Page 7 of Inside Silence
“I’ll just see myself out.”
Chapter 3
Savvy
* * *
Dammit.
Frustrated, I toss the container of concealer I bought on a whim years ago, and used only once, in the trash bin. Then I wash off the pathetic attempt at trying to cover up the bruise on my face. I only made it look worse than it already does.
Damn Ben Rogers for leaving us no option but to take him down by force yesterday afternoon. Drunks are unpredictable, and despite Ben’s wiry frame, he did not go down easy. Even with two of us trying to control him, he managed to put up quite a fight and my face bears the evidence of that.
I was hoping I could cover it up so I didn’t have to answer the inevitable questions all day long. Looks like I’ll have to keep the bill of my ball cap pulled down low to obscure as much of it as I can.
Resigned, I dismiss my reflection in the mirror and head to the kitchen for my pre-workout drink designed to boost energy, before I head out for my morning run.
Most mornings I like to get to the office early, but on the weekends I make sure I get my runs in. It’s the only real organized exercise I get, and it’s good for me. Running helps me think, process things, and work through problems. It wouldn’t be the first time I solved a crime on one of my morning runs.
I don’t have any job-related puzzles to solve this morning, but I do have some stuff to process. Namely Nate’s surprise return to Silence, with his teenage daughter, and the unexpected emotions it triggers in me.
Tossing back my drink, I grab my phone, clip it to my waistband, and tuck my AirPods in my ears. In the hall I slip my running shoes on and open the door to a crisp September morning. I don’t allow my thoughts to flow until I hit the trail at the end of my street.
Nathan Gaines was nothing but a distant memory until yesterday. Any feelings associated with him have been long buried under another lifetime. Another one of love and loss that ended almost four years ago when a call came in about an industrial accident at the Lizard Peak Quarry.
I was a deputy and responded to the call. I arrived at the quarry and my father, who was still sheriff of Edwards County at the time, blocked my path with a devastated look in his eyes that told me more than I ever wanted to know.
A tragic accident crushed a mining engineer working for the Lizard Peak Quarry under a collapsed, thirty-foot rock wall. His name was Matt Farkas, and he was the man I was supposed to marry only a few weeks later.
There isn’t much I remember from what followed, but what is vivid in my mind is the dark ache that seemed to shadow any and all other feelings. Including the hurt Nate Gaines had once put on me.
I breathe deeply from the fresh morning air in an attempt to release the sudden tightness around my chest. Ironically, it’s not the loss of the man I loved enough to want to spend the rest of my life with causing it, but the remembered pain of betrayal and abandonment when Nathan Gaines disappeared without a word.
Reaching the banks of the creek, I stop and bend forward, bracing my hands on my knees as I wait for the feeling to pass. Something my father advised me is not to fight pain or grief, but accept and move through it.
I grab for my phone when it starts buzzing against my hip. It’s the station.
“Talk to me.”
My hair stands up when I recognize the urgency in my chief deputy’s voice.
“We’ve got a situation.”
“Oh yeah, he’s gone.”
I step back as Buck Wilson approaches and studies the body on the ground. He’s not only our local veterinarian and my father’s good friend, but he’s also Edwards County’s elected coroner.
You don’t need a medical degree to come to that conclusion. It’s pretty obvious, given the man was eviscerated and most of his face is missing. I’ve seen a few dead bodies before but nothing quite this gruesome.
Not what I expected when Hugo told me to join him at the bridge over Watts Lake on the south side of town for a fatality. I thought there’d been an accident, or perhaps a drowning, but nothing prepared me for the mangled corpse under the bridge on the edge of the water.
A fisherman staying at the campground, on the far side of the lake, noticed something caught on branches that were stuck on a bridge pile when he decided to cast his line over here. As soon as he realized it was a body facedown in the water, he dropped his line, waded in, and pulled the body to the shore. When he rolled the body over, he quickly realized there’d be no reviving him and dialed 911.
“You think an animal got him?” Hugo asks as Buck kneels down to closely examine the body.
The older man shrugs. “Possible. We’ll have to get a better look back at the lab.”
The coroner’s lab is in the basement of the Silence Medical Clinic next to the morgue. I’ve only been in there a handful of times, the last time we were trying to identify the charred remains of the victim of a vehicle fire after a crash on the highway south of town. It’s not my favorite place, and it generally takes me days to get the smells out of my nose—especially after that last time—but I will definitely attend this autopsy myself.
