A False Dawn Read Free Page A

her upper chest.  Her breathing labored, a slight gurgling sound coming at each inhalation.  Dried blood at the corner of her mouth and nostrils.  Her blue jeans were stained with blood.
    “Can you hear me?” I asked.
    She opened her eyes.  There was no connection.  She seemed to stare at a place somewhere above my head.  She was distant and dying.  I gently squeezed her hand and lifted a strand of hair from her face.  She gasped and pulled away.
    “I’m not going to hurt you.”
    She started to shake.  She was going into shock.  Her life was compressed into minutes.  I held her hand.  “There is a phone in my car.  I’ll call for help.”
    Her lips trembled, and she whispered something in a language I didn't recognize. “ Atlacatl imix cuanmiztle ,” she said in a labored breath.
    What did it mean?  There was a slight reflex from her hand.  A single tear escaped through swollen flesh and shattered blood vessels, past the slit of an eyelid, down her face, vanishing into mud and river sand.  One of the bruises on her cheek resembled the letter U. 
    I ran to my Jeep and dialed 911.  “Come on!”  An answer on the third ring.  I explained to the sheriff’s dispatcher that an ambulance would be too slow.  The victim needed to be airlifted by helicopter to the hospital now.  I took a towel out of the back seat of the Jeep and ran back to the girl.
    “You’re going to be okay,” I said in the most convincing voice I could.  My heart raced.  “Medical help is coming!  Do you hear me?”  There was only the sound of air escaping her chest.  I applied pressure to her wound.  She was slipping away. 
    Where the hell are they?   
    She looked at me for a long moment, the clear eye seeming to connect.  It was now a pleading, frightened eye, an eye too wise for its young host.  From somewhere lost in history and heritage, she looked at me through the saddened eye of the elders.  She wept silently.  I never felt so helpless.   
    The wail of sirens sounded in the distance.  I heard a helicopter far away.  But the look in her eye was further away as it peered through time and space and found me.   
    I held her hand, my own eyes suddenly watering.  “Stay with me!  Okay?  Stay with me!  I’ll find the person who did this to you.” 

 
 
FOUR
     
    The feeling was almost surreal.  For years I had investigated crime scenes.  Now I was the one being questioned.  The initial battery of Volusia County deputies had been efficient, articulate, and polite in asking most of the right questions.  Had I known the victim?  Did I see anyone?  They scribbled notes, eyes panning my face while I explained what happened.  I gave them permission to search my car as a team of forensics people started sifting through the surroundings.
    Then the detectives arrived.  A man and a woman got out of an unmarked Crown Vic.  Another man, who was alone, parked behind them and stayed in his car with a cell phone welded to his ear.  The detectives huddled with two officers for a few minutes, heads nodding and glancing toward me.  Then they walked in my direction.
    She was in her mid-thirties, an attractive brunette with an aggressive, no nonsense walk.  The man was a little younger.  African-American, light skin, square shoulders.   They both carried notepads and small tape recorders.
    She said, “Mr. O’Brien?”
    “That would be me.”
    “I’m Detective Leslie Moore, and this is Detective Dan Grant, homicide.”  Detective Grant removed his sunglasses and nodded.  The woman continued, “I understand you worked homicide for Miami PD?”
    “Thirteen years.”
    Detective Grant said, “Well, you ought to be used to this.  What’d you see?”
    “You never get used to it.”  I told them the entire story.  They didn’t interrupt.  I concluded by asking them a question.  “Is she alive?”
    “We don’t know,” Detective Moore said.  “She’s in surgery.”
    Detective Grant