Miller Avenue Murder: An addictive police procedural legal psychological thriller

by Nenny May

  Again, and again because, her mother might have been buried, but the night of her passing still hungover Rachel Olson like a dark cloud.

  Mathew had pointed this out, time and time again, and she’d pushed him away every time. Until one day, he’d had enough, he’d left her, and she never recovered from it.

  That was until Detective Dawson. The husky, quick-witted bad cop that weaseled his way into her life and didn’t seem like he had an exit strategy planned for when the book is closed on the case.

  “That’s what’s best,” She corrected and broke free of his concerned stare and headed for the door. “I’m okay leaving my car here for the night, we can take yours, right?”

  “Yeah, it’s out front, the, erm… black Yukon,” He waved a hand towards the door.

  She was quick on her feet, not particularly sure what she was running from, the rapidly approaching night, or her unrequited feelings for her work partner.

  Much like what she’d felt for her flings post-divorce, it would burn out. This meant nothing, not even enough to work him up over.

  Gertrude had waved to a retreating Rachel Olson and continued shutting the lights at the reception.

  The evening breeze caressed her skin, and she drew to a stop. How long could she keep it up? How much longer could she outrun everyone that showed her the slightest bit of human decency?

  Mathew had painted her as a monster because of her flaws. Was that enough to run from the world?

  She heard a click, her eyes fluttered open, a light had been retreating.

  Footsteps and a familiar scent whipped past her. Detective Dawson had been pulling open the passenger door. She climbed into the clean GMC Yukon SUV, eased by how much like Dawson the car smelled. The door clicked shut and he jogged around to the driver’s seat, letting himself in.

  “I’m surprised you could find something we could do in the evening… it’s not drinking, is it?” She eyed him skeptically.

  He barked out a laugh. “No, it’s not drinking.” He made his way out of the precinct’s parking and onto the street. “It’s something we can both benefit from.”

  That said he began heading down a route she knew all too well.

  A route she hadn’t been to since her mother’s funeral.

  A silence settled in and she’d had her head turned to the window. They’d just driven past an Ups Customer Care Center when she relaxed into the leather seats.

  Detective Dawson wasn’t Mathew Rollins. He wasn’t going to dig up her flaws and leave her. He wasn’t going to trap her in a bubble of her own errors. No, Dawson wanted to help her, for reasons beknown to her, he wanted to tug her from the shell Mathew had forced her into. And she didn’t know whether to follow him or run for the hills.

  She didn’t run. Not yet.

  Cape Lookout State Park on Whiskey Creek Road, what was once her favorite retreat as a sixteen-year-old. She looked at him as he pulled the car to a stop.

  “The beach,”

  “You need to relax, Olson, and what better way than a walk on the sand,”

  “I don’t have beach shoes.”

  “I’ve got flip-flops in the trunk.”

  “I’m in a pantsuit.” He bothered a glance at her from behind the wheel.

  “Roll up your pant legs.” He opened his door and slipped out into the night.

  She considered his words. This wasn’t a cheap suit! People don’t roll up the pant legs of a Givenchy pantsuit. Sure, it had left a noticeable dent in her account, but anyone would risk it to be seen out and about strutting in a raven black pantsuit. It had been a spur-of-the-moment splurge days after her salary had settled in, but it had been damn worth it in her opinion.

  Nothing better to do, she joined him by the trunk. He’d already rolled up the legs of his slacks and was slipping off his loafers for a pair of black flip-flops. “I’m not going to wait for you. Act like a princess all you want, I’m heading down there, and you can join me if it suits you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of something; cigarettes.

  “No wonder your voice sounds like cat-claws against a black-board,” She nodded to the stick he placed between his lips. The packet was back in his pocket.

  “Ouch,” He placed a hand on his chest. “And it’s chilly, out,”

  “So, here’s an idea, we don’t come to the beach in the middle of Autumn?”

  “This doing more good than harm, and as much as I love the trunk of my car, I would rather be by the shores.” He said, not moving from the back of his car. His expression was closed up, cold. She’d seen it before, never directed at her… he’d used it during interrogations when he had to be the feared cop over her shoulder. It had been a constant in the Leona Wendy case. How could she have forgotten it?

  She reached for a pair of flip-flops, forcing the thoughts out of her head, and begun rolling up the legs of her pantsuit—and resisting the urge to groan—when the strain of tobacco hit her nostrils. She bit back the impulse to explode in a coughing fit. It had laced the air at American Angels… she’d never pegged him as a smoker.

  It was a turn-off.

  “Can you please not do that?” He shrugged and led the way down the path by the trees.

  And now he wasn’t listening.

  This was turning out to be more stressful than the day she’d had. How had he changed all of a sudden?

  This was going to give her whiplash.

  She’d hopped from one evil to another. From having her job whirling about in her head to having her feelings for Detective Dawson crawl their way out of the box they were supposed to be locked in.

  This wasn’t the time to acknowledge whether or not his countenance towards her had changed.

  This was supposed to be a chance for her to ease up her tense nerves. A chance to make the separation from her job and her personal life.

  He was much tall than her, and it added to his stride. She was noticeably slower. She wasn’t bothered. It gave her time to take in the familiar sceneries of Cape Lookout.

  Her mother, Cecilia Jackson-Brown—after the divorce—had adored the cape lookout trail. There were days Rachel and Cecilia would camp out for days at a time and hike, she especially loved heading south to the cave and tidepools.

  Detective Dawson had paused in the sand, the burning stick between his fingers and head was thrown back. His shirt hung loose against his frame. He’d completely undone the buttons at this point, in the breeze, the cotton material flapped at his sides, he barely took notice of it. If things were different, if they weren’t work partners, she would have allowed herself the luxury of drooling for the man with the chiseled torso.

  But things weren’t different. And an affair would only complicate things.

  “Eyes at the stars, Olson, not at me.” She didn’t turn away, not this time.

  He was the one to look at her, beneath the evening glare with the wind whipping at her hair that had escaped the bun she’d ceremoniously pulled it into before work. The curls were violent against her cheek, her eyes were slits in the breeze.

  Tossing the burning stick into the sand, he took a step closer, just enough that he could run his hands through her hair. It was soft, and the curls like a baby’s hand wrapped around his fingers.

  Her breath was warm, he could feel it against his chest from where his buttons had been opened after a long day at his desk.

  Her thick curly hair was long enough for a single braid down to the middle of her back. A technique he’d learned a while back.

  Hands pressed on her shoulders, he turned her around and took her hair in his hands again, this time, parting it and braiding it back until it fell just at the middle of her back. She ran a hand over his work. It had been a while since he’d worked in hairstyling for some extra cash, but it would do.

  “Now come on, I know a great spot not too far from here.” His face went blank.

  She followed, wondering why in hell he’d thought to bring her to the one place that reminded her most of her dead mother.<
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  “I tried. I did everything you asked… the umm… cognitive therapy… thing, it’s not working,” Jessica Stanford a sixteen-year-old mother who was not only dealing with post-partum depression, but persistent Depressive Disorder said, her thin unruly brows knitted as tears shone in her glossy blue-green eyes.

  Lisa eyed the car seat by the open door. Jessica always opted for an open-door session. Oftentimes she would watch the nurses dart by, enthralled by the everyday affairs of the private mental institution. The infant in the beaten-up-hand-me-down-car seat, yet to be named by the single mother had been barely clothed, she had a diaper on, and a hat over her small pink head. “You drove here by yourself?”

  Jessica Stanford followed Lisa’s eyes. “Yes.” Her eyes leaped away from her child. Almost as if she couldn’t stand the sight. Lisa could. Where Jessica Stanford saw an underfed unkept baby, Lisa saw a child with a mother exploring the downs of motherhood.

  Postpartum Depression wasn’t uncommon in new mothers, and especially single mothers and Lisa Patterson had handled one too many patients suffering from it. Her other patients weren’t in their teenage years and didn’t struggle as much as Miss. Stanford, but Lisa understood a chunk of it was attributed to dropping out of high school to undergo a psychiatric treatment that once again did more harm than good.

  “Can you tell me in detail, what you tried?” A tear slid down the girl’s rosy plump cheeks.

  “Every damned thing, journaling, changing my thinking patterns… she’s been wearing that diaper since yesterday… she has a rash I don’t know what to do about and I don’t fucking want her.” There was a crack in the girl’s voice.

  This wasn’t the first time Lisa had met with Jessica.

  This wasn’t the first time Jessica had pleaded with Lisa to take custody of her newborn daughter.

  That wasn’t how parenting worked. That wasn’t how adulting worked. She couldn’t just hand over her responsibilities.

  If that were the case, Lisa wouldn’t have endured sitting through two separate sessions supervising the new trainee Psychologists Samantha Galbraith and Nick Marsons. The hospital in a bid to expand had sought to take in two new rookies in her field, rookies she was instructed to guide—without extra pay since the board of directors had shrugged of her pitch for a raise.

  “But you don’t want to give her up to an adoption agency,” Lisa clicked her fingers on her keyboard. She dragged her mouse against the surface of her desk and put out a request for her colleague Dr. Thomas Weaver, the hospitals on ground Psychiatrist.

  She hadn’t done it to push the girl back on medication. No, she’d done it to get a second pair of eyes. She and Dr. Weaver had an understanding. He knew Lisa’s patents weren’t to be medicated, but he could advise her on the girl’s behavioral patterns.

  “No, I grew up from foster care. It’s shit, I want her to have a good home.” Jessica had been staring at the man by the door, he hadn’t knocked, nor had he poked his head in. Lisa tried on a smile.

  “You care.” Lisa observed. Her patient for over a month turned her attention to her newborn.

  “I don’t want her to go through what I went through…”

  “She’s not going to.”

  “And how do you know?” Jessica Stanford balled her fists.

  “What you’re going through, Miss. Stanford, is anxiety, a normal symptom of depression and PPD.”

  “You know how I feel about medical bullshit,” Lisa tensed her shoulders, agitated by her patient's choice of words. She bit her lips on the choice words that clung.

  “What I’m trying to say, is you’re already a great mother, she’s alive isn’t she?”

  Jessica sat in silence, once more focused on the man at the other end of the open door, the man Lisa was yet to acknowledge.

  At this time of the night when the hospital was about closing a frantic man, standing in place, naked fear evident on his face didn’t particularly sit right, especially to the new mother who’d gone into fight or flight mode.

  The silence didn’t last long enough for Lia to get her thought out.

  “That doesn’t mean I’m a good fit for her.”

  Lisa shook her head and scribbled down something on the notepad open before her. “And you think I would be,”

  “You have a job, you’re organized… please, don’t let me go home with her, I don’t know what I would do…”

  Lisa glanced at her iMac.

  “I can’t take your baby.” Lisa hadn’t once considered Jessica’s offer. It wasn’t born through a sincere heart but through a broken mind. I can transfer you to, Dr. Thomas Weaver. He isn’t on seat today, but if you can come in first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Are you sure he’s not around?” The man at the door had become frantic and two nurses had appeared on either side of him.

  Lisa tilted her head, from where she sat, her patient was staring at the infant in the car seat.

  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  She ripped out the paper she’d scribbled in and handed it to Jessica Stanford. It had taken a moment of waving the pink paper in front of her patient to get a response, but when she had, she’d been relieved to conclude another session.

  As Jessica rose from her seat and began towards the car seat, Lisa reached for her schedule for the following day. She’d had a rough enough day, and before carpooling with Julie, she wanted to wrap her head around what the following day had in store for her. Not only did she have a meeting with the board of directors to discuss the future of her new trainees, she as well had to relay a report of the progress or lack thereof in her clients of the week to her supervisor Caroline O’Brien.

  Lisa’s afternoon was unoccupied due to a cancellation—

  A knock at her open door had her head jerking in that direction. With a racing pulse, she acknowledged the man at the other end of the door. She couldn’t take any more clients, why hadn’t Bridget sent him back?

  No…

  she needed to get home. One more late night and she was sure her body was going to give in to the strain it was under.

  Ludacris enough as it was… it wasn’t the first time she’d slaved over a desk nine-to-nine. She still felt it, the weakness that taunted her at night, the numbness that held her down in the darkness of her room. She couldn’t ignore it.

  The man who poked his head in had her breath hitching in her throat. She was hardly ever skittish. But he had this effect on her. One that had adrenaline leaching and her mind, running. A voice in her head whispered the words killer.

  He knew the home all too well. He knew how he could get in without being noticed and how long it would take him to return to Portland before the body was found, he knew the stairs, the master bedroom…

  She hadn’t been expecting him for a week. She hadn’t even heard back from Regan Sinclair about the contract.

  Paul Campbell was frantic when he let himself into her office. His hair was a disheveled mess, his shirt had visible sweat stains and wrinkles. This was the son of a family that once nestled at the breast of wealth. She was tempted to shake her head.

  “Mr. Campbell, I wasn’t expecting you, and not especially this late,” She pointed out.

  He’d glared at her, his face scrunched, and nose crinkled as if she reeked. She didn’t, she’d made an effort to ensure her office smelled as nicely as she did.

  His mouth curved into a macabre smile, one that was gone as quickly as it appeared as color drained out of his face. “We got into a fight.” He said more to himself. His words hadn’t been intended for anyone. He hadn’t been looking at her and in his blue-green eyes was a demented look. One she knew all too well from a former patient of hers. One she didn’t want to be left alone with.

  Bad things happened when she was alone with patients like this. Things she didn’t want resurfacing. Things that tested her dedication to the role of senior Counselling Psychologist for the Tillamook Wellness Center.

  She was torn;
at a crossroad. She was inclined to flee, to save herself, reach for the desk phone, and call for help. In the worst case, scream and cry, the door was still ajar. She would be abandoning her desires to prove his involvement in his mother’s case.

  She couldn’t leave.

  She had to convince herself and the rest of Tillamook what he’d done.

  People like him didn’t deserve to get away with his actions even if he was affected. Her death had an impact on him. Gruesome deaths had a way of tampering with a person’s mental health.

  Murders did as well.

  She was the only one in her department that believed he could have done it. Everyone else was listening to Stuart Middleton. He’d filled their heads with conspiracies. She had a theory, one she had to prove for the sake of the late Blake Campbell. Stuart was a poser, basking in the attention.

  It would die down.

  She didn’t care about attention. She cared about avenging a dead old woman.

  Where the hell was Bridget and why didn’t she have nurses hauling Paul Campbell to the west wing of the building, to where the admitted patients were kept, sedated, and observed?

  He’d remained unmoved by the entrance.

  “You were in a fight?” Her voice was gentle, cracked.

  She winced hoping to the heavens that he wouldn’t pick up on the fear that ran through her veins.

  One thing she’d learned in practice was an act of patience went a long way when handling frenzied patients. He was delusional. From what she could tell, he was yet to regard her presence. He’d made his way to her, to her office in a state she assumed to be an irritable, angry, or low mood.

  Despite looking directly at her, he was yet to notice her.

  He shook his head then nodded.

  He was hearing her. She reached for her keyboard and opened up his file and noted delusions.

  She was suspecting a case of Delusional Disorder.

  It had already been made known by Channel Nine News that Blake Campbell had been mentally disturbed… A report that ought not to be made as it tarnished the victim’s reputation. Reporter Lucy Wilkens was best known for exclusive controversial reports. It was her brand. She went deep into the story to get the headlines.