No Place Like Hell

No Place Like Hell

K S Ferguson

Published by

K S Ferguson

Smashwords Edition

Contents

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Acknowledgements

Titles by K S Ferguson

Touching Madness: Excerpt

Copyright

1

June 1968

Bricks-for-brains at the wheel of the Camaro in front of us revved his engine. It roared through his glasspack mufflers.

"You want to bet he's going to do something stupid?" I asked my partner, Dave, who rode shotgun in the patrol car.

"I don't need your female intuition to see trouble coming, Nicky," Dave replied.

We crawled down Santa Domingo Boulevard amidst a sea of teenagers cruising in their muscle cars. Exhaust choked the airless summer night as we drove past the stucco façades of businesses lining the Solaris commercial district.

The brake lights flashed on a beat-up Ford Falcon ahead of the Camaro. The Falcon's driver had spotted our cherry top, and traffic slowed further. At the intersection, the light cycled from green to yellow.

The numbskull in the Camaro jerked his car into the open right lane, downshifted, and peeled rubber. The screech of his tires cut through the rumble of motors. After a quick glance in my rearview mirror, I changed lanes to give chase.

"Idiot." Dave flipped on the light and siren.

A guy materialized on the right sidewalk and charged in front of the Camaro. With a squeal of brakes and a thud, the Camaro smacked the pedestrian, who bounced down the pavement like a wad of Silly Putty.

"Hell!" I slammed on the brakes, shifted into park, and jumped out. Dave called in while I dashed ahead.

All traffic had lurched to a halt. People got out of their cars to gawk. Bricks-for-brains sat frozen in the Camaro, his face white through the windshield. His girlfriend covered her mouth as though holding back a scream.

My breath caught in my chest, and my feet moved in slow motion. Everything moved in slow motion, including my brain. All I could think about was whether the poor schmuck lying so still on the pavement was dead.

A couple of toughs burst from the door of a building to my right and pulled up short at the edge of the street, staring at the body. The young turks driving the muscle cars got out to watch and point and elbow their companions.

"Stay back!" I yelled, raising a hand to warn them off.

I reached the victim, and time stood still. He was of average weight and probably average height, although it was hard to tell, the way he was crumpled on his side. His shiny wing-tips were scuffed and streaked by his slide across the pavement. The right pant-leg of his gray dress slacks was shredded from mid-thigh to mid-calf, and bloody, ragged flesh showed in the gap.

All those first-aid lectures played like a reel-to-reel tape on fast forward. My first coherent—and useless—thought was that I should have grabbed the first-aid kit from the trunk. Like a first-aid kit could fix this mess.

Dave joined me. I shifted the victim onto his back and positioned his head as gently as I could, mindful that if he ever woke up, he'd be pissed if I'd made him a quadriplegic.

The right sleeve of his white dress shirt was rolled up above his elbow. The left was still fastened by a glittering green cufflink. I loosened his green and gray striped tie.

He had close-cropped brown hair and a hamburger face. I put two fingers on his neck where his pulse should be. Something jumped. Or maybe it was wishful thinking. He definitely wasn't breathing.

I tilted his head back, pinched his nose, and put my mouth over his to start artificial resuscitation. Inflating his chest seemed impossible.

"Oh, man!" Dave said, crouching beside me. "It's Tad Newell, the mayor's son."

I didn't care who he was; he wouldn't die on my watch. His lips tasted of bourbon and his cheeks smelled of aftershave and blood. His chest, rippling with hard muscle under his shirt, didn't crunch or grind as I compressed it. I took that as a hopeful sign.

His picture had been on the front page of the paper. He'd recently returned from a tour in 'Nam. According to the article, a group of anti-war protesters spit on him while he made a speech at a veterans' picnic.

"Where the hell's the ambulance?" I gasped between breaths and compressions.

But Dave was gone, taking control of the scene. The hot Southern California smog transferred from my lungs to Tad Newell's, one breath at a time. My hands willed his heart to beat. The night stretched while I counted to five over and over.

"Okay, lady, we got it."

A white-clad ambulance attendant elbowed me aside and checked vitals. A second attendant rolled a gurney up before joining his workmate. The first one peeled back an eyelid and flashed a penlight over the eye.

"Dead," he said.

My stomach heaved. I'd locked lips with a corpse.
Eww
. I wanted to wash my mouth with lye. It was hard to see through the mist in my eyes.

"Maybe you want to rethink that," Dave said at the attendant's shoulder. "You want to be the one who pronounced on the mayor's son?"

The attendants exchanged a look. In a heartbeat, they had Newell fitted with an Ambu bag. While one of them squeezed the bag, the other applied a neck brace. Together, they whisked him to the ambulance. They pulled out fast, siren wailing.

I dug a hanky from my pocket and wiped Newell's blood from my lips. I wanted to swipe at my tear-filled eyes, but as the first—and only—woman patrol officer on the Solaris force, I couldn't afford to show weakness.

"Do we need to take statements?" I asked.