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Prologue
Logan
Bernice’s voice crackled over the scanner as I turned into the dirt drive leading up to the rambler I called home. “Unresponsive male, corner of Sycamore and 3rd.”
Just my luck. With a heavy sigh I shifted into reverse and backed the police vehicle out onto N 22nd again to head back toward town. I had a bad feeling about this and not just because it was nearly 6 pm on Friday night. I was more than ready to go home and drink a cold one after working overtime all week. I usually didn’t mind giving up my free time to the Hideaway Hills police force, glad to have something to do with myself in the evenings since Phoebe had left. Nothing much ever happened in our tiny lakeside town anyway, and I’d grown used to spending nights at the station house after the day shift workers went home. I spent the time reviewing reports or going over the budget with a fine-tooth comb. But, given the events of this past week, I was beginning to think I’d grown complacent. This last week had been different out here on the Peninsula, and not in a good way.
Flipping on the flashers and siren, I sped down the winding one-lane street that snaked back and forth like the tail of a serpent around the side of the mountain, descending closer to sea level as I retraced my steps to the heart of town. I’d lived all my life in this remote place and still found it awe-inspiring as well as more than a little mysterious if I was being honest. My forefathers had been among the founders of Hideaway Hills, originally built as a trading outpost on the coast of the Pacific Northwest and then developed later into a logging town. Timber was still our main industry, thanks to our location deep in the rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula. In fact, most people didn’t even know Hideaway Hills existed, and I liked it that way. I’d always known I wasn’t cut out for big city living. But I suspected more went on out there in the darkness of the forest than I knew about, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
Pumping the brakes, I rounded another bend. I was probably driving too fast, but then again, I’d driven this same road more times than I could count. Still, more than one careless or drunk driver had met the Grim Reaper himself when one glance away from the road sent them hurtling over the edge of the cliff to the boulders that waited below.
The road began to level off and opened onto the town square where the original courthouse still sat at the far end of a small park. It was where seasonal festivals and outdoor gatherings often took place. Autumn had come early this year, and the lush green expanse was already dotted by falling orange and yellow leaves even though it was only the beginning of September. I sped past the red brick municipal building that housed the police station and jail and turned onto Sycamore, home to a variety of retail shops and family-owned eateries. Twilight had fallen over an hour ago, but the streetlamps were just now coming to life. I roared through the four-way stop at 4th and pulled up behind the open doors of an ambulance at 3rd where a small crowd was gathered on the sidewalk outside of Tiny Tim’s Tavern.
I climbed from my vehicle and jogged around it as two other squad cars came speeding from the other direction. The clutch of onlookers immediately parted to allow me through. Our town’s new paramedic, Ainsley Adams, was performing CPR on a man lying prostrate on the pavement. A gust of wind blew, whipping Ainsley’s red hair into a frenzy as she worked furiously but steadily. I took a step closer.
“Gus Wainwright,” I said aloud, recognizing the victim.
Next to me, Tiny Tim, a grizzly bear of a man at 6’6”, stroked his long gray beard with his right hand and steadied himself on his hand-carved wooden cane with the left. I’d been young when it happened, but I still remember the accidental timber fall that claimed his right leg below the knee as well as his career as a logger. He’d confided one night over mugs of brew that the doctors offered him a “fancy” prosthetic, as he put it, but he declined, saying he didn’t think it matched his vibe, whatever that meant. Instead, he chose a simple peg leg and from that point on, his favorite activity besides tending bar was telling the story of his accident in as many outlandish versions as he could dream up. In fact, just this past Monday, one of my officers came in still chuckling about how Tim had claimed Saturday night that while he was on the ground waiting for help to arrive, a UFO appeared and he was taken up into a spaceship by a bunch of aliens who performed some sort of advanced medical procedure that was the real reason he was able to survive the incident.
Tim met my gaze. “Think you should know I kicked Gus out of my tavern earlier tonight, Sheriff,” he advised. “He was drunk as a skunk and looking to start a fight as usual. One of my patrons found him out here about ten minutes ago.”
We were both familiar with Gus, a townie who typically spent his off hours, when he wasn’t working as a handyman, either frequenting bars or sitting behind the steel bars of a jail cell. He was known for rough housing and harassing pretty ladies when he got drunk, which was too often for everyone’s liking.
“Did anyone see what took place here?” I asked the crowd before kneeling to look over the ground more closely. There wasn’t any noticeable blood spatter and it didn’t appear Gus had sustained any visible injuries. “Did anyone follow him outside?”
Everyone responded in the negative. It figured.
“Want us to start taking statements, Sheriff?” asked Scott Barkley, joining us at the scene. He was my youngest and newest recruit, having recently completed his initial training.
“Go for it,” I directed, glancing toward his partner, Dean Stout, a seasoned officer I knew would keep Barkley in line. Stout nodded and removed a notepad and pen from the interior pocket of his jacket.
Two male EMT’s began setting up a stretcher at Gus’s side. I offered my assistance moving him carefully onto it so that Ainsley could keep working, trying my best not to notice her female curves which even the drab green scrubs she was wearing did little to hide.
“I’ll head to Mercy General when I’m done here,” I said as we lifted the stretcher with Gus into the back of the ambulance, catching Ainsley’s brief nod before she leaped inside, and the conveyance peeled away from the curb.
***
Two hours later, Barkley, Stout, and I had combed the neighborhood and interviewed as many people as we could find but still couldn’t locate a single witness to what had taken place outside Tiny Tim’s. The patron Gus had been arguing with earlier in the evening hadn’t left the pub, so there was zero chance the two men ever had an opportunity to exchange blows.
After sending Barkley and Stout back to the stationhouse to complete the incident report, I made my way to the hospital. I never cared for Gus Wainwright but that didn’t mean I wanted the guy dead. He couldn’t be much older than I was—early to mid-thirties at most.
I walked through the doors to the ER and was surprised to find Ainsley sitting in the waiting room by herself. Her back was to me, but I still knew exactly who she was by the coppery color of her hair. Damn redheads. I’d always been a sucker for them even though in my experience the stereotype held true that they were usually as bonkers as they were beautiful. Like my ex-wife, Phoebe, also a redhead, who brought home a terrarium one day after shopping at the home goods store, telling me she thought it would be the perfect complement to the newly enclosed porch we’d just had added on to the house. She spent the afternoon setting it up only to announce over dinner that it was a portal to the Faery realm and that she’d been claimed by the Fae Prince. I still have no idea how she managed to keep a straight face as she spoke. I’d barely been able to swallow my meatball, I was laughing so hard, and still remember the look in her eyes as she sadly apologized to me, saying that she cared for me as a person but needed to take her place on the throne of the Spring Court beside her fated mate.
When I woke up the next morning and she was gone, I figured the tale was just something silly she’d come up with to cover up the truth, which was that she’d met someone else. Given she never appeared in Hideaway Hills again, everyone assumed that was the case and she’d just run off with the guy. Luckily, the judge granted me a quickie divorce, and the first thing I did was take the terrarium and drop it off at the resale store. Hopefully, its new owners weren’t being visited by fairies, because if so, I might be in trouble.
“Any word?” I asked quietly, taking a seat in the chair beside Ainsley’s. She shook her head, worrying lines creasing the porcelain skin of her brow.
“I did everything I could, but I still couldn’t get a pulse,” she said, blinking away tears.
I reached over and grabbed her hand, giving it a squeeze. “I know you did. Frankly though, I’m surprised you’re still here. There’s no need for you to be. I’m assuming you weren’t acquainted with the victim since you’re still pretty new in town?”
She shook her head and sniffled. “No, I’d never seen him before now. But the clerk said there was no next of kin on file, so there wasn’t anyone they could call. I didn’t feel right leaving. Someone should care, right?”
At that moment, the doors opened, and Dr. Hiromi Lundin appeared, the petite doctor’s expression grim. I rose to greet her.
“Sheriff,” she said by way of acknowledgement.
“Did he make it?” I asked, even though I already sensed the answer.
