“So it’s a homicide?”
“Miraculously, no. Not yet. The victim’s in bad shape and lost a lot of blood, but dang if she isn’t still alive. Listen, can you come? I need an answer pronto.”
“What is it?” Jen asked.
“Crime scene on the West Side.”
“Go,” said Jason. “If they need you, definitely go.”
“That a yes?” asked Miguel.
“Sure. Yes. Meet you at the lab?”
“Yeah, we’ll take the van – the CSI van. We’ll drive it from there.”
“All right, I’m on my way.”
“Was that your husband?”
“Yeah, why? Want his autograph?”
“Ah… no. See you soon.”
Jason had already escorted me to the door by the time I ended the call. We had a quick kiss and then I was on my way back to work.
I’d like to think I’m an intelligent person, but that doesn’t mean I always do intelligent things. As soon as I got in my car, I dialed my mother and put the phone on speakerphone.
“Chloe?” she answered.
“What’s up, Mom?” I pulled away from the curb and had to shield my eyes once again from the sun. The light was still honey rich, the kind that made adobe homes appear to glow from the inside. It’d still be a while until sunset, so I rested my arm on the steering wheel so that I could keep my hand in position to block the sun. As luck would have it, I was driving west.
“Honey, how are things?”
“Fine. Why do you ask?”
“Well, I assume you’ve seen the news.”
“Nope. Do I want to?”
“Oh, honey…”
“What is it, Mom? Typical tabloid stuff?” I’d reached the end of the road, and the three cars with photographers were still there, waiting. It hit me then that they knew Jason was here. They’d tailed me home to see if there would be fireworks of some kind, and now they saw me leaving again, something I was sure they could use to fit whatever narrative they had about Jason and I on the verge of a breakup.
My mother paused for dramatic effect, then said, “I’ve read over twenty articles that say Jason’s back together with Vicki Hanson.”
I could just picture my mother on the couch of her run down little apartment in Fargo, North Dakota, with some tabloid or other in her lap. She was probably in her bathrobe with little foam dividers between her freshly manicured toes, her blond hair piled on top of her head in its usual French twist. “What do you mean back?” I said.
“That’s who he was dating when he met you.”
To my knowledge, Jason hadn’t been dating anyone when we met. That was why he’d pursued me. Vicki had been his costar on his hit Disney show back when he was a teenager, so they were probably good friends, but I’d never met her, which just went to show how much I still didn’t know about my husband. She was also his costar in this upcoming film shoot.
“I just saw Jason, Mom. He’s not with anyone else.”
“Saw on Skype?”
“No. He’s here for the evening. Back at Jen’s house.”
“Where are you, then?”
“I’ve got a crime scene to investigate.”
“And he’s okay with that? He flies out to see you-”
“Mom, he’s the one who insisted I go. He’s very supportive of my career.”
“That’s a warning sign.”
“What, being supportive?”
“Wanting you at work, out of the way, busy with other concerns. That gives him more breathing room to do what he wants.”
“Then why would he fly all the way back to Albuquerque for the night?”
“To keep up appearances with his family.”
“Exactly how much thought have you given this, Mom?”
“I can’t help it. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“Yeah, well telling me my marriage is falling apart-”
“Would you prefer not to know?”
“Mom… You sure you don’t just have issues because my father was married to someone else when I happened?” Mom had been a teenage intern in my father’s dental office when I’d happened, and they’d carried on with their relationship until my half brother tried to kill me in a misguided attempt to repair his parents’ marriage. Said brother wasn’t the brightest bulb.
“Of course I have issues. Who wouldn’t after what I’ve been through? But listen to me, you won’t ever be in the situation I was in.”
“I’m not going to get involved with-”
“I will never cut you off.”
I shut my mouth so fast that my teeth came together with an audible click. I didn’t know Mom’s parents because they’d never, ever had anything to do with us. Intellectually I understood that was why my mother stayed involved with my father as his mistress for over a decade. She had no help and was pregnant and a high school dropout at seventeen. My father had employed her at his dental office and given her money on the side. Emotionally, I’d never really grasped the significance of this.
Now was the first time in my life when I felt like I had something to lose. I knew Mom would always stand by me, but Mom and I had a tough relationship at best. If I lost Jason, though, that’d feel like having my heart ripped out of my chest.
“You still there, honey?”
“Yeah.” The word came out shaky, like I was on the verge of tears.
“Oh, sweetie. Listen, let me give you some advice.”
“Okay…” I never sought her advice.
“Just watch him. Be aware. People give signs when they’ve got something to hide. Don’t play the fool.”
“Mom, you weren’t cheated on. You were the person-”
“I was with a man who couldn’t keep his promises. Judge me if you want for being young and stupid. It still hurts.”
“Sorry. I don’t mean to judge.”
“I wasn’t Bill’s problem, Chloe. Bill was Bill’s problem.”
“You’re right.” I didn’t actually agree completely, but it seemed like the kindest way to bring the conversation to a close. “I’m almost at the lab,” I lied. “I’ll talk to you later?”
“One more thing.”
“Okay…”
“Get to know Vicki Hanson. Keep your enemies close.”
“Mom-”
“I’m serious. Become her friend. A lot of women back down when they meet the wife and realize she’s a real person, capable of getting hurt. I never thought of Bill’s wife as a person. Things might have been different if I had.”
I doubted it, but didn’t argue.
Sensing my desire to escape, she let me go. “Okay, sweetie. Love you.”
“Love you too.” That much was true. I didn’t always get her, but I did love her. For most of my life, she’d been all I had.
The emergency room was packed with medical personnel in scrubs running up and down the halls. “Fifteen car pile up!” a voice offscreen yelled.
A pair of sliding doors whooshed open and in strode Clayborn, her green eyed gaze sweeping the corridor. “I’m looking for a multiple gunshot victim,” she snapped at the nearest orderly. When he looked askance, she pulled out her badge. “I’m with homicide.”
“The victim came in a minute ago,” hollered a nurse as she charged down the hall. “Room fifteen.” She pointed.
Clayborn ran down the hall and skidded to a stop in front of the door to Room Fifteen. Inside stood a man in a white labcoat who muttered and shook his head. Two paramedics watched him and exchanged knowing looks.
“Why aren’t you applying pressure to the wounds?”
The doctor, a young man with a cleft in his chin and tousled hair, turned, indignant. “She’s as good as-”
“She is not as good as gone. Do your job.”
“Someone get her out of here.” He gestured to the paramedics to usher her away, but Clayborn flashed her badge in their faces and stormed into the room. The doctor blinked and looked away, one hand upraised, as she unbuttoned her shirt.
>
She yanked it down over her shoulder to reveal an ugly knot of a scar. As the doctor watched, she showed another on her stomach. “People survive gunshot wounds. Now get to work and do your job.”
The doctor’s eyes widened. “That’s a-”
“Maybe it’s a one in a million injury because people like you don’t even try.” She got in his face, her nose inches from his. “Pressure on the wounds, find the bullets. You got experience with gunshots?”
“I-”
“Depending on the caliber of the weapon, some bullets enter without enough energy to exit again, and sometimes they’ll ricochet around inside a person, so they won’t necessarily end up where you expect them. You do emergency medicine in this town and you’re going to have to learn this stuff.” She grabbed a pair of scissors and began to cut the victim’s clothes away. “I’m guessing this is an entrance wound. You-” she pointed at one paramedic “-direct pressure. Now.”
She pulled a camera out of her pocket.
“What are you doing?” demanded the doctor.
“Taking the kind of pictures that no jury can ignore.” She began to fire away. “Get in there, doctor! You guys still have a pulse?”
The doctor took a step forward, and after another glare from Clayborn, grabbed some gauze and shears and began to bark orders. “Stop the bleeding if you can. Have we still got a pulse?”
“Weak,” said one of the paramedics, “but there.”
The doctor rolled up his sleeves. “Let’s do this.”
Clayborn stood back and took photo after photo.
CUT TO:
“Dammit, Clayborn, what are you doing here?” a gruff man in a suit demanded. He strode into the victim’s room. The medical workers were gone, and a white sheet covered the body on the stretcher. Clayborn sat on a chair, sulking. “The crime scene’s across town,” said the man. Her supervisor had gray hair, slicked back, and wire rimmed glasses. He kept one hand in his pocket while he gestured with the other.
“If they’d taken it seriously when they brought her in-”
“Aw, you didn’t try to get them to waste their resources-”
“It isn’t a waste of resources!”
“She had eight bullets in her.”
“I’ve had-”
“Three, Clayborn. You had three, and you were one in a million case.”
Clayborn rolled her eyes. “You used to be with narcotics, Mitchell.”
“Yeah. So?”
“What’s the most addictive drug?”
“I dunno. Crack? Meth? Nicotine? This some kind of test?”
“Wrong. The most addictive drug is a shot of pure luck. Being the one in a million.”
“You feeling all right? Listen, you can’t waste valuable time and resources staked out here when there’s a crime scene going cold clear on the other side of town.”
Clayborn gave him a sullen look and got to her feet. “I got good pictures. The DA will be happy.”
“The DA won’t see them until you crack this case and find me a shooter.”
Clayborn nodded, squared her shoulders, and headed out of the room. “They wasted time they could have spent treating her.”
“Clayborn, get to the scene. See if you can save other lives. We’ve got a killer on the loose.”
She tossed her blond hair out of her eyes and exited through the sliding glass doors.
“I wish I could go to the hospital and gather evidence off the victim immediately,” said Miguel as we climbed into the CSI van, which smelled like sun baked vinyl and cold metal. “It’s sick, I know.”
“We don’t collect the evidence off a live victim, do we?” That would be a new one for me. As far as I knew, crims didn’t do that.
“No, but I wish we did. But I’m being morbid, I know, wishing we could get in in the emergency room. At least I’m not wishing the victim would die. Man, that sounds completely sick.”
“No, I get what you mean,” I said. “If she lives, she can tell us what happened. If she dies, we can get all kinds of information from the medical examiner. If it’s touch and go for a while, we could lose evidence. She’s already been carried away from the crime scene so we can’t see exactly how she fell. If they wash her wounds, they could wash away the perp’s blood too-”
“Right. A pair of paper bags over her hands will only do so much for us.” Bagging a person’s hands was a way to preserve any evidence under the fingernails. This would have been done to the victim before she was taken away.
I wanted to add, “But yeah, you’re being totally sick,” and didn’t dare. My in-laws would have cracked up, but not everyone was into my sarcasm. “It’d make for a cool scene in a crime drama,” I said. “The CSIs busting into the hospital to interfere.” Miguel had put me in the driver’s seat, which I took to be a test of some kind. This van was big.
“Yeah, tell it to your husband.”
I decided to just shut my mouth. We only needed to get along as coworkers, after all, not friends. I started the engine and adjusted the rearview mirrors. The back end of this vehicle seemed very, very far away. Miguel watched me as I backed it out of the space and took it in a wide turn to point its nose towards the street. It seemed best to err on the side of caution, so I made all my turns wide. Perhaps they were too wide, but I didn’t run over any curbs.
A few streets later we passed an ambulance racing the other direction. Miguel stared wistfully after it. It may or may not have been our victim, but that was about as close as we’d get to her tonight, or perhaps ever.
Detective Clayborn strode into the house. A small army of crime scene investigators ran to and fro, wearing rubber gloves and carrying an array of special lights, measuring tapes, and magnifiers. Mackenzie, the beat cop who’d called in the homicide, stood waiting.
“Detective,” he greeted her. “Single female victim. We did a sweep of the house and found no one.”
Clayborn nodded as she marched past. The uniformed cop and a CSI fell into step behind her as she walked up to where the body had lain. A few blotchy bloodstains marked the spot. “All right, what’s the story?”
The street was crawling with emergency personnel, the neighborhood unremarkable and suburban. Three and four bedroom homes with peaked roofs and eaves were set back from the road behind tiny lawns or xeriscape – a popular choice in the desert. A patrol car was parked in front of the crime scene, a fire truck across the street, its lights still flashing. One cop stood in the open doorway, another in the middle of the yard, fending off a crowd of rubberneckers. A man in plainclothes who seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place, stood in the doorway and talked on a cellphone. Two personnel who might have been firefighters (I didn’t have the uniforms memorized yet) could be seen inside the house through an uncurtained window.
“No, no, no!” shouted Miguel. He jumped out of the CSI van before I even parked it and slammed the door with a bang. I rolled down my window so I could hear what was going on while I parked the van and felt the cool evening air that smelled slightly of wood smoke.
“Get out of the house. Get back,” he shouted. “Away from the house. Consider the entire lot and the street, and possibly the neighborhood part of the crime scene. Vanderholt? Where are you?”
It was not easy to parallel park a van on a street where the driveways were less than a van length apart, but I did my best and killed the engine.
“Where’s the crime scene tape?” he hollered at me.
This was my first time in the CSI van, so I had no idea. I climbed into the back to look around and found a big roll of it right by the rear doors, which I shoved open. With the roll in hand, I jumped down.
Miguel snatched it. “Give me that.” He ran towards the house. “Everyone out! Out! Hey, do we have a search warrant yet for the house? I don’t care if you entered legally. If we’re gathering evidence, we need a warrant – shut up! Do we know if the victim is the only occupant? Get the DA on the phone. Someone’s called the DA, right?”
Yeah, this was g
oing to be a long night.
“Excuse me,” said the man in plain clothes, holding a cellphone. “I’m on the phone with the DA right now.” I surmised from this that he was the detective, and thus in charge of the scene, and his voice was really familiar.
“Well get everyone away from the house. What’s the matter with you people?” He turned and marched towards the end of the street. “Two roadblocks,” he shouted. “The whole neighborhood is of interest. Two roadblocks. One here, one there.” He pointed at the other end of the block. “Vanderholt!”
I was already on my way to join him. When he saw that, he glared balefully. “Traffic cones,” he demanded.
I turned around to head back to the van. The crowd in front of the house had all turned. A dozen pairs of eyes bored holes into my skin and I looked back, uncertain. Nearly all of them were women.
“It’s her,” I heard one of them say.
“She really does work for the APD.”
“Wait, who’s that?” said a male voice.
“Shhh. Chloe Vanderholt.”
“I hear they’re getting a divorce.”
I did my best to ignore them as I hefted a stack of traffic cones out of the back of the van, and jogged back towards the roadblock. A flashbulb popped in my peripheral vision. No, I thought. Not this. Not now. I’d been so focused on driving the CSI van that I’d actually forgotten about the paparazzi tailing me. A glance let me know there was only one parked nearby, that stupid white sedan.
Miguel and a small, gray dog burst from the bushes of a nearby front yard. He made a wild snatch for the animal, which evaded him easily. At the sight of another flashbulb, he whirled around. I dropped the cones with a plasticky thunk on the asphalt and ran to head him off as he charged the photographer, who leaned out of the passenger side window of a parked sedan, flashbulb popping away.
“Get out of here!” my supervisor yelled. “This is an active crime scene. You want me to get one of the cops here to arrest you?”
“Arrest me for what?” The photographer, I could now see, was one I knew, a blond guy who’d staked out my house in the past.
“Interfering with an investigation.”
Nobody's Damsel Page 3