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Lacey broke into a jog, the desperate fear in the old woman’s voice driving her on. “What’s the matter?” she asked, skidding to a stop in front of the gate.
“Oh, thank the Lord. Come quickly.” The woman’s face was drawn back in a rictus of panic and she fumbled to unlatch the gate, then beckoned Lacey into the front garden. “It’s Rania. I found her lying right here.” She pointed toward the front steps of the second little cottage, this one not nearly as well-restored as the one next door. The garden was also overgrown, with high hedges around the perimeter blocking the view from the road and garden beds full of daisies that were going to seed. But Lacey raced past these to the base of a set of steps from the front veranda. A young woman was lying on the grass, long dark hair spread around her face like a carpet. She was covered in blood. Lacey recoiled at the sight. But then instinct and training took control of her limbs.
She knelt beside the woman, feeling for a pulse. This didn’t look good. The victim was unconscious, and Lacey eventually found a weak pulse beneath her fingertips. Smudge, who’d followed her in through the gate, gave the woman a sniff and Lacey pushed him away. “Have you called an ambulance?” she asked without looking up.
“No, I…I just found her. And I don’t have a phone. Oh, Lord, is she dead?” This time Lacey glanced up to see the old woman hovering above, wringing her hands together and looking like she might collapse on the spot. She knew how the lady felt; her own heart rate was spiking, and she needed to slow her breathing before she hyperventilated and blacked out. Lacey took a second to try and clear her mind. She should know what to do. She used to be a cop—was still legally a cop. She was trained for this exact thing. But now… Now all she wanted to do was run far away.
“No, she’s not dead,” Lacey forced herself to say. “Here, take my phone. The pin number is 4557.” She handed the lady her cell. “Call an ambulance. And the police,” she added. Damn, if only Nico didn’t work half an hour’s drive away. If only he hadn’t left at such an ungodly hour this morning. She really needed him here. Needed a steadying presence who understood exactly what to do in this kind of situation. Because she was about to go to pieces, she could feel it.
“I just came around to prune the gardenias in Rania’s garden,” the woman said, her gaze fixed on the figure collapsed on the ground as if she couldn’t look away. Smudge was hanging back now, as if he sensed something wasn’t right, and his ears were down as he stared at Lacey. But she had no time to worry about the dog now.
“What’s your name?” Lacey asked, trying to keep her voice steady. Even though she wanted to be far from here, her training as a cop was taking over, like muscle memory for a judo throw she’d learned so well she didn’t even have to think about the move anymore. Rule number one was to manage the onlookers and witnesses. Make sure the site was secured, and the bystanders were safe. Then call for help. It was ingrained in her psyche.
“I’m Margie. Herb and I live next door. I like to help Rania with her garden.” The words tumbled from the old woman’s lips. “But I never thought…” She stopped and covered her mouth as tears leaked from her eyes. Margie was kitted out in Lycra from head to toe, the type that all those mobs of fanatical cyclists wore when they took to the roads on their expensive machines to ride hundreds of miles in one day before they descended on the local café to drink coffee and chat. And now that Lacey looked more carefully, she could see she was fit and slim, even though she must be in her seventies.
“That’s good, Margie. My name is Lacey. It’s great that you’re here, and that you found your neighbor in time. But if you want to help Rania, then you need to call an ambulance.”
“Okay.” The woman nodded weakly, but began stabbing at the phone, and Lacey transferred her concentration back to the woman lying on the ground and began to catalogue her injuries. The young woman looked to be in her early twenties. The skin on her face was unlined and Lacey noted detachedly that she was quite beautiful, with honey-colored skin and dark hair and eyelashes. Of middle-eastern descent, maybe.
She was wearing pajamas, as if she’d been roused from her bed when the attacker struck. There were defensive wounds on both her hands and more slashes across her upper arms. Whoever had done this didn’t seem to be an expert at stabbing a victim to death. A first-time attacker, perhaps. But it was the two deep wounds in Rania’s chest that were of most concern. Blood had leaked from the wounds saturating her clothing and leaving pools of red on the grass below. Rania’s skin felt icy to the touch. How long had she been lying here? This didn’t look like it’d just happened. Had this poor lady been lying in her garden all night? First things first, she needed to stop the bleeding.
“Margie, I need a rag or a piece of clothing. Something to help staunch the wounds,” Lacey called to the woman who was now talking excitedly into the phone. Lacey removed her own sheepskin jacket as she spoke and covered the woman’s torso, trying to keep her warm. She was wearing a long-sleeved tee and a sweater beneath her sheepskin, and so she also stripped the sweater over her head and used it to push against one of the wounds on Rania’s chest, but it wasn’t enough to cover both injuries. The chilly wind now nipped at her through the lightweight fabric.
“Here.” Margie handed her the Lycra jacket she’d been wearing, and Lacey used it to staunch the other wound. It wasn’t ideal, but it’d have to do. The most worrying thing about the wounds on Rania’s chest was that they were no longer bleeding profusely. As if all the blood had already seeped out of her body. There was nothing Lacey could do about that, however, so she pressed down hard on the wounds and prayed the ambulance would get here soon.
It was only then, as she put pressure on the other woman’s chest and whispered to Rania that she was going to be okay, that the other part of her brain finally registered the pools of blood on the ground. As soon as she glimpsed the blood, images of Cindi invaded her mind. The blood was her undoing. Much the same as the other night when it’d dripped from Nico’s nose, it was the sight of the ruby-red liquid that tipped Lacey over the edge and she was engulfed in memories so strong they took over her conscious mind.
Her memory was torn back to that fateful day as she arrived at the scene. The blue-and-red lights on top of her cruiser flashing in the background, lighting the scene with their eerie, unnatural pigments. The way everything seemed to play back in slow motion as Lacey ran toward the front of the house where she could hear the animal screams of pain issuing from a girl’s mouth. Then Lacey crashed through the door, seeing the mother crouched over Cindi, blood streaked across her maniacal face as she stabbed down over and over again into the fragile body of her daughter, calling on the devil to leave her child’s body. Lacey didn’t even have time to draw her service weapon; she’d dived on the woman, grappling her away from the child and knocking the knife from her hand, not even caring about the danger to herself in a bid to stop the carnage. Her partner, Mike, had followed her in and helped subdue the mother. Then Lacey had started CPR on Cindi. Even though she’d known it was too late.
It wasn’t until the next day that she’d finally, spectacularly, fallen apart, crawling into bed and refusing to come out. Refusing to go back to work. Refusing to talk to anyone. Finally, the police counsellor had got through to her and talked her down from the precipice of mad depression. But it wasn’t until after weeks of counseling that she’d felt a little more human.
Life as Lacey knew it was never the same, however. She wasn’t the same person anymore. What hurt the most, what’d shattered her confidence, was the feeling of complete and utter helplessness. That she was too late to stop the tragedy. Too late to save the little girl. Her badge and her gun and the fact she had the power of the law on her side were all useless when it came to saving Cindi. This was the reason she couldn’t go back to policing. She’d never be able to trust herself again. To trust that she wouldn’t fall to pieces when she was needed the most.
The mother had been in an ice-induced rage and was completely and utterly devastated when she finally came down off her high and realized what she’d done. But that didn’t stop her from being sent to jail for the next thirty years. And it also didn’t stop Lacey from blaming herself every single day since then for not getting there a minute earlier, so she could’ve perhaps saved the little girl.
“The ambulance is on its way,” Margie reported, but Lacey barely heard the older woman’s words. All she wanted to do was to curl into a fetal position on the grass until everything disappeared. She couldn’t do this. This woman was going to die, and it’d be all her fault. A second death on her hands. A low moan escaped her lips.
“Lacey, did you hear me?” Margie touched her shoulder and Lacey flinched away. “Are you okay, luv? Oh, Lord, is Rania going to die?” Margie’s voice rose an octave as she observed Lacey’s distress.
She had to get herself under control, if only for this elderly woman’s sake. She couldn’t leave Margie to tend this situation all on her own. Lacey drew in a shuddering breath. And then another.
“I’m okay,” Lacey rasped. “What was that about the ambulance?”
“They’re on their way. But they have to come from Burnie and it might take them half an hour to get here, so I called the local doctor. He lives in Wynyard, its only ten minutes away.”
“Good. Well done,” Lacey praised Margie, while clenching her teeth and marshaling her mind back into a semblance of order. She leaned over Rania and felt for a pulse again, listened for signs of breathing. They were there, but her breath sounded like it was rasping in her lungs now. Not a good sign. She hoped that doctor got here soon.
“Margie? Where are you?” a loud voice bellowed over the side fence.
“Oh, Herb, thank the Lord. Quick, come over to Rania’s, she’s been hurt,” Margie replied.
Ten seconds later, a fit-looking older man appeared in the garden. He was wearing Lycra like his wife.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked, seeming to assess the situation almost immediately. “I’m ex-military,” he added by way of explanation, his eyes flicking over Rania but not coming to rest on her, as if afraid to look too closely.
“You could get me some blankets,” Lacey replied. “Then you could wait out the front and direct the first responders in here. I believe your wife has called a local doctor.”
“Yes,” Margie piped up. “I called Dr. DuPont. He was just about to leave for work, but he said he’d be here in less than ten minutes.”
