Harm’s Reach

Ren and Gary walked toward his SUV. They looked up when they heard the sound of an engine coming from the same direction they had driven in.

‘What, pray tell, is this?’ said Ren.

A minibus appeared up ahead.

‘We need to screen this off,’ said Gary. He took a crime scene screen from the trunk of his SUV and went back to the victim’s car. Ren approached the minibus, holding up her badge. The driver leaned out the window.

‘Where are you coming from?’ said Ren.

‘Boulder,’ said the driver, a warm-faced woman with a frosted nest of honey-colored hair. ‘Just taking m’ladies back to Evergreen Abbey.’ She smiled.

Ren looked in and saw twenty or so women. The ones who weren’t sleeping were craning their necks toward her and out the front of the bus.

Ren leaned into the driver. ‘We’ve got a crime scene up ahead … Is there another way you can reach the abbey?’

‘There sure is,’ said the driver.

‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ said Ren. ‘Thank you.’

She nodded.

You are dying to ask me what’s going on.

‘Can I take your name and the name of the director of the abbey?’ said Ren.

‘Sure,’ said the driver. ‘She’s Eleanor Jensen, and I’m Betty Locke, chaffeuse, locksmith, carpenter …’ She smiled.

‘OK, Betty, thank you,’ said Ren. ‘We’ll be in touch.’

Ren went back over to Gary.

‘Ladies of the abbey,’ said Ren. ‘Someone better go talk to them before this gets legs.’

This is beyond screwed up. There is a pregnant woman behind that screen in front of me.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Why, on this beautiful, seventy-degree, clear-blue-sky Monday is a pregnant woman lying dead on the side of the road?

Where were you going? What were you hoping to do? Had you named your baby, had you picked out clothes, painted a nursery?

Stop.

Ren stared up at the sky, but the clouds were moving too quickly, morphing into strange shapes, drawing her eyes left and right, making her head spin. She lowered her head and let out a deep breath.

She looked into the car. There was an iPod on the floor, some candy wrappers. She looked into the back. There was a pair of women’s shoes behind the passenger seat. Ren glanced down at the victim – she was wearing silver and blue sneakers, but she had nice black pants on, ones she could have dressed up with different shoes.

Maternity pants …

‘She either had a passenger or was about to have one,’ said Ren to Gary. ‘A lady driver would keep her change of shoes in the passenger well, unless she didn’t want them in the way of a passenger. Where was the purse?’

‘Behind the passenger seat,’ said Gary.

‘Someone was about to join her very soon,’ said Ren. ‘Driving alone, she would have that beside her otherwise.’

Ren looked around the car, the trees, the road. She walked out into the middle of the road and did it all over again.

‘So,’ she said, ‘the car was parked. If this woman had arranged to meet someone … she could have chosen this spot, where the trees are diseased … there’s just one short stretch of reddish brown along this part.’

They turned as a Jeep came toward them.

‘It’s Dr T,’ said Ren.

Barry Tolman was the Medical Examiner for Jefferson County. He was quiet and unassuming, a dignified pacifist of a man who got to see the results of the violent happenings of Jefferson County and sixteen other counties. They met him by the victim’s car.

‘Hello, there, Ren, Gary.’

‘Hi, Dr Tolman,’ said Ren.

‘You’re going to have to start calling me Barry.’

‘Sorry,’ said Ren. ‘I know. My parents drilled respect for doctors into me.’

‘You can say “elders”,’ said Tolman.

Ren laughed.

‘This is what I’m talking about …’ said Tolman, looking down at the body.

‘Yes,’ said Ren. ‘I read your interview in the Post.’

‘I am a tired old man,’ he said. ‘No one is listening. “People kill people, not guns”, “Take the guns out of the hands of the mentally ill”. It’s always the crazy activists with the catchphrases. Like the mere act of repeating their mantras legitimizes them. Hell, a sane guy buying a gun is not necessarily going to be sane ten months later when he walks in on his wife sleeping with his best friend … or when he’s up to his eyeballs in debt and his employer throws him out on the street … Do we hand this person a weapon that can kill sixty people? The voices inside are the loudest.’

‘New World Order,’ said Ren. ‘I’m really looking forward to it.’

He smiled. ‘What is the sorry tale here?’

More cars began to pull up: Sheriff’s Office investigators, and Kohler.

Gary waited until they had all gathered before he filled them in.

Crime scene investigators arrived and began processing the scene.

‘We’ll leave you guys to this,’ said Gary. ‘Ren and I will pay a visit to the abbey …’

‘Would eight a.m. tomorrow morning work for you?’ said Tolman.

‘An autopsy,’ said Ren, ‘always a bright start to the day.’