Through the Sheriff's Eyes

by Janice Kay Johnson

  He hesitantly provided the names of a few more guys Rory might have hung out with, but Ben didn’t have much hope for them. Once Rory got angry, his ability to make friends diminished. Faith didn’t think he had any, and it was beginning to look as if she was right.

  Lenny Phillips, the Farmer’s Insurance agent in town, was even less help. He’d tried to sell Rory a life insurance policy, he said. “Of course, it wouldn’t have paid out, not the way he died…” He cleared his throat, his round face flushed.

  Ben went back to his office, where he put his feet on his desk and leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head, thinking. He was hitting nothing but dead ends. Maybe nobody had helped Rory. He could have rented a dump somewhere, hidden his pickup in the garage, and it would sit there until the landlord went poking around. Although it didn’t make sense that he’d have paid rent very far in advance. Who did that? So why wasn’t that landlord already poking around?

  Noah Berger still hadn’t called. Ben would give him another day or two.

  That left J. P. Hammond, who evidently no longer lived in the area. No one seemed to know where he’d gone, and his Washington State driver’s license had expired a year ago. Ben would have to widen his inquiries for Josiah Peter Hammond.

  In the meantime, he hadn’t learned a damn thing. Maybe Rory had driven the truck into the Columbia River where it would rust undiscovered until a fisherman caught a line on it one day. Maybe Rory hadn’t left any notes, any hint at all of whether he’d gone to the Russells’ house that night intending to kill Faith.

  Maybe Ben would never be able to give her even this much: an answer that could help give her peace.

  She seemed puzzled and even angry because he felt guilty, but the fact was, he did. So sue me, he thought. It didn’t mean he wasn’t also head over heels in love with her, because he was.

  With a sigh, he sat up and put his feet back on the floor. He probably shouldn’t have kissed her. He guessed he’d hoped that once Faith emerged from the fog of her own guilt and mourning for what had once been, she would notice him. He wanted to believe she had; she’d sure as hell responded that night when he had her in his arms. But by the next day, she’d put a pretty impressive wall in place and was back to trying to convince him she was fine, just fine, and didn’t need him.

  He’d given it one more shot during the week, stopping by the farmhouse Wednesday evening. She had been pleasant and pretended to assume he was there to help. He’d spent a couple of hours hauling boxes down from the attic to be sorted through and loading more boxes, destined for a thrift store, in her Blazer. He’d never really caught her alone.

  But when he’d asked, her father had agreed that she was sleeping. He’d lowered his voice and stolen a glance at the empty doorway. He knew Faith wouldn’t like having them talk about her.

  But she was getting rest, and she was eating better. That was something, Ben told himself now. One step at a time. She had every reason to doubt him. He had to be patient.

  Too bad for him that he’d felt way more patient before he’d kissed her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WHY HAD SHE AGREED to have dinner with Ben?

  Faith scowled at herself in the mirror. Now she was having to get dressed up, when she should be spending the evening working—it was hard enough packing up a house that three generations of family had lived in, but she and Dad had to pack up an entire farm, too. Barn, garage and outbuildings, all were crammed with stuff. Apparently, nobody in the family had ever gotten rid of anything.

  But mostly, she shouldn’t be going tonight because it meant shoring up her guard against Ben, who still seemed determined to rescue her.

  Of course, she knew perfectly well why she’d said yes. The simple answer was that he had finally, after a week of quiet, relentless pursuit, cornered her until she had had no choice but to agree or be rude. The more complicated answer was that, heaven help her, she wanted to be with him.

  Maybe it was just chemistry, his particular brand of pheromones, but he did something to her. All kinds of contradictory somethings. She felt safe when she was around Ben; the fearful part of her relaxed. At the same time, she became excited, excruciatingly, sweetly conscious of herself as a woman and him as a man, of every glance, every shift of his expression, of even small things like the way his hand wrapped around a glass or the steering wheel. She had responded to him like this from the first, and that made her wary. He’d consistently done a disappearing act every time she’d reached out to him before, so now he was being persistent, but how was she supposed to believe she could count on him?

  It seemed only sensible to send “not interested” signals until he shrugged and disappeared from her life again.

  But he wasn’t disappearing, and when he’d stood there and said, “Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night, Faith?” she’d tried to evade him, starting with, “This isn’t a good time, Ben. You know how much I have to do. Dad still isn’t mobile enough to be as much help as he’d like…”

  “You have to eat,” he had said patiently. “You have to take a break sometimes, honey.”

  Damn it, there he went again. It was the “honey” that got to her. The slow, deep, rough way he said it gave her goose bumps. His voice always dropped a notch, became huskier and more intimate, as if he was turning to her in bed.

  She was nuts to read so much into some imagined tone in his voice. But Faith knew perfectly well that she was going out to dinner with him because he’d called her “honey” again. And because he’d looked so kind, if also a little bit frustrated.

  She put in earrings and started downstairs. Ben and Dad were talking in the kitchen. Both turned to look at her when they heard her footsteps.

  Dad’s face softened into a smile she didn’t see much anymore.

  Ben’s eyes warmed and he smiled in appreciation. Her pulse bounced. She liked his purely male approval. If nothing else, it beat the pity she’d seen on everyone’s faces recently.

  “Look your fill,” she told them both. “I don’t wear heels often.”

  Ben moved to meet her. Lowering his voice, he said, “You don’t need them, not with legs as long as yours. But I’ve got to say, the effect is nice.”

  She’d thought so, too, when she had appraised herself in the mirror. All that weight she’d lost had her looking more like a model than a farm girl. Her little black dress bared plenty of leg, and for once she’d put her hair up in a smooth twist on the back of her head, baring her neck, as well.

  She said good-night to Daddy and let Ben escort her out the door. His hand rested between her shoulder blades the whole way to his SUV, as if he thought she needed guidance.

  She should have stepped briskly away from his hand, but didn’t.

  Pulling out onto the highway, Ben commented, “Your dad looks good.”

  “He does, doesn’t he? He goes to physical therapy twice a week, and lately I keep catching him doing his exercises. I’m not sure he was that diligent earlier.” She swallowed the lump in her throat, allowing herself to acknowledge a difficult truth. “I think he’s relieved. He seems…freer.”

  Ben shot her a startled glance. “He told you that?”

  “No, of course not.” Her father, Faith had begun to realize, hadn’t been honest with her in a long time. Or, more likely, he’d given up trying to be, when she didn’t want to hear him.

  “It’s funny,” she said. “He’s lived on the farm ever since he married Mom. Thirty-seven years, I think. But he’s not very sentimental. He’s been going through all those boxes you hauled out of the attic, but I have to keep sneaking behind him to make sure he’s not trying to sell something at the estate sale that Char or I would want to keep. Or, worse yet, give it away to a thrift store.” She wrinkled her nose. “Partly, he wouldn’t know an antique if it bit him. He sees an ugly old glass bowl, I see Carnival glass with a lovely patina of age. And the really old stuff wasn’t from his family, it was from Mom’s, so I guess it makes sense that he’s not attached to
it. He took over running the farm when my maternal grandfather died, you know. Grandma Peters lived with them until she had a stroke when Char and I were…oh, seven or eight.”

  “I hadn’t heard that.” Ben sounded interested. “Did your father want to be a farmer, or did he just fall into it?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, perturbed. She’d never asked him that. It hadn’t occurred to her; he had always seemed content with his life, competent, settled in the rhythms of a farm. But maybe…maybe some of his relief now was because it wasn’t what he’d always wanted to do. Maybe this was an escape.

  Had she been trying to save a heritage for him that he didn’t want?

  The thought was unsettling.

  Ben took her to a restaurant in Edmonds, near the ferry dock. From their window table they could see lights out on the Sound and catch glimpses of arriving and departing ferries. Their table was candlelit, and conversations around them were hushed. She wondered if he’d known how romantic the atmosphere was, whether that’s why he’d brought her here, or whether he’d picked it out of the Yellow Pages.

  He kept conversation easy, grumbling—but not too seriously—about a city council meeting and his frustration with the budget. He talked about his wet-behind-the-ears officers, but with the rueful pride of a father, and about butting heads with Fred Mulligan, the cantankerous old guy who lived right behind the town library and hated all the comings and goings, including cars lined up along the curb for a block each way, but especially the kids walking over from school.

  Faith laughed. “Old Mr. Mulligan has been complaining as long as I can remember. I was scared of him, but Char wasn’t.” Story of their lives. “She’d deliberately cut across the corner of his lawn while I made sure to stay on the sidewalk. He might not have known who she was, but everyone knew those identical twins were Don Russell’s. He called Dad a lot.”

  Ben chuckled. “And you weren’t ever tempted to be defiant? Just once?”

  “No. I’m the original good girl.”

  In the pool of silence that opened after her admission, Faith thought, How was it possible that she of all people had ended up shooting a man dead? Pulling the trigger and doing it again and again while blood exploded from his chest?

  She hoped she hid her shudder. It was hard to tell, when Ben’s dark eyes were so often unreadable.

  After a moment he said softly, “A good girl with guts.”

  She wanted to believe he really saw her that way. That he thought she’d had courage and not just desperation. She wanted to believe that what she’d done had been brave and not just horrible. Convincing herself wasn’t easy, not any easier than believing that Rory really had meant to kill her.

  “Are you getting reconciled to the idea of moving?” Ben asked, as if he really wanted to know.

  “I don’t have much choice, do I?” Faith closed her eyes momentarily, dismayed at how sharp she had sounded. “I’m sorry. I’m being bitchy. Or pathetic.”

  “No. Honest.”

  He understood. She could tell, even without looking at him. “The honest answer,” she admitted, “is that I don’t know. I still have this huge sense of failure. You don’t have to tell me it’s irrational—Char does often enough. If Dad actually wants to move…then I don’t even know who I failed. Maybe nobody. Maybe myself.” She picked up her fork and made herself take a bite. After swallowing, Faith said, “The thing is, nothing much has changed yet. I go to school every morning, come home and work until I put dinner on, then work some more until bedtime. I have no clue what I’ll do with myself after we move and my evenings are free. How I’ll feel then.”

  “You’d be a good mother,” he said, not pointedly, but as if he were making an idle observation.

  Faith froze inside. She had wanted children so much. Rory and she had planned to wait a couple of years before starting a family, but once he started hitting her she hadn’t even let herself think about getting pregnant. She’d made excuses when Mom asked if the time wasn’t coming. She’d quit even thinking about the baby she had once longed to hold in her arms. Now here she was, almost thirty, with no prospects at all of ever having her own child.

  Had Ben wanted children? she wondered. Or… She suddenly reeled, as if she’d walked into a plate glass window.

  “Do you have kids?” she asked. He had to be close to ten years older than her. He could conceivably have a son or daughter almost grown.

  But he shook his head. “I was married once, briefly, but we didn’t get that far. Thank God.”

  “What happened?”

  He shrugged. “She didn’t like being married to a cop. I was working Vice then, and it was hard. But when it came down to it, I didn’t care enough to make any changes.”

  “Oh.”

  He smiled. “Don’t look so shocked. We shouldn’t have gotten married at all. It was impulse on my part, that’s all. Thinking I might have what I saw other men had.”

  He said it so easily, as if it hadn’t mattered. As if he’d been an idiot to think he could have had the home and family and love he must have wanted.

  Faith ached inside for him, which was a switch from aching for herself.

  Ben hadn’t loved his wife enough to make drastic changes in his life then, but a year ago he’d walked away from a successful career with a major metropolitan police force to take the job in West Fork. She wondered what reason he’d given himself for doing that. He almost had to be yearning for something different. But what?

  She cleared her throat. “Did you ever want children?”

  He didn’t answer for a minute. Eyes holding hers, he said at last, “There was a time I’d have said no. Now…maybe. If it’s not too late.”

  Her heart began to pound. Was there any chance…? No. Don’t read too much into it. And even if he was talking about him and her, she didn’t trust him, not that way.

  She didn’t trust herself. How could she, after she’d driven Char away and then chosen to marry Rory?

  When she didn’t say anything, Ben’s expression closed, stealing her last chance to guess what he had actually felt or thought. He nodded at her cup. “More coffee?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  He nodded. “Then I’ll get the check.”

  They talked some on the drive home, but sporadically. Faith was very conscious of the dark and the two of them in a kind of bubble together. Things said, things unsaid, had a presence as tangible as another person. The lights of other cars would illuminate Ben’s face briefly, the hard planes of it and the pair of furrows that had dug their way between his eyebrows. Then the headlight would sweep past and she’d no longer be able to make out his features. Why those furrows? Was he brooding? Angry? Frustrated again?

  Faith kept fixating on his hands, as she often did. He had big hands, broad in the palm. Dark hair dusted the back of his fingers. Along with the thickness of his wrists and the sinewy power of his forearms, his hands were unmistakably male.

  Oh, who was she kidding? He was all male, and for some perplexing reason that drew her, even though she’d have sworn her inclination had always been to want a partner and friend in a man—someone more likely to be sensitive and kind and funny than protective and sometimes domineering and capable of violence.

  She stole a glance at his profile. Ben had been kind to her, she couldn’t deny that. He hadn’t made her laugh much, but then she hadn’t been in the mood, so she couldn’t necessarily blame him. And, while “sensitive” might not be exactly the word to describe him, he did see below the surface with her in a way no one else seemed to.

  I’m in love with him, she thought hopelessly. Not just attracted, not just tempted, but foolishly in love. With a man driven by guilt and an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, a man who was almost forty years old and hadn’t managed any long-term, committed relationships—his short-lived marriage didn’t seem to count, motivated as it had been by impulse. A man who maybe wanted something deeper in his life, but didn’t appear to actually understand what
that was.

  Even if he wasn’t so complicated, even if she knew him better… She couldn’t trust her own feelings, not when she’d been so horribly wrong about the only other man she’d ever loved.

  She was having trouble breathing. Her chest felt tight. She couldn’t love Ben Wheeler.

  But then Faith thought about the two times she’d slept with him stretched out beside her, and knew that she did. What she’d felt was trust. Trust, and happiness, although she hadn’t called it that either time.

  She wanted to sleep beside him every night for the rest of her life.

  OF COURSE Ben had been invited to Gray and Charlotte’s wedding.

  Faith preceded Char down the aisle of the church, aware the entire way of Ben sitting near the front, turned in the pew with his arm laid across the back so he could watch her measured progress. He wore a dark suit and white shirt; she could tell as much even with her eyes focused straight ahead.

  Gray waited at the front, Moira beside him. Faith kept her eyes on them. She wouldn’t think about Ben. Today was about Charlotte. Charlotte and Gray.

  Faith had been repeating that to herself for the past hour. She hadn’t been to a single wedding since her own. She wished she had. Anything to blur the memories. It didn’t help that she and Rory had gotten married in this same church, the one where she and Charlotte had gone to Sunday school as children. Rory had waited for her exactly where Gray now stood, in front of the altar. What had blurred in her mind was Rory’s expression as he watched her come to him. She couldn’t remember that at all, and was glad.

  Holding sadness at bay was mostly easy, Faith was so filled with joy at her twin’s happiness. How could she not be? This was one of those times when she swore she knew everything Char felt, as if in some way they were still as inseparable as they’d been in the womb.

  Char being Char, she’d left any decision about what her maid of honor would wear to Faith. Left to their own devices, Faith and Moira had agreed to coordinate their dresses. Peach, they’d decided, would look good on both of them and would accent Char’s ivory dress. They wanted an old-fashioned look, too. They wouldn’t try to match, just go for a similar style.