ONE SMALL VICTORY Read Free Page B

ordeal of
extricating what was left of two victims from a tangle of wreckage
were evident in the grim set of her mouth and the tightness around
her blue eyes. It brought to mind painful pictures of his first
accident scene as a rookie patrol officer ten years ago. A mangled
car. A young mother almost cut in half by the dashboard. The
husband in the driver’s seat, flattened like some bloody paper
doll. And the baby in back... God, he didn’t want to remember the
baby in back.

    He shook his head to chase away the images
and asked, “What brings you in on your day off?”

    Linda shrugged and stepped into the office.
“Couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

    Steve understood. He’d noticed the signs of
distress last night after the winch had pulled the car out of the
culvert and they’d had their first glimpse of the horror inside.
But she’d appeared to steel herself and concentrate on the details
of the job. Her ability to flip that switch had impressed him.
There were times he still had difficulty doing that, and when he
did, the emotions always caught up with him later. He wished he
could tell her it would get easier.

    Horrible, bloody accidents with bodies as
twisted and bent as the steel that trapped them were the hardest,
especially when they involved kids. And Steve could never decide if
the deaths were more senseless when it was just a case of
recklessness, as they’d first assumed last night, or when the
accident was tied to booze or dope.

    “Can I do anything?” Linda asked, leaning a
blue-jeaned hip against his cluttered desk.

    “You want to follow up with the driver? Go by
the hospital and find out if he’s able to talk?”

    Linda nodded.

    “Then you could check with McKinney and
Lewisville. See if they have anything on him. Check the sheets on
the Jasik kid, too.”

    “Was the Brennan boy dealing?”

    “Possibly. There’d been some suspicion when
he was in school. But if he was, he was slick enough not to get
caught. Then he disappeared for a while. Franks has been watching
him since he came back but hasn’t been able to get anything on
him.”

    “You think the other boy was doing it
too?”

    Steve shrugged. “Won’t know till we get the
results of the tox screen.”

    Linda slid off the desk and rolled her
shoulders. Steve heard a vertebrae snap. He eyed her. “You sure you
want to do this?” he asked. “You look like you need the closest
bed.”

    “I tried that.” A flicker of a smile touched
her face, then was gone. “It didn’t work.”

    He laughed and waved her off, turning back to
the mess littering his desk. He had to get the paperwork in gear
for the toxicology lab in Dallas. Put a hold on the body at the
hospital morgue. Make sure all the reports were signed.

    The endless paperwork. Should have been a
freakin’ office clerk.

    ~*~

    Dressed in her good tan slacks and a silk
blouse the color of cream, Jenny opened her bedroom door and heard
snatches of conversation punctuated with the clatter of dishes
drifting from the kitchen. People, possibly lots of people, had
arrived. She winced and considered closing the door and never
coming out again. Then some long-forgotten sense of propriety told
her she shouldn’t be rude.

    When she stepped into the kitchen, the first
person she saw was her mother. Time warped for one brief flash, and
Jenny was a child rushing to the comfort of her mother’s arms. The
older woman held her and crooned, “There, there. It’ll be
okay.”

    Jenny allowed herself to be the child for a
moment, savoring the security of being taken care of. Then she
pulled back and looked at Helen, struck by how much the woman had
aged in the past twelve hours. Anxiety deepened the furrows on her
forehead and her hazel eyes were dull and lifeless.

    “You okay, Mom?”

    Her mother bit her bottom lip and nodded.

    A touch on Jenny’s arm drew her attention and
she turned to see her neighbor, Millie, so impeccably proper in her
hat and gloves. Today’s