The Bear

by Dustin Stevens

  Knowing how insubordinate the greeting probably sounded, he wasn’t surprised that there was no immediate response, nothing but silence coming in over the line.

  Just as he wasn’t surprised how little he actually cared at the moment.

  “Actually, it’s fine,” Reed said, propping his elbow on the armrest, continuing to stare out at the waking day. “We needed to have this conversation anyway. Matter of fact, we’ve needed to have it for more than a month.”

  Hearing his tone, sensing his shifts, Billie raised herself from the floor. Moving so she was directly in front of him, she lowered her backside, staring back, as if imparting her own voice into the conversation as well.

  “I don’t know why you felt the need to ground us,” Reed said. “For a year and a half now, Billie and I have done our job, and we’ve done it well. We haven’t been a headache to you or your department. Hell, we even requested the graveyard shift and transferred to the worst precinct in the area so we’d be as invisible as possible.”

  A hundred times in recent weeks, Reed had made this case. Sitting alone in the car, standing beneath the beating water of the shower, hacking away at the shrubs along the front of his parents’ home.

  With every word that spilled out, the next seemed to come faster, as if anxious for its turn to be heard.

  “Yes, we have had a few high-profile cases, but that’s not on us,” Reed said. “We never asked for that crazy bastard to use us to exonerate himself and splash it on YouTube. We didn’t seek out a body found floating in the Olentangy or the international human trafficking ring it was connected to. Damned sure didn’t request to be the ones to save the lives of you or your nephew. Just like we didn’t plan to spot a young girl walking past us here the other night or go and offer our services to the local police department. That’s just how things went. And do you know why?”

  Knowing that the woman on the other side had not yet said a word, that there was zero chance she would start with this, Reed didn’t bother waiting for a response.

  “Because we’re damned good at our job.”

  His grip tightening on the phone, his body temperature rising, Reed could hear his voice climbing in kind.

  He just couldn’t bring himself to stop it.

  “And that means you have a choice,” he continued. “Either cut us loose or reinstate us, because we’re not sitting on the sidelines any longer.”

  Reed wanted to say so much more. So many thoughts and feelings that had occurred over the last few months, things that were aching to come spilling out.

  But there was no need. His point had been made. Belaboring it now would only have a diminishing return, making it appear that he was venting instead of presenting a reasoned argument.

  Falling quiet, he sat with the phone pressed against his face, feeling his cheek grow warm beneath it.

  In total, it took the better part of two minutes before there was any response, the first words from the other side during the entire call.

  The first exchanged between the two in over a month.

  “I take it you found the girl?” Columbus Chief of Police Eleanor Brandt asked. In her tone was a clear bit of frost that Reed had expected.

  What he didn’t expect were the words she chose to open with.

  Feeling his brows rise, Reed replied, “Yes.”

  “And she is okay?”

  Nobody could compare the visage of the girl he had spotted Wednesday with the one currently under sedation down the hall and describe them as ‘okay,’ though Reed knew what Brandt was getting at. Unfortunately, these things seemed to have a sliding scale.

  In a case involving a suspect that had abducted and killed so many already, the fact that Serena Gipson was still breathing was a success.

  “Yes.”

  Giving a slight grunt in response, Brandt fell silent. Almost a minute passed that way, neither saying a thing, before she spoke again.

  Her words somehow managing to be even more surprising than her opening.

  “You’re right when you say you two are good,” Brandt whispered, the strain in her voice and the low sound of it both hinting she would rather be saying anything else in the world.

  “But you’re wrong if you think this was a punishment. Or that I had anything to do with it.”

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  The smell of chicken emanated up from the grill positioned on the back corner of the deck. Rising in a plume of smoke and steam, it drifted out across the back meadow, so strong it could be picked up by anyone within a mile or more.

  Running alongside it was a white plastic folding table, pulled from the garage and covered with a red and white checkered tablecloth especially for the occasion. Already loaded with potato, macaroni, and fruit salads, a large platter was set up on the end, waiting for the stars of the spread to finish cooking and to be added to the mix.

  Placed on the deck in front of it was a well-used blue plastic cooler, the top propped open, the interior filled with ice and various beverages.

  All told, enough food to feed a small army, as sure a sign as any that Cheryl Mattox was settling in well to her new home.

  “How we doing out here, Mama?” Reed asked, placing a hand on her back as he approached from behind. Peering over his shoulder, he looked over the spread on the grill, caramelization just starting to take hold.

  “All set,” his mother replied, extending a spatula before her and adjusting a few things, always searching for the optimal balance of heat distribution.

  “Can I do anything?” Reed offered.

  “Call Southwest Airlines and ask to push your flight back a few more days?”

  A soft chuckle rolled from Reed as he patted her once on the back, leaving her to do her work. Offering a glance to the corner of the deck, he saw Thad Martin, Todd Wyatt, and his father all grouped up around the glass top table, deep in the throes of a conversation about the upcoming Sooners football season.

  As much as the comment from his mother was a rehashing of the same one she’d lobbed his way hundreds of times over the years, he couldn’t disagree with the sentiment. In the wake of apprehending Edward Gaines, he’d hoped that things might slow down, but the enormity of the case had proven that to be tough, no matter how ardently he’d tried to avoid it.

  Once authorities knew exactly where to look and what to look for, things had fallen into place in short order. The narrative, as agreed to by most everyone involved, was that things had started more than seven years ago with the death of Molly Gaines - originally Molly Comstock – the woman in the portrait that Reed had first spotted hanging in the living room of the farmhouse.

  The former wife of Gaines, she had perished in a car accident late one evening. The accident had occurred in her own vehicle, a man who was most definitely not her husband behind the wheel; they were both highly inebriated, neither surviving a head-on collision with a pair of heifers that had escaped their pen and wandered onto the road.

  From there, a pretty clear sequence could be drawn. Utilizing a combination of information Deke had culled together and the assistance of law enforcement from the various locales, they were able to string together all nine cases, the breadth of time, and the fact that he was careful to always stay off reservation land, allowing him to slide by unnoticed for so long.

  To date, only the body of Darcy Thornton had been recovered, Martin informing Reed just that afternoon that Gaines was attempting to leverage the locations of the remaining girls for leniency in sentencing.

  An approach Reed couldn’t help but shake his head at, the best the man could hope for being a reduction in the number of life sentences he was staring at.

  Assuming the state didn’t make a special exception and decide to end its hiatus on the death penalty for him.

  A handful of times throughout the previous week, Reed had made the drive to Muskogee to give statements. Even more than that, he had fielded calls and text messages, assisting in any way he could.

  When he wasn’t doing that,
he was back at home, tearing through boxes, helping his parents wrestle everything into working order.

  Or he was across town, stopping by to check in on the three young ladies currently spread across the back meadow.

  Stretched out wide to either side were Maisie and Josie. Both in T-shirts and shorts, they were taking turns lobbing a tennis ball back and forth, Billie tearing a path between them, fetching a throw from one before depositing it at the feet of the other.

  With every toss, she managed to pluck the ball out of the air before it hit the ground, both girls would throw their hands into the air, each successive throw rising higher, testing the ability of the girls’ new friend.

  Standing at the midpoint of their makeshift court, just back from Billie’s path, was Serena. Having already graduated out of the crutches she’d been given at the hospital, she still stood cocked to the side, the majority of her weight balanced on her left leg.

  A leg that was covered by a pair of baggy grey sweatpants, oblivious to the temperature that had climbed almost a dozen degrees in the last week.

  With her back to the house, she watched like a basketball spectator at center court, her head rotating from one side to the other, her hands rising to cheer with her sisters whenever Billie pulled off a spectacular catch.

  Ambling slowly forward, Reed made a point of dragging his feet as he approached, careful to announce his presence without saying a word.

  Sidling up alongside her, he folded his arms, watching the game already in progress.

  “Her true talents are wasted as a detective.”

  A flash of dark hair greeted the comment, Serena glancing over at him. Already, a fair bit of the swelling and bruising had receded on the right half of her face, the left still a bit distorted, tugging her smile to the side.

  “I think if you’re not careful, my sisters are going to try to steal her from you,” she replied.

  Matching the grin, Reed watched as Josie hopped once before sending the ball in an elongated parabola. Bouncing in place a moment, Billie tracked it, waiting until it started a descent before tearing off in the opposite direction.

  “Them, Mama, Wyatt, Martin,” Reed replied. “I’m just the chauffeur in the partnership.”

  The smile on Serena’s face grew wider, a single crack of laughter falling out with it. “Right.”

  Together they watched as Billie snatched the ball on the first bounce before bounding toward Maisie, never once glancing over.

  “How’s the wheel?” Reed asked.

  “Eh,” Serena replied, both of their gazes locked in parallel, watching the game before them. “Day by day. Doesn’t throb all the time anymore, which is nice. I can actually get some sleep.”

  Not once in all the visits Reed made did he ever hear her complain, but it was apparent how much discomfort she was in. Leg always propped out before her, she was careful to never let anybody see the damage, an act that could have only served to make things worse.

  Reading between the lines, he said, “I see you ditched the crutches.”

  Snorting softly, Serena replied, “Finally. Those damn things were way worse than walking around on my own.”

  Noting that she still hadn’t answered his question directly, Reed chose not to press it further. He didn’t blame her for wanting to sidestep the injury, as much for her own psyche as not wanting to have it be an omnipresent topic of conversation.

  He could imagine he’d be the same way.

  The road she had ahead of her was one he had thought a lot on for the better part of a week and still he couldn’t quite make sense of. While her face was on the mend, and her leg would no doubt get there as well, whatever had happened inside that holding cell would last infinitely longer.

  Just having been there, seeing it with his own eyes, Reed knew it would pop up in flashbacks for a long time moving forward.

  Jim Dianason had been right when he said the body keeps score, but so does the mind.

  And those wounds can take a lot longer to mend.

  “Thanks for inviting us,” Serena said, again casting a glance his way. “Quite a spread your mom has up there.”

  Rotating at the waist, Reed glanced back toward the porch, the scene mirroring what he had stepped away from minutes before.

  “Thanks for coming,” Reed replied. “Sorry if it’s a little awkward.”

  Having gone through what she had, he could imagine that seeing Martin and Wyatt wasn’t the easiest of things. Nor was the smell of grilled meat in the air, even if they had made the conscious choice to serve chicken on her behalf.

  Two more reminders of an incident she’d fast want to put behind her, Reed didn’t pretend that watching her sisters play was the reason why she was currently standing where she was.

  Especially on a bad leg.

  “How about you?” Serena asked. “All good?”

  What the question was aimed at in particular, Reed couldn’t be certain. The last week had been a whirlwind, but it paled in comparison to what the future promised.

  For days, he’d been trying to decipher the cryptic message Brandt had given him, the woman offering nothing more than the promise that they would sit down as soon as he was back in Ohio. Hundreds of thoughts and ideas about what it could mean and who she had been referring to had crossed his mind in the time since, though nothing concrete had come together.

  How he expected to sit on a plane the next day without going stir crazy was still something for debate.

  Coupled along with that was the slow realization that the previous week had levied upon him.

  Not once had his parents told him the real reason for their move, though in the last days, it had started to become glaringly apparent. Beginning on their visit over Christmas, the details were now too many to ignore, culminating with a revelation Serena had made a couple of days earlier.

  Rhett Mattox wasn’t a man for taking lunch breaks or leaving things to the next day. Certainly wasn’t one for decaf coffee or jumping on a riding lawnmower.

  “Promise you’ll look after my pop over at the cancer center?” Reed said.

  Shifting her focus his way, Serena met his gaze. A puff of breeze pushed her hair away from her neck, blowing it out behind her.

  “Promise you’ll be back to see us soon?”

  For a moment, neither said a thing, merely locked in their respective stances, before Reed finally cracked a small smile.

  “We got this.”

  Two feet away, Serena did the same. “Yeah, we do.”

  Sneak Peek #1

  The Exchange, A Suspense Thriller

  Prologue

  To look at the file sitting closed on the table, it would appear that a great deal of investigation had taken place. More than a half inch thick, the interior of the plain manila folder bulged in the middle, paperclips affixed to the top holding contents inside, a thick rubber band keeping the package intact for transport.

  Flipping it open told quite a different story.

  The vast majority of the material inside – everything but a single page, in fact – was photographs. Taken from a myriad of distances and angles, they encapsulated every single inch of the bedroom scene, almost reveling in the macabre. From the contorted pose of the victim to the sprays of blood spatter covering the posters above her headboard, nothing was spared, each item in the room documented with painstaking detail.

  As for the report, it was nothing more than a few short lines, all jotted down in slanted script. In a couple places there was even an occasional wobble visible, hinting both at which detective had done the analysis and the extreme impetus he had to finish the task as quickly as possible.

  Based on the concentrated gore of the photos, a first reaction would be to empathize with whoever had filled out the documentation. The images seemed to convey a scenario that was rarely found outside of horror movies or nightmares, the sort of thing no human should ever witness, let alone linger over.

  Moving on quickly was a natural reaction.

  St
ill, to the untrained eye, someone looking at the materials for the first time, it was impossible to see what was depicted in the photos and justify the way it had been simplified to nothing more than four sentences.

  There were just too many questions that sprang to mind, too many things that needed to be addressed before anybody could think to wrap the investigation.

  Appears to be an obvious case of suicide. Deep slashes on wrists and trajectory of blood indicate as much. Knife found on the scene, bagged as evidence.

  Will look into the message written in victim’s blood on the wall, which is curious, but does not alter conclusions in the slightest.

  Chapter One

  Erika Wernick had been awake for more than an hour before the pale gray glow of dawn appeared at the top and bottom of the blinds pulled closed over her bedroom window. Faint and indiscreet, she knew what time it was the moment the light appeared, the sun rising at the same time every day in the spring since she was just a child.

  There was a time when having such familiarity was something Erika reveled in, the very thing that brought her back every few months, had her aching to return each time she was gone.

  Now it just reminded her of how much she had lost, of how much things had changed in the preceding months.

  In the six weeks she had been back, there was not a single morning that Erika had managed to sleep through the night, the reasons for it seemingly numerous but essentially coming down to one of two things.

  The first was the dream, her subconscious never letting the events of that night drift too far below the surface, especially cruel on days when she had managed to hold it at bay during her waking hours. Never was she able to completely push the thoughts away - the accident too recent, the nerves too raw – and she doubted she ever would.