by Scott Blade
Again Vaughn spoke. She said, “Cameron, we’re wasting time. What’re we looking for now?”
I said, “Evidence that we missed at first glance.”
She said, “This is more like our fifth glance.”
I ignored her and kept looking over everything.
She said, “You know I’m not a country cop. I’m not incompetent. I’ve looked too. There’s nothing else to see.”
I stopped and looked at her.
I said, “I’m not saying that. And my mother was a country cop. In Mississippi. That’s a lot more country than here. Trust me. And she did just fine.”
Vaughn shrugged and threw her arms up and said, “Ah.”
She turned to silence.
Together, we looked carefully around the car one last time. I counted the bullet holes again. I looked at the trajectory. The shooter was definitely on the driver’s side of the car. He stood four feet and five inches away from the front bumper. He was right-handed. Judging by shoe size and depth of his footprint, he was no taller than 5’10”, but I couldn’t be sure about this. It was just a guess. I’m smart, but not a wizard.
Next, I studied the sequence of events in my mind. The shooter had met with the two cops in front of the car. They stopped and talked in a trinity circle at a distance of thirty-five feet. The headlights were off on the police car, but had they been on during the meeting? That was a good question, but I doubted it because chances were that they would still be on, unless the shooter had turned them off after. My instincts and the evidence were pointing at a guy who was definitely an amateur and that meant that no way did he think to turn off the lights after murdering them. No, I figured that the lights were already off. The cops must’ve been first to arrive and shut their lights off before they got out of the car.
A professional shooter would’ve shut the lights off because they would’ve attracted unwanted attention—especially out here, in the middle of nowhere. A deserted country road with no light around for miles would’ve beckoned people to the crime scene like a signal fire.
I was about fifteen feet from Vaughn. She looked at the footprints again. I called over to her.
I said, “Look for a flashlight.”
She said, “I got one.”
I said, “Look for their flashlight?”
She asked, “You think that they used one?”
I said, “The headlights are off. I doubt that the shooter thought to turn them off. I’m thinking that they used a flashlight.”
She said, “Even if we find it, fingerprints won’t do us much good. We’ve gotta call in a forensics team for that. And that means calling the FBI, which we can’t do. Remember?”
I said, “I know. But either way, it’s evidence.”
She nodded and we spent another fifteen minutes combing the area and even a little outside the area. Vaughn used her flashlight to scour over the low hills and into the dips and through the scattered bushes and rocks, but she found nothing.
I said, “Okay. Take a look at the car with me one last time.”
She stopped her search for the flashlight and joined me by the dead cops’ police car. She stayed there and watched as I walked away carefully and followed the foot tracks again. I stopped at the meeting place and looked back at the car, then I traced the footprints again with my eyes, slowly. I came to the same conclusions all over again. The same exact scene was reenacted in my head. The two cops met with someone. The motive was probably money, blackmail, or some variation. They told him something that he didn’t like to hear, the two cops returned to their car, probably laughing at him. The shooter stood here for a moment, and then he went back to his car. He got his gun, came back at them, and shot them both dead.
Vaughn said, “Anything yet?”
I said, “Same as before. Maybe the motive is money.”
She said, “Could be.”
I said, “It’s something of value. The shooter met with them here and they told him something that angered him, something that made him snap. He went back to his car, slow. He ducked inside and grabbed his gun, which was probably on the seat. He must’ve known that they wouldn’t have checked him for weapons or if they did, he was confident that they wouldn’t check his car. He got his gun, came at them, stopped there, and fired until he was out of bullets.”
I pointed to the ground where his tracks had stopped and back at the two dead cops. I held out my right hand, cuffed it with my left, and made a gun gesture. My index finger pointed straight out and I mimicked squeezing an invisible trigger. I pretended to fire thirteen rounds at the two dead cops. I looked down my index finger from my thumb like it was the stock sights on Glock and aimed and fired. Each time I jerked back in a quick and soft recoil like the Glock has. I could picture each bullet firing through the bullet holes in the car, windshield, and through the dead cops.
Vaughn watched and stayed silent for a moment.
She asked, “You think that this was a payoff? Maybe they were supposed to deliver money to this guy. Maybe he’s an FBI agent who protects them or something. They seem very reckless. Maybe, they didn’t search him because he was a federal agent. Maybe, they’ve been paying him off. This time they told him that they didn’t have the cash and he shot them. Maybe, he even knew how to make the whole thing look like an amateur shooter did it.”
I shook my head and said, “No. I don’t think so. I mean you’re right. It’s probably a payoff of some kind, but they weren’t bringing him money.”
She said, “They weren’t?”
“No. I think he was bringing them money. The payoff was the other way around. He said that he didn’t have it and so they told him something bad. Some kind of bad news. And the guy snapped. I don’t think that anyone is good enough to make this look that amateurish.”
Vaughn asked, “So what’s the bad news that they gave him? Why not just shoot him if he didn’t have the money? Why let him go if he was supposed to pay them off? A second chance maybe?”
I said, “I don’t know. Maybe to toy with him. They gave him the bad news and then planned to leave him to think that it was true.”
We moved back to the dead cops’ car. I examined it once more, double-checking the mental list of everything inside the car that I had already accounted for. There were two dead cops, two department-issued Glocks, holstered and unfired. There was one Remington Model 870 neatly perched, butt end pointing downward and barrel pointing upward at the cab’s ceiling. It was also untouched. In the backseat, there was nothing but bullet holes in the upholstery, leaving a spray of cloth and stuffing from the seats strewn everywhere. They had been blown out at the time of impact and had long since settled.
I stared at the corpses up and down. I decided to do something bold, probably against Vaughn’s wishes, but I needed to look closer. I pulled the sleeve of my shirt down over my fingerprints, reached out, and popped the driver’s side door open.
Vaughn gasped and said, “Cameron. Evidence.”
I said, “Relax. The shooter didn’t touch the door. I’m not disrupting anything.”
She said nothing.
The door swiveled open and broken glass from the windshield shifted and made low cracking and piping sounds.
I let the door swing all the way open and bent down and stared into the interior. I knelt all the way down on one knee, making sure to plant it on a hard patch of dirt so I left as little evidence as possible that I had been there, and I studied the inside closer.
I looked back at Vaughn and asked, “Can I borrow your flashlight?”
She nodded and handed it to me butt first.
I nodded and thanked her and turned the light to the inside of the police car.
I traced the beam across the faces of the dead cops, down their chests, and across their torsos. The light swept over them and fell into the gaps and crevices left by the bullets.
Vaughn asked, “Anything?”
I said, “They’re dead. That’s for sure.”
She smiled and I kept loo
king. I looked at the carpets and then the foot wells. I found nothing of interest.
I reached down, fingerprints covered again by the sleeve of my shirt, and grabbed the lever to release the trunk. I jerked it in one quick motion and heard the lid snick and the trunk opened up.
I retreated back out of the cabin of the police cruiser, slumped my weight back down on my heel and rested on my knee for a second. I looked back at Vaughn and said, “Let’s have a look in the trunk.”
She nodded and waited for me to stand up and followed me back to the trunk. I left the driver’s side door open and walked around past the backseat and around the bumper. I stepped over a dip by the back tire. The wind picked up and blew the early spring air down from the low mountains way off in the distance. I felt it brush over my head and across my face. I looked back at Vaughn and watched it lift her short hair for a moment and then let it settle back into its default position.
Vaughn and I walked to the back of the car and stopped about three feet from the trunk lid. I reached out and jerked the lid all the way open in one quick motion like the contents might’ve been a trunk full of deadly snakes.
Actually, the contents inside of the trunk seemed rather standard for a police car. There was a Breathalyzer, a bullhorn, a first aid kit, three road flares, two orange cones, one roll of yellow police tape, two pairs of raincoats, a spare tire—fully aired up, a black-and-yellow carjack, an unopened pack of Duracell DD batteries, two grime-covered shovels, an opened box of crime scene gloves, a box of evidence bags, and a bright yellow fire extinguisher fastened just above the rear right tire well.
I shone the flashlight beam across the objects, but nothing of particular interest jumped out at me about them. I twisted downward and scanned the interior of the trunk. I looked closely at the edges and the lining and then at the metal roof of the trunk.
The black rubber lining around the lid had been compromised but not in a subtle, time-altered erosion or cracked kind of way. This was a disturbed way, as if something or someone had tried to claw out of the trunk from the inside.
I said, “Look at this.”
Vaughn came closer to me, put her left hand on my back, and leaned in next to me and over the trunk lid.
She smelled nice in a subtle way.
I tried to ignore her body as it pressed up against my back, which was no easy task.
I pointed at the rubber seal.
She tilted her head and stared at it. She made a sound indicating she saw exactly what I saw.
She said, “Interesting. What did that?”
I said, “An animal? Maybe they had a dog in here?”
Vaughn said, “Against regulation to lock a dog or any other living animal in the trunk of our cars. Same rules apply to the state police.”
I said, “These guys are far off the regulation game already. Nothing about them tells me that they give a crap about the rules and regulations. Like you said, they were up to something.”
She paused a beat and stayed where she was.
I couldn’t move because she was leaning against me. I waited for her to either say something or to stand back upright. She spoke first.
She asked, “What if they had a person locked in here?”
I said, “Possible.”
We fell silent while contemplating this scenario.
The wind slowed and then picked up again and gusted across the land, through the scattered rocks, and then over the roof of the car.
I stared up at Vaughn. She was an incredible woman, older than me, but that hasn’t stopped me before from being attracted to an older woman. I sensed that my father had been more to her than just a friend. I guessed that he had been her lover, which I wasn’t too sure how to feel about. I didn’t know if I was supposed to not be attracted to her just because she had slept with my father years ago. I wondered how other guys had felt about their father’s girlfriends.
Precipitously, I could tell that the same thing was on Vaughn’s mind as well. I could tell from the way that she looked at me. There was definitely a struggle in her mind about it and for a moment we were locked in a stare that could stop a train.
Then I thought that I reminded her of him and that might’ve been her attraction. Maybe, she really was just having recurring feelings that she had once had for Jack Reacher.
I smiled for a moment because this made me think that I was more like him than I had imagined, which I took to be a good thing.
Abruptly, the radio from her police cruiser crackled and broke the silence and I heard that familiar chatter that transmitter radios made when someone on the other end held the speak button down.
First, there was the crackle, then a swift death to the sound and a male voice came on and said, “Chief. Chief. Come in.”
The word Chief made me think of my my mother for a brief moment and I was transported in my mind back to being a teenager in the backwoods, small town that I grew up in. And my mother was still alive, but that memory only lasted for a moment and then it was gone.
With the thoughts of my mother, my attraction to Vaughn diminished because those are not thoughts that a man wants to have when he is simultaneously looking at a woman who attracts him.
Vaughn stepped away from the crime scene, avoiding the footprints and the tire tracks in the dirt. She walked back to her own car in a curved arc. She walked a radius that kept her far out and away from the two dead cops like she was walking around invisible police tape.
She made her way to her police cruiser, leaned in against the door, and reached in through the open door and grabbed a radio off the dash. She pulled it out of the door and stood up, stretching the curled cord out. She pulled the radio up to her mouth and spoke into it.
She said, “Sean. I’m here. What’s up?”
The guy on the other side of the connection said, “What’s your twenty?”
Vaughn said, “Whaddya need?”
The guy named Sean said, “There’s a 10-56A near the motel on Bakers Street.”
I stood up and walked over to Vaughn, following the same careful trajectory that she had in order to avoid contaminating evidence any more than I already had. I reached her and saw her eyes widened and she buried her head into her forearm for a brief moment. Then she lifted her head back up and squeezed the talk button on the radio.
She asked, “10-56? With an A?”
I searched my memory for police radio codes and recalled that a 10-56 meant that there was a suicide, but in a 10-56A I wasn’t sure what the A stood for.
The guy named Sean said, “Yes. Some guy tried to off himself.”
Momentary static came over the radio and another crackle sounded.
Sean came back on and added, “in the motel.”
Vaughn asked, “10-72?”
Silence.
Sean said, “Ah. Er. Not sure what that is.”
Vaughn sighed like she was used to underwhelming performances of her deputies.
She asked, “Is there a gun involved?”
Silence fell across the radio again and Cameron imagined that Sean was double-checking his information.
Sean said, “Affirmative.”
Vaughn said, “Get Howard over there ASAP! And call the paramedics!”
Sean said, “Howard’s already here. He was nearby. He called the ambulance. That’s why I asked your twenty. Because they might beat you there.”
Vaughn said, “Okay. Good. What’s the guy’s condition?”
Sean said, “Bad. I’m not sure to what extent. That’s all I got.”
Vaughn said, “Take him to the hospital. Make sure that they restrain him just in case. Tell Howard to stay with him and I’ll meet him at the hospital.”
Then she clicked off the radio.
She looked at me and said, “You should come. I guess.”
I said, “I could stay here and look around some more.”
She said, “No offense. I’m taking you. I’ve trusted you more than I should. And we’re obstructing justice here. I can’
t leave you behind.”
I said, “We’re bedfellows now. You gotta trust me.”
She nodded and said, “I trust you enough, but I’m not leaving you here. No matter how much I liked Jack. No arguing. Get in the car. Let’s go.”
I shrugged and walked over to her, followed the same path that we had already made, along the invisible crime scene tape. I stepped close to her as I passed and opened the passenger side door. I dumped myself down into the seat and shut the door.
Vaughn followed suit and got in on the driver’s side. The steering wheel was low and pulled close to her, the seat was pulled all the way forward in a way that would’ve been completely implausible for me, but she was a small frame to begin with. She dug in her pocket and pulled out the keys, slid them into the ignition and fired up the engine. It sounded newly tuned like it was straight out of the shop. She hit the transmission lever into reverse, backed up, turned, and slowly accelerated. I guess that she didn’t want to kick up sand and dirt behind the car, blowing it all over the crime scene. She waited until we were out of the dirt and back onto the concrete and then she stomped on the gas. The light bar stayed on, but as she hit the gas the sirens blasted to life echoing over the land and dying down as they carried farther away until they ricocheted over the mountaintops far off in the distance.
Chapter 8
VAUGHN’S POLICE CRUISER roared through the small town of Hope. She turned left and then she turned right, running a stop sign, ignoring two red lights, all while weaving in and around cars. Some stopped dead in the center of their lanes for her to pass, while others pulled all the way over to the shoulder of the road. We knitted through one street and onto the next, took a curb at a slower speed and then sped up after the curb. The car dodged potholes and slowed just before a huge bump with no clearly marked sign indicating that there was an approaching bump in the road. I imagined that she had all of the streets memorized and could probably have driven with the headlights off and blindfolded. If she was here when Jack was here, and that had been about ten years ago, then she had been here the whole time. Hope wasn’t a huge town, bigger than the one I grew up in, but smaller than others that I had seen. Hope fit neatly in the small town category.