The Second Lie (13 page)

"Have you found anything?"

"Not yet. But I'm not giving up."

"Shane could be lying."

"I don't think so."

Chuck was sharp. The best.

But Sam wasn't as apt to believe the kids.

The drugs were here. No one could argue with that. And if they were being produced here, as Sam suspected, their problem was not just identifying a delivery service. They had to find and shut down an entire company. If there was a superlab in Ohio, they were only seeing the beginnings of a spike in drug use. And it was already nearly impossible to keep up with what they had.

She opened the packet of dressing. Put it on her salad.

"And Shane has no idea who left the notes?"

"None."

"I don't suppose he kept any of them, either."

"No. He'd been told to flush them."

With the plastic fork she'd just taken from its wrapper, Sam mixed the dressing into the salad.

"Whoever's behind this is thorough."

"Nobody wants to get caught. Stops the money flow."

"Yeah, but you have admit, this is a pretty elaborate setup. Money splitting in several ways. Seems like big business to me."

"I grant you that," Chuck said. "But maybe now they'll know we're on to them. If we make it hard for this guy to do business here, he'll move on. The last thing he wants is cops on his trail."

Sam wanted to believe him. To be relieved of her suspicion about the superlab.

"I don't know, Chuck. I look at the child welfare statistics and the Holmes case and...this isn't just in the schools. Or one guy selling drugs. With the quantities we're seeing, the lower cost, the use across all sectors of society, I'm really afraid we have mass production going on right here in Fort County."

She wasn't telling him anything he hadn't heard before. From her.

With a quarter of his burger lying uneaten on the paper in front of him, Chuck looked at her.

"What?" she asked.

"Just...I wasn't going to say anything, but..."

"What?" she asked a second time.

"You need to let that idea go, Sam. The whole superlab thing." He wiped his hands on his napkin and leaned forward. "People watch you, don't you know that?"

"People? You mean my brother. And Kyle."

Shaking his head, he glanced away, and then, as though he'd made a decision, pinned her with his most serious look.

"I figured you knew, but...everyone watches you. From the sheriff on down."

Shocked, she just stared at him. "Why? I've never done anything wrong. My record's exemplary."

"It's not about anything you've done. Or not done, for that matter."

"Then what?"

"You've been under scrutiny from the day you put on a uniform. Surely you knew that. You have to try harder, be more perfect than anyone else."

Chuck was right. She did seem to have to answer a lot of questions about routine things. Always had.

She'd just thought the sheriff was looking out for her.

"Because I'm a woman." Chandler was a small town. A little old-fashioned.

But she wasn't the first--or the only--female cop in the area.

"No, not because you're a woman. Because of your dad."

The quietly spoken words hit her hard.

"You idolized your old man," Chuck said. "Everyone knows that. Some of the older guys say you're just like him in your loyalty to the job. Your refusal to relax and let anything go. Your passion for police work. And they're afraid that--"

"I'll be just like him and make a mistake."

"From what I hear the job was everything to your father."

"Just as it is to you."

"With one difference," Chuck said. "I do the job I'm given. I don't go looking for more."

Sam's father had. Which had made him a better cop in Sam's opinion. The best. He gave over and above. And the people of Chandler had been safer for it. She had the medals and awards he'd won that showed their gratitude.

Just because he'd had a problem, as well, a sort of personal vendetta, didn't take away from all the lives her father had saved.

"Like it or not, you are your father's daughter."

She'd give anything to be as good a cop as her father was. "I was ten when he died, Chuck. Hardly enough time to model myself on him."

"But aren't you doing just that? You've talked about your meth lab suspicions to everyone. And I know your brother is worried. You aren't on meth-lab detail, Sam."

"I'm asking questions. Which is what any good cop would do if he or she had suspicions."

"And in anyone else, it would just be put down to being a good cop, but not for you, Sam, don't you see? They're looking at you. Looking for a sign that you're going over the top, as he did. And you're giving it to them."

Sam forked a bite of her salad. What could she say?

"They don't want to lose another cop. Or have to visit your mother a second time with the news that a member of her family is dead in the line of duty."

"So I'm guilty by association."

"Just be careful, Sam," Chuck said, picking up his burger. "Don't feed them. Drop this meth thing. I'll talk to the sheriff again, tell him that we need to dig a little deeper about a possible superlab nearby. In the meantime, I promise you, I'm aware. If I see anything, feel anything, hear anything that raises suspicion I'll be on it."

Sam nodded because she had to.

Not because she'd made up her mind to let go.

11

Chandler, Ohio
Friday, September 10, 2010

I
was tired when I got home Friday night, but picked up the call that came in just as I was sitting down with a glass of wine because Sam's name popped up.

She sounded all cop and official-like. "As far as I can see Maggie spends a lot of time with that girlfriend I told you about, and she plays tennis. I haven't seen her so much as smile at a man across a street, let alone be in contact with one."

"I've seen her a total of three times," I said. "Talked to her mother twice. Neither of them mentioned that she plays tennis." Didn't necessarily mean anything, though.

I took a sip of wine, glad I had a full bottle. I might need a rare second glass tonight. "It's an expensive sport."

"Yeah. But not for the kids Maggie plays with. There's a group of them." Sam told me about the tennis club the kids had formed. Said she'd gotten a list of their names from some Delia woman who worked at the complex.

"Do they have an adult sponsor? A coach of some kind?" I was pretty certain there was a man in Maggie's life, and that she was savvy enough to know she had to be discreet. I also knew that if I was going to help my young client, we had to find this guy before Maggie had sex with him.

Camy lifted her head from my lap--her usual place when I was sitting at our dinner table.

After a questioning stare and a cursory sniff that revealed no food was being consumed with my wine, she settled back down.

"No," Sam reported. "They're on their own. But there's more."

Of course there was. Sam wouldn't be telling me about it otherwise.

"What?" I asked, twiddling a pen between two fingers.

"I busted a kid last week for selling drugs at a high school football game. He's a member of this tennis club."

Okay. I didn't like it. But... "When we played basketball that Miranda girl was a user. Remember? Heck, these days, it's pretty much impossible for a kid to go to school without being exposed to users. And probably dealers, too."

"I saw a couple of the other kids in the club this afternoon. At least, I think they were from the club. If I met either of them on the street, I'd keep an eye on them."

"Not someone you'd want your fourteen-year-old hanging out with?"

"Nope."

"But not adults, either."

"No."

Fine. We were looking for an adult. Period.

"Who else works at the courts besides this Delia woman?"

"Some kids work part-time. Mostly doing cleanup stuff. But that's not what I'm worried about."

"What are you worried about?" I asked.

"I think that tennis club could be a front for drug dealing. And if it is, this guy Maggie's going for could be their supplier. Or a client."

Overreaction.
I made my first note since the conversation had begun.

Sam was seeing drugs everywhere.

I wondered if maybe I should consider giving her that prescription she'd been after me for.

She didn't seem to be shaking the Holmes case.

She'd told me about practically accusing Kyle of being involved with meth production.

"I'm not sure how it would work," Sam said. "I haven't figured it all out yet. But I know that one of the kids was busted for dealing within the past couple of weeks. I mean, it's kind of a stretch, a bunch of these kids suddenly wanting to play tennis. And they don't seem interested in learning the game. Watching them on the court, it's like they couldn't care less."

I said nothing, just let Sam talk.

"How they get their drugs and what they do with them, I have no idea. And how does tennis fit in? Why not just deal drugs? Unless they deliver at the club. Maybe buyers come to the courts to make the deals."

"It seems kind of far-fetched to me."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"It probably is. Kel? Do you think I'm irrational?"

"Absolutely not."

"Obsessing?"

"There's a difference between being dedicated and being obsessive," I said.

"Which do you think I am?"

"Dedicated. And overtired. And I think you're worried about the upswing in drug use. You're overwhelmed with your seeming lack of ability to do anything about the problem, and like any good cop, you're brainstorming every possible scenario you can think of."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"You'll tell me if you think I'm losing it, right?"

"Not that you'll listen."

"I know. But you'll tell me?"

"Yes. You know I will."

"Gotta go," Sam said abruptly, as she'd done many times before. I could hear the crackle of her radio in the background. "Chuck needs backup on a domestic-abuse call."

The line was dead. I hadn't had a chance to ask the deputy if she'd found out anything about Maggie's mom.

One of the things Kyle had managed to keep after his divorce--thanks to David Abrams--was the state-of-the-art combine that his father had purchased the year before his death. With careful planting this year, so that the rows and combine head were equally matched, he'd been able to bring in a little more than his estimated harvest, and the feed corn had already been delivered to Bob Branson.

And now Kyle could concentrate on his future--the experimental crop that he'd been working on since high school. To minimize loss and kernel damage, he would handpick the acre filled with the prototype seeds' growth. This year, he had a winner. Bob thought so, too.

The older man was coming for Monday night football that evening and bringing a steak dinner courtesy of the saloon in town, plus a hamburger for Grandpa. Now that the major crop was in, Kyle could easily grill them a couple of slabs of beef, but Bob insisted, and Kyle wasn't about to argue.

The divorce was taking its toll on Bob and, to Kyle, he looked frail, though Bob insisted he was fine. The eighteen-hour days he was putting in seemed to support that.

It was the first time in the almost two years since the stroke that had initiated Grandpa's downward spiral that Bob had agreed to have dinner with them at the farm.

Kyle had just finished his breakfast and was listening to Clara sing to Grandpa as she bathed him when he first smelled the burning.

His initial thought was that he'd left a towel or plastic utensil too close to a stove burner. But the stench was unusual, acrid, and it wasn't coming from the kitchen.

"Zodiac!" His urgent call was met by silence. Kyle couldn't remember whether the dog had been underfoot while he was cooking breakfast. But then, the eight-year-old German shepherd came and went as she damn well pleased since Sam had given her a doggie door for her birthday.

Kyle rushed past the table and outside. The smell was worse. Pungent. Like chemicals. At the barn door, he skidded to a halt long enough to haul the big door aside. The warm interior seemed to be just as he'd left it. Rad and Lillie popped their heads over the stalls, telling him good-morning--as they did every day. But Lillie's nostrils flared and her eyes darted with an uneasy glint.

Zodiac was nowhere to be seen.

"Easy girl," Kyle said softly, stroking the mare's nose as he checked her stall, Rad's and the six empty ones. All fine. Not wasting a second, he let the horses out to the pasture and went to check the supply barn. Maybe there was a clue...

Kyle coughed, inhaling the distinct smell of smoke. And that's when he saw the cloud on the horizon--above the land the government paid him to leave unplanted as part of an ecological program to regenerate the earth.

There was nothing out there to burn but dirt and clover. Nothing that would send up such a stench.

The dirty gray plumes of smoke were shooting higher into the crisp morning air while he stood there, reasoning to himself why there couldn't be a fire.

Making a run for the house, Kyle called to Clara to keep Grandpa in his room, grabbed his cell phone off the kitchen counter and dialed 9-1-1.

Sam was at Kyle's place before the fire was out. She wasn't on duty until noon. But he'd called.

"Did you find her?" she shouted as he met her car in the drive. Zodiac was still missing.

"Not yet." His face was grim. "I can't get anywhere near the fire," he added.

"I know." The authorities had ordered Kyle to stay away from the site because of the chemical odor he'd reported. But at the moment, the fire wasn't his only concern. "I've checked all of her haunts," he continued, his long hair more mussed than usual. "She's not down by the stream or in either of the barns."

"What about with Grandpa? You know she likes to sleep beside his bed in the mornings."

"Checked. Clara's here, anyway."

"Did you look at your mole traps? Could she have gotten caught in one of them?"