Chapter 10

Jess

My dad appears on my doorstep late Sunday night, as I'm getting home from the crime scene. No call. No notice. Just a worn backpack and a big grin, his whiskey-colored eyes, same as mine, sparking with a million unsaid words.

"Sorry I'm late, Bug." He still calls me by my childhood nickname, like I'm six instead of thirty-six. "I meant to be here by midday, but there was an accident on the I-85."

I give him a quick hug, his smell, woodsmoke and coffee and a faint hint of Old Spice, evoking childhood memories.

"No problem." I don't want to talk about it, to be honest, and I tell him so.

We order Chinese food, barely saying a word between us. My dad isn't the talkative type, and for once I'm glad. Eventually I go to bed, falling into a restless, uneasy sleep.

Monday morning, I rise before the sun and leave a note on the kitchen table, telling him where I'll be.

It's cold and gray in the graveyard. Isla's hand grasps mine tightly as we stare at the grave at our feet. That weird, anxious energy thrums inside me, like black fingers curling beneath my skin.

As a detective, a paramedic before that, I've spent years around death. But it didn't prepare me for grief.

"Somebody weeded it." I dig a toe into the bare ground by the headstone. It's hard, prickly with frost.

Isla gives me a funny look. I suppose weeds aren't something eight-year-olds think about.

I notice something nestled at the base of the granite headstone, a small heart-shaped stone, and bend to pick it up. Pain shoots through my leg. The heart is smooth, its surface blank. I'm pretty sure I know who left it here.

Isla plucks the heart out of my palm, rubbing it between her thumbs. "What do you think heaven's like, Mommy?" she asks.

"Oh, Isla ..." My chest clutches, my throat closing.

Isla drops the heart stone back on the headstone, seeming to know I can't speak. She flicks a messy blonde braid over one shoulder and skips after a leaf that's whirling by, blown by the icy morning breeze.

Before I can call her back, I hear gravel crunching behind me.

"You were up early," my dad calls as he strides across the frost-tipped grass.

He's carrying a Starbucks cup in each hand, the lines around his mouth pronounced, his back hunched in his wool coat. His ears poke out from beneath an old tweed flat cap my mom gave him years ago, ears that earned him the nickname Q-bear, instead of Quinn.

He looks old, I realize. Isn't it strange when you realize your parents are getting old? Maybe parents age us as much as we age them.

He thrusts a cup at me, and I thank him.

"I let it pass me by yesterday," I say. "The anniversary. I didn't want to think about it."

"Sometimes it's easier that way."

"Yeah."

"Wow." He whistles, taking in the view. "Sure is pretty up here."

I follow his gaze across the graveyard, the gravestones like teeth biting at the sky, down the sloping hill to the dark waters of Black Lake. Beyond that, the islands that dot the lake's surface, the town curled along its shore.

Pretty can be an illusion, though. A perfectly pleasing deception. My eyes dart to the frost-coated pine forest of Killer's Grove, where the Harpers went missing last year.

Dad studies me. "You look like shit. That job of yours is giving you wrinkles."

"Gee, thanks." I try not to roll my eyes, to revert back to the teenager I once was. "Being a detective isn't exactly all sunshine and roses, as I'm sure you remember."

"I know, Bug." He drapes an arm around my shoulders, our breath puffing white into the frigid air. "Why don't you quit?"

"I can't."

"Transfer? You could move back to New York or, hell, to Atlanta, with me. It's warmer there."

"I have a case."

He hesitates, then: "I'm worried about you, Jess."

I want to tell him I'm feeling better now. Rehab. Counseling. I bake in the evenings, swim in the mornings. I'm doing okay. But just then my phone rings. Lieutenant Galloway, who took over after Rivero got promoted and moved to Boston last month. I'm late for work, a meeting about the Harper case. I press "End."

"What exactly is it you want here?" Dad asks.

I glance at Isla, who's inspecting a nearby headstone, and I suddenly yearn for the smoky burn of whiskey, the black beast of my addiction stirring. A list of regrets scrawls across my brain. Perhaps, like Sylvia Plath, I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.

I look again at Killer's Grove. Ominous clouds skitter like whispers, dark over the tree line. I think of Pete Harper, how he'd hovered there in the hulking shadow of the forest. And then I think of my last case, the case that nearly broke me, solved under an oppressive, brutal sun.

"I want to help them," I say. "The victims. I'm their voice when they no longer have one."

I became a detective because I wanted to create order in an otherwise unorderly world. I've dedicated my career to bringing closure to those left behind. But balancing empathy and horrific crime is a battlefield, and I'm a soldier who can't put down her sword. Now, I think, maybe I'm not supposed to. I want to find the truth for the dead. That's all any of us want, after all. The truth.

"Solving more cases isn't going to make you feel any better," Dad says. "Trying to save the world, it's a compulsion, same as drinking."

A sharp breeze whips my long, dark hair around my face. I wince at the chill.

"I appreciate you coming here." I change the subject. "Your support ..."

"It's okay, Bug." He clears his throat. "I know I wasn't around much when you were younger. I ... regret that. But I'm here now."

I look at my dad, surprised. We Lamberts are not an expressive bunch. A cold drop of fear squirms in my gut.

"I wish I could help you," he continues. "The thing is, you can't move forward if you're standing still. That's the honest truth."

Somewhere in the distance, the sound of an ambulance drifts by, ghostly and distant. I glance down at Isla, who's come up beside me, beautiful now as she was in life.

Then I look down at her grave, embedded like a shipwreck in the ocean floor.

I SLA E LIZABETH L AMBERT

A GE 8

A LWAYS WITH US

And I miss her all over again.

Dad and I make vague plans for dinner later; then I head to work. I pull into my space at the front of the police station, hurry along the sidewalk, cane thudding against the icy pavement. I press my ID to the door, wait for the familiar buzz.

The bullpen looks the same as always, different mug shots, same crimes, a mess of files stacked haphazardly on the desks, drab blinds. The air is stale, too warm, thick with the scent of burned coffee.

Roll call has begun. I try to sneak in without anybody noticing, sliding in behind my old partner, Will Casey.

"How's the case?" he whispers.

"It's weird, isn't it?" I whisper back. "Shane leading? Why aren't y—"

But I don't get a chance to finish.

"Lambert, good of you to join us!" Lieutenant Brooke Galloway calls.

The sound of Galloway's voice ignites a frisson in my belly. When she first took over for Rivero, I was a little relieved. Finally, another woman on the team. She seemed smart, pragmatic. A decorated naval officer, she'd moved into policing and was one of the youngest female lieutenants in the country. She was known for being persistent, tough, black-and-white as a checkerboard. I thought we would be allies. I was wrong.

I think she'd fire me if she could, but she's already down one detective since Bill Liu's getting chemo, plus Shane's pretty green. Not that we have a lot of crime around here—mostly prowlers, burglaries, low-level stuff—but I pull my weight.

My stomach cramps with nerves as heads swivel, like I'm a kid who's been marked as the unpopular one. I catch a couple of side glances. I know what they say behind my back. I hate it. The looks of pity. The snide comments. I just want to get on with the job.

"Listen up . . . ," she continues.

Will shoots me a reassuring smile as Galloway goes over outstanding cases, incidents, suspects. When she's finished, I head to my desk, which is shoved up against the wall near her office. When I first started, I had a view from the window, but now I'm stuck here. I suspect Galloway's keeping an eye on me.

Galloway calls my name on the way to her office.

"Shut the door," she tells me. "Sit."

I do as she asks. My good leg jiggles, a restless habit. She sits across from me. The room feels crowded, like she's taking up all the air, all the space.

"I read the police report on your accident last year," she says. "It's different from what some of the officers said."

I frown. I've never read it.

"You'd been drinking."

I want to tell her it was only one drink, but it's no excuse. I know that.

"There was no proper investigation. No urine, no bloods taken. Just a rainy day, a random deer, and an old man who was a less-than-reliable witness. And word on the street is, now you think you can see dead people? Can you tell the future, too?"

She lifts a sleeve and extends one arm across the desk. "Read my palm, then. Tell me what it says."

I stare at her. I can't see the future. I don't read tarot cards or crystal balls or palms. I have no control of this thing that happens to me. It's a gift, or maybe a curse. All I know is sometimes the dead appear to me. Sometimes they talk. Sometimes I know things that are inexplicable.

But it isn't exact or precise. I don't even know if they're real or just a heightened perception I have.

When I don't answer, Galloway sits back, pushes her inky-black curls off her forehead. For a second, I glimpse a scar near her temple. She smooths the hair back in place. Cops don't hide scars they're proud of getting on the job.

"Some people say your last case is confirmation of your ‘powers.'" She puts the word in air quotes. "But I worry. And I can't have one dysfunctional cop fucking it up for everybody else. Understand?"

It's a warning. I understand that. So I nod.

Galloway stands abruptly, throws the door open. "Townsend!"

Shane hurries into the office, that easy smile on his face. "Heya, Lieutenant."

He moves to shut the door, but Galloway stops him. "Leave it. This won't take long. We got the labs back. Blood on that backpack matches Ella Harper."

She pulls a school picture of a teenage girl from a folder. "This is Alice Harper. She was there yesterday when Maya found the backpack."

"She was there?" I say, surprised.

Galloway nods.

I study the picture. Holy shit. It's the girl who was at my shrink yesterday. She's cut her hair, looks a little more ... strung-out or something, but it's definitely her.

"She was the only one left behind." Galloway hands us another picture, this one of the backpack. Black with a daisy, the white center now a deep, rusty red, a small badge near the bottom that I can't quite make out. "And now we know that backpack belonged to Ella Harper. Someone stashed it in that basement. The body, well, we'll know what the connection is soon enough. But Alice Harper, she's our only witness. You guys have got yourself a case. I want Shane leading this one."

Shane's eyes widen, his ears flaring bright red.

"Wait ..." I blink. I'm far more experienced than Shane. "That isn't right."

"Are you telling me how to do my job, Detective?" Galloway asks stonily.

"No . . ."

"Shane worked the case last year. And I'm not sure you being in charge is such a good idea. After all, it's not so long ago you were talking to your daughter's ghost, isn't that right?"

Outside the office, the bullpen goes quiet. My face flames hot.

Galloway's eyes are flinty. She's testing me. Thinking I can't be trusted. I grind my molars. So this is how she wants to play it. Fine. Fucking fine.

"I want the case cleared by Christmas," Galloway continues. "The mayor's a personal friend of Jack O'Brien, Laura Harper's brother, and they want it solved. Yesterday."

Seriously? Christmas is only a few weeks away. And assigning me a new partner on an old case while making me the junior? It just doesn't make sense. But I give a tight smile and limp out of her office.

I don't stop at my desk. I keep going, down the hall, to the bathroom, into a cubicle. I lock the door and sit on the toilet, stomach burning. I hear three sharp knocks on the bathroom door, then Will's voice as he steps inside.

"Hey, old girl. You all right?"

I flush the toilet and wipe my eyes before opening the cubicle.

"You shouldn't be in here, Will."

I twist the hot-water tap, thrust my hands under. Will looks back at me from behind black-framed glasses, his skin glistening pink in the fluorescent lights.

"What Galloway said was unprofessional."

I sigh. "Maybe she's right, Will. Our last case, I was ... distracted."

I turn the tap off, dry my hands. I'm still a mess. I barely sleep at night. I have a constant restlessness inside me. I did my time in rehab and still I crave a drink.

"I get it," I say. "Having a preoccupied detective on a case is the last thing a lieutenant wants."

"Especially a new one who wants to make her mark," Will says dryly.

"Maybe I shouldn't be here."

Will is the only one who knows the extent of everything. That I still see Isla, even now.

Grief hallucinations, my shrink calls them. Except it isn't only Isla I see.

"You're a good detective, Jess. Trust your instincts. And don't let Galloway get in your head."