Steven James - The Knight

“If you don’t want to talk about this,” Cheyenne said, “it’s OK.”

“Lien-hua is still in DC.” Only after I said the words did I realize how out of place they must have sounded. I didn’t even know why I’d said them. Maybe to let Cheyenne know Lien-hua wasn’t in the picture anymore.

“DC,” Cheyenne replied. “So, the same city where you’ll be living this summer?”

“Um. Yes.” I didn’t want to talk about Lien-hua anymore. We were halfway down the hallway. I ventured a personal question.

“So what about you?”

“You mean a guy?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing serious, not for a long time. This may surprise you, but I’ve been told I intimidate men.”

“You’re kidding. Really?”

“Shocking, I know. Although, I should tell you, I was married once, right out of college. We were together about five years.”

“Do you mind if I ask what happened?”

A small pause. “Every affair begins with a smile.”

With every moment the conversation was becoming more and more intimate, and my judgment told me to stop asking follow-up questions, but I went ahead anyway. “So, were you smiling or was he?”

I’d probably stepped way over the line, but Cheyenne didn’t seem to mind. “For a while we both were,” she said. “In the end, I left the guy I was smiling at, and Cody left me.” She paused and then added, “Cody Howard was my husband.”

“Cody Howard, the DPD’s helicopter pilot?”

“One and the same.”

I didn’t see that one coming.

At least that explained why she wouldn’t fly with him.

We arrived at the dispatch office, and as she was about to press the door open, I asked her to wait a second. “Listen, I wanted to say, I’m sorry about last night.”

“About what?”

“Sorry about when you said you were thinking I was going to kiss you…”

“Yes?”

“And I didn’t.”

A small pause. She looked amused. “Yes, I do remember that, come to think of it.”

“So anyway, I wasn’t trying to blow you off. I’m just… well, I felt kind of bad about how things ended.”

“Pat,” she said, straightening my collar. “I don’t think they ended.”

And as I was searching for a reply, she pushed open the door to the EMS dispatch center and stepped inside.

Once inside the dispatch room, Cheyenne went to locate the on-duty supervisor while I waited by the door and gazed around the room, which was lit only by the bluish glow of computer monitors and the few remaining overhead fluorescents that weren’t burned out.

A sign on the wall to my right read:

Remember the Three Ws!

Where is the Incident?

Are there Wounds?

Are there Weapons?

Lives depennd on YOU!!

A misspelled word. Overuse of exclamation points. Unnecessary capitalization. Tessa would have gone ballistic.

Nine dispatchers were on duty in the cluttered cubicles, and most of them had at least two computers, two headset mics, and a floor pedal for transferring and receiving calls. Everyone looked wired and sleep-deprived. The room smelled like old bologna and burned coffee. Eight cubicles sat empty.

With the stress, long hours, low pay, and emotional drain, it’s not easy to find people to be EMS dispatchers. I don’t know of any major city in the U.S. where the emergency services department isn’t short staffed and constantly looking to hire. In fact, one recent Johns Hopkins University study found that being a dispatcher in a major metropolitan area is just as stressful as being an air traffic controller. Maybe that’s what accounts for the 60 percent annual turnover rate.

And here’s the irony: most high schools have more up-to-date computer systems than EMS services do, and yet, even though dispatchers potentially hold a person’s life in their hands with every call, most states don’t even require applicants to have a high school degree.

When a call comes in, a dispatcher might hear a gunshot, hear a body fall, listen as the line goes dead, and sixty to seventy seconds later he’s on the phone again with someone else. The dispatchers never find out what happened to the previous caller unless they read about it in the paper or maybe catch the story on the evening news.

But none of the dispatchers I know watch the local news or read the paper.

It’s just too painful.

Cheyenne returned with a man who identified himself as Lancaster Cowler.

He swaggered toward me like an ex-jock but looked like he hadn’t done a push-up in the last twenty years. A roll of stomach fat oozed out of the space between his shirt and his belt like the tip of a giant tongue. “Special Agent Bowers,” he said, his voice moist and thick.

I shook his hand. “Mr. Cowler, I don’t want to keep you long. I just have a couple questions about the anonymous calls reporting the double homicides on Thursday and Friday.”

“Woman who took the calls isn’t in today,” he said. “Weekends off. You know. To be with her kids.”

“Can we see if anyone else has accessed those files?”

“Sure.” He leaned his head to the side and called to a man sitting beside a pair of computer screens. “Ari, I need you to pull a couple of audio files for us.”

The guy looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. “Which ones?” His eyes remained glued to the screen on the left, which contained a panel of dispatch codes and a map of Denver with digital blips representing the current GPS location of the city’s emergency vehicles.

Cowler ambled toward the man’s desk. “Double homicides.”

Ari turned to the screen on his right and quickly scrolled through the database of the week’s digitally recorded calls. “Do you know the times?” Even though Ari looked over thirty, his face was covered with acne. The only things on his desk that showed he had a life outside of this room were a Star Trooper action figure, a Semper Fi plaque for ten years of service, and a silver ceramic dragon with outstretched wings.

I watched the call times scroll down the screen. “There.” I pointed to an entry from Thursday afternoon. “And there.” I identified the second call.

Ari tapped at the keyboard and brought up the first file. Cowler studied the screen. “Nope, reference number doesn’t show anyone else accessing the files, except the medical examiner’s office. But that’s typical for them to do before an autopsy.”

“Let’s hear the first call,” I said.

As Ari played the audio, the automated live-read transcription scrolled across the screen:

EMS: “This is 911. How-”

CALLER: “I have something to tell you. I need you to listen carefully.”

EMS: “Sir, can you tell me your name?”

CALLER: “There’s a body in Bearcroft Mine, three miles south of Idaho Springs. Take Wheelan to Piney Oaks Road. After 5.3 miles, take the dirt road to the right. It ends at the mine. I want you to send-”

EMS: “Who am I speaking with?”

CALLER: “The Rocky Mountain Violent Crimes Task Force. No one enters the mine before they do, or more people will die. You won’t find Chris, so don’t waste time looking for him.”

EMS: “Sir, are you there now? Are you in any danger-”

CALLER: “Dusk is coming. I won’t stop until the story is done. Day Four ends on Wednesday.”

EMS: “Sir-” CALL TERMINATED BY CALLER.

The second audio was similarly concise but listed Taylor’s address and Cherry Creek Reservoir as the location for the bodies.

The caller’s voice was electronically disguised, and although I couldn’t be certain, it sounded like the pitch, pauses, and cadence of the speech on both tapes matched the speech patterns of the man who’d called me earlier in the day.