Chapter Four – Hard Days
Chapter Four
Cooper
HARD DAYS
Performed by Brantley Gilbert
I leaned back in the old leather chair, which was worn down in a way that didn’t quite fit. The grooves and valleys had been formed by my father’s body. His chair. His office. His team.
And yet, here I was, trying to fill it.
I dragged a hand over my face and felt the scruff I should have shaved off this morning and hadn’t for no good reason other than pure exhaustion.
My team and I had spent the night raiding a cabin up in the mountains, rounding up several pounds of meth, but left with no arrests.
Someone had tipped them off. I might have spent the majority of my detective years on personal crimes and homicide rather than vice, but I knew a tip-off when I saw one.
We’d been close to capturing someone. The goddamn pizza had been warm, for Pete’s sake, but there’d been no car. No trace of anyone in the woods.
I’d left Sandy and a couple of crime scene investigators we’d borrowed from a neighboring county sifting through the evidence.
Sandy hadn’t been happy with my decision.
She’d sworn it would take her time, but she could get through it without someone else traipsing all over her damn crime scene.
But it would have taken her days, and I had a feeling we didn’t have that to give.
When Carter Smythe had been shot dead a year ago, after he and his partner had used similar drugs to wreak havoc on Maisey Campbell, Dad hadn’t been able to question him on where he’d gotten his supply.
According to my father, after Carter’s death, the drugs had gone underground, but they’d come back with a vengeance since I’d taken over.
A horrible mix of methamphetamine and heroin had led to two overdoses in the last month. Kids. Fucking teenagers.
My stomach twisted in knots, thinking of Luca. Not only because he was at risk, an easy target for whoever was doing this, but because I’d caught him giving away drugs he’d found at his mother’s house after trying them himself.
Marijuana. Nothing like what was here, I reminded myself.
This had nothing to do with Luca, and yet it still ate at me.
The fact he’d smoked a joint while unsupervised at his mom’s.
That his mother had been so careless to let her cronies leave drugs lying around where Luca and his friends could find them.
Thankfully, it hadn’t been his tween friends he’d tried to give the joints to, but a group of college students he’d been trying to impress at the skate park.
But the entire incident had just been more proof that I’d failed him.
He’d sworn it was his first and only time, and he hadn’t been using regularly. I’d made him take a drug test, and it had been a relief to have only THC show up and nothing else, seeing as drugs that flew through his mother’s home had been varied and prolific.
The only positive to the entire incident was that it had put the final strike against Eden and allowed me to finally win full custody of my son.
Unfortunately, it was also why Luca hated my guts at the moment.
Hated me enough to let some tall, gray-eyed piece of havoc think I’d abused him.
A stunning beauty who still hadn’t responded to my calls about her broken window.
Maybe she hadn’t felt comfortable returning a call to my personal phone. Maybe she’d left a message here at the station, and I’d lost the note in the chaos of the paperwork on my desk.
I leaned forward, picked up the receiver, and buzzed Suzanne at the front.
“Sheriff,” she greeted sweetly, and I cringed internally.
Blond, curvaceous, and smart, Suzanne may have been six years older than me, but she’d made it clear, on my first day, exactly what she thought it meant that we’d both wound up divorced and in Rivers at the same time.
“Andie Nealy didn’t happen to leave me a message, did she?” I asked.
“Andie?” Surprise filtered through her voice, and I heard the hint of disappointment as she said, “No. She did not.” A pause. “Is this something about your house? With you being neighbors and all now?”
Jesus. The last thing I needed was more talk about Luca if it came out he’d busted our neighbor’s window. “Just let me know if she calls please.”
I cut off whatever she was going to say and turned my attention back to the whiteboard I’d hung to use as a case board.
It covered up the frames holding my father’s awards and photos of him with important folks throughout the state.
Dad had said he and Mom would come by to clean out the office, but I think he was as reluctant to end his thirty years of service as I was to pick up his mantle.
Once I’d left Swift Rivers at eighteen years old, I’d never imagined returning here to live.
I certainly never thought I’d be stepping into my father’s shoes.
I’d wanted to be a detective for as long as I could remember, but I hadn’t wanted the small-town sheriff hat Dad had chosen.
I’d wanted the big-city pace and sitting in a stuffed bullpen with twenty other cops all trying to do the same thing—get justice for those who couldn’t get it for themselves.
Now I had two Rivers kids and their families who needed justice.
One of the kids had died, and one would live with permanent repercussions from their OD.
I was working the case the same way I’d worked any other homicide—lining up the people, alibis, and clues until the threads tied them together.
I’d get answers and an arrest, just as my partner and I had with our almost-unheard-of case-close rate back in LA.
A tap at the door was followed by Deputy Sheriff Josh Cleaver’s face appearing around the door. “Can I come in?”
I gave him a curt nod. He strolled in, shoved his hands in his pockets, and stared at the case board as I assessed him.
He was fit, in a lightweight-boxer kind of way.
His brown hair was the bland kind that few witnesses would ever be able to describe, and he had light-brown eyes with ears that stood out just a touch too far.
Nearly a decade and a half younger than my forty-two, he’d gotten stuck with the unfortunate nickname of Beaver because of the overbite he’d had as a kid that was now just a distant memory.
Dad had twelve deputies working for him, plus Suzanne at the front desk, Harold as bailiff in the courtroom, and Sandy, who handled the crime scene work.
The entire staff, aside from Harold and Sandy, was fairly junior, which was why the county board of supervisors had looked outside the department for someone to fill the three and a half years remaining on Dad’s term.
Except, I didn’t know shit about running an entire sheriff’s office and had no interest in playing politics. In LA, I may have been offered a captain’s shield, but I had no interest in moving up the chain of command from there. I wanted to stay close to the action.
Now I had my hands full with a bit of all of it.
“What can I do for you, Deputy?” I asked.
While my father had been grooming Cleaver for more responsibility, stating he’d seen potential in the kid, I hadn’t had enough time to validate it.
What I did know was that Carter Smythe was Cleaver’s cousin, and Cleaver’s brother wasn’t exactly known around town for his pristine image.
Randy had a couple of possession charges on his record and an arrest in Fresno for dealing, which had landed him a short stint in a county lockup.
With family ties like that, what did it mean for Josh Cleaver? Would he tip his brother off to keep him from being arrested again?
Cleaver stared at the board with me, and his jaw worked overtime. “I know what you’re thinking, Sheriff.”
I raised a brow but didn’t say anything.
After probably an entire minute had gone by, Cleaver shifted, crossing his arms over his chest. A defensive move. His eyes were as defiant as my son’s these days.
“It wasn’t me. I didn’t tip anyone off.”
I didn’t say anything, and Cleaver’s brows furrowed. “Randy and I have never gotten along. Not growing up. Not as adults. I’d almost go so far as to say I hate the guy, if I wasn’t afraid it would give Mom a coronary. If he’s behind this, I want nothing more than to bring him down.”
The words carried a force to them—a strength of truth.
An idea started to form, one I wouldn’t have hesitated to put in place if I knew all the players well enough. Dad trusted this man, and I believed in my father’s instincts, but if I suggested this plan to Cleaver, and he botched it, we’d have an answer soon enough.
“Does your brother know you hate him?” I asked.
Cleaver’s mouth thinned. “He knows there’s no love lost.”
“You think you could change that?”
For the first time since walking into the office, Cleaver seemed to be taken by surprise.
“What?”
I waved at the board, “Regardless of whether your brother is involved in this, we need an inside track to the dark side of Swift Rivers. The gossip in this town is fierce enough that I’m not sure we’d be able to keep an informant a secret.”
“My walking into his apartment with my badge on isn’t going to help us either.”
I rubbed my jaw again. “What if we use the local blabbermouths to our advantage? You know, put on a bit of a show. What if I pretend to fire you for your family ties, and you turn to your brother, looking for revenge?”
Cleaver’s eyes turned steely. “It’s what you’d like to do anyway, right? Get rid of the weak link. The deputy tied to the trash you’re trying to bring down.”
I wasn’t going to feed him a line of shit and tell him I hadn’t had my doubts—still had my doubts. Instead, I said, “Seems like this would be a damn good way to prove to me and everyone else which side you’re really on.”
“By pretending to be on the wrong side.” The entire idea infuriated him. His face was squinty, his shoulders stiff, and his eyes were flashing.
While it reassured me, it didn’t alleviate all my concerns.
“You don’t need to make a decision today,” I said. “Think about it.”