with the stupid smile Ray met earlier that morning in the break room at the Sheriff's Department in Whitlock, had been the sheriff's driver. Apparently, he always looked stupid.

  When Ray's call finally rang
through to the Citizen-Gazette, the receptionist barely gave him a chance to say hello before she launched into a fast-paced lecture on how crazy everyone at the paper was acting because no one could get hold of him and everyone was so worried. Well, maybe not Toni and Walter, but definitely Becky, who was snapping at anyone who spoke to her because the production staff was yelling at her for holding off on the front page until she heard from Ray. The girls in advertising were getting upset because the circular in today's paper would be delayed if Becky held up going to press because of Ray. Even Scott was annoyed because he needed his new camera back by noon for a photo op at a Chamber ribbon cutting for the new motel opening down in Oxton.

  "Tammy!" Ray barked. "Please let me talk to Becky."

  "Becky! Ray's on the phone!" The receptionist yelled without bothering to take the phone away from her mouth. A quick click and he found himself assaulted by his equally frantic managing editor.

  "What the hell are you trying to do to me?!"

  "Becky, I'm sorry," Ray pleaded. "This is the first chance I've had all morning to call."

  "Like hell," she countered. "Where are you?"

  "I'm out in horse country at Wilkston Creek," he said. "Somebody shot Evan Wallace."

  "Holy shit," she said, the edge coming off her tone ever so slightly. "Shot, or shot and killed?"

  "Shot and killed," Ray said. "I was on rounds with Billy for the feature when we found Wallace sprawled over the hearth at his house."

  Becky was silent for several long seconds. "He's really dead?"

  "Yeah, well, that's what happens when someone shoots you in the chest and you're careless enough to let all your blood pour out onto the floor," Ray said. "His wife is barely any better."