Right Behind You

  Next body was behind the counter. Female this time. Eighteen, nineteen? Second victim. Or certainly shot after the salt-jonesing customer, because the female had seen it coming. Body had fallen in a twisted hump, as if she’d turned, tried to run, only to remember she was boxed in, imprisoned by the counter in front and a wall of tobacco products to the back. She’d gotten a hand up. Shelly could see the bullet hole straight through the palm.

  She didn’t need to see the rest of the damage to know it’d been fatal.

  Inside, the sound was louder. The damn flies, drawn by the smell of blood, and now concentrated on twin targets.

  It’s funny, the things that can get to a woman. Shelly had seen terrible auto accidents, hunting tragedies, even a few combine incidents. She knew gore and dismemberment. Small towns were hardly the idyllic sanctuaries portrayed on TV. And yet the flies.

  The damn flies . . .

  She focused on breathing through her mouth. Slow, deep breaths. Procedure. Now, more than ever, protocol mattered. She needed to alert her detectives unit, plus the county DA and ME’s office. Calls to make, work to do.

  A movement to her left.

  Shelly whirled, hands together, arms straight, already raising her Glock. End of the candy aisle, right before the wall of cold drinks, she spotted some kind of wire rack, quivering. She tucked closer to the wall making herself less of a target.

  She headed down the outer aisle, where she could come at her target from the side. She was sweating profusely, the beads of moisture stinging her eyes. Flies. The drone of flies, interrupted only by the shuffling of her heavy-soled boots against the linoleum floor. Despite her best intentions, her breathing was too loud, ragged in the unnaturally still air.

  She wasn’t wearing a vest. Too hot, too uncomfortable. And even responding to a call of shots fired . . . Bakersville wasn’t that kind of town. Not that kind of community.

  She of all people should’ve known better.

  End of aisle, she slowed. Rack wasn’t moving anymore. She strained for the sound of movement—say, an unknown shooter creeping down the other side of the aisle or sneaking up behind her.

  Nothing.

  Deep breath in. Release slowly.

  One, two, three.

  Sheriff Shelly Atkins pivoted sharply, Glock straight ahead, homing in on the target.

  But the aisle was empty, the wire rack of snack bags still. No movement from anywhere in front of the wall of refrigerators housing cold drinks.

  Shelly straightened slowly. Aisle by aisle now, step by step.

  But whatever had caused the disturbance was long gone. Maybe just an errant breeze or Shelly’s own nerves.

  Either way, she stood alone in the store. Two bodies. The endless drone of flies. The stench of fresh blood.

  Shelly unclipped her radio from her shoulder, preparing to get on with the business of next steps. Just as her gaze came up, she spotted the third victim.

  Chapter 2

  STRAWBERRIES OR KIWI?”

  “Apple?”

  “That’s not a strawberry or a kiwi.”

  “Strawberries and kiwi get too soft. By snack time, nothing but goo.”

  “Apple it is.”

  Rainie gives me a wink, then turns to raid the fridge. In response, I push the last of my scrambled eggs around on my plate. This is one of those mornings when I’m supposed to eat a healthy breakfast, get my energy up. I don’t feel like it and Rainie knows it.

  Beneath the table, Luka thrusts his wet nose against the palm of my hand. In his own way, my dog’s trying to cheer me up.

  While Rainie’s back is to me, I scoop some of the cold, pebbly eggs into my palm, then return my hand to my lap. This time when Luka noses me, I open my fingers and deliver the treat. Now at least one of us is happy.

  I’m not supposed to feed Luka human food. He’s a former police officer, Quincy likes to remind me. A trained member of law enforcement. He had to retire at five, having torn his ACL twice in one year. Basically, Luka has a bum knee. Not bad enough to hinder him in civilian life, but not strong enough for active duty.

  Now Luka is my partner. Quincy got him from a cop friend, a year after I arrived at Rainie and Quincy’s house. It’s my responsibility to take care of Luka. I feed him, exercise him, and give him his daily joint supplements. I also learned Dutch. I never knew this, but the German shepherds used in police and military training mostly come from Europe, where the bloodlines are purer. Luka came from the Netherlands, so his initial training was in Dutch. His canine officer continued giving his commands in Dutch and now it’s my turn.

  Do I sound good in Dutch?

  I have no idea. But Luka doesn’t seem to mind. He listens to me very intently. I like that about Luka. He’s a very good listener.

  And I sleep better at night when Luka is stretched out beside me. Another no-no, of course. Police canines should be confined to their kennels when off duty. Then, when you let them out, they know it’s time to work. Dogs like their kennels, Quincy has explained to me. Many times. Just because Luka is retired is no reason to ignore five years of training. Something, something, something. Blah, blah, blah.

  Quincy is very good at lecturing. And I’m a very good foster daughter. I nod obediently at all the right places.

  While continuing to take Luka out of his kennel to sleep with me at night.

  Rainie cast the deciding vote. I overheard her telling Quincy to let it go. Luka seemed fine and I was sleeping better. Why mess with it?

  But I understood what she meant, because some nights, Luka leaves me to search out Rainie instead.

  By now, I understand how much Quincy likes his logic and routine. For Rainie and me, however . . . Life is a bit more complicated for us.

  I don’t call my foster parents—maybe soon-to-be adoptive parents—Mom and Dad. Some fosters, they insist on these things. But I was ten by the time I arrived in this house and had already been placed in too many homes to buy into the instant-family bit. Quincy’s full name is Pierce Quincy, but everyone calls him Quincy, even Rainie, so I do, too. He’s older than most foster dads. In his sixties. But he carries it well. He and Rainie are out running each morning. Plus Quincy still works. Once upon a time he was an FBI profiler. That’s how he met Rainie—she was a deputy right here in Bakersville when there was a school shooting. Quincy helped with the case and they’ve been together ever since.

  Now Quincy is retired from the FBI and Rainie has retired from policing. Instead, they work together, consulting on cold cases or weird murders outside a police department’s normal “purview.” Basically, they’re experts in monsters.

  Which is maybe how they ended up with me?

  Rainie doesn’t like it when I say such things. I’m just a kid, she likes to remind me. My job isn’t to be perfect, but to learn from my mistakes. Some days, that’s harder than you’d think.

  My parents are dead. I don’t have any surviving aunts, uncles, grandparents. Just a brother, four years older than me. I remember him. Kind of. The night my parents died, he went away. No one talks about him, and me being me, I’m not the kind to ask. That would be opening up.

  As Quincy would say with his droll smile, Let’s not go nuts.

  In the foster world, being family-less isn’t terrible. It means I’m free to be adopted. Which, when I was five and arriving at the first home with nothing but a black trash bag of clothes and threadbare stuffies, made me highly placeable. It wasn’t a bad house, either. I mean, the fosters seemed nice enough.

  I have trauma. Wait, post-traumatic stress. In the beginning, at least, I was assigned therapy twice a week. My fosters had to take me, all part of the “plan” developed by the family counselor.

  But I’m not good at therapy. I don’t like to talk. I color. When I was five, the lady counselor encouraged drawing. Especially pictures of my family. Except I never drew a family
of four. I always sketched two people. A bigger kid and a little kid. My older brother and me. Where are your parents? the lady counselor would ask me.

  But I never had an answer.

  I don’t sleep well. The trauma again. And sometimes, even when I know better, I do bad things. I just do. Impulse control. Apparently, I don’t have much. And those first fosters . . . The nicer they were, the less I could stand them.

  I don’t think that’s the trauma. I think that’s just me. I’m a little bit broken inside. There are reasons, I’m sure, but having spent the past thirteen years being me, I’m not as convinced as the therapists that the reasons really matter. I mean, if the handle snaps off your coffee mug, do you ask it why it broke? Or do you just glue it back together?

  This is Rainie’s philosophy, as well, and I like it. We are all a little bit broken, she tells me (the reason she doesn’t sleep at night?), but we all work on fixing ourselves.

  I like Rainie and Quincy. I’ve been in this house three years now. Long enough for them to decide to keep me, warts and all. I have Luka and my own room and somewhere in Georgia, a soon-to-be adoptive big sister, Kimberly, with her husband and two kids. In November, if all goes as planned, her daughters will be my nieces. Which is kind of funny, given that they’re my age. But I like them. At least as much as I like anyone.

  I’m lucky. I know that. And I’m working really hard on gluing and improving and impulse-controlling.

  But some days, it’s still hard to be me.

  —

  I HAVEN’T SEEN QUINCY YET THIS MORNING. Lately, he’s been holed up in his office, working on his “project.” He won’t talk about it, but Rainie and I suspect he’s writing a book. His memoirs? Techniques for profiling? At dinner, Rainie and I have been amusing ourselves (and maybe him) by suggesting titles for this unknown great work. Rainie’s favorite: Fibs from a Feebie. My favorite: Old Man with Boring Stories to Tell.

  He hasn’t confessed yet. Quincy is definitely one of those guys who’s mastered the art of silence.

  Now, Rainie . . . If Quincy’s the quiet one, then Rainie is the emotional one. At least, her face is easier to read. And she’s pretty. Long, thick red-brown hair. Blue-gray eyes. She dresses casually, jeans and sweater in the winter, capris and tank top in the summer. But somehow, she always looks put together. At ease.

  At summer camp, she would be the girl everyone would want to get to know.

  Me, on the other hand, one look and you know I’m a foster kid. I definitely don’t have Rainie’s reddish hair or Quincy’s bright blue eyes. Nope. I’ve got dirt-brown hair that flips in directions I can’t even predict. Jug-handle ears. Dull hazel eyes. Not to mention bony knees and elbows and a too-thin face.

  Rainie tells me I will grow into myself. Give it time.

  You want to know a secret? I love Rainie and Quincy. I really, really want them to become my real-life forever-and-ever parents. I want to stay in this house. I want to spend every day with Luka by my side.

  But I never say these words out loud. Not even the day Rainie and Quincy sat me down and told me they had started adoption procedures.

  Not a talker, remember?

  I like to think they already know how I feel. Being experts in monsters and all.

  Rainie has returned to the kitchen island. She places an apple in the blue insulated lunch bag, then folds over the top, sealing it shut. Done. I can’t help myself. I sigh heavily. I don’t want to go today. I don’t want to do what they’ve decided I should do. Quincy is a big believer in tough love. Rainie, on the other hand, she’s not gonna relent, but at least she feels bad about it.

  “It might be fun,” she tries now.

  I roll my eyes at her. Eggs are gone. I push my fork through little puddles of maple syrup, drawing elaborate designs around random pancake crumbs.

  “You like to swim.”

  I don’t dignify this with an eye roll.

  Rainie returns to the table, sits down beside me. “If you could do anything you wanted today, what would it be?”

  “Stay home. Play with Luka.”

  “Sharlah, you’ve done that every day this summer.”

  “You and Quincy have run most mornings this summer. You still got up and ran today.”

  “It’s swim camp. Four hours at the local Y. You can do this.”

  I give Rainie a look. I want it to be tough, or sarcastic, or something. But for just one moment . . .

  I can’t do this. I suck at this. Which is why they’re making me go. Not to improve my swimming—who cares about that?—but to work on that whole playing-well-with-others thing. Another one of my broken bits. I don’t want to socialize with other kids. I don’t trust ’em, I don’t like ’em, and best I can tell, the feeling’s mutual.

  So there. Leave me with Luka. I love Luka. Who’s once again licking my hand and whining sympathetically under the table.

  “Sharlah . . .”

  “If you let me stay home, I’ll do chores,” I whisper. “I’ll clean my room, the entire house. I’ll work on learning responsibility. Quincy loves responsibility.”

  “One week. Four hours each morning. Who knows, you might even make a friend.”

  Wrong thing to say. Now I am miserable and self-conscious. Rainie seems to get it. She sighs, squeezes my hand.

  “Give it two days, honey. If you still hate it by Wednesday . . .” Rainie pushes back her chair. “Come on. Grab your swim bag. Time to get this show on the road.”

  I rise to standing, dead girl walking.

  Luka falls in step beside me.

  “Where’s Quincy?” I ask as we head for the front door.

  “Phone.”

  “New case?” I ask, already more excited for a potential homicide than swim camp.

  “Nah. Local call. Nothing that exciting around here.” Rainie opens the front door. “Try smiling,” she advises me. “It’s as good a start as any.”

  I plaster a grimace on my face, then trudge out in the scorching heat. Luka takes up position on the front porch, where he will wait till I return.

  Except for a second, Luka isn’t watching Rainie and me head to the car. His attention has gone left; he’s staring off at something in the woods. A squirrel, deer, prized stick?

  I follow his gaze.

  And feel the fine hairs prickle at the back of my neck.

  “Come on,” Rainie tells me. “Load up.”

  But I’m still staring at nothing in the woods, shivering for reasons I can’t explain.

  “Let’s go,” Rainie prods again.

  Reluctantly, I get into the car. Leaving my dog, still on watch, behind me.

  Chapter 3

  SHELLY’S LEAD HOMICIDE SERGEANT, Roy Peterson, arrived on the scene first, followed shortly by his team, then Deputy Dan Mitchell. Roy put his detectives to work, then paused long enough to confer with Shelly and Dan outside the EZ Gas. The sweltering August heat had already darkened their uniforms with sweat but was still easier to take than the rapidly increasing stench of blood and gore inside the tiny convenience store.

  No sign of media yet, which just went to show there were some advantages to being a backwoods town. Given that Bakersville was nestled equidistant between the bustling metropolis of Portland, Oregon, and political fuss of the state’s capital, Salem, Shelly didn’t expect that situation to last for long. Ninety minutes was an easy enough drive for a rabid reporter hell-bent on the latest tale of violence. Though sadly, a convenience store shooting was hardly newsworthy in this day and age. Only the location of the murders—the proverbial small town—would make it a story of note.

  “Call came into dispatch eight oh four A.M.,” Shelly related to her sergeant, tone clipped. “Report of shots fired. I arrived on scene at approximately eight sixteen A.M., discovering two bodies inside. One a young male, approximately midtwenties. Second a young female, eightee
n, nineteen years of age. Both appear to have been shot multiple times.”

  “Owner of the store?” Roy quizzed.

  “Don Juarez,” Shelly answered, having already asked dispatch the same question. “I spoke to him briefly by phone. He was headed to Salem but is returning now. He tentatively identified the cashier as Erin Hill—at least that’s who was scheduled to work this morning, and the body matches her description. She’s from a local family. I already contacted Officer Estevan, asked her to pay the parents a visit.”

  “And the DOA male?” Roy asked.

  “No ID, no wallet. Maybe shooter grabbed it on his way out. Truck outside is registered to a fishing charter company. We’ll need to fax the vehicle registration over to our counterparts in Nehalem. Maybe one of them can get us a name.”

  “Got Rebecca and Hal photographing the scene, bagging and tagging evidence,” Roy reported. “ME should be here shortly. So far, we’ve recovered nine shell casings, one slug.”

  “Nine shots for two victims?” Shelly shook her head. “Seems a bit much.”

  “Male customer was shot three times to the chest, once to the head. Female clerk the same: single shot to the head, three to the torso, including one slug through the palm of her hand.”

  “Weapon?” Shelly asked.

  “Recovered slug appears to be nine millimeter.”

  Shelly sighed. Nine-millimeter handguns were common enough, especially around here. Certainly wouldn’t narrow their search any.

  Dan spoke up. “That’s eight bullets.”