"I know you're the boss," I say. "So I can't tell you to take time off. But if that will help--"
"Hell, no. Working helps. I'll be in tomorrow. Tonight, I just ... Yeah, I should go." He walks to the door, and as he leaves, he says, quietly, "I suck at this part, too, detective," and before I can reply, he's gone.
Day two of mourning. It is only now, when something goes wrong, that I realize exactly how efficiently this town usually works. Every day, I join the same neighbours walking to work. We pass the lumberyard, and it's already abuzz with activity. At morning break, I will walk to the bakery and get my cookie. The
varieties may change, but it will always be warm from the oven at 10 a.m. I can grab a coffee, too, freshly brewed, and I'll linger a few minutes and chat with Devon and Brian, the couple who run the bakery. They're my equivalent of the morning paper. No gossip for those guys--just the news. After I get back to the station, Kenny will pop by to check on our wood supply for the stove. And so it goes.
We don't ever run out of wood because Kenny got busy or the local supply is low. I don't ever miss out on my cookie because one of the guys stayed home sick or just didn't feel like baking that morning. Everything runs perfectly and predictably.
When you think about it, that's amazing, given all the moving parts required. Something as simple as getting a sandwich at lunch means that the greenhouse workers must bring the produce to the shop that morning and Brian must bake the bread and the butcher must fillet the salmon ... the list goes on. In the city, those parts are interchangeable. No tomatoes at the usual supplier? Grab replacements from elsewhere. Employee phones in sick? Call someone else. Salmon went bad? Substitute corned beef. That isn't possible here. Yet the town runs like clockwork.
Today, the clock is broken.
I don't see my usual neighbours on the way to work. Kenny doesn't come by. The bakery has cookies, but they're peanut butter because those were Abbygail's favourite, and I would feel like a fraud eating them. I already feel like one.
I mourn the girl in that photo. The girl who kept that dingy stuffed animal and cheap tin necklace. The girl who had a crush on the sheriff. The girl who encouraged her boyfriend to go after someone he wanted more than he wanted her. The girl who survived hell down south, came up here, and made a new life for herself.
That's what people do in Rockton. Make new lives. But for Abbygail, it wasn't about having fun with a new persona. It was about putting a shattered world back together. About becoming the person she should have been. To do that at such a young age takes incredible strength. She clawed back her birthright--the right to be a capable, independent young woman--and she should have left this town, gone back down south, and lived the kind of life that, in a just world, she would always have had. But someone took that away from her. The place that gave back her life also stole it away.
I'm furious for her. Outraged for her. And I mourn her. But I don't really have that right, do I? I'm surrounded by people who knew her and are in genuine pain at her passing. All I have is a photo and a stuffed toy and a tin necklace and second-hand memories. So I have no right to mourn. But I still do. Quietly and on my own, because that's how I spend my day. Being the clock. Being that one functioning piece of Rockton that keeps the rhythm and does her job. My job is solving this crime. Avenging Abbygail.
So I work. All day. Into the night.
It's dark out now. I'm standing looking at notes I've tacked up--easy enough to do when the station walls are made of wood. I'm brainstorming connections when Anders comes in. He grabs a beer from the icebox, walks up behind me, and says, "You need a whiteboard."
"I can't imagine that'd be easy to get on the plane."
"Ask Eric. He'll get you one."
I shake my head and continue mulling over the pages.
"Speaking of getting stuff from the boss, do you need anything?"
"Unless it's urgent, I'm leaving him alone."
"Let me rephrase that. Can you find something you need from him?"
I turn to Anders.
"He's kinda stuck with Beth," he says. "She needs the support, but..." He shrugs and eases back onto the desk. "Beth can be a bit ... hover-y, if that's a word. She's worried about Eric, how he's dealing with this, and for him, that's a little..."
"Suffocating?"
"Exactly. He's there because it's the right thing to do, and he knows she's in pain..."
"But he could use a break?"
He nods. "I could take him something--minor trouble in town--but Beth won't appreciate me bugging him with the trivial shit. You're the detective on Abbygail's case. She can't argue with that."
"I'll see what I can do."
FORTY
The moment I set foot in Beth's house, I know we should have rescued Dalton sooner. It's not Beth herself. She's grieving, and as a friend, Dalton wants to help. But there's an oppressive air in the house that would indeed suffocate him. An air of inactivity, of pressure to stay in one place. Dalton might spend hours on the back deck, but his brain is busy. Here, he's stagnant in every way, sitting in a chair, gripping the arms, like a boy at an elderly aunt's, counting down the minutes to his escape.
When I walk in, he's on his feet so fast I cringe with guilt. Last night, he'd tried to linger at the station. Hinted he'd appreciate a reason to stay. I should have paid more attention.
"You need something, detective?" he says, with such eagerness that it drives the guilt wedge deeper.