The Pink Stick (The Space In Between)

The line on the stick was definitely pink; no mistake; no room for error; pink.  Sergeant Scott Meyer put the stick into the evidence bag and robotically marked it with the case number, date, and his initials.  He tried to shut his mind off and go on working the case like he knew he should; like he’d been trained; like he’d done for the past eighteen years, but he found it almost impossible to put the stick out of his mind.

This wasn’t the first time.  Last month there had been a similar murder with a victim much like this one.  They had no murder weapon.  They had no motive.  They had no suspect.  All they had was the coroner’s ruling on the cause of death: death was a result of a repeated blows to the head and the weapon was some kind of stick, a wooden stick that had left splinters in the bloodied scalp.  Just a week ago there’d been another similar victim.  The department experts had tried not to focus on the possibility of a serial killer. To do so would be to blind

themselves to other possibilities.  But now, there was this third victim and although the coroner had not had a look at this one, Scott could see the injury plain as day.  And this victim was much like the others; same class, same neighborhood.

Scott knew it couldn’t be but he had to work the case like any other case.  It didn’t matter that he’d seen this stick before and it didn’t matter that there were probably other sticks much like this one out there; other sticks that belonged to other suspects.  He had a hunch on this one.  But could he do it?  Could he turn her in?  Scott even knew why she’d done it.  He understood it, yet it wasn’t right.  He knew her motive, at least in her eyes, was right and just.  They had argued about it over the past months but he always left it alone, not wanting anything to come between them.  But he couldn’t do that now.  He couldn’t turn his back.  He couldn’t close his eyes to it.

As Scott Meyer continued gathering evidence at the scene, he thought about the first time he had met her.  He was on the job that night.  He’d taken a suspect into the Emergency Room for examination and Hailey had been the nurse on duty.  He remembered seeing her face and those incredibly deep blue eyes.  He remembered how her heart shaped face had been framed by the tendrils of red-gold hair that had strayed from the clip that held her hair up in the back of her head.  She had asked all the questions for the hospital files and had talked to the suspect to triage him then she had sent them both down the hall to wait for an available examination table.  As he accompanied the suspect, Scott hadn’t been able to take his mind off of her. 

Scott finished collecting evidence at the scene and headed back to the station to fill out the paperwork.  He asked himself how he could do this.  How would he be able to change their life?  Maybe there was a reason.  Maybe he was wrong.  Maybe there was another stick out there with pink on it.  But could it be exactly like Hailey’s?  He doubted it although he wanted to believe that it was someone else’s…someone else with her initials…some other H.M.  that had this exact brand of stick with this exact pink marking on it.  He shook his head, knowing there was no other.  It had to be.  He knew when he ordered that pool stick for her that there was none like it.  That’s why he had it customized for her, with the exact shade of pink that was her favorite and with the exact design that had been on the cue stick she’d used when she won the state women’s pool championship last year.  He had ordered it right after the championship so it would arrive by Christmas, but it had arrived late.  Instead of the cue stick, he had given her the ring he had bought as a Valentine’s gift, the one he had slipped on her finger when she had said yes.

As he pulled into the station, he knew he had to do it.  He  knew this would be the hardest decision he’d ever face.  It would effect everyone, but he had to do it.