Page 4 of More Than Nothing
“Turn the music off, Kai. Then take your friends outside and get them to give their names to my deputy or Chief Roberts. You’ll need to stick around and wait for me. I want to speak to you myself.”
In the relative silence that followed, Roman crouched next to the girl on the floor and studied her face. He recognized the signsin front of him. Overdoses were a dime a dozen in Detroit, but he hadn’t expected to see one here so soon. “What have we got?”
“Millie Westlake. Seventeen years old. We took the call at 01:35 and arrived at 01:47. The patient’s vomited twice but was seizing and unconscious when we got here. Pupils constricted, skin and lips are blue. Someone made the call when she went from slurring her words to not being able to speak. We’ve administered one dose of naloxone and she’s stable for now, but we need to move her.”
The paramedic stood and wheeled a collapsible recovery stretcher closer to the girl. Roman moved to her feet and, between the three of them, they lifted her onto it. Pulling up the side bars, they raised the stretcher, letting the legs unfold, and locked it into place.
“No other casualties?”
“Not that we’ve seen.”
Millie Westlake’s dress had no pockets. He’d need to track down any jacket, coat, or purse she might have brought to the party.
“You’re good to go.” Roman watched them wheel the stretcher swiftly out of the kitchen, his heart pounding beneath the breast pocket of his shirt. Sweat dampened the hair at the nape of his neck.
When he’d left Pine Springs twelve years ago, he hadn’t been chasing thrills or excitement necessarily. Sure, he’d had plenty of ambition and drive, but he’d mostly wanted the opportunity to make a difference. In the intervening years, he’d often wondered if he had made any difference at all. More recently, Roman had barely even been surviving. So close to the edge he was in danger of falling, he’d had no option but to accept this temporary transfer.
Still stalked by the oily, soul-staining shadow of homicide policing, he prayed that Millie Westlake and this case wouldn’t destroy his already shaky foundations. Curling his hands into fists as he strode through the house, Roman went in search of the chief and any witnesses.
Interviews and paperwork dominated his team’s working hours for the next two days straight. Chief Roberts was more than happy for Roman to take the lead on a case that would clearly run beyond the term of his last few days in office.
As he read over the lab report with Dougie, a movement in the parking lot outside his window caught Roman’s eye. He frowned and squinted against the bright blue of the afternoon sky. It was Elenie Dax. The waitress from the diner and a member of the family Chief Roberts clearly despised.
Leaning against one of the trees that flanked the path, head turned in the direction of the station, she appeared to be waiting.
Roman dragged his attention back to the matter at hand.
“As we guessed, what Millie thought was pure MDMA had been laced with fentanyl.” He swiveled his screen to face his deputy.
“Cheap, easy to get hold of, and dangerous,” Dougie murmured as he scanned the details. “Bet she didn’t count on taking that kind of a risk when she decided to try getting high. Her friends have closed ranks. They’re not naming the source of the drugs, or they genuinely don’t know.”
Roman grunted.
They’d established that Mr. and Mrs. Mason had gone out of state to visit family, taking their two youngest children but leaving the older two at home. It was the perfect opportunity to throw a party. Millie Westlake’s closest friends admitted she’d scored some MDMA, seemingly intent on gaining enough false courage to approach a girl she had feelings for. There were no other drugs in Millie’s purse when Dougie eventually tracked it down. Although both friends swore blind she hadn’t done it before—to their knowledge, at least—the teenager had taken the pill halfway through the evening and within twenty minutes was struggling to breathe.
Recovering slowly in hospital, after forty-eight hours on a mechanical ventilator, Millie—a tall, solid basketball player—owed her survival to a hefty dose of luck and her own general fitness.
“Chief Roberts swears all narcotics in Pine Springs trace back to the Dax family,” Dougie volunteered.
Roman took another glance out of the window. “Without evidence to link them to the supply, that gets us nowhere.”
The paperwork trail on the Daxes was extensive and revealing. He’d made a point of looking them up. Shoplifting charges, intimidation, arson, car theft, regular alcohol-fueled punchups—and, yes, rumors of drug dealing, as Dougie said. Only a few minor convictions had made it all the way through the system, but every member of the family had come to the attention of the local police force more times than Roman could count.
Every one of them bar Elenie Dax, who was still loitering at the back of the parking lot.
Dougie spread his hands. “We’ve had a steady increase in thefts of farm chemicals, drugs at the high school, counterfeit cash. Roberts swears it only started after the Daxes moved into town. I don’t know if that’s true, but Frank Dax’s name comes up every single time. Only problem is that no one will give evidence against him. People won’t turn on their neighbor if they think that neighbor will burn down their fucking house. He’s been untouchable so far.”
Millie’s panicked parents were still glued to her bedside; it would be another day or so before the girl would be well enough to interview. Would she tell them where the drugs had come from? Or would she be too scared to talk?
Roman had thought he’d left this kind of policing back in Detroit.
An image—the image—took his breath as it rose behind swiftly closed eyelids. Swallowing hard, he fought to keep his heart ratesteady, even as the blood tingled in his ears and set a tremor running through his fingers.
He would not think. He would not remember.
Battling to keep his thoughts from showing on his face, Roman tugged at his shirt collar. None of his officers knew that he’d taken on this new role under pressure; he needed it to stay that way. He hadn’t even come clean to his family or friends that his return had a time limit. Being forced by his superiors to take a twelve-month secondment for his mental health wasn’t something he wanted to shout from the rooftops.
He had one year to prove to his captain that he’d got his head straight, and he’d be in with a fighting chance of making lieutenant on his return to the city.
