On Her Father's Grave (Rogue River Novella Book 1) (9 page)

“It’s quiet. The car is here but I don’t see the officer. I called for him and no answer. I’m going to check the outbuildings.”

Dispatch paused. “He’s not answering his radio. Stay with your vehicle until backup arrives.”

Stevie sat in the hot sun, her door open, wondering how long it’d take the next car to arrive. Paul’s empty vehicle was disturbing her.

Then the screams started.

Her heart in her throat, Stevie leaped out of her vehicle, her hand on her weapon. She took two steps in the direction of the barn behind the small home and then stopped. She grabbed her radio and reported the screams. Male screams.

“Oh my God.” She wanted to slam her hands over her ears.

“Wait for your backup,” came the dispatcher’s voice.

“No! They’re killing him,” she shouted at her radio, her feet glued to the ground. Every nerve in her brain shouted for her to find Paul, but her training made her stay put. “I’m waiting,” she whispered, feeling like she was about to physically split in half. She shuddered. The screams stopped, then started up again.

A second car pulled in beside her and Luis Madero stepped out, his eyes widening as he heard the screams. He spoke into his radio and gestured with his head for Stevie to follow him.

Stevie’s training kicked in and she moved automatically, working in unison with Luis as if they were in a training exercise. Her brain shifted into autopilot, tuning out the screams. At the door to the barn, Luis gestured for her to enter and the scene burned itself on Stevie’s brain.

Paul was being held down on the floor of the barn by three men while a fourth poured a liquid over his face. The men wore heavy-duty protective gear, gas masks, and gloves; Paul had nothing. An odor assaulted Stevie’s nose and her eyes started to water. Luis shouted and the men looked up. All four made the decision to run. Stevie holstered her gun and grabbed the hose from outside the barn, dragging it toward Paul and holding her breath. She stood back and sprayed the cop, rinsing the clear substance from his skin.

She didn’t know what it was, but she knew she had to get rid of it. She dimly heard Luis radio for an ambulance. She glanced at the jug that the liquid had come from. Someone had written “HCL” on the side with a black marker.

Her brain tugged a name out of the little-used high school chemistry section of its memories:
hydrochloric acid
.

She inhaled, which made her lungs burn and more tears stream from her eyes. But she didn’t know if it was a result of the liquid or the sight of Paul’s burned face and peeling skin.

Stevie shuddered at the memory and refocused on Ted Warner’s information on her patrol car’s computer. It’d been six months since she’d walked into hell in that barn. She wiped at her dripping nose and the tears that’d leaked from her eyes. She still saw Paul’s ruined face when she tried to sleep at night. Or when a place like Ted Warner’s poked at her memories. LA had lost what little remaining luster it’d held for her after that incident. Meth labs were everywhere, but she’d hoped that maybe at home, there’d be fewer of them.

And perhaps, just maybe, the criminals wouldn’t be as cruel.

She swallowed hard, put the car in drive, and headed back to the office to ask if any of the other officers found it odd that obnoxious Ted Warner was driving the nicest truck in town.

Zane tapped his pen as he sat across the table from Grace Ellis and her parents. The three of them had shown up ten minutes ago, Grace with red eyes and her parents with determined looks on their faces. Zane had wanted to interview Hunter’s girlfriend after reading Stevie’s notes from her interview, but had hoped to learn the type of compound in Hunter’s blood first.

There’d been a moment of confusion when Grace’s father had wanted to speak with Roy. Zane had brought him up to date. The parents had exchanged a look but seemed to accept him in his new role. “Tell him what you told us,” Mr. Ellis had prodded his daughter.

Grace had shrugged. “I saw Hunter talking with an adult when he first got to the lake.”

“Who?” asked Zane.

“I don’t know. I figured it was someone’s dad. I didn’t seem him around again.”

“What did he look like?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see his face.”

“Then how did you know it wasn’t another kid?” Zane asked.

“He dressed like an adult. You know . . . shorts, but old guy shorts. And tennis shoes instead of flip-flops.”

“So it was an old man?”

“No. He wasn’t
old
. I meant old like you.” She blushed and looked at her hands. “You’re not old, you’re
older
.”

Zane sighed. “You can’t tell me what he looked like, but you know it wasn’t a teen and wasn’t someone
old
.”

“Right!” Grace looked pleased. “You know. The shorts were something that were probably popular ten years ago.”

Zane wondered what Grace would think about the shorts he’d worn to the Taylors’ last night. “How about hair color?”

“Not gray. Not blond. Dark.”

“Taller than Hunter?”

Grace shut her eyes and thought. “No. Definitely shorter. And he wasn’t fat. He was about the same as everyone else there.”

“Why didn’t you tell this to the first officer that questioned you?”

Her face fell. “I didn’t think of it. All I thought about was what Hunter was doing during the party and what’d happened to him.” She grabbed a tissue from the box that Zane had set on the table. His past experiences with teenage girls had taught him that they easily break into tears. Especially when they’d been brought in for underage drinking, and he’d had to call their parents to come pick them up. Grace wasn’t in that situation, but Zane had placed the tissue box on the table out of habit.

“I miss him. The stupid jerk.” She blew her nose.

Zane looked at the parents. Grace seemed to come from a quiet middle-class family. He knew the parents by sight, and at least he hadn’t met them at midnight over their daughter’s antics as he had some teens’ parents. He decided to take a risk with the town’s gossip network. “We’re keeping an eye out for something Hunter might have taken that stopped his heart or lung function. Is there anything in your medicine cabinet that Hunter might have helped himself to when he was visiting Grace? Like a prescription?”

Three jaws fell open.

“Hunter wouldn’t take something from my parents!” Grace exclaimed. But a fleeting doubt crossed her face.

The parents looked at each other, then back at Zane. “The only prescriptions we have on hand are for acid reflux,” Mrs. Ellis said. “I don’t think that would do it, would it? I don’t know what the overdose symptoms are.”

“No pain medication or tranquilizers on hand? Maybe something you have tucked in the back just in case?”

The parents shook their heads. Zane nodded. He’d figured as much. His earlier conversation with Hunter’s parents had gone the same way. Shock, denial, then consideration. Hunter’s mom kept tranquilizers, but a check of her supply had shown none were missing. He wished the medical examiner had the drug identification from the state lab. It’d be easier to find the source of what had killed Hunter if he knew what he was looking for.

“How was Hunter’s attitude recently? Was he looking forward to graduating?” Zane changed the subject.

“Yes, he hated school. He was ready to find a job and earn some real money,” Grace answered eagerly.

Grace’s mother gave a small snort.

Zane understood. Jobs that paid “real money” were slim in Solitude and the surrounding counties. “Where did Hunter want to work? Wasn’t he going to college next year?”

Grace smiled. “He was going to try to get on with his friend’s dad’s construction business. They’ve stayed busy and the O’Rourkes’ hotel is giving them a big contract. He was going to go to Oregon State as planned at the end of the summer.”

Zane had worked construction his college summers. It could be backbreaking work and eye-opening for a teenager. If anything would have convinced Hunter that college was the right path, it would have been being the young new guy on a construction site. “Have you seen anything that indicated he might have tried suicide?” Zane asked delicately.

Grace’s eyes opened wide. “You think he killed himself?”

“No, I’m asking you if you think he’d try. There’s a difference. Right now there’s something odd showing up in his blood tests. We need to figure out if it got there accidentally or on purpose and why. Did he take it to get high or end his life? Make sense? We have to consider all the possibilities.”

“Oh. I don’t think he’d kill himself.” Her brows knitted, and she studied the table. “I don’t think that at all. Don’t they give all their stuff away and act odd if they’re thinking about it? Hunter didn’t do any of that.”

“That’s the answer I needed.” Zane smiled at her. “Can you think of anything else that’s happened in the last few days? No mention of getting high with something new? Or perhaps you heard your friends mention something new they wanted to try?”

Grace had slowly shaken her head during his questions. “I heard another high school kid died in Coos Bay. Did he die the same way?”

“Yes, early tests indicate that student may have taken the same substance as Hunter.” Zane bit his lip. By evening the entire town would know the cases were related. But damn it, he needed some answers. Maybe some gossip would knock loose an explanation.

“That’s so sad.” Grace looked ready to cry again.

“I’m very sorry for your loss.” Zane reached across the table and touched the girl’s hand, lowering his voice. “I know you’ll always wonder what your future could have been with him. But promise me that you won’t feel you’re required to be unhappy for the next few years.” He paused, waiting for her to return eye contact. “Mourn him and remember him, but trust me . . . one day you’ll be very happy if you open your heart again. And never shut people out, okay? Never.”

Grace nodded, her eyes damp. Her mother grabbed a tissue and mouthed a silent “Thank you” to Zane. The three of them stood, and the father shook Zane’s hand as they headed out of the room.

“Who did you lose?” Mr. Ellis asked in a quiet voice.

“The girl I’d hoped to marry one day. We were both eight at the time and I thought my life was over,” Zane said with a rueful smile. “I know I was just a child, but I was devastated and learned a lesson for a lifetime. I still wonder what might have been, so I can imagine what she will face for the next few decades.”

He followed the family out to the main entrance. Stevie had returned and was holding a handful of funnels, talking quietly with Kenny and Sheila. He could smell that she’d been standing in the sun. The scent of the outdoors flowed from her hair.

He nodded at the funnels. “You bought some more? I take it that worked pretty good?”

“I bought enough to put one in each vehicle and keep a few in the station.” Her smile was shaky.

Sheila took one and tucked it under her desk. “I need it for when Mr. Berg comes in. I’m tired of yelling at him.”

Zane’s gaze narrowed on Stevie. Her eyes were red, and she seemed a bit pale for someone who’d been out in the sun. It was nearly noon, and he could feel the heat trying to sneak in through the single-paned windows of the station. They only used the air conditioning a few times a year, but he was glad they had it. “What’s going on?” he asked her.

“I was just asking Kenny and Sheila what they knew about Ted Warner. He nearly ran into me as I was backing out of Mrs. Simmons’s driveway, and he was driving an awfully expensive new truck. Yesterday morning I had the impression he hadn’t worked in a while?”

Zane raised a brow at Kenny, who shrugged. “Last I saw he was still driving an old Ford sedan, and no, I don’t think he’s had a job for a while. Loretta works at the hair place and is always complaining about his lazy ass.”

Sheila shook her head. “Beats me.”

“Are you implying Ted is doing something he shouldn’t be doing?” Zane asked Stevie. A new truck was pretty rare in town, especially for a lazy ass like Ted, but it didn’t mean he was doing something wrong.

Stevie swallowed hard. “I know it sounds stupid. It caught my eye is all. Usually something like that will have the neighbors talking, you know? I was just wondering if there’d been any scuttlebutt about it going around. You know . . . gossip is always biggest in the smallest of towns.”

Zane stroked his chin. Stevie didn’t strike him as the type to jump to conclusions about people. “What else bugged you about Ted?”

Her eyes widened the slightest bit. He was right; there was something else. “It’s nothing. But I drove by his house today and it reminded me of a place in LA.” Her jaw closed firmly. She wasn’t ready to share what it’d reminded her of, but that wasn’t what interested Zane.

“So between Ted’s truck and your . . . memory . . . you started to wonder what Teddy-boy has been up to?”

“Something like that.” She looked away, aware of how ridiculous she sounded. Even Sheila seemed amused. “What did Grace Ellis have to say?” Stevie changed the subject, and Zane brought her up to date.

“The other kids said there weren’t any adults there.” Stevie frowned. “Did we miss something?”