The Virgin of Small Plains (45 page)

Wide-eyed, out of words, Abby nodded.

“She wasn’t raped. She had blood down her legs because she had given birth.”

“How do you know that?” Abby whispered.

“Because I knew she was pregnant and when I saw her in the snow that night, I could see she wasn’t pregnant anymore. Abby, we had just been out in the fields delivering newborn calves. I knew a recently delivered female when I saw one, even if she was human instead of some other kind of mammal, and even if I was only a kid. Sarah had been pregnant, and she’d had the baby, and then she died.”

“What happened to the baby…and who was the father?”

Abby was still whispering, as if she was afraid to ask such questions.

Rex tapped the first folder. “This is the child’s DNA. I had it identified by comparing it with her DNA.” He looked at her. “It’s Jeff, Abby. Jeff Newquist is Sarah’s child. I got a sample of his saliva off a cigarette he smoked, and I did that because of what I knew. I knew Sarah was pregnant, I knew she stayed at the Newquists’ ranch house during her pregnancy, and then they showed up with a brand new adopted baby. I thought there was at least a chance that baby was hers.” Once he saw that she had absorbed that information as well as she could at the moment, he continued. “My next job was to identify the father, so I sent in samples from the most likely suspects.” He tapped the second folder. “These are Patrick’s DNA results.” He tapped the next one. “Mitch’s.”

“Mitch?” The single word was an anguished protest that gave away her feelings then and now.

“I had his tested because Sarah had a crush on him.”

“But that didn’t mean that
he—
”

“I thought I should make sure.”

“But how did you do that, how did you even get his DNA?”

“That part was easy. We shared a lot of clothes. I’d wear one of his practice shirts for football, he’d slip on one of my basketball shirts.” Rex smiled slightly. “My mom keeps everything. And a teenage boy’s sweat is a long-lived thing.”

Abby stared at the folders and then up at Rex.

“Does one of them match?” she said, looking afraid.

He nodded again. “Jeff has DNA that matches Sarah’s and Mitch’s, Abby.”

Tears flooded her eyes and she looked down.

He waited sympathetically for her to be able to look at him again. When she did, he said, “I think that’s why his parents sent him away, so they could adopt Jeffrey as if he was a stranger’s baby, and no one would ever connect him to Mitch.” He gave her a little more time to absorb that, and then he said, “I think my brother killed her, out of jealousy.”

He expected her to look horrified again, but this time, she didn’t.

“Oh, come on, Rex,” Abby said, sounding the calmest she’d sounded since first showing up in his office that afternoon. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

His mouth almost dropped open. She wasn’t reacting very dramatically to his momentous announcement of the terrible secret he’d been keeping to himself for all these years, that his older brother had probably killed a girl.

“Of course I believe it!” he protested. “I just said so. My God, I just called my own brother a murderer.”

But she shook her head. “You two have never gotten along. Patrick would love to beat you any way he could and you’d love to believe the worst of him. It’s true, Patrick is a jerk. He’s a liar and a manipulator, but he’s not very good at it, Rex. You know that. He always gets caught. If he had done this, he would have given himself away by now. No matter whether our dads were covering up for him or not. So, okay, he’s all those things. But he wouldn’t
kill
anybody, Rex.”

When he looked at her as if she was naive, Abby said, “He wouldn’t!”

Then, seeing him gathering the folders and getting up from his chair, she said, “Where are you going?”

“
We’re
going out to the ranch.”

“Why?”

“We’re going to find out if my parents know anything that we don’t know.”

“Rex! You’re not going to accuse Patrick to them!”

But he was already heading for the door. Abby jumped out of her chair and hurried after him. On her way out the door, she suddenly remembered the awkward moment in Verna Shellenberger’s kitchen when Verna had seemed to falter in her own belief in Patrick. Abby’s heart sank, remembering that, and suddenly she wasn’t quite so sure of her own conclusions about him. And if she wasn’t even sure about Patrick, who had been in and out of her life for all these years, then how could she possibly be so sure about the innocence of a man who had been gone for half of that time?

In his SUV, when she couldn’t get him to talk about Patrick, Abby said, “We’re a fine pair, aren’t we?”

“We?” She had finally goaded him into speech. “What do you mean we? What’s this we business?”

“You and me, Rex,” Abby said. “Too much in love with other people to ever fall in love with anybody else.”

Rex gave her an angry, puzzled look as he drove. “Huh? I’m not in love with anybody.” Sounding reluctant, as though he hated to humor her even with a joke, he said, “Though I’ve probably been overfond of a horse or two.”

“Sarah,” Abby said, simply and directly. She looked over at him. “I know about the flowers, Rex. Every Memorial Day you give her flowers.”

“How the hell do you know about that?”

“I maintain the cemetery, remember? I’ve seen you.”

He tried being indignant. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“It looked private.”

“Well, so what? It doesn’t mean I’m still in love with her, Abby. I’m just showing respect, that’s all, and saying I’m sorry.”

“Really? When’s the last time you were in love with a woman, Rex?”

When he didn’t answer, but only shifted uncomfortably in his seat, Abby said, “There hasn’t been anybody, has there? Anybody you’ve loved, I mean. There hasn’t been anybody since Sarah.”

“She has nothing to do with it. And, anyway, you’re a fine one to talk. Who have you ever loved since Mitch?”

“But that’s what I mean, Rex,” Abby said, without defending herself. “We’re a fine pair.”

They rode for two miles in complete silence.

Finally, he sighed, breaking it. “Yeah.”

“I’m sick of it,” Abby told him, taking up right where she’d left off.

He sighed again. “Me, too.”

They were already driving alongside the fence line of his family’s ranch. His parents’ home was ahead on the right. “Look,” Abby said, “your mom’s waiting for us.” Rex had called ahead to say they were coming. Now they both saw that Verna had spied them and was starting to run toward the gate where they would turn in.

“Rex?” Abby said, as they got closer and she could see Verna’s face. “I think something’s wrong.”

When they pulled into the driveway, Verna hurried up to Abby’s side.

Rex and Patrick’s mother was weeping.

“Abby! Oh, Abby! I’m so sorry, honey! Abby, your dad’s been shot!” She looked across at her sheriff son while Abby gasped, turned white, and grabbed for Verna’s hands to hold. Verna squeezed them tight.

Abby almost couldn’t get the words to come out. “Is he…?”

“He’s dead, sweetheart,” Verna told her gently while the tears flowed down both their faces. “Your father’s dead.”

Chapter Thirty-nine

Two sheriff’s deputy vehicles were already in the Reynoldses’ driveway, blocking the exit by the other cars parked at the top of it. Rex and Abby rushed into the house through the wide-open front door.

All Abby saw was her father lying on the living room carpet.

The wound was tremendous, fired at close range, opening up his chest and penetrating his heart and lungs.

“Dad!” she screamed, while Rex held her back.

“I’m sorry, Abs, you can’t go over there.”

It was a crime scene now and he saw that his deputies were struggling to get it right.

She had called her sister, Ellen, from Rex’s car, but she wasn’t there yet.

He took Abby out of the house again and then walked around to the back and through the office door. Inside her father’s little clinic they found four other people huddled, waiting for somebody to pay attention to them.

Her father’s long-time nurse ran up to Abby and they sobbed in each other’s arms.

“We heard shouting,” one of the patients said.

“Then we heard a shot,” a second one said.

“What did you do then?” Rex asked them all.

“She tried to get into the house through that door—” The first one pointed at the nurse and then at the door that led into the Reynoldses’ kitchen. “But it was locked from the other side.”

All the patients were locals, older men whom Rex had known for years.

He realized they’d been scared, and who wouldn’t be, hearing a sudden gunshot inside their doctor’s house.

“We shoulda gone around to the front sooner than we did,” one of them said.

Rex nodded. But they’d been frightened of what they’d find. It was a kindhearted town where people went out of their way to help one another, but it was also a town full of small-town fears of big-city problems, where an elderly nurse and three old men sitting in their doctor’s office and hearing a shot might have imagined there were people wanting to steal drugs, or some such. He didn’t blame them for being slow to act, but he knew they would forever blame themselves.

Deputy Edyth Flournoy walked in at that moment, carrying a rifle encased in plastic, which she displayed for Rex to see.

“That’s it?” he asked her.

“This is it.”

Rex looked over at Abby, then back at the rifle.

It was Mitch’s childhood gun.

Rex, who had shot it many times himself, would have recognized it anywhere because of the heart and initials that Abby had scratched into the wooden barrel, an act of loving vandalism that might have infuriated another boy but had only made Mitch laugh and kiss her. Rex had been there to see it and he remembered thinking at the time,
it must be love.

His cell phone rang. When he saw on the Caller I.D. screen that it was his parents’ number, he answered, saying, “Mom?”

“Rex—” His mother’s voice was shaky. “Mitch is here.”

“Mitch is
there,
at your house?
Now?
”

Both the nurse and Abby looked up sharply at him.

“He’s in our driveway, Rex,” his mother said, sounding near panic. “With Jeff. Rex, he’s got a gun.”

“Where’s Dad?”

“Upstairs.”

“Can you get to Dad’s gun case?”

“No!” Abby screamed, breaking away from her father’s nurse. “No, Rex!”

Ignoring her, he continued giving instructions to his mother. “Get out one of Dad’s rifles. You know how to use it, Mom. If Mitch does anything to threaten either of you, shoot the bastard.”

“Rex, I can’t! I couldn’t do that!”

“Mom, it’s his rifle that shot and killed Doc.”

“No!” Abby screamed again.

Rex took the phone from his ear for just long enough to look his friend in her eyes and say, “Maybe it’s about time that you and I believed the worst of Mitch Newquist.”

She ran after him when he raced out to his SUV and jumped in before he could stop her. He didn’t have time to argue with her or to force her out of the car. He had told his deputies to leave what they were doing and follow him. “But don’t make any moves until I tell you to,” he instructed them.