The Crow, continued
Week 1, Winner
So many things resemble importance but aren’t.
He looked at the steering wheel; its bright pink leather cover worn to a muted sheen at five and seven. A cascading series of city parking stickers adorned the right hand side of the windshield, plastered like band posters on a boarded up shop window. A hula dancing figurine stood motionless in a thick sea of dust in the middle of the dashboard, stalwartly waiting for its owner to return it, and the vehicle, to the open road. Someone had spent time here; maybe even lived here. Not an adolescent driver then, he noted to himself.
Scanning the rest of the car like a textbook glossary he logged the remainder of the scene with practiced formality: normal wear and tear on the seats, missing cigarette lighter, crinkled up straw wrappers and change in the center console bin. The glove compartment containing a user’s manual, hardly touched, along with an out-of-date insurance card still tucked into the envelope it had been mailed in. Trash littering the floor on the passenger’s side. More mail, a parking ticket, food wrappers. He’d need to pull all that out and sift through it. He grimaced a little at the thought.
He turned to look at the back seat, craning his neck as one might while driving. Just a quick glance to check a blind-spot. That’s when he noticed it.
He’d often reflected on how clues are like puzzle pieces. You can spend hours and days looking for that right configuration of color and form, letting your mind play tricks, convincing you that maybe you have it. Your hopes gain hold and, excitedly, you pick up a piece of a cloud or the general shape of a tree branch and rotate it around to find the right perspective. And when you finally hold that piece up against the rest of the puzzle it…doesn’t fit.
But you know when you are looking at the right piece. That’s different. It has an aura. A thing about it that says “look at me” like a model on a runway.
Pieces like that have a sense of belonging that only comes with knowing before you pick it up that it’s a perfect fit. Tucked into the folds of the backseat, he could see that piece now. A slightly bent, empty manila folder haphazardly tossed aside. The crisp black ink of a handwritten label on the tab standing out in stark juxtaposition to the disorganized vehicle interior. He’d seen enough crime scenes in his lifetime to place good money that that was not a match for the driver’s handwriting. It was a lead.
“Detective?” Perkin’s voice interjected itself upon the scene.
“Shhh,” Max Neilsin said, holding up one finger in warning without turning to look at the young officer. He knew Perkin meant well, but Christ. Read the room. The moment was lost, though. Gone on a breeze that wafted through the open passenger window, past his head, and out the hole where the driver-side door used to be. He sighed in frustration, closing his eyes for a full second before replying.
“What is it?”
Perkin glanced down furtively at black boots covered in thick, brown mud from the shoreline. The scent of it crept in at the edges of his nostrils; a faint earthy tone mixed with a fragrance of rain from a stormy night.
“Down by the lake. We have a…I guess it’s a body? I couldn’t…” She stopped suddenly pale, holding up the back of her hand to her mouth and looking like she might be sick. “Sorry” came her muffled voice. She leaned forward, hands on her knees, steadying herself against the possibility.
“Take your time,” Max responded. She nodded slightly in silent reply.
He turned his attention back to the interior of the vehicle when she remained hunched over, eyes shut against the cold damp morning. He was happy to give her space and equally happy for the extra few moments of study it afforded him, but it was all for naught. He couldn’t regain his focus, conceding a moment later to fate and whatever had rattled Perkin. The missing door might’ve been a great clue he mused as he looked back to check on her, but it was nowhere in sight.
Perkin had slowly begun to return to form, nausea subsiding and the color in her face returning. He rotated in the seat so as to leave the vehicle without disturbing the steering wheel listening to the leather creak as he moved, a soundtrack to the physical effort it takes to leave a small car with low ground clearance. He dropped one steel-toed boot out onto slick wet grass followed by the other, careful to let the boots adjust to the terrain before grabbing onto the car frame to pull himself up and out.
The silver Jetta had come to rest on the top of a gentle hill on the southern tip of the lake. A large swath of torn up ground traced its path of origin back to an unkept dirt road a hundred or so yards away. Remnants of a wooden fence where the vehicle had breached the premises lay scattered on the road. Something didn’t fit, he thought, frowning. He made a mental note to check on that after this business with the body was done.
He turned back to Perkin who was looking more sure of herself. From this vantage point he could see the water stretch far away behind her, the other side a tiny line on the horizon. To his left the terrain sloped downward toward a copse of trees and the lake where he presumed the body must be. To his right the shoreline stretched around a small inlet where, on the other side, Max could see the rough structure of a medium-sized cottage. It had been lost to fire some years ago. He’d been new to the area when it had burned. Now it stood abandoned, its red-walled exterior easy to pick out in the mid-morning light. Dark, empty windows lined with fire-stained broken glass watching them.
He clapped his hands, rubbing them together vigorously while watching the steam of his breath dissipate into the air. “Alright, let’s go see what this is all about,” he said as he walked toward Perkin; the soft footfalls of his boots against the foliage following him. “By the lake, yeah?”
She nodded as he passed, descending in the direction of the shoreline. Perkin rushed to follow, slipping on the grass but quickly catching herself. She politely cursed the curse of someone needing to swear but not wanting to commit to a full “shit” or “fuck” while in the vicinity of senior associates or children. She must be new, he thought, putting his hands in his pockets to protect them from the clammy air. He felt the lining of each pocket gently power on, instantly grateful for the tiny heating units sewn into their depths.
It always took a good month or two to lose the formality of newness out here. It wasn’t like the city, with its pomp and circumstance and red tape.
The short walk only took a minute but he savored the downward trek, silently kicking himself for not staying in shape. Somewhere in the distance a flock of ducks quacked and took flight, their wings beating against the air in an arrhythmic cloud of flapping. As he passed the copse of trees he could see two officers clad in the same heavy blue uniform that adorned Perkin. They stood next to a mass roughly the size of a body laying oddly misshapen and all of a singular shade of dull gray. Smaller gray lumps outlined a short trail from it back to the water’s edge.
Farther off and to his left an odd metal shape sat thrust into the ground, large and glinting in the sunlight. As he got closer he recognized this as the missing door, folded in half like a misshapen metal taco and driven into the muck. A long earthen scar extended from it to the shoreline creating a tiny canal filled with cold water from the lake. It pooled around the door, a cold bog full of mystery.
Max heard Perkin’s boots squelch in the mud behind him as she caught up. He paused a few feet from the body, waiting for her. When she swung into view he glanced over, inquiring “do you have a kit?” He knew it was a redundant question. All officers had a kit.
“Yes, one second.” She reached around to the small of her back, fumbling with an invisible catch that opened the utility pouch sewn into all standard issue parkas. From the depths she drew out a shallow white box slightly bigger than a deck of cards and handed it to him, all the while side-eyeing the scene in front of them. A clear distrust mingled about her eyes.
“Thank you,” he replied, turning back to look at the body. No, he revised almost immediately. Not a body…something else.
***
This is a second-stage story-start — if you’d like to see where the story goes, “clap” for it. My “winning” second-stage story-start (based on number of readers who clap for it) will be developed further and will become a full short story!
