Chapter 2
Roman
The emergency call came through just after two a.m.
Instinct had Roman up and dragging on his clothes before he’d finished the conversation with Chief Roberts.
He rang his new deputy, Dougie Taggart, from the SUV, collecting him on his way, and pulled up behind the ambulance outside the Masons’ house less than ten minutes later.
There was no sign of the chief himself as yet.
More than a dozen young people loitered anxiously in small groups.
It looked as if others might have left.
Two boys were attempting to gather the numerous bottles and cans tossed all over the front yard.
A bonfire, lit in an old trash can on the grass, was still smoldering but on its way out. As Roman and Dougie jogged up the path, no one was brave enough to catch their eye.
“You stay out here,”
Roman instructed.
“Start taking names and statements. I don’t want anyone else to leave without giving you their details. Tell Roberts I’m inside when he gets here.”
He headed for the front door. A blond girl, pale and shaky, stepped back as he strode in.
“Don’t go home without seeing my deputy,” he told her. “Where are they?”
She gestured toward a huge kitchen-diner off the hallway.
Bypassing a large central island surrounded by white glossy cabinets, Roman took a chokehold on his focus when it threatened to desert him.
His chest felt too hot, his fingers too cold, but he swept his eyes over the scene, taking mental photographs he’d review later.
Two paramedics were kneeling on the floor, a teenage girl lying on the tiles between them.
She wore a short lilac dress and her legs were bare.
Her shoes were nowhere to be seen, toenails unpainted.
Drawing closer, he could see an intubation tube had been inserted into her airway. One of the medics was rhythmically squeezing a bag to push air into her lungs, while the other monitored her vital signs.
Three girls sobbed in each other’s arms, their cries covered by the music still belting out from speakers hidden somewhere in the room.
A couple of boys hovered uncertainly, clearly torn between comforting the girls and watching what was happening on the floor.
“What’s your name?”
Roman asked the kid nearest to him, relieved to hear his voice sounded normal.
“Charlie Randall, sir.”
The boy’s eyes darted left and right.
“Whose party is it, Charlie?”
“It’s mine. Mine and my brother’s.”
A taller guy, definitely older, appeared in the doorway. Gray-faced with shock, he met Roman’s eyes with gritty courage.
“I’m Kai. Kai Mason. This is my parents’ house.”
“Turn the music off, Kai. Then take your friends outside and get them to give their names to my deputy or Chief Roberts. You’ll need to stick around and wait for me. I want to speak to you myself.”
In the relative silence that followed, Roman crouched next to the girl on the floor and studied her face. He recognized the signs in front of him. Overdoses were a dime a dozen in Detroit, but he hadn’t expected to see one here so soon.
“What have we got?”
“Millie Westlake.
Seventeen years old.
We took the call at 01:35 and arrived at 01:47.
The patient’s vomited twice but was seizing and unconscious when we got here.
Pupils constricted, skin and lips are blue.
Someone made the call when she went from slurring her words to not being able to speak.
We’ve administered one dose of naloxone and she’s stable for now, but we need to move her.”
The paramedic stood and wheeled a collapsible recovery stretcher closer to the girl.
Roman moved to her feet and, between the three of them, they lifted her onto it.
Pulling up the side bars, they raised the stretcher, letting the legs unfold, and locked it into place.
“No other casualties?”
“Not that we’ve seen.”
Millie Westlake’s dress had no pockets. He’d need to track down any jacket, coat, or purse she might have brought to the party.
“You’re good to go.”
Roman watched them wheel the stretcher swiftly out of the kitchen, his heart pounding beneath the breast pocket of his shirt.
Sweat dampened the hair at the nape of his neck.
When he’d left Pine Springs twelve years ago, he hadn’t been chasing thrills or excitement necessarily.
Sure, he’d had plenty of ambition and drive, but he’d mostly wanted the opportunity to make a difference.
In the intervening years, he’d often wondered if he had made any difference at all.
More recently, Roman had barely even been surviving. So close to the edge he was in danger of falling, he’d had no option but to accept this temporary transfer.
Still stalked by the oily, soul-staining shadow of homicide policing, he prayed that Millie Westlake and this case wouldn’t destroy his already shaky foundations.
Curling his hands into fists as he strode through the house, Roman went in search of the chief and any witnesses.
Interviews and paperwork dominated his team’s working hours for the next two days straight.
Chief Roberts was more than happy for Roman to take the lead on a case that would clearly run beyond the term of his last few days in office.
As he read over the lab report with Dougie, a movement in the parking lot outside his window caught Roman’s eye.
He frowned and squinted against the bright blue of the afternoon sky.
It was Elenie Dax.
The waitress from the diner and a member of the family Chief Roberts clearly despised.
Leaning against one of the trees that flanked the path, head turned in the direction of the station, she appeared to be waiting.
Roman dragged his attention back to the matter at hand.
“As we guessed, what Millie thought was pure MDMA had been laced with fentanyl.”
He swiveled his screen to face his deputy.
“Cheap, easy to get hold of, and dangerous,”
Dougie murmured as he scanned the details.
“Bet she didn’t count on taking that kind of a risk when she decided to try getting high. Her friends have closed ranks. They’re not naming the source of the drugs, or they genuinely don’t know.”
Roman grunted.
They’d established that Mr. and Mrs. Mason had gone out of state to visit family, taking their two youngest children but leaving the older two at home. It was the perfect opportunity to throw a party. Millie Westlake’s closest friends admitted she’d scored some MDMA, seemingly intent on gaining enough false courage to approach a girl she had feelings for. There were no other drugs in Millie’s purse when Dougie eventually tracked it down. Although both friends swore blind she hadn’t done it before—to their knowledge, at least—the teenager had taken the pill halfway through the evening and within twenty minutes was struggling to breathe.
Recovering slowly in hospital, after forty-eight hours on a mechanical ventilator, Millie—a tall, solid basketball player—owed her survival to a hefty dose of luck and her own general fitness.
“Chief Roberts swears all narcotics in Pine Springs trace back to the Dax family,”
Dougie volunteered.
Roman took another glance out of the window.
“Without evidence to link them to the supply, that gets us nowhere.”
The paperwork trail on the Daxes was extensive and revealing. He’d made a point of looking them up. Shoplifting charges, intimidation, arson, car theft, regular alcohol-fueled punchups—and, yes, rumors of drug dealing, as Dougie said. Only a few minor convictions had made it all the way through the system, but every member of the family had come to the attention of the local police force more times than Roman could count.
Every one of them bar Elenie Dax, who was still loitering at the back of the parking lot.
Dougie spread his hands.
“We’ve had a steady increase in thefts of farm chemicals, drugs at the high school, counterfeit cash. Roberts swears it only started after the Daxes moved into town. I don’t know if that’s true, but Frank Dax’s name comes up every single time. Only problem is that no one will give evidence against him. People won’t turn on their neighbor if they think that neighbor will burn down their fucking house. He’s been untouchable so far.”
Millie’s panicked parents were still glued to her bedside; it would be another day or so before the girl would be well enough to interview. Would she tell them where the drugs had come from? Or would she be too scared to talk?
Roman had thought he’d left this kind of policing back in Detroit.
An image—the image—took his breath as it rose behind swiftly closed eyelids. Swallowing hard, he fought to keep his heart rate steady, even as the blood tingled in his ears and set a tremor running through his fingers.
He would not think. He would not remember.
Battling to keep his thoughts from showing on his face, Roman tugged at his shirt collar. None of his officers knew that he’d taken on this new role under pressure; he needed it to stay that way. He hadn’t even come clean to his family or friends that his return had a time limit. Being forced by his superiors to take a twelve-month secondment for his mental health wasn’t something he wanted to shout from the rooftops.
He had one year to prove to his captain that he’d got his head straight, and he’d be in with a fighting chance of making lieutenant on his return to the city.
“Thanks, Doug. Carry on logging the statements for now and we’ll work out our next step.”
When his deputy left the office, Roman turned back to the window with a ragged sigh, suppressing the surge of unease threatening to rise.
The vast, chaotic layout of the Detroit PD had afforded no outside views, only a shared desk with his partner and the hot, heavy scent of too many bodies in an under-ventilated space. This window, looking out onto trees—and yes, the small parking lot, too—was a big tick in the small-town policing box. Being able to see the sky made Roman feel like he could breathe.
Elenie Dax was still there, and he seized on the distraction with relief. Over the next ten minutes, he studied her as she checked her watch, straightened her ponytail, pulled at a leaf, shredded the leaf, dropped the leaf.
What was she doing?
And why did Roman feel so invested?
He knew this town. It remained as familiar to him, as easy a fit, as his favorite sweatshirt. He knew the town fair was coming up soon. He could predict the stalls that would be there. He knew the Pine Springs History Museum was closed more than it was open. He knew Peggy Winterburn was a troublesome gossip and Ray Parker’s gruff exterior hid a kind heart. He knew there would be cardboard sledding and chocolate galore at the Downtown Winter Carnival in January. He was even pretty sure the local teenagers still necked at the lakeside off Starling Road.
Yet he’d felt out of step with the situation in Diner 43. An audience of one, stumbling in partway through the second act of a story he had yet to make sense of. Watching Elenie Dax maintain her composure in the face of Roberts’ belligerence, his respect for the outgoing police chief had dropped from low to non-existent, disintegrated by the latter’s shitty attitude and the quiet dignity of the waitress with the smoky gray eyes. Now he was beginning to wonder if he’d backed the wrong horse.
The front door of the police station was pushed open and Chief Roberts plowed a path to his Subaru Outback, loosening his belt a notch as he neared the car. Elenie ducked into the treeline. Roman checked his watch; it was 2:45 p.m. Roberts, embracing his apathy in the last couple of days before retirement, had decided to go home early.
With the dust still settling from the Subaru’s tires, Elenie Dax stepped out of the trees and headed for the main doors. Curiosity had Roman pushing back his chair.
She stood in front of Maggie at the front desk, the low hum of their voices masked by the flick-flack of the ceiling fan. Her hair caught the sunlight, natural streaks of red licking like flames through her mahogany ponytail.
“I can handle this, Maggie,” he said.
Elenie’s shoulders stiffened.
“It’s just a lost property issue. No big deal.”
Her voice was husky, the professional reserve she’d shown in the diner edged out by wary discomfort.
“Follow me and I’ll take the details.”
Roman gestured toward his office and ignored Maggie’s raised eyebrows that were expressing doubt at his form-filling abilities.
Elenie took a few steps backward.
“Um, maybe later would be—”
“No time like the present when you’ve waited this long.”
He gave a fractional nod toward the parking lot and headed back along the short corridor without waiting for a reply.
It was a quiet afternoon, with only three of them on duty besides Maggie, now Roberts had gone home. Weaving between the desks in the open office, Roman frowned at the subdued atmosphere. It felt more like a courtroom in session than a hub of activity. He skirted Dougie, who had trapped a phone between his chin and shoulder and was scrawling notes he’d probably struggle to read later. Officer Forsberg glanced away from her monitor and caught his eye.
“D’you need me, sir?”
“No, we’re good, thanks, Kristina.”
Roman waved Elenie into his office and half closed the door.
“So, how can I help?”
She stepped forward and opened her fist, dangling a jeweled cuff bracelet from her fingers. It was bright, gaudy, and obviously expensive. Laying it carefully on his desk, she prodded it into a straight line of sparkling white and yellow stones.
“I didn’t steal it.”
Elenie’s watchful eyes were cautious, her body tight. She looked like a flight risk.
“Obviously not or I doubt you’d have brought it here.”
He kept his tone reasonable, his words level.
“Please, take a seat.”
She eyed the nearest chair with suspicion but did as he asked. Roman settled himself behind his desk.
“It was on the floor in the restroom of the diner. I found it this morning and Delia told me to bring it here. I’d have come sooner but we were busy.”
This time, he caught a defensive tone.
Elenie Dax was like a cryptic crossword or a Magic Eye picture—complicated, confusing.
Nothing clear at first glance.
She rubbed her nose and examined her surroundings.
Roman kept his eyes on her, familiar enough with his new office to know what she could see.
The noticeboard on one wall, laden with leaflets and pieces of paper, some new, some yellow and curling at the corners.
A wastebasket, full to the top, next to his desk.
The lower drawer of the filing cabinet he’d left ajar.
Two outdoor jackets of differing weights hooked to the back of the door; he didn’t know whose they were.
Some mess was his own, he’d be the first to admit it. But the space he’d inherited had been untidy when he got here. It didn’t bother him much. He could put up with anything for twelve months.
When he reached for a pen on the desk, Elenie’s eyes skittered back to his face.
She smoothed restless hands over a crease in the front of her skirt, frowning at the bracelet.
“It was so rammed this morning, I can’t narrow down who might have lost it. But I can tell you everyone I remember who came in.”
“Right,”
he said.
“Let’s take those details then.”
Over the next ten minutes, Elenie gave him a list of names, singling out anybody flashy or vulgar enough to own a bracelet of this type.
He wrote quickly with occasional prompts, admiring her eye for detail and the concise delivery of information.
She’d make a great witness.
As soon as they were done, Elenie bounced to her feet like a prisoner granted parole.
He thought she’d leave immediately but she paused in the doorway and turned back to face him.
Roman could read little in her expression.
She had a poker face to rival the best he’d seen.
Elenie cleared her throat.
“I heard about Millie Westlake.”
He stood up behind his desk, pushed his hands deep into his pockets, and said nothing, waiting for her to continue.
“Do you know any more about what happened?”
She searched his face and there was an added intensity to her voice that hadn’t been there before.
“I can’t give any details about an ongoing investigation,”
he repeated by rote.
“Why do you ask?”
Elenie looked away.
“No reason. I used to babysit Millie, that’s all. I wondered if there was any news.”
“Not that I can release.”
Roman let the silence sit to see if she’d say anything else, but instead she took a step over the threshold. He stopped her before she could leave.
“The other morning in the diner with Chief Roberts . . . He was aggressive. There wasn’t any need for that.”
Elenie halted with one hand on the doorframe. A few moments ticked by. Her fingers traced a raised crack in the paintwork.
“He was just saying what everyone thinks. My family is trash. And by default, so am I. You’ll find that out soon enough if you haven’t already.”
Her poise was remarkable.
“What did you say to him? I didn’t recognize the language.”
Elenie’s mouth twitched and there was something about the unexpected mischief in the miniscule movement that rattled Roman’s senses. It felt like touching his tongue to a battery.
“You caught that, huh? I told him he’s as ugly as salad. It’s my favorite Bulgarian insult.”
And she ducked out of the room before he could say anything else.