Deserves to Die (9 page)

Ahead of him, in her own vehicle, Deputy Winger was heading toward her assignment as one of the road deputies who patrolled the county. She was one of the few people in the department he completely trusted, and so he’d initiated their breakfast meeting, which, he reminded himself, was
not
a “date.” One thing was certain, he wasn’t going to mix business and pleasure again. The women on his staff were off-limits. Period.

He’d made that mistake once already and wasn’t about to do it again. Besides, aside from Deputy Winger, he didn’t trust anyone working for him. It wasn’t that the other men and women on the force weren’t good officers. Just the contrary was true. But nearly every one of them was so loyal to Sheriff Grayson that they weren’t as yet swayed to the inevitable fact that he was the right man to step into the job as acting sheriff.

I’ll have to change that,
he thought, pausing at the railroad tracks as a long freight train barreled through the town, blocking his route up the steep hillside. He watched the cars hurtle past, just on the other side of the crossing’s flashing arm, and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. An ambitious man by nature, he looked upon Grayson’s passing as a tragedy, but an opportunity, as well. Not that he would have ever wished his predecessor ill will or an early death. But since Grayson had passed on, Blackwater wasn’t a man to let a chance like this slip through his fingers.

He believed in the old adage his great-grandmother had conveyed to him when he was very young. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” she’d told him on more than one occasion and he’d used that saying as his personal credo from the time he’d entered school and sensed that he was different from his peers. He’d been able, from an early age, to know when someone was lying or hiding something, even if that person was adept at concealing their feelings. It was an ability that had served him well in his job. That waitress at the diner, Jessica, according to the pin on her uniform, had definitely been afraid of revealing something about herself. He’d known it as if she’d suddenly announced it to the world. When she’d recognized he was “the law,” she’d been all thumbs, as evidenced by the coffee splatters on his clothes.

The last rail car shot by in a clatter of steel on steel, the train heading underneath a tunnel on the south end of town. As he half listened to the crackling police band, Blackwater watched the signal’s flashing blade lift slowly. He eased onto the gas while on the opposite side a girl in an older Ford Mustang was looking down, no doubt paying attention to her phone and unaware the signal bar had lifted. On the road behind her, the irritated driver of a huge Suburban laid on the horn, startling the girl. She hit the gas and the Mustang lurched forward, the woman in the Suburban scowling darkly as she followed close on the blue car’s bumper.

Road rage. Never good. A part of him wanted to pull over both drivers, one for possibly texting, the other for tailgating, but he had other fish to fry, specifically solving the cases that would help him be elected at the end of Grayson’s term. He snapped on his wipers as the snow began to fall again. He was probably ambitious to a fault, but so what? Even though this job had just fallen into his lap, he wasn’t going to let it go. In his thirty-eight years, he’d already learned that real opportunity knocked only once on a man’s door, and sometimes passed by a person’s house altogether.

The engine strained a little as the hills steepened, the road slicing into the hillside and skimming the top of the ridge.

Blackwater had been a poor kid growing up. His dad had loved baseball, alcohol, and other women more than he did his family and had bailed on his wife and kids when Hooper was a sophomore in high school. From that point on, he’d been the “man of the house,” and he’d reveled in the responsibility . . . and yes, power. And he wanted the power that came with the job of sheriff.

He drove his Jeep into the lot for the station, and with a sense of rightful ownership, parked in the space marked S
HERIFF
. First up on his to-do list was make certain Grayson’s killer was prosecuted to the full extent of the law, convicted, and locked away forever. He had limited control on that one. His department could only provide testimony and evidence to convict, but he’d been in talks with the DA ever since hearing the news of Grayson’s death and that office was definitely on the same page. A couple other potential homicides would keep his staff busy and the public concerned, and that didn’t begin to touch the normal crimes involving robbery, drugs, domestic violence, and such. Yeah, the department would be busy.

He loved it.

As he yanked his keys from the ignition, just for a second, he thought of the waitress again. Along with her anxiety at slopping hot coffee on him and the fact that he was a lawman, he’d sensed there was bone deep terror that she was definitely trying to conceal. He’d been left with the feeling that covering things up and hiding were all a very integral part of who she was. A mystery, the waitress.

Not your problem. You have more than enough to deal with.

After locking his Jeep, he jogged through the lightly falling snow, past the poles where the flags were drooping at half-mast, to the front door. It was cold, but he found the change of the seasons invigorating, the winters bracing after spending so much of his life in the Southwest. Inside, the bright lights and gleaming floors didn’t match the somber atmosphere. Even Joelle, usually bubbly to the point of being ridiculous, was subdued, her demeanor sober as she looked up and told him that several reporters had already stopped by for interviews.

“Not this morning,” he said. “Maybe a press conference, later. If necessary.”

He started to turn away, but she held up a beringed finger. “Sheriff, I mean . . . Sir, I was thinking,” she said.

He noted that the black stones of her ring matched her earrings, part of her mourning attire, he presumed.

“Maybe we should dim the lights for the rest of the week, make a little shrine here, beneath Sheriff Grayson’s picture”—she motioned to the wall where the past sheriffs were displayed—“and, you know, have a moment of silence every day?”

“No.”

“But—”

“This is the sheriff’s department. Our business is the public’s and we’ll remain open at full staff, with the lights on. No shrine. I’ve got the flags at half-mast and we’ll run the department with a skeleton staff for the funeral so any and all officers who want to go can attend. Sheriff Grayson will get a full-blown law enforcement funeral, motorcade, three volley salute, the whole nine yards, but the department will remain open, uncompromised, ready to handle any and all calls and emergencies. We owe that to Sheriff Grayson’s honor.”

Though her lips were pursed in disapproval, she didn’t argue, just nodded tightly and turned to a ringing phone.

If Blackwater had to be a hard-ass as commander to keep the county safe and well protected, so be it.

Noting that the offices seemed quieter than usual, he walked briskly along the hallway to the office marked S
HERIFF
. No doubt about it, he felt a twinge of satisfaction as he hung his jacket on the hall tree near the door. This, he sensed, was where he belonged.

T
he last thing Pescoli needed was Hattie Grayson seated across her desk bringing up the same damn topic she had in the past. When it came to the subject of her ex-husband’s death, the woman was a broken record. Worse, she’d come in with Cade Grayson who, rather than take a seat, decided to stand, leaning against the file cabinets, looking enough like his brother to give Pescoli a weird sense of deja vu.

“So you don’t think it’s odd that two of the brothers are dead?” Hattie asked, her eyes red-rimmed, her face drawn. She’d been close to her brother-in-law and had, according to the local rumor mill, dated not only Cade, but Dan, too, before marrying Bart, or some such nonsense. The timeline seemed skewed to Pescoli, not that she cared. She did know that Dan, in the past couple years, had spent a lot of time with Hattie and her daughters. Then Cade had returned, and Hattie had turned her attention to Dan’s younger, wilder brother. It seemed, them being together, that Hattie and Cade were a couple.

Pescoli gave a mental shrug. What did it matter? Considering her own love life, she wasn’t going to judge Hattie on hers. But the obsession about Dan and Bart’s deaths being connected was nonsense. Bart had committed suicide; Dan had been shot by an assailant.

“I think it’s tragic that we lost the sheriff and that his brother died before him,” Pescoli said neutrally.

“Bart did
not
kill himself,” Hattie insisted, as she had ever since her ex, supposedly despondent over their split, had walked into the family’s barn, tossed a rope over a crossbeam, and hung himself.

“I know that’s what you think, but his death was ruled a suicide.” There it was. The bone of contention.

“He wouldn’t do that to . . . to the girls,” she insisted, then more softly, “or to me.”

“We know who killed the sheriff,” Pescoli reminded the distraught woman seated on the edge of one of the visitors chairs positioned near her desk. The detective’s gaze moved to that of Cade Grayson to include him in the conversation. “There’s no argument. That man’s behind bars. He’ll be prosecuted and convicted.”

“Are you sure?” Hattie asked.

Dear Jesus, yes! I saw Dan go down, I witnessed him take the bullets. And I was there when the son of a bitch who killed him was arrested. I almost lost my own damn life to that psycho.
Though her emotions were roiling, she managed to keep her voice calm. “Of course.”

Hattie squeezed her eyes shut and held up her hands, fingers spread wide as if she knew she’d stepped over the line. “Yes, I know that you got Dan’s killer, but you told me you’d look into Bart’s death again. Reopen the case.” Blinking rapidly, she swiped under her eyes with a finger.

Pescoli located a box of tissues under an unruly stack of papers. Nudging it around two near-empty cups of decaf to the far side of the desk, she said to Cade, “You think someone killed Bart, too?”

“Don’t know.” His jaw slid to one side and Pescoli remembered that Cade had been the unlucky person who had found his brother’s body hanging from a crossbeam in the barn.

“Could be.” A couple years younger, Cade looked a bit like Dan with his long, lean body, square jaw, and intense eyes. The Grayson genes were strong enough that a family resemblance was noticeable, though he was a couple inches shorter than the sheriff had been, and, from all reports, a lot more of a hellion in his youth. He’d ridden the rodeo circuit, only recently returning to Grizzly Falls. “Bart was having his problems,” Cade said, his gaze drifting to Hattie for a second. “We all know that.”

Hattie’s face grew more ashen.

“But she’s right,” Cade said, hitching his chin toward his ex-sister-in-law. “Bart loved those girls and it seems unlikely that he would take himself out, denying McKenzie and Mallory from knowing their dad.”

Pescoli felt trapped. “Look, I said I’d look through the files, and I will. But I didn’t mention reopening the case.”

“Semantics,” Hattie said.

“More than that. A major difference.” Pescoli wanted to make certain they understood her position.

“Just, please.” Hattie swallowed and plucked a tissue from the box to wipe her eyes. Too late. Mascara was already beginning to streak her cheeks. Clearing her throat and standing, she said, “I know you were a good friend to Dan, and your partner Selena . . . she and Dan were close.”

Pescoli waved a dismissive hand indicating that she didn’t understand but accepted Alvarez’s romantic fantasies about their boss.

“Dan would want whoever killed Bart to be brought to justice,” Hattie said determinedly.

That much was true. Pescoli reminded, “If he was murdered, but—”

“He was murdered!” Hattie leaned over the edge of the desk so that she could meet the doubt in Pescoli’s gaze with her own conviction.

Pescoli rose from her chair and said firmly, “We don’t know that.”

“That’s because when he died, everyone just assumed the worst,” Hattie stated. “So, you’re right, we don’t know, but it’s your job to find out.”

“His death was investigated at the time. Even his brother—”

“Dan was never satisfied about the outcome,” Cade put in, straightening. They were all standing in the room, regarding each other tensely.

Hattie lifted her chin. “If it makes you feel any better, Detective, don’t do this for me. Do it for Dan.” With that she walked away, her sharp footsteps echoing along the hallway.

Cade said, “She’s serious about this, you know. And Dan wasn’t happy with the outcome of the investigation, though, of course, he wasn’t sheriff at the time. I know you weren’t involved then, either, but if you’ve got the time, I’d appreciate it.”

Something in his eyes reminded Pescoli of his older brother. For a second, she imagined the sheriff standing in front of her. But then Cade squared his hat onto his head and followed after Hattie.

Pescoli looked at the case files stacked on the corner of her desk. Deeter Clemson’s fall to his death, Jimbo and Gail Amstead’s domestic violence case where each had ended up in the hospital, Ralph Haskins’s suicide, as well as the new, deceased Jane Doe. Throw her personal life into the mix, and she really didn’t have time to dig into a long-closed suicide just because the ex-wife and beneficiary of the life insurance policy wanted her to. As Pescoli understood it, the insurance company had balked at paying the benefits to Hattie and her twin daughters as it was determined that Bart had taken his own life.

Pescoli really shouldn’t bother with Bart Grayson’s death. The case had been investigated and closed, but Hattie’s final words echoed through her mind.
If it makes you feel any better, Detective, don’t do this for me. Do it for Dan.

“Oh, hell,” she muttered and knew that she’d dig through the case file. Just a cursory look, then maybe her guilty conscience would be assuaged.

Then again, probably not.

Ryder gassed up his truck at a station-convenience store with the unlikely name of Corky’s Gas and Go.
Sounds bad any way you cut it,
he thought as he replaced the nozzle and, hands deep in his pockets, dodged a minivan and a Prius parked beneath the broad canopy covering several pumps. A fuel truck had pulled around back, ready to refill the underground tanks, and a woman in a long coat and boots nearly ran him down as she pushed open the glass door to the market about the time he was walking in.

“Watch where you’re going,” she said as she hurried outside.

Ignoring her, he walked past her to where the heater was cranked to the max, a wall of hot air meeting him as he strode down the aisles to the back case and grabbed a beer and a couple bottles of water as the H
₂
0 that flowed from the tap of his room at the River View wasn’t exactly pristine.

A girl in her early twenties was manning the register in a tank top; it was that warm inside. “Hire anyone yet?” he asked, motioning toward the H
ELP
W
ANTED
poster taped to the glass just inside the door.

“Nuh-uh. Don’t think so.” She rang up his purchases. “You get gas?”

“Pump six. Any applicants?”

“Corky, he’s the owner, just put up the sign this mornin’. It’s still pretty early.”

“What’s it for?”

“You interested?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, you have to take a drug test and submit to a background check.” She rolled her eyes, indicating that was a pain. “Then, you start helping out at the pumps. Some people don’t like to pump their own, y’know?” Another eye roll. “Corky’s a stickler,” she said.

Ryder decided Anne-Marie wouldn’t take a chance on a background check. No, she’d find a job where the owners of the establishment weren’t as conscientious as Corky.

Of course, there was always Grayson.

Ryder could go right to the source.

But he didn’t want to spook her and there was more than a little bad blood between Cade and himself. And there was that little problem about Cade just losing his brother. The man might be hair-trigger touchy and who knew how it would go down if Ryder just showed up and Grayson was harboring Anne-Marie. If she caught wind that he was on to her, no doubt she’d bolt again.

For now, Ryder needed the element of surprise, so he had to be careful.

He bought a couple maps of the area that he’d study then keep in his truck, as the Internet service was often spotty, especially when he was driving in the hills. Besides, sometimes he got a better feel for the land with an old fashioned map rather than wireless Internet service. Climbing into his truck, he drove through town again.

Three times already he thought he’d caught a glimpse of Anne-Marie in the small town, and three times he’d been wrong. He’d gone through Craigslist, the want ads, and any Internet Web site that listed houses, rooms, and apartments to rent. He’d scoured through ads from a few weeks earlier, but had come up with nothing. At the same time, he’d gone through the motions of checking listings for job opportunities, marking off those that he thought would require background checks.

In the past, he’d always been one step and three or four weeks behind her, nipping at her heels, only to reach the town in which she’d landed to realize, after a week or two, that she’d taken off again. It always took a while to discover her next move.

This time, though, he believed he’d gotten the jump on her.

Of course, he’d missed her by several days in Denver, but had gotten lucky and found a bar where she’d poured drinks for six weeks before getting spooked. Wanda, one of her coworkers, had recognized her, even caught her adjusting a dental appliance and had figured out she was on the run. “Anne-Marie? Huh. I knew her as Stacey.”

“Not Heather Brown?” That was the name she’d used in Omaha.

Wanda had shaken her head. “She’s Stacey Donahue. She go by somethin’ else, too?”

“Yeah.”
A lot of something elses,
he’d thought

“That happens a lot, y’know. People changin’ their names and runnin’ from their pasts. Husbands, ex-boyfriends . . .” She’d skewered Ryder with a suspicious glare, then shrugged as if she’d determined he wasn’t dangerous. “As I said, happens all the time.”

Ryder had then interviewed all the workers at the establishment and discovered no one had really known where she lived. He’d ended up in a confab with Wanda and a couple other employees.

“Rented a room, I think. Somewhere not too far because she walked to work most days,” Wanda offered. “I think she said she had family in San Bernardino that she was hoping to see . . . that was it, right? No, wait, maybe it was San Jose, oh, hell all those towns in California sound the same to me. Donella, you knew her better. Where did Stacey say she had family. San Jose?”

“I didn’t know her that well,” Donella denied, giving a quick shake of her head, her ponytail wagging. “I thought she said . . . San Jacinto. Maybe.”

“No, that ain’t it.” Wanda let out a frustrated sigh. “All I know was it wasn’t San Diego or San Francisco, but it started with San . . . wait, or maybe Santa. There’s a lot of those, too.”

“Talk to Tanisha,” Donella declared. “She’s the one who talked to her the most.”

He’d thanked them, then, hours later, had shown up for Tanisha’s night. The place was rockin’ by then, a band coming on at nine, but he hadn’t been thinking it would make any difference as Anne-Marie had told everyone she worked with a different story about heading out to somewhere in California, or Las Vegas, or Phoenix. Diversions to hide her true destination.

However, Tanisha, who happened to be one of the bartenders, had given him his first real clue.

“Yeah, I talked to her, but she kept to herself,” she confided in a smoky voice that hinted at too many cigarettes. A short, black woman with a hard stare if a customer was getting too rowdy, she added, “Said she was from Texas somewhere. Maybe Houston. I can’t really remember.”

Encouraged, Ryder had stuck around, ordering drinks and placing healthy tips in the jar on the counter.

Finally, Tanisha remembered. “You know, she did say something once about looking up an old boyfriend. When I asked her who he was, she clammed up and said she’d thought better of it. Didn’t say his name, but I think he was some kind of cowboy. But y’know, we’re in Colorado. Everybody’s a cowboy here.” She’d laughed then.

But Ryder had known Anne-Marie must have been talking about Cade Grayson. “Did Stacey ever talk about Montana?”

Tanisha was polishing the long wooden bar with a cloth and a man at the far end raised a finger, indicating he’d like another drink. Ryder had been impatient, wishing he had the bartender’s attention all to himself, but then she said, “Y’know, that’s about the one damn place in these United States she didn’t mention.”

Bingo.

He’d then canvassed the area and found a rooming house where the landlady who, for a little cash, admitted that her last tenant, a woman she “never trusted,” had moved on and told her to forward any mail to a post office box in LA. Ryder hadn’t taken that bait. He’d been fooled by Anne-Marie too many times. Instead, he’d followed the only clue that had made any sense to him—that she was going to hook up with an old boyfriend. Maybe that had been her plan all along, to go to Cade, or maybe it was a move out of desperation. Whatever the case, one-time rodeo rider Cade Grayson was Anne-Marie’s ex-boyfriend and a bona fide son of a bitch.