Through the Sheriff's Eyes

by Janice Kay Johnson

  She hadn’t moved, but the way she was studying him was… Hell, he didn’t know what it was.

  “Introduce me to one of your ghosts,” she said. “Tell me something that will make me understand you.”

  “I told you I’ve killed.”

  “On the job. When you had to.”

  “Which didn’t make it any less bloody, or them any less dead.” His voice was rough with frustration.

  “How did you grow up?” she asked stubbornly.

  “A drug-addict mother. Foster homes. Faith, I’ll be thirty-nine years old in January. You don’t need to meet my ten-year-old self.”

  “Aren’t you curious about me at ten years old? Fifteen? Twenty?”

  “Yes,” he admitted, knowing he was walking into a trap but unable to help himself.

  “Well, then?”

  “I don’t have anything pretty to tell you. My childhood has nothing in common with yours. My life has nothing in common with yours.”

  “Until I had to shoot my ex-husband.”

  Yeah, the fact that they’d both killed was something they shared. Something most people never experienced outside of the armed forces.

  “Tell me…something.” She looked soft. Wistful.

  Ben felt naked. And like a son of a bitch, too, because this beautiful, injured woman was pleading with him to tell her something ugly because he’d led her to think it was important.

  “No,” he said around a constricted throat. “No. I’m not going to do that to you. Faith, I love you. This doesn’t matter. Trust me.”

  “Like you trust me?” She shook her head hard when he let go of the counter edge and stepped forward. “Whatever you’re offering isn’t love. I’m glad I realized it before I gave you any more of myself.”

  “Faith—” He felt like his guts were being torn out.

  “No.” She backed away, her eyes still dry but distress pinching her face. “No. I shouldn’t have come.” The next moment, she whirled and hurried for the front of the house.

  “Damn it, Faith!” He was close behind her. “Don’t make true confessions a condition on our having a relationship.”

  She flung open the door and paused briefly. “You want a relationship that’s all about my weaknesses, my tragedies. Is that really what changed your mind, Ben? You liked playing…I don’t know.” Her voice hitched. “Knight errant to my wounded lamb?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “What is it like?” Pain darkened her eyes.

  “I love you. I trust you.”

  “Do you?” Faith wore sadness like a cloak, as she had for most of the time he’d known her. The difference was, this time it was his fault.

  She pulled the door shut in his face. He opened it to see her running for her truck, jumping into it, probably locking the doors so he couldn’t drag her out.

  And driving away.

  Once the street was empty, Ben very carefully closed the door, turned, leaned back against it and let his head fall back in a silent paroxysm of desolation.

  THREE WEEKS LATER, Christmas come and gone, an answer floated back from one of Ben’s thousand inquiries regarding Rory Hardesty.

  At last he had a lead on Josiah Peter Hammond, the one of Rory’s old friends who had eluded him to this point. Of all places, J.P.—who now went by Pete, assuming this was the right guy—apparently now lived in Nebraska. Hastings, Nebraska. A simple call to information, and Ben would likely have a phone number.

  He sat in his office for the longest time staring at the scribbled notes he’d made on the legal pad that sat in front of him.

  Faith would not want to hear from him again, not for any reason. He couldn’t blame her. He hadn’t been willing to trust her, not the way she’d meant. He still told himself he was protecting her, not himself, but either way it played out the same. Her life lay bare to him, while his was closed to her. Maybe she was right. Maybe he’d lied to himself when he’d believed they could be happy that way, that when he woke at night shouting he could pretend he didn’t remember the content of his nightmares.

  Faith and her father had moved this past weekend, Ben knew from Gray. The estate sale was over, the farmhouse was now empty. All the signs along the highway were gone. Ben hated driving by more than ever knowing what was coming.

  He’d given thought to looking for a new job, a new town. However, even though West Fork was small, it was entirely possible if he stayed that he and Faith would never run into each other. He didn’t recall ever seeing her before the morning he’d gone out to the farm to talk to the Russell sisters about the arson fire. Socializing much with Gray and Char would be out, of course, but that wasn’t likely to be a problem. He’d known from the get-go that their friendship was contingent on his relationship with Faith. They’d both believed Faith needed him.

  It seemed they were wrong.

  He looked again at the legal pad.

  This is my job, he told himself, but knew better. Hardesty was dead and long buried. What difference did his last days make? His last intentions?

  But they did matter to Faith. This was very likely the only thing he had to offer her. A kind of absolution: yes, you had to kill him or die yourself. He knew she still asked herself that question every day.

  Ben muttered an obscenity and picked up the phone. Information gave him the number, but when he called it he reached only voice mail. He didn’t leave a message. He’d try again tonight.

  In the act of dialing, he’d shifted into cop-mode.

  The fact that Hammond lived halfway across the country would suggest he and Rory hadn’t maintained a close friendship. Staring unseeing at the open door of his office, Ben thought, Uh-huh, but what about that saying about distance making the heart grow fonder? Rory had alienated most of his buddies; maybe this Hammond remembered only the high-school friend who hadn’t yet developed an increasingly violent obsession with Faith.

  He’d hoped for a distraction of any kind and got lucky that afternoon. A public-utility district worker operating a backhoe turned up a human skull. The minute Ben saw it he suspected it was from an old Indian burial; the bone was brown and crumbling, the remaining teeth ground to stubs with no signs of modern dental work. Of course, an Indian burial opened up a whole other can of worms—although, thank God, not his—and work was temporarily shut down on the site while the skull went to the county coroner and calls were made to the anthropology department at Western Washington University and to leaders of local tribes.

  He went home and discovered that, despite the windows he’d left open all day, it still stank from the previous evening’s effort to keep himself busy. He heated a can of chili, too tired to make any more effort on dinner. The morning’s resolution had crumbled; his mood was bleak enough that he hesitated over calling Hammond, but finally muttered an obscenity and picked up the phone.

  “Yeah?” a male voice answered.

  Ben identified himself and said, “I’m trying to reach Josiah Peter Hammond, who graduated from West Fork High School in the state of Washington.”

  There was a brief silence. “That’s me. What’s this about?”

  “Rory Hardesty.”

  “Shit,” Hammond said explosively.

  Ben waited.

  “What’s he done?”

  Interesting that he’d leaped immediately to the conclusion that his good friend Rory had “done” something, rather than fearing he’d been a victim of a crime, was missing, or was the subject of a lawsuit of some kind.

  “Were you aware that Mr. Hardesty is dead?” Ben asked.

  Hammond whispered another expletive. “No. God. No. I haven’t heard from him in…uh, a couple months or so. I just figured he’d cooled down. Maybe went back to work.”

  “He called you?”

  “Uh…yeah. And texted.”

  “What did he say, the last time you heard from him?”

  “He was totally hung up on Faith. His ex. He thought he’d get her back. Then he got totally pissed when she told him she was s
eeing somebody else.”

  Ben straightened. What the hell…? Who had she been talking about? Or had her supposed love interest been fictitious? Hadn’t she realized that saying anything like that to Rory was tantamount to waving a red flag in front of a bull? And exactly when had she held this conversation with Rory?

  “That was your last conversation with him?”

  “The last time we talked, yeah. He texted me a couple of times later, though. Mostly pretty obscene. Um…just letting off steam, you know?”

  “Did he threaten his ex-wife, Mr. Hammond?”

  Sounding really uncomfortable, Pete Hammond said, “Well, yeah, but… It was just the kind of shit people say, you know?”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he was going to kill her. I figured he was drunk. Just… God.” He breathed audibly. “Did he actually do it?”

  “He tried. He stabbed her sister in one assault, then came back a couple of weeks later and went for Faith. She shot him.”

  Hammond was clearly shaken. He kept repeating, “I didn’t believe him,” until Ben had to clench his teeth to keep himself from saying, You stupid son of a bitch, didn’t it occur to you to warn Faith?

  Instead, he kept his temper and asked if Hammond had any idea where Rory might have been staying in the month leading up to his death.

  Voice subdued, Hammond said, “Yeah. He told me he’d walked out on his job and just needed someplace to…be. My aunt has this log cabin outside Gold Bar, right on the river. Really primitive. Not that big a step up from camping out, but it has four walls and a roof. Just an outhouse. My uncle really liked to fish, only he died a couple years ago and Aunt Betty hasn’t done anything about selling the place yet. Rory and I used to go up there sometimes. I told him where the key was hidden so he could stay there for a while, just until he got his shit together.”

  Gold Bar, barely a dot on the map off Highway 2 on the way up to Stevens Pass, one of the main routes over the Cascade Mountains. All that time, he’d been so damn close, not an hour’s drive from West Fork.

  Suddenly enraged, Ben wanted to arrest this jackass as an accessory to Rory’s crimes. He wanted to make him face Faith and explain why he’d protected and sheltered a guy who was openly threatening to kill her.

  But none of that would do any good, and a part of him knew that it wasn’t unreasonable for Hammond to have assumed his buddy was just shooting his mouth off. People did say things like that. “I’m going to kill my old lady” wasn’t usually a real intention. Normal people didn’t believe a guy who meant it. Normal people were always surprised when their son or husband or neighbor murdered someone.

  Ben asked, “How do I find this cabin?” and got directions as well as the aunt’s full name and phone number so he could get permission to search the cabin without having to acquire a warrant. He thanked the other man although he didn’t feel civil. He hoped like hell Rory’s good friend suffered guilt enough to make him a better person.

  Ben grunted. Too bad he couldn’t remember the last time—if ever—that he’d seen anyone even try for redemption.

  The next morning, he reached Betty Fuller, who gave him the needed permission while repeating, “I had no idea. To think someone was living there. Goodness. It’s really not much better than a shack. I simply can’t imagine. But I suppose if J.P. said so…”

  Two days later, he made the drive to Gold Bar and found the cabin hidden in the woods on the banks of the river. Rory’s red pickup truck, dusted with fir needles, was parked beside it. His search inside the cabin yielded nothing but fast-food wrappers torn to shreds by mice, towers of empty beer cans, a filthy sleeping bag and a duffel bag full of clothes, atop which lay a key chain, an iPod and a cell phone. No convenient note.

  The battery to the phone had long since died, but Ben found a charger and not much else in the truck. He took the duffel bag for Rory’s mother and plugged the cell phone into its charger in his car, hoping the hour-long drive home would be long enough.

  Depression settled over him as he turned his car around and drove back down the long dirt lane shrouded by fir trees and enclosed by a tangle of undergrowth. He supposed he’d thought that, because Faith had married the guy, Rory might have been literate enough to be inclined to write out his rage. It was surprising how many nuts did.

  Ben glanced at the phone, the kind that might show text messages that had already been sent. It was his only hope.

  He had to make a stop at the jail in Everett, which meant he’d have to drive by the farm. From long habit, he tensed even before the curve of highway revealed the first fields to him.

  But the cornfield was no more. Bulldozers had been working here the last day, or several days. He swore softly, his foot lifting from the gas pedal. The farmhouse was a heap of rubble, as were the smaller outbuildings. Most of the farmland was now raw, bare earth, nearly ready for the stakes that would mark out lots. Only the barn still stood, stark and lonely, a sagging scrarecrow leaning beside the closed double doors. Several massive pieces of earth-moving equipment were parked for the night between the barn and what had been the house.

  Ben had had no idea this was coming so soon. He wondered whether Faith had known, whether she’d seen the place yet. Aching for her, he wished she never had to see it, could forever imagine her home still standing. He wished he could be the one to hold her after she did see what had been done.

  Taking a deep breath, he accelerated again. He needed time to figure out the damn cell phone, access any messages and sent texts. Tomorrow would be soon enough to go by Mrs. Hardesty’s to give her the pitiful few possessions her son had left behind and tell her where she could find the pickup truck. For her sake, he hoped Rory had actually owned it rather than being badly in hock for it.

  Dispatch didn’t expect him back today and he hadn’t been called, so he drove straight home and took the cell phone in the house with him.

  It came on readily. After some experimenting, there it was, the last text sent to a phone number Ben didn’t recognize but guessed was Hammond’s cell. The date was the day Rory had died.

  2NITES D NITE. IM GunA F-ING BLEED D BITCH OUT. SHE HAD HER CHNC. SHES MYN 2 KILL.

  Cold rage swept over Ben. Standing in his own kitchen, he made a raw, animalistic sound. He wanted to go back in time and save her. He wanted to be the one to do the killing.

  But when the first wave of fury ebbed, it left behind some relief, as well. Faith’s knight errant could give her the bloodied lance.

  There could be no more question. Rory had not crept into her bedroom to frighten her. He’d come to stab his knife deep in her breast.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  FAITH WAS JUST PREPARING to lock up her classroom at the end of the day when Clio Nordmann stuck her head in. Clio was a pretty redhead about Faith’s age who taught second grade in a room just down the hall. They’d become friends as soon as she hired on in West Fork two years before.

  “Faith! Wow. Did you see?”

  Accustomed to Clio’s dramatic tendencies, Faith took her coat from the hook in the closet. “See what?”

  “Your farm! Surely they won’t be able to build until spring. Why did they start clearing the land so soon?”

  A strange numbness crawled over her. “Clearing the land?”

  Clio’s expression changed. “You didn’t know?”

  “No. The sale closed really quick because the buyer didn’t need financing. Last week.” She was talking to fill the awful chasm opening up inside her. Somehow she locked the door to her classroom and, walking beside Clio, started toward the back exit that was closest to the staff parking. “Did you drive by?”

  “Yesterday.” Clio stole a look at her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’d rather be warned.” Faith managed a smile and they parted to go to their cars.

  She drove home—although she felt more like a guest in her dad’s stucco cottage and knew that she should start looking for somewhere else
to live, someplace that would feel like hers. Inside the house she found a note from her father on the kitchen table letting her know he was having dinner with the Friebergs, and she was welcome to join them if she wanted.

  “Mary says dinner about 6:00,” he’d scrawled.

  Mary and Andrew Frieberg had been friends of Faith’s mother and father as long as she could remember. They were dairy farmers who were still holding on, determined to pass their operation down to their son, with whom Faith and Char had gone to school. Faith definitely did not feel like chattering over the dinner table with the Friebergs.

  She sank down in a chair and wondered if her father knew that the farmland was already being cleared. He’d have said something, wouldn’t he?

  She hadn’t expected to react this way. She’d known that the buyer wanted the land, not a farm; this had been inevitable, and it made no sense to get upset. Faith honestly didn’t know which would be worse: driving by the abandoned farm that looked as if it were waiting for them to come home to it, or seeing it all gone.

  By sheer determination, she got through the next couple of hours. She made a salad and ate enough to consider it dinner. She worked out the logistics of an art project she was planning for her students to do tomorrow. She watched the local news, although when she turned the TV off she realized she had no idea what the newcasters had said.

  She’d be less depressed if only the days would get longer, she thought, glancing at the darkened window. At this time of year, night had already fallen by the time she got home from school.

  She wouldn’t be able to see much if she did drive out to the farm.

  The sodium lamp outside the barn might still be there; the power company had put it up and would have to come out to take it down. The developer might leave it anyway for now, to discourage trespassers.

  Faith was putting on a parka and reaching for her car keys even before she knew she’d made a decision. She would just wonder if she didn’t see for herself.