“You’re right. I don’t. Yet you don’t see the side of the elephant I’m on. You need to understand that there are good people who can help you. That’s a conversation for another time. Right now, I believe you’re right. Someone in the council—likely multiple someones—wants this case to go away. They may be protecting the killer. They may just want to kill two birds with one stone—close this case and get rid of a problematic resident. That’s not evil, but it’s sloppy, and it endangers everyone here, forcing them to unknowingly live with a killer.”
I want to laugh at so much of what she says. At the earnestness with which she says it. She’s like the sheepdog in a cartoon, suddenly realizing one
of her flock is a wolf wearing a sheepskin … and the scene pans to show half the sheep with wolf tails hanging out the back.
I don’t laugh, because she is earnest. She really is worried that we’ll leave a killer—one killer—in Rockton. She really is blindsided by the revelation that a council member isn’t acting in Rockton’s best interests. She’s shocked that she’s been tricked into framing Roy … and I’m sitting here thinking That’s it? A council member lied to you and misled you? Around here, we call that Tuesday.
While her genuine shock makes me laugh, it also gives me hope. Of course I need to consider the possibility she’s lying. Still, if there is a chance her shock is sincere, then I have an opportunity here. One to flip an adversary to an ally and, yep, I’ve screwed that up before—hello, Val!—but I’ve also succeeded, and I cannot afford to reject the possibility. Rockton needs all the help it can get.
“I want to see this cache,” I say. I lift my hands. “You’re going to undo these, and I’m going to take my gun. You’ll leave yours here.”
Her mouth opens in protest.
I cut her off. “You want me to trust you again? Start by trusting me.”
She nods and pulls out a penknife to cut the wrist strap.
FORTY-THREE
I stop at the station first. Petra is with me. Dalton isn’t there. I know he isn’t. I caught his voice on the wind, like Storm picking up a favorite scent. I avoided him and detoured to the station, in hopes of catching someone there. I do. It’s Sam, doing militia paperwork in Kenny’s absence. I tell him that Petra and I are going for a walk to chat, and please let Dalton know if he comes by. Dalton will buy the excuse … as long as he doesn’t see my expression while giving it.
I do consider asking if Sam knows whether Dalton has Storm or he’s left her with a sitter. I’d love to take her on this trip. Whatever Petra might do to me, I trust her around my dog. She was Storm’s first sitter, and when Jen lashed out at the dog a week ago, it was Petra who went after her. I think back to that now, to the rage on Petra’s face, so uncharacteristic it startled me. A hint at deeper wells. I’d known that. I just hadn’t pursued it, assuming it was something in her past, no concern to me except as a friend who might want to help her get past it.
I laugh at that.
“So that story about your kid was a lie,” I say as we head into the forest.
She tenses and looks over quickly.
“You remember the one,” I say. “Not really a story so much as a scrap, tossed my way so I’ll feel like you’re sharing something personal. You’d joked about Storm being a sign that Dalton wanted kids. Then you said that we should sort that out because you’d been married and you wanted a baby when your husband didn’t. You had one, and it destroyed your marriage. When I asked about your child, you suggested he—or she—had died. A poignant backstory scrap that I now realize was complete bullshit.”
“No,” she says, her voice hardening. “It was not.”
“You also suggested, less than an hour ago, that you have the kind of job experience that seems a little inconsistent with motherhood. And when I tried to find hints of you online as a comic-book artist, I came up blank. Was anything you told me the truth?”
“All of it was.”
I look at her. “Like hell. You—”
“Let’s start with this.” She pushes aside a branch. “According to my intake record, I’m thirty-five. That may also be what I told you. I’m forty-two. I’m just blessed—or cursed—with the kind of face that can pass for younger. I think you know what that’s like. So I’ve had time to do more than you might imagine.”
She pauses and assesses a fork before swinging left. “In books and movies, people always say ‘I’m special ops.’ So let’s go with that. I was, as they call it, special ops. I won’t go into more detail. I can’t, as you might imagine. It gave me a unique skill set. In my early thirties, I decided to get out. I quit, as amicably as one quits that sort of work, and I focused on my art. Yes, I was a comic-book artist, but without my real name and very, very deep digging, you wouldn’t find me. It’s the kind of career where you don’t make a name for yourself unless you’re at the top of your game, and I definitely was not. I made more of my income inking than drawing.”
“Inking?”
“Someone higher up the food chain did the art, and I filled in the colors. Bet you never even knew that was a job, huh? It is, and it paid decently, mostly because artists want to draw, not color between someone else’s lines. That’s where I met Mike, as we’ll call him. We started as friends, and that’s really what we always were. Really good friends with really good benefits. But he wanted a baby. Him, not me. I didn’t figure I was mommy material with my background. I wanted to give him a baby, though, so I got pregnant, and we got married—in that order.”
She stops. Looks around, as if wondering how she got here. Then, with a shake of her head, she backtracks and finds a broken tree and turns right, heading off the path.
“The marriage ended,” she says. “Quickly. Yet while I wasn’t cut out to be a wife, I was a damned fine parent. My daughter was…” Her voice catches. “People talk about miracle babies, and she was—not for any trouble with her birth, but because she changed my life. Although Mike and I split, we co-parented and remained friends.”
She finds the spot and stops there, gesturing at it while still talking. “It might sound as if I left my former life behind and effortlessly moved on. I didn’t. Anders has said he saw things, as a soldier, that he didn’t agree with. So did I. It gets in your head. I drank to get it out. I remember you asked once if Anders and I ever hooked up. We haven’t. I wouldn’t, because I’m afraid I’d be one of those lovers who says yes to a hookup while hoping for a relationship. I’d be even more afraid of getting a relationship. I see too much of my past in him and his drinking, and it scares the shit out of me. Like him, I never graduated to full-blown alcoholic. Just the consumer of a troubling amount of alcohol. I didn’t drink when I was pregnant or breastfeeding, though. I went cold turkey then. After Mike and I split, I never drank when our daughter was over. Then came the day…”
She hunkers onto a fallen log, lacing her hands. “It was late afternoon. I’d drunk three glasses of wine while I worked. It was Mike’s week with Polly. I got a call from him. He was tied up at work in an emergency meeting and the day care needed her picked up ASAP. Could I do it?”
Her shoulders hunch. “I could have said no. I could have admitted I’d been drinking. I could have called a cab. But one thing about drinking is that it blows your judgment to hell. Three glasses in four hours meant I wasn’t even legally intoxicated. I’d be careful. I’d drive slow. On the way back, there was this truck in front of us, with a load the driver hadn’t secured. It hit a bump and pipes flew off, and I saw them coming and I … I reacted too slowly. It might have still been fine except…” Her voice goes to a whisper. “Polly wanted the top down. I had a convertible, and she loved riding with the top down and…”
Her arms squeeze her legs, her gaze on the ground. “I have seen things in my job, Casey. What I saw that day…” Her voice drops to the faintest whisper. “I never see the rest anymore. All I ever see is her. All that matters is her. It is the only truly unforgivable thing I have ever done.”