17. Hawkins

SEVENTEEN

Hawkins

Rus slept until he woke naturally.

Which meant he was out of bed at nine seventeen, feeling refreshed.

He put on clean running clothes and managed the trail five times before he headed in.

He was stopped by an employee who asked, “Would you like breakfast sent up now, Agent Lazarus? Maybe pancakes today?”

This being how they knew yesterday when to send up breakfast. Lucinda had them on the lookout for him.

He suppressed a smile, popped his earbuds out and requested, “Could you give it half an hour? And you pick, but something healthy.”

Lucinda had been correct. He was a meat and potatoes man, and if he could eat that with the addition of peanut M&Ms and a variety of pies and cookies, that’d be awesome.

But his body needed additional nutrition.

He went to his room, did his sit ups, added some exercises for his obliques, then planks, mountain climbers, a few burpees and ended on his pushups.

After that he took his shower.

He was shaved and in jeans and another long-sleeved tee when room service showed.

That day, coffee, granola, fruit, yogurt, toast and cold-pressed juice, something, at a taste, he knew had apple, ginger and kale.

He did not pull out Brittanie’s file.

He didn’t open his laptop and check email.

It wasn’t that Sundays were rest days. He’d had one lifetime of that, and now he didn’t let anyone tell him what to do with his days.

It was that he learned, sometimes you needed to step away from a case in order to see that case.

If you immersed yourself too fully in it, you missed things.

This had worked for him when he’d found the father who’d abducted his daughter, then killed her, because, for some fucked-up reason, that was preferrable to letting her live with her mother.

And it had worked for him when he’d found another guy, who’d grabbed his girlfriend and her little sister, because he’d gone off his meds, and he’d holed up somewhere with them and no one could find them. Until Rus found them.

And it had worked for him on a serial rapist case, and another serial murderer, both who he’d help stop before they’d notched too many victims on their lists.

The only time it hadn’t worked for him in an intricate or intense investigation was CK.

His mind had been taken up by the music he listened to while exercising.

But now, eating, with nothing but the view of mist on the lake and clinging to the pines to take his attention, he let everything crash in.

Was he right with what his gut was telling him about Ezra?

What were they missing? What drew Brittanie to that motel?

Who was Ezra’s partner, and was he wrong to think there was one? Is this guy a guy who could have acted alone?

To-do list material:

Circling back to Thea for names of her colleagues who did the “more extreme” stuff. Running through them to see if Ezra made contact, and possibly finding his partner. Ascertaining for certain Thea knew what was coming and advising she plan for it if she was outed for what she did for a living when all of this went down. Intensifying the search for the one missing boyfriend they hadn’t found, and ruling him out…or in. Following up with his team on Brittanie’s bank statements, cell and laptop.

He gave time to wondering about how Jace was holding up.

And more to what he’d do next since he’d made the decision to leave the FBI, and rethinking that decision since he had responsibilities.

He had five years before he could officially retire.

It was lunacy to quit now.

But if he requested it, could he be reassigned to the Seattle office?

Which of course brought to mind the sound of Lucinda’s laughter, and her defense of him.

Which further brought to mind something he’d never thought about because he’d convinced himself, or maybe Jennifer had convinced him that he owed her something.

She’d saved him from the cult. He’d told her that more than once. He’d been grateful for her love and support, also her parents’, and he’d shared that often.

But that didn’t mean she owned him or his time, like Pastor Richard thought he did.

He now worried he’d gone from thinking that was what he had to give to one entity in his life, then, maybe out of habit, he gave it to another.

But it was fucked up what she did. She knew he was coming home. She knew when.

And she was fucking some guy who looked like him precisely so he’d walk in on them.

He thought that was on him because she told him it was.

But it wasn’t.

What Lucinda said made sense.

It was on Jenn.

Now, they were over. She’d moved on. But they shared kids, and he did not call her to shoot the shit and ask what was going on with her life because, for the most part, she acted like she was entitled to be a bitch to him because he’d betrayed her.

When it was the other way around.

Rus had emotion around this. He was pissed about it, and the significance of that anger, he had an urge to tell Jenn he was feeling it.

However, at this time, he wasn’t sure it would serve any purpose.

What needed to work for their kids worked, and he should let it go.

Further, he wasn’t certain even if he shared she would rethink what she did. That was how deep she was in feeling she was warranted in her actions, which was part of why she’d done such a bang-up job of convincing him this was true.

But the fact remained, if she was done with trying to make him the husband she needed, she should have walked away.

Instead, she did something else, and it was Rus who’d been holding the weight of that, not Jennifer, and it had started digging under his skin.

And last, what was on his mind was the fact he was relatively certain CK was in Washington, and what that meant about how closely he monitored Rus’s movements.

By the time he’d decimated his breakfast and sucked back the dregs of his juice, he’d sifted through all of this in his head, which meant he was able to set it aside.

He then made a plan for what was next for his day.

He called down to have the valet bring his vehicle around.

He grabbed his phone, his wallet, his credentials, pulled on a sweater and attached his gun to his belt.

He was not a gun person, even though he had to be.

And since he had to be, he made a point of knowing how to use it.

He was at the range a lot. He worked toward marksmanship awards, and had won a few. He scheduled time in the simulations. He took care of his weapons. And he did all of this solely because it was part of his job, and should he need to use his firearm, he wanted to use it right, and if he or his colleagues were in danger, he didn’t want to miss.

He did not own a personal firearm. He had only the two issued to him by the Bureau.

Though, when he was fully out of the game, he’d purchase one. He’d put enough people behind bars not to own one. But much more importantly, he knew how deadly a gun was, he respected that, and he’d own one responsibly.

During investigations where it was unnecessary for him to carry, he didn’t. The higher-ups weren’t thrilled with his choice, and leaned on him, but not too hard, because he produced results.

But it was Rus’s experience it intimidated witnesses.

He did not need to sit in Lucinda’s office with a gun at his hip while he talked to her staff. He needed them to open up and share. He needed people like Sherri to give him DNA. He needed people like Thea to trust him with information that was a threat to her livelihood. And along his journey in law enforcement, he’d learned carrying a gun did not help any of that, and in some instances hindered it.

Many cops thought a gun gave them authority or was an indication they held it.

Rus was of a mind, either you naturally had authority, meaning you knew what you were doing, and you could communicate that to people along with the fact they could trust you, or you didn’t.

And if you didn’t, then you shouldn’t be in the job.

If you needed a gun as a prop, rather than what it was—the very last tool you had no choice but to reach for in an urgent situation—it was a prime indication you had no business being a cop.

But the possibility of CK being close, he was going to carry.

He walked out to his SUV, drove into town and parked close to Aromacabana.

He got a coffee and sat outside on a chair that looked purchased at a yard sale, cleaned up, painted and set outside on the wide sidewalk next to a small table and another chair, neither matching, both also probably bought at a yard sale.

Rus then did what he’d been meaning to do since he got there, but he didn’t have the time.

He took in the town.

He’d driven through it a half a dozen times, and first impressions were, it was Mayberry.

There was no McDonald’s. There was no Starbucks. There was an old movie theater that had one screen. There was a diner that looked stuck in the fifties, and it was called the Double D, so it probably was. There was a five and dime, and Rus hadn’t seen one of those since he was a little kid.

A flower shop that had buckets of colorful blooms on the sidewalk under its front window.

A greengrocer, which also displayed its goods out front.

It was idyllic.

It was Americana.

It seemed safe and quaint and perfect for a weekend away from the big city, even though a girl was murdered five miles away in a motel where people daily broke their marital vows.

Even though it was a place where men still cheated on their wives regardless that, a year ago, four of them from this town had been nationally humiliated. This leading from an eight-year-old being brutally murdered in a way even Rus couldn’t finish the report, and as mentioned, he wasn’t squeamish.

Not to mention, the town’s foundations had been built on usurping Native land, killing animals for their coats, and otherwise raping its natural resources, all while fifteen-year-olds were pimped at bordellos.

And Rus felt all of it.

The seedy underpinnings that, no matter the coats of paint you slapped over it and coffeehouses you opened in it, never faded away.

It wasn’t the nostalgia of Mayberry.

It was the nostalgia of Hawkins in Stranger Things. Where, beneath it, every horror you could imagine was seething, working constantly at finding an opportunity to make it to the surface, and if that didn’t succeed, as was the case for Brittanie, pulling you under.

Rus took a sip of his excellent coffee, thinking, fuck him, that was what made him perfectly comfortable sitting right there.

He’d never want Mayberry.

He needed Hawkins.

He was Hopper, knowing no matter what he did, life was going to suck, but doing what he could to fix it anyway.

He could see himself buying flowers from one of those buckets and taking Lucinda’s shit when he gave them to her, all while monitoring that coven, because he knew they were up to something, and it might start innocent and supportive and about the sisterhood, but in the end, it would be no good.

He took another sip wondering if Moran needed a full-time detective.

Rus didn’t want to wear another uniform, but he did want to do the work.

And fuck it, so he was only five years away from full retirement.

The Crystal Killer could be done playing with him, walk up to him sitting right there, and shoot him in the face.

Life was too fucking short.

His father was miserable because, not only the best years of his life, but the best years of his wife’s, he’d squandered. They had money because they both still worked. Their retirement bought one-hundred-percent wool carpet for Paster Rich’s living room, put gas in his Mercedes and paid for his timeshare.

Rus liked it here, a whole lot better than the choked-with-people hassle of the East Coast.

He’d be far away from his kids, but they didn’t have to rely on telegrams to communicate.

Misted Pines seemed a magnet for some seriously bad shit.

So they’d need a good detective.

On this thought, he went for his gun and nearly spilled his coffee down his sweater.

Because, getting the drop on him in a way he’d never share that shit with anyone for the rest of his goddamned life, was a round woman wearing a headband made of those stick-on bows you put on presents, a sweater that had rows of the same down the front, with snowman earrings dangling at her ears.

She threw herself in the chair across the small table from him.

She stuck her hand his way.

And said, “Heya, I’m Kimmy.”

Shit.