Julia Spencer-Fleming - All Mortal Flesh

“Dispatch, I am responding.” O’Brien tapped her computer screen to register the time and bring up an incident log. She turned on her lights and pulled into the passing lane. Traffic to her right, already slow due to the storm-imposed speed limit of forty-five miles per hour, decelerated even further as she swept past.

She was a scant five miles from Pattersonville when her radio lit up again. “Eight-one-nine, be advised the suspicious individual has left the Indian Hill rest station and is headed east in a 1992 Volvo station wagon, dark green.”

“Plates?”

There was a pause. “Hold on on the plates.”

Huh. That was odd. “Should I pursue?”

“Eight-one-nine, the manager reports the POI may have switched plates with one of his employees. We’re trying to get a confirmation on that. Please proceed without lights.”

O’Brien turned off the lights but kept her speed at a steady fifty-five, which was as fast as she was going to go, unless this guy turned out to be Osama bin Laden.

“Eight-one-nine, we have a confirmation that one employee’s rear license plate now matches that of the stolen car last seen in possession of Dennis Shambaugh.”

Her computer screen flashed on with the BOLO for Shambaugh. MILLERS KILL POLICE DEPARTMENT glowed over a mug shot.

“Suspect is wanted for assaulting an officer, GTA, questioning in a homicide, questioning in a Class B fraud. Suspect is not known to be armed, but has a prior felony assault conviction. Units eight-two-oh and eight-one-eight are on their way. Proceed with extreme caution.”

Her adrenaline kicked into high gear. She sped up, the powerful engine growling, the windshield wipers slapping hard against the snow that seemed to bullet straight toward her. She passed the Pattersonville travel plaza. She passed car after truck after SUV-what were all these people out for on a day like this? She came up behind a grandpa who didn’t recognize her outline in the swirling, snowy gloom and who continued on his steady forty-mile-an-hour way in the passing lane. She gave him the lights, and eventually he noticed and moved to the right.

She snapped off the red-and-whites and accelerated again. She figured she must be getting close. She divided her attention between the road ahead and the vehicles to her right, a task complicated by the poor visibility. Thank God the perp hadn’t stolen one of those Japanese cars that look like fifty per cent of everything else on the road. She could concentrate on picking out the unique boxy shape of the Volvo.

SUV. SUV. Lincoln. Toyota. Mazda. Toyota. ’Burbmobiles and grampmobiles and generics.

Then, just past her right front corner, the outline of a Volvo station wagon. Dark, although she wouldn’t have laid money it was green. She flicked on her radio. “Dispatch, this is eight-one-nine. I have a possible match in sight. I can’t make out the plate in this muck.”

“Eight-one-nine, proceed. Eight-two-oh is ten miles behind you bearing west.” And so could continue past her after the suspect if she pulled over the wrong guy.

“Dispatch, I am proceeding.” She turned on her video recorder and hit the lights.

The Volvo immediately pulled forward, accelerating into the blowing snow and, as O’Brien stepped on her gas, disappearing.

“Holy crap,” she said. “He’s turned his lights off.” She turned the siren on, gripped her wheel, and hurtled after him, the noise jabbing into her head, drowning out the too-fast beat of her heart. No way he could get away. It was the Thruway, not a country road. No exit up ahead except through the Amsterdam toll, where local police were probably already moving into position.

But what he could do was cause one god-awful accident. How far was her siren going to carry over the howl of the wind and the roar of the blower and the swish of the wipers? “Get off the road,” she muttered beneath her breath.

A shape loomed out of the darkness ahead. O’Brien swore and stood on the brakes, her car’s rear shaking like a bucking bronco. The red taillights loomed larger, and larger, and she gritted her teeth and braced for the impact, and then the traffic in the right lane opened up and the SUV slid across the lane and into the snow piled by the side of the road.

“Dispatch, vehicle off the Thruway at my mark,” she got out, right before a flurry of red brake lights sparked through the gray snow haze. A car in front of her spun into the median. She swerved, clipped a minivan with her rear right quarter, saw the car ahead of it slip sideways oh God please don’t roll and the minivan crunch into its hood, both vehicles spinning out of control oh God please and then ahead of her another car skidded out of the murk and plunged into the median and kept going and going and she registered no lights and she registered box and she said, “God damn, he’s taking the turnaround. He’s trying to head east.”

A split-second glance in her rearview showed her nothing following in the six feet of visibility she had. She swung the car into the turnaround, struggling to hold it, skidding wide, the tires churning and clutching, the dim shape of the Volvo almost-maybe there in front of her. Her wheels dug down into the snow, caught on sand and gravel, and she surged forward, the frame shuddering, only to slam on the brakes as she went past the Volvo, went past its nose, which wasn’t where it should have been, and realized it hadn’t been able to keep the turn and had instead skewed backward, down into the hollow of the median.

“Suspect has come to a halt,” O’Brien said, not realizing she was shouting until the words rang in her abused ears. She turned the siren off. “I have at least three vehicles off the road in addition. At least one collision.”

“Ambulances on the way,” Dispatch said.

She unholstered her weapon and wrenched open her door. The wind and snow beat against her face. She kicked through the churned-up mess of snow and earth and then waded into the median, her gun in position. She stopped to the right of the driver’s door. She could see the man inside, pale-faced and dark-haired. Thickset and terrified-looking. She kept her sights on him. “Get out!” she screamed against the wind. “Keep your hands where I can see them!”

He unlatched the door and listed out, one hand in the air. “Both hands up!” He flopped his wrist, and she could see that there was something wrong with his other arm. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a whirl of red and white. Her backup.

“Dennis Shambaugh,” she yelled. “You’re under arrest.”

Clare sat at her desk and watched the snow fall past the diamond-paned windows in her office. It made a beautiful picture, like an illustration from a Snow White storybook she had as a girl. She could imagine herself opening the casement and pricking her finger, the red against the snow. Hair black as ebony, skin white as snow, lips red as blood.

Blood on snow. She wrenched her gaze away from the window and forced her attention back to the papers in front of her. She had done all she could reasonably do. She had called the people who had lost animals, and then she had called the police. Why weren’t they the ones who had seen the pattern, anyway? She was a priest. Why did she have to do their legwork for them?

She flashed on a long-ago conversation with Russ.

Legwork? he had teased.

Well, that’s what they call it on TV.

She smacked the papers with the flat of her hand. No more of that. She was going to get her work finished and go home. Make some soup and put in a DVD and say her prayers and go to sleep. And that would be the end of the first day of never seeing Russ again.

She sank her head in her hands. That was the blood and blackness in her picture. She had already done this, just last Monday, and been whipped from pillar to post in the past four days. His wife was dead, then she wasn’t. He was a suspect, then Clare was. He needed her, relied on her, leaned on her. Then he weighed her and found her wanting. Yesterday morning he sat here, right here in this office, and let her hold his heartbreak in her hands. Now they couldn’t talk to each other.