A Contemporary Thriller Book Series
One Small Victory by Maryann Miller
Series Excerpt
“What’s so damn important you had to get me out of a meeting?”
Jenny faltered at the force of Ralph’s antagonism coming across a thin wire of communication like some insidious emotional cancer. She gripped her phone until her fingers burned. “Your son.”
“If there’s some kind of trouble, we can discuss it–”
“Ralph, will you please just listen.” Jenny hesitated, some inner core of compassion trying to keep her voice gentle.
“I have half a mind to–”
“Ralph, it’s Michael–”
“What fool thing did you let him do now?”
Again, a deep stab of pain, but Jenny fought the urge to attack him with angry words. She could never be that cruel. “Please, Ralph. Just let me… He’s…” She paused again, finding the word so incredibly hard to say. “…dead.”
There was a moment of silence until she heard a quick intake of breath. She sat on the edge of her bed to give him time.
“Oh, my God,” Ralph said, his anguish becoming a part of hers over the miles that separated them. “When did it happen?”
“Last night. It was–”
“Last night? And you just now got around to calling me?”
“Don’t yell. I tried to call before. You weren’t home all night.” She stopped before adding the familiar old refrain, ‘Where were you, Ralph?’ But he picked up the melody line anyway.
“What I do is my business.”
Jenny took a deep breath and let it out in a slow hiss. “Could we please not fight? Not now.”
In the long silence that followed, she got up and paced the small confines of her room. Then she heard him exhale in a long sigh.
“Are you coming?” she asked.
Again, silence. Into the void she offered a gesture of peace. “If you come, we can just be two parents who’ve shared and lost a son. We can put everything else on hold.”
Still no words from him, and she felt another flicker of compassion. Some part of him had to care, had to be hurting. “Just call me, okay? Let me know when you’re coming.”
She pushed the disconnect button and leaned her forehead against the wall. I can’t do this. How am I supposed to make all these decisions? Handle all these details? I just want to go someplace and die.
Her inclination was to slide down the wall and huddle in the corner, but she pulled away from the temptation. Go outside, some inner voice told her. Nothing is ever so terrible outside.
Stepping off the back porch, Jenny was struck by a brilliance of light that made everything sharp and crystal clear. The huge expanse of sky was a rich, deep blue with only an occasional wisp of white, backlit by the sun. The air was crisp, fresh, incredibly alive.
The voice had been right. Despair could not live long in such a setting.
Jenny walked down the sidewalk toward a weathered lawn chair under the sprawling elm tree that had started dropping leaves in random piles of yellow and brown. She had to step with care over the gaping cracks in the pavement. She’d wanted to get the walkway fixed for as long as she’d owned the house, but somehow life’s essentials always bumped it to the bottom of her list.
A sense of rightness settled on her as she sat down, the warmth of the sun touching her cheek like a caress. Then a flutter of movement caught her eye, and she turned to see a Monarch butterfly sailing in lazy circles on the wind. The brilliance of orange and brown against the fading grass was striking, and Jenny was caught up in the butterfly’s dance. It lit briefly on the edge of her watering can, opening its wings in an innocent display of beauty, then lifted again to find another morsel of nectar in the bed of wildflowers along the fence.
As the butterfly soared, Jenny could almost feel some part of her spirit lifting with it. Butterflies always made her feel that way. As if, like Peter Pan, all she had to do was believe and she could fly with them.
When she was twelve, she’d told her friend Angie that. The other girl had laughed. Told Jenny that was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard.
Jenny smiled at the memory. Their friendship had almost ended when she wouldn’t help catch butterflies for a collection. The idea of drowning the poor creatures in alcohol had been more than she could stand. Angie had argued back that butterflies didn’t live long anyway, but that hadn't swayed Jenny. No matter how short the life span was, the creatures deserved every minute of it.
So did Michael.
The thought caught her off guard and cast a shadow on the moment as effectively as the cloud that brushed across the sun. She didn’t want to think about the injustice of it all. That only made her furious, and she wasn’t sure if the fury was harder to bear than the pain.
The back door opened with a loud bang, and she glanced over to see Scott step out.
“Phone for you,” he said.
Jenny reached for the handset for their landline, but he held back. “Did you talk to Dad?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Is he coming?”
Jenny went out on a limb. “Yes.”
To avoid any more questions, she took the phone and hurried past him into the house.
* * *
Steve stepped back from the sheer force of this woman standing before him demanding answers. A cop’s worst nightmare. The mother of the deceased.
Trudy, the dispatcher, had buzzed him when the woman stormed in, and he’d come into the hall to face what was obviously barely controlled anger.
“Mrs. Jasik. Please–”
“No I won’t, please.” Fury smoldered in the woman’s deep brown eyes. “I demand to know what’s going on.”
“You want me to call the Chief?” Trudy asked, already reaching a finely manicured hand toward the phone on her desk.
Steve shook his head and turned to the woman who clutched a large leather purse to her chest like body armor. “If you’ll come down to my office, I’ll explain.”
She stood rigid, and Steve recognized the stance of anger. He reached out and touched her arm. “It would be better than trying to handle it here.”
He watched her glance around the room, taking note of the patrol officers who had been drawn to the commotion and stood in doorways. Then she shifted her gaze to Trudy, who still had her hand on the phone.
Finally, she faced him again. “Yes,” she said. “Perhaps you’re right.”
At her compliance, Steve felt the tension dissipate. There was a rustle of movement as the other officers returned to their desks, and he gestured for the woman to follow him. He led her down the hall, their footsteps muffled in the soft carpeting. In his office, he indicated she should sit in the chair in front of his desk. “Something to drink? Coffee?”
“No.” She didn’t sit. “I want to know why my son’s body hasn’t been released to the funeral parlor.”
“It’s a matter of routine–”
“Don’t try to smother me in the party line.” He watched her reach up to sweep a cascade of auburn hair off her forehead before she continued. “Mr. Hobkins called. Told me arrangements would have to be delayed. There’s some kind of official interference.”
Steve bit back a sharp reply. Getting defensive about what she considered ‘interference’ wouldn’t help. He gestured again for her to sit, and this time she did.
“Mrs. Jasik, I’m sorry you found out this way.” He stretched the moment by pouring a cup of coffee from the pot on top of his filing cabinet. Then he sat down at his desk and faced her. “I should have contacted you myself. I just thought I had a little more time.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“You’re right. It’s just an explanation.” He kept his gaze steady. “And I do regret making this more difficult for you.”
“Okay.” She let the large purse drop into her lap. “So just tell me why?”
“We’re investigating the circumstances of the accident.”
“What circumstances?” Alarm widened eyes that were almost as dark as her hair.
“Drugs were found in the car.” Steve paused and grasped his coffee cup with both hands. “We have to determine if your son was using them.”
“No. Not Michael.”
Steve chose his words with care, not wanting to set her off again. “Most parents don’t know if their kids are doing drugs.”
“I know!” Ire seemed to stiffen her spine again. “Maybe he tried it. I don’t know. Lots of people try it. But he didn’t do drugs.”
“I hope you’re right.” Steve paused to give her a moment. “But we can’t ignore the facts. Drugs were found in the car, and the Brennan boy’s blood tests showed he was under the influence. We have to consider the possibility he wasn’t the only one.”
Jenny wanted to scream that he was wrong, but some rational part of her mind recognized the detective’s position. After twenty years on the force in Houston, her Uncle Sid had told her that a good cop believes what is seen, not what family members say. So she swallowed the urge to lash out in blind defense of her son and sat mute.
“I don’t like to do this, Mrs. Jasik. But the questions have to be asked.”
“I know.”
“What do you know about the Brennan boy?”
“Not much. They’ve been friends through most of high school, but he was always a little reserved with me.”
“Did you ever suspect he was doing drugs?”
“I’m sure he wasn’t. I mean—”
“The tests are conclusive, Mrs. Jasik.”
“Oh.” Jenny cast her mind back to the times she’d been around Brad, searching for some clue, some sign that he might have been taking something. Not that she’d recognize the signs. She still thought of a ‘joint’ as a place. She sighed. “I’m probably not the best judge of who’s into drugs.”
“That’s fine.” The detective took a swallow of coffee, then set his mug on a stack of papers on his desk. “Have you noticed anything different about him recently?”
“He hasn’t been around for a while. The boys drifted apart toward the end of senior year.” Her voice faltered. “I think Michael said Brad left town after graduation. I didn’t even know he was back until he picked Michael up the other day.”
“Where were they going?”
“Turner Falls. They were supposed to camp all weekend.”
She watched the detective note her responses in a steno-type notebook. Then he closed it and looked at her with some unrecognizable emotion stirring in his eyes.
They really are the most remarkable eyes. That thought caught her up short. My God, woman, you are nuts.
She shifted her gaze and shrugged. “I wish I knew more.”
“That’s okay.” He paused for a moment, and she glanced back in time to see him drain his coffee. “When we get the test results, I’ll let you know.”
“How long?”
“I’ll push it through as fast as I can. Hopefully, not more than a day.”
Jenny nodded, hefted her purse over her shoulder and started to rise. Then some impulse made her turn back. “Tell me about the accident.” Her voice was soft but steady.
“Perhaps it would be better–”
“No. I don’t think so.” Jenny sank back into the chair. “It’s still so unreal.” She looked away, then back. “Maybe because I want it to be. I don’t know.”
Again, she paused and looked down at her hands that were tightly clasped in her lap. Then she let her eyes drift back to the detective. “I don’t even know where…it happened.”
“Out on 720. West of town.”
Jenny took a moment to consider her next question. “Were they speeding?”
“It appears so.”
Jenny listened as the detective described the distance from where the car hit the deer and where it impacted on the concrete drainage pipe in the culvert and tried not to picture what it must have been like for Michael.
The detective finished the narrative with, “To have sailed that far, they had to have been going at a pretty good rate of speed.”
“I see.” She dipped her head and took a deep breath. The explanation was so crisp. So clinical. But maybe that was better than trying to put any kind of words to what her son might have suffered.
She bit her lower lip hard to fight off a wave of tears.
“I know it doesn’t make it any easier,” the detective said. “But it was quick.”
Jenny nodded and took another deep, shuddering breath. Then she met his gaze. “Thank you.”
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