home authors guest shorts graphical shorts
They found the decedent inside his vehicle, a 1986 brown and tan Ford F-150 with a garden hose stuffed through the sliding back window. The hose was barking exhaust fumes into the cab, the other end was stuffed into the tailpipe with a rag. The truck was running, parked facing the river, the headlights were off but the dome-light was on. He was found by a small woman with a big dog, the doors were locked. The radio was not on nor was the heater despite the sub zero temperature of the January night. The primary detective on the scene was smoking a filtered Camel while he waited for his partner to arrive. He thought back to the time his mother tried to kill herself in 2001. He was 26 at the time, older now. They found her in the garage with the door shut and the engine running, she was asleep but not dead. She had been in there for over 26 hours but she drove a Toyota Echo so not only was she not dead, the car still had plenty of gas. At the hospital she tried again. She asked to borrow a Camel and threw herself off the balcony overlooking the river. They had to pick her teeth out of the grass. She was on the second floor at the time but the first floor was partially underground so landing face down on a sprinkler head was just unlucky. The detective threw his cigarette on the ground and stepped on it as the memories gave way to the night and the river and the wharf and the flashing lights of the ambulance. It reminded him of the time his father killed himself by crashing his 1990 Beechcraft B36TC Turboprop into a freighter off the coast of Madagascar. He was a good pilot, his father. He loved large boats and island nations. He always flew with a strobe light in the cockpit.
Date Written: January 19, 2011
Author: TheBuyer
Average Vote: 3.83333