HIGHWATER: a suspense thriller you won't be able to put down (12 page)

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Last chance. Get out right now, asshole.”

Liz steeled herself. Was she actually going to shoot him? She hadn’t planned on it, no. But, at this close range, she could wing him. Then what? Then he’d be lying there, bleeding, and she’d have to call the ambulance. What an ordeal that would be. She didn’t think she could handle any more ordeals. She just wanted to leave, to go home. If only he would just get out, she could pack up. She could put miles between her and this God-forsaken place. The time had come.

“He’s back,” said Christopher, and at first Liz thought he meant Jared, and she listened for a vehicle and let the rifle drop a little, relaxing her grip on it.

“Liz,” Christopher said, standing there like a little wooden soldier, searching her with his eyes — were there tears in those eyes now? It didn’t matter.

“Our baby is back. It’s a boy. He’s alive.”

Liz raised the gun again and with no thought in her mind, her breath fast and hard, the shower running in the bathroom, she fired.

***

The shot took Christopher right in the chest and sent him backwards so that he fell against the bed, dropped, and ended up half-sitting against the frame.

Christopher’s eyes were wide, his mouth hanging open. Liz dropped the rifle to the ground and stood there.

He was looking at her, his eyes flicking back and forth. His chest heaved, and with one hand, he pawed at it. Blood on his fingers, he looked at them, and then his eyes found her again, and now they were glazed.

Liz dropped to her knees in front of him. Her own mouth worked. After a moment, she found words, “Our baby? Our
baby
?” It was all she could say.

There was one last look from Christopher where he was all there, where she knew he’d heard her, and then his eyes fluttered and his back arched and he groaned. Blood ran from either side of his mouth in two rills, the cords on his neck standing out as his body fought against the invasion of the bullet, the shock of the intrusion.

And then his heart, which had been pierced by the hollow-point and destroyed, stopped beating.

His body slumped, the top half of him rolling away from the bed so that he lay jackknifed on the carpet.

Liz took her hand from his leg. The hand was trembling. On it was the half-drawn flower she’d been doodling with the ballpoint pen, a forsythia blossom, her favorite.

“Chris,” she said, “Christopher.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Trooper James Cruickshand had seen the call on his Mobile Data Terminal before it had even come over the radio.

He was noshing on a breakfast sandwich from State’s Market when he’d seen the complaint line and clicked on it. The note card came up onto the screen and he clicked on the ILLI tab. Viscome Road. Kingston residence. Caller identification was Elizabeth Goldfine.

He’d already sucked the grease from his fingers and dropped the shifter into Drive when the voice call came in.

“3E32, weapon discharge at this time, 6053 Viscome Road, Elizabeth Goldfine. High priority, in progress. Serious physical injuries, male, possibility of DOA.”

Cruickshand was gaining speed. He had been sitting near the intersection of 8 and 33, eating his sandwich, shooting the shit for a while with Dandy Gramone who’d happened by as he was out testing the water, or whatever he did every morning.

Now Cruickshand roared down 33 in the Ford Explorer. As the trees rushed past he clicked on the
Handling Resources
tab with his stylus. The complaint call had been sent to the RRSO as the agency. IN21 had been dispatched as well. Michelle Branch. She was from the Sheriff’s Office, like Tom. Red Rock Village Police didn’t come out here. It was State and County. Branch was en route. The two of them would handle the call.

Cruickshand got her on the radio.

* * *

By the time the police arrived, Elizabeth had finally taken her shower. She’d moved Christopher, but merely changed his position so that he looked more comfortable. She realized as she’d done it how absurd it was, the dead being uncomfortable, but she’d been unable to stop herself. It was automatic, like folding up the blanket the night before when she’d left her chair and footrest to go inside.

She scrubbed herself clean. She washed the wine taste out of her mouth, swishing with the shower water as she stood under its beads, and she worked her armpits (and her “critical areas” as Finna would say) into vigorous suds and rinsed thoroughly. She brushed her teeth standing in the bathtub. She thought, really, of nothing as she did all of this, only of the cleaning itself, as if she were preparing for a day of work, and not for an interview that could send her to prison.

She had dialed and said that someone had killed an intruder. It was the truth. Christopher had been an intrusion. A major one. Since his first appearance, her life had been turned upside down. Yesterday her biggest concern had been her relationship with Jared, her fears about his Johnny-come-lately promises and plans, and whether or not she was going to see this one out or if she was going to leave it behind like so many before it. Now she might face a murder charge. She could claim self-defense, of course, but the way things were going, she didn’t know that she would. She seemed to be losing control of everything. Her walls, her world, her creation; it was falling apart. Something was taking over. Some other person.

Even her urge to flee had vanished.

She briefly thought, however, of pinning things on Jared. The weapon which had been used to shoot and kill the man in the bedroom was Jared’s rifle, or his family’s for that matter. Her prints were on it only because at Jared’s behest she had held it before, aimed it; he’d tried to make a mountain woman out of her, ready to shoot a bear, or a coyote. It could easily be rendered, without much brainwork, that Jared had come home to find Christopher in the house, talking with Elizabeth — or even just by himself, going through the drawers, sniffing her panties perhaps — and had flown into a jealous rage and started shooting. It wasn’t much of a leap. Happened all the time.

Liz turned the water off and stepped out of the shower. It was her flesh she saw, looking in the mirror, standing there naked, dripping. They were her eyes, her nose, her hair, but it was a stranger inhabiting her. No one she’d invented; someone else. Someone who’d been living in her this whole time, it felt, just beneath and behind everything else, waiting for the rest of it to crumble so that she could step forward and take over.

She left the bathroom and looked at the lump by the side of the bed, under the afghan.

She looked back into the bathroom. There was a puddle by the bathtub. She stood looking at the puddle, and heard car engines grumbling underneath the sound of the rain, drawing closer.

* * *

They met at the turn onto the Kingston drive from Viscome Road. Michelle Branch was already out of her vehicle. Cruickshand put it in park and got out. He was fifty-eight, prone to a flaring sciatic nerve. His leg felt a little dead as he walked around the car to her. She was checking her weapon. He looked around, he sniffed the air. He thought he’d been out here before. Years ago, as a kid.

Donna Viscome Road
, Cruickshand suddenly thought.
You used to call it “Donna’s Road.”

“Caller hung up,” said Branch.

“I saw that.”

“Crazy how fast these calls come over the MDT.”

Cruickshand nodded, looking down the driveway, which twisted out of sight. “I know. And I hate text messaging.”

“Too many people with scanners today.”

They got to walking, both of them guns drawn, and said nothing else as they rounded the bend and approached the house.

It was midday. The clouds moved slowly overhead, the rain had tapered to a drizzle, the wind dying down. The weather could be wild this time of year: from rain to snow, and then back to rain.

The house was nice enough, green and white. One of the older places. Not really a camp, but not one of the new-fangled places either, which were starting to look like they’d come out of a catalogue, everything just-so. This place was genuine, probably built in the thirties or even earlier. Some of the camps and homes out here had been built in the late 1800s.

The birds sang in the forest. The eaves of the house dripped, the gutters spouted. There were puddles everywhere in the potholed dirt driveway. Cruickshand and Branch made their way around them, and reached the porch.

Cruickshand looked at Branch and signaled with his left hand that he was going to the door; she would stay on the ground. She nodded. He climbed the three porch steps, careful not to creak or scuff. When he got to the door he stood alongside of it, then reached over and rapped on the storm shield. Branch crouched low and off to the side of the porch stairs, concealing herself well behind the railing and footer post.

“Miss Goldfine? This is the police. Please come to the door with your hands out in front of you.”

Cruickshand peered into the door, keeping himself guarded and away. If Goldfine still had a gun, Branch would see it from where she was tucked away and would signal him.

“Miss Goldfine! Come on out!”

A girl appeared in the kitchen then; Branch saw her and signaled to Cruickshand who had moved his head back away from the door. He looked in again. She couldn’t have been more than early twenties.

Cruickshand knew the drill. Probably the suspected DOA was her boyfriend who’d been boxing her ears in for the last time when she’d gotten out his hunting rifle and finally let him have it. Domestics were a constant. Murder was rare, but it happened.

The girl wasn’t armed. She walked slowly across the kitchen towards the door, and Cruickshand could see that she was freshly showered — her hair was wet. She had makeup on. She looked like she was ready to go to a job interview, or to a cocktail party. Dressed smartly, all done-up, but he could see the blankness in her eyes, even from a distance. He’d seen it before. Likely she was still uncomprehending of what she’d witnessed, or what she’d done.

When she was only a few feet from the door, he signaled to Branch. When the girl opened the door, he grabbed it, swung it open the rest of the way and got a hold of her. Branch sprung onto the porch and already had the handcuffs out. Trooper Cruickshand spun the girl and Branch latched the cuffs on.

“Who else is in the house?” asked Branch, locking the cuffs home.

The girl shook her head. “I did it,” she said. Then, “He’s upstairs.”

Branch looked at Cruickshand. “You want it?”

He nodded and asked her, “You good?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, get her to the car and I’ll clear us and start prelim. You can make the call.”

“911 already notified the Sheriff.”

“I know. But you need to make the call anyway.”

“Right.” Branch started to escort the girl off the porch and to her vehicle at the end of the road.

Cruickshand went inside the house.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The girl had gone AWOL in her brain, Cruickshand thought. She was a vacant room; the occupant had bailed out through the bathroom window. She wouldn’t give Branch any trouble, he was sure, but there was no telling whether someone else was there in the house or not — there could be a second person, or a third. Who knew? Someone else could have done the shooting; the girl could be lying for any number of reasons. Protect someone, maybe. Or because someone had forced her. No, there was no guarantee of her being the only one standing in the house any more than there was a guarantee there was a dead body in here. The girl wasn’t a medical examiner, was she? She wasn’t the county coroner. People sometimes called in a death when it turned out that someone was just passed out. Breathing shallow. All kinds of things.

As if on cue, Cruickshand’s ears picked up the distant sound of the ambulance on its way.

He continued to move through the kitchen, his body coiled, sweeping the gun wherever he looked. The place was spotless; almost inordinately so. Cruickshand decided to check the trash. First, he had to find it. He looked around the kitchen at knee-level, but there appeared no lidded trash can he’d thought to find. Next, he started checking the lower row of cabinets. On the third try, he found trash. He pulled out the plastic can. There was nothing in it except for a brand new bag.

Baby’s got a brand new bag
, he thought.

Time to fish or cut bait
, he thought next. He blinked at that. That was an old phrase. Hadn’t heard that in years.

“Cruickshand?”

It was Michelle, on the porch. Just after she said his name, a fresh gust of wind kicked up against the side of the house. Cruickshand heard a high whistling that come with it, and then things were quiet again. Sounded like another storm cranking up.

“Good,” he called back to Branch. He swallowed. He turned and looked out of the kitchen and into the next room and quickly walked in through an alcove, passing a flight of stairs on his left. There were no signs of anyone else here, no boots on the porch, no telltale dishes in the kitchen sink, no rolled-up sleeping bag on the couch. Yet something had battened on to him, some idea that there was someone else, if not in here, then on the premises.

He surveyed the living room, poked his head out onto the porch, saw a crescent of the choppy, gunmetal pond below the house. There, he thought, down there. A distinct sense of something down near the pond. He took a moment and stared at it. The feeling returned that he’d been here before, that he’d spent time along the banks of that very pond.

Cruickshand turned and strode back into the kitchen and leaned toward the entrance, toward the other porch, putting his weight on one foot and said, “Clear, Branch. All clear.”

He rocked back on his rear heel, spun, and started up the stairs. He was a little less cautious now, but he knew there could still be someone, sure. Even though there was nothing to indicate that anyone else was in the house, there were also signs of cover-up, a cleanliness Jim doubted was just coincidence.

He took the stairs carefully but swiftly — as swiftly as a fifty-eight-year-old old bastard could take a flight of stairs, he thought — and quickly reached the top. The narrow stairway corridor opened into a bedroom with a slanted ceiling. To the right there was a doorway to another room. Jim spun and looked in there and saw that it was like a sitting room, or den, with four vertically rectangular windows, cut at an angle on top to the pitch of the roof, so that the apex was the center of the two middle windows. It looked like the room had been recently redone, and there were tools lying about in light sawdust — a skill saw, a jigsaw, a tool belt with a chalk line and tape measure and cat’s paw, among other things. Jim turned away and out of the room and returned his attention to the bedroom.

The bed in the corner was a double, or maybe a queen-sized, and it was one of the few things in the place — besides the refurbished sitting room — that wasn’t immaculate. It was a jumble of comforter and other blankets. There wasn’t much else in the room. A dresser sat on the other end opposite a roll-top desk. There was another window there, between the dresser and desk, a simple, double-hung job with flecked paint. Jim saw that it was open a crack.

He took a couple of steps closer to the bed. On his left was a bathroom. He pointed the gun in and checked it out. There was moisture hanging in the air; a recent shower indeed. The mirror was still a bit fogged over. That there was an attempt at concealment going on, you didn’t have to be a detective to see: kitchen totally tidied-up, pillows fluffed in the living room, body cleansed in the shower. But to conceal what? The girl had already confessed to whatever had happened.

Jim turned and walked out of the bathroom and over to the bed. He was about to feel around in the heap of covers for something, anything, when he heard a squishing sound at his feet.

He looked down. Along the edge of the bed was a darkened area. He bent and dropped his fingers into it. Wet. Like someone had dumped water, or whoever had taken a shower had stood right here, letting all the water on their bodies slurry down onto the carpet. It would have to be one helluva wet person, but what else would it be? He sniffed his fingers. Basically odorless. It didn’t smell like blood or urine that he could detect. In fact, now that he thought of it, if anything it smelled a little like . . . semen.

He pulled his fingers away from his nose and said “awwfff” to the room, standing up so fast it made him dizzy.

“Jim?”

Of course it wasn’t semen. There wasn’t a man on earth that could produce a sample like that. It wasn’t semen, no, of course not, but there was that particular odor, so faint, so implacable but somehow unmistakable — something to do with sex. Some salty, metallic thing. He would follow up with the serology report later, if just to satisfy his own curiosity.

“Jim?”

He heard the porch door open and bang closed. Branch was in the house.

“Yeah.” He stepped forward again and rifled through the covers and blankets on the bed. Nothing there. Not even a stuffed animal. The ambulance siren grew louder. Then, it went out.

Trooper Jim Cruickshand walked over to the top of the stairs and looked down. Michelle Branch was standing at the bottom.

“She’s all set. I’ll take her in.”

“Okay,” he said.

“What you got?” She squinted up the stairs at him. She wasn’t chewing gum, Jim noticed. He liked that. All the chick cops chewed gum, it seemed. It made them look a little bit like dykes. Michelle was a smokin’ hottie, Jim had always thought. She had a thick mane of reddish-brown hair, same color eyebrows, and those kind of eyes that were both grey and blue at the same time, without quite being either. She had a good face, feminine, but not porcelain. She didn’t wear any makeup, but her lips were naturally bright. But Branch had a hubby. And a kid.

“Nothing,” said Jim down to her. “I got nothing. There’s no one here.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” For some reason he didn’t mention the wet spot. Why not? Because it, other than being mostly odorless, had the faintest but unmistakable smell of sex?
You don’t want to sound stupid, eh Jim
? “Bed’s unmade, someone recently took a shower, probably the girl, but, well, that’s what the cavalry is for.”

“Right-o. Alright, I’m going to bring her in. Thanks, Jim.”

“Thank you, Michelle,” he said, smiling. She left the bottom of the stairs, not glancing up at him again, but only walking out of sight.

Jim returned to the bedroom and stood there. Something occurred to him, something he’d seen on the way in, walking down the road to the place. He set his gun on the bed. First, he had to take a piss. It might not be much of one — his prostate was no great shakes anymore, pardon the pun — but the pressure was there. He walked into the bathroom, put up the seat and unzipped.

First he’d let Michelle get going then he’d check the shed outside. See if there was any trash in it and what the trash might have to tell.

As he did his business, Jim thought he heard something. A voice. Of all things, it sounded like it had come from the drain. He listened, and heard it again. Only this time, it seemed to form inside his head.

“
Verrega
,” he heard. “
Don’t let her go
.”

Jim waited for more, feeling his blood run cold. When he heard nothing else, he fastened his pants back together. He walked slowly out of the bathroom, and stared at the wet spot on the carpet.

* * *

Officer Michelle Branch walked back out of the Kingston place and over to her vehicle, which she had driven up almost to the back porch. The Goldfine girl was sitting in the back, cuffed, hands behind her, looking straight ahead.

Michelle got in and did a three-point-turn and had started out the dirt driveway when someone pulled off Viscome Road on the other end and started in.

Michelle’s heart leapt; it’d taken her by surprise. The vehicle was a green Chevy Blazer. She thought she recognized it. She put her Explorer in park and got out.

Investigator Milliner emerged, a light smile on his tired-looking face. “Sheriff called me. How are you, Ms. Branch?”

“Tom, good afternoon.”

Milliner started over to her, leaving his driver’s side door open. He was wearing jeans, boots, and a hunting jacket, the red-and-black-checked kind. His hair was sort of pushed against his head on one side and the balding part on top had a few wiry, errant hairs standing up like drunks at a line-up. Milliner looked like he needed a good rest. Hell, he looked like he needed three weeks in Bermuda.

Milliner’s ghost of a smile faded as he walked toward the vehicle, no longer looking at Michelle, but fixed intently on the girl in the back seat. He approached on the other side of the Explorer, looking in the rear passenger-side window at the girl.

“This her?”

“That’s her.”

The ambulance was approaching, but the siren had clipped off in mid-wail. Michelle wondered why. Before she even had a chance to raise this with Milliner, though, the ambulance was there, lights twirling, turning off from Viscome Road and only getting as far down the driveway as the back of Milliner’s vehicle.

“Shit.” She hopped back into the driver’s seat and threw the gearshift into reverse. Then she thought of Jim saying
there’s no one here
. Well, Jim may have made that call, but you never knew. There could still be someone. Tom Milliner was still standing on the other side of her vehicle, staring in at the girl who was looking straight ahead, seeing nothing, it seemed.

“Tom,” Michelle called loudly.

He snapped out of it and turned and looked at the ambulance and trotted over to his car.

A few seconds later Michelle was reversing back towards the house and Tom was following, the ambulance on his heels. Michelle and Tom parked as far out of the way as they could in the constrained area, and the two EMTs got out and started up toward the porch.

Milliner came back over to Michelle, who sat in the vehicle. Michelle gestured with her hand for Tom to lean close.

“She says she’s the perpetrator.”

Tom looked at the girl in the backseat.

“But Jim hasn’t found anything yet,” said Michelle.

Tom glanced at Michelle then turned his head to look at the house. “Let me take her in.”

“What? Why?”

“Sheriff called me, like I said. I been out here already. Twice. I sort of got a case going with her.”

“Oh. Okay.” It meant less paperwork for her. She got the suspect out and took the cuffs off and Milliner put his own on her. The girl was warm, loose as a rag doll, and Tom had no trouble getting her into his own backseat. She looked like she was in shock.

Tom walked around the front of his Blazer and got in it. He started up the engine. Michelle thought to stop him, to ask a few more questions, but the two EMTs were walking back towards the ambulance, empty handed.

There was no body after all, Michelle thought. Jim had been right. What a strange afternoon. She patted the hood of Tom’s Blazer and he pulled out and started away.

After some deliberation she signed off on the EMTs and sent them on their way. They followed Milliner’s path out of the dirt driveway, headed to Donna’s Road, and Route 33 beyond.

* * *

Jim Cruickshand burst out of the front door of the house, his face flushed.

Michelle called over to him. “What’s the matter?”

Jim looked past her, down the driveway. He came down the porch steps. “Where is she?”

“Milliner was here. Picked her up.”

“Follow them.” he said. “Keep your eye on that girl.”

“What is it?” She was used to state troopers giving commands rather than making requests, it was their way, but there was something else in Cruickshand’s voice.

“I’m not sure yet. Just keep on her. Let me know what Milliner does with her.”

She nodded and got in her Explorer and took off through the woods, as instructed.

Trooper Jim Cruickshand listened to the sound of her engine fade, watching the driveway which led away from the Kingston place. Then his head swiveled on his neck as he turned to look at the shed which sat pressed into the trees.