From the short fictional mystery series Body in Cold Rock Creek.
Naomi was standing on the bank looking at the creek,
like she always did, just watching and listening to the water flow across the
rocks when she spotted something too familiar lodged behind a log on the other
side of the wide creek. It was just
below the rapids and the water was rushing over it.
“Damn,” Naomi said aloud. “Damn.”
She knew that the tranquility of her refuge on the creek would soon be
shattered when all the law enforcement personnel, and vehicles and the coroner
got there to remove the body from her and Edgar’s portion of the creek.
Coroner, was that what they were called in
Tennessee? She didn’t know, because it
seemed that every state called the same job by a different title. She was well aware of the Medical Examiner’s
offices in both Dade and Broward Counties in Florida. She had been to each of them too many times
seeking the cause of death during the course of her death investigations, but
she had mistakenly thought that was all behind her.
Now, here floating in the creek bordering her and
Edgar’s property bumping in and out as the water plunged it backwards then
forward into the log across the creek was a body. One that she found. One that she was first on the scene. That was new.
That was different. She had never
been first on the scene.
Naomi’s instinct was to rush across the deep
water and retrieve the person floating face down. Try to revive him. It looked like the person was a man. She knew, however, that he was as dead as a
doorknob and that now his body was evidence which she should not touch. He was dead and floating on the top of the
hole where, she knew, the trout were swimming right under him.
Dear God, thought Naomi, surely they are not gnawing
on him like he was a fat night crawler, or a nymph or an intricately tied fly. Surely not but, she thought, fish are
opportunistic. To them bait is just bait
and if they are hungry they strike at whatever is available and today it was
the body floating above them like one long buffet.
Naomi was unsure how much time had passed since she
first saw the body. Had it been a
minute? Had it been an hour? Sometimes time takes on a mind of its own and
a second can seem like a lifetime or a week can seem like a moment. Naomi
didn’t know how much time had passed, because she stood mesmerized looking at
him. Helpless. Knowing that he was gone. This body floating in her creek had kick-started
her memories back to the past. So many
bodies, so many deaths.
Do something fool, she chastised herself. Do something.
Call that nice sheriff, the one who had knocked at her and Edgar’s door
not two weeks past. The one who was
running for office. The one who everyone
liked and wanted as sheriff, but they hadn’t gone out and voted so his opponent
won the primary. He was knocking on
doors handing out post cards telling people how to write-in his name on the
ballot during the real election in August.
The election that would determine who was going to be the sheriff of Cold
Lake County.
Call him, her inner voice screamed. Naomi pulled the cell phone out of her pocket. The one unlike the one most of her friends
carried. She flipped it open and her
fingers, seeming to be on the body of someone other than herself, dialed 9-1-1.
“9-1-1, what is your emergency?” said the female
voice who answered the call. “9-1-1,
what is your emergency?” the voice repeated.
“Oh,” Naomi replied.
“Sorry,” she hesitated. She
inhaled deeply and a voice, not seeming to be her own, spoke to the faceless
female on the other end of the wireless transmission, “My name is Naomi
Childers and I’ve found a body floating in my creek.”
To be continued ….
©Patty F.
Cooper, Elizabethton, Tennessee July 19th,
2014
All Rights Reserved
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