Richard Doetsch - Half-Past Dawn

The evidence room was enormous, nearly the size of the building’s footprint. The raw space of concrete floors and walls was filled with thousands of shelves, twelve feet high, their layout creating dozens upon dozens of rows and aisles that formed passages and walkways that ran on for hundreds of feet. The space was lit by harsh, bright fluorescent lights, although the shelves conspired to cast heavy shadows that ran off in every direction.

Boxes of all sizes filled the shelves, their contents varying from dime bags of marijuana to photographs of domestic-violence cases; expensive jewels from the latest store robbery to the two knives taken from the suspect in the slaying of an off-duty cop. Trials were won and lost on the evidence held within this facility.

Jack, Mia, and Charlie walked down the central aisle from which forty rows branched off toward the secondary aisles. One could truly get lost in the labyrinthine space, feeling like Theseus without a thread.

“You forget the scope of the justice system,” Mia said. “And you handle all this yourself?”

“One man per shift,” Charlie said. “It’s really slow most of the time. I’m kind of like the librarian, checking things in and out.”

“Do you ever get lonely?”

“Nah, kind of peaceful. Besides, there’s usually a decent flow of people throughout the day to tell me what’s going on in the world.”

“What do you do if you get hungry?”

“I bring a bag lunch or dinner, but…”

Charlie smiled and tilted his head for them to follow him as he turned down row S. He reached up and pulled down a large cardboard box labeled Evidence 9530273. He lifted the lid to reveal a bag of Oreos, a six of beer, two bottles of water, some chips, magazines, and VHS tapes of The Quiet Man, The Poseidon Adventure, True Grit, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

“I’m prepared for any scenario,” he said in a mock-serious tone.

Jack and Mia laughed, appreciating the humor intended to break Mia’s serious mood.

Charlie put the box away and led them back out to the center aisle. He finally turned and pointed to a vacant section of shelf on row Y. They all looked up.

“Stick it up there in the white-collar-crime section away from all the drugs, jewels, and guns. No one will have any interest in it over here.” Charlie turned and headed back toward his office.

Jack turned to Mia and looked into her eyes. “You’re not going to tell me what’s in the case, are you?”

Mia slowly shook her head.

Jack looked at her as he slid the box onto the deep shelf seven feet up. “You’re sure about this?”

Mia looked up into his eyes. She couldn’t hide her worry. There was an intensity in her face, a focus like Jack had rarely seen. Mia was excellent at hiding her emotions, her thoughts, never betraying her inner feelings to the outside world. But Jack wasn’t the outside world. He could read her as if she were an open book.

“I’ve never been more sure about anything,” Mia softly said.

And finally, Jack realized that what he saw in his wife’s eyes wasn’t worry or concern about her latest case. It was a far more base emotion.

It was fear.

Mia’s eyes opened with a start, her heart already pounding in her ears as she awoke from a nightmare into something far worse. She looked around the barren, windowless room, and except for the bed she lay on and the tray of food on the floor, there was nothing to offer any indication of where she was. The heavy brass knobs were polished to a high sheen, while the key mechanism for a dead bolt looked average and recently installed. There was a single lamp in the corner, its forty-watt bulb casting heavy shadows in the small, confined space. The room was not more than ten foot square, and she couldn’t imagine its function beyond a jail cell.

She rose from the bed, her shoulder sore, her head throbbing, and reached for the brass doorknob, although she knew what she would find as she turned and tugged on the thick, heavy door. She laid her ear against the white oak and gently shook the door, listening to its hollow reverberation on the other side. There was no reaction, no approaching footsteps, just the soft echo of the knob turning to and fro and, in the distance, the faint sounds of the city.

Mia turned and looked at the tray of food on the floor. There was a sealed bottle of water. A loaf of bread, cheese, fruit, and a wedge of sausage, like a welcoming tray from some fine hotel. And although she felt hungry-starving, actually-the hollow pit in her stomach, the mix of fear and anger, was too overwhelming to allow her even to think of eating.

Mia had always been able to master her emotions, contain her fear, her pain, her disappointment. Her stepfather had instilled in her that the display of emotions was for the weak, the unintelligent, a sign of our animal heritage. The display of emotions-be it by man or woman-would only serve to fog the mind and impede one from clear thought.

Whether is was the disappointment she felt at being cut from the swim team in eleventh grade after dedicating so many years to the sport or being thrown from her horse at the age of fifteen, her father admonished her tears, scolded her for not burying the pain deep down, never to be spoken of again. She had learned it so well that she was thought of by many as cold and distant. But her face to the world was so contrary to the swirl of emotions she felt within, emotions she didn’t display until she met Jack and he cracked the hard shell she had developed over the years. But those lessons her stepfather forced upon her, while not suitable for a child, had come in handy in her line of work. She was unreadable when she chose to be, masking her feelings with an expertise only seen through by her husband.

But as she thought of Jack, it all came pouring forth in her mind: the rainy bridge, the white Tahoe, the gunshot, her husband’s eyes as he looked pleadingly at her as the car tumbled over into the churning river below.

Despite all of her mastery of her emotions, despite the desperate need to find a means of escape, Mia wrapped herself in her grief.

For the second time, the most important man in Mia’s life had been murdered, violently taken from her as she was forced to bear witness.

And as all strength left her, she collapsed to the floor, her body wracked with sobs.

The call came at 6:30 that morning. Cursing under her breath at whoever had the nerve to rattle her so early on a Friday, Joy Todd rolled over and grabbed the phone to hear her sister utter her name in a fateful tone. Joy sat up and swept her long blond hair out of her face as if it would help her to focus. She climbed out of bed, stretching the kinks out of her back when her sister began to sob.

“Sheila…” Joy said. “What’s wrong?”

Sheila read the headline from the morning paper.

Joy’s anger was immediately vanquished by grief, and she collapsed to the floor, unable to move.

She finally struggled to stand, wiping the tears from her blue eyes, and she knew where she had to go. It was an odd instinct, something that affected everyone when dealing with the tragic death of a loved one. It happened in plane crashes, motorcycle accidents, and shootings. Some kind of mystical tug on the heart and mind drew the grieving to the place of the incident, where they could try to touch the souls of their loved ones as if they lingered waiting to say good-bye. Makeshift memorials were constructed of flowers, candles, handwritten notes, some in pen, some in pencil, many in crayon bidding farewell, expressing their love and anguish to the ones they never got a chance to say good-bye to.