Poetic Justice

2-2

CONSTABLE RALEIGH WAS almost at the x-ray suite before he caught up to his partner, whom he was surprised to see wasn’t already with the prisoner they had been sent to watch over. He wasn’t worried that his partner wasn’t where he was supposed to be, he wasn’t either, because the constable from Oakhurst was with the teen murderer they had followed from the village, and the teen was unconscious.

“Where’ve you been?” Raleigh asked curiously as he fell in beside his fellow constable. “You only had to park the car.”

“It wasn’t easy finding a parking space,” Constable Bass replied. “The car park’s pretty full, you’d think it’d be quieter, given how much it costs to spend any time there, and I had to get a ticket. Then I had to find the place. What about you, you should have been here already, you didn’t have to do anything but come straight up here after I dropped you off.

“I’ll bet you stopped to chat up a nurse, didn’t you.” He knew only too well how easily his fellow constable could be distracted by someone with a pretty face, and even the occasional less than pretty face.

“No I bloody didn’t, I had to stop at the bog,” Raleigh said with an indignation that was not entirely genuine. He had made a detour into the toilets on his way past, but that had only taken a few moments; the rest of his delay had been taken up with a young nurse he stopped to get directions, which he didn’t actually need, from.

He reached the door of the x-ray room two steps ahead of his partner and was pulling it open when he suddenly stopped and swore.

“What’s up?” Bass asked as he stepped up to his partner’s shoulder. “You just remember you forgot to wash your hands? Or you realised your zip was open the whole time you were chatting up the nurse you reckon you didn’t speak to?”

“No, there’s blood on the door,” Raleigh said in a quiet voice, pointing to a pair of a parallel bloody smears that looked to have been made by someone’s fingers. Automatically his hand went to the holster for his extendible baton, an action his partner immediately copied.

His baton extended, ready to be used at the first sign of trouble, Raleigh slowly pulled open the door to the x-ray room. Once it was wide enough he slipped through, his grip on the baton tightening, though he quickly realised that the weapon was not going to be needed, it was too late for that.

“Jesus!” he swore, lowering his baton as he moved further into the room.

Bass couldn’t help repeating his friend’s utterance when he saw the room, and the bloody mess that had been made of the technician’s face. He recovered more quickly than his colleague and hurried across the room to check for a pulse.

“Thank God!” he gasped in relief when he found one.

“What about the constable from Oakhurst?” Raleigh wanted to know as he looked around the room. “He should be here. And what about the kid, how’d he get away, he was cuffed. D’you think he had help?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” Bass asked. Having satisfied himself that the technician was still alive, which he considered a minor miracle based on what he knew of what had happened in Oakhurst that morning, he got to his feet, his mind racing as he tried to work out what could have happened and what he and his partner should do next. “Maybe he took the guy’s cuffs off so he could be x-rayed, I’m sure they have to remove everything metal or it messes up the x-rays,” he said, remembering that from the last time he had to have an x-ray. “Have you looked everywhere for the constable? How about on the other side of here?” He leaned over the couch of the x-ray machine and saw what he was looking for. “Here he is. You check whether he’s still alive, while I get help and radio this in.”

**