Scattered Graves

out of the police car and walked to her own vehicle, climbed in, and locked the doors. She was shivering, so she started the engine and turned on the heater. She looked in the rearview mirror at herself. Her face was a puffy, blood-smeared mess. Her blackened eye was swollen half shut. Her hair was in tangles, blotched with dried blood. She suddenly felt the way she looked. She put her forearms on the steering wheel, rested her head gently on them, and waited.
It wasn’t long before she heard the sirens, faint at first, then growing louder and louder—coming in high volume to the rescue of a downed officer.
Diane didn’t move until she heard a knock on her window. She jumped. It reminded her of how all this had started. She didn’t have the strength to do it again. This time she wouldn’t roll down the window.
She lifted her head. It was Izzy Wallace. She smiled wanly and rolled her window down, glad to see a friendly face. Izzy looked at her.
‘‘What the hell happened?’’ he asked. ‘‘Wait a min ute. I’ll come around.’’
He picked up the smashed cell phone and looked at it, worry on his face. He walked around and got in the passenger side of Diane’s red SUV.
Diane explained all the events of the morning— from being pulled over by Harve Delamore to the fall.
‘‘So he’s at the bottom of the ravine?’’ said Izzy.
‘‘Yes. His gun is down there somewhere. I knocked it out of his hand. His knife is down there too. So is my jacket. My billfold with my driver’s license is in it,’’ she said.
‘‘We need to go to the police station, and you will have to give a statement again. We need to take a picture of you too. You look like hell,’’ he said.
Diane looked at her face again in the rearview mirror. Her left eye was black and swollen, and she had a huge bruise from her eye to her jawline. And there was the blackening dried blood. She looked at her mouth and her teeth. Thank God, her teeth weren’t damaged.
‘‘I didn’t think he would come out on the rocks,’’ Diane said. ‘‘If you’ve never climbed before, it’s scary. I thought I could get away from him that way.’’
‘‘Harve never had the best judgment,’’ said Izzy. ‘‘You know there’s going to be some who will blame you.’’
‘‘I know. Does he have a family? A wife and kids?’’ asked Diane. ‘‘Are his parents still living?’’
‘‘He has an ex-wife. They didn’t have any kids. I think his parents are dead. He has a brother some where. I don’t think they got along.’’
‘‘That’s sad,’’ said Diane.
    Izzy escorted Diane into the police station, took a picture of her and her face, and walked her to one of the interview rooms.
    ‘‘This won’t take long,’’ he said.
    Janice Warrick walked in and frowned at her. ‘‘You look awful. Have you been to a doctor?’’
Before Diane could answer, Curtis Crabtree came in with a patrolman and told Janice to leave.
‘‘I caught this case,’’ said Janice. She looked at each of them. The large frown line between her eyes deepened.
‘‘The chief is taking it,’’ Curtis said.
The patrolman had thin light brown hair that looked slightly windblown. His name tag said he was Officer Pendleton. Of the two, he looked the most angry— and grief stricken. Izzy had said Delamore’s friends would blame her.
Neither said anything. They just stood against the wall across from her, staring. Diane was surprised that Curtis was there. Perhaps like Neva, he was a police officer or a detective before he was recruited to work in the crime scene unit. Like any new broom, the new mayor had done a lot of sweeping. Diane was one of the people he’d swept out. In the wake, new people were hired. There were many in the police department now that she didn’t know.
Diane didn’t say anything either. She sat and waited, hoping it wouldn’t be too long. She ached all over, and her head throbbed where Delamore had hit her. She closed her eyes and rested her head in her hands. She hoped that frustrated them—her not being able to see them stare at her.
The door suddenly opened, and Edgar Peeks, Mayor Jefferies’ new chief of police, burst into the room. He had dark hair, hazel eyes, and almost a baby face, were it not for the day-old beard he seemed to always wear—perhaps because he had such a baby face.
He pulled up a chair and sat opposite Diane, glaring at her for several moments.
‘‘You are in a lot of trouble,’’ he said.
Diane said