by M. P. Cooley
“Which you’re incredibly bad at, being from Minnesota.”
“Very true. Anyway, I was all set to do the cowardly thing when I remembered I’d left the keys to both my car and my apartment here. I had to man up and face you.”
“And here we are.” I pulled him to me, wanting him closer. “I love you, you know?”
“I didn’t know.” Kevin went from being pulled into my arms to pushing forward and kissing me, the heat of his body warming me from the inside out.
A BURST OF COLD air broke my reverie as Hale got into the car. There were tears in my eyes. Grief wasn’t my whole life, but it could still sneak up on me, leaving me demolished. I didn’t know if the tears were because I was thinking of the time when I had Kevin and good work or just plain old exhaustion. I was prepared to play it off with a lie about the vents, but Hale didn’t even notice: he climbed in, pushed the driver’s seat back to accommodate his long legs, and slammed the door hard.
“Hey now, sleeping already?” Hale said. “Was that on the schedule?” I stared ahead at the approaching minivan, ignoring him. The vehicle slowed and the window rolled down, revealing Denise and Jason Byrne.
“Oh, hello there!” Denise called, cheerful in a way that could only be caffeine induced. “June—Officer Lyons—I’m sorry, my son and I had to go into the pharmacy. We waited as long as we could, but people need their medications and, well, making them wait could be inconsiderate. Inconsiderate and dangerous, you know, the ones who depend on us.”
“We had a development in the case,” I yelled across Hale.
“Did you arrest that poor girl’s killer?”
Jason popped forward at this, waiting eagerly for my response.
“No. But we’re working hard on it.” Jason slumped back. Relieved or disappointed?
I thought through our schedule. Marty’s was our next stop, and I wanted to take my time with him, if I could. Hale’s people were already on their way to the Jelicksons’ house to find any “evidence missed on the first go-through”—their words—and I figured that we would need two or three hours. I proposed that we stop by the pharmacy at noon.
Denise agreed. “Oh, and before I forget, I made these for you.” She got out of the car, a tinfoil package in her hands. “Cranberry orange muffins. Lord knows I don’t need them—gotta keep to my training weight.” She laughed, patted a nonexistent roll of fat, and shoved the baked goods in the window.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Hale said, pinned against his seat by Denise. “These’ll keep us going.”
“Glad to be of help, Mister . . .?” Denise smiled at him expectantly. From this angle I could see a missing molar, marring her sweet smile.
“Agent Bascom, ma’am.”
“Agent Bascom. I’m glad to help the investigation in any way I can.” Denise walked back to her car, her step brisk and light despite the snow on the ground and her thick-soled utility boots. She and Jason sped off, her car skidding toward the shoulder before she did the smart thing and slowed down.
Hale put the car in drive. My ten-year-old Saturn lacked high-performance steering, and he had to pull the wheel hard to make the U-turn.
“Well, she sure is nice,” Hale said.
“She really is. I hope we didn’t inconvenience her too much.”
“Who cares? You managed to unearth a meth lab. A meth superlab. A meth superlab being run out of a congresswoman’s house.” Hale didn’t take his eyes off the road. He shook his head in disbelief. “I would’ve never believed it. And based on all the crystals we found dumped in the barrels, active for quite a few months.”
I thought back to the ranches where noxious fumes seeped through the smell of soybeans and manure. “Those bubbling twenty-twos could produce a huge amount of meth, in the hundreds of thousands of hits.”
“Who was cooking?” Hale asked.
I puzzled. Marty? Danielle? Jason? Craig?
“Ray,” I said finally. “Or maybe Marty.”
“Or both. Maybe their kin hoped to open a new branch of the Abominations’ business.”
“But someone was distributing it. Who?”
Hale drove, one hand on the wheel, the other resting against his neck. Lying, I thought. Before I could call him on it his phone rang.
“Hello,” he said as he skidded to the side of the road, the car jerking forward as he put it in park. “Yes. Yes. Estimated time? Good. Update me once you’re in. Yes, good.”
Hale explained that the weather had done us in again. “They can’t get down to the Jelicksons’. Can’t get within five blocks, what with the snow. Want me to drop you home?”
“Well, we know where to find the Byrnes. Want to swing by the pharmacy?”
“You could catch a nap. You need it.”
“I need to solve this case, and honestly, I won’t sleep. Let’s go now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A couple of salt spreaders rumbled by, dropping rock salt on the layer of ice missed by the plows’ blades. Hale swerved out of the way of an arc of snow, a man with a blower giving back what a plow had pushed into his driveway. Up ahead I saw ninety-year-old Mrs. Primeau attacking her stairs with her great-grandson’s kiddy shovel. It was just her size, and she had two of three steps done.
On a day like today, I wished I could be home with Lucy. By this time during the last snow day she had become bored and started to melt her crayons near the fireplace—she didn’t enjoy it as much when she and I had to chip off the wax disks that dotted the bricks—but still, it would be more fun than this.
“So, you seem settled in here,” Hale said. “And you seem happy. With your family, which makes sense. But if I’m not mistaken, you’re enjoying the work, too.”
I stifled a laugh. If Hale knew that my work consisted of doing endless patrols during the crappy shifts and leading safety lectures in schools, he wouldn’t say that.
“Considering your ambition way back when, June, I’m having a hard time matching you up with the girl I knew at the academy.”
“Hale, we haven’t been close in ten years. We haven’t seen each other at all in eight. Do you think I’m the same person?” I turned to face him, confront him, but his eyes remained glued to the road. “We’re developing a good working relationship, a relationship that’s helping us solve this case, but I don’t want to have a personal conversation with you. Unless we discuss the case, let’s not talk. At all.”
CHAPTER 11
HALSTON STREET WAS PLOWED, which was surprising—usually side streets weren’t cleared until the next day. One of the snowplow drivers must have a girlfriend on this block. Denise Byrne, who was piling garbage bags and empty boxes in the alley at the store’s rear, did a double take as we slid past. Up in front, Jason didn’t notice us. Headphones in ears that were red from cold, a cord leading down to the pocket of a fleece-lined jean jacket, he was shoveling the front walk, flipping snow to the beat of some tune only he could hear. He seemed to be enjoying his time in his own world.
“June?” Denise called, moving quickly to meet us. She was wearing an HFHS ALL-STAR BASKETBALL GAME sweatshirt, the hood pulled up and her thumbs poking through holes in the wristband. “June, we weren’t expecting you for another three hours and I’m afraid you caught us when we’re a little behind. We have customers coming, and we have to clear the walk and the trash, and I have a number of prescriptions I need to fill.”
“Very sorry, Mrs. Byrne, we had a change in plans,” Hale said.
“But we’d be happy to conduct the interviews with you while you prepare for your day,” I said. Denise’s teeth chattered, her thin lips blue. “Or at least while you go inside and warm up.”
Jeff Polito sauntered up the block, slowing as he saw us.
“Can I pick up my prescription, Mrs. Byrne?” he asked.
Denise looked at me. “Would it be okay if I took care of Jeff first? If it’s a problem, I guess he could take some aspirin and come back in an hour.”
I recognized Jeff from way back. He drove t
rucks these days, but in high school he was “that guy”—the man in his midtwenties who would let kids come to his house and party. The kids always found one person like that, and Jeff was less creepy than most, although that wouldn’t have prevented my father from running Jeff out of town if Dad had found out. Jeff would go to the beverage center with our pooled money and buy beer and my favorite, wine coolers. His only requirement was a twelve-pack for himself, but since he drank Genny Cream Ale, this was no great hardship. He seemed hopelessly cool at the time, with his own apartment and all the free pizza he could bring home from his delivery job.
“June!” He grinned at me. “How’s your dad?”
“He’s good, he’s home with Lucy today. You okay?”
He held up his arm. “Old injury—arm got caught in the rig. Acts up in this weather. It’s not an emergency or anything. . . .”
“That sounds terrible,” I said, seeing my chance to get Jason alone. “If you’re putting the prescription together now, Denise, we can start with Jason. We can talk to him while he works.”
“Or even help out,” added Hale.
Denise marched toward the front, and with her basketball player legs she quickly outpaced Jeff, Hale, and me. She tapped Jason on the shoulder as she passed, and he scrambled to pull out his earbuds, nodding at everything his mother said. Then he jogged toward us, suggesting we join him in the alley while he took care of the garbage.
“So . . . Danielle,” I said. “You guys dated, right?”
“Yeah, back when we were in high school,” he said, as if it were a million years ago instead of three. Jason slashed through the tape on the boxes using an X-Acto knife and collapsed the cardboard in on itself, throwing it in the recycling bin, which stood next to the most pristine Dumpster I had ever seen.
“Emma Willard?” Hale asked.
Jason snickered. “No. Not Emma Willard. That’s for girls, and superexpensive. We attended Catholic Central over in Troy. We took the bus together. Well, at least until my dad gave me his car.”
I asked Jason to describe Danielle. He stopped working and gave it some thought. “She was nice.”
This was like pulling teeth, but I didn’t take it personally: young men weren’t known for their eloquence.
“She was funny, you know, she’d say anything to anyone. Even the teachers. And she dressed cool, which is hard in a school uniform. Her penny loafers had the chunkiest heel I ever saw.” He leaned over to pick up another box. I recognized the brand as a shower chair Kevin had used. The pharmacy probably stocked a full set of products that catered to Hopewell Falls’s aging population: adjustable beds, walkers, and hospital supplies.
“And she didn’t mind that I was quiet, quieter than her, because she said I let her do all the talking.”
I smiled. I knew several long-lasting marriages that were based on the fact that one person liked to talk and the other liked to listen, or rather, liked talking less.
“Was she out of control, a little crazy?” Hale asked.
Jason dropped his X-Acto. “What?”
“You know. Hot.” Hale picked up the knife and handed it to Jason. “When you guys got it on.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that about her. We were kids. We just hung out. That’s all.” Jason shoved the cardboard into the recycling bin so loudly it echoed. I thought he was going to use the box cutter on Hale if I didn’t step in, so I picked a nice neutral topic: her interests.
“She liked movies a lot. She said she was going to go out to Hollywood and be an actress, which is why she picked UCLA.” Jason stopped, flipping the safety on the box cutter and putting it in his pocket. “That’s what got us talking. She never saw any of the old movies, like from the seventies, so I showed her those.” From behind Jason, Hale raised an eyebrow. “She really liked Bonnie and Clyde, and cried a bunch at the end. Her dad only let her come over to my house when my parents were home, and when the movie finished she had to go right home.”
“And you stayed in touch?” I asked.
“I saw her Facebook updates, all the fun in L.A. But we didn’t talk or e-mail.” He paused. “And we didn’t date after high school.”
Jason didn’t seem like the type to speak ill of the dead, so I asked the next question gently. “Did she ever do anything you didn’t like so much?”
“Well . . . ,” and Jason seemed to strain under the effort of saying something not so nice, “she sometimes drove too fast and played her music too loud.” I stifled a smile remembering my little drive from two nights ago. He furrowed his brow. “She would mouth off to people if they told her what to do. That was maybe a bad idea ’cause she got thrown out of a couple of high schools. And maybe college? I’m not sure what really happened there. Craig said she ran off with Marty and her dad disowned her, but she said she got bored of college, which I can’t understand. I mean, I love college.”
“Are you in college now, Jason?” I asked.
He paused, picking up another box and breaking it down; he had three left. “Pharmacy school. I was supposed to start the DPharm program last month—”
“The what?” I asked.
“Doctor of Pharmacy program. I took twenty credits a semester and finished undergrad early but . . . with my dad? Things are tight right now. Plus, my mom thinks if I take a couple of months off she can talk me into going to medical school.” He shoved the box into the Dumpster with a clang. “That’s not happening. Anyway, I guess that’s another thing that wasn’t so great about Danielle. Her folks, they just gave her stuff, and she didn’t seem to care. She would throw away the things they gave her, things other people would kill for.”
He was on a roll: “I thought she changed out in L.A.—grew up?—but she wrecked college, too. And she wasn’t a very good employee here, promising to work hard and then not caring. It’s like if you’re nice to her, she doesn’t try to live up to her side, like she wants to punish you for trusting her. My mom said she couldn’t afford to pay for someone, especially someone who was unreliable, and”—he gestured to the alley, the Dumpsters, the snowdrifts—“here I am.”
“How about Marty?” I asked. “You guys seemed like good friends.”
He put the last box in the bin, and shut and locked it, testing the top to make sure it was secure. “He’d be parked out here, waiting to pick her up after work—she hated the cold, and he tried to make sure she didn’t have to spend even a minute outside. The two of them, they were like movie stars, like Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, and I”—he shrugged—“well, I’m not. So I was surprised when he invited me over for dinner. He was a cool guy, you know, he’d read Charles Bukowski’s poetry. And he always, always watched her when she bounced around, and he always listened to what she said, and got mad if she ‘played the dumb blonde.’ And he gave her books to read, like Jack Kerouac and Chuck Palahniuk.” A blast of cold air seemed to take Jason’s breath away. “She didn’t read them, so I borrowed them.”
“Do any drugs, Jason?” Hale asked.
“What?!” Jason watched the pharmacy’s back door. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I touched Jason’s arm, petting him like frightened animal. “What Agent Bascom meant to ask was whether drugs were around.”
“Well, sometimes pot,” Jason blurted softly. “I didn’t smoke any. Neither did Marty. Sometimes Dani did, but only outside. Marty hates drugs.” He spoke low and quickly, keeping his eye on the back door. “I think his brother, you know, Ray? He smoked it with her sometimes.”
“What’d you think of Ray?” I asked.
“He is really juvenile.” I stifled my smile at a twenty-one-year-old boy calling a seventeen-year-old juvenile, but he had a point: with his familial and financial responsibilities, Jason was mature beyond his years. “Ray would be around a lot, when me and Marty hung out. Marty said he and Danielle were trying to be real parents to Ray. I guess Marty’s family isn’t so great. Marty was making sure Ray didn’t get into trouble—he was strict, but said Ray needed a fir
m hand. Danielle was helping Ray study for the GED. Danielle got a GED, you know. She never graduated from high school.” Jason took a deep breath. “But Ray, he was okay, I guess.”
“So you won’t be too broken up to hear he got killed,” Hale said.
Jason appraised Hale. “No way. You’re lying.”
“Jason, we’re not,” I said, impressed that he had caught on to Hale’s shock tactics. Jason’s pale eyebrows shot up in surprise, visible only because his face was red with cold. “That’s why we were over at the Brouillettes’. We found his body on their property.”
“God. Does Marty know? I wouldn’t have said those things if I’d . . . God. Poor Ray.”
I tapped at my notebook. “Can you tell us where you were last night from eight until midnight? We need to know for our records.”
The back door swung open, and Denise Byrne dragged out two huge garbage bags and placed them next to the pile she had brought out earlier. Hale gallantly reached over to pick one up and stumbled; they were heavier than they looked.
“You can leave that for Jason, Agent Bascom.” Denise looked from me to Jason. “You almost done out here?”
“I have to do the plastic and glass, Mom, and after I can finish the trash.”
“No, I meant the detectives.” Denise waved her finger between Jason and me. I felt scolded.
“A few more questions,” I said. “Jason, last night?”
“June, I think I misunderstood this discussion.” She walked down the steps until she was at ground level, although she still towered over me. “I thought this was just an interview, but you’re talking to my son like he is a suspect.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Jason said. “It’s okay. Last night, I watched some videos with my dad. There was a storm, you know?”
“I don’t know why you two needed to watch Star Wars again. After four hundred watchings you must know all the lines by heart,” Denise said, smiling fondly. “You know, I hate to be a pain, June, but we should have our discussion right now, while I have the time.”