Page 10 of The Darkest Chase

When the hell did I wind up being coffee boy?

When I first signed on with Redhaven PD, Chief Bowden showed up every morning with coffee for everyone—jolly, welcoming, always swinging into the backroom belly-first with a cupholder in one hand. He’d grin like a Cheshire cat as he handed out everyone’s orders on his way to his little corner office.

Black coffee with just a dab of sugar for Captain Grant Faircross.

A half-milk, half-coffee, all sugar diabetic monstrosity for Lieutenant Lucas Graves.

A sweetened vanilla latte for our dispatch officer, Mallory.

Black with Irish crème, no sugar, for me.

Cinnamon chocolate cappuccino for Officer Henri Fontenot, unless he was just on his way out as the chief came in. Then he’d end his nightly on-call shift with a steaming cup of chamomile tea on the chief’s dime.

How do I know all this?

Because I’m the poor bastard filling those orders now.

All because our jolly, bumbling chief has turned sullen and withdrawn lately—when he bothers to show up at the office at all.

If we’re going by rank or tenure, this should be Henri’s job.

I’ve been here longer and I outrank him by a smidge as a junior sergeant, while he doesn’t have any real title besides officer. Even so, that smooth-talking Cajun already wheedled his way out of coffee duty by reminding everyone he got the short end of the stick with night shift in the most boring town in North Carolina.

Nothing usually happens after dark besides the odd coyote running through town or summer kids stirring up misdemeanors.

That’s why I’m walking out of Red Grounds and into the morning light, carrying a cardboard cupholder with five steaming paper cups printed with the café’s logo.

I’m the last one in to work. I always am.

Technically, it’s a medical exemption, though there’s nothing in my medical history that requires coming in later in the morning. The excuse lets me use my morning hours as I see fit. Walking my dog. Hiking the woods.

Making a few phone calls.

And what I learned during this morning’s phone calls left me pretty fucking pissed.

That brick of cocaine we recovered when we arrested Culver Jacobin for the attempted murder of Delilah Graves—formerly Delilah Clarendon before she went and married Lucas—was a key piece of evidence in an ongoing case.

We’d followed protocol. Turned it over to the FBI to poke at with a few other alphabet agencies. Forensic analysis showed this particular cocaine sample was a dead match for the drugs plaguing the east coast over the last decade, far north of Redhaven.

Proof that the drug epidemic that’s been escalating every year—and taking more lives along with it, stealing folks from their families, stealing from me—can be traced right back to this nowhere town.

So close.

I was so fucking close.

Yet somehow, every last lab sample wound up destroyed in a freak accident.

Coincidentally, right before the forensic analysts verified all their notes.

Then the rest of the entire brick of coke disappeared from evidence lockup.

Clerical error, my ass.

This was a classic cover-up.

A lot like how Culver Jacobin’s and Ulysses Arrendell’s ‘suicides’ in prison were a cover-up, too. The wealthiest family in Redhaven—hell, in all of North Carolina—has a vested interest in burying investigations. They also have all the money in the world to make damn sure it happens.

They’ve also set me right back to square one, putting me in one hell of a mood.

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