Dead by Sunrise

by Richard Ryker

  “No. Because this is our jurisdiction, and we are going to show the folks up in PA that we know how to do things the right way. That means doing the small stuff, whether you think it’s priority or not.”

  Half the room turned to Nolan. He crossed his arms again, gave a tired expression.

  “Who’s covering the far west region today?” Brandon asked.

  Isabel Jackson raised her hand.

  “Who else is on?”

  “Me,” Nolan said.

  “Jackson, head out to the beaches—La Push, Second and Third Beach—any and every campsite you run across. Record the names of everyone you interview, along with contact info. Take the picture from the missing person report. I’m sure Nolan knows where there’s a copy.” A couple of officers snickered at the remark. Nolan’s face burned crimson as Brandon addressed him. “Nolan, I want you to run a report on all the registered sex offenders in the area, then go pay each of them a visit. Ask where they were during the time the girl went missing.”

  “You think she was raped?” Will asked.

  “The coroner found semen in her and on her clothing. And she was intoxicated. We need to consider all possibilities.” He turned to Nolan. “Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Nolan said, none too respectfully.

  “I’m on in a few hours,” Josiah said. “You want me to do anything?”

  “Go ahead and start your shift early. Cover your regular beat but be on the lookout for any information about this girl.”

  “You need anything from me?” Will asked, passing a hand over his face.

  “Yeah, go get some sleep. You’re making me tired looking at you.”

  While none of the officers seemed particularly inspired by his rant, Brandon was pleased with how it had gone. He’d been a team lead and supervisor of one kind or another for half his working life. One thing he learned about leading others—people might like you but have absolutely no respect for you as a leader. The cops under his watch would learn to like him, or not. But first and foremost, they had to understand that sloppiness wasn’t an option. They were accountable to Brandon for their actions. In time, they’d learn to keep each other accountable too.

  His office phone rang. It was Sue.

  “Chief, the mayor would like to speak with you.”

  “Transfer her through.”

  “In person.”

  “She’s here?”

  Sue scoffed. “I believe she meant she wanted you in her office.”

  He didn’t have time to talk parades or famous author visits right now.

  “It sounded important,” Sue said. “Just saying.”

  “Got it.”

  Brandon left through the front lobby. On the way out, he glanced at Sue’s computer screen, revealing a selection of shoes on the Amazon website.

  “It’s my fifteen-minute break,” she said.

  He really didn’t care if Sue spent her break window shopping online. As long as she got her work done.

  “I need the paperwork for my department issued firearm.”

  He’d been carrying his own Glock 27 since he arrived in town.

  “Already done,” she said. “Nolan was supposed to tell you yesterday. It’s in the first lockbox on the left by the lockers.”

  There was no end to Nolan’s incompetence. Or was it something else? More purposeful.

  “If there’s something didn’t get done around here,” Sue said, “it probably wasn’t my fault.”

  She was probably right.

  “Understood,” he said, leaving her to Amazon. As he reached the door, he turned back. “You know any places around here that sell vampire teeth?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Lord. Not you too.”

  “It’s for an investigation.”

  She sighed. “Try MaryAnne Tyler. She runs the Original Damsel and Dracula store down on the corner of Division and Forks Ave. I’m sure she’ll find something to suit your fancy.”

  “Like I said, it’s for an investigation.”

  “Whatever turns you on.” She cracked a wry smile. “Better not keep the mayor waiting.”

  Good point, but first he needed to get his firearm.

  He clicked in the code to the door.

  “Hey, Chief,” Sue said.

  “Good job kicking their asses today. They needed it.”

  Brandon nodded.

  “Thanks, Sue.”

  Mayor Sara Kim wasn’t alone in her office when Brandon arrived. The mayor and another woman lingered over the conference table, scrutinizing several colorful posters—photos of Forks and the surrounding area.

  “Chief Mattson,” the mayor said. “This is Olivia Baker, our Minister of Tourism.”

  Brandon rose an eyebrow. “I didn’t know we had a Ministry of Tourism.”

  “It’s part of our plan to revitalize Forks,” Olivia said. She was young, probably in her mid to late twenties and wore a black skirt and light blue top. A mini-me of the mayor. Olivia shook Brandon’s hand. “Nice to meet you. We have some great ideas for the city. And the department.”

  What did the Minister of Tourism have to do with his police force?

  Brandon glanced at the glossy photos on the table. “Look. I’d love to talk business, but we’re working a case right now.

  “Is this about the girl who drowned?” Olivia asked.

  Brandon eyed her. “How’d you know about that?”

  He hadn’t made a public statement about the case.

  “Small town,” Olivia said. “Word gets around.”

  “Anything I should know?” the mayor asked.

  Brandon glanced at Olivia before answering the mayor. “If you have a moment, I’d like to speak to you in private.”

  Olivia left them alone, but not before making sure Brandon knew she wasn’t happy about being kicked out of her own meeting with the mayor.

  Brandon closed the door behind her.

  “The girl who drowned. We’re looking at a possible homicide.”

  The mayor frowned. “Are you sure?”

  “All the evidence suggests foul play, some sort of cover-up. That’s how she ended up in the water.”

  The mayor slumped into the chair behind her desk.

  “Any suspects?”

  “She had a boyfriend, a few friends. But we’re not ruling anything out right now. I have my officers checking on campers, rustling up the local sex offenders.”

  She shook her head. “This is bad news.”

  “We’ll catch who did this,” Brandon said.

  “That’s not what I mean. Tiffany Quick is coming in thirteen days.”

  Just yesterday she’d reminded him they had two weeks to prepare. Maybe she thought her new police chief didn’t know how to subtract.

  A festival meant tourists trampling all over his crime scene, which at this point was an indefinite space somewhere between Lauren’s campsite and First Beach. But that wasn’t what worried the mayor.

  “We can’t have people scared that there’s a murderer out there, Brandon,” she said. “If word gets out about this, our tourism numbers will plummet. Ms. Quick might refuse to show, we’ll have to cancel—”

  “Well then,” Brandon said. “I’d better get to work.”

  “Okay, but—did you hear about the graffiti outside the Forks Diner?”

  “I noticed it, yes.”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “Just some dumb kids, probably.”

  Or someone hoping to increase the town’s reputation as a vampire mecca. Maybe the mayor’s new Minister of Tourism.

  “Okay,” she said. “Keep me updated.”

  “Will do,” Brandon said.

  As little as possible, he thought.

  She was worried about tourism. Meanwhile, more than an hour away, a young woman’s mother grieved for a daughter she’d just lost. He was learning fast that when it came to politics and priorities, his small town miles from anywhere wasn’t much different from Seattle.

  “Before you
leave,” the mayor said. “Olivia would like to discuss some of her plans—”

  “I’ve got a homicide to solve. You do want your tourists to feel safe, don’t you?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Good,” Brandon said. “One more thing, mayor.”

  “Yes?”

  “Whatever I tell you about this case, keep it between you and me, okay? I don’t need the investigation compromised.”

  She folded her hands, resting them on her desk. “You can trust me.”

  He wasn’t so sure. If he wasn’t careful, the mayor’s obsessive focus on tourism and Tiffany Quick would screw up this case. As if it wasn’t enough keeping his own officers in line, he’d have to do his best to keep Mayor Kim and her staff an arm’s length away from his investigation, too.

  Chapter 8

  Brandon drove down to the Fork’s Diner where he found a pack of tourists huddled around the dagger ankh symbol. He should ask the diner to paint over the ankh ASAP. Graffiti attracted more of the same, and if people kept visiting the spot, the Mayor Kim might set up a photo booth and charge admission.

  As Brandon approached the group, a family of four asked him to take their picture next to the symbol. He did, albeit reluctantly. They thanked him just as a trio of attractive women in their early thirties, seeing Brandon in uniform, asked if he would pose with them in front of the ominous ankh.

  This time he declined, again reluctantly. The last thing he needed was a front-page photo of himself posing with a group of women next to potential evidence.

  When the crowd had dispersed, he pulled out his cell phone and took a photo of the ankh. In case it came up again, he’d research the meaning behind the symbol.

  Brandon scanned the street. One block away on the corner of Calawah Way sat a placard advertising the Original Dracula and Damsel store, with the first letter of each word accentuated, spelling the word ODD. It was the store Sue had mentioned might carry vampire teeth.

  The Original Dracula and Damsel store was a touristy trinket store with refrigerator magnets and collectible figurines featuring both Forks the town and the vampirish books that had made it famous. Entering the store, he was greeted by a life-sized cardboard cutout of one of the main characters from the film adaptation of Moonbeam Darklove. The movies hadn’t been filmed in town, a fact that had upset locals hoping to score roles as extras.

  A mom with two teen daughters and another couple in their twenties browsed the shop. Brandon waited while the couple purchased a pair of matching Moonbeam Darklove t-shirts. When they left, he approached the cash register.

  “I’m looking for MaryAnne.”

  “That’s me.”

  She was in her late fifties, plump and wearing a white dress with a blue flower pattern. She didn’t look the part of someone who’d run a store specializing in vampire paraphernalia.

  “How can I…wait. Aren’t you Buzz Mattson’s son?”

  “That’s me,” he said. Buzz was what everyone had called his father as long as Brandon could remember. He’d earned the nickname during his forty years working for a local logging company.

  “Welcome back, young man. For a moment there, I thought I was looking at Eli’s ghost.”

  Except Eli had been skinnier and taller. Brandon was pretty sure he didn’t look anything like his brother.

  “I appreciate that. I won’t take much of your time. Do you sell vampire teeth?”

  She paused, considering him. “Are these for your father?”

  “What…why?”

  “He’s a big fan of the books. You didn’t know that?”

  “My dad? No. I didn’t.”

  She frowned at him. “Hmm. I thought everyone knew that.”

  Brandon had been away a long time. There were people in town that knew his dad, and had known Eli, better than Brandon. But Buzz Mattson, hard-nosed diesel mechanic a fan of the Moonbeam Darklove series?

  “This is for an investigation,” Brandon said.

  “No need to get huffy about it,” MaryAnne said. She pulled the key out of the cash register and Brandon followed her to the back of the store, to a large display of various plastic fangs. Some were plain white, others stained with fake blood, and still others advertised that they would glow in the dark.

  “Do you carry teeth capable of breaking human skin?”

  “God, no. That sounds dangerous. We don’t sell anything like that here.”

  “Any idea who might?”

  Her eyes studied his face.

  “Didn’t you go off to Seattle? To investigate murders?”

  People here in Forks knew more about him than he’d assumed. You might move away from a small town, but they never stopped talking about you.

  “Homicide,” he said.

  The chime above her door rang as two young girls entered.

  “Is that what this is about?” she asked.

  “Look, I just need to know who sells the teeth I described.”

  She glanced over his shoulder. “I have customers. But if anyone sold something like that, it would be over at the Darklove Damsel.”

  “That’s another store?”

  “Out the door, take a right, two blocks down. It’s the creepiest place in Forks. She sells just about anything.”

  “Thanks.”

  A sign in the door of the Darklove Damsel indicated the store was closed. Brandon tried the handle. It was locked. Blackout curtains darkened the store’s windows. Cheap, tinted film peeling at the edges covered the door. The lights were off inside.

  He checked his watch. Almost two o’clock. He’d take a late lunch and check on his dad, then return to the shop. If MaryAnne was right, and this store did sell more realistic vampire teeth, a list of customers who’d purchased the fangs could lead to Lauren’s killer.

  Brandon’s dad lived on five acres a few miles outside of town. When he was a kid, his father kept a few cows out in the pasture and about an acre of raspberries, potatoes and assorted vegetables. His dad’s attempt at the farming life. Now, wild grass had crept into every corner of the property, a fire hazard in the dry summer months.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t love his dad. He did, in his own way. They hadn’t always gotten along, and his father’s inability to approve of anything Brandon did was one of the reasons he’d stayed away so long.

  He drove up the long gravel driveway and parked out in front of the house. He knocked on the door. The television blared, some news channel reporting on events in the Middle East. Brandon stepped back off the porch and peered into the window. His dad lounged on the couch, feet up on the table, hands folded on his lap. Next to the couch, leaning against the wall was his dad’s .22 rifle.

  Since when had he kept his rifle with him? Brandon made a mental note not to startle the old man.

  He returned to the front door and tried the handle. It was open.

  His dad turned his head slowly. “About time.”

  Brandon smiled, ignoring the jab.

  “Hi, dad.”

  His father mumbled a few words, unintelligible to Brandon over the trio of Fox News pundits arguing on the television.

  Brandon grabbed the remote and turned the volume down.

  “Make yourself at home.”

  The sarcasm was hard to miss.

  Brandon teetered on the edge of the loveseat, considering the room. His mom’s trinkets sat collecting dust on shelves as old as Brandon, her sheet music still on the piano. She had died over a year ago, Eli not long after that. His father hadn’t changed a thing about the house since then. It was as if his mom had gone shopping in town and his dad was waiting for her to come back any moment with a car full of groceries.

  A few logs crackled in the fireplace. Brandon glanced at the combination thermometer-barometer on the wall. Eighty degrees.

  “You keeping busy?” Brandon asked, because he didn’t know what else to say.

  “Much as I can, being sick and all.”

  His dad usually had some ache or pain to complain about. G
rowing old wasn’t something Brandon looked forward to. Your days measured out by how long it had been since your last major medical procedure.

  Brandon considered his father’s thin arms and hunched frame. He’d always been taller, stronger than Brandon and Eli. The kind of man most men in town wouldn’t dream of crossing.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s not wrong? I’m just biding my time. God’s taking me any day now to be with mom and Eli. Not that you’d notice.”

  Brandon shifted in his seat. Conversations like this were the reason he’d only seen his dad a few times since his mom’s passing.

  “Damn shame,” his dad said, motioning at the television, “about the Middle East. I say don’t waste another American life. You never made it over there, did you?”

  “No.”

  His father knew that.

  Brandon had served his time in the Army, but by the time 9/11 happened, he was already a detective with the Seattle PD.

  “Eli served in Afghanistan,” his dad said. “And he chose to stick around instead of moving off to Timbuktu.”

  “You mean Seattle?”

  “Same difference. How did you put up with all those damn hippies, anyway?”

  “Seattle isn’t a bunch of hippies,” Brandon said. Most people there were normal, working class folks. Not much different from the citizens of Forks. “I get it, dad. I haven’t been around as much as you would have liked.”

  “Didn’t say that.”

  “I’m not Eli—”

  “He died a hero.” His voice wavered, and he cleared his throat. “Protecting his own people.”

  “Yeah, and he’s not the only one,” Brandon replied. “I haven’t been sitting on my ass in the big city collecting welfare checks or whatever the hell you think it is we do over there. I’ve been working, protecting people too. Solving murders.”

  His dad scoffed. “Yeah.”

  “Not to mention, raising a daughter.”

  “You couldn’t do that here?”

  “No.”

  “Your daughter—my granddaughter—disagrees.”

  Emma visited her grandfather a few times a year, at most. How could he possibly know what Emma did or did not want?