And, as she watched, the sheriff of Routt County felt the hot, sharp pain of the tears in the back of her eyes.
SEVENTY
L
ee sat in her office staring, unseeing, at a note from Ned Puckett on the desk in front of her.
She sighed deeply, picked up the single sheet of paper and, for the tenth time that morning, tried to concentrate on its contents. Vaguely, she was aware that Ned was querying the use of town funds to buy meals from the Steamboat Yacht Club.
Equally vaguely, she remembered authorizing Tom Legros to do just that a few days earlier, when she’d kept the residents of Mrs. McLaren’s boardinghouse locked in the Public Safety Building for eight hours. Unfortunately, when she’d lit out in Ray Newton’s helicopter, and Jesse had radioed her to tell her Mikkelitz was on Mount Werner, she’d neglected to tell Tom he could let the guests return home. As a result, they’d had lunch and dinner supplied by one of the more expensive eating houses in town courtesy of the Steamboat Springs municipal budget, and Ned wasn’t exactly delighted about the fact.
She looked at the letter now, realized she’d have to do something about it, crumpled it in one fist and tossed it at the wastepaper basket in the corner. She missed, thought about walking across the room to pick it up, then decided, the hell with it.
“I’ll deal with it later,” she told herself.
Three days had passed since the confrontation on Storm Peak. She’d recalled Ray in the Jet Ranger and he’d flown Jesse and Abby to the district hospital, where one of Mikkelitz’s intended victims was still a patient. Lee had chosen to wait with the body, riding down in a convoy of oversnow vehicles she summoned by radio.
They’d found a diary in Mikkelitz’s room, a chilling collection of random, wandering thoughts, all with a recurring theme of victimization and revenge. Reading the diary, it became obvious that Mikkelitz had ultimately planned to avenge himself on the man who had fired him—but this time, he wanted the whole town to suffer as well.
There were references in the diary to other events in the past, other slights and acts of revenge. It seemed that, previously, he’d been content to kill and slip away undetected. The Storm Peak killings represented an escalation in his thinking. It was as well they’d stopped him, she thought.
She’d passed the diary on to FBI headquarters. A phone call the previous day told her they had found unsolved murders in three states that might just be the work of Anton Mikkelitz.
She glanced out the window at the mid-morning traffic on Lincoln. The ski shuttle bus was pulling away from the curb, the racks on its sides more than half-full of skis. She smiled wanly. There’d been a hurricane of media coverage once word got out that the Mountain Murders case had been solved and that the killer himself was dead. For two days, you could hardly move along Lincoln Street without being stopped by TV crews, half blinded by the glare of their lights, or knocked unconscious by the sudden thrust of a microphone in your face.
The news teams had been bad enough. Lee had made an official statement to a bank of cameras, lights and tape recorders, then got the hell out of the room, followed by a hundred shouted questions. Later that evening, a producer from
60 Minutes
had approached her, wanting to discuss a story on “The dead shot who’d put the ‘she’ in sheriff,” dressing it up to sound like a piece on women in new age law enforcement. Lee saw it for what it was intended to be—a sensational piece, emphasizing her role in killing the murderer.
Politely, she’d declined to be interviewed for the piece. The producer insisted. Less politely, Lee told her to fuck off.
That seemed to do the trick.
She felt no remorse about the death of Mikkelitz. She didn’t glory in it. She didn’t regret it. Rather, she accepted it. He’d chosen the path, she reasoned, and he deserved no better. Given the chance, she would have taken him into custody and seen him stand trial. As it was, she thought the way things had turned out made a more satisfactory conclusion. Mikkelitz may have been-in fact, almost certainly was—insane. But he was criminally insane and dangerous to all around him. This way there’d be no trial. No legal double-talk. No slight chance that he might find himself out on the street, free to murder once more. It had happened before, she knew, and more than once.
He was gone and she didn’t regret it for a moment.
She’d been to see Jesse once in the hospital. He was recovering from the gunshot wound and a severe loss of blood. He’d been sedated and only half aware of her presence and she felt awkward, standing by his bed, holding his hand in both of hers. She kept remembering him kneeling in the snow beside Abby. Holding her. Comforting her. Lee had to admit it, they looked good together.
She’d seen Abby as well. The reporter was also in the hospital, being treated for shock, the gunshot wound to her leg—and for a whole faceful of bruises and contusions where Mikkelitz had beaten her. They’d shaken hands, although Abby had seemed more inclined to want to hug her, and Lee had stood awkwardly while the other woman thanked her, the terror of the hours she’d spent with Mikkelitz still visible, deep behind her perfect blue eyes. Lee had left the hospital room a little more abruptly than the occasion warranted.
And now, today, the media had packed up and gone. The Mountain Murderer story was cold news and the tourists were slowly returning to Steamboat and Mount Werner, encouraged by the fact that accommodation was available and special discount prices were being offered as local traders tried to save something from the season.
Today was also the day when Abby would leave the hospital and return to Denver. Somehow, Lee knew that Jesse would be going with her. And as she knew it, she shook her head angrily, knowing that Jesse and Abby, no matter what they had between them, were simply not as right for each other as Jesse and she.
She knew it. Was sure of it. Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. Jesse and Abby, she knew, might last a few more years together. But inevitably, they would drift apart and break up again.
But this time, knowing Jesse as she did, he would be too proud to return to her. She smiled sadly as she thought about it. Would she be too proud to have him back if he did, she wondered? Then she admitted, no, she wouldn’t. Pride was all very well. But it had no place between two people who were so right for each other.
There was a tap at the door—a light double tap that she knew was Jesse’s.
“Come in,” she called, and he stood there, a little awkward, his weight not fully on his wounded right leg, smiling at her, tearing her heart.
“Just dropped by,” he said, gesturing vaguely to indicate that he was here.
She nodded.
“Abby’s … kind of … on her way back to Denver. Flying out of Hadley at one o’clock,” he said.
She nodded again, and for the sake of something to do, glanced at her watch. It seemed appropriate, since the time of day had just been mentioned.
“Should be an easy run out to the airport,” she said. “Road’s clear, I guess.”
Jesse walked to the window and looked at the traffic outside. “I guess so,” he agreed. “Been no snowfalls in forty-eight hours, so I guess the road’s clear.”
Silence. Awkward, tangible. It stretched on, then Jesse finally said, “Abby would probably like to say good-bye, you know? And say thanks for what you did.”
She made a dismissive little hand gesture. “No call for that,” she said. “She already said all that and anyway”—she glanced around at the nearly empty desktop, looking for Ned Puckett’s crumpled up memo—“I’ve got paperwork I’ve got to catch up on.”
She thought she could just get through saying good-bye to Jesse. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if Abby were here, thanking her. She was uncomfortably aware of how she’d been tempted to shoot Mikkelitz and take the chance that he might or might not pull the trigger on Abby. The thought had only been there for a microsecond, but it had been there.
“Just tell her good-bye from me,” she added.
Jesse nodded two or three times. “I’ll do that,” he said. Then, after a pause, “I’m going with her.”
Lee rattled open the top drawer of her desk, making a production of finding a felony report form and a ballpoint pen, keeping her eyes down and away from Jesse’s as she spoke.
“I kind of figured you would be,” she said. She looked up, felt herself smiling like a death’s head. “I guess you’d better be going then.” She looked quickly down, beginning to fill in meaningless details on the form.
Jesse frowned, looking at her, hesitated for a few seconds. “Yeah, I guess so. Be seeing you, Lee.”
“Yep.” Just the one syllable, bitten off, delivered head down, still writing. “Be seeing you.”
He let himself out. She heard the door click softly shut behind him, finished writing her name in the space for “reporting officer,” wrote after the name “Sheriff, Routt County, Colorado,” then set the pen down and put her hand over her eyes and wept silently.
She didn’t hear the door re-open. Didn’t hear Jesse enter the office and stop, watching her shoulders shake with grief. She didn’t hear anything until he spoke her name.
“Lee?” he said. “Are you okay?”
He’d gotten halfway down the corridor, wondering at her strange, over-bright behavior and her abrupt manner. Something was wrong, he knew, and he turned back to see what it was.
Now the hand dropped away from her eyes and he could see the tears running down her face as she made no effort to stop them. And the eyes, those gray, uptilted eyes that he’d loved since he was seventeen, had a depth of sadness in them that looked fit to tear the heart right out of his chest.
“Jesus, Lee,” he breathed, moving toward her. “What’s the matter?”
But she stopped him, one arm flung up, palm out, as if to hold him back.
“Just go!” the words were wrenched from her. “Just go, please. Go to Denver with Abby and, for Christ’s sake, be happy.”
He frowned at her. Not understanding. “Denver?” he asked.
She nodded, the tears still running. “You said you’re going with her. Just go! Now! Please, Jesse?” The last two words were a helpless plea and suddenly, he understood.
“I’m going with her to the airport,” he explained. “That’s all. I’m seeing her onto the plane, then I’m coming back here.” He hesitated, then finished, “If you want me.”
She stopped sobbing, choked in disbelief. “If I—” she started, couldn’t finish the sentence, shook her head in wonder and tried again. “If I want you? Oh, Jesus God, Jesse, of course I want you, you damn fool!”
He grinned foolishly at her, relief and pleasure mixed in the expression. “Anyways,” he said, “I figured if I stuck around for another eighteen years or so, with any luck, I might get you back into bed again.”
She was out of her chair and around the desk in one movement and his arms went around her as she buried her face into his neck. He smelled the natural fragrance of her hair, felt its softness against his cheek, felt the press of her body against his and he kissed her.
She responded enthusiastically. So did his body, and she pressed herself harder against him, twining one leg around his to hold him closer to her. He winced. Luckily she’d chosen his left leg, but the movement sent a shaft of pain through his wounded right one as he set more weight on it. She didn’t notice, so he didn’t bother to tell her, afraid she might pull away if he did. Her tongue explored his mouth, found his, and he forgot about the leg.
Neither of them heard the door open as Tom Legros entered. He stopped, startled. His sheriff had her back half to him, her shapely, jean-clad butt was resting on her desk and she had one long leg twined around her deputy’s. Their arms were around each other and their faces locked together.
Just a little embarrassed, Tom looked away from the scene by the desk. Neither of them seemed to have noticed his arrival. He wasn’t quite sure how to cope with the situation. Maybe they had noticed him after all. Maybe he should say something. Tentatively, he cleared his throat.
Lee disengaged her lips from Jesse’s by a few millimeters and said, rather indistinctly, “What is it, Tom?”
Tom cleared his throat again nervously. Still looking to one side, not looking directly at them, he rotated his Stetson in his hands.
“It’s Miz McLaren again. Seems she’s got another guest complaining about those boys on the snowmobiles. Wants to talk to you, but I guess—” He hesitated. He wasn’t quite sure what he guessed. He continued.
“Anyway … what do you want me to tell her, Sheriff?”
Lee leaned back a little in Jesse’s arms. She considered her reply for a few seconds, then, more distinctly, said, “Tom? Tell her, fuck her.”
He leaned forward a little, not sure that he’d heard her right. “Tell her?” he hesitated apologetically.
“Fuck her,” Lee repeated, a little more distinctly.
Tom nodded nervous agreement. “Tell her … fuck her. Yep, I’ll do that, Sheriff. I’ll … get on it right away.” He backed apologetically out the door, closing it behind him. In the corridor, he took a deep breath, set his Stetson squarely on his head, and started back to the phone.