Rachelle McCalla - Troubled Waters

“I just told you.” The fire had gone out of her voice. Her chin quivered ever so slightly.

“So you never saw him outside of work?”

“Leave,” she pointed to the door. She wasn’t ordering him anymore. Her eyes were pleading.

Heath felt an unfamiliar urge to soothe her. “Tracie.” He spoke her name softly.

She flinched as he drew closer.

And suddenly, Heath realized he had to back off. “I’m sorry. I’m out of here.” He glanced back as he slipped through the door. Tracie’s face was still turned away, and her slight shoulders heaved as she gulped a breath.

For a fleeting instant, he wanted to grab her up into his arms, to protect her from harm as he had on Saturday. But something told him he was already too late.

Trevor had gotten to her first.

It took Tracie most of the rest of the morning to compose herself. Heath showed up at her desk shortly before noon. He handed her the keys. “Why don’t you drive? You know the way.”

She accepted them with quiet thanks and tried not to shiver when his hand touched hers. His comment on the phone the night before had reminded her of how rarely she experienced human contact. But she didn’t need to get it from him. She had friends. Tim was one of them.

Tim’s place was on the edge of town, rimmed by woods like so much of northern Wisconsin. Tracie spotted his bike leaning against the side of the porch. She knew he hadn’t driven since his license had been revoked following a drunk-driving charge the year before. She smiled. Tim was a good guy. A lot of drunks just kept on driving without a license.

Heath followed her up the peeling porch steps, and Tracie felt a sense of déjà vu as she recalled what had happened two days before when she and Heath had stood on a Price doorstep. She shook off her nervousness, rang the bell, and waited. No answer. She met Heath’s eyes, he shrugged, and she pressed the buzzer again. Still nothing.

“The bell might be out. Let me try knocking.” Heath reached past her and rapped on the doorframe.

“Here, try the inside door,” Tracie suggested, alert to the possibility of danger, and eager to get inside instead of standing out in the open on the porch. She held the storm door open.

Hardly had Heath’s knuckles touched the inner door than it swung inward. Heath quickly reacted and raised his arm. “Don’t look—” he started.

But Tracie had already seen inside. Tim lay in a pool of blood on the floor.

“Tim!” Tracie gasped as she shouldered past Heath to her fallen friend. Her hand flew to his neck and found a weak pulse. Hope rose within her. “He’s alive!” She could hear Heath behind her, giving instructions over his radio. “We need a medical team, quickly!”

“Tracie?” Tim’s eyelids fluttered.

“Yes, Tim, I’m right here.” She found the wound in his gut and tried to stem the flow of blood. “Help is on the way. Hang in there.”

“Can you hear them?”

Tracie listened for the sound of approaching sirens, though it was far too soon to expect them to arrive. The only sounds she could hear were Heath’s soft footfalls as he scoured the perimeter behind her. “Not yet, Tim, but they’re on their way.”

“They’re singing,” Tim gasped. “So beautiful.” His eyes bore a faraway look.

And suddenly Tracie realized Tim was no longer really with her. “Tim,” she choked on his name. “Tim, stay with me. Look at me!” she demanded.

Tim shifted his gaze to her face, and his pupils dilated as he focused on her.

“Who did this to you?” Tracie could feel the tears running down her cheeks. She realized Tim didn’t have much time. Likely the only way they’d ever bring his killer to justice was if he could name him before he died.

Tracie watched the light fade from his eyes.

“No, Tim. Look at me! Who did this?”

Tim blinked. “T—” he choked. “T-Tre—”

Tracie focused, pleading with her eyes.

“—verrrr.” The last syllable escaped his mouth in a sigh.

And he was gone.

Tracie picked up his hand and held it to her lips. “No.” She tried to squeeze back the tears. “No, please, no.”

She didn’t realize Heath stood behind her until she felt his hand on her back.

“Perimeter’s clear,” he said softly.

Tracie nodded. She didn’t look up at Heath, but neither did she push his hand away. It wasn’t until the paramedics came rushing in that she stood and turned to face him.

“We shouldn’t have left him alone. We should have put him in protective custody.”

“He didn’t want to go,” Heath reminded her. “Besides, we thought we had everybody.”

“It doesn’t matter!” Tracie hugged herself tightly. “We should have insisted. He could have gotten mad at us, but at least he’d still be alive.” She looked back over her shoulder in time to see the medics draping a sheet over Tim’s body. She pinched her eyes shut.

Heath’s hand fell gently on her arm. “We can’t go back in time. Don’t blame yourself.”

Much as Tracie would have liked to push him away, she found she couldn’t bring herself to shrug off the light touch of his hand. She took a moment to steady her breathing, then looked Heath directly in the eye. “We have to catch whoever did this.”

The corner of Heath’s strong jaw shifted in a determined expression. “I think it was the same person who shot at us on Saturday.”

“That makes sense,” Tracie acknowledged, “but we don’t have any evidence to link anyone to either crime.”

“Don’t we?” Heath moved closer to Tracie as investigators scurried around behind them, and his hand slid higher on her arm. “You asked Tim who did this. I heard his answer.”

“You did?” A shudder rippled through her. “But all he said was—” She stopped and pinched her eyes shut, too afraid to speak the word out loud.

Heath’s mouth moved close to her ear. “Trevor,” he whispered.

She pulled back and looked at him, her eyes wide. “But what does that mean? Trevor’s friends? Trevor’s associates, his rivals, his enemies? We don’t know what Tim was going to say.”

“He said Trevor.” Heath looked at her with an intensity that made her want to shrink away.

“Trevor’s dead,” she insisted in a whisper. Didn’t Heath understand? She’d seen Trevor’s dead body floating in Lake Superior. There was no way a dead man could commit murder.

“His body was never recovered,” Heath challenged her.

Tracie shook her head, still feeling shell shocked. “Trevor’s dead,” she repeated.

Heath nodded, took a step back, and bowed his head. When he looked back up at her, his eyes wore an unreadable look. “Right.” He said simply. “Right.”

Jonas sounded frustrated when Heath finally reached him by phone later that afternoon to report on what had happened.

“He was still alive when you reached the house?” his supervisor clarified.

“Barely,” Heath conceded. “If we’d have gotten there a moment later, we wouldn’t know anything. As it was, I think it’s pretty clear he was blaming his brother for his death, but Tracie doesn’t necessarily see things that way.”

“Ah,” Jonas’s tone brightened. “The two of you are close now, hmm?”

Heath cringed. “She’s not the most open and trusting person, but I think she’s starting to let me in.” He thought about the brief time she’d allowed him to rest his hand on her arm. It wasn’t much—for most people, he wouldn’t think of it as anything. But with Tracie, it was progress.

“Starting to?” Frustration edged back into Jonas’s tone. “Look, we’ve got a gunman on the loose and we’ve just lost a witness. We don’t have time for you to ease your way into this. Tracie Crandall knows way more than she’s telling, and until we learn what she knows, we run the risk of losing more lives on this, maybe yours.” Jonas paused, and his voice dropped an octave to take on bone-chilling seriousness. “If you can’t handle this, Heath, tell me now, and I’ll put in someone who can.”