Dopesick - Beth Macy Page 0,125

to the opioid epidemic: well-meaning but as divided as it was helpless, and utterly worn out.

Police were investigating, but Alan Henry theorized that Tess “had gotten crosswise with somebody she owed something to,” possibly a drug dealer or a pimp—an argument Patricia rejected outright as blaming and unjust “when we have no idea of what happened to her.”

A former counselor of Tess’s who works with addicted and sex-trafficked women in Las Vegas said it was entirely possible that Tess had in fact been a victim of gang stalking. Addicted women who do sex work are sometimes threatened with rape or murder if they refuse to join a gang trying to “turn them out,” or coerce them into prostituting themselves on the gang’s behalf.

Another rehab worker who knew Tess and had herself been a heroin-addicted sex worker from 2003 to 2010 told me that four of her prostitute friends had been murdered by gangs and left in Dumpsters and, in one case, the air-conditioning ducts of a motel. “These gangs will stalk you and hurt you and block you from making money,” said Kathleen Quirk, who does street-level counseling with addicted prostitutes in Las Vegas, offering cookies she bakes in her home as a way to forge an initial bond. “They make your life miserable until you do what they say—or you end up dead.”

The scenarios were almost beyond comprehension for those at home closest to Tess.

Her grandfather, a retired auditor for IBM, was struggling to grasp the violent nature of Tess’s death. As Patricia relayed the details in the booth of a steakhouse chain, where they stopped after making arrangements for Tess’s cremation, his eyes welled with tears and he said, “Oh…That means somebody hit her.”

*

Tess finally made her flight home the night of December 30. It was unseasonably cold in Virginia, the winds howling and furious. The snow flurries reminded Patricia of all the cold nights she’d spent worrying about Tess. She was still sleeping with her cellphone, awaiting Tess’s transport to Roanoke. Just after midnight, she texted me:

Her body has arrived.

It took funeral-home technicians two days to make Tess presentable enough for Patricia to view her body. Her head had been shaved in Las Vegas, for the collection of evidence, and Tess’s older sister had picked out an outfit from one of Tess’s favorite shops, including an embroidered vest, leggings, and a bright silk-cashmere headscarf with a boisterous, smiling Frida Kahlo.

In a windowless nook of a downtown Roanoke funeral parlor, not far from where Tess once roamed the streets, Patricia caressed the back of the scarf, as if cupping a baby’s head, and told her poet goodbye.

It was January 2, Tess’s birthday. She would have been twenty-nine.

Patricia tucked the treasures of her daughter’s life inside the vest—a picture of her boy and one of his cotton onesies that was Tess’s favorite, some strands of Koda’s hair, and a sand dollar.

We hope you enjoyed this book.

Plate Section

Acknowledgements

Notes

Index

About Beth Macy

An Invitation from the Publisher

Plate Section

After the death of her nineteen-year-old son, Jesse Bolstridge, Kristi Fernandezbecame obsessed with the story of his swift descent into addiction, including finding any missing details that might explain how he went from high school hunk and burly construction worker to heroin-overdose statistic.

From the small sliding-scale clinic where he practices in Virginia’s westernmost county, Dr. Art Van Zee was among the first U.S. physicians to warn people about the dangers of OxyContin. The overdose victims showing up in the ER in the late 1990s weren’t simply his patients; they were also dear friends, many of them descendants of the coal miners whose pictures line his exam-room walls.

Sister Beth Davies was a plucky activist nun who had already spent decades standing up to coal-mining operators, and she refused to be swayed by Purdue Pharma’s marketing or its offers of “blood money.” Executives at the company might have been able to intimidate people up north, where their philanthropy held sway, but it didn’t work with Sister Beth.

“Mark my words: This is the beginning of a disaster for us,” Pennington Gap, Virginia, pharmacist Greg Stewart told Sister Beth Davies in the late 1990s. He had already been the victim of two robbery attempts, including one by the OxyContin-addicted son of a hair-salon owner who crawled in through the ceil-ing vents connecting the salon to Stewart’s store.

The first time Big Stone Gap lieutenant Richard Stallard heard about the new painkiller, a confidential informant told him it was already available on