Page 82 of Good Girls Lie
You would write back, a pretty little letter, more personal this time, about how genuinelydelightedyou are to have me joining you.
Sosweet.
Yes,gleeis a very funny word. A funny word indeed.
Though you really should start looking at the synonyms forsad. You have no idea what’s coming. None of you do.
“The past beats inside me like a second heart.”
—John Banville,The Sea
49
THE COP
Kate Wood takes 29 North to Manassas, one hand on the steering wheel, singing an earworm by Billie Eilish that got into her head back at Goode, “You Should See Me in a Crown.” She heard the song coming from one of the dorm rooms and can’t seem to shake it. She finally looked up the video and had to turn it off almost immediately. Spiders. Ugh. She doesn’t like spiders.
The Goode School gives her the willies just like spiders do, sitting atop the hill like an ancient, cherry-round orb weaver in a desiccated web, waiting. Oh, sure, it’s been renovated, updated, but paint and shellac can’t scrub away ghosts. Just walking through the campus is like nails on a chalkboard. She has no idea how Uncle Tony can stand living there.
Something about Camille Shannon’s death feels hinky to her. Tony thinks it’s a clear case of suicide, the diary was the clincher for him, but Kate isn’t so sure. Something about the roommate is off. Something deeper than British reserve and the aloofness of a teenager. Something in her eyes... A darkness, like she’s hiding something.
Granted, Kate is a cop. To her, the whole world is hiding something. But this girl’s empty eyes have been haunting her.
And how she’s been roped into this case... Stupid. She’s supposed to be at home, minding herp’s andq’s, waiting for the ruling on her suspension. Just the thought of the situation makes her blood pressure spike. She was executing an arrest warrant, a nasty drug dealer turned murderer named Gary Banner. Should have been standard fare, but the idiot had seen her and bolted, hid out in a barn, and when she tracked him down, he started shooting. She responded in kind, killing him.
Cut-and-dried case.
But said scumbag happened to be the beloved, railroaded, not responsible for his actions, must have been provoked—was that warrant properly drafted?—nephew of a state senator.
They took her badge and gun. Have had them for two weeks and counting.
Kate is in the right, she knows this. The department knows this. The media knows this. The city of Charlottesville knows this. But she’s still on suspension pending a lengthy examination of the case by the new Police Civilian Review Board. And she has her doubts she’s going to get a fair shake.
She took off for Marchburg to visit her mother’s twin brother, her favorite uncle, both for comfort and, if she’s being honest with herself, to lay the groundwork for making a jump to the sheriff’s office staff in case she gets run out of Charlottesville on a rail.
Nepotism, but this is hardly an issue. Tony would never hold her back. And Kate’s not going to give up her career because of a civilian oversight committee. She’s just not.
Tony is laconic and acerbic and loves that they have so much in common, the two misfits who stepped outside of the Wood family tradition of producing country doctors to be cops, instead. They talk regularly, and she wishes she could see him more, but she’s been ridiculously busy since she made detective, and he’s running the entire county under his office.
The visit has been good for them both. They’ve had some beers, told some war stories—crime scenes discovered, bodies in strange places, crazy methods of death—the kind of dark humor people outside of law enforcement find wildly offensive, but to her and him, it’s life. You laugh, or you cry. It’s the way of things.
He hasn’t pushed her. He’s been a sane sounding board. He’s assured her all will be well. And now, she’s stumbled into a case.
Not your case, Kate.
She drags her attention back to Goode. Nothing about the broken body of the teenager adds up. And the family slaps them all in the face by insisting on the body being posted up in DC? It’s rather pointless, Virginia’s OCME is an exemplary system of medical examiners all tied together under one umbrella, supporting one another throughout the state. But Tony had agreed without a fuss. The death is a sensitive one.
Another sensitive case.
So, Kate finds herself driving north toward the autopsy, singing a creepy-ass song by a wildly successful teenager with a clear talent for tapping into the emotional issues of her peers.
Kate isn’t here to close the case, it’s not hers, it’s Tony’s, and she’s on suspension. She offered to go because if she’s on-site, she can hear the results right away and can share them with Tony. And make sure they’re all getting the same story, are all on the same page.
It’s not like she has anything better to do. And she likes to drive. It helps her think.
Ash Carlisle—Ashlyn Elizabeth Carr, her real name. Five feet eleven inches, 130 pounds, blue on blond. Pretty. Intelligent. Cultured. Rich as sin. Parents dead. Roommate dead. Hiding something. Kate is sure of it.
The tear in the girl’s shirt notwithstanding, her eyes had been glassy like she was on something, and her breath smelled overwhelmingly of Altoids. Deduction based on Kate’s own teenage foibles: the kid had been drinking, and so had her girlfriend, the all-star senior. Funny, they look something alike, are of a similar height and build, but the senior is tougher, you can see it in the aggressive way she defended her younger compatriot.
