The Bitterest Pill

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  Cole was already out of it on the couch. Jesse couldn’t sleep. This happened to him occasionally since he had parted ways with alcohol. He paced around, read a little, and caught the end of The Outlaw Josey Wales on cable. It was one of those movies he could watch from any point in the movie to the end. He turned on his computer. When it booted up, he typed Swingline Sue’s into Google, but never hit enter as his cell phone buzzed on the table. He saw it was from the Paradise Police Department and picked up.

  “What’s up, Suit?”

  “There’s a kid here to see you . . . Rich Amitrano. Says he was a friend of Heather Mackey’s and that he really needs to speak with you.”

  “Ten minutes.”

  * * *

  —

  JESSE WALKED INTO THE STATIONHOUSE, waved hello to Suit, who nodded at the bench by the fingerprinting table. Rich was staring at his phone, which made him like every other teenager Jesse had encountered over the last several years. The kid looked as tired as Jesse felt. He guessed they could share at least a few minutes of insomnia together.

  “Hey, Rich,” Jesse said, offering his hand.

  The kid shook it, placing his phone in his front pocket.

  “Come on into my office. You want anything? Water, coffee, tea?”

  “No, that’s okay, Chief Stone.”

  “Jesse. C’mon.”

  When they went into the office, Jesse pointed at the two wooden chairs facing his desk. Jesse sat opposite the kid.

  “I should apologize,” Jesse said. “When I spoke to you, Megan, and Darby at the cemetery, I could tell you wanted to talk.”

  “That’s okay. I understand. You must be really busy.”

  “Not too busy to talk.”

  Then Jesse waited the kid out. He had wanted to talk, so Jesse was going to let him do it without prompting.

  “Is it true that Chris is missing? Do you think something bad’s happened to him?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Is he missing?”

  Jesse said, “Uh-huh, but I don’t know what’s happened to him. Do you?”

  Suddenly, Rich, who’d come to speak to Jesse, had nothing to say.

  “Look, Rich, you’re the one who wanted me—”

  “I’m sorry, Chief—Jesse. I really miss Heather. I love Darby and Megan, too, but it was different with Heather and me. We never judged each other. We could be totally honest with each other about stuff.”

  The kid had changed directions, but Jesse figured he would circle back around to what he’d come in to say. “Stuff like what?”

  The kid squirmed in his seat a little, took a few deep breaths, and stared Jesse right in the eye. “I’m gay. I know that it’s supposed to be easier these days to come out, but I can only know my experiences. I knew I could tell Heather and she would be totally cool about it. Telling her gave me the courage to tell other people.”

  “Does your family know?”

  “My dad’s accepted it. He doesn’t like it, but he’s okay. My mom . . . She prays a lot and ignores it. My brothers and sisters couldn’t care less.”

  “I couldn’t care less, either, Rich, but is this what you came to me to talk about?”

  “Heather and I shared a kind of secret crush on Chris. That was okay. We could tell each other stuff like that. The thing is . . .” He stopped himself, stood up. “I shouldn’t be here telling you this stuff. I’m sorry.”

  “Rich,” Jesse said, “you came in here to tell me something. If you don’t tell me now, I can’t help.”

  “Heather slept with Chris to get drugs. She was ashamed of herself for doing it and she was ashamed about caring about what other kids thought. That’s why she never told Chris how she felt about him.”

  “Did you tell Chris how you felt?”

  Rich smiled, shrugged. “I knew he was straight, but a boy can dream.”

  “He sure can.” Jesse smiled, too. “There’s something else, isn’t there, Rich?”

  “Heather told me that Chris was her dealer. Everybody kind of knew that, but Heather said that Chris got his stuff from one of the teachers in school.”

  “How would she know that?” Jesse asked, his voice more serious. “Did he tell Heather?”

  The kid shook his head. “No, but she said she caught Chris and her meeting a few times. Like by the lockers after practice and once in a classroom.”

  “Her?”

  Rich nodded, his face reddening. “She saw them through the classroom window and . . . they . . . weren’t talking.”

  “Who was it? Which teacher?”

  He shrugged again. “She wouldn’t tell me. I think she was afraid if I knew, I would try to save her by ratting out the teacher.” He bowed his head. “It was the only secret she ever kept from me. I swear, Jesse, that’s all I know. Maybe if I had said something . . .”

  “If and maybe aren’t places you want to go to, Rich,” Jesse said, thinking of the circumstances surrounding Diana’s murder. “You can’t change the past, but you might have just helped stop anyone else from dying.”

  “How? I don’t know which teacher.”

  “Believe me, it helps.”

  Jesse got up from behind his desk and came to stand in front of the kid. Rich stood as well.

  “Thank you for coming to speak to me.” He shook the kid’s hand. “It was a brave thing to do. Sometimes the lines get blurry between right and wrong. Not this time. You did the right thing.”

  “I hope so.”

  When Rich got to the door, Jesse called after him. “My door’s always open to you.”

  Fifty-one

  She’d driven back home from the motel in a rage. Now she sat in her car, pounding her palms on the steering wheel and screaming. She understood the girl’s panic, and on some intellectual level even empathized with it, but on a visceral level she just didn’t really give a shit. Did Petra care about what would happen to her? Did that stupid little girl consider that the woman she said she ached for had degraded herself? She had risked everything—her career, her dignity, her life—to make sure she would always have that next dose. And now where was she? Nowhere. Worse than nowhere.

  While she had been assured of a steady supply, she’d never given much thought to the jail time she was risking. The drugs weren’t even the worst of it. Chris Grimm wasn’t even sixteen when she seduced him and that was statutory rape. And now that Chris had been killed, she was part of a murder conspiracy. She took some deep breaths and looked over her right shoulder at the duffel bag containing the stash she’d taken from Petra’s trunk. She could run.

  There were enough pills in the bag to keep her going for a very long time, but not forever. Forever. She laughed an angry laugh at herself. Forever no longer had any meaning to her. For her, forever was the time between hits, and her tolerance was building up so that the duration of her high was shrinking. It took more and more Oxy to get her where she needed to be, never mind where she wanted to be. Simple want was a luxury she could no longer afford. Those days, the days of enjoying the high, were gone as gone could be.

  Wasn’t that the trap, the lie of it, the incredible euphoria of the initial high? How it made all the pain go away. Not just the physical pain, though that would have been enough. It was a magical thing, the way it was equally effective in vanquishing the little hurts of the day, the nasty remarks or people’s simple rudeness, and the gaping wounds of a terrible childhood or a broken heart. When you were in as deep as she was, it wasn’t the drug that chased those big and little hurts away. It was the desperation and panic about getting the drug that made everything else insignificant. Junkies don’t need to search for or ponder the meaning of life. Life is about one thing and one thing only—chasing the next hit. But the cruelest irony was that once you were hooked, the physical hurt of not having it was worse than the pain that made you take it in the first place.


  She had twice tried breaking free of the hold it had on her, and that had been enough to convince her that doing whatever she needed to do to get high was worth it. The cold sweats, vomiting, constant nausea, cramps, diarrhea, and the muscles that would not stop aching. Nothing was worth going through that again. Nothing!

  She turned and looked once again at the stash bag in the backseat, stared at it, and decided to run. But just as she placed the key back in the ignition, her cell phone rang.

  “Look across the street.” It was a thickly accented man’s voice. “Make a wave at the white van.”

  She waved. The headlights on a van parked across the street and facing her flashed on and off.

  “You have something for Mr. Sarkassian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Leave car doors open when you go.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do not fuck us around. You have seen the picture of the boy. We are doing this to him. To you, we would do much worse. We would pleasure ourselves with you and it would not be gentle like you do with the girl. Make sure the girl keeps her mouth shut. You understand.”

  She was so frightened she couldn’t speak.

  “Answer me, bitch.”

  “She’ll be fine. I will take care of her.”

  “Good. You know the boy was calling your name when we hurt him. You must be good. The girl talks and we will find out just how good.”

  She was paralyzed with fear. Unable to speak or to move. When she said nothing, the man on the other end of the line laughed. His laugh was almost as frightening as anything he had said. The phone went dead.

  She tried not to completely fall to pieces or to look again at the duffel bag behind her. She had removed some of the stash at the motel while she was hidden behind Petra’s raised trunk lid. She knew she could always blame the girl for not keeping a good check on the inventory—they wouldn’t go after Petra. But what she had taken wasn’t going to keep her going for long. She got out of the car and walked as quickly as she could on legs that were weak from fear. She did not look back. When she turned the corner, she put her back against a wall and noticed she had sweated through her clothing. Fear did have a very particular smell. She stood frozen that way until she heard the van speed past. Even then, when she finally felt safe enough to move, she had to talk herself through the process of walking.

  Fifty-two

  It had been a long time since Jesse was awakened by both his cell phone and landline, and when it happened, it never meant anything good.

  “Dad, Brian Lundquist is on the phone for you.”

  Dad. He hadn’t yet gotten used to Cole calling him that. He wasn’t sure he ever would. He certainly liked it. It was just that he didn’t quite trust it yet. He didn’t trust that it wouldn’t disappear with a change of mood. But for the moment his concern was Lundquist’s call.

  Jesse reached over for his cell and dumped the incoming call. He stumbled into the kitchen. Cole was already dressed for work.

  “I have to go,” he said, handing the phone to Jesse. “Take care. See you tonight.”

  “See you.” Then he put the phone to his ear and spoke. “What’s up?”

  “We got a John Doe outside of Helton. Fits your missing kid’s description.”

  “Homicide?”

  “From what I’m hearing from the locals, the vic looks like he could have been killed five times over. I’m heading that way. You want me to swing by and pick you up or you want to meet me there?”

  “I’ll meet you there. Text me the location.” Jesse looked at his wall clock. “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

  “No worries. We won’t move him until you arrive.”

  “Thanks.”

  * * *

  —

  THE SUN WAS COMING UP behind Jesse as he drove west to Helton. Helton was an old mill town, one Jesse was familiar with. Not for any reason he liked. It was a place of old redbrick buildings covered in soot that had once bellowed from its factory chimneys. Nowadays the only thing it manufactured was hopelessness. It was the sort of place that gets skipped over when times are good and suffers the most when they’re not. But Jesse’s unease had nothing to do with the economics or sociology of the place. It was the red line that began with the case that had brought him to Helton, a line of blood, geography, and time. It had begun with the murder of a teenage girl that resonated through time until it ended with a bullet ending the life of Diana, Jesse’s fiancée. No, there was nothing about driving toward Helton to lift Jesse’s spirits.

  He turned off the four-lane road out of Helton and into a thickly wooded area that had been taped off by the state police. The usual collection of official vehicles was parked in a small clearing. Along with the Staties, the Helton PD, the office of the local medical examiner, and the local fire department ambulance corps were all represented. Jesse recognized Lundquist’s car as well. He grabbed a file containing photos of Chris Grimm, some given to him by his mother, others generated from the security footage at Kennedy Park.

  At the tape, Jesse showed his shield and gave the uniform his name. The uniform pointed the way. It was a scene befitting the kid’s last name—Grimm. At some crime scenes, even at homicides, there’ll be a smiling or disinterested face. That wasn’t the case here. The sight of those faces told Jesse that Lundquist hadn’t been exaggerating. Lundquist heard Jesse’s approach, turned away from the body, and came to meet him.

  Lundquist pointed at the file in Jesse’s hand. “Photos of the Grimm kid?” Jesse handed the file to Lundquist who opened it up. Lundquist winced. “Good-looking boy.” He nodded over his shoulder toward the body. “He doesn’t look like this anymore. Whoever did this to him was either raging at him or enjoyed inflicting pain.”

  “Helton PD’s case or yours?” Jesse asked.

  “Mine.”

  “Good. I want to spend as little time in this town as possible.”

  Lundquist was going to ask why and then thought better of it. “Come on, let’s have a look.”

  People say the anticipation of bad things is always worse than the real thing. Not always. And this was one of those “not always” occasions. Jesse, who had seen bodies in all manner of disrepair, was surprised at the level of brutality that showed on the kid’s body.

  “Are those entrance wounds?” Jesse asked the local ME, pointing to where dirt had caked around spots on the boy’s hair and on his chest.

  “Looks that way,” the ME said.

  Jesse said, “You think they were the COD?”

  “If they were, they saved the boy from an incredible amount of pain. I haven’t even had a very close look at him and I can tell you he was thoroughly tortured premortem.” The ME pointed with his gloved finger. “There are visible burn marks on his neck, face, and hands. There are an array of broken bones. Teeth are missing, and some fingers. And if those bullets were postmortem, then the person or persons who did this to him were even more twisted than I would care to imagine.”

  Jesse walked around the body. “He wasn’t murdered here.”

  “No,” Lundquist answered. “And rigor has come and gone. He’s been here several days.”

  The ME asked, “Is this your missing boy?”

  Jesse asked Lundquist for the photos and handed them to the ME.

  “I think so. It looks like him. His clothing is a match for the footage we took from cameras at a local park on the day he disappeared.” Jesse waved at the ME and then pointed at a spot where no one was standing. The ME followed Jesse. “Doc, I noticed the kid’s missing fingers look as if they were sawn off. Do you think he was mutilated in any other way?”

  The ME was confused. Then, understanding the implication, nodded. “I see your point.”

  “Yeah, when I break the news to his mother and she comes to identify him, I need to prepare her. And God help us if she needs to see more than his face.�
��

  “I understand, Chief Stone. Give me a moment.”

  The ME went back to the body and asked everyone standing around the shallow grave to move away and to give him some privacy. A minute later, he came back to where Jesse was standing.

  “Until I get him on the table I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but I think he’s . . . intact.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  Lundquist came over to Jesse as the ME went back to his business. “What was that about?”

  “I needed to know some things before informing the mother.”

  “My case now, Jesse. My job, but if you want to come . . .”

  “I think it would be a good idea. So tell me how he was found.”

  “Marathoner was training before dawn. She tripped over the hand. Used her cell phone flashlight to see what she tripped over. Called nine-one-one.”

  “And the Helton PD called you. Any ID on the body?”

  “Nothing obvious. No wallet. No phone. When they get him to the morgue, they’ll be able to do a more thorough search.”

  Jesse gave Lundquist the Walterses’ address in Paradise and filled him in on the recent domestic abuse situation.

  “We have to be careful when we enter. The husband is the kid’s stepfather and he’s a handful. We had him on an illegal weapons charge, but the wife claimed the gun was hers.”

  “Like that, huh?”

  “Just like that.”

  Lundquist said, “I’ll take her to identify the body. Maybe she’ll let her guard down around me.”

  Jesse agreed. He went back to the shallow grave with Lundquist and took one more look at Chris Grimm. As far as he was concerned, Grimm was Paradise’s second drug casualty. He may have been the one to supply Heather with the drugs, but Jesse believed not even Patti and Steve Mackey would have wanted the Grimm kid to die the way he had.

  Fifty-three

  Jesse got to the Walters house before Lundquist. As Lundquist had pointed out, it was his case, so Jesse waited in his Explorer for the state homicide man to arrive. Jesse had already called Molly and given her a heads-up about Chris Grimm’s body.