Damaged Goods (Don't Call Me Hero Book 2) (9 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

It was mid-afternoon, but the dark clouds in the sky made it appear more like nighttime. Webber Park was empty except for a few vagrant men huddled beneath the picnic enclosures, trying to ward off the worst of the whipping wind and steady rainfall. Even though it was raining, I looked forward to those moments in my patrol when I got to leave my FTO in the car and walk around the park. It was only Day Three and I’d already grown tired of my supervisor, but I was sure he’d have the same to say about me. My only solace was the knowledge that although Mendez was an annoyance, he was also temporary. If I played by the rules, spit-shined my shoes, and did his paperwork for him, I’d have my own beat soon enough.

My police radio crackled at my hip with an incoming call from central dispatch: “432.”

“This is 432,” I heard Mendez’s voice over the radio.

“432,” the original voice recited, “you’ve got a 10-53 at 45th and Lyndale. Multiple car accident, Code Eight.”

Leaving the pedestrian walk, I jogged back to the patrol car where Mendez already had the reds and blues flashing. I didn’t waste time removing my rain jacket even though my seat would be wet the rest of our shift.

“Sounds serious,” I said as I buckled up. “Code Eight. EMS is en route?”

Mendez grunted affirmatively, and we began to drive in the direction of the accident.

If possible, it started to rain even harder when we arrived on scene. The corner of 45th and Lyndale was a sprawling three-way intersection, dotted by fast food restaurants and small businesses. Traffic had come to a complete stop and only the rain kept the gawkers and onlookers inside of their vehicles. Beyond the rapid back and forth of the patrol car’s windshield wipers I could see the flashing lights of an ambulance and fire truck, but we were the first police officers to arrive.

A white four-door sedan was tipped over on its side in the middle of the intersection and a second vehicle, a blue coupe, had veered head-on into a row of parked cars. Broken glass and bits of plastic and twisted metal littered the intersection.

One of the paramedics was helping a man and a woman out of the nearly inverted vehicle. They looked shaken up, but not seriously hurt. The vast majority of emergency responders were swarmed around the second vehicle. There were too many bodies in the way and too much distance for me to visually assess the condition of the second vehicle and its driver and possible passengers.

“Set up a road block to redirect traffic,” Mendez instructed me, “and I’ll check out what we’re dealing with.”

The trunk of our car was equipped with road flares and first aid materials. I began to establish a perimeter around the two-car crash. Statistically, directing traffic could be more hazardous than a high-speed pursuit, especially when it was overcast and raining. Vehicles drove too fast and too close, and after a while of pointing and waving and moving traffic safely through the intersection, my uniform pants and yellow rain slicker had become splattered with dirt and debris. To add insult to injury, tires kicked up rainwater, soaking my already saturated uniform.

Despite my soggy clothes, I preferred this task to what Mendez was doing. I had training as a first responder, but I was grateful the paramedics had already arrived and those kinds of services weren’t needed from me. The sight of blood didn’t bother me—in Embarrass I had once wrestled with a guy tripping on animal tranquilizers in a bathroom covered in his own blood—but this was different.

Mendez strolled across the intersection. “You making mud pies over here, Miller?” he called to me.

I shook out my legs. My socks were soaked through and the polyester material of my uniform pants clung uncomfortably to my skin.

“Our 10-53 turned out to be a 10-54.”

“Shit.” My stomach dropped. “Someone died?”

My partner nodded. “Looks like the driver wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. His head practically went through the windshield. If you’ve ever wanted to see what a brain looks like, you should check it out.”

I involuntarily shuddered from the mental imagery. I didn’t need to play tourist. I knew too well what the insides of a man’s cranium looked like.

Mendez pulled a driver’s license out of his jacket pocket. “Brian Daniel Grimes,” he read out loud before handing the photo ID to me.

I stared down at the laminated image of a smiling man with dark hair and brown eyes. Brian Grimes had only been forty-two. “How about the other car?” I asked.

“They’ll be fine. EMTs are recommending they get checked out at a hospital, but they’ll live.”

“Do you want me to take their statement?”

“No. I need you to contact next of kin. I’ll stay here and wait for the traffic unit to show up.”

“Me?” I was startled by his orders. He wouldn’t let me drive the patrol car and yet he wanted me to fly solo to tell someone that a loved one had died.

“You’re a woman,” he reasoned with an abrupt shrug. “You’re better at feelings—being sympathetic and shit.”

“Being sympathetic and shit,” I repeated in a voice devoid of emotion.  ”I thought I was supposed to be a badge.”

Mendez’s eyes narrowed. “Just take care of it,” he ordered. “That’s an old address on his ID and there’s no registration in the car, so you’ll have to call dispatch to get an updated home address off the vehicle’s plates.”

He tossed me the car keys; it was the only time he’d ever relinquished them.

I snatched the key ring out of the air. “Thanks,” I tried not to snarl.

The rain continued to fall as I slowly drove out to Brian Grimes’ former residence. I was in no hurry to tell his family that he’d died in a car accident. He hadn’t lived in the Webber-Camden neighborhood, so the drive took me to someone else’s beat in another precinct. The house was in a nice neighborhood, the kind I imagined graduating to when I’d grown sick of apartment life. The streets were lined with mature maple trees whose seedpods blanketed the streets and sidewalks like a lush, green carpet.

I parked the patrol car in front of the Grimes’ residence and sat for a moment with the vehicle still running. The home was a cute two-story bungalow. A warm, yellow glow radiated from the partially curtained windows that faced the street. Death notification was the least desirable duty as a police officer and also the one responsibility for which we had the least amount of training. I couldn’t recall any classroom training, but I’d had on-the-job training with my original FTO on a call the previous year. A young boy had been run over in the streets where he’d played. It had been the worst day of my short police career.

A phone call would have been immensely easier, but inappropriately callous. Those words, that uniformed presence on a person’s front stoop, it could be the worst news a family would ever hear, which was why it was so important it be done in person, in time, and with delicacy. I couldn’t imagine my own parents receiving a phone call or a form letter from the military if I hadn’t made it out of that desert.

My lips moved over the official words I’d soon be saying: “I regret to inform you …”

My boots and socks squished as I walked from the patrol car up the inlaid brick walkway. The yard was manicured with red cedar mulch in the flowerbeds on either side of the central walkway. The few feet between the road and the house told me much about Brian Grimes. He had children—young kids who played sports as evidenced by the soccer ball and red plastic wiffle ball bat I saw in the front yard. The red minivan parked in the driveway was adorned with bumper stickers that told me someone in the family ran half-marathons and that they were Minnesota Twins fans.

Four concrete steps led up to a narrow wooden porch covered by the overhang of the roof. Planters spilling with purple and white petunias hung from hooks on the ceiling, their sweet scent perfuming the thick, humid air.

I took off my patrolmen’s cap and tucked it under one arm. I ran my hand over the top of my head to quickly assess my hair situation. Rain and humidity always made my hair curlier than usual, but it felt properly tamed, pulled back in the low bun I wore knotted at the nape of my neck.

I pressed my finger against the round, illuminated doorbell. I could hear its musical chime from somewhere in the house. A dog—a big one by the sound of it—began to bark.

I heard a woman’s stern command: “Quiet, Kirby,” she yelled. The dog promptly ceased its alarm.

A nervous smile crept up on me. I wondered if they’d named the dog after the baseball player, Kirby Puckett. He’d been one of my favorite Minneapolis Twins when I was little.

A young woman came to the door. She was pretty—dark hair and a serious face—probably Hmong, one of the major ethnic groups in the Twin Cities. She wore an old t-shirt over her thin frame and running shorts.

“Mrs. Grimes?” I guessed.

“Yes?”

“Are you related to Brian Daniel Grimes?”

“He’s my husband. Has something happened?” she asked.

“Ma’am, may I come in?”

“Oh, of-of course,” she stuttered.

Inside the home it was warm and clean. I took care to knock the mud from the bottom of my boots. I didn’t want to be more of an inconvenience than I was already going to be.

We walked past a young boy seated on the carpet in the middle of the living room. The TV was on, some children’s program quietly playing in the background.

I gestured to the couch. “You should probably sit down.”

Mrs. Grimes scooped up the small boy and set him in her lap. Chubby fingers fisted in her dark hair before she gently pried them off.

Normally I would have sat beside the next of kin or at least crouched down to be at her eye-level. My uniform was soaked through though, and I didn’t want to ruin her furniture. I stood before her and cleared my throat. “Mrs. Grimes, your husband was in a car accident this afternoon. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but he died while paramedics were attempting to revive him.”

I watched the woman’s mouth slowly fall open. The anguished wail that came out of her parted lips brought me back to one of my first days in Afghanistan. I was in the city of Kubal, which might as well have been a distant planet for all it resembled my hometown of St. Cloud. The
adhan
—the Islamic call to prayer made five times a day—rolled out from the mosque minarets across the city. The sound of Brian Grimes’ wife’s grief and the
adhan
mixed in my brain.

It stopped raining soon after I left the Grimes’ home. I had to return to the site of the car accident to pick up Mendez. I was tempted to leave him there and make him find his own way back to the precinct. But he was my FTO and if I pissed him off there was no way he’d recommend me for full active duty again.

When I arrived on the scene Mendez and the guys from another patrol were eating pizza while homicide and the traffic unit took pictures of the crash and did their scene recreation. To an outsider it might look heartless—cops sitting on the hood of the patrol car, eating a sausage and mushroom pizza while surrounded by the remnants of a fatal crash. But you have to dehumanize it—take the emotion out of death—or you’ll never make it.

I stopped the vehicle and rolled down the driver side window to catch my partner’s attention.

“Hey, Miller,” one of the officers in the traffic unit greeted. “What’s good?”

I nodded in return. I didn’t recognize the guy, but we might have been in the academy together. Being one of the only women in the department meant that most people knew who I was even if I had no idea who they were. I was a novelty in a seemingly endless stream of mustachioed Vikings.

“You ready, Mendez?” I called from behind the steering wheel.

He shoved one last piece of pizza into his mouth. “Yeah,” he declared around the cheese and sausage. “Skooch over.”

“I’m driving.”

My partner looked at me. Something in my face must have told him I wasn’t in the mood to fight about this. Instead of pulling rank, he slid into the passenger seat.

“432,” came a call over the radio. “What’s your 10-20?”

I picked up the handset. “This is 432,” I replied. “We’re finishing up with that 10-54 on 45th and Lyndale.”

“Are you 10-8?” The dispatcher wanted to know if we were available for our next call.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“There’s a 10-73 near 41st and Colfax. Neighbors called it in.”

10-73 was code for an abandoned vehicle. Normally it wasn’t a big deal, but you never knew driving up to the car what you might find inside: drugs, guns, explosives, dead bodies.

“Copy,” I told the radio dispatcher. “432 is en route.” I returned the in-car handheld to its holster.

Mendez whistled under his breath. “Looks like my rookie’s all grown up.”

“I never was a rookie,” I retorted.

I glanced in the rearview mirror at my reflection. Tired, worried eyes stared back at me. There was no time for emotion, no time for reflection. You’re onto the next call and you have to wipe the slate clean. But you have to unpack all of the horrible things you’ve seen at some point or you’ll go crazy or explode like a powder keg. It was only my first week back, and I already felt myself rapidly reaching that point.