Chapter Callie #2
The adrenaline drops away and she feels wrung out, and she can no longer ignore the tension headache that has pulsed across her forehead ever since she first laid eyes on Jenna’s purse.
“Sure, yeah. I’m just—” She looks over her shoulder at the narrow thread of the trail, her shins still stinging.
“I’m just going to take another minute here, if you don’t mind. ”
“Not at all. Are you … are you okay?”
“Bad day. Or maybe a bad year. I don’t know.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“What are you measuring?”
“I test for salt water intrusion. Or at least that’s what I’m looking at today. The waterways here are fascinating.”
“Sounds like it.” A hurt look flashes across his face and she hates herself for it.
He’s young, her age, good-looking in an academic sort of way.
Thick-framed glasses, ropy muscles, good posture.
Another gnat tickles at her ear and she shakes her head, grunts.
He smiles, reaches into one of the many pockets on his vest, tosses her something that she is almost too surprised to catch.
“Most people don’t throw things at officers in uniform, you know.”
“I think I’m doing you a favor.”
She turns the bottle in her hand. Bug spray. “Thanks.” She spritzes her wrists and rubs them together, relaxes a little at the idea of doing this one small thing that should bring her relief, even just for a few minutes.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” she asks. The way he looks at the water, the woods, is too reverent.
“No. Or, I didn’t grow up here. I’m from Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. My parents were professors at Bucknell. I teach down at Stockton. But I live in Mullica, right on the river.”
“Nice.” What must that be like, she wonders. A profession handed down. A legacy that wasn’t trauma or dysfunction or pain.
“I like it well enough. It’s good kayaking and the sunrises are something to behold.”
“I’ve never been on a kayak.”
“Well that’s a crime. It’s the best way to enjoy the woods, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Yeah I’ve heard that before. My friend, Jane, she and her husband own Pines Adventure Company. She was always after me to go.” It hits her a beat too late, that the way she’s talking about Jane makes it sound like she’s dead.
“You should take her up on it.”
“She’s—uh. Well. She had a bad accident a little ways back. She won’t be out for a while.” Please, she thinks. Please don’t make me explain.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve heard of her company. It seems like they do a lot of cool stuff. I don’t want to overstep … maybe you want to go out for the first time with your friend when she’s better. But if you ever felt like it, I’ve got two singles we could take out.”
He reaches into his vest, finds a notebook, scribbles on a piece of paper that he tears out from a pad in another pocket.
He walks down the bank and reaches over some brush to hand it to her, their fingertips touching for a second before coming away.
Is this guy really asking her out? Out here in the woods?
While she’s wearing her uniform, swearing at the bugs?
She’s in no frame of mind to date. Her mother is missing.
She works too many hours. She’s chasing down a drug ring.
She’s taking care of Jane and Opal. And yet, she feels a little thrill taking the scrap of paper from him.
Maybe there is one part of her life that should feel normal.
One little pocket that isn’t touched by the shadows of everything else.
“I’ll check my calendar.” She gestures at the uniform. “Work’s been busy.”
“I get it. But get in touch if you’re up for it. I promise, I’m not as creepy as I seem when I’m sneaking around the woods.”
She surprises herself by laughing. “Oh. Here.” She holds up the bug spray.
“You hang on to that. So long as you tell me one more thing.”
She frowns.
“Your name?”
“Callie. I’m Callie.”
“Nice to meet you, Callie. Hope your day gets better.”
“Yours too. Can’t feel great to get shouted at by a cop in the middle of doing your job.”
“I think it worked out okay.”
She nods at him, a stupid grin on her face. She clutches the paper in one hand and the bottle of the bug spray as she follows the path back to Gary Hines’s lot.
Later that night she’s still on shift, backs up Collins on a call about a group of kids having a party in the woods. They arrive at the trailhead within minutes of one another, have to take the path on foot.
“They’re probably in the factory,” he says, nodding toward the sound of music, an occasional screech or whoop rising above the beat.
Callie knows the one he means. It used to be a brick baking factory, a whole little town.
Schoolhouse, foreman’s home, tiny cabins for the workers.
Not much left of it but the foundation of the factory building, one wall.
But its where kids have been doing this shit since she was in high school.
The owner died before it could open and then the property’s caretaker and his wife died on the site after they lit a fire without cleaning out the flue.
Whole town went up in flames and now it’s another ghost story people tell about what used to be.
They walk the trail without turning their flashlights on—don’t want to give the kids a chance to spot them and scatter.
The toe of her boot catches on something in the blackness—a railroad track, the rail line long defunct—and she hits the ground hard.
Collins offers her a hand to help her up but she only shakes her head at him, her knees stinging and her face burning.
They approach the edge of the ruins, a bonfire in a trashcan lighting up the technicolor graffiti on the old factory structure.
The kids have their backs to them, a few girls dancing around a speaker propped up on a boulder, two boys passing a joint between them a few feet from the girls, eyes locked on their swiveling hips, three others clustered in what looks like the mouth of a tunnel, taking turns insulting one another.
Collins kicks an empty bottle of lighter fluid.
“Idiots.” He steps ahead of Callie and cups his hand around his mouth.
“Listen up. Everyone where I can see you. You run, you’re screwed, you understand?
We got guys on all sides here, you’re bound to run from me and right into the arms of one of my colleagues, who will not be inclined to be gentle. ”
For the most part the kids don’t look too alarmed at his bluff.
No one shouts cops and makes a break for it, tries to hide.
No one pours out their beers, and even the kid holding the joint is slow to pinch it out.
Callie glares at Collins, unbelieving. He should have waited for instructions from her, followed her lead.
Collins is undeterred. “Any of you morons over twenty-one here?”
“Eat shit!” one of the boys yells from the other side of the trashcan.
A girl with a long braid hisses at him. “Shut up, Ryan.” She crouches, sets her beer down at her feet. “Please take him in. He’s so annoying.”
“You love me, baby.” Ryan wags his tongue at the girl. Callie catches a boy in a tie-dye shirt and a pair of mesh basketball shorts slide a hand into his pants pocket, a flash of green between his fingers.
She aims her flashlight on him. “You. What do you have there?”
“My inhaler,” he says.
“Show me.”
He stares at her, weighing his options, then shoves his hand into his pocket, draws out one of the little green glassine baggies, the pine bough stamped on it.
“What is it?” she asks, keeping her voice light.
The kid doesn’t answer, just stares hard past her left ear.
Collins clears his throat. “I believe Chief Hauser asked you a question.”
She wants to roll her eyes, to tell Collins that she’s just fine on her own with this shrimp of a kid, who can’t be more than seventeen. She doesn’t need his Bad Cop act. She can practically sense him puffing up his chest.
She holds out her hand for the package and he gives her a hateful look as he places it in her palm.
“Where’d you get it?” She’s still aiming for a tone that feels conversational.
They need these kids to open up to them if they’re going to learn anything about the drugs.
Hollow scare tactics aren’t going to cut it.
She’s got to toe the line between authentic yet firm.
None of this cop caricature crap that Collins is pulling.
The kid cuts his eyes across the bonfire, then back to Callie. “I don’t know.”
Now, time to press a little. “Look. I’ll level with you.
I’m doing you a favor, here. Lots of dirty drugs circulating these days.
But it sounds like you’re not feeling too chatty out here among your friends.
I could take you into the station, where we could talk properly?
Or if you wanna help me out now, we can skip all the formalities.
You let me know. We would have a lot to discuss if I take you in.
Possession charges. Underage drinking. Would you like to do that? ”
“Get some, Matty, she’s hot!” She swivels to see which one of them said it, but her eyes fall on one of the girls.
A petite blond sitting on a rock. Layla.
The girl from the paintball field. The girl with the braid puts her hand on Layla’s shoulder, leans in to whisper in her ear.
Layla groans, shakes her head. The firelight shows the shine of her eyes.
Sweat glistens across her collarbones. She’s used recently.
No surprise there, but Callie can’t help but feel a pang. She turns back to the boy.
“Where’d you get it?” she asks him again.
“Usually I buy from a guy named Johnny.”
“Where do I find Johnny? Can you tell me anything else about him?”
“He’s older … he hangs out at the gas station on Route 12 sometimes. But someone else got this for me this time. Look. I mean it. I don’t know.” She doesn’t believe the lie but he manages not to give himself away completely until his eyes dart across the fire, to Layla.
Ah.
Callie and Collins divide the kids up. She gives the girls a ride home, Layla and her friend Amanda. She drops Layla off first, at a tidy Colonial with a minivan parked in the driveway, the porch festooned with wind chimes that ting in the breeze.
“What was she on?” Callie asks Amanda, as they watch Layla fit her key into the lock.
“She snorted something. The green bag.”
“Heroin?”
Amanda gives a little nod, turns her face to the window, but not before Callie catches a tear streaking down her cheek in the rearview.
“She’s been in a lot of trouble this year. I’m pretty sure there’s an older guy she works with who has her dealing, but she won’t tell me. She knows I get mad when she takes this stuff. It’s not like it was before.”
“What do you mean?”
“People started buying the green bags back when they were just selling mushrooms. That was fun. But we haven’t been able to get the mushrooms again since the end of the summer.
A kid I know from Collingswood, though? He bought some stuff two weeks ago and overdosed.
His shit was salted with fentanyl. He’s fucking dead.
” The redhead had been trying so hard to sound older, in control, but her voice cracks on the word dead.
A copycat, Callie thinks. She’s seen it before.
One guy starts making cash, another, less connected, less experienced, jumps in to grab a piece of the pie.
She feels for this girl. How helpless she must feel. Just like Callie, when she first saw Jane in the hospital, bruised and swollen, numbed out on morphine.
“Where does she work?” Callie asks
“A plant nursery. It’s called Eden Grows”
“I know it,” Callie says. She’s never been there, but she’s seen the logo plenty of times. On T-shirts she’s washed at Damien and Jane’s house. The bumper sticker on the back of Lorraine’s car. Eden Grows is the name of the nursery Luke owns.