Harm’s Reach

I haven’t spoken to my mother in weeks. I hope she isn’t worrying about me. Does this girl have a mother somewhere worrying about her? Is some mother over in Ireland going to have to take the worst possible call to take as a parent?

Laura Flynn was just twenty-six years old.

The same age I was when I was diagnosed. She looked down at Laura Flynn’s body.

Twenty-six-years old. And I thought I got a death sentence.

Perspective, Ren. Perspective.

‘The lining is torn,’ said Gary, looking into the victim’s purse. He swiped his hand through the tear, found nothing.

‘That’s weird for a very new-looking purse,’ said Ren. ‘Maybe she was stashing something in there.’

‘Guys, how do you think an Irish girl like that could know anything about The Flying G case?’ said Janine. She paused. ‘To be open-minded, I will say “any of my cases”.’

‘And it’s an Avis rental, Janine, by the way,’ said Gary. ‘If you can work some magic.’

‘OK,’ said Janine.

‘No SatNav,’ said Gary.

They could hear Janine typing. ‘Hold on, guys, news just in: someone reported a burning vehicle at The Darned Heart at twelve thirty today.’

‘What?’ said Ren. ‘First a burning vehicle, half an hour later, a bank robbery, and two hours after that, a woman’s body is found …’

‘Sounds about right,’ said Janine.

‘Well isn’t this a darned part of Jefferson County,’ said Ren. She took Janine off speaker. ‘Come our way.’

‘Sure,’ said Janine. ‘I shouldn’t be more than an hour. And thank you so much for my plant – it’s beautiful. And your notes. You’re nuts.’

Oh, you have no idea. Or maybe you do.

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.