On a Dark Tide

by Valerie Geary

  The Chihuahua trotted over to a bean bag chair and clambered onto it, turning a circle, making a little divot for his small body in the fabric. The dog sighed and settled his head on his paws. His big, dark eyes followed Brett as she took pictures with a Polaroid camera she’d borrowed from the department. Zach’s room wasn’t a crime scene, but she was careful anyway, wearing gloves, making sure to get before and after shots, working the room from right to left.

  She found what she was looking for under the bed. In the most obvious place. As if Zach wasn’t even trying to hide it. She sat on the beige carpet, carefully opened the box, and snapped pictures of the contents before taking everything out for a closer look.

  There was a small baggie of weed and a large manila envelope stuffed with pictures. Brett flipped through them quickly. Though she recognized several faces, including her detective sergeant Stan Harcourt and several councilmen, she wasn’t exactly sure what she’d found. It looked as though Zach might have been collecting dirt on people. Husbands cheating on wives. Men in suits exchanging fat envelopes with people like Danny Cyrus and Lincoln Byrne. A few of the pictures were obviously from fight club nights. Brett pushed the photos aside to get to the contents underneath: three pairs of girls’ underwear.

  She picked up one pair, holding it carefully by the elastic band. A little red bow was sewn on to the front exactly how Elizabeth had described. She put it and the other two pairs of underwear into separate bags, labeling each with details of where and under what circumstances she’d found them. Not that she needed to be careful. There would never be a case brought in front of a jury where the chain of custody would matter. Anger gripped her. Anger at a mother’s belligerent ignorance. Anger at a selfish boy who took what he wanted without asking. Anger at these other girls, unknown to her except for their blue polka dots and pink stripes, these other girls who had suffered before Elizabeth but said nothing. Anger at herself for not arresting Zach when she had the chance that night at Eli’s parents’ party. If she had, he’d still be alive.

  She supposed his death could be considered a lopsided sort of justice. As wrong as it felt to her, as much as she would have preferred him to be sitting behind bars rather than dead in a cold storage locker, he couldn’t hurt anyone else now. There was that, at least.

  Brett gathered the evidence bags, along with the envelope of photographs, and taking one last Polaroid for good measure, walked out of the room. She stood over Lindy for a minute, watching her sleep. Part of her wanted to kick the woman awake and slap some answers out of her, but she knew Lindy wouldn’t have them. It was obvious Zach had been living his own life apart from his mother for a long time.

  The Chihuahua followed Brett out of Zach’s room. He stood by her ankles and blinked up at her, then his mouth parted in a clownish smile as his small, pink tongue flopped out, panting. Brett scooped up the little dog, juggling the weight of him with the evidence bags in her arms. As she left the trailer, Lindy snorted and turned over in the chair but kept sleeping.

  Brett plopped the dog in the passenger seat and put the stuff she’d taken from Zach’s room in the footwell. The dog sniffed a little, then turned a tight circle, curled his nose under his back paws, and let out a long sigh, settling in like he belonged here. He was tan with a white star on his nose. One ear was folded down, the other stood up straight. Looking at him in the daylight, he was actually kind of cute, in a pathetic street urchin sort of way.

  “Crap,” Brett muttered and started the car.

  Chapter 25

  “What the hell are you going to do with him?” Jimmy laughed and took the Chihuahua from Brett’s arms to scratch under his chin.

  Brett had been asking herself the same question all day as she brought the dog along with her to several afternoon interviews. The weather was cool enough that at least she could leave him in the car with the windows cracked. Every time she checked on him, he was standing on his hind legs, paws on the sill, his nose pressed to the window, fogging the glass, waiting for her return. When she eventually got back into the car, he gave her a single, perfunctory tail wag, then settled into that tightly curled ball again and fell asleep.

  “What’s his name?” Jimmy asked.

  “I have no idea.” She drank the last of her first beer and lifted her hand to the bartender to signal for another.

  “You have to give him a name.”

  “I’m not keeping him.”

  “Then why the hell did you even take him?”

  She stared at the dog whose eyes were half-closed in pleasure over Jimmy’s attention. “He didn’t belong there.”

  The bartender set two beers down on their table, even though Jimmy wasn’t done drinking his first. He’d been too busy canoodling the dog to bother with drinking. The bartender, a middle-aged woman with red hair cut pixie short and tattoos up and down her arms, reached over and scratched the dog’s head. She cooed like it was a baby, and Brett asked if she wanted to take him home.

  The woman threw her head back and laughed, her hoop earrings rocking. “Oh, doll, I would love to, I really would, but my man’s allergic.”

  She scratched the dog one more time and returned to the bar.

  Brett sighed and sat back against the bench, taking her time with the second beer, picking at the paper label. Jimmy fed the dog a pretzel. Crumbs sprayed everywhere as the dog crunched on the snack.

  “You like dogs,” Brett said, more than hinting.

  “Trixie gets too jealous.” He shrugged like he was sorry, though she knew he wasn’t. “Besides, I’ve been telling you to get a dog for months. And now one’s just dropped into your lap. It’s serendipity. Like it or not, he’s your dog now, Bretty.”

  He passed the Chihuahua over the table. Brett settled the dog in her lap, stroking her fingers over its short but soft fur, wondering how the hell she was going to explain this to Amma. Not that Amma would mind. She liked dogs. The Chihuahua sighed and curled into a ball.

  “So.” Brett locked eyes with Jimmy across the table. “Are you going to tell me what you’re really doing here? Because it can’t possibly be to cover this story that’s not even a story. Not really. Not by the Oregonian’s standards.”

  “Sure it is.” He counted the reasons off on his fingers. “It’s topical. Stabbing takes place during a Halloween festival. And weird. Everyone’s wearing costumes. And it’s got a human interest angle. The victim is a high school kid.”

  “Who wasn’t exactly a saint.”

  “Can I quote you on that?”

  “No.”

  Jimmy laughed and shrugged. “Besides, two murders in a week? Two stabbings? That’s the makings of a new serial murderer right there. And you know how well that sells papers.”

  “We don’t know they’re related.”

  “Yet.” Jimmy leaned forward over the table, a familiar gleam in his eyes, like a predator on the hunt. “But clearly they could be?”

  “I’m not talking about my case.” She pretended to zip her lips and throw away an invisible key. The Chihuahua flicked his ears. “But why send you here to cover it? There are a dozen junior reporters your editor could have sent to cover this non-story, and he decides to send you?”

  “I volunteered.” Pink colored his cheeks.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Well, it was an excuse to do more research for my book.”

  “Right. Your book.”

  “Plus, you know, I meant it the other night when I said I miss you.” He grabbed his beer and drank until the bottle was empty. Then he grabbed the second one and tipped it to his lips.

  Brett scanned the bar. For a Sunday night, the Pickled Onion was pretty lively. Several groups of people drank along the wall and at the bar itself. Couples sat tucked away in dark booths. Pool balls clacked together, and pinball machines plinked noisily in the back. Country music played from a speaker sitting on a chair near the bathrooms. The Pickled Onion was the kind of bar that had sticky floors and terrible food, b
ut the drinks were cheap, and, for cops, the first one was always on the house, so it was the bar everyone came to. She saw Eli in the corner drinking with Marshall Trudeau and slouched lower in the booth, angling her face away, hoping they wouldn’t notice her.

  As if yesterday’s festival stress wasn’t enough, Danny Cyrus had filed a harassment complaint against her and Eli. Which was complete bullshit. They’d been doing their jobs when they went to talk to him at his trailer. But a complaint was still a complaint. Now Irving was pissed because he’d told Brett to stay away from the Andress case. And Stan was pissed because it meant extra paperwork. And the chief was pissed because she’d made him look bad. She hadn’t talked to Eli about any of it yet. Not about the complaint. And not about what happened at the festival, with Amma mistaking Elizabeth as Margot. She certainly didn’t want to talk about any of it now when she was half-drunk, holding a dog in her lap that she’d basically stolen from a victim’s house.

  Jimmy shot a glance in their direction, his eyebrows raised. “I take it you don’t want me to go over and say hi?”

  “So, how is your book coming along?”

  He let her dodge the question. “The investigation into your sister’s murder was crap.”

  “We figured that out a long time ago, Jimmy.”

  “No, I mean, I went back through the copy of the file I’m not supposed to have, you know, to refresh my memory for this book, and I forgot how bad it was. I remember when you and I met, when I started digging around in this case for the first time, I remember thinking how there was just so much missing. But looking at it again, after everything that’s happened, it’s like, did anyone even work it?”

  “I’m sure Stan Harcourt did his best,” she said, with a bitter laugh, thinking of her detective sergeant’s sneering grin, his jaw working furiously around a wad of chewing gum. She’d come into the precinct three days last month to find him asleep at his desk in his corner office.

  Brett lifted her beer, surprised, and a little disappointed to find it was already empty. She should slow down. Drink some water. Eat something. She grabbed a pretzel, and the dog lifted his head to beg. She broke off a piece and fed it to him.

  “See? You’re starting to like him already,” Jimmy said, then kept talking about Margot’s case. “The interviews were so half-assed. They didn’t ask any of the right questions, or if they did, they didn’t document it. They put so much energy into trying to prove Danny Cyrus did it that they didn’t bother actually working the case from any other angle. It’s no wonder Archer French flew under the radar for as long as he did. If I hadn’t come along and started asking the right questions, who knows if we ever would have caught him.”

  “That’s easy for you to say now,” Brett said. “Hindsight being what it is.”

  “But this kind of stuff happens all the time, doesn’t it? A cop works a case to fit his perp, not to find his perp. He’ll include anything that proves his theory and toss out anything that doesn’t. And then, by the time someone comes back around to take another look, all the good evidence is gone or degraded past the point of being useful. And then you’re left trying to fill in the blanks with more blanks.”

  “Not every cop works an investigation that way,” she said, the beer turning her edgy and defensive.

  “No, but it happens more than it should.” Jimmy laid his palms flat on the table. “And I can’t help but think what else they might have missed? What else was overlooked?”

  She sighed. “Stop beating around the bush, Jimmy. Say what you want to say.”

  “I just was thinking that if you’re really sure about this gut feeling of yours, if you really think Archer wasn’t involved—”

  “I never said he wasn’t involved,” she interrupted. “I said I don’t think he killed her.”

  “I’m trying to tell you that I think it could be worth taking another look.” He reached his hand across the table and took hers, squeezing it gently. “I’m not saying we’ll find anything new, I’m not even saying I agree with you on this whole French didn’t do it scenario. I’m just saying, based on how the original investigation happened, it might not be a total waste of time. And I’m happy to do most of the legwork. You know how much people like talking to reporters, trying to get their fifteen minutes of fame. They say things to me that they’d never say to a cop. I’m happy to stick around a few days, re-interview people who lived in Crestwood that summer. They’ll like me better now that I’m famous.”

  She swatted his hand away. “You’re not famous.”

  “Almost.” He grabbed her hand again. “I’m serious, Brett. You’ve got me curious now. Let me do some more snooping.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “Of course I would.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to get the story right.”

  “Archer’s story. For your book.” She started to withdraw her hand, but he tightened his grip on it.

  “No, Brett. Your story. I want to get your story right. And Margot’s. Her ending deserves something more than a ‘probably’ with a question mark.”

  They stared at each other across the table, and Brett found herself thinking about that night on the balcony before she left Portland. How she wouldn’t mind kissing Jimmy again to see if it was as nice as she remembered, or if she had just told herself it was nice so many times she started to believe it. She leaned forward. Jimmy leaned closer, too.

  “Hey, Brett.” Eli dropped down into the booth with a tumbler of whiskey in one hand and scooted close enough their legs touched. “Good to see you again, Johnny, is it?”

  “Jimmy,” Brett said, letting go of Jimmy’s hand and sliding as far from Eli as she could before she bumped into the wall. In her lap, the Chihuahua lifted his head at the jostling, then lowered it again after she stopped moving.

  “Right. Jimmy.” Eli flashed his teeth at them both. “So. Did you come back to our neck of the woods to stir up more trouble?”

  “You two know each other?” Brett asked.

  “Not really,” Eli said, still grinning like he was about to take a bite out of something. “I never forget a face, though. He was up here a few years ago, snooping around the station, digging into everyone else’s business.”

  “I was solving a cold case the rest of you had given up on,” Jimmy said.

  “Did you hear that, Brett?” Eli nudged her with his elbow. “Your old pal Jimmy here doesn’t think we can do our jobs.”

  Brett was tired of their posturing, but when she tried to motion Eli to move so she could leave and get herself another drink, he ignored her.

  “Oh, my apologies,” Jimmy said, though he clearly wasn’t sorry in the least. “I didn’t realize you were a detective, too.”

  “I’m not,” Eli corrected him. “I’m just a lowly beat cop who was on my way to making detective before your girl here took my spot.”

  “Eli, come on.” Brett’s voice was a low warning. “Don’t do this.”

  “Do what? Tell the truth?” He turned his hard-edged grin onto her. His words slipped a little. His breath reeked of booze. “It’s what happened, isn’t it? You come waltzing in from nowhere, Chief’s little pet project. The rest of us don’t even stand a chance.”

  “That’s not what happened, and you know it.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me how it went down, huh? Remind me how I lost out on a promotion because I don’t have a nice set of tits.”

  Jimmy stiffened and rose a little off the bench, but Brett shook her head, signaling him not to bother.

  “You’re drunk, Eli,” she said.

  “I’m cuckolded.” Eli glared sharply at Jimmy before tilting his head back to drain the tumbler and signaling for another.

  Marshall appeared at their table a few seconds later with an apologetic look on his face. “Sorry. I told him to leave you alone but—”

  “But I told him that we should go introduce ourselves to Brett’s friend. It’s the
neighborly thing to do, isn’t it, Marsh?”

  The bartender arrived to take their order, and Eli said, “Let me buy this round.”

  “I’m good.” Jimmy gestured to his still half-full bottle.

  “Yeah, me too.” Brett shoved Eli out of the booth and gestured for Jimmy to come with her. “I’ve got an early day tomorrow.”

  Eli noticed the Chihuahua for the first time and tilted his head, his smile softening. “Who’s that little guy? He’s cute.”

  “This is, uh…” Brett looked down at the dog in her arms. His top lip was pulled back as he snarled in Eli’s direction. “This is Pistol.”

  She scratched the dog under the chin. Pistol’s tongue flicked out, soft and pink and wet.

  “Goodnight, Eli. Marshall.” Brett nodded at both men and left the bar, carrying the dog under her arm the whole way out.

  Jimmy followed her.

  They were getting into Brett’s car when Marshall called out to her from the doorway of the bar. The neon lights from the sign turned his skin a rose color. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

  Brett passed the dog over to Jimmy and walked to where Marshall was standing with a nervous smile playing on his lips. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and started to talk. “I wanted to thank you for taking care of Elizabeth yesterday. For making sure she got home safely, I mean, for not leaving her alone.”

  “Of course,” Brett said. It had been a simple choice.

  Marshall cleared his throat, obviously wanting to say something else. She waited quietly, knowing that sometimes all people needed was space and they’d easily find the words to fill it.

  Sure enough, he started talking again, quieter this time and more reserved. “It’s just all of this stuff with Elizabeth. It’s got me thinking a lot about Margot.”