It's amazing how sharp your senses get when death is in the vicinity.
Christine Reynolds could hear clearly the sounds of far-off coyotes and the whistle of a train from many miles away. She could smell the smoke from the pistol she still held in her hand, and the blood of the man lying on the ground in front of her. The echo of the gunshots still reverberated in her ears as she stared numbly at his dead body. A light desert breeze caressed her naked body as she stood in the moonlit darkness trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Suddenly, a burst of noise came out of a radio from the direction of the highway, some 100 yards away, and it jolted her back to reality. The enormity of what she had just done hit her then, her legs went rubbery and she sank to her knees on the hard-packed sand.
She had just killed a man. No, worse, she had just killed a cop, albeit a cop who had just finished raping her and who was going to kill her. Her chest heaved as she absorbed that information. Then her training kicked in, and she forced her mind to clear. She knew there was only one way she could get out of this without a capital murder charge, and that was to come absolutely clean, prove to them that he'd attacked her, raped her and that she'd shot him in self-defense.
Christine dropped the pistol, and looked for her clothes. They were in a neat pile, all except her bra, which he had ripped off in his impatience to get at her. She put her panties on, hoping that they would trap enough of his semen to prove rape, then slipped her dress over head. It was ripped down the front a good foot. She put her sandals on, then stumbled back to the patrol car, which was parked silently behind her own little sedan. As she walked, she felt the warm, slow trickle of blood from her nose, where he had punched her. She dabbed it with her hand as she reached the highway. She climbed into the front seat of the patrol car, on the passenger's side, and thought about how she needed to do this.
She gave a short scream and jumped as the radio crackled again.
"Unit 21, do you copy?" the dispatcher at the county sheriff's office said. "Come in, Unit 21, what is your situation?"
Christine looked at the dashboard and saw the number, 21, his unit. She picked up the microphone and pressed the send button.
"This is Unit 21," she began. "I'm on Highway 61, about 20 miles north from town. You need to send a detective, a coroner and an ambulance to this location. I just shot your cop."
"Come again?" the dispatcher said, in a voice that was equal parts hysteria and disbelief. "You say you shot him?"
"Yes ma'am," Christine said. "I shot him. He'd dead. When you send that ambulance, make sure there is a female EMT on board and that she has a rape kit."
"A rape kit?" the dispatcher said.
"That's correct," Christine said. "A rape kit. I'll explain it to the detective when he gets here. But your officer stopped me for no reason, raped me, he was going to kill me and I shot him."
At that moment, Christine's professional facade broke, she buried her face in her hands and she wept. She ignored the cacaphony of noise that broke out from the radio. How could this have happened to her? She lost herself in the bitter memories of the previous half-hour, and tried to piece together exactly what had happened.
Christine had heard stories about running into rogue cops at night on lonely stretches of Western highways, but she had just figured that they were urban legends, the paranoia of city dwellers.
She was on her way to spend two weeks with her family in Montana. Her little brother was getting married, and she wanted to be there. Christine was a 36-year-old divorcee who worked as an emergency room nurse at a large hospital in suburban Los Angeles. She had chosen to start her trip at night, because that was her normal work shift, and because it was cooler driving in the summer through the long stretches of desert she had to pass to get home.
She had stopped in a small town to gas up and grab some refereshments - water and chips. She had seen a sheriff's patrol car in the parking lot of the convenience store, but had paid him no mind. She was a law-abiding citizen, an Army veteran, and she believed she had nothing to fear from the police.
Christine had seen him in her rear view mirror coming up fast with his lights flashing. She was startled when he came up behind her, rather than passed her, so she slowed, pulled over to the side of the road, and he came to a stop behind her. She was puzzled, because she hadn't been speeding and she was stone sober, as always. He'd turned his lights off, which Christine thought was unusual, but shrugged it off as she fished in her purse for her driver's license.
The deputy was a big man, lean and powerful-looking. The moment she rolled her window down and got a good look at him, she started getting bad vibes. He was looking at her in a way that sent shivers of fear down her spine. He looked over her license with his flashlight shining on it, then turned the light on her face, blinding her with the light.
"L.A., huh?" he grunted.
"Officer, what is this all about?" Christine asked. "Why did you stop me?"
"Please get out of the car, ma'am," he said.
"What?" she asked.