“Yes. Three.”
So it was true. “You were married when we . . . we . . .” He turned and faced me. I searched his face, wanting answers. “Why?”
“I comforted you. We comforted each other. That’s all.”
“We almost . . .”
“But we didn’t. We didn’t take it that far.”
“Only because I . . . I had a flashback.”
He raked his hands through his hair. Hands that had traced my naked body, hands that I wanted even now to . . . I shook myself, barely heard his answer. “We got caught up in the moment. It was a mistake.”
A mistake? That’s how you’ve reconciled it? “You seemed pretty intent on making it happen.”
“You came on to me. Remember?”
I remembered the longing—no, the need—and that same urge inflamed my body even now. Stay on point, I told myself again. “I had no idea you were married. You never mentioned a wife. Or kids.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Like what? You weren’t married?” I laughed. “Come on, Doogan. The wife and kids didn’t just magically appear out of nowhere. How long have you been married?”
“I was nineteen when we married.”
“Ah . . . I see. Too young to know better. So that makes it okay for you to screw around on your wife?”
His eyes flashed with anger. “Just hear me out, okay?”
“I’m listening.”
“Katie was only seventeen when we were married and she got pregnant right away. It was hard. Really hard. I was messed up back then. I told you about it before. The gang. The drugs.”
“Yeah. You told me.” More lies, probably. My right hand shook and I held it still with the left.
“I got caught up in the easy money. I wasn’t big-time or nothing. Mostly just pot. A little here and there to friends. Never kids.”
People can find a way to justify just about anything.
Damn, if I didn’t need a pill right now.
“But it wasn’t enough. My supplier kept pushing for me to sell harder stuff. Katie tried to talk me out of it. She wanted to move. Get away from the crowd I was running with and start over. But I couldn’t get out. They wouldn’t let me. I ended up getting busted and sent to the state pen. I did seven years. And Katie and the kids, just the two at the time . . .” He ran his hand through his hair again, and I forced myself not to look. “Johnny was almost eight when I finally got out. We tried to make it work, Katie and me, she even got pregnant again, but . . . we fought all the time. Then my little sister went missing. That’s when I went up to Tennessee. I had to look for her.”
“You were married, Doogan. Married. And you didn’t tell me.” Anger sparked inside me. Pavees screwing around before marriage was unacceptable, but desecrating a marriage with adultery? Another new low for you, Brynn. Add home wrecker to your sins. But the blame for this sin shouldn’t have landed on my lap. “You lied to me. Would have taken advantage of me. Then you left with no explanation. I trusted you.”
“I thought my marriage was over. I never would have—”
“Shut the hell up, Doogan.” I crossed my arms over my chest, conscious of my heated breasts as they strained for him. I pulled my arms into myself, trying to keep the shakes and my endorphin-deprived hormones under control. “I don’t care. I really don’t care. I came here about the gun. I need to know what you did with it.” I blurted out about Maura’s murder and the other girl who was missing and my current case and the body Wilco found in the cave. How they’d figured out that it was Dublin’s bones up there in that cave, the bullet casings . . . everything. “That gun ties my grandmother to the crime. Where is it?”
“I tossed it.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember. Someplace up on the mountain.”
“Think, Doogan. Where on the mountain?”
“They’re not going to find it. Even if they do, they won’t tie it to her. I wiped it clean before I tossed it.”
“Before or after you dumped his body in the cave?”
“After.”
“So, near the cave?” I prodded. I cocked my head to catch his gaze.
“Yeah. I think so.” He lowered his head and paced. “I dumped the body and the four-wheeler and headed out of the woods on foot. I went south toward the highway. I stopped about halfway, cleaned it and tossed it. I remember there was a big tree, an oak, a widow-maker.”
“How could you have been so stupid?”
He stepped closer. His body tense with anger. Wilco sensed the shift in his mood and pressed closer to me, alert and on guard. Doogan didn’t seem to notice, his anger building with every word. “Look. I did you and your family a favor. I put myself at risk. If the cops find out, I’ll be back in the pen.”
He was so close, I could feel the heat of his temper. I’d felt heat from him before, only not from anger, but desire. I lost focus, my mind travelling elsewhere. The image of that night together, the strength of his embrace, the way our bodies fit together.... Something inside me shifted and stirred. A hotness unfurled inside my belly and moved lower.
He leaned down, even closer. “Is that what you want? Are you so angry that you want to see me go back to the pen?”
“No. That’s not what I want.” The words came out the wrong way, wanton and suggestive. What is wrong with me? This guy’s a user. A player. Back off, Brynn.
But I didn’t.
His gaze became more intense, his lips curling upward. “What is it you want then?”
My back arched, I looked up and met his gaze. Him. I wanted him.
A strange mix of desire and disgust washed over me. How could I want a man who thought so little of women, of me, of his wife? Back away. Move. Leave.
But I stayed. The surge through my bloodstream of narcotic-deprived craving for something, anything, to fill me with the hormones to take the edge off my withdrawals. That’s all this is. Shake it off.
Yet, there was more, could be more; I knew that. He was willing, if I was. What would it be? Secret meetings, cheap hotel rooms, a quick roll in the hay when he was in the area?
He was like all the other men I’d known. Users. Cheats. I should have never trusted him. Yet, I wanted him. That night, back in the trailer, he’d awakened an instinct in me, something that had lain dormant for years, something I’d pushed aside since the rape. It hadn’t felt anything like the shallow relationships I’d experienced during my time in the service. I’d trusted Doogan with my body. My scarred and maimed and ripe and desperate body. It’d felt good to trust, to be held again. I wanted that more than anything. I wanted to be loved.
But not like this.
I squirmed free of my desires and forced myself to step back. My peripheral vision caught on something. I looked closer. A slight part in the front-window curtains of the house. The face of a young boy peered out at us. I gave a little laugh, trying to cover my frustration and shame. “I don’t want anything from you. Good-bye, Doogan.”
CHAPTER 23
By seven-thirty the next morning, we had Nevan Meath processed, signed out, and secured in the back seat of the cruiser, Wilco caged in the cargo area. We were cruising north on Highway 25. The Osborne Brothers were playing on the radio and I was sipping bottled water. So far, Nevan hadn’t said a word. Neither had I. The night before, my med-impoverished brain had kicked into overdrive, amping up my anxieties until I thought I would explode. Then my nose started running. My eyes were tearing. I felt like I had the worst flu of my life, and, for all this suffering, I couldn’t be completely sure the drugs would be out of my system by Tuesday morning.
Grabowski glanced over. “You look like crap.”
“Thanks.”
“Where’d you go last night? You didn’t get in until late.”
“Why so curious? Pusser put you back on babysitting duty?”
“No. I just wondered.”
I shifted in my seat, trying to find a comfortable position, my every muscle jumpy or m
iserable. Or both. He turned his attention to Nevan. “Anything you care to tell us about, boy?”
He stared straight ahead, defiant. He wouldn’t even look my way, hadn’t since we’d picked him up at the Augusta Police Department. I didn’t really care. I wanted to get this done and get home.
Grabowski glanced in the rearview mirror. “We’ve got a witness who saw you bash in Maura’s car with a baseball bat. You must have a pretty bad anger problem to do something like that.”
“Your witness is lying.”
Grabowski looked in the rearview mirror. “You were the last person to see Maura alive.”
“Says who?”
“Hatch Anderson.”
Nevan’s expression tightened. He turned and looked out the window.
Grabowski kept firing off questions. “We have another missing girl who was in the area at the time. You know anything about her?”
“No.”
“How would you know? I haven’t told you her name.”
Nevan pressed his lips together.
“Addy. Addy Barton.”
Nevan’s jaw twitched.
“You know that name, boy?”
Nothing from Nevan. I wiped a bead of sweat from my forehead and scrolled my phone screen. “We found Maura’s journal. You might find some of it interesting. This one is dated just a few days before her death. It mentions you.” I read it out loud.
February 3
Nevan says he hates Bone Gap and his stupid family. I’ve never seen him so upset. I understand why. It’s all so unfair. I’m angry, too, but not as mad as Nevan. Today we were in his truck and he freaked out about everything. He drove like an idiot and we went into the ditch. Then he started swearing and screaming like it was my fault. I was so scared.
Grabowski let out a little whistle. “You did all that, boy? Makes it sound like you’re on the edge, a violent guy.”
“You don’t understand—”
“Come on, Nevan. What’s not to understand? She was carrying another man’s child. That’d piss me off. She cheated. Disgraced you. She deserved to die, right?”
“Stupid-ass copper. You got it all wrong.” I looked back at the boy. Just a boy. His face smooth, without a promise of a whisker for years, and fine-boned, nearly pretty-faced, like a Ken doll, only without a Barbie at his side anymore. He looked all wrong for playing the part of an enraged lover, jealous enough to kill.
Grabowski smirked. “Then tell us what happened, Nevan. Set me straight.”
Nevan’s eyes darted from me to Grabowski, then settled outside the window again. Grabowski sighed. He’d pushed too hard and he knew it.
Suddenly my stomach reeled as if some vile stench filled the air. I could only hope it wasn’t my own soured sweat. I swallowed hard and folded my arms across my chest. Grabowski turned up the music again. Yeehaw . . . I sat back, bit my lip, and wiped more sweat from my hairline. I closed my eyes, consciousness ebbed, I was vaguely aware of Grabowski’s voice in the background, fading, fading. My mind released and swirled into darkness, punctuated with lucid images: dreams of flying through the clouds, Superman-like, up and up, higher and higher, closer to the sun. The heat sears my skin; on my arms, I see blisters bubble and pop, bubble and . . . I woke with a start and pulled a wad of toilet paper from my coat pocket. My face was soaked with tears and snot. My head zinged like I’d been hit with an electrical current. I dabbed at my eyes. “How much longer?”
“A couple hours.” He looked me over, pressed his lips into a thin line, then went after Nevan again. “There’s a lot of evidence stacked against you, boy. The bat and—”
“I don’t know where that came from. I’d never seen it before.”
“Hatch said he left you and Maura alone up there by the fire tower.”
“He’s lying. I went up there to see if she was okay. She was. She told me to leave. She wanted to be alone with Hatch. So I left.”
Winnie left, he left, Hatch left—someone was lying.
“It didn’t bother you that she was with another guy.”
Silence.
Grabowski smirked. “Surprised you’re so nonchalant about all this, Nevan. Your pretty little fiancée goes and gets knocked up by some guy outside the clan. A ‘settled’ guy, as you people say.” He glanced in the mirror again. “Didn’t it make you sick, boy? Thinking of his hands all over your girl.”
More silence.
“Maybe you weren’t man enough for her?”
A deep purple flush crept into the hollows of Nevan’s cheeks. “You don’t know shit, musker.”
Grabowski smirked and went for the jugular. “Or maybe it’s true that gypsy girls are like that. You know. Easy lays.”
My cell phone rang. Nevan’s head snapped my way. He clamped his mouth shut, shifted back in the seat, and went quiet again. Damn.
After I finished the call, I turned to Grabowski. “A purse was found. The missing girl Addy Barton’s purse. It was partially submerged in the river. They need my dog.”
CHAPTER 24
A lot of things determine whether or not a dead body will float. Water replaces the air in the lungs of a drowning victim, making the body heavier and it sinks. But once bacteria begin their fleshly feast, decomposition creates gases that make the body lighter, and it floats to the surface. How long it takes for the bacteria to create enough noxious gases to reach that critical lift level depends on several factors: water temperature, ingested drugs and medications, body-fat percentages (fat floats better than muscle), the type of clothing worn, and even what food was last consumed.
For the Nolichucky River’s most recent victim, the biggest concern was water temperature. This was February. Ice chunks floated on the water and gathered along the banks in large white conglomerates. With our current record low temperatures, it could take a body almost two weeks to float.
“A kid found her bag a couple hours ago.” Pusser pointed up to a snowy area of the bank where a few picnic tables sat. It was late afternoon. We were at the Gorge Campground, a popular destination for outdoor enthusiasts, even in the winter. After securing Nevan at the county jail, Grabowski and I came straight to the scene. “It still had her ID in it. And something else, too. A zip bag of white pills. We’re analyzing it now.”
I surveyed the river. “You’re assuming she’s in the water.”
“It’s all I have for now. The river runs pretty shallow along the banks, but there are some deep holes in the middle. Think your dog will find anything?”
I looked to where Wilco scurried back and forth along the river edges, dipping his head playfully at the floating ice. “If she’s out there, Wilco will find her.”
For a dog who’d served mostly in dry-desert conditions, water was a source of joy for him, never a hindrance. Nor was it for most HRD dogs. Bodies submerged in water still give off scent. It rises in the gases from the decomposition that bubble and pop along the surface of the water, dispersing a putrefied perfume easily detected by a trained dog. Decomposing bodies also release oils that rise and form greasy sheens along the water’s surface. I’d seen Wilco hit off both of these phenomena twice before in the Badghis Province, where he detected the bodies of two internationals who’d drowned after trying to recover supplies that had fallen into the Murghab River. There we had some indication of where the men had gone down. Here we had no idea. No doubt Wilco could find this body, eventually, and with the right equipment. But with the amount of distance we had to cover, today was a bit of a long shot.
I slowly unpacked a bright orange immersion suit, something similar to what I’d worn in the Marines during cold-water survival maneuvers. It was heavy and cumbersome, my muscles rubbery and uncooperative, but in this frigid water, hypothermia could set in quickly. In this part of the gorge, the river smoothed out and mellowed into a few riffles and waves, leisurely compared to the downright suicidal rapids farther upstream. Still, I wasn’t one to leave things to chance.
I bent to put my leg in, missed, and tried again. Next to me,
Pusser chomped down hard on a toothpick and apprised me of his theory on the Barton girl. “Nothing seems to fit, does it?” he said. “Maura was stabbed and left whole to bleed out on a sacrificial altar. This girl, if she’s out there, somehow ended up as fish bait.”
I shivered. Pusser never sugarcoated things.
“So the only thing linking the two deaths is the timing. And the diner,” he added. “We know from the trace on her charge card that she ate her last meal there. But that’s not much to go on. That diner is the only real eating establishment on this side of the mountain. Most people travelling through end up there.”
“Or she ate there regularly and knew Maura.” I had both feet in the suit.
Pusser’s eyes skimmed the surface of the water. “At this point, it doesn’t really matter. There’s a body somewhere, maybe out there, and we’re responsible for finding it. Let’s do what we can before the light’s gone.”
I glanced sideways. His stooped posture and distant, empty stare hinted at profound sadness. He was thinking of Jo. I wanted to say something, offer some words of condolence, comfort, but I wasn’t supposed to know about his daughter.
I turned away, unable to bear his sadness, and focused on working the rest of the way into the suit. Not easy. The shakes had momentarily subsided; they were probably the adrenaline rush of an upcoming search. But my muscles ached, and my limbs felt like a Gummy Bear’s limbs. I was struggling to pull the heavy suit over my hips when noise drew our attention to a couple officers carrying a raft to the bank. Wilco noticed, knew what was coming, and declared his enthusiasm with a throaty affirmation that echoed through the canyon. Pusser looked his way and laughed. Wilco’s timing was perfect, his enthusiasm soothed Pusser’s sadness. Almost as if he knew. Maybe he did.
The raft was put in the water. I boarded with Wilco, huddled near the front, hunched over, sweating profusely, neoprene material clinging to my skin like plastic wrap on a steaming dish. Three more suited officers joined me. Wilco was climbing over all of us and positioning himself near the bowline. He knew his place. The other officers manned the paddles and oar, and off we pushed.
Fractured Truth Page 14
