Monday morning
Richard was absorbed in his latest management book, Monday Morning Leadership. My boss was going to ignore me whether I stood or sat, so I might as well be comfortable, and I sank into a chair. I studied him, looking for something to appreciate, perhaps what he was wearing, like his polished wingtips or today’s crisp shirt of palest peach, a pleasing complement to his mocha-brown skin.
“I want a different assignment,” I said. “It’s dangerous out there. I feel like bait.” My stomach churned as I waited for his response. A million dust motes danced in the sunlight slicing through his window blinds, striping the flat gray carpet and my favorite shoes, red slingbacks. The heels were worn. I tapped a reminder into my phone: red heels. I’d take them to the demented shoe-repair guy in his tiny cubbyhole at the mall, who ranted under his breath about the God Damn Government as he tore shoes apart.
I empathized. I, too, felt like ranting about the God Damn Government—my employer, the State Bureau of Investigation. Richard was the SBI special agent in charge of the capital district. I was a mere special agent, in charge of very little. I hoped Richard was absorbing leadership tips from his book that would work to my advantage.
His coffeemaker puffed out clouds of rich smells. When the puffing changed to hissing, as if it were a cue, he put the book down and swiveled in his leather chair. “Fredricks tells me you’re good at undercover.”
“Does he?”
“Before that you were working with the inter-agency bunch.”
“Yup.” I’d spent three months zooming around North Carolina in a helicopter with a thermal imager, looking for indoor pot gardens and meth labs.
“How’d you like it?” This was new, Richard caring whether I liked an assignment.
“Once I got over being airsick you mean? I learned a lot.”
Richard spun again to enjoy his corner-office view of the parking lot. “You hated it, didn’t you?”
“Every bleeping minute.” I hated it from the first day—when the pilot, a state trooper twenty years my senior, grabbed my thigh, forcing me to express my need for personal space in blunt language—until the last day, when we raided a trailer full of thriving plants under gro-lights and arrested a man who wept as his four children wondered where they’d get their lunch money now. No, drug interdiction was not my favorite assignment.
He poured himself a cup of coffee and stared at me over the rim of his mug. “You’re not a team player, Stella.”
Ouch. I thought about volunteering to read last week’s book, still on his desk, Six Sigma Team Pocket Guide. “I was good on the inter-agency team, wasn’t I? I followed regulations. Were there complaints?”
“Hank didn’t like you.”
“The pilot? Hank liked me a lot. I had to make him not like me so much.”
Richard frowned. He hated hearing about interpersonal conflicts. “You’ve put in a lot of overtime. Take the afternoon off. Maybe you’ll feel different tomorrow.” He opened his desk drawer and took out his cigar box. He selected one, laying it on his desk in preparation for ceremonial cutting and après-lunch smoking.
“I doubt it.” I wanted to grab Monday Morning Leadership off his desk and find the page describing me: a Driver, not a Passenger; a square peg/round hole misfit.
He found a different metaphor. “I’d rather pitch to your strengths, Stella. I’ll keep you in mind for a different assignment.”
That was the first thing he’d said to me in a long time that I liked. Maybe those books were working.
I drove home, changed into jeans, and picked up Merle, planning to take him for a hike along the Rocky River. As I passed the high school, I saw a teenage girl hitchhiking. Idiot. I slowed to a stop and she got into my car, slinging a backpack onto the floor. She looked about sixteen, with small neat features, blond bangs covering her forehead, and a ponytail to the middle of her back. Silver hoops marched up her earlobes and a slim figure meant she could wear the skinny jeans I had to avoid.
“Thanks,” she said. “Women never stop.”
“Where are you going?”
“Silver Hills.” An expensive gated golf community a few miles north.
“I’ll take you there if you’ll listen to these numbers.” I was making an effort to keep calm, not throttle her for terminal stupidity. “There are almost six thousand registered sex offenders in this state. They’ve been convicted. But only one in seven men arrested for rape is convicted, and only one in twenty-five reported rapes results in an arrest. And most rapes aren’t reported.”
She closed her eyes and puffed out a breath, fluttering her bangs. “Spare me the lecture. I have to babysit, and the kid’s dad didn’t pick me up like he said he would. I waited at the school bus stop for an hour. What was I supposed to do?”
“Let me simplify. Predators look for girls like you. Girls are picked up and never seen again.”
“Yeah, yeah. What makes you so smart?”
I showed her my ID. “What’s your name?”
“Nikki Truly. You’re a cop? You’re no older than me.”
“What makes you so smart?”
She laughed, showing even white teeth, transforming her face from sullen to cute. “OK. I get it. Next time I’ll call a cab.”
The entrance to Silver Hills was blocked by a red-striped boom, a flimsy barrier between its residents and undesirables. A spiky-haired guard emerged from his hut, nodded at Nikki, and raised the boom.
“He knows you,” I said.
“I live here,” she said. Wow. What would it be like, to have parents with money? Fern, a literally starving artist, had raised me. Many’s the night she and I chowed down on oatmeal and beans, having exhausted our food stamps for the month. I drove slowly, past starter castles and baronial mansions with rock walls, each one landscaped at a price probably exceeding my salary. We passed a golf course, signs to a club house, tennis courts, a pool. “Where to?” I asked.
“The Mercers’, where I’m supposed to take care of their kid.” She directed me through hilly, curved streets into the driveway of a pink-brick two-story with a three-car garage. Compared to the houses around it, 1146 looked ill-tended. A patchy sod border encircled the house and a few small shrubs struggled in the muddy red earth of planting beds. “Come in with me,” Nikki said. “I’ll introduce you to the dad. You can give him the lecture so he won’t be late again.” I rolled down the windows, told Merle I’d be right back, and followed her to the front door.
There were no cars in the driveway but through a garage window we could see a new-looking, burgundy SUV. “That’s Kent’s car. I wonder why he didn’t pick me up,” Nikki said. She tried the front door—it was unlocked. We walked into a high-ceilinged living room. Warm sunlight, tinted green from the trees outside, reflected from polished, oak floors. Stairs curved up to a second-floor balcony. The walls were covered with photographs—pictures of faces, hands, insects, babies, animals—living things. I didn’t inherit any myself, but I recognize genuine artistic talent when I see it, and was drawn to photos of a toddler with delicate features, dark hair with straight-across bangs, hazel eyes. “This is the child who lives here?” I asked. “She’s beautiful.”
“Yeah, Paige. Her mom’s a photographer. Kent?” Nikki called. There was no answer. “I’ll see if Paige is here.” She climbed the stairs.
I wandered into the kitchen, an acre of pickled-oak cabinets and black granite, cluttered with dishes and half-eaten food. French doors were open so I stepped onto the cypress deck, where a blue umbrella offered shade to a teak table. Below, a sandy path led through white-petaled dogwoods down to the shore of Two Springs Lake. A pretty postcard scene.
But on the patio below, something unnatural caught my eye. Bare feet, muscular legs.
Unmoving, still.
I leaned over the deck railing, recoiling when I realized what I saw.
A man lay on his back, probably dead, I thought immediately, based on the puddled blood that had poured from great gaping slices running from the crook of his elbows to his wrists. Under a golden tan, his skin was waxy, bluish. His hair was crinkly blond.
What was doubly shocking, I recognized him. Last night, this man had sold me twelve hundred dollars’ worth of oxys.
In a styrofoam to-go box.