“Tell me what happened.”
“I’m not talking about it, Calliope. I made my statement and I’m done doing anything for the cops in this town. It’s the shame of my life that you’ve become one of them.”
In an instant the room feels too small and hot, the ticking of the clock so incredibly loud. Callie worked so hard, so much harder than anyone she knows in the force, to get through high school, taking every shift she could at the pizza place to stay up on rent as her mother lost job after job. She got a full ride to Rutgers, graduated summa cum laude. She’s pursued extra training as often as possible, made herself valuable to her team. She’s done so much to be able to stand on her own two feet and not feel the world spinning beneath her, like it did when she was a kid. She clears her throat. The words emerge like the low growl of a cornered animal.
“I’m sorry you feel that way. Best of luck with your sentencing.”
She passes Latour in the hall, who mimes eating popcorn.
“Oh fuck off, would you?”
Outside the station she stares at the tops of the trees for a longtime, barely distinguishable from the black of the sky. Her heart is racing. Her bare feet rub against her boots. And for a second, she feels it. Something primeval, a force moving through her body. Seeping into her and out of her. For a second, before she shakes the feeling off, she understands it. How Jenna would believe there’s something malicious lurking out there, something you can’t escape.
Callie heads hometo her little one-room cabin on the lip of a cedar water lake so small it doesn’t warrant a name, or like many places in the Pines, goes by a name only the longstanding locals know, something that no one bothered to codify, label on a map. Through her bedroom window the water, with the moonless night, is dark as tar.
In bed she struggles to get comfortable, can’t unclench her fists, relax her jaw. Callie was a bad sleeper as a kid—always on alert for the thump of Jenna tripping over something or falling down the stairs—but as an adult, deep, restful sleep had become one of her few pleasures during her grinding ascent in Narcotics. Up north, Callie installed a home security system in her apartment, had a personal weapon locked away in a safe on the off chance of an intruder, and worked out hard four days a week so that her body was strong and her reflexes were good. Adult Callie slept soundly, knowing she only had to look after herself and that she could do it well.
All that has gone to shit in the Pines and she spends the night tossing and turning. She could have just driven Jenna home, let her sleep it off, no one the wiser. Now, all the guys know she’s the kid of the biggest mess in town. Now, she’s got this case in her head from thirty years ago.One of those things, the guys had said.
She turns over, looks at her phone. 2:00A.M. The woods eerily still outside her window, a quiet that makes her every thought ring out, echo back to her. And she decides then that no, that’s not good enough. It won’t beone of those things. Not on her watch.
CALLIE
Her mood is sour when she gets to the station in the morning and gets worse by the minute. The younger guys suppress smirks when she addresses them. She stops by the breakroom to find Jenna’s record printed out on the table and her mug shot stabbed to the corkboard. Someone has writtenMOMMY DEARESTin black Sharpie above Jenna’s head. And now, in that spaced-out stare, and in between the lines of Jenna’s many infractions, Callie sees it: this Baby Doe story, unspoken and yet bearing down on everything.
According to Collins, they released Jenna at shift change, asked if she wanted to call anyone for a ride. But Jenna had said no thanks and simply walked out the door in her socked feet. Christ.
She pours herself a cup of coffee and studies a flyer behind Della’s reception desk, asking for volunteers to work the dunking booth at the Cranberry Festival. Frank used to do it every year, he told her, with a note of expectation in his voice. Wouldn’t they all love that? She can practically feel the surge of water up her nose, the wooziness that would overtake her as the guys on the squad lined up to take aim, plunging her into the tank again and again and again. No thanks.
She takes another sip from her mug, waits for the scorch of the heat and the first hit of caffeine to sharpen her bleary, swirling thoughts. Robbins approaches her from behind—she can smell him before she sees him: the Axe body spray that makes her throat itch, and under that, a whiff of cordite and mud. Some of the guys go hunting in the mornings before work, when the ducks feed at dawn. It seems like an awful way to start the day, hunkered down in a blind, watching the dark stars of birds fall from the sky.
Robbins clears his throat. “Got something for you, Hauser.”
“What’s that?” She says, aiming for nonchalance, but she knows this can’t be anything good. The last time Robbins had something for her it was deer jerky that he had killed and dried himself.
He holds out a file. “Heard you were looking for this one.”
She sets her coffee down on the nearest desk, flips the folder open, aware that Collins and Latour are watching from across the room.
“Maybe a big shot like you can finally help us simple Pineys sort this one out.”
Dread takes the form of an ache in her molars, a tightness in her solar plexus. But she won’t let them see that. Just takes a breath and flips through the file as though it’s nothing. Meaningless as a traffic stop report.
The crime scene photos are arranged on top, even though it is standard for the report to come first. Her guts twist. Heat surges in her chest. She forces herself to take a sip of her coffee, swallows it against the knot in her throat, a double burn.
She picks up one of the photos. Robbins, Collins, and Latour stand in a half circle behind her, their arms crossed. She can practically see the cartoon thought bubbles over their heads.We’ll just see what this lady detective can handle.
She rolls her shoulders, exhales.You dare me to look, I’ll look, you stupid motherfuckers. I’ll look harder and longer than any of you.
She lets her eyes skim the images, wills herself not to feel. A skill she learned as a child, honed on patrol. Senses on, emotions off. Assess first. Act next. React later.
She touches the edges of the pictures with her fingertips to make it seem like she is trying to see better, trying to look closer at rather than away from. But her old tricks aren’t working today. She’s not seeing the photos as a cop. She’s seeing them as her mother, sixteen years old, a watch cap pulled down over her ears and a sack of newspapers heavy on her shoulder. A sick mother at home and a father working two jobs to pay the hospital bills.
She has to speak. Has to show them she’s not rattled. Even though she is angry. Even though she feels she is going to be sick.
She clears her throat. “I’m assuming the state agencies stepped in at some point?”
“Someone from Major Crimes was involved for a bit. But you know how those guys are.”
