Chapter 4: A Disgust for Sham
November 3, 2018
Chloe fashioned herself a punk hell-raiser in her late teenage years, she of the blue hair, tats, drugs, and anger. In her mightiest of rages and lowest of funks, she felt as though she could destroy the world and flip off its smoldering ruin. There was no rule and no law she wouldn't break if that rule and that law didn't piss her off bad enough.
But it took Chloe until she was a twenty-four-year-old (somewhat) responsible adult to spend a night in jail. She was taken from the site of Justin's murder to the police station after midnight. They took her fingerprints and mugshot. They took her jacket, her belt, her shoes. They even took her glasses.
And they took the fucking watch.
The one small blessing that Chloe could rightfully call hers was that no one else shared Arcadia Bay's one women's cell with her that night. She passed Friday night into Saturday morning in a solitude broken only by the bored-looking officers on duty.
At nine AM, a tired and weathered-looking male officer came into the cell. He gave Chloe her glasses back and escorted her to an interrogation room down the hall. The officer stood by the door for twenty minutes until the investigating officer arrived, during which Chloe sat at the table and stared daggers into the two-way glass on the far wall.
The lead homicide officer was a lean man in his late-thirties: handsome and wearing a mustache in a way other men wore ceremonial swords at matters of state. He wore enough product in his slicked-back hair to lightly stain the collar of his navy blue button-up. He had the same kind of pale eyes that belonged to birds that descended from the sky upon field-mice in snowy plains.
Chloe didn't think this guy was a local. She'd know if he was.
"Chloe Price," the detective said. Not asking. Stating a fact.
"And your name is…?
"Jesus… H… Christ," the detective said. "Or it might as well be. Neither of us are going to save you."
Chloe remembered Rachel telling her that, should push come to shove, that one must never talk shit to a cop, and the amount of respect to show to an officer of the law went up exponentially with the severity of whatever crime they suspected one of.
There were some things Chloe and Rachel didn't see eye-to-eye on.
"Well, Detective Christ. As much as I'd just love to braid your hair and talk about boys, I'm going to have to need my lawyer here before I can do that."
"Why do you need a lawyer?" the detective asked. "You wouldn't have something to hide, now, would you?"
Chloe rolled her eyes. "Don't look at me like I watch TV, alright? We could talk about whether or not that Otters are gonna make it to state this year, and I'd still need my lawyer present. Anything I say or sign otherwise is done so under duress, and therefore inadmissible in an Oregon court."
The detective smiled and nodded. "You've done your homework. Do you have an attorney?"
Well, Chloe thought, he's got me there.
The detective sat at the table in the metal chair across from her. "You do realize if anything you say is inadmissible, then anything I say is inadmissible. It's a two-way street, you see."
The detective smiled a shark's smile, and Chloe sent up a Red Alert to the muscles in her face, ordering them not to show that pang of fear she felt.
"What we have here," the detective said, "is a dead man. Justin Williams. What we have here, is someone standing over the body. If you think we're gonna let that one go, you are sorely mistaken."
"That body was starting to stink," Chloe said. "You're telling me I shot Justin God knows when, and then came back for no apparent reason?"
"Y'know, they say murderers always return to the scene of the crime," the detective said. "You're asking me if you'd do something a murderer would do?"
The detective leaned in. "Girl, you are going to start eating shit, and you'll learn to love the t—"
The door to the interrogation room opened, and a young female officer who looked like she'd been psychically mauled by a bear poked her head in.
"Detective Finch?" the officer asked.
Finch, Chloe thought. File that one away somewhere.
"What the fuck, Davies?" Detective Finch asked, his sheen of predatory cool cracking irreparably.
"I'm sorry," the officer said, "but there's… someone here to see you.
"Alright," Finch said. "Stay here. Watch her."
Finch left, and Davies, the harried female officer came in, taking sentry by the door. Chloe listened to the mounting commotion outside the interrogation room. Finch started bellowing, but space and the walls obscured his words. But even through walls and feet of empty air, Chloe could detect an even female voice that could frost the Sahara. It was a voice that was… kinda familiar.
The mad opera outside culminated with Finch yelling, loudly and clearly: "YOU CAN'T GO IN THERE!"
The door opened, and a woman appeared. They had never been in the same circles, but Chloe could recognize her anywhere: honey-colored bangs over dark, carnivorous eyes that spelled doom and perdition to anyone who crossed their owner.
"Get up," Victoria Chase said. "We're leaving."
Chloe got her Parliaments out of her jacket and lit one, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose as she did so. Chloe and Victoria stood near the steps of the Arcadia Bay Police Department, where the ashtrays were. The sky was overcast, wanting to rain, but making a list of pros and cons before it committed.
"Your friend Dalton offered a statement at eight this morning saying that he sent you to Justin's house to check up on him," Victoria said. "Not to mention the fact that it got leaked to the Beacon that there was no gun on the scene, and the arresting officers failed to do residue tests on your hands to see if you'd fired a gun recently." Victoria looked at Chloe. "They couldn't have done anything to you if they wanted to."
"Who leaked all this to the paper?"
"It appears you have a guardian angel," Victoria said. "Someone on the ABPD has taken a shine to you, for whatever reason."
"That detective, Finch? He seemed pretty certain he could make something stick."
"I don't think Finch knew the information was public knowledge. And unless I'm mistaken, you don't have a lawyer. Any cop would be brave in the face of that. I, on the other hand, am Kate Bradford's literary agent. Her legal team is my legal team. That makes it your legal team."
Chloe took a drag. "And you did all this out of the kindness of your heart?"
"No," Victoria said. "Katie asked me to."
"So Kate Marsh did this out of the kindness of her heart?"
"Bradford," Victoria said. "And no. A favor was asked, and Katie is nothing if not accommodating to her friends."
"Who asked this favor?"
Victoria looked at Chloe as though she'd whiffed the easy opening question on a quiz show. "Who do you think?"
The temperature on Chloe's face rose ten degrees while it dropped forty degrees everywhere else. Victoria dug Chloe's keys out of her purse.
"Here," Victoria said, handing the keys to Chloe. "I got that thing you call a truck out of impound for you. Have a nice day. Call me never."
Victoria had gotten a few more steps toward the parking lot before Chloe called out to her.
"If you're so high-powered, what are you still doing in Arcadia Bay? I mean, even Kate moved to New York."
Victoria turned and fixed Chloe with a glare.
"Because I love my husband," Victoria said, and walked away.
The rest of Chloe's day was a busy one. The first stop was the Two Whales, where Vivian fixed her with a dirty stare as Chloe gave Lenny Diehl his watch back, and picked up her two hundred in cash. She stuffed her four fifties in her jacket pocket and left. The exchange took two minutes.
The next bit of business, once she got back to her apartment (in the Blue Cove Apartments, the less classy of Arcadia Bay's two apartment complexes), was to call Dalton. She had planned to be calm and rational in her questioning about the coincidence of Dalton sending Chloe to the house of a dead man, but what came out was:
"Did you set me up?"
"Chloe," Dalton said. "If I was gonna set you up, why would I call the cops to tell them I sent you there?"
He had a point. The rest of the conversation consisted Dalton asking her about other, reasonably-priced weed hook-ups.
Chloe showered, and came out of the bathroom in a pair of blue sweatpants, a plain gray tank-top, and her glasses. She went to her bedroom to light up the ceramic skull bong she got in Long Beach when there was a knock on the apartment door.
It was Trevor Cade.
Much like a Civil War that pits brother against brother, so life visited a similar fate upon former skate-homies Trevor Cade and Justin Williams.
Justin Williams became a pot dealer.
Trevor Cade became a cop.
"You're the one who leaked the info about my arrest to the paper," Chloe said, in lieu of a hello.
"Yeah," Trevor said. "Can I come in?"
He could. They sat at Chloe's cluttered kitchen table. She dug an almost spent bottle of rum and a can of Pepsi out of the fridge, which they mixed and split. They played catch-up.
"How's the wife?" Chloe asked.
"Dana? Yeah, she's good. We're, uh, we're having a baby."
"Congratulations."
Trevor smiled, but it didn't last.
"Not congratulations?" Chloe asked.
"No, not that," Trevor said, "that's great but… What happened with Justin is just fucking with me."
Chloe nodded. "I'm sorry for your loss."
"Yeah," Trevor said. "Me too. It's just… Justin had a thing for you, and I know it wouldn't have worked. For, y'know, obvious reasons. But… you made him happy all the same. I know you. I know you wouldn't have killed him. Even before the evidence, I knew."
That was the sweetest thing Chloe had heard all day. "Thanks for helping me out," she said. "But Detective Finch seemed convinced otherwise."
"He's new," Trevor said after taking a sip of his rum and Pepsi. "I don't mean new as in he just became a cop, I mean new as in, he's not from The Bay."
Trevor took another sip before thinking a second. "I worry about this place. It's like the people running this small town don't know how small towns work. I mean, all these outsiders… You need more than a hard-on and a badge to get shit done around here. You gotta know the lay of the land. You gotta… you gotta know the ecosystem."
Trevor finished off his drink. "Look, Chloe, I know what you do around here. I know how you make your money. Just… don't get into any trouble I can't get you out of."
Chloe walked Trevor to the door. She closed it after him. She stayed at the doorway to finish the drink in her hand, when another knock came. She quickly looked into the kitchen to see if Trevor had left anything there and saw nothing.
Another knock.
Chloe set her glass down on the small table near the entryway to the kitchen and opened the apartment door.
She was still an itty little thing. From age thirteen to age twenty-three, she probably hadn't grown more than three inches in height. She still looked the same as she did in their selfies together from five years ago, but an intangible inner maturity made her seem her age somehow. She wore black slacks and dress shoes underneath a form-fitting red sweater. Her hair was in a pony-tail, and she was still pulling off those bangs. Her eyes were still as wet and blue as the Pacific, and freckles still dotted her face like landmarks on a map.
"Max?"
Chloe could see Max Caulfield trying not to smile and failing.
"Hey, Chloe."
