Nature Noir by Jordan Smith (best summer reads of all time txt) 📕

clatter of cobbles and the dull clunk of rocks hitting a car's underbody, a flash of sunlight on steel and glass, and his eyes fixed on an older American sedan with dull paint rapidly gathering speed toward him through the parked cars, its rear end fishtailing and its tires smoking and hurling stones.

The car began to straighten out as it accelerated up the cobble strand. From one side a man appeared, running hard toward it. He was wild-haired, stripped to the waist, his face contorted and mouth open in a yell, the big veins and fibers of his neck standing out. He clutched an object in the crook of one arm like a football player running a ball. The other hand was raised in a fist, which he waved angrily as he ran at the car. As the car passed him, he lifted the ball and extended his throwing arm, firing the ball perfectly toward the car. It flew through the open passenger-side window and disappeared inside the speeding vehicle. Except it wasn't a football, Finch thought. Something larger. A beach ball, perhaps.

Then Finch thought, No, not a beach ball. It was something pink, with limbs that moved as it flew through the air. It's a baby that man just threw at that car. For the love of God, it's a baby, he thought. Meanwhile the man continued to yell and shake his fist, running after the car, which still sped toward Finch.

Finch was not the only one whose attention was drawn to the commotion. As the baby sailed through the air, a low moan of horror and disbelief rose from the crowd on the beach, changing into a chorus of angry yells. As soon as they saw what he had done, several of the men and women down by the water rose to their feet and, unified by their hatred, began running toward the baby-thrower. As if in slow motion, Finch was spinning the Jeep around to position himself for a traffic stop and reaching for the controls of the light bar and siren and the radio microphone from its clip on the dash. The man saw the mob coming at him. Finch unfastened his seat belt. The car, passing by Finch's Jeep, braked to a stop. The driver's door flew open and a woman got out, screaming and waving her arms at Finch. Then she was reaching back into the car.

"Hey!" shouted Finch.

On the beach the mob descended upon the baby-thrower. Their aggregate intention now obvious to him, the man turned and ran at top speed down the beach along the lakeshore, disappearing into a thicket of the willow and giant rush. The woman had pulled the baby from the car and was holding it up in front of her, then hugging it, then holding it up again, screaming, weeping, red-faced, screaming something at Finch, pointing in the direction of the man who had run away. Finch could not tell what she was saying. He had the radio mike now, and in his other hand he gripped the aluminum club he carried in his Jeep.

"Hey!" he yelled again at the woman without knowing exactly what he wanted her to do, except to stop screaming so he could talk on the radio. Thumbing the microphone, he said into it, "Northern, four six nine, I need code three backup at Upper Lake Clementine."

There was a short crackle of static from the speaker in the car and then nothing. Finch keyed the mike again. "Northern, four six nine, code three traffic."

"Four six nine, Northern," the dispatcher replied, sounding almost bored. "Please repeat your traffic."

"Northern, four six nine. I need additional units to a four-fifteen at Upper Lake Clementine."

"Additional units, Lake Clementine..."

Finch imagined his backup roaring to the wrong end of the lake. "Negative, Northern—Upper Lake, Upper Lake!"

There was another burst of static. Then silence.

Finch: "Did you copy, Northern?"

Deafening static, then the dispatcher: "Copy, Upper Clementine, units available, please respond."

"One seven nine," I said into my microphone, several miles away. "Code three from the Confluence."

If the world exists in a perpetual state of uncertainty, if things are half-assed and watered-down and most things fall into a gray area, when you respond to a call like that you are bathed for a few minutes in superhuman certainty. You put away whatever squabbles you and your partners have had, ready to wade into the fray, to sacrifice yourself for any one of them. You hit the lights and siren and drive better than you normally do, think sharper than you normally do. The people in other cars look at you as you pass them on a mountain road and at intersections the cars part for you like the Red Sea for Moses. It is an acceptable substitute for reality; it's fleeting, but it keeps you believing in what you do.

One after another, three other four-wheel-drive patrol trucks converged on the road and roared down it, arriving at the bottom with the brakes stinking and spongy under the pedal. I was a couple of minutes ahead of the others. I jerked my baton from where I kept it jammed between the seat back and the cushion and rolled out of the car, sliding the club into the ring on my gun belt as I strode through the crowd now milling around Finch—fifty, perhaps seventy-five people.

Finch, poker-faced and sturdy in his green jeans, khaki shirt, gun belt, and green baseball cap with a badge insignia above the bill, stood by the open door of his car with the woman. Her car was still parked where she had stopped it, the driver's door still open. Finch was asking her questions and taking notes on a clipboard. As I walked up to them he glanced at me and, without acknowledgment or greeting, began to speak with no trace of excitement other than the elevated volume of his voice and the pace of his delivery.

"This was a male-female fight. The guy—he's gone—ran downstream. They were arguing.