Good Day In Hell. J.D. Rhoades

thousand dollars …”

      “I know,” said Keller. “I’ll find her.”

      “But Jack, please be careful,” she said. “You’re right. This one feels weird.”

      Keller looked back at the picture. He felt the beginnings of the hunter’s rush he always felt when he got a jumper, the steadily rising drumbeat of adrenaline in his veins that grew and grew as he got closer to the takedown. He almost didn’t hear Angela when she said, “So, you seeing Marie this weekend?”

      He tore his eyes away. “We’re trying to get together, yeah. Still trying to iron out the details.”

      “How’s she doing, anyway?”

      Keller shook his head, then sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “She says she doesn’t want to talk about what happened.”

      “That’s not good, Jack. She killed a man.” She said the last sentence quietly, in a near-whisper, even though they were alone. “She’s got to deal with that.”

      He shrugged. “She did what she had to do.”

      “And the fact that it had to be done makes it easier, Jack?” Angela said. “You know better than that.”

      “I know,” he said. His voice was tight with frustration. “But she won’t talk. And I don’t know what to do.”

      Angela put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’m prying.”

      “No,” he said. He sat down. “You’re right. I’m not mad at you. I’m just—” He threw his hands up. She stood behind the chair, rested her chin on top of his head, and hugged him from behind. “Poor Jack,” she said. “Still trying to save everybody.” They stayed like that for a moment before Angela sighed and pulled away. “Stay with it, Jack,” she said softly. “You two—” Her voice caught, then she steadied it. “You two are good for each other.” She looked out the front window toward the street.

      “No regrets?” Keller said after a moment.

      She laughed sadly. “Oh, plenty of those, Keller,” she said. “But nothing I can’t handle.”

      There was a small crowd gathered at the front doorway of the service station as Marie pulled in. Cars were parked randomly around the concrete slab. Marie picked up the radio. “County, thirty-five is 10-23.”

      The reply came back immediately. “10-4,” the dispatcher acknowledged. “Thirty-five, be advised, EMS is en route.” The dispatcher pronounced it “in root.”

      “10-4, County, I hear them,” she replied. She reached into the glove box and pulled out a box of rubber surgical gloves, tucking a pair into her pocket as she got out.

      Marie felt her pulse quicken as she jogged over to the small knot of people. There were three men and a woman, clustered in the doorway. “Move aside, please,” she said. They looked up at her, faces still blank with shock. No one spoke. No one moved, either. Only when she pushed forward did they give ground, reluctantly, as if they were trying to protect her from what they had already seen.

      She saw the body of a man, lying on his back on the floor. His hands were over his face. The hands were covered with blood. Flecks of unidentifiable tissue were mixed into the rapidly congealing fluid coating the fingers. Marie knelt by the body. The people pushed back into their earlier positions, looking down at her. She looked up in irritation. “You people need to get back,” she said. “This is a crime scene.” Nobody moved. “I said, get back!” she snapped. For a brief second she heard the voice she used when she was at the end of her rope with her son, what she called the “Mad Mommy” voice. It seemed to work; the people edged back. Marie fought back the hysterical urge to laugh. Steady, girl, she told herself. She bent back to the man on the ground. She took the pair of rubber gloves from her back pocket and pulled them on. Gently, she pulled the hands away from the face.

      “Oh, God,” she said. She felt her stomach heave. The man’s face was a mess of brain, blood, and smashed bone. I am not going to throw up, I am not going to throw up, she said to herself as she clenched her teeth. Automatically, her hand slid down to the artery at the base of the man’s neck, searching for the pulse she knew she wouldn’t find. The sudden howl of the ambulance pulling in made her jump. She stood up as the shrieking spun down to a rumbling purr. Her knees trembled slightly as she turned toward the two paramedics, a man and a woman, who spilled out of the truck and began jogging toward her. They slowed to a walk as they saw Marie’s face. She shook her head. They came in anyway and she stepped aside. She felt the trembling in her knees begin to spread to the rest of her body. She closed her eyes.

      Against the back of her eyelids, like a picture on a movie screen, she saw another body, lying by the side of a road, illuminated by the riot and flash of the lights of her cruiser, her partner’s face looking up at her, frozen in a last look that said What the hell just happened to me…

      Stop it. She took a deep shuddering breath and straightened her shoulders. Do the work, her own voice came again in her head. Do the next thing. For a moment, she fumbled for what the next thing might be. Secure the scene, the voice said. And the witnesses. She got to work.

      By the time the detective pulled up, Marie had the scene lined off with rolls of bright yellow tape from her trunk and the witnesses corralled over to one side of the parking lot. One of the men had complained that he and his buddy had to get to work and had looked like he was going to make an issue of it. He had even muttered something under his breath about “not taking any shit from any girl deputy.” Marie had just unclipped the handcuffs from her gun belt and stared significantly at him. He had backed down and was now sitting on a stack of boxes.

      Marie was bent down, drawing a chalk circle around a shell casing near the body when the brown unmarked car pulled in. There was a mini-gumball light pulsing blue on the dash, but no siren. A man got out.

      Marie had once had an art class in high school where they had tried to teach her figure drawing. The teacher had told them to start by sketching the basic parts of the body as rounded shapes: an oval for the head, another for the torso, long thin ovals for the limbs. But the man approaching seemed to have been made out of squares and rectangles. His iron-gray hair was cut across the top of his squarish head in a brush cut. His shoulders were broad and blocky and his body seemed to drop straight from them to the ground with no visible waist. His face was pitted with ancient acne scars and his nose had been broken long ago and badly reset, giving him the look of a prizefighter who had had more losses than wins. She was so new, it took her a moment to place the name. Shelby, she finally recalled. She didn’t know anything about him beyond that. He stopped and looked around at the scene, noting the tape and the witnesses. He looked at Marie for a second, then nodded almost imperceptibly. He walked inside and stood over the body for a moment, looking down. Then he turned slowly, looking things over, before walking back out. He jerked his chin at the paramedics sitting in the open door of the ambulance. “They move anythin’?” he said. His voice was surprisingly high for such a big man and his accent was pure country.

      “No sir,” she said.

      Shelby cracked a tight grin, showing crooked teeth. Marie decided he was probably one of the ugliest men she had ever met, but there was something about the smile that relaxed her. “Don’t call me sir,” he said. “I work for my livin’.” Marie recognized the non-com joke that must have been old in the time of the Roman legions. Shelby was obviously ex-military. Marie smiled back, relaxing a little more. “Just checked him over. He was dead when I got here.”

      Shelby nodded again. “Get any statements?”

      “No sir … I mean, no,” she said. “Waiting for you.”

      “Awright,” he said. He looked around. “Looks like you got ever’thing pretty well squared away,” he said. “Good work.”

      “Thanks,” she said.

      He looked back at her, then down at her hands. “Y’better wash that blood off, though. Don’t want to spread it