Joanie clocked into work Tuesday morning and was disappointed to see Constables Marinville and al-Rashad weren't on the roster until tonight, when she'd already have clocked out. How could she keep an eye on him when he wouldn't even be here, she asked herself as she thought back to last night.
The phone call surprised her. She'd been just about to turn in after having brought Mrs. Mackenzie home and eaten dinner. At first she was afraid it might be Joe; she'd gotten his text but ignored it because she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of being curious about the case when she was still angry at him. Her chat with Al might have helped her deal with her feelings about Joe's actions, but she wasn't ready to forgive him yet. For a brief second she'd also been afraid it was Lauren calling; perversely, she thought her sister-in-arms/sort-of-sister-wife might call to ask her to reconsider ending things with Joe, if only so that Joe wouldn't make Lauren end things with Rachel as per their arrangement. She wouldn't know how she'd react if she had to have that conversation with her.
When she looked at the screen, though, she was surprised again to see it was Sunny calling. She couldn't remember ever talking to him on the phone, even if at some point they'd all given each other their numbers in the past.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Joanie, Sunny Parhar here, sorry for the late call."
"No worries, Sunny, how can I help you?"
"Well, I found out some news today, and I think you might have a connection with it."
"You mean Patrick Marinville."
"Oh, so you know?"
"Yes, Joe texted me about Lauren's little adventure. If I'd known she was out my way I would have said hi."
"Did he mention Patrick was being followed by someone else?"
"Yes. That is concerning. I'd wondered if something was off about him. So, his wife really is this Agnes who was Al's girlfriend?"
"Yes."
"Joe didn't say if Lauren knew who was following him, but he did text me the make, model and plate number of the car."
"Well, we have suspicions, but we don't know for sure. That's why I'm calling, actually. Could you just keep an eye on him when you can, in case he does anything or if anything happens to him?"
"Well, I'll do what I can, but our shifts don't always overlap."
"That's about all I can ask, then."
Of course, once Sunny had hung up, Joanie couldn't sleep, preoccupied as she was not only with thoughts of Joe and his indiscretion, but also the intrigue surrounding Patrick Marinville and whoever might be following him. It had made her eager to see him, so of course she was disappointed to see he wasn't there, in addition to being tired from lack of sleep.
When she went to her desk, however, she was surprised to see Corporal Natychuk waiting there for her. "Sergeant Mara," he said, smiling.
"Corporal," she said, offering her hand, which he shook. "What can I do for you?"
"I hear you've been approached to take over my role as media relations officer."
"I have," she said.
He waited for her to say more, but she had no more to say. He cleared his throat and said, "I take it you haven't decided yet?"
She grimaced and said, "May I be frank with you?"
He looked around to see if anyone was paying attention, then leaned in and said, "Let me guess. You don't want to do it."
She shrugged sheepishly and said, "Is that bad?"
He chuckled and said, "If I can be frank with you, I didn't want it when they offered it to me. I thought I'd be terrible at it."
She blinked in surprise. "Really? But you're a natural on camera. I've seen you many times, and you come across as personable and competent."
He beamed and said, "It just came with a bit of practice. Everyone's a little stiff at their first media scrum. You don't have to worry about what you're going to say, though, if that's what you're worried about. You get the talking points about the case you're addressing from the higher ups. The trick is to take the questions the reporters will ask and bend it back to those talking points, and not let them make you go off script."
She nodded, but his words didn't make her feel better.
"Hey, look," he said, glancing at his watch, "I've been asked to give a statement at the scene of an accident in the Willowbrook Mall area. The super's authorized me to bring you along so you can shadow me and see how it's done. That's the real reason I'm at your desk. We're due there in fifteen minutes."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, feeling her chest tighten in panic. "Uh, I don't know..."
"Look, you don't have to say a word," he said. "You don't even have to be on camera. You'll just stand off to the side and watch how I address the press, the words I use, the body language I convey. Then we'll have a debrief to go over what you saw." He smiled. "At the very least, you can get out from behind that desk for half an hour."
She sighed in resignation and said, "They really want me to do this, don't they."
"Yup. Come on."
She put on a uniform jacket and her kepi, something she hadn't needed to do since she began riding a desk, and followed him out the back door of the detachment to the parking lot, where an unmarked cruiser waited for them.
They drove west to the 200th Street area, technically the City of Langley but still policed by the RCMP. They used their lights and sirens to skirt around the traffic jam leading up to the accident, and arrived at quite the mess. Now Joanie understood the need for an official word. Normally a single two-vehicle accident wouldn't warrant more than an exchange of insurance information and maybe, if things got tense or there were injuries, a visit by police and emergency services. This was different. Multiple vehicles, injuries if not fatalities, fire trucks and ambulances greeted them when they arrived. Worse, a traffic light post had been hit so hard that it had fallen over, knocking out traffic management to the entire intersection and causing hours of inconvenience for drivers in an already busy area of the city.
They parked just on the other side of a blockade formed by two cruisers parked across the road. When they exited, the constables manning the blockade greeted Natychuk and discussed what they knew so far. While they did, Joanie wandered past them and took a closer look at the mess.
The car that hit the traffic light post had taken the most damage. The others were mainly fender benders as the chain reaction of cars avoiding the initial accident spread down the road, although the front most cars before the accident with the post were t-boned as they'd braked hard and swerved.
She passed by other police and emergency workers tending to the victims, exchanging commiserary nods. She stopped at the post. The car that hit it had both its airbags deployed, and its front was smashed in. She imagined the victims were already on their way to hospital.
Something about the make and model of the car twigged with her. She pulled out her phone and checked the text Joe sent her. Her eyes widened, and she checked the plate number.
Holy shit. It was the car Lauren spotted following Patrick yesterday.
She quickly put her phone away and looked around, noticing Natychuk was waving her over. Members of the media were converging on him, and it looked like they were getting started. She hurried over, feeling her stomach drop. Seeing those microphones brandished like weapons at the corporal, she felt an irrational urge to pull out her gun and defend him. Probably not a good thing for a potential future media relations officer to do; that wouldn't represent the detachment well.
She stopped just where the blockade was, standing with the guard constables in an attempt to blend in and not be noticed. Natychuk was just giving his statement, and Joanie paid attention to his delivery just as he'd instructed her to do. She listened to the facts he gave them: the approximate time of the accident, right in the middle of rush hour; the number of cars involved; the total linear distance of roadway shut down and where the detours were located; the approximate amount of time needed to complete the investigation and remove the damaged vehicles.
"Witnesses report seeing the vehicle that hit the traffic light post in a dangerous race with another unidentified vehicle seconds before it hit," Natychuk went on. "The unidentified vehicle sped away as the accident was happening. We're asking for the public's help in locating this vehicle."
"Can you tell us the condition of the occupants of the car that hit the traffic light post?" one of the reporters asked.
"They were brought to Langley Memorial Hospital, but otherwise we have no word on their condition."
"Corporal Natychuk," another of the reporters asked. "Is that Sergeant Mara behind you?"
Everyone stopped talking, and to Joanie's horror all eyes turned on her.
Natychuk looked behind him at her and smirked. "As a matter of fact, it is," he said.
"Is she looking over your shoulder, Corporal?" another of the reporters joked. "She does outrank you."
Natychuk cleared his throat, and Joanie could tell he was barely concealing irritation at the implication. "I wasn't going to get into this today," he said, and now she realized he was the one going off script, "but very soon I'm going to be transferred out east, so you won't be seeing my ugly mug anymore."
Groans of mock, or maybe genuine, sorrow met this announcement. He raised his hands. "As a result," he said, a little louder to make himself heard over the whispers, "I'll be leaving the role of media relations officer vacant for this detachment. Sergeant Mara is shadowing me today to get a feel for the role in case she decides to take it on."
His announcement silenced them completely. It seemed all of the noises around her, the growls of emergency vehicle engines, the shouts of police and emergency workers, the beeping and groaning of hoists lifting the traffic light pole, had stopped at the same time. Or maybe it was Joanie's own ears filling with cotton as every eye, every microphone, every camera, turned and headed her way.
"Sergeant Mara! Sergeant Mara!" they cried, all at the same time.
She froze, just as she feared she would. Her eyes felt wide, and she could see a hundred and eighty degrees like a wide angle lens. At the same time, her ears felt closed, and their entreaties came to her as if from the moon. Was this what it felt like to have a panic attack? She'd never had one before.
"Sergeant Mara, are you healed up yet?" one of them asked. They all seemed to blend into each other, and she couldn't tell who was from the CBC, who from Global, who from CTV, and who from CityTV.
To her surprise, she realized she knew the answer to this question, because it had to do with her. She cleared her throat, hoping she wasn't blushing too hard, and said, "I'm almost a hundred percent. For the last few weeks I've been back on desk duty, but I've been itching to get back out in the field, serving this community that I love."
Smiles greeted that answer. "Sergeant Mara," another asked, "do you think you'll take the job?"
The sixty-four thousand dollar question. She took a little too long to answer, and she hoped this wouldn't make it to TV, but her hesitation wasn't due to reluctance. She was thinking about that car and the people in it who were now in hospital. The only way to find out more about them was to stay close to this and, as she hadn't been assigned to work the scene because she was technically still behind a desk, she had to do the job of media relations officer, or at least keep shadowing Natychuck until she found out more.
Plus, she realized she liked it when they called out her name when they asked their questions, and seemed to hang on her every word. That kind of adoration could become addictive.
She smiled and said, "Yes, I think I will."
The cheers that answered her sealed the deal.
Thanks for reading this far! If you liked what you read so far, hit "Vote" to send this title up the ranks. If anything doesn't ring true about police procedure and emergency response to an accident, leave a comment and let me know; I strive for authenticity.
To see how Al navigates his first time on his feet in weeks, and an awkward conversation with Rachel and Lauren, click on "Continue reading."