exbex replied to your post: You. All of you. Gimme some prompts for Midnight...
Mike’s worst…I don’t know if case is the right word. Worst call? Especially pre-Turnbull.
He’s had his share of bad ones. Here’s one.
He knew how to read rivers.
Knew how to see the currents even under the surface, even when it seemed calm; could see under the foam, around the backs of rocks to a whirl, a circle back, rotation into pools where trout would rest and wait for the swifter currents to spin food into the deep blue.
Bodies weren’t that different.
“Union-foxtrot twelve, radio; when the Dogmaster comes on-scene, tell him I’m northeast the residence on the river,” Mike said into his portable, and then clipped it back on his belt once he heard the acknowledgment from dispatch, picking his way along the brushy shore and reading the river, stripping it mentally to its bones, rebuilding it in theory.
These kinds of calls were a tossup, but Mike never went into them hopeful. That way, when the happy ending came, it was joyful instead of expected. That way, when it didn’t, he hadn’t gotten his hopes up.
That didn’t stop him from cajoling the universe for the better end.
The call had come in only thirty minutes ago, but the little boy hadn’t been seen in over an hour. He had been playing in his yard. His father, wringing a shopcloth in his hands over and over, insisted again and again that the boy knew better than to go near the river, because some part of him had to know. Some part of him had to already know.
The ground was drier than usual, prints were hard, so Mike just paused here or there to watch the river, and that lead him to some snapped off branches and some yarn and a broken bobber or two. He didn’t touch them.
He gave a nod to himself and then followed the trampled grass, the bent sticks, the whispering currents of river, and he thought about where he would fish if he were six years old, too. He’d told the family to stay put, despite their willingness to trample down there calling the boy’s name, because if the worst was what happened, then he didn’t want them seeing it.
The first solid prints he found in river mud were right at the edge.
Little feet. A bit of broken string. A scramble against bank. A rock with a new scrape in it.
Mike closed his eyes for one heartbeat, then read the water and when he picked his gaze up, there was vivid blue in blue.
He called off the dog master as he pushed through the brush; called for the medics, called for the chaplain instead. He untangled the little body once named Ryan from the brush his little legs got tangled in. He pulled him on shore and even though he knew it was too late, he tried to breathe life back into the kid, he listened to the vague crackle of ribs as he tried to push blood through the little, cold body. He only quit when the paramedics took over, but all of them knew.
He answered some questions, calm. One of the guys asked, “Hey, Chase, you okay?” and Mike said, “Yeah,” and then the somber group started clearing the scene, and Mike went back to pick up the homemade fishing rod, with red yarn and broken bobber because--
Because. Because Ryan had made it to go fishing. Because he had sat on this shore and tied that little knot with the bowtie he tied his shoes in, and he tied a bobber on, and he thought he’d catch a fish on yarn without a hook, and two hours ago, this was what this little boy did.
Mike sat on the edge of his bed, face in his hands or fists in his hair, until he ran out of tears.
