Picture Me Dead (3 page)

Ashley shook her head. “I wasn't rude. All right, yes, I
was
rude. Maybe I should even have apologized. But I was just in a hurry, and he startled me—even scared me there for a few seconds. He's just…dark.”

“Dark? Hispanic, Latin, Afro-American?” Karen said, confused.

“No, dark, as in…intense.”

“Ah, intense,” Karen said.

“Well, I mean, he's dark, too. Dark-haired, dark-eyed. Tanned. Apparently likes boats, or water, or the sun.”

“Um. Sounds sexy. The
dark
type.”

“Did he have a bod?” Karen demanded.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Maybe I'll start hanging around Nick's more,” Karen said.

“Oh, right, like you need to go looking for men,” Jan said.

“Yeah, I do. Who do I meet at a grade school? You've got it made, because you stand up in front of hordes of people in great outfits and sing. You're the one who doesn't need to go looking for men.”

“Looking is easy. They're all over. Finding good ones is tough,” Jan said.

“Well, forget Nick's, then. Don't all the psychologists say never to look for a date in a bar? You're supposed to meet them by bowling or something,” Ashley said.

“I hate bowling,” Karen commented.

“Then bowling probably wouldn't be a great way for you to meet a guy,” Jan observed. “There you have it, how not to date in a nutshell. Put the three of us together, and we can really solve the major problems in the world,” she said ruefully.

“Hey, I solve the problems of six-to ten-year-olds on a daily basis,” Karen reminded her. “I'm responsible for molding the minds and morals of the future voters of a country in need of the best next generation in history. Ashley spends her days learning how to shoot and deal with the scum of the earth. This weekend, I think we should leave the serious stuff behind and worry about the next best serious stuff—our tans and the size of our butts.”

“We won't set our goals too high,” Jan said. “If we can just find a few strangers who have bathed and are halfway articulate and don't mind a few minutes on a dance floor, we'll call it social triumph. I need a cookie.”

“Works for me,” Karen agreed. “But…butt size, huh? I think I have to have one more cookie, too, before the coffee, since it's going to be at least twenty minutes before we reach the rest stop.”

Ashley noted, with a quick glance at her friend, that Karen delicately bit off a tiny piece of cookie and chewed slowly, savoring every nuance. That, she decided, was how Karen stayed the nearest thing to perfect. She ate everything, but had the art of nibbling down pat. One cookie could last Karen an hour. She was petite, a perfect size two, with huge sky-blue eyes and a sweep of natural, near-platinum hair, testimony to a distant Norse heritage, along with her family name, Ericson. Jan, on the other hand, was dark-haired, dark-eyed, five-nine and as fiery as her Latin surname, Hevia, suggested she might be. Ashley referred to them often by the fairy-tale names they had gained as children: Rose White and Rose Red. She was a green-eyed redhead herself, the coloration courtesy of her mother's family, the McMartins, since her last name was Montague. Her father's family had been mainly French, with a little Cherokee or Seminole thrown in, which meant that she had only a small spattering of freckles on her nose and the ability to acquire a fairly decent tan without burning like a beet first. She was the medium between Jan and Karen at five feet six. The two had playfully labeled her the thorn in the roses. The three had been friends since grade school, and had shared dreams, victories and heartaches ever since. This weekend was something they had been looking forward to for a long time, since their adult lives had taken them in very different directions. Karen was teaching and going to school for her master's degree. Jan was a singer, and though she doubted she was ever going to achieve mega-star status, she didn't care. She loved singing and songwriting, and her career was beginning to take off nicely, if modestly. She and her accompanist were being booked as an opening act for shows across the country. Ashley was in her third month at the metro police academy, and she had thrown herself wholeheartedly into every class, every subtlety of the law, rights and self-defense that could be learned.

“Think Sharon and your uncle Nick are going to get married?” Jan asked, leaning forward.

Sharon Dupre, the baker of the divine cookies, had been seeing Nick for almost a year now. They were definitely a hot item.

“Maybe. Who knows,” Ashley replied, watching the clock and the road. “Nick is such a dyed-in-the-wool bachelor. He loves his fishing and his restaurant, and I guess, as long as Sharon tolerates his habits, it could happen.”

“Well, Nick is going to have to tolerate Sharon's weird real estate hours,” Karen said.

“True,” Ashley agreed. “He seems to deal with it all okay. Nick is a live-and-let-live guy.” She knew that well, having grown up with her uncle. She was often sad to realize that she barely remembered her parents. They had been killed in an automobile accident when she had been three. She adored Nick; he had filled the roles of both parents with love and tenderness, and there was nothing she wanted more for him than the laid-back happiness with which he had always lived. Whether that included marriage to Sharon or not was a decision he was going to have to make himself.

“Hey, there's a great pair of pants in this ad,” Jan said, sitting forward to show the magazine she was reading to Karen. “Think they'd look good on someone with fat thighs?”

“They
are
great pants,” Karen said.

Jan tapped her on the arm with the magazine in mock anger. “You're supposed to tell me that I don't have fat thighs,” she informed her friend.

“Sorry. You don't have fat thighs. And I think they'd be great on me, too—a little person with a bubble butt.”

“Great pants all around,” Jan said.

“You're supposed to tell me I don't have a bubble butt.”

“I'm jealous, considering I'm all thighs and no butt,” Jan said, then switched subjects abruptly. “You should have joined the Coral Gables force, or even South Miami, rather than metro, Ashley. What were you thinking? Coral Gables has some really cute guys. And they're nice.”

“Yeah, the metro guys can be assholes,” Karen agreed.

Ashley arched a brow, meeting Karen's gaze. “You just think they're assholes because you got a mega-ticket from one,” she said. “I wanted to be on the metro force.” Miami-Dade County, also known as the Greater Miami area, was made up of more than two dozen small cities, villages and municipalities. Some had their own large forces, with departments dealing with everything from jaywalking to murder, while others depended on the metropolitan force, which covered the entire county, for their homicide and forensic divisions. She had always wanted to work where she could cover the full scope of the area where she had lived all her life. “There are good officers—
and
even cute ones on all the forces.”

“And you were whizzing down the highway when you got that ticket,” Jan said. “Oh, look, Ashley is bristling. When she's in her patrol car after graduation and needs to give out tickets, you'll have to watch out. All she'll need to do is park near your house and wait for you to leave the driveway at ninety.”

“I do not speed that badly,” Karen protested. “And look—Ashley is speeding now!”

“She's going two miles over the limit,” Jan said. “And watch it, or we'll wind up crawling the whole way to Orlando.”

Even as Jan spoke, Ashley began to press on the brake.

“See,” Jan said.

“No, no, there's something going on up there,” Ashley said, frowning.

The cars ahead of her were suddenly squealing and braking. Behind her, two cars, in attempting to stop, nearly plowed into the median.

They were almost at the turnpike. The highway was five lanes each way here, with turnpike access just ahead, and the ramp for the east-west expressway also branching off. The early morning traffic, which had been so smooth, was suddenly a mess.

“What the hell is going on?” Ashley murmured. Creeping in line behind the cars directly ahead of her, she saw that two cars had apparently been involved in an accident. She was off duty and still just in the academy, but if there had been an accident and there were no other officers at the scene, by the book, she was obliged to stop until someone on duty could arrive. But just as the thought occurred to her, Karen, who had toyed with the idea of going into law instead of education, read her mind.

“No, we don't need to stop. There's already a cop car at the scene—just ahead. He must have just gotten there.”

Whatever had caused the accident, they had missed it by no more than a few minutes. The lanes weren't blocked off yet, which meant the officer really had just arrived. The drivers of the vehicles were both out of their cars. One was sitting on the median, a man with his face in his hands. The other, who had apparently struck the first, was standing by his car, just staring at the road.

The accident had occurred in the far left lane. Ashley was driving in the lane directly next to it. As she moved along, she looked to her left, noting gratefully that neither driver appeared to have been hurt.

But someone had.

As she crept along in her lane, she suddenly gasped.

There was a man on the highway. Sprawled in the lane, naked except for a pair of white briefs. He was facedown, head twisted to the side, apparently dead.

She'd gone through everything necessary to become a cop. Taken the tests and seen all the videos featuring the types of horrors a policeman was likely to be up against at some point in his career or hers. But the sight of the man sprawled on the highway, naked except for his underwear, was still shocking and terrible.

“Oh, my God,” Karen breathed at her side.

“What?” Jan demanded.

Ashley's hands were glued around the steering wheel as she fixed the entire scene in her mind. The immediate area first. The position of the two cars involved. The cop and the cop car that had just arrived. The body. Sprawled. Naked except for the white briefs. The head, twisted. The blood that seemed surreal against flesh and asphalt.

The cars, still veering off toward the median. And, across the median, cars slowing, braking, the screech of brakes. Far across the opposing lanes, someone standing, staring at all the traffic as if waiting for a light to change.

She moved past the body. It was still imprinted in her mind. As crystal clear and vivid as a photograph. The rest merging, blurring. The cars in the opposing lanes a kaleidoscope of color. The figure standing, watching the scene…

Just someone. Faceless. Dressed in…black, she thought. Man? Woman? She didn't know. Part of what had happened? A friend of the man who had been struck?

“What? What the hell is it?” Jan demanded from the back seat.

“A body. A body on the highway,” Karen said, her voice faltering.

“A body?” Jan swung around.

They were past it now.

“Maybe I should turn around,” Ashley said.

“The hell you should! The cop trying to deal with the situation and the traffic would be pissed as hell to have something else to deal with,” Karen said. And she was right. There was already an officer on the scene. Traffic was knotting into serious snarls as it was. By the time she could safely reach an exit, turn around and get back to the scene, an ambulance would have arrived, and more on-duty officers, probably even those specializing in traffic accidents and fatalities, would be on hand.

“You've got to forget it, just forget it,” Karen said sternly. “Please, Ashley. How many vacations do we get together? And get serious, there are accidents every damn day down here. Fatal ones, too. It's sad but true. You are not on duty. You're not even a full-fledged cop. And if you start taking every single event you witness to heart, you're going to be a lousy cop, because you'll be too emotionally involved with each incident when you're required to be alert to everything.”

Karen was making a great deal of sense.

“I didn't even see the body,” Jan said.

“You're lucky,” Karen countered, swallowing.

Ashley was glad that, despite her words, Karen had been equally affected by the sight.

“There are accidents every single day,” Karen repeated. “People die, and they're going to continue to die,” she told Ashley sternly.

Ashley glanced at her quickly. “They don't die naked except for their underwear, on the highway, every day,” she countered.

“Did he come from one of the cars?” Jan asked.

“Maybe, but how?” Karen said.

“Perhaps he was in one of the passenger seats and was thrown out when the accident occurred,” Jan said.

“He was riding around in his underwear?” Ashley said.

“Hey, this is South Florida. Spend a little more time at the clubs on South Beach,” Jan said. “He might have been riding around stark naked, who the hell knows?”