Chapter 6
Roman
“I come bearing gifts.”
Roman held up takeout coffee and two wrapped Italian subs as Dougie opened the front door of his apartment.
“Thank fuck for that. There’s nothing to eat in the house and I’m starving!”
His deputy limped into the open-plan kitchen, pulling himself onto a bar stool in a pool of sunshine which lit him up like an actor onstage.
Sliding one sub over the counter, Roman peeled the paper from the other and took a huge bite. He’d just finished an early shift, missing lunch thanks to an abandoned car which had turned out to have blown a tire.
“How’s the leg?”
“Sore but it could be worse. Itches like a bastard now and then—usually when I’m trying to sleep.”
Dougie took a long drag of his coffee with a happy sigh. Relaxed and comfortable in cargo shorts and a college tee, he looked in far better shape than when Roman had driven him to the hospital.
After Dougie’s girlfriend, Summer, arrived, sickly green and worried, he’d headed straight to the Renner farm. Thinking he’d come to arrest them—“Believe me, I’m still considering it,”
Roman told them with every bit of ferocious gravitas he could summon—the youngsters had broken down immediately.
“We didn’t know he was there!”
Thirteen-year-old Sadie’s chin trembled.
“I never meant to hit him. My shot clipped the boundary sign by our fence and it went off at an angle!”
Her younger brother looked petrified.
Roman lit into them about gun safety, hammering home without mercy exactly how much worse the outcome could have been. He was pretty convinced neither of them would ever pick up a gun again, BB or otherwise. Dougie was declining to press charges but Roman had put the kids on community work for the whole summer with the grateful and remorseful support of their parents—litter picking, graffiti removal, and painting fences. Anything he could think of, basically. They would be his go-to mini-slaves for as long as it took them to learn from the experience.
Chatting as they ate, he and Dougie caught up on the latest news from the station. Despite the best efforts of his other two officers, further inquiries into the torching of Ray Parker’s truck had come to nothing, since proof of an argument was not enough to link Frank Dax to arson.
“And Millie Westlake?”
Dougie asked.
“She’s out of hospital but she’s given us nothing on who sold her the pills. Says it wasn’t someone she knew. Her description is vague as hell—sounds like she straight up googled ‘drug dealer’ images for the details. Her parents are protective and she’s far from strong right now, so I’m not inclined to push any harder at this stage. But I’ve circulated the lab reports to see if we get any hits on busts with the same chemical balance.”
“If the drugs came from Dax—or someone like him—anyone around here would be terrified of ratting on him.”
“If the drugs came from him, I’ll find out. He’s been treading a fine line for long enough and I think he’s balancing right on the edge of it. I’m not Chief Roberts. I have no intention of sitting back and letting Dax ruin other people’s lives so that he can trade in for his next new truck.”
Finishing his last mouthful, Roman stretched his legs out beneath the breakfast bar and propped an elbow on the counter.
“Which leads me to Elenie. Tell me what you know.”
Dougie ran his palm over the light shading of stubble on his cheek.
“Um, about something in particular?”
Picking a crumb off the front of his shirt, Roman licked it from his thumb.
“Yeah, I want to know when she’s been in the station, what for, and why there are no details of her on file.”
Dougie’s eyebrows lifted.
“There must be. Chief Roberts brought her in at least once a month. There was always something going down. Much like the rest of the family. Always in trouble of some sort.”
“Like what?”
pushed Roman.
“Well, he used to pick her up if he wanted to press her for information, lean on her a little.”
Dougie shifted awkwardly on his stool.
“There were a couple of times when Roberts said the local kids were scoring pills from a white girl at the Daxes’ end of town. The description matched. He was convinced it was her.”
“I can’t find that lead anywhere either. Neither can Maggie. No statements in support of it. No witnesses in any cases who point in the direction of Elenie Dax. I’m beginning to think this was personal. It looks to me like harassment.”
Roman scrubbed away the agitation that had settled at the back of his neck.
“Tell me, what do you think?”
An uncomfortable flush crept above Dougie’s collar.
“Damn. You could be right at that. It never felt quite . . . I just let it go because I wasn’t sure. And he was impossible to question. The station was run more like a dictatorship before you turned up. It didn’t feel like a team.”
He glanced up toward the ceiling.
“There was this one time when Roberts brought her in with cuffs on. Said he had some questions ‘as usual.’ He implied it was something serious. He put her in the cells for a bit while he prepared the paperwork—shit, or said he was preparing the paperwork. I knew she was in there but when I did the rounds and checked on her half an hour later, he’d left the cuffs on. Elenie was still sitting there with her hands behind her back.”
Dougie took a big gulp of coffee, hunching his shoulders.
“I took them straight off and I thought she’d lay into me. But she just said, ‘Thank you’ in that calm voice of hers. When I asked him about it, he brushed me off. Told me she tried to scratch him when he removed them so he cuffed her again until she cooled down.” Silence stretched between them. Dougie examined the last bite of his sub before putting it into his mouth. “I’ve never had a proper conversation with her before I got shot. Seems to keep a really low profile outside of the diner, but Elenie’s pretty sparky when she gets chatting. She made me laugh.”
And just like that, Roman felt an unexpected pang of envy for the man who’d taken a pellet in his thigh. He wiped it away with an internal volley of curses directed at Chief Asshole Roberts and his inflexible, lazy judgments.
“When I look at our setup through your eyes, I’m embarrassed.”
Dougie grimaced, picking at the edge of the dressing on his thigh.
“We’re spread too thin here. Disorganized and underfunded. Frank Dax knows it. He’s made it work to his benefit. All Roberts wanted was an easy path to retirement. He wasn’t going to rock any boats or risk reprisals. I like working in a small town and protecting local people, but we have issues that aren’t excused by a lack of money or equipment. It’s training and leadership we need to get us back on track.”
Roman drained his coffee. Dougie wasn’t aware his role was a temporary one; none of the officers knew. Roman hadn’t expected to feel guilty about it. Part of him itched to get stuck in and make a difference. He knew he had the experience to instigate some key changes in the Pine Springs PD. Another part warned himself not to get too entrenched.
“We can tackle it together,”
he said, careful about promising too much.
“I’ll be reviewing policies, procedures, and training. And I’ll welcome any input from the team.”
By unspoken agreement, they changed the subject for the remainder of his visit, and the tension gradually eased as they discussed Dougie’s return to work.
“I’d better head out. Milo invited himself over to my place after work. I’ve a ton of stuff to get done first that I should have sorted at the weekend.”
Climbing to his feet, Roman screwed up the takeout wrappers and dumped them in the trash, already looking forward to an evening shooting the breeze with his old school friend.
“Yeah, I heard already. Summer’s going over to watch a movie with Caitlyn while he’s at yours.”
Dougie’s girlfriend was good friends with Milo’s wife.
“Thanks for the food, Chief. If you wanna make this a regular arrangement until I’m back, there’ll be no complaints from me.”
Irrepressibly buoyant, his deputy wasn’t above pushing his luck.
“I’ve got better things to do than doorstep you takeout for the next ten days,”
Roman grumbled, heading for the door.
But all he could picture as he drove home was Elenie Dax’s slim wrists locked inside the steel grip of Chief Roberts’ handcuffs. And it pissed him off.
It was hard to get his head around the fact that his best friend—cocky, droll, and fearless—was married and about to be a father. Lounging on the couch, they propped their feet on the low, battered chest which currently served as a coffee table, Roman’s functional black socks side by side with Milo’s mismatched stripes. The second quarter of a basketball game provided background noise, and they kept half an eye on the action as they relaxed.
“It’s good to have you back, bro.”
Milo held up his beer.
Roman tilted his own bottle to clink them together.
“It’s good to be back.”
There hadn’t been much time to catch up with friends over the past few years, and he’d missed the familiar connections. Trips home from Detroit had been rare and brief. Returning to life in Pine Springs felt like easing himself into a bath filled with water at the perfect temperature. Unexpectedly soothing, instantly comfortable.
Gradually, Roman’s muscles were unwinding, his chest loosening. His stomach no longer rolled and clenched with stress and exhaustion every fucking morning when his eyes opened—just maybe every other day now. In the three weeks since he’d been back, he was beginning to sleep better, eat more regularly, breathe more deeply. He’d underestimated the effect of coming home. If he could fast-track his recovery over the coming months, this secondment year would fly by and he’d be back on his plotted career path before he knew it.
Milo gave him a nudge.
“Is Zena planning to visit or have you two definitely parted ways?”
“We’ve ended it for good. She won’t be visiting.”
Taking a swallow of his beer, Roman let his head drop onto the couch cushions behind him.
“Honestly, we’d been struggling for a while. She told me I’m cold, dull, and ‘emotionally unavailable.’”
Milo winced into the neck of his bottle.
“She was right, up to a point,”
Roman admitted.
“I think I’ve lost the part of me that was fun. I’ve forgotten how to relax and let go.”
They drank in silence for a moment. He watched the breeze move the branches of the pines outside the huge living room window, narrow branches twisting like tendons flexing on an athlete.
“Maybe being back here will help. It’s good to get out of the city.”
Roman hadn’t believed his luck at finding this place for rent, positioned just on the town border, nestled in woodland. The A-frame cabin was peaceful and secluded—everything his basic apartment in Detroit wasn’t. While his few pieces of furniture looked sparse in the rambling space, he didn’t need much more right now.
“I wouldn’t take the word of someone with a name like a German Shepherd dog as gospel.”
Milo elbowed him.
“Caitlyn wasn’t a fan.”
Roman grimaced at the memory of two strained dinner dates in the city, when the conversation had flowed like lumpy gravy and the warmth had hovered somewhere on th.
“blizzard in deep winter” scale.
“We suited each other for a while.”
He tried to be generous.
“She was ambitious. I was ambitious. Neither of us had much time to spare. She didn’t need a lot of attention from me.”
“That’s a good reason to choose a gecko for a pet. Not a fiancée,”
Milo said, raising an eyebrow.
“And you’ve never been dull. Dorky, maybe, with dubious fashion choices and embarrassing celebrity crushes. But at least your batting average used to make up for it.”
Roman snorted.
“That was you with the dubious fashion. You’re mixing me up with yourself.”
“I’m not the one whose jeans were more rips than material. Your mother nearly had a heart attack every time you walked up Main Street with your boxers on show.”
“That feels like a lifetime ago.”
“You were the best at creative pranking, too.”
The corner of Milo’s mouth quirked.
“Remember the time we filled Principal Skellingthorpe’s convertible with table tennis balls?”
Roman’s lips lifted.
“Oh, yeah. That was fun.”
“We even put them in the glove compartment and trunk. It cost me all my lawnmowing money for a month, buying those.”
“My favorite was the food dye in his wiper fluid,”
Roman said with a contented sigh.
“We were little shits.”
“D’you think he ever knew it was us?”
Milo grinned the wide, contagious grin that made him look fourteen years old again.
“Oh, he knew. Poor guy just couldn’t prove it. Probably why he retired as soon as we left. We wore him out.”