Willow Road

Chapter 1

Chapter 1Zeeb Hemming tucked his shirt into his jeans and adjusted the belt as he crossed the threshold to Stoneshade’s police station. Dolph Tala, his second in command, cackled. The sounds bounced off the walls and made Zeeb slow his steps. Boris Tala’s laugh was more controlled, but something was going on.

Zeeb had only been in Stoneshade for seven weeks. He’d needed a change of scenery, and when the position as chief of police had come up, he’d called in a few favors. Why Stoneshade had a chief of police was a mystery. The department consisted of him, the Tala cousins, and Rica Rudolph, a no-nonsense female in her early forties.

Rica had the day off today.

“What’s going on?” Zeeb looked at Boris and Dolph, who were both hunched over a newspaper.

Boris grinned at him and turned the paper around so he could see. A crossword puzzle took up half the page. “You’re solving crosswords?” There weren’t many crimes to solve in a small village like Stoneshade, but if they had time on their hands, there was always admin work or cold cases.

“No, the personal ads below.” Dolph reached across the table and tapped on one of the ads.

Zeeb leaned closer to read. “Drop-in full-service massage. Willow Road 1. No need to call ahead.” He frowned at Dolph. “It’s the red house next to the cemetery, right?”

Both Boris and Dolph laughed hard enough for tears to form in their eyes. Zeeb didn’t get it. Selling s*x was a crime, not a laughing matter.

“Has this happened before?”

Boris took a deep breath, as if to try to control his laughter. “Yes. It happens regularly.” He laughed again, and Zeeb growled. He didn’t mind laughter in the station, but they were here to solve crimes, not laugh at them.

Dolph schooled his face, most likely sensing Zeeb’s mood. “It’s eh…it’s a joke.”

“A joke?”

“Yes.” A grin tugged at the corner of Dolph’s mouth. “Jeremiah Pace lives on Willow Road 1.” He looked at Zeeb expectantly, but Zeeb shook his head. He’d never heard the name before.

“Who’s he?”

“The village idiot.”

The faces of some of the odder people Zeeb had met since moving here flashed before his eyes, but he didn’t associate any of them with the name Jeremiah.

“I don’t know who he is.” But maybe he should drive over there and have a chat. Offering s****l services as a joke or otherwise shouldn’t be encouraged.

Both Dolph and Boris looked at him for a few seconds, then Boris took a deep breath. “Right. Sometimes I forget you’re not from around here.”

Zeeb doubted it. Once an outsider, always an outsider, and the families living here had been here for many, many generations. Half the village ignored him; the other half informed him how they’d assumed Dolph would be the next chief of police when old Mr. Farkas had stepped down.

“Who is he?”

“Human.” Dolph wrinkled his nose. “He…I don’t know what strings his father pulled, but he went to school with us.”

Zeeb did his best to hide his wince. He mustn’t have done a good job because both Boris and Dolph nodded.

“Smart kid.” It was Boris continuing. “He’s a few years younger than me, so I never had any classes with him, but everyone knew he was something of a genius. Not after, though.”

After what? Boris was in his mid-thirties, which would leave Jeremiah in his late twenties to early thirties. Zeeb tried to produce a face of someone of that age living in the village but failed. “If he was that smart, it explains why his father wanted him in your school.”

Human schools had lower fundings, lower results, fewer opportunities. There were also fewer schools which meant the distance the human children had to travel was often greater than shifters had. Zeeb wasn’t sure he believed it was right to divide people, but it was what happened when one race got to make all the decisions. Shifters held all the top positions in society, and they worked hard on maintaining the segregation between humans and non-humans.

Dolph grunted in agreement, but there was no understanding or empathy in his gaze. “Anyway, something happened.”

It didn’t take more than a fraction of a second for a knot to form in Zeeb’s gut. “Something happened?”

“Yeah. Someone lured him into the basement one day, and…When they found him, he was out of his mind.”

Zeeb swallowed hard. “Out of his mind?”

“Hysterical. Screaming. Hyperventilating. He never came back to school after that.”

“How long ago was this?” If he was in his early thirties now, it must have been some time ago.

Dolph sighed. “We were eighteen.”

“We? You were there?”

Dolph flashed teeth but instantly looked away from Zeeb’s gaze. Zeeb had a higher position at work, and he was far more dominant than both Boris and Dolph, far more dominant than most people he met. It was part of why he’d left his last job. He was sick of people looking at him as if he was their leader. He didn’t have a pack, and he didn’t want to have one. He’d gone lone wolf when he was seventeen and had realized he was more dominant than the alpha of his pack. He didn’t want to fight him, and he didn’t want the responsibility, so he’d left.

“We were in the same year.”

Zeeb stared at him. There was no way Dolph didn’t know what had happened. “And?”

“And?”

“And what happened?” Dolph was thirty-one, if Zeeb remembered correctly. He’d read both Boris and Dolph’s birth dates several times, but it wasn’t information he’d memorized. It was hard enough remembering he’d turned forty-two.

“I don’t know.” Dolph looked at Boris instead of Zeeb. “One day he was in school, the next he was gone. It was for the better.”

“For the better?” Zeeb tried to keep his voice neutral, but some steeliness crept into it.

“I can’t imagine he had a good time.”

“He was bullied?” Of course, he was. A human in a school for shifters. What had his parents been thinking?

“PE.” Dolph gave him a look with raised eyebrows. “In retrospect, I can’t understand how they allowed him to participate. It was a miracle he walked out of there alive.”

Zeeb winced. Shifters were fast, strong, and vicious, add teenage hormones to the mix, and Zeeb had to agree—it was a miracle he had survived.

“What has all this got to do with s*x ads in the paper?”

“Personal ads, they’re not always of a s****l nature. Sometimes it says he’s having a garage sale or arranging poker night or something.”

“Does he?” Zeeb had never heard about anything happening on Willow Road. There were only four houses, one of which looked abandoned. It was a dead-end road. All houses were on the same side. On the other side was a grove, not big enough to be called a forest, but with enough trees to make it impossible to see through them. And at the end, the river cut the road off. While still being in the middle of the village, it was secluded.

Boris laughed again, and Zeeb glared at him.

“No.” Dolph shook his head. “He hasn’t left his house since he moved in, and he never sees anyone.”

Zeeb narrowed his eyes. “And when did he move in?”

Sighing, Dolph answered. “I don’t know. He lived with his parents for some time after, a couple of years maybe. So, eleven years?”

“And he hasn’t left his house? Who puts these ads in the paper?” Zeeb didn’t know why he was angry, but this whole story made him want to crush skulls. Human or not, a kid should be able to go to school in peace.

Neither Dolph nor Boris spoke, and Zeeb allowed a low growl to slip out, to which Boris rolled his eyes. “It’s a joke, Zeeb.”

“I’m not laughing.”

Dolph huffed. “Maybe you should.”

Zeeb ignored him. “When did it start?”

Groaning, Dolph looked at Boris. “Five years ago?”

Boris shrugged, then nodded. “It’s no big deal, Zeeb. They’re having a bit of fun, is all.”

Zeeb ignored him and focused on Dolph. “How did it start?”

“Bree did his hair.”

Zeeb knew who Bree Tala was. “Another cousin of yours?” The Tala family was big and had lived in Stoneshade for generations.

“Second cousin.”

It was Zeeb’s turn to shrug. He didn’t care how they were related. Bree was a hairdresser. He’d never had his hair cut there but had seen her salon. “He came to see her?”

“No. He never leaves the house. She went there to cut his hair, and he was a jittery mess. Right before she began cutting, he flew off the chair and grabbed the paper. He told her he needed to do the crossword puzzle. She wondered why, and he said he does them every day. They help to calm him down.”

He looked at Zeeb as if he’d explained the whole thing.

“And?”

“And, what?” He looked confused.

“How did it go from a hairdresser talking to her client about crosswords to s*x ads in the local paper?” Hairdressers didn’t have client confidentiality, but gossiping about something like that didn’t endear Bree to Zeeb.

Dolph threw his hands in the air. “Since he’s solving the crosswords every day, and the personal ads are underneath, it’s likely he’ll see the ads.”

“They want him to see the ads?”

“He’s a guy with severe agoraphobia or extreme fear of people, at least. Imagine people ringing his doorbell, thinking they’re gonna get a happy ending to their massage, and instead all they see is this nervous wreck shouting at them to get off his property.” Dolph laughed, but Zeeb cut him off with a snarl.

“This is not funny! You’re harassing a citizen of this village.”

“I didn’t put the ad in.” Dolph glared at him, but there was some hesitancy in the way he held himself.

“Imagine a man with agoraphobia.” Zeeb peeled his lips back from his teeth. “He’s battling his fear every day, he doesn’t dare leave his house because of what some people did to him thirteen years ago, and then the same people who did it, send people to ring his doorbell, prolonging the bullying, and you’re letting it happen.”

“Hey.” Boris flew to his feet. “We’re not letting anything happen. It’s time he puts himself together and moves on. Everyone has a past, and yet we manage to have jobs and pay our bills.”

“He doesn’t pay his bills?”

Boris looked confused. “How should I know? Since the house hasn’t gone up for foreclosure, I guess he does, or his parents do.”

“Where are his parents?”

Dolph stood too. “They moved away. It was when he bought the house. They left the village, he stayed.”

Zeeb nodded. “I want to know who puts the ads in, and I want it to stop.”

“It’s a joke. They’re only—”

“It’s not a joke. It’s harassment, and either you make sure it stops since I assume you know who puts the ads in, or I’ll open an investigation. A real investigation, and I’ll talk to a prosecutor.” When Dolph failed to hide a grin, Zeeb remembered the local prosecutor was another Tala. Giving in to a mental groan, he added, “An out-of-town prosecutor.” He still had enough contacts to make it happen.