An Unsettled Grave Read online

  * * *

  The visitors’ parking lot was crowded, but she drove into it anyway, avoiding the open spaces in front of the emergency room doors reserved for police. God forbid she park her unmarked county car there to do a rape investigation. Security would harass her until she proved to them she was a cop. Then any cops who showed up would harass her for taking up one of the spots, when they had DUIs to drag in and out of the hospital.

  She knew cops who made four or five DUI arrests a night. They did it for the plaques handed out at the state capitol and annual free steak dinners sponsored by MADD. They’d sit outside bars cherry-picking the patrons as they left, or drive up and down their one stretch of highway following cars until they found any infraction that let them stop the driver. The slightest waver over a double-yellow line. A missing license plate light. Anything.

  Of course, the people who lived in the towns they were protecting and serving weren’t made any safer by this practice. What they needed were cops patrolling their neighborhoods and stores, making sure none of the meth freaks and heroin addicts were stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down.

  But the papers made a big deal about it, and the chiefs of police crowed high and low whenever one of their guys got a new award for traffic enforcement. In Carrie’s mind, there were two kinds of police officers. The first kind were the road dogs, and the others did traffic.

  Road dogs had no problem arresting a dangerous DUI, but they’d just as quickly give somebody a break and call for someone to pick them up. They stopped to talk to the kids on the street corners, finding out what was what and who was who. They checked doors to businesses after hours. They knew what cars belonged on the streets in their sector, and what ones didn’t.

  The older road dogs might bust you in the head if you deserved it. A good old-fashioned ass-kicking, but a fair one. Then they’d drive you home and let you sleep it off. The next day, they’d knock on your door and make sure you were all right.

  Traffic cops, though? Different animal. A traffic cop gets off on writing the most tickets in his agency. He smiles when he recounts the story of how he pulled over a tractor trailer and wrote the driver an eighteen thousand–dollar ticket, and son of a bitch if that fucker didn’t start crying right there on the side of the road.

  If Carrie had to put her money on it, if she had absolutely had to gamble, even if it meant all the money she’d made being on call for so many weeks straight, she’d put every last cent on it not being a road dog who raped Monica Gere. If it was a cop, Carrie would bet the house that it had to be some traffic asshole.

  She slung her work bag over her shoulder as she walked through the ER’s sliding doors and waved to the nurse at the front desk. “I’m here to see the SANE nurse.”

  The nurse looked bored, cracking a piece of bubble gum between her front teeth, the tip of her finger hovering above her cell phone’s screen. “Your name?”

  “Carrie Santero.”

  The nurse cocked an eyebrow at her, the gum paused between her teeth. A decision was made behind the dark, unsympathetic eyes, as they looked Carrie up and down. The nurse picked up her desk phone and said, “One to admittance.” She put the phone down again, set her phone aside, and said, “The SANE nurse is with another patient right now, but someone will take you back and talk to you. Are you injured? I mean, besides, you know.”

  “No,” Carrie said. “That’s not what I meant. Hang on.”

  This is what I get for throwing on jeans and a T-shirt to get here as fast as I could instead of taking my time getting ready and milking it like everyone else does, she thought.

  She reached into her coat pocket, searching for the slim black wallet tucked inside. Even after six months, she still wasn’t used to being out of uniform. She pulled the wallet out and opened it, revealing the gleaming golden badge within. “I’m a detective with the DA’s office.”

  The nurse leaned forward, squinting to read the writing engraved on the badge. “I didn’t know they had any female detectives. None ever came here before.”

  “I’m new,” Carrie said, setting her coffee down on the desk as the nurse slid a visitor’s pass toward her.

  * * *

  Sgt. Dave Kenderdine was standing outside of the Sexual Assault Nurse’s Examination room, chiseled arms folded across his wide chest. Dave was only a few inches taller than Carrie, but twice as wide. He tipped his head to her as she walked down the hallway, saying, “Congrats on the gold shield. Looks fancy.”

  It was perfunctory. Everyone congratulated her, but no one ever said she’d earned it. Or deserved it. They never said the county couldn’t have picked a better person. At least they respected her enough to not lie to her face, she thought.

  She liked Dave. He was a good cop, with more than twenty years on the job, and an even better sergeant. They’d worked together on the task force several times, and they knew each other from her days in patrol. She’d always been able to rely on his judgment. He was one of the few guys on the job who never bullshitted her. But that changed when she got moved up to the county. She was now no longer one of the team. She was one of them.

  Carrie looked past him at the closed SANE office door. The windows were covered by curtains. The faint murmur of voices came from within. She slid the long, narrow notebook out of her bag. “Did you get a chance to talk to her?”

  “Yeah, right,” Dave said. “She took one look at the uniform and started screaming. I backed out of the room and stayed in the hallway. This chick’s nuts.”

  Carrie sipped her coffee, still looking past him. “How did you get the call?”

  “It came in as a nine-one-one from a passing motorist. They found her facedown on the side of the road with her bare ass hanging out and figured she’d been sexually assaulted. As soon as she heard them talking to dispatch, she started freaking out about the police. The witnesses said she’d been attacked by a cop, and that story seems to have spread.” Dave eyed Carrie to see what she made of that. Testing her. “Obviously I don’t need to tell you what I think of that claim.”

  Dave passed her the county dispatch sheet with the name and phone number of the person who’d called it in. Carrie read the location and said, “This didn’t happen in your jurisdiction, Sarge. How’d you get stuck with it?”

  “I was dumb enough to answer the radio,” he said. “Dispatcher heard them saying it might be a cop and was smart enough to ask for any available supervisors. That should have been my first clue not to get involved.”

  “Has she said anything else?” Carrie asked.

  “Besides screaming and telling me to get the fuck away from her? Not that I know,” Dave said. “Listen, you understand this is most likely bullshit, right? I mean, I get that you only had a few years on the street before going to the county, and I’m not saying that factors into this, but come on. A cop did this? On duty? I know all the guys out here. Some of them might not be the sharpest tools in the shed, but they aren’t rapists.”

  Carrie pulled out her notepad and wrote while he talked. “Does anybody know the victim? Any previous contacts?”

  “I ran her through our system. She called in a road hazard two years ago. Nothing since.”

  Carrie kept writing. “No mental health issues?”

  “None that involved the police. Doesn’t mean there weren’t any.”

  “Understood,” Carrie said. She looked up at him. It was time for the real question. Everything else had just been passing time waiting. “Who else is working the street tonight in the area. Besides you, I mean.”

  Dave stared at her. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “You know how this goes, Sarge. I need to know where everyone was at when she says it happened, so I can start clearing guys. Anyone on a call, or a business check, or meal break, that’s all good stuff that helps me say they don’t have anything to worry about. The first part of internal investigations is eliminating good cops from bad accusations.”

  “Is that what they teach you at interna
l affairs school now?” Dave said. “They tried to send me to that shit a few years ago and I walked out. It probably cost me a promotion, but I guess I just sleep better at night knowing I’m not a scumbag.”

  Carrie swallowed the last of her coffee and tossed it into the trash. “You know what’s funny, Dave? We all act like anybody out there is still giving us the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, cops are getting caught every five seconds shooting people in the back or planting evidence. Do I think a cop might have raped this chick? God damn, I hope not. But if he did, I will drag his ass to jail through a fucking F.O.P. fundraiser if I have to. And I would hope good guys like you would be right there with me.”

  She pulled a manila envelope from her bag and held it toward him. The top was stamped DNA Kit. “Swab the insides of both cheeks with the Q-tips inside the packet, then seal it, and sign the waiver saying you gave it to me voluntarily.”

  Dave looked down at the envelope without moving. “It’s not voluntary if you tell me to do it. Maybe I should talk to my union rep first.”

  The door to the SANE room opened and the nurse looked at Carrie with relief. “I was afraid they’d send a male detective.”

  “Now even detectives are suspect?” Dave shot back. “What, maybe the bad guy changed out of his police uniform and suddenly put on a suit to come here? Maybe he’s some kind of evil genius with a costume for every occasion, right?”

  Carrie went through the door and closed it behind her. Monica Gere was sitting on the bed with her knees tucked under her chin, muttering to herself. Leaves and pieces of grass were still tangled in her long hair. Carrie made a few quick notes. Monica’s bare arms and legs stuck out through the hospital gown. They were muscular and trim. Early thirties, she wrote. She’s in good shape. Not an easy target.

  Pieces of gravel were stuck in the raw scrapes covering the woman’s forearms and knees. Carrie inspected her knuckles and fingernails, seeing no bruises from punching her attacker or blood from trying to rake his flesh. Whatever had happened to Monica Gere, she hadn’t fought back, Carrie thought.

  “Monica?” Carrie said, leaning down next to her.

  The SANE nurse, a stout woman with short, white hair, patted Monica on her shoulder. It wasn’t affection. “Come on,” she said, rubbing the woman’s arm briskly. “It’s time to talk.”

  Carrie leaned forward to read the nurse’s name tag, making sure she spelled it right. “Miss Pritchett?” she asked, holding up her hand. “Maybe just let me try it my way.” She leaned down again, closer. “Monica, I’m Detective Santero. Can you tell me what happened?”

  Monica stared at the wall beyond them, still muttering.

  “I want to help you,” Carrie said. Still nothing.

  Nurse Pritchett rolled her eyes. “I’ve got some notes from what she said when she came in. I’ll write up my report and get it to you first thing in the morning.”

  Carrie reached out to touch Monica’s arm, but she swatted Carrie’s hand away, then scurried to the far side of her hospital bed, flailing her hands and feet. “Don’t touch me!” she screamed.

  “All right,” Carrie said, standing back and holding up her hands. “I’m sorry. Jesus. I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”

  Monica thrust her head up, eyes gleaming with hatred, and screamed, “It was a cop! He had on a uniform! He pulled me over in a car with red and blue lights! Get the fuck away from me!”

  Carrie backed off. Monica lowered her head into her arms, half screaming, half sobbing. “Monica?” Carrie tried again, and the woman thrashed out with her arms and legs, screeching and bashing her fists against the blanket.

  Nurse Pritchett snatched the call box from the side of the bed and mashed its red button. Nurses and doctors rushed into the room, bearing restraints and a syringe full of pale liquid.

  “Is there anybody we can call for her?” Carrie shouted above the din.

  Nurse Pritchett latched on to one of Monica’s arms, pinning it down. “Somebody from victims assistance is on the way. Clear the room and give us some space, okay?”

  Carrie pulled a business card out of her bag and laid it on the counter. She left the room and shut the door behind her, muffling the screams, and worked her jaw to make her ears pop. Dave Kenderdine was leaning against the wall, looking amused. “Bat-shit crazy, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Carrie said. “Maybe. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

  “Well, that must be why I’m just a glorified patrolman and you’re a big shot county dick.”

  Carrie slapped the DNA envelope against his chest, right against the badge. He didn’t move. “My report is going to say me and you talked, you immediately agreed to cooperate and provide the county detectives whatever assistance we needed in order to get to the bottom of this.”

  She pulled another handful of DNA envelopes from her bag and stuffed them down in the crook of his folded arms. “After that, I need you to make a list of all the cops working tonight, and their patrol logs. If you see any who have unaccounted time during the two hours prior to the nine-one-one call, go ask them for a voluntary DNA swab.”

  He looked down at the stack of envelopes. “And why exactly would I do that?”

  “Because I asked you. And we go back. And I trust you, even if you’re being an asshole right now.”

  “I’m not comfortable going after my own kind, Carrie.”

  “Whoever did this, cop or not, he’s not our own, Dave. You know that.” She started down the hallway. “Anybody with long stretches of time where they weren’t doing anything, starting with you, okay?”

  He called out after her, “Hey, what makes you think I wasn’t doing anything?”

  She shrugged. “You’re a sergeant.”

  She looked back at him, grinning as she went through the door.

  “Oh, real nice,” he said but couldn’t help grinning back.

  CHAPTER 3

  A Group of men in orange hunting vests stood in the gray dawn. Mist rolled off the mountains like a slow river, snaking through the trees and caves and swirling around the men’s dirty boots and camouflage pants. Sitting among them was a large black dog, so old its snout showed white and its eyes looked glazed over. The dog panted and whined, staring into the mist. The man beside it shifted his shotgun onto his left shoulder and patted it on the head, saying, “Quiet, now, Butch.”

  Two police officers headed up the hill, toward the men. The older officer’s wool-lined collar was pulled up against the cold. The gold star pinned to the front of his brown Stetson glinted in the emerging light. Not many cops wore Stetsons anymore, even that far out into the western parts of Pennsylvania.

  Decades ago, when there were no local police departments, the state police covered the hundreds of miles of unincorporated country with just a handful of troopers. The state police had a long and storied tradition of sending only their most serious fuckups that far out into the middle of nowhere. It was a good place to bury their sins in the purgatory of dirt roads and farms and coal mines and a populace with no interest in coming into contact with the law.

  Back in the old days, the state troopers were known for their wide-brimmed campaign hats. They were also known for being drunk in their cars and firing their duty weapons into the air when they came upon a fight and were too outnumbered to do anything but watch. A farmer named Franklin Hayes had once been shot in the leg by a police bullet from two miles away. Hayes never even heard the gunshot when the trooper pulled up to a group of drunks fighting in the local bar’s parking lot and stuck his gun in the air and fired.

  Hayes was sitting on his front porch, drinking coffee, his aching legs stretched out in front of him after a hard day in the field. He heard something sizzling through the air, coming right down on top of him. By the time he looked up, the bullet had already punched through the porch’s thin aluminum roof and sunk deep in the meat of his right thigh.

  The farmer hollered so loud his wife came running. He laughed the whole way to the hospital, sayin
g he’d been struck by a meteor and that they were lucky. Meteors were rare and expensive things. He’d read they might even be made of pure gold or diamond, and once the doctors dug it out of his thigh she would have to make sure none of them ran off with it.

  Much to Franklin Hayes’s dismay, the doctors pulled out a chunk of deformed lead instead. The story made it into the Pittsburgh newspapers several days later. The state police maneuvered its infinite tentacles to pay off his hospital stay and erase the speeding tickets messing up his car insurance. The trooper who’d fired the gun was quietly transferred to a barracks back east.

  After that, the local towns decided they needed their own police departments. As a way of differentiating themselves from the Staties, Walt Auburn, Liston’s first chief, opted to outfit his men in cowboy hats. The eastern parts of Pennsylvania with the big cities and counties are about as far from the Old West as possible. That changes out past the Poconos. Beyond the Allegheny Mountains, going toward West Virginia, western Pennsylvania people are frontier folk, rednecks and hillbillies stranded north, tied to odd religions and conspiracy theories about the government. They live that far out from civilization for a reason.

  Forty years later, Chief Steve Auburn carried on his father’s tradition. It was the same style Stetson, but not the same one. All that remained of Walt’s hat was the warped metal star he’d worn pinned to the front of it. It still smelled like smoke, whenever Steve opened the ornate cedar box he kept it in.

  Auburn cupped his hand across the gold star pinned to the front of his own hat and tipped it forward, lifting it off the top of his bald head. “Morning, boys.” He breathed through his nose, trying to catch his wind after the long trek up the hillside and not show it. Sweat ran down the sides of his face. “I heard you think you found something up here.”

  The hunter holding the dog by the leash was named Willie Oaks. He swatted the dog across the backside, trying to get it to quit whining. “I set Butch after a down bird, and he come back carrying it, Steve,” Oaks said. “At first I hollered at him. Thought he picked up a damn rock and lost the bird. He started covering it up before I yanked him away. I didn’t want to touch it or go anywhere near it once I saw what I thought it was.”