Now & Again by E. A. Fournier Page A

stared hard at Josh. “You in the truck, too?”
    Josh nodded with a timid grin. “But just ridin’.”
    She looked him over and mentally added his face to her list of future perps. “Come on then.”
    She pushed through the disheveled room like an icebreaker through soft sea ice. Kendall and Josh were tucked in behind her and hoped the crowd didn’t pinch back together before they squeezed by. The policewoman never gave a look back as she flowed by the mobbed intake desk and into the station bowels.
    Their little flotilla moved down a busy hallway, bearing toward the right side. They passed many people heading the other way: uniformed cops and men in ties, mostly, but none of them made eye contact.
    The police woman paused briefly before they turned a corner. “Since you’re the red truck, you’re goin’ to the big room.” She smiled grimly and then led them off again.
    * * *
    The female police officer opened a heavy door with a frosted glass pane labeled
CR-2
. She waved Kendall and Josh into the long, harshly lit conference room and against a wall beside the door. She smiled widely at the room, waiting for everyone to note her entrance, aware that this moment would be jabbered about for days, and more than pleased to be at the center of the cause. “Figured you’d be interested in these guys. Moved ‘em to the front of the line. They were in
big red
.”
    The weary people in the room stopped what they were doing and stared. Some were seated, others were standing in groups, all paused in mid-talk. There were uniformed police, middle-aged men in shirtsleeves, and a few women with beat-up laptops. A cheap metal and laminate conference table held stacks of grisly accident photos, forensics reports, point-of-impact analyses, skid charts, marked up transcripts, and a grubby army of coffee cups.
    Unit Leader, Lieutenant Vic Chadek, stood next to a large whiteboard that was literally covered with colored lines and extended notations. Wearing a conservative tie with rolled up shirt sleeves, he held a dry erase marker poised in his hand, and contemplated the interruption with an edgy glare. “No shit?”
    The police woman nodded in smug satisfaction, “No shit.” She glanced at the other people in the room, winked, and then exited, closing the door solidly behind her.
    Vic capped his marker and dropped it onto the metal lip of the whiteboard with a loud clack. He tossed a half-hearted smile towards Kendall and Josh. “You’re in a Crash Investigation Unit, gentlemen, and my name’s Chadek – Senior Investigator, Lieutenant Vic Chadek. Do I need to tell you two what a hell of a crash we had here?”
    They both silently shook their heads.
    “I wouldn’t think so.” Chadek leaned over the table and glowered at them for a few seconds, just because he felt like it. “We’re all happy as hell you finally decided to check in, ’cause we weren’t havin’ a lotta joy readin’ VIN numbers off your…remains. You know what I mean?”
    They continued to stand quietly against the wall – deer in the headlights.
    Chadek pursed his lips as if tasting something sour. “Oh, yeah, why don’t you go ahead and take a seat, guys. Sorry.”
    Kendall and Josh hurriedly grabbed the nearest heavy grey metal chairs available and dropped into them. They placed their hands on the table but their fingers kept vainly searching for something to do.
    Vic didn’t sit. Instead, he pulled out a chair, angled it and placed a foot on the seat so he could lean over and rest his elbows on his knee. “You got some ID’s on ya?”
    They quickly dug out drivers’ licenses and placed them on the table. Chadek nodded at a nearby officer and the man gathered the cards and left the room. Josh nervously followed the man with his eyes until the door clicked shut behind him.
    Chadek motioned at the debris across the table. “Let me tell you about this CIU. We analyze impact speeds, skid marks, point of impact placement, time distance, friction,