by Jaime Maddox
“I got somethin’ else for you, too.”
Derek eyed him suspiciously. “What’s that?”
“Information. Valuable information.”
“Oh, yeah? What kind of information?”
“Before I say anything, we have to set the terms, man. Fifty-fifty split.”
Derek stood tall once again, staring him down. Was everyone going to challenge him today? “Before I set the terms, I have to know what the fuck we’re talking about.”
He pursed his lips for a second. “Okay, okay. Here’s the story. My sister, the rich bitch from up the mountain, is going on vacation. She gave my mother the key so she can go in and feed the cat. She also gave her the alarm code.”
Derek stared off into the distance, thinking. This guy had given him similar information in the past, and they’d both profited from it. But it was dangerous. Derek assumed all the liability and got only half the money. He’d usually walk away with two or three grand from a job like that. Easy money for a few hours’ work. Risky, though. “Fifty percent just isn’t worth chancing a trip to prison.”
“Oh, I’m not sure about that. She’s got a nice house, my sister. A mansion. Married a guy that owns a trucking company. Lots of jewelry, expensive rugs, artwork. You name it.”
“It may be valuable, my man, but I have to be able to sell it to make any money. And stolen art isn’t easy to move.”
“I understand they keep cash in the safe.”
“Hmm,” Derek answered, more interested now that cash was involved. “Give me the details.”
The man filled him in, and when he’d finished, Derek patted him on the back, sealing their pact.
“See you next month,” he said as he drove away.
If all went well, Derek would have an envelope stuffed with cash to give the guy when they next met. If not…well, he couldn’t think about that.
Chapter Two
Business as Usual
A stationary parade of cars, most with their flashers engaged, told Mac Calabrese she’d found her destination. Even though she’d spent her entire life in the mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania, she still found the winding, unmarked roads confusing, and once in a while, she’d get lost. Thankfully, this wasn’t one of those times. Her calendar was crowded because of the kidnappings in Garden and the allegations of murder that had surfaced. This traffic fatality was just another headache to deal with, putting her even more behind schedule. Her instincts told her this was going to be an awful day, and they were rarely off target.
Slowing to an appropriate speed, Mac crossed the double yellow line and passed the still vehicles, pulling to the front, where all the usual emergency responders were parked in haphazard fashion. There was another police vehicle, this one belonging to the township police. A fire engine sat in the wrong lane, its lights twirling frantically from positions high and low on every corner. A sleek medic’s SUV was pulled onto someone’s front lawn, and an ambulance sat beside it, its open doors testimony to the urgency of this call. Set apart from the others, the black coroner’s wagon announced the news that no one ever wanted to hear.
Mac had been told there were fatalities when she was called to the scene twenty minutes earlier, and she’d spent the entire drive preparing for them. It wasn’t her job to investigate crime scenes and accident sites, and she didn’t like it. Someone had thought she should be called, though, so here she was.
Parking her car behind the fire engine, she hastily retrieved her badge from the bag on the passenger seat. She probably knew everyone at the scene, and more importantly, they knew her, but she liked to be ready if she encountered some rookie with an attitude doubting her credentials. It rarely happened when male state police officers arrived on a scene, but to her, it had happened too often to waste her time remembering.
A few steps from her vehicle she was greeted by Shultz, the local cop. “Nasty scene here, Mac.”
“Why’d you call me?”
“They’re running drugs.”
“Ah,” she said as they approached a white sheet covering a still but unmistakably human form lying on the right side of the road.
She stopped and turned. No one was near the body, no one to stop a photographer or nosy citizen or, worse yet, a frantic parent from penetrating the perimeter of the accident scene. As she looked back, she realized the haphazard location of the vehicles actually had successfully blocked prying eyes from getting a good look at the chaos, but someone needed to guard this body.
Raising an eyebrow, she questioned Shultz. “What kind of drugs? And can you get someone else here to help preserve this scene?”
“Backup’s on the way. Looks like heroin to me, but I’m no expert. There’s a duffel bag over there,” he said, pointing toward the forest beside the road, “loaded with little plastic bags filled with white powder. As far as I can tell, they all have a big H written on them.”
“Did you call narcotics?”
“On their way.”
Fuck! Mac thought as she looked around. What were the mountains coming to? She was used to the pill problem, but she rarely saw heroin involved. Most people in her jurisdiction died from combinations of narcotics, benzodiazepines, and alcohol. She knew pills were becoming harder and harder to find, though, and that heroin was becoming much less expensive. She supposed it was only a matter of time until the dealers from New York and Philly expanded their territories into hers, giving the good people of Northeastern Pennsylvania yet another choice on their menu of drugs. Another weapon to use in their slow, painful suicides.
“Any IDs on our bodies?”
As she asked, Mac squatted and pulled up the sheet. If the missing piece of this guy’s skull was any clue, fatality number one had probably died from head trauma when he was thrown from the vehicle. If not for the puddle of congealed blood on the road beneath his head, he might have been mistaken for someone napping, with his arms raised above his head and his legs spread out below. He was facedown, and she was grateful to be spared the trauma of looking into his vacant eyes.
How would his mother do it, though? Did he even have a mother to claim his body, to cry over him and wonder where he’d gone wrong? Would she wonder if some part of this was her own inadequacy as a parent, or would she blame someone else for the dead-end path he’d taken?
“This one’s got nothing,” Shultz said, bringing her back to the present. “But the one trapped beneath the dashboard is Terrence Yield, according to his driver’s license. Philadelphia address. The car’s registered to a Robert Michelin, also with a Philly address. He could be the one beneath the car.”
“You’re fucking kidding me,” Mac said, shaking her head. “How far beneath?”
“We’re talking Wizard of Oz here, Mac. Nothing but the slippers showing when I got here. As soon as the fire boys arrived, they lifted the car up and one of the medics crawled under to check him, but of course he was flatter than a pancake.”
Raising her eyes from the road, Mac surveyed the scene. Broken remains of a black SUV were scattered along the road. A few feet from her lay a headlight. A spare tire, its smiley-face cover in tatters, sat on the double yellow line. Another tire had come to rest just beyond the other. A pillow with a torn red pillowcase had landed nearby. Everywhere, she saw litter—McDonald’s wrappers and bags, Dunkin’ Donuts cups, Coke bottles, a banana peel. Shattered glass and pieces of metal twisted beyond recognition were mixed throughout. At the end of the trail, like a powerful magnet drawing her closer, was the crushed body of the car. It had traveled a hundred yards before finally coming to rest on its roof, in someone’s front yard, the three remaining tires reaching toward the heavens, perhaps pointing the spirits of its dead passengers in the right direction.
Mac stopped again and turned in a full circle. She pointed back. “So he was traveling this way and lost control back there, based on the location of victim number one. What do you think happened? Blowout?”
“There’s a little curve there, who knows? Arguing with his buddi
es, texting, a deer on the road and then he’s suddenly off the road, hits the guardrail, bounces around, flips a few times, spews a couple of bodies and then finally stops.”
“That’s a colorful description, Shultz. You been studying or something?”
Mac saw the color rising in Shultz’s fair cheeks and decided to stop the teasing before he fainted. He was an excellent police officer, meticulous and by the book, and she liked him. “But you’re right. Unless you find a dead deer or a telltale phone, we’ll probably never know what happened.”
They came upon a suitcase, a cheap-looking carry-on model in surprisingly good shape. “Did you check this yet?” Mac asked.
“Yep. Opened it and closed it right back up. Money and guns. I didn’t count the cash, but I found two handguns.”
“Completes the picture, right?”
“It’s a shame, Mac, isn’t it? Three boys dead, all because they were someplace they didn’t belong doing something they shouldn’t have been doing.”
“It’s only the lucky ones that survive, Shultz.” Mac had seen enough to know that. Good luck buffered people through tornados and they came through without a scratch, and bad luck lured lightning through windows and fried people in their beds.
“Yeah, but sometimes you have to make your own luck. And doing stupid shit doesn’t help the cause.”
They stopped at the rear of the vehicle and were greeted by Wendy Clemens, the coroner. A day earlier, Wendy had been kidnapped and nearly killed by Edward Hawk, and Mac was sure that entitled her to a day off. “What are you doing here?” she asked before her rational mind told her it was none of her business, that she shouldn’t publicly question another professional like that. She shook her head and offered a smile. No doubt, Shultz already knew what had happened to Wendy in Garden. “Sorry. I’m just surprised to see you. Feeling okay?”
Wendy shrugged and offered an overzealous smile back at them both. “It’s all good. Summer. Busy time. Can’t slack off.”
Mac gave Wendy a discreet wink. They’d casually known each other for ages—played on rival teams in the same softball league for a few years, ran into each other at the occasional party, and met in the bar after golf tournaments. And of course, they met at times like this, when their professional worlds collided. Their conversations had always been limited to a few words, though, and Mac now regretted never getting to know Wendy Clemens better. Maybe that would change in the future. Dressed in pressed chinos and a pristine white golf shirt, she looked like a total pro, someone Mac would appreciate socializing with. Just as friends, though. While she could imagine Wendy did well with the ladies, she wasn’t Mac’s type.
Mac cleared her throat and returned to the present. “Well, glad you’re back in action. What’s the plan here? How long do you need?”
“I just arrived a few minutes ago, so I’ll be here awhile. An hour, perhaps. Then I’ll take them to Scranton for autopsies. The schedule’s open. We’ll probably be able to get them done tonight.”
“Excellent. Show me what you have.”
Victim number two had been pulled out from under the vehicle, and Wendy lifted the corner of the sheet covering his body. Mac didn’t have to worry about making eye contact with this one; the pressure on his crushed skull had enucleated his eyes. Gooey-looking pink-and-red fluids oozed from everywhere. Mac blinked and perhaps held her eyes closed a second too long, because when she opened them, Wendy had dropped the sheet. Mac didn’t ask her to lift it again.
“Number three appears to have a broken neck and probably a few other injuries that would have killed him, too.” Wendy moved a few steps in the direction of the mangled car and pulled a sheet from the frame covering a missing section of the vehicle, so Mac could peer into the front passenger compartment. A young man’s face peered up at her from a narrow space between the dashboard and the front seat, his neck bent severely, his chin resting in the area of his navel. His hips sat on the console. One leg was angled impossibly and wedged beneath the crushed steering wheel and the spent airbag. Mac couldn’t see the other.
A voice called Shultz away, and Mac took advantage of the opportunity to talk to Wendy.
“I’m glad we’re alone. I need to ask you a few more questions about Hawk.”
In her role as coroner, Wendy had shown such composure, even when faced with the unbelievable horrors before her. At just the mention of Hawk’s name, though, she paled and turned away, busying herself with her camera. “Sure. Just call me,” she said, and Mac wondered how those photos would turn out. The big camera was shaking in Wendy’s hands.
“You got it.”
Mac turned and began walking the perimeter of the scene, taking it all in. She’d tell Shultz to have the traffic begin turning around. With both lanes blocked by bodies and debris, they weren’t getting through here anytime soon. Reconstruction experts would look at the pattern of evidence and try to figure out what had happened, but Mac didn’t figure it really mattered. In the end, it was all about drugs. She was so sick of dealing with drug- and alcohol-related deaths. It was all so senseless. The alcohol had always been around, but they’d been seeing the pills only the past few years. In neighboring communities there were violent drug deaths, too. Now it looked like she had another enemy to fight. Not just pills but heroin, too.
She didn’t get it. She’d taken pills, after her knee surgery and again after a broken wrist. They did nothing for her. What did everyone else experience that incited them to pop a dozen pills at once? What was so bad about their lives that they wanted to? It made some sort of sad sense to her that the mentally ill and chronically neglected kids began using drugs in their big cities, but as far as she could tell, the people she saw using drugs here had no excuses. They were bored. They were looking for a good time. And they were dying.
It was a big problem, and it was getting bigger. What the fuck was she going to do about it?
Chapter Three
Tough Love
Dr. Jessica Benson curled up on her couch, pulled the blanket up to her forehead, and sobbed. She wished she could call someone, but who? Her new best friend, Wendy, was off playing coroner, and since she’d been through the same ordeal as Jess, she’d probably fall to pieces when she was done. Her ex-partner, Ward, was working, and even though she’d promised she’d help Jess through her dark time, Jess was skeptical. She’d tossed Ward aside and broken her heart. Who could blame her if she bolted now? Her only real family was her father, and if he came over, she was likely to murder him. He’d been driving her crazy for months, but after her experience at the cabin, she was convinced he had early dementia. Her strong, loving, wonderful father was losing his mind. Just one more thing to deal with.
But who else could she call? She’d systematically pushed away her friends, eliminating the chance that any of the people who cared for her could discover her drug problem. She’d left her adopted home outside of Philadelphia to come to her birth home in the mountains and socially, culturally, and geographically isolated herself. When she’d wanted to avoid discovery, her new situation had been ideal. Now, she just felt lonely. And anxious.
She supposed she could feel a lot worse. She’d been kidnapped, drugged, and psychologically terrorized. And while Dr. Edward Hawk didn’t harm her physically, she’d spent a terrifying fifteen hours as his captive, fearing for her life the entire time. The first twenty minutes had been the worst part, when Hawk injected her with succinylcholine, a drug that completely paralyzed her. She couldn’t focus her eyes. She couldn’t breathe, and she hadn’t died only because Hawk had breathed for her. A few times during that period she’d thought she would, when Hawk abandoned her to attend to other matters. He’d come running back, though, squeezing the bag at her lips vigorously, forcing air into her lungs and oxygen into her blood, sustaining her until he could extract information from her.
After the drug wore off, he’d tied her to a chair in a supply closet, then smuggled her out of Garden Memorial Hospital in a body bag. At least she wasn’t alone
, though—Hawk had given the same injection to her friend, Wendy, and stuffed her in the body bag beside Jess. In the cabin at her father’s hunting club, Hawk had ranted and raved as he paced the floors, threatening them with death and then promising to release them if they cooperated. Jess hadn’t told him a thing, even though she thought he’d kill her. Her stupid father had talked like a radio personality, though, and his issues and his hatred for Ward became very clear as he spoke.
Her dad blamed Ward for Jess’s sexuality. He blamed her for Jess living in Philadelphia. He blamed her for not allowing Jess to come home sooner and care for her dying mother. And he told Hawk that if Jess had some idea about him murdering his patients, it must have come from Ward Thrasher.
Although her father was right about one thing—Ward had been the one to warn Jess about Edward Hawk—he was wrong about everything else. Nothing was Ward’s fault. Ward had rescued her from Hawk and treated her for narcotic withdrawal when she recognized Jess’s symptoms, and Ward had sat by her side until she was ready to go home. Even though she’d treated Ward awfully, Ward had still taken care of her. Ward still cared. Ward was a wonderful woman, and Jess had pushed her away. Jess had lied to her and betrayed her in terrible, unforgivable ways. Suddenly she wanted Ward’s forgiveness, wanted the calming presence of Ward in her life.
And because her life really and truly sucked, just as Jess realized how much she loved her, Ward told Jess she’d fallen in love with someone else.
Jess tried to forget about Ward’s new girlfriend as she dialed her cell.
“How are you feeling?” Ward asked by way of greeting.
It had been only three hours since their last conversation, but she felt like days had passed. Her life had flashed before her dozens of times as she relived her ordeal with Hawk. She was anxious and scared. And exhausted. In spite of the fact that Wendy had slept beside her and her father was in the living room wearing his sheriff’s hat and gun, she hadn’t slept a wink.