Point taken.
“So then what happened?”
“We talked about my problem and stuff, and after a while she told me that there was this drug I could take that would help different functions in my brain to work better so that I could get straight A’s no matter what the subject. She told me it was perfectly safe or else we wouldn’t be able to get hold of it so easy. She asked me if I wanted to try it.”
“And you said you did.”
Nicole nodded. “Then she told me how much it was.”
“And that’s when you took the money from the emergency fund in your mother’s bedroom.” Sam had already heard all about the family theft.
And had cautioned MaryLee against keeping any substantial amount of money where her kids had access to it.
“Right. She told me to wait behind the bleachers at the football game and someone would come. That’s what I did, and then Shane came up and told me he’d been sent to help and to kiss him, and I did, and then you were there.”
Sam had to find the older girl. And to trace the phone number.
And to acknowledge that Chuck had been right about Shane.
Thank goodness. She should have known.
“Why’d you kiss him?”
“I don’t know. Because he’s cute. And…I don’t know.”
Sam wanted to relent, to give the girl a hug, but as tough as it was being an adult in today’s world, it was tougher being a kid. Nicole Hatch had to be able to hold her own. To discern right from wrong a whole lot better than she’d been doing.
“I’m going to bring you some yearbooks and you see if you can find that girl for me, okay?”
“’Kay.”
“And I want the phone number you called, too.”
“I don’t have it anymore.”
Sam frowned and Nicole’s eyes filled again. “I promise, sir…ma’am, I’d give it to you if I did. I’d give you anything you asked for. I threw it away as soon as I knew I was in trouble because I didn’t ever want to call it again.”
No worry. Sam would find it another way. If it was that easy to come by at school, she shouldn’t have too much trouble.
Sam opened the door, heading for the records room where five years’ worth of Chandler yearbooks were on file.
By Friday morning, Zodiac was almost back to normal. She was up before Kyle, nudging his arm at the side of the bed before the alarm went off. And she ate a full breakfast. She watched as he fed Grandpa, who hadn’t recognized Kyle and was not able to get out of bed that morning. Then, after greeting Clara, the dog trotted next to Kyle when he went out to the barn to take care of the horses. She stood just inside the fence as he worked with Rad. And watched as he oiled and adjusted the tractor, readying it for Monday’s harvesting of the experimental corn.
He’d been on the phone the day before with an ethanol manufacturer who’d agreed to run Kyle’s corn through a line he wasn’t currently using, with the agreement that if the corn produced as well as Kyle suggested it should, then he would get first refusal on all of Kyle’s future production.
It was a shot in the dark.
But then pretty much everything great that had happened in history had been the same. You didn’t get to new places by walking along the same old roads.
Out of all the ethanol manufacturers he’d contacted, one had returned his call.
Sam called Friday morning, just as she had each morning that week. She was checking up on Zodiac and, Kyle figured, on him, too.
He hadn’t contacted her. He’d screwed up. Betrayed her trust. And she still didn’t know the whole of it.
The fact that she didn’t trust him now, when he needed her protection, was partly his own fault and partly a product of who Sam was—a cop, no matter what. Even if it meant investigating her lifetime best friend at the first hint of criminal activity rather than automatically believing in him.
Sherry Mahon and fires and chemicals and meth labs aside, they’d broken up all those years before for good reason. He’d been stupid to let himself fall back into friendship with her.
“I interrupted a drug deal under the bleachers at the football game two weeks ago today,” she said, seemingly out of the blue. Normally, Sam’s conversational twists amused him. Today he figured her statement was leading him up a row he didn’t want to hoe, so he said nothing.
“A thirteen-year-old girl called for help with algebra and ended up stealing a hundred dollars from her mother for a bag of meth.”
Thirteen. Holy Christ. When he’d been in junior high, they’d been hard-pressed to find an opportunity to down a swig of beer without getting caught. Later, in high school, there’d been a little pot circulating. How in the hell had that progressed to football drug deals?
“It was a fifteen-year-old kid who sold it to her.”
She sounded so depressed.
“You’re doing the best job you can, Sam. You can’t keep criminals off the streets and run the school system, too.”
“They’re not pressing charges against either kid. But the boy will be spending his Saturdays at the dump until next summer, and there’s a record of the arrest. If he gets in trouble one more time, he’s done.”
“I’d say his life was off course before he made that drug deal,” Kyle told her, falling into the role of talking her down without even realizing he was doing so. It was what he’d always done. The relationship they’d developed.
When the job got to be too much for her, she called him.
And he was there for her.
“Chuck says the kid insists that he got the stuff from a friend of his in Indiana, but I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t?”
“No. He’s getting it right here in town, Kyle. I’m sure of it.”
Doing an emotional backup, Kyle said, “You are.” She was coming in a different door, but still engaging him in drug talk. What’d she expect? That he’d suddenly confess if he knew kids were involved?
“Yes. The kid plays tennis, Kyle.”
Was she nuts?
“What does playing tennis have to do with methamphetamine?”
“I’m not sure, maybe nothing. But there’s this group of underprivileged kids who have a club at the Tri-County Tennis Complex. Supposedly they met on the Internet and came up with this idea on their own. But I don’t believe it.”
And this was one reason why life out on a farm appealed to him. He wanted no part of her life. The constant crime. Mistrust. A life where everyone was a possible bad guy.
“They were on a site for kids with single parents and a bunch of them who couldn’t afford the fee for sports, known as ‘pay to play,’ that went into effect with the school systems this year decided to start their own club,” she continued.
And this upset her, why?
“How’d you find out about it?”
“I was watching one of the kids. I’d actually followed her there.”
“Because you suspected she was doing meth?”
“No. I’m keeping an eye on her for something completely unrelated. It has nothing to do with this case. I just happened upon the tennis thing.”
“I’m still not following how tennis and meth are connected.”
“Maybe they aren’t. But the activity at the complex is suspicious. And now we’ve got a dealer who’s in the club.”
“A coincidence.” He cursed himself as soon as he let the word slip. And mouthed her reply as she said it aloud…
“I don’t like coincidences.”
“Have you talked to Chuck about this?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“He’s as concerned as I am about the increase in drug offenses, but he doesn’t think the tennis club is involved. He thinks the club is a good and healthy outlet for kids who were cut out of sports.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“Yeah, well, I’d agree, but…”
“Your instincts are telling you differently,” Kyle said, knowing her well enough to antici
pate what was coming next.
“Yes, they are, but it’s more than that.”
“What else is there?”
“Chuck was telling me about what this fifteen-year-old and his mother told him about the start-up of the club. He says the mom helped the kids write up letters that were delivered to all the sports facilities around here, including both bowling alleys, asking for free or discounted services.”
“And the tennis complex agreed to give free court time?”
“Right. But on a hunch, I went to both bowling alleys yesterday, talked to several people, and neither of them received letters from these kids. Neither did the Y, the golf course or the soccer club.”
“Maybe Chuck misunderstood the mother. Or maybe the kids didn’t really mail the letters. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, Sam.”
“I know. I’m just worried. We’ve got to find the source of these drugs, Kyle. I feel like we’re running out of time and we’re getting nowhere.”
So maybe she was just talking to him. Like the old days. Not stringing him out to get him to confess something.
“You’re doing everything you can,” he assured her. “Following every single lead.”
“It’s all I know how to do,” Sam said. “Chuck’s following up, as well. But there are only the two of us on it.”
“Does Chuck now think there’s a mass production operation close by?” Kyle hoped to God her fellow officer had put an end to the obsession. Or that Chuck agreed with Sam and she wasn’t obsessing, after all.
Not that that helped his current situation and the suspicious activity on his farm.
“No, he doesn’t. He still thinks we’re looking for a distributor who’s moved into the area. But it’s more than that, Kyle. There’s just too much of this stuff showing up at too affordable a price for it to just be some new distributor.”
“What about the sheriff? Did you talk to him?”
There was a pause before she replied. “Chuck did.”
“And?”
“He wasn’t convinced there’s enough evidence to warrant an investigation into a superlab. But they’re wrong, Kyle. I know there’s an operation. I can’t ignore what the evidence is telling me. The bust at school wasn’t the first, and you know as well as I do that drugs weren’t a problem there, even ten years ago. And Holmes isn’t the only meth-related death we’ve had in the area—he’s just the closest to Chandler. And lived the cleanest life. And there’s the fire at your place, the chemicals missing.”
She took a breath. “I already told you about social services and three-quarters of the child welfare cases being associated with methamphetamine in some way. That’s up a quarter from last year. And why are all these disadvantaged kids suddenly playing tennis? It’s a perfect front for getting the drugs to the kids. The tennis complex could be the pickup point. Can you think of a better way to traffic illegal goods right under our noses than by using our kids? Sherry Mahon had way more meth in her possession than only personal use would suggest. Drug arrests like hers are so commonplace these days they don’t even make the news. When you take these things by themselves, they’re nothing, but added together…”
Sherry Mahon again. Kyle felt the sting, intended or not.
“They’re signs of a hurting economy, Sam. Maybe, like Chuck says, there’s a new distributor. This is Chandler, Ohio, not Mexico City. And the tennis club actually gives me hope for a generation that has been touted as having no work ethic.”
“I watched them play. They’re not interested in tennis. And your kind of thinking is what they’re banking on.”
“Who?”
“The cooks. They’re counting on our ignorance as they work their trade right here in front of us. Taking our money, our kids, even our lives.”
The cooks. Did her indictment include him? He was afraid to ask.
“If you know something, Kyle, you have to help me.”
So she had been trying to close in on him? This had been a professional call all along?
He almost hung up on her.
“If I knew something, I would already have told you,” he said instead, driven by some slim hope that he could still reach her.
She used to listen to him.
“This meth disease is not just a moneymaker, Kyle. It’s not just feeding druggies who would find the stuff, anyway, or adults who make their own choices. It’s infiltrated the kids. Sweet innocent little girls who just want help with homework. I can’t let that continue. I can’t pretend I don’t see. Not even if your farm is implicated.”
“Then I guess you’ll have to keep looking, Sam. But I can’t help you.”
This time Kyle did disconnect the call.
17
Staring at her reflection in the mirror Saturday morning, Sam sipped from her second cup of extrastrong ground Colombian and faced the truth.
She’d reached a point in life where she had to decide who she was, a decision that was going to define the rest of her life.
She could back down from her convictions, play the game the way everyone seemed to want her to do. Spend her free time looking for a drug distributor while the evil substance continued to be produced in large quantities right here in the county.
Or she could risk her job, her friendship with Kyle, the respect of her peers and her family by continuing to look for a superlab. She wasn’t Joe Blow cop. She was the daughter of Peter Jones, a man who’d lost it in the line of duty and paid the price.
So did she do the reasonable thing and just let the hunch go? Bury her head in the sand as Chuck and the sheriff wanted her to do, accepting that there wasn’t time or resources to act on a mere possibility? Did she please her loved ones, her mother and Pierce and Kyle, and play it safe?
Or did she carry on the legacy of her grandfather? A legacy her father had bequeathed to her as surely as he’d left her having to live down the fallout from his last act.
Both her father and grandfather had served the public their entire lives by trusting hunches. Acting on them. Countless times.
Just as Sam had done during a routine traffic stop that had turned into a shoot-out. This wasn’t about ego. Or needing the big plays. She’d turned that one over to an officer wearing a bulletproof vest because she’d had a hunch to do so.
There’d been other times, as well. Many of them.
Peter Jones had been a great cop—just like his father. The best. He’d been a natural.
He’d just let a personal crisis interfere with his good judgment and acted on a misguided “hunch” rather than relying on solid police work.
Did that mean Sam was somehow genetically predisposed to make a similar mistake?
“Who are you?” she asked the blue eyes staring back at her.
And she knew she was going to have to make a call.
Chandler, Ohio
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Camy and I were lying in bed reading on Saturday morning. Or rather, I was reading. The princess, pressed up against my side, slept. She wasn’t interested in the newest selection from my book club. Neither was I, to tell the truth, but I slogged on diligently, trusting that I’d benefit from the ensuing conversations regarding its readability or the motivations behind it.
At the very least, someone would tell me why the book had been deemed worthy of a club read.
I checked my page number, something I’d been doing every single time I turned a page, as though miraculously I’d whizzed through half the book and just not noticed.
I was only on the third chapter.
Just to make certain I hadn’t misread the total page count, I flipped through to the end again.
I had a long way to go before our next meeting. And all day to get there.
As long as I didn’t let myself get distracted. I wasn’t even going to skate.
I heard my cell phone ring.
And dove for it, sending Camy flying to the other side of our queen-size bed.
Caller ID said it was Sam.
“Hello?”
“Kel?”
“Yeah, Sam, what’s up?”
“You win.”
“What?”
“I have a question for you, dammit, and if you make more of this than it is, I swear I’ll never speak to you again.”
I sat up straight, the book forgotten.
“What’s going on?”
“Just answer me this.” The tension in her voice was the total opposite of the confident tone I was used to. My recalcitrant friend sounded vulnerable. “Is it possible that being with that guy while he blew off his head screwed me up?”
Sam was calling for help. Just what I’d been hoping for. Begging for. The idea of her actually doing so disarmed me.
“Screwed you up how?”
“Messed with my mind to the point that I’m not thinking clearly.”
“How are you sleeping?”
“Not great. But better. I’m using the couch instead of the bed so that I don’t feel so much pressure to go to sleep. So far, the trick seems to be working.”
That sounded like the Sam I knew. Unconventional, but generally successful.
“What makes you wonder if you’re thinking clearly?”
“This whole drug thing I’ve been talking to you about. I’m really convinced there’s mass production of methamphetamine going on around here, Kel. I feel it, with my cop instincts.”
“And you trust those instincts.”
“I always have in the past.”
“And they’ve served you well?”
“Absolutely.”
“So what’s the problem this time?”
“I just… A couple of people have mentioned that I’m over the top on this one. That I should just let it go. But I know that if I do, I’ll be making a huge mistake and there will be a lot more people hurt, and probably killed, before the whole thing finally comes to light.”
“What people have said you’re over the top?”
“Chuck. Pierce. Kyle.”
“All people you’re close to.”
“Yeah, but also people who knew my dad.”
Her dad. Not a topic Sam had ever mentioned to me before. But I knew the gist of the story. Everyone in Fort County did.
The Second Lie Page 15