AUTHORITIES RESPOND
MORGAN
It didn’t take long for Morgan to establish a new routine. Whether it was a good sign or a bad one remained to be seen.
She was up before six regardless of whether there was any reason to be.
Her body wasn’t used to sedentary days and a full eight hours of sleep at night.
As a death investigator, she was often called out to scenes at all hours of the day and night, and the remainder of her time was spent in the office at the medical examiner’s office or less commonly, the morgue.
Here, there was none of that. Instead of grabbing takeout coffee on her way somewhere, she was killing time waiting for the ancient percolator to do its thing.
Instead of battling traffic to get to a scene, she was donning flannel and watching the sun rise from Frank’s back porch in a glorious display.
Instead of navigating police tape and dodging reporters, she was walking the perimeter with Shadow.
The dog had become a quiet companion over the last few days, climbing into bed with her earlier and earlier, and then parking himself somewhere in her general vicinity without making a fuss about it during the day.
She didn’t hate it. She'd even caught herself talking to him once or twice, which she would categorically deny if pressed.
Frank would be on the porch when they returned, coffee in hand. Morgan didn’t hate that, either. It was nice having someone around, even if they didn’t speak much. There really wasn’t a need to.
It was peaceful. Grounding. And, she supposed, the point.
But she couldn’t completely quell the restlessness that had nothing to do with Pine Ridge and everything to do with Philadelphia.
She was managing it, but that required effort that she would have preferred to spend on something tangible.
Something productive. Downtime was nice—even necessary sometimes—but it didn’t suit her.
She needed questions to answer and mysteries to solve.
The forced leave felt more like a punishment than the “much needed break” they’d labeled it as.
She'd been pulled from her cases, her files handed off.
Even now, someone else was probably sitting in her office, at her desk, touching her things and rearranging them in a way that would take days to put back when she returned.
If she returned.
Her supervisor had said six weeks, but he hadn’t been able to look her in the eye when he’d said it.
A lot, she supposed, depended on how high up the directive had come from. The not-knowing was agony for someone whose entire career was finding answers.
Maybe, instead of walking out of her supervisor’s office with her tail tucked between her legs, she should have fought harder to stay.
That was the other thought that came in the mornings, when her brain had nothing else to latch onto.
She could have pushed back. Filed a formal objection instead of just stating her position.
But in her defense, she had been blindsided.
She’d walked in ready to discuss the anomalies of the case and the next thing she knew, she’d been walking out with leave paperwork in her hand and the strong suggestion that wasn’t really a suggestion that she take a few weeks off to re-examine her goals and return with a fresh perspective.
The implication was, if she had refused, the separation would happen anyway and be permanent.
But why? That was what she hadn’t been able to figure out.
The case wasn’t that different from dozens of others she’d worked—a suspected overdose in a known drug house, with only a few minor discrepancies.
Was her supervisor right in saying that she was overthinking things and prolonging closure unnecessarily?
Imagining inconsistencies in a situation that followed no rational consistency?
Did it even matter in the grand scheme of things?
Yes, she thought without hesitation, it did. The truth always mattered.
After five days, she couldn’t stand it anymore. She retrieved her phone and turned it on, needing to reach out and touch something beyond Frank’s domain. Within seconds, it began vibrating with notifications, interrupting the enthusiastic birdsong just beyond the kitchen window.
Morgan looked at the screen for a moment and then sighed. She'd been ignoring her mother’s frequent calls for five days. Now was as good a time as any to bite the bullet.
“You're alive,” her mother said, by way of hello.
“You know I am.”
“I know nothing of the sort. You haven’t picked up or answered any of my voicemails.”
“I texted you when I got here.”
“Anyone could text. I needed to hear your voice.”
Morgan had to admit, she had a point. Phones could be used to fabricate stories and create false narratives in some cases, but surely not hers. It was a sad fact of her life that no one outside the office—and her mother—noticed she was gone.
Morgan thumbed the screen and confirmed that her location was turned off. Not that her mother knew how to use it to find her, but one of her uncles surely did.
“Okay, well, you’re hearing it now, Mom.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be. I'm fine. I just needed some space.”
“Space. You're twenty-six years old, on administrative leave, and you needed space.” A pause that communicated a great deal about what her mother thought of this framing. “Are you eating?”
“Yes.”
“Sleeping?”
“Yes.”
“Have you met anyone?”
Morgan knew what she was asking. It was the same question she always asked on those rare occasions they spoke at all, because, as her mom often said, careers were not a substitute for a husband.
The guy in the coffee shop came to mind, but spilling coffee on someone didn’t count as a meet cute. “Not really.”
Her mother made a sound of disappointment. “Are you somewhere safe, at least?”
Morgan pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it. The genuine concern in her mother’s voice was unusual—and a little unnerving.
“Yes.”
Another pause, longer this time.
“You're with your grandfather?”
“I’m with Frank, yes.”
She could have sworn she heard her mother sigh in relief.
“Just be careful, okay? Take as much time as you need.”
“I will.”
Morgan ended the call and exhaled. She loved her mother, she really did, but preferred to do so from a distance.
Three hours from Philly seemed just about right.
For a small town, Pine Ridge wasn’t bad, Morgan thought as she exited the bookstore, her mood lighter thanks to a bit of retail therapy.
It was scenic and quiet. The diner had genuinely good food and a corner booth with good light that had become her default when she needed to be around other people without interacting with them.
The bookstore had a great selection. Even more surprising, the farmers market was a small but surprisingly decent substitute for the Reading Terminal Market in downtown Center City—without the barrage of Italian curses being bandied about.
The pace was slower and the people were generally friendlier, more inclined to look you in the eye and offer a nod or a hello.
The barista at the café was another matter.
Granted, Morgan hadn't exactly been in a great mood the first time she’d gone in there, which was why she’d stopped in again a few days later, only to discover that no, it wasn’t her.
Morgan found that mildly baffling, since she hadn’t said or done anything to warrant the rudeness.
Unless it was about him.
The answer slid into place with a satisfying click as Morgan remembered her initial assessment of the young woman.
Apparently, she was not only smitten but territorial too.
Morgan wondered if the guy knew he’d been so thoroughly claimed, then shook her head at the ridiculousness of it. Probably not. His body language had been friendly and open, but not in a way that suggested anything more than friendly conversation.
Their paths had almost crossed again—almost being the operative word.
She'd seen him again, through the diner window.
He'd been standing by one of the sugar maples in the square, looking back at her as if he was surprised to see her there. For one crazy moment, Morgan had thought he might be thinking of joining her. Then he’d pulled his phone from his pocket, something had crossed his face, and he'd walked away.
It was probably for the best.
Later that afternoon, Morgan wandered into the kitchen for a snack and spotted the newspaper Frank had left on the kitchen counter.
Morgan picked it up, mildly curious about what constituted news around Pine Ridge.
Meeting minutes, probably. Letters to the editor.
An op-ed piece on the best recipe for potato pancakes.
She read the township supervisors meeting summary. A letter about the library hours. A piece about road resurfacing near the county line.
Then, below the fold on page three: AUTHORITIES RESPOND TO DEATH AT LOCAL CAMPGROUND
She read it once. Blinked.
She read it again. Blinked. Then a third time.
The article was four paragraphs. A deceased man, white male, estimated forty to fifty years of age, was found by local teenagers in a cabin at the campground along Black Lake on Route 9 East. No identification on the body.
Authorities had been unable to reach anyone with oversight of the property to confirm whether the cabin had been rented or the man had been squatting.
The campground's ownership was apparently unclear following the recent death of its previous operator.
The teenagers had discovered the body after noticing the cabin door standing open.
A preliminary assessment suggested the death may have been the result of a medical event. The investigation was ongoing.
What the article didn’t say was far more interesting than what it had. There was no mention of a phone, a wallet, personal items, or a vehicle.
Morgan set the paper on the table and looked at it, her fingers flexing subconsciously as each bit of information appeared like a jigsaw puzzle piece in her head—floating around but not lining up to create a picture that made sense.
This was what she did. This was exactly the kind of thing she excelled at.
But she was on administrative leave. She had no jurisdiction here, no authority, and no professional standing that would give her a legitimate reason to ask questions about a dead man in Pine Ridge, Pennsylvania.
She was a guest in her grandfather's house and was supposed to be keeping her head down and staying out of trouble.
She picked the paper back up.
A man died of a medical event—no mention of what that medical event might be—in a cabin he shouldn’t have been in.
She sat back, considering the theoretical cause of death. Did the victim have a medical condition? Had he gone there to die in solitude? If so, why was there nothing to identify him?
A robbery gone wrong, perhaps? With no indication of where he'd come from or what he'd been doing in an off-season cabin at a campground that apparently had no functioning management, it was impossible to hazard a guess.
Her brain itched, the way it did when she encountered something that didn’t make sense.
She folded the paper and set it down.
It was absolutely, one hundred percent, none of her business.
Frank came in from the back porch and moved to the sink to wash his hands.
“Did you read about the body they found at the campground?” she asked.
“What about it?” he said.
“Doesn’t that seem off to you? A man is found dead, no obvious cause except a possible medical event, and nothing to identify him?”
“You'd know better than I would,” he said noncommittally, drying his hands. “You're the one with the training.”
“I'm on leave. And I have no jurisdiction here.”
“Hmm,” he hummed quietly. “Wouldn't be the first time the authorities called something a medical event because it was easier than trying to figure out what really happened.”
Morgan sat at the kitchen table and looked at the folded Ridge Courier, long after Frank moved into the living room.
The dog came and put his head on her knee. She scratched his ear without looking at him, her eyes still on the paper.
No phone. No vehicle. No identification. An off-season cabin at a campground nobody was running.
She was not investigating. She was simply a concerned citizen, asking the same questions any rational concerned citizen would be asking.