Small Town Spin (2 page)

He nodded, his eyes gleaming with unshed tears. “There was a bottle of Vicodin in his pocket. It was empty.”

Ah.

“He’d just picked it up yesterday,” Tony continued. “His knee has been bothering him since he took that bad fall in the state championship game in December, and he twisted it in baseball practice last week.” He bent his head and buried his face in Ashton’s hair, tightening his arms around her. I ducked my head, jotting notes and trying to sort through their story.

A whole bottle of narcotics would do it. But why?

I looked around. The mirror image of the little girl I’d seen outside, but wearing a Mathews High football jersey that swallowed her tiny frame, waved at me from the kitchen doorway. There was a ring of chocolate around her mouth and a light missing from her blue-green eyes. The combination broke my heart.

I wiggled my fingers at her. She stepped into the living room.

“Mommy?” She paused at the end of the couch, and Ashton and Tony broke apart, wiping their eyes.

“What is it, angel?” Ashton flashed a half-smile and opened her arms. The little girl ran to her and climbed into her lap.

“I want TJ to come home,” the child said, her whisper muffled by Ashton’s shirt.

Dear God.

Tony Okerson looked at me over his daughter’s head, pain and pleading twisting his famously-handsome face. “Please, Miss Clarke. Don’t let the press turn my family’s loss into a sales pitch.”

I wasn’t sure what I could do to stop it, but I offered a shaky smile as I stood, promising him I would, anyway. There was nothing else to say.

“Thank you for coming,” he said, tears falling faster than he could brush them away.

“Of course. Thank you for sharing your memories with me.”

I scratched the dog behind his soft, floppy ears as I let myself out the front door, tugging it to make sure he couldn’t escape. I climbed back into my car, the effects of the medicine washing away with the adrenaline and emotion of the afternoon.

The image of the Okersons clinging to their wounded little girl burned the backs of my eyelids as I dropped my head and let the tears fall for a few minutes.

By the time I rubbed my hands over my face and started the car, it was after six, the sun low in the sky.

I wondered where the drugstore was. Another dose of Benadryl was definitely in my future. And since I was poking around town, I might as well meet the local law enforcement.

I glanced at the Okerson house one more time in the rearview as I started up the driveway. Something wasn’t right. The details didn’t add up. And I was already too invested in these people and their story to walk away without trying to find out why.

2.

Welcome to Mathews

A dazzling pink sun sank into the Chesapeake Bay, rings of orange, violet, and gold flowing across the horizon and into the water. I slowed the car and watched from the rock-lined road that ran along the north side of the island, letting the beauty erase some of the turmoil I’d lugged from the Okerson house.

A dull honking behind me broke my reverie, reminding me I’d stopped in the middle of the street. I checked the rearview to find a John Deere occupied by an older man in starched jeans and a white straw hat. I waved an apology and gunned the engine.

I hadn’t passed anything but churches and seafood places on the island itself, so I drove back across the little bridge, wondering as I breezed through the only stoplight in town if it ever turned red.

I stopped at the 7-Eleven on the corner that led back to the real world and shuffled inside, hoping they had cold medicine of some variety to get me through a couple more hours and then get me home. Leave it to me to take a sick day and wind up working ’til ten o’clock. The news doesn’t wait for pollen. Or anything else, in the age of Twitter.

I found a packet of Sudafed and a small vat of Diet Coke. Sipping the soda, I moved to the register.

“You’re not from around here,” the words were flat—a statement, not a question—from the wiry redhead behind the counter.

“Just passing through,” I replied, trying to smile through my sinus pain.

“There ain’t nothing out here but fields and water and the people who work them,” she said, pulling my change from the till with a raised eyebrow that said she wanted to know why I was there. “You come here, you leave, but you don’t pass through.”

“Seems like a nice place.” I turned for the door.

I hauled myself back into the car, shivering in the breeze and thinking I probably needed a couple of Advil, too. I laid a hand across my forehead. Fever. Hooray. After swallowing the Sudafed, I dug a vial of Advil out of my bag and took two, leaning my head back to rest for a second. 

I tried to search for the sheriff’s office address on my Blackberry. No signal. Great. There weren’t but so many places for the sheriff to be in a mapdot this tiny. I turned the opposite of the way I’d come into town. I could find the office.

Or not find it. I tried following the arrows through the halls of the big red courthouse with the sign out front that said “Sheriff’s Office.” It was locked, paint buckets outside and drop cloths covering everything I could see through the window.

Twenty minutes later, I’d circled town three times and wondered if the police had closed up due to remodeling. I stopped in the parking lot of an ancient service station that had been reborn as an antique store. The old-fashioned gravity-fed gas pumps out front were topped with blue and white globes emblazoned with “Esso extra” and flanked by vintage Standard Oil signs. The front walk displayed a charming array of merchandise.

If I wasn’t crunched for time and feeling craptastic, I’d have browsed for an hour. As it was, I dragged myself to the door and asked the gray-haired gentleman behind the counter where I could find the sheriff.

“At the courthouse,” he said, bustling around the end of the high, polished wood counter. His brow wrinkled deeper with concern when he stopped in front of me. “Why don’t you come in and have a seat, sugar? You don’t look so good.”

“Allergies,” I said. And decongestants for dinner.

“What business d’you got with Zeke?”

Zeke? Sheriff Zeke. All right. “Just a few questions.”

“You look like death on toast.” He settled on a stool behind the counter. “Sit down.”

“I appreciate the hospitality, but I need to go talk to the sheriff,” I said with an effort at smiling. From the look I got in response, I probably managed a wince. “I tried the courthouse, and the office looks like it’s being painted.”

He nodded. “They moved out of the new office for the painters and back to the old office. At the courthouse. Go to the stop sign up yonder and turn right, then go behind the shops on Main.”

“I’m afraid my cold medicine is fogging my brain. The courthouse is a block down on the right,” I said.

“But the place where the courthouse used to be in the middle of town is where you want to go,” he explained with a patient smile.

“I see.” I didn’t, really, but I’d go wherever he said if it meant I was closer to getting home.

The little Okerson girl’s haunted turquoise eyes flashed through my thoughts and I stood up straighter, thanking him and trying to stride back to the car. Mind over matter, my mom always said.

I found the sheriff’s office right where he said it would be and parked next to a pickup from the same era as the gas station/antique store. After blowing my nose, I climbed out of my car and started down the sidewalk. The hastily-stenciled “Sheriff” sign hung over a door next to what had to be the coolest vintage fire station in Virginia, a soaring two-story red brick building with twin open garage bays and an honest-to-goodness fireman’s pole. The sheriff’s temporary front door stood open to the April breeze, voices carrying to the sidewalk.

“Dammit, Zeke, you got to do something about this,” a deep baritone boomed. “Those old bats are gonna skyrocket the divorce rate ’round here, and we don’t have the manpower at the courthouse to handle the uptick in paperwork.”

“It’s not my jurisdiction, Amos.” A tired sigh followed the words. “And they’re not doing anything that’s against the law.”

“Neither are we,” the baritone protested.

“Didn’t say you were,” the sheriff replied. “All I’m saying is I can’t help you.”

A tall, barrel-chested man in a sport coat, slacks, and polished black boots stormed through the door, nodding at me as he passed. The pickup’s door groaned a protest when he jerked it open.

I peeked around the doorframe. The cavernous room held a handful of mismatched office furniture. A twenty-something woman with spiky hair the color of the fire engine next door sat behind a dispatch unit in one corner, flipping through a magazine. A man in a chocolate-and-tan uniform slumped in a wooden swivel chair in the center of the desk tangle.

“Excuse me,” I said, wincing at my nasal twang. The Sudafed hadn’t even made a dent.

They looked up—his sun-bronzed face softened into an interested smile, while she raised a brow.

I smiled, focusing on the sheriff. He didn’t look old enough to have a name like Zeke. I’d put him mid-forties, with dark hair, curious eyes, and a medium build that spoke more to leanness than muscle, but was fit all the same.

“What can we do for you, miss?” he asked.

“I’m Nichelle Clarke, from the
Richmond Telegraph
,” I said. “I came out to talk to Tony and Ashton Okerson, and I want to ask you a few questions about TJ.”

The dispatcher returned to her magazine when the sheriff nodded.

“Not much I can tell you that his folks couldn’t, but come on in.” He waved to a chair across his desk. “I’m Zeke Waters.”

“Nice to meet you, Sheriff,” I said, falling into the chair he offered. It took effort to lean forward and scrounge a pad and pen out of my bag. “I don’t suppose you have a tox report back on TJ yet?”

I knew the answer to that was almost surely “no,” since it hadn’t even been a day, but it was a small town. Maybe there wasn’t that much for the coroner to do.

“We probably won’t have it for several weeks,” he said. “We don’t have a crime lab or a coroner, so everything goes to Richmond for autopsy and testing. From the looks of the scene, they’ll find a combination of narcotics and alcohol. Most kids who try to kill themselves don’t actually pull it off, either because they don’t really want to die or because they do it wrong. I can’t tell you how much I wish TJ was in that group. The whole damned town is already in an uproar, and it’s only going to get worse when word gets outside our little corner of the world.”

“And y’all assume it was a suicide because?” I raised one eyebrow. I couldn’t figure why it was the first place everyone went.

“Because smart kids don’t chase a whole bottle of narcotic pain meds with booze if they don’t want to die.” Sheriff Zeke leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “TJ Okerson was a smart kid.”

“But his parents say he wasn’t troubled. Good grades, steady girlfriend, popular... I’ve written about teen suicides before. This doesn’t fit. Are you opening an investigation into his death?”

“Of course we are,” he said. “I examined the scene and talked to the other kids who were out there with him last night. A couple of the boys said he was talking about missing his girl, and worried about his baseball season because of his knee.”

I scribbled. “So he was a little upset. There’s a difference between bummed and suicidal.”

“You trying to tell me how to do my job, Miss Clarke?” Sheriff Zeke’s tone flipped from conversational to stiff. “Because this is not my first rodeo. I know everything you’re saying.”

“Then why are his parents convinced he killed himself?” I asked.

Losing a loved one to suicide is hard, because the guilt that stays with the survivors can eat a person alive. I’d only been at the Okerson’s house for a couple of hours, but I liked them. I didn’t want them living with the “what if.” And my gut said something was off. Even if the sheriff was looking at me like I was a moron.

“Because right now it’s the most plausible answer. He was upset. Alcohol is a depressant. And I don’t see a scenario where anyone made a kid as strong and fast as TJ Okerson swallow a fistful of narcotics.”

“But you don’t even know that’s what killed him,” I protested. “You don’t have the tox screen back.”

“It’s the most likely possibility.” He sighed. “Look, it’s not like I assumed this all by myself. His parents said he got the pills yesterday. They’re gone, he’s dead, no evidence of trauma. How does two and two add up in Richmond? Because out here, it’s usually four. This is a small town. I hate like hell the idea that a kid with everything in the world to live for decided he didn’t want to anymore. But it happens.”

I studied him. His whole posture was one of resignation and exhaustion. He didn’t want this case any more than I did.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like I was questioning your investigative skills. They just seem like such nice people,” I said. Maybe he was right, maybe he wasn’t. But arguing with him wasn’t going to get me anywhere but frozen out of the loop. “Was there anything else unusual about the crime scene?”

His face and voice softened again. “Beach party. Bonfire. Beer bottles. Just kids blowing off steam on vacation,” he said. “I was out there for over three hours this morning combing the shoreline. It’s a sad situation. Got everyone on edge. But I’ve been at this for more years than I want to admit. The simplest answer is usually the right one.”

I nodded, adding that to my notes.

“Thank you for taking the time to talk to me,” I said, fishing a business card from my bag and handing it to him. “It was nice to meet you. When you hear about the tox screen, will you give me a call?”

“I’m about to get buried by the media, huh?” he asked, tucking the card into the top drawer of his desk.

“Very likely. But if it helps, national folks don’t ever hang around long.”

“Our local paper and some of the TV stations and the paper in Newport are about the only reporters we ever get in here,” he said. “This will be different.”

I smiled. “I’m sure it’s nothing you can’t handle.”

“I’d rather not have to.”

I smiled understanding and turned for the door.

Back in my car, I contemplated napping for a full two minutes before I started the engine and turned out of the square, aiming the headlights toward home.

For most of the drive I tried to convince myself that Sheriff Zeke was right, but my inner Lois Lane chirped that he wasn’t looking hard enough. Honestly, I wanted him to be wrong. Murder was a sexier story all the way around, both because it would be easier on the people who loved TJ in many ways, and because murder sells papers. Plus, something about the sheriff’s words nagged the back of my brain. I just couldn’t grasp what through the germs and exhaustion.

After arriving home, I filled Darcy’s food and water on my way to bed, thankful for her doggie door. Perching on the edge of my cherry four-poster, I kicked off my heels, too beat to even put them back on their shelf. I figured out what bugged me about the sheriff’s story as I snuggled into my pillows.

Why would TJ Okerson be worried about his upcoming baseball season if he planned to swallow a fistful of Vicodin?