“I wash the windows. I oversee grounds maintenance. I’m not paparazzi, Sheriff.”
“Do you compost?”
“What?”
Walt appreciated the surprised reaction, appreciated the effect the question had.
“Around back?” Walt asked.
“In the aspen stand. East light. Early light. Get as much warmth on it as I can.”
“Show me.”
“You want to see my composter?” He seemed dumbfounded.
“If you don’t mind? Actually,” Walt said, now spotting the twin geometric shadows in the tight stand of aspens on the back side of the sprawling house, “I can see it from here.”
Plain sight
, he was thinking. “Fiona?”
She joined him and they walked behind the house across a magnificent patio and past a bubbling fish pond. He had a dozen questions he wanted to ask her, but didn’t want to blow the timing or sound suspicious. He needed to think about how to proceed.
“You’re awfully quiet,” she said.
“A lot to process,” he answered honestly.
“The tires.”
“Among other things.”
“You think he switched them out?”
“I think it’s possible. All I go on are possibilities.”
“Got it.”
“What are the possibilities our mountain man paid your place a visit?” He wondered why he’d suddenly started down this path, why he’d chosen to sound so certain of himself.
“We talked about this.”
“Kira heard things.”
“Kira imagined things.”
Should he bring up the bat? The emergency room? Could he bring himself to believe any of what he was thinking?
Inside the stand of aspen the air cooled significantly. The two compost towers were green plastic with stackable sections. The lids to both were closed.
“Look over there,” she said, pointing out toward the house.
Walt followed her arm. “What?”
“Huh!” she said. “Wonder what’s inside?”
Walt turned around. One of the lids was laid back, open.
They exchanged a glance.
“I’m not deputized,” she said. “It’s why you wanted me to come over here, right?”
Walt said nothing.
“Thing is,” she said, “we know each other too well. Personally, I think that’s a good thing, but you’re going to have to tell me if you think otherwise.”
“I want to know you better,” he said. “I want in. And I want to let you in. I want to reach that place that we’re so far in that anything can be said, anything shared. I want to find that place where when one of us laughs, the other knows why, and when one of us is about to cry, the other is already reaching for the hankie. Like that.”
“Hankie? Haven’t heard that one in a while.”
“I’m old-school.”
“You are nothing of the sort. You are . . . dreamy. Thank you for that.” She peered inside. “Blue and white lilies,” she said. “You want pictures?”
He stepped closer. “Blue and white? I remember them as . . . yellow, when he was working on the bed.”
“Yellow?” she said. “That would be my place. Leslie and Michael’s. They have, like, five beds planted in yellow lilies. Unbelievably pretty.”
“Your place,” he stated, his voice raspy, his throat dry.
“You want me to shoot these?” she asked.
He nodded, unable to get another word out.
“You okay?”
He nodded again.
“Walt? Something wrong?”
His mind tried to stop his mouth, but it was over before he could stop himself.
“Everything,” he said.
31
W
alt stood, backlit by the glare of the Jeep’s headlights, his ghoulish shadow stretching far in front of him. Fiona parked her Subaru by the cottage and stood alongside him.
“Do you want to come in?” she asked.
“That flower bed is damaged,” he said, his eyes on the freshly turned earth.
“The deer wreak havoc,” she said.
He looked over at her, the harsh light playing across her face. “When did Kira go missing, exactly?”
“I don’t know exactly. A couple days after the Advocates dinner.”
“The right timing and she’s in the clear.”
“Do not go there.”
“Believe me, I’d rather not. Occupational hazard.”
“You don’t really believe that? Kira, I mean?”
“Unfortunately, it’s not about what I believe. It’s what the evidence proves. You know that. And before it proves, it suggests. Right now, it’s suggesting things I’d rather it didn’t. I don’t like any of this, believe me.”
“It was a few nights after the Advocates dinner that she took off. That’s all this is about. She was upset. At me. At having a flashback in the middle of her talk.” She drew in a deep breath. “You know, I have this weird memory of you coming by here one night, but I’m not real clear on which night it was, or what was said.”
“Nothing was said.”
“Because?”
“Because you wouldn’t open the door.”
“That’s ridiculous. If I didn’t open the door it was because I wasn’t home.”
“Or it wasn’t you. I saw someone on the couch.”
“My door doesn’t have a window in it.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
She crossed her arms. “Well, maybe it was me. For the record, I don’t like guys peeping on me.”
“For the record: I care about you. I was worried about you.”
“Well, don’t be. I’m fine.”
“And Kira? Is Kira fine?”
“You’re beginning to be annoying.”
“You’re beginning to piss me off.”
“Maybe it’s late.”
“Maybe it is. I’d like to bring a team up here. I’d like to eliminate her from consideration, and that’s the best way to do it.”
“Don’t you need a warrant for that?”
“Do I?”
“It’s not my property, Walt. I, or I guess you, can ask Michael and Leslie, if we can find them. They’re in Tibet or Bhutan or something. She’s on a meditation retreat, so who knows? It could be weeks. A month or more.”
“It’s to help eliminate Kira from—”
“I get it, okay! I understand it. I’m just saying that Michael and Leslie aren’t easy to find.”
“Find them,” he said. “For Kira’s sake.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It’s not that complicated.”
“It’s late,” she said.
“You want me to go.” He made it a statement. “Your earlier invitation?”
“I don’t think I realized how tired I was.”
“Why—” He caught himself. There were questions he’d been wanting to ask her for some time now—her name appearing on St. Luke’s emergency room manifest; her refusal to answer the door that night. He could have asked them anytime. He could have asked them now. But he held off because once asked, he couldn’t take them back; once they were asked, he would have answers and he wasn’t sure he wanted the answers. He couldn’t recall a time that as sheriff he’d not wanted answers, the feeling so foreign to him he felt upended. She was protecting Kira, and for him to go after the girl meant he would have to go through her, and it was the last thing he wanted.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Let me help clear her,” he said. “I want to clear her.”
“I’ll try,” she said. “I promise.”
“If she was threatened. If it was something like that—”
“Walt, she wasn’t here that night.”
“Yeah, but you see, that’s part of the problem. The autopsy couldn’t establish an exact time of death—the cold nights, the hot days. It screws everything up. We have a witness—”
He felt her tense and knew she tried to hide it.
“But it doesn’t establish a TOD for us. Time of death,” he explained. “We don’t know which night it was. It’s one of two. But you seem to think otherwise. Can you help me out here?”
“How?”
“Explain to Michael and Leslie how important this is for Kira. If they complicate this, it only makes things worse for her.”
“I told you I’ll try to find them. It isn’t always so easy.”
“I’m going to say something as a friend. Not as sheriff. Okay? For a minute let’s say I’m not wearing the uniform.”
“Okay.” She crossed her arms more tightly. Any more and she’d have trouble breathing.
Collecting himself, he looked up into the darkness of the trees, the shadows from the headlights playing tricks on the eyes.
“I know you’d do anything to protect her. I understand that urge. But don’t put yourself in the middle of this. The law is real clear about that kind of thing. Believe me, I don’t want you or Kira caught up in this. But a thing like this, it sorts itself out eventually, and there’s no going back and changing what was said, or done, before it does. There’s no changing that stuff.”
“Some cases don’t get solved,” she said. “Some cases go cold.”
He felt his breath catch. A few seconds earlier he’d been wondering if she’d somehow managed to substitute her name for Kira’s on the emergency room manifest—if she was sacrificing herself for the young woman. Fiona showed no signs of head injury. Had Kira taken off to hide her injuries? Was she waiting for a bruise to heal before returning? He’d been thinking he needed a look at the actual medical records. But that had all evaporated with her pushing him off the investigation. Could he let the case go cold? Could he do such a thing? A month earlier he wouldn’t have even considered such a possibility.
“You’re right, it’s late. Neither of us is thinking clearly.” He stepped toward her and kissed her on the cheek, but she stood rigid and unresponsive.
He whispered, “I hear you.”
“I . . . My memory is all messed up.” He saw now that her face was stained with tears.
“Shhh.”
She faced him and met eyes with him. She looked frightened—terrified, was more like it—and he pulled her to him and held her.
“There’s so much to tell you,” she said.
“I’m here.”
“I want to tell you.”
“It’s tricky,” he said. “Some things may be better left unsaid.” He wondered where that had come from. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—ask her to betray Kira. There were other ways he could do this. He could leave her out of it. “Get some rest.”
“But I want to . . .” she said.
“Sleep on it.”
She nodded, his uniform shirt damp with her tears. She clung to him as he gently pushed her away and walked back to the Jeep. He stopped and looked back at her in the headlights, wondering how he could let such an opportunity pass. Wondering who he’d become.
Bea licked him as he climbed in. He pushed her into the backseat and drove off, intentionally avoiding a glance into the rearview mirror.
32
A
s lead investigator on the Gale case, Walt was shown and was required to sign off on the case paperwork. The longer and more involved a case, the greater the paperwork. He was no stranger to bureaucracy. As sheriff, he was in charge of people management and budget oversight; he essentially ran a decent-sized company with a charter to solve crimes and keep the peace, work that was typically delegated to others. He and Nancy had developed a routine, a rhythm to the administration of his office that allowed him, as with the Gale case, to keep his hand in the work that interested him, while keeping the office work moving ahead. Like any worthwhile assistant, Nancy was crucial to the process. She knew what had to be done when, and saw to it, chasing him down for signatures and ensuring he attended the necessary meetings with the county commissioners and politicians.
He finished signing a stack of papers and slid the next in front of him, recognizing the top sheets as the inventory from Gale’s rented SUV. He’d been so obsessed with his own handling of the baseball bat found outside the vehicle that, while he’d been briefed on the contents of the vehicle itself—including the victim’s missing wallet, found under the seat; blood evidence, not on the headrest but near the ignition and on the steering wheel and passenger-side floor mat; and the car rental contract, discovered inside the console lock box—he’d not given a great deal of thought to any of it. The wallet contained no cash; the blood evidence had been collected and sent off to the lab, along with the rental contract to be processed for fingerprints. The vehicle’s interior and exterior had been processed for latent prints, with little more than a few smears and smudges to show for it.
He flipped through the detailed inventory, making sure to read it carefully as he continued to think about his handling of the baseball bat, and how he was going to eventually add it to the same list. Boldt had promised quick lab work; he made a mental note to follow up on that.
He read past the line before stopping abruptly and backtracking. It was listed under contents of the wallet.
“Nancy!”
She knew that tone, and rushed through the doorway.
“Double-check this, will you? It’s got to be a mistake.” He spun the page around and indicated the line. “Someone screwed something up. I’m almost positive Brandon said the ATM withdrawals were from a Visa with this same bank. As in, this same card. It can’t be in the wallet if it’s being used to make cash withdrawals in town, can it? Sort it out, please.”
“Got it.” She took the page with her. But Walt came out of his seat and followed her back to her desk and hovered there as she located Brandon. Walt held out his hand for the receiver. She handed it over, disappointed in him for micromanaging. She and Beatrice knew how to get to him.
“Tommy? The ATM card. Gale’s ATM card. It was a Visa with what bank?”
“Purchase Bank, in Mobile.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
Walt cupped the receiver and said to Nancy, “Find out where Gale’s effects are. Specifically, his wallet. The lab, I assume?”
Nancy returned to Walt’s desk and carried a stack of papers back to her desk. She flipped through several and ran her finger along a line. “Yes. Still in Meridian.”
“Ask them to e-mail us a photo of the card, will you? Both sides. And I want that card fumed or dusted for prints.”