Callie
You got it. Where to?
Anywhere. I just need to get out of this house. And I need to be ALONE.
Uh, I can drop you off somewhere and come back for you? Or we can go to a park and sit on different benches?
You know what I mean. You don’t count. I love my family but today I hate my family.
Sure. What time?
We ride at dawn.
8?
Fine. But know that with a small child at home I’ll have lived half a day by then and may already be cranky.
You’re cranky now …
Too much TikTok. Btw, is this your girl?
Callie doesn’t know what she’s expecting, but not Rebecca Nixon.
Callie had told Jane about her before the DNA results came back, about Nixon’s obvious disdain for the cops she’s helping, about her self-congratulatory air that she tries to pass off as empathy.
And there she is when Callie clicks on the link, all false lashes and contoured cheekbones.
She’s wearing a suit not unlike the one she has on for her website photos, but this one is purple and her top is cut a little lower.
She brushes a barrel curl over her shoulder and tilts her head.
I wanted to share what is so important to me about solving cold cases.
“Oh what the fuck?” Callie says. There are only three other videos on Rebecca’s profile and she’s far from the number of views that Jane’s usual roster of crime girlies can rack up. The second video on her profile is centered on a cold case, the kidnapping and murder of six-year-old Laura Munch.
Authorities were stymied for two decades. When Laura’s older sister, Amanda, came to me, I knew there was a way to help them. I knew there was more that could be done. Watch my next video to see how I cracked the decades-old case.
That’s her, she texts Jane. She can’t bring herself to say anything else.
Def gunning for a podcast. Or maybe she wants to go primetime? There’s a guy like her who just landed a network deal.
I can’t even talk about it. I’ll see you tomorrow AM. She closes her eyes, pictures Rebecca spinning Callie’s story for the rest of the world to consume between makeup tutorials and dance videos. Straitlaced cop finds her own life at the center of the cold case she’s investigating …
She turns her phone off and has to will herself not to smash it as hard as she can against her desk.
The next morning she rings the doorbell at Jane and Damien’s and Opal answers, dressed in pajamas with rain boots and a blue tutu.
“Hey Callie,” Damien says. He smiles, but it looks forced.
She looks at him a beat longer than is polite.
Do his eyes look bloodshot? His pupils dilated?
His arms—are there track marks? Would he, desperate, cross over from pills or powder to shooting up?
Jane had mentioned that he was picking up some shifts at Luke’s selling Christmas trees and ropes of pine garland now that hiking and canoeing has slowed for the winter.
Luke made good on his word. Money still tight, worse if he’s got a habit to support.
She only looks away when Opal tugs at her shirt. “You’re taking mama away. I want you both to stay here.”
“We’ll be back before you know it, Miss Opal. And before I go back to my house today I’ll talk to your mommy and daddy about the next time we can hang out. Maybe Wednesday? That’s my off day this week.”
“My folks will be here,” Damien says.
Jane’s eyes narrow. “Well Callie can still come over. She and Frank can talk shop.”
“Sure, yeah. You probably see my dad more than we do, Cal. God knows he can’t give up the job.”
Callie doesn’t know what to say. Frank dropped by the station again this week, talking shit with the guys, leaving during shift change for beers at the tavern.
But not before popping into Callie’s office to give her a few pointers on where to best set up drunk driving checkpoints during the holidays, even after she told him she had it all sorted out.
“He’s been helping a lot,” she says, but can’t look at Jane, who surely knows she’s lying. “But I don’t want to impose on your family time. I’m off on Friday too. Maybe that will work.”
“Let’s hit the road,” Jane says, inching toward the door. Both Callie and Damien move to help her.
“I got her,” Callie says.
Damien frowns. “It’s just the porch is hard, there’s a certain way…”
“Dame, we’re good. Go find Opal and make sure she’s not flushing her socks down the toilet again.”
“Have fun,” Damien says. From down the hall there’s the sound of a toilet flushing. Damien strides off to take a look and they hear him protesting, “Oh, Opal, no, come on, we can’t do that…”
Jane raises her eyebrows at Callie. “Let’s go before we find out what she did.”
She helps Jane in the car, still not used to the new thinness to her arms.
They back out of the driveway and Callie tosses a paper bag of donuts into Jane’s lap.
“Oh, hell yes. Thank you for not making me share these with my child.”
“So maybe it’s because I’m an incredibly observant police officer but I’m picking up on some … vibes. What’s going on?”
Jane breaks a donut in half. “We’re fine.
We’re all just sick of one another. I’m sick of being a burden on everyone.
There were days when I thought I was losing my mind in that house with just a little kid and my husband during COVID and even after, when things started opening up again, and then it was like …
the universe heard me think that, decided to really show me what an ungrateful bitch I was. ”
“You’re not an ungrateful bitch. You’ve done so much for them. And your recovery, not being able to do anything on your own. Shit. I would be crazy too.”
“Thank god you are here. Maybe I’m really better.
Just faking it a little bit so that you feel sorry for me and stay.
I don’t want you to ever go.” She’s surprised at Jane’s tone—the bitterness that has seeped into her voice when she talks about being home.
Had she really been going crazy before the accident, and Callie hadn’t noticed?
From the photos and texts and calls, Jane had always sounded so happy.
Pictures of Opal covered in flour after baking a batch of cookies.
Damien with Opal in a pack on his back under a canopy of trees.
Maybe Callie hadn’t been paying close enough attention, caught up as she was in her eighty-hour workweeks, making sure she went to every happy hour with the guys, every target practice session, brought cases home on the weekend.
She should have visited. She should have gone on one of Jane’s foraging tours.
She should have asked her friend some simple but crucial questions: Are you happy?
Are you okay? What else do you need? Had Damien had a problem even then?
It was a story she heard more and more, ordinary people cracking under the weight of the pandemic.
Affairs, drinking too much, online gambling.
Habits that pushed them into pits they couldn’t climb back out of as the world began to right itself.
“I’ll stay as long as you need me to. You know that. Just me, or did your husband not seem too happy to see me?”
“Don’t worry about him. He’s been weird around me lately.
” Callie waits for the conversation to turn, the way it was about to the last time she was with Jane.
Tell me, Callie wills her. Just tell me and I’ll help.
She’s brought the baggie, keeps it in her wallet, waiting for the right time to bring it up.
Jane claps her hands together, brushes the sugar from her fingers. “Enough about me. What’s the latest on your case?”
“I drove up to Princeton to see that teacher who signed Annabelle’s yearbook.”
“How’d that go?”
“She was super evasive. She knows more than she’s letting on, I think. It seems like she suspected there was something weird going on with the sisters and she should have had CPS involved but doesn’t want to catch flack for it now.”
“Can’t blame her.”
“She’s suggested that Sabrina Riley was in a relationship with a cop.”
“You think she was?”
“It’s possible. I need to dig up a roster from the ’90s, see who was on the squad that would fit the bill. Maybe ask Frank what he thinks about that.”
“Frank won’t tell you shit about any of his guys. I’ll tell you that right now.”
“What’s their deal? Frank and Lorraine? Why don’t they help you more instead of—”
“Instead of butting in down at the station? Yeah, no wonder the last guy at your job had a heart attack.” Jane sighs. “They’re helping us plenty.”
“Money?”
“We’d have lost our house if it weren’t for them. Don’t get me wrong, they’ve got some expenses of their own. I think they took out equity on their house during the recession, so there’s that. The rest is Luke.”
“Luke’s helping too?” Weed must be doing well, even better than she thought. Or, something else is filling his coffers. Getting all these kids high, getting them hooked. Even his own brother.
“Yup.”
The theory feels reasonable to her, but she hesitates mentioning it to Jane—Layla had seemed adamant that Luke wasn’t dealing, but maybe he’s not doing anything directly.
He could be letting other people sell stuff at the nursery, taking a cut.
And then there was that coffee cup in his car.
Could be coincidence, but the shade of the lipstick print looked the same as Layla’s.
Maybe they drive around together, meeting with buyers.
Would Jane tell her, if Damien was buying drugs from Luke? Or someone who worked with him?
“You don’t like him. I didn’t notice it until I moved here. I guess I was never around the two of you together, aside from the wedding.” But now she hears it in Jane’s voice, the disdain unmistakable.
Jane looks out the window again. “You can almost smell the ocean.”
“You’re avoiding my question.”
“I didn’t hear a question.”
“Why don’t you like Luke?”
“He’s a bully, to Damien. Not like Damien cares, though. He’s one hundred percent the little brother, devoted even though Luke is a total asshole.”