“A former ace homicide detective with the Denver PD, he holds several commendations for bravery and efficiency. Sheriff Torrens is confident that he’s the man who will crack this case. And her confidence is reassuring to the people of Steamboat Springs.”
There followed a series of random shots of townspeople, all expressing trust and confidence in Lee’s and Jesse’s ability.
“She’s a fine sheriff,” said Cyril Culpepper. “Good as any man. Hell, better even, maybe.”
“Jesse, he’s a good boy. He knows his job.” That was Andy Taylor from the Times Square Ticket Office.
“They’ll get him. Sure enough, they’ll get him. They’s good cops,” Lorna Watson, wife of the local jeweler, expressed with confidence. “I just hope they do it sooner rather than later. It’s terrible what’s happened here.”
Lee’s eyes narrowed as she sat watching the screen. Suddenly, she knew what Abby Parker-Taft was up to.
Abby Parker-Taft was, at that moment, lying back on her bed in the Mountain View Hotel, wearing nothing but bikini briefs and a short gray T-shirt that barely reached her midriff. She was watching herself on-screen with a cool, professional detachment.
Her screen self was now on the corner of 7th and Lincoln, outside the entrance to the Harbor Hotel. It was getting on toward dusk and the neons in the street glowed behind her, blobs of unfocused color. She’d made the producer hold the sun gun to one side for this shot. Normally mounted on top of the camera, it would cast a flat, glaring, unattractive frontal light on the subject.
Held to the side, as she’d directed, it gave her a better look. Side lit, features more clearly defined and with a slight halo glow about her blond hair. She nodded to herself. She looked as good as a girl could, under the circumstances, she thought.
“This is a town in fear,” she was saying to the camera. “But a town that trusts its cops to do everything in their power to keep them safe. Hardworking cops, just waiting for that one break, that one simple clue that will break this case wide open.”
The shot cut back to her earlier interview with Lee, a close-up of the sheriff. Watching, Abby smiled again, the direct comparison did little to flatter Lee Torrens, she thought. She heard her own voice over the shot of Lee, as the sheriff flicked through a pile of information folders and wanted posters. Abby had asked her to do this as a fill-in shot.
“Sheriff Torrens is a good cop doing a difficult job. But she knows that, sooner or later, the Mountain Killer is going to make a mistake. One slip. One little item he’ll forget. When he does, they’ll nail him.”
The screen now froze on a close-up of Lee, then slowly dissolved through to a matching close-up of Abby. The smile returned to her face.
Lee’s face was lined, tired, lit straight on. Her hair was a tangle and the gray showed clearly. By contrast, Abby was fresh, glowing, with just a stray tendril of blond hair stirring in the evening breeze as she brushed it away from her face.
“Abby Parker-Taft, from Steamboat Springs, for 6 News at 6.”
Her image remained on-screen for a few seconds, in a small frame at the top left as the studio cameras found the anchorman once again. Then the small frame disappeared, to be replaced by a still shot of the Governor’s Mansion in Denver.
“In Denver today, Governor Morgan Whitton received a delegation from industry and commerce to discuss the vexed question of industrial pollution in the mile high city …”
Lee hit the remote switch and the screen instantly imploded to black. Almost immediately, the phone rang. She dropped the remote onto the couch and grabbed for the receiver.
“Sheriff Torrens,” she said.
“You see it?” It was Jesse. There was no need for him to say what he meant by “it.” He sounded vaguely pleased.
“Yep,” she replied evenly. “I saw it.”
“Damn me,” he said. “I’m not sure what I expected, but that sure as hell wasn’t it. She was pretty damn fair the way she treated you, Lee. I was half expecting she’d do a hatchet job but, by God, she didn’t.”
She could almost picture him, grinning with relief, shaking his head in surprise. He was pleased, she knew, on her behalf.
“Maybe I should consider running for mayor,” she said, with just a hint of bitterness in her voice.
He sensed it, paused awkwardly. “You mad about something, Lee?” he asked uncertainly. “I mean, she could have been a whole lot rougher on us you know. She gave you one hell of a vote of confidence at the end there.”
“Yeah, I know,” Lee replied, trying to lighten up a little about it. She didn’t want this conversation to continue any longer.
“Jess, there’s someone at the door. I’ll get back to you, okay?”
“Yeah. Sure, Lee.” He sounded a little relieved now, as if he thought he’d maybe been mistaken about her earlier reaction. “But it sure was nice to get some good press for a change, wasn’t it?”
“It sure was, Jess,” she said, forcing a smile into her voice. “I guess for once it helped to know someone in the business. Gotta go,” she said hurriedly, cutting him off.
“Sure. Bye, Lee,” he said.
She heard the words thin and distant as she was already setting the receiver down. She hung the phone up and looked at it, shaking her head sadly.
“Don’t you see why she did it, Jess?” she asked the silent instrument. “She wants you back.”
FORTY
I
n his cabin above Rabbit Ear Pass, Jesse stared at the phone, a puzzled expression on his face. He’d been pleased with Abby’s report. Not for his own sake. After all, it didn’t really matter a damn to him what the media thought of the way he was handling the case. But for Lee it was important. She was an elected official and she needed good press during a crisis like this.
He knew there was bad feeling just below the surface between Abby and Lee and he’d expected the worst of Abby’s report. She was a past master at the sly innuendo, at damning a subject with faint praise. Her cool, beautiful looks could be devastating when she turned the wick up on her sarcastic sense of ridicule. And he knew she saw the report as a chance to go on to bigger things-maybe a spot on network news somewhere. Jesse might be a country boy, but he’d been around enough to know that network news producers didn’t usually give out jobs to reporters who handed in good news reports.
“Good cops, tough job” was a whole lot less likely to impress the network than “Hick cops fuck up.” Jesse knew it. And if he did, he was sure that Abby knew it as well.
He shrugged, stopped gazing at the phone and moved to the kitchen, where a half-full bottle of Jack Daniel’s was waiting on the bench. He poured himself a slug, thought about adding ice, decided it was unnecessary, and sipped at the smooth fire of the liquor.
He wondered if Lee was all right. It was sometimes hard to tell what a person was really thinking when you were talking on the phone. Jesse liked to be able to see a person’s eyes when he was talking to them. Eyes found it difficult to lie. If you could see the eyes, he felt, you could see what the person was really feeling.
The phone rang. Taking his glass with him, he crossed the room and picked up the receiver, expecting it to be Lee, calling him back after dealing with whoever it was who had called on her.
“This is Jesse,” he said.
“So it is,” Abby replied. “I guess I’d know that voice anywhere.”
Ready to hear Lee’s voice, he was taken aback.
“Oh, hi there,” he said lamely. He could hear the smile in her voice as she replied.
“Hi there? I bust my buns singing the praises of the Routt County Sheriff’s Department on network television and all you can say to me is ‘Hi there’?”
“Sorry, Abby,” he said, recovering a little. “I was sort of expecting someone else to call, I guess.”
“Lee?” she asked, her tone light and seemingly unconcerned. He wondered if he’d been wrong about the possibility of jealousy between the two women—at least on Abby’s part.
“Yeah, well, I was speaking to her earlier and we got cut off, you know,” he said.
“So, did she see the piece?”
He knew that, at heart, reporters were just like any other performers. They all needed praise for their efforts. He guessed that was fair enough. They got their asses kicked often enough too.
“She saw it, yeah,” he said carefully.
“And?” she pushed gently.
“And… great!” he said, forcing the enthusiasm a little, and wondering if Lee had thought it was great. He decided to get off that uncertain ground. “I thought it was great too.” This time he could be sincere. “I was going to call to thank you,” he added.
“You ‘were going to call,’ ” she said, just a hint of disbelief in her voice. “How often does a girl hear that little phrase?” She laughed softly to let him know she was joking—just a little.
“I’m sure you don’t hear it too often, Abby,” he replied seriously. There was a second or two of silence before she continued.
“Not often. Just from people I … care about,” she said. He said nothing to that. There was another silence, this one stretched a little longer. Then, finally, she broke it. “Would you really have called me, Jess?”
He hesitated a second, considering his answer. Then he said, truthfully, “Yes. I would have called, Abby. It was a good piece and we owe you.”
“We?” she repeated, teasing slightly. “Just who is we, Jess?”
“All of us in the sheriff’s department,” he said evenly. But she wasn’t going to let him get away with it quite as easily as all that.
“That includes you, of course?”
“Of course.” He wasn’t sure where she was going with this. He wished she’d drop it. But she wouldn’t.
“So, in that case, you owe me, as well as all those others, right?”
“Well, I guess I do, Abby” he said, keeping his tone light, trying to make the conversation a joke. But there was an undercurrent here that he wasn’t comfortable with.
“Right,” she said briskly, springing her trap. “I guess if you owe me, you can settle that debt with a good dinner. How does that sound?”
“Sure,” he said, still trying to keep things nonspecific. “Any time at all.»
“Tonight,” she said triumphantly and he tried in vain to back off
“Tonight, Abb? Well, I’m not sure about tonight. I’m up here in the cabin and it looks like it could snow anytime soon …” He let the sentence hang, hoping she’d take the hint. Naturally she didn’t.
“Oh come on, Jesse!” she said, a slight edge creeping into her tone. “Surely we can see each other just once for dinner? We’ve hardly said two words to each other all the time I’ve been here!”
“We said plenty yesterday—” he began. But she wasn’t letting him get away with that.
“That was work,” she cut in briskly. “I mean talk. Catch up on old times. Tell me how you’ve been doing. Hell, Jesse, you know damn well what I mean!”
“Well, maybe tomorrow night,” he stalled, but again she cut him off.
“I’m heading back to Denver tomorrow,” she said. “Tonight’s the only time we’ve got. Now come on, Jess! I won’t bite you.”
He hesitated again. Part of him did want to see Abby Part of him always did. But he knew that when he did see her, he always ended up confused. She was a breathtakingly beautiful woman and she knew how to use her looks.
He knew too that she still felt a strong attraction to him. Those two facts made a dangerous combination. He knew he shouldn’t really see her tonight. But he felt his breath coming a little shorter just at the thought of doing so.
Besides, he thought, he did owe her. The department owed her. And somehow, he didn’t see Lee being prepared to settle the debt by buying her dinner. He shook his head angrily. It didn’t do to think about Lee when he was talking to Abby.
“Okay,” he said abruptly, before he could change his mind. “Why the hell not?”
A small gurgle of laughter echoed down the line.
“How could a girl possibly refuse such a gallant invitation?” she asked.
“Give me half an hour,” he said, now committed to the idea. “I’ll pick you up at your hotel.
11
“No,” she said quickly. “I’m just heading out for a workout. You know where the gym is at Sundance Plaza?”
“I know it,” he said. There was a gymnasium, complete with indoor running track and pool.
“Pick me up there at seven thirty” she said.
“Okay” he said. “Seven thirty it is. Where do you want to eat?”
“Surprise me,” she replied, and he could hear the smile in her voice. “Somewhere reasonably expensive.” She paused, then said, only half joking, “Not the Tugboat, okay?”
He laughed. “Okay. The Tugboat is out.”
“Any good music in town this week?” she asked. He knew by good music she didn’t mean classical. One of the few areas of agreement they shared was a love of country music.
“There’s a tolerable bluegrass band on at the Barn,” he suggested.
“They do a mean steak there too, as I recall?” Abby said, and he had to agree.