Money Creek

by Anne Laughlin

  “I’m afraid it will. I was hoping you’d freely join us, but if I must stoop to coercion I will.”

  She narrowed her eyes. It was too bad Henry was a bastard. She’d hoped they’d be on good terms. Blackmailing her wasn’t winning him her affection, but she couldn’t risk him telling Elizabeth.

  “If that’s the way you’re going to play it, I have no choice. This has to be about something other than simply meeting your friends.”

  “Actually, it is. I’m headed to the house at four o’clock on Saturday afternoon. We’ll drive together in your car.” He seemed satisfied and opened the car door.

  “Where should we meet?”

  “You can pick me up at my apartment. See you then, Clare.”

  She cranked up the heater and pulled her car out onto the quiet town square. A turn around the square pointed her toward home and she drove quickly there. The last thing she wanted was to go to a party of strangers. Would this day ever be over?

  * * *

  Henry was the first student out the door at the end of his senior seminar on twentieth century American literature. The other students hung back to talk to the professor about the theses due in the spring. Henry had yet to identify his subject, but it wasn’t even March yet. He had plenty of time. He shrugged into his wool coat and took his phone out of the pocket. There was a notification on the screen that his business partner, Ray, had called back. He hit the return call button as he left the building and walked to the parking lot. It was picked up on the first ring.

  “It’s Henry. Thanks for calling me back.”

  “Of course. What’s going on?”

  It was freezing out. Henry half trotted toward his car. “I wanted to give you a heads up I’m bringing someone to the house on Saturday.”

  “Like a date?” Ray’s tone was mocking.

  “No, not really. I’d like it to be, but I just met her.”

  “So why are you bringing her?”

  “I think she may be of use to us. She’s a customer of mine. Speed’s her thing. She’s also a lawyer in my parents’ firm.

  “Interesting.” He seemed more focused. “Definitely bring her.”

  Henry was relieved. Even though the scope of their business was distributed equally among himself, Ray, and Bobby Hughes, Ray was the leader of the alliance. He was more decisive, more inventive than the other two and the role fell to him naturally. If he’d told Henry to not bring her, he wouldn’t have pushed back.

  “Sounds like you haven’t heard the news,” Ray said.

  “What news?” Henry was always nervous about news since it was frequently bad.

  “Stingy called me. One of the guys who cooks for him got busted. We don’t know what he’s telling the cops.”

  He was right. It was bad news. “There’s not much he can tell them, right? I mean, the cooker shouldn’t know anything about us.”

  “That’s the business model. But if he gives up Stingy we have a problem. He won’t turn on us, but it would be very hard to replace him if he’s scooped up.”

  “I don’t see what we can do other than be proactive and replace Stingy now, have him go to ground. I’m not convinced he wouldn’t testify against us.”

  “Relax. This Morgan guy who got arrested doesn’t know Stingy’s real name, where he lives, who he associates with. Even if the cops tripped over him, they wouldn’t know what they were looking at.”

  “They have sketch artists, you know.” Henry’s voice was tight.

  “Jesus. I told you to relax. I’m monitoring the situation. Until we get our own manufacturing sites up and running, they’re going to be arrests like this. You have to stand up under pressure, man.”

  The only time he’d been under serious pressure was when he’d been kicked out of Princeton and he’d weathered that. Now the stakes were much higher. Stingy was one degree of separation between him and the cops. If they ever got busted, he’d be middle-aged before he got out of prison. “I think we need to make sure Morgan can’t testify about Stingy. If Stingy gets picked up, we don’t want Morgan to identify him as his exclusive buyer. It’s too dangerous.”

  “What are you suggesting exactly?” Ray sounded surprised.

  “You know what I mean. We need to silence him.” His anxiety seemed to lessen as he warmed to the idea.

  “Permanently?”

  “Yes, permanently. Don’t you agree?”

  “I see it as an option, but I’m surprised you do.”

  “There’s a lot at stake.” Henry tried to sound business like.

  “Let me talk to Bobby. If he agrees, we’ll take care of it.”

  As simply as that a man’s fate was sealed, and he’d put it in motion. That was power he never thought he’d have. Their business was standing on a house of cards. The foundation would not hold if one witness could topple everything they’d worked so hard to establish. Why take the chance? Morgan was low on the totem pole and totally expendable.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Freya led three deputies and Ben through the undergrowth to a crumbling hunter’s shack deep in the woods, about seven miles outside Money Creek. They’d been tipped off to yet another meth lab by the new confidential informant they were breaking in. He told them a buyer had been to a lab that looked like a cleaning crew had just got done with it. Another in the series of labs being taken over by the drug organization they were trying to find.

  She raised her hand and the group stopped behind her. Bright light poured from the windows of the shack. No one bothered to cover them. Motioning with her hand, she sent two deputies to the back and approached with Ben and one other deputy. Their cruisers and an ambulance sat idling a hundred yards away on a pitted dirt road. She and Ben stood on each side of the door and when Freya nodded, Ben kicked it open and she burst into the room first, swinging her weapon to the right. Ben was right behind her and aimed left. Her gun was trained on a group of three sitting around a tiny table on one side of the shack, two men and a woman. On the table was a bag of white powder and paraphernalia scattered about. Freya yelled out to identify herself.

  “Illinois State Police. Hands on top of your heads. Now.”

  One of the men, greasy-haired and skeletal, dipped his hand below the table and she shot him in the shoulder. The other man, a twin of the first, brought a gun up while her eyes were still on the first and fired, missing her but hitting Ben in the arm. She moved her gun a few inches and shot him in the chest.

  “Fuck,” she said in the eerie silence. She retrieved the two guns. The first man moaned and gripped his shoulder while the woman, dressed in almost nothing in the cold shack, had her hands in the air. She wore a murderous expression. Freya checked the pulse of the second man. He was dead.

  Ben stood by the door, holding his wounded arm. She looked at the deputy who had followed them in. “Are we clear?”

  “All clear inside.”

  She grabbed her radio. “Are we clear outside?”

  “All clear.”

  “Bring up the bus. We have an officer and suspect wounded and one suspect dead.”

  “Roger that.”

  The woman threw herself over the dead man. “You killed him. You killed my Edmund,” she screeched. As a deputy approached to remove her, she swung her arms wildly, fending him off, protecting her man. The deputies grabbed her and the wounded man and muscled them out of the trailer. Freya turned to Ben.

  “What a fucking mess,” he said.

  Freya tried not to feel responsible for the fucking mess. She should have cut down the shooter before he had a chance to fire and wound her partner. Either way, she’d killed him. They were the first shots she’d ever fired in the line of duty. She’d always wondered how she’d feel if she took a life. Adrenaline coursed through her system. Now she’d have to go to a mandated shrink to monitor her reaction to the fatal shooting. As far as she could tell, her reaction was principally one of annoyance. It was a lot of hassle, all of it pointless. The man shot at them. Her training was clear on what
to do.

  “How’s your arm?”

  “It’s fine. A flesh wound.” Ben looked toward the dead body. “You did what you had to. It was a good shoot.” She didn’t answer as two paramedics entered and took him out the door.

  On the other side of the trailer was a very neat and compact meth lab, almost identical to the one they’d busted a few days before. Deputies and technicians started pouring in. She eased her way outside. The cold air hit the fine sheen of sweat on her face. Standing next to a cruiser was the senior deputy on the scene, Bill Hogstead. He was about forty, his jacket bulged in front from his belly, he wore thick glasses and a dull look on his face. Freya knew he was one of the most competent officers she’d ever met, despite his appearance. “How do you think things went?” he said.

  “Considering I had to shoot a man to death, I’d say pretty well.”

  Hogstead looked at her sympathetically. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m good.” This was the first in what would be a long line of people asking how she was doing. She didn’t know what it said about her that she was doing fine.

  “Well, you still have two perps left. Maybe you’ll get some good information out of them.”

  “Let’s hope. Do you have things covered here?”

  “Yeah. We have to wait for a forensics unit from Bloomington to take the lab apart and process the scene. I’ll be here when they arrive.”

  “Good. I’m headed out.” Freya waited in her car until the ambulance pulled onto the road and followed it to the hospital.

  Three hours later, she was in a waiting room in the hospital while her suspect was in surgery. Sheriff Phillips walked in with two cups of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and sat next to her. It was the first she’d seen of him since the shooting.

  “How’s Ben?” he asked. He handed her a coffee.

  “Heading home. They bandaged him up and cleared him to leave. He’s on pain meds so he’s going to sleep those off. He wanted to be here with me.”

  “No doubt. What can you tell me about the lab?”

  Freya drank some of the coffee, which was much better than the vending machine coffee in the hospital. “It was well organized, very neat, labeled, safe. Or safe-ish, anyway. My feeling is that wasn’t the work of the threesome we found in the trailer.”

  “You think what, that there’s an organization of some sort overseeing the lab?”

  “Something like that. If there is a banding together of the larger drug dealers, it seems to me they could be pooling resources to improve their whole production system. I hope to find out when I question the guy. The woman was no help. She swore she didn’t know anything other than her boyfriend cooked meth.”

  He was quiet as he drank his coffee. “Aren’t you going to ask me about the shooting? Two shootings, actually,” she said.

  “I got an account of it. I don’t have anything to ask.”

  A woman in surgical scrubs walked into the waiting room. She took a sterile cap off her head and stuffed it in a pocket. They stood as she approached. “I’m Dr. Bouchard. I’ve just finished up surgery on Andrew Dunning.”

  Freya wanted to interview the witness immediately. “How is he?” she asked. The doctor was tall and willowy, with blond hair haphazardly tied into a bun on the top of her head, strands springing loose all over. Freya had eyes in her head—the woman was magazine cover beautiful.

  The doctor addressed Freya. “The bullet went through the upper lung but missed all the nerves and vessels. He’s lucky. He’ll have a chest tube and the recovery will take a while, but he should be fine.”

  “Is he awake?”

  “He isn’t, and I don’t expect him to be for several hours. I’d recommend you talk to him first thing in the morning.”

  Freya shook her head. “No, I’ll wait here until he wakes up. I need to ask him some questions as soon as I can.”

  Bouchard looked relaxed, but her voice was firm. “That’s not possible tonight. Even if he were awake he’d be barely coherent.”

  Freya was about to argue further when the sheriff put his hand on her arm. “Thank you, Doctor. What’s the earliest time we can see him tomorrow?”

  “I’d say eight o’clock. I’ll leave word at the nurses’ station in SICU.” She nodded slightly and left. They walked toward the exit and agreed to meet outside Dunning’s room in the morning. She got in her car and pointed toward her downtown apartment, but found herself taking a slight detour to drive by Clare’s house. It was a bit stalker-ish, not something she’d normally do. But after her conversation that afternoon with Ben, she was curious about her. They’d been sitting in their cramped office, waiting to hear back from the sheriff on the raid planned for later. Ben went out and came back with a cup of coffee.

  “That’s like your twelfth cup today,” Freya said. “Didn’t you sleep?”

  “Not much.” She looked up from her phone and waited for more. “It’s a little delicate, but I had to help out a friend.”

  “What’s delicate about it?”

  Ben looked around, as if a pack of reporters might be behind him. “It was Clare.”

  “Clare? What about her?” Now he had her full attention.

  “I ran into her at Abe’s last night. She was already fairly lit up when I sat next to her. She downed a lot of shots. Her capacity is amazing. But by the end of the night she was showing it. Her eyes wouldn’t focus. Her body was all floppy, like someone had stolen her bones.”

  Freya frowned. “Why didn’t you stop her from drinking so much?” She was having a hard time imagining Clare flat-out drunk. She didn’t like to picture it, it clashed so much with the controlled woman she was starting to get to know.

  “Have you ever tried to stop a drunk from drinking? That wasn’t going to happen unless I physically removed her from the place, and I didn’t think it was my place to do that.”

  “She’s not a drunk. She can’t be.”

  “All I know is she was a drunk last night. It wasn’t pretty.”

  Freya was silent for a moment. She was afraid of the answer to her question. “Did she ask you to come home with her?”

  Ben drank down his coffee and looked at her. “She did. It was the worst invitation I’ve ever gotten. But I was worried about her. I drove her to her house and went in with her. She passed out right away. After she sang a rousing version of ‘If You Believe.’”

  Her heart sank at the news. “Did you leave then?”

  “No way. I didn’t want her to aspirate in her sleep. I got her into bed and lay next to her to make sure she was okay. Not much sleep, as I said.”

  The phone rang. Freya talked to the sheriff for a brief while and hung up. “We’re a go for tonight. He’s giving us three deputies.”

  “Great. How about six o’clock? It’ll be dark by then.”

  “Fine.” Freya couldn’t let go of the story Ben just told her. “Did you see Clare this morning?”

  Ben nodded. “I did. And did she ever look rough. Puked her guts out. But she was awake so I didn’t need to babysit her anymore.”

  “I wonder if she remembered what happened.”

  “I’m pretty certain she was in a blackout. She looked shocked to see me, as if I was a home invader. Then she looked embarrassed.”

  “Who wouldn’t be?” She turned the conversation back to the details of that night’s raid, but she had a hard time focusing. Should she be interested in someone with an alcohol problem? That was asking for trouble. Maybe this was rare and she was really a social drinker. Whatever the case, Clare had just become more of a mystery.

  Chapter Fourteen

  By Saturday morning Clare’s physical hangover was gone, but the emotional one clung like a barnacle. She made a grocery list and ran out to the Kroger, glad for something to do. While she shopped she thought more about how spectacularly bad Thursday night and Friday morning had been. The self-flagellation went on and on. This bad shit didn’t simply happen to her—she was responsible for getting drunk and sleeping with Ben and t
hen screwing up the motion the next morning. She couldn’t trust herself, and now that she knew booze was her nemesis, she swore off the stuff. Pills hadn’t gotten her into trouble. She’d stick with those.

  For all her disappointment at the dullness of living in Money Creek, she didn’t want to leave it. She was sick at the thought of losing her job, which she surely would if she screwed up a second time. She loved working with Elizabeth and she was getting good work to do, work that challenged her and gave her real responsibility. She loved her little house and cooking dinners and even cleaning the dishes and putting everything away in its proper place. She was getting to know Freya, who seemed way more interesting than anyone she’d met in a while. Then it occurred to her for the first time that Freya might have heard about her sleeping with Ben. They were partners, and partners told each other everything, didn’t they? What if she pulled away from her, repulsed by a sloppy drunk who dragged men home with her?

  As she got back in her car her phone pinged and she saw a text from Freya. Checking in to see how you’re feeling. Christ. Ben obviously told her. Why would she ask how she was feeling? How awkward would it be the next time they ran into each other, which was as sure a thing as any in a town as small as Money Creek? She didn’t reply to the text.

  She pulled into her driveway and saw her neighbor Sally in her front yard, bundled up and bent over, picking at some dead plants that were poking through the fresh snow. She hoped to avoid a conversation. Sally stood straight and watched her with her hands on her hips. She wore a bulky parka, a hat with flaps over the ears, and an enormous hand knit scarf. As soon as she was out of the car, Sally said, “You feeling okay? You were pretty sick the other day.”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “Because I saw you on Thursday night. Happened to look out my window when I saw a man helping you into the house.”

  “So, you’ve said.”

  Sally came closer to her and lowered her voice. “It looked like you were feeling pretty good, what with the singing and everything.”

  Clare was cringing on the inside but tried to appear unconcerned. “As I said, I’m feeling fine. I have to get these groceries in.” She turned her back on Sally and pulled a couple of paper bags out of the car. When she turned back, she was still there watching her. What a fucking busybody. How many people did she tell about Clare coming home with a man and singing her heart out at one in the morning? She unloaded the car and shut the front door of the house behind her. She could still feel Sally’s critical gaze upon her. How dare she judge her? She wanted to open the door and yell at her to mind her own business. This was the real drawback to small town life. No one in Chicago would tell a virtual stranger what they thought of their behavior. Here she was fair game. She put her groceries away and got ready to pick up Henry for the get-together with his friends. The good times kept on coming.