13
T
he sheriff’s office was located on
the second floor of the hundred-year-old courthouse, next door to the fire station. The acrid scent of burning coffee and stale cigarette smoke hit Josh’s nostrils and set his gut to churning again the moment he walked in the door.
Earlene Spoonhunter, the night dispatcher, who Josh figured had to be at least as old as the building, glanced up from the afghan she was crocheting. Her eyes, as black and bright as a raven’s, gave nothing away.
“The sheriff called,” she informed Sam in a flat Western tone as expressionless as her gaze. “Seems a tourist swerved to miss a fool sledder crossing the road, hit some black ice, and ran his rental SUV into a tree. He ended up with a broken arm and some bums from the air bag; Will’s taking the guy to the hospital and figured he should be here in about thirty minutes.”
“Well, we’re sure as hell not going anywhere,” Sam said. He opened a side door, gesturing Josh into a small
room. “Have a seat, kid. Can I get you something? Maybe some coffee to warm up? Or a can of pop?”
Josh had seen enough cop movies to know the drill. The trick was to bond with the suspect by offering him something to eat or drink. Get him off guard, so he’d spill the beans. The thing was, Josh didn’t have any beans to spill.
“I wouldn’t turn down a 7UP.”
“Don’t have any 7UP. How about a Mountain Dew?”
Josh shrugged. “Sure.”
“I’l
l be right back.”
The deputy, who made the old lady in front seem outright chatty, shut the door behind him, leaving Josh alone in a room with a brown metal table and four battered wooden chairs that looked as if they’d been retrieved from the Dumpster behind the Salvation Army.
There was a mirror on the wall. Suspecting he was being watched from the other side, Josh slumped down into a chair and, resisting the urge to rub his clammy, cold hands together to warm them, folded his arms across his chest.
He felt the aloneness come crashing down like a huge stone onto his shoulders. Felt the dark weight of it inside him.
He’d always felt alone. Most of the time he’d managed to convince himself he’d gotten used to it. Preferred it. He was also a world-class liar; especially when he was lying to himself.
This wasn’t his first time in police custody. He’d been “detained” once for shoplifting a leather L.A. Lakers
jacket by the security guard at the Nordstrom South
Bay Galleria in Redondo Beach.
A call to that year’s stepfather, who was conveniently the managing partner in a Century City law firm, had
made the problem disappear, and after receiving an apology from the sto
re manager for the “misunder
standing,” Josh had been on his way.
He’d also been picked up a few times in roundups of kids at an after-hours club in Westwood, but none of those times had been anything like this.
This was serious shit. If he didn’t manage to convince that stone-faced Indian deputy that he didn’t know anything about what had happened to Erin, he could end up in a cell.
Not just a cell. He could go to prison, where motherfucker, baby-raper gang members were just waiting for a shiny new ass to ream.
Fuck. Sweat began to roll down Josh’s back.
At the same time he began to shiver, and although he fought against it, trying to clench his jaw, his teeth began to chatter like castanets.
His head was spinning, and although there couldn’t be anything left in his stomach, he was hit with a greasy nausea that made him feel on the verge of hurling again.
The last time he’d felt this rotten was after he’d gotten some bad ecstasy at a rave. When he’d started imagining that the other dancers were sharks trying to eat him, the girl he’d been with had gotten scared enough to take him to the hospital, where the ER doctor had
stuck a saline drip in his arm. By the next morning the hallucinations were gone and he was feeling okay again.
Josh had the scary feeling that it would take a lot more than fluids and a night’s sleep to rid his mind of the images of Erin, covered in her own dark red blood, her pretty white throat cut all the way to the bone.
14
T
he streets we
re dark, the store-
fronts shuttered, as Will drove to the jail after delivering that tourist who’d been injured in the accident to the ER.
Hazard had garnered a bit of fame back during the early seventies, after the movie
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
had come out. According to legend, Butch and Sundance had enjoyed the pleasures of the working girls at The Shady Lady, one of several Hazard brothels in the booming red-light district.
The outlaws had long gone, as had the gold prospectors and mountain men, but the cowboys and the Indians—the majority of whom lived on the joint-use Shoshone/Arapaho Wind River Reservation—had stayed.
Hazard was surrounded by mountains: the stunningly beautiful Tetons, soaring a mile high of the town; the Wind River Range, which presented some of the most rugged territory in the state; Heartbreak Ridge, curving around the southeast edge of the valley; and
towering over everything, its lofty peak often sheathed in clouds, White Owl Mountain, named for the mythical Arapaho bird of winter.
Growing up here, Will had taken the mountains for granted. In fact, there’d been a time he’d thought of them as a prison. Coming home, after years in the Low- country, he could appreciate their wonder.
Back when he’d been as young and stupid as Josh, he couldn’t wait to escape what he saw as a world of grinding boredom broken up by periods of backbreaking- hard ranch work. Which was why, when that judge had worked out the deal with his father to allow him to avoid going off to juvie, he’d joined the marines.
The irony was that the Corps, in their wisdom, had, for some reason he’d never be able to figure out, decided to make him an MP.
Surprisingly, he’d been good at his job. Good enough to get promoted into criminal investigations as soon as he reached the required age of twenty-one. Although he enjoyed the work, he’d chafed under the rigid military rules and regulations and hadn’t reenlisted.
But his talent for chasing down bad guys had gotten him hired by the Savannah police department, where he quickly discovered civilian law enforcement agencies had their own set-in-stone rules and bureaucratic bullshit. After things went south, and Josh landed in his lap, Will had believed that after all these years, and having achieved a small measure of respectability, it wouldn’t be that difficult returning to his hometown.
He’d been wrong.
From the moment he’d accepted the job as sheriff, he could feel the weight of the town’s expectations, like giant boulders pressing down on his shoulders. He doubted many of the people who’d known him back in the bad old days would’ve ever expected him to grow up to be the guy in charge of
Hazard’s laws. He had, after
all, been the wild kid, the rebel without a clue who’d gotten drunk, stolen cars, and brawled on Saturday
nights.
But never had he landed in any trouble anywhere near like the mess his son might be
in.
His son.
Even now the idea seemed almost beyond belief.
Weird enough he’d ended up being a cop. But a father?
A father was supposed to be the grown-up, the guy in charge, the dad who always knew best and who protected his children against all those dangers lurking outside the safety of their home.
The road to hell was definitely paved with good intentions. Will’s reasons for having come back to Hazard were complex, but the bottom line was that Josh’s unexpected arrival in Savannah had changed both their lives. He hoped for the better, but unfortunately, that remained to be seen.
If he’d stayed in Savannah, his son wouldn’t have met Erin Gallagher. And the lad sure as hell wouldn’t have landed himself in the middle of a murder investigation.
Will’s fingers tightened on the leather-padded steering wheel. He flexed them. Drew in a deep breath. Let it
out again. Drew in another. Inhale. Exhale. Find the center.
Yeah. Right. Like meditation was going to solve this problem.
Josh admittedly had some issues. The kid was angry, confused, and every bit as rebellious as Will himself had once been. And although from what he’d been able to glean from the lawyer, Whitney sounded as if she’d been about as far from June Cleaver as a mom could get, and although Josh refused to discuss it, Will suspected Josh was also grieving for his dead mother. The mother who’d not only neglected to inform Will she’d gotten pregnant, but had, for sixteen years of his life, lied to their son about his real father’s identity.
Any kid would have to be majorly pissed. Will sure as hell would’ve been. But even with all he had going against him, there was no way Josh could harm anyone.
Will knew that. Unfortunately, people tended to believe the worst. Which meant he had to find Erin Gallagher’s murderer fast. Before runaway rumors put a scarlet bull’s-eye on his kid’s back.
Recalling all too well a time when he’d been perceived as Hazard’s bad boy, he vowed not to let that happen.
15
“
W
ell? Will you come?"
Staring into the orange and red flames blazing away in the fireplace, the man raised by wolves could see the scene so clearly, it was like watching a movie. One in which he’d played the starring role.
The girl standing in front of him smelled like a tropical garden. Not that he’d ever been to the tropics, but he had not a single doubt that Hawaii would smell exactly like nine-year-old Mandy Longworth.
“Does your mother know you’re inviting me?”
“Of course.”
Her cheeks, already a deep pink from the bite of the Rocky Mountain winter wind, blushed even deeper. “She said I could ask whoever I wanted.”
He’d never been invited to a birthday party. Partly because he’d never fit in with the kind of popular kids who went in for that sort of thing. But mostly because he knew that no parents would want a boy from Muddy Hole—a ramshackle neighborhood of rusting trailers on the wrong side of the tracks, guarded by residents’
snarling junkyard dogs—inside their magazine-perfect homes.
“Bet you invited everyone.”
“I always invite the entire class.”
“Back in Texas.” Her father, a big shot at Odessa Oil, had transferred his family here from Dallas. “Where you went to some fancy private school.”
She tossed her blond head. “If you’re calling me a snob, you’re just stupid and you don’t have to come to my party if you don’t want to.”
“I didn’t say that.” He wasn’t used to girls talking back to him. He wasn’t used to girls talking to him, period.
“Then you’ll come?” She held out the invitation again. When she touched his sleeve with a fluffy white mitten that matched the trim on her hood, he felt a fist gripping inside his chest.
“Sure.” He shrugged. “Unless something comes up.”
The dimple in her cheek flashed and her cornflower blue eyes brightened, as if someone had turned a light-bulb on inside her. “That’s great.”
A woman across the parking lot began calling her name. Shit. If he’d had his stepfather’s pistol, he would have shot the bitch.
“That’s my mama.” She waved. The woman waved back, her smile a twin of her daughter’s. “I’d better go. I have a ballet lesson this afternoon.”
Halfway to the black Suburban, she turned back. “You don’t have to bring a present. Like Mama always says, having a birthday at Christmas just means I get
too many gifts all at once, anyway. It’s the company that’s important.”
“If I come, I’m going to bring a damn present.”
Her eyes widened a bit at the cuss word. But she
didn’t argue.
“Whatever you want.” She flashed him another smile, then raced off toward the car.
He’d filched a charm bracelet from the Mountain Mercantile. Her mother’s blond brows had lifted suspiciously at the gift, which she’d probably figured he hadn’t been able to afford. And she’d been right. But he was glad he’d taken the risk because everyone else had brought birthday presents.
She’d thanked him and held out her thin, white arm, like a princess inviting a serf to put it on her wrist. But the minute his fingers had brushed against that silky, white flesh, they’d turned as thick and useless as sausage. While the other kids laughed as he fumbled with the clasp, he’d imagined pouring gasoline on them, setting them on fire, imagined their flesh burning and those stuck-up expressions melting off their faces.
Their scorn infuriated. But not as badly as the pity on Mandy Longworth’s face.
Don’t think about that!
He drew in a deep breath. Let it out. Closed his eyes and focused on a more appealing memory of the day.
Desire stirred deep in his groin as he recalled Mandy’s joy when her parents handed her a fluffy, white kitten. Its slanted eyes had been bright blue, its button nose pink, and it was wearing a silver bell on a red ribbon around its neck. The cat, which she named Snowball, spent the rest of the party curled up in Mand
y’
s lap, blissfully purring like a small motor.
It hadn’t been purring two weeks later, when he’d taken a razor and shaved off its soft white fur.
Or when he’d pelted it with a steaming-hot shower.
The kitten’s mewling cries had been like electric wires running beneath h
is skin, creating a surge of en
ergy like nothing he’d ever before experienced.
With power singing in his blood, he’d taken the wet and blistered animal out into the woods behind Muddy Hole, where he’d tie
d it to a tree with brown twine.
Although hunting season was over, there was always a chance some cross-country skier or poacher might hear the animal’s shrieks, so he’d stuffed a sock down its throat. Then taken his stepfather’s bow from its black leather case.
He hadn’t been a very good archer, but the fifth shot had proven the charm.
All it took was the memory of that feather-tipped arrow pinning the cat’s body to the trunk of the towering Douglas fir tree to make him hard.
He unzipped his jeans. Took out his cock and began stroking himself as he remembered pretty little Mandy Longworth’s red-rimmed eyes when she’d come to school after finding the kitten’s skeleton strewn over her backyard. They’d known it was Snowball because of the filthy red ribbon and bell still tied around its neck.
Coyotes had been the general consensus.
Packs of wild dogs another popular choice.
But from the way Mrs. Longworth had stared hard at him the next time she’d picked up Mandy at school, he’d had the feeling the rich bitch suspected the truth.
But suspecting wasn’t knowing. And knowing wasn’t proving.
Still, it wasn’t long after that holiday birthday party that the Longworths’ house was put back up for sale and the family moved back to Texas.
Mandy Longworth’s Christmas kitten was the first life he’d taken. A great many animals and humans had died by his hand since that memorable day. The lovely young skater, who’d reminded him in so many ways of Mandy, was only the most recent.
But not the last. As he ejaculated on a surge of hot pleasure, the man who was once the boy raised by wolves was already imagining his next kill.