An Interview with Annette Dashoffy By E. B. Davis

Pete was beginning to feel bruised from all the brick

walls they’d been running into.

Annette Dashofy, Helpless, Kindle Loc. 1975

 

As a massive weather system barrels toward them, Vance Township Police Chief Pete Adams and his wife, County Coroner Zoe Chambers-Adams, soon learn how unprepared they really are. A 911 call reports a dead young mother, her critically injured husband, and their missing seven-year-old daughter. Pete and Zoe realize that as the storm moved north from Louisiana, a mysterious killer came with it.

The wounded and trapped father is Zoe’s friend and blacksmith, and he asks her to stay with him during the rescue efforts. Pete encourages her to oblige, hoping she can uncover clues that might help the investigation. But as attempts to free the victim fail and his condition worsens, Zoe’s questions reveal he doesn’t know why his family was targeted and child kidnapped. Yet he stays alive, hoping for one last glimpse of his little girl.

Pursuing the murderer and the kidnapped child, Pete and his officers battle downed trees, massive flooding, and a widespread loss of communications. They’re isolated with no backup, while facing rising water and impassable roads. The killer faces the same problems, yet somehow stays one step ahead of law enforcement. But he is becoming desperate, and more people are dying because of it.

As two lives hang in the balance, can Pete win the race against time and weather to stop a savage and cunning predator? And will he and Zoe be able to reunite a family before it’s too late?

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If you’ve lived around farms and/or lived in Pennsylvania during Hurricane Agnes as I have, real situations like those Annette Dashofy included in Helpless occur. Real situations that are scary. Pete and Zoe’s helplessness is demonstrated in all the trials they face, real situations that occur like cataclysmic dominos due to one man’s psycho madness during an epic storm, pressure cooking a horrible situation that deteriorates as time ensues.

 

Helpless is a page turner, as Annette’s books usually are, but what is unusual is that it is a suspense, not a mystery. We don’t know whodunit right from the start, but we have a good idea, and then our suspicions become fact. After that—there is not only a countdown against the killer, but also of the child’s safety, the father’s survival, and the storm’s impact and hoped dissipation. Annette has suspense ratcheted up on so many levels, it’s no wonder you turn the page quickly. Readers feel Zoe and Pete’s desperation, their helplessness in trying to end a very bad situation.

 

***

Because Zoe’s horse barn is on high ground, she anticipates boarding horses that are located in low-lying areas, which will flood due to the storm. What is a tie stall?

 

In comparison to a box stall, which is usually 10- or 12-foot square allowing the horse to move around freely, a tie stall is about half as wide. The horse is tied facing the feeder and can’t walk around. It’s not ideal but works in a pinch. And the poor farmers living in low-lying areas were definitely “in a pinch.” As a side note, I live in one of those areas and came very close to having to evacuate my horses once or twice.

 

Zoe must choose between doing her job, attending the county’s dead and performing autopsies, or staying with a gunshot wounded and tractor-trapped father, Danny, who is desperate to get his daughter, Peyton, back from a kidnapper, who thinks he is the child’s father. How does Zoe decide what to do?

 

Her heart desperately wants her to stay. Danny is an old friend. Zoe still misses her old career as a paramedic. But her head insists she fulfill the demands of her new office. However, Danny begs her to stay with him, and Pete feels her talents are better served right there as opposed to being at the morgue.

 

What are the “special circumstances” Pete refers to when asking Zoe to stay with Danny?

 

There are a lot of special circumstances, but the ones Pete cares about involve the increasingly bad weather and the fact that, as a friend, Zoe can talk to Danny and draw out potential clues as to who this mad man is and where he’s taken the little girl.

 

Why does Zoe call in a doctor to assist with Danny’s care?

 

Ideally, Zoe’s paramedic buddies would’ve loaded Danny into the ambulance and taken him to the hospital 20 miles away. But they can’t move him, and his condition is grave. So, Zoe places a call to her old friend, Emergency Department Doctor Fuller (who has appeared in several previous books.) Dr. Fuller is the best where emergency medicine is concerned, and Zoe is grateful he agrees to come.

 

The horrible and shocking situation is that the weight of the tractor keeps Danny from bleeding out, and since he is a strong man, the weight of the tractor hasn’t collapsed his airway. In short, he can talk. To find the madman, Zoe asks Danny how he met his now deceased wife Michelle. Zoe takes pages of notes about how they met to find out more about the victim. What does she uncover that makes Danny’s paternity questionable?

 

Zoe’s questions are aimed at keeping Danny talking with the hope of directing him to a couple of topics he’d refused to discuss earlier. Zoe and Pete are convinced Danny can give them information about who took his daughter that he doesn’t even know he has. Of course, his stories only raise more questions about Danny’s wife’s mysterious past. Zoe is most concerned about the short amount of time between Danny meeting Michelle and marrying her. It’s simple math.

 

What are anti-shock compression trousers, and what do they do?

 

Anti-shock trousers inflate around the lower extremities of a patient, forcing blood upward around vital organs. If a patient has suffered traumatic blood loss and is going into shock, they’re one of the “tools” carried in an ambulance or rescue truck to maintain the patient until they can reach a hospital.

 

When they discover that Michelle, wife of Danny, mother to the kidnapped child, and murder victim, was originally from New Orleans, of course, they call the NOLA police, but because of Hurricane Iona all circuits are busy. The only Catch-22 that didn’t happen appears to be that no one’s car got stalled out in flood waters. What else didn’t go wrong in trying to find the perp?

 

It’s really a cat-and-mouse game throughout the book. The biggest curse and blessing were the rising flood waters. Help couldn’t get to them, but their suspect was as trapped as Pete and his crew. Alas, once the torrential rain started easing off, it meant the killer would be able to escape the area and go literally anywhere.

 

One of Michelle’s friends assumes that Michelle has made a wrong decision based on her own circumstances. That subversion costs Michelle her life, but the friend loses her life, too. Why do people try to take control of situations beyond their boundaries? This aspect of the case was so real, but also so maddening!

 

Good question. Everyone seems to believe they know what’s best without understanding the big picture.

 

What’s a leather keeper?

 

There are lots of variations, such as the loop next to a belt buckle into which you tuck the end of the belt to keep it from flapping. But the ones Pete and practically all law enforcement use have a double loop, one encircling the officer’s regular belt and the second encircling the officer’s duty belt, which holds his side arm, handcuffs, pepper spray, etc. These “keep” the heavy duty belt from sliding down.

 

Nate is a new deputy to Pete and works with him when Seth is released to sandbag his house, which he bought from Pete. Nate’s worried about drowning during a flood because he can’t swim, but the currents are such even seasoned swimmers could drown. Although Nate proves himself, is he also a bit of comic relief?

 

Actually, Nate Williamson has been in every one of the Zoe Chambers Mysteries, but he’s recently moved from being Pete’s weekend officer to being one of the weekday nightshift officers. I had fun showing a vulnerable side to Nate since in past books, he’s been the big scary looking cop who keeps the peace just by his appearance. He’s always been a softy beneath it all but used his appearance to his benefit. This time, we get to see the big guy legitimately scared.

 

Is the 911 system more vulnerable than regular phone numbers?

 

There are lots of safety backup systems to keep something like this from happening, but this was one of those storms no amount of planning could foresee. Overall, any system relying on electricity tends to be more vulnerable than the old landlines. But even those lines come down at times.  

 

During emergencies such as storms with flooding, do emergency operators triage calls? What are the priorities?

 

Oh, absolutely. The priorities are basically the same as any emergency room or disaster scenario triage situation. Category One requires immediate care, which means life-saving measures are needed now. Category Two means “urgent,” which in EMS-speak means non-life-threatening but needs medical attention. I don’t want to use the words “less important,” but basically someone in this situation can wait until the category one patients are stabilized. Category Three means non-urgent. The patient may need attention, but the injuries are minor. What you may not know is that patients who are clearly not going to survive fall into this category as well. In a disaster, medical resources must attempt to save those who can be saved.

 

What does hot shod mean? Does it hurt the horse?

 

It doesn’t hurt at all. A horse’s hoof is made of the same thing as our fingernails. Hot shoeing means the blacksmith uses a forge to heat and shape the horseshoe. With cold shoeing, the blacksmith simply pounds the shoe into shape without the forge. Hot shoeing is generally used for horses that require special shoes due to hoof problems. Also, when a shoe, hot from the forge, is placed on the horse’s foot, it tends to bond better, hence the horse is less likely to throw the shoe. 

 

As the bodies pile up, Pete’s available personnel goes down. Crime scenes need to be guarded until processed, and the storm delays the CSU. This seems so elemental, and yet, until you pointed it out, I hadn’t realized how stretched the police can be. Also, that Amber Alerts can aid the perp rather than the police. Is this when the State police help out?

 

The Pennsylvania State Police help out in lots of cases in rural areas. In fact, it’s one aspect of police work that I tend to “fudge” in my books in order to make Pete and his department more vital to the stories. In reality, the PSP would be doing the bulk of the investigation because small, rural departments simply don’t have the manpower or financial means. Local and state police work together. When there’s an incident around here (and we had a big one recently), I’ll see a local unit or two followed by a couple of state troopers screaming past my house, one after the other.

 

Due to the storm and blood, how many changes of clothes did Pete go through in the one day?

 

Ha! I didn’t count. But he did get soaked a few times!

 

What’s next for Pete and Zoe?

 

The next book picks up a couple days after this one and deals with the fallout from that last chapter. In other words, the long simmering feud between Zoe and Dr. Charles Davis finally comes to a full boil with deadly results.