The Hopkins Case – Chapter Seven
The phone rang a third time.
The phone rang a fourth time and Art called out from his office, "Do you want me to walk over there and answer that for you?"
The look Rachel returned would have cowed a lesser man. Art just blew her a raspberry, stood up and sauntered into the bullpen. It was creeping up to 8pm and the room was deserted except for the two of them. Rachel was scratching her way through a report; Art was waiting on approval for a search warrant for one of his Marshals in the field and he was bored.
The phone had stopped ringing by the time he arrived at her desk. He quirked an eyebrow at her, inviting an explanation for her lassitude.
"It'll go to voicemail."
"And what if it was an emergency?"
Rachel dropped her pen, an impressive amount of attitude in so small and ordinary an action. "It's Joe. He's going out for dinner with people from work. He insists I go. I don't want to go. I'm tired and I don't feel like making small talk. He thinks it looks bad if I don't go. I don't give a shit how it looks."
Art rocked back on his heels. "Okay then."
Rachel picked up her pen and continued to fill in the spaces on the report.
Art yanked a chair over and sat down facing her. "You want to talk?"
"No."
He looked around the office for a different topic. He didn't feel like discussing Raylan anytime soon but the next desk over provided fodder. "Is Tim back yet?"
Rachel frowned, glanced sideways at the empty space where her friend should be. She dropped her pen with a little less attitude and picked up her phone, texted, Where r u? Art's worried, then set it back down and continued her work.
Art stayed put in the chair while they waited for a response from Tim. There was nothing to do sitting at his desk and annoying Rachel was at least amusing him to some degree. After ten minutes of listening for a text bing and being ignored by his best and favorite deputy, he pulled his own phone and dialed Tim's cell. No one answered.
"Shit," Art cursed. "Where is he? It shouldn't have taken him this long. I told him I wanted him back here before six with Donny Hopkins in tow or I'd fire him."
"Tcha, no you didn't." Rachel tried Tim's number, too. Nothing. "I talked to him earlier. He was calling from a landline – probably can't get a signal," she reasoned.
"When was earlier?"
Earlier, she thought, was four hours ago and he said he'd only be another hour or two. She dialed his house. No answer. She looked at her boss, said, "You're not really worried about him, are you?"
"Nah," he replied, flipping the end of his tie up and down. He pursed his lips, rubbed his head, added, "Well, maybe a little. He was only going to Estill County, not even an hour drive. Car trouble, do you think?"
He and Rachel stared at each other, trying to divine the future, see into the past, work a little astral projection to Irvine. Art got up finally and walked to his office, came back with a car number scrawled on a post-it, handed it to Rachel who looked it up on the tracker.
"No signal," she reported when the screen refreshed, creases worrying her smooth face.
"Shit," Art repeated. "He picks out the one car with a broken transponder?"
"Or…" Worry creases appeared again.
"Or…" Art dug the heels of hands into his eyes.
"I'll start driving. Call me when you hear from him." Rachel stood up and slipped into her jacket, pulled open a drawer for her keys. "I'll check in when I reach Irvine if I haven't heard from you before then."
Art thanked her but she quipped she was happy for the excuse and he believed her. He watched her go. A whole lot of Marshal-hours on this stupid Hopkins case. His budget was going straight to the shitter.
She traced Tim's investigation, stopping at each Dempsey address in turn. Yes, ma'am or occasionally no, ma'am, depending on the question asked. She reached the Aunt eventually and was directed up the hill.
"Are you his girlfriend?"
"No ma'am, we're coworkers," Rachel replied smiling.
"He went up that hill quite a while ago. Do you think he's in trouble?"
Rachel detected a hint of honest concern in the woman's voice, liked her for it. "He's pretty capable. I'm sure he's fine. Probably just car trouble and no signal for his phone."
"You really think he's capable? He's a man, young lady. Why would he be any different from the rest of them?"
Rachel's smile grew involuntarily. "You do have a point."
"Tell me about it." The Aunt shook her head, a seen-it-all gesture. "Are you married?"
"Yes ma'am." The smile slipped to a guarded line, barbed wire.
"It doesn't look like it's agreeing with you."
Rachel mulled over the Aunt's summary of her personal life as she followed her directions up the hill, taking two turns and driving fast on the empty road, climbing and winding. It's not as if the woman was a psychic, so Rachel was annoyed, in parts equally split, at the woman for messing in something private, at herself for giving the statement any weight at all. How could the Aunt possibly know? Was it that obvious? Rachel dismissed the remark as ridiculous. And it occupied her thoughts completely as she drove through the dark.
The next bend glowed, a car oncoming, and Rachel slowed a bit as a precaution. Full headlights blinded her as the other car rounded the corner careening into her lane. She slammed on the brakes, tried to pull clear of the collision but both vehicles were moving too quickly and she was clipped on the driver's side corner, hard. The world became a blur of shadow and strobe lighting as her car spun in crazy circles off the uphill-side of the road, finally coming to a stop broadside against a large tree. Rachel's hands were clenched tightly on the steering wheel and the brake pedal was firmly pinned to the floor. She eased her grip and swore loudly. One headlight was still working on the passenger side and in its beam she could see down the road to nothing but field and forest.
"Jesus," she breathed and tried to calm her pounding heart and heaving lungs. She sat a moment or two, at some point realizing that she was unhurt, a quick thank you sent upward. Pulling her phone out she dialed 911, all muscle memory, then listened to a ringing in her ear that she thought was the call going through but it was just adrenalin, her blood pumping. There was no cell signal here. She tried the car's ignition, nothing there either.
Thoughts of the other vehicle got her moving. She grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment, opened her door and ran down the road following the skidding tire marks. She could make out a car in the field, an old Cadillac maybe. It had careened off the road and tumbled down the incline a hundred yards from the corner, coming to rest flipped upside-down, one wheel still spinning.
There was a body on the road, thrown through the windshield on impact. She passed him on the way, stopped briefly to check for vitals and finding none, hurried on, hoping fervently she wouldn't find any children in the wreckage. The next body she didn't even bother checking, another man, mangled when he fell out of the door as the car flipped. She got to the wreck and flashed a light inside but couldn't see anything clearly and had to climb in through the driver's door to check for other passengers. There were two men in the back, piled together in a mess of limbs. What she had thought was smoke filling the car was actually a cloud of white dust.
Rachel tried to make sense of the tangle, reaching back and groping. Her hand grasped something soft and plastic and she tossed it out of the way then stopped and stared at it where it lay. She was certain it was a bag of drugs. She lifted it, some spilling from a tear, dipped her finger in and tentatively dabbed some of the powder on her tongue, spat it out again in disgust. She knew that taste – bitter. Bitter heroin. Her sister had introduced Rachel to it by proxy and it had left a bitter taste in her mouth all the years between and even now and probably until the day she died. Bitter, thinking about Shawnee. That was heroin for her, the taste a reflection of her feelings. Bitter.
She backed quickly out of the vehicle, rubbing at her face in case any of the drug had settled on her then tried her phone again, but still no signal. Wrapping her scarf over her nose and mouth she crawled back inside, grabbed the man on top and started pulling. She prayed she wasn't aggravating a spinal injury. Moving them was not the right thing to do, but she didn't want to leave them breathing in a cloud of heroin dust – if they were even breathing. She found a head and a neck and a pulse, kept pulling until she had one man out and on the grass. Then she went in for the last one. He also had a pulse and she started heaving him out. He was easier to move, sliding along the ceiling of the car, but by the time she was finished she was sweating, her knees and hands bleeding from the glass littered in and around the wreck.
"Goddammit. Doesn't anybody bother with seatbelts anymore?" she snapped, as she gave a final tug and fell backward on the grass. "Jesus."
She wiped her bloody hands off on her pants and held the a light up to the men's faces. One looked familiar, she tried to place him; the other she knew.
"Oh God. Tim?"
He looked like a negative of Al Jolson, his face covered in white powder. Rachel pulled her scarf off and wiped desperately at him trying to clean away the heroin. She jumped up and started running for her car, then stopped abruptly, came back and considered the scene. She dragged the other man around until she could cuff him to the car's frame then she searched him and found two handguns.
"For heaven's sake, Tim, what the hell did you get yourself into?" she demanded angrily, turned and ran to her car.
Rachel came back quickly with a bottle of water and washed the caked powder off of Tim's face. He'd had the worst of it, landing on the bottom of the heap in the back, his face pressed into the bags. Shawnee had only ever used needles for her heroin, a more economical method. Rachel wasn't sure how much heroin you'd have to snort to overdose, only that it depended on the purity and your tolerance. There was no way of knowing if this heroin was cut or not. There was no way of knowing how much Tim had breathed in.
She cleaned the last of it off and started paying attention to the rest of him, uncuffing him first. That detail told her everything she needed to know about the situation. She cringed when she moved his arms back to his sides, his left was not behaving properly, likely dislocated. It wasn't the first time it'd happened to him. He told her once that he'd hurt it as a kid and now it was susceptible to injury. She had a vivid memory of Art popping it back in place for him after a violent arrest, Tim going ghostly white, then smiling weakly at the relief. She didn't think she could do that for him. She wished Art were here.
She checked him over for bleeding, ran a hand through his unruly hair. A jolt went through her when she looked back to his face, slack, like he'd stopped breathing. She dropped her ear to his chest and listened. There was a beat, but too slow, and breath, barely. The rhythm of his heart and lungs was sluggish and panic crept down her arms. This is how people OD'd. Their bodies shut down in the lethargic haze of a heroin high. Their heart rates dropped off, their breathing became shallow, their brains stopped getting enough oxygen, they slipped into unconsciousness then a coma then they died.
Rachel tried to rein in her fear fueled by her bitter memories, but it overwhelmed her. Frantic, she slapped his face to wake him. She was not going to watch him die of an overdose.
"Tim!" she screamed at him, afraid, yanked him to a sitting position. She poured the remainder of the water bottle over his head and that brought him around. He blinked at her, licked at the water trailing over his lips then closed his eyes again.
"Oh, no you don't, mister," she called him back loudly, slapped his face again. "You stay with me. Tim! TIM!"
He opened his eyes again, trying to focus on her face. "Rachel?" His eyes drooped and she shook him hard. He swatted at her. "What are you doing? I'm trying to get some sleep. Fuck." Then he turned to his right and threw up.
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