Kitsap County Sheriff Deputies
Eliza Kurtz & Sara Clark
Tucked away in the dense evergreens alongside the cracked stretch of asphalt that made up Blakley Avenue, one of Bainbridge island's most traveled roads, was the pine green Ford Crown Victoria police cruiser used by Kitsap Counties Sheriffs Department. Inside it was an exhausted junior deputy. Eliza was coming to the end of her twelve hour shift but the last few hours were always the slowest; especially when she was on a speed trap. Her car hadn't moved since she parked it six hours ago, and aside from the hourly check-ins and the
company of her partner, Eliza hadn’t had much contact with anyone. So between the
two of them they’ve spent the majority of their shift downing water to stay awake,
enduring Eliza’s awkward attempts at conversation, and occasionally being interrupted by nature's call causing them to dart off into the trees to relieve themselves.
Just as things started to feel like they were never going to pick up, a call came
over the radio from the station’s dispatch: a rather strange call for officers to respond to a
resident’s home after their neighbors reported the sounds of an altercation. It didn’t sound too alarming to the two bored deputies but the stark, professional tone of the dispatch operator never really gave much for them to go off of.
“10-4 dispatch, 2034 in route to disturbance.” Clark, Eliza’s partner let off the handset and
fastened it back onto the dashboard right as Eliza settled herself back into the driver's seat. She was out of the vehicle when the call came in so she needed to get caught up.“What’s the call?” Eliza started the car up and waited for directions. “10-41 on West Park, just take a right heading out of here and it’s pretty much a straight shot.”
“About time something eventful happened today.” Eliza shifted the cruiser into gear and
sped off down the road, lights and sirens piercing through the quiet evergreen forest.
At the speed they were traveling it took no more than 20 minutes for them to get there,
as they pulled up the gravel driveway into the residence things seemed pretty normal at
first glance. “2034 to dispatch, we’re 10-75 at 173 West Park.” Clark took over the handset
again as Eliza parked in front of the home, now with only the lights of the cruiser
violently illuminating the surrounding area.
“10-4 2034.”
Eliza and Clark dismounted their vehicle and proceeded towards the front door of the
home. As they headed up the stairs leading onto the front porch they could see the front
door left open with bloody footprints streaked out of the home and off over the railing at the
opposite side of the porch. Both of the junior officers looked at each other in disbelief
before they drew their handguns. It seemed like they’d have to start taking this call a lot
more seriously. “Eliza you head inside I’m going to see if whoever left those is still
alive.” Being the senior of the two and the most experienced Clark instinctively took
control of the situation, although Eliza wasn’t confident that splitting up was a good idea,
but she didn’t want to waste time asking questions. So with a brief hesitation Eliza
slowly opened the door leading into the home while her partner split off to investigate
the trail of gore.
“County Sheriff! Is anyone in here….” Eliza made her way into the home following the bloody trail into the kitchen. Water had started flooding the rest of the home from the kitchen sink. Apparently the homeowners were in the middle of doing dishes, some of the dishes were left in or around the sink while others were scattered across the room. A drawer of utensils was pulled out from its slot in the counter as if someone was searching for something in a panic. As Eliza carefully made her way across the water and blood soaked tile she noticed that a knife was missing from its place in the drawer with bloody handprints all around it. Eliza acted
like she was much more courageous than she actually was to the rest of the department but now she was starting to get nervous. Instinct told her to run out and find her partner but she was afraid of looking weak, especially in front of Clark. So even though her heart was beating its way up into her throat Eliza mustered the courage to press on.
Hoping that they had arrived in time to help whomever was the source of all this blood. With every step out of the kitchen Eliza felt off, she had never seen anything even closely resembling this before. It was a horror show cast upon a seemingly innocent home. Maybe that’s why it was all so jarring. No one ever expects something like this will actually happen, especially not within an hours drive of your home. Now entering the living room she started to feel like something was horribly wrong as she spotted two bodies, an older man presumably in his mid to late 40’s and a young woman that couldn’t be any older than Eliza herself. They both appeared to be dead but the woman was hunched over the man tearing at his guts like
a savage beast.
Eliza started to tremble in fear, something was definitely off with this call and she quickly started to lose her composure. “Clark! Clark!” Eliza desperately screamed for her partner so she didn’t have to witness this alone. As she called out the woman spun around, her pale lifeless face soaked in blood with her mouth hung open revealing cracked, chipped teeth presumably from rending flesh. “Ma’am stay where you are!” Eliza leveled her handgun at the woman, her hands were trembling over her handgun and she started to feel a stream of urine run down her legs. Her body was telling her to either run or fight but she was
paralyzed with fear. “Clark! Get the fuck in here!” As she screamed the woman let out a hiss that sounded like she was expelling all the air from her lungs before she lunged towards Eliza. In a panic Eliza let two wild shots off into the woman's chest before the two became entwined with each other. Eliza started to scream in terror as the woman's face came within inches of her own. Her eyes were foggy like those of a corpse, and her breath reeked of bile and gore. She snapped her teeth in an attempt to bite at Eliza’s face, it took everything Eliza had in her to keep the woman's putrid maw face away from face.
In the panic Clark came rushing into the room and without taking the time to think swiftly booted the woman off of Eliza and fired three more shoots into her decrepit body. This time it seemed to do the trick as the woman's body became a motionless slump at the base of the family’s sofa. With the threat neutralized Clark’s attention immediately turned to her partner. She chose to ignore the smell of urine that now permeated the room while she frantically
searched Eliza for gunshot wounds, but despite the blood soaked on Eliza’s uniform she couldn’t find any. “Liz, did you get shot?” In between gasps for breath and hysterics Eliza managed to get out a response.
“No...those were mine.” Clark was confused for a second until she realized that it took five
shots to kill a woman that more closely resembled an exhumed corpse than a human that was now lying with her head busted open just a few feet away from them. It still didn’t make any sense but her focus was better served on her partner. Clark helped Eliza onto her feet and walked her out of the home. She could tell that her legs were struggling to hold her up but Eliza was trying her best to hold herself together.
Clark sat her partner down in the front passenger seat of the squad car and then knelt down in front of her. Eliza’s eyes were piercing, her pupils were dilated and it felt like she wasn’t even cognizant to her surroundings. Clark knew better than to ask if she was alright but she didn’t really know what else to say. “Liz are you good?” She didn’t get a response, at least not a verbal one. Eliza just looked at Clark in confusion, almost as if it were the first time the two of them had met. Clark wiped a streak of the woman’s blood from Eliza’s cheek, and met her look with a half smile. “I’m going to get on the radio, alright?” Eliza managed to sneak out an “okay” while Clark went around to the driver’s seat and grabbed the handset from over the center console.
“2034 to dispatch, requesting 10-52, with additional units.”
After a few seconds dispatch chimed over the radio with their response. “Understood 2034, 10-52 inroute.”
“10-4 dispatch.” As soon as Clark came off the radio she could hear dispatch come over the radio again requesting additional units for her and Eliza. It would be a few minutes until help showed up and the outside lights of the home had just started to flicker on. It was starting to get dark as the sun slipped below the treeline and the two of them could probably think of a hundred better places they would rather be at than here when it got dark out.
“Dispatch 2041 on scene with EMS.” An ominous cloud seemed to hang over the
scene as the other officers made their way up the dusty gravel driveway with the
ambulance following closely behind them. Their lights and sirens gave their arrival
away miles before they actually arrived which served to put the two deputies at some
semblance of ease. Under the stark gray sky everything started to feel like a threat, the
wind, the trees, even just the silence stood to betray their sense of safety. Every moment of
silence since the incident gave an opportunity for them to rerun it in their heads.
Eliza could still barely move let alone speak. At times Clark thought she had passed out
but every time she checked on her she was still just staring off into the forest as if she
expected something to pierce it’s veil and reveal its wicked self to them. Clark felt a horrible guilt over the whole incident, the fact that she split them up, and that she didn’t respond fast enough when Eliza called out to her. It was bad enough that Eliza ended up in the state she’s in now but Clark nearly got her killed. Had she had taken just a few more seconds to get there
she would’ve been holding her partners corpse as the other officers pulled onto the scene. Pulling herself out of the driver's seat Clark made her way to the other side of the vehicle to retrieve Eliza. “Let’s go get you checked out Liz.” Clark extended her hand
towards her partner who met it with a cold, weak grasp. She pulled Eliza out of her seat
being certain not to pull her out too fast and once she was one her feet she wrapped her
arm around Eliza’s waist to help her stay up right. As they made their way closer to the
other officers a team of EMTs ran out from the ambulance towards them. Clark let them
carry Eliza off to the ambulance while she continued on to the other officer’s patrol car.
They had already gotten out and were just as puzzled as her and Eliza were when they
arrived. “What the hell happened Clark?” One of the officers said with a little more than a tinge of concern in her voice. Clark tried to keep it together in her response, it wasn’t time for
her to fall apart but having some more familiar faces on the scene helped calm her
down.
“There’s two dead inside, one male, one female there’s signs of a struggle.... well I
guess more than that, the male was dead when we got here. From what little I was able
to get out of El..Kurtz the girl was, um eating his guts. Kurtz tried to apprehend her but she
was attacked by the woman. When I came in to help the woman wouldn’t respond to any
commands so I shot and killed her.”
“You weren’t in the house when she got attacked?” The other officer chimed in. Clark
knew him but not very well. She was like Eliza, she kept to herself and only really spoke with people at work when it was relevant. Still she didn’t like how critical his tone was, but she would’ve acted the same so she let it slip.
“No. There’s a set of footprints that head out of the house and into the treeline. I was
following them when I heard Kurtz fire two shots, after that I ran inside to see that she
was being attacked so I acted in her best interest.”
Since all the officers involved weren’t in any place of authority they didn’t dwell on how
the protocol said things should’ve been handled. Their department was small, really
small. Kitsap County only has 20 officers on the island with the rest of their force on the
mainland. Making it to where everyone knows each other back at the station, so while Eliza stays pretty quiet almost everyone likes her. So seeing her like they just did made it hard for the other officers to not feel concerned for their sister.
“Sara, is she holding up okay? I mean I know that’s a stupid question. I’m just worried about her. She’s a good boot after all.” His voice had shifted away from being critical, and sounded more concerned than anything else.
“I don’t know Pat. She’s pretty shook up, but she’s tough you know?” Clark didn’t sound confident, but she honestly just wanted this whole thing to go away. Part of her still refused to admit that any of it was real, and she hoped that she would just wake up alongside the road on that boring speed trap with Eliza trying her best to keep a conversation going. Before she could dwell on it too much the female officer spoke up and pulled her off to the side.
“Sara how are you holding up? This has to be rough for you, but you need to stay out of your head right now. Just because you’re her field training officer, doesn’t mean that you need to beat yourself up over it.” Her tone was compassionate but it wasn’t what she needed to here. She was the one put incharge of mentoring after the new kid, and she fucked up. As far as she was concerned this all fell on her.
“I appreciate it but I don’t really want to think about myself right now.” Clark did her best to
detach herself from the conversation without being rude but either way it wasn’t one that
she wanted to be a part of. So she left the two officers and headed to check on Eliza.
They had her wrapped in a blanket while she sat on a gurney inside the ambulance as they took her vitals and cleaned her up as best that they could. Her khaki blouse was tossed to the side, the blood stains so dark that they almost matched the dark brown of her trousers. “How are you holding up Liz?” She didn’t say anything back, sending a sharp chill down Clark’s spine. One of the medics finished cleaning Eliza up and hopped out of the ambulance next to Clark. He kept his voice down and gestured for her follow him along the side of the ambulance.
“I heard you talking to the other officers. That woman isn’t the first.”
“What are you talking about?” Clark was caught off guard by all of this.
“We’ve gotten a few calls about similar incidences. Didn’t you hear about the shooting in Baltham?”
“No we’ve been on shift all day.”
“Well, pretty much the same scenario went down in the city. Police shot up these noncompliant, hostile pedestrians.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Clark raised her brow in confusion. Despite everything that had happened today things just kept getting stranger.
“I’m not too big into conspiracies and all that shit but all I’m saying is that something’s
going down, and you all need to keep an eye out for each other.” Just as he finished his
sentence the other officers came around the corner of the ambulance, and the medic left
Clark as he went back to his patient. As he left Clark felt her stomach sink, like that
feeling she’d get when her friends would tell scary stories around the campfire growing
up. She didn’t want to be at this house anymore.
“Sara we’re going to take over for you two. There’s another unit heading out this way
and we called up the coroner. Things are pretty slow back at the station so if you want
to head back and file your reports you shouldn’t get too much trouble.”
“I appreciate it.” Clark didn’t hang on her words. She wasn’t going to give the situation
anytime to change and trap the two of them there. She headed around the back of the
ambulance to get Eliza who was still wrapped in the drab blue blanket given to her
by the medics. “Is she going to be okay to head back to the station?” The medics were
jostling around the ambulance as they put their equipment away when Clark called out
to them so it took a moment for them to respond. “I mean there isn’t really anything we can do
for her. I’d suggest keeping someone with her for the next few days though. It’s better to
have someone there during things like this.”
“You ready then Liz?” Clark offered her hand to her partner in order to give her an easier
time getting down from the back of the ambulance. Eliza still didn’t feel like her shy, goofy self but she was becoming more responsive. She took Clark’s hand and with the help from the medics she climbed out of the ambulance. Clark adjusted the strap on her tank top, while also making sure the blanket was wrapped snugly around her shoulders before she grabbed her blouse and started walking her back to their patrol car. As they passed, the other officers tried not to look concerned for her in hopes that some friendly faces would set her mind
at ease, but Eliza was still zoned out for the most part and didn’t notice them.
“Hey I appreciate you two!” Clark called out to them, thanking them one final time before
she loaded Eliza back into the front passenger seat of their vehicle. As she settled into the driver's seat Clark let out a sigh as she realized that this wasn’t all just a bad dream. Starting the car up and shifting it into gear Clark turned around and headed out of the driveway, hoping that this would be the last time they ever saw this place again.
