Rough Country: A gripping crime thriller

by T. J. Brearton

  She caught him before he left. “You gonna call Minnie this summer? To come help you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Have to drive all the way up there to pick him up. Then he’s got to stay down here.”

  “Just until you get the rest of it in. You don’t have much time. Two weeks before it’s too hot for the spinach, the lettuce…”

  “I know. My back slowed up the whole damn thing.”

  “Now, don’t go getting all depressed on me.” She straightened her neck and looked out the window. “I’ll call. I’ll get Minnie down here and set up the room for him – you don’t even have to think about it. He’ll just be there when you need him. Okay?”

  “All right.” Roy wiped his mouth – little bit of water left on his lips – and added, “Thank you.”

  “Well, all right,” she said. “Now get back to work.”

  15

  Like father, like son

  On the way back to civilization, it started to rain. Pretty much noon on the dot, per Roy Hollander’s prediction.

  Hollander, Reed thought. An odd duck, indeed. Interesting, too, the way he’d talked up his family history – a sort of claim to the region. Or the way he’d gotten so triggered by the religion question.

  Those things, and the woman who’d been watching from the window, but trying to keep out of sight.

  All very interesting.

  Reed flipped on the wipers. After a few swipes, his phone buzzed in the little console holder where he kept it. The incoming number shared his home area code. Uh-oh.

  “Mr. Raleigh?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Annie Gleason, principal at South Worthington Central School.”

  Reed tapped the brakes, slowed, then pulled over onto the road shoulder. “Is everything okay?”

  “Michael is all right, yes – he’s not hurt.”

  “Okay.”

  “But I had to remove him from class today.”

  “You… Okay, um, why?”

  “Is there any chance you can come in?”

  “Ah…”

  “He was banging paintbrushes off the desk in art class.”

  Reed just listened.

  “He said he had to keep doing it or he was going to hurt someone.”

  Shit.

  Two minutes later, Reed was driving in the opposite direction and on the phone with Overman.

  Overman was worried. “Is Mike all right?”

  “Principal said he’s having some issues, been going on for a little while, but things got extra attention today. Jess is in Nevada at some conference. They tried her and her cell went to voicemail, so they called me.”

  “They kicking him out of school?”

  “Just today. It’s policy – he made an indirect threat; a parent has to pick him up.”

  Overman said, “Listen, family first. I can send Jablonski up there to pick this thing up.”

  “Ah, man…”

  “Hey. I gotta have somebody there. And anyway, if Jessica is in Vegas, who’s with Mike?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t even know she was going.” Reed felt the anger rising.

  Easy. Take it easy…

  A road sign blurred past. Seventy-two miles to Albany, where the school was nearby. Reed typically saw Mike every other weekend. It would’ve been more, except during the divorce he’d been an idiot. Angry. He was still angry now sometimes, but he’d learned to keep it from his ex.

  When he’d met Jessica Marchand, her daughter, Sarah, was a little thing, big brown eyes. Her biological father had been in the wind. Two years later, Reed had shipped out. When Sarah went missing toward the end of his deployment, Jess had blamed Reed for not being there. When she’d later said that the reason he didn’t care about Sarah was because the girl wasn’t his flesh and blood, he’d lost his temper – he’d broken a window, scaring Jess, who’d then gone for the restraining order. Which made sense, and good for her. But then when it came time to share Michael, the younger son they’d had together, the court lingered over Reed’s outburst, and two weekends a month was what he’d wound up getting for visitation.

  At least they lived close together. He could be to Worthington in a half an hour to pick up Mike from school, which he did two Fridays a month. What had he missed? Jess hadn’t said anything about this behavior. Or had she and Reed not paid close enough attention?

  Been going on for a while, Gleason had said.

  “Listen.” Overman sounded paternal. “Take the time you need. Jabs can finish up. Be good for the Mosier kid to see a new face, anyway, maybe jog him into coming out with it. Otherwise, let’s just get a court order and go through the Mosier residence, turn the kid’s tattoo parlor upside down, find the lancet used to make the wound, all that good stuff.”

  “Actually, can you pass something on to Virginia Leithsceal for me?”

  Reed gave him the website address for Aaron Mosier’s tattoo work. “Just have her look through. If we see that symbol on there somewhere, or anywhere in his shop…”

  “I hear you,” Overman said. “Good luck with Mike. Get back when you can.”

  With its white alabaster columns, the school looked like something out of Greco-Roman times, set back from the road with pin oaks framing the wide front walkway up to the steps.

  Reed almost got lost on his way in to the principal’s office, but made it.

  Mike sat on a bench in an antechamber, feet flat and head down, thumbing his phone. His backpack was beside him on the ground, unzipped. Mike was always walking around with an unzipped backpack.

  “Hey,” Reed said, coming in. “Eyes up, buddy.”

  Mike lifted his gaze, and for an instant it was there – that little boy who lit up when he saw his father – but it quickly dissolved into the mix of adolescent emotions. The response was heavy, lackluster: “Hey, Dad.”

  Reed said, “Let me go see what’s going on.”

  Annie Gleason was an older woman, pretty and short. She led him into her office and offered him a seat. “Can I get you anything? Water?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  She took a bottled water from a mini-fridge and cracked it open. He expected her to take her seat behind the large maple desk, but she leaned on the edge of it and drank thoughtfully. She put the water down on the desk and looked through the bank of windows overviewing the track and field. It was one p.m., school still in session, but it looked like a gym class was underway, with smaller kids playing a soccer game, half in ragged yellow pinnies.

  Gleason said, “Michael was that age just yesterday, it seems.”

  Reed nodded.

  At last, she moved behind the desk and took her seat and studied him with crisp blue eyes. “Even though we’re a sizeable school, I feel like I know every student. I remember when Michael won the award – the, ah…”

  “At the science fair.”

  “That’s right. That’s right.” She was nodding eagerly, then cocked her head. “He still show an interest in science the way he did?”

  “Sure. Yeah… Not really.”

  She smiled, but it faded fast. “He doesn’t do any sports,” she said. “Though I understand he tried out for baseball and didn’t make the team.”

  “I understand Mike said something that caused some concern…”

  “Mr. Raleigh, I’m sure you understand the need we have to make sure no student, if they’re in need, goes without the proper attention. We don’t want anyone to feel like they’re being neglected. Or that we don’t understand.”

  He knew what she was saying. Reading between the lines, this was about fear that Mike would turn into a bigger problem. A danger. At least, it was partly about that. Reed didn’t doubt Gleason and the school’s genuine concern for Mike’s emotional well-being. But Gleason had a thousand other children to think about, too. And with Mike’s history, what happened to his sister, his divorced parents – making comments in class about keeping himself from hurting someone was a big red flag.

  “I’ll
talk to him,” Reed said. He grabbed the arms of the chair, as if to stand, but caught the look in Gleason’s face – doubt.

  “I know you will, Mr. Raleigh, but I’m worried that might not be enough.”

  He eased back in the chair and listened as she talked through her proposal about counseling. How the school could provide someone for Mike to talk to on a weekly basis, but that she also encouraged, if at all possible, they seek someone outside of the school as well. In addition to the occasional outbursts, Mike was easily distracted; he had trouble focusing. Gleason suggested that Reed and Mike’s mother consider the possibility of attention deficit disorder.

  She also said they were going to restrict Mike’s study hall – he was now prohibited from leaving the room, since he’d been getting out under false pretenses to wander the halls, or sit in the back of the library with his phone. “It’s unproductive use of his time,” Gleason said. And with finals coming up, Mike’s grades were a concern. His “bare minimum” of effort wasn’t going to see him through for much longer.

  Reed listened, and thanked her when it was over, and left.

  Mike was silent on the way home, fixed on his phone.

  “Hey, buddy,” Reed said. “Put that away, huh?”

  Mike sighed and stuffed the phone into his pocket. He looked out the window.

  Reed observed him a second, then kept watch on the road. “You want to talk to me?”

  “Not really.”

  Rookie move – never make it a question.

  “Well, I want to talk to you.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “Hey… come on, man.”

  Mike’s voice got louder, tighter. “Come on, what? You want to say all the things I’ve already heard, go ahead – knock yourself out.”

  “Mike… Why are you talking to me like that?”

  “How am I supposed to talk to you?”

  “A little respect wouldn’t hurt. And for that matter, it wouldn’t hurt to show your teachers a little respect, either.”

  “I show my teachers respect, Dad.”

  Reed gripped the wheel at ten and two, focusing on emotional control. It was true, he had to hand it to the kid; all the teachers said Mike was respectful and polite – that wasn’t the issue. It was the other students he butted heads with.

  “So, look, buddy, this thing with your study hall…”

  “I don’t care,” Mike said, sullen again.

  “Well, sure you do. You’re growing up and want to be able to make some choices. Decide what you want to do with your time. Right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But when you’re given that option, the teachers think you’re screwing around and–”

  “I’m screwing around? You should see these kids, Dad. They get away with murder.”

  “It doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing. You’re distracted. You need to focus on the work.”

  Mike made a face like he tasted something bad. “Why do you think school is so important?”

  That stopped him. The case had been completely forgotten, and now it came flooding back – with Aaron Mosier saying in Reed’s head, What’s the point anymore? Robots are taking our jobs, and climate change is going to make the planet uninhabitable.

  They continued to debate it the rest of the way home. Nostalgia pinched his stomach when he pulled into the driveway: there was the boxy house with its white siding and black shutters, the wraparound yard he used to mow, the perennials Jess had planted along the front walkway the first summer after moving in. Mike had been a baby in that house; he’d grown up there. Reed had once called it home; now it was part of another life.

  “Who’s that?” Reed asked, gesturing at the turquoise Honda in the driveway.

  “Delilah,” Mike said.

  Reed understood: Delilah was a law student interning at Jessica’s firm. Mike said Jess had asked Delilah to stay in the house the three days she was at her continuing-legal-education thing in Vegas.

  Reed parked beside the Honda. Mike started to open the door, and Reed caught his arm.

  “Listen, man… all of it… this is all normal stuff, okay? It’s okay to feel the way you do. To be pissed off. Life is unfair. But you sounded the alarm when you talked about hurting someone. I’m not saying you keep anything bottled up inside, but when you do something like that, it gets the machinery going. You see what I mean?”

  “I didn’t mean anything.”

  “Well… I think you did. You had that thing with a student late last year, remember? You almost cleaned his clock. They don’t know you’re not going to do something like that again. Or worse. A student does something like that, says something like that, and they have to chase it down.”

  Mike stared out the windshield. “Dad?”

  “What?”

  “Did you kill anybody over there?”

  Reed felt a flush of blood through his body, tingling his fingertips. “No.”

  “But something happened to you.”

  “Something happens to everyone in that situation.”

  Mike stared at him, waiting for more.

  Reed sighed. “You go halfway around the world, live in a different country, with that kind of… daily tension – it affects you.”

  “It feels like that for me.”

  The words broke Reed’s heart. He wished he could be there for Mike, be there every day. His boy was growing up. He was losing him. To maturity, to anger, to the world, to the complexities of his own developing mind. And to Mike, it felt like war.

  Reed swallowed it down. “So, but Delilah is treating you okay?”

  “Yeah. She’s okay. She has really big teeth.”

  It was so out of the blue it made him laugh. “Oh yeah?”

  Mike was quiet. “Are you coming in?”

  “I wish, buddy, but I’m in the middle of something.”

  The boy looked at him. It was almost too much to bear, and Reed had to force himself to maintain eye contact. Watching Mike deal with this fact, that his father was running off again – that this was a feature of their relationship, not a bug – was terrible to witness. “As soon as I’m done with this case, I’m coming right back here. Summer is coming, too. You’ve only got, what? Three weeks left?”

  “Four.”

  “We’re going to hang out this summer. Go fishing. Maybe go up to the Adirondacks and do some camping. You’d love it up there. In fact, I saw this cabin the other day. And, I don’t know, but I just started thinking…”

  Mike took the door handle again. He wasn’t interested.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Reed said.

  “Yeah.” Mike got out of the car and walked slowly to the house, up the concrete stairs to the front door. Reed waited for him to turn back with a wave, something he had done for years on Monday mornings when Reed returned him to school.

  But Mike just went right in.

  16

  bugs

  Calling his ex was unadvisable. He did it anyway.

  Getting her voicemail, he took a breath and said: “Just dropped our son off after he made a comment about possibly hurting someone. Gleason thinks he’s got ADD and wants him to see somebody.” The emotion took him by surprise. “I want to… I want to see him more, Jess. If we’ve got to get there through the court, that’s fine. But I need to see him more. I’m losing…” He choked out the last words. “I’m losing him. It’s too soon for this. It’s too soon.”

  He hung up and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, thinking of all the things he hadn’t said. And where the hell have you been? Why haven’t we talked about any of this?

  An hour later he pulled into the Shamrock, killed the engine, and sat in the dark for a moment. Then he collected his things and headed for his room.

  Along the way, he caught movement in the woods behind the building – first a rustling, then a sharp snap. He halted, listening, then heard more rustling, but further back, deeper in the trees. Something moving fast and light. A deer, not a human.
/>
  When headlights blasted him from the other direction, his defenses were already up. He shielded with one hand and touched the grip of his gun with the other. The car came bouncing in from the road, slowed to a stop in front of him, and David Kruse got out.

  “Been calling you,” Kruse said after shutting off the car. His footsteps crunched across the gravel.

  “There’s a dead spot in service on 87 – what’s up?”

  “Some guy called Jablonski is supposedly taking over? You’re out? Is that what’s going on?”

  “I had some family stuff. But I’m back.” His phone was buzzing nonstop in his pocket now that he was back in a covered area. He checked: Kruse hadn’t been the only one trying to reach him. There were voicemails from Virginia, Jeremiah Mosier, and an unknown number. Plus a missed call from Sanjay Varma and one from Internal Affairs.

  “Hey,” Kruse said, “I’ve been with crime scene at Daryl Snow’s most of the day – you mind if I pop inside a minute? Gotta make a prostate stop.”

  An exposed lightbulb hung over the front door to the cabin, swarmed with bugs. Reed said, “Be my guest.”

  They went inside with Kruse still talking. “So nothing at Snow’s place to indicate drugs or any sort of criminal activity, but about a dozen different sets of fingerprints and three thousand dollars in cash, wrapped in household cellophane and then a plastic grocery bag, hidden in the crawl space beneath the trailer.”

  Reed stood by the foot of one of the two twin beds as Kruse went into the tiny bathroom. “But then,” Kruse said, having left the door ajar, “it’s not illegal to have a little cash on hand, and Snow’s sawmill business was primarily cash. You could go up there and for eighty bucks come away with a knee-high stack of rough-cut lumber.”

  “How about the girl’s room?”

  “Pretty much what you’d expect.” Kruse flushed and turned on the faucet. “I mean, they didn’t have a lot, but she had one of those cheap-o computers, Chromebook or something, and crime scene brought it in for analysis. And we got her phone. Got the subpoena for Tyson Wheeler’s records, too, but they only go back five days.”