The Wrong Woman by J.P. Pomare

Author:J.P. Pomare [Pomare, J P]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781399703123
Published: 2022-08-03T16:00:00+00:00

REID

NOW

I head to the cafe first to get a coffee and a bite to eat. There are cafes closer to the motel, but I’m drawn across town. Something feels right about sitting there at the site of the crash while I plan my day. Or maybe I’m just telling myself that. Maybe I drive over there every day to see the flirty waiter. There’s not many eligible queer men in this part of the state, or there didn’t seem to be when I lived here. There was Marco, but that didn’t end particularly well for me. Marco leaked my chest-cam footage of us bringing in the dealer in the Amanda Marley case. Let’s face it, if not for him, I’d probably still be a cop.

I joined the police force a couple years out of school. It was that or firefighting. I wanted a job where I could help people, I wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps.

The night he died, I woke to find Mom sitting on my bed in the dark in her dressing gown, trembling all over as tears rushed down her cheeks. She didn’t want to wake me, she said. Maybe she thought if I kept sleeping, I’d never have to learn that my father was gone.

It happened after midnight. Dad was on patrol; he pulled over a suspected stolen vehicle. This was before cameras were mounted on cars and before stab vests were mandatory; before all the precautions they have these days. The road where he died is long and straight, and it was a cold night; a frost had turned the banks beside the road to concrete. I’ve spent hours out there at the spot, just thinking about him. Imagining his last hours.

Dad knew half the population of Manson, so when he approached the driver’s door he probably expected to see one of the usual suspects. Maybe it was one of the usual suspects – who knows? They never got them in the end.

The funeral was at St Paul’s Church in the centre of Manson. The heating was out, and it had snowed all morning but the church was so packed with mourners that it didn’t seem so cold. It was closed casket. I’ve seen enough gunshot victims by now to know what a bullet fired at close range does to the human body, to the face and skull.

A couple years into the job, I realised there’s nothing glamorous about police work, especially in Manson – no organised crime, cults or conmen – but it felt important, even the trivial things. The job was mostly filing reports; in small-town America, domestic abuse calls account for the majority, with a few drug disputes, and the catastrophic potential of overconfident teenagers and fast cars.

With my record and skill set, I thought I had a real chance at making detective. But every time a chance to climb the ladder came around, I was disappointed. There were promotions but never in the direction I so badly wanted. Maybe the

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