Chapter 3
Savvy
Dammit.
Frustrated, I toss the container of concealer I bought on a whim years ago, and used only once, in the trash bin. Then I wash off the pathetic attempt at trying to cover up the bruise on my face. I only made it look worse than it already does.
Damn Ben Rogers for leaving us no option but to take him down by force yesterday afternoon. Drunks are unpredictable, and despite Ben’s wiry frame, he did not go down easy. Even with two of us trying to control him, he managed to put up quite a fight and my face bears the evidence of that.
I was hoping I could cover it up so I didn’t have to answer the inevitable questions all day long. Looks like I’ll have to keep the bill of my ball cap pulled down low to obscure as much of it as I can.
Resigned, I dismiss my reflection in the mirror and head to the kitchen for my pre-workout drink designed to boost energy, before I head out for my morning run.
Most mornings I like to get to the office early, but on the weekends I make sure I get my runs in.
It’s the only real organized exercise I get, and it’s good for me.
Running helps me think, process things, and work through problems. It wouldn’t be the first time I solved a crime on one of my morning runs.
I don’t have any job-related puzzles to solve this morning, but I do have some stuff to process. Namely Nate’s surprise return to Silence, with his teenage daughter, and the unexpected emotions it triggers in me.
Tossing back my drink, I grab my phone, clip it to my waistband, and tuck my AirPods in my ears. In the hall I slip my running shoes on and open the door to a crisp September morning. I don’t allow my thoughts to flow until I hit the trail at the end of my street.
Nathan Gaines was nothing but a distant memory until yesterday. Any feelings associated with him have been long buried under another lifetime. Another one of love and loss that ended almost four years ago when a call came in about an industrial accident at the Lizard Peak Quarry.
I was a deputy and responded to the call. I arrived at the quarry and my father, who was still sheriff of Edwards County at the time, blocked my path with a devastated look in his eyes that told me more than I ever wanted to know.
A tragic accident crushed a mining engineer working for the Lizard Peak Quarry under a collapsed, thirty-foot rock wall. His name was Matt Farkas, and he was the man I was supposed to marry only a few weeks later.
There isn’t much I remember from what followed, but what is vivid in my mind is the dark ache that seemed to shadow any and all other feelings. Including the hurt Nate Gaines had once put on me.
I breathe deeply from the fresh morning air in an attempt to release the sudden tightness around my chest. Ironically, it’s not the loss of the man I loved enough to want to spend the rest of my life with causing it, but the remembered pain of betrayal and abandonment when Nathan Gaines disappeared without a word.
Reaching the banks of the creek, I stop and bend forward, bracing my hands on my knees as I wait for the feeling to pass. Something my father advised me is not to fight pain or grief, but accept and move through it.
I grab for my phone when it starts buzzing against my hip. It’s the station.
“Talk to me.”
My hair stands up when I recognize the urgency in my chief deputy’s voice.
“We’ve got a situation.”
“Oh yeah, he’s gone.”
I step back as Buck Wilson approaches and studies the body on the ground. He’s not only our local veterinarian and my father’s good friend, but he’s also Edwards County’s elected coroner.
You don’t need a medical degree to come to that conclusion. It’s pretty obvious, given the man was eviscerated and most of his face is missing. I’ve seen a few dead bodies before but nothing quite this gruesome.
Not what I expected when Hugo told me to join him at the bridge over Watts Lake on the south side of town for a fatality. I thought there’d been an accident, or perhaps a drowning, but nothing prepared me for the mangled corpse under the bridge on the edge of the water.
A fisherman staying at the campground, on the far side of the lake, noticed something caught on branches that were stuck on a bridge pile when he decided to cast his line over here.
As soon as he realized it was a body facedown in the water, he dropped his line, waded in, and pulled the body to the shore.
When he rolled the body over, he quickly realized there’d be no reviving him and dialed 911.
“You think an animal got him?” Hugo asks as Buck kneels down to closely examine the body.
The older man shrugs. “Possible. We’ll have to get a better look back at the lab.”
The coroner’s lab is in the basement of the Silence Medical Clinic next to the morgue.
I’ve only been in there a handful of times, the last time we were trying to identify the charred remains of the victim of a vehicle fire after a crash on the highway south of town.
It’s not my favorite place, and it generally takes me days to get the smells out of my nose—especially after that last time—but I will definitely attend this autopsy myself.
I watch as Buck goes through the man’s pockets for anything that might reveal his identity, but he comes up empty.
I note the victim is wearing a running shoe on his left foot but he appears to have lost the other one.
He has on what looks to be black track pants and what is left of a white, short-sleeved T-shirt.
Part of a small logo is visible right where the material was ripped away. I can’t quite make it out.
“Hugo, could you grab the camera from my trunk?” I ask my second-in-command.
The body has obviously already been moved, and the scene disturbed, but I still want to record what I can before we load the body into Buck’s van. Sometimes pictures can reveal small details that might otherwise get lost.
It may well have been an animal attack, but something feels off. The man’s injuries seem almost too purposely violent.
Unfortunately, since we are a relatively small county, we don’t have the luxury of a crime scene tech.
Some of us have had some basic forensic training so we can at least preserve as much of the evidence as possible in cases where a crime is not immediately obvious.
On those occasions it’s clear we’re dealing with a crime scene, I would call in help from the Washington State Patrol, who have far more resources than we do here, including a designated forensic lab and several crime units they can send out to assist.
But first I need to know if a crime was committed.
“I can hear you thinking,” Hugo observes when Buck goes to his van to grab a body bag and I start snapping photos. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. It looks too clean for an animal attack.” I point at the entrails spilling from the man’s abdomen. “Other than the obvious injury to his stomach, the bowels look almost untouched.”
“Something could’ve spooked it. Interrupted its lunch,” he returns morbidly.
He’s testing my point, which is exactly why we work so well together. We don’t let the other run on a mere hunch or get stuck on an unfounded theory. We push each other to find the evidence to support any speculations.
“Have you ever heard of an animal tossing its unfinished lunch in the lake?”
He shrugs at my question.
I guess there’s only one way to find out, and when Buck returns with the bag, we quickly help him wrap up the body and load it into the van.
Before I slip behind the wheel of my cruiser to follow the van to the clinic, I turn to Hugo with an afterthought.
“Where is the guy who found him?”
“I told KC to drive the guy back to his trailer and question him there. The man was pretty shaken.”
“Okay, when KC returns, tell him to join me in the morgue. It’s a good opportunity for him to learn a thing or two.”
Nate
“I’ll be fine, Dad.”
Tate sticks her chin out and challenges me with her eyes.
My daughter’s sweet appearance is deceptive, she has a stubborn streak a mile wide.
“I just don’t—” I start before she cuts me off.
“It’s not like I can go anywhere without you knowing anyway. I’m living in a prison,” she pouts.
She’s referring to the tracker I installed on her phone last night. She’d been pissed off, and no amount of me explaining how worried I’d been when I couldn’t find her and, it was for her own safety, made it any better.
Clearly, she’s still mad this morning.
“I wouldn’t go if it wasn’t an emergency,” I offer, referring to the call I received half an hour ago.
Normally, I don’t take on work during the weekends, but I’m trying to rebuild my business here, I’d be a fool not to take what is offered.
The call was for a partially collapsed ceiling as the result of what is suspected to be a busted pipe.
Lucky for me, the local plumber is on a hunting trip this weekend and not available so they called to see if I could help.
I’m not a licensed plumber, but with over twenty years’ experience in construction, I’ve picked up a thing or two along the way, so I told the woman I would see what I could do.
Despite the scowl on her face, I bend down and kiss my daughter’s cheek.
“Show me a prison with an endless supply of chocolate chip waffles in the freezer,” I whisper in her ear before grabbing my cell phone and keys off the counter and heading out the door.
So much for my plans to make sure Tate eats healthy. Last night I caved at the sight of a cooler full of my daughter’s favorite breakfast at the grocery store when I was picking up a few things.
Parenting 101; when all else fails, try bribery.
What can I say, I’m desperate to get my daughter to actually talk to me instead of arguing or giving me the silent treatment. It’s exhausting.
The irony doesn’t escape me when I pull up to the sheriff’s station. Last time I was here, I was basically run out of town. Today I’m here by invitation.
I vaguely recognize the woman who is waiting for me when I walk in the door. I take the hand she offers me.
“Thanks for coming on such short notice. Good to have you back in Silence, Nathan.”
The derisive snort escapes me before I can check it. She takes it with a smile.
“You probably don’t remember me, it’s Brenda. I’ve worked for the county sheriff’s department for over twenty-five years. I remember you,” she states, wagging a finger in my face. “And for the record, I think you got a bum deal.”
Not what I expected to hear and I’m not quite sure how to respond to it, so I move on to the reason I’m here.
“Where is the damage?”
“The holding cells in the back,” she indicates, suddenly all business. She motions for me to follow her as she briskly moves toward the rear of the building.
I hate to say I’m well acquainted with the holding cells.
I should be, I spent enough time there as the juvenile delinquent I was.
Vandalism, breaking and entering, public intoxication, a brawl or two.
What can I say? I was your proverbial bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks and for a while tried to live up to that reputation.
A reputation that turned out to be difficult to shed after I smartened up and stuck to the straight and narrow.
Three cells side by side against the back wall, floor-to-ceiling steel bars securing what currently appears to be a single drunk, sleeping it off on the narrow bunk at the far left.
He seems oblivious to the mess in the cell on the right, when wet insulation is spilling out of a giant hole in the ceiling.
“Never mind him,” Brenda suggests. “It’ll be at least another four or five hours before Chance realizes where he is.” She chuckles. “He didn’t even wake up at the loud crash when the ceiling came down.”
Then she claps me on the shoulder. “Well, I’ll leave you to it. I turned off the water main in the basement through there.” She points at a door on the far side. “But I managed to make a fresh pot of coffee first. It’s in the kitchen, help yourself.”
With that she disappears down the hall.
I subject the hole in the ceiling to closer scrutiny before heading back the way I came in to grab a ladder off my truck. In passing, I glance over at the drunk who hasn’t so much as twitched.
I have a feeling it’s going to be a long morning.
“The fuck are you doing here?”
I try to swing around at the booming voice but am suddenly, violently shoved up against the counter, the coffeepot slipping from my hand and shattering on the floor.
Next thing I know, a thick arm wraps around my neck, closing on me in a chokehold.
I’m so stunned, I don’t have a chance to react, when that same voice hisses in my ear.
“You must be some kind of fucking idiot to show your face here, you useless piece of shit.”
That emphatically slung insult triggers my memory. It used to be Deputy Sanchuk’s favorite. Unbelievable that bully bastard still wears a damn badge.
Just as I grab at his hand and start to peel his thumb back, I hear Savvy’s voice.
“Jeff! What the hell is the matter with you?”
Followed by Brenda’s. “Let him go, you big oaf! He’s here to fix the ceiling.”
While the women are yelling, I manage to get a firm grip on his digit and bend it back sharply. Immediately the pressure on my neck releases as he lets out a satisfying yelp. I cough a few times as I turn around.
“Serves you right if he broke it,” Brenda scolds Sanchuk, who is now cradling one hand with the other.
Savvy puts her hand on my shoulder and leans her face close to mine.
“I’m so sorry about that. Are you okay?”
I grunt, unable to form any words…and it has little to do with the condition of my throat.