Jaded (6 page)

“They’re gone,” Gunther Jensen said.

Hand still on his weapon, Lucas stepped through the opened door and scanned the wreckage of the old man’s living room. “You check the cellar?”

“No,” Gunther said, white-knuckling the railing on the porch. “The stairs bother me some.”

Lucas could see a twin mattress stripped of its sheets and shoved awkwardly into the corner. Gunther probably moved downstairs after his last fall. “Sit down. I’ll take a look around,” Lucas said. “Stay here. Don’t touch anything.”

Old habits died hard, so he released the snap and kept his hand on the Glock’s grip as he climbed the stairs. The board creaked under his feet, alerting anyone upstairs to his presence, but something in the house’s shocked stillness told him whoever had trashed the seventy-nine-year-old widower’s house while he was visiting his sister in the county home was long gone.

He checked the four equally wrecked bedrooms, closets, and bathroom, then opened the narrow door to the sharply pitched stairs leading to the attic. A thick layer of undisturbed dust covered each riser. No one, including Gunther, had gone up there for some time, but Lucas still put his back to the wall and edged up the narrow stairs. He peered cautiously over the landing and found nothing more threatening than an ancient dressmaker’s dummy and a hundred years of Jensen family history crammed into boxes, crates, and trunks. Cobwebs covered the dust. No one had been in the attic in decades.

Sneezing once, he retraced his steps and did a quick check of the cellar, which was in much the same condition as the attic, except it smelled of damp and mildew. “Whoever did this is gone,” he said to Gunther.

“They got my wife’s jewelry,” Gunther said. He pointed at a small mahogany box, and his hands trembled, although whether from Parkinson’s or shock, Lucas couldn’t tell. “She didn’t have much. I buried her with her wedding ring but kept the engagement ring. The diamonds weren’t more than chips shaped like a daisy. These days the gold was worth more than the diamonds. Thought I’d give it to my granddaughter for her sweet sixteen next month. But they took it.”

Lucas remembered the ring, so similar to the one his own grandmother had lost. As a boy he’d rashly promised her he would find the ring for her, spent hours digging for it in the backyard. Even now when he worked on the plumbing, he automatically kept an eye open for the glint of gold or light refracting off a tiny diamond, insignificant by today’s standards. Even though his grandfather replaced the ring with an anniversary band, Lucas never stopped looking. Then he got busy in Denver, and finally accepted that the ring was gone forever. Sometimes lost things weren’t meant to be found again.

He’d been a cop too long to make those kinds of promises. Instead, he stepped forward and clasped the man’s shoulder. Gunther nodded twice, then seemed to steady himself. “Mind if I take a look in your medicine cabinet?”

As he suspected, Gunther’s supply of pain pills for his herniated disk was missing. Determining what else was missing from the wreckage took an hour. He righted the furniture and straightened what he could while they searched. In the end, the thieves had made off with jewelry, the old man’s laptop he used to e-mail his grandkids living in Sioux Falls and Minneapolis, and a stash of cash they’d found in the freezer.

“Who would do this?” Gunther said.

The old man gave money to anyone who asked, so Lucas wondered the same thing. “Have you had anyone working around the house lately?” he said neutrally.

Gunther stared out the window, his hand hovering over the wooden box’s mother-of-pearl inlay. “Cody Burton needs service hours at the high school. He walks over and helps me download audiobooks.”

Suspect number one. Lucas nodded, but watched Gunther’s expression close off. “Anyone else?”

“I hired your cousin to take down the storm windows and turn over the garden,” Gunther said slowly. “She showed up last week, looking pretty bad. I couldn’t pay her much.”

Suspect number two.
Looking pretty bad
meant Tanya had found a new source for the prescription painkillers again, and using again meant she needed money. He tried to feel something at the news—anger, regret, sadness, but discovered Tanya’d used up her allotment of empathy a long time ago. Or maybe he just didn’t have anything left to give.

“So they were both in the house at some point in the last couple of weeks.”

Gunther nodded. Dusting for fingerprints was pointless, unless they found someone else’s. Not his cousin’s, and not the kid he’d sent to the library staffed by a shy librarian for community service.

“I need to get back to the station,” Lucas said. “Don’t touch anything until I send someone out to dust for fingerprints. You still attend First Lutheran?” When Gunther nodded, Lucas added, “I’ll call Pastor Theresa. She’ll get the youth group out here to help you clean up.”

Outside the house he stood, hands on hips, and surveyed the prairie rolling away to the horizon. When he was a kid he’d spent summers in Walkers Ford, and thanks to a functioning Chevy Camaro and a steady supply of Tanya’s friends, he knew the surrounding landscape pretty well. When he returned as chief of police, he spent long evenings driving the county roads with a map, marking off farms and ranches, abandoned buildings, homes. So he knew that due south of the Jensen place lay the double-wide trailer that was home to Cody Burton’s mother, three younger half brothers, and his brother, Colt, who’d been released from the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls a couple of weeks earlier.

He’d sent Colt away for burglary. Unlike on television shows where cops had to troll the world looking for perps, in reality, most crimes were committed by people close in relationship or proximity to the victim. The Burton trailer clung to a wide swath of exposed prairie less than a mile away. Tanya’s ramshackle house hunkered by the creek that ran past Brookhaven, the sprawling, grand old house he still thought of as Marissa Brooks’s place, just over two miles north as the crow flew.

No time like the present to do the job. He drove first to the Burtons’ and banged on the door. The trailer’s metal skirt, rusting and loosened from the boxy structure, vibrated in counterpoint to his fist, but he didn’t let up. No way in hell someone wasn’t home. Eventually, Colt Burton opened the door.

“What do you want?”

Stale beer and body odor hung around Colt like Pigpen’s dirt cloud as Lucas peered around him into the trailer’s dimly lit interior. “Courtesy call,” he said. “Someone broke into Gunther Jensen’s place this morning.”

“Wow, Chief, you’re worried we’re next?”

Lucas ignored the sarcasm. “Mind if I take a look around?”

Colt leaned against the door frame, a good eighteen inches higher up than Lucas. “Got a warrant?” he drawled.

“Not yet.”

“Get one and come back.”

“I’ll do that,” he said easily. “Who’s home?”

“Mom’s sleeping. The little kids crawled into bed with her to watch TV. You know where Cody is,” Colt said, then shut the door in his face. Lucas got back in the Blazer and drove over to his cousin’s house. He knocked on the weathered door, watching it rattle in the frame as he did.

No answer. One good shot with his fist would splinter the rotting wood around the lock, but once again, he refrained. Either the Burtons or Tanya had both motive and opportunity, but an arrest wasn’t enough. Convictions counted. He’d stop by again later.

Back in the Blazer and headed into Walkers Ford, Lucas mulled over the break-in. Until recently, crime in Walkers Ford had run more to alcohol—underage drinking, driving while intoxicated, accidents—and dog problems of the loose and/or barking variety. The social fabric of a small town policed as effectively as he did. Neighbors looked after one another, kept an eye on each other’s kids. Life as the Walkers Ford chief of police was exactly the break he needed after a decade in Denver.

Then J&H Industries, the manufacturing plant on the county line, had lost a major defense contract and scaled back to two shifts, with the corresponding eddies into small businesses supported by those workers. Convenience stores, cafés and restaurants, gas stations were all directly affected by fewer people driving to and from work. Shops noticed a decrease in sales. People worried about feeding their kids and paying bills sometimes turned to drugs for relief.

Sometimes they took what they needed from someone else who had it. Like Gunther Jensen, a retired farmer making ends meet on Social Security.

Lucas drove past the library on his way into town. On impulse, he pulled into the parking lot and climbed the stairs to the front door. Through the leaded-glass windows he saw Cody, a can of Pledge in one hand and a dust rag in the other, carefully wiping down the woodwork around the front windows.

Alana stood in front of one of the library’s public access computers, guiding a patron through using a search engine. She wore a knee-length skirt made of brown fabric that looked like it would be rough to the touch, a cream sweater that hit at her hips and was belted around her waist with a very thin brown leather belt. The outfit was sophisticated, clearly expensive, and worn with a confidence only big-city money brought. But while the way her skirt clung to the curve of her ass when she leaned on the elbow-high counter made his pulse pound, it was the bright interest in her eyes as she explained the nuances of Google-fu to Mrs. Finley that tightened his heart in his chest.

He opened the door. Cody steadfastly ignored him, but Alana’s gaze flicked to the door to see who the newcomer was. Her eyes widened when she saw him, and she excused herself.

“Yes, Chief?”

He lifted his eyebrows, just as a test. As expected, she blushed, just a faint hint of pink, but enough to remind them both of unfinished business.

Relenting, he flicked a glance in Cody’s direction. “How’s he working out?”

“Considering he’s been here for all of three hours, fine. Why?”

Her stomach growled ominously, loud enough for the mom sitting in the children’s book area to look up in surprise. “I’m going to grab some lunch. You want to come along?”

She looked around the building. Mrs. Battle, the former library director who’d come out of retirement at seventy-seven to help Alana, held a book at an odd angle and peered at the call numbers on the spine, then shelved it just as the phone rang. Mrs. Battle beat Alana to it, and another mom with kids came through the front door. “I can walk over to Gina’s with you,” she said. “I can’t stay away for long.”

“Fair enough,” he said.

“Chief Ridgeway and I are going to walk over to Gina’s and talk about Cody’s community service,” she said to Mrs. Battle. Lucas wasn’t thrilled with the way she made this sound all professional, nothing personal. “I’ll bring back lunch. Minestrone soup?”

“Yes, please,” Mrs. Battle said. “Take your time.”

Alana disappeared into the office to grab her purse. Once down the steps, she shouldered the enormous bag and set off down the sidewalk. He didn’t have to ease up on his stride so she could keep up. She gave him an expectant glance as they crossed Main Street. “I just came from Gunther Jensen’s place. It was broken into this morning while he was visiting his sister at the nursing home.”

“That’s terrible,” she said.

That was life. That kept guys like him in enough work to last a lifetime. “They wrecked it pretty badly, took some jewelry, a laptop, some cash.” He waited while she processed this. “Gunther lives about a mile from Cody’s place.”

She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked at him. “Cody was waiting outside the library this morning. He was nearly blue with cold. I’d say he’d been outside for quite a while.”

“He have a car?”

“I didn’t see one in the lot,” Alana said.

So the kid probably walked the six miles from the trailer to the library, a long trip in the cold damp spring air, but staying out of jail was a good motivator. If he’d even spent the night at home. He could have been outside all night, except his clothes were clean, if worn and a size too small. “Okay,” he said, filing the details away.

He held the door to Gina’s Diner for her. Everyone noticed them walk in together, but conversation didn’t stop. He was her landlord, and everyone local would know about Cody’s arrest and community service. That and their public-service roles were enough reason for them to be together, if anyone asked, which would keep her happy.

Gina slid the plastic menus back into the caddy when he said they were getting food to go. He ordered a burger and fries. Alana ordered lasagna, two cups of minestrone soup and extra rolls, and two slices of pecan pie.

“Mrs. Battle loves pecan pie,” she confided as she dug in her bottomless pit of a purse for her wallet.

“I’ve got it,” he said, and handed over cash for the meals and a tip.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Did you skip breakfast?” he asked when Gina brought out two white sacks of food.

“I gave my breakfast to Cody,” she said.

He just shook his head at her naiveté. Defensive color stood high on her cheekbones, or so he thought, until she added, “Let me make you dinner tonight. As a thank-you for lunch.”

It wasn’t defensive color. It was nerves. The shy librarian was asking him on a date. A quiet date at her house. A quiet, private date at the house where she had kissed him, and something about the secrecy rubbed him the wrong way. This wasn’t who he was, a man who did things on the sly for any reason at all.

“Sure,” he said.

“Is six too early?”

“Six is fine,” he said.

“You can bring Duke over if you want,” she said with a smile. “I promise I won’t ask you to fix the bathroom sink again.”

3

A
LANA STOOD IN
the pasta/canned goods aisle of Hooper’s Market, an empty plastic basket in one hand and her phone in the other, waiting for her e-mail to download. When the wheel stopped spinning, she knew why it had taken so long. She had e-mail from Marissa Brooks, which meant pictures.

Hey, Alana—

Thanks for the picture of the Main Street planters. I always knew spring had arrived when the planters went out. Are the prairie crocuses blooming? Has the council hired a replacement director?