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by Gary Corbin
Chapter 1
The sun sank low over the Torrington River, peeking below the angry storm clouds threatening to ruin the last mile of Valorie’s evening run. Dressed in running shorts and a gray cotton sweatshirt with “Property of Clayton PD” stenciled across the chest, she’d keep warm enough if the rain held off. But late March storms in western Connecticut often turned brutal. She picked up the pace and considered the bright side. Maybe she’d even beat her best six-mile time.
She passed a pair of twenty-something men dressed in expensive name-brand running outfits and ignored their catcalls. Why men her age lacked the ability to keep rude comments about her ass to themselves, she might never know. She dialed up the music volume and pushed a loose earbud back into her ear canal to drown out their lewd shouts.
Approaching the pedestrian bridge over the river, she slowed to allow a mother pushing a stroller to exit going the other direction. The two men behind her gained enough ground to return within earshot, and one of them said something to the effect of thanks for reconsidering his offer. She sprinted onto the bridge without looking back. Reconsider this, butthead.
Halfway across, lightning flashed, followed a second later by loud thunder, and the skies opened up in a torrential downpour. The metal grates beneath her feet grew slick, and she debated slowing her pace, but the risk of lightning striking the steel structure outweighed the danger of a slip or a twisted ankle. The high-pitched shrieks of dismay from the men behind her almost made her laugh. Such tough guys.
Lightning flashed again as she approached the end of the half-mile crossing, accompanied a few seconds later by a loud thunderclap, startling her. She stumbled and caught herself on the side rail, breathing hard. The last thing she needed was to fall into the frigid current of Berkshire snowmelt thirty feet down—or worse, the jumble of rocks that lined the embankment. Slowing her pace now seemed a much better idea.
Val took a few deep breaths and pushed herself away from the rail to resume her run, then stopped. Something caught her eye along the rocky shore of the river below. A pile of clothing—no, not a pile. A parka, backside-up, arms outstretched, with gloves protruding from them. Slacks extended from the bottom of the parka. And bare feet.
A body—from what Val could tell, a woman’s body—appeared to have gotten snagged in the rocks on the shore, pushed there by the river’s relentless current.
The two men caught up to her and slowed to a stop. An athletic white guy in matching Adidas shorts, shirt, and shoes shared a sweaty grin and wiped his brow. “Hey, gorgeous,” he said. “Want to join us for an after-running drink at—”
“Call 9-1-1,” Val said. She ran ahead, veering off the running path onshore toward the riverbank.
“Something I said?” the guy asked. His buddy, a taller, skinnier black guy in Nikes, laughed and slapped him on the back.
Val picked a path among the rocks toward the body. Before she could reach it, the current shook the body free, and it floated downstream, rocking in the river’s wake toward the bridge. If she hesitated, the current would wash the body away from her, and it would be lost downstream.
Brushing rain from her face, she waded into the water. The river’s icy cold shocked her skin, and her teeth chattered. She slipped on the slimy rocks on the riverbed, and the strong current threatened to knock her down. She paused to regain her footing, shivering, rubbing her arms for warmth. The body drifted further away, picking up momentum. She reached for it, missed the woman’s arm by inches. Another step closer...her foot skidded out from under her and she fell onto her butt, the water splashing up to her armpits and onto her face. So. Fucking. Cold!
Above, Mr. Adidas shouted down to her, still holding a cell phone to his ear. Val couldn’t make out what he said and didn’t care. “Send an ambulance!” she shouted back.
She rolled forward onto her knees, reaching again for the body. Almost. She crawled toward the woman, scraping her knees on the rocky bottom, frigid waves soaking her hair and neck. But her face stayed above water, and now she could reach the body. She grabbed the parka’s arm, stopping its journey into the center of the river. The current tugged back, nearly knocking Val over, but she held firm, and dragged the body back to the shore.
The other runner, whom Val had nicknamed Nike-man, met her on the rocks and helped her pull the body to the grass alongside the running path. Val thanked him and then checked the body for signs of life.
“Do you think she’s dead?” the guy asked, wide-eyed.
“I don’t feel a pulse, and she’s not breathing,” Val said. “Do you have a phone? Mine just got soaked.”
The man nodded and unlocked an iPhone, then handed it to her. “I never touched a dead body before,” he said, then ran ten feet away and fell to his knees in the grass.
Val sympathized. She’d never forget the first dead body she’d ever touched. Then again, it was only five months ago. It was also the first person she’d ever killed, a gang member who’d shot at her first, whom she’d stopped from raping a teen-age girl. A day she’d never forget—but not one she could dwell on now.
She dialed her boss’s number from memory. “Clayton Police, Blake here,” her sergeant answered. “How can I help you?”
“Travis, it’s Dawes,” she said. “I just pulled a body from the Torrington River, on the east side of the ped crossing. A young woman, possibly a teen-ager. White, about five-five, one thirty, dark hair. Dressed for winter, other than being barefoot. I’m guessing she fell or jumped off the bridge.”
“Or got pushed,” Blake said. “But no shoes, huh? Any signs of foul play?”
“Some bruises on her face, but that could be from the fall. Is anyone missing that meets her description?” Val’s teeth chattered. As the excitement of the moment abated, bitter cold crept deeper into her bones.
“I’ll check missing person reports,” he said. “Dawes, are you okay?”
“I got a little wet,” she said. “The sooner you get someone out here, the sooner I can change into dry clothes.”
“On it,” he said. “Actually, it looks like someone called it in already.” Sirens sounded, as if on cue. “Shouldn’t be more than a minute. I’ll send fresh clothes out to you ASAP.”
Val waved thanks to the white guy, still leaning over the rail on the bridge overhead and talking on his cell phone. She strolled over to his buddy, still puking on the grass. “You going to be okay?” she asked him.
He rolled over to a sitting position on the wet grass, rain splashing his face. Lightning lit up the sky again, and thunder rumbled in the distance. “I guess I need to get used to this,” he said with a sheepish grin. “I’m going to UConn Med School in the fall.”
“It gets easier, I’m told,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Diego Collier,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Up there, that’s my friend Kent Mercer. Sorry about what he said to you earlier. He can be kind of a jerk sometimes.”
Val waved it off. “Thanks for your help tonight, Diego. Can you stick around for a few minutes? Detectives will want to ask you a few questions.”
“Sure,” Diego said. He pointed to the logo on her sweatshirt. “But aren’t you a cop?”
Val sighed. “Believe it or not, this is my day off.”
***
Rico Lopez, her patrol partner since the first of the year, met her in the break room at the start of their 5:00 shift the next evening. “I heard you had a fun day yesterday,” he said, pouring them both a mug of coffee. He handed her one and leaned his compact, muscular frame against the counter, facing her. He rubbed the white scar that ran across the light brown skin of his forehead, a souvenir of a domestic violence case six months before that put his partner, Brian Samuels, on long-term disability with a gunshot wound.
Val toasted him with her mug and took a sip. “Any word from the M.E. on the victim’s identity or how she died?” she asked.
“Drowning,” intoned a deep baritone from the break room door. Sergeant Travis Blake, a 6’5”, barrel-chested white man in his early 40s, took up the entire doorway, and his voice occupied any space his body didn’t. “No opinion yet as to how or why.”
The room fell silent, each officer paying their own private tribute to the woman. After suffering rape at the hands of a so-called family friend at the age of twelve, Val had struggled with occasional thoughts of suicide, temptations she resisted with therapy and the unflagging support of her older brother, Chad. She stuffed the unbidden memories and brought her thoughts back to the present.
“What else do we know about her?” Val asked. “She had no ID on her when she washed up on the riverbank, no phone, nothing.”
“Her name was Susan Lambert,” Blake said, waving Rico aside so he could access the coffee pot. “We matched the body to a missing persons report this morning, and the family ID’d her a few hours ago. Seventeen years old, a junior at Liberty High School. Varsity volleyball, honor roll, student body treasurer. Volunteered on weekends with the mayor’s reading-to-poor-kids program. Oldest of three girls, parents still together.”
“Why would a girl like that kill herself?” Rico mused aloud. “She had the world by the ass on a downhill pull.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Val said. “You never know what a teenager’s going through. Boyfriend troubles, school, acne, almost anything can trigger depression.”
“Scratch the boyfriend angle,” Blake said, stirring four scoops of sugar into his coffee. “Her parents said she wasn’t dating, and her sister confirmed it. Apparently she was too busy with all of her extracurricular activities. Oh, and it ain’t school. On top of everything else, the girl had a 3.8 grade point average.”
“Sergeant Blake?” An African-American woman with gray-specked curls and oversized red-framed glasses poked her head in the door. Val recognized her as Yvonne Conrad, executive assistant to precinct commander Laurence Gibson. “Oh, and Officer Dawes, good, you’re both here. The M.E. report on that drowned girl came in, and there’s an emergency meeting at City Hall to brief the mayor on it. Lieutenant Gibson wants you both there.” She handed Blake a sealed manila envelope with his name scrawled across it.
“The mayor?” Blake frowned. “Why would Megan Iverson give a rat’s ass about this case?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Yvonne said. “Meeting’s in twenty minutes. You’d better get a move-on. Traffic’s a mess out there.” She scooted out of the room, humming an old-time blues tune Val couldn’t quite name.
Lopez rolled his eyes. “I bet I know why. Iverson’s considering a run in the next governor’s race, running on a law-and-order platform. She’s looking for a headline to ride into the primaries.”
“Whatever the reason, we’d better get on the road,” Blake said. “Rico can drive us over while we read this report.”
“Beats desk duty,” Rico said. “I’ll get the car.”
Val and Blake scanned copies of the report while Lopez fought Clayton’s clogged city streets at rush hour. He blipped the sirens a few times to scoot past some of the uglier backups, but they remained stuck in traffic at 5:30 when the meeting was supposed to begin.
Val didn’t mind. She appreciated the opportunity to dive deeper into the report’s details. The M.E. had declared drowning as the cause of death, but hadn’t ruled out suicide, homicide, or accidental death. But a possible explanation for why the girl would take her own life emerged deep in the report’s background pages—an explanation that left Val numb and silent for several moments.
“Look at this,” she said when she could speak again. “Bruising on the thighs in various stages of healing—some fresh. Scar tissue and traces of semen in the vaginal canal.”
Blake stared at her, recognition dawning. “And our all-American girl allegedly has no boyfriend.”
Val nodded, a lump rising in her throat. “No boyfriend,” she said, exhaling a long, uneasy breath, “but she does have a history of violent sexual abuse.” Her throat grew tight, and she turned her gaze out the window, unable to focus again on the report’s details.
Blake let out a long, low whistle and dove back into the report. For the rest of the ride, only Rico’s muttered curses at Clayton’s idiot drivers broke the somber silence.
