What really changed the game was that neither the driver nor the passenger looked where I was pointing. They stared straight ahead. “Nothing,” said the driver, “just some snacks.” His tone had changed from polite to something else. It was subtle. Defensive, maybe?
“Can I see those snacks, then?”
“You got a warrant?” he said, the attitude fully shifting now. Everything had flipped.
Long story short, that Ziploc held a couple of eight balls. And along with it, a fat roll of rubber-banded twenties thick as a bat barrel. Aubrey was fourteen, had already been fighting for a year. The medical bills were overwhelming. Insurance covered some but not enough to make a dent. Her meds alone were starving us. Ginny wasn’t even working part-time anymore, staying home to care for Aubrey. We were stuck. Caught in a drain that never stopped swirling.
It all happened fast, like I was an expert in corruption. Sure, I’d let a few cute girls out of speeding tickets, hit my siren to get around traffic, but nothing like this. I stuffed that wad of bills into my drawers, letting it brush my ball sack, then tossed the bag of coke onto the driver’s lap. They both looked at me wide-eyed and slack-jawed. “What am I gonna do with it?” I said. “Now get your asses out of here. Go down a couple more miles, pick up Route Two. When you find Ninety-five, you drive the exact goddamn speed limit until you hit New York City. Got me?”
“Yes, sir,” they said in unison.
I walked away, thirty-six hundred dollars to the good. It kept us afloat a few more months.
I’d crossed the center line. It wasn’t even debatable. That little car hadn’t had a chance, not against my cruiser. I’d worked hundreds of accidents, so as I stared into the meadow, at that totaled car, I knew this outcome wouldn’t be good.
Panic was something I’d been trained to control, but I felt it worming its way in. So two quick breaths, a shake of the head, and I walked toward the vehicle. I still hadn’t radioed dispatch.
The little car’s entire front end was compressed and flattened. The front bumper was gone, no sign of it anywhere. The surroundings were oddly quiet, save for the kalump kalump of the windshield wipers, which continued to work perfectly.
I opened the door, causing a horrendous pop, metal grinding at the seam. A woman sat on the driver’s side, air bag deployed but her torso slumped over the console, her head and shoulders hovering above the passenger seat. Some song by the Chili Peppers sounded from the radio, which was the first thing I did, turn that goddamn thing off.
“Hey, can you hear me?” I said. Her long hair dangled like tassels, hiding her face. “My name’s Officer Schmidt. Concord Police. Can you hear me?”
Her lungs wheezed in a loud, annoying way, same as my old dog used to do when sleeping. But she was alive, fighting hard. I hadn’t killed her. She wore a pink winter jacket, one of those ribbed, puffy ones all the kids are wearing these days. Patagonia. Aubrey had begged for one. Expensive as hell, but that’s where a small part of that eightball money went.
I grabbed that pink jacket by the shoulder and pulled her upright, where she now sat more or less normally in the driver’s seat, nearly pinched by the air bag. And that’s when I realized she was just a kid, probably the same age as Aubrey, give or take. Christ, she might be a classmate. A friend, even. Her hair was stuck to a purple gash along her right jawline, which made sense when I glimpsed the passenger window. Cracked and bloody, traces of skin sticking to it.
She hadn’t been wearing her seat belt. She’d been shot to the other side, hit her head, then somehow bounced back into the driver’s seat. My assessment: serious head trauma, a punctured lung, broken ribs. She was alive, but if she was going to stay that way she needed immediate medical attention. Probably an airlift to Mass General. Problem was, no chopper would be flying in these conditions.
I stepped back from the girl and reached for my radio. I’d screwed up, was going to suffer severe consequences. This girl, Aubrey’s age, who’d done nothing wrong, might die. I looked across the top of the roof, out toward that gray field. A different set of deer stood motionless at the wood’s edge, a dozen of them, their heads cocked, watching my every move. As if judging me. But they were stupid goddamn deer. Who the hell were they gonna tell? I released my radio, still didn’t call in.
I had a buddy, Jimmy, who worked Homicide in Boston. We’d been in the academy together, still met up twice a year for beers — talk shop, shoot the shit. Jimmy once told me something interesting, something I’d never forgotten. “In Russia,” he’d said as we sat in a bar in Allston, drinking heavily and staring at college girls, “homicide detectives, they got this superstition, right? They claim that the face of a murderer is captured in the victim’s eyes.”
“What do you mean?” I said, ogling one young lady in particular, who was throwing darts with her friends and wearing a BU T-shirt so tight it seemed impossible.
“Since the murderer’s face is the last thing the vic sees, it lingers on the surface like a snapshot. All you gotta do is look into their eyes and, voilà, you’ll have your murderer.”
“Ha, you ever tried it?” The girl’s first two darts bounced off the board and landed on the floor, the third hit double-twenty somehow. She gave a little jump, clapped her hands like a cheerleader.
“Are you kidding?” said Jimmy. “Of course, with every stiff I get. Never seen shit, but hell, can’t hurt, right?”
I was pretty drunk, listening to Jimmy, watching that girl bend over like a magical fantasy as she gathered her stray darts, but somehow I found myself thinking only of Sharon Tate. If that superstition were indeed true, imagine what her dead eyes could’ve shown those investigators. Images that, no doubt, would’ve made the toughest of them rethink their occupation — a bunch of blood-soaked kids, high on weed and acid and God knows what, thrilled with their darkness. Actually enjoying what they were doing.
I leaned back into the car, the girl still unconscious, laboring for breath. Shit everywhere. Gum wrappers, Dunkin’ cups, loose change, a spilled container of Tic Tacs. Located her purse, wedged beneath the passenger seat. Unzipped it, found her phone right away, then, sitting among lipstick tubes and pens and a blush brush, the thing I was after: her driver’s license. And stamped into the bottom comer, what I was hoping for: a bright red heart with DONOR printed across it.
I waved that hard piece of plastic, tapping it against my palm. Thinking, contemplating, mapping things out. Her name was Samantha, sixteen years old, lived here in Concord. Almost certainly a schoolmate of Aubrey’s, maybe a year ahead. Same age, same size, organ donor. No way to discern blood type. I tapped that license, keeping time with the kalump kalump of those wipers, with her heavy gurgling. Crazy shit started flying through my head. I knew how to get her blood type. Maybe.
I held her phone at the edges like a deck of cards, pressed the HOME button with my knuckle. The screen was locked, Touch ID required. But that didn’t matter to me. What mattered was the “Emergency” tab in the bottom left corner. I knuckled that, which led to the “Medical ID” tab, in bright red lettering.
One of the public-safety programs that we police officers take part in is going around to schools, talking to kids about basic safety measures. One of the first things discussed is the importance of filling in the Medical ID form on their phones. If there’s ever an accident, emergency personnel can access that info without a pass code. We urge all students to do it.
I tapped “Medical ID” and held my breath. There it was, each line filled out: Medical Conditions — asthma. Allergies & Reactions — penicillin. And so on, until Blood Type — B+. Exactly the same as Aubrey’s. Ginny and I had always joked with her about it — how her blood type was the same as her outlook on life — Be Positive.