Miller Avenue Murder: An addictive police procedural legal psychological thriller

by Nenny May

  She shook her head and turned on her heels that had begun to draw sores and blisters on her sweaty feet. She’d pushed past grinding bodies, squished bodies, from lean to bulky until she’d felt once more, the autumn evening breeze hit her skin in a rush. It tousled the strands of dark curled hair that had made their way from the loose French braid she’d pulled it into that morning. She gulped a lung-full and relished in the soft scent of the earth in the calm of Tillamook’s desolate streets.

  Many of the neighboring businesses had locked up for the night. There was a nail salon that sat slumbering across the street, a café whose neon closed sign lit up the street, and to the right of the district bar she’d escaped from, was an ice-cream shop that sat in an eerie darkness.

  Her eyes squeezed shut. What had she been thinking? These were her colleagues, not her friends, she’d never been good at that, making friends, it was harder than it seemed and always put her on edge, as if she were putting herself out there to be judged, probed, and poked. She’d spent her day with a woman who was judged probed and poked by officials who acted like they knew what the hell they were doing in actuality, they were working together to make a calculated guess, a detailed judgment.

  Rachel Olson wasn’t ready, after she and Mathew had called it quits, she’d recoiled into a shell she couldn’t seem to break out off, fallen into a pattern of work, home, work home, and nothing more. Of course, home meant, Netflix and torturing herself with all the reasons he’d left her. All the reasons he’d taken his son with him.

  “What was that back there?” Detective Dawson’s voice rippled through the crisp evening air. She threw her head over her shoulders and took in his tousled work-worn features. In spite of the retreating sun, she acknowledged the five-o-clock-shadow that wrapped his chin and face, the dulled flame in his eyes a brown that competed with hers. He’d undone the first two buttons on his shirt, and rolled his sleeves up to his elbow, exposing strong forearms coated with a thin line of long dark brown hair.

  “Nothing,” She returned her attention to the empty streets. She’d never been to this part of town. 4th Street, Carnahan park was somewhere in the distance, she wasn’t sure where. In spite of being a local born and raised in Tillamook, Rachel Olson barely knew the sleepy town of Tillamook Oregon. Not that she’d tried to know it. She didn’t know it, and it didn’t know her, and she was fine with that.

  “That wasn’t nothing, that was…” He wasn’t sure. “…quite a show,” He settled.

  “Hope you enjoyed it?” She didn’t bother looking at him as she spoke. She was waiting, anticipating when another car would zoom by. That didn’t seem likely. American Angel was nearly at capacity and yet not a car was in sight. She’d seen pedestrians’ troop in and out of the building, none had loomed around the cars that lined the curb. This was a weird part of town. The night was fast approaching, its velvet darkness promising as much as the day. Rachel was not looking forward to retreating to her home—house, it had lost all homey-tendencies when Sterling had moved in with his father.

  She hadn’t argued against it. He wasn’t her son. He was Mathew’s from his first marriage that had ended in a bitter divorce.

  “We would like the lead performer to join our table if that isn’t too much to ask?”

  She wasn’t better than his ex-wife, she just couldn’t look past his little flaws—those weren’t little. The nagging, the subtle abuse, the drinking. She couldn’t look past it and she hoped to God it didn’t affect Sterling.

  “She’s unavailable.” Rachel shook her head and reached into her pocket for her keys, this was stupid, leaving her comfort zone was stupid. She had a ton of work anyway, how could she have duped herself into thinking she could socialize? She wasn’t ready. Not yet.

  She hadn’t gotten over the sweet smile of her ex-husband’s eight-year-old son.

  She’d begun making her way towards her car, she’d parked around the corner.

  “You don’t have to leave, Rachel.” She paused at the way her name rolled off his tongue. She turned. She did a great job at masking the fluster in her amber cheeks. Till that moment, she’d always been Olson to him. She didn’t know how she felt about him using her first name.

  “I do, because these people see me as their boss and not their peer, you should have seen the uncomfortable look in Steve Woods’ eyes when you called out my name. It was dark in there, but I have eyes, Dawson, I saw how everyone stiffened up when you introduced me to your table.”

  “Because they’re not familiar with having you there, if you’d just broken the ice like I set you up to do, we won’t be out here in the cold.”

  “If I’d just broken the ice,” She shook her head, “I don’t fit in, Dawson. Breaking the ice would do nothing for me.”

  He wasn’t convinced.

  “You know, you don’t have to be here, Dawson, stop trying to take control of this situation like you do every damn one.” He frowned.

  “I don’t—”

  “Yes, you do. And I’m not going to go on a tangent to prove to you something you can dig deep down and figure out.” She gulped a breath. “I don’t fit in. Just leave it,” She said again and cracked her frigid knuckles and rubbed her hands together.

  Had she only known; she wouldn’t have wasted the gas it took to get her down to American Angels? This was a good forty-minute drive from her home. At the time she would get back to her bed, she doubted she would have it in her to go through Blake Campbell’s phone.

  “What’s this really about, Olson?” It was her turn to frown and when she did, she’d made sure to scowl at him. He couldn’t find it anywhere in him to let sleeping dogs lie, could he?

  “Don’t act as if we didn’t just return from a hell shift investigating the brutal murder of someone’s mother. Excuse me if I suddenly feel too tired and out of it to chat with my colleagues,” He wasn’t satisfied with her response. It was getting too dark and too chilly for her to give a shit. Her home didn’t seem all that attractive, she thought again, but it was better than getting frostbite trying to prove to her work partner all the reasons why she’d frozen up at the idea of putting herself out there amidst seven of her colleagues. “Goodnight, Dawson.” She pulled out her keys and picked up her pace towards where Betty had been nestled in the cold.

  He hadn’t come after her.

  Why had she been half expecting him to?

  Home didn’t seem all that appealing when she’d pulled Betty into the driveway and killed the engine. Embraced by the darkness of the night, alone on the driveway of a petite home on 9th Street, she contemplated heading back to American Angels, swallowing her pride and joining her chirping colleagues.

  The silence was roaring, but her contempt was louder. How hadn’t Detective Dawson seen the criticism in their eyes, the hesitance that clamped their lips shut? What was she supposed to do? Linger around until the discomfort suffocated them and one by one, everyone got up from the table and left? She couldn’t escape it. It plagued her like a shadow, that inability to fit in, the one that had sent Mathew packing, she was a crumpled puzzle peace. A lot of things had sent her ex-husband packing. But he’d managed to underline the primary problem. She was. She had to change if any part of her wanted a chance with him, a chance at a happy marriage.

  Edging onto her mid-thirties, Detective Olson wasn’t sure marriage was on her agenda anymore. Hadn’t it been scrapped off the day Mathew walked out her front door?

  Releasing a sigh, she bit back the spiraling memories. To Rachel, home meant memories. Home meant neighbors that knew of her inability to keep a man. How wouldn’t they when Mathew had been determined to make a scene? Screamed and yelled as if she’d committed a capital crime and when people had wandered onto their porches, he’d trudged his things to his pickup truck listening to the music of her subtle pleading.

  She was stubborn, self-involved, and ignorant, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have other qualities…

  He hadn’t stuck around long enough to see her good tra
its.

  Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to see them?

  Jaw clenched, she reached for her bag and climbed out of the safety of Betty’s four doors and into the night. A cool breeze whipped at her. Curled strands of sable-brown 3c hair danced to the symphony of crickets.

  She undid the French braid of that morning and let her hair sit like a bird's nest over her head and shoulders.

  She didn’t see what her neighbors saw in her hair when they would insist, they yearned for hair like hers. Not only was it a mess of tangled curls she tussled with in the mornings before work, but it wasn’t all that long. It fell to the middle of her back, a lot shorter than when she was growing up and her mother would spill different products and creams into it and would comb and brush it with love. She didn’t care for her hair with love, a desire to not look homeless maybe, but certainly not love.

  She stopped in her tracks.

  A shadow emerged from her porch. She nearly reached for her taser, her heart caught in her throat, a chill in her veins. It wasn’t a faceless killer in a bid to do to her what had been done to Blake Campbell.

  Since when did she get startled by the cases she worked? That was never something she’d had to worry about, why now? She didn’t want to admit it, but there was a chance she could be getting too invested with the Campbell murder investigation.

  “Did I scare you, Naomi?” Detective Olson bit down on her cheek but shook her head.

  “No, you didn’t, sweetie.” She jogged up the porch stairs and opened the door for Tuscany, her fourteen-year-old neighbor. “Can’t sleep?”

  “Mom’s smoking, thought I would take my asthmatic ass out of there and not, you know, die.” Rachel hit the wall lights and basked her living room with life. Her home on 9th Street wasn’t a big one, the living room and adjoined kitchen were the highlights of the place. White chocolate brick walls lined the living room giving the biscuit floorboards ample opportunity to shine. She had quotes up on the wall—Tuscany’s choosing—and plants on shelves—those were all her. The couch had been half-off at a target and the pinewood coffee table, she’d inherited from her mother. It was now a spot for unread Cosmopolitan magazines that confidently reminded her that she wasn’t going to experience multiple orgasms like many women ought to at her age.

  She shrugged off her coat, tossing it on a chair by the dining table, a small round fir table with two matching chairs—they’d also been on sale. “Had anything to eat?” She’d asked because despite not feeling it on the ride down from long prairie road, she was famished.

  “Do leftovers count?”

  “Tuscany, honey, how long have you known me? No, leftovers don’t count.” She reached for an apron on a hook on the grey walls by the cedar cabinets.

  “You seemed to enjoy my Bake n’ Shark last time you had it, wanna give that another go?”

  Tuscany who’d been leaned against the island counter, shrugged, putting away her phone. “Sure, why not.”

  “Still remember how to make it?”

  “Fish, bake, vegetables and a pepper sauce. Of course, I still remember.” Tuscany said as matter of fact and pulled open the fridge door.

  Shaking her head, Rachel Naomi turned on the stove and reached for a pan.

  Why couldn’t Mathew have seen this part of her?

  CHAPTER TWO

  That afternoon, He hadn’t known where else to go. The air had oozed of anguish and sweat for some reason. That irked him. After his fleeting conversation with Detective Olson, he found himself two doors down, and past the rows of chairs annoyingly placed.

  He didn't know the Sherriff all that well, Hell! He didn't even know what he was doing. But whatever it was, he was letting his legs guide him and his lips spew out whatever they damn well please!

  He only knew the man through his late father Christopher Campbell who'd in a sense taken the at the time young rookie officer under his wing. And Paul had met this man time and time again growing up, and whenever their paths would cross, Paul would be stuck in his fathers' timber exporting company's headquarters smack dab in the middle of Tillamook County, and they would always be on the third floor. Many at times Paul would be slumped on the couch in his father's sizable office, forced to bury his pre-teenage head in homework. Pierce had been the only other source of entertainment to the young Paul before he would get to return to their home in the evenings.

  Clicking his desert tongue against the roof of his mouth, he didn't bother to knock on what had been a cracked door. He was after all a familiar face. "Sherriff Peirce?" He asked merely out of courtesy. This was a man who'd taken him on his first ride-along at fourteen.

  "Who's askin'?" The middle-aged man's head rose from where he'd been scribbling something in a booklet. The years were not good to him. In his youth, Paul would admit, Pierce was quite the ladies’ man. Those ride-alongs' weren't just ride-alongs'... The ladies that would cling to Pierce weren't there just because of the squad car... although thinking back he had to admit that was a bonus.

  Paul inched closer and helped himself to a seat. The worn leather creased beneath his weight. "My, my... How long has it been... Peter is it?" Paul's fingers curled in a fist beneath the table. The last he needed was to come off as disrespectful or standoffish, especially since he needed a favor from someone so high up. He bit down on his tongue swallowing the bitter taste in his mouth.

  "Paul." He corrected, meekly. He dreaded the thought of being frail. Anything that associated him with weakness ached in his bones. With his broad size, generous height, and swollen arms, feeble should be the last thing to cross a person's mind in his presence.

  "How can I help you, son?" Sherriff Pierce paused then added; "I'm sorry for your loss. It must be a difficult pill to swallow considering how she passed on." Sherriff Pierce wasn't all that young, not anymore. He'd bid farewell to his youth as depicted by the faint salt sprinkled in his pepper hair that sat atop his receding hairline. Was it the stress? He could bet top dollar this man wasn't up to fifty. If he did his math right, he ought to be in his mid-forties. It was a shame he looked much, much older. This was only worsened by his sagging cheeks and double chin. Paul resisted the urge to shake his head in dismay.

  "You've known my family, Sheriff. You know when my father died, how much that hurt me. I couldn't believe someone in my life was gone... I mean he was there since when I was born, and I was always with him after school." Paul cleared his throat. "You remember those days, those months where the three of us would be at Campbell's House of Timber. You would help me with my homework, and he would teach you how to be a successful... whatever it is you wanted to be." He cracked his fingers beneath the table, his head ducked. "You've gotta remember." He waited for a reply that never came, eyes burning a hole in the wall behind the Sherriff. "Whatever. Bottom line is you knew what I went through we don't need to hatch up old wounds. But I have new scars and I need your help." He ran his tongue over his bottom lip. "I want to know what really happened to my mother. I wanna know who did it? I want to know as much as I can. She didn't deserve this. She was brutally murdered and I as her son, can't let her killer walk away scot free. I need to do something..."

  "I'm going to stop you right there. I can't tell you I understand your situation. That would be offensive on multiple levels. I don't understand and I never will. You lost both your parents and you're still so young. You don't deserve that, and all I can offer is my condolences. But what I can tell you is I comprehend your statement. You don't want to feel useless while waiting for an investigation that could take weeks, months and at its worst years even though we have officers working overtime and trust me we do. I have my best men and women on the job."

  "Best women?" Paul was skeptical. If the Sherriff was referring to their lead Detective, then he wasn't too comfortable with the direction his mother's investigation was headed. His mother's investigation, his mother had been murdered. The thought made him queasy.

  "I know Detective Olson is young but she's effective. And this isn't her firs
t murder investigation for that matter. Tested her skills a while back on another case... the details aren't going to interest you, but she was phenomenal."

  Paul Campbell remained unconvinced. He'd spent less than five minutes with that woman, and she’d come off as lackadaisical in her work. He wasn't too comfortable with her on the case. The chances of her losing interest in his mother's case were much too high. He would have sleepless nights with someone like her on this case. No, there had to be someone else, someone more engaged.

  "Look, there has to be someone else that could handle this." Paul leaned back in his seat and ran a finger through the collar of his red polo shirt. The topic was unsettling, to say the least. "I don't want to sound misogynistic or racist; I am all about women in high positions, especially our ebony beauties... not that I think she's beautiful in an unprofessional way..." His head fell into his palms. He eluded a groan that had a roaring chuckle bubbling from the Sherriff.

  "Son, I understand you right now. You think she's too at ease to handle your case. She can give off that impression,"

  "Exactly!" Paul chimed his eyes a resemblance of hazelnut on a milk bed glimmered in fading excitement.

  "I understand that, but here’s the deal..." The Sherriff leaned in closer to Paul. "I'm gonna' let you in on a little secret. Now, I don’t want this getting around, you know how word travels in a town as small as Tillamook, okay?" The middle-aged man's eyes shifted side to side as if someone else were listening in to their conversation. "And I especially don’t want this getting back to her. She's going to have my head on a platter if she knows. But she doesn't work alone because we need someone else sparking that dull flame in her during investigations. She might seem apathetic at first but she's damn smart and damn effective. And I give you my word, son. Your mother's case is in fine hands." Sherriff Pierce leaned back in his seat and flung open his booklet once more.