Randy, for believing in me and supporting my dreams, even when that means you must keep wearing dress clothes and fighting traffic while I’m at home telling stories in my PJs. Thanks for loving me and ensuring that our three daughters didn’t starve during deadline mania and, let’s admit it, most of the other times, as well. You are my hero.
A special thanks to Officer David Willett, of the Michigan State Police, for patiently answering all my questions, even the strange ones; and to my dear friends Angela Armstrong, for inspiring me through your own true-life romance with a hunky police hero, and Cindy Thomas, for your constant support and superior country-music-festival matchmaking. As always, I would like to thank the real heroes in law enforcement, those who every day don the uniform with dignity and accept the duty and risk of protecting the rest of us. May God go with you all!
Contents
Another day, another death. A continual supply of senseless carnage. Solutions buried deeper than the corpses fallen by their own hands.
Jamie Donovan squeezed his eyes shut and took several gulps of dank air to slow the pulse pounding like hi-hat cymbals in his ears. He would give anything for the pummeling inside his head to let up, even if the deluge pelting his hoodie refused. But he couldn’t keep pacing in the frigid early April rain outside Casey’s Diner like a despondent person. Did he want someone to call the police on him?
So, he yanked open the door and ground his molars as the wind caught it and clanged those obnoxious bells against the glass. He stomped inside and wrestled the door closed. Rain dripped off his coat and puddled on the mat. As if to punctuate his misery, water trickled from his hood to his nose. He brushed it away with a soggy sleeve.
Why had he agreed to come at all? The answer to that was clear, even before nearly a dozen expectant faces turned to him from the line of tables on the far wall. If he hadn’t at least made an appearance at the diner tonight, his fellow Michigan State Police troopers would have known he was not okay after the events that occurred during his shift. And they’d have had proof that he’d lied when he said he was. How was he was supposed to fake normalcy when the usually delicious scents of frying bacon, cinnamon and fresh-baked somethings were rolling his insides like six-foot swells trapping a boat on Lake Michigan?
“Whoa there, Hercules!” Sergeant Vincent Leonetti called out.
The others laughed the way they usually did at Vinnie’s jokes, but the sound fell flat. Everyone was trying too hard. They all thought he was just sensitive to the type of case he’d investigated tonight. Weak-stomached even. If they only knew. But because they seemed to need him to pretend, Jamie pushed back his hood and started toward the table.
Suicide attempt. Why did they call them attempts? Like a gymnast trying out an amazing, double-twist dismount. That guy’s effort wasn’t an attempt, anyway. It was a frigging success, with blood spatter like a Jackson Pollock painting on the living room wall to prove it.
Jamie had been too late. Again.
Though