Hot, Shot, and Bothered

by Nora McFarland

  “I think that’s everything we need.” I pressed stop on the camera and removed the clip mic. “Thank you for speaking with me.” I removed a reporter’s notebook from my gear bag. “One more thing, can you give me your sister’s name? The coroner probably won’t release it for several days.”

  “Jessica. When she was a kid we all called her Jess or Jessie.”

  I was writing the E in her last name when it hit me. “Jessica Egan?”

  He was too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice the change in me. “That’s right.”

  The chain-saw repairman leaned out of the truck. “All done.”

  “Thanks,” Egan called, then looked at Bell. “Get me back to my crew. I don’t care how, but I expect you to make it happen.” He returned to the truck without looking back.

  Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Egan had stayed a few moments longer. Would I have said something to him? I was still pretty shocked and unsure, so maybe not.

  Bell left. I think I must have mumbled a thank-you, but I was on autopilot.

  Jessica Egan?

  I hadn’t heard that name in thirteen years. I’d only known her for the one summer I’d lived at Lake Elizabeth.

  Was it really possible that the thing in the body bag I’d been so careful not to look at had been Jessica Egan?

  FIVE

  Thursday, 9:04 p.m.

  I packed up my equipment and returned to the baseball field. I don’t remember the walk. One minute I was on the front side of campus, then the next I was behind the grandstand. Slim’s truck was gone.

  I took out my cell phone.

  Callum answered. “KJAY, we’re on your side.”

  “It’s Lilly. When are they doing the autopsy on the drowning victim?”

  “I have no idea, but I doubt it’ll be anytime soon.” His voice receded. “Hey, Bev. How about you try and put the right tape numbers in your scripts? . . . Don’t give me that look. I’m the one around here who gives looks.” He came back to the phone. “What about the IO? Did you get a statement?”

  “No. He wants their midnight briefing to be the first time anyone comments.” I paused. “But I did get an exclusive interview with the brother of the drowning victim.”

  “Oh.” He couldn’t have sounded less interested.

  “He’s a Forest Service Hotshot. They called him off the fire line to break the news.”

  “Oh,” Callum said again, but this time his voice was higher and a lot more emphatic. “That’s great. We’ll slip in a nice VO/SOT about the drowning in the A block.”

  “The last sound bite is the one to use.” Through the grandstand I saw several people crossing under the bright lights toward the briefing tent. I recognized Slim’s satellite truck parked out there too. “Have you heard anything more about how she drowned?”

  “Is there more than one way?”

  “You know what I mean.” I wasn’t in the mood for sarcasm, even from Callum. “The story up here seems to be that she was drunk in a dangerous place without a life jacket.”

  “That’s the story I heard too.”

  “There has to be more to it than that.”

  “Why?”

  An image of Jessica flashed before my eyes. Short, brown hair, jeans, and tennis shoes. A dour, disapproving frown as I offered her a can of beer I knew she wouldn’t take. The offer itself a joke meant to provoke someone I thought was an uptight buzz-kill.

  “Lilly?” Callum called. “Are you there?” “Yes, I can hear you.” I paused again. “I’ve been talking to some people who used to know her. Back when the victim lived here, she didn’t approve of drinking or partying out on the lake.”

  “Just a minute.” He set the phone down. I heard him yelling at someone in the newsroom, then he returned. “Sorry, Lilly. What were you saying?”

  “I think the drowning story is suspicious.”

  “I’ll call about the autopsy, but drownings are nightmares for MEs. It’s almost impossible to tell if water in the lungs got there before or after they died.”

  My voice rose. “But they must be able to find something out.” “Sure. They’ll do a toxicology report and check for evidence she struggled with an attacker, but if the body got roughed up underwater, it’ll make it that much harder.”

  I remembered the diver saying the body had been thrown against the rocks. How badly damaged was Jessica’s body? Pukey the Kid had taken one look and hurled.

  “Call anyway,” I said.

  “Sure. I’ll put it in the planner for follow-up next week.” I heard him moving papers around his desk. “Why don’t you go ahead and find someone to take your video down the canyon? Make sure they know to deliver it to Teddy and Freddy.”

  I left Command Headquarters and returned to Elizabeth. My plan was to stop at a gas station and find someone preparing to evacuate. As I drove, I kept thinking about the way the police and Jessica’s brother had talked about her—like she was a silly, self-destructive bimbo who stupidly got herself killed. It made me angry. I didn’t know why I felt so strongly since Jessica and I hadn’t even been real friends.

  I thought of calling Rod to talk about it, but he was working. Besides, telling him about Jessica would require telling him the gory details of my misspent youth.

  When I saw the doughnut shop I slammed on the brakes.

  The lights were all on inside Double Down Donuts, but the door was locked. I pounded on the window until an older Asian woman entered from a door behind the cash register. She wore a hairnet and an apron. She saw me and immediately began shaking her head. “Closed.” She had a strong accent and I doubted English was her first language.

  “Wait,” I called. “I’m looking for someone.” But she’d already returned to the interior of the building.

  I followed the dirt lot around to the back. The only light came from above the closed rear door. Parked nearby was a delivery van with DOUBLE DOWN DONUTS painted on the side.

  I knocked on the back door. After a few moments, a teenage girl opened it. The sweet and creamy aroma of baking poured out and drove away the stink of the fire.

  The girl looked liked the older woman’s granddaughter. Her long black hair was piled into a hairnet and she wore an apron smeared with batter and flour. “We’re closed.” Her voice was pure American. She had an iPod attached to her arm with the earbuds draped over her shoulder.

  Behind her the older woman saw me. “I said we’re closed.”

  “I don’t want doughnuts.” I paused and rethought that. “I mean, of course I want doughnuts, but that’s not why I’m here.”

  “Little Sister!” I heard metal crash and then Bud appeared behind the girl. “What’re you doin’ here?” His hands, covered in oven mitts, took me into a giant bear hug.

  I pulled back and looked at him.

  Bud wore his usual cutoff jean shorts and five-o’clock shadow.

  His wrinkled and tattooed torso was bare underneath the apron. “You should be back home in Bako. It’s not safe up here.”

  “I’m covering the mandatory evacuation.”

  “Move.” The woman pushed past Bud and reached for the door. “You’re going to ruin this entire batch.”

  I stepped farther into the kitchen so she could shut the door. An air conditioner was running, but the heat from the ovens was still brutal. All three of their faces were glossy from sweat. “If I were you, I’d leave it open.”

  “It’s because of the ash,” the teenager explained. “If the door’s open, the ash gets into the batter, the glaze—everything really.”

  Despite the threat of ash, the room was remarkably clean. The beige walls gleamed from a fresh coat of paint and matched the new stainless-steel counters. The only thing that looked old and worn, besides Bud of course, was the blue-checkered linoleum floor.

  The woman didn’t stay for introductions, which was a relief because I didn’t have the energy to engage in polite chitchat. She and the teenage girl resumed pouring flour into a large mixer at the other
end of the room.

  “I’m up here workin’ too.” Bud walked to a rack of stainless-steel trays holding freshly glazed doughnuts. “I’m bakin’ for all those brave men fightin’ the fire, and no government organization ever did nothin’ without doughnuts.” He rolled the rack to a counter piled with pink cardboard bakery boxes.

  I followed. “Should I translate that to mean you’re gouging the government and the money is too good to stop?”

  “This here rodeo’s on the up-and-up.” He put his left hand, still covered in the oven mitt, over the right side of his chest. “On my honor.”

  I ripped my eyes away from all that creamy, sugary goodness on the trays. “It’s supposed to be your right hand, and it goes over your heart.”

  “Never do remember that right.” He grinned. “But I’m not shootin’ a line this time.” He gestured to the woman. “Mrs. Paik here has this first-class shop, but when they started signin’ up local contractors, she didn’t have the people-type skills to put herself forward proper.”

  He gave Mrs. Paik his trademark grin—the one that had charmed women and separated fools from their money for longer than I’d been alive.

  Mrs. Paik frowned at him. “You’re wasting time talking,” she yelled over the mixer. Her immunity to Bud’s charms was impressive.

  He nodded as though he agreed, but then went right on talking. “She was set to miss this here gravy train so I stepped in on her behalf. I got a real good way of talkin’ with the boys runnin’ this here show, on account of my bein’ a smoke jumper up in Alaska all those years ago.”

  “Translation—you charmed them with tales of the good old days and made them think you were part of their club.”

  He nodded while swapping out the oven mitts for disposable gloves. “I’m gettin’ fifty percent of the take, and as you said before, there may be some gougin’ involved, so the take is considerable.”

  Mrs. Paik yelled across the room again, but this time in another language. Bud listened and then glanced at a clock on the wall with a KOREAN FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION logo on the clockface.

  “It’s awful late.” Bud looked back at me. “Head on over to my place, if you need a place to sleep.” He began filling the boxes with doughnuts. “It’s close by. I’ll give you directions.”

  “I know where it is. You let me live there after Mom kicked me out, remember?”

  “That takes me back a piece.” Bud grinned. “Sure put a crick in her neck, my lettin’ you do that. She said how you was goin’ to the devil and I was helpin’ you along.”

  “No good deed goes unpunished.”

  He looked confused for a moment, but then smiled. “That’s right. I forgot about my missin’ TV.”

  “I seem to remember selling a lot more than your TV. You were right to kick me out. I wasn’t a very good person, back then.”

  “You’d just lost your way, Little Sister. It was a bad time, but you came back ‘round right.” He grinned. “I’ve never quite gotten there myself.”

  I didn’t return his smile. “That time is what I came to talk to you about.” I glanced at the woman and the teenage girl. They were each focused on the mixer as its massive paddles churned. “A woman drowned on the lake last night.”

  Bud continued putting doughnuts into the pink boxes. “I heard about that. What kind of idiot goes out partyin’ at a time like this?”

  “No, that’s just it.” I put a hand on his arm and forced him to stop. “I knew the dead woman back when I lived up here, and she wasn’t like that. She’s the last person who would have gotten drunk and gone out on the lake.”

  “I’m sorry, Lilly.” His face looked genuinely pained. “I never would’ve talked bad about her like that if I’d known she was a friend of yours. You must be right upset.”

  “No, it’s not that.” I hesitated. “We weren’t friends exactly, but I know she wasn’t reckless or wild. She was into protecting the environment and animal rights. She was smart and strong, not stupid and frivolous like people are saying.”

  He resumed filling the box. “She wasn’t mixed in with that hippie-type group who came in protesting development a ways back?”

  I nodded. “Yes, but that’s exactly what I mean about her not being wild. She gave up all her free time volunteering for that group while everyone else her age was only interested in having fun.”

  “Well, I can understand how she got herself a bad reputation. Those environmental folks rubbed most of the locals the wrong way, and there were all kinds of stories about drugs and such.”

  “No. She never would have approved of that kind of thing. She didn’t even approve of me.” My voice rose. “It’s all wrong. The things people are saying about her, the way she died—it’s all just wrong.”

  “Is there some other reason you got for thinking that, other than you not believin’ the lady was the type?” I didn’t answer. “ ’Cause a person can be on the straight and narrow for years and fall right off.”

  That hit a little too close to home, but before I could think of what to say, Mrs. Paik approached. She spoke to Bud again in the other language, and to my surprise he responded. Soon they were having an argument.

  I tried to get Bud’s attention. “What language is that?”

  He didn’t answer, but the teenage girl took one earbud out. “It’s Korean. My grandmother says you’re slowing us down and you need to leave. Your uncle is saying . . . she’s colder than . . . the flip side of a pillow . . . on the dark side of a hill.” The girl paused. “I may have lost some of it in translation.”

  I shook my head. “No, that sounds like Bud.”

  After a few more moments of arguing they both broke off.

  “I’m sorry,” Bud said to me. “We’re pressed for time and I need to get back to work. How about, if everythin’s not on fire by mornin’, you and me can rustle up some breakfast?”

  Mrs. Paik forced a bag of doughnuts on me and pushed me outside. “Good-bye,” she said, then slammed the door.

  I’d already finished one of the doughnuts by the time I returned to the van. I quickly ate a second and then started to get the tapes ready to send down the canyon. I stopped when I saw the one labeled ELIZABETH, DROWNING.

  Something was nagging at the back of my brain, but I had no idea what it was. Why did Jessica Egan’s death bother me so much? Bud was right. People can change a lot in thirteen years. For all I knew Jessica had become a Playboy Bunny.

  I switched on the suitcase editor Leanore had been using earlier. It sat on a small counter in the rear of the truck. I unhooked the chair from the wall and sat down to look at my video.

  I saw it the third time through.

  Elizabeth police headquarters is grouped with city hall and some other county offices in a newer complex of buildings. Previously most of these services had been located in Elizabeth, but as the population had shifted to the other shore, a change had been demanded. Just like Search and Rescue, as a compromise it had also been placed where the eastern and western shores met. I passed the dirt road I’d taken down to the body retrieval a couple hours earlier, then made the right up to the city government buildings. Despite the late hour, the lights were all on.

  I left my gear in the truck and entered the police station. About half a dozen empty desks filled the room. Several similarly empty offices lined the back wall. The only person there appeared to be a support officer watching a cable news channel’s coverage of the wildfire.

  I recognized the video Slim had fed back to L.A. The girl in the cannabis tank top was talking as a boy with glasses and a ponytail looked on. My work had never been picked up nationally, and it was galling to see a slug get that kind of honor.

  I put aside my momentary professional jealousy and spoke to the officer. “Pardon me?”

  The support officer was a plump woman in her fifties. Her dyed hair had been carefully arranged in a way that contrasted with the drabness of her brown uniform.

  She jumped at the sound of my voice. “Sorry. Didn’t
hear you come in.” She pointed to the monitor. “Can you believe this girl? Says she doesn’t have to evacuate because the firefighters will save her. That’s how good men get killed—airheads like that.”

  Now that the clip had gone national, I suspected most of America would have a similar opinion of the girl.

  “I’m a shooter from KJAY,” I said.

  She glanced at the logo on my polo shirt and straightened. “I’m sorry. None of us are authorized to talk.”

  “I know all about the evacuation, but that’s not why I’m here. I need to speak with someone about the drowning today.”

  She looked surprised, but shook her head again. “I can’t comment about that either.”

  “I have important information.” I leaned around her and tried to see into the offices. “Is the sergeant here? It’s urgent.”

  “He’s getting his first sleep in twenty-four hours. I can’t wake him unless it’s an emergency.”

  “I don’t think the drowning was an accident.”

  She glanced over her shoulder toward the hallway. “Wait here.” She walked down the hallway and returned a minute later. “It’ll just be a minute. He’s pulling himself together.”

  “Thanks.” I shifted my weight to the other foot. Scanners played in the background. The cable news channel moved on to the latest political fight in Washington. I shifted my weight back to the other foot. After another minute I sat down on one of the hard plastic chairs in the waiting area.

  The feel of the chairs reminded me of the waiting room at the old police station in Elizabeth. I remembered sitting there thirteen years ago while they questioned Jessica in the back. An officer stood nearby in case I decided to bolt. I was sure Jessica would tell them everything. She had nothing to lose and everything to gain by telling the truth.

  But I’d underestimated her. Jessica was strong. She’d withstood everything they threw at her and kept her mouth shut. Not many teenagers, let alone adults, would have been able to do that.