The Lonesome Lawmen Trilogy

by Pauline Baird Jones

  “You’d better drive.” Last thing he saw before he nodded off was her pleased smile as she fired up the engine.

  TEN

  Phoebe closed the door between her and Jake, her fingers spreading across the cool surface as if sheer longing could push it and her through to the other side to him. In her mind, he was doing the same thing. When she heard him leave, his footsteps headed back toward the office instead of his room, she let her arm drop to her side.

  Lightheaded and adrift, she reached for the phone he’d already be moving to monitor and dialed. She’d give him something and protect her knight.

  Queen to king with a check and mate in sight.

  When Dewey answered, he seemed to understand she wasn’t in the mood to chat and arranged where to meet her. He had to drive from Denver, so she had time, too much time, before he could come. Too much time to linger at this intersection between past, present and future.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and listened as Jake came back. Did he hesitate outside her door? Then he was past her and knocking on the next. Phagan’s FBI agent. It appeared her feint had worked. It was the logical move for him to make, since his job was pursuing fugitives like Dewey. Phagan’s Fibbie would probably go, too, since she’d figure Dewey could lead her to Phagan. A neat little game of move and counter move with cold, hard logic controlling the board.

  After a time, she heard both of them get into Jake’s truck, his engine fire, and then pull away. Good old logic that left the queen standing alone.

  She looked around. Some palace. The room was shabby and sad, the thick air resistant to being anything but stale. It was the kind of place that made her want to leave. It was inevitable, she supposed with a weary sigh, that the past would creep in now. Intersections were for reflection and assessment. They weren’t intersections if you didn’t stop to think, to choose. Or to at least remember why you’d chosen the present course. She wasn’t a dewy-eyed innocent. Her stepfather had made sure of that. But she hadn’t known everything, though she felt it on a subconscious level. It was only later, when it was too late, that she’d put all the pieces together.

  Things like his footsteps in the night. He’d come and look in on her, but it didn’t make her feel safe or watched over. Some deep instinct had her pretending she was asleep until he closed the door and moved on to Kerry’s room. She’d be asleep before he walked past again, but some nights, too many nights, muffled sobs dominated her nightmares.

  With adult clarity, she knew she’d been too young at the time to cope with what she knew on that subconscious level, but reasoning couldn’t stop her from feeling she should have done something. She’d spoken the truth when she said that Peter Harding liked the young. Her blessing and her burden were that her sister’s sacrifice had saved her from Harding’s attentions. Kerry Anne had made a bargain with the devil that she kept even after she left for college.

  Back then, Phoebe had wondered, when any wondering could breach her burgeoning adolescence, why Kerry Anne came home every weekend when it was clear she hated it and hated him. Only when it was too late did she comprehend the full horror of her Kerry’s existence and what she’d sacrificed to protect her little sister.

  Somehow, some way Kerry had realized he was getting ready to break his unholy bargain with her. The last visit before her death, she’d warned Nadine to prepare herself to leave. She didn’t give many details, just that they were going to disappear with the help of her boyfriend, Phagan, but she did warn her to travel light.

  In the end, all she took were the shoes, the dress and the picture of Kerry Anne. That’s all that wasn’t tainted by him, by the gratitude and slavish obedience he demanded from his stepdaughters.

  Phoebe rolled onto her back and faced her greatest fear. Had she been the one to give away Kerry’s plans? Had Montgomery Justice somehow picked up on or sensed her secret hope to get away from him? Had she been the accidental cause of her sister’s death? The weight of not knowing almost broke her. She opened the doors, let herself remember that night she’d come home and found her sister dying on the bathroom floor, her wrists slashed almost to the bone in an apparent suicide. She had turned to go call for help, but Kerry Anne called her back. Her blood was everywhere by then. She’d had to kneel in it to lift Kerry’s head onto her lap, to get close enough to her blue lips to hear her whispered words.

  “He did this, didn’t he?” Nadine had sobbed.

  Kerry had nodded weakly. “You…have to leave…nothing…to stop…him now.”

  She hadn’t understood what Kerry Anne meant. Not then, God forgive her. Or maybe He’d been showing mercy and kept her from understanding everything then. Full knowledge might have had her joining her sister on the tile.

  Kerry told her where there was some money, not much, but enough to catch a bus and gave her Phagan’s phone number, with a warning not to call him until she was clear. And Phagan had sent Dewey to her. He’d helped her disappear. Helped her find a new name, a new life with the Mentels. Later, after her marriage to Jesse ended, he’d come to her again with a plan for justice, not just for her but for other runaways.

  It had been enough to keep her focused until she met Jake.

  The kicker was, Kerry Anne wouldn’t condemn her for turning aside. She’d welcome it. She hadn’t given her body or her life so that Phoebe could spend hers in a quest for justice.

  Phoebe got up and faced the lousy motel mirror. Looked into her own eyes and told her demons, “All she ever wanted was for me to be happy. I’m the one who can’t forgive or forget. I can’t forgive myself.” She gave a harsh laugh, one that was short on happy and broke in the middle. “I’m sorry, Kerry, but how can I seize my freedom, knowing he’s free to do it again?”

  It wasn’t just about Kerry Anne. Not anymore. It was about his new fiancé and her two little girls. Maybe there’d been others during those years he’d disappeared, too? Maybe she wouldn’t succeed. Maybe he would kill her. Maybe Jake would stop her before she checkmated Harding, but she still had to try. It’s what Kerry Anne would have done if he hadn’t killed her.

  She felt…like weeping, she realized with a shock of surprise. She hadn’t cried once since her tears had mingled with Kerry’s blood. Crying might help ease the knot around her heart, but she didn’t have time. And she wasn’t going to face Dewey with red eyes and nose.

  She took a shaky breath, then another. After the third, it was a little easier. She looked around and realized she’d come to the motel with nothing. There was nothing to hold her here or hold her down except her own longings. She left the key in her room, pulled the door closed, then slipped down the walk, heading away from the lighted office. When she reached the road, she kept walking. If she put one foot in front of the other, eventually she’d get to where she was supposed to meet Dewey. If she didn’t, well, nothing she could do about it.

  * * * *

  The sun was just topping the mountains when Jake and Bryn got to the address his contact in the DPD had given him. Bryn had nudged Jake awake when they reached to the outskirts of Denver so, she said, he could help her watch for street signs. Jake had his own opinion about why she woke him up. She didn’t want him groggy when they went in.

  Too bad. He was gonna be groggy. He’d slept just long enough to feel like complete crap. He rubbed his face, fingering the day’s growth of beard turning his chin the texture of sandpaper. His eyes felt as if they were filled with sand, and his head felt thick and stupid, as if his brain had been replaced with a slug of cement.

  Even worse was the feeling that he’d let himself be distracted by lust and pity into making the wrong move. Logic said it was his job to go after Dewey Hyatt, but his gut was saying the queen, Phoebe, was where the action was or where it would be. Hyatt was probably long gone, and Phoebe would be, too, by the time they got back. If he hadn’t been so tired, he’d have never let himself get outmaneuvered so neatly. He’d probably lost Phoebe, too, but just to make sure, he dialed up the Estes PD and asked them to go pick
up Phoebe and hold her for questioning.

  Surprised and not altogether pleased, Honk agreed. He finished his call as Bryn stopped the truck, looked at the house, then at him.

  “This is a waste of time, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Probably.”

  Her sigh was huge and frustrated. “Do you think they’ll call it off, wait until we get tired of waiting for them to do something and then move in again?”

  Jake frowned, trying to get past cement and activate some actual thinking. Without looking at Bryn, he said, “Phagan’s been sending you leads, hasn’t he?”

  She paused, then said tersely, “Yes.”

  “They won’t fall back. They’re going to finish this. I just wish—” He stopped.

  “Wish what?” Bryn sounded ready to boil.

  “I wish I could figure out why Phagan wants us, or at least you, in the game this early on.” He looked at Bryn in time to see her blush. It was charming. No question. And Phagan might have a romantic interest, but that still didn’t explain what he was about to do or why he’d put his people at risk, particularly Phoebe. It made no sense. Trying to figure it out made his head hurt, so he gave it up for now. “Let’s get some crime scene people in to toss this place and then—”

  “What?”

  “Well, we squeeze Phoebe Mentel, if by some miracle Honk does find her, and let’s have her place tossed, too. We should have enough for a warrant now. I’m sure he was there the other night, so his prints will be, too. If we link her to Hyatt, then we’ll have cause to hold her if—”

  A very big, very unlikely if, Jake conceded. She wouldn’t be there. And this time just following the scent wasn’t going to work. She was too good at laying down false trails. He’d have to keep his eye on the whole board, try to anticipate all the moves, not just the next move. If he wanted to catch her. If.

  He bit back a groan as he unfolded his body from the passenger side of the truck and followed Bryn inside.

  There shouldn’t be an if in his head. He needed to bury his personal feelings fast and deep. Beyond want was personal honor. Law enforcement wasn’t just a job he got paid to do. It was a personal trust he’d never betrayed before. It didn’t matter how sad the lady’s eyes were or how enticing the lady’s mouth. The situation sucked, no question about it, but a lot of things did.

  The address was in a modest, middle-class neighborhood, a corner lot that made half a gateway to a quiet cul-de-sac still slumbering in the building morning light. On this Saturday morning most of the lawns still had newspapers lying on their lawns and the shades drawn on the windows. The sun hadn’t had time to burn away the chill, the rich scent of green from the air, or the dew giving a jewel-like patina to the landscape.

  In the distance Jake could hear the buzz of a mower, like a small plane coming and going, and he caught a glimpse of a jogger working off last night’s supper, but otherwise there was no one outside to see them approach the house.

  No car in the driveway or the garage, he noted as they split up to cover the front and back doors, confirming his feeling that they were already too late. Bryn rang, the sound echoing through the interior of the house. Jake knocked half-heartedly, then sagged against the railing while Bryn kicked in the front door. She was the one who was the most pissed, and he didn’t have the energy to kick a hole in a paper sack. When she let him in, it was obvious the king—Jake wasn’t sure who was white and who was black in this game—had already moved to a new square, leaving nothing behind but a single red rose on the scrubbed top of the kitchen table. Somehow he knew it was the rose that put sparks in Bryn’s eyes. He was more interested in the small pile of pistachio shells in the garbage can.

  Jake had enough strength to dial his phone, so he was the one who called in the Denver cops’ crime scene techs. That done, they returned to the truck and headed back to Estes Park. Jake stretched back out as best he could in the passenger side, sparing a brief thought to a wish that he could be beamed to his destination with a little help from Scottie before sleep claimed him again.

  * * * *

  Phoebe woke around noon feeling like she’d been chewed up and pooped over a cliff. It had only been a few hours since she said goodbye to Jake, but it felt longer. After they got to their new place in seedy section of Denver, Dewey had insisted she try to sleep for a couple of hours. To her surprise, she had dropped off almost immediately, but now that a mental open season had been declared on her past, it was running amok through her dreams. She’d waded through blood and dodged Peter Harding for most of the night. And those were the good dreams. She struggled free of sheets she wasn’t sure were clean and headed straight for the shower.

  It was almost as bad as her dreams. Dewey had chosen their new digs for anonymity, not amenities or décor. To call it gnarly was to imply it had at some time been gnarl-less.

  The single window was so crusted with dirt light couldn’t penetrate it, which was a positive thing since the small pane of glass looked out on an alley that was a home for the fund-free and displaced. A lone light bulb struggled to produce minimal wattage, which was also a plus. It was better not to know how not clean the green tile was as she stepped under the languid stream of tepid water. After a time, the water warmed up enough to fog the mirror over the sink.

  Phoebe dried herself, then wrapped the towel around her hair and faced the mirror. Between fog and age, the mirror reflected her in pieces.

  Through a glass darkly.

  She didn’t know where the phrase came from, but it seemed to fit the here, the now, her present reality. Hadn’t she lived her life in pieces? In the shadows? Didn’t she reinvent herself almost daily as the game demanded? Wasn’t she about to do so again?

  Even without help from the mirror, she was able to turn her brown eyes blue with the contacts Dewey had picked up for her. She released her hair from the towel, the wet ends starting a chain reaction of tiny chills where they touched her bare skin. She rubbed the strands until most of the water was in the towel, then dragged a comb through section by section until the tangles were gone. The bag Dewey had packed yielded a pair of salon scissors as well as some sassy, sexy lingerie.

  She discovered she could still smile, even ankle-deep in angst-ville.

  With a comb, she separated out a section of hair. The scissors sliced smooth and deep, releasing damp pieces to fall to her shoulders. They slid down her body where they curled into dark question marks against the green tile. When they surrounded her, she stopped and fingered the butchered ends. Amazing how it changed her look. The old chess queen Phoebe was dead. Long live—she couldn’t remember the new name.

  She dug out the new driver’s license. Polly?

  She wasn’t surprised when the bag also gave up a shirt in parrot colors of green and yellow to go with the ragged blue shorts. And some temporary dye for her hair. Or should she call it her plume? Under wooden clogs that hinted at a perch, she found the glue-on fingernails. Long, curved. Like claws.

  Polly didn’t want a cracker. She wanted to kick Dewey’s ass.

  * * * *

  Their warrant secured, Jake watched the crime scene techs go through Phoebe’s house, waiting for confirmation of what he already suspected. It came quickly. Dewey Hyatt had been here. And Phoebe’s prints matched the kid’s lawyer’s prints on every point. It seemed, he was doomed to recognize her no matter what she turned herself into. This was his new reality. He’d become a homing beacon for a thief.

  When the frenzy slowed, he walked through the house, going where he hadn’t gone before. Odd, to feel like an intruder in a place so personally impersonal. In a strange way, her restraint in decorating said more about her than a thousand knickknacks, photos and papers would have. He’d seen her extraordinary self-control. Sensed how single-minded and stubborn she was, that she wouldn’t give up or give ground unless forced to. That she kept her own counsel and played to win. It didn’t matter to her that this game she was playing with Hyatt and Phagan was dangerous and that she wouldn’t be com
ing back, dead or alive. He was convinced that she didn’t like it, but she accepted the rules of her game and played them to win. That, like him, she did what she had to do.

  Just as he had to play by his rules, because they were a matter of ethics and the law. He chose to follow those rules because he knew he couldn’t sleep with the enemy and keep his integrity. That’s what he’d told himself last night when his body had been screaming to take that step toward her and find ease in her body for the burning in his gut. He’d turned away and reduced the burn to a sullen smolder.

  And if he had it to do again? In the cold light of day, his choice seemed more bitter than wise. If she came back to him, if he found her again, he’d step across that threshold. He’d cross that line. He’d take her and at least have the memory to warm him on the long, lonely nights. He’d—

  Do the same thing he’d done last night. He’d do what he’d taken an oath to do. Who he was and what he believed in were fixed points in a shifting world of grays and compromises. He couldn’t stop being who he was any more than Phoebe could stop being what she was. Sometime in the past, their lives had committed them to different paths, to a course that made them adversaries, not allies. If either of them shifted ground, they’d stop being them. So they’d lose either way.

  He went outside to the truck. It was a relief when Bryn joined him. He didn’t dare think hot thoughts around her, though she was looking as ragged as he felt. Something was going on there, but he didn’t feel up to finding out. He sure didn’t want her probing his secrets and was sure—as in sure that the sun would rise tomorrow—that she didn’t want him probing hers.

  “I think we have enough for an arrest warrant—if we can find her. She didn’t leave much of herself behind,” she said.

  “Then it might be better to start with, wanted for questioning. I hate to over-play our hand.”

  “If we can match her voice on the answering machine and ID her as Pathphinder, she’s ours,” Bryn said.