The touch of murder, p.2
The Touch of Murder, page 2
Not much, but enough to keep him going.
And he would keep going. And then one day, Freddie might find himself on the other side of those sheer curtains.
This was about as likely as running eight miles.
But it wasn’t impossible.
Freddie took a huge breath, feeling his lungs to their capacity, straightened, then started to run again. Normally, after arriving at the house he once called his own, he would walk home. But today, he was determined to run all the way back. He made about a mile before having to stop, but a mile today was a mile more than yesterday—a mile closer to redeeming himself for his past transgressions and turning his life around.
First stop, his health.
Next, came getting back to work.
Freddie Furlow had dedicated his entire life to law enforcement. He began as a rookie cop, training in Matheson, before moving around to different departments and different cities until he found his home in Greenham. There, he’d naturally progressed from boot to detective where, for a time, he’d been happy.
When Peter Shade had become his captain, his friend had tried to promote him on several occasions. And to Freddie’s knowledge, at least twice these proposals had been approved by whoever signed the checks. But after the events that had sent his life into a spiral and his weight ballooning, he’d declined.
He didn’t deserve a raise. Not after what he’d done. If anything, he deserved to be behind bars like the criminals he used to hunt.
Freddie sighed.
First health, then work.
Back to work—he had to get back to work.
But that might prove even more challenging than running. At least with running, you had a basis—everyone knew how to walk.
How do you escape demons that will never stop chasing you? Even if you could run from them, they were always just a step behind.
Just waiting for you to stumble so that they can pounce.
And devour you.
Chapter 3
Veronica knew that it was going to be awkward, but as a member of the Band-Aid generation, she believed in the importance of ripping the covering off quickly rather than suffering through peeling it back slowly.
She didn’t hesitate before heading into the City of Greenham police station.
With her head held high, Veronica walked briskly up the stairs, trying not to think about Freddie. This soon proved impossible, however.
She had never seen a photograph or heard a description of her new partner Ethan Blake—like a crime scene, she wanted to go into this unbiased—but the process of elimination made him obvious.
And Ethan couldn’t have been more different than Freddie.
Thin, with defined features. Freddie had a wealth of experience, and just looking at Ethan was enough for Veronica to know that this man did not.
“Detective Shade? My name’s Ethan.” He extended his hand. His grip was strong, but not too strong—he wasn’t compensating for anything. This made her smile a little, remembering Cole’s joke from earlier that day.
“Please, just call me Veronica.”
Ethan had dark brown hair that was neatly styled with a part on the left-hand side. His jawline was pronounced, not as sharp as Cole’s, but similar. His outfit was what tipped Veronica off to the fact that he was green: a classic light gray suit with a belt that matched his brown loafers.
Brown loafers… shoes that would give Ethan blisters after day one.
Anybody who had been a detective for more than ten minutes knew the value of function over style.
“Where are you from, Ethan?”
When her father, Peter Shade, had been forced into retirement, the department, with the oversight of the mayor, had looked outside of local jurisdictions for his replacement. Enter Captain Peter Bottel from Washington, DC. Her father might have been police captain, but he was—is—a cop through and through. Pierre Bottel, on the other hand, was a politician masquerading as a captain.
Ethan Blake, the first detective hired or promoted by the department since Veronica herself more than a year ago, wasn’t local either. If he had been, she would have known his name and his rep.
“Originally?”
Veronica started toward her desk, and Ethan respectfully fell in step with her.
“Sure.”
“Arizona. But I was only born there; I didn’t live there long.”
Veronica stopped in front of her desk.
“That one’s yours.” Veronica indicated the desk across from her, the one that had once belonged to Freddie Furlow. It had long since been cleaned out, with her ex-partner’s belongings either being placed into storage or having been delivered to him while he was on leave. “But I wouldn’t get too used to it. We don’t spend much time in the office.”
Most of my time as a rookie was spent in Freddie’s disgusting car full of fast-food wrappers.
“What did you do before being hired as a detective here in Greenham?” Veronica continued with what she hoped came off as casual conversation.
“Oh, yeah, right—well, I completed my police training in Oklahoma, but then I got a job as a trooper with the Oregon State Police.”
Veronica, who was in the process of sipping from her travel mug, sputtered.
“Dammit.”
Ethan quickly grabbed a Kleenex from a box on her desk and handed it to her.
“Thanks,” Veronica said, wiping her face.
In many ways, Ethan Blake reminded her of Cole Batherson; they were both young, had a similar style, and while Cole was better looking, Ethan wasn’t hard on the eyes.
“How long did you work as a state trooper?” Veronica asked, trying to keep her tone even.
This wasn’t the question she wanted to ask. She wanted to ask if Ethan knew ex-State Trooper Steven Burns. She wanted to ask if they’d ever worked together. She wanted to ask why Steve left the State Police.
“Two years. Two years and then—”
“You came here,” Veronica finished for him.
Ethan shrugged.
“I came here.”
Veronica gulped her coffee, finishing what was left.
“Well, welcome to the City of Greenham, the drug abuse and overdose capital of the West.”
Ethan clearly wasn’t sure how to respond to this, so he just nodded.
The lack of reciprocation when it came to her career trajectory indicated that Ethan already knew about her past. Veronica actually found it refreshing that he didn’t placate her by asking. Unlike Veronica, a man who wore an outfit as fancy as Ethan did, and was that put together, clearly did his background research. And she knew exactly what her new partner would’ve found.
Greenham PD Officer Veronica Shade was promoted to detective approximately fourteen months ago. That made her one of the youngest detectives in the department. There were rumors that she’d only been promoted because her father was captain—thank you Ken Cameron—but any detective worth his salt would have seen through that.
Ethan would’ve also discovered that she brought down the Dollmaker, Gloria Tramell, a murderer, abusive wife, and neglectful mother. And no story would be complete without reading about or watching the video that still circulated online of the botched live TV interview with Marlowe Lerman. The one in which a mysterious caller revealed all of her secrets to the world, including the fact that she suffered from a rare condition called multimodal synesthesia, where sensory stimuli entered her brain and got mixed around like melted chocolate in a bowl.
There were more details, sure, but the practical man probably passed some, if not all of them, off as fantasy. He would have also learned of Dante Fiori, maybe even of Veronica’s later brother, Benny.
Maybe, maybe not.
It didn’t matter to Veronica—she was beyond caring what people thought. She was just here to do her job, one that she wasn’t ashamed to say she was excellent at.
Veronica sat in front of her computer and opened her email. Across from her, she watched Ethan awkwardly lower himself into Freddie’s chair… only to sink nearly to the floor. Freddie’s girth had permanently damaged the springs in the chair.
As he struggled to adjust the chair’s height, Veronica felt herself smiling.
There was one interesting email, some stranger reaching out after reading Cole’s piece about her in the Times and being inspired. It was nice, but she didn’t respond.
After a few minutes of Ethan doing nothing other than looking more uncomfortable than a nun at an adult cinema, she finally addressed him again.
“We mostly wait,” Veronica admitted. “Wait until a case lands in our lap and then we move. And we don’t stop moving until we solve it.”
Just as she finished speaking, the door behind Ethan opened and Captain Peter Bottel stood in the doorway of his office.
“Detectives Shade and Blake, can you join me in my office, please?”
Veronica stood and Ethan joined her.
“And this would be the case. Just follow my lead.”
Once inside the office, the captain asked them to close the door. Ethan obliged.
“Welcome to Greenham PD, Detective Blake,” Captain Bottel said.
“It’s a pleasure to be here,” Ethan responded.
Captain Bottel scratched his bald head then adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. In his mid-fifties, the man was completely bald, and almost entirely hairless aside from a rust-colored mustache that Veronica was fairly certain he dyed on a weekly basis.
“Normally, I’m not in favor of throwing a new detective right into a murder investigation, but unfortunately, you are the only two available.”
Veronica’s interest was piqued. Since Dante Fiori, the most exciting cases she’d been given were robberies and assaults. Better than unarmed jewelry heists, but she would be lying if she said she didn’t miss the excitement of something a little more… substantial. It wasn’t as if serious crimes weren’t being committed in Greenham—if anything, the opposite was true. All crime was up, from drug overdoses to break-ins, to murder.
“That okay with you, Detective Shade?” the captain asked.
“Yes, sir,” Veronica replied. “Not a problem.”
There was a folder on the captain’s desk, and he nodded at it. Veronica took it and handed it to Ethan. They were starting to leave when Captain Bottel spoke up again. “Hopefully quick and easy with this one, detectives.”
Veronica loathed euphemisms. All they did was confuse and obfuscate.
But in this case, the captain’s meaning was clear.
“Quick and easy” meant to keep it out of the press. It also meant no more serial killers, and no more drama. Find out what happened, arrest the culprit, and move on.
But even though Veronica nodded in agreement, deep down, doubt began to creep in. After all, her name was Detective Veronica Shade.
She didn’t know how to make things quick and easy.
It simply wasn’t in her genes.
Chapter 4
“No, don’t open that,” Veronica warned. Ethan, who was in the process of opening the case folder, snapped it closed as if looking inside would break some unwritten rule.
Jesus, he’s skittish, Veronica thought. She tried to remember her first day on the job, to recall if she’d been this nervous. She thought not, but Veronica was well aware that her memories weren’t always the most reliable. Then again, I had a decade-plus veteran to guide me through the first days. And my first case… what was it? She couldn’t remember. But she knew what it wasn’t: a murder investigation. Captain Shade would have never allowed it.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Veronica apologized. She wasn’t prepared to be a mentor, but she also didn’t want to make another enemy in the department, either. Been there, done that. Arresting fellow officer Ken Cameron had garnered her no friends. His murder, also tied to Veronica, made her even fewer.
“If you want to look at the case, by all means, be my guest. My personal approach is a little different, as you can imagine. I read what someone else has written and it biases me. Can’t help it. I like to go in clean, open-minded.”
Ethan said nothing—he just chewed the inside of his cheek.
“That’s not going to work for me,” she added.
Ethan made a face.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Look, my last partner and I, well, we had some...” Veronica sucked her teeth as she tried to come up with the right word, “—secrets, I guess. I don’t want to start off the same way with you. If we’re going to be an effective team, we should be able to speak our minds to each other.”
Ethan still looked uncomfortable, and Veronica sighed.
“I don’t like playing games either, Ethan. If you want to say something, just—”
“Do you want to avoid the crime scene photos because you think it will affect your synesthesia?” Ethan interrupted.
Well, that’s one way to ask what’s on your mind. Blunt, to the point of being rude.
But she’d asked for it and couldn’t get mad because her partner had listened to her.
“Partly,” Veronica admitted. She didn’t like talking about her synesthesia, didn’t like making it the focus like it had been on Marlowe, but at times, it was unavoidable. “But I also find that when you look at pictures that someone else took of a crime scene, you’re tempted to try and find their angle, instead of investigating from scratch. You’re apt to miss things that way. As a state trooper, I’m sure you developed methods of your own.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Good.”
Veronica waited to see if Ethan would open the folder. He didn’t.
She placed her hands flat on the table and stood.
“Alright, let’s get going then, shall we?”
They drove in silence through Greenham, making their way toward the city’s seedier districts. Like most of Oregon, most of the West, hell, most of the Country, Greenham had a significant drug problem. It rivaled Portland in scope and per capita overdose deaths, despite having less than a fifth of its population. Overdoses were so common in Greenham that beat cops usually spent a grand total of five minutes at the scene before signing off on them. Detectives were rarely called in.
And the borough that their case drew them to now was in the worst area in all of Greenham: a wedge-shaped district sandwiched between the more affluent Meadowbrook and Cedar Heights. It was officially named Nettle Point, but everyone called it Needle Point.
She knew the approximate address of the crime scene and the police car parked by the curb offered something more specific.
Veronica got out of her car and was preparing to show her badge when a man with slicked black hair in a police uniform stepped out from behind a white tarp that hung from rotting scaffolding.
“Court,” Veronica greeted the man with a grin.
“Detective Shade.”
Court was young, even younger than Ethan by a few years.
“This is Detective Ethan Blake, first day on the job. Ethan, meet Officer Court Furnelli.”
The two men shook hands and exchanged pleasantries.
“They finally got you out of the Greenham holding cells, huh?” Veronica teased.
Court performed a mock salute.
“Onward and upward.”
“Good for you.”
“How’s Freddie doing?” Court asked.
“He’s better, out of the hospital,” Veronica replied with a shrug.
Even though she was at odds with her ex-partner, Detective Freddie Furlow, she still cared for the man. And while she may not have visited him in the hospital, she’d followed up to make sure he was doing okay.
After a massive coronary, Freddie had been hospitalized for two weeks before being released with a more-or-less clean bill of health. Cleaner, anyway.
“Yeah, I heard that. How’s he doing? I heard he’s coming back to work soon,” Court said. He turned and gestured for them to follow him beneath the white tarp.
“Really?” The last Veronica had heard was that Freddie was on indefinite leave.
“Yeah, a couple of the fellas and I were talking, told me that he was doing really good. Lost some weight. A lot of weight. Might be back real soon.”
That’s why I didn’t hear, Veronica thought. Because it was chatter among boys. And the boys don’t like me.
Except for Court. Court had always been nice to her, even after the Ken Cameron debacle. He was a good kid, and a smart cop.
Freddie getting healthy, and losing weight, was good news. The heart attack had done what she never could: get the man to take his health seriously.
“Good, good,” Veronica said absently.
Before stepping beneath the tarp, Court turned to look at both her and Ethan one last time.
“I should warn you,” he said, his tone suddenly serious. “It’s not pretty in here.”
Veronica nodded, appreciating the man’s warning, but she took it with a grain of salt. Like all rookie police officers, Court Furnelli had spent a year and change working in the bowels of the Greenham PD—working the holding cells. It was a bad job, the worst job, mostly consisting of cleaning up junkie puke. But that was a far cry from murder.
“Thanks.”
Court pulled back the drape, and Veronica realized that she was very wrong.
The scene before her was enough to bring bile to the throat of even the most hardened and seasoned detective.
And her new rookie partner Ethan Blake was anything but.
Chapter 5
“An anonymous caller reported hearing strange noises in the wee hours of the morning,” Court said. “Must have been hella strange for someone to send me out here.”
Before stepping through the curtain, Veronica took a deep breath, then a second without exhaling. She had gotten so good at preparing herself for her synesthesia that it came second nature to her now. It had been her psychiatrist, Dr. Jane Bernard, who had first taught her this technique. It was simple, yet effective. Without it, there was the real potential of being overwhelmed.
