Rough Country: A gripping crime thriller Read online

  Rough Country

  TJ Brearton

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  2. Day One

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  11. Day Two

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  17. Day Three

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  21. Day Four

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  25. Day Five

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  INTO DARKNESS

  Preview INTO DARKNESS

  We hope you enjoyed this book

  Also by TJ Brearton

  Acknowledgments

  Rights Info

  For Eric M. Green

  Prologue

  The trees moved in and out. Pulsing slowly, as if breathing. The night sky swirled above, the stars smearing off into trails. Kasey wiped her mouth and spat. She waited for any more upheaval from her insides. Keeping her head down, she tried to pull herself together. Focus. Tonight was an important night. Maybe the most important of her life, and here she was alongside the road, sick to her stomach, unable to sense what was even real anymore.

  The headlights coming fast down the road – were they real? They left long white trails, bigger than the stars, as the vehicle pulled over. The crunch of grit beneath the tires was very loud, almost sensate – she could feel each tiny rock and granule of dirt pop out from beneath the pressure of the tire rubber.

  “Hey? Where do you think you’re going?”

  A male voice. Angry, but measured. Full of rage and violence.

  “You can’t go anywhere.”

  Kasey’s heart started hammering. She had to get out. She couldn’t let anyone pull her back in – she’d come too far.

  When she heard sounds of fighting – a punch, a grunt, boots scraping against the asphalt – she ran. She ran across the road and into the park.

  Not much of a park. Not the kind with swings and slides, but old mossy picnic benches, everything overgrown. The pine trees stretched up to the sky, swaying in the cool evening breeze. They made knocking sounds, creaking noises. She ran through them, past them, leaping over slithering ground vines, skirting the clutches of grasping bushes. She ran until her chest felt like it was going to explode. She willed herself clearheaded: she knew this area. Knew the trails. The bridge across the creek led deeper into the forest. It was dark, but maybe there was still hope.

  Only, everything was writhing with life. The dark shapes surrounding her twisted and grew and shrank back again. The burble of the creek stayed in her head, the sound getting louder, like static turned up on a radio, instead of fading as she left it behind.

  The smells bloomed in her nose: the tannic water, the coppery-acidic pine, a perfume of wildflowers – lavender – on the wind. Her feet slammed and her arms pumped. She was an engine, burning hot, racing in the red.

  But she wasn’t alone. Kasey risked a glance behind her. One of the dark shapes was manlike, pursuing her along the trail, over the roots, slapping away the branches in its way.

  It howled for her: “Kaseeeey!”

  She cried out – a piercing, anguished yell – then felt the tears stinging her eyes. But she wasn’t giving up. She was going to make it through these woods and to the other side. To freedom. Real freedom, and for the first time.

  Spiderwebs spread across her face. Branches clawed at her arms. Was she still on the trail? Her feet crunched beneath her – the dead leaves from last autumn – had she gone off the path?

  “Kaseeeeey! I’m gonna getcha, girl…”

  Almost playful, like he was enjoying this. Like it was just a little game they were up to. Maybe, to him, it was. His object was to catch her. To never let her leave. To never let her speak to anyone again. Not now.

  She was suddenly sprawling – tripped on a root or a tangle of brush. It felt like she fell forever, into a black hole. Kasey groped blindly as she plummeted, seeking any hold. When she felt the ground beneath her, it smashed every last puff of air from her lungs. She scrambled to get back to her feet, struggling to pull in a breath, succeeding only in a shrieking wheeze.

  “Kasey…”

  Not much more than a whisper now; he was right behind her. His silhouette was closing in, bleeding like ink, shapeshifting as it enclosed around her.

  She felt the sickness rise in her again, but there was no time for that.

  Run!

  Kasey got moving and kept moving. Even when the monster snagged the back of her shirt, even when his hand closed around her shoulder, she dreamed she kept moving. Kept surging into the tumbling, spinning forest. Toward a light at the far end of the branches and bramble. Toward a new life, a lasting freedom.

  The muscles in her legs were still clenching, her arms twitching back and forth as if she had forward momentum. He put her down on the ground, down on her back. His face, just enough light to see it – his face circulated like paint swirled in a can, colors and shapes blending clockwise. Then it stopped; it stabilized long enough for her to see him smile.

  “Oh, Kasey…”

  And his hands closed around her throat.

  1

  Damage control

  MacKinnon would you have done things differently?”

  No answer.

  “Reed? You just said you would have done things differently.”

  “I did?”

  “Just a minute ago. You said if you could do it over again… What did you mean? Did you mean your whole life? Or just those couple of years during your deployment?”

  Reed came out of the darkness and chaos of the past. First, he focused on the therapist. Really tried to see him. Then he looked at the office: the bookshelves with the self-help bestsellers, the three succulent plants lined up on the windowsill overlooking the big field beyond the barracks, the Chinese calendar on the wall – the kind you got for free with takeout.

  He said, “I read a Stephen King book when I was over there.”

  The therapist drew a breath through his nose, as if marshalling patience. “Which book?”

  “It was, ah, Dreamcatcher.”

  “What did you think?”

  “Yeah, I enjoyed it. But I’d be reading and my phone would keep ringing.”

  When he didn’t elaborate, the therapist prompted him. “Why was your phone ringing? For your job, you mean? You were a kind of troubleshooter in the Navy, is that right?”

  Reed studied a fingernail chewed to the nub. “It was like a constant state of damage control.”

  “That’s a tense situation.”

  The therapist was named Crane. Like the TV sitcom guy from the ’90s. Didn’t look like the guy, though. His face was rounder, his hair grayer. He said, “So – can you talk a little bit about what you would have done differently? If you could go back, what would you change?”

  Reed felt the familiar contraction. It happened in his gut – but kind of everywhere, too. A tightening of the whole body.

  Probably adrenaline. Because it angered him to talk about it.

  Why?

  Because if he talked about it, he might get emotional. It
might hurt.

  Anger was a defense mechanism.

  See? Maybe therapy was working after all.

  Crane said, “When you’re talking about doing it over again, you’re thinking about your family. Is that a fair guess? You’re thinking about your daughter. About what happened around the time of your deployment. Would I be right about that?”

  Steady… Reed thought. Hold steady…

  “What’s the insertion point?” he asked.

  “Sorry?”

  “What point am I starting over from? You said go back, start over. From what point? When I first met with a recruiter? Or before that? When?”

  It helps to be literal. The more literal, the better. Relentlessly logical.

  “Before that. Let’s say you find yourself back there, before the recruiter,” Crane said.

  “Okay. So right after 9/11.”

  Crane glanced at the clipboard balanced on his knee. “Right… You enlisted in 2002.”

  “You’re asking if I would enlist again? Knowing what would happen?”

  “You said you’d do things differently. I’m trying to understand what you mean.” Crane looked like he might be getting worried that he was pushing too hard. “Listen, let’s just look back from here. Okay? Forget actually going back. Forget the insertion point. Just look back at your former self and think about what you would do differently. And forget whether or not you’d enlist. Ask yourself instead if you would still marry Jessica. If you still would have taken that on.”

  “All right,” Reed said after a moment.

  Crane’s eyebrows went up when Reed fell silent. “But I really think you should answer. Would you trade away those years you had? So you wouldn’t have to feel the pain you’re feeling now?”

  Can you answer? Huh? Come on – man up.

  His chest hardened and his eyes began to sting. He didn’t know where to rest his gaze and looked at the floor, then out the window, that he might not see her little face.

  Baby girl.

  But was it her face anymore? Really? Or just the idea of her face? Her pretty, six-year-old face?

  “Take it slower,” Crane repeated, nodding with encouragement.

  Take it slower… Why don’t you prescribe me something? Make it go away.

  But Crane wasn’t a shrink; he was a psychologist. A treater of damaged veterans. Drug-free.

  Reed took a shuddering breath and hastily wiped his eyes. “You know… Do we have to do this?”

  Resist. Don’t go into it.

  “I mean because I… just because I say something like ‘I would do it differently’ – why do we have to get in there with a pickaxe and a shovel? People just say things like that. You know? It doesn’t mean anything. People just say they would do things differently. It’s an expression. Right? Aren’t there things you would do differently?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Certainly,” Reed repeated. He was tense, and getting tenser, and feeling bad about it. Compound guilt, gotta love it. He glanced at his watch. Still ten minutes left. Maybe he was just prolonging things by being here. Running on some false expectation that one of these therapists with their sympathetic eyes was going to cure him.

  There was no cure for this. He knew it; everybody knew it. Expectations were just resentments waiting to happen.

  “I’ve gotta get going,” he said, standing up. “I gotta get ahead of some work today.”

  There was no work to get ahead of.

  “I understand,” Crane said, understanding exactly.

  Reed looked around, forgetting what he’d come in with. His gun was in the car. Badge was in his wallet, wallet was in his back pocket, phone was in the case clipped to his belt. He smoothed out his pants and then started for the door.

  “Reed?”

  Hand on the knob, he turned. “Hmm?”

  The therapist smiled softly. “You’re making progress.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Listen. All right? You’re a forty-five-year-old veteran of war. You’re a death investigator for the New York State Police. And you’re a survivor of your own child. That’s a lot all by itself. The fact that you’re standing there, that you’re coming here, going through these steps – that’s what makes you a hero. Every day.”

  Reed said, “All right.”

  And then he left.

  Day One

  the body

  “Raleigh?”

  A man’s voice.

  Reed Raleigh glanced at the bedside clock. Six thirty a.m. He wiped his mouth, licked his lips. “Yeah?”

  “You get a haircut yet?”

  “No.”

  “Shave the beard?”

  “It’s where I store extra food.”

  The caller was J. T. Overman, longtime investigator riding his last year to retirement as a supervisor. “Listen, I got a thing.”

  Reed sat up, swung his legs out of the bed. “Okay…”

  “Teenaged girl. Found in the woods just up from Elliston. You know it?”

  “Ah. Maybe. That’s Stock County? Way up there?”

  “The HQ in Ray Brook is down a guy. They called me, asked if I could spare anyone from Major Crimes. You’re it.”

  Reed stretched and let out an inadvertent groan.

  Overman said, “Body was found by a woman out walking her dog. She dialed 911, a trooper stopped, took a look, called the back room.”

  “And?”

  “They said there’s some display on the body. Cuts on the stomach, maybe made with a razor blade. There’s a lot of blood, so it’s hard to tell what it is. And could be postmortem, or might’ve been done while she was alive. Death looks like manual strangulation.”

  Overman seemed to be waiting for Reed to answer.

  Reed put the phone on speaker and dropped it on the bed. As he spoke, he found his pants and pulled them on. “Okay. Tell ’em it’ll take me about an hour and a half to get there.”

  “Take the van.”

  Another grunt as he pulled on his socks. “That thing?”

  “You don’t want to put the miles on your Mustang. Probably be a lot of ground to cover.”

  The van. Cripes.

  “I’m on my way,” Reed said.

  Seventy-four minutes later, he was pulling off the road near signs for Mandalay Park in the tiny hamlet of Carmen, New York. State and county police vehicles choked the road’s narrow shoulder. A fire policeman guarded the orange cones in the road, placed there for traffic. Out here, though, there wasn’t much of that.

  Another cop, in plainclothes, was talking to the TV people a little further down. Good. Reed avoided reporters unless there was a strategic interest in getting out information.

  What would you have done differently?

  Yesterday’s therapy session was stuck in his head like a skipping record. He managed to push it aside as he closed the van door – a conversion van, Ford Transit; a tall, white, space-age thing they had the Major Crimes guys use because you could stick a small lab inside – and he walked down into the forested area.

  The “forested area” was technically a park, but the kind that consisted of a few tall pines and a couple of mossy picnic tables. A walking trail fed into the woods beyond.

  The plainclothes guy was probably Bureau of Criminal Investigation. He saw Reed, but remained with the reporters. Good again. It was always better to see things for yourself first before you got someone else’s version.

  This was three years’ experience talking, anyway. Not much, but something. And he had Overman sharing all the pearls of wisdom, too – you had to count that.

  The first cop Reed ended up encountering was a trooper who came down out of the deeper woods on the other side of a babbling brook. She crossed a small log bridge, caught her breath and asked, “You Raleigh?”

  She pronounced it, as many people did, Raw-lay.

  “Yes ma’am, Reed Raleigh,” he said, emphasizing the Rally. Not that it mattered. Just habit.

  The trooper extended her hand. “L
ouise MacKinnon.”

  “Pleasure.”

  After the handshake, MacKinnon checked out the BCI guy over on the road and asked Reed, “You want to wait for Pyle?”

  “I’ll go back in with you if it’s all right. Have a look.”

  “Okay. It’s this way.”

  They crossed back over the bridge and he followed her up the path. Threaded with tree roots, but well worn. Wild ferns were an almost iridescent green; spring had exploded in the North Country over the past week. Gradually, then suddenly – that’s what people said about spring in the Adirondack Mountains. And the morning was cold enough that Reed could see his breath as he spoke.

  “The woman who found the body?”

  “We got her statement, of course.” MacKinnon was on the heavy side and breathed hard as she walked. Probably she’d been going back and forth from the crime scene to the road for a couple of hours now. “Said she didn’t touch anything, didn’t move anything, saw no one else. Saw no one on the way in or on the way out, and there were no vehicles parked on the road shoulder but hers. We would have kept her here for you, but she’s a teacher over at the school. She had to go to work, and we had her statement, knew where to find her, so…” MacKinnon seemed to wait for his approval.

  “Ah, that’s… what’s the school called?”

  “Eastern Adirondack. They call it EAC.”

  Trooper MacKinnon kept her back to him as she followed a curve in the trail. They were now running parallel to the road, only you couldn’t see it, not really. Just a glimpse here and there of the vehicles in the distance, the flashing lights.