Ted met him in Alex’s front driveway mid-morning. The minute Ted’s feet touched the ground, he cocked his ear. “That’s chainsaws.”
“She lost the battle with Miller,” Doug said
Ted looked at the ground and shook his head. “I hadn’t heard. Judge moved fast, I guess.”
“How does it work, when somebody sets out to log three-thousand acres of trees?”
“Well, you got the tree-fallers first with chain saws. Before long, one of Miller’s cat skinners will walk a CAT up and start work on Alex’s driveway. Widen it. Smooth it up. Reduce the grade. Old Ridge Road, too. Both will be made passable and safe for logging trucks. God. It’ll break Alex’s heart to see all of that.”
“Not if I can help it,” Doug replied. “Let’s go.”
They trekked up to Old Ridge Road and down to the glade surrounding Granite Pond. To Doug’s surprise and dismay, the place had been scoured clean of rubble. “Do you know what happened to the debris that was here?”
“Alex hired somebody to clean up and haul it off.”
“Fuck,” Doug grumbled. “I didn’t know that.” He headed for the cabin site with Ted walking beside him. “Did you ever find out how McGregor got here that night?”
“Cindy’s rig. They came from town together.” Ted pointed toward the waterfall end of Granite Pond, a good hundred feet from where they stood. “It was parked over there.”
“Four-wheel-drive?”
“Yep. She drives an old Blazer.”
Doug walked to where he had parked his pickup the evening he came here with Cindy, slightly to the right of where the cabin’s front door had been. It had seemed like a more logical place to park.
“Wonder why she parked it way over there?”
Ted shrugged. “She told Jim they went fishing before they got down to serious partying.”
Plausible, but not likely. Doug chuckled. “Wonder if they caught anything.”
Ted filled in a few facts that Alex had not. He was convinced the accelerant had been lantern fuel, a container of which could be found in every garage or storage shed in Callister County.
The lantern’s scorched skeleton was no longer present, but Doug’s memory scrolled back to where he had first seen it beside the brick hearth. Could Cindy have offed her lover, then set the place on fire? If so, what had been Miller’s role?
Moving on, Doug tried to visualize a time line “How long you figure it took the cabin to burn down, forty-five minutes, an hour?”
“Maybe. Maybe less. An old building like that would go up in a hurry. There was zero humidity. I didn’t pay that much attention to time, to tell the truth. Our concern was preventing a disaster on this whole mountain.”
Doug and Ted strolled toward the pond’s bank nearest the ridge road “You’re a forest scientist. What’s your opinion. Will a road really damage that stream and pond the way she thinks? She said something about the soil being disturbed and releasing talc into the water.”
Ted’s brow arched. “Honestly? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect she’s right. I’ve seen it in a stream up in a high country mining district.”
Doug sighed. “I hope she’ll sell that house to Miller if he still wants to buy it. When I finish remodeling, my place will be big enough for the two of us.”
“Boy, I don’t know. She loves that house.”
At the pond’s edge, Doug looked back at the ridge. “How far is it from here to Miller’s timber?”
“The boundary’s about a mile to the south.”
“I don’t remember seeing him here fighting the fire. Yet, besides Alex and her house, he’s the guy with the most to lose. Why wouldn’t he show up? If I had been in his shoes, I would have.”
Until his conversation with Culpepper, Doug hadn’t wondered about Miller’s absence from the firefighting. “Did anybody besides the sheriff ever talk to him?”
“I heard from him myself a couple of days later,” Ted said. “He said he was up north looking at a logging job or he would’ve brought his equipment and helped us. He was real grateful for the job we did.”
“I’ll bet. Listen, you wouldn’t want to babysit the cats for a couple of days, would you?”
“You gotta be kidding.”
“Not kidding.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m working on Alex’s problems. But I need to be out of town a couple of days. Don’t ask me where I’m going.”
Tex shrugged. “Hell, I’ve been driving up here to take care of those damn cats for years. I guess a couple more trips won’t hurt me.”
****
The next day at dusk, after a long day’s drive through a variety of extreme and beautiful landscapes, Doug reached the town of Challis. It was located at the edge of the Challis National Forest. To the southeast, Borah Peak rose like a twelve-thousand-foot wall. He stopped for a sandwich before calling Cindy.
She told him to meet her behind the bleachers at the roping arena. Challis wasn’t much larger than Callister. He had no trouble finding the arena. He killed his pickup lights as he turned behind the bleachers. The sky was clear and the area was lit by moonlight. Cindy’s battered Blazer waited for him, parked out of the way under the bleachers just as she said it would be. The mere fact she felt a need for such secrecy told him her information would be extraordinarily consequential to somebody.
He left the Silverado and walked over to her rig. When he opened the door, her interior lights didn’t come on, which stopped him. Was it a coincidence that they didn’t work, or was she that fearful of being seen. The night air was cold and the minute he slid onto the passenger seat and closed the door, the windows began to fog, leaving them sitting in an eerie blue-gray darkness.
“You hiding out?” he asked her.
“What do you think?”
“I’m glad you changed your mind about talking to me.”
“What are you gonna do for me after I tell you what you want to know?”
“Everything in my power to help you.”
“But you’re not a cop any more. And you never was an Idaho cop. Why should I believe you can do anything?”
He sensed her nervousness, could hear a tremble in her voice. It had been three years since he had questioned a witness or a suspect, but the routine came back to him as if he had done it yesterday. “Because I know somebody who can and if you didn’t already believe that, you wouldn’t have called me.”
“There’s no telling what Kenny might do to me if he finds out I talked to you.”
“Let me make it easy. I’ll ask questions and you just give me simple answers.”
She turned to face the windshield and nodded.
“Was Miller at the cabin with you and Charlie the night of the fire?”
She nodded again.
“The next question’s obvious, kiddo. Did he do something to Charlie?”
She sniffed and ducked her head. “They had a fight.”
“And Charlie lost?”
She nodded again and wiped her eyes, then jerked the latch on her door and scooted out. Doug left his seat, too, and rounded the front end of the Blazer. Hands shaking, she was attempting to dig a cigarette out of a pack. He reached for it, bumped one out, then held the lighter for her. “What happened?”
“Kenny threw Charlie across the room. He’s a lot bigger than Charlie was and he’s real strong. Charlie hit his head on the woodstove and just sort of folded up on the floor.”
Doug thought of the autopsy report and the official cause of death. McGregor might have survived his head injury if someone had helped him escape the cabin before he burned to death. “What did you do to help him?”
She broke into sobs, her shoulders shaking. “He wasn’t moving. And he was bleeding something awful….Kenny said he was dead....And I didn’t have any clothes on.”
She drew on her cigarette, then wiped her nose with the heel of her hand. “Then Kenny dumped lantern gas everywhere and lit a match. I tried to tell the dumb fucker he was go
nna burn up all his trees, but he was blind drunk and pissed off.”
End of story. A small part of Doug had always been amazed at how simple most murders were. People were killed by people they knew.
“Did Miller harm you?”
“I didn’t give him the chance. I took off and hid in the trees. I didn’t like the look in his eye. I seen him choke a big dog once with his bare hands. I ain’t forgot it.”
Doug’s eyes narrowed as he tried to picture the man choking a dog to death. Miller was just plain mean and even more violent than Doug thought. “What happened next?”
She sniffed. “He staggered around outside a few minutes, then got in his truck and took off. The next thing I knew Alex showed up. I don’t know what I would’ve done if she hadn’t come.”
She drew deeply on her cigarette. The tip burned bright orange in the darkness. She was stalling. Doug wasn’t about to lose momentum. “You left out what Miller was so pissed off about.”
She stared up at him, but he couldn’t see her eyes in the darkness.
“Charlie said Kenny stole some trees.”
“How the hell does somebody steal trees?”
“Kenny logged some trees off Forest Service ground and some ground that was owned by some old people from Pennsylvania. Charlie knew about it.”
Blackmail! Not an uncommon motive for mayhem. Doug’s memory scrolled back to his conversation with Alex: Charlie was in over his head with something...always out of money...gambled...restaurants in trouble. “Charlie wanted money from Miller to keep his mouth shut? How’d he know about the stolen trees?”
“I don’t know….I just know he said he had some pictures.”
“Did he ever actually collect any money from Miller?”
She nodded. “Kenny paid him once. I don’t know how much, but he was pissed off about it. He told Charlie he was never gonna do it again. And he wanted the pictures.”
“What happened to the pictures?”
“I don’t know. Charlie said they were in California. That’s part of why Kenny got so mad. After he gave Charlie the money, Charlie didn’t give him the pictures.”
“So that night at the cabin, Charlie pressured him for more money? Miller jumped him?”
“Naw. That ain’t what they got in a fight about….But it’s why Kenny set the cabin on fire.”
Doug frowned. This story was getting confusing. “Then what was the fight about?”
“Me and Charlie was on the bed and Kenny was in the recliner, watching. I already told you he liked watching.” She turned her back and leaned her elbow on the Blazer’s front fender. “Charlie couldn’t, you know, do anything. He was too drunk. He said it was my fault his dick went limp. He started pushing me around. He even hit me. Kenny always took up for me when we was kids growing up. He dragged Charlie off me and threw him across the room.”
“So there wasn’t a real fight, then? Sounds like Charlie was defenseless.”
She shook her head. “Even if Charlie hadn’t been…” A keening sound came from her throat and she began to shake and sob. “Charlie couldn’t of…fought against Kenny….Nobody can.”
Doug yanked his handkerchief from his back pocket and handed it to her. “Keep talking, Cindy.”
She blew her nose and continued to sniffle, staring straight ahead and talking into space. “Kenny said he’d get rid of his problem with the goddamn trees once and for all. I didn’t know what he meant at first….Then he started throwing the lantern gas all over everything.”
She paused and Doug waited. “I told him he could lose all his trees next door,” she said. “He didn’t even hear me. It was like he was zoned out or something.” She broke into sobs again. “He even threw it on Charlie.”
Doug waited again for her to compose herself, giving her space. “So then what happened?” he asked quietly.
“It scared the shit out of me. I ran outside.”
A bone deep weariness spread over Doug. He was saddened to be faced with the fact that all of the pure evil in the world was not concentrated in Los Angeles County. He drew a hand down his face. “One more question, Cindy. Does Jim Higgins know all this?”
She nodded. “Him and Kenny are good friends. Hell, Jim’s worked for Kenny ever since I can remember. He ain’t really a sheriff, you know. He’s a truck mechanic.”
Doug clenched his jaw. “Right.”
“You wanna know something funny?” Cindy dropped her cigarette on the ground and ground it out with her shoe. “Me and Charlie didn’t even intend to go to that goddamn cabin. He was in the Rusty Spur waiting for me to get off when Kenny came in, wasted on Wild Turkey. He’s the one wanted to go to the cabin. I didn’t want him with us ’cause I knew Charlie was going back to California and I prob’ly wouldn’t see him for a long time. I was mad ’cause I thought Kenny just wanted to go off to the bushes somewhere so he could jack off. He’s so scared somebody’ll find out he’s weird. Hell. Maybe he wanted to talk to Charlie about the money and the pictures all along. Kenny always gets what he wants.”
“Not this time, Cindy. Not this time.”
“Am I gonna be okay?” she asked in a tiny voice. “You promised. I can’t be in jail or anything. I gotta be able to take care of my kids. I’m all they got. If I get in trouble, the state will take them.”
“I’m gonna help you,” Doug said, and meant it. “Stay wherever you’re staying until either I or a lawyer named Bob Culpepper contacts you.”
After cautioning her again, Doug left Challis. He stopped at a motel in a little town at the junction with the Interstate and spent the night. Before heading for Boise, he called Culpepper and told him they had a case against Kenny Miller. He could almost see Culpepper beaming through the phone.
“I’ll call Jack Dunlap as soon as we hang up,” Culpepper said. “He’ll alert the state police.”
“Alex will be home tomorrow. I’d like to be the one to tell her what happened to her husband.”
“Of course,” Culpepper said.
****
The hour and a half flight from LAX to Boise gave Alex an opportunity at last to do some serious thinking about the relationship she had allowed herself to stumble into with Doug. She had spent an entire day digging out additional stories of the shooting in which he had been wounded and three others killed. An entire newspaper page had been devoted to the funeral of John Bascomb’s teenage son, during which, she remembered hearing Doug had been in the hospital fighting for his life.
Until the shooting, Doug’s police career had been exemplary, filled with awards. It would have survived the controversial shooting but for an affair with Bascomb’s wife. News stories didn’t reveal how long the cuckolded husband had known about the relationship, but the world knew the sordid details within a few days after the teenager’s death.
In a small L.A. newspaper, Judy had discovered another fact that had seen little publicity. Since the kid’s death, Bascomb’s wife had been treated in the ER for injuries from spousal abuse at least three times.
What Alex had learned only supported what she already knew. Doug Hawkins was not the loose-cannon, woman-chasing lout she had first believed him to be. If anything, he took on too much responsibility for the shortcomings of others. He was good and strong, the kind the helpless looked to for protection and support. The kind a woman would fall in love with. Perhaps the kind she had already fallen in love with.
Did she want to give their relationship a chance? Judy had told her she was crazy if she didn’t jump into it with both feet. She must concur with her assistant’s opinion because that’s what she had done—jumped in with both feet and both hands. And try as she would, she couldn’t be unhappy about it.
She enjoyed the way he fussed over her. So many years had passed since she had shared her days with someone who cared if she lost a sale or dented her car or broke a nail. Nor had she felt similar concerns for anyone else. The only living, breathing things she had cared about lately were Maizie and Robert Redford. She had disciplined he
rself not to need the companionship of another human being, not to want it.
She crossed her arms and hugged herself as she realized, for the first time, really, Doug Hawkins was her man. And he would be waiting for her at the airport. She could hardly wait to see his beautiful silver eyes, the smirk she had learned to enjoy the sight of. She wanted his brawny arms around her, holding her and protecting her. She wanted his husky, sexy voice whispering his lusty intentions in her ear. And she damn sure wanted him to follow up on those intentions.
Her plane touched down on schedule. She hurried into the waiting room and found him there, a brilliant grin on his face and a huge bouquet of roses in his hand. Her pulse kicked up.
He looked mouth-watering gorgeous, wearing a green pullover, jeans and rough-out boots. His hair showed a hint of curl and touched his collar. When they met, she melted into his embrace, wasn’t even embarrassed when he kissed her for everyone to see.
****
Doug felt as if she had been gone a month instead of a week. He had been lonesome and horny and lost the whole time she was gone. Having her in his arms again reinforced what he already knew—he didn’t like her flitting in and out of his life like a hummingbird. “God, I’ve missed you,” he told her.
He chose a highway rest stop just out of Callister to tell her the truth of her ex-husband’s death. She cried and he handed her is handkerchief. Then he closed her into his arms and rested his cheek on her hair. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Poor Charlie,” she said, sniffling and dabbing at her eyes. “He was such a victim. Not just of his own excesses as an adult, but of where he was born. Of course, he could have taken control of himself at any time, but he chose not to. Something was missing inside him.”
“I lied to you when I told you I was going to scout out some hunting sites. I was afraid you wouldn’t understand if I told you in a phone call that I was going to see Cindy.”
She pulled away and looked down on the small stream that ran at the bottom of the steep canyon. “I might not have understood. There’s certainly been bad blood between Cindy and me. But you know what? She’s a victim of the same elements Charlie was. Weakness and ignorance and being trapped by her environment. I probably don’t hate her as much as it appears I do.”
The Love of a Stranger Page 32
