B00NRQWAJI (23 page)

“I don’t know. To intimidate you? Silence you? Make you feel less than what you are? That’s what rape’s about. But I don’t want you to take that chance. Just because things didn’t work out between us doesn’t mean I—”

“Don’t say it,” I ordered.

Because if he uttered any words of caring or friendship just then, they would kill me.

I wanted to be more than friends with Barrett. I wanted much more so badly. And I didn’t want him to know it.

But Barrett didn’t say another syllable. He and I walked to the old truck in silence. And just as silently, we drove away, leaving the splendid stars behind.

Chapter 24

The ride on the old bench seat beside Barrett lasted an eternity as far as I was concerned.

The luminous dial on the Cartier Roadster I wore on my wrist, however, claimed the trip took less than eighteen minutes.

At any rate, it was nearing nine o’clock when the Chevy’s headlamps snagged the first black twists of the Barrett Orchard’s apple trees. I was eager to reach the house and to slip away from it. To meet Deputy Dawkins behind the barn. I wanted to know what he’d have to say about Sheriff Rittenhaus and the crimes committed in Fallowfield. Maybe even more than that, I wanted to put some distance between myself and Adam Barrett.

But all that would have to wait.

Barrett slowed the truck, turned into his grandmother’s lane. And for a split second, I thought we were back at the fire ring. Because as we eased up the drive, through the dark of the night, I spied a river of flame.

“What the hell?” Barrett said.

“It’s the display in front of the farmhouse! The straw bales are on fire!” Every bale was alight, burning yellow and orange and white.

Barrett hit the gas. We sped closer, got a closer look. The pumpkins heaped on the straw were withering in the heat, collapsing in on themselves. And the scarecrow…The scarecrow?

“It’s Dawkins!” I exclaimed.

Arms outstretched, head lolling to the side, Dawkins hung where the straw man used to be. Only now he was surrounded by a hillock of fire. And the flames snapped hungrily at his feet.

Barrett slammed on the brakes. The truck skidded to a halt. I was out of the Chevy and running for the deputy before I could think.

I kicked at the first bale I came to. It rolled onto the lawn, smoldering but smothering its flame. I kicked another, grabbed the twine that bound the thing together. The rough cord bit into my fingers. It drew blood as I tried to haul the second bale onto the first. As I tried to build stair steps. As I tried to reach Dawkins.

Barrett appeared at my side. He clutched the sleeping bag in his hands. He flung it wide, tried to suffocate the blaze. But the fire burned through the nylon. It sent up the stink of reacting chemicals.

Undeterred, Barrett and I climbed onto the ruined bag. I tried to climb higher. He tried to climb closer. But there was no reaching Dawkins. Not hoisted on the pole and crossbar like he was. And not with choking smoke billowing around him. Through the wavering heat, I could see sweat running down the man’s cheeks. Or maybe those were tears leaking from his closed eyes.

Desperate now, I sprinted for the truck, slid behind the wheel. I put the Chevy in gear. And I plowed into the blaze. I thought I heard Barrett shout my name. But all I heard for sure was the crackling of the flames as they attacked the truck.

Riding the brake, I pushed into the bales, nosed the grill against the post holding Dawkins high. And revving the engine, I toppled it. Like a tree felled in the forest, the post went down, carrying Dawkins beyond the inferno.

I grabbed the gearshift, hissed at the heat singeing my hand. A snap and a pop shook the truck. I tried to throw the stick into reverse, but it didn’t want to go, and I suspected the transfer case had ruptured.

So I stomped on the accelerator, threw all my weight into turning the wheels.

The Chevy surged forward onto Mrs. Barrett’s well-kept lawn. But the burning bales were behind me now. And Barrett had Dawkins by the shoulders, dragging him to safety.

I cut the engine. It shimmied to a halt and I abandoned the vehicle, running to do what I could for Dawkins. Barrett had him flat on his back near a bed of marigolds. The deputy’s trouser legs had burned away. The remaining flesh was red and black and smoking—and I caught a stomach-turning scent that smelled a lot like charred chicken.

“He’s unresponsive,” Barrett barked.

He pressed his ear to the deputy’s chest, listened for a heartbeat.

He didn’t find one.

Dropping to my knees beside Dawkins, I tilted his head straight and back, checked his airway with my fingers, and noted a dark discoloration over his Adam’s apple. Someone with strong hands had choked the dickens out of him. But I pushed that from my mind. On Barrett’s count, I gave the deputy the kiss of life. His chest rose and fell as I forced air into his lungs. And when I paused, Barrett went to work, his muscled arms compressing Dawkins’s sternum as he tried to make the man’s heart beat.

We kept at it until paramedics’ hands closed over ours. Luke Rittenhaus appeared out of nowhere to pull me away. I turned and looked and saw firefighters beating back the raging flames on Mrs. Barrett’s front lawn, their ruby-red fire engine dwarfing the scorched Chevy I’d left behind. Charlotte Mead, with her hands clasped beneath her chin, looked on from the passenger seat of a Ford that must’ve belonged to the sheriff. And on the front porch, Barrett’s grandmother, swaddled from chin to ankle in a lilac bathrobe, stood gripping the railing as if it were the only thing keeping her vertical.

Barrett joined her, spoke to her, steered her toward her own front door.

But his eyes remained on me.

I was shaking. After the heat of the blaze and the burn of adrenaline, the autumn night stole all the warmth from my body. And, apparently, when the paramedics reluctantly proclaimed Dawkins dead, the deputy’s death stole something profound from Rittenhaus.

In an informal questioning session around Miranda Barrett’s kitchen table that would never pass muster in any other jurisdiction I’ve ever crossed, Rittenhaus and a junior deputy asked Mrs. Barrett to describe what had happened. As she talked, Charlotte bustled about making coffee. Barrett had descended from upstairs with an armful of blankets. He’d wrapped one around his grandmother—and one around me. I wanted to shrug it off, but I knew my body was in shock and I’d be smart to listen to it.

“I heard a car,” Mrs. Barrett explained softly. “It didn’t sound like the McCabe boy returning or the old Chevy, so I looked out the parlor window. I saw a silver sedan parked beside the scarecrow. There was a man. He had a lighter. He touched it to something in his hand and threw that at the straw. A second later, there was this brilliant yellow flash.”

Molotov cocktail,
I thought.

If we were lucky, the fire marshal would find a shattered bottle in the blaze’s aftermath. And the pieces would offer clues, like accelerant residue, that would lead to Dawkins’s killer. But luck was usually hard to come by.

“Can you describe the man or the sedan?” Rittenhaus asked, his voice flat.

Mrs. Barrett’s face folded; mutely, she shook her head.

Well, I’d seen a silver sedan recently. A silver Mercury, to be specific. And the thought that Eric Wentz’s stolen vehicle had turned up here, at the orchard, to burn up a solid guy like Dawkins made my temper flare.

I sent Rittenhaus a look that told him so. He recalled the report I’d phoned in after the Mercury had rear-ended me. I could see it in the way his gaze slid away from mine.

“Deputy Dawkins was off duty,” Rittenhaus said. “Can you tell me what he was doing here?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Mrs. Barrett replied.

And that’s when I thought I’d better lay my cards on the table.

“He was here,” I announced, “to meet with me.”

If I’d hoped my little revelation would provoke a reaction, it certainly did. Barrett, Rittenhaus, and his junior deputy turned to men of stone—but that didn’t hide their shock. Mrs. Barrett reached toward her grandson and patted his fisted hand. Charlotte, leaning over the table to pass around coffee mugs and a plate of cookies, fumbled a handful of spoons. They clattered to the kitchen floor like rain on a tin roof.

“Sorry,” she mumbled and knelt to scoop them up.

“Why the devil,” Rittenhaus growled, “did Dawkins want to meet with you?”

“He never got around to telling me.”

And this was the truth. But I wouldn’t necessarily expect the sheriff to believe it. Instead of pressing me about it, however, he hauled himself to his feet and wished Mrs. Barrett a good night.

“I think we’re done here,” he told her. “The fire chief might want to speak with you tomorrow.”

And with that, Rittenhaus turned on his heel. He stomped through the house. His deputy and his girlfriend had to scramble to catch up with him as he barreled through the front door.

For one long moment, neither I nor the Barretts said anything.

But then Barrett spoke.

“All right,” he said, and anger reverberated in his low baritone. “Luke’s gone. He can’t hear you now. So you tell
me,
Jamie. What did Dawkins want to talk to you about?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Adam!” his grandmother breathed.

And I felt as if Barrett had spit in my eye.

But I kept my calm, sloughed off the blanket he’d brought me, collected the coffee cups, and carried them to the sink.

“I could guess,” I admitted. “Dawkins wasn’t from around here. He was an outsider as well as a law enforcement officer. He saw things Rittenhaus—and you—can’t. Or won’t. I think he was going to tell me about them. But I don’t know that for a fact.”

Barrett was at my side in a heartbeat, leaning over me while I rinsed the mugs under the tap.

“You expect me to believe you’re only guessing?” he demanded.

With my back to him, I answered, “I’ve never lied to you, Barrett. But ever since I arrived in Fallowfield, you’ve made me think I ought to start.”

Head held high, I left him and his grandmother in the kitchen, went upstairs to take a shower. I could no longer smell the smoky stink that had to be clinging to my hair, my skin, and my clothes. But I knew it was with me.

And just as I couldn’t pick up the scent of the contamination I carried, I knew there was some connection among these crimes in Fallowfield that I couldn’t see. Too many people had died. And there were too many stories of drug use.

Death, drugs, and a decades-old assault seemingly came together with Eric Wentz—and I wondered if Kayley’s demise, so much like Pamela’s, had pointed Deputy Dawkins toward the crux of it all. After all, someone had wanted to shut him up. That much was clear.

But the reason behind these crimes was still murky. And my list of suspects was short. All of Barrett’s high school friends were on it, as far as I was concerned. But when it came to them, Barrett couldn’t see the forest for the trees. And I believed Rittenhaus couldn’t, either.

It had taken an out-of-towner like Dawkins to begin to put the pieces together.

Well, I was an out-of-towner, too. And I knew of a third stranger who’d taken a keen interest in what went on in Fallowfield. So, one way or another, I’d finish what Dawkins had started—whether Rittenhaus or Barrett or Dawkins’s killer wanted me to or not.

Chapter 25

The lobby of Marc Sandoval’s motel was a lonely place. Empty club chairs clustered together in little conversation groups, but there were no guests out and about at this late hour to make use of them. From behind a front desk of fancy laminate, a sleepy college-age boy stared with glazed eyes at the replay of a football game roaring over the cold fireplace. He perked up as the soles of my shoes tapped across the floor. When I merely smiled at him and bypassed his post on my way to the elevators, he reluctantly turned back to the game.

Around the corner, the elevators, with their shiny stainless-steel doors, gleamed on one side of a wide corridor. A long glass window ran the length of the other. The window showcased the motel’s indoor pool. Cool blue-and-white tiles made it a lovely oasis. And one resident was taking advantage of it.

While I watched, a lone swimmer plied through the water. The crown of his sleek, dark head was just visible above the concrete decking. And his muscled arms reached up and out in a powerful backstroke.

On a hunch, I pushed my way into the glassed-in enclosure. Heat and humidity swamped me as if I’d instantly walked into the Amazon basin. Or Miami, if the collection of imitation-rattan lawn furniture sitting around the pool was anything to go by.

A white terrycloth bathrobe lay draped across the foot of a chaise lounge. A couple of towels kept it from being alone. And on the tile, a pair of men’s flip-flops waited for their owner to finish his laps.

I stepped to the edge of the pool and looked down.

Marc surfaced in front of me. With his strong shoulders and his black hair as slick as a seal’s, he looked like a beefcake ad for some Italian fashion designer’s cologne. But that didn’t stop him from placing both elbows on the pool’s apron and grinning up at me.

“Well, well, Jamie Sinclair, what brings you here this late at night?”

“I was supposed to meet a possible informant. Except he turned up dead. Someone crushed his windpipe before setting him on fire in Barrett’s grandma’s front yard.”

Mark swallowed an expletive, planted both palms on the pool’s decking. In one smooth move, he pushed himself onto the tile. Water streamed from his bronzed skin in torrents.

He wore black swim briefs. The briefest of briefs. They were the kind Australian lifeguards wore—and he looked damn good in them.

I took a step back, put some space between us, and pretended not to notice.

“I think the good people of Fallowfield may be a little too close to the action to see what’s really going on,” I told him. “So I brought you some names. The first is Llewellyn. Allegedly, that’s the guy we saw talking to Vance McCabe in the Cherry Bomb.”

“Llewellyn?” he repeated. “That’s not good.”