Stray Narrow

by Jerusha Jones

  “Right,” Sheriff Marge grunted. “They’re taking pictures, which is all they can do. But it’s already too late. We weren’t going to get anything useful from those, anyway.”

  “The hat and glove?” I queried.

  “Those are good,” Sheriff Marge agreed, but then added a caveat that crushed my little surge of hope, “if the wearer is in the system. I hate to admit it, but these guys are smart. And patient. That combination—which is so rare in common criminals—is never something I like to see.”

  “So they’re not common.” Pete said. “That, in itself, will narrow the field.”

  Sheriff Marge was nodding along. “Motive. We know why they’re after this young fella here”—she tipped the brim of her hat toward Burke—“so we need to keep hard on the line of enquiry about why they felt they had to get rid of Cassidy.”

  “Her secrets—which she didn’t know herself, most likely—are hidden with her equipment,” I murmured. We all knew; I just felt like saying it out loud again.

  “I expect they’ve been destroyed by now.” Sheriff Marge is a stickler for the facts—and the reasonable conclusions that should be drawn from them—no matter how discouraging they might be. She doesn’t tolerate fairy-tale dreaming.

  Dr. Lipscomb stuck his pink-cheeked baby face around the curtain and spoke with an accent that was much more southerly-leaning now that he wasn’t issuing medical assessments and directives. “You all are going to have to move your conference elsewhere,” he said. “An elderly man has fallen off a roof, and we’re about to get really busy in here in a few minutes.”

  “In this weather?” Hester clucked. “What was he thinking?”

  But Sheriff Marge’s gaze had snapped up sharply, and she pinned Dr. Lipscomb with it. “Who?”

  “I can’t…well…” he stuttered. “It’s my duty to protect the privacy of…”

  But Sheriff Marge’s right eyebrow had reached the apex of dictatorial supremacy, and Dr. Lipscomb quailed under her glare. Good thing my tidy bandage hid my wincing smirk. The young upstart would soon learn which side his bread was buttered on.

  “Uh, Ira Cupples,” he conceded, flushing hotly. Then he quickly clarified, “Senior.”

  If Sheriff Marge had been an eye-roller, she would’ve done so now. “I thought so,” she grunted instead. “Keep him heavily sedated. I can’t afford to make another emergency run back here tonight to defuse some kind of hostage situation. Don’t let him anywhere near your scalpels or needles. And don’t let him fool you into thinking he’s some sort of feeble, spacey old man. You got that?”

  Dr. Lipscomb revealed his good breeding by snappily and rotely responding, “Yes, ma’am.” He nearly saluted.

  CHAPTER 23

  We reconvened, after traveling motorcade-style yet again, at the sheriff’s department’s modular building. The sagging structure is perched on concrete blocks in the middle of the crackled and potholed parking lot of an abandoned supermarket. The county had purchased the property with grand plans for a new law enforcement complex, but somebody had forgotten to tell the accountant how much the proper facilities would cost to build from scratch. The good citizens of Sockeye County, and much more so her sworn peace officers, were waiting for the economy to turn around, and the tax base to rise commensurately, so they could finally build an office that didn’t smell like mildew and scorched frozen burritos and a jail that had electronic locks on the cell doors and separate accommodations for men and women. In other words, a brave new world. Or maybe just joining the twenty-first century.

  Patience is a virtue everywhere, but it’s a matter of remedial survival when you live in the sticks. That, and an extraordinary tolerance for discomfort.

  As proved by the way Sheriff Marge’s deputies were sprawled over and behind their cluttered desks—assembling, collating, and organizing the disparate facts they’d collected that evening.

  Archie Lanphier was standing by a printer that was groaning in a perfect imitation of death throes as it jerkily ratcheted out a single sheet of paper. “Got the Acura,” he said as we shuffled inside, stamping the slush off our shoes.

  The visitors’ seating area consists of one garage-sale-reject lime-green couch with self-esteem issues. I nudged Burke toward it, and settled in beside him—settling being the operative word. I sank until my knees were nearly level with my chin.

  But I was suddenly exhausted beyond description and didn’t care about my ungainliness since the cushions were the kind of soft and clumpy squishy that indicated their interior foam had disintegrated decades ago. My eyelids began drooping of their own accord—probably also a symptom of adrenaline crash.

  There was room on the couch for one more, but Pete chose to lean against the door frame, his hands jammed in his jeans pockets, silent and scowling.

  Nadine, the dispatcher and office manager, and who probably should’ve gone home ages ago, took one look at Burke and jumped up from behind her desk. She’s a firm believer in foundational support of the unmentionable variety. And, apparently she’s in the right profession, because the shape of her brassiere is what’s commonly known as a bullet bra, the likes of which haven’t been seen in public since the late 1950s—except on Nadine. She has torpedoes on her chest. Nothing jiggled.

  I was tempted to slap a hand over Burke’s eyes. Except, well, the searing damage was already done.

  “You want Pop-Tarts, hon?” she asked in a throaty smoker’s voice. The offer was clearly aimed at Burke only, and I suspected that Nadine, also, had been primed with enough of his backstory to have developed a few spastic maternal twinges for the hard-case orphan.

  “No,” I snapped, instantly zapping into hyper-alert parent mode. “But thank you.” The kid was going to float away from a hot cocoa overdose as it was. I wrapped an arm around him, and he leaned into me.

  Snuggled, actually. Nestled, his shaggy hair tickling under my chin, and a flood of conflicting emotions just about smothered me.

  Hester gave Nadine a withering glare, and she strode across the room between us as though she was drawing an imaginary—but very real—battle line. She yanked the top chair off a stack of plastic spares and plunked into it like the resolute chaperone she was. As a ward of the state, Burke’s psychological condition and sweet tooth were as much her responsibility as they were mine, and I was grateful for the backup.

  Nadine sniffed and wiggled her loose-jointed hips back into her own seat.

  Sheriff Marge had come in last, and just caught the tip of Archie’s statement. “Where?”

  “Stolen out of Kennewick three days ago,” Archie replied.

  Sheriff Marge is the only person with a private office in the stubby little module, but she eschewed it in lieu of the corner of Nadine’s desk, where she hitched her broad backside after wrangling the equipment dangling from her duty belt out of the way. “The only one?” she asked.

  “Yup,” said our taciturn deputy.

  “Not too many of those to choose from in these parts.” Sheriff Marge nodded stiffly. “Our perps are showing some surprising consistency. Doesn’t help us much, though, since it’s still consistency we can’t trace back far enough.”

  I had my mouth open to ask for clarification, but Sheriff Marge beat me to it with a new train of thought. “Before we go any further, Pete—” She rose and went over to the coffee station. She tore open a packet of herbal tea and set about dunking it methodically into a cup of hot water. “I know you’ve already given your complete statement to the Gilliam County sheriff’s department, but I’d like to hear it in your own words.”

  My head was on a swivel between the herbal tea and Pete. Caffeine-free? Statement? Dual shocks to my system at the same time. It wasn’t like Pete and I’d had time to have a marital tête-à-tête since the tobogganing incident, but what hadn’t he told me?! And what on earth was Sheriff Marge drinking?

  Pete’s blue eyes bore into mine for a long moment before he turned to Sheriff Marge and complied with her request. “I got a call from
Delbert Mason, out in Arlington, Oregon this afternoon.”

  Heads were nodding in the room, along with a couple grunts of recognition from the deputies. Apparently Delbert Mason was well known along both sides of the river. A man who manages a port that includes a grain co-op and elevator usually does hold that sort of status.

  “Said he wanted my opinion on a project he was considering. It’s not the first time he’s asked me, so the request—while the timing was a little odd—wasn’t completely unusual, so I went.” Pete shifted, pressed his back more firmly into the hard ridges of the door frame, and his scowl tightened. “When I got out to the port, Del’s truck was the only vehicle in the parking lot. Again, not unusual, especially this time of year. I went straight up to his office; the door was barely latched. It swung open under my knock. And there was Del, strapped to his office chair with duct tape, a gag across his mouth.”

  My eyeballs about popped out, and I made a strangled little gurgling noise.

  Pete shot me a worried glance, but continued. “So I cut him loose. I was concerned about fingerprints—if I was smudging over ones that might’ve been left by the people who did that to him—but he told me, as soon as I got the tape off his face, that the men had been wearing balaclavas and gloves, that they’d been very careful to cover their tracks. They hadn’t even spoken to him. They’d written out their demands on paper ahead of time, including the reason he was supposed to give me on the phone to get me to come out.”

  “Now that’s something.” Sheriff Marge grimaced as she slurped her tea—from the heat or the insipid flavor, I couldn’t tell. “I think we can assume from the written communication that the perps knew Del would recognize their voices if they spoke—why they had to completely mask their identities. What weapon did they use?”

  “Del’s not sure. They jabbed something in his back, which he assumed was the muzzle of a gun, and they smacked him with something hard on the back of the head when he put up some resistance, but he never saw the weapon.”

  “But he saw the car?” Sheriff Marge prodded. Apparently she’d read the full report, and just wanted to cement the details into her mind.

  Again Pete’s tone was grim. “Not to fully identify it. He spotted it from his office window, coming down that steep, winding road into the port. He said it was black, one of those Japanese jobs. You know Del—if it’s not American made, he has no use for it. And he’s certain he doesn’t know anybody who owns a car like that.”

  In the far corner, Dale Larson chuckled shortly and wagged his head from side to side. “One of the perks of using a stolen vehicle. Our boys are bright.”

  “Yeah. But they’re desperate,” Sheriff Marge retorted, her eyes narrowing behind the reading glasses as though she was seeing a far-off vision.

  Everyone in the room seemed to hold their breath, waiting. She was working on something. Calculating. Applying her extensive knowledge of human nature and criminal behavior.

  She heaved a sigh and balanced the barely sipped cup of tea on the edge of the table. “Here’s how I see it,” she said finally. She was squinting at me and Burke, but the intensity of her glare softened. She crossed over to us in two steps and bent to ruffle his hair, kind of pawed it away from his face for a second, held his gaze, and gave him a curt nod. “They don’t like you much, Burke.” She squatted down so she was at eye level with him. “I was hoping those two men would show themselves, and also hoping they wouldn’t, because of the possible consequences of that. Are you understanding me?”

  Burke’s head rubbed against my shoulder as he nodded.

  I wasn’t quite sure I was following as closely as I needed to be, but I dug my fingernails into my thigh and tried to focus.

  “They seem determined to get you, because your ability to identify them is very important,” Sheriff Marge continued, speaking straight to Burke. “The sketches you helped Ms. Oliphant produce are very helpful, but there are lots of ways for a good defense lawyer to get around those in court. They’re not definitive, not sufficient in and of themselves. To shift the preponderance of evidence, we would need to produce you as an eyewitness to be sure of a conviction.”

  A lot of big words, each one like a blow straight to my gut. I’d known this, of course, even consciously as well as subconsciously, in all the deep recesses of my brain. But hearing the confirmation spoken in Sheriff Marge’s solemn voice made my hands tremble.

  “The fact that these men didn’t just disappear, didn’t just go back to their normal lives hoping that you’d forget or that maybe you didn’t see too much that day in the forest—well, it scares me too.”

  “I can be brave,” Burke whispered.

  She thunked his leg with her knuckle in an approving manner. “You already are. No question about that. But I’m going to ask for more.” She pushed to standing with some alarmingly loud pops in her knees.

  “I don’t like what you’re thinking,” Pete said from the doorway, his voice grating with strain.

  She turned slowly to face him, then kept moving, her gaze returning to settle on me. “I don’t like it either.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Sheriff Marge did give Hester the chance to pull the plug on her plan. But Hester puffed up like an indignant mother hen and stated forcefully and clearly that it was her official opinion, on behalf of the state, that the sooner this whole ordeal was over, the better for the child. His life was in danger, and would continue to be so, until the two killers were behind bars.

  So I was outfitted with a Taser and given cursory instruction on how to operate it. While I was trying to wrap my head around aim with the laser sight at bare skin or thin clothing over areas of large muscle mass (unlikely in this weather)—prong connect—electrical conduction—silence is golden, a loud buzzing noise means try again or if he’s too close just jab the guy with it for pain compliance, I noticed that Owen Hobart had dropped to one knee beside Burke and they were having what appeared to be an intense conversation.

  It was the first time Owen had spoken since we’d arrived at the station. He’s a man of few words, but the ones that do come out are worth listening to. Burke nodded vigorously several times and even responded verbally, but I couldn’t hear what either one of them was saying. Owen’s big hand rested on Burke’s shoulder briefly before they split apart.

  It was nearly midnight, but I was exhausted well beyond the fact that it was past my bedtime. My bones ached.

  We rode home in the pickup, with Pete driving. My head tipped against his shoulder, and Burke had slumped against me, domino style. Tuppence had been snoozing in the cab, and she grudgingly made room for us.

  Now I understood my husband’s preoccupation, his sullen scowling all evening, and the gritty fury that was still shimmering off him like a heat-fueled mirage.

  I waited until both Tuppence and Burke were snoring softly. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I whispered.

  He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “At first, I didn’t want to scare you. I knew you’d be busy getting ready for Hester’s interview, and I thought if I was lucky, I might be able to get home in time for that and just walk into the house like nothing was wrong. I called Sheriff Marge. She put the scenario together a little better than I did—the full import of why I’d been called away. So then I did try your phone, as I was racing back here, but you weren’t answering.” His hand gripped my knee in the dark. “That was the most terrifying hour of my life, babe. I didn’t get to you in time.” His voice was thick, almost slurred.

  I buried my face in his shoulder. “You can’t shield me from everything.”

  “I can try.” His hand tightened on my knee.

  I tilted my head up, squinted to see his profile in the dull glow from the dashboard lights. “I don’t want that. I want all of real life, no matter how much it hurts. Because I also want the fullness of joy that comes with the pain. Okay? I want to know.”

  “Then you know I love you.”

  I could only nod, tears had clogged my throat.r />
  oOo

  The general consensus had been that the killers wouldn’t try again—at least not immediately—to reach Burke at the Sills’ house. But their tactic with Delbert Mason and the way they’d stolen at least two vehicles from locations where they had good chances of getting away with it indicated that they were familiar and comfortable with a broad range of territory and with people’s habits.

  It was clear the perps didn’t mind being up-close-and-personal with their victims. They were neither squeamish nor afraid, nor easily flustered. They’d been extremely hands-on, whether for murder or just intimidation. And, so far, they’d avoided the actual firing of a gun, although they had to be considered armed and dangerous.

  Sheriff Marge thought—given how careful the killers had been about not leaving evidence behind—that they would be very wary of shooting, because of the bullets, spent casings, and possible gunpowder residue. Everything leaves a trail. Now that she had the hat and glove and possible DNA samples from those to match with any deposits they made in the future, they’d have to be even more circumspect.

  She was banking on a battle of wits, otherwise she would never have asked Meredith and Burke to take the necessary risks. Owen had to agree with her. The sooner the better. Trap them at their own game. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t on edge.

  He was also no longer envious of Pete. He couldn’t imagine placing his wife and a young boy who was officially under his protection out as bait for two clever killers. But, as Sheriff Marge had pointed out, they were bait whether anyone wanted to acknowledge that unpleasant fact or not. Might as well spring the bait in the right trap.

  Owen had gone home after the meeting and donned his old-school cold-weather gear, this time with a layer of camouflage on top. Then he’d driven his personal vehicle—a beater pickup that looked like every other beater pickup in the county—to the Port of Platts Landing and hiked over to the old Tinsley homestead where the Sills family were pretending everything was normal.