I closed the door behind him and nearly bumped into him as he stopped just inside the doorway. He handed me Beulah’s lead, rolled into a nice bundle. “I forgot to give this to you yesterday and thought you might need it.”
I took the harness and set it on the counter by my Jeep keys. “Thank you. I’ve been … well, I just got back from Buena Vista.”
“I know.”
He just stood there. And so did I.
What was wrong with me?
It was like I was having an out of body experience watching the most humiliating moment of my life.
Could I be a bigger doof?
“I was just having a glass of wine and some cheese. Want to join me?”
He glanced at his watch.
“You probably have to go, have a date or something.” No clue why I said that.
He grinned. “I’d love some wine.”
I darted around the kitchen counter and motioned for him to have a seat at the bar. I fumbled with a glass and poured him some wine. Topped off my own. “Merlot okay?”
“Perfect,” he said, tipping his glass my way before taking a sip.
I unwrapped the buffalo sausage and cheese, quickly sliced both, shoveled the production onto a plate, and dumped out a sleeve of crackers beside the creation. I slid the plate toward him.
“It’s not much, but I just got home.”
“Your mom sent you flowers? How sweet.”
I stared at him. “How did you know they were from my mom?”
“Jeanne sent me some too. Yellow roses. About a week ago. To thank me.”
“Jeanne?” I said, walking slowly around the counter to my stool beside him.
I was most certainly out of body.
When did my mom and Streeter become so chummy?
“You call my mom Jeanne?”
“That is her name.” His right eyebrow arched as he took a sip of wine. He plucked a slice of sausage from the plate and took a bite. “The buffalo Jens shot?”
My chin dropped again. “You know my brother shot a buffalo?”
I wondered just how long I’d ignored Streeter’s calls and if maybe it wasn’t such a great idea. Especially now, in retrospect, that I was finding out he’d been chatting with my family and, apparently, quite a lot.
How much did they tell him? And where was I that entire time?
Clearly, head in a fog. I had no clue.
He said, “Garth invited me up to this year’s family pheasant hunt.”
“This can’t be happening,” I said. But I hadn’t meant to say it aloud.
“Should I go?” He swiveled his barstool toward the door.
“Oh, heavens, no,” I said, grabbing his forearm.
I slapped both hands over my face, embarrassed. I heard him chuckling. I let my hands drop into my lap and averted my eyes. “I’m sorry. This is just so surreal. You being here. In my apartment. When I have so much to say. To tell you.”
“So tell me,” he said with a shrug.
I looked down at my hands, which I’d begun to wring nervously. I wasn’t sure where to begin or how to tell Streeter how much I appreciated him. “You were there for me. That night. All night. And the next day. You took me to the memorial service and then to California. And then you called. Every day for ten days. Twice a day.”
“More,” he said. He fished a cracker from the heap, placed a slice of sausage on top, and then cheese, and handed the morsel to me. “Eat. You need the protein.”
That single gesture alone was my undoing. For the first time in days, I cried—only with a smile on my face. His gesture was loving and caring and genuine. Authentically Streeter.
“Thank you.”
Then I ate. I tried to hide the feelings that had overwhelmed me and attempted to regain my poise. I sipped on my wine. I watched as he made himself a similar sandwich stack.
He popped the entire stack into his mouth. Then he lifted his glass. “Good buffalo sausage. Not too spicy.” He took a sip. “I see Beulah’s happy to be home.”
I glanced over my shoulder. She was sacked out on my couch, snoring.
“She did the same at my cabin.”
“You live in a cabin?” I asked, feeling my thoughts return. “Where?”
“Conifer. Want to see it?”
My glance cut to his, and I felt my eyes widen. “I do.”
I did.
His cool blue eyes were amazingly bright. The setting sun through my deck window painted him beautifully.
Surreal.
I reached out and touched his arm again, just to make sure this was happening.
Streeter grinned.
“I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. Did I already say that?”
“You did.” His smile was crooked.
“Taking care of Beulah, covering everything for me at work. You even managed to find me a case that’s right up my alley. I’m jazzed.”
“I see that.”
The emotional rollercoaster I was experiencing—the excitement, confusion, elation, disbelief, timidity, joy—was unexplainable. All because Streeter appeared at my door. The floodgates opened to jumbled thoughts. “My shrink would have never allowed any of this had you not agreed to keep your eye on me.”
Streeter leaned forward, close enough that I thought he was going to kiss my cheek. But he didn’t. He simply moved a strand of hair from my forehead.
I thought my heart was going to leap out of my chest.
“Are you sure you’re okay? With Jack?”
A steep dive down the rails of a rickety coaster, from the highest of highs to a gut wrenching low with the mention of his name.
“You didn’t shed a single tear at his funeral.”
That was true.
“You concern me.”
Sorrow filled me. “I’m okay. Confused. Sad. Stunned. Mad. Pissed, really.”
Streeter nodded and fixed another cracker. It felt good to talk to a friend. To be brutally honest with him. Something I’d never had the courage to do with Jack.
“Jack was a dear man. Pained, but dear. I can’t excuse what he did—using us, the FBI, the way he did.”
“He died a hero.” Streeter held my gaze.
“You said that. And I’m sure he did. But I struggle with that. No matter how it came to be and what he had to suffer through, it wasn’t right what he did. He shouldn’t have died like that. It was like he had a death wish.”
“He wanted us to catch the real murderer.”
“Jenna Tate wasn’t worth that. Wasn’t worth his life.” I sighed. Then I remembered how Jenna had used Streeter. “How are you dealing with all of this? With Jenna, I mean?”
“She’ll be arraigned later this week, and trial dates will be set.”
I reached out and grabbed his forearm again, only this time I didn’t let go. He met my glance. “I mean personally. I know you two were … had a thing.”
“A thing?” His expression seemed amused.
“You didn’t? You two weren’t …?”
He shook his head. “That was Jenna. A tease. But we never had a thing.”
I let go of my hold on him. The tension drained out of every muscle in my body. “I thought … I worried you were …”
“And it bothered you all this time? That we had a thing?”
I realized he was getting the wrong impression.
Well, not wrong exactly.
Damn it. I had to clean up my mess. “I should have felt a bigger loss than I did when Jack died. He said he loved me. But choosing death over life with someone you say you love isn’t love. Is it?”
He just stared at me. “I’m not sure I followed what you just said.”
“I loved Jack as a dear friend. But I wasn’t in love with him. And when he died, I was crushed. Losing him like that—as a friend, as a coworker. I cried a lot for that loss. But in California, at the funeral, I … I felt like you, the others, expected me to be his family. I wasn’t that. I just couldn’t. Does that make any sense?�
��
Streeter said nothing and shook his head slowly. He was forcing me to explain.
I grabbed my glass of wine, drained and refilled it. “All I felt was a big, empty pity for him. That seems strange, doesn’t it? When someone close to you dies?”
I hadn’t thought about the implication of what I’d just said. Of course, he’d known what it felt like to lose someone close. He had loved his wife.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …” I watched as he drained his glass and went to get a refill. “I saw it. Her headstone. On Sunday.”
He emptied his second glass and poured a third, staring straight ahead.
“Paula Winzig Jacobs Pierce,” I said. “Michael’s aunt. Your wife, right? Why didn’t you tell me?”
He fiddled with the stem of his wine glass. “I couldn’t.”
He didn’t want to talk about that. So I didn’t. “Thanks for sending Mully. He saved my life. I promised the Deputy Sheriff in Deadwood we’d open a case.”
“I’ll run with it,” he said, his tone dull.
“You sent him to help me, didn’t you?”
“You don’t need to ask. And you don’t need to know.”
I slid my glass away and rose to my feet. He did the same, thinking I was signaling for him to leave.
But that wasn’t it.
I’d waited long enough.
I walked over to him and reached up to touch his face with both hands.
I kissed him like I’d kissed no one before. I melted into him, loved him in that moment like every human being should be loved. I had never felt so strongly about anyone in my life.
I was the first to stop kissing, but I did not stop touching his face. I dragged my fingertips down his cheek, his neck, and rested the palm of my hand on his chest. “I didn’t love Jack. I couldn’t. There was always you between us.”
He leaned down and kissed me back. “And there was never Jenna. Or anyone besides you. Since Paula.”
I grabbed him by the hand and led him back to my bedroom.
Beulah slept.
ONLY ONE MORE DAY remained until Jeremiah Coyote Cries could go home, walk in the fields, lie down on a grassy bank, and feel the sun against his skin.
The hum of quiet conversations in the well-guarded visiting room sounded like a distant swarm of killer bees. Every Wednesday morning, the same people arrived to visit their incarcerated loved ones. Most of the visitors were wives and children bearing gifts of family news and food.
Some of the prisoners had no family or families who were non-supportive. They never came to the visiting room. Instead, those prisoners chose to spend their Wednesday mornings playing a pick-up game of basketball in the yard or watching television.
Coyote Cries normally dedicated his Wednesday mornings to the weight room and excessive bench presses and squats. He seldom had reason to participate in visiting unless he was conducting business—unlawful, undetected business—with the outside world.
Today was one of those days.
He shoved through the entrance of the prison corridor thirty minutes into visiting hours. When the doors swung open with a bang, the hum of the room instantly ceased. Heads swiveled in his direction. He walked confidently toward a man sitting alone at the corner table. The tall, strong Indian sat down across from the lone visitor.
The hum returned, and its level rose louder than normal as the prisoners undoubtedly squawked to their families and friends about him. About The Reverend. About the legend.
He felt the gossip even more than heard it. So he sat with his shoulders high, his torso rigid. He rested his muscular arms, disproportionately longer than his short legs, on the table. He looked imposing as he swept his long, shiny grey hair off his high cheekbones and tucked his braid neatly behind his ear.
Glares from angry spouses bored into him from all directions, undoubtedly because of stories of how he had transgressed against their loved ones in some evil way. Mostly true, he was sure. But he ignored them anyway.
Instead, he’d gladly allow them to study his flat profile and his sharp angular features. He wanted them to remember him. Every detail. To never forget The Reverend.
The man across from Coyote Cries said, “What’s so funny?”
“I’m not laughing,” he said as he glanced at his own reflection in the window and saw that there was a perpetual hint of a tight, arrogant smile on his lips. Like the male version of Mona Lisa. As if he knew a secret he would never share.
No wonder he’d asked.
It was the closest expression to amusement this guy had ever seen on Coyote Cries’s face.
He narrowed his black eyes, cold and piercing, to bore into the visitor. And he let his passive tone belie his hostile expression. “The whispered rumors. About me, The Reverend. I find them amusing.” His long, strong fingers wrapped tightly around the ratty Bible that he carried everywhere he went in the prison.
“I heard one of them call you a chameleon.” The man’s glances flitted everywhere. Except on him, the client. He was nervous. Coyote Cries wondered if this idiot had done what he had told him to do. He better have. If he knew what was good for him. Time was running out.
“And what do you think?” His question was intended to mute his visitor and to send a cold chill through his veins. It was his get-back-to-business question.
The man didn’t answer. But he got the hint. He informed Coyote Cries about the project’s progress.
Coyote Cries listened to his nervous whispers about his activities over the past two weeks. The man was small, good-looking, in his late forties with a full head of reddish-brown brittle hair, cut short. Four of his fingers hosted gold rings. His custom-tailored suit was lined in silk. His blue eyes darted about nervously behind his gold wire-rimmed glasses as he leaned forward to continue his progress report.
Not unlike Coyote Cries, this guy’s appearance belied his ability to get things done. He appeared pampered, nervous, and rich. But his results suggested he hadn’t been unwilling to get his hands dirty to get the work done.
Good for him, because if he hadn’t been, he’d be no better than dead.
“… and I wasn’t sure if I would ever get it from her. But I finally did. It cost me, though,” the man explained.
Coyote Cries leaned back, glancing around to see if anyone was listening.
The guards and prison staff paid little if any attention on visitors’ day—especially with his visitors. He had convinced nearly every staffer that he was a devoutly spiritual man who had made one mistake in his youthful years.
The guards adored him and believed The Reverend had been made an example—given a stiff sentence for trumped up charges of drug possession and trafficking just because he was Native American. He was seen as the victim.
Nobody was listening. No worries.
But the other prisoners and their visitors did present a problem. Disdain and defiance were etched deeply on their faces. He imagined the room was buzzing with stories of past penances and explanations of the transgressions that triggered The Reverend’s wrath. Most fellow prisoners justifiably feared him, which was why they were desperately trying to hush their loved ones.
With his back against the wall, Coyote Cries laid his worn Bible on the table in front of him and placed his large hands casually in his lap. “How much, Vic?”
“Four G’s. I had enough left in the account you set up for me to cover it. You still have about a hundred twenty left. The market’s great these days. I’m making more in the free market than I am from the organization.”
“Is that before or after I pay your annual fee for keeping up on my investments?”
“After,” Vic answered. “I’m telling you, you’re making money at this. You won’t even have to get back into the business once you get out of here if you don’t want to.”
Coyote Cries actually smiled. It was brief, and it was barely detectable, but he was sure Vic noticed. He wanted that. “That’s good. Because I won’t be able to pony express to the reserva
tion after I get out. At least not for a while. They’ll be watching me too closely at first.”
“Look, Jeremiah.” Vic couldn’t maintain eye contact: That wasn’t a good sign. “I can’t promise you anything at tomorrow’s parole hearing. Chances are—”
He cut his lawyer off. “Chances are, I’ll be free. Because of you.”
He could see the Adam’s apple in his lawyer’s throat bobbing up and down. “Where can I find you? After you get out?”
“I’ll find you,” Coyote Cries said, still sitting rigid in his chair, casually studying the others in the room. “I have a job to do right when I get out. But after a few weeks, I’ll be able to let Dan know if I can pony for him or not. If not, I’m going to need a ticket to get lost.”
“When …” Vic licked his lips nervously. “The ticket, I mean.”
His mouthpiece clearly wanted Coyote Cries gone; out of Denver. As soon and as far away as possible.
“My parole hearing is tomorrow,” Coyote Cries said flatly. “That’s where you should focus.”
Vic nervously fidgeted with his glasses. “So … what’s your plan?”
“What’s yours? Shouldn’t you have a strategy by now? For tomorrow?”
He watched as the man’s tongue circled his dry lips. “About that.”
Coyote Cries raised an eyebrow and held Vic’s stare.
“There’s always next time. I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
Like the dawning of a new day, Coyote Cries suddenly realized his attorney wasn’t working to get him out. Quite the opposite. He had no hope or intention of freeing him tomorrow.
Coyote Cries cut his glance to the nearest guard who was not within earshot of the two. “I need your help one more time.”
Vic nodded.
“I need you to get me some things. Leave them at Dan’s mountain home. I’ll pick them up.” Seeing Vic’s nervousness intensify, Coyote Cries added, “Don’t worry. I won’t be staying there.”
Vic let out a sigh of relief. “Good, because Alcott would kill me if anyone messed with anything up there.”
Coyote Cries enjoyed hearing this. He might be able to use that tidbit of information to his advantage if Vic or Dan ever crossed him.
Becoming increasingly uncomfortable, Vic’s hands started to tremble. Coyote Cries calmly enumerated the items on his list. He resisted the urge to grin, watching his lawyer scribble the descriptions down in detail.
Jeremiah’s Revenge: A Liv Bergen Mystery Page 7
