Many of the characters within this story, and the universe they inhabit, are the intellectual property of Jason Katims Productions.
Roswell: Re-Imagined
Written by Horatio Jaxx
Chapter 6: Aftermath
As the Sheriff of Chaves County, New Mexico, Jim Valenti rarely went to the site of a crime that was in the initial stages of the investigation. His job required that he be in position to oversee the entire force. The day-to-day business of responding to criminal activity was the work of the uniform patrol officers and the detectives who were under his command. The shooting at the Crash-Down Café was a rare exception to that rule. His son, Kyle, was a regular patron of the Crash Down and his girlfriend, Liz Parker, was the reported victim of the shooting.
"What happened?" Jim questioned the first uniformed officer he came across inside the restaurant.
"Two men, late forties, early fifties, they were dining over there. They got into a quarrel. One of them drew a gun on the other one. A single shot was fired and a waitress, Liz Parker, the daughter of the proprietor, was struck once in the abdomen, apparently by accident. She is alive, but in critical condition. The perps are in the wind."
The officer's deftly executed report was taken in with equal ease by Jim. He scanned the room as the officer spoke, searching through the collection of people sitting and standing about in the dining area. He took note of Detective Mullen and the waitress he was questioning. He noted Detective Romero questioning a couple of young men who looked to be teenagers. He scanned half a dozen more faces, but none of them possessed the one he was looking for.
"Okay, thanks," Jim acknowledge a second before stepping into the center of the room.
Jim Valenti knew his son was not in the Crash-Down at the time of the shooting. He called Kyle the instant he heard about it and verified that he was alright. He deliberately neglected telling his son about the shooting to keep him away. But he suspected Kyle would find out on his own and he wanted to check just in case. Satisfied that all was being taken care of as it should, Jim turned about and walked out to the front of the restaurant.
As soon as he came to a stop on the sidewalk, he heard a familiar voice call out to him.
"Jim, Jim, will you tell this … officer to let me by?"
Jim turned to his left and spied Amy De Luca standing behind the yellow police tape and being restrained from going under it by a uniformed Deputy Sheriff. He had no idea what her business was there, and that made him even more curious. After a pause to ponder that, he walked over to the area where she was standing.
"Hi."
"My daughter is in there. I need to get inside," Amy insisted.
Jim had a passing awareness that Amy De Luca had a child. His association with Amy went back to their childhood. He gave little notice to her when they were children because she was five years younger than he. Later in her high school years and on into college his interest in her grew. Slender and attractive, Amy De Luca was very much admired by him when he was in his mid-twenties. Unfortunately, his position as a Sheriff Deputy caused him to have run-ins with her on several occasions and to even arrest her on one of them. That did not endear him to her at all. The thoughts that he entertained about asking her out were shortly dashed by her open contempt for him. Jim rationalized this as being all for the better and promptly moved on to a less radical dating choice.
"Who's your daughter?" Jim asked with a curious look.
"Maria, she works here," Amy quickly answered back. "I need to get in there."
"Is your daughter a waitress?" Jim asked back out of curiosity.
"Yes!" Amy answered in an exasperated tone. "Can I go in now?"
"I'm sorry, Amy," Jim sincerely apologized. "Right now, the restaurant is a crime scene, so we have to limit the area to as few people as possible. But I saw your daughter. She's fine and I'm sure she'll be out shortly."
"My daughter is a teenager," Amy returned in an argumentative tone. "The Sheriff Department shouldn't be interrogating her without a parent present."
"The detectives are just trying to get as much information as possible about the incident while it's still fresh in everyone's mind." Jim couched his response with a flirtatious smile.
Amy De Luca was not amused by Jim Valenti's self-deprecating demeanor. Her memory of the Sheriff of Chaves County went back to when she was thirteen years old and very much infatuated with him from afar. Tall, straight, thin and muscular, the six-foot one-inch-tall track star was her ideal of what a high school boy should look like. She spent the next three years of her life trying to win his attention to no avail. She proved no match for the girls his own age, but in Amy's mind it was he who took the blame for that. She spent the next twenty years ignoring him and magnifying every perceived slight by him far beyond its true proportion.
"I've heard that before," Amy responded sarcastically.
Jim immediately picked up on the enmity in Amy's remark and concluded that he was still very much unpopular with her. In that same instance he decided to adjust his posture and act like the professional that he wanted the general populace to see.
"Ms. De Luca, there's been a shooting and my officers are working very hard to gather and process all the information they can about what happened here. I'm sure your daughter is in no trouble. We have a description of two suspects and your daughter doesn't fit either one of them. So, if you'll please just give us a few minutes here, I'm sure your daughter will be right out."
Amy took no offense to Jim's practiced message. The word, shooting, brought her thoughts back to the seriousness of what had happened here and to her greatest worry.
"How's Liz?" Amy anxiously pleaded. "Is she going to be okay?"
Jim had no decisive answer for that question and feared giving the wrong impression. After a moment of thought he provided the only answer that he felt would satisfy that concern.
"I'm sorry, Amy, I don't know. They did manage to stabilize her, and they took her to the hospital."
"Oh, poor Liz," Amy nearly sobbed into her hands. "Maria must be terrified."
Amy's obvious concern for Liz, and for her daughter, encouraged Jim to do what he could to alleviate her distress.
"I'll see if I can hurry things along," Jim softly advised a second before turning back towards the Crash-Down entrance.
When he got back inside the Crash-Down, Jim saw that Detective Mullen was still questioning the waitress. He walked over to area where they were talking, six feet back and in Detective Mullen's field a view. He signaled for the detective with a gesture of his hand. Detective Mullen requested that Maria wait for a minute and then he moved to within whispering distance directly in front of the Sheriff.
"Who is she?" Jim questioned softy.
"Her name is Maria De Luca," Detective Mullen responded back in kind. "She was the waitress serving the suspects."
"Are you getting anything useful out of her?" Jim asked back.
"We'd be lucky if she could identify them in a line up," Detective Mullen responded with a heavy dose of humor and sarcasm.
Jim responded to the remark with a cold stare that Detective Mullen quickly picked up on.
"Her mother is waiting outside," Jim advised dryly a second behind. "Hurry it up."
"Yes sir," Detective Mullen answered back with renewed professionalism.
Detective Mullen turned back to Maria without delay and gave her leave to exit the building. As he did this, Jim noted the blood on the hands and clothing of one of the young men that Detective Romero was questioning.
"Who's that?" Jim questioned Detective Mullen the instant he came back to him.
"His name is Max Evans," Detective Mullen answered after a glance in his notepad. "He attended to the victim before the paramedics arrived. They say he may have saved her life."
"Really," Jim remarked as he continued to stare. "And who's his friend?" He asked two seconds later.
"Michael Guerin," Detective Mullen responded after glancing in his notepad once again. "Both boys are students at Roswell High School and are in the same grade as the victim."
"Do they have any other connection with the shooting?" Jim questioned as he continued to examine the two young men.
"It doesn't appear so," Detective Mullen reported without looking in his pad. "They were sitting on the opposite side of the room."
"Okay," Jim acknowledged with a nod of his head.
Jim's first thought was that the gallantry of someone so young was outside of the norm and that made him suspicious. He had no idea where that suspicion would lead. It was his practice as an officer of the law to follow his intuitions and not steer them. In this case he saw nothing about the two boys to warrant any further study and turned his attention back to Detective Mullen.
"Find the shooters," Jim instructed with a stern stare. "This is personal."
"Yes sir," Detective Mullen answered back with a nod.
Jim turned and left the dining area by way of the front entrance. Outside, on the sidewalk in front of the Crash-Down Café, Jim took notice that Amy and Maria were gone from the area. In their place he saw his son, Kyle, staring back at him. Jim immediately walked over to attend to his concerns.
"How is she, Dad?" Kyle questioned earnestly the instant Jim came within soft speech range.
"I don't know, Kyle," Jim responded with a nod of his head.
"Is she going to live?" Kyle rifled back an instant behind.
"She was alive when they took her to the hospital," Jim reported succinctly. "We just have to wait and see," he softly added an instant behind.
"You're telling me everything, aren't you, Dad?"
Jim knew that his son was inquiring if there were any physical disabilities inflicted by the injury. He considered that for a moment and then decided to ease his son's worry on that subject. He stepped a little closer before quietly attempting to do that.
"The wound was a through and through in the lower left abdomen. She will likely not suffer a physical handicap if she survives."
Kyle had just taken in the last word of this when he noticed a bloody Max Evans walking out the front entrance of the Crash-Down. Michael Guerin was a step behind.
"Was Max inside when it happened?" Kyle questioned with a look of surprise.
"You know him?" Jim questioned with a look back over his shoulder.
"Yeah, he's in one of my classes," Kyle reported blandly. "And I think he's in one of Liz's classes too."
Jim watched Max and a Michael as they walked across the street. An attractive young lady, who looked to be no more than a teenager herself, was standing next to a jeep as if she was waiting for them. Her arms were crossed, and she wore a stern expression on her faces. It looked to him that she was not at all pleased to see them. He continued to watch as Max and Michael walked directly to her and as all three climbed into the jeep. His suspicious nature flared up again at the sight of that. The behavior of the three seemed out of place with what had just occurred. He quickly filed it away under weird behavior and dismissed it as nothing of importance. As soon as they pulled out into the street, he turned his attention back to his son.
"It may turn out to be a good thing that he was inside. The paramedics think that he may have saved Liz's life."
Kyle took that in with silence as he watched Max, Michael and Isabel disappear around a corner.