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CHAPTER 2
Greta Havorsford jolted awake the instant her alarm started playing “Oklahoma.” She wasn’t from Oklahoma, nor did she have any fondness for the state. She had only visited there during travel for sports. Yet after testing other melodies, she found that this song from the well-known musical consistently roused her the fastest with its annoying optimism, and she had transferred the tune to the clock via a USB port from her cell phone.
Unfortunately, waking at distasteful hours came with her job as county deputy sheriff. Rising so early would have been more tolerable if the calls were something out of the ordinary, something “interesting.” Although traffic accidents, domestic violence, burglaries, and drunk and disorderly were serious, they were routine. When an accident occurred, any living victims would be
attended to and the same with the nonliving, though at a lower priority; the scene would be recorded, witnesses questioned, traffic controlled, and eventually reports written. Everything was already choreographed by standard operating procedures: SOPs.
She groaned, rolled in her bed, picked up the phone, and punched receive.
“Yeah.”
“Greta. It’s Alex Boylan from Lincoln.”
“Yeah,” she replied groggily. “What’s up?”
Boylan was a deputy sheriff in the next county south. His patrol area covered the northern part of Lincoln County, while hers was southernmost Tillamook County. Having adjacent patrol districts, they’d often interacted since she’d taken her position. Overlapping and adjacent jurisdictions could get complicated, despite formal arrangements and attempts at cooperation by county sheriff departments, the city police of towns large enough to have their own departments, and the Oregon State Police. Interpersonal contacts often provided the best grease.
Such was the case between her and Boylan, a ten-year veteran of the Lincoln County Sheriff Department, married with two kids. He had reached out to Greta during her first few months of trying to gain her footing right out of college. They coordinated on cases that overlapped the two counties and helped each other out as needed and whenever possible. Greta had twice had dinner with his family. Susan Boylan was cheerful and fully content with her life as wife, mother, and part-time florist. Greta, in perverse moments, wished she could hate her.
“A Coca-Cola driver came into the Lincoln City Police Department and reported a body at the county line, right at the ‘Welcome to Lincoln County’ sign. It routed to us because it’s in our jurisdiction and to me to go check out. The driver thinks the body is on our side of the line, but I thought you might like to come on down, too.”
As Boylan’s words registered, she snapped to attention and tried prying her eyes open.
“A body? Some hitchhiker or what?”
“Assuming there is a body, and it’s not just some animal,” stated Boylan. “From the driver’s report of the smell, it’s been there a while. We’ll have a better idea what happened once we examine the body.”
Greta, now fully conscious, sat up in bed. “Okay. I’ll meet you there.”
She put the phone down and squinted at the digital clock: 3:32 a.m. She’d gotten almost five hours of sleep, so why did it feel like she’d just dozed off? Still . . . a body was a body. It was the most exciting thing that had happened on the job in months.
She steeled herself, threw off the covers, and hustled barefoot to the open bedroom window. Being buried under warm layers, with her head poking out and inhaling cool damp air rich in smells of forest and sea, made for hard sleeping and pleasant dozing until time to emerge.
She shut the window, went into the bathroom to throw water on her face, and made quick use of the commode. Then she padded back into the bedroom, hurriedly pulled off her bright pink cotton pajamas, and grabbed a clean uniform out of the closet. Heavy socks, underwear, uniform, boots. She fastened her side braids into a bun at the back of her head, so the hat would fit. She settled her utility belt containing her Glock pistol, ammo clip pouch, flashlight, handcuffs, utility knife, pouch with disposable gloves, and work cell phone around her waist. Her heavy jacket and her hat provided the final touches. From answering the phone to ready to roll took eight minutes.
As usual, Greta appraised herself in the mirror. She saw a tall, strong-looking young woman of twenty-three years, medium brown hair, brown eyes lighter than most and a distinguishing feature. Not an attractive woman but healthy. She had always been tall. She remembered noticing this fact somewhere around age seven. On her twelfth birthday, an uncle measured her as six feet. She had towered over classmates, which was an endless source of comments from those children. Some were meant to be humorous, though too many were deliberately cruel. By that age, she had picked up a hated nickname—“Flamingo”—based on her height, long limbs, and awkward gait, as her body temporarily outgrew coordination.
Neither parent seemed cognizant of the effect her size had on Greta. She often suspected, correctly or not, that they were a little embarrassed by a middle daughter who was so different from the other two. Her sisters had inherited their mother’s height and features. In contrast, Greta seemed to have inherited mostly her father’s genes. He was tall and somewhat homely, yet a kindly man with seemingly endless patience with his wife, his daughters, and the world in general. Greta adored him, and he doted on her. She often wondered whether he paid special attention to her because of guilt that she resembled him, in both height and facial features. What she had inherited from her mother was a trait she regretted—her mother’s tongue—although in Greta’s case, it was more a tendency to be sarcastic, instead of nagging. This natural tendency resurfaced if she wasn’t careful—often fomented by anger or irritation.
She practiced frowning in the mirror for the intimidation factor. She looked imposing . . . for a woman. A giggle spoiled the effect, as usual.
With the house lights turned off, she got into her sheriff’s utility vehicle and set her hat on the passenger seat. Department protocol required locking the rifle and the shotgun in the house each night, and she did the first couple of months. After that, they stayed in the stand-up rack in the cab. Just one of the many insights she’d picked up from other deputies, as she learned the difference between official procedures and reality.
Droplets of heavy mist coated the windshield as soon as she exited the garage. She checked to be sure the garage door had closed and locked. It had a nasty habit of getting almost shut and then reopening, signaling to the world that no one was home. Rain made this happen more often.
Windshield wipers on, she drove out onto Barefoot Lane, Cape Kiwanda Drive, over the Nestucca River bridge, along Brooten Road through what passed for downtown Pacific City, and onward a couple of miles inland to meet Highway 101. There, she turned on her flashing lights and sped up to ten miles over the limit, heading south toward the county line sixteen miles away. She resisted using the siren because it wasn’t an emergency, and she didn’t want to wake anyone unnecessarily. She didn’t need the flashing lights either, but why not use one of the perks of the job?
Hardly any traffic was on the roads this time of the night. In another couple of hours, people driving to work would create what passed for commuter traffic in this area, meaning a vehicle every minute or so.
The weather alternated between rain and mist, as if undecided. More mist as she drove south, then more rain as 101 turned inland at the coast settlement of Neskowin and climbed upward of six hundred feet into the forest. After she left Neskowin, there were no more lights. She drove with only her headlights brightening the dark and lonely road ahead.
After a year of driving the Tillamook County roads, she anticipated the county line and slowed around the next turn. Two hundred yards ahead, she saw Alex’s vehicle parked on the west side of 101’s two lanes. He’d already put out cones and flares to slow traffic in both directions. It had taken Greta thirty minutes from the call to arrive.
She pulled in behind him, left her own lights flashing, and got out, settling her hat on her head. She walked toward Boylan. The drizzle/rain had let up, but fine droplets were refracting in their vehicles’ lights, white and red. There was no wind.
“Hi, Greta.” Boylan waited for her at the back of his vehicle.
“What’cha got, Alex?” She stopped next to him, and they shook hands. He was tallish, about six foot two, which made him only inch shorter than Greta, with a slender build. She had twenty pounds on him.
