Ridley Pearson - Middle Of Nowhere

Behind her, the garage door groaned shut, a combination of hair-raising squeals-metal on metal- and the tight, quickened shudders of rollers traveling slightly off track. The garage opener's bulb was burned out, leaving only the yellow glare of car headlights, on a self-timer. Sharp shadows stretched across the tools and garden hoses that cluttered the walls. The room smelled of burning rubber, hot motor oil and lawn fertilizer-slightly sickening. A light rain struck the garage roof percussively.

Moving around the parked car, Maria Sanchez's body reflected the late hour-hunched shoulders, stiff legs. She wanted a bath, some Sleepytime tea and the Amy Tan novel that awaited her. She felt the weight of her sidearm in her purse as she adjusted its strap on her shoulder. When out on active duty she wore it holstered at her side, but the last four hours of her day had been paperwork, and she had transferred the gun to her bag. At least another four to go if she were to get even partly caught up. But no more on that night. She had clocked out. Amy Tan owned the rest of her waking hours.

She closed the side door to the garage, and stepped into darkness. The light alongside the back door hadn't come on, which surprised her since it worked off a sensor that should have automatically switched it on at sunset. It must have been burned out also. Just like the one in the garage. God, she wanted that bath.

Something moved behind her. A cop learned the difference between the elements and human beings. This was not wind, not the elements. It was human movement. Her right hand dropped and reached for a weapon she now remembered wasn't there-her terror mounted.

The crook of a man's elbow choked her windpipe. Next came a hard kidney punch. Sanchez's handbag slipped to the wet grass. She tried to respond as she'd been trained-as a police officer; to compartmentalize and set aside her terror. She drove back her elbow sharply and bent forward, driving her butt into the man behind her. The attempt did nothing to loosen the grip of that chokehold. Instead, the defensive move put more pressure on her own throat, increasing the pain, restricting the blood flow. She stomped down hard- hoping to connect with an instep, shatter it. She could smell beer and sour sweat and it was these smells that increased her fear.

Then another kidney punch. Sanchez felt herself sag, her resistance dwindle. She hadn't put up much of a fight, but now she knew she was going to lose it. She suddenly feared for her life.

Her reaction was swift and intense. She forced herself up, managing to head-butt a chin or a forehead. The viselike hold on her neck slackened. She felt the warmth of blood surge toward her brain. Briefly, relief. She tried once again to rock forward and this time break the grip for good.

But now the grip intensified. This guy meant business. He cursed and jerked his locked hold on her neck, first right and then sharply left. She heard her own bones go, like twigs snapping. And then cold. A brutal, unforgiving chill, racing through her body. In seconds, all sensation of her body was gone. She sank toward the mud and her face fell into the muck. Raspy breathing from above and behind her. And then even it disappeared, overwhelmed by a whining in her ears and that desperate cold that finally consumed her.

The night air, a grim mixture of wind and slanting rain, hit Boldt's face like needles. Seattle was a police beat where the weather could and did compromise a crime scene, often in a matter of minutes. On the advice of Bernie Lofgrin and his forensic team-the Scientific Identification Division, or SID-the department had issued foul weather directives for all first officers- the first patrol person to arrive on the scene. Regulations now required plastic tarps and oversized umbrellas as mandatory equipment for the trunk of every cruiser. But mistakes were still made, and that night seemed ripe for them.

As Boldt hurried up the home's short pouredcement driveway, he faced the garage, behind and to the left of the house. A basketball hoop and paintchipped backboard faced the street. Boldt ignored the garage for the time being, his attention instead focused on the SID van parked there in the drive. Of all the divisions, SID should have understood the importance of protecting evidence, should have respected the department's attitude toward parking on private property. And yet there was the SID step van, inexplicably parked in the victim's driveway. One expected the occasional procedural error from the medical examiner's chuck wagon, even tolerated it when, as had happened earlier that night, an ambulance had been required to carry away a victim, and so had likely parked in the drive. But as the collectors and keepers of evidence, SID had no excuse for parking in a crime scene driveway for any reason. Some SID tech had wanted to avoid the rain, that was all, and that wasn't good enough. The infraction incited Boldt's temper, and in a rare display of emotion, he exploded at the first SID tech he encountered. He ordered the van relocated to the street.

Privately, Boldt blamed the "Blue Flu," SPD's first sickout by its officers in the history of the department. The Flu had so overwhelmed morale that it now apparently offered even civilian employees-like those who peopled SID-an excuse to turn in shoddy, rushed work. He wondered what chance law enforcement had if the five-day-old sickout continued. He also feared the consequences; shoddy work wasn't the only outcome of the Flu-officers, including Boldt, had been threatened by anonymous calls. Lines were being drawn. Violence bubbled beneath the surface.

A first-degree burglary indicated an assault, in this case a broken neck and the probable rape of Sanchez, a cop. Boldt felt the urgency of the situation-this case needed to clear before the press had a chance to run with it, before the press became fixated on the vulnerability of a police department weakened by the Flu.

Already on the job, Detective Bobbie Gaynes offered Boldt and the investigation a ray of hope. Because of the Flu, and a lottery-like case-assignment strategy that had the depleted ranks-lieutenants and above, mostly, accepting whatever cases Dispatch threw at them-this crime scene belonged to neither Boldt nor Gaynes, but to Lieutenant Daphne Matthews, whose official posting was that of staff psychologist. Boldt expected Matthews on the scene momentarily, even looked forward to it. They worked well together.

A woman in her early thirties who regularly altered her looks for the fun of it, the diminutive Gaynes currently wore her hair cut short and colored a dark red. The heavy rimmed black "Geek" glasses and light makeup created a style that was a cross between hip urban single woman and computer programmer, which actually went a fair distance to describing her personality as well. Gaynes lived for computer chat rooms these days.

Her prompt arrival on the scene came as no surprise. Boldt had personally brought Gaynes to Homicide following her stellar work on a serial killer case some years earlier. Before that, she had worked Special Assaults-Sex Crimes, as her fellow officers called it. With the Sanchez crime scene initially reported as a burglary/assault, rape couldn't be ruled out. Gaynes was a good detective to have on hand.

Boldt kept expecting the press. The lights. The questions. They would need answers immediately.

"You knew Maria Sanchez didn't you?" Gaynes asked.

"I know her personally," Boldt corrected. "Yes."

"I only meant-"

Boldt interrupted. "She sat the kids a few times." He added, "The kids loved her."

Violent crimes against fellow police officers held special significance for anyone carrying a badge. All crimes were not investigated equally-a fact of life. Members of the immediate police family deserved and received special attention. Maria Sanchez would be no exception.