Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26

R ose gaped at me, and I thought, Really got to learn to say things better, and shot a quick look at Poppy, but she just sat there, blinking at me.

"Sid Quill?" Rose said and then shook her head. "Yeah, right, we only know one Sid. What happened?"

"His body was in Pike's marijuana field. We just put it in Sid's basement. I have to go back, but you said you wanted to know things, and since we're right next door, I'm telling you so you don't come over to see what's going on with all the vehicles out back."

"Of course," Rose said. "Uh, thanks?"

I checked Poppy again. "You okay, kid?"

"What happens to his store?" Poppy said.

"No idea," Max said. "We'll have to look for a will."

"Maybe I could come over and look at it."

"The body?" Rose said to her, appalled.

"No, the store. Like if we wanted to expand."

"Expand?" Rose said. "Why would we want . . . never mind. Do we know who killed Sid?"

"No," I said. "I have to go. Pike and Luke are over there now." I stopped, trying to think of what to say that wouldn't annoy Rose and make Poppy cry. "We okay here?"

"Pretty much," Rose said, still looking gobsmacked. "Are you done with the Pathfinder? Poppy needs to go back to school."

I looked at Poppy. "You're cutting class?"

"I'm kind of done with high school," she said, still looking like she was thinking about taking over Sid's shop.

"Graduate, go to college, then be done," I said and saw Rose close her eyes and shake her head.

" No ," Poppy said.

Great.

"Right." I gave Poppy the car keys and retreated to Sid's basement before I said something else wrong.

* * *

Luke had Sid's body in a bag over his shoulder. All three vehicles were parked in the alley behind the stores, one door over from Oddities' kitchen door. I pulled open the angled double storm doors leading to the basement and went down a set of wide steps into the very cool lab, Luke and Pike following.

"Oh, crap," I muttered as I saw what was inside.

Luke carefully lowered Sid to the floor and joined Pike and me, looking at the table where Melissa's body had been. Now there was a layer of four-inch-square white packets arranged in the pattern of a body.

"I don't think that's sugar," Luke said. "And I bet that's what was all over Sid."

"That's major weight," I said.

In my previous life, I'd been involved in the War on Drugs on several ops. It was playing whack-a-mole since someone was always out there willing to make a profit off deadly addictions, but I'd never felt bad whacking down the bad guys on those missions.

And now somebody had whacked Sid and wanted us to know why.

"So the poses tell us the killings are connected," Luke said. "And the amount of coke tells us Sid was dealing."

I looked around and noticed that the cart which had had Sid's dirty tools on it was spotless. In fact, the entire place was clean. Tabletops wiped down, tools hung up on hooks. We had a killer who doubled as an obsessive cleaner. So not all bad.

"Someone tidied this place." I checked the small fridge. "Took Melissa's blood samples, too."

"Marie Kondo," Luke said. "I always thought she was up to something."

"Who?" Pike said.

"Famous cleaning lady," Luke said. "This has her all over it."

I turned to Pike. "Ignore him. I know Sid sold your weed. But where did he get the coke?"

"No idea," Pike said. "He wasn't moving it locally, that's for sure. I'd have known and shut it down. That a whole ‘nother level and brings nothing but trouble."

"That's way too much for local use even if everyone in town was on it," Luke said. "And they aren't."

I noticed the gear neatly lined up on the long table on one side of the basement. It was the one that had been covered by the dirty tarp last time I was down here. I went over and checked a couple of empty bins that had traces of something in it. "I've seen this setup before. He was stepping on it."

"Stepping on it?" Pike asked.

"Sid was taking what was probably pure cocaine, or close to it, and adding filler from these bins, making it less pure but increasing the quantity. To make more money. He was probably an addict himself. He came off like that, now that I think about it."

"Fuck if I know," Pike said, contributing useful information as always.

I tried to make sense of what we were looking at. "So, Sid was working as a chemist, stepping on coke. For somebody. And . . ." I trailed off, waiting for either of my esteemed colleagues to chime in.

Luke tried. "Sid must have been a cutout for moving the coke since I don't think he was dealing himself." He was using a term from tradecraft. It meant someone in between two parties who knew both sides but kept them from knowing each other. In this case, one side was selling pure cocaine and the other side was buying stepped-on product from Sid. "Like Pike said, we'd have known if he was dealing in town. Outsiders on both ends."

I went over to the anatomy print and shoved it aside. I tried the safe door, and it swung open.

There were several bundles of cash still inside. Probably thirty or forty thousand.

Now I was annoyed. "Why kill Sid and leave the money and coke? Hell, the coke alone is worth a lot. Probably close to a million. A lot more if he hadn't stepped on it yet and it's pure."

"Killing Sid was the goal," Luke said. "And we don't know that the killer didn't take money. We just know that he didn't take all of it." He stopped for a minute. "Or she."

It was nice to know Luke was equal opportunity when it came to suspects, unless he was still planning on pinning it on Marie Kondo.

"Melissa was poisoned, right?" he asked me.

"Yeah," I said.

Luke frowned down at Sid's body. "Looks like Sid was, too."

"Or ODed," I said. "Forcibly."

Pike made his contribution. "That's still being poisoned."

"Don't serial killers use the same MO on their victims?" Luke said.

"It's not a serial killer," Pike said. "Not in the usual sense. This might be a professional, a player or a dog, taking out other players. Nobody just wanders into a town and starts taking out random citizens. Especially in this town."

"It might be worse than that," I said. "What if it's a professional who is now a serial killer and can't stop? Gone off the deep end."

"Oh, great," Pike muttered.

"You know, we have an expert on serial killers in town," Luke pointed out.

"Who I think is also a prime suspect," I said. Now that Sid was gone, Rowan was gonna be my prime suspect.

"He could be helpful," Luke countered.

"He's also a journalist and the last thing we need is Rocky Start in a headline."

"Herc would nuke this place if anything went public," Pike said, which was realistic but not helpful.

Even with a serial killer running loose, Herc was a worse threat. "You know Herc has access to the Ferrells' feeds, right?"

Pike nodded. "It was a Catch-22. Part of the compromise we made with him for being our guardian at a higher level, keeping the Feds, county, and state away."

I had wondered about the bubble Rocky Start existed in and assumed Herc was involved somehow because it took a lot of juice to keep those people away.

"I know the alley isn't covered by cameras," I said. "We could check to see if they have anything from out front. Do you trust the Ferrells?"

Pike gave a bitter laugh. "Can you ever trust a snoop?" He looked old and worn out. Then he took a deep breath. "Well, I sure am glad you boys are on the job now. Call me if you need help."

"Hold on," I said. "Melissa's got to have a locker, right? And her place is right across the street. And nobody has eyes on the back. Let's take Sid's body over there. Then we can come back and search here." I looked at the table full of coke and tried to imagine what else there might be. It was Sid, he could have anything stashed in this place, but the coke was the big find.

I checked and the Pathfinder was gone, so Poppy was on her way to school. We carried Sid's body back out to the cargo bay of Pike's old pickup and covered it with the tarp and then took it around to the back of Melissa's place and into the basement there. We opened the freezer and put Sid in and went out. Pike looked unhappy, but we all were, so.

He shook his head. "Well. You guys take care of this, okay?" He didn't wait for an answer, just got in his truck and took off.

"What the hell?" Luke said.

"I think his play is that I'm the new Oz and you're the new him," I said. "But I'm leaving. So now the town has two of him."

"Humor," Luke said. "Not."

"Don't worry, I won't leave until we catch whoever is doing this." I shut the door to Melissa's basement and started the walk back to Sid's since Pike had driven off and left us.

"We?" Luke said as he caught up with me as we rounded the building onto the cross street.

"It's your town." I gestured to the bank of stores on our left as we crossed State Street: Ecstasy, Oddities, Quill's Pharmacy. It felt like years since I'd had to google where Ecstasy was when Pike texted to meet him there, but no, only three weeks. I tried to remember what life was like before I'd gotten off the Trail to get my boots, but that seemed like another lifetime ago.

Maybe it was.

"My town?" Luke protested, but it was his home, the place where his kid lived, and I knew he'd protect it. "What makes you think we're going to be able to find the killer? We've got nothing except another body, a lot of coke, and the knowledge we were wrong about Melissa being a one-off. We're not exactly on a roll here."

"Maybe Melissa was in on this drug thing with Sid," I suggested. "Maybe she was moving the drugs in caskets? Maybe whoever delivered it to Sid—or was going to pick it up from him—got pissed? And something went wrong."

Luke just stared at me and my maybes, waiting until I crashed on the harsh rocks of reality.

"Okay, yeah. Not probable. Either of those ends would not leave the cocaine and the money."

"Or pose the bodies," Luke said. "And I don't think Melissa would have touched this. She was very smart. Dealing is very dumb, especially in Rocky Start. Practically inviting yourself to get hit."

"But the coke still has to be a lead. Somebody might come looking." Yeah, I was grasping at straws, but when straws are all you've got, you grasp. "When they don't get their cocaine. Or their money for the pure cocaine. Depending on how the deal was structured."

Luke shrugged. "Still not the killer. This is about the killings, not money or cocaine. Melissa wasn't left with cocaine; the killer put her hands around an urn."

"An empty urn. Sid was also our backup coroner. Geoffrey Nice is just a mortician, right?"

"Yeah," Luke said. "He's a civilian."

"So he'd be no help figuring that out." I thought about Sid, about who'd want to kill him. Anybody and everyone, probably. "I can't believe he put that stupid sign in Melissa's window. Maybe somebody here killed him just because they thought he was an asshole."

"He was an asshole," Luke agreed. "He was also hitting on Rose. Did you kill him?"

"Humor. Not. Want to walk the Trail with me until Pike gives up on the idea?"

"And leave Rocky Start and my kid with this mess?" Luke shook his head. "You're not going anywhere, either, hotshot; you've got Rose and Poppy."

I started to say "I don't have Rose and Poppy," but that would have been futile. "Okay. I'll check with the Ferrells on surveillance. If they have nothing, what do we do next, Deputy Luke?"

"I'm not playing cowboys with you, Max. Why'd you ask Pike about trusting the Ferrells?"

I told him about Dottie's confession, selling us out to Norman.

"She could have gotten us killed," Luke said, with more force than usual. "Darius almost died?—"

"But he didn't and now we have new problems. The MO for both murders points to a chemist."

"Which both Sid and Melissa were," Luke said.

"And the only other one in town is Harvey, right?"

Luke nodded but he didn't seem enthused. "I don't know how good he was in his prime, but he's gone downhill a lot since he came to town. And why would he want to kill Melissa and Sid?" He shrugged, looking tired, which was not usual for him.

"What else is wrong?" I said, not really wanting to know.

He hesitated. "Do you know what's going on with Poppy and Darius?"

"Uh, no?" I was definitely not having the I-think-your-kid-is-sleeping-with-my-not-daughter conversation.

"Poppy usually rides to school with Darius, but she's been blowing him off the past three days. He said she won't answer his calls or texts or emails. He was going to see her before school this morning, but I don't know what happened and he's not answering my texts."

"Poppy's having a hard time," I told him. "PTSD."

Luke nodded. "Darius has his moments, too."

So we were just two guys talking about the kids after having just loaded the corpse of a drug-addicted, coke-smuggling pharmacist into the morgue of a murdered funeral home director. Because even though we were both pretty sure we had a serial killer on our hands, we had our priorities straight for once in our messed-up lives. The kids came first.

I hesitated. "Any suggestions on how to help Poppy? You've got this dad thing down."

Luke snorted. "No one has the dad thing down, Max. We muddle along and do the best we can. Learn as we go, fuck up a lot, and try not to be the assholes our own parents were." He paused. "No disrespect meant. Your parents might have been great."

"Nope. Assholes. My mother died early and I never knew who my dad was. Lots of foster homes." It struck me that I had always assumed it was my fault I was passed from home to home, but maybe it hadn't been? Nevertheless, I knew deep down he was right about not having the parent thing down.

Luke nodded. "Yeah. I've probably cut Darius too much slack because my dad was over me so bad, I ran away when I was fifteen and never went back."

"So you're doing better," I said.

"Darius got tased and almost killed," Luke reminded me.

And Poppy had been held captive by a homicidal psycho bitch. So much for doing better. In my defense, it wasn't my fault, same as what had happened to Darius hadn't been Luke's fault. I think. Then again, we were in Rocky Start because of who we had been, so yeah, our fault, sort of. Rose had a point, wanting Poppy out of here. But it seemed Poppy felt differently, so that was a danger zone.

"So, what do we do?" I asked, circling back to our priority. "About the kids, I mean."

Luke shrugged, helpful as always. "We muddle along. Right now, we leave them be while letting them know we support them no matter what. Plus, you're lucky. Rose takes good care of Poppy. So, the best thing right now is you take good care of Rose. Half of being a good parent is having a good partner."

Guilt trip much , I thought but did not say. "How come you never got married?"

"You mean again? I made a promise to Octavia. Dying promise." He gave a sad smile. "She was pissed at me for not being there for Darius' first ten years. And she was so mad those last months. Mad at the cancer, mad at me, mad at God, mad at the world. It was all so fucking unfair and she was right about that. She was a better person than I'll ever be and I'd escaped death so many times. But she couldn't escape what was coming and she was scared for Darius."

We were round the back of the storefronts now and back at Sid's basement door, and Luke paused and looked away and then went on, just standing there, so I just stood there, too.

"She said I hadn't been the man she'd thought I was when we first got married. And she was right. So, she made me promise I wouldn't get married or have any relationships with a woman until Darius left for college. That I owed Darius everything and that he had to be my sole focus. I wanted to be that man she'd thought I was. Plus, she made me promise to get my act together."

"What?" I asked, even though I had a good idea what he meant.

"You know anyone in our line of work who has their life together, Max? The booze? The uppers to keep you going on ops and the downers to wind you down after? The meds in big bottles Herc's doctors dished out like candy for all the wounds and broken bones and strains and pains? So you could sleep off-mission?" Once more, he didn't wait for an answer. "No more drinking or drugs for me. I've got nine years sober and I'm not planning on changing that after Darius goes to college."

He didn't ask me the obvious question, but I owed him the answer.

"I've been sober since just before I got on the Trail." I shifted nervously. "One reason I want to get back on it, to be honest. Not hard to stay sober on the Trail."

Luke snorted. "Going to have to stop walking sooner or later, Max. For people like us, it's the staying still that's the problem. That's when our bodies and our brains start vibrating. I had a very hard time my first year here. But focusing on Darius kept me straight. No way was I letting him or the memory of Octavia down. I keep my promises."

"Yeah," I said, knowing that was absolutely true.

Luke went on. "What happens when you get to the end and stop moving? Gonna do a Forrest Gump and head back north?"

"I don't know." Time for a subject change. "Okay, we need to clear this lab out," I said, starting down the steps into Sid's basement. "You have a place you can secure the coke and cash?"

"Yep. Big gun safe."

We went inside, and Luke started gathering up the packets, stuffing them in a bag which was lying on top of the trash bin—probably what they'd been in to start with, and I added the cash.

Then we left, him with a bag full of coke and cash, and me to tell Rose all about our new murder, since she was conveniently right next door.