Then she saw his eyes.
“Are you all right, Jared?”
He stared at her and then looked at the ground. Even with the activity, it was quiet enough to hear birds singing. His eyes were red and his complexion had that greenish-gray tint of the nauseated, reminding her of when nursing students attended their first autopsy.
“It’s really bad,” he said. “Things like this don’t happen here.” He paused and kicked absently at the asphalt. “I was the first officer on the scene. Oh, my god…”
“You might want to get on your haunches and try to lower your head,” she said. “It might make you feel better.”
He remained standing. He whispered quickly. “I’ve never seen so much blood.”
“Dead?” she inquired, but her middle was already cold.
“Two girls.” He hesitated. “Somebody used a knife. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Oh, no.”
She saw another man walking toward them from the direction of the tarped-off area. He had sergeant’s stripes on his uniform and an unhappy expression.
“Be good to you, Jared.” She turned to leave.
Then she saw the movement out of her left peripheral vision.
It was a man, running and stumbling through the bushes at the foot of a stand of thick trees.
He was completely naked, and seemed to be wearing war paint. But Cheryl Beth had spent enough time in emergency rooms to know that it was dried blood caked on his hands, arms, and face.
“Stop! You, halt!” This command came from the uniformed group near the tarp. Now the sergeant and Jared focused on the man, who was running parallel to them twenty yards away. He was young and his face held a confused madness.
Both officers drew their weapons and ran toward him.
The naked man screamed, “Hostiles! Hostiles! I have wounded!”
Cheryl Beth watched the spectacle with a momentary, anesthetized detachment, unaware of the messenger bag over her shoulder.
Another cop in a different style uniform dashed straight toward the naked man and tackled him, driving him into the grass. He screamed and thrashed but was quickly surrounded as eight men and women in uniform converged on him. He struggled and moaned.
“Quit fighting!”
“Quit resisting!”
The commands came quickly and atop each other. But the naked man dragged himself on the wet grass underneath the cop who had initially tackled him, regained his footing, and ran. The cop tried to grab his ankle but missed and fell face-first onto the grass, taking two other officers down with him.
She knew this man.
It was Noah Smith, one of her nursing students. Grass and mud now mingled with the caked blood on his naked body. Across the grassy distance, their eyes connected, his were full of terror.
“Cheryl Beth! What are you doing here? Help me!”
A female officer used a black baton to strike him in the side of the ribs, the knees. Pain centers. He moaned but ducked past her. She reached for him but lost her balance, spun around, and fell backwards, her equipment belt rattling loudly.
He ran directly toward Cheryl Beth.
Part of her was alarmed, but another was clinical, amused as the Keystone Kops scene unfolded before her. The campus police, city cops and deputies, a dozen now, caught up and surrounded him.
“No, no! Help me!” He dashed toward one cop, then another. They closed the ring, leaving him no escape. Cheryl Beth was now terrified they would shoot him.
“Tase him,” the sergeant said and it was done. The naked young man snapped backwards and arched his back as surely as if he had been defibrillated. Then he lay still on the spring grass, face up.