I pulled my radio to my mouth. “Delta Three, 10-7,” I said, signing off for the night. I got on the highway back toward my place.
It was a quiet trip, unusual for a drive in my patrol car. I loved music, and it always echoed the ever-changing demands of my job. At the beginning of a shift, rock or metal amped me up. Put me on alert. Kept my head on a swivel.
Pop or classical would bring me down for the drive home. Pop when the shift was calm; classical when I had to battle demons. It was a trick I’d learned from my training officer the night I worked my first suicide.
Tonight, there was no radio, only my mind replaying the bizarre conversation with my father. How could this be happening again?
Now, of all times in my career.
The exit toward home was empty; not surprising since most of Sapphire Lake shut down after ten p.m. I turned onto the highway and caught an oncoming car in my radar beam.
Alarm bells sounded through the car. I looked at the flashing radar as the car whizzed by me.
Sixty-six in forty-five.
Damn it.
I flipped on my blue lights and cut the wheel hard to the left, spinning up gravel as I crossed onto the road’s shoulder. I touched my radio. “Delta Three, 10-81.”
I sped to catch the car. “Please don’t be drunk. Please don’t be drunk. Please don’t be drunk,” I chanted in a whisper.
Tickets I could write and leave. Drunk people I had to take to jail, the same jail I’d just come from. I really wanted to go home.
Brake lights blazed up ahead as the driver finally slowed.
“Go ahead, Delta Three,” the dispatcher replied.
“Sapphire Park Highway approaching Snow Valley Road. Nevada tag, eight-six-nine-victor-charlie-adam.”
The piece-of-shit car eased onto the side of the road across the emergency lane. Its crooked bumper was covered with band stickers.
I pulled behind it, leaving the front of my car angled onto the pavement to protect me from any other idiots who might be out that muggy night.
I threw my transmission into park and unbuckled my seatbelt, carefully checking all around me as I got out. Then I closed my door and cautiously started toward the car.
Music was blaring so loud it rattled the back window. What’s that song? Oh . . . “Apple Bottom Jeans.” Shit. Drunk people love that song.
Erratic movement in the driver’s seat made me slip the hood off my weapon and partially unholster it. The music stopped. I cautiously approached, counting only one head inside as I touched the back taillight to leave my fingerprints behind. I shined the flashlight on my shoulder into the messy back seat as I passed.
Is that a boom box?
The driver—White female, shoulder-length brown hair—waved through the hazy glass. Duct tape was holding it inside the window frame.
The girl pointed to the door. “Can I open it? The window doesn’t roll down!”
I nodded as my gaze swept the empty passenger’s seat.
The door creaked open. “Hi!” Two soda cans and a long, slender piece of plastic tumbled onto the asphalt. “Whoops. My bad.” She moved to pick them up.
“Ma’am, please stay in the car,” I ordered.
She held up both hands. “Sorry. Didn’t want a ticket for littering too.”
I frowned. She has to be high. Nobody’s this chipper.
The car appeared to be empty. I kicked the plastic device over with my boot. “What’s this?”
“A remote control.” She glanced into her back seat. “The car speakers are busted. I dropped the remote when I saw the blue lights.”
So weird.
“My name is Corporal Nyx with the Sapphire Lake Police Department. I clocked you doing sixty-six in a forty-five-miles-per-hour-zone. Why were you driving so fast?” Pupils normal size.
She clasped her hands beneath her chin. “I’m really sorry, Officer. There’s been some kind of emergency at my work, and my boss needs me to come in and close the bar, and I really can’t afford to lose this job because my ex moved out, and I’m already behind on my rent, and I—”
I held up a hand to stop her. “Where do you work?”
She tilted up the name badge on her white blouse. “The Drexler. It’s the golf resort near—”
“I know very well what it is.”
“I’m a bartender in the lounge and kind of on a final-strike basis with my boss, if you know what I mean.”
“Where are you coming from?”
“My apartment.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “I live in Seneca Park, the older complex behind the—”
“License, registration, and proof of insurance, please.”
When she leaned across the car to open the glove compartment, I took a deep whiff inside. No pot. No booze. No cigarette smoke either. Just coffee and pizza. A half-eaten slice lay on the center console.
She gripped the car-owner’s manual with her teeth as she riffled through her purse. Then she passed a Nevada driver’s license through the window.
Bess Lincoln.
24.
Organ donor.
Seneca Park address.
The license had only been issued a few months ago. “You just move here?”
“From Charleston in the spring.” As she flipped through the pages of the owner’s manual, she rolled her hazel eyes up at me. “A guy. Guess how well that turned out? Whatever, though. It got me the hell out of South Carolina, and this place is—aha! I knew the registration was in here.” She handed me a folded piece of paper with torn edges. “My proof of insurance is on my phone.”
She pulled a phone out of her purse and swiped the cracked screen. Then she showed me a digital insurance card from a budget company.
The names and address matched, and the insurance was current, so I let her keep the phone. When I handed it back, she pointed at my arm. “Nice ink.”
How is this girl not high?
I patted the roof of her car. “Close your door and sit tight. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I backed toward the end of the vehicle.
Had she been going six miles per hour less, I wouldn’t have given her a ticket, but fifteen over on this road was my limit. My code. And it was a rainy night.
No job was worth wrapping a car around a tree.
At least she wasn’t impaired. Which, thankfully, meant no trip back to the station for me.
When I reached her bumper, I turned back to my patrol car.
Tires screamed.
Headlights swerved.
Crunch.
The last thing I saw was a flash of silver sailing straight for my face.
Chapter Three
“Shit, Celise!” With a stifled yowl, through a clenched jaw, I pounded my fist against the side of the thin gurney mattress. “What are you cleaning it with? Battery acid?”
“Yes. It’s been a while since we’ve had to patch you up.” The syringe clanged against the metal tray as the nurse put it down. “We use battery acid on all our patients now.”
I held up my middle finger.
“Classy.” She bent so we were eye level, and her honey-blonde bob fell away from her face. “You sure you don’t want the drugs? This isn’t going to get any better.”
“I’m sure,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Are you about finished?”