Blown Away Read Online Free PDF Page A

of the deputies bent so far into the passenger side, only his waist and legs showed. Another snapped photos. A third took notes. Her excitement grew.
    â€œYou needed my help for a traffic accident?” she asked when close enough.
    Branch smiled, made a show of looking at his watch, a Guy Special with the huge bezel and multiple knobs. “What kept you?” he asked. “Bambi’s mother get in your way?”
    Emily made a face, shaking her head. The day she graduated the police academy, she bought one of those red flashing lights TV cops used in their cars. She listened to her radio scanner when off-duty, figuring she could check out interesting calls. An opportunity came a few weeks later, a bank robbery near Fox Valley Mall. She slapped the “Kojak” flasher on her roof, mashed the accelerator—and slammed into a deer leaping from the shadowed tree line. The impact totaled both deer and forest green Saturn, but Emily was merely shaken, thanks to air bags.
    The first responder to her 911 call was a Joliet patrol officer she liked. He checked her for damage, found none, then wagged his finger at the deer. “Next time, buddy, move right for sirens and light.”
    â€œVery funny,” Emily shouted over the howl of approaching fire engines. “Don’t tell anyone at my shop about this, OK? I’ll never hear the end of it.”
    â€œCourse I won’t,” the officer assured her. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
    The next night she walked into roll call for the pre-shift briefing and found, propped in her chair, a set of deer antlers bolted to a junkyard fender. “Bambi” and “Thumper” from a child’s coloring book were skewered on the tips. “Oh, no!” Emily shrieked, touching the Rust-Oleum “blood” as her face turned equally scarlet. “I’ll get him for this, no matter how long it takes!” The grinning cops sprang to their feet and, led by the shift commander, chanted, “Bambi! Bambi! Bambi!” Her friend Annie Bates, a patrol sergeant and lead sharpshooter on the department’s SWAT team, put out the word the next day to knock it off. “’Cause it’s pathetic,” she explained when Emily asked why. “Roadkill? Deerslayer? Cool nicknames. But Bambi?” Annie shook her head in disgust. “I told the boys to cease and desist or I’d Thumper ’em.” Branch still loved to tease her about it.
    Emily gave as good as she got, though, and fired back, “I might be a stone-cold killer, Captain, but at least I’m properly groomed.”
    Branch scratched his salt-and-pepper stubble. “I was running, too, when Marty called,” he said, fishing through his fanny pack. He pulled out a long green cigar that was frayed on both ends. “Happy birthday,” he said, tossing it her way.
    Emily grabbed it midair and looked at him, puzzled. Branch knew her birthday—the big Four-O—was still three days away. He also knew she detested cigars.
    â€œThe stogie’s only half your present,” he said. “The other half is the homicide we’re gonna help Marty investigate. The body’s inside the car.”
    Emily got excited even as her legs turned to ice. “Homicide? Wow!” she said, surprised at her mixed feelings. She’d been telling Branch for months she wanted to work a “big crime.” Now that he’d made that possible, she didn’t know if she was up to it. She decided to cover with bravado. “I’m ready. That fatal crash on Valentine’s Day? The drug overdose by the river? I handled those with no problem.”
    Branch shook his head. “This is a homicide, not a death. Complete with rotting corpse. That’s what the cigar is for. The stink keeps you from losing breakfast.” He glanced at the big black flies dive-bombing the car. “With this one, we’ll need all the help we can