BELIEVE

CHAPTER TWO

     “This one doesn’t sound good,” Officer Jeffrey Popwell said to his partner, Officer Dave Oliver, as their car, the lead squad car, raced up Seventh Street, sirens on as the car’s blue and red lights broke up the night sky.
    “None of them are particularly good, are they?” Oliver at the wheel replied.
    “No. Of course not.”
    Oliver was a 30-year veteran with the RPD, Popwell had been with the force for all of 18 months and with the Traffic Division the last six of those.
    “I just meant that the description of multiple vehicles involved and that one of them is right up in some lady’s front lawn.”
    “I know what you meant. What was the woman’s name who called it in? The one at 3400 Montego?”
    Popwell gave a quick look at his notes.
    “Jeannine. Jeannie Holeman,” Popwell replied.
    “Ok, When we get up there we’ll do a quick assessment of the situation and then you, Tom and Cheryl can get busy with closing off the area,” Oliver, being the senior officer on the scene, said. “I’ll check in with this Jeannine Holeman. 9-1-1 indicated she was older and pretty upset. I just want to assure her that we are here.”
    Officers Tom Benson and Cheryl Robinson were in the squad car right behind them, followed by an ambulance and a fire engine in case of a gasoline fire. All of their sirens and lights were blaring and flashing.
    With a light rain still falling, the rescue units were now about ten blocks away, just passing Conway Lane.
    “What’s with all the sirens outside?” Robby asked his mother while moving to the window.
    Living on Allen Glen Drive, the Caldwell home was one block over from Seventh Street, just off Conway Lane. If they had been upstairs they would have had kind of have a view of parts of Seventh but even downstairs in the kitchen they were close enough to hear the sirens and see the emergency vehicle lights bouncing off the night sky.
    The combination of Steve and Kyle not answering their phones and now sirens and lights flooding the neighborhood had Ruth unsettled.
    “Help me get Dwayne on his feet and to the living room,” she said.
    Robby tried to help his brother up. They both slipped on the Coke all over the tan-colored linoleum floor.
    “I think I might be better doing this on my own,” Dwayne protested.
    Still, Robby tried to help his brother.
    “Just leave me alone,” Dwayne barked.
    Robby backed off.
    Running through Ruth’s head were two simultaneous thoughts.
    First, not upset the boys. At this point she knew nothing about what was going on. Maybe whatever was going on with the emergency vehicles in the vicinity had nothing at all to do with Steve and Kyle. Second thought, she needed to know.
    Still running out on her two teenagers was bound to make things worse. The boys were well past the age of needing a babysitter, but if she was going to leave the house under these circumstances, she wanted somebody there. To keep things on an even keel.
    Out of habit, she looked to the clock on the wall instead of to her phone for the time. It now read a quarter past six. In theory, Paul from down the street, Carla, Ethel and maybe even Fred would be arrive. Wait until at least one of them arrives, then she would feel better about leaving.
    “Robby. Run upstairs and put some clothes on,” Ruth said, as she and her oldest got Dwayne situated on the living room sofa by the front window.
    In an instant, Robby realized that, almost naked, he had positioned himself at the front window in nothing more than his Fruit-Of-The-Looms. Granted it was now dark outside and the front of their house was separated from the street itself by the thirty feet of their driveway. Nonetheless, the teenager all of a sudden felt uncomfortable and exposed.
    Nodding, he ran up the stairs.
    “You okay?” Ruth asked Dwayne.
    Dwayne was not sure if he was okay or not.
    When he and Kyle had been younger, around five and six years old, they had then had this uncanny capability to “feel” each other’s emotions. They would say to each other “I know how you’re feeling” and really know. But perhaps the most bizarre incident had happened when they had been seven. Dwayne and his mom had been in the kitchen eating cheese sandwiches on a Saturday afternoon.
    “Would you go and tell Kyle that his lunch sandwich is here?” Ruth had said.
    “I can’t,” Dwayne had responded.
     “Why not?” Ruth had asked.
    “He won’t be able to come. Kylie’s locked in the basement.”
    Now Dwayne had been with his mom in the kitchen for quite a while. Not around the house at play with his twin. There was no way that he could have had direct knowledge as to where Kyle was. And yet he had known.
    It was her own memory of that one event that had Ruth concerned. Her twin sons knew things about each other that could not be explained.
     “Do you…” Ruth began with caution with her teen, half afraid of what the answer might be.
“Do you remember that time Kyle got locked in the basement?”
    His head full of apprehension, Dwayne looked at her. He knew where this was headed, and he was afraid. For the same reason he had not wanted to use the word bad when he had asked her, told her to take action to make the phone calls.
    Dwayne nodded a reluctant yes.
    Ruth sat down on the sofa next to him.
    “Do you…do you know where Kyle is now? As in right now?”
    Dwayne felt uncomfortable. He closed his eyes hoping for something, although he knew not what. Then he opened his eyes.
    “Mom. I don’t know where Kyle is at. I wish, I really wish I did. I just felt…”
    “I know. You said that something had happened,” she interjected.
    Now, Dwayne had thought to himself, tell her the one word.
    “It was more than that,” the boy said.
    His mother looked at him with a quizzical expression.
    “It was that something bad happened. Something bad has happened.”
    A logjam had developed on Seventh Street five blocks up from Walmart as the emergency vehicles approached. There was also quite a group of people there, some from the neighborhood. Others whom had been in their cars near the scene, forced to move to the side of the road.
    As they pulled over in front of the news van, Officers Oliver and Popwell were astonished at what they saw in the darkened street.
    The rain had shifted from a drizzle to scattered showers. Through the windshield wipers of their squad car and about forty yards ahead of them, the officers first saw a semi-truck cab on its right side. Of the four corners at Montego and Seventh, the northwest corner was an undeveloped lot with a small hill and dirt. On its right side, the semi had skidded along the sidewalk, past the dirt hill, to the sidewalk of Montego street before it had stopped.
    If anyone, Oliver thought, had been on that part of the sidewalk right then, they would have been killed.
    The semi had been a transporter for a car hauler. The officers could see from their vantage point that the hauler was dislodged from the cab and on its side as well. There were still two cars in the lower portion of the hauler, but two cars from the top had, on impact with the sidewalk, dislocated, as if fired projectiles, and landed fifty yards away in the dirt.
    “Come on,” Officer Oliver said. “We’ve got work here to do, partner.” 
    Popwell joined Officers Benson and Robinson to begin the process of putting order back where chaos was as they started to place flares on the street. Meanwhile, Oliver crossed up towards the huge semi cab. He aimed his flashlight at the broken glass of the windshield. Inside, he could see the still figure of an adult male.
    “There’s a driver in the semi,” Oliver hollered back to the paramedics whom had just parked their ambulance behind the squad cars.
    With their emergency kits, the two young paramedics started to run up towards Oliver and the semi when one of them, Jason Pennington, noticed what appeared to be a car across the street in someone’s front yard.
    “We’ve got another vehicle over here,” Jason told his partner, Mike Tomlinson. “You take the semi and I’ll take whatever is over there, across the street.”
    Mike nodded.
    Oliver moved his flashlight up and past the semi. Shining it around, he could see the two cars that had separated from the hauler. This was clearly bad, but it could have been much worse, he observed. The cars had lodged in the dirt, but they just as easily could have sailed across the street into occupied homes.
    On the sidewalk across from the semi were at least three dozen people on the sidewalk. The shocked, upset, bewildered looks on their faces said a lot. Oliver wondered if they had seen the accident. Witnesses were important to police work. He remembered there had been a second 9-1-1 caller. Julio Hernandez. He wanted to find Julio Hernandez as well as talk to Miss Holeman.
    He crossed the street to the people that he was sworn to protect and serve. On the verge of retirement, he was as serious about that oath now as he had been thirty-years earlier.
    “Everything will be okay,” Oliver began aloud. He knew that might not exactly be a true statement given the devastation but keeping people calm was certainly a part of what he did.
    “Is anyone here named Julio Hernandez?” he asked, walking slowly down the line of people. “Julio Hernandez?”
    Some people managed to shake their heads no. Others did nothing. People witnessing even the aftermath of something horrible might be as affected as those directly involved. Officer Dave Oliver knew this very well.
    “Hello, Ruth,” Carla said into her phone, having pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot on Keystone to make the call.
    The last thing she needed was to stupidly be talking on her phone while driving. There was already one accident to cope with. Her possibly getting in one was not a requirement of the evening.
    “Carla,” Ruth replied. “I am so glad you called. Are you close? I am not sure what is going on in the neighborhood. We just heard a bunch of sirens and saw the flashing lights.”
    “Any idea what is going on?” Carla asked, fishing for information in terms of what Ruth might already know.
    Carla had her suspicions that something horrible had happened due to what she had seen on the news report from her home, she did not want to get Ruth upset. At least not until she was there, face-to-face with her. To be supportive because that is what close friends do for each other. They support.
    Making his way through some shrubs, Jason tripped over a large piece of metal as he approached the car. Looking closer, he could see that it was the lower portion of a thirty-foot light pole. It was completely down on the passenger side of the car. Or what was left of the car.
    “What happened here?” Jason said aloud to himself.
    Even from the rear of the car, the porch light of the house provided enough light so that he could see the back of a slumped over figure of an adult male. As he moved closer, he could see the man was face down. For the most part in the passenger side of the car.
    With an eye on Dwayne on the sofa, Ruth moved off into the dining room and, hopefully, out of her son’s earshot.
    “No idea,” Ruth replied to Carla’s question while she lowered her voice. “Dwayne collapsed and said I needed to call Steve and Kyle. They ran off to Walmart. I don’t even know when exactly, but it was at least thirty, maybe forty minutes ago. Neither of them answered. And now the boys and I just heard a lot of sirens someplace on Seventh.”
    Carla was still way down by Keystone and Seventh. At least, under normal traffic situations,  eight minutes to Ruth. Knowing what she knew, she wanted Ruth not to leave until she got there.  At least then she would be there instead of Ruth, alone, faced with who knew what.
    “Listen, Ruth. I’m close. Well, about halfway there. Promise me, please, that you’ll sit tight until I get there. Then we can go explore together.”
    “Sure,” Ruth said. “I don’t want to leave Robby and Dwayne alone anyways. I was thinking that you or Paul or Fred, if his flight from LA got in, I thought someone would be here. With the boys.”
    Carla tried to remain as calm as possible. Given that Steve and Kyle had to have been in the accident from the license plate on the news, she said, “That’s a good plan.”
    The front doorbell rang.
   “Someone is at the door. Let me go and get it.”
    “Okay. But promise me you’ll stay there until I get there. Please, Ruth.”
    “I’ll wait.”
     Was I too obvious, Carla thought to herself as she pulled away from McDonald’s.
    If Carla had been too obvious, it had gone right over Ruth. She had too much on her mind. One boy upstairs. Another in the living room, traumatized by something unexplainable. Her husband and other son not answering their phones. Now somebody at the door. Steve had always told Ruth that she was the level-headed strong one of their team but right now she felt overwhelmed.
    Ruth turned on the porch light and opened the door.
    “I am so glad you are both here,” she said.
    Fred Hornberg stood on the porch of the home Steve had designed. At six feet four inches, he towered over Ruth. Behind Fred, on the bottom of five steps which lead up to the house, was Paul.     
    “Come in. Please. I don’t know what to do,” Ruth said as she ushered them into the house and closed the door.
    The paramedics reported to the officers that both the driver of the semi and the driver of the Toyota were deceased. The call had been made to the coroner’s office. Until the coroner would arrive in about thirty minutes, the bodies would neither be touched or moved.
     Officer Oliver was patient as he waited on the lit front porch of 3400 Montego. Jeannine Holeman’s home. He turned to his left and looked back at the roofless car on Miss Holeman’s lawn. In his three decades on the force he had never seen such devastation. After a minute, the door was opened by a frail older woman.
     “Hello,” Oliver began. “Are you Jeannine Holeman?”
    “I am,” she responded. With care, she eyed the officer’s uniform and badge. “I was wondering if any of you were going to come to my door or not.”
    “Absolutely, we wanted to speak with you,” Oliver said.
    “May I come in?”
    Jeannine opened her door. A senior citizen living alone, she always had it in her head to be cautious whom she opened the door for and let into her home. Of course, in this case it was more by habit for she knew this man was a police officer investigating an accident.
    As Oliver went into the Holeman home, Popwell, at Oliver’s direction, was going person-to-person, car-to-car in search of Julio Hernandez, the other caller to 9-1-1.
    They knew from Mr. Hernandez’s call that he had been right behind the semi and Toyota when the accident had happened. In the notes was his comment “I had to swerve and put on the brakes to avoid being in the accident myself”. Even more so than Miss Holeman, the police wanted to speak with Julio Hernandez, if he was still there.
    It would be a bit of a time-consuming effort, given that there were at least forty people now on both sides of Seventh Street and fifteen cars, their headlights still on, on the sides of the street. At least the rain had let up, but it had gotten colder with the temperature now around thirty-seven degrees.
    “I don’t know what to think,” Ruth said to Fred and Paul who were on the sofa, Fred right beside Dwayne. “Steve and Kyle both went to Walmart and have been gone a long time and now with all these lights and sirens, I am concerned.”
    “I heard them too,” Paul said, given that he just lived two-doors away.
    Fred was not sure what to say. He neither wanted to upset Ruth nor Dwayne.
     Fred had known the Caldwells for four years, about the same time as Paul, but on a much more intimate level. In July of 2013, he had donated his time as the stage manager for Artown, the month-long celebration of the arts. While Artown took place at venues across Reno, the major location was Wingfield Park in downtown by the Truckee River, directly across the street from Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. After the boys’ initial public performance at Trinity with Silent Night at midnight on Christmas Eve of 2012, their next major concert had been opening night, July 1, 2013, at that Artown.
    Fred had a no-nonsense, gruff demeanor about him, and he was not enamored with child performers. He had more than his fill with show biz kids. Some, if pushed to the point, he would admit were talented. But it was the kid who thought he or she could act big that he had enough of. But the Caldwell youngsters were to Fred different. This he attributed to Steve and Ruth just being good, down-to-Earth parents.
    The Caldwell Trio, as the boys had named themselves, had wowed the audience at Wingfield. Including Fred, who was not one who wowed. Fred had asked Steve and Ruth if the boys might record a few songs which he would pass along to an agent friend in LA in the business. Steve and Ruth, not really believing anything would come of this, had agreed.
    Much to everybody’s surprise, two weeks later Fred had informed Steve and Ruth that his agent friend wanted to meet them and so as a summer family vacation to Disneyland, all of them had flown down to southern California and met with famous children’s agent, Frieda Granite.
    Thus, had begun the odyssey of Robby, Dwayne and Kyle Caldwell. In the process, Fred, like Carla, had become an unofficial member and confidant of the Caldwell family.
    Fred was about to say something, although he was not sure what, when he was stopped. He felt Dwayne’s left hand reach out and clutch Fred’s right knee.
    “Where is Robby?” Fred said to divert the topic and concern that went with the topic, at least for a moment.
    “Robby,” Ruth said up the stairs. “Fred and Paul are here. Come on down.”
    “Be right down,” came Robby’s voice.
    In a moment, Robby, now dressed, albeit not in the nice clothes he had been asked to wear for the party, came down the stairs. It was clear to everybody in the room from the expression on the boy’s face, he had been upstairs worrying about the what ifs.
    As the coroner pulled up, the paramedics whose services were sadly not needed here, were getting ready to move on, as was the news crew. As Oliver left Jeannine’s home, he passed by the crew from the coroner’s office.
    Having asked all the men on the street if they happened to be Julio Hernandez, Popwell had gone from car-to-car. As he approached the final car, immediately Popwell realized he should have thought to have started with this car.
    Different from the other vehicles that were, more or less, lined up by the side of the road, this last car was headed into the sidewalk. The 9-1-1 notes ran through Popwell’s head as they had for Oliver earlier: “I had to serve and slam on my brakes”.
    The officer tapped on the window. A non-descript Hispanic man inside rolled down the window. Popwell could now see inside a woman in the passenger seat and two young children in the back. The man was in tears.
    “Are you Julio Hernandez?” the officer enquired.
    “Si, senor. I mean, yes, officer.”
    “Did you call 9-1-1 about this accident?”
    “I did. I’m sorry. For crying like a little kid. I was just thinking that my whole family might have been in the accident. They, my wife and my kids, might have been killed.”
    “I understand, Mr. Hernandez. Thankfully you are all okay. You are all okay?”
    Julio looked to his wife who nodded a yes.
     “Yes, officer. We are just shaken up.”
   “I was wondering, Mr. Hernandez, if you might mind getting out of the car. Just for a moment, sir. So, you can give me your statement of what happened here.”
    He looked at his wife and took her hand tightly. She nodded that of course he had to do what the officer was asking. He kissed her and whispered, “Te quiero mucho. Ya vuelvo,” then got out of the car, closing the door behind him.
    “What did you say there?” Popwell asked out of interest.
    “Oh. I just told her how much I loved her. And that I would be right back.”
    As he motioned Julio to the front of the car, Popwell took out his notebook.
    Ruth’s anxieties were worse. How long had it been since Carla had called? Why was she not there yet? Had Carla been in an accident?
    She got up and headed for the front closet to get her coat.
    “Where are you going, mom?” Robby asked.
    Before she could answer, there was a knock on the front door.
    “I was beginning to get worried about you too,” Ruth said, opening the door to find Carla.
    “Sorry about that. Traffic is snarled up. Shall we go?”
    As Ruth grabbed her coat, Carla, on purpose, dropped her car keys on the carpet. Once she got Ruth out of the house, she needed an excuse to come back in. She needed Fred, whom she had seen on the sofa, to know what she knew.
    “Okay, let’s go,” Ruth said, as she put on her coat. “Boys, we’ll be back soon. Keep our guests company. Fred? Paul? Maybe you want something to drink. If they do, boys, be good hosts.”
    Carla let Ruth go out first, then followed. She closed the door behind her, making sure it would not lock.
    “Stupid me,” Carla said, feigning a search for her keys. “I must have dropped my keys on the floor. Get in the car, Ruth. I’ll be right there.”
    As Ruth got in the passenger side of the car, Carla went back into the house.
    “What’s up, Aunt Carla?” Robby asked.
    “I dropped my keys somewhere,” she replied, eyeing the keys on the floor.
     “I’ll help you,” Robby said.
    Robby’s help was not what she wanted. With her right foot, she shoved the keys under the small table by the door to buy her a little more time.
    “Maybe you can help me, Fred?” Carla said.
    Perhaps it was the way she had put a slight emphasis on Fred’s name, or the look on her face, or that he was just thirsty, Paul said, “You know, Robby, I could sure use a drink.”
    “What would you like, Mr. Fisher?” Robby asked, halfway to the kitchen as Fred stood up and headed for Carla.
    “A soda would be nice, Robby,” Paul replied.
    As Robby disappeared into the kitchen and Fred joined Carla, again Paul sensed his role was to be a distractor.
    “So Dwayne, you guys working on any new pieces of music?”
    With Dwayne distracted by Paul and Robby in the kitchen, Carla retrieved her keys and got up close to Fred.
    “Fred. Steve’s been in a car accident.”
    “What?” Fred replied with shock and concern.
    “Quiet. Don’t want to upset the boys. I saw it on the news. I saw the license plate.”
    Fred also knew that plate, 2SaxDKC, all too well. Steve had run the notion past Fred when he had ordered the personalized plate four years earlier.
    “I have no idea what Ruth and I are going to find. Let’s hope for the best. But whatever, it is bound to be a long night. Can you stay with the boys?”
    “However long it takes. All night, if necessary,” Fred said.
    Carla started to turn for the door but was stopped by Fred’s hand on her left shoulder.
    “Call or text me when you know something,” he said.
    Carla nodded and exited the house.
    Julio had, indeed, been right behind the semi. Too much closer, and he would have been in the accident as well. He described in detail for Officer Popwell what had happened.
    “We were about three quarters of a mile up the street,” Julio had begun, “when the truck swerved first to the left. I remembered thinking to myself ‘what the heck’. As it first swerved was when I first saw the smaller light blue car in front. Between the size of the truck and the cars it was hauling, I could not see earlier what was in front of the truck.
    “It then swerved back to the right, the trailer swung back and forth across two lanes. It also picked up speed. A lot of speed. It was then that I started to brake but I was not sure which way to go. I could see that the driver of the other car must have felt the same way I did. He moved his car back and forth between the two lanes towards downtown. He was looking, I knew he was looking, looking for a way out. I could see two shadows in the front seat of the other car. One was smaller. Maybe a kid.”
    “What? What did you say, Mr. Hernandez?” Popwell asked as he stopped writing.
    “I could see two shadows in the front seat of the other car,” Julio repeated.
    “Wait here. Please,” Popwell said.
    The officer turned and ran the thirty yards down Seventh Street to Montego. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw the paramedics in the ambulance and about to pull out.
    “Wait! Wait!” Popwell hollered at them.
     Oliver looked up.
    Carla and Ruth crossed over McCarron. Walmart was on their left.
    Although lost in her thoughts, Ruth thought it was odd that Carla seemed to be knowing right where to drive.
    “Are you sure this is the right direction of where the emergency vehicles went? I mean, you were not even up here when that happened?”
    Carla drove another block and then pulled over to the side of the road, just before the bend. She knew that just four blocks past the bend was Montego Street, where the news crew had reported the accident from. Staring straight ahead over the steering wheel, Carla reached for the key in the ignition and turned the car off.
    “Why are we stopping, Carla?” Ruth asked.
    “There’s been an accident, Ruth,” Carla said, not turning to her.
    The word ‘accident’ and the way Carla had said it, with a sense of grief in her voice, had Ruth’s undivided attention. For a moment neither women said anything, then Carla turned to her.
    “There’s been an automobile accident,” Carla said. “I…I….saw it on the news.”
     Ruth could not, would not ever lash out at Carla. If Carla had waited until now to say something, Ruth knew it had been with the best of intentions and she hoped, in order to lift Carla’s burden, Carla would know that.
    “Wha…what did you see? On the news?” Ruth asked, adding, “Please. Tell me.”
    “Please, Ruth, understand that I wanted to be here for you, to be with you. That was why I did not tell you over the phone. That was why I pleaded with you to promise me that you would not go anywhere until I got up here. For the sake of our entire friendship, please understand.”
    “Carla, my dearest Carla…what did you see on the news?”
    “The news was showing a car accident…”
    Ruth’s right hand went to her mouth.
    “The camera shifted down to the street and…and…oh damn it.”
    “And?” Ruth asked.
    “There…in the middle of the street…was the car’s license plate.”
    For a second this revelation hit Ruth hard. She knew. Just because, she knew.
    “What I could see of the plate,” Carla tried to go on, only to be stopped by her own tears.
    “It read 2SaxDKC?” Ruth asked.
    Carla just looked at Ruth. With tears streaming down her face she thought of Steve and often he had said about Ruth “You are the strong one.”
    Ruth unbuckled her seatbelt and reached over and embraced Carla.
    “What’s going on?” Oliver asked as he approached his partner.
     “Don’t let the ambulance leave,” Popwell responded. “We might have a third victim.”
     “What? How do you know?” Oliver asked.
     “Hernandez. The witness. He said he saw the shadows of two people in the Toyota.”
    As Oliver started to run across Seventh Street to the ambulance, he yelled back to his partner, “Go and see where the coroner is at.”
    He turned and as he did his foot hit a piece of metal which, in the dark, nobody had seen. He picked it up and turned it over. It was the smashed-up license plate. With the plate in his left hand, as he got to the ambulance, he could see that there was a new set of headlights half-a-block further down Seventh. He could make out the figure of Officer Robinson stopping the car.
    “What’s up?” Mike, in the driver’s seat of the ambulance, asked, his window rolled down.
    “We have reason to believe there is a third victim,” Oliver replied.
    “Where?” the paramedic asked.
    “We don’t know. We just have an eye-witness who says that there were two people in the car.”
    As Oliver left the ambulance and headed towards the car that Robinson had stopped, Mike turned to his partner, Jason who said the strangest thing.
    “Have you ever had a feeling as if you were meant to be someplace?” the blond-haired and blue-eyed Jason asked.
    “What do you mean?” Mike asked.
    “I don’t know. I am just glad we are here.”
    “I am sorry, Miss,” Officer Cheryl Robinson said to Carla. “But I cannot let you go any further up Seventh Street. There has been an accident.”
    “I know. I know. My best friend’s husband was in the accident.”
    “How do you know who was in the accident?”
    Robinson looked up the street at the news van. To her knowledge no information had yet been released to the media.
     “I saw the license plate on the news,” Carla said.
    “What’s going on here?” Oliver asked as he approached Carla’s car.
     “These ladies say they know the accident victim in the car,” Robinson replied.
    Oliver doubted this. They did not even know who the victims were yet, and he had not had the time to even check in with the news crew, being appreciative that they had stayed back and out of the way. Reno PD had an excellent relationship with the local media. This was just another example of good community public relations that RPD took pride in.
    “She said,” Robinson said, “that she saw the license plate on the news.”
    Oliver looked at the twisted, mangled piece of metal in his left hand and turned it right side up with both hands.
    “What’s the license plate number, Miss?” Oliver asked Carla.
    “2SaxDKC.”
    It was difficult from the condition of the plate for Oliver to make out the first and last digits, but clearly the middle part was SaxDK. Gently ushering his colleague aside, Oliver opened the door for Carla to get out.
     “I thought you said there were two ladies?” Oliver said to Robinson.
    “Yes,” Carla said. “My friend, Ruth.”
    The three of them looked to the other side of the car. No Ruth. Just the passenger door open.
    Determined. Ruth moved up the sidewalk with the breeze in her face. Past the people who were still there. Her first few steps were a walk, then to a brisk walk. Still a block away and on the other side of the street, she was now at a trot. She held the top of her coat closed with her left hand to her neck.
    “Come on,” Oliver said to Carla.
     As they got to Oliver and Popwell’s squad car, Ruth was about to cross the street towards the car. She got to the middle of the street and stopped.
    “Go and be with your friend,” Oliver said to Carla. In his hand, he still held the license plate as he opened his squad car door and sat sideways into the car and took his radio in his hand.
    He remembered that the woman had said the other two pieces were the number two at the start and the letter C on the end.
    Ruth looked with a sense of despair at the back of her and Steve’s car. Carla put her arms around Ruth’s shoulders. She did not say a thing as the coroner started to remove the body that they knew was Steve’s.
    “I need you to run Nevada plates,” Oliver said into his car radio. “The number 2 S as in Sam, A as in apple, X as in x-ray, D as in Dwayne.” He paused for a second, not knowing why he had used Dwayne instead of say David. Then he continued. “K as in Kyle.” He stopped again. “Oh my god,” he said to himself.
    He looked out at Carla and Ruth standing in the darkness, but specifically at Ruth.
    “I’m sorry. I did not get that,” the dispatch operator said. “Please repeat.”
    “Sorry,” Oliver continued. “Yes. K as in Kyle and C…as in…as in Caldwell.”
    Officer Oliver did not need to hear the response. He already knew who these people were. Ruth Caldwell was as well-known to the community as the boys were. And he knew whose body was probably in the Toyota. Still, he did need official confirmation.
    “The vehicle is a 2014 sky-blue Toyota. It is registered to a Stephen James Caldwell,” dispatch reported.
    “Thank you,” Oliver said.
    “Would that be the Stephen Caldwell of the Caldwell family of musicians?” dispatch asked.
    Oliver paused.
    “Can you notify Command,” he started to say, “that we have a death of someone important in the community? They’ll need to know.”
    “I’ll take care of it,” dispatch replied, a slight quiver in the voice.
    “Thank you,” Oliver said again.
    “Where is Kyle?” Ruth asked Carla, having braced herself, as best she could. She held tight to Carla, to wait to see two bodies removed from the car.
     The airbags had deployed upon impact. The airbag on the passenger side had been underneath Steve. Then both Officer Popwell, standing by at Oliver’s direction, and the coroner saw a movement – an ever so slight movement – of the passenger side airbag. At first, both men had attributed it to either the movement of the car as they had removed Steve’s body, or the wind (which had picked up) or both.
    Still, the coroner decided to take one last closer look.               
    “Well, hello there,” the coroner said.