Chapter Callie
CALLIE
Frank comes into the station bright and early the next morning—she knows before she sees him by the bravado of the greetings. Shouts of Chief and Hey, boss. Even Della dips her head when she sees him, girlish and deferential.
He raps the doorframe of her office but doesn’t wait for her response before he strides into the room, pulls out a chair. She’s got a copy of her grant application on the desk and he reads it, raises his eyebrows.
“Drones? Interesting … lots of trouble with privacy violations though, right?”
“Not if they are used responsibly.” She crosses her arms, finds herself wondering again why Frank doesn’t use all this free time to help out more at Damien and Jane’s. Drones could have been used to scan the woods for Jenna. If they had them. If they had been prepared.
Frank clears his throat. “Heard there was some trouble last night. More drugs? Were you able to get anything interesting out of those kids?” He must listen in on the scanners, must have heard the calls from the night before.
She had tossed and turned all night, wondering if she should stop by and talk to Luke herself.
She thought about his truck, the cool arrogance with which he pulled out that spliff, told her about his pot plants.
But what if he’s got another game? Is that why he came by the station to change her brake pads?
To cultivate some goodwill? To test what she knew?
But she’s not about to tell Frank any of that. Not yet.
Instead she gives him the broad strokes: her theory about the copycat, Amanda’s idea that this new guy was linked to the uptick in ODs.
“Sounds like this new guy is greedy, less scrupulous. It also sounds like the old dealer, whoever it was, wasn’t really messing around with hard stuff. Just hallucinogenics. Now all these kids who were having a good time with that are ODing on fentanyl in the same packaging.”
Frank sighs. “You gotta continue to get the messaging out there about all that. Maybe have Della update the social media with warnings about the fentanyl.”
“Sure, I’ll do that,” Callie says, knowing it will be a waste of time.
The department has Facebook and X pages, a few hundred followers each.
Most of the engagement is people complaining about speed traps and parking tickets at the boat launch near the lake.
Nothing young people will ever see. But what else can they do?
Besides rooting out this dealer. Or dealers.
More ghosts moving through the shadows of the woods.
“I’ll have to contact some people I know, maybe get some cooperation from the DEA.
” She’s heard enough of Frank’s glory days stories to know there’s tensions here, between the small-town guys who live through the day-to-day and the dickswingers at the state level, but it seems like a drug ring might warrant the extra manpower.
“We’ve tried that. DEA is overextended on another ring closer to Philly.” Callie isn’t totally surprised. The DEA likes cases that have tentacles, networks of dealers. Busting one or two small-town thugs won’t get them those big headlines, no flashy cash and gun forfeitures to brag about.
She rises, a cue to Frank that she’s got a lot to do.
“Well, you keep me posted on how I can help, okay? These guys treating you all right?”
“Sure,” she says. She’s not going to get into the animals—a dead duck in her mailbox when she finally got home yesterday. Probably not Collins, then, who was with her most of the night. But the others … could be any of them, more than one of them. Frank lingers in the door.
“How are you doing? This thing with your mother. It’s tough.”
Callie shrugs.
“I know it’s hard. But you’ve got to stay focused. These guys, they need to see you as a leader. Not as a girl chasing after her mommy.”
Callie stiffens. “I’d argue that a missing person falls under my job description.
But I take your point.” What if it were one of your family?
She wants to ask Frank. What if it were your precious Lorraine who had wandered off the trail?
What if it were someone blameless? He’d have razed these woods to the ground.
Frank grips his jaw with his hand, rubs his stubble. He must be close to eighty but doesn’t look it: handsome, still as tall as his sons. But he does look tired today, Callie thinks. Like something is under his skin. “How’s Damien seem to you these days?”
“He seems okay. Like he’s hanging in there.
” Though the first thing she thinks of is the conversation between Damien and Luke, how she left them both in crackling, edgy silence.
Maybe Damien knows Luke is dealing. She wonders if he would talk to her about it.
“Stressed,” she concedes. “But who wouldn’t be, right? ”
“Yeah, well. Our Janie is a trooper, that’s for damn sure. And we’d all do anything in the world for Opal.”
“One hundred percent.” She has the sense that Frank is holding something back, or maybe trying to tell her something else while crutching along on platitudes.
Does he know about Jane, about the way she had been poised to leave?
Is he asking Callie something bigger? Or is he issuing a directive that she’s meant to pass on to Jane?
Stay the course. Do your duty to your family.
Or else. We’ll do anything for Opal. Anything to keep her close.
Callie isn’t sure if it’s the lack of sleep, all the dark trails her mind has been following lately, but Frank’s words fall on her ears with the ring of a warning.
She pulls up to Jane’s house and something feels off.
It takes her a moment to register what it is: Damien’s car is gone.
Did the three of them go somewhere? Has she gotten the time wrong?
She had texted Jane when she woke to tell her when she was coming over, and Jane had responded with a thumbs up and a TikTok link.
You should start doing this! Do a podcast like that guy who found the Golden State Killer!
No thank you, she texted back.
Though the mention of the case made her think about Healy, his team trying to pull a usable DNA sample.
Fauver might be able to blow her off, but genetics wouldn’t lie.
And what a pleasure it would be to catch Fauver, the smug, woman-battering piece of shit, who could never have envisioned a world in which he didn’t get away with everything he did wrong.
All this blood and chaos on his hands. That’s what she wants to tell Jane.
These TikTok detectives want you to believe in conspiracies.
In twists and turns. But so often, the guy who seems most likely to have done it, has done it.
And it’s just a matter of paperwork after that.
Callie tries the front door and it opens, finds Opal in a circle of blocks, something orange smeared around her mouth.
“Auntie Cal!”
“Hey Opes. Whatcha doing?”
“I’m building a city for unicorns.”
Jane sits up on the couch.
“Where’s Damien?”
“He went out to run an errand. He’ll be right back.” Callie can tell that she’s trying to play it cool but that Jane feels caught out.
“He could have waited until I got here.” She glances at her phone again to make sure she’s not late. Noon, just like she said.
“We’re fine, Cal. He just left like ten minutes ago.”
Callie bends to pick up a container of hummus from the ground, searches around for the lid, finds it in the living room of Opal’s dollhouse.
Jane sighs. “Opal can open the fridge on her own now. As you can see.”
“Opes, can I clean your face?”
“I’m a dog! Woof woof!”
“Okay, can you be a good doggy and come here for your doggy bath?” Opal runs to her on all fours and lets Callie swipe a wet paper towel around her mouth, over the hummus-streaked strands of hair that have fallen out of her ponytail, as Opal wriggles and pretends to wag her tail.
“He can’t leave you alone with a three-year-old, Jane. Jesus. What if something happened to her? What if something happened to you? One of you could get hurt and then what?”
“Come on Cal, I don’t need a lecture. He had to run out. It’s quick.”
“What couldn’t wait until I showed up? What was the errand? You could have had me do it on the way.”
They both turn at the sound of Damien pulling in the driveway.
“I can handle it,” Jane says to Callie, a fierce glow to her eyes. Callie can’t help but think of the hospital voicemail again. I was going to leave him. I had a plan.
Damien comes through the door empty-handed. So it wasn’t a grocery run, a pharmacy trip. From where Callie’s sitting she can’t tell what about it was so urgent. He aims for nonchalance—“Hey Cal, good to see you”—but he can only meet her eye for a beat before looking away. “Janie, you almost ready?”
“I just want to put some makeup on. God knows physical therapy is the most I get out into the world these days. Gotta make it count.”
“You’ve got to be the hottest patient they’ve got,” Callie says. Now’s not the time to push either of them. And not in front of Opal.
“I don’t know, I think they’ve got some young athletes who’ve torn their ACLs, that kind of thing. I’m just a middle-aged lady hobbling through for an hour.” Callie winces at the term middle-aged. They’re both thirty.
“Jane, stop. You’re still a babe and you know it.”
“Second that,” Damien calls from the kitchen.