Steadfast (True North #2)

by Sarina Bowen

  He shrugged. “About whatever is causing you to make that kicked-puppy face all the time.”

  “What face?”

  “It’s like this.” Denny grabbed the lapels of his coat and scrunched his face into a pathetic frown with droopy eyes.

  “Ugh. No. I do not look like that.”

  He smiled. “Okay, not just like that. But still…” He cleared his throat. “Want to have crepes for dinner? My treat.”

  That did sound good. Except I’d bought three chicken breasts to roast at home with baked potatoes. I started to say that I couldn’t make it, but somehow I said, “Fuck it,” instead. “Sure. Let’s go.” If my parents hadn’t figured out how to feed themselves by the time I got home at seven o’clock, I could still cook for them. They wouldn’t starve to death in ninety minutes.

  We took Denny’s car to The Skinny Pancake, which was a Main Street Montpelier cafe not too far from the hospital. Denny ordered the lumberjack—a ham and cheddar crepe. I got the crepedilla because it was always fun to try to pronounce it.

  Right after we sat down, Denny addressed the elephant in the creperie. “I just want you to know that whatever the hospital decides in January, I’m sure we’ll both end up with good jobs.”

  I cringed. “Well, just try to remember the little people when you sit down behind the desk inside your new office.”

  “Sophie,” he warned. “They might not choose me.”

  “They should,” I said, voicing my fears. “You have a masters and more experience. It’s okay, though. I’ll find something. I kind of thought Norse would have made a decision by now. Why do you think he hasn’t?”

  He took a sip of coffee. “I think he was trying to put in for more budget. Maybe he thought he could offer us one-and-a-half jobs? It wouldn’t be ideal to stay part time, but it looks savvier to hunt for a job when you already have a job.”

  Ugh. “Which is a kind way of pointing out that I should have already begun my job search.”

  He grinned over the rim of his mug. “Graduating is a natural breaking point. Nobody would expect you to job hunt while taking finals. Or me,” he added quickly.

  Apparently I wasn’t the only one who assumed he was a shoo-in. “Hey Denny—have you ever hired a private investigator?”

  He looked a little startled at the sudden change of topic. “I have not. But once in a while the social work office needs to recommend someone, so there’s a file at work with names in it. I could find it for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  The waitress delivered our food, and Denny tucked in. “Aren’t you going to tell me why you need a PI?” He asked between bites.

  “I’m not sure I do,” I hedged. “But I’ve been reading the police file from the accident.”

  “Wait. The one from…” Denny didn’t quite finish the sentence.

  “Yes, that accident. There are some things that seem weird to me about it.”

  Denny sat back in his chair. “What good does it do to go there?”

  That was a perfectly good question, and one that Jude had already asked. Gavin was gone, and Jude had done his time.

  But I couldn’t shake the idea that everyone was holding out on me, and I couldn’t stand it. “I feel disloyal all the time,” I admitted. “I still love Jude. And I’m not trying to prove that he’s innocent or anything. But I can’t figure out why he and Gavin were together that night. My brother was an ass to Jude every chance he got, always trying to put him down…”

  I trailed off as I thought about this. You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead. But Gavin had called Jude every kind of name. Depending on his mood, Jude was trailer trash or a loser. Or both. And once he’d called Jude a junkie and I went ballistic. It had been spring break of my freshman year in college, which would have been less than a month before Gavin died.

  A chill snaked up my neck just remembering it. At the time I’d been so angry, because I’d suspected Jude took some drugs, but I’d prayed it wasn’t a real problem.

  Had Gavin known about the drugs? How?

  “You could just ask Jude what happened,” Denny said, taking another bite.

  “He won’t say much about it. And we’re not, uh, exactly on cozy terms right now.”

  Chewing, Denny raised an eyebrow. I guessed he meant to make some kind of point about Jude’s contribution to the shit show that was my life, but I wasn’t going to take the bait.

  “I just want to know, Den. There’s a scribble in the file about a tox screen for my brother. But the results don’t turn up. Why would there be a tox screen for him? Maybe Jude wasn’t the only one with the drug problem. On the other hand, it could just be a typo.”

  Denny pointed his fork at me. “Now that’s simple enough to figure out. If a test was done, the hospital might have a record of it. Looking that up would be a hell of a lot cheaper than hiring an investigator.”

  I looked across the table at Denny’s slim, handsome face and felt a rush of love. “You are a freaking genius.”

  He smiled. “Keep talking.”

  “Don’t push your luck.” I laughed.

  “I won’t. Learned that lesson already.” He looked down at his crepe and sighed. “Just be careful, Sophie.”

  “Careful of what?”

  “What if you learn something you don’t want to know?”

  “That could happen,” I admitted. “Reading the police report has already made me re-think that Officer Friendly bullshit they taught us in elementary school. There are boldfaced lies on the first page.”

  He grunted.

  “My brother was killed in Jude’s vintage 1972 Porsche, which is still parked behind his father’s garage. I took a quick look at it last month.” Before Jude interrupted me. “The front of the car was crumpled like a soda can, and the windshield was gone.”

  Denny looked a little sick. “Damn,” he whispered. “I’ll bet that used to be an amazing car.”

  I snorted. Boys and their machines.

  “Why were you looking at the car?” Denny asked.

  “To try to figure out how the crash happened. The driver’s side is still intact. But the passenger door is missing.” The first thing I’d seen when I’d lifted the tarp on that side was the textured seat fabric—black and white, with tan strips down either side. I’d always found the design strange. Though the sight of it was so achingly familiar that I’d felt the sting of tears in the back of my throat.

  Denny cleared his throat. “And you think that’s strange?”

  “Yeah, I do. Supposedly they had to cut Jude out of the car. Why remove the passenger door to get the driver out?”

  “Maybe because the other door was blocked?”

  I shook my head. “The crash was head on, from the looks of it. The driver’s door isn’t even scratched. And they pulled him out of the passenger side just for fun?”

  “That is a little weird,” Denny admitted. “But there are probably pictures of the crash site.”

  “They’re missing from the police file,” I said. “Look, I know I sound like Nancy Drew right now.”

  He grinned.

  “Go ahead and laugh. But if you were me, you’d want to know what happened.”

  His smile faded. “I’m sure I would.”

  Thank you. I cut my crepe with a fork and let the mystery do another circuit of my mind. As if I could stop it even if I wanted to.

  After dinner, Denny drove me back to my car in the hospital parking lot. “Thanks for dinner!” I told him. “You cheered me up.”

  “My pleasure.” He nodded at my car. “Drive safe.”

  I could see he was going to wait there while I got in. But I wasn’t getting in. “Actually I’m going back to my desk for a minute,” I said, trying not to sound shifty. “See you tomorrow.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “Let me guess—you’re going to look something up in the patient database?”

  “No,” I said firmly. “And I wouldn’t tell you if I was.”

  “Ah.” His smile
was sad. “Be safe, okay?”

  “Always.” I watched Denny drive away, and then I went into the darkened Office of Social Work and switched on my computer. After it blinked to life, I typed Jude’s name into the computer database. There were three entries for him: one for his recent admission and surgery, and one dated June of this year.

  That one surprised me, so I opened it. But then it all came clear. Admitted to Deep Pines Inpatient Drug Treatment Facility, it read.

  Right. And now I felt like a snoop. From the menu I clicked on the third and oldest file, from May of 2012. There it was—his tox screen from the night of the accident. The results were exactly like the police report had said.

  For a moment I just sat there staring at it, hearing Denny’s question echo in my head. What if you learn something you don’t want to know?

  I realized that I’d been holding out a slim hope that Jude’s tox screen wouldn’t look like this. My foolish heart had been hoping to exonerate him. But there it was in black and white, blinking on the page. His bloodstream showed Oxycodone, and not a small amount. And another substance, too. I wrote the chemical down in my notebook to look up later.

  Then I clicked on the doctor’s name. As I’d hoped, a list of the other tests he’d ordered the same day appeared before me. And there it was: Gavin Haynes, age 24. Dead on arrival.

  One click later I was staring at my brother’s autopsy report. Thanks to my hospital job, I’d read these before, and they always gave me the willies. I really didn’t need to know how much my brother’s brain weighed on the day he died, so I skimmed. My eyes snagged on the words ineligible for organ donation. And then I saw why.

  Gavin’s tox screen revealed Oxycodone, too. And not a small amount. Plus another chemical—the same one in Jude’s bloodstream.

  Holy…!

  I must have sat blinking at that screen for five minutes, wondering if I was crazy.

  My brother had been high, too. Gavin was on drugs. I tried this idea on in my mind and it didn’t fit well. Gavin the athlete. He’d snorted pills?

  Not only was this unexpected, but now I had a problem. The tox screen didn’t prove anything at all except that my family had withheld information from me. That was mean, but not illegal. So what the heck was I supposed to do with this information?

  Instead of printing the file, I took a screenshot because it seemed stealthier. Then I printed that out, tucked it into my backpack and went out in the darkened parking lot to my car.

  For a moment I just sat there in my car feeling shaky. It had never occurred to me to wonder if my brother took drugs. I’d never thought he was the type. Gavin was a sort of my-body-is-my-temple athlete—always drinking imported spring water and making protein shakes at the kitchen counter.

  In other words, I’d bought into the same pile of bullshit social profiling that everyone else did. They looked at Jude’s tattoos and saw trouble. They’d looked at Gavin’s lacrosse stick and saw the great American athlete.

  Two tox screens. Both positive for two different drugs. I thought my skull might explode just from trying to wrap my head around it. On the one hand, it cleared up a few things. I’d never believed that Gavin would get into a car with a strung-out Jude behind the wheel. I couldn’t picture him getting into a car with Jude at all. But if Gavin’s judgment had been impaired, it made more sense.

  Of course, there was one person who could actually explain what happened that night. And he hadn’t yet. I started my car, cursing Jude. I wanted to throw the car into gear and speed over to his place and bang down the door. What the hell were you thinking? I wanted to scream.

  But, damn it, first I had to wait for the engine to heat up. I counted to sixty, feeling insane. Fuck you, and the Porsche you rode in on.

  It was snowing as I drove to Jude’s neighborhood and parked around the corner from his house, hoping none of my father’s policemen would happen by. It was dark out, though, and I didn’t see a soul. I got out and scurried down the alleyway running behind the Nickel property.

  My plan to storm Jude’s room demanding answers remained intact until I skidded to a stop at the bottom of his stairs. The wrecked car was right in front of me. I took a step forward. Then another. I grabbed the tarp and yanked it all the way off.

  The fabric crumpled to the ground with a louder thud than I’d been expecting. I braced myself for Jude’s door to pop open. But the sound of radio music was just audible in the nighttime air.

  Looking at the car was almost as frightening as viewing a corpse. The front had been crumpled like a soda can. The windshield was gone. But the very top of the car’s hood still gleamed, the dark purple paint shining like oil in the night.

  Just then I had another memory of Gavin and not a comfortable one. My brother had actually tried several times to buy this car from Jude. He’d insult Jude to his face and then offer him money for the Porsche.

  Naturally, Jude always turned him down. “Thanks, man,” he’d say in a voice that was far more casual than he felt. “I could never sell her. Spent too many hours on this baby.”

  My brother hadn’t ever let it drop, though. I used to get tense whenever he brought it up. I could always hear how badly Jude wanted to tell Gavin just to fuck off. But he never lost his temper somehow.

  So much of my life swirled around this ruined hunk of metal. The missing windshield was like an open wound. I took a deep breath and eased around to inspect the side.

  The driver’s door was just as I’d remembered it—still in perfect shape. The passenger door was entirely missing. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I took a few pictures, praying that the flash of the camera didn’t bring anyone into the alley.

  It didn’t.

  Gingerly, I reached a hand through the gap until my fingers met the old upholstery of the passenger seat. I’d been happy with Jude. Maybe that made me an idiot. He’d had a terrible problem, and I’d ignored it. But I still ached for my own naiveté and for flying down the road on spring days in this car, our windows open to the breeze.

  Talk to me, I inwardly begged the car. What happened here?

  But the alley was silent, except for the persistent bark of a dog in the distance. Arf-arf-arf!

  I’d come here to rage and threaten. To demand answers. But now all the fight had left me. Lifting my chin, I looked up at Jude’s window, where lamplight shone between the blinds. He was right there—so close. My heart spasmed at the image of Jude lying on his bed with a book alone, when he could be with me instead.

  I don’t see a future for us, he’d said.

  The snowflakes fluttered down, sticking to my eyelashes, accumulating on the cuffs of my coat.

  I didn’t storm up the stairs.

  Instead, I grabbed a corner of the tarp off the ground and wrestled it onto the car. It took some work until the thing was covered again.

  Then I walked back down the alley again, Jude none the wiser.

  I got back into my own car and turned the key. I was counting to sixty when I realized there was someone else who should know what I’d found. I took my phone out again and tapped on a contact’s name.

  Officer Nelligan answered on the first ring. “Miss Sophie! What are you up to on this fine evening?”

  “Thinking deep thoughts about the police file you gave me.”

  “Uh-oh.” He gave a nervous chuckle.

  “Uh-oh is right, because I found something weird.” I told him about the missing tox screen, and how I’d dug that up at the hospital.

  “Oh my,” he said afterward. “I’m sorry to hear that about your brother. That should have been in the file. But I can see why your father wouldn’t want it publicly known.”

  Maybe it’s not the only thing he didn’t want known? The whole thing troubled me. “Can I ask you a question about procedure?”

  “Shoot.”

  “How is a police report filed? What are the steps? Is there a digital copy of the report you showed me? And if it’s altered, is there a record of that?”

 
Silence. And more silence.

  “Hello?” I asked. “Did I lose you?”

  “I’m here. I’m just thinking. Why are you asking me this instead of your father?”

  Right. “Well, Rob, my father lies to me with great frequency. I clean his house, I cook his meals, and he never misses an opportunity to make sure I know that the wrong kid died. And now I know that my brother was mixed up in something nasty. And there are some assholes out there beating the crap out of my ex and dropping my name. You can forgive me for having a little curiosity.”

  “Well, dadgummit,” Nelligan muttered. “You make a few good points. But I could lose my job for sticking my nose in this.”

  “I know it makes you uncomfortable,” I admitted. “On the other hand, if there’s something shady about this case and your boss is responsible, don’t you want to know? Let me just share a weird detail with you. Both of the officers who assisted with Jude’s arrest and interrogation moved across the country within three months of the incident. Neither of them had family outside of Vermont. They both lived here their whole lives.”

  “That doesn’t mean they did something wrong,” Nelligan argued.

  “You’re right. And if you pull up this file at your desk and find nothing weird about it, who does that hurt?”

  There was a lot more silence. I held my breath, waiting to hear what he’d say.

  “What am I looking for exactly?”

  “I have a list of inconsistencies. Got a pencil?”

  His laugh was rueful. “Why am I not surprised? Let’s hear ’em.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Jude

  Cravings Meter: 1, Stupidity Meter: 11

  This week I drove myself to Thursday Dinner. I brought two-dozen cupcakes from Crumbs and made it just in time for the meal. “Hey guys!” I said as I slipped into the dining room at 6:29, narrowly avoiding a reprimand by Ruth.

  “Hey Jude!” someone yelled.

  “Heyyy Jude,” sang Griff to the Beatles tune.

  “I’ll bet he’s never heard that one before,” Audrey said drily. “Sit here, sweetie.” She patted the last empty seat, the one next to her.