Idyll Fears Read online

  ALSO BY STEPHANIE GAYLE

  Idyll Threats

  Published 2017 by Seventh Street Books®, an imprint of Prometheus Books

  Idyll Fears. Copyright © 2017 by Stephanie Gayle. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Cover images © sbayram/iStock (snowstorm); iofoto/Depositphotos (road)

  Cover design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke

  Cover design © Prometheus Books

  Inquiries should be addressed to

  Seventh Street Books

  59 John Glenn Drive

  Amherst, New York 14228

  VOICE: 716–691–0133

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  WWW.SEVENTHSTREETBOOKS.COM

  21 20 19 18 17 5 4 3 2 1

  Names: Gayle, Stephanie, 1975-author.

  Title: Idyll fears : a Thomas Lynch novel / by Stephanie Gayle.

  Description: Amherst, NY : Seventh Street Books, an imprint of Prometheus Books, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017014990 (print) | LCCN 2017023092 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633883581 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633883574 (paperback)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural. | FICTION / Gay. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3607.A98576 (ebook) | LCC PS3607.A98576 I38 2017 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014990

  Printed in the United States of America

  For my father, Paul Vincent Gayle,

  who gave me my work ethic and my nose and who taught me

  silence is a tool (and a weapon)

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Wind chimes tinkled, their high, golden sounds all wrong on this chill December morning. My fingertips traced my jaw to check my shave. The coffeemaker sighed, its work done. I filled my thermos. Loose linoleum tried to trip me on my way to the window. Outside there was pearl-gray sky. Hell. I’d lived here long enough to recognize a snow sky. Snow days were busy. Car accidents, medical emergencies. Not to mention the local yokel antics. Two weeks ago, a fistfight broke out at Karp’s Hardware over the last snow shovel.

  I zipped my jacket. Stuffed my leather gloves deep in my pockets. The glassy sound of the wind chimes grew frantic. Strong wind outside. My phone rang. I paused at the door. It rang twice more. No one would care if I were late to the station. No one but my feral secretary, Mrs. Dunsmore. I picked up the white plastic receiver.

  “Get out of town.” The voice was pitched low and deep, verging on Darth Vader.

  “Or what?” My pulse leapt to the base of my throat.

  “We don’t want your kind here.” He broke into a coughing fit.

  “My kind?” The more he talked, the better my chances of identifying him.

  “Homo,” he said. “Queer.” He hung up.

  I dialed *69 and wrote down the caller’s telephone number. Flipped a page and checked my log. Second call from this number. Darth Vader didn’t know it, but he was in trouble. The log contained eight other numbers. Either most people in Idyll didn’t care that their chief of police was gay, or they were smart enough not to call him at home to complain. I grabbed my thermos and whistled my way to the car. Shrieks brought my eyes up. Kids, running.

  The car radio announced that Idyll’s schools were closed, along with twenty others. The weatherman was excited. “This one could end up in the record books, folks. The worst of the storm will begin around 10:30 a.m., with visibility at less than a quarter of a mile.” Shit. We were in for it. I might have to call in the reserves. That meant overtime. The selectmen would rant. They rated safety well below meeting the annual budget. I backed out of my driveway slowly. My neighborhood was lousy with kids excited over the blizzard-induced three-day weekend. When I reached the end of the block, my radio squawked.

  The dispatcher called, “Four, 10-2.”

  Patrol car four answered. “Four, go ahead.”

  “Four, we have a 10-76.” He paused. “It’s a kid.”

  “Location?”

  “176 Spring Street.”

  Spring Street was a mile or so away. I could be there in minutes.

  “Um, what was that address again?”

  I knew that voice. Hopkins. A snowflake smacked my windshield, melting on impact. Dispatch repeated the address. Hopkins was lazy. Counting the days to retirement. Probably had been since he was a cadet. Some cops are like that. But even a shiftless hump like Hopkins could find a missing kid. He was a local, better suited to the job than me.

  Snowflakes fell lazily. Maybe this storm would fizzle out, like the last one. The police station’s parking lot was half full. My spot was at the building’s rear, my door parallel to the back stairs. The lazy clowns at the DPW did a poor job plowing. Last week I’d had to put cardboard under my rear tires.

  The station’s warmth was a shock after the cold. Nearby, I heard the soft snicker of crepe soles. Mrs. Dunsmore. She stood before me, her profile soft with age. Her nostrils flared. Her hand went to the silver crucifix she’d worn since they’d told her about me. I was tempted to tell her my grandmother, Rose, had owned one just like it. “Chief,” she said, her voice hoarse.

  I plowed forward. Her sigh was a gust at my back. I turned. “What?”

  “You’re late.” Great. The harpy wanted to scold me. “And we’ve got a situation.”

  “Gimme five minutes.” I couldn’t deal with her disapproving mug so early.

  My shining doorplate, Chief Thomas Lynch, was only a month old, though I’d been here almost a year. I reached for my phone. Punched in three digits. “Get me the address for this number.” I recited the one from this morning’s call.

  “Will do,” my part-time detective, Finnegan, promised.

  I sat in my chair, tented my fingers, and stared at the ceiling. The room smelled of burnt dust. The odor would last until late spring, when the heat was turned off. The phone rang. Outside call. I snatched the receiver up. “Chief Lynch.”

  “Chief, it’s Charles Gallagher.” Ch
arles co-owned the town’s candy store, Sweet Dreams, with his partner in all senses of the word, David Evans.

  “Good morning, Mr. Gallagher. How are you?”

  “Not well, I’m afraid. We’ve had a break-in at the store.”

  Mrs. Dunsmore walked in. I waved her out, mouthing, “Give me ten.” She scowled but left.

  He said, “I went to put up a sign saying we’re closed, what with the blizzard coming. Wanted to make sure the hatches were battened, so to speak. The back door was broken open.”

  “Cash register?” I asked.

  “Intact, but inside is a mess. There’s glass and candy everywhere, and there’s hate speech on the wall.”

  “Hate speech?”

  “Anti-gay.” Faint crunching sounds came through the phone. “It’s going to take forever to clean up this mess.”

  “You’re insured?” I asked.

  My phone lit up. It blinked and then disappeared. Mrs. Dunsmore had grabbed it. She’d been doing it more often, as if it were her job. Funny, given her feelings about me.

  He said, “Oh, of course we’re insured. It’s not that. I can’t believe that someone would do this.” He sounded confused. Shock, most likely.

  “I’ll send someone over, to take a statement and pictures. Don’t touch anything.”

  “You can’t come?” he asked.

  Burglaries weren’t my patch, and he wasn’t asking because it was my job.

  “Detective Finnegan will be over soon.”

  “Thanks, Chief.”

  He hadn’t called the main line. Maybe he worried our detectives wouldn’t be sympathetic. I hoped that wasn’t true, although Wright would walk six feet around the coffeepot, empty mug in hand, if I stood in its path. It shouldn’t have surprised me. Black guys are more homophobic than white guys.

  Finnegan was in the detectives’ pen. He wore a checked sports coat so loud I had to look away. Between his stubby fingers, he held a slip of paper. I grabbed it. An address: 20 Suffolk Street. “Good work. I need to know about cars registered to this address. Get the makes and plate numbers,” I said.

  “Okey doke.” He drank from a mug that read, “Feel Safe at Night. Sleep with a Cop.” He peered around me. “Lady D. is on the hunt for you.”

  “I know. She tried to pin me when I got in. Any idea what bee is in her bonnet?”

  “Nope.” Finnegan enjoyed an odd relationship with Mrs. Dunsmore. She gave him hell for smoking, his filthy desk area, and his wardrobe. He bared his nicotine-stained teeth at her and offered to make her the fourth Mrs. Finnegan. “Hey, when you see her, tell her I took the call and recorded the number,” he told me.

  “Huh?”

  He waved his hand. “She’ll know.”

  I said, “We got a situation up at Sweet Dreams.”

  He cocked his head. “Someone knocked over the candy store?”

  “Someone broke in and wrote hate speech on the wall.”

  “That’s no way to show holiday spirit.” He didn’t ask what kind of hate speech. “You hear about the storm? Should be a fun day.”

  I wished I shared his enthusiasm. On my way back to my desk, Mrs. Dunsmore planted herself in front of me. “Chief, half the crew is out.”

  “Half?”

  “They’re really sick. Not taking pre-holiday days.” I’d noticed the waste bins full of crumpled tissues and the coughs. I’d escaped contagion. Not being popular had perks. “This coming storm is a bad one,” she said.

  On a normal day, we could survive with a skeleton crew. Idyll, Connecticut, wasn’t plagued by crime. The snow-shovel fistfight had been the most exciting event until Mr. Gallagher’s call this morning. “Another thing. John wants you.”

  “John,” I said.

  “Miller.” She saw my confusion and grimaced. “On dispatch.” Mrs. Dunsmore was appalled that I didn’t immediately recognize every name in the station. We had three Johns, and I hadn’t lived here for a thousand years, unlike some people I could name.

  “Finnegan says he took the call and recorded the number,” I told her.

  “Good.” She walked away. So much for including me in their work.

  John Miller wore a green sweatshirt and a Santa hat. He was one of those people who decorated everything, including themselves, for the holidays. It was a wonder we weren’t best friends. “Chief.” He kept one ear cocked toward his panel. “I heard back from Hopkins.”

  “Missing kid. Yeah. I heard the call.”

  “His name is Cody Forrand. He’s six years old, and he’s still missing. I sent Klein and Wilson to help search. That leaves us down one unit.”

  Half the shift was out sick. “How long has Cody been missing?”

  He glanced at the big clock above his mounted phone. “Almost two hours. Oh, and another thing.” His Santa hat listed toward his left ear. “He’s got a medical condition. Something about not being able to handle cold weather.”

  I looked past him, out the window. The snow fell, the flakes like white bullets raining down. “Shit,” I said.

  John Miller nodded. His Santa hat tilted too far and slid onto the counter with a soft plop.

  The weatherman was on the radio, even more excited. “We’ve heard from folks in New Haven. They’ve got two inches already, and there’s plenty more to come. Expect decreased visibility and high winds. The governor is urging people to stay off the roads.”

  In a neighborhood of larger ranches, 176 Spring Street was a small home. Its door sported a faded wreath. No signs of our patrol cars. On the small lawn stood a plastic playhouse, its pitched roof covered in snow. I knuckled the front door. A man yanked it open. His anxiety rolled off him in waves, like heat.

  “Good morning, Mr. Forrand. I’m Chief Lynch.”

  He glanced past me and asked, “Did they find him?”

  “Not yet.” I stepped into the entryway. Hats, mittens, and scarves in bright crayon colors hung from pegs. The adults’ coats were visible only in small patches below.

  “Sorry, I’m Pete.” We shook hands. His fingers were cold. We walked inside. The living room floor was a minefield of action figures and half-dressed dolls. A bare fir tree was propped in the corner, no gift-wrapped boxes below. Christmas was two weeks away. Stockings were tacked to the wall, their flat, baggy forms cheerless. Smells assaulted me. Wet clothes. Burnt toast. Urine. Coffee. Above the TV, a family photo hung off-center. Dad posed behind son; and Mom, behind daughter, who was older than her brother. Cody had brown hair and eyes. He looked small for six, but the photo might be old.

  “This way.” He walked through the living room and into the kitchen. A petite woman stood near the wall-mounted phone. A girl, her hair in two dark braids, sat at the table, coloring. Breakfast remains cluttered the table and counters: loaf of bread, stick of butter, banana peel, cereal boxes, milk-filled bowls, and mugs.

  “Mrs. Forrand, I’m Police Chief Lynch. I’m here about Cody.”

  “He’s been gone over two hours! In this weather he . . .” She stopped, eyes on her daughter, unwilling to finish the sentence.

  The girl put her crayon down. Looked up at me. “Cody has CIPA.” Her eyes were light gray, her stare unblinking.

  “CIPA?” I asked.

  Mrs. Forrand tucked her hair behind her ear. “It’s a nervous-system disorder. Very rare. He won the genetic lottery. He can’t feel pain.”

  “He can’t feel pain?” I asked.

  She clucked her tongue. “It’s worse than it sounds. He’s broken four bones and burnt himself I don’t know how many times. It’s hard to teach him to be careful.”

  “Cody’s like a superhero,” the girl said. “He just doesn’t know when to quit.”

  “Where are the other police?” Mrs. Forrand asked, looking out the window.

  So they hadn’t reported in to the parents. Well done, Hopkins.

  “They’re searching. I’m sorry, but what is Cody’s problem with the cold?”

  Mrs. Forrand said, “He can’t regulate his temperature, and he d
oesn’t feel the cold like you or I would, so we have to set time limits for him, to keep him safe.”

  “What time did he leave the house?”

  “7:30. He was bouncing off the walls, excited by the snow day. He was supposed to be gone twenty minutes. When I called him inside, he wasn’t in the yard.”

  Mr. Forrand said, “I checked his friends’ houses. They hadn’t seen him. I walked around, calling his name. When I got back, he hadn’t shown, so Jane called the police. I went out again, ten minutes ago.” He glanced at the wall clock. “Hell. I should call work. Tell them I’ll be out all day.” He cleared his throat. “I thought we’d find him by now.”

  “He’s always had this condition?” I asked.

  Mrs. Forrand walked to the table. Picked up a cereal bowl. “Since birth.”

  Her husband said, “He wasn’t diagnosed until almost two years ago.” He raked his hand through his hair. “We didn’t understand why he didn’t cry when he got hurt. We thought he was this super tough kid. None of the doctors knew what was wrong.”

  “They thought we abused him,” his wife whispered. “Because of his injuries.”

  The girl piped up. “There’s only thirty-two kids like Cody in the whole country.”

  Mrs. Forrand carried the bowl to the sink. Her blond hair needed washing. Her eyes had dark circles. She looked like she’d had more than a rough morning. Drugs?

  “Has Cody gone missing before?” I asked.

  “Why are you asking that?” She crossed her arms.

  “I wondered if maybe he had a hiding place we should check,” I said.

  She bit her lip, worked it between her small teeth.

  The girl stood up. “I can help look.”

  Her parents turned to her, ready to object.

  “I’m eight,” she said. “I’m not a baby. Besides, he’ll come if he hears me calling.”

  Her mother swatted the idea away with her hand. “No, Anna. Stay inside. The police are looking for him. He’ll be home soon.” Anna bit her lip, a mirror gesture of her mother’s.

  “Anna,” I said, “do you have any idea where Cody might’ve gone?”

  “Doug’s house, but Dad already checked there. Twice.”

  “Please,” Mrs. Forrand said. Her hands shook. “Please find him.”