Little Red Haired Girl Ch. 02

We were driving in my Police SUV, as I had run late at work getting some paperwork done and had just gone and picked my wife up at her office. As we approached North Street, I saw the bright blue lights of a Police cruiser blocking the road, and directing everyone back onto the Bypass. Of course I pulled up to see what was going on.

"Hello sir, ma'am." said Sr. Patrolman Johnson. "Someone called in and said they smelled gas as they were walking along North Street. The Gas Company said they had no alarms, but we're checking it out anyway, and we'll re-open the street if they give the all-clear."

"Okay, good." I said. "You're doing a very efficient job of directing traffic around it. Keep up the good work."

"Thank you, sir." said Johnson. I pulled back onto the road and joined the traffic heading south on the Bypass.

"Everyone at the University loved your interview this morning." Laura said. We'd not talked politics during dinner, but she wanted to do so now, I perceived.

"I'm surprised any Faculty at the University watches KFXU." I replied. Laura gave a brief smile.

"Some of them do." Laura said. "And when it started going around about what you said about Wilson Hammonds, people tuned in."

"I figured all the Faculty would love him for his pro-Illegal-Immigration positions." I said, partly to needle my wife.

"They hate him for trying to cut the University's budget every year, too." Laura said.

"That makes sense------ what the heck?"

Time slowed down.

Up ahead of me, I'd seen a black shape coming up the wrong side of the road, and now I was realizing that it was plowing into a southbound car head-on. A fireball rose above the SUV that was right behind the car crash, which had stopped. Instinctively I hit the buttons to turn on my dash-cam and the lightbar and siren, bathing the area immediately in front of me in bright blue and white lights.

Then, to my shock, with a screech of rubber on the pavement, the SUV behind the crash suddenly pulled to the left and gunned its motor, going around the crash and further south! I had no time to chase it; I could now see two automobiles on fire.

I was calling in the crash on my Police radio as I halted about 60 feet behind the two burning vehicles. Laura was already out of the car ahead of me. I instinctively grabbed my red crowbar as I got out and followed her. All the cars behind us had stopped.

I heard a voice on the passenger side of the car, yelling "Mommy! Mommy!" I ran around to look, and a chilling sight greeted me: I saw the little red-haired girl Frieda Franklin crying and yelling "Mommy! Mommy!" as she desperately tried to open the passenger side front door of the burning Audi...

To be continued.