Richard Hale - Frozen Past

“We are, aren’t we?”

“The best.”

“Ok then. We’re boyfriend and girlfriend.” He smiled at her and she kissed him again.

As he got lost in the softness of her lips, a faint ‘tap, tap, tap’ invaded his senses. She pulled away and looked toward the back sliding glass door a few feet away.

It came again. Three quick, light taps, as if someone was using their fingernail against the glass. Luke tensed and he felt her shrink into him.

“What is it?” she said.

“Wait,” he said softly, and she waited.

Tap, tap, tap.

“Shit,” he said and got up. She followed him to the door and he tried peering through the glass into the darkness. He could see nothing. He flipped on the outside light and brightness flared into the backyard illuminating the white snow.

He could see nothing out there.

She held onto his arm, leaning into him, as he took another step closer to the glass. Suddenly an object crashed into the door and she screamed as they both jumped back.

It was small, black, and fluttered around on the ground for a second outside the door, then grew still. Luke knew what it was.

“A bird,” he said. He stepped up to the glass and looked closer. “A crow. That’s weird.” And that’s when they heard the sirens.

The whole neighborhood, it seemed, had turned out to watch the spectacle. Luke, Ellie, and his mom and sisters, all stood at the edge of the crowd surrounding the pool and watched as the firemen and policemen rescued ‘George.’ His dad and little brother had stayed at home.

John, Jimmy and their dad came up and stood with them, joining the growing crowd.

“What’s going on,” Mr. Besner said to Luke’s mom.

“I don’t know. I think someone fell in the pool.”

Luke tried not to look at John and Jimmy, but he could sense their nervousness. Ellie held his hand tight and pressed up against him. He could feel her trembling beside him.

“Are you gonna be ok?” he whispered in her ear.

She nodded quickly but said nothing. Her eyes were shining in the flashing lights and her mouth was set in a tight line. He felt surreal and wondered what they had got themselves into. He looked around at the crowd and thought for sure everyone was staring at them though he knew he was probably imagining things. How could anybody know? No one had seen them he was sure.

The rescue workers grew a little more active and the crowd murmured louder seeing that something was happening. Luke watched as they pulled ‘George’ out of the pool and then quickly lay him on the ground. The paramedics seemed frantic.

Something wasn’t right.

Luke craned his neck to look and saw the paramedics urgently hooking up I.V.’s to ‘George’ and one was pressing on his chest doing CPR. Luke’s knees suddenly felt week and he turned to John next to him, but John stared dumbfounded at the scene, his mouth hanging open.

Luke looked harder, straining to see through the crowd and as he heard Ellie gasp, he saw a small, white hand poke through the sleeve of the clothing they used to make the dummy. Then, as someone shifted in the crowd, he saw a paramedic bend to a white face and press his lips to the cold blue lips of the boy they pulled out of the pool. The paramedic was giving mouth to mouth to a real person.

Luke grabbed Ellie as she swooned and sank to her knees.

Detective Jaxon Jennings, homicide investigator for the Fairfax County Police Department, looked down at the boy the paramedics were frantically working on and shook his head. He turned and scanned the crowd, looking for anything. All he saw were scared parents and children of a quiet neighborhood suddenly turned upside down. He knew this place. He had been here a couple of weeks ago on a call about a mutilated dog. No big deal, right, but the department had a policy of investigating all acts of cruelty toward animals. The FBI training they had received dictated it. Too many people who tortured animals graduated to humans later in their demented lives.

“Is he gonna make it?” Sally Winston, his partner, asked over his shoulder.

One of the paramedics working on the boy thought she was talking to him. “Don’t think so. He’s been gone too long. We don’t even have any electrical activity in his heart.”

She looked at Jaxon and her eyes conveyed a sadness he no longer felt at his age. At forty seven, he’d seen too much to feel anymore.

“How long are you guys gonna work on him?” Jaxon asked.

“As long as it takes,” the paramedic snapped.

Jaxon took it in stride, nodded his head and wandered over to the fence, looking out at the crowd.

“What do you think?” Sally said to his back.

He turned and looked at the boy again. “Hard to say right now. Looks like a simple drowning. There are no marks on him I can see at the moment, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any.”

He looked around the pool deck and something caught his eye. He wandered over to the southern side of the deck and stared at multiple footprints near the fence. On the other side, they led off into the parking lot and the crowd.

Sally came over and bent down to look.

“Have any of our people been over here?” Jaxon asked.

“No. The area hasn’t been contaminated. Didn’t know if it was a crime scene yet.” She stood, and he watched her follow the footprints with her eyes as they meandered over to the edge of the pool, where they blended with the footprints the paramedics and cops had made.

Jaxon bent down and looked at the imprint of one shoe. “Kids?” he asked.

She joined him. “Looks to be about the right size.”

“We better get some imprints of these,” he said.

“Sure,” and she left to get the kit.

Jaxon continued to look around and noticed something brightly colored, caught on the top of the fence, fluttering in the breeze. He walked over, careful not to disturb any of the other tracks, stood on his tip toes and pulled the piece of fabric off. He studied it, and then stared out into the crowd again not sure what he was looking for. He pulled an evidence bag out of his jacket pocket and slipped the fabric inside. He was beginning to think there was more to this than met the eye.

Luke’s mom knelt in front of Ellie and ran her hand across Ellie’s face. She looked up at Luke. “Lucas, you should get her home. She shouldn’t be seeing all this. It’s upsetting her.”

“I’m alright, Mrs. Harrison. Really,” Ellie said and stood.

“Are you sure?”

Ellie nodded and grasped Luke’s hand. “I’m sure.”

“Alright.”

Ellie gripped Luke’s arm tightly and leaned up against him. “Sorry,” she whispered in his ear.

“It’s ok. It shocked me too.”

“What is going on?”

“I have no clue. Let’s talk about it later, ok?”

She nodded and stared at the ground. Luke turned to John who gave him a worried look and then proceeded to ignore him. Jimmy looked stoic as he watched everything happening in the pool area.

Luke scanned the faces, worried the person behind The Voice was mingling with the crowd. Didn’t they say the person always returned to the scene of the crime? All the faces seemed normal, and he could see no one acting weird or suspicious. He wondered how he looked to everyone else.

He turned back to the pool and saw the cop who had come out to investigate Ellie’s dog, Bentley. He tensed and then shifted a little so he was hidden behind the man in front of him as he watched the cop scan the crowd. Peeking around the shoulders of the man, he stared as the cop talked to another woman and then they walked over to the fence and looked at something on the ground.

Ellie nudged him. “What are they doing?” she whispered.