Making It Right (Most Likely To #3)

“Everything else, which wasn’t much, I wrote in my log.”


Jo stood and walked Stan out. “I can’t thank you enough for helping out.”

“Did you get a lot out of the Fed training?”

Jo pictured the final simulation exercise, the praise from those who saw her in action. “I learned a thing or two.”

“Not sure why you thought you needed to go. You have a quiet town here.”

“Oh, I don’t know. There’s been a fair amount of media vans pulling into River Bend in the past couple years. Even small towns have their problems.”

“I suppose.”

“Thanks again, Stan.”

“Anytime, Jo.”

She sat down to her pile of mail and dug in. It was after seven thirty when she left the office and went to Sam’s to see the cement pond everyone was so up in their armpits about.

The rain had started in again, making the mess shimmer along with everything else on the road.

“That’s impressive,” she muttered as she assessed the parameters of the hole. A hole that was worthy of a small town’s gossip for months to come.

With her stomach telling her she hadn’t eaten since the sandwich she’d grabbed at the airport in DC, Jo stepped into Sam’s diner and sat on one of the many empty bar stools at the counter.

She knew the name to every face she saw in the place. Most greeted her with a hello or a welcome back. A few people who were too far away settled with a wave.

“Welcome home,” Brenda, the longtime waitress of Sam’s, greeted her. She lifted a coffeepot, and Jo shook her head.

“I need to sleep tonight.”

Brenda smelled the top of the pot, wrinkled her nose, and put it back on the warmer.

Jo didn’t bother with the menu she’d memorized in high school.

“What looks good tonight?”

Brenda set a glass of ice water beside her. “Pot roast. It’s Zoe’s recipe, and I think Sam finally has it down.”

Jo tilted her head. “Has Zoe approved?”

“She tests it every week, says if it gets any better, she’ll let Sam put her name on his menu under the dish.” Brenda chuckled. “Imagine that, Sam’s diner could have a dish. Even if it’s pot roast.”

“I haven’t had pot roast in forever. Bring it on.”

Jo’s phone buzzed in her back pocket. She fished it out to see Gill’s name lit up on her screen.

It was a text message. How was your flight?

Jo grinned . . . a silly schoolgirl grin, and promptly looked around the diner to see if anyone noticed.

Uneventful. She texted back.

And did your town fall apart without you?

Jo glanced out the window at the cones surrounding the massive hole in the street. A little.

Nothing you can’t handle, I’m sure.

She liked his praise, even if he had little to base it on. Isn’t it late there?

Not as late as last night. Some chick kept me up for hours.

Jo bit her lip, her fingers texting faster than when she was a kid.

Shame on her.

She should be spanked. Gill left a smiley face next to his words.

You’d have to catch me first, and I’d bet twenty bucks I’m faster than you.

A series of dot dot dots followed for the longest time. Jo looked around the restaurant again, didn’t see anyone watching her.

Challenge accepted.

Jo laughed, and Brenda looked up from where she was putting together Jo’s salad.

Good night, Gill.

He followed with, G’Night, Sweetness.

A dinner salad emerged in front of her. When she looked, Brenda grinned from behind the counter. “Must be good.”

Jo didn’t comment as she tucked her phone away and reached for her fork.

Even Sam’s dinner salad tasted better than before she’d left.

Brenda tapped her fingers on the counter. “I like that smile, JoAnne. I haven’t seen it in a while.”





Chapter Twelve




Gill looked up from his desk when he saw Shauna walk by. “Burton,” he said, catching her attention.

She doubled back. “Yeah?”

“Do you have those files on Jo’s case . . . her father’s case?”

Shauna regarded him with concern. “I do.”

“I’d like to take a look at them.” It was Monday, and they’d be working overtime in an effort to find the suppliers of a local high school in the grips of a heroin outbreak. The investigation went beyond the local police due to the number of seventeen-year-olds that were ending up dead. One of whom happened to be the nephew of a local congressman.

Looking at the Ward case would have to take place when he was at home, but he didn’t want it to get away from him.

“I’ll get them to you. Once you’ve read them, I’d like to go over a few things,” Shauna said.

“Do you see anything suspicious?”

Shauna didn’t look convinced. “Seems too cut-and-dry. Like someone put a stamp of approval on his case way too quickly, but I’m not convinced he was murdered.”

“You’re contradicting yourself.”

She walked away. “You’ll see.”

Gill turned his attention back to his computer and the maps of the high schools involved in his current case. Two of the largest public schools in Eugene took up the majority of cases, and it was starting to leak into the smaller private schools as well. You’d think it would be easier to find a link in a smaller setting, but these were privileged kids who didn’t talk, where the public school kids worked a little harder to gain notice and be popular. What Gill needed to do was get inside the heads of these kids. Problem was, it had been fourteen years since he’d walked the halls of a high school. The few friends of his that had kids had young kids, which didn’t help him.

He looked through the high school photos of the dead teenage kids.

They looked normal. Painfully normal.

Kids that should be out sneaking beer from their parents’ fridges or bumming a joint off a twenty-one-year-old.

Heroin didn’t fit.

Gill opened his search engine and requested facts on drug use outside of Eugene but still in the state. It would take time for the information to land in his inbox, so he clicked around to see how many high schools occupied the state of Oregon. It was a really long list.

He scrolled through, not really looking for anything, and found River Bend High. He clicked on the link. The decent size high school taught ninth through twelfth grades, with an average of two hundred students per year. The school collected kids from outside the town of River Bend, which kept the facility in an actual brick-and-mortar building instead of those portable excuses for schools that popped up everywhere.

Just for kicks, he clicked around the high school site, settled on the track and field page, where he paused.

Sheriff Ward, or Coach Ward, as she was labeled on the website, stood beside several students at some kind of meet. One of the alumni from River Bend was quoted on the page, saying, “Coach Ward doesn’t hear the words I can’t. When she’s not coaching us, she’s policing us, so it isn’t like we have a chance to say no.”