Puget Sound, 2013.
It was less than a fifteen-minute trip back to Fairmile by road, the last few miles along a dirt track edged with towering, old-growth Douglas fir and big-leaf maples. Frankie’s wipers worked double time to clear the driving rain. Flicking on the radio, tuned to the local station, she caught the end of a news report: the body of an elderly woman found in suspicious circumstances.
The words ‘suspicious circumstances’ were something of a cover-all: they could mean suspicious as in foul play was involved or, less ominously, medically inexplicable. When she heard the name Pacifica Gardens, however, her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. Ingrid’s nursing home. On the other side of the island.
Frankie briefly considered pulling over, making a call, but common sense told her the likelihood of the phone being answered was slim; it would be quicker to drive there. She scanned the road ahead for a place to turn, then checked the rearview mirror, ignoring the automatic impulse to reach for lights and sirens. Some habits died hard.
Instead, she spun the wheel in a tight arc. The tyres squealed in protest and the truck threatened to fishtail in the wet, but the treads held, and she was travelling in the opposite direction, managing to stay within a hair of the speed limit.
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