“Did she tell you about her relapse? She was brought into the station the other night. DUI.”
On the other end of the line Steve exhales heavily. “I didn’t know that, no. I called her when she didn’t make the meeting the other night. And then every day after that.”
“Park police found her purse and there were drugs in it. Heroin. Do you know if she had used before?”
“We talked about it, when we first started working together. No drugs for her. Said it was only ever that one love, booze. I feel like she would have told me, if she were struggling with that. I… I don’t really know what to make of it. But you see people make all kinds of choices in this life when they are hurting.”
“Yeah. I was surprised too. Okay, well. I have her phone but if she calls you, could you call me down at the Pine Lakes station? Right away.”
“I certainly will. I’ll be praying for her.” She doesn’t believe in prayer or God—too close to superstition—but his kindness touches her all the same. “And, Callie?”
“Yes?”
“She’s very proud of you.” Callie fights off the prickle of tears, even as she wonders if he’s telling the truth. The Jenna she broughtin a few nights ago would beg to differ. Callie can’t get that raw-throated cry out of her head.The shame of my life.The last thing her mother said to her.
“I’m glad she has you. Thank you, Steve. Please do let me know the second you hear anything. It seems like she trusts you.”
The most recent number in Jenna’s outgoing call log wasn’t saved in her phone. Callie searches it on Google first—she doesn’t like calling someone without knowing who she is taking to.
The first result is a business listing. William Fauver’s Autobody shop. Dialed at 8:05A.M.on Thursday morning. Not long after she had been released.
Looks like she knows her first task for the morning, then.
She rises atthe first hint of daylight, scarfs a half-crushed granola bar from her bag. She spent the night on the lumpy couch in her office, up late printing off a stack of missing posters, a picture of Jenna from one of the women she worked with, from their holiday party last year. Callie uncovers a cheap plastic hairbrush in the bottom of her desk drawer and does her best not to look like a woman who slept with her face on her blotter. It rained in the night, a loud insistent pounding that woke her with a start. The kind of rain that will scour the woods clean, make it impossible for the dogs to find Jenna’s scent today.
“What the hell have you done?” Callie asks the picture of Jenna on the flyer, her voice rising, breaking, her throat still raw from shouting in the woods the night before.
When Devereaux andLatour get in she hands them a stack of posters and tasks them with putting them up on every telephone pole and supermarket bulletin board they can find within a twenty-mile radius.
“Is this the best use of our time?” Latour asks. “Department resources on a missing person with a history of substance abuse? Who is probably trying to skip out on her court date?”
The anger that rears up in her is huge, total. “You seem to have a hard time grasping that you report to me. That your time is my time, Latour. From the second you walk in that door to when you leave at night, you’re mine. Understand? And hey, you’ll need this.” She pulls a staple gun out of her pocket, whips it at him a little harder than she needs to so that he has to snap his hands up to keep it from clocking him in the jaw.
“Glad those reflexes are still good. You’ll need that if you get bounced off the force and need to go back to breaking up bar fights at the Lodge, like you did when you failed your test at the academy the first time around. Don’t think people don’t know about that. I know plenty about all of you. How you got here. How you spend your free time. You probably want to register that second hunting rifle you’ve been taking out.”
Next to him Devereux suppresses a smile while Latour’s face goes white, his eyes narrow. But the last thing she’s afraid of is a simple man’s anger. Maybe it will mean more shit talk behind her back. Maybe it will mean more dead animals in her mailbox. But she won’t hear one more person implying, one way or another, that Jenna’s life means nothing.
She’s still fumingas she walks out to her squad car, but when she sees someone on the ground stretched out it alongside it, she loses it.
“What the hell is this?”
Luke casts her a look over his shoulder. He’s got the car up on a pair of jacks, the front left wheel on its side next to him. He’s in a T-shirt, tools laid out on the back of a flannel shirt he must have just taken off.
“You said your brakes were loud. I’m replacing the brake pads. Totally shot.”
“You came all the way over here to replace my brake pads?”
He shrugs. “And maybe I was delivering some new red bark cedars for a landscaping project nearby. But you mentioned at dinner the other night that it was getting on your nerves.”
“If I didn’t find you out here, were you going to come in and tell me? Or just let me think the brake fairy paid me a visit in the night?”
“Guess so.” He wipes his hands on a grease-streaked cloth.
His eyes shift over her shoulder, to the doors of the station. Unlike Frank, Luke is a lone wolf, and she gets the sense that he’s not eager to strike up small talk with the likes of Collins or Mac.
“What if I need my car right now? Like, right fucking now?”
“I just need to get this wheel back on and you’re set.”
