CHAPTER 1: The Shakedown On Route Nine
The cruiser’s spotlight pinned me against the driver’s door of my rusted Civic, blinding any view of the ditch behind me. Deputy Kyle Miller twisted my left wrist behind my shoulder blade until the cartilage popped, ratcheting cold nickel-plated steel around my bone before I could draw a full breath. I could not run because my boots were wedged into the frozen mud of Route Nine, and I could not fight back because his partner, Deputy Greg Cole, already had two thick fingers hooked into my collar.
"Keep your mouth shut, Clara," Miller muttered into my ear, his breath smelling of stale coffee and menthol. "You cross the center line twice on a county route, you don't get to ask questions."
"I didn't cross any line," I choked out, the frost on the car roof biting into my cheek as he shoved me downward. "My taillights work. My inspection sticker is thirty days current. You’ve been sitting on the quarry turnaround since nine o'clock waiting for me to leave town."
They didn't answer. They didn't have to. Blackwood County ran twelve miles of timber and gravel between the river and the interstate, and past midnight, Miller and Cole were the only law that ever drove it.
Miller yanked my feet apart with the heel of his boot, kicking my shins against the rocker panel. He wasn't conducting a field sobriety check. He hadn't asked for my registration or proof of insurance. His hands moved with frantic, brutal efficiency, tearing through the pockets of the heavy canvas barn coat I had pulled off the rack in my father's hallway an hour before.
The coat had belonged to my brother, Jesse. Six months ago, Jesse’s pickup had broken the guardrail over Black Creek Ravine at eighty miles an hour. The county coroner ruled it an accidental impact following mechanical failure, closing the file in forty-eight hours. I took the coat because the heater in my Civic had died on Tuesday, and November in the foothills did not forgive thin wool.
Cole kept his flashlight centered on my temple, blinding me while Miller jammed his fingers into the torn inner lining near the left armpit.
"Nothing on the belt," Cole said, glancing toward the empty black ribbon of highway behind them. "Hurry it up, Kyle. Log truck from the mill comes through here at quarter past."
"Shut up," Miller snapped. His fingers snagged on something stiff inside the lining.
I heard the dry rip of rotted thread. Miller pulled his hand back into the white glare of the spotlight.
He wasn't holding a baggie of pills or a pipe he could use to justify an arrest. He held a small, black microcassette tape wrapped tightly in yellow electrical wire. The tape was cracked across its plastic housing, but across the white adhesive strip running along its spine, Jesse had written two lines in purple permanent marker:
Cruiser 404 - Cabin Audio - Oct 12.
The gravel on the shoulder went dead quiet. Even the wind through the pines seemed to drop.
Cole slowly lowered the beam of his flashlight until the circle of light hit the front quarter-panel of the patrol car idling ten feet behind us. Painted in sharp, reflective gold lettering right beneath the county crest was the fleet unit number: 404.
Cole stepped back, his boot crunching into the frozen slush. "Where did she get that?"
"It was in the seam," Miller whispered, staring down at the cassette in his bare palm. His voice had lost every trace of routine authority; it sounded hollow, thin, and terrified. He turned the tape over, his thumb tracing the jagged fracture in the plastic casing. "Jesse cleaned out the fleet bay three days before the wreck. He told the sergeant the cabin mic was dead."
"I don't know what that is," I said, my chest heaving against the cold steel of the trunk. "That's Jesse's coat. I took it off the hook by the porch tonight. I swear to God I didn't even know it was in there."
Miller looked up slowly. The red strobes on the cruiser’s lightbar washed across his hollow cheeks, turning his eyes into dark, wet sockets. He didn't offer a citation. He didn't reach for his radio to call in a search. He slipped the cassette into his own vest pocket, zipped the nylon flap shut, and reached for the heavy iron handle of the patrol car's rear cage door.
"Get her off the road," Miller said to his partner, his eyes never leaving mine. "Nobody saw us pull her over."
CHAPTER 2: Deputy Miller Locked The Heavy Door While My Brother's Tape Vanished
Miller slammed the cruiser’s heavy cage door, driving the steel latch into its striker before my shoulder could clear the frame. Cole killed the roof spotlight, plunging the frozen gravel of Route Nine into blackness just as the diesel roar of the timber truck shook the ditch. The hauler’s air horn tore through the pine ridges as twenty tons of hemlock logs barreled past, pinning Miller against the quarter-panel until the red marker lights disappeared around the quarry bend.