Heather(97)

Callie punts the reporters over to Healy’s office, but that doesn’t stop them from contacting Frank, who is more than happy to go on the record. This one has been needling me for a long time. When you’re in this job as long as I’ve been, there are cases you just can’t get out of your mind. I’m very glad that we’ve gotten to the bottom of this one, that justice will finally be served, and that woman appropriately punished for what she’s done. This has haunted my community for decades and this isn’t who we are. But he doesn’t say anything about the drugs, doesn’t text her with questions or advice, doesn’t stop into the station unannounced.

Callie can’t beat the sickening, constant pull of dread. Adrian makes sure she eats. Talks her into going for long walks without her phone. It’s about bearing witness, she tries to tell him. She has to suffer along with Annabelle. It helps with the guilt that makes her breath go shallow, that wakes her in the night like an ache.

All the while, Jane keeps calling, leaving voicemails. Her messages are low, hushed, strained. Callie wonders if she’s not lying about being on drugs—there’s a hunted, paranoid tilt to her voice. It’s always the same thing. We need to talk. Call me please. Callie’s glad to be staying at Adrian’s, glad for his cooking, his arm around her at the end of the day. And glad Jane doesn’t know his last name, where he lives, so that Callie doesn’t have to face her. And Jane wouldn’t dare come talk to Callie in the station. Because in a way that she can’t understand, underneath her anger toward Jane burns a hot, bright shame. They vowed to always stick together, and she wonders what those vows mean. They aren’t codified in front of a group of people, made official by certificates and legal documents, like a marriage, but surely they matter, scaffold a life in some of the same ways. And now Callie has broken it. Or maybe Jane did. She’s not sure.



* * *



Three weeks after their confrontation, Frank breaks his silence, calls her on her day off. She’s at Adrian’s, reading a book on the sofa, trying to distract herself while he’s doing a site visit with a group of his students. She lets the phone ring twice, three times, before she picks it up. At first it had been a relief to have Frank off her back, but the more she thinks about it, the more she needs him. Not with her job, but with Jane and Damien and Opal. Callie needs to find a way to get each of them the help they need, and she doesn’t feel like she can do it alone.

“We’ve got a scene out here. Pine bough bags. There’s something else you should see.” He describes where to park and how to take the trail into the woods. Callie looks at the map, wishes she could get him to drop a pin, but Frank says she’s breaking up—bad service, as usual—and that she’ll find him if she follows his instructions. It’s not far from Jane and Damien’s base camp, the land that’s been in Frank’s family for centuries. Maybe half a mile from the little cabin where they keep their paperwork and safety kits for their trips.

It could be a coincidence, but she thinks not. Jane might have been telling the truth about being out of the game, but there are factors outside her control. Even if she wouldn’t have wanted to get involved in the narcotics it could have been more complicated than that. Fauver blackmailing them. Or all those hospital bills to pay.

She grits her teeth, gets hot all over. Before she can change her mind she writes a text and sends it to Jane. Frank just called me out to a scene, right near your cabin. You said you were done. Is that the truth?

She’s surprised that Frank would call her after she dressed him down, but it occurs to her that maybe he’s found something linking the drugs to Jane and Damien. That’s why he wouldn’t call it in to anyone at the station, why he’s getting in touch with her directly. Of course he doesn’t want to text her—sensitive information. They’ll want to step lightly. Maybe he has a hunch and wants to know what she knows. She’ll come clean, tell him everything that Jane confessed to. Then they can make a plan for how to help Opal, make sure she’s safe. They’ll figure out how to handle Fauver, get Jane to turn herself in, make sure she has a good lawyer, get Damien clean if he’s using.

And then she’ll resign. Just like all the guys said. Won’t even make it a year.

She feels a heaviness at the base of her spine. So many parts of her life ending. She doesn’t know who she will be on the other side of what she’s about to do. But that will be a project for the next year, two, three. Figuring out who she is without Jane. Without her badge and gun.



* * *



She spots Frank’s car at the turnoff. He warned her she would have to go the rest of the way on foot, take a narrow, sandy trail through the trees, that she might lose the trail in some spots where the understory was choked with huckleberry but to look for the water. It’s out by a sinkhole—the blue water bright between the trees. She pictures Adrian’s map, all those blue dots in the woods, shivers. And those are only the ones we know about.

She hears him before she sees him, twigs snapping underneath his feet and he shifts his stance. A nervous pace. The water ahead the most beautiful, beckoning blue.

“Hey, Frank,” she calls out.

But it’s Damien who steps out from behind the cedar.

Her heartbeat goes loud in her ears. This isn’t right.

“Where’s your dad? He called me out here.”