Difficult Run (20 page)

She turned to walk away and Jake said, “But M.J., I . . . ”

She didn’t wait for him to finish.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

M
.J. DROVE TO GREAT FALLS PARK and went running.
 
She pushed herself for a full six miles, a lot of it uphill.
 
By the time she returned to the locker room, she had calmed, but hadn’t eliminated, the anger she felt toward Swain and Jake. In the case of Jake, she thought, there was also an equal measure of hurt feelings and disappointment. He had completely let her down and she didn’t think she could ever forgive him for that.

As soon as she entered Dodd’s office, she remembered that she had forgotten to get the memory card from the camera.

“I forgot to check the camera,” she said.
 
“I’ll go back and get the memory card.”

Dodd noticed that she seemed upset and said, “I’ll walk with you and you can tell me what happened this morning.”

As they walked toward Mather Gorge, she told him about the meeting with Swain and the thirty-day ultimatum.

“Damn!” he said. “Well, all we can do is keep checking the camera and hope for a break.”

They swapped memory cards and went back to Dodd’s office.
 
The pictures from the night before were of the usual collection of park animals, but no ape.

When M.J. arrived for roll call the next morning, someone had placed a toy gorilla on her desk and when she sat down its eyes started flashing and its arms started beating its chest.
 
She could hear muffled laughter from the other cubicles—all male. She wanted to stand up and start yelling obscenities, but decided against it.
 
Instead, she turned off the toy and unceremoniously dropped it in her wastebasket.

Tony Lauretta appeared at the entrance to her cubicle.
 
“What the hell’s going on M.J.?” he asked.

She pointed to her wastebasket and said, “Some of the guys thought that would be cute.”

Lauretta leaned down and picked up the toy gorilla.
 
At roll call, he held it up and said, “One of you kids seems to have lost a toy.
 
Now I’m going to keep it for you so you don’t hurt yourself on any of the moving parts.”
 
He paused and said, “If any of you think this was funny, I’m here to tell you that this was one of the most unprofessional things I’ve ever seen and totally disrespectful of a fellow officer.
 
If anything like this happens again, you’ll be dealing with me.
 
Is that understood?”

They all nodded their heads and none of the male officers, except Jake, would even look at M.J.
 
All of the women officers looked her way and smiled.

After roll call, Jake came up and tried to talk to M.J.
 
She turned and walked away.

M.J. went to Tony Lauretta’s desk and thanked him.
 
“Don’t mention it,” he said, “just doing my job.”
 
As she turned to leave, he added, “You’re a good detective, M.J.
 
You keep on this.”

The trail camera produced nothing of use for the next week and M.J. and Dodd were becoming more discouraged with each passing day.
 
When M.J. went to the park the following morning, the sky was becoming overcast and as she entered Dodd’s office he said, “We may have a problem developing.
 
I just checked the weather reports and there’s a large storm that’s been stalled for almost two days over what they call the Potomac Highlands—that’s a large area in Virginia, West Virginia and Western Maryland that feeds the river.
 
It’s dropping one to two inches of rain an hour and if that keeps up we’ll have flooding down here for sure.”

“How long before that happens?” she asked.

“The River Desk at the National Weather Service says we should start to see the river rising late this afternoon and that it will probably reach flood stage late tonight or early tomorrow morning,” he replied.

“Can I check back with you later today?” she asked.

“Sure,” he replied.

M.J. drove to Anacostia Station and shuffled through some papers on her desk, not really reading any of them.
 
Just after four in the afternoon, she called Dodd.

“What’s the latest on the river?” she asked.

“Well, it’s come up quite a bit already,” he replied.
 
“The River Desk says flood stage will start about 2 a.m.”

“How about Mather Gorge?” she asked.

“Oh, it’ll be to the top a lot earlier, midnight at the latest,” he said.

She thanked him for the information.

“M.J.,” he said, “don’t do anything stupid.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” she replied. “See you tomorrow.”

She sat at her desk thinking for a while, then walked to Jake’s desk and found the Nikon camera he kept in one of its drawers.
 
He had already gone for the day, so she left a note on his desktop that said “Borrowed your camera – M.J.”

She went to her apartment and microwaved a frozen dinner.
 
When she had finished eating about half of it, she lay down on her bed and set the alarm.

The alarm went off at 1:00 a.m. and she went into her bathroom and splashed some cold water on her face, put on her hiking shoes and looked outside.
 
It was drizzling, so she found her black rain slicker.
 
Before she put it on, she checked the ammo magazine in her gun and the two spares she carried on her belt.

There was almost no traffic on the drive to the Difficult Run parking lot, which was empty.
 
She put the camera strap around her neck and zipped up the rain slicker, then opened the trunk of her car and removed a heavy flashlight from its bracket. It was still drizzling and the cloud cover was thick enough to obscure all but occasional glints of moonlight.
 
She switched on the flashlight and started toward Difficult Run.

She alternated between illuminating the trail and the wooded hillside to her left with the flashlight, walking slowly enough to sweep the beam back and forth several times every few feet.
 
It took her close to an hour to reach the end of the trail where the stream emptied into the Potomac.
 
She could hear the water crashing against the rock walls that lined the right-angle turn at the bottom of Mather Gorge.

She had not seen or heard anything on her walk down the trail.
 
This may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done
, she thought.
 
Maybe Swain was right and there isn’t any ape.
 
Maybe I just started looking at everything through one filter and made it come out the way I wanted.

She sighed, turned and started back up the trail, shining the light to the right as she went. She had gone about a hundred feet when she thought she heard something ahead of her on the trail. She raised the flashlight and could see a dark figure in the mist coming down the trail toward her.
 
When it came fully into the beam of the flashlight, she could see an ape, knuckle-walking slowly with its head raised and its eyes looking directly at her.
 
These were not the soft, human eyes of the zoo gorilla.
 
These eyes were filled with rage.

When the ape was about thirty feet away from her, it stopped walking and stood upright, baring its teeth.
 
It was huge, easily as tall as she was, and showed no sign of stopping its advance.
 
The flashlight shining in its eyes obviously enraged it, but M.J. was not about to shine the beam elsewhere.

M.J. kept the flashlight in her left hand with her left arm extended laterally. She drew her gun with her right hand and thought to herself,
Now what, stupid?
Stop while I take your picture! Put your hands up! Stop or I’ll shoot!
 
She aimed the gun, took the safety off and put her finger on the trigger.

The ape had dropped back down to its knuckle-walking position, but when it got about ten feet away from M.J. it rose back up, extended its arms and looked ready to leap.

M.J. fired once and hit the ape mid-chest.
 
It looked down in amazement and placed one of its fingers against the entrance wound, then examined its blood-smeared finger.
 
It let out a high-pitched scream and then started to run toward M.J.

M.J. fired a second time and the ape fell backwards onto the trail.
 
It seemed to take a few labored breaths and then stopped moving altogether.

M.J. moved closer, keeping both the flashlight and the gun aimed at the ape.
 
When she felt confident that the ape was dead, she holstered her gun and reached inside her rain slicker for the camera.
 
She raised it and pushed the shutter button.
 
Nothing happened.
 
She tried again.
 
Nothing. “Shit!” she said aloud and put the camera back inside the slicker.

She was still standing with the flashlight examining the ape’s body, when she heard something drop heavily onto the trail behind her.
 
She drew her gun and spun around, still holding the flashlight in her extended left hand.

It was another ape.
 
It had apparently jumped down from the rock outcropping next to the trail and was standing fully upright just a few feet from M.J., its teeth bared and a look of pure hatred on its face.
 
It was much taller than the one M.J. had just killed, easily six feet, maybe more.

Before M.J. could fire, the ape extended its left arm and swung with such force that it knocked the gun out of her hand.
 
It followed with its right hand and the flashlight went flying into the rock wall.

The flashlight had stayed on and there was enough reflected light for M.J. to see that the ape was advancing slowly.
 
She backed away, knowing that to turn around would cause the ape to leap onto her back and kill her.
 
Her right heel touched the body of the dead ape and she cautiously stepped around it.
 
When the advancing ape reached the body, it stopped for a moment and looked down.
 
That was all that M.J. needed. She spun around and started running up the trail.

She was certain that her right wrist was broken and it dangled uselessly by her side.
 
She put the pain out of her mind and concentrated on distancing herself from the ape, which she could hear running on all fours on the hard-packed trail behind her. Then she didn’t hear the sound of the ape’s running for a few seconds and suddenly it could be heard again, only this time closer.
 
It’s going over the rock outcroppings to shorten the distance between us
, she thought.

She knew she dare not look around to see just how closely she was being pursued.
 
The trail was almost completely dark except for the moonlight that occasionally shone through the rain clouds. She knew she had to remain completely focused and try to stay as near the center of the trail as possible.

She was running as fast as she could manage with her crippled wrist.
 
She figured her pace was probably slightly better than the ape’s, but she could not let up for an instant.
 
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she recalled seeing a gaping wound on the ape’s right arm just before it knocked the flashlight out of her hand.
 
Lola!
, she thought, and that thought gave her the energy to increase her pace.

She guessed that she was perhaps a hundred yards from the end of the trail, maybe less.
 
What would she do next?
 
There was a shotgun in the trunk of her car, but she had no hope of getting to it.
 
The car keys were in her pocket, but, even if she could get to them, the odds of opening the trunk fast enough to grab the shotgun were slim.
 
Besides, even if she got the gun, how could she use it with just one arm?
 
If she continued straight on the trail, it would take her onto Georgetown Pike. Maybe a passing motorist would see her and stop to help.
 
Passing cars at almost three in the morning?
 
Probably no cars at all
, she thought.