Dead Man Falls (18 page)

Jerry got me back over the fence, and at some point, he wrapped a blanket around me and put me in the car, which was where I still sat, staring out the windshield at the emergency equipment and personnel that had materialized around me.

The shock was fading and sound began to trickle in through the open window. Through the buzz of radios and conversation, I heard a familiar voice say, "Get her on over to the hotel, Jerry. We’ll talk when I get there. Give me maybe half an hour." I didn’t hear Jerry answer, just saw him head toward the car. He got in, closed the door and turned toward me. "You okay?"

"Yeah." The word took more effort than I’d imagined. "Fine."

Jerry reached over and touched his finger to my chin. Only then did I realize my jaw was chattering. I was also shivering uncontrollably.

"The hotel’s just across the road," he said. "We’ll get you warmed up in no time."

I pulled the blanket tighter around me and nodded.

A Redwater officer met us in the hotel parking garage. How Rick and Jerry arranged things, I don’t know, but the officer rode with us in the elevator up to the rooms, two of them, with a door between. The officer went into one and came out the other then told us all was well.

Yeah, right.

Once we were safely inside my room, Jerry set my duffel bag on one of the queen-sized beds and guided me down beside it. He slipped through the adjoining door, presumably to lock the night latch and talk to the officer.

The hotel room was actually very nice and very new. Dense burgundy carpet with gold flecks covered the floor and the bedspreads utilized the same rich tones in a floral pattern. Victorian style cherry wood furniture, including an enclosed TV cabinet, and Monet prints gave the room a classy feel. Definitely best of the best.

When Jerry came back into my room he headed directly into the bathroom. He didn’t say a word, but the sound of water splashing into the tub coaxed a little sigh from my throat.

I could almost feel the hot water calling to me and I couldn’t help but wish Jerry and I were here under different circumstances. But, we weren’t, and death does not turn me on. I have never understood how comforting someone after a death can turn into hot sex. I will admit that Jerry’s thoughtfulness was endearing, but if and when we ever did get around to the physical relationship stuff, I certainly didn’t want to be distracted by visions of Rhonda Davenport.

I wedged myself up off the bed just as Jerry came out of the bathroom. "You get me into that tub you may not get me out."

"I’ll get you out." He smiled a little. "I have my ways. Besides, you’ll rest better after a hot bath."

"I thought I heard Rick say he’d be here shortly."

"He will, but don’t worry about it. You don’t have to talk to him until in the morning."

"Sheriff Parker says?"

He nodded. "I’m in charge of deciding what’s best for you tonight."

"Is that so?" A grin wrinkled my face and it felt good. "So, I just need to do what I’m told."

"That’s right. Your orders are to get in that tub, relax then go to bed. No discussions, no arguments, no choices. Got it?"

My arms felt like they were tied down with lead sinkers or I would have given him a mock salute. I did manage a light chuckle. "I’ll let you get away with that tonight, but try it again in the morning and we’ll see who’s telling who what."

"Next time," he said, "don’t go without me."

I nodded, knowing exactly what he meant. "Believe me, if I’d known what was there, I wouldn’t have been within a thousand miles of it."

"You saw her from the bridge?"

"I saw something, but I wasn’t sure what." Smiling as much as my quivering jaw would let me, I added, "I called for you to come over."

"My mistake," he said, his voice low and serious. "I won’t make it again."

"Oh, I could have told you what I thought I saw and you’d have come running. But I was afraid of being wrong and looking stupid. I don’t want to look stupid in front of you, Jerry, although I guess I did just exactly that."

"No, you didn’t." He reached toward me and gently touched my shoulder. "I’ve been in law enforcement for over twenty years, Jo. It’s my job to handle these things. Let me do it, okay?"

"Okay." I slipped my hand over his, squeezed then stepped back a little so we were no longer touching. "There’s something I have to confess to you. It doesn’t speak highly for me as a human being, but it’s the truth and it’s only fair that you know." He didn’t say anything so I charged on. "This whole thing really did a number on me. I’m not proud of the way I reacted, and I’m even less proud of what I’ve thought about since."

"This kind of thing is a shock--"

"It’s not that," I said before he could rationalize anything for me. "I'm a horrible human being, Jerry. I don't feel anything. I hate admitting this, but I just don't feel sorry that she's dead. Like I said, I'm a horrible person and you should know it."

"You're not horrible, Jo, you're in shock." He smiled and nodded toward the bathroom. "Get in the tub, Honest Annie, and relax for awhile. It will do you good."

I looked up at him and tried to read his face. I needed to know what he really thought about what I’d said. "You don’t hate me for it, for not caring that Rhonda’s dead?"

He sighed, reached out and pulled me to him, hugging me tightly. My cheek rested against the warmth of his chest as his fingers toyed with my hair. "Even when you got married without me, I didn’t hate you. That you’re not crying your eyes out over somebody who tormented you every chance she got isn’t even worth discussing." He kissed the top of my head then leaned back and looked down at me. "Now then, Miz Jackson, Sheriff Parker orders you to get in the tub. I’ll check back in a few minutes to make sure you don’t fall asleep and drown."

I dropped my hands and stepped back, feeling a little awkward about my confession, being alone with him, holding him close, everything. "Thanks, Jerry."

He grabbed my bag from the bed and set it in the bathroom, then hurried through the adjoining door into his room.

A hot bath really did sound good, but I only made it into the doorway of bathroom. It wasn’t the huge jetted tub that stopped me, or even that Jerry had considerately stacked a towel, washcloth and soap on the tiled edge of the tub, or that he’d put out the bathmat. What really got me was the can of Dr Pepper sitting on the counter next to a glass filled with ice.

With a knot in my throat, I popped the top on the can, filled the glass, chugged it down and filled the glass again. Then I undressed, slipped into the steaming water and cried.

Chapter 13

I awoke to a rhythmic knocking on the door between my room and Jerry’s. I did not know this right away, of course, as I initially believed someone was enthusiastically banging on my skull with a hammer. No, what brought reality crashing in was the cheerful voice of Sheriff Parker saying "Good morning, Jolene. Are you awake?"

I glanced over at the clock on the nightstand. "No, I’m not awake, it’s only eight o’clock."

Apparently he took this as his cue to march into the room because I heard boots scuffing across the thick carpet. I pulled a pillow over my head. "Go away."

"I let you sleep as long as I could," he said, a light and cheery lilt to his voice. "Room service is coming with food and a six-pack of Dr Peppers in about half an hour. Rick will be here before then."

Lovely, just lovely. "All right, fine. Close the door on your way out."

Jerry laughed. "Don’t go back to sleep now."

In a very few minutes, the phone rang--and rang and rang.

I did not answer it. I didn’t have to. Even I couldn’t sleep with that annoying noise and a certain sheriff knew it. I considered ripping the vicious little appliance from the wall and flinging it through the adjoining door into the next room, but I didn’t. I just dragged myself out of bed and into the bathroom, mumbling ugly and unrepeatable phrases every stumble of the way.

After my shower, I did feel better. Not completely human, but better. I fluffed my wet hair with the provided blow dryer so I didn’t look like a drowned rat, and I swiped on a little mascara to counteract my puffy eyes. Somehow along the way I managed to dress myself in standard shorts and fitted tee shirt, and I was just slipping on my sandals when Jerry knocked at the door again.

I let him in and he eyed me provocatively. "You look--"

"I know how I look." Like crap. "Furthermore, I know how I feel." Crap again. "Want me to get into the specifics?"

"Come on, Jolene, lighten up. You look great. What’s wrong?"

Wrong? What could be wrong?

I led the way into his room.

Both Rick and the food had already arrived. Breakfast was nothing to brag about--the bacon was chewy, the eggs rubbery and the toast burnt--but after I’d sucked down a Dr Pepper or three I was semi-coherent. This was not necessarily a good thing, however, as I soon realized that listening to law enforcement types speak in code was neither entertaining nor interesting. From what little I could make sense of, it seemed to me they were entirely too hung up on facts and just the facts.

I sat in a burgundy leather chair, my feet propped up on the matching ottoman. Rick and Jerry huddled around a small round table in the corner of his room, guzzling coffee and combing through the ugly yellow yearbook, mumbling, pointing and making notes. But after a few minutes they even quit mumbling and note-making. Clearly, they were getting nowhere. I forced myself up from the comfy leather wingback and moseyed over to the table. Both stared intently at a graduation group shot that spread across the open pages.

Jerry acknowledged my interest by turning the book to face me and pointing to the right-hand side. "Rhonda only had one page in her hands. This one. No circles, no marks of any kind on either side."

I leaned over and took a closer look. Our senior class consisted of only about fifty or so students, which meant about twenty-five of them were on the page Rhonda had held. I could name most, even if I didn’t know much about them.

My best friend in school besides Jerry had been Kat--now known as Kathleen Jessup, hot-shot Dallas attorney. The teenage version stood on the bottom row near the center, looking smart and pretty, her long thick hair curled under just below her shoulders. Calvin Holt was in the row behind her, black glasses his most distinguishing characteristic. Russell Clements’ glassy-eyed face showed up two people to the right of Calvin. Jerry wasn’t in that part of the picture and neither was I. We were both on the left side of the page. I scanned the entire class again, looking for another particular face. "Jerry, where is Rhonda?"

"She’s not in that photo, Jolene. She didn’t go to graduation."

"She didn’t?" I tried to remember those last few weeks of my senior year, specifically when Rhonda quit harassing me. "She was there for finals."

He nodded. "And then she went down to Abilene."

Huh?

"To give birth."

I felt my jaw drop down to my knees. "Birth? As in baby?" And yes, I couldn’t help it, but the next gut-wrenching question in my brain was the identity of the father.

"Don’t say it, Jolene," Jerry-the-mind-reader said--and rather testily, I might add. "You know better."

Yes, I knew better, but Rhonda had been such a sore spot for so many years that getting my hackles up over her was a conditioned response. I pulled the ottoman over to the table and sat down. "I didn’t ask if the baby was yours, Jerry. I know very well that you have better taste than that." I glanced at the Redwater detective then nodded toward Jerry. "But seriously, the things Rhonda said she did with Mr. Sheriff there would make a porn star blush. She was a creative liar, I’ll give her that."

Rick looked questioningly at Jerry. "She knew she was pregnant and was trying to set you up?"

Jerry shook his head. "No, not at the end of the year. But she’d been trying to get herself pregnant at least since football season."

"Oh, so her little stunt after the game was a real seduction," I said, my very ancient jealousies unpleasantly showing themselves. "But the thing at the end of the year was just to piss me off?"

"That’s about it," Jerry said with a grin. "Only it had the same effect on me and I refused to help her anymore after that."

He’d said as much back then--except about the pregnant part--but hearing it now I could put things into a different context. The green monster sat itself down and tried to behave. "She probably just wanted to get out of Kickapoo, and thought getting pregnant was one way to do it."

"Since it didn’t work on me," Jerry said. "We can figure she tried to seduce somebody else--and succeeded."

Rick said to Jerry, "She never told you who the father was?"

"All she would ever say is that she didn’t want anybody to know--especially him."

That made no sense, not from lying, scheming Rhonda. "Well, if you’d been the one that got her pregnant you can bet she’d have wanted the world to know about it--and tried to force you to marry her. Why not the other guy?"

Rick frowned thoughtfully. "That’s a good point, Jolene."

Jerry tapped his fingers on the table for a minute. "We all know Rhonda’s moral compass was a little skewed. Let’s assume that she intended to get pregnant and profit from it in some way."

"Okay, I’ll buy that." I’ll buy anything, particularly when it moves us off center and into something active, like creative theory-making. "Now, how does it help us find a killer?"

Since neither lawman answered, I figured they didn’t have a good idea either. A random thought skittered by and I pulled it to a halt. "Hey, what did your profiler in Dallas come up with?"

Rick cleared his throat and wiggled around in his chair. "Actually, we don’t have much back yet. The senior analyst is out of town, but a couple of the junior people have been looking at it for us. They’ll have a preliminary report this afternoon."

I managed to suppress the chuckle but not the smile. Textbook education is fine, essential even, but real life rarely follows case studies and the only thing that makes the grade there is experience. "Well, should be interesting to see what they come up with." I smiled again. "Until then, however, you are very fortunate to have
me
!"