The Long Dark January: A Nadine Kelso Mystery

by A. S. Andrews

  Chief of Police Jennifer Eng expressed her condolences, and said “a full investigation of the circumstances is underway,” but that accidental CO poisoning was “likely” the cause. “With the power off and on these last few weeks, we’re seeing more use of generators,” said Eng, 42. “That definitely raises the risks.”

  Carbon Monoxide is odorless and colorless. Symptoms include dizziness, nausea, and headaches. In many cases, death can occur before symptoms can manifest.

  The Center for Disease Control and Prevention warns that generators should never be used in confined spaces where CO cannot be properly ventilated. Chief Eng reminds home owners to install and regularly maintain carbon monoxide detectors.

  Nadine Kelso could picture the chaos, the raised emotions. Castle Rock, so Google told her, had a population of under 2000. You take a small town, add in the winter holidays and inclement weather, then a tragedy involving a family—well, you could expect a storm of sentimentality, confusion, and all the other factors that made death investigation so damn trying.

  She’d talked briefly with the Chief of Police on the phone. Jennifer Eng sounded competent, obviously worn down by the last few days. Teddy had said she was a good officer.

  “Her old man was on the job. Gavin Eng. Little before your time, I guess. Stand-up guy. The daughter’s not as old-school, but she’s smart, and no pushover. You can work with her.”

  Nadine had taken Teddy’s meaning: you will work with her, and follow her lead. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too arduous.

  If she ever got there.

  Two and half hours and she was just now clearing Olympia. Nadine had visions of the apocalypse, the I-5 laid waste, along with whoever caused the accident that had a thousand cars at a standstill. Ahead she saw a sign, Max Speed 120. No worry of that any time soon.

  Bored, she dialed her mother, put the call through the Pilot’s Bluetooth. Waiting as it rang, as her mother fumbled with the receiver. She’d never quite adapted once the rotary had been taken out of her home.

  “Nadine, so good to hear from you!” Her voice melted forty years from her daughter’s personality.

  “How’s it going, Ma?”

  “I was just putting soup on. The tomato you like from Trader Joe’s. Are you thinking of swinging by?”

  “Wish I was.” Nadine switched lanes, cursing silently when the line she’d just left began to move. “Right now I’m stuck on the I-5.”

  “On a big case?”

  “More of a favor, I guess.”

  “A favor,” her mother said.

  “I’m consulting on a case which is probably accidental. Teddy, my former supervisor, knows the town chief.”

  Her mother drew breath across her teeth. “That poor couple in Castle Rock.”

  Nadine didn’t ask how she knew. Her mother was one of the most well-informed people in Washington State. Especially when it came to tragic news.

  The car rolled forward—finally—and traffic began to pick up. “You’re keeping yourself okay, Ma?”

  There was no answer, and Nadine thought she’d lost contact. Then her mother shrieked, “Oh—oh, drat.”

  Panic. She wondered if she should pull over. “What’s going on, Ma?”

  A clatter of dishes on the other end of the line. “Nothing. Just a little accident with the soup. Drat drat drat.”

  “Ma?”

  And then four minutes of radio silence.

  At seventy-seven, Martha Kelso was still active, strong, and in control. At least she gave off that impression to her daughter. Lately, though, Nadine had begun to pick up on little things that made her wonder if her mother didn’t need more help. More than a nursing student coming in twice a week to vacuum.

  You could only do so much from a distance.

  Nadine took the exit towards Castle Rock. She passed what looked like a ruined church. Then another, in better shape. Two churches and zero people so far. She dialed her mother again.

  “Ma. What happened there?”

  “Nadine, so good to hear from you!” That same exuberance in her voice.

  Almost like she hadn’t just called.

  It turned out the soup had boiled over. She’d taken the pot off to clean it, laying the plastic ladle on a burner she thought was off. Now the left half of the stove was covered in melted plastic. She coughed through her explanation. In the background Nadine could hear the whirl of the range fan on full blast. Anyone could make a mistake like that, right?

  Nadine approached the main thoroughfare of the town, scanning for the police station. Main Street proper was only a few blocks long: café, gas station, a couple of antique stores whose entrances were still barricaded with snow. It reminded Nadine of the town from the first Rambo movie. Hope. Though that name might prove ironic.

  “I gotta go, Ma,” she said. “You’ll be all right? You’ve got the windows open?”

  “I’m fine, Nay. You go do what you have to.”

  “Call Jimmy if you need anything.” Nadine’s ex-husband owned a restaurant in Belltown, five minutes from her mother’s house. They were still friendly, and her mother dined at Jimmy’s at least once a month.

  Nadine wanted to ask if her mother was okay. But the older woman had already hung up.

  She spotted the police station, a flat building of cream-colored brick, and turned into the parking lot.

  Back to work, she thought. Here goes.

  Chapter 5

  Chief Eng’s office was in the far corner of the station, with a glass partition separating her workspace from the administration desk, the booking area, and the locked stairwell leading to the holding cells. She’d decorated her walls with photos of her parents, her husband, and a little boy of seven or eight. Files and envelopes and empty Tupperware covered Eng’s desk. It would be a pleasant room under more pleasant circumstances.

  The last few days had taken their toll on Jennifer Eng. She sat behind her desk with her chair tilted against the radiator, submerging her tea bag in a travel mug, then reeling it up. The mug proclaimed her as a WORLD CLASS MUM. Eng was stocky and short-limbed, what Nadine thought of as a rugby player’s physique. Dark circles under her eyes, a lived-in look to her beige uniform.

  “Thanks for coming,” she told Nadine. “Deputy Commissioner Fowler said you have a lot of experience with this kind of thing. Death.”

  Nadine eased herself into the spare chair in the room. The drive had done no favors for her back.

  “I have a bit, yes. I worked in Major Crimes for eight years. Internal Complaints for the last two.”

  “And right now?”

  “Right now I’m between jobs.”

  Chief Eng waited for her to add to that, but they’d just met, and Nadine wasn’t here to recite her life story. The chief let the tea bag drop into her wastebasket, landing on a mound of papers with a wet plap.

  “Just to be clear, Lieutenant,” she said.

  “I’m a civilian consultant,” Nadine said. “Not an officer anymore.”

  “Ms. Kelso,” the chief said. “Just to be clear, any mistakes, any wrongdoing, are entirely on me. I was the first on scene.”

  Nadine felt a tension growing. It happened sometimes when cops learned she’d worked for Complaints. Even good cops, men and women who’d never think of taking a bribe or fitting up a suspect, grew wary around the ‘rat squad.’ A natural antagonism, a distance. After two years, she still wasn’t used to it. But then maybe the chief was just being protective of her officers.

  “All Teddy—Deputy Commissioner Fowler—told me was that you had some unanswered questions regarding the Gordons, and that you’d appreciate a second look. I’m not here to assign blame. Just to observe.”

  “You’re welcome to see whatever you need,” Chief Eng said. “Talk to whomever. And call me Jen.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  The chief took a file folder from the inbox on her desk and slid it across to her. Then opened a bottom drawer, drew out something plastic-bagged and beige. A Saf-T brand ca
rbon monoxide detector.

  “Are you anything other than a technological dunce?” Jen said.

  “Hmmm?”

  “Because I am not. I had to have Bill explain this thing to me.” She stood and motioned to someone through the glass wall at Nadine’s back.

  A moment later a thirtyish man walked in, his lengthy black hair in a braid. His uniform looked only slightly fresher than Jen’s.

  “Officer Bill Coker,” Jen said by way of introduction. “This is Ms. Kelso.”

  “Nadine.”

  “Pleased.”

  “Bill, can you explain to her what’s wrong with this thing?”

  Bill took the bag from her and opened it, slid out the detector. The screws had already been loosened, and he eased them out of their sockets, exposing the circuit below.

  “This is a cheap one, and a billion years old,” he said. “That said, from the outside it looks to be in working order. The green light is on. See?”

  “Faulty?” Nadine asked, envisioning some relative of the Gordons, the brother, maybe, suing the Saf-T Company for millions.

  “Sabotaged,” Bill said.

  He took Nadine through how the detector worked. The electrochemical sensor used electrodes submerged in a chemical solution, which became more conductive as CO levels rose. The machines were more sophisticated than Nadine realized—the speed they would set off depended on the concentration. At a level of 400 particles per millom, the alarm would sound in a few minutes. With a less lethal but steady dose, like 70 ppm, it would take an hour.

  “Got it?” Bill said.

  “Sure.”

  “So you’ve got the battery sending current to the sensor, which if set off, sends current to the alarm. When the battery starts to wear out, you get the chirping sound every minute—replace me, the thing is saying.”

  Nadine nodded, hoping there wouldn’t be a test.

  “Now let’s take our model here. While the house was flooding, the detector was doing what it was supposed to. The CO levels rose and the sensing chamber caught it—that’s this black square guy here. But—“ here Coker tapped the cylindrical metal tube next to the sensing chamber—“the alarm wasn’t sounding. The circuit registered as complete, but it didn’t make a sound.”

  “And that has to be sabotage?” Nadine asked.

  “Has to be. These things are made to strict specifications, tested before they leave the factory. Sure, you might get a faulty sensor. But a faulty alarm? That’s the easiest thing to test. It’s not likely.”

  “But possible,” Nadine said.

  Bill Coker shrugged. “I mean, it’s not impossible. But say the Gordons have had this for a few years, and from the looks of it they have. Average battery life in these suckers is twenty months. That means they’ve swapped out batteries at least once. Which also means it had to have chirped to alert them to the fact the batteries were failing. Plus, when they power on, they usually chirp a few times to signal they’re okay. You’ve got one of these that’s never chirped, and you’ve never questioned was it working? Hard to believe.”

  “When was the last time you checked your own?” Nadine asked.

  “The day after I learned about the Gordons.”

  “But before then.”

  Bill Coker nodded, conceding the point.

  “It’s not definitive,” Jen admitted. “But then there’s the generator.”

  She opened the file and placed a picture in the center of the desk, showing the backyard of the Gordon house. The concrete slab, the generator plugged in near the outlet. Another photo, this one showing the generator close up.

  “Susan and Andrew weren’t stupid or careless,” Jen said. “The generator looks new. They’d know the dangers of CO poisoning, and if there was any fault with their detector, they’d’ve noticed.”

  Nadine had seen seemingly smart people behave in ways both mysterious and colossally moronic. A man who’d steered towards a three-car collision, joining his vehicle to the wreckage as two highway officers looked on. Or a woman who’d opened her apartment door for the teen who’d mugged her in the laundry room just an hour before. No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, the saying went. Nadine amended it to, no investigator hurt their chances of solving a case by keeping in mind that, at times, very smart people could act pretty damn dumb.

  “The generator was on when Gary Gordon arrived?” Nadine asked.

  “He shut it off. At least that’s what he told me.”

  Nadine peered at the picture. There was a closed window above and to the right of the generator. A sliding door to the immediate left. “These were both open?” she asked.

  “The door was unlocked, according to Gary.”

  “Unlocked but not open?”

  “He doesn’t remember. It was open when I arrived.”

  “How long could this model run on a full tank of gas?” Nadine asked. “Eight hours?”

  “About that, yes. There was maybe a third of a tank left when I checked. So we can assume it was turned on sometime between four a.m. and when Gary arrived around nine.”

  “Maybe,” Nadine said.

  “Something wrong with that calculation?” Jen folded her hands in front of her on the desk. “If you think we’ve made a mistake somewhere.”

  “You’re assuming on January 1st the Gordons started with a full tank of fuel. Or that they didn’t top it off at some point.”

  Jen shrugged. “Then we’re back at zero,” she said. “Unless you have some brilliant theory to dazzle us with.”

  Nadine sympathized with the chief. No one liked to be told they were off base. Herself least of all. In Jennifer Eng’s place she would have gotten much more defensive.

  “Let’s get something clear between us,” Nadine said. “I’m only here to consult. Not to scold you or pat you on the back. I start with the cold, simple fact that some people are dead, and we owe it to them to cover every angle. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Jen said.

  “Good. Then let’s start by taking a look at the house.”

  Chapter 6

  Nadine left the Pilot in the parking lot of the station and rode with the chief in her prowler. Jen handled the old Ford patrol car with the tact and patience appropriate for a willful child. Once the motor had run for a minute and the interior was comfortably warm, she rolled out of the lot.

  “I check mine every year,” Jen said, as they turned onto Main.

  “Hmm?”

  “My CO detector. Every Labor Day.”

  “Good for you,” Nadine said.

  “The Gordons seemed like responsible folks. They knew the dangers this time of year. I believe they would have checked. Especially with the temperature dropping, the snow and wind.”

  These late eclipses of the sun and moon, Nadine thought. “Were the technicians able to fingerprint the detector?” she asked.

  Jen nodded. “None but Andrew’s and mine.”

  “Were the Gordons religious?”

  “I don’t know them all that well. I mean I didn’t,” she amended.

  “When you talked with their friends and neighbors, they saw the Gordons as pretty happy?”

  “Not without their problems, like any couple,” Jen said. “I know what you’re hinting at. You think it’s possible one of them did this on purpose?”

  “It’s always possible,” Nadine said. “A few years ago there was a case, a family in Seattle. The husband owned one of those start-up tech companies. Turned out he’d gotten overextended, made several bad investments, and lost most of his personal fortune. Rather than face that, he flooded his penthouse with natural gas. Locked his kids’ door. Left a note on the fridge saying how sorry he was.”

  “I can’t see Andrew doing that,” Jen said. “Or Susan, either.”

  “Poke around in their finances. Things might seem different.”

  “Most people around here aren’t exactly well-off,” Jen said.

  A fair point. Nadine had done some cursor
y research in preparation for her visit. Castle Rock had a median household income of $34,000, compared to $53,000 for the national average. The population was on the younger side. Violent crime was low. Property crime higher than average. Three inches of snow a year. 61 inches of rain.

  Jen turned down a side street of one-story houses, the snow along the shoulder well-trafficked and mostly slush. The Gordon house was indistinguishable from its neighbors, except for the police cordon tape across the door.

  The chief parked in the driveway, next to Susan Gordon’s Jeep. Patches of grass shone through the white lawn.

  “Where do you want to start?” she asked, but Nadine was already moving around the side. Past the garage, to the back of the house.

  The entirety of the back yard was marked with criss-crossing footprints in the snow, most concentrated near the edge of the house, though several paths led back to the gate. Beyond that Nadine could see an empty lot which bordered on forest. Pale birch trees and leafy Douglas fir, dead brambles and laurel bushes weighted with snow.

  The generator had been taken as evidence. A square drawn in blue chalk on the concrete marked where it had been. Nadine inspected the windows, double glazed, locked from inside. Jen stepped out through the sliding door to join her.

  “This was closed up?” Nadine asked, nodding at the windows.

  “When Gary got here, yes. The fire department opened them when they arrived. The sliding door was unlocked, according to Gary. That’s how he got in.”

  “And he walked over the footprints leading out to the gate.”

  “We all did,” Jen said. It was a point she’d confessed to Nadine’s boss, to sell Teddy on the idea of sending someone to help. Not her fault, of course; by the time everyone had tramped through, there was little for her to protect.

  “Let’s start with the obvious question,” Nadine said. “Where did the fumes get in?”

  “The fire marshall told me if the door was open a crack, even at that distance, some carbon monoxide could filter into the house. If there are structural issues, vents. It could be several places.”