Chapter 23 Bringing the Fox Home
Bringing the Fox Home
I lured Sinoe into the car with the remains of yesterday’s sandwich. I turned the AC on while she stretched out on the back seat and yawned. She didn’t seem disturbed at all by the heat of the burning house or the embers drifting like fireflies.
I called an animal sanctuary, to learn that they did not take foxes. But, interestingly enough, they’d taken in two opossum joeys and a raccoon kit the day before yesterday. And Viv had been the one to drop them off.
What the hell? Did she have some premonition that she’d be abducted?
Or did she leave on her own?
Surely she didn’t toss her house and set fire to it…That had to happen after she left.
“What happened to Viv?” I asked Sinoe.
She looked in my direction without lifting her head.
The volunteer fire department arrived in a half hour.
By then, the scene was swarming with sheriff’s deputies.
Gibby and I sat on the El Camino’s tailgate and watched the house burn.
There’s always something heartbreaking about watching a house fall on itself, the roof trusses breaking and everything in the house collapsing like a star.
Paramedics treated and released me on the scene. I was told I was lucky.
Funny. I didn’t feel lucky.
When I got home, I opened the car door for the fox, unsure what else to do. Sinoe hopped out, stretched, and yawned. She followed me to the porch, jumped up on a chair beside Gibby’s food and water dishes.
I opened the front door, and she showed no interest in following me inside. She curled up in a fluffy ball on the seat of the chair.
“If you change your mind…” I began, but she closed her eyes.
Gibby circled behind me into the house, tail tucked between his legs.
Nick was home. He was sitting in his scrubs on the couch, staring at the television. His posture was slumped. Gibby scrambled up to lie in his lap.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He didn’t look at me. “I’ve been placed on administrative leave.”
I sat down beside him and took his hand. “What happened?”
“I got called in on the carpet by Dr. Floyd for a HIPAA violation.”
“A HIPAA violation?”
“Yeah. For unauthorized searching, and sharing patient records.”
I sucked in my breath. “The people who had benzene in their lungs. But they were your patients—”
“The EPA started nosing around. They learned about the benzene thing through you. The hospital went nuclear that I shared details of patients’ files with you.” His tone was flat, unemotional.
“But…isn’t there an exception for public health hazards?” I protested. “If Copperhead Valley Solvents has been dumping shit in the river and—”
“They’ve targeted me. And I’m guilty.”
“I’m sorry.” Fuck. I was to blame for all of it.
We sat in silence for a moment, that useless apology ringing around us.
“What happens now?” I asked. This was beyond my ken.
“Depends on what the investigation finds. I could get fined. Sued. Lose my license.”
“No.” My hands balled into fists. “I’ll take the blame. I’ll tell them that I demanded the information at gunpoint. I won’t let this stand—”
He shook his head. “You can’t affect their process. They have to review it. We’ll see what happens. But for now, one thing’s certain. My application to the university’s primary care office in the city is tanked.”
I wrapped both of my hands around his cold one. I’d fucked up. I was chasing this case, and hadn’t considered what this would mean for Nick—Nick and all the stupid fucking rules. “This is all my fault.”
“No,” he sighed. “I should’ve known better.”
He turned his gaze to me for the first time, and his brows drew together. “What happened to you?”
I looked down. I was rumpled and wet, and I smelled like smoke. Parts of my hair and jacket were burned. “I’m okay.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah.”
I glanced at the black television screen. I hadn’t realized he wasn’t watching anything.
“I’m worried about you,” he said. “You aren’t invincible. One day, there will be a fire or a bullet you can’t dodge, and I don’t want to lose you.”
“You’re not going to. No matter what.”
I meant it. Nick had given up so much for me…and now his career was in jeopardy. I couldn’t help but wonder if this sudden inquiry was a way to get me to drop my investigation. I didn’t know how tight Sumner and his friends were with the hospital administrators or the board. Fuck.
I ran a bath to wash the smell of smoke out of my hair.
Thinking of my mother, I threw a handful of salt into the tub.
I sank into the bathtub, hissing as water lapped at my reddened skin.
First-degree burns—no more harmful than a sunburn, but I still felt them.
I’d turned the lights off. I didn’t want to look at my body, at all the damage it was accumulating.
Nick was right. I wasn’t invincible. I felt my body degrading with each new hit.
It took longer and longer to bounce back.
Gibby nosed his way into the bathroom and lay down on the rug. I reached out and stroked his nose.
Maybe Nick and Gibby and I needed a fresh start, away from here.
I tried to imagine what I would do if I moved away with Nick.
I was older than the recruitment limit for the city police department, and I wasn’t thinking they’d be much interested in a transfer.
I’d developed a bit of notoriety from working the Forest Strangler copycat case last year.
Maybe I could find work with the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
Or maybe I could take early retirement. And then what? What would I be if I wasn’t a cop?
I sat with that, in the warm, stinging water on raw skin.
I’d never seriously considered it before.
Maybe I’d work with dogs? I wondered what it would take to become a vet tech, or to go back to school to be a veterinarian.
I couldn’t hope to pay back student loans before I died, but maybe it was worth considering.
What would Nick do if he wasn’t a doctor?
I didn’t know the answer. I don’t think either of us ever saw him as anything else. He’d wanted to be one since his mother died. Since my father killed his mother.
Fuck. We just kept on fucking his life up, didn’t we? My father and I were excellent at destroying everything we touched. Like poison.
Lulled by the warmth and the darkness, I dozed in the bathtub as the stinging faded. I was suspended for a moment, existing in an instant of unfeeling, unthinking nothingness.
Something giggled from the drain near my feet, burbling up near my toes. The water was red, red as it had been when my mother lost my sister, red as I imagined it had been when Viv’s mother tried to kill herself. Somewhere, beyond the drain, a baby cried.
I jerked awake, and yanked my feet back with a splash. On the floor, Gibby yelped and lurched to his feet.
I steadied my thundering heart, staring at the drain. In the dimness, I could see that the plug was intact. There was nothing there.
I rubbed my wet hands on my face.
Would things like this be able to reach me in the city, or wherever we wound up after this?
I supposed that depended. Was this real, or was this in my head?
Because if this was in my head, it could follow me anywhere, and I could never escape.
—
I stared at myself calmly in the bathroom mirror.
In the gray light of morning, I could see the damage to my hair much better.
The ends were unevenly burned; my ponytail had been half burned off in the conflagration.
I guess I was just lucky I wasn’t wearing flammable hair spray yesterday.
It seemed like the rest of my hair was a darker blond than I remembered.
Maybe it would wash out over time, but I wasn’t sure.
I ran my hands through it. I wasn’t particularly vain, but I was hoping it wasn’t screwed up enough to cause Monica to force me into a salon.
Nick tenderly combed my hair straight over my shoulder, then lifted his scissors and started cutting.
Blackened hair fell to the floor as he worked, beginning on my left side.
The scissors made grainy slicing sounds.
He moved to the right, pulling pieces under my chin to make sure they were even.
He moved to the back, fingertips dusting fallen strands of hair from my shoulders. I closed my eyes and let him work.
When he was finished, my hair hung a couple of inches below my jaw. I leaned into my hair and sniffed it. It didn’t smell like ash. And I didn’t think it looked bad, either.
I turned around in Nick’s embrace and kissed him. He put the scissors down, slipped his hand up to the bare nape of my neck, and leaned into the kiss.
He was my person. I knew this on a cellular level. I knew it when I told him my secrets, when I let him cut my hair, and when we tumbled in bed.
No matter what happened, I couldn’t be without him.
—
I slipped out of the house afterward. Nick had finally fallen asleep, and I didn’t want to disturb him. I kissed Gibby on the head, certain that he would watch over his dad.
The fox was gone. I worried that she was too domesticated, that she needed people. But maybe, also, she needed to be free.
I met Monica in the parking lot of the local waffle house. I wanted to avoid the office as much as possible, to avoid the sheriff. I arrived at the waffle house early, so I caught up on email in the car.
My attention was caught by movement to my left. I recognized Rod Matthews, sauntering across the lot with his hands in his pockets. His ankle appeared to be missing its monitoring bracelet.
I followed him into the restaurant, hung back until he was seated in a booth, and then scooted beside him.
“Hey, Rod. How’s it going?”
He blinked at me like a deer in headlights. “Um.”
“I see you lost your monitoring bracelet. Does your PO know about that?”
He stared down at his menu. “No.”
“What’s going on, Rod?”
He put his head in his hands. “I want to leave the state. Start over. I was supposed to meet a guy here about a ride to Nashville.”
“And why would you want to do that?”
“I’m in trouble.” He said it so low, I could barely hear him.
“This isn’t about the charges you caught?”
He shook his head. “I’m trying to get out of the life, and they won’t let me.”
“Really? Who’s ‘they’?”
“My brother. He’s running meth up to Michigan.”
“Well, I might be able to help you out, but you’re gonna have to be honest with me.”
“Mm-kay.”
Monica slid into the booth, opposite us. “Hey. Nice haircut.”
“Thanks.” I played with the ends of it.
“Looks like you already got a brunch date.”
Rod groaned.
“Rod was about ready to tell me about meth production in Bayern County. And some other stuff, about the local meth heads being in the employ of the Kings of Warsaw Creek.”
Rod hunched his shoulders. “Yeah, I guess.”
Monica grinned at him. “How about I’ll start? I just learned from the state crime lab that the stuff you’re using to cook meth is a benzene compound from Copperhead Valley Solvents. Its trade name is Vapozene. Does this sound familiar?”
Rod sighed. “Yeah. We pick it up by the barrel at night, by the loading docks. It cooks so much faster.”
“How much are you doing?”
“Six barrels a week.”
Monica emitted a low whistle. “That’s a lot of crank.”
I rested my chin in my hand. “And are your friends and brother also taking orders from Jeff Sumner? Doing his dirty work by intimidating witnesses? I really didn’t appreciate getting shot at the other day.”
Rod stared at his menu again. “If I admit I know some stuff, can you get me out of here?”
Monica shrugged. “I think it’s entirely possible that we could make your charges go away and you could go on your merry way, but you gotta produce some tangible evidence. Not just your word, ’cause tweakers don’t come across as being particularly credible to judges.”
Rod nodded. “Okay.”
“Great!” Monica said brightly. “Let’s get pancakes.”
I grinned. Maybe things were finally going to go my way on this case. If I couldn’t nail Sumner for murder, maybe I could nail him for drug trafficking.
Rod Matthews vomited up a surprising amount of information about the local meth trade.
Monica took copious notes over the next few hours at the waffle house.
I paid for a steady stream of coffee and hash browns to keep Rod singing.
It was all hearsay at the moment, but if we could verify even a quarter of what he was telling us, then we had a pretty damn good case against Jeff Sumner.
Monica closed her notebook. “I’ll call Judge Chamberlain, see if we can get warrants for records at Copperhead Valley Solvents.”
“What about me?” Rod sighed.
“If you promise to stay put, I’ll put you up in a nice hotel room with a breakfast buffet.”
“That sounds better than jail.”
My phone rang. “Koray.”
“Hey, it’s Jasper. I heard back from my contact at EPA. Can we meet?”
“Sure.”
“Can you meet me at these GPS coordinates at dusk?”
I wrote down the familiar coordinates. “Did you find something?”
“I hope so. Just come.”
He hung up, and I frowned. I’d been all high on the idea of getting Rod Matthews to roll on Jeff Sumner, but now a chill crawled across my spine.
I didn’t trust Jasper. Not even close.
I just hoped this wasn’t a trap.