Richard Hale - Frozen Past

“I think they’re looking at our footprints. Crap!”

“Maybe we should go.”

“No, not yet. Let’s see what happens.”

They watched for a while longer, and then the paramedics loaded the body onto a stretcher and attached a machine which continued the CPR compressions with a piston like arm. They loaded him up in the ambulance and drove off with the siren wailing. Shortly, a uniformed police officer announced there was nothing more to see and asked if everyone would kindly return to their homes.

People shuffled off, talking about what they had seen. Luke and Ellie joined his family and the rest of the neighbors from his court as they all headed back home. He glanced back as they left and saw the woman cop fiddling with some equipment by the fence. He couldn’t tell what she was doing, but he knew it had something to do with them.

Jaxon hated this part of the job. He was tempted to pass this on to Sally, but he was the lead and the job was supposed to fall to him. Contacting the family of a deceased relative was never easy, but when it involved a child it was even more difficult.

The boy from the pool was now in a refrigerator at the county morgue awaiting an autopsy, if the family so desired, or if the evidence dictated a crime had taken place. In the boy’s back pocket, a school paper had been found with the name of the boy at the top left. It had been blurry and faint on the soggy paper, but with a little work they had been able to determine who it had belonged to. It had then been a simple act of pulling School records on the child to get the address and phone number of the parents. He wouldn’t need the phone number. He would do this in person.

Sally decided to go with him and he was glad about that. She handled civilians much better than he did. They arrived at the house at 9:00 in the morning and knocked on the door. His hands were sweating and he was irritated at himself for how he was feeling. He had been quiet all morning and Sally kept turning to look at him as if something was wrong.

“Are you getting a little case of conscience?” Sally finally asked as they waited at the door.

“Why?” he said.

“You look a little nervous and upset.”

He paused, then said, “I’m just pissed I have to be here on a Sunday.”

She shook her head, but said nothing else.

The door was answered by a woman in her mid thirties, brown hair and eyes, pink robe and slippers, holding a spatula, smiling as if the world was good and her life was perfect. He knew he was going to ruin that perception in a few seconds.

Jaxon had his I.D. out and he held it out to the woman. “Morning ma’am, I’m Detective Jennings and this is Detective Winston. We’re with the Fairfax County PD and we’d like to have a word with you regarding your son.”

“My son?” She said, the smile slipping from her face as she glanced at the badge.

“Yes. May we come in?”

She hesitated, and then opened the door wide. “Yes, please do.”

He let Sally go first and followed, entering a foyer with a staircase to his left leading to the upper floor, and a small half bath on his right, painted in a dark red color that reminded him of blood. The entrance to the kitchen was directly in front of him. She led them to the living room, which fell to the right of the kitchen just past the half bath. She gestured to the couch and said, “Let me get my husband.” They nodded and sat.

She disappeared up the stairs and silence permeated the room as they waited. Jaxon glanced around, noting the loveseat to his right, large flat screen TV on a dark stand of wood in front of them, and various tables and cabinets spaced throughout the rest of the room. A small dining room joined the living room and what must be the kitchen through an entrance to the right of the TV.

They heard footsteps on the stairs and then the woman returned, followed by a short, stocky man of about the same age. He had light, sandy, blond hair, blue eyes set wide, and a goatee, neatly trimmed.

“Morning officers,” he said. “What’s this about my son?”

Jaxon cleared his throat. “This is never easy so I’ll get right to it. Your son was found dead early last night.”

The woman’s hand flew to her mouth as a gasp escaped her and the husband, though clearly shocked, turned and supported his wife as her legs gave out and she held on to him trying to remain standing.

“No!” The woman wailed. “It can’t be. He was just with me last night.”

The husband appeared angry, and said, “Where?”

“He was pulled from your neighborhood pool about 8:30 p.m. last night,” Sally said in a soft voice. “We are truly sorry.”

The woman looked at her husband and then began to laugh hysterically. Jaxon had seen a lot of different reactions from people, including screaming, fainting, vomiting, crying, wailing and shocked giggling, but he had never seen the kind of laughter he was watching. He questioned his tactic now, and wondered if he had caused the woman to lose her mind completely.

The woman stopped laughing and turned to him, “You’re wrong officers. My son is not dead.”

As if on cue, a boy of about fourteen entered the room, sleep still in his eyes, a rumpled Washington Redskins t-shirt twisted around his torso. He looked at Jaxon and shock registered for a brief second on the boy’s face and then he seemed to recover.

“What’s going on, Mom?” the boy asked.

Jaxon looked at Sally and had a sinking feeling in his gut as he watched her face. She had come to the same conclusion he had. He turned back to the boy.

“Are you Lucas Neal Harrison?” Jaxon asked.

The boy looked at his parents and then back at Jaxon and said, simply, “That’s me.”

Jaxon cursed quietly under his breath.

Ellie lay in her bed, her head resting on her hands, looking out the window at the bright sunshine streaming in. The vision of the boy being pulled from the pool dressed in the clothes they had used for ‘George’ the dummy had haunted her all night. She hadn’t slept well and had only just dozed off an hour ago when her noisy brother had startled her awake by slamming the toilet seat in the bathroom next to her room.

Jimmy’s idea of putting the dummy in the pool had seemed innocent enough at the time, but even before the revelation of the real body, she had questioned their act when she saw all the activity it had attracted. With the shocking discovery of the real boy in the pool, she had this terrible feeling of sinking in quicksand with no way out and nobody to help her.

She sat up and brushed her short hair, the simple act reminding her of Luke’s finger’s doing the same thing last night before all the weird stuff started happening. She smiled to herself as she remembered how good he felt. Why couldn’t these good feelings stay? Every time something went right, it was followed by something going bad. It made her feel cursed.

She had called Luke in the middle of the night again and found he was wide awake. They had talked for a while, but the comfort she found with him the previous night escaped her last night. She could tell he was tense and worried about what might happen. He wasn’t his usual happy go lucky self and she had been a little disappointed he hadn’t been able to alleviate her fears. She had finally said goodnight to him at about four in the morning.

Two nights in a row with little sleep left her feeling anxious and sluggish all at the same time. She went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face and then brushed her teeth. The dark circles under her eyes stood out against her pale face like small bruises.

She went back to her room and logged onto the computer wanting to see if there was anything about the incident from last night in the news. She saw she had an e-mail notifying her of a message on Facebook. She logged onto her Facebook account and froze.