One Hit Wonder Read online

  “If I’m drunk, should I be driving?” I said bitterly.

  “Good point.” He slammed the door.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake.” I tossed my hands in the air from frustration.

  Leo brushed past me on his way to the patrol car. He took a bag from the trunk, then returned to me. Dropping the duffle bag at my feet, he riffled through it until he came out with a breathalyzer.

  “For the love of all that’s good and holy,” I said. I sidestepped, but he blocked me.

  “You say it’s the flu? Prove it.”

  Oh, how I hoped he caught the virus and it laid him out for days. I snatched the breathalyzer from his hand, then sucked in a deep breath before giving the small device a mighty puff.

  Yeah, I was ticked at opportunity because I was standing here. I was ticked at myself for not tossing my cookies some place other than the accident scene. But I’d get over those. Growing up struggling to read had put me in several uncomfortable situations, and that school of hard knocks gave me a tough skin. However, what I would not get over was being treated like a degenerate by Leo Stillman.

  “When you’re done, give that to Junior,” Rawlings said.

  The breathalyzer beeped, and I showed the number to Leo.

  “Ha,” I said, then resumed my coughing fit. Deep breathing in and out was hard, my lungs heavy and full. Sucking in copious amounts of air had been a strain. One I was paying for now.

  Leo took the device from me, read the numbers, then gave it a mad shake. “Must be broken.”

  I wanted to assault him with words, but was stuck coughing. As the coughing subsided, and I thought I’d get a word out, a new round would resume.

  Leo smirked. “Looks like you have something to say but can’t get it out. That’s too bad.”

  As I hacked into my sweatshirt-covered elbow, I raised my other hand and stuck my middle finger in his face.

  The small muscle in his jaw ticked twice. But before he could respond, the radio pinned to his shoulder chirped.

  “Squad 50,” said a male voice I recognized. Jeff Smith, one of three cops employed by Wind River and Leo’s counterpart. Add the chief, a sergeant, and Lieutenant Rawlings, and that was the entire force.

  A female voice responded, “Go ahead Squad 50.”

  “I’m at 5545 179th Avenue. Junkie’s bar. I need medical attention for an unconscious, unresponsive, and breathing female, approximately forty-five years of age, with a possible upper body injury. I also need the fire department since she’s pinned to a post by a car.”

  The female dispatcher said, “10-4 Squad 50, medical is on the way. Fire is on their way.”

  We all stood silent for a beat.

  “Judas Priest,” Rawlings said.

  “Ms. Trina?” My eyes locked on Leo’s face, searching for the answers to what wasn’t said in the short conversation. It had to be Ms. Trina. She worked every Friday night at Junkie’s bar. Friday’s were theme night, and she’d once told me theme nights were her favorite. Smith had made it sound like her injury was serious.

  “Holy crap,” Junior said from behind me.

  I turned and found him walking toward us, a towel pressed to his forehead.

  “Did he say Ms. Trina was hurt?” Junior looked as shocked as I felt.

  We’d all gone through school with Ms. Trina. As head lunch lady, she could tell when a student was having a bad day and gave us extra rolls, nuggets, or a Coke. Along with Leo’s kid brother, Hue, I’d spent a fair amount of days getting extra’s from Ms. Trina. Her oldest, Becca, was my age. Her youngest was in her final year of high school. Ms. Trina had become a single mom when her husband Bart had a massive heart attack back in February. Dropped dead in a convenience store near Century Link Field in Seattle following a Sounders Game. He’d reached for a bottle of water and died on the spot.

  Ms. Trina was having a sucky year.

  “You didn’t go to Junkie’s tonight?” I asked Junior. If I was a regular, so was Junior. He went as much as I did.

  Junior winced. “I went for a while but left early because I had to be at work early today.” His face tightened and he said angrily, “I bet this wouldn’t have happened if I had stayed later.” He turned to Rawlings. “There were a couple of guys there that were getting rowdy. Didn’t know them. They weren’t from around here.”

  Rawlings said, “I’ll want a statement about that later.” He pointed a finger at me. “You sure you got pics of this, Samantha?”

  I nodded, too numb to talk.

  Rawlings directed his finger at Junior. “You call a tow truck?”

  Junior nodded.

  Rawlings said, “Then we’re gonna leave now.”

  “Understood,” Junior said. “My dad should be here soon anyway.”

  “I’ll stay with you Junior until your dad comes,” I said. It didn’t feel right to leave someone out on the road alone in light of Ms. Trina’s accident. How had a car pinned her to a post?

  Rawlings grabbed me by my elbow and propelled me toward LC. “No can do, Camera-girl, you’ll need to go with us. You’re the on-call photographer. Try and keep up, too.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at Junior, Leo, and the scene. This was nothing compared to what I was about to see. I met Leo’s stare and read his skepticism. He didn’t think I was up for the challenge.

  My mind flashed back to the pictures we’d seen in class of crime scenes. Who had I been kidding about taking photos of a dead deer being a true test? No, my true test was about to come.

  I climbed in LC and cranked his engine. I wrapped my arms around me as I waited for LC to warm up, a chill seeping deep into my bones.

  Leo and Rawlings sped to Junkie’s bar. All I could think about was Ms. Trina and her family. The woman worked three jobs. Dad said her husband’s life insurance must have sucked and followed the comment up with a lecture about the importance of retirement planning and insurance.

  Junkie’s bar was across town in the soon-to-be newer commercial development of Wind River. Crenshaw, Junkie’s owner, knew this side of town was destined for expansion. He’d kicked off the impending boom by converting an old building on the corner of his junkyard into a bar. Currently, the property was surrounded by soon-to-be-demolished trees that fed into the foothills of Mt. St. Helens.

  Crenshaw also happened to be the tow truck driver for the town. He was former military and vigilant about security. Some would even say paranoid.

  Rawlings gestured out his window to the side of the road, and I took it to mean I should park there. I checked my camera’s batteries and settings. Messing this up was not an option. I carried my crime scene kit with me.

  An ambulance and a fire truck were parked ahead of us. Five people were standing at the head of Ms. Trina’s car talking and gesturing. Two firemen, two EMTs and a cop.

  “What’s going on?” Leo barked.

  One of the firemen looked our way. “She’s pinned at the lower arm. Doesn’t look good for the arm. Crenshaw is out of town, and the guy covering for him is about twenty minutes away on another pick-up. We’re trying to decide how to move the car.”

  Smith, the cop who called it in, said, “Becca called dispatch and said her mom hadn’t made it home. I rolled out here to see if she’d left. I found her chained to the pole, blindfolded, and with a gag in her mouth.” He pointed to the back-corner panel of Ms. Trina’s car. “From what I gather, it appears the place was robbed. Inside is a mess. They left Trina here, and in their haste to escape, they collided with her car, which pushed it into her.”

  I collapsed against LC. The fear and uncertainty of the situation left my knees weak. I’d never experienced violence and crime of this severity before. Up until now, my life was remarkably uneventful, and that’s saying a lot when you’re the daughter of a newspaperman and a lawyer.

  “Her stats are falling,” said the EMT monitoring Ms. Trina.

  Leo, Rawlings, and the other EMT had a brief discussion.

  Leo turned to me. “Start photographing
everything now. We’re going to put her car in neutral and roll it back so we can move her.” His words were hurried. The others were rushing to do what task they’d been assigned.

  I brought the viewfinder to my eyes. The job of a forensic photographer was to take pictures of everything I could as they prepped to move Ms. Trina as well as shoot the move. This was done for court purposes. My photos would be evidence, and their value even higher if the unthinkable happened and this became a homicide. I made sure to get shots of the scene as it was before they moved the car. Focusing the camera was hard with tears in my eyes. One thing for certain, we’d be at a different scene had the Crenshaw parking lot been different.

  A few years ago, when Junkie’s opened, the parking lot had been a gravel space and nothing more. Until an inebriated idiot who didn’t know drive from reverse came inches from crashing into the building. After that, Crenshaw built nine small walls, one for each spot, each with a 4 ½ inch concrete pole called a bollard coming out of the center. Each was painted a bold color. Crenshaw’s theory being, a wall took more idiocy to plow through and a speed bump wasn’t a deterrent at all.

  The walls, twenty inches high and two feet wide, were made from cinder blocks, and Ms. Trina was sitting on one. She hugged the red pole and, because of the shape of her VW Rabbit’s front end, only her arm had been pinned from the hand to an inch below the elbow. Her leg escaped the same fate by centimeters. Had there been no wall, only a pole, the car would have crushed her.

  Though Officer Smith had removed Ms. Trina’s blindfold and gag, she remained unconscious. Seeing her chained to a pole broke my heart and sent tremors of fear through me. The awkward way her head hung back, her pallor, were reminiscent of corpse images I’d seen in school. This was not the vibrant, quick-to-laugh woman I’d known all my life. How had this happened?

  A fireman named Bucky cut the chain. Smith bagged the chains as evidence.

  On the count of three, the men worked in synchrony to move the car and Ms. Trina. I captured it all in stills. Within seconds, Ms. Trina was lifted onto the stretcher and the EMT’s worked madly as they loaded her into the rig then sped away.

  I stood next to LC while the cops discussed what to do next. A couple times Leo looked at me and nodded. At the patrol car, he took out a trash bag from the trunk.

  I gulped, imagining all sorts of things he might put into the bag. Like Ms. Trina’s white sneaker that lay a few feet from the pole.

  Then he came to me.

  Arms crossed, he said, “I’ll take you from place to place and tell you what to get shots of. If at any time you think you might be sick, you throw up in this bag. You got it?” He thrust the bag at me.

  “If you think I’m drunk and you have to use these pictures in a criminal case, wouldn’t that be a possible problem for you?” My aim wasn’t to get under his skin, but to fry whoever did this to Ms. Trina. Me being a technicality, the reason a criminal wouldn’t be charged, was unacceptable.

  “I have the breathalyzer that says you aren’t. No one has to know I think it’s broken.”

  I snatched the bag. “There’s nothing left in my stomach anyway.”

  He grabbed me by the elbow. “Seriously, Samantha. We can’t have this scene messed up.” His tone spoke to the seriousness of the situation. Not that I needed a warning.

  I snatched my arm away. “Where do we start?”

  Fevers were like tides. They burned hot when the tide was in and left a person clammy with uncontrollable shivers when it was out. Currently, the tide was out so I hit the shutter button several times on accident because of those shivers. The adrenaline didn’t help. My flu symptoms were exacerbated by my nervousness. My hands shook, my breathing was shallow, and my stomach rolled with apprehension and upset.

  “Breathe,” Leo said. His focus remained on the area as he scanned for the next images to capture. He bagged evidence after I snapped the pics.

  “I am breathing,” I said and checked the display to make sure I had what I needed in the shot.

  “No, you’re panting. Breathe normally. Slow and steady.”

  He was right. I was a ball of nerves. There was no margin for error. The responsibility was a heavy weight to bear.

  Rawlings said, “Come here, Samantha. I want shots from here. These pieces might be parts from the car that hit hers.” Rawlings was standing next to Ms. Trina’s car.

  Smith came out from inside the bar. “Hey, I’m gonna need pictures in here, too. Looks like the robbers might have been the same people who’ve been hitting up the convenience stores and late-night diners.”

  The news called them the Comic Book Bandits and reported the robbers wore superhero masks when they held up a joint. It was also reported the Comic Book Bandits tied up the people and employees and left behind superhero novelty rings.

  Leo gestured for me to follow Smith inside. The place had been tossed. Although, the theme tonight had been the seventies, one of the most popular themes for the bar, and the mess could have been from just that. The buffet with the pub food hadn’t been cleaned, and plates had been knocked off, scattering food and broken ceramic everywhere. The disco ball hung above the center of the dance floor and continued to spin, shooting off a variety of colored lights. A blond afro wig balanced precariously at the edge of a bench seat of a booth.

  “She didn’t get any time to clean up.” Captain obvious, that was me.

  Smith surveyed the bar with disgust. “The kitchen’s a wreck, too. Food pulled out of the fridge and everything.” He pointed to the counter by the register. “Take a picture of that. Make sure to get the top.” A red kid’s party favor ring rest against the register. The sticker was a Batman emblem.

  I spent the next two hours inside taking pictures. At one point, the Chief of Police joined our party.

  When I stepped outside into the cool early morning air, the sun was peeking over Mt. St. Helen’s, and exhaustion hit me hard. I was out of adrenaline, and the fever tide was in, raging, bringing with it waves of heat.

  I stumbled to another parking pole and held onto it as I slid to the wall. I leaned against the cold metal and wondered how Ms. Trina was doing.

  Shoes came into my field of vision, and I looked up to see my dad.

  “What are you doing here?” My voice was hoarse. My throat dry.

  “Covering this story. How you holding up, kiddo?” He pressed his hand to my forehead.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have any flu meds in your pocket, would you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” He dug into his jacket pocket and handed me a tab with two capsules. From his other pocket, he took out a small bottle of water. “I heard you’d been called out to take pictures.”

  I swallowed the meds and chugged half the bottle.

  Chief Louney joined us. “You know, Russ. You can’t be asking Samantha to disclose anything that might affect this case.” He turned his attention to me. “Do not speak to the press.”

  I gave him the thumbs up to show I understood his instruction. “I couldn’t if I wanted to. It’s all a blur. I’m tired and overwhelmed.” Though Dad and I knew that wasn’t true. All I had to do was think about one item in any photo I’d taken and my mind’s eye could recall it as if looking at the actual space in real time.

  Chief Louney said, “Then go home. You’re done here.”

  Dad held out his hand and tugged me up. He pointed me toward LC and gave me a gentle shove.

  I don’t remember the drive home. Or climbing the stairs to my apartment over Dad’s newspaper. I collapsed onto my bed, ready to get lost in a deep sleep.

  But from the fever or not, restful sleep played elusive, coming only in short fits and bits with visions of evil superheroes.

  Chapter Three

  Noon found me on the floor of my bathtub, the hot, steamy shower running over me. I was forced to exit when the water turned cold.

  My lips were chapped to the point of cracking. My fever low enough for coherent thoughts.

  I choked
down a dose of flu medicine and transferred the photos from both scenes onto a thumb drive. Then I made myself as presentable as possible considering my fever was still one hundred and one. I pulled my hair into a ponytail and carried a hand towel in my sling bag to wipe off sweat for when the inevitable heat waves crashed over me again.

  Dressed in navy blue leggings and a long yellow tunic, I added a dark gray hoody hoping it would hide the inevitable sweat stains. To stay in bed would be smart, but I was haunted by the images of last night. To make matters worse, my imagination was in full production, creating all sorts of creepy scenarios of what Ms. Trina had experienced while being robbed then chained to a pole.

  Food of any variety was needed before heading out, though nothing in my sparse fridge looked appealing. Below my apartment was my dad’s newspaper. Printing was done out of house, so by newspaper, I meant offices. More importantly, Dad kept a stocked fridge in the break room.

  There were two stairways to my apartment. One at the front that led to the street. The other through a locked door at the outside rear of my apartment. That door opened to stairs that led directly into the back portion of the newspaper office.

  The newspaper had one large room called the bullpen. Used to house cubicles for staff writers back in the day, now it was a large space with a conference table and chairs. Four separate rooms were off to the far-right side. One held files, archives, and supplies. The middle two rooms were my dad’s office and the galley kitchen. The restroom was at the end.

  Stella, Dad’s office administrator who also worked the front, was at her desk by the lobby. An athletic woman with a penchant for herbal and natural remedies had, unfortunately, a past littered with dead husbands. Obviously, high blood pressure or other serious maladies couldn’t always be controlled by an essential oil. Stella was on the phone, which allowed me to get to the kitchen unnoticed.

  In the kitchen, the coffee pot was empty, an unusual occurrence for a newspaperman and company. The grounds were in the filter and water in the tank but no coffee. As if a cruel joke, someone forgot to flip the on the switch. I punched the switch with a jab of my finger.