Dark Tort

her associate’s degree and was starting paralegal school, and was set on acquiring—and fitting into—a professional wardrobe. Remembering her happy gratitude when I’d presented her with the suit, I gently shook her again with my free hand.

“Dusty, it’s me, Goldy,” I murmured as I let go of her wrist and reached under her shoulders with both hands. “I’m going to turn you over.”

Her body was limp, but warm. There was redness around her neck. I saw now that blood was seeping out of a small gash at the top of her forehead, and her pretty face was flushed on one side. Her blue eyes were half open. Her slack mouth contrasted with her bright, curly hair. She didn’t moan or blink, and I cursed silently. When I shook her again, her legs sprawled like a scarecrow’s; her hands flopped open, palm up. The thoughts I should get out of here and Don’t touch anything competed ferociously with If she’s still alive, I could help her.

I felt in my apron pocket for my cell phone. Not there. I patted my pants pockets. Again, nothing. I’d been in a hurry to get over here after my van wouldn’t start, and I must have left the phone in the front seat. I gently let go of Dusty and jumped over to the reception desk. But when I picked up the molasses-covered receiver to call for help, there was no dial tone. I raced to the first office on the hall, felt for a light, and found another phone. I jabbed buttons, to no effect. Did the H&J folks shut down all telecommunications at night? I hadn’t a clue.

I returned to Dusty and frantically started CPR. I noticed that the redness around her neck was quite dark, not just pink. My heart faltered. I wanted to talk to Dusty, to ask if someone had hurt her, and why. But I couldn’t do any of those things, because I was trying to breathe life into her lungs.

As I worked feverishly on my young neighbor, I kept thinking, This isn’t happening. There was fake blood. There were weak pulses. I still half expected her to jump up, erupt into giggles, and shout for everybody to leap out from assorted hiding places. I felt the other wrist for a pulse. Even if it’s weak, I remembered from my days in Med Wives 101, keep going. I momentarily stopped CPR and waited for Dusty to breathe on her own. She didn’t.

Leave, that same inner voice commanded me. Get out. Call for help from somewhere else. But I couldn’t. Not yet. I was bent on bringing about the resuscitation part of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

After—What was it? Five minutes? Ten? A half hour?—I gave up. Later, the cops wanted to know when I’d left the H&J office. And every time they asked, I told them I didn’t know, that time had turned fluid once I’d discovered Dusty. And why did that matter so much? I wondered. I could not pinpoint the actual moment when I exhaled, got to my feet, and again glanced in vain around the office for something that might explain what was going on. Feeling foolish, I peeked around the firm’s massive front door to make sure no one was waiting in the hall. Then I dashed out.

The door closed with a firm k-chook. I pulled the red metal ring with my two office keys out of my pocket. I always kept the H&J keys on a separate ring, because I had been warned that losing them meant a five-hundred-dollar fine. I secured the bolt with the second key and raced down the half-lit hallway.

If only, if only, if only I’d been here on time, I repeated to myself, Dusty would still be alive. But I wasn’t going to think that way. It was possible she could still be revived. Possible, but not probable. Feeling like a failure, I pushed through the metal service door.

Outside, the chilly-sweet autumn air smacked my face and made me cough. A sharp mountain breeze was lashing the trees that circled the rear parking lot. Nearby, a neon light illuminated pines, spruce, and a stand of aspens. The golden leaves cloaking the aspens’ white-barked branches quaked and shuddered. Another whip of air sprayed dust and ice into my eyes. I needed my cell phone. Had I locked my van after parking back here in the service lot? I could not remember.

My breath came out in frosted white tatters as I trotted, half blind, toward my normally trustworthy vehicle, which had delayed me tonight with its drained battery. I could imagine the voice of my husband, Tom, a sheriff’s department investigator, urging me to get cracking. Get out of there. But I didn’t know what had happened, and I desperately wanted to help Dusty. Tom’s voice drilled my inner ear: Never stay alone at a crime scene that hasn’t been secured. Right, right. This was a rule every cop learned at the academy. But I wasn’t sure I’d actually been at a crime scene, because of course, I wasn’t a cop. But being married to a cop, I’d learned the rules—sometimes the hard way. And I often didn’t exactly follow them, as Tom frequently was at pains to point out.

Hugging my sides, I hurtled awkwardly across the gravel. Dizziness assaulted me, and I slowed to a walk and tried to breathe normally. What was the swooshing noise in my ears? I tried to ignore it, tried to tell myself it was the hum of traffic from Interstate 70. My white shirt gleamed in the neon haze drifting down from the crown of a nearby light pole. Where was my jacket? Inside the van, probably. I rummaged in the pockets of my pants, and realized I had dropped my car keys in the law firm office. With just the smallest amount of hope, I pulled on the van door. Locked, of course.

I turned around and tried to think. Was it close to eleven? What place would be open? Where would there be a pay phone? Did anyone actually use pay phones anymore? I shook my head to rid myself of the drumming in my ears and tried to force myself to think clearly.

As I trotted around the building I scolded myself again for not getting here right at ten, when I was scheduled to show Dusty how to make the high-protein bread King Richard had asked I serve his clients the next morning. I cursed as I surveyed the front lot, where a freezing nighttime mist hugged the grid of streetlights in front of the long, two-story office building. This was where the lawyers, clients, and staff parked…but the space held only Dusty’s Civic.

My breath puffed as I ran, panting, toward the shopping center across the street. I thought of Dusty again, sprawled out on the reception-area carpeting. Back in my pre-Tom days, I’d been unhappily married to John Richard Korman, a physically abusive doctor who was the father of my fifteen-year-old son, Arch. It was during my years with the Jerk, as his other ex-wife and I had called him, that I’d learned the lessons of Med Wives 101, our own version of medical authority. Sometimes you can’t feel a pulse, I stubbornly reminded myself for at least the tenth time.

After glancing around for traffic—there was none—I hopped onto the road beside the parking lot. A combination of dropping temperature and frigid humidity had sheeted the pavement with ice. I shivered. Why hadn’t I worn my jacket into H&J? Because I’d been in a hurry to meet Dusty for our sixth and final cooking lesson. She’d said she had something to tell me.

I scooted across the street to the access road that led up to the three-sided strip mall. Ahead, a few lights twinkled in the chilly fog. The main tenant of the shopping center was a supermarket. There were also a liquor store and two bars, a reminder of our saloon heritage here in the West. Other occupants included a store called Art, Music, and Copies, various and sundry clothing, shoe, and western-wear stores, and Aspen Meadow Cafe. These all appeared abandoned and wreathed in darkness.

Please, God, I prayed, as I jumped carefully onto the access road’s slippery pavement. Please let Dusty be okay. The thin, vulnerable face of Sally Routt, Dusty’s mother, loomed before me. She’d already lost a son, Dusty’s older brother, whom I hadn’t known. I couldn’t even contemplate talking to Sally about Dusty being hurt. Or worse.

The cord to one of the pay phones outside Aspen Meadow Cafe was torn off. The other phone had no dial tone. Another sudden, glacial breeze stung my skin as I tried to make out shapes in the near distance. The shopping center was not abandoned, after all. About ten folks, their bodies padded with puffy down jackets, huddled outside the grocery store. But the store was closed. What was going on? I wondered. Then I remembered a special on ski-lift tickets beginning at midnight. The first two dozen people to buy a hundred bucks’ worth of food got a season pass at Vail. The would-be bargain hunters stomped and stamped, but they were tough—again, this was the West—and had no intention of wimping out in heated cars.

It would take me at least five minutes to jog up there, and several more to find someone with a cell phone who could call an ambulance. Plus, I was freezing. I needed to find someplace closer.

I peered along the line of nearby storefronts. Next to the unopened cafe was Art, Music, and Copies. Inside, a gray fluorescent bulb blinked, as if someone had forgotten to turn it off. Still, I thought I remembered that the copy place, as we called it, was supposed to be open late. I trotted up the sidewalk and banged on the large plate-glass window, which boasted hot pink lettering that screamed “You Own It, We’ll Clone It!” I tried the door, which rattled