Megan
The streets had iced over last night, but as Texas weather was wont to do, it changed drastically this morning. The sun rose warm and bright, putting a quick end to the ice in the places it touched. The shady areas took longer, but between the sunshine and the sand trucks that were out and about, most of the major roads were safely passable. Good. I wasn’t in the mood to be dealing with traffic accidents.
I found myself wondering where Wade had spent last night. Had he found an open church to hole up in? A homeless shelter? A twenty-four-hour diner? I also found myself wondering where the facts ended and the fiction began with Wade Chandler Mayhew. Was he a violent juvenile delinquent as his record and the evidence seemed to reflect and as his mother portrayed him? Or had her false testimony led to her son receiving harsher sentences than he deserved?
I could only hope that someday the boy would be found and the facts would be ferreted out. Call me an idealist, but I still hoped for truth and justice.
Brigit and I set out on patrol. As we cruised through the neighborhoods, we spotted the slushy remnants of yesterday evening’s snowmen. Scarves and carrot noses and charcoal eyes lay in yards, the snowmen they once graced having committed snowicide. You’re not alone, Frosty.
My first call of the day involved a frozen pipe that had burst in a shopping center parking lot, creating a potential traffic hazard. I put out a semicircle of orange cones and directed cars around the area until a city works crew came and took over.
My second call involved documenting property damage on a corner lot in the Colonial Country Club neighborhood. Someone had lost control of their car when driving last night and taken out a brick mailbox and a decorative fountain, leaving muddy tire ruts in the yard. The culprit failed to own up to his or her blunder, however, leaving the homeowner furious and facing a bill of a couple of thousand dollars to replace the damaged property. I took down notes for the report I’d complete later.
I was starting to ponder lunch options when dispatch came on the radio, asking for an officer to respond to a call in the neighborhood just north of R. L. Paschal High School. A 9-1-1 call had come in, but the caller had hung up immediately after the dispatcher answered.
I grabbed my mic. “Officer Luz and Brigit responding.”
The call could have been a false alarm. Some people had the 9-1-1 emergency number programmed on speed dial and inadvertently hit the number on occasion. Other times, people thought they were having an emergency, but the situation resolved itself before their call was answered. I remember hearing of such a call last Easter, when a father had challenged his sons to see who could stuff the most marshmallow Peeps in their mouth. The father won with thirteen, but found himself suddenly unable to breathe with a baker’s dozen of fluffy yellow chicks lodged in his trachea. He managed to upchuck the chicks before the dispatcher got to the call.
Of course there was always the possibility that today’s call had been purposely ended, such as in cases of domestic violence where the perpetrator might wrestle a phone from his victim’s hands.
At any rate, any time someone called 9-1-1 and hung up, the operator attempted to contact the caller. In this case, when the operator returned the call, there was no answer.
I pulled my cruiser to a stop in front of the house and took a look. The house was a single-story white brick model with cheery, bright red shutters and a wooden rocking chair on the porch. A line of red-berried holly bushes flanked the front of the house. A large oak tree sat in the front yard, its gnarled roots reaching out from its base for a few feet before disappearing into the earth.
Nothing immediately looked amiss. Though the front curtains were all pulled closed, that wasn’t necessarily unusual, especially given the frigid temperatures of last night. Why leave the windows uncovered and let all that cold in?
My eyes made a quick survey of the surrounding area. There wasn’t much to see. Nobody was out and about at this time of day in winter. They were either at work or huddled inside watching soap operas. A sand-colored Suburban sat across the street a few houses down. On this side of the street, the only vehicle in sight was a blue Subaru Impreza parked near the corner.
I climbed out of the patrol car and let Brigit out of her enclosure in the back, wrapping her leash several times around my hand to keep her close. The two of us walked up the winding brick pathway to the door. Brigit had her head raised, her nose twitching as it scented the air. Whatever she smelled excited her to no end. She launched into a prancing dance, her front legs coming off the ground like a saloon girl performing, her tail wagging so hard it whipped against the back of my legs.
Something had my partner agitated. But what?
Gasp! My heart ping-ponged in my chest when a squirrel darted out from the bushes a few feet away. He ran up the oak tree and squatted on a branch, swishing his bushy tail in indignation as he chastised me and my partner with a call of chik-chik-chik-chik-chik! Heck, I was tempted to chik-chik-chik him right back. The damn rodent had scared the snot out of me.
As Brigit and I drew closer to the front door, my eyes spotted a small, hand-lettered sign in the front window that spelled out MEEMAW’S DAY CARE in primary colors.
Kids. Hmm.
Maybe one of them had been playing with the telephone and accidentally called 9-1-1. Or maybe one of the kids had gotten his tongue stuck to a frozen barbecue grill in the backyard. Or maybe Meemaw had suffered a coronary. Or maybe I should stop speculating and go to the front door and find out, huh?
Determined to do just that, I took a few steps forward before being yanked to a stop by my partner. Brigit had stopped in her tracks, her ears pricked. Her head made jerky movements to the left and right as she processed whatever auditory data I, as a mere Homo sapiens, could not detect. The only thing my ears detected was the drip-drip-drip of the icicles melting at the edge of the roof.
Brigit set off to the left, leaning with the effort, pulling hard on the leash. Okay, I knew I was supposed to be the pack leader and take charge, but the truth of the matter was that my gut had begun to churn with a very bad feeling. I’d also learned to trust my partner’s instincts, as different as they might be from mine.
Brigit led me around the side of the house. Melting icicles dripped onto my face, head, and shoulders as we sneaked around. Brigit stopped walking and rose to stand on her hind legs at a window.
Wait. I could hear something now. Was it a child crying?
I stepped closer to take a look. Through a small gap in the curtains, I saw three young children huddled in the center of a bed. All of them appeared terribly frightened, one sucking his thumb with tears rolling down his face, the other two bawling outright. The door to the bedroom was closed.
I supposed it was possible that these three children were in time-out, having done some minor act of mischief that had gotten on Meemaw’s last nerve. But something didn’t feel right about this.
Brigit dropped down from the window and yanked me once again, pulling me along the side of the house to the back. We circled around and she led me to a back door with a square window in the upper half. The curtains on this window were lace, giving me a mottled view into the house.
Holy shit.
Was I seeing double?