Disturbing the Dead (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

By three in the morning, Holly’s screaming nightmares had awakened the household twice, and Rachel’s own dreams made her afraid to close her eyes again. She went down to the kitchen and found Tom leaning against a counter and tossing a pill into his mouth.

After he’d all but accused her of getting Holly and herself shot at, Rachel had decided to stay cool and aloof with him, but her resolve collapsed the instant she saw him. “Are you all right? Are you taking something for pain?”

Tom followed the pill with a gulp of water. The fluorescent bulb over the sink, the only light on in the room, gave his olive complexion a sallow tinge. “Yeah. It seems to bother me most when I’m not busy. Just lying there trying to sleep.”

Rachel was torn between wanting him to get relief from the pain and wishing he would stay clearheaded in case something happened.

As if reading her mind, he said, “I only took half a pill. That’ll help, but any more would make me loopy.”

Dressed in jeans and a wrinkled shirt, he looked the way he always did when out of uniform, as if he’d shed his natural skin and donned a disguise. Rachel was acutely aware of her own attire, a loose robe over a nightgown, as well as her disheveled hair. She pushed strands off her face, then clicked on the ceiling light and crossed to the cabinet next to the sink. “You need plenty of rest to heal properly.”

“Don’t stand too close to the sink,” he said. “Somebody outside could see you.”

She jumped back, staring at the thin curtains drawn across the window behind the sink. Anyone in the yard could have seen the outline of her body. She ran her tongue over dry lips as she remembered the noises outside her house the other night, her certainty someone had been spying on her. “I’m going to make hot chocolate,” she said, and heard the strain in her voice. “You want some? It might help you sleep.”

“That and some earplugs. But yeah, thanks, I’ll take a cup.”

Tom leaned against the counter and watched her measure cocoa, sugar and milk into a saucepan. Her hands shook and his scrutiny made the tremor worse.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Well, I have to admit it’s a little stressful to have somebody trying to kill Holly and me, on top of —” She broke off, annoyed that she’d almost told him about the threatening letter from Perry Nelson. Turning away from him, she placed the saucepan on the range.

“On top of what?” Tom asked.

“Nothing. I’m as okay as I can be under the circumstances. I wish I could say the same for Holly.”

“Is she having nightmares about the shooting?”

“No. She’s dreaming about her mother. She’s terrified her mother might be dead.” Rachel blamed herself for Holly’s emotional state. If she hadn’t goaded Tom about the possibility of the second skull being Jean’s, he wouldn’t have talked to Holly about it and the girl wouldn’t be battling an onslaught of nightmares about her mother’s skeleton rising before her eyes. “I hope you aren’t going to tell me again that I never should have gotten involved with her.”

“I apologize for that. I realize how much it means to you to help her.”

“Well, hallelujah.”

He shrugged, but only with his right shoulder, on the uninjured side. “I’m hardheaded, not hopeless.”

“Oh, there’s definitely hope for you.” Rachel felt him watching her as she stirred the chocolate. When it was just short of boiling, she poured it into mugs. “Here you go.”

“Thanks. Come sit in the living room with me. I’ve still got the fire going.”

Rachel hesitated, but the thought of returning to her bedroom and her bad dreams was a lot less appealing than sitting before a fire with Tom. They walked up the hall together. At the foot of the stairs she stopped to listen for sounds from Holly’s room, but she heard nothing.

Tom scooped his blanket and pillow off the leather couch and Rachel sat at one end, figuring he wouldn’t crowd her if she left most of the space for him. After dropping the bedding onto a chair, he prowled the room, checking the drapes, making sure no potential shooter could get a peek at the human targets inside. Billy Bob, dozing on the hearth before the fire, would have made for a cozy scene if Tom’s big black pistol hadn’t been lying on the coffee table in Rachel’s line of vision. The shadowy room seemed to emphasize their isolation.

She’d believed that having an armed deputy here overnight would make her feel safer. Even with the deputy in the same room, though, she felt shockingly vulnerable. God, it was so easy for one person to kill another. Give someone a motive and a will to commit murder and he could do it anywhere, anytime.

No one in Mason County had a personal motive to kill her, but somebody wanted Holly out of the way. The same somebody probably believed that whatever Holly knew, Rachel would also know before long. And that was exactly what she was after. Somewhere in Holly’s head was hidden a secret worth killing to keep, and Rachel wanted to pry that deadly information out of the girl.

Tom sat on the couch at a distance she found comfortable, and they drank their chocolate in silence for a minute, the crackle of the fire the only sound in the room. Then he asked again, “On top of what? Has something else happened that I don’t know about?”

Rachel hesitated, tugged in one direction by the need to protect her privacy, keep Tom out of her life, but wondering if that might be foolish in the long run. “I guess the police here should be forewarned, just in case.”

“Hey, now you’re worrying me. What are you talking about?”

“The guy who shot me—did you know he was sent to a mental hospital instead of prison where he belongs?”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “Jurors can be idiots sometimes.”

“He hates me because I turned him in for forging my name on a narcotic prescription. Then I did my best to get him convicted of attempted murder. The way he sees it, all his problems are
my
fault. If I hadn’t turned him in, he wouldn’t have gone through the trauma of being arrested and the agony of withdrawal. He wouldn’t have lost his job and his girlfriend. He wouldn’t have been so miserable that he just had to come after me with a gun to get even. If I got shot in the process, well, that was my own fault too.”

Her throat tightened and a spasm of fury shook her when she thought about the night Perry Nelson had burst into her little world and blasted it to bits. Tom set down his mug, slid closer and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“They had to remove him from the courtroom a couple of times while I was testifying because he kept shouting at me,” Rachel said. “He even tried to get at me once.”

“Jesus Christ.” Tom squeezed her shoulder.

His touch felt comforting and she didn’t pull away. “Then when the verdict came in, not guilty by reason of insanity, he looked around at me and laughed and gave me the finger. And he told me that when he got out of the hospital he’d come after me and finish what he started. I guess I thought I could hide in the country and be safe forever. But he knows where I am. I got a letter from him a few days ago. It wasn’t signed, and it didn’t have his fingerprints on it, but I know it came from him.”

“He’s locked up, right?” Tom said. “He won’t be out anytime soon.”

“He’s already trying to get unsupervised weekends outside the hospital, and his doctors are supporting him.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Tom said. “Just proves my theory that psychiatrists are the craziest people on the planet. But the court can stop it, Rachel. In cases like that, the doctors can’t act on their own.”

She nodded. “He has a hearing on his petition in a couple of weeks. I’m going to be there to testify if the judge will allow it. I can’t let him get out.”

“Listen,” Tom said. “Tomorrow I want you to write down all the information I need to keep tabs on this s.o.b.” He rubbed her back gently. “I won’t let him get anywhere near you.”

“Thank you.” She forced a smile.

He withdrew his hand and Rachel felt a ridiculous stab of loss.

Determined to steer the conversation away from herself, she said, “Right now, my main concern is Holly. She has nightmares every night. I think she knows what happened to her mother and she’s dreaming about it. Maybe one of these nights she’ll trust me enough to tell me everything.”

“I need to know what she remembers,” Tom said, “but I don’t want you going without sleep night after night to find out.”

“You’re the one who really needs sleep, but you’re sitting here awake too.” Rachel examined his face more closely, saw the shadows under his eyes. “You look as if you haven’t slept since all this started.”

“Ah, this case is driving me a little crazy.” He picked up his mug but set it down again without drinking. “I wish to God we’d never found those bones.”

“Well, I have to admit both our lives would be easier right now if you hadn’t. But I don’t think Holly’s life would be better in the long run. And the killer would go free.”

“Yeah, but…” Tom’s eyes had a bleak, faraway look. “It’s turned out be more…personal than I expected. I’ve found out some things—” He shook his head. “Never mind. It’s not important.”

“If it’s keeping you awake at night, it’s important. Talking about it might help.”

Tom rose abruptly and moved around checking the drapes, although they were as snugly drawn as they’d been ten minutes before.
Don’t push him,
Rachel told herself.

He sat on the couch again and leaned forward with his hands clasped between his knees. “I don’t want to burden you with my problems.”

Let it go.
But instead of taking the opening he’d offered, she said, “Go ahead and burden me. I’m a masochist. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.”

He smiled at that, then jumped up again, grabbed the poker and reached behind the fireplace screen to jab at the oak logs. Billy Bob snorted and rolled over.

Why hadn’t she left well enough alone? Something serious was preying on Tom’s mind, and she wasn’t sure she could handle the closeness that more revelations might bring.

Tom hung the poker back on its hook and stared into the flames. “I always looked up to my father. I thought he was the best example of what a man should be. With his family and his work. It sounds trite, but I really did put him on a pedestal.”

Oh no.
Had he discovered that his father bungled the original investigation? Took a bribe, destroyed evidence? Rachel knew little about police work or about John Bridger, and she doubted she could say anything to make Tom feel better.

He faced her. “I’ve found proof that my father was having an affair with Pauline McClure before she disappeared.”

For a moment Rachel was too startled to speak. “Oh, Tom,” she finally managed. “My God.”

“She was probably sleeping with other men too. It puts a hell of a different spin on everything.”

“Do you think your father—”

“Had something to do with her murder? No. But at this point, I don’t believe I really knew him, so how do I know what he was capable of?”

Rachel moved to Tom’s side. “You’re feeling betrayed. But that doesn’t mean his whole life was an act.”

Tom stuffed his fists in his pockets and shifted away. “So I’m supposed to forget about it?”

“What your father meant to you, the role he played in your life, that hasn’t changed. This was between him and your mother. It doesn’t affect you.”

“Yes, it does. I didn’t know about the affair till now, but it changed my whole life. The night of the accident— Earlier that day, Pauline was declared legally dead. She’d been missing for seven years. It was eating my father up, but I thought it was because he’d never solved the case. I got the brilliant idea that going out to the fish camp for dinner with the family might cheer him up. Me, home for a visit, my mom, my brother and his wife and Simon.”

Tom paced in front of the fireplace, a powerful inner turmoil visible on his face. When he spoke again he seemed to be dragging the words out of himself against great resistance.

“But all during dinner, my dad kept snapping at my mom. I’d never seen him treat her that way. I was afraid they’d get into an argument in public, so I insisted on leaving. The thunderstorm was blowing up, but I practically pushed them out the door to the van. I made them go out on the road in that storm.”

“The accident wasn’t your fault. You hit some pooled water and lost control, didn’t you? It could happen to anybody.”

“It
was
my fault, damn it!”

Rachel stepped back, frightened by his anger.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to— Rachel, I’ll never get past it if I don’t accept the truth.”

Her eyes filled with helpless tears at the sight of him in so much torment. “I understand that. Believe me, I understand it better than you can imagine.”

He marched toward the window, stopped, turned and strode back. “But I’m not the only one to blame. That damned woman was messing with our family right up to the minute they died. Now I’m supposed to solve the bitch’s murder, get justice for her.”

“You have to do your job. You won’t respect yourself if you don’t.”

“My job,” he said with a scoffing laugh. “I had a
real
job in Richmond. In my first year as a detective, I had a better clearance rate than some of the veterans. Then the accident happened and I felt like I had to come back home. I took Simon’s parents away from him and I had to be here for him. And the other day when we found those bones, I thought I’d be able to do something for my dad too, I could wrap up this case for him. Now I find out he was a liar and a cheat and—”