The Bitterest Pill

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  Suit shook his head. “He’s down in Boston, lobbying for highway funds. Mrs. Mackey was having trouble getting him on the phone until a few minutes ago.”

  “Talk to me, Suit.”

  “The kid’s in her bed—” Something caught in Suit’s throat. He might’ve been an ex–football star and a man to have on your side in a fight, but he was a gentle soul. That used to concern Jesse. Not anymore. He had taken a bullet in a gun battle with Mr. Peepers, and when the shit hit the fan at the old meetinghouse, Suit had walked back into the building to lead the people inside to safety. He’d done it knowing there was a good chance he would die in the process.

  “It’s okay, Suit.” Jesse patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll see for myself.”

  The Mackey house was at the foot of the Bluffs. It was a new-to-look-old Cape Cod–style home with a detached two-car garage and vinyl siding meant to look like overlapping cedar shingles. There was a bluestone path leading up to two granite steps and a welcoming red door. The red door didn’t feel very welcoming just then. Jesse let himself in, Suit trailing behind. The second he entered, he heard Patti Mackey’s robotic, disembodied voice. Jesse stopped to listen.

  Sue, yes, it’s about Heather . . . No, she’s not in some kind of trouble. She’s dead . . . You heard me right . . . I’m numb, Sue. I shouldn’t be, but I’m numb. Is something wrong with me?

  In Jesse’s experience, Patti’s denial and distance weren’t unusual. She was in a kind of self-protective shock, but it would wear off, and when it did . . . He had seen that dam break too many times for his liking. Once was too many. And there was no getting used to it. It was difficult to witness, so much so that he had always been glad not to be a parent. Now that layer of insulation had been stripped away. He followed Patti’s voice into the kitchen. Jesse had known the family for a long time and thought he should talk to Patti before going to see to Heather. It was a sad fact of his job that Heather was beyond his help.

  Patti was a gray-eyed beauty with fair, freckled skin and long auburn hair. She could have passed as Heather’s much older sister. She was placing the phone back in its cradle when Jesse reached the kitchen. She turned to him—eyes empty, face blank. The moment she saw him the walls came down and she crumbled into Jesse’s arms. The tears came in a rush, soaking Jesse’s uniform shirt. Her body clenched and every part of her shook. But it was the sobbing that haunted him. The shrieks coming out of her were feral, primeval. He knew it was moot to try and say something soothing, so he stroked her hair and waited for the first wave to subside. When it did, Jesse sat her down at the kitchen table and held her hand.

  “What happened, Patti?”

  But it was too soon. She couldn’t even form words.

  “Officer Simpson,” Jesse called for Suit.

  When Suit stepped into the kitchen, Jesse told him to sit with Patti and to get her anything she needed. As he left the kitchen he leaned over and whispered in Suit’s ear, “Just keep her out of the bedroom.”

  The ME was to the side of the bed, jotting notes down on a pad. Peter Perkins stopped what he was doing and held up a plastic evidence bag containing a syringe.

  “Found it at the side of the bed.”

  Jesse nodded, distracted. He was focused on the dead girl on the bed, dressed in a too-big Red Sox T-shirt. If not for the two other men present and the odors in the air that came with sudden death, Jesse might have been able to fool himself that the girl was simply in a deep sleep. He supposed she was, really, in the deepest of sleeps.

  The ME stopped his scribbling and turned to Jesse.

  “She’s been dead about two hours. No obvious signs of foul play. We’ll have to wait for the tox screen,” he said, “but it’s a heroin OD. I’d make book on it.”

  Jesse asked, “Was she a heavy user.”

  “I don’t think so. No track marks. Only one fresh puncture wound that I can see.” The ME took the girl’s left arm, turned it up, and pointed to the inner fold of her forearm. “See it?” He didn’t wait for Jesse to answer. “I’ll know more when I get her on the table. I’m done with her, if you want to have a look. I’ll send my crew in to bag her.” He looked back at the girl. “A shame.”

  Three

  A shame. Sometimes all it took were a few syllables to sum things up. But those two simple syllables were also woefully inadequate, because while they summed things up, they would also leave a thousand questions in their wake. The questions for Jesse and his department would be the easy ones: When did the girl start using? Who was her supplier? Could they catch him or her? Could they make a case against him or her? The questions for Heather’s parents would be the harder ones: How could we not have known? What didn’t we see? How had we failed her? And some of those questions, maybe all of them, would go forever unanswered. Jesse liked the Mackeys and hoped the questions wouldn’t tear Patti and Steve apart, but Jesse had seen the scenario play out a hundred times before. The parents would need someone to blame and, short on answers or with answers they didn’t like, they tended to blame each other.

  If there was anything that experience had taught Jesse about drug cases, it was that they didn’t happen in a vacuum. Where there was one case there would be others. It wasn’t a matter of if, but a matter of how many, how severe, and when. The tough thing was that to limit the damage, Jesse was going to have to ask some of those hard questions of the Mackeys, and he was going to have to do it sooner rather than later. Sooner being now.

  He found Patti Mackey in the kitchen, Suit standing silent guard over her. Jesse was glad for Suit being on hand. One of Suit Simpson’s remarkable qualities was that in spite of his size, he was almost always a comforting presence. People just felt at ease around him. The same could not be said of Jesse. He supposed he was a little softer around the edges these days, now that he was a father and he was no longer drinking, but there was something about his self-containment that didn’t allow people to feel the kind of comfort around him that they felt around Molly or Suit. He was okay with that. Those qualities helped make him good at his job. Still, there were times, especially times like these, when he wished he had the knack.

  Patti was no longer wailing. No, she sat at the kitchen table nearly as still as her daughter had been. Jesse had seen it before; the stages of initial shock play out in only a very few minutes. First the disbelief, then the flood of pain that came with the realization that your child was lost to you forever and that there would never be another unblemished day for the rest of your life, then the momentary self-imposed numbness. It wouldn’t last long. Her zombielike state certainly wouldn’t survive the ME’s guys toting the body bag down the stairs.

  “Patti,” Jesse said, “I’ve got to ask you some questions.”

  “What?” Her answer seemed to come from somewhere very far away. Her red-rimmed eyes unblinking. Her expression excruciatingly blank.

  Suit made to leave the room, but Jesse waved for him to stay, to sit at the table beside Patti Mackey. When Suit had taken a seat, Jesse began again.

  “Have you noticed anything strange about Heather’s behavior lately?”

  Patti blinked, fighting herself. “Different? No, not different. She just seemed a little more tired lately. Her stomach was giving her trouble, but she’s a—was a junior and, you know, looking at colleges and taking tests and all. Now, I don’t—”

  Jesse knew it was unkind, but he had to keep Patti in the moment and not let her drift into the dark place just yet.

  “Patti, Patti, come on. I need you to focus. So she was a little depressed and tense with all the junior-year stuff. Anything else? Was she keeping new company? Any new boyfriends? Girlfriends?”

  But it was no good. Patti still wasn’t ready. The strength she was using to hold it together was blocking her ability to think deeply or to feel anything. And then, when the front door opened and the ME’s men came in, one holding a folded body bag under his arm, Patti ex
ploded out of her chair and charged at them, clawing. “No! No! You leave her be. That’s her room. This is her house. You don’t touch her. You don’t touch her!”

  By then Suit had caught up to her and was holding her back, clamping his arms around her. She put up a hell of a struggle, and Jesse could see that Suit needed to exert some strength to hold Patti back. Even as Suit held her, Patti screamed and kicked at the air.

  “You leave my daughter be. You leave her be! You’re not going to put her in a plastic bag, not my girl, not my beautiful little girl.”

  But that was exactly what those men were going to do. They were going to place the body of Heather Mackey, cheerleader, popular high school junior, in a liquid-proof bag and pull a zipper up over her cooling, lifeless face. Then they were going to carry her down the stairs and out the front door, place her remains in the back of a van, and drive her to the morgue.

  Jesse nodded for Suit to take Patti Mackey into the living room.

  “You keep her there no matter what,” he said.

  Jesse watched the sad procession. The ME first, his men behind him, and Peter Perkins in the rear.

  “Chief,” the ME said as he passed, head down. “I will have the results for you as soon as I can, but the tox screen is going to take a while.”

  “Do what you can, Doc.”

  Peter Perkins stopped and stood in front of Jesse.

  “What is it, Peter?”

  “I heard an author interviewed on TV last week. He said we declared the war on drugs fifty years ago. We’ve spent a trillion dollars fighting it, but that drugs were cheaper, more available, and more potent now than ever before. Said that if that was victory, he’d hate to see defeat.”

  Jesse didn’t say anything to that. What was there to say?

  Four

  Jesse’s son, Cole, was sitting on the sofa, watching TV and drinking a beer. Cole and Jesse weren’t yet at the hugging, I-love-you-Dad-I-love-you-Son stage. It was unclear if they would ever get there. Still, there were moments when Jesse found himself staring at his son in awe. They didn’t look much alike, though Cole was tall, athletic, and sturdily built. Cole’s looks, as they say in the South, favored his mother. They shared more in terms of personality. Tonight it wasn’t awe in Jesse’s eyes, but fear. Fear, not for himself. It was the kind of fear he only ever experienced over people he cared for.

  “Hey,” Cole said, not turning away from the screen.

  “Hey, yourself.”

  “It’s kind of late for you to be coming back from a meeting. Did you go down to Boston?”

  “No meeting tonight. Work.”

  Cole finally looked away from the screen and at the face of the father he had known for only the last several months. Regardless of the short time, Cole had learned to read Jesse’s grudging expressions. He recognized some of them from the mirror.

  “Something bad, huh?”

  “Seventeen-year-old girl ODed.”

  Cole shook his head, sipped his beer. “Heroin?”

  “Yeah. What made you say that?”

  “Say what?”

  “Heroin.”

  Cole shrugged. “I don’t know. Was she a junkie?”

  Jesse shook his head. “The ME doesn’t think so. Why?”

  “Back home—I mean, before I left L.A.—there was a lot of that. Inexperienced users ODing. The cartels are cutting their shit with—”

  “Fentanyl,” Jesse said, finishing his son’s sentence.

  “Why do you do that, ask me a question you know the answer to?” Cole asked, angry.

  Angry was Cole’s default setting. He’d shown up in Paradise while Jesse was still in rehab, and everyone who’d crossed paths with him, before or since, couldn’t miss the massive chip on his shoulder. Although Cole had accepted the truth of what had happened between his mother, Celine, and Jesse all those years ago in L.A., he hadn’t been able to shed the resentment and sense of abandonment he’d harbored against his father. Given his struggles with alcohol, Jesse understood how that worked. As Dix said, “Recognition is the easy part. Just because you know the truth of things, it’s impossible to snap your fingers and make patterns of behavior disappear. Logic and reason are woeful in the face of deeply ingrained feelings.”

  “Sorry,” Jesse said. “I was thinking aloud.”

  “No problem.” Cole went back to the TV.

  Jesse stared at the beer in his son’s hand. Most nights, it didn’t bother Jesse. He had been sober for months now, and drinking had never been a social activity for him anyway. Oh, he drank socially. Drunks didn’t need much prompting. For Jesse, though, it was his drinking alone that did him in in the end. He had been around a lot of drinkers and lots of drinks since returning from rehab. It was hard at first, but easier all the time. And when sobriety got challenging, he’d just call Bill, his sponsor, and Bill would talk him down. Tonight, though, that beer looked pretty damn appealing.

  Cole noticed Jesse staring at the beer.

  “Sorry.”

  Before Jesse could stop him, Cole clicked off the TV, went into the kitchen, and poured the beer down the sink. They might not have worked everything out and they still tiptoed around each other, but Cole didn’t want Jesse to go back down the rabbit hole. He wasn’t sure what he wanted from Jesse. He wasn’t sure when he came to town and he wasn’t sure now. At least he had a better idea of what he didn’t want. He hadn’t come all the way across the country to watch alcohol destroy his father the same way cancer had destroyed his mother. Although Cole still lugged that chip around on his shoulder, he was smart enough to know that parent issues were more easily resolved with a living parent than with a dead one.

  Cole poured the rest of the six-pack down the sink as well.

  Jesse said, “Thanks.”

  “Whatever. I’m going to bed. Daisy’s got me in early tomorrow doing some prep work in the kitchen.”

  “You going to work there for the rest of your life?”

  Cole laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “You got me the job there. You embarrassed?”

  “Never.”

  Cole tried not to smile at that, but failed. “No, I’m not going to work there the rest of my life. Who knows, maybe I’ll become a cop.”

  Jesse knew Cole was trying to get a rise out of him. “Uh-huh” was all Jesse said to that. “Good night.”

  The beer might have been down the drain, but the smell of it hung in the air. Jesse filled the kitchen sink up with soap and water, then let it drain out. When that was done, he dialed Bill’s number and talked about why it was better to be sober. As they talked, Jesse kept picturing Heather Mackey’s lifeless body in her bed surrounded by her little-girl stuffed animals.

  Five

  Jesse’s first stop the next morning was at the high school, and his first stop at the school was the office of Principal Virginia Wester. His initial instinct had been to go back to Heather’s family to see if Selectman Mackey had anything to add to whatever little his wife had said the night before. But since the case wasn’t murder, at least not in the way he understood it, or an apparent suicide, Jesse figured to circle back to them in a day or two. Right now they would be caught in the throes of grief and in the midst of doing something no parent ever wants to do, let alone think of. People sometimes plan for their own deaths—buy plots, draw up wills, sign DNRs, choose readings, etc.—but he had never known anyone who planned for the death of a child. No, he would leave the Mackeys alone for the moment.

  Freda Bellows had been a fixture at Paradise High School for nearly forty years. In her time as a secretary to the principal, she’d seen five principals come and go. Freda, a thin, jovial woman, loved being around the kids and was the unofficial institutional memory of the school. A few years beyond retirement age, she had been granted special dispensation by the Board of Selectmen, allowing her to stay on until she decided she’d had enough. Th
at was one of the things Jesse liked about small-town life. In L.A. or Boston, exceptions were frowned upon. If you do it for one, you’ll have to do it for all, and you know how much that will cost. In a place like Paradise, exceptions weren’t seen as calamities but as kindnesses. Freda usually had a smile for everyone. Not today. Today she greeted Jesse with red eyes and choked-back sobs.

  “Oh my God, Jesse,” she said, a mascaraed tear running down her wrinkled cheek. “I can’t believe it. Heather was such a wonderful girl. Was it an overdose? They’re saying it was heroin. I can’t believe it. Was it heroin?”

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “I can’t talk about it, Freda.”

  “I’m sorry, Jesse. I understand. Would you like to see Principal Wester?”

  “I would.”

  “Go on in.”

  Virginia Wester was the new principal at Paradise High. Ten years Jesse’s junior, she was a handsome woman with dark blond hair, worn-penny eyes, and a perpetually stern look on her face. Smiles seemed to come at a premium for her. That was fine with Jesse. He wasn’t exactly a backslapping good-time Charlie himself. They had never exchanged much more than perfunctory hellos at town functions, but that was about to change.

  “Chief Stone,” Wester said, extending her hand as she came around the desk to greet him. “Sad day. Terrible day.”

  He shook her hand. “Jesse.”

  “Excuse me.” She was confused.

  “Please call me Jesse.”

  She didn’t know what to do with that. Should she smile and make a similar gesture or tell him that such informality made her uncomfortable. She opted for saying “Please, sit.”

  He sat.

  “Obviously, we’ve heard the news,” she said. “We would like to help any way we can, but unless I know what we’re—”

  “I usually can’t comment on an ongoing investigation, but if it will help you to help me . . . It looks like a heroin overdose. We don’t have the tox screen back yet, but we’re pretty sure.”