ASTERWICK 12 - Camille (Patreon)

10.17.26 – 8:00 p.m.

Asterwick Police Department – Central Asterwick

Camille Navarro – Current: 5’5” 138 lbs

At eight on Saturday night, Officer Camille Navarro sat beneath a humming fluorescent panel in the Asterwick Police Department briefing room and watched Sergeant Lyle Carter turn six unrelated complaints into a weather report.

“Three disturbances since swing shift,” Carter said. “One domestic on Laurel, one road rage call by the mill bridge, one fight outside Danner’s Market over a parking space neither party was using.” He stood at the end of the scarred conference table with a paper cup in one hand and the shift log in the other. He had the broad, settled build of a man who had worn a duty belt long enough to resent furniture with arms. “Nobody dead. Nobody stabbed. Let’s preserve the trend.”

Cami shared the table with Officers Nolan Price, Beth Kincaid, and Wes Talbot. Four patrol officers and a sergeant sounded respectable until calls stacked up and someone had to cover the university, downtown, and thirty miles of county road at once. Then it felt like five people holding a blanket over a town determined to kick free.

Carter flipped a page. “County wants us aware of two reports involving an unmarked white cargo van west of town. One caller says it sat near the old logging gate. Another says one followed her from Bellweather Lane to Route Eight before turning off. Plates unknown. Could be nothing.” “White van, no plates—terrifyingly specific,” Price said.

“Caller was busy driving,” Carter replied. “Which is more than I can say for the two men on the mill bridge. They stopped traffic to argue about a turn signal.” He looked around the table. “It has been a rough forty-eight hours. More fights. More people running hot over stupid things. Watch hands, watch each other, and don’t let somebody else’s bad night become yours.”

Cami wrote WHITE VAN beneath the other notes in her notebook and drew no circle around it. Circles turned observations into theories, and theories had a way of demanding attention before they earned it.

Carter assigned sectors. Kincaid took campus. Talbot took the north neighborhoods. Price covered east and backed downtown. Cami drew west: the mill district, the highway approaches, and the wet, dark roads climbing into the Mountain Range. Ordinary Saturday work in Asterwick.

The first hour gave her nothing worth remembering. She moved a fallen branch from Alder Street, reminded two freshmen that the courthouse steps were not a skate park after dark, and stood beneath an apartment awning while a married couple argued over whether a dent in the refrigerator had existed before dinner.

The husband paced the kitchen in socks, sweating through his T-shirt despite the open window. He called the dent deliberate, then disrespectful, then proof that nobody listened to him. His wife stood by the sink with both arms folded and said he had put it there himself while reaching for a beer.

Cami separated them, checked for injuries, and listened until the stories stopped changing. No threats. No weapons. No damaged property beyond the refrigerator. She should’ve had a backup officer for a call like this, but the radio was buzzing with activity tonight, and she didn’t feel the situation warranted getting Carter out on the road. The husband agreed to sleep at his brother’s place and became offended when Cami asked for the keys to his truck. “I had two beers.” “Then walking will help,” Cami said.

He left muttering that everyone was treating him like a criminal. Cami watched him cross the lot with his jaw working and added nothing to her report that she could not defend in court. At 9:06, dispatch sent her to a convenience store on Route Eight for a customer refusing to leave. By the time she arrived, the customer had gone. The clerk said the man had thrown a basket because the lottery terminal froze. He had seemed drunk, except his speech was clear and he walked straight. Cami took the description, checked the lot, and found only rain shining under the canopy lights.

At 9:31, she saw the van. It came down Mill Road from the west, plain white sides reflecting her headlights, no company name, no rear windows. At the stop sign by the abandoned planer building, its brake lights flashed without the wheels fully stopping. The van rolled through and drifted across the center line before correcting.

Cami waited until the road widened, then switched on her lights. The van slowed immediately and pulled onto the gravel shoulder. Good signal. Clean stop. Oregon plate visible and current. Cami radioed the location and plate, waited for dispatch to confirm the registered owner, then approached along the driver’s side with her flashlight low.

The driver lowered his window before she reached it. Mid-thirties. Close-cropped brown hair. Dark work jacket. No visible tattoos. Both hands rested on the wheel at ten and two. They were gripping it hard enough to pale the knuckles. “Evening,” Cami said. “Officer Navarro, Asterwick Police. Do you know why I stopped you?” “Because this town rolls up the sidewalks at nine?” His smile arrived without warmth. “You rolled the stop at Mill and Foundry and crossed the center line.” “I stopped.” “Not quite.”

His jaw tightened. A muscle jumped once near his ear. “Fine. Whatever. Can we do this fast?” Cami asked for his license, registration, and proof of insurance. He produced all three. Evan Rusk, thirty-seven, Portland address. The van belonged to Cascade Event Supply, also Portland. Dispatch found no wants, no warrants, no stolen report. The documents in Cami’s light were boring in every reassuring way.

“What brings you to Asterwick, Mr. Rusk?” “Delivery.” “For who?” “Private event. Tables, beverage equipment, promotional junk. I drive what they load.” Something shifted behind the steel partition with a heavy liquid knock. Not tables. A container settled, then knocked against another. Rusk’s eyes flicked toward the sound and back.

Cool air flowed through the window carrying damp wool, engine heat, and another odor Cami could not place. Cedar, fresh-cut and sharp. Under it, iron—wet metal, like a handful of old nails left in rain. Rusk was sweating along his hairline. “What kind of beverage equipment?” she asked.

“Kegs. Lines. Whatever.” His right knee bounced below the steering wheel. “Is there a reason you’re interrogating me over a stop sign?” “I’m asking about your trip.” “You asked. I answered.” He leaned closer to the window, irritation rising too fast for the conversation. “Write the ticket or don’t.”

Cami let the silence sit. People rushed to fill silence when they feared what it might contain. Rusk only clenched and unclenched one hand on the wheel. “Would you mind opening the rear so I can take a look?” she asked. His knee stopped. “Yes.” “Yes, you mind?” “I do not consent to a search.” The sentence came polished, as if he had carried it ready. “Am I being detained for something besides your traffic stop?”

Cami had nervousness, an unusual odor, plausible cargo sounds, and a driver whose temper did not constitute probable cause. Instinct could tell her where to look. It could not open a locked door. Her radio broke the silence. “All units, disturbance at the Giant’s Rest, Mill and Third. Report of a fight, one subject injured.”

Price acknowledged from the east sector. Cami looked once toward the van’s blank rear doors. Dispatch came back before she answered. “Update: multiple callers. Several fights inside, disturbance moving toward the street. Possible head injury. Fire and medical staging.”

Cami handed Rusk his documents. “You’re receiving a warning for the stop. Stay in your lane and come to a complete stop next time.” “That’s it?” Relief in his voice was obvious. “That’s it.” She stepped back. “Two-twelve responding.” As she hurried to her cruiser, the van merged onto Mill Road and continued east. Its rear suspension rode low. In the mirror, the unmarked white box turned south before the Giant’s Rest and disappeared between old brick mill buildings.

Cami knew leaving was the correct decision, but that didn’t make her feel any better about it. The Giant’s Rest stood three blocks away. Cami reached it in less than two minutes and found an ordinary bar fight trying to become a riot.

A man in a denim jacket shoved another against the carved wooden sign by the entrance. Two women were pulling a third man backward by his belt while he screamed that somebody had laughed at his truck. Broken glass glittered in the gutter. A man with blood down the front of his shirt kept trying to push past strangers and reenter the bar.

Cami stopped short of the doorway and counted. Seven visibly involved outside. Three injured. At least two more shouting inside. No weapons in hand. No gunfire. Price arrived behind her, tires chirping, and Kincaid called that she was four minutes out from campus. “You take blood-shirt,” Cami told Price. “I’ll clear the door.”

The man at the entrance heard her order and turned. His pupils looked normal. His balance was good. Sweat ran from his temples as if he had sprinted there. “He called me a liar,” he shouted, pointing at the man pinned to the sign.

“Then you can survive the insult from over there.” Cami indicated the curb. “You didn’t hear how he said it.” “I don’t need the director’s cut. Curb. Now.” He obeyed three steps, then spun and lunged again when the other man laughed. Cami intercepted him, turned his momentum into the brick wall, and cuffed him while he cursed with startling invention. His anger had no slope. It went from complaint to violence like a switch.

Inside, the air was hot with beer, fryer oil, and bodies. Chairs lay overturned. One table had collapsed. Cole Mercer sat against the wall holding a bar towel to his nose while two patrons argued over who had helped him first. Hal Brenner shouted from behind the register for everyone to calm down, which nobody had ever found calming.

Cami raised her voice over the room and began sorting the crowd. “If you’re injured, move to the windows and wait for medical. If you witnessed the fights, take a booth and stay there. If you’re still looking for someone to argue with, go outside with Officer Price.” She repeated the instructions, pointing people into place, until the chaos began separating into manageable groups.

The men drew her attention first because they required it. One had attacked his roommate over a spilled beer. Another had punched a stranger who changed the jukebox song. Two coworkers from Alder Crown Timber had turned on each other over who owed for fries. Each story sounded too small to carry the force behind it.

They also looked wrong in similar ways. Flushed faces. Clear speech. Heavy breathing. Restless hands. Several seemed less impaired than angry men in bars usually were, not more. They tracked instructions, balanced well, and then abandoned reason over the slightest provocation.

The women made less noise and created stranger problems. Near the dartboard, a university librarian Cami recognized from community meetings held a shouting logger against the wall with one hand on his chest. The man outweighed her by at least eighty pounds. The librarian looked frightened by him and more frightened by how easily she was restraining him. Her cardigan sleeves had ridden tight over newly pronounced arms.

At table six, a woman kept insisting she had grown because her friend now came only to her eyebrows. “She was shorter than me at dinner,” the friend said. “Ask anyone.” The taller woman laughed too brightly, complained that she was burning up, and tore the metal pull from her purse zipper without noticing.

Another woman stood beside a cracked chair, staring at the broken backrest in her hands. “I only grabbed it so they’d stop,” she told Cami. “It came apart.” Her blouse pulled tight across her shoulders. She did not appear intoxicated. She appeared hungry, restless, and embarrassed.

Cami wrote what she saw. Unexpected strength. Reports of heat. Clothing fit changes. Possible stimulant or adulterant exposure. She underlined the last possibility once. Rhea Blackwood stood behind the bar collecting glasses with a towel wrapped around one hand. Cami knew her by sight. Everyone who worked downtown eventually knew everyone else by uniform, schedule, or preferred emergency.

“Start at the beginning,” Cami said. Rhea looked toward Hal, then at the white ceramic tap handle beside the house ale. “The beginning is complicated.” “Give me the part that happened tonight.” “New beer. Night Timber. Hal said the supplier paid an incentive to push it.” Cami glanced at the black tree printed on the handle. “Supplier name?”

“I don’t know. Invoice should be in the office.” Rhea lowered her voice. “There was something in the glasses. Iridescent. Green and purple in the foam.” “You saw it before the fights?” “Just before. June saw it too.” “June who?” Rhea hesitated. “June Park.” The name surfaced from three witness statements. Very tall Asian woman. University sweatshirt. Struck Cole Mercer after he swung first. Left before officers arrived.

“I’ll need to speak with her.” “She was scared,” Rhea said. “That doesn’t prevent a conversation.” Cami nodded toward the taps. “Shut this one down. Don’t pour it, dump it, or disconnect anything. Keep every used Night Timber glass you can identify separate from the rest.” Rhea’s shoulders eased a fraction. “Already started.”

Cami photographed the tap, the keg line, the empty pints Rhea had placed beneath the counter, and the broken furniture. She asked each coherent witness what they had drunk and where they had been sitting. Accounts disagreed about insults, punches, and timing. They agreed about the new beer. Night Timber had been popular.

Price came inside with his notebook open. “Medical wants three transports. Mercer’s nose, possible concussion by the door, and one guy with a hand injury who keeps trying to fight the ambulance.” “How many arrests?” “Two so far. Could make it five if we want paperwork until sunrise.”

“We want the people who won’t stop.” Cami looked at the room. “Get names from everyone else. Ask what they drank. Exact brand if they remember.” Price followed her gaze to the women clustered near table six. “What are you thinking?” “I don’t know. Maybe a contaminated product. A stimulant. Something shared.”

“In beer?” “It has happened before.” Not like this, she did not add. Cami crouched behind the bar where a pint had shattered beside the rubber service mat. Amber beer pooled in the grooves. A thin luminous color clung near one shard, gone when she changed the angle of her flashlight and visible again when she moved it back.

Then she smelled cedar. She stopped breathing for half a beat and leaned closer without touching the spill. Cedar, clean and sharp beneath stale beer. Wet iron under it. The same smell had come through the window of Evan Rusk’s van less than fifteen minutes before the urgent call. Cami stood. A wave of heat suddenly pooled in her pelvis and radiated up and out across her limbs. The room tilted slightly sideways. She steadied herself with a hand on the bar and blew out a breath.

The sensation passed, and she collected herself. Across the bar, the white Night Timber handle rose above the taps like a marker. “Rhea. Who delivered this keg?” “I didn’t see them. It was here when I came in.”

“Was it delivered in a white cargo van?” Rhea went still. “There was a white van in the alley Monday night. Right after I found something strange in the backroom.” “What kind of something?” Rhea looked toward the locked backroom door. Around them, officers separated witnesses, paramedics worked over Cole Mercer, and men who had been friends an hour earlier glared at one another from opposite walls. “A vial,” Rhea said. “And it smelled exactly like the beer.” Cami took out her notebook. This time, she drew the circle.