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Ed's short fiction has appeared in HandHeldCrime, Futures Mysterious Anthology
Magazine, and EWGPresents Without A Clue.
The afternoon Sharon Knowles was dismissed from the jury pool, she drove out to Burke Lake. The day was typical for Washington, DC. It’d started sunny and moderate but by noon switched to overcast skies with a chilly breeze. She parked her Honda in the lot by the near deserted marina. Before zipping up the cell phone inside her fanny pack, she debated checking in with Captain MacSorley, her godfather and mentor. His last words replayed in her mind: “After jury duty, report back to work. We need you here.”
Sharon needed to get in a run, though.
Couldn’t the Bay City Police manage without her for a few hours? She didn’t keep a fit mind and body by patrolling in a cruiser on stressful ten-hour shifts. After swinging her legs around, Sharon changed into her running shoes, a pair of slightly broken in red Nikes. Her thigh muscles screamed in protest as she stretched by the rear bumper.
Frowning a little, she felt a raindrop wet her forehead.
Sharon saw rows of rental jon boats lined before the marina's shack. Its front flaps were propped up for business. Inside a gangly teenager bobbed his head to music piped through his ear cords attached to an MP3 player. Car batteries sat off to the side. Burke Lake prohibited gasoline outboard motors in favor of battery-powered electric trolling motors. The meditative quiet in this county park on a Wednesday afternoon appealed to
her.
She didn't, however, care for sharing the trails with cyclists. Their reckless speeds and aggressive maneuvers seldom yielded the right of the way. You stayed on your toes or else. It felt like only a matter of time before knobby bicycle tires marked across her back flattened her.
Sighing, she trotted to the painted marker where the circuitous 4.5-mile path looped around Burke Lake, linking at the earth dam on the deepest end. Not a soul showed in her 360 scan and off she went, a measured and methodical rhythm propelling her tread over the flat terrain. In fact, the course stayed level the whole distance with the added joy under regal oaks and maples bursting in buds.
Such a wondrous day had to be a crime.
Her brain plugged into the task at hand. She ran through a mental check: joints, limbs, extremities, spine, and lungs. All systems were a go. An old worry nagged at the edge of her mind. The weakest link was her knees that could blow out at any juncture. Her boyfriend Zelmo could attribute such a problem to an old football injury sustained on a high school gridiron.
Such a convenient fib, however, wasn’t available for her to use.
Instead, Sharon tried a new technique -- visual imagery. She imagined that her knees were teacups, fragile yet still utilitarian. If filled to the brim slow and sure, they worked splendidly to hold green tea. If picked up and set down too hard, they cracked. If dropped, they shattered. She resolved while chugging by the new Frisbee golf course to keep a watchful eye on them.
Her progress more than satisfactory, Sharon lapsed into a reverie. The jury pool had congregated at nine o'clock in a large stuffy room at the courthouse. Curious, she surveyed the turnout and liked seeing a mix of races and gender. The bulk, nonetheless, were ladies at least Sharon's mother's age. Until a call came down from the courtrooms on the fourth and fifth floors to send up a new batch of potential jurors, there was nothing to do but while away the time.
A crowd murmur didn’t distract Sharon. She’d brought along an old Sue Grafton crime novel, C Is For Corpse. Anna, her older cop partner, also a voracious reader, had recommended it as the best to date in the Grafton alphabet. What would the popular author, she wondered, use for her Z title? Z Is For Zapped, maybe?
Through the willow hedge, Sharon espied a blue heron in the shallows on yellow legs spooning for minnows. The rare sight thrilled her enough to tell Anna. A rubbing spot on the ball of her right foot threatened to wear a blister. Still, she didn't gauge it critical enough to make a pit stop to try and fix it.
On her immediate right, a set of chin-up bars bounced into view. The first leg of the trail also offered an exercise workout routine. Looking at the bars left Sharon feeling drained.
Wasn't a vigorous run enough? For herself, such was the case.
While in the large room waiting for a judge upstairs to call her number, Sharon hadn't dared go use the lady's restroom. Too many ducked in only to be told upon reemerging that her jury group had already left in the elevators. Of course, the mortified ladies raced out the double doors to catch up with the others. It was bad form to show up late in any judge’s chamber. Also, for Sharon it was a bad career move.
Running now, Sharon affirmed that, yes, a blister was indeed in progress. Her teacup knees still steamed along. Her mind wandered off again. A funny scene in Grafton's book took a page right out of Sharon's life. The lady detective character, pressed for time, changed her clothes inside her compact car.
Wasn't that the truth? She carried a spare uniform inside an airline carryon bag in the Honda’s trunk. You just never knew when the cell phone beeped next and you were asked to make a beeline to the station house . . .
"On your left," a voice barked from behind.
Automatically, Sharon shifted to the path’s edge. The cyclist loomed up at breakneck speed. She heard him first. His front tire then bit the meaty shank of her left calf. In that same split second, she realized her worst fear was unfolding.
Instincts took over. Yanking her leg along in a leaping plunge, she rolled upon hitting the ground to minimize the bicycle’s hammering impact.
Her reflexes triggered by an adrenaline dump saved her from serious injury.
Seeing red, she didn't spare dressing down the cyclist who it turned out was the gangly teenager manning the marina’s boat shack. He wobbled on the bicycle until righting himself.
Braking in a slide through a patch of wet red clay, he next put down his feet and twisted around.
"Are you okay? Sorry," he said between huffing breaths. "I guess I was flying faster than I realized."
“You reckon?" Sharon said. "The rules posted on path signs instruct cyclists to yield to pedestrians. Do you ever bother to read them?"
The teenager didn't smirk but seemed genuinely crestfallen, his chin falling to touch his chest. "Working here, you'd think I'd know better. Sorry for my mistake."
Sharon brushed off her jogging shorts and sweatshirt. "Inside my pack is a police badge and a cell phone," she said, keeping her voice even. "Yes, I'm a cop."
His head jerked up, luminous hazel eyes enlarging with each word. "What, are you set to arrest me?"
The teenager was hurting. Sharon gazed away as if countenancing the idea. A smile touched the corners of her lips despite the shooting stabs of pain through her left calf. "You bring up a valid point," she said. "Should I do my duty and take you in?"
"Oh-oh, I'm not down with anything like that," said the teenager. "What will my boss say? What will my father say?
Hoo-boy. What will my mom say? She'll be livid."
Stooping down, Sharon massaged the raw abrasion the rubber tire had burned on her skin. The wound wasn't as serious as she first thought, really a glancing blow rattling her nerves more than anything else.
"What will my mom say?" repeated the teenager.
"She won't say anything," Sharon decided. "I won't press charges if you promise to stay off the running path whenever I come to Burke Lake to use it. Deal?"
"Deal," said the teenager, relief energizing his words.
"Well, you better return to your job before your boss pokes up and finds you out messing around," said Sharon.
The teenager nodded while mounting the bicycle to go back the way he'd pedaled. "Yes ma'am," he said. "And thank you for giving me a break."
Sour lines creased Sharon's forehead while she watched him scoot around a sharp bend in the trail. For the first time, someone her junior had addressed her as "ma'am" and her reaction was a negative one. She preferred to regard herself as the teenager's older sister and not his mother's contemporary that warranted calling her "ma'am." Gingerly she leaned some weight on her left foot and flexed it forward.
It was okay. The stop had helped Sharon catch her breath, so she felt revitalized to press on to the trail's end. Her first bounds taken were rocky but her pounding feet in short order lay down a new steady rhythm. Trailside tree trunks and branches blurred by her as thoughts were cast adrift again.
Finally her juror number was announced and she huddled with her fellow citizens inside a slow, onerous elevator. At the fifth floor, they piled out of its collapsing doors. Inside the austere courtroom, she had a seat in the bat black pews while noting the longhaired, scared looking teenager behind the defendant's table. A public defender near her own age sat in the chair beside him.
As the jurors were interviewed by the Commonwealth Attorney and the public defender, Sharon learned the youthful prisoner had been arrested on a third shoplifting charge. A stack of gangsta rap CDs concealed under a baggy sweatshirt hadn't fooled the alarm’s squaw when he darted out the exit. A store detective had chased him down. Tabs put on the CDs tripped the alarm.
Sharon wondered if this experience would wise him up to stop stealing. All of the jury members were selected before they got to Sharon and she was excused.
Presently, Sharon broke a heavy sweat dampening the sweatshirt across her back. Her breaths labored in ragged inhalations and her mouth went dry. Lungs, starved for oxygen, pumped harder.
She didn't break stride, just put down and picked up one foot in front of the other. One-two, one-two . . .
Distracting thoughts to take her mind off this run became more difficult to latch on to. One question taunted her: why did she ever want to put herself through this torturous grind? Her reaction touched on her same motives for joining the police force. It was a challenge.
Sure enough, that was the main reason. It fired her competitive zeal except the dam blister broke. With each footstep it grew to twice the size of a Ben Franklin dollar coin. Her eyes glazed over and a trance overtook her senses. She'd exceeded the beginner's prescribed limits. Four-and-a-half miles didn't wear well on her. On the last run, she'd slowed into a camel's walk and nearabout had a heart attack while crossing the earth dam.
Why, she still wondered, why?
If only that ever elusive second wind kicked in, Sharon could muster the energy to frame a final response to that question.
No second wind came. Through the barren trees she viewed the dull gray lake waters lap up against the earth dam. Finally she transcended the dam’s gentle slope at the four-mile marker. Now she'd put it on automatic pilot. The tea in her teacups never once tipped over. Her knees absorbed each jarring impact just fine.
Her ears pricked up as a muffled beeping reached them. In the next moment, she realized that her cell phone inside the fanny pack was going nuts. Her initial impulse was to ignore it since she was almost over the finish line. Again, it rang.
Out of a sense of duty, she stopped. Clumsy fingers undid the zipper to the fanny pack around her middle. She fished out the cell phone and stabbed the "ON" button.
"Sharon Knowles, here," she said.
"What's wrong with your breath?" asked Captain MacSorley. "You sound like you've been running again. Don’t tell you were."
Lying would only complicate matters, so she went with honesty. "Yes," she said. "Around Burke Lake."
"I thought you were in court today," he said.
Sharon gulped down more oxygen. "I was until the judge dismissed me."
"Oh, skip it," said Captain MacSorley. "Just get yourself together and meet me at my office in a half hour."
Being the police captain's goddaughter had certain disadvantages, like him always looking over her shoulder to keep her on the straight and narrow. "Has something big broke?" she asked.
MacSorley grumbled to clear his throat before saying: "A girl out jogging in another park never made it home. Her ex was paroled from Red Onion Prison last Wednesday. Anymore questions, young lady?"
"None," Sharon said. "See you in less than thirty minutes." She redoubled her now sure-footed gait.
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