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As I shouted at the emergency operator to fetch an ambulance and gave her our location, Clive cleared lemon cake away from the side of the young woman’s face. She was very pretty – maybe a little too much blue eye shadow. But it did match the wickedly beautiful azure blue eyes of hers. I guesstimated her age as somewhere in the mid-twenties. She had been banged up quite a bit on the way down. There were bruises on her face and hands and her fingernails were broken, like she’d tried to catch herself. Gravity had won the battle.
And the way she was looking up at me, it was pretty obvious that she was also dead. ‘You can stop now, Clive.’ I stuck his phone in my shorts and put my hand on his shoulder. ‘Clive, you can stop.’
Clive looked up at me. ‘Maggie, is she—?’
I nodded and helped Clive up from his knees. ‘Let’s go outside and wait for the ambulance. They should be here soon.’
I heard the sound of a door opening somewhere further up and a woman’s voice called out, ‘What’s going on down there? Is everything OK?’
I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted back, ‘There’s been a little accident!’ I listened to my voice echo through the shaft. ‘The ambulance is on its way!’ I heard the door creak shut and shrugged my shoulders. Some people don’t like to get involved. ‘Let’s go, Clive.’
We tumbled out into the sunlight, rattled and out of breath. I swiveled my head, looking for signs of help arriving in the form of an ambulance, and spotted flashing lights across the parking lot. But it wasn’t an ambulance. It was a Table Rock police cruiser. I saw a man in a blue uniform poking around on the driver’s side of Andy’s pickup.
Another officer, a sturdy woman about my age, stood next to the cruiser talking on a radio. If fireplugs and people could have offspring, she’d be the product. I was too far away to hear what she was saying. I waved. ‘Hey!’ I beat my arms. ‘Over here! She’s over here!’
The woman on the radio looked over at me, said something into her handset then approached. Her partner closed the door to the pickup and came toward us as well.
The man who’d stepped from the pickup slowly unsnapped his holster and drew his weapon. ‘Stay where you are!’ he ordered. ‘Place your hands behind your heads.’
Clive and I looked at one another. I shrugged and took a step toward the officers. ‘You don’t understand,’ I began. ‘I’m the one who called nine-one-one to report—’
‘Remain still!’ he ordered. His partner now drew her weapon, too.
‘Don’t shoot!’ cried Clive. He looked a little wobbly, standing with his fingers laced together behind his head. I decided to join him in the assumed position.
The woman frisked me first, then Clive. She nodded to her partner. ‘All clear.’
Which was funny, because nothing was clear to me.
