I can tell he really wants to curse me out, but he bites down on his insults, giving me the world’s biggest glare instead. “What do you want?”
“In case you didn’t know, my parents are dead,” I snap. “Murdered. I want answers, that’s what I want.”
No matter how unfeeling Jones was, at least he pretended to care. This guy’s looking at me like I’m a cockroach infesting his apartment.
“They found out it was a suicide. Case closed. Go home, Piper.”
It’s my turn to bite down on an insult, but Josh has my back. “What the hell, man? Why are you being so rude to someone who just lost her parents? Why is everyone here such an asshole to you, Piper?”
How do I even start to explain? Come to think of it, I barely know myself. I only shrug as the officer scowls at both of us.
“Guess we’re at the start of an epidemic, huh?” I mock him. “Didn’t know suicide was contagious.”
He looks like he wants to punch me, but he restrains himself as another officer comes over and speaks in a low voice that I strain to pick up on.
“Head back in, Sam. Tell anyone who tries to come in that the police station is closed today. You can say it’s out of respect for Jones. We still have to tell the rest of his family. Come on, we have a lot of clean-up to do.”
I’m more pissed off than I can put into words. High school Pissed-off Piper has nothing on me right now as I watch them head back into the station, followed by all the others, actually locking the door to prevent anyone from going inside.
Clean-up. Yeah, I bet theydohave a fuckload of clean-up to do. Beyond scrubbing the walls and floor of the blood spatter caused by Officer Jones apparently pointing his own gun straight into the middle of his forehead, it takes a whole lot of cleaning to cover up a murder.
But why the hell would they cover up the murder of their own chief of police? Who could possibly be more important than Jones? Who could they all be loyal to, even more loyal to than their own boss?
Unless it’s not loyalty that’s keeping them in check, but fear, I realize, recalling Jones’ widow’s frightened expression.
Or maybe, just maybe, my overactive, jump-to-conclusions imagination is making me assume absurd things. Maybe my parents reallydidhave a suicide pact, and maybe Jonesdidkill himself in the weirdest way possible.
A shot to the head.
I don’t have time to repress the image before it pops into my brain.Dad, his eyes staring unseeing, blood trickling out of his mouth… the front of his head missing.
He was also shot in the center of his forehead.
So was Mom, I think with a shudder, remembering her slumped-over form.
The only thing keeping me from falling to the ground and hunching over in pain at the vivid images burning my brain is the significance behind them.
Three people, shot in the exact same way. It’s not a suicide. I’m sure of it. Itcan’tbe.
Since when do police officers cover up for serial killers?
I train my eyes toward my left, where I’m expecting Josh to be waiting for me docilely, like the naive, kind of annoying golden retriever I still imagine him to be, in spite of the way he’s been proving me wrong lately.
He proves me wrong yet again as he’s nowhere in sight. I lookaround and spot him a little further away, speaking to… Jones’ widow. A police officer is standing behind her, glaring at Josh.
I hurry over to him, just in time for him to say, “Are you sure you don’t remember?”
Her own glare is a mirror of the officer’s. “I have nothing to say. Leave me alone. All of you, leave me alone.”
She grabs her daughter’s hand, who can’t be more than three, and marches off.
“Let it be,” grunts the officer who had been behind her. “I don’t know why you’re being so insistent. It’s a suicide, the others said so.”
He stares at me with the look of someone who doesn’t know who I am, which means he must have only recently arrived in Astley.
I decide to take advantage of that. “And you just go along with what the others say?”
He shrugs. “I’m a traffic cop. What else would I do?”
