By
Ed Benjamin
Harry crossed the barrier. The patrolman was going to stop him, but Dwight had looked up and motioned for the cop to let him through. Dwight walked up to Harry about ten yards before he got to the car.
“Are you sure you want to do this? She’s still in there.”
Harry nodded and continued on to the wreckage. She lay on her side, face down on the seat. Harry noted the cut strap of the safety harness where the impact had severed it. Blood had seeped out of the body where the slug had entered. There wasn’t a lot of blood. No extensive blood flow.
She probably died quickly. Thank God for that.
Dwight stopped him.
“No further. The crime scene unit from San Antonio is on the way.”
“This was a bad idea, Harry. You ought to leave.”
Harry’s left fist clenched.
“What have you got so far?”
“We’ll know more when CSU gets here. Looks like they rammed her car and then shot her.”
Harry’s mind drifted back their first meeting. He had felt the pull even then. It took working together for six months before they did anything about it.
Dwight edged him back to the police line. Harry let himself be backed away but did not take his eyes off her body until she was out of his line of sight.
Katie, I love you so much it hurts.
“Has anyone notified her mother?”
“It’s taken care of. Don’t worry. I heard the Chief himself was on his way.”
“Don’t let him get too close. He tends to garbage up crime scenes.”
“We’ll handle it, Harry. Are you alright?”
Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys to the Mustang. He held them out for Dwight.
“Can you get someone to drop my car off for me? I’m going to walk.”
Dwight took the keys and nodded. Someone should be with him. Dwight took the keys and looked at Harry. Later, he described Harry as having a faraway, vacant look.
A single tear worked its way down Harry's right cheek. When the tear reached the bottom of his chin, Harry reached up his hand and wiped the tear away with his right index finger.
Harry began walking. As he walked, his mind ran over the past few months. The moment they met, he knew she was the one! He had always scoffed at the idea of a special someone for him. Actually, he thought everything he had heard about love and a deep feeling for another was something unreal. Something one read in fiction novels or if t were real, then something that happened to other people, cer5tainly not him.
She had acknowledged the attraction when they met but refused to become entangled romantically. Then one night, things changed. Once they connected, he instinctively knew that she accepted him the way he was.
When they met, Harry was ending a two year period of self-doubt and depression. On reflection, he wondered if it was a manifestation of mental illness brought on by the events which resulted in his exile from the Air Force. He had already begun the process of change. Meeting her only provided the impetus for him to speed up the process.
Knowing her caused him to continue to look at himself. She had accepted him as he was. He had changed since he met her, not because of her, but because knowing her, something had inspired him to become to continue to become the best he could be.
So, in his own mind, Harry became better. His self-confidence returned. He faced life on an even keel and on its own terms. Gone were the manic days of depression and feelings of abandonment. He had basically stopped the daily drinking habit which had consumed him, now reduced his drinking to an occasional glass of wine.
He was sweating. It was hot and the Texas sun bore down on him. He passed the one mile mark.
Another mile to go.
His mind started thinking about his birth parents, the car crash which killed them, then the accident which took his sister and his adoptive parents, his deep depression when the Air Force had medically retired him, and now this.
Harry began to recognize he was starting to fall into another well of dark thinking. This is not productive. Instinctively, Harry recognized his grief and feelings of loss would not be fruitful at this moment. He had a place in his mind where he stored things. Things he wanted to disregard. A place where he put things he didn’t want to face in the present. He told himself that he would deal with them later. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if he would regret not feeling the pain of this moment.
There’s a lot to do.
Then he started to focus on the situation at hand. Was it something about him? Was something from his work with the Defense Department behind this or his private investigation business or was it something in which she had been involved.
She had her own thing going also. She did keep under the radar, but she lived and worked in the netherworld of cyberspace. He supposed it could have been something there.
He imagined he could still feel the tear where it had rolled down his cheek and he had wiped it with his finger. He shook his head and and wiped the memory of the tear away.
His mind then moved from grief, not to vengeance, but to Justice.
A beginning
If you are interested in some background about Harry, then I invite you to check out Harry's War on Amazon Kindle Harry's War
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