hand poke through the sleeve of the clothing they used to make the dummy. Then, as someone shifted in the crowd, he saw a paramedic bend to a white face and press his lips to the cold blue lips of the boy they pulled out of the pool. The paramedic was giving mouth to mouth to a real person.
Luke grabbed Ellie as she swooned and sank to her knees.
Detective Jaxon Jennings, homicide investigator for the Fairfax County Police Department, looked down at the boy the paramedics were frantically working on and shook his head. He turned and scanned the crowd, looking for anything. All he saw were scared parents and children of a quiet neighborhood suddenly turned upside down. He knew this place. He had been here a couple of weeks ago on a call about a mutilated dog. No big deal, right, but the department had a policy of investigating all acts of cruelty toward animals. The FBI training they had received dictated it. Too many people who tortured animals graduated to humans later in their demented lives.
“Is he gonna make it?” Sally Winston, his partner, asked over his shoulder.
One of the paramedics working on the boy thought she was talking to him. “Don’t think so. He’s been gone too long. We don’t even have any electrical activity in his heart.”
She looked at Jaxon and her eyes conveyed a sadness he no longer felt at his age. At forty seven, he’d seen too much to feel anymore.
“How long are you guys gonna work on him?” Jaxon asked.
“As long as it takes,” the paramedic snapped.
Jaxon took it in stride, nodded his head and wandered over to the fence, looking out at the crowd.
“What do you think?” Sally said to his back.
He turned and looked at the boy again. “Hard to say right now. Looks like a simple drowning. There are no marks on him I can see at the moment, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any.”
He looked around the pool deck and something caught his eye. He wandered over to the southern side of the deck and stared at multiple footprints near the fence. On the other side, they led off into the parking lot and the crowd.
Sally came over and bent down to look.
“Have any of our people been over here?” Jaxon asked.
“No. The area hasn’t been contaminated. Didn’t know if it was a crime scene yet.” She stood, and he watched her follow the footprints with her eyes as they meandered over to the edge of the pool, where they blended with the footprints the paramedics and cops had made.
Jaxon bent down and looked at the imprint of one shoe. “Kids?” he asked.
She joined him. “Looks to be about the right size.”
“We better get some imprints of these,” he said.
“Sure,” and she left to get the kit.
Jaxon continued to look around and noticed something brightly colored, caught on the top of the fence, fluttering in the breeze. He walked over, careful not to disturb any of the other tracks, stood on his tip toes and pulled the piece of fabric off. He studied it, and then stared out into the crowd again not sure what he was looking for. He pulled an evidence bag out of his jacket pocket and slipped the fabric inside. He was beginning to think there was more to this than met the eye.
Luke’s mom knelt in front of Ellie and ran her hand across Ellie’s face. She looked up at Luke. “Lucas, you should get her home. She shouldn’t be seeing all this. It’s upsetting her.”
“I’m alright, Mrs. Harrison. Really,” Ellie said and stood.
“Are you sure?”
Ellie nodded and grasped Luke’s hand. “I’m sure.”
“Alright.”
Ellie gripped Luke’s arm tightly and leaned up against him. “Sorry,” she whispered in his ear.
“It’s ok. It shocked me too.”
“What is going on?”
“I have no clue. Let’s talk about it later, ok?”
She nodded and stared at the ground. Luke turned to John who gave him a worried look and then proceeded to ignore him. Jimmy looked stoic as he watched everything happening in the pool area.
Luke scanned the faces, worried the person behind
He turned back to the pool and saw the cop who had come out to investigate Ellie’s dog, Bentley. He tensed and then shifted a little so he was hidden behind the man in front of him as he watched the cop scan the crowd. Peeking around the shoulders of the man, he stared as the cop talked to another woman and then they walked over to the fence and looked at something on the ground.
Ellie nudged him. “What are they doing?” she whispered.
“I think they’re looking at our footprints. Crap!”
“Maybe we should go.”
“No, not yet. Let’s see what happens.”
They watched for a while longer, and then the paramedics loaded the body onto a stretcher and attached a machine which continued the CPR compressions with a piston like arm. They loaded him up in the ambulance and drove off with the siren wailing. Shortly, a uniformed police officer announced there was nothing more to see and asked if everyone would kindly return to their homes.
People shuffled off, talking about what they had seen. Luke and Ellie joined his family and the rest of the neighbors from his court as they all headed back home. He glanced back as they left and saw the woman cop fiddling with some equipment by the fence. He couldn’t tell what she was doing, but he knew it had something to do with them.
Chapter 9
Jaxon hated this part of the job. He was tempted to pass this on to Sally, but he was the lead and the job was supposed to fall to him. Contacting the family of a deceased relative was never easy, but when it involved a child it was even more difficult.
The boy from the pool was now in a refrigerator at the county morgue awaiting an autopsy, if the family so desired, or if the evidence dictated a crime had taken place. In the boy’s back pocket, a school paper had been found with the name of the boy at the top left. It had been blurry and faint on the soggy paper, but with a little work they had been able to determine who it had belonged to. It had then been a simple act of pulling School records on the child to get the address and phone number of the parents. He wouldn’t need the phone number. He would do this in person.
Sally decided to go with him and he was glad about that. She handled civilians much better than he did. They arrived at the house at 9:00 in the morning and knocked on the door. His hands were sweating and he was irritated at himself for how he was feeling. He had been quiet all morning and Sally kept turning to look at him as if something was wrong.
“Are you getting a little case of conscience?” Sally finally asked as they waited at the door.
“Why?” he said.
“You look a little nervous and upset.”
He paused, then said, “I’m just pissed I have to be here on a Sunday.”
She shook her head, but said nothing else.
The door was answered by a woman in her mid thirties, brown hair and eyes, pink robe and slippers, holding a spatula, smiling as if the world was good and her life was perfect. He knew he was going to ruin that perception in a few seconds.
