Lethal Target Read online

  Tess looked at the baggies and studied the residue. It could be several things, but four previous deaths in the valley had been caused by an illegal drug called acetyl fentanyl. A relative of the powerful prescription painkiller fentanyl, it was five to fifteen times more potent than heroin and a hundred times more powerful than morphine. The stuff was bad—a small amount could produce a euphoria like heroin or oxycodone. But the cost of that euphoria was often death.

  It was so dangerous, she’d received a law enforcement alert to use caution when dealing with anything suspected to be fentanyl. An officer back East overdosed when his bare skin accidentally came into contact with the substance he’d confiscated at a crime scene. He had to be treated with Narcan, spent a couple of days in the hospital, but was expected to recover. Not even police dogs were immune; several throughout the country had overdosed doing their jobs sniffing for narcotics.

  Tess had read up on the compound because of the previous deaths linked to its use in the valley. The illegally produced product could be mixed with heroin to make it an even more potent product, or it could be sold in pills disguised as oxycodone. If the needle was his, it told her that Tim had likely mixed it with heroin.

  But something was off here. Rogue’s Hollow was a small town. Tess had, by now, learned who the druggies were and who the problem children were. Tim Harper wasn’t one of either set. This family had not been on her radar for any reason.

  “You’ve never come across this kid with drugs?” Tess asked Jonkey.

  She shook her head. “He wasn’t even one of the kids who ran with Duncan when he was off the rails.”

  “Did his mother say who she thought the paraphernalia belonged to?”

  “No. She was distraught. She believes he must have had an aneurysm or stroke, anything but overdose. When the medics asked her if Tim did drugs, she denied and just about fell apart. I didn’t want to make things worse. But aren’t the parents the last to know? Duncan said they were best friends; maybe he would know.”

  Tess nodded. “I’ll talk to Duncan and Mrs. Harper. ETA on the coroner?”

  “Hour.”

  Tess stepped forward and looked at the boy’s outstretched arm. Could that be a needle mark? she wondered when she spied a small, dark spot in the crook of the arm. She couldn’t be positive. It was prudent to wait for the postmortem to confirm her suspicions or completely cancel them out. There might also have been some scrapes and bruises on his hip and thigh, but with the lividity, it was hard to tell. She then did her own brief visual survey of the room. It looked like a typical boy’s room: sports posters on the wall, computer with game controllers, and a couple of bumper sticker sayings about beer and parties. But when she turned, the wall behind her caused a “Whoa” to escape her lips.

  “Kinda cool, huh?” Jonkey said. “Tim was known as the photog.”

  “I’ll say.”

  The wall was covered with photos, mostly four-by-six, but a few blown up larger. Tess stepped closer and saw a range of nature shots, candids with friends and family, and pics of the town of Rogue’s Hollow and other places she didn’t recognize. They were all quite good to her untrained eye, happy and positive depictions of a kid who had a full life. In one corner of the room a small table contained an older film camera, a couple of digital cameras, and several lenses.

  The only thing out of the ordinary that caught her eye was the open, screenless window. She walked to it and looked out, not sure why it bothered her. Late spring nights were cool, but not freezing, so windows were often open, especially to take advantage of fresh early morning air. Because the house was on a sloping hillside, even though Tim’s room was on the first floor, there was quite a drop from the window to the ground.

  “Problem with that, Chief?” Jonkey asked.

  “Not sure. The screen is down below. It’s about a ten-foot drop. Doubt anyone climbed in, but someone could jump out. I’ll ask his mom if this is normal.” She gave the closet a once-over, then turned to her officer. “Check around for any other contraband and photograph everything. I’ll be back.”

  Tess left Jonkey and returned to the living room to talk to Tim’s mother. It was never easy to talk to someone who had lost a loved one. Though this wasn’t a notification, Tess would never forget the first time she’d had to deliver the news about a death. A man high on meth had stabbed his live-in girlfriend to death in a violent altercation. The woman had put up a horrific fight and the house was a bloody mess. Tess had been on the sidewalk when the woman’s adult son came running home because news had reached him that something had happened to his mother. He couldn’t be allowed in the house, and she was forced to tell him right there on the sidewalk that his mother was dead.

  The sound he made would stay with her forever. It was a strangled cry, a hideous, pain-filled howl. Then with a bare hand he punched out the window of the car closest to him, probably breaking his hand, and took off down the street the same way he came.

  And for Tess, violent death always brought back memories of the day she’d been told about her father, killed in the line of duty. She truly felt Eva Harper’s pain, understood the hurt, the shock, and the loss. True, Tim didn’t die in a violent shooting, but he did die in a senseless, unexpected way that his mother would never make heads or tails of.

  As Tess stepped into the living room, she saw that another man had joined the mix. Not surprisingly, it was Pastor Oliver Macpherson. He was on one knee, holding Mrs. Harper’s hands, and he appeared to be praying.

  He, too, understood the pain of loss. His wife, Anna, and her cousin Glen had been murdered nearly a year ago when Tess had only been in town for two months.

  Oliver’s presence was a given. She’d learned in the past year that he was always there when people needed help, support, even those who didn’t attend his church. She’d seen him at the scene of a drowning, offering a shoulder to a foreign tourist, heard that he helped make a house wheelchair friendly after a man was severely injured in a car crash. A month ago in the early morning hours he showed up to help when a local couple lost everything in a house fire.

  Tess paused, never truly certain how to approach Pastor Mac, as he was called. The man confounded her. She considered him the crazy friend she couldn’t figure out. The fact that his faith hadn’t seemed to waver, even after the murder of his wife, left Tess scratching her head.

  “How can a supposedly good God keep letting people die horrible deaths?” she’d asked him once over coffee.

  “Tess, the world is broken, and everybody dies. I don’t blame God for Anna’s death; I blame Roger Marshall.”

  “Certainly he pushed, but God could have stopped it, if he’s God.”

  “If we were puppets, and God the puppeteer. People are free agents; they make decisions for good or evil.” He’d shrugged, stormy green-gray eyes clouding briefly. “God has a greater knowledge of everything than I will ever have. I can’t question his will or resent circumstances over which I have no control. All I can do is live my life the way I’m called to live it.”

  Tess had changed the subject after that. Her mother often said something similar, and it made Tess angry. The attitude was so passive. She still seethed at times over the loss of her father.

  It was incomprehensible that after his loss Oliver could still believe and tell people a good God existed. But she did agree on one point—the world was broken. You couldn’t be a cop for eighteen years and not know that. Broken with a lot of pieces missing. And what was it they said about Humpty Dumpty and all his pieces?

  Despite the snag over faith, she considered Oliver a good friend and valued his help, especially in situations like this. He could calm down a crisis without saying a word. She didn’t want to interrupt his comforting Eva and she didn’t have to. Duncan stepped up to Tess before she could say anything to the pastor.

  “Tim was going to college in the fall. . . . How?”

  Dressed in baggy shorts and a green Oregon Ducks T-shirt, Duncan was tall and slim. Tess had to look
up to hold his eyes. She could see the pain there.

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Last night. We had a party for Greg.”

  “What? Where?” Tess knew Greg Nguyen, a local high school baseball star. Because Rogue’s Hollow didn’t have a high school, teens from the Hollow and Shady Cove attended Eagle Point High, making Greg a celebrity in the entire Rogue Valley.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked sheepish. “You know, the Spot.”

  The Spot. The kids had partied in the woods, in a popular place she’d learned about early on in her tenure as chief. The Spot was across Midas Creek, on Bureau of Land Management property, and across from the location where Anna and Glen had faced their killer nearly a year ago. Like a shadow of the old postal delivery creed, neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night, nor a murder, had made the Spot any less attractive. In fact, knowing that a murder occurred across from their favorite party spot had made it more popular in a Walking Dead kind of way.

  Tess pulled Duncan out the front door to speak to him on the porch. “Duncan, was Tim an intravenous drug user?”

  Shock too real to be faked exploded on his face. “A what? No. No. Not Tim.”

  Tess raised an eyebrow. “We found paraphernalia.”

  Duncan shook his head. “No, Tim didn’t do drugs.”

  “What went on at the party?”

  “Beer and some pot—that’s all I saw. I swear.” He held his hands up.

  Tess studied the kid. She knew he’d been a pot smoker when she first arrived in Rogue’s Hollow. But the last few contacts she’d had with Duncan had been positive. He’d cleaned up his act and impressed her with his newfound maturity. She believed he was telling her the truth.

  “Who was there?”

  “Just the guys. Me, Greg, Trace, Josh, and Tim. Greg just signed a letter of intent; he’s getting a full ride to college. And Coach Whitman was there, for a little bit, at the beginning.”

  Tess recognized the names, all Rogue’s Hollow boys. Jocks mostly. She had seen some pictures of sporting events on Tim’s wall. Tess loved baseball and had managed to attend the last regular season game Greg pitched. The talented all-American, all-state athlete was electric for a high school player, really fun to watch. If she remembered right, Whitman was the assistant coach.

  “I’m only speculating here, but it’s possible Tim died from a drug overdose. If so, he had to buy the stuff somewhere. Did you see anything that looked shady at the party?”

  Duncan blanched in shock. “Honest, Chief, I didn’t see anything that looked like Tim or anyone was buying drugs.”

  “But what? Something crossed your face just now—what?”

  Duncan wiped his palms on his thighs. “Aw, he talked . . . a while ago . . . I thought it was just talk . . . about celebrating getting out of town and into college in a special way. He wanted to try something like ecstasy. But he didn’t spell it out. Maybe a few months ago he would have told me, but now . . .”

  “He knew that you were trying to stay clean and straight?”

  Duncan nodded, head down. He raised his head slowly. “You’re sure he died from an overdose?”

  “No, I’m not sure. The autopsy will give the official cause of death. I’m just asking questions. Do you think he might have experimented?”

  Duncan winced. “He might have. And maybe a few months ago I would have tried it with him and we’d both be dead.”

  Tess let that pass, hoping Duncan’s newfound law-abiding personality would stick. She doubted it was ecstasy that Tim tried, but there was no point in getting into that with Duncan.

  “He had to buy it,” she said. “Drug dealers don’t generally give people birthday presents. Was anyone else at this party?”

  “Uh . . . there were some older guys.”

  “Who?”

  “Couple guys from the Hang Ten. I think one of them was called Eddie. I don’t know the other. And Dustin Pelter was there . . . you know, Pig-Pen?” Duncan scratched his chin. “I didn’t count. I was just listening to Greg talk about baseball.” He shrugged.

  Dustin had been friends with Anna’s cousin Glen. He was a semi-homeless guy who would show up wherever he might get free pot or beer. Tess also knew that at one time he was a heroin addict, though supposedly clean now. He’d have to be interviewed.

  But it was the mention of the Hang Ten that caught her attention. Of the three pot farms in her jurisdiction, the Hang Ten was the biggest. Could they be dealing more than pot? Tess wouldn’t doubt it, but she’d have to prove it. Legalized recreational pot was not something she thought was a good idea, but the people of Oregon had voted.

  “Was there anyone at all there you think could have been dealing hard drugs? Maybe to Tim?”

  “I can’t believe Tim did drugs. But I didn’t stay till the party ended. I made so many mistakes in my past, I’m trying to keep my curfew. I left before midnight.”

  “I want you to talk with Officer Jonkey, write down everyone’s name.”

  He nodded.

  “Let’s go back inside. I’ll get Officer Jonkey.”

  They stepped through the front door and Tess went back to Tim’s bedroom.

  “Anything else?” Tess asked.

  Jonkey shook her head.

  “Send what you have to the lab. And ask for prints on the syringe.”

  “You think there’s a problem?”

  “I don’t know; something is just off. No harm in covering all the bases.” Tess considered Jonkey for a moment. She’d been on for twelve hours; it was her end of watch. Gabe Bender would be logging on any minute. “How tired are you?”

  “Chief?”

  “Do you want some overtime and to see this investigation through, or do you want Bender to relieve you?”

  “This is my first death investigation that’s not a car crash. I’d like to finish it if you’ll approve OT.”

  “Consider it approved. I’ll wait for the coroner. Duncan tells me that Tim partied last night at the Spot. I want you to head up there and look for evidence.”

  Tess noted the surprise on Jonkey’s face. In the world of investigations, sitting still and waiting for the coroner was grunt work. Searching a scene for evidence was police work. That Tess, the chief, would opt for the grunt work and let the lowly patrol officer do the police work probably rocked her back a bit. But Tess had to learn to trust her people. So far none of them had let her down, and Jonkey needed the experience.

  “Um, sure, but . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, is there anything in particular I should be looking for?”

  It was Tess’s turn to shrug. “If it’s okay with his mother, why don’t you take Duncan with you? Get an idea where everyone was while they partied. If Tim purchased drugs, my bet is he got them from someone there.”

  Jonkey nodded and together she and Tess left the bedroom. Tess explained the idea to Duncan and his mother.

  “While this isn’t a homicide investigation,” Tess told Delia, who’d agreed to let her son go with Jonkey, “maybe Duncan will remember something that at the time seemed unimportant, but now might lead to an answer concerning Tim’s death.” She turned to the kid. “Help Officer Jonkey with where everyone was and what exactly went on at the party.”

  He bobbed his head up and down. “I will.”

  “Becky, rule #4: ‘Always trust your gut.’ Look for anything off, suspicious. Maybe something will jump out at you; maybe it won’t. But give it a good going-over.”

  She nodded. “Roger that. Come on, Duncan; let’s go.”

  Tess asked communications to check on the coroner’s ETA. She had about twenty minutes to wait, and she wasn’t going to complain. In Long Beach, it was not uncommon for officers to wait ten to twelve hours for a coroner’s van.

  Delia Peabody overheard the call. “Chief, there’s coffee in the kitchen if you want it.”

  Coffee sounded heavenly to Tess. “Thanks.”

  Pastor Mac had
finished praying with Mrs. Harper. He was sitting next to her on the couch and she was doing the talking now. Briefly he looked up at Tess and gave a slight nod of acknowledgment. She continued into the kitchen. She poured herself some coffee, thought for a moment, and filled a cup for the pastor. When she walked back into the living room, Delia and Ellis were saying their good-byes and Eva was gone.

  “She had to use the restroom,” Oliver explained when he closed the door. “Delia is leaving to organize some women to stay with Eva until her husband gets home.”

  Tess handed him the coffee.

  “Thanks for this.” He sipped the brew.

  Oliver Macpherson was tall and broad shouldered. He’d never looked to Tess like a pastor. She could see him working outdoors with physically challenging labor, chopping down trees, fighting fires, but it was difficult to see him in her mind’s eye behind a pulpit. There was a bit more white in his close-cropped beard since Anna’s death, but his stormy green-gray eyes, though muted by grief, were just as bright and alive as ever.

  “Sure. Thank you for coming over. I don’t know what to tell her.”

  “That’s not been my experience.” Pastor Mac offered a somber smile. “It’s been my experience that you know just the thing to say to people in extreme grief.”

  Tess felt her face redden and she looked away. True, she’d offered Oliver heartfelt advice following the death of his wife, Anna. But she’d felt a connection then because of how hard Anna’s death had hit, and the words had come easily. But discussing death and loss always came back to faith for him and churned up anger in Tess.

  “Does Eva attend your church?”

  “She does, her husband also when he’s here. Ellis was able to get ahold of someone in authority in Drake’s Army unit. He will likely be given compassionate leave.”

  “That’s good to hear.” She sipped her coffee. “Did you know Tim well?”

  “I did. He was our resident photographer. He was quite good. As I understand it, he wanted to study art in college and make photography a career.”