Tunnel Vision

Chapter One

AN ACRID TASTE rose in her throat as the scream erupted from her mouth with the first flash of gunfire.

“No!” A second flash, followed by searing pain, dropped her to her knees. She raised her revolver and squeezed off two quick rounds before crawling toward the prone body near her on the damp grass. Wetness soaked through the knees of her uniform pants and her vision was blurred by the tears forming in her eyes. She couldn’t cry. Wheeler needed her. She didn’t remember hearing the back-up cars sliding to a halt nearby or the shouts of other officers running toward her as she reached out and rolled her partner and friend onto his back, yanking at the Velcro of the bulletproof vest that hadn’t protected his neck and head. She could barely bring herself to look at him. She had to concentrate. What she did was a matter of life and death, now more than it ever had been. Ignoring the throbbing in her leg, she began chest compressions and leaned over his body to breathe air into him. As she returned to the compressions, she glanced quickly at his neck and watched frothy red bubbles oozing from the black hole torn in his throat.

“You’ll be okay, Stan,” she whispered over and over as she pushed on his chest, creating a mantra to guide the rhythm of her movements. She breathed air into his lungs once more and saw a burst of red flow from the neck wound. As she turned to resume compressions, a hand grabbed her wrist. She tried to push it away, but it was too strong. “You’re killing him!” she said as she struggled. The hand squeezed her wrist tightly and she looked down to see a bloodcovered hand. Flashing her eyes to Wheeler’s face, she tried to remain calm. She brought her face closer to his and managed to say, “You’re gonna be okay, Stan. I promise.”

The look on his face twisted into a frown and his head moved slowly from side to side, his lips moved, but no sound escaped. “What? What are you trying to tell me?” she asked as she leaned closer to hear. In a rush of unexpected air and sound, she heard him.

“Your fault, Brodie. This is your fault.”

Trying to get away from the accusation in his voice and the dimming light in his eyes, she fought against the steel grip. “I’ll always be inside you,” he whispered, his lips curling into a cruel grin. “I’m taking part of you with me.” She watched in horror when his eyes refused to show any sign of forgiveness as a dull, milky film clouded them and the final air escaped from his lungs. She could hear him inside her mind already, accusing her.

“No!” she screamed, sitting up abruptly and sucking in air through her mouth in short, panicked gasps. Her eyes frantically searched the blackness surrounding her and she begged for one small flicker of light to prove the persistent nightmare was finally over. That she was still alive. Her clothing was wet with perspiration. Small droplets of sweat ran between her breasts and trickled down her neck and along the hollow of her spine. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them tightly until she could stop shaking. As her breathing became more controlled, she lowered her forehead to her knees and squeezed her eyes closed, pushing away the face in her dream. It was always the same.
Is
this what happens when you die unexpectedly?
You crawl
inside someone else’s mind and make their life hell?
Why did Wheeler have to stare at her like that as he exhaled his last harsh metallic breath into her?

She shivered from the sweaty clothing sticking to her damp skin. She was pulling the wet t-shirt over her head and leaning down to pull a dry shirt from the nightstand drawer, when the sudden, explosive sound of gunfire made her bolt from the bed, plunging her back into the nightmare. She grabbed her service revolver and flashlight from the nightstand. She crouched and made her way to the bedroom window, looking carefully outside as she pulled an old heather-gray t-shirt over her head. Through a slit in the Venetian blinds she saw a car parked on the shoulder of the road in front of her house. Its hood was up and a figure leaned into the engine compartment. She moved quietly into the living room and opened the front door, shining the beam of the flashlight on the car, her revolver following the shaft of light. A man turned his head toward the glare and waved. Relaxing slightly, but still wary, she lowered the revolver and walked toward the car.

“Didn’t mean to disturb you, ma’am,” the man said.She glanced around the car and then shined the light into the vehicle. An old woman with mussed white hair sat behind the wheel, looking like a deer frozen in the headlights of a Mack truck. She raised an arm to shield her eyes from the flashlight beam. The man under the hood was considerably younger than the woman and his shaggy hair kept falling in his face. Brodie clicked the safety on her revolver and stuck it in the back waistband of her shorts before moving to the front of the vehicle.

“Car trouble?”

“Yeah. I keep telling her she needs a new fuckin’

car, but noooo, she’s bound and determined to hang onto this one until they both croak,” the man said in a low voice.

He tinkered under the hood a little longer and finally stuck his head out from under one side of the hood. “Try it now, Grandma, and remember, just pump the gas pedal one time.”

The woman didn’t reply, but Royce Brodie heard the clicking sound as she pumped the gas pedal and turned the key in the ignition. The engine sputtered a few times and sounded as if it might die again until the man reached under the hood and grabbed the throttle rod to keep it going.

“It just has to idle a few minutes and then it should at least get us to a gas station,” he said, glancing at her. “Probably just a clogged fuel line. She won’t buy nothin’ but that cheap shit and it keeps fouling the engine.”

The man slowly released the gas pedal and the engine grumbled, but continued idling. He slammed the hood down and walked to the driver’s side of the vehicle.

“Scoot over, Grandma. Better let me drive in case she dies again,” he said as he opened the door.

“Just don’t you speed in my car, Billy,” the old woman said as she slid across the seat.

Smiling at Brodie, he shrugged and said, “Not much chance of that.”

She stepped out of the way and watched as the car began to crawl away. As she walked back toward her house, the car began to sputter. Suddenly, a series of backfires poured out of the car’s exhaust, a flash accompanying each sound. It was the same sound she had heard the night her life changed forever and the nightmares began. The night Stan Wheeler found his way inside her mind and soul to torment her. Then there had been someone to hold her and soothe the nightmares away. Now there was no one. Wheeler had died because of her, and she had killed the love that might have saved her. Rubbing a hand across her face and through her damp hair, she stepped into her house but knew she wouldn’t sleep again that night. The shrill ring of her phone kept her from having to worry about it.

FROM A DISTANCE, the activity in the field off the steep westbound lane of the main highway into Cedar Springs, Texas looked like a convention of fireflies on a humid summer night. Patrol units blocked the divided highway at the top of the hill above the accident site to make room for emergency vehicles, their red and blue lights cutting through the darkness. Brodie yawned and squeezed her eyes shut, shoving a finger under her wire-rimmed glasses to rub the pre-dawn blurriness away. Exhaustion would eventually give her the nightmare-free sleep her body craved, if only for a couple of hours. She barely remembered groping for her jeans and boots in the dim light of her bedroom. She hadn’t been in a hurry to reach the scene. Once a victim was dead there wasn’t a helluva lot she could do for them. She nosed her vintage 1969 Olympic Gold Camaro along the shoulder of the eastbound lanes, past a line of slowmoving vehicles obviously hoping to get a better look at the accident. She shook her head and ran a hand through her short, dark, but graying hair. Everyone talked about how horrible accidents like this were, all the while busting a gut hoping to catch even a glimpse of a bloodied and mangled body.

Halfway up the hill, she swung the Camaro onto the grassy, sloping median separating west and eastbound lanes. Before she could extract the wallet holding her detective’s badge from her waistband, a flashlight-waving patrolman in the median signaled her to stop. She didn’t recognize him and concluded he was one of the new eager-beaver types the department had recently hired to beef up its ranks in response to the rising crime rate that accompanied the rising population rate of Cedar Springs. The small town she escaped to nearly eight years earlier was being slowly but steadily gobbled up by Austin’s relentless urban sprawl. And no matter how hard people tried to get away from them, every time they moved, the cockroaches managed to tag along. Brodie rolled the window down as the officer, dressed in brand-spanking new dark-blue pants and gray shirt, approached. He leaned down to the driver’s side window with a frown and began the speech he had probably already repeated dozens of times, all the while ogling the car’s immaculately restored interior.

“There’s been an accident, ma’am,” he droned as he reached into his shirt pocket. “I’m issuing a citation for illegally crossing the median and obstructing the right-of-way for emergency vehicles.”

“Don’t think so,” Brodie said matter-of-factly, holding her detective’s shield up for the officer to see.

“Oh, I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t know detectives came out for traffic accidents.”

She was becoming mildly annoyed at being

referred to as ‘ma’am’. At fifty she already felt old enough without being reminded of it multiple times by some kid barely out of puberty. Forcing a smile, she focused on the officer’s nametag and shrugged.