by Blake Pierce
Figuring she might as well strike while the mood had hit her, she stripped down to her underwear and slid into a pair of thermals. It wasn’t too cold out this morning—a bit above freezing—but she wasn’t used to being out in the woods. She owned nothing in camo, so she settled for a pair of dark green pants and a black sweater. She was well aware that it wasn’t the safest get-up to go deer hunting in, but it would have to do for now.
She slid on a pair of thin gloves (having to dig through yet another box to find them), laced up her most rugged pair of shoes, and headed out. She got into her car and drove two miles away to a stretch of back road that led to an expanse of forest that was owned by the man she had purchased the house from. He had given her permission to hunt on his land, almost as some random footnote or bonus to having purchased the house for ten thousand over the asking price.
She found a spot on the side of the road where it was quite obvious that hunters had been turning around or pulling over for years. She parked her car there, the driver’s side just barely off of the road. She then took up the rifle and walked off into the forest.
She actually felt silly, parading through the woods. She had not hunted for five years or so—the very weekend she had received the gun from her mother. She did not have the gear—the proper boots, the deer scent to spray on trees, the blaze orange hats or vests. But she also knew that it was a Wednesday morning and that the woods would be virtually empty of other hunters. She felt a bit like the shy kid who only played basketball by herself and then skipped away when the more talented kids came into the gym.
She walked for twenty minutes and came to a rise in the land. She walked quietly, with the same practiced caution she had used as a homicide detective. The gun in her hands felt good, although a bit foreign. She was used to much smaller weapons, her Glock in particular, so the rifle felt quite powerful. As she came to the top of the slight rise in the land, she spied a fallen oak several yards away. She used it as a meager means of hiding herself, sitting on the ground and then scooting down a bit with her back against the fallen tree. In a reclining position, she rested the rifle next to her and looked up into the tree tops.
She lay there peacefully, feeling even more enclosed by the world than she had while on the porch an hour or so ago. She grinned when she imagined Rose out here with her. Rose hated just about anything to do with being outdoors and would probably flip her lid if she knew her mother was currently sitting in the forest with a rifle, looking to potentially kill a deer. Thinking of Rose, Avery was able to clear her mind a bit, to focus on everything around her. And when she was able to do that, her career instincts kicked in.
She heard the rustling of leaves on the ground as well as in the trees as the last few stubborn leaves clung on against the coming winter. She heard a skittering somewhere to her right and above her, likely a squirrel coming out to check the wind. Once she was acclimated to her surroundings, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to really let go.
She heard all of those things but she also saw her own thoughts start to slide into place. Jack and his girlfriend, both dead. Ramirez, dead and gone. She thought of Howard Randall, falling into the bay and probably also dead. And at the end of it all, she saw Rose…how she had been constantly ensnared in danger because of her mother’s line of work. Rose had never deserved it, had never asked for it. She had done her best to be a supportive daughter through it all and she had finally reached her breaking point.
Honestly, Avery was impressed that she had lasted as long as she had. Especially after the last case, where her life had literally been in danger. And it hadn’t been the first time.
The snap of a twig from behind her broke Avery from her thoughts. Her eyes snapped open and she was once again staring up into the mostly stripped branches overhead. She slowly reached for the Remington as yet another soft shuffling noise sounded out somewhere behind her.
She brought the rifle to her and slowly readied it. She moved with expert stealth as she raised herself to her elbows. She breathed in and out slowly, making sure not to so much as blow a nearby leaf askew. Her eyes scanned the area below the little rise she was hiding on. She spotted the deer to the west, about seventy yards away. It was a buck, an eight-pointer from what she could tell. It was nothing sizeable, but it was something, at least. She spotted another one further ahead of it but it was partially covered by two trees.
She brought herself up a bit more, steadying the rifle on the side of the fallen oak. She flexed her finger as it found the trigger and firmed up her grip on the stock. She took aim and found it a bit more difficult than she had anticipated. When she lined the crosshairs up and had a shot, she took it.
The rifle’s crack as the shot was fired filled the forest. The recoil was noticeable but very slight. The moment she fired, she knew she’d be off to the right; her elbow had slipped in its positioning on the tree as she had pulled the trigger.
But she did not get to see the buck make its escape.
When the sound of the gunshot filled her ears and the woods, something in her mind seemed to tremble and then freeze. For a paralyzing moment, she could not move. And in that moment, she was not in the forest, having failed to take down a deer. Instead, she was standing in Jack’s living room. There was blood everywhere. Both he and his girlfriend had been killed. She had not been able to stop it and, as such, she felt like she had killed them. Rose was right. It was her fault. She could have stopped it if she’d been faster—if she’d been better.
The blood glistened red and Jack’s eyes looked at her, dead and seeming to plead. Please, they said. Please, take it back. Make it right.
Avery dropped the rifle. The clatter of it on the ground broke her out of her fugue and once again, she found herself openly weeping. The tears came, hot and flowing. They felt like little trails of fire down her otherwise chilled face.
“It’s my fault,” she said to the forest. “It was my fault. All of it.”
Not just Jack and his girlfriend…no. Ramirez, too. And everyone else she had been unable to save. She should have been better, always better.
She saw the picture of Jack and Rose in front of the Christmas tree in her mind’s eye. She curled up into a ball by the fallen oak and started to shake.
No, she thought. Not now, not here. Get your shit together, Avery.
She fought the surge of emotions off and swallowed it down. It wasn’t too hard. She had, after all, gotten quite good at it over the last decade or so. She slowly got to her feet, picking the rifle up from the ground. She cast only the slightest of glances back toward where the two deer had been. There was no regret in missing the shot at all. She simply didn’t care.
She turned back the way she had come, carrying the rifle over her shoulder and a decade’s worth of guilt and failure in her heart.
*
On her way back to the house, Avery supposed it was a good thing she hadn’t killed the deer. She had no idea how she would have gotten it out of the forest. Drag it back to her car? Bungee cord it to the top of her car and slowly drive back home? She knew enough about hunting to know that it was illegal to leave a kill just sitting to rot in the woods.
Any other time, she might have found the image of a deer affixed to the top of her car hilarious. But she currently found it nothing more than another oversight. Just something else she had not properly thought through.
Just as she was about turn onto her road, the chirping of her cell phone broke her out of her funk. She grabbed it from the console and saw a number she did not recognize, but an area code that she had seen for most of her life. The call was coming from Boston.
She answered it skeptically, her career teaching her that calls from unknown numbers could often lead to trouble. “Hello?”
“Hi, is this Ms. Black? Ms. Avery Black?” a male voice asked.
“This is she. Who is this?”
“My name is Gary King. I’m the landlord for the place your daughter is staying. She has you listed as a next of kin on he
r paperwork and—”
“Is Rose okay?” Avery asked.
“As far as I know, yes. But I’m calling because of a few different things. First of all, she’s behind on her rent. It’s two weeks late and it’s the second time in three months. I try to go by there and talk to her about it but she never answers the door. And she won’t return my calls.”
“Certainly you don’t need me to work on that,” Avery said. “Rose is a grown woman and she can handle getting scolded by a landlord.”
“Well, it’s not just that. I’ve gotten calls from her neighbor complaining about the sounds of loud crying at night. This same neighbor claims to be fairly good friends with Rose. She says Rose has not seemed herself lately. Says she keeps talking about how everything sucks and how meaningless life is. She said she’s worried about Rose.”
“And who is this friend?” Avery asked. It was hard to fight off, but she could feel herself quickly slipping into detective mode.
“Sorry, but I can’t say. Legalities and all.”
Avery was pretty sure Mr. King was right, so she didn’t press the matter. “I understand. Thank you for you call, Mr. King. I’ll check up on her right away. And I’ll see to it that you get your rent.”
“That’s fine and I thank you…but I’m honestly more worried about what might be going on with Rose. She’s a good girl.”
“Yeah, she is,” Avery said and ended the call.
By that point, she was less than half a mile away from her new home. She pulled up Rose’s number and placed the call as she pushed her foot down harder on the gas. She was pretty sure how the next couple of minutes would play out, but still felt a stinging hope each time the phone rang in her ear.
As she expected, it went straight to voicemail. Rose had only answered one of her calls since her father had been murdered and that had been when she had been especially drunk. Avery opted not to leave a message, knowing that Rose would not check it, much less return the call.
She parked in her driveway, leaving the engine running, and ran inside long enough to dress in something a little more presentable. She was back in the car three minutes later, pointing it back toward Boston. She was sure Rose would be pissed that her mom was coming into town to check up on her, but Avery didn’t see where she had any choice, given the call from Gary King.
When the road smoothed out and became less curvy, Avery increased her speed. She wasn’t sure where her future rested in terms of her old job but she did know one thing she’d miss about working in law enforcement: the ability to break the speed limit any time she damn well pleased.
Rose was in trouble.
She felt it.
CHAPTER TWO
It was shortly after one o’clock when Avery showed up on Rose’s doorstep. She lived on a ground floor apartment in a decent part of town. She was able to afford it because of the tips she got as a bartender at an upper-class bar—a job she nailed down shortly before Avery had moved out to her cabin. Her job before that had been a little less glamorous, waitressing at a chain restaurant while doing some cheap editing work for ad firms out of her apartment on the side. Avery wished Rose would just buckle down and finish college, but she also knew that the harder she pushed, the less inclined Rose would be to choose that path.
Rose knocked on the door, knowing Rose was home because her car was parked a block down on the side of the street. Even if that clue hadn’t tipped Avery off, ever since she’d moved out on her own, Rose had opted for jobs with later hours so she could sleep late and lounge around the house all day. She knocked louder when Rose didn’t answer and nearly called out her name. She decided not to, figuring her voice would be even less welcome than that of the landlord she was trying to dodge.
She probably figures it’s me because I tried to call beforehand, she thought.
Given that, she figured she’d go with what she did best: negotiating.
“Rose,” she said, knocking again. “Open up. It’s your mom. And it’s cold out here.”
She waited a moment and there was still no answer. Instead of knocking again, she calmly approached the door, standing as closely as she could to it. When she spoke again, she raised her voice just enough to firmly be heard inside but not nearly enough to cause a scene out on the street.
“You can keep ignoring me if you want but I’ll keep calling, Rose. And if I want to get really obsessive about it, remember what I used to do for a living. If I want to know where you are at any given time, I can make it happen. Or you can make life easier for both of us and just open the damned door.”
With that said, she gave another knock. This time, it was answered within a handful of seconds. Rose opened it slowly from the other side. She peered out like a woman who didn’t trust the person standing on the other side of the door.
“What do you want, Mom?”
“To come in for a minute or two.”
Rose considered it for a moment and then opened the door all the way. Avery did her best not to pay too much attention to the fact that Rose had lost some weight. Quite a bit, actually. She had also dyed her hair raven black and straightened it.
Avery walked inside and found the apartment meticulously cleaned. There was a ukulele on the couch, something that looked sorely out of place. Avery pointed to it and gave a questioning look.
“I wanted to learn to play something,” Rose said. “Guitar is too time consuming and pianos are too expensive.”
“You any good?” Avery asked.
“I can play five chords. I can almost get through one song.”
Avery nodded, impressed. She almost asked to hear the song but figured that might be pushing it. She then thought about sitting down on the couch but didn’t want to seem as if she were making herself welcome. She was pretty sure Rose wouldn’t extend that invitation anyway.
“I’m okay, Mom,” Rose said. “If that’s why you’re here…”
“It is,” Avery said. “And I’ve wanted to speak with you for a while. I know you hate me and blame me for everything that happened. And that sucks, but I can deal with it. But then today I got a call from your landlord.”
“Oh God,” Rose said. “That greedy jerk won’t leave me alone and—”
“He just wants his rent, Rose. Do you have it? Do you need some money?”
Rose scoffed at the question. “I made three hundred dollars in tips last night,” she said. “And I make almost double that in tips on a Saturday night. So no…I don’t need any money.”
“Good. But…well, he also says that he’s worried about you. That he’s been hearing about some things you’ve said. Now don’t bullshit me, Rose. How are you, really?”
“Really?” Rose asked. “How am I really? Well, I miss my dad. And I was nearly killed by the same asshole that killed him. And while I miss you too, I can’t even think of you without remembering how he died. I know it’s messed up, but every time I think of Dad and how he died, it makes me hate you. And it makes me realize that ever since you got really deep into working as a detective, my life has suffered for some reason or another.”
It was hard for Rose to hear, but she also knew it could have been much worse. “How are you sleeping?” she asked. “And eating? Rose…how much weight have you lost?”
Rose shook her head and started walking back toward the door. “You asked how I was doing and I answered you. Am I happy? Hell no. But I’m not the type that’s going to do something stupid, Mom. When this passes, I’ll be fine. And it will pass. I know it will. But if it is going to pass, I can’t have you around.”
“Rose, it’s—”
“No. Mom…you’re toxic to me. I know you’ve tried very hard to make things right between us—you’ve tried for several years now. But it’s not working and I don’t think it ever will considering recent events. So…please leave. Leave and stop calling.”
“But Rose, this is—”
Rose broke into tears then, opening the door and screaming. “Mom, would you please just fucking leave?”
/> Rose then looked at the floor, stifling her sobs. Avery fought back her own as she obeyed her daughter’s wishes. She passed by her, painfully restraining herself from hugging her or giving some last argument. In the end, she simply walked through the door and out into the cold.
But the door slamming violently closed behind her was perhaps the coldest thing of all.
***
Avery was crying before she was able to start her car. By the time she was back on the road and headed for her new home, she was doing everything she could to hold in a series of chest-tightening sobs. As the tears ran down her face, she realized that she had cried more in the past four months or so than she had for the entire span of years beforehand. First there was Jack dying, then Ramirez. And now this.
Maybe Rose was right. Maybe she was toxic. Because when it came right down to it, the deaths of Jack and Ramirez were her fault. Her ambitious career had led the killer to those she loved the most and, as such, they had been targeted.
And that same career had pushed Rose away. Never mind the fact that the career in question was over. She’d retired soon after Ramirez’s funeral and although she knew that Connelly and O’Malley were leaving a back door open for her, it was an invitation she knew she’d never accept.
She pulled into her driveway, parked the car, and walked inside with tears still running down her face. The sad fact was that if she abandoned her career completely, her life would be empty. Her future husband had been killed, an ex-husband she had been on good terms with was gone, and now, the only survivor from her past, her daughter, wanted nothing to do with her.
And rather than fix it, what did you do? some smaller part of her asked. It almost sounded like Ramirez’s voice, pointing out how she was making matters worse. You left the city and retreated into the woods. Rather than face the pain and a life that had been upended, you ran away and spent a few days drinking yourself into oblivion. So what will you do now? Run away again? Or should you maybe fix it?
