I turned and ran blindly through the trees toward the road again, phone to my ear, though I was only halfway listening to it ring on the other end. The other half of me was completely engrossed in panic. After what seemed like an eternity, someone picked up.
“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency, please?”
“I
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t understand you. Can you please slow down?”
“No! The killer heard me trip!”
“Ma’am, can you give me your location?” the operator asked, her voice annoyingly calm.
I paused as I reached the gate again, the bright lights of passing cars on the other side a small comfort. I sucked in a large gulp of chilled air and stopped to catch my breath, listening behind me for any sound of footsteps.
I heard nothing but my own Doberman-esque breathing.
“I’m at Oak Meadow Park at the corner of University and Blossom Hill,” I told the dispatcher.
“I’m sending someone out to your location now. Please stay on the line with me until they get there.”
“Okay,” I whimpered. “But hurry. I think they killed Nicky.”
“Don’t worry. Help is on the way,” she said. And even though I knew there was nothing she could do from the other end of a phone call, her voice did make me feel a little less alone.
I managed to hop back over the gate to the street side, and sat down on the curb to wait for help, one ear listening for any sign of the killer, one listening to the dispatcher who continued talking in smooth, even tones.
After ten cold minutes, my butt was numb, goose bumps were permanently embedded in my arms, and the red and blue lights of a police cruiser pulled down Blossom Hill. I jumped up and waved my arms madly at the guy behind the wheel, who pulled to a stop in front of me.
I’d never been so relieved to see law enforcement in my life.
After I explained what I’d seen, the cop grabbed a flashlight from the front seat and disappeared into the park.
I waited alone on the sidewalk again. I was just starting to worry that maybe Figure Two had done the officer in, too, when an ambulance pulled to a stop at the curb behind the police cruiser.
Two paramedics got out, then grabbed a stretcher from the back. One of the guys pulled a pair of wire cutters from the back of the van, making short work of the locked gate, then they wheeled the stretcher down to the field.
Stretcher not body bag.
Did that mean that Nicky was still alive? That he was okay? That maybe I’d just watched an assault and not a murder?
I hugged my arms around myself, anxiously waiting for that stretcher to come back. While Nicky was a cheater and a liar and had basically threatened my best friend, I still found myself quietly chanting, “Please be alive, please be alive,” as I shifted from foot to foot on the sidewalk.
A couple minutes later, the officer climbed back up the hill, his form bobbing through the trees as he approached me.
“Is he dead?” I asked.
The officer shook his head, and I felt myself sag with relief.
“He’s hurt. How badly, it’s hard to tell right now. But the paramedics are doing all they can.”
All they can. That wasn’t the most positive phrase. I was about to ask more when another car came around the corner, lights flashing red and blue. Apparently in addition to paramedics, my officer had called for backup. Unfortunately, as the car pulled to a stop at the curb, I recognized that backup.
Tall, red-haired, round-bellied. And the one thing that could make my night worse.
Detective Raley.
I briefly contemplated running again, but since blisters were already bruising my heels, I nixed that idea, instead drawing myself up as tall as I could while he approached.
“Hartley,” he said.
“Detective Raley.”
He took a deep breath, staring off into the tree line. “Why is it that whenever anything criminal goes on in this town, there you are?”
“Great reporter’s instinct?”
He shot me a look. Clearly his opinion differed on that one.
“All right, let’s hear it,” he said, pulling a notebook and pen from his back pocket. “What were you doing here?”
I pursed my lips together, not sure how much to tell him. Best-case scenario: Nicky was unconscious and certainly not talking to me tonight. Worst case: He was never talking to anyone again.
“I was meeting Nicky,” I finally confessed.
“Why?” he asked, bushy eyebrows frowning.
“I was interviewing him for the school paper.”
“About what?”
“Stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“School stuff.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Yes.”
He gave me an expectant look. “Well?”
“Oh, did you mean, ‘will I be more specific’? Because ‘can’ implies an ability. I have the ability to be more specific, but if you’re asking if I have the intention of complying with a request to be more specific, then what you really mean is ‘will I be more specific.’”
I watched Raley grind his back teeth together, his nostrils flaring. If I’d had to guess, he was employing some sort of anger management technique and mentally counting to ten.
“Okay, will you please be more specific, Hartley?” he asked, his teeth still cemented together in a grimace.
“Sure. What was the question?”
A vein bulged in Raley’s forehead, and I was pretty sure he was one blood-pressure point away from a full- blown aneurysm.
“Did you see who hit Nicky?” he asked instead, changing gears.
“Kinda.”
“Christ,” he muttered under his breath. “What does ‘kinda’ mean?”
“It means I saw someone hit him on the head, but I couldn’t see who did the hitting. It was really dark and the guy was keeping to the shadows.”
“Guy?” Raley asked, jumping on the word. “So it was a male you saw?”
I bit my lip. “Honestly? I’m not sure. Maybe.”
Raley sighed, flipping his notebook shut. “So you didn’t really see anything?”
I bit my lip. “Sorry,” I said, sincerely meaning it. Maybe if I had gotten a good look, we’d both have our killer now.
“Okay,” Raley said, resigned to my status as the worst witness ever. “I’ll have someone drive you home.”
Considering the blisters were growing to astronomical proportions, I got in the car. (Besides, it wasn’t like he gave me much choice.)
The first uniformed officer drove me home in silence, though the second he walked me to the front door, it was clear someone had called ahead to Mom.
“Oh, Hartley!” She tackled me in the foyer, grabbing me in a hug so tight I felt it rearranging my internal organs.
But honestly? After the night I’d had, I needed a spleen-displacing hug. I wrapped my arms around her middle and hugged back. After a long comforting moment, Mom pulled back to look at me.
“Are you okay, honey?” she asked, her eyes searching my person for visible scars.
