I nodded, catching every word. I was pretty sure I still had the suicide prevention stuff in my files from the other cases.
“I have some public service announcement stuff on this topic I can use in my copy,” I said. “But once we run it, it’s going to go all over, just like TJ’s story did. We can’t control what the other media outlets do.”
Sheriff Zeke sighed.
“I know.” He dropped his head. “Dammit! If TJ Okerson was standing here right now, I’d take a swing at him, hand to God. The Cobbs… I’ve never heard a human being make a sound like the one that came out of Tiffany Cobb when I showed up at her house tonight. Sydney stopped answering her phone a little after seven, she said.”
“They were having a party that early?” I looked up from my notes.
“It was dark. They’re upset.”
Huh. I glanced between Zeke and Lyle again, but they didn’t look like that was out of the ordinary. Damn.
So now this girl had killed herself because of what had happened to her boyfriend, who may or may not have killed himself? It was a shitty story all the way around.
“How old was Sydney?” I asked.
The sheriff reeled off all the vital statistics and I took them down while Lyle stood by with his tape recorder. When Zeke excused himself to check something for a young deputy, I turned to Lyle. “I went by your office today,” I said. “I wanted to introduce myself. I’m Nichelle.”
“I know who you are.” He shoved the tape recorder into his pocket and looked up at the underside of the bridge.
“Listen, the Okersons have a friend who works with me,” I said. “It wasn’t personal.”
He nodded. “Hard to take it any other way when you’ve covered every jaywalking ticket in a town like this for ten years. Then something like this happens and I don’t get the call.”
“I can certainly understand that. Y’all had great photos of the snapping turtle rodeo, by the way. And your story on TJ was good. The football coach didn’t talk to me.”
“Coach B will talk to anything in a skirt, but not seriously. We had a female photographer on our staff for exactly half of one football game. He told her women weren’t allowed on the sidelines, and she clocked him. She got fired.”
“And arrested?” I asked.
“Nope. Zeke said he deserved it, and coach didn’t want to admit it hurt bad enough for him to press charges.”
“See? I didn’t know to call him, and I might have punched him, too, so thanks for the heads up.”
He grunted a reply, eyes roaming around the scene.
I followed suit, standing in silence and hoping to overhear something useful.
“What a week,” Lyle finally said.
“Jesus, you can say that again,” I said. “I’ve spent more time in your town than in mine.”
“I’ve worked out here for a long time, ma’am.” Lyle leveled a gaze at me. “I’ve never seen anything like this. This is a great town. Good people. God fearing. Hard working. Two dead kids in two days? And these kids? TJ and Sydney were the goddamn homecoming king and queen, for chrissakes. This is going to hit these people hard. And Zeke is right: it could spread like brush fire. I wish y’all would all go home and just let it die with Sydney.”
I took a deep breath. “I can understand, and even sympathize. But you know as well as I do that that’s not going to happen. So what can we do to help, Lyle?”
He stared at the ambulance on the other side of the bridge embankment for a long minute. “I don’t know.”
I dug a card out of my bag and jotted my cell number on the back. “If you think of something, call me.”
He stuck it in his pocket, only half paying attention to me.
I pulled out my Blackberry to text Bob an update and sighed when I saw that it was almost ten. “I’m never going to get well,” I muttered, picking my way back toward my car.
Once out from under the shadows of the bridge, I spotted Zeke talking to his deputies up near the edge of the road. Passing a patrol car, I glanced into the open trunk and saw a box of bagged objects. Rocks, beer and Coke bottles, a crumpled piece of neon green paper, and assorted other teen party scene stuff. A mason jar crowned the pile. I paused, glancing toward the sheriff, who had his back turned. None of them were paying attention to me.
Stepping closer to the trunk, I ran the beam of my little pink flashlight over the jar. The label looked like it had come off an inkjet printer, the three x’s across it all faded in the middle.
In my years covering crime I’d seen dead people and drugs, interviewed murderers and prostitutes, and snuck into illegal gambling halls: but I’d never seen a jar of moonshine. Not the unregulated, not-sold-instores kind, anyway. Yet I was pretty sure I was looking at an empty one.
I fished my Blackberry out and snapped a quick photo of it, then stuffed the phone back into my bag.
“Find something interesting?” Zeke asked, waiting behind me with crossed arms when I turned. My face must have betrayed me, because he put up one hand before I could get a word out. “Wait. Do I want to know?”
“Is that a moonshine jar, sheriff?”
“It is.” He closed the trunk of the patrol car.
“You’re pretty cavalier about that for a cop.”
“Miss Clarke, moonshiners are Alcoholic Beverage Commission police business, not mine, first of all. Second of all, I have my hands full right now. I couldn’t hunt for a still if I wanted to.”
“Was there moonshine at the party the night TJ died?”
“There was. The kids drink it because it’s easy for them to get. Teenagers are the perfect target market for moonshiners, because they’re the ones who want booze and can’t buy it, which has always sort of been the whole point of moonshine, right?”
I shook my head. “And you’re really not doing anything about this?”
“I do when I catch them. The kids, that is. Underage drinking is against the law. But chasing moonshiners isn’t my jurisdiction.”
“Was Sydney drinking that tonight?”
“Very possibly,” he said. “That jar was found near her. I’ll run prints to be sure.”
“Where do they get it? Is it a local operation? I mean, I cover a lot of shit in Richmond, and I’ve never run across bonafide illegal moonshine.”
“I know of three stills on the island. When anyone drops by to check them out, they’re family heirlooms gathering dust. But I’m sure that’s not always the case.”
I nodded, seeing a phone call to the ABC police in my future. “Thanks again, Sheriff.” I pushed the button to unlock my car door and waved a good night. “I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”
Back home, I brewed a cup of coffee just after eleven, thanking my lucky stars I hadn’t passed a bored state trooper as I lead-footed it home from Tidewater. Bob had called me twice and I had a story to write before I could sleep. Two, actually. And no promise of rest for my Saturday, either. Settled on my couch with my laptop and a cup of Colombian Fair Trade, I stared at the screen.
“Two dead kids. Jealous baseball player guy. Moonshine. This is jacked up, Darcy.”
I had no pointed reason to suspect that Sydney’s death was anything other than exactly what it looked like. But something nagged. I started typing.
For the second time in as many days, a well-known teenager in Mathews County on the Virginia coast is dead.
Sydney Cobb was surrounded by friends Friday night, students toasting the short life of Mathews High quarterback TJ Okerson. Sydney was TJ’s longtime girlfriend, his mother told the Telegraph in an exclusive interview.
“She left a note,” Mathews County Sheriff Zeke Waters said as deputies around him scoured the rocky shoreline for evidence. Waters said Cobb’s note read, “It hurts.”
I pulled from my story on TJ to finish the piece, and sent it to Bob with a promise that the day two on TJ was coming. After some thought, I’d left out the moonshine jar. I didn’t want anyone else nosing around that until I had time to check
it out.
Pondering it, I clicked over to my Google tab and typed “moonshine.” The number of hits was staggering. I gathered from a scan of the pages that the Internet could teach me how to distill my own booze, and decided to look over that in the morning.
I dug out my notes from Coach Morris and wrote a day two on what a great kid TJ was, and how his parents didn’t pressure him, which I was more sure about after seeing Tony on ESPN earlier. He’d even said something about TJ being healed enough to salvage his career if that’s what he wanted to do. Which didn’t sound like a psycho-pushy-dad thing to say. Maybe I could head off some hateful commentaries by highlighting that.
By the time I emailed Bob the second story, my coffee was cold and I was past ready to crawl into bed. I hustled Darcy outside, trying to focus on something more pleasant than dead teenagers and grieving parents in the last few minutes before my head touched the pillows. A few hours before, I’d been looking forward to the dreams I might have after Joey’s surprise visit. By bedtime, I just hoped to keep them more chick lit than Stephen King.
7.
Digging for answers
Interesting quirk of Virginia law number three forty seven: all liquor stores are owned and operated by the state. Number three forty eight: the Alcoholic Beverage Commission has its own police department. With sworn peace officers and everything.
They’re about as chatty as most other cops with reporters they don’t know, too.
After the second guy in a row said “no comment” and hung up on me, I slammed my phone back into its cradle and jerked my tea cup off the desk with such force that it sloshed out all over a pile of press releases. Fabulous. I rooted through two drawers before I found a napkin, muttering every swearword I knew as I blotted my desktop.
“Tough day?” Parker’s voice came from behind me, and I jumped and whacked my knee on the underside of my desk.
“What in God’s name are you doing here on a Saturday?” I asked, spinning my chair to face him.
“I can’t just sit around my house,” he said. “Mel’s at some kind of city council workshop, and I was going stir crazy, watching all the shit about TJ and his girl on every station. So I thought I’d come see if I could help you. I dragged you into this, and you’ve been sick and all. What can I do?”
His green eyes looked pained.
I sighed. “I wish I had an assignment for you. Have you talked to the Okersons? How are they?”
“How you’d think. Ashton wouldn’t be functioning at all if she didn’t have the service to plan and the twins to take care of. Tony is going over every minute of the last week in his head a hundred times a day, trying to find what he missed. And now they’re upset about the girl, too. They adored her. Tony plays golf with her dad.”
I nodded. “It’s a suck situation, Parker. I’m sorry.”
“What the hell, Nichelle? I mean, really. I read your piece this morning. You talked to the coach. Did he say anything else?”
“Not really.”
He shook his head. “I just don’t get it.”
“That makes two of us. Hey—has Tony ever mentioned TJ having a drinking problem? Not normal teenage crap, but like an addiction? Hangovers? Excess? Moonshine?”
“Moonshine?” Parker laughed, but the smile faded when he caught the serious look on my face. “No. Why?”
“Look, I left this out of the story this morning because I want to look into it before it goes all over the TV, but there was an empty moonshine jar at the scene where the girl was found last night. I did some reading when I got here this morning, and it turns out alcohol isn’t the only kind of poisoning you can get from drinking it. There’s no way to know for sure what killed TJ or Sydney until the tox screen comes back, but I know good and well Sheriff Waters out there is assuming his case is closed while he waits for that report. I want to know where the kids are getting this stuff. I’m just not sure how to find out. I don’t have a contact at the ABC police.”
“Your guys at the PD must have one.”
“It’s Saturday. Aaron wasn’t in yet when I tried, but I’ll call him again in a bit and see if he’s willing to share one with me. I have a drug bust and a car-on-pedestrian crash to talk to him about, anyway. Keeping up with my regular job and covering crime in Mathews on top of being sick is even too much fun for me. This kind of blows, to be honest.”
“I imagine. How you feeling?”
“Better, I think. I’m on day two of antibiotics, and I had some magic soup for dinner last night. But I need some rest. Like, even just going home on time and getting in bed would be nice.”
“You’re dedicated. It’s part of what makes you good.”
“I might settle for mediocre and healthy this week.” I grinned. “No, I wouldn’t. I love it. And I want to help your friends.”
“Good luck. I’ll go hang out in my office and pretend to work, but if you come up with something I can do, holler. I’ll be around. Even if you want me to go on a coffee run.”
“Grant Parker is offering to run my errands? Cue the Twilight Zone theme.” I widened my eyes and glanced around.
He flashed a ghost of the famous grin that made women in twelve counties call for smelling salts. “Just trying to make it easy for you to do your thing.”
“I appreciate that, and I’m not one to look a gift coffee in the mouth, but listen: you did me a favor, too, Parker. This is a huge story with national exposure, and you insisted Bob give it to me.”
“I wish I hadn’t been in a position to do that.”
“I do, too.” I waved a stack of pink message slips. “I also wish I didn’t have thirty reporters to talk around this with. I should probably get to it.”
“Call me if you need me.” He disappeared in the direction of his office.
I sipped my tea and surveyed my desk. I picked up the first message slip. CNN.
“Here we go,” I said as I dialed the phone.
I made it through half the stack in an hour, politely saying as little as I could get away with, mostly describing the emotion in the Okerson house. After a particularly dogged woman from NBC sent me into a coughing fit (which was an excellent excuse to hang up), I took a break from giving interviews so I could conduct one.
“It’s Saturday. And you said you were sick,” Aaron barked when he picked up.
“I’m aware of that, and I am sick. Though more human today, I think. So far, anyhow.” I clicked out a pen. “I’m behind. This Okerson thing put together with the sinus infection is killing me. But I have a regular job to do, too.”
“Aw, nice of you to take a break from the glamour for me.”
“You know I love you best.”
He chuckled. “Which one do you want first?”
“The man versus car. What happened?”
“Guy was walking along the side of Patterson at close to eleven last night. Kid driving the car was sending a text. He mowed the pedestrian down and hit a tree. Knocked himself out. Phone was still in his hand when our guys got on the scene.”
“Holy shit, Aaron.” I blew out a breath. “Is everyone OK?”
“Driver was at St. Vincent’s overnight, but they expect him to make a full recovery.”
Thank God. “And the victim?”
“He wasn’t so lucky. Doctors said he bled out about an hour into surgery.”
I closed my eyes for a second before I scribbled that down. “Just walking down the street. And this kid did a stupid thing and gets to go the rest of his life knowing he killed someone. Jesus.”
“Right? If I were smart enough, I’d make a device that disabled the text feature on any cellphone inside a moving car. These are the most senseless things we see.”
“Amen to that.”
If there was one habit my job had made me positively phobic about, it was texting while driving. It caused several tragedies a month. I’d been known to snap at friends I was riding with when they reached for their phones.
“You want the drug bust, too?”
<
br /> “You know me too well. That’s the other one that caught my eye. Is Stevens around today, or are you giving up that info, too?”
“I saw him this morning,” Aaron said. “He’s got a lot of paperwork to go through. They’ve been working undercover in that club for eighteen months. I’ll put you through to him.”
I wished Aaron a happy weekend before he transferred me. The new narcotics sergeant relayed the details of a huge marijuana growing and trafficking ring operating out of a bar downtown. Almost a thousand plants, plus a literal truckload of ready-to-move product. I thanked Stevens and hung up before I realized I’d forgotten to ask Aaron about the ABC police. I hit redial.
“He wasn’t there?” He asked by way of a hello.
“No, he was. But I forgot that I meant to ask you something else. I need some information from the ABC police, and so far this morning I’ve been stonewalled twice, just calling random officers. Do you have any friends over there who might talk to me?”
“A couple, but I doubt they’re in today,” he said and then reeled off names and phone numbers. “Anything interesting you need them for?”
“Maybe. There’s something nagging the hell out of me about these dead kids in Mathews.”
“It’s because they’re kids,” he said. “I saw your piece this morning, and I’ve worked with you long enough to read between the lines. I know I don’t have to tell you how common copycat suicides are.”
“See, I thought so, too. And maybe you’re right. But since no one else seems to be looking at anything other than the obvious answer, I’m going to make damned sure of it before I let this go. Those children have parents who deserve to know what happened.”
“It’s a small town and this will be a sore subject for a long time,” he cautioned. “Just watch yourself. You can’t go accusing people of murder willy-nilly.”
“When have you ever known me to do anything willy-nilly?”
He was quiet.
“Yeah, don’t answer that. But I’m not pointing fingers. I’m just poking around. If you’re right and there’s nothing to it, I’m totally safe, right?”
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