I sounded my first siren when I was three. Riding in our town’s Santa Claus parade, tucked into the front seat between my grandfather and my father. Granddad was chief of police. Dad had just made detective. An uncle and an older cousin walked behind the cruiser, stiff in their dress uniforms, struggling not to smile.
I don’t remember ever deciding I wanted to become a cop, no more than my friends consciously decided they would grow up to marry and have children. We simply assumed that was what we would do, what we needed to complete our lives.
I enrolled in police college right out of high school. My brother had already headed off to New York to pursue acting, having never shown any interest in the “family business.” When I graduated, Dad was so proud, he didn’t stop grinning for a month. My mother says it’s a good thing he died three years later, or “what happened next” would have killed him. Maybe she’s right, but I’ll never forgive her for saying it.
“What happened next” began when my partner and I were first to a crime scene. Dawn Collins, fifteen years old, brutally raped and murdered. I’d seen murder victims before. I’d seen far worse cases than this. And yet, when I walked into that room and saw Dawn, naked and curled up in the corner, her dark hair falling over her face, the cord around her neck the only sign she hadn’t just fallen asleep, something in me snapped. Not a loud snap. Not even a hard one. Just a tiny little snip, like someone had flipped off my power switch and I just…shut down. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t process. Couldn’t react.
My partner, a seasoned constable nearing retirement, had taken it in stride, presuming I was in shock and just letting me follow him as he processed the scene, calmly explaining each step, and letting me play student bystander. By the time the others arrived, I’d snapped out of it enough to do my job.
That night, the nightmares came. I’d lived with them for over a decade by then and, usually, they were the same images played and replayed-running through the forest, running for help, help for Amy, help that would never come in time. But that night after seeing Dawn Collins, I wasn’t running. I was back in the cabin, a man’s face over mine, features contorted in laughter as I screamed. Screamed in terror, in pain-screamed for Amy, screamed for my father, for anyone.
I woke up screaming. Bathed in sweat. Shaking so badly I had to gasp for breath. Twenty minutes later, two officers from my own precinct showed up at my door, responding to a call from my neighbor. By then, I was calm enough to convince them it hadn’t been me-maybe someone down the hall or a too-loud television. They bought it-even joked about it later, at the station, teasing me about who I’d been having sex with to make me scream so loud. And I laughed with them, because that’s what they expected, and because I knew no one would ever guess the truth. Nadia Stafford was not the kind of girl to wake up screaming from anything.
That night, I gagged myself before I went to bed. I knew the nightmares would come again, and they did. That crime scene had reminded me too much of Amy’s death. Once I fell asleep, I felt her panic, her terror, her agony. Knew what it was like to be a victim.
And when they caught the guy a few days later, I knew what I needed to do to make the nightmares end. I had to see Dawn get the justice that had been denied Amy. So I asked for and received permission to be in on the arrest. I wanted to see his face at that moment when he knew it was over, that justice had prevailed and he was going down.
Only it didn’t happen that way. When we picked up Wayne Franco, he was downright gleeful in anticipation of the glory and recognition to come. There was no justice forthcoming. I’d been a fool to think so. Being arrested didn’t mean you would pay the price for your crimes. Amy had taught me that.
As I stood there, watching Franco grinning, I knew I hadn’t come here to see Wayne Franco arrested. I’d come here to see Dawn Collins get justice. So I waited. And when he made the mistake of reaching into his pocket, I put a bullet between his eyes.
By waiting for my mark to make that fatal move, I’d given the department the excuse they needed, and they fell on it like shipwreck survivors spotting a lifeboat. They claimed I was acting in self-defense; who knew what the killer was pulling from his pocket? No one ever asked whether I thought my life was in danger. I’m sure they suspected the answer. In the end, they were able to take my history, couple it with a psychiatric evaluation and claim post-traumatic stress disorder, allowing me to “retire” from the force.
The media hadn’t been nearly so magnanimous.
After six months of hell, I’d cashed in my meager retirement savings, taken ten grand in “get out of our lives” money from my mother’s new husband and put a down payment on the Red Oak Lodge.
By the time we reached a motel, my reflective mood had blown over, leaving only wisps of cloud. I’m no good at brooding. After “the Incident” I think I disappointed some people by not falling into a fit of depression like some Victorian heroine, retiring to my bed and wasting away until nothing remained but a melancholy epigraph for my grave. Then there were those who wanted to see me rage into battle, fight the establishment, middle finger extended to the world. When I’d simply shrugged and started over, I robbed both groups of the chance for some classic “wronged woman” drama. But I hadn’t been wronged. I’d made a choice. I’d paid the price.
Given the chance to do it over, would I-could I-do any differently today?
Probably not.
Jack and I shared a motel room. I’ll admit when he broached the “one room or two” question, my instinctive response had been to say “two…of course.” And that wasn’t because I suspected Jack wanted more out of this partnership. In two years he’d never looked at me in a way that suggested he’d even noticed I was of the opposite sex.
Yet sharing a room required a whole new level of trust. If we were partners, though, this wasn’t the time to say, “Sorry, I don’t trust you enough to sleep in the same room.”
So I’d taken a deep breath, told myself “In for a penny, in for a pound” and asked him what he thought we should do. One room was safer, he said. In the future, he’d try to find suites with separate bedrooms and pullout sofas, to give me privacy, but it was too late for that tonight. So one room-two beds-it was.
The next morning after breakfast I called Emma at the lodge to check in. Then we headed out to our first stop of the day-a meeting with a contact of Jack’s in a business district that looked as if it hadn’t done much business in a while. The For Lease signs just barely outnumbered the pawnshops. After a half-block of silence, I cleared my throat.
“This guy we’re meeting, am I allowed details? Like who he is and why we’re talking to him?”
Jack skirted a trio of slow-walking seniors and didn’t speak until we’d outpaced the three by at least twenty feet.
“Saul’s retired,” Jack said. “Like Evelyn. Old pro. But more…” He paused. “Involved. Keeps his ear to the ground. Listens to gossip, rumors. These days? Nothing else to do.”
“So you trust him.”
“Don’t distrust him.”
Jack stopped in front of a dilapidated coffee shop, checked the address-or the portion of it that hadn’t peeled off the window-then opened the door.
To my surprise, the coffee shop was running at over half capacity. For a moment, I thought, Must be good coffee. Then I looked around at the customers, most of whom looked as if their current seat was the closest thing they had to a permanent residence. Not so much good coffee, then, as free refills, an unusually cold day and a management policy that didn’t discourage loitering.
The shop looked better inside than out. Still shabby, but clean. A pregnant server made the rounds with a coffeepot in one hand and a dishrag in the other, relentlessly hunting for half-filled cups and dirty tables. Someone was baking in the back, the sweet smell of banana muffins overpowering the faint stink of unwashed bodies.