by Nora Roberts
“You want to get out? We don’t have to stay.”
And every time she ran, it was a step back. Just one more retreat. “No, no, I’m okay. Um. Do you ever do that?”
Linda-gail skipped a glance toward the stage as Reuben ended to enthusiastic applause. “Sure. You want to?”
“Not for a million dollars. Well, a half a million.” Another man headed for the stage, and since this one carried about two-sixty on a five-eight frame, Reece decided she could eliminate him from her list.
He surprised her with a sweet, if thready, tenor on a ballad. “I don’t recognize him,” Reece commented.
“T. B. Unger. Teaches in the high school. T.B. for Teddy Bear. And that’s his wife, Arlene, sitting there—the brunette in the white shirt? They don’t come into Joanie’s much, homebodies with two kids. But they come into Clancy’s so he can sing, once a week. Arlene works at the school, too, in the cafeteria. They’re sweethearts.”
Literally, Reece thought as she watched the teddy bear sing his love song straight into his wife’s eyes.
There was sweetness in the world, she reminded herself. And love, and kindness. It was good to be part of that again, to feel that again.
And to laugh when the next performer, a blonde with a tin ear and a lot of self-deprecating humor, butchered a Dolly Parton classic.
She made it a full hour, and considered the evening an enormous success.
Walking back to her apartment through the quiet streets, she felt almost safe, almost easy. As close to both, she concluded, as she had felt in a very long time.
And when she let herself in the door, she felt almost home.
After locking the door, checking the knob, bracing the back of a chair under it, she went to wash.
In the doorway of her little bathroom, she froze. None of her toiletries were on the narrow shelf by the sink. She squeezed her eyes shut, but when she reopened them, the shelf was still empty. She yanked open the mirrored medicine cabinet where she stored her medication, her toothpaste. It, too, was empty.
With a whimper of distress she spun around to scan the room. Her bed was neatly made, as she’d left it that morning. The kettle sat shining on the stove. But the hooded sweatshirt sheknew she’d left hanging on the coatrack was missing.
And at the foot of the bed, rather than under it, sat her duffel.
Her legs trembled as she crossed to it, and the whimper became a muffled cry as she yanked the zipper and found her clothes neatly packed inside.
Everything she’d come with, she saw as she pawed through the bag. All her things, carefully folded and stored. Ready to go.
Who would do such a thing?
Giving in to her unsteady legs, she lowered herself to the side of the bed. And faced the truth. No one could. No one could, not with the new lock.
She’d done it herself. She must have done it. Some internal instinct, some remnants from the worst of her breakdown kicking in. Telling her to run, to go, to move on.
Why couldn’t she remember?
Not the first time, she reminded herself, and dropped her head in her hands. Not nearly the first time she’d lost time, or couldn’t quite recall doing something.
But it had been months since she’d had these kinds of episodes.
Almost home, she thought, fighting despair. She’d actually let herself believe she was almost home. When some deep-seated part of her knew she wasn’t even close.
Maybe she should take a hint. Pick up the duffel and go down, toss it in her car and drive. To anywhere.
And if she did,anywhere would just be another place where she’d cease to be. She had a place here, if she dug in. She’d had a date, she’d had a beer with a friend. She had a job and an apartment. She had, if she held on to it, an identity here.
She put all her stuff away—the clothes, the toothbrush, the bottles, the shoes. Though her stomach was raw, she set up her laptop again. Wrapped in a blanket to try to battle a cold that came from inside, she sat down to write.
I didn’t run. I cooked today, and earned my pay. Pete gashed his hand while washing dishes, and the blood shook me. I fainted, but I didn’t run. After work, I went to Clancy’s for a beer with Linda-gail. We talked about men, about hair, about normal things women talk about. There’s karaoke at Clancy’s, and the walls are crowded with the heads of dead animals. Elk and moose and deer, even bear. People sing, mostly country, with varying degrees of talent. There was the onset of a panic attack, but I didn’t run, and it got better. I have a friend in the Fist. More than one, really, but there’s nothing quite like a girlfriend.
Sometime today I must have packed my things, but I don’t remember doing it. Maybe I did it on my break after Pete hurt himself. Maybe. The blood, seeing the blood shot me right back to Maneo’s. So it was, for a minute, Ginny’s blood, not Pete’s.
But I’ve unpacked it all, and put everything away. Tomorrow I’m going to see Doc Wallace to describe, as best I can, the man and woman I saw along the river. Because I did see them. I saw what he did to her.
I didn’t run today. And I’m not going to run tomorrow.
13
DOC WALLACE set out tea and coffee, each in lovely old stoneware pots, and sugar cookies on a pale green Depression glass plate. He served it all among the framed family photographs and fussy throw pillows of his pretty parlor with the finesse of an elderly aunt entertaining her weekly book club.
If he’d troubled with the fussy touches to relax Reece, he’d succeeded. She found herself charmed instead of anxious while they sat in front of the low glow of the fire with the scent of gardenia potpourri scenting the air.
Her first impression was of comfort and ease, and her second: This was a man who’d been well trained.
No wall of animal heads here, she thought, no wagon wheel lights or thick, Indian-style blankets. Though she knew he fished, there was no stuffed trout over the mantel, but a lovely oval mirror in a cherry-wood frame.
Her grandmother would have very much approved.
In fact, she thought the room could easily have been found in a home on Boston’s Beacon Hill, and said so.
“It was my Susan’s favorite room in the house.” Doc passed her the tea he’d poured himself. “She used to love to sit and read in here. She was a great reader. I’ve kept it as she liked it.”
He smiled a little, handed Brody a cup of tea. “Figure she’d haunt me otherwise. And fact is…” He paused a moment, and behind the lenses of his glasses, his eyes were kind and shrewd. “I can sit down here after a long day and talk things over with her. Now, some people might think that’s a little crazy, a man talking to his dead wife. I think it’s just human. A lot of things some might think are a little crazy are just human.”
“Being a little crazy’s just human,” Brody commented as he helped himself to a cookie.
“I’d be human then. And look,” Reece began, “I appreciate you trying to put me at ease. I do, and you have. But I know I’m a simmering stew of neuroses with chunky bits of phobias, seasoned heavily with paranoia.”
“It’s good to know yourself.” Brody bit into the cookie. “Most people don’t know they’re nuts, which is annoying to the rest of us.”
She spared him a glance, then focused on Doc Wallace. “But I also know what I saw by the river was real. Not a dream, not a hallucination. Not figments of my fractured mind and hyper imagination. Whatever the sheriff thinks, whateveranybody thinks, I know what I saw.”
“Don’t get too worked up at Rick,” Doc said mildly. “He’s doing his job, best he can. And he does a good one for the Fist.”
“So everybody says,” Reece muttered.
“Still, it may be that we can help him along with it.”
“Do you believe me?”
“Doesn’t matter if I believe you or not. But I’ve got no reason not to take you at your word. Seems to me you’ve been doing everything you can to keep a low profile around here.”
Doc doused his own coffee liberally with what Re
ece knew was half-and-half from the little glass creamer. After stretching out his legs, he crossed the ankles of feet clad in snazzy running shoes.
“I’m forced to report my attempts in this area have been a miserable failure.”
“Well, reporting a murder tends to turn the spotlight on the messenger. Doesn’t make much sense you’d make up a story like this and pull everybody’s attention onto you.” He nudged up his glasses, peered at her through sparkling clean lenses. “Besides, Brody appears to believe you, and I know him to be a tough sell. So…”
Doc set his coffee aside, picked up his sketch pad and a pencil. “I’ve got to admit, this is exciting for me. It’s like being onLaw and Order .”
“Which version?”
Doc grinned. “I like the original myself. Now, Brody’s told you I do a little sketching. Even got a couple of charcoals in The Gallery.”
“I keep meaning to get in there.”
“Ought to. They’ve got some nice work by local artists. Still and all, I’ve never done anything like this before, so I did a little research on the procedure. I’m going to ask you to think in shapes first, if you can. Think of the shape of her face to begin with. Square, round, triangular. Can you do that?”
“Yeah, I think I can.”
“Close your eyes a minute, get the picture in your mind.”
She did, and saw the woman. “Oval, I guess. But a long, narrow oval. Ellipse?”
“That’s good. On the thin side, then?”
“Yes. She wore her hair long, and the cap—the red cap—was pulled down low on her forehead. But I got the sense of a long, narrow face. I couldn’t see her eyes at first,” Reece continued. “She wore sunglasses. Wraparounds, I think.”
“How about her nose?”
“Her nose?” She drew a complete blank. “God, I don’t think I’m going to be very good at this.”
“Do the best you can.”
“I think…I think long and narrow, like her face. Not prominent. I noticed her mouth more because it was moving. She was talking—yelling I thought—a lot of the time. Her mouth seemed hard to me. She seemed hard to me. I don’t know how to explain.”
“Thin mouth?”
“I don’t know, maybe. It was…mobile. What I mean is she seemed to have a lot to say. And when she wasn’t talking—that I could tell—she was scowling, sneering. Her mouth kept moving. She wore earrings—hoops, I’m nearly sure, I caught the glint of them. Her hair was past her shoulders, wavy, very dark. Her sunglasses fell off when he knocked her down, but it all happened so fast. She was so angry. I had the impression of big eyes, but she was so angry, and then so shocked, and then…”
“How about distinguishing features,” Doc continued in the same easy tone. “Scars, moles, freckles?”
“I don’t remember any. Makeup,” she said suddenly. “I think she wore a lot of makeup. Red lipstick. Yes! Very red, and…it could just have been temper, but I think too much blusher. There was a vividness to her that seemed overdone, now that I think of it. Maybe temper, maybe, or too heavy a hand with the blusher. It was so far away, even with the binoculars.”
“That’s all right. If you had to guess her age?”
“Oh boy. Ah, late thirties maybe. Give or take a decade,” Reece added and pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Hell.”
“Just go with your first impression. Is this close?”
Reece edged forward in her chair when Doc turned the pad around.
He was better than she’d assumed. It wasn’t the woman she’d seen looking out at her from the pad, but the potential of her was there. “Okay. Okay,” she muttered as one of the knots in her stomach unraveled. “I think her chin was a little more pointed. Just a little. And, um, her eyes not that round, a little longer maybe. Maybe.”
Reece picked up her tea again, used it to soothe while Doc made adjustments. “I couldn’t tell the color of her eyes, but I think they were dark. I don’t think her mouth was that wide. And her eyebrows—God I hope I’m not making this up—her eyebrows were thinner, really arched. Like she’d plucked them to death. When he yanked her head off the ground by the hair, her cap came off. Did I forget that before? Her cap came off. She had a wide forehead.”
“Take a breath,” Brody suggested.
“What?”
“Take a breath.”
“Right.” When she stopped to take one, she realized how hard her heart was pounding, that her hands were starting to tremble enough to slosh the tea in her cup. “Her nails were painted. Maybe red. I forgot that, too. I can see the way they dug into the dirt while he strangled her.”
“Did she scratch him?” Brody asked her.
“No. She couldn’t. I don’t think…He straddled her, and he had his knees down on her arms. She couldn’t lift them to scratch at him. She didn’t have a chance. Once she was down, she didn’t have a chance.”
“How’s this?”
Reece studied the sketch. Things were missing, she thought. Things she wasn’t sure she had the skill to convey or the artist the skill to invoke. The fury, the passion, the fear. But it was closer.
“Yes. Yes, it’s good. I can see her in it. That’s what counts, isn’t it?”
“I’d say so. Let’s see if we can refine it a bit. You eat one of those cookies, Reece, before Brody scarfs them all down. Dick made them. Man makes a hell of a sugar cookie.”
She nibbled on a cookie while Doc asked more questions. She drank another cup of tea while she watched as he changed or finessed the shape of the woman’s mouth and eyes. Thinned out the eyebrows a bit more.
“That’s it.” Reece set her cup down with a little rattle. “That’s her. It’s good, it’s really close. It’s what I remember she looked like. What it seemed she did. I—”
“Stop second-guessing yourself,” Brody ordered. “If that’s your impression of her, it’s good enough.”
“Not from the Fist.” Doc looked up at Brody. “Doesn’t look like anyone I know, not offhand.”
“No. But if she passed through, someone saw her. Getting gas, supplies. We’ll show it around.”
“Rick can fax copies to other town authorities.” Doc pursed his lips as he studied his own sketch. “Maybe Park Service, too. She doesn’t look familiar to me. I’ve treated just about everyone in the Fist and the local vicinity over the years. Including tourists and transients, one time or another. Hell, anyone born hereabouts in the last twenty years, I’m likely the one who gave their butt its first slap. She’s not one of ours.”
“And if they never came through here,” Reece said quietly, “we may never know who she was.”
“That’s what I like about you, Slim. Always thinking positive.” Brody caged another cookie. “You want to take a shot at describing him for the doc?”
“I didn’tsee him. Not really. Flashes of profile. His back, his hands, but he was wearing gloves. It seemed like he had big hands, but that really could be just me projecting. Cap, sunglasses, coat.”
“Any hair below the cap?” Doc asked.
“No. I don’t think so. I didn’t notice. She was…in the spotlight, you could say. She had center stage, and then when he knocked her down, I was so stunned. And still, I guess I watched her more. I couldn’t stop watching her, what was happening to her.”
“How about his jawline?”
“All I can think is hard. He seemed hard. But I said that about her, didn’t I?” She rubbed at her eyes, tried to think. “He was very still most of the time, and I had the impression of control. She was livid and ranting, and he just stood there, hardly moved. Economical? She was all over the place, gesturing, pacing, pointing. He pushed her, but it was almost like swatting a fly. I’m projecting.”
“Maybe you are, maybe you’re not.” Doc sketched idly. “What about build?”
“Everything about him seems big now, but I can’t be sure. Taller and broader than she was, certainly. In the end, when I see him straddle her, I think he must have known exactly what he was doing. Restraining
her arms that way. He could’ve held her down like that, worn her out until he could reason with her, then walked away. Maybe it was because of the distance, but it seemed so deliberate, so cold.”
Doc turned his sketch pad around again, held it up. And Reece shuddered.
This was a full-length image, back turned, face in one-quarter profile. Because it could have been so many men, fear balled ice in Reece’s belly.
“Anonymous,” she commented.
“Still, you can eliminate some people right from the Fist,” Doc said. “Pete, let’s say. Little guy, scrawny. Or Little Joe Pierce, who’s carrying around an extra hundred pounds and hypertension.”
“Or Carl. He’s shaped like a barrel. Wrong build.” Another knot unraveled. “You’re right. And I don’t think he was young. I mean, say, teens or very early twenties. His carriage, his, um, body language was more mature than that. Thanks. It clears my head a little.”
“Wasn’t me.” Brody lifted a shoulder. “Unless I channeled Superman and flew over the Snake and back.”
“No.” For the first time since they’d begun, Reece smiled. “It wasn’t you.”
“I’ll make copies, post one in my office. Most everybody’s through there.” Doc picked up the sketch of the woman again. “I’ll take copies down to the sheriff’s office.”
“Thanks. A lot.”
“Like I said, it’s a little like playing detective. Interesting change of pace for me. Brody, why don’t you take this tray on back to the kitchen for me.”
And the look Doc sent Brody told Reece the doctor was in again, and she was the patient. She struggled not to resent it, not after the favor he’d just done for her. But her back stiffened as Brody left the room.
“I didn’t come here for a medical consult,” she began.
“Maybe you should. But the fact is, I’m an old country doctor, and you’re sitting in my parlor. Your eyes are tired. How are you sleeping?”
“Spotty. Some nights are better than others.”
“Appetite?”
“Comes and goes. Comes more than it used to. I know my physical health is tied to my mental health. I’m not ignoring either.”
