Still Waters33

by Tami Hoag

  The sound pounded on her ears as the crowd began to close around her. Elizabeth felt panic rise in her throat, and she jumped to her feet. She desperately needed to escape—anywhere, any way. She dropped her notebook and dove ahead, trying to cut a path between two photographers, shoving them in opposite directions, slapping at their cameras with her hands.

  Then her eyes focused on one face in the blur—Dane’s. His expression was furious as he shouted at the people around her. Elizabeth didn’t hear a word he said. She grabbed the hand he held out to her and let him pull her away from the melee. She stumbled up the steps past the witness stand and into the judge’s chambers. The door slammed behind her and she wheeled around, eyes wide, mouth tearing open as she tried to suck in a startled breath.

  “Stay here,” he commanded. “I’ll be right back.”

  He went out into the courtroom before the look of terror on her face could persuade him otherwise. Anger burned through him as he scanned the crowd. The deputies had restored a certain amount of order, herding people back to their seats, but excitement still charged the air. The scent of the kill, he thought bitterly. Fucking reporters. Goddamn fucking reporters.

  The noise level died abruptly as he grabbed the podium with both hands and roared a command for quiet into the microphones, his volume setting off a series of feedback shrieks in the amplifiers. One intrepid fool raised a hand to ask a question, but the arm fell like a wilting weed as Dane turned his full attention on the man.

  “Miss Stuart has no statement for the media,” he said softly, his voice barely a whisper rasping out of the speakers. Still, it reached every corner of the room, fell on every ear, lifted every neck hair. “Is that understood, ladies and gentlemen of the esteemed press?”

  Several seconds of silence passed before a reporter from the Tribune spoke up. “What about freedom of the press, Sheriff?”

  Dane met the man’s gaze evenly. “The first amendment doesn’t give you the right to harass or coerce statements out of witnesses. If Miss Stuart has anything to say, she’ll say it to me and no one else. She is a part of an ongoing murder investigation. Anyone bothering her will have to answer to me. Have I made myself perfectly clear?”

  He glanced around the room to find most eyes on their steno pads or electronic equipment. At the table beside him, Kaufman was cracking his knuckles and sweating like a horse. Yeager slumped back in his chair, dark eyes glowing, rubbing a hand across his mouth to hide a grin of unabashed delight.

  “This press conference is over,” Dane murmured.

  Silence followed him into the judge’s chambers. Elizabeth had retreated to a corner near a floor-to-ceiling bookcase that was crammed with dusty leather-bound tomes on jurisprudence. She stood with her back to the wall, one arm banded across her middle, the other fist pressed to her lips.

  Dane crossed the shadowed room, head down, eyes on the woman before him. She was nothing but a bundle of trouble, but at the moment he couldn’t direct any of his anger at her.

  “I—I know you don’t like me,” she stammered. “But I’ll give you a dollar to forget about that for a minute and put your arms around me.”

  He bit back a groan as compassion eclipsed his need to keep his distance from her. No matter what she’d done or who she’d done it with, he couldn’t take the thought of her being emotionally hacked to pieces by media mongrels. He put his arms around her gingerly and patted her back, and blatantly ignored the warmth rising in him. Proximity, that’s all it was. Proximity and basic human kindness.

  “It’s nothing personal,” Elizabeth assured him as his clean male scent filled her head. He was so strong and solid. She thought about doubling her offer, to buy a little more time, but squashed the idea. She couldn’t let herself weaken, couldn’t rely on anyone to hold her up, especially Dane Jantzen, lone-wolf misogynist Jantzen with his ornery moods and his grudge against divorcees.

  “I’m sorry I caused such a commotion,” she said, her voice hoarse with suppressed emotion as she pushed herself away from him.

  Dane sat down on the corner of Judge Clauson’s massive walnut desk and gave her a wry smile, shaking his head in wonder. “Lady, I sincerely doubt you could walk into a roomful of blind monks without causing a commotion.”

  A chuckle managed to find its way past the knot in Elizabeth’s chest. She sniffed hard and wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand, glad she hadn’t gotten time to put that mascara on after all. She would have looked like Rocky Raccoon by now.

  “I’m gonna take that as a compliment,” she said. “Whether you meant for it or not.” He didn’t say, but he didn’t take it back either, which was better than nothing, she supposed. Feeling calmer now, she sniffed again and offered an apologetic little smile. “I’m sorry I overreacted out there. It’s just that all those voices and cameras and . . . It brought back . . .”

  She pulled in a deep breath and shook off the rest of what she had been about to say. She didn’t have the energy for it, and she doubted Dane wanted to hear it anyway. “I just can’t get attacked but once a day or I get skittish. Thanks for saving me—again.”

  Dane shrugged lazily. “We protect and serve. Are you okay now?”

  “Oh, sure.” She grinned, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. “I’m right as rain. I should be more used to that kind of thing by now, I suppose.”

  “No one should have to get used to it. I never got used to it,” he admitted candidly, a wry smile flipping up one corner of his mouth as he recalled his own brushes with the press.

  “I saw that look once,” Elizabeth said, sliding into the high-back leather swivel chair behind the desk. She crossed her legs and moved the chair side to side, pushing off with the toe of her sneaker. “It was on the face of a cat sitting next to an empty goldfish bowl. What’d you do? Cut up some poor shrimp from the L.A. Times and feed him to your pet tiger?”

  “Not quite. I cultivated a reputation for having a short and violent temper. Not many people were willing to call me on it at the time.”

  Or now, Elizabeth was willing to bet. He was a man who seemed to keep his control on a tight leash, yet an undercurrent of something wild and dangerous ran just beneath the surface. Something dangerous and exciting.

  Dangerous thinking, Elizabeth.

  “Well,” she said, springing up out of the chair to pace along the bookshelves. “I don’t think anyone is liable to buy that routine from me unless I start waving a gun around or something. I think I’ll just rely on the kindness of my local sheriff’s department.”

  “It’s what you pay your taxes for.” He went to a door opposite the one they had come in through and held it open. “Come along, Miss Stuart. Agent Yeager has a few more questions for you.”

  Elizabeth nibbled her bottom lip as she hitched her purse strap up on her shoulder. For a second there she had almost thought they were going to be friends. A dozen questions had sprung to mind. She had wanted to ask him about being an athlete in the spotlight and about his own divorce, wondering if a football star splitting with his wife engendered the kind of hoopla a media mogul did. But in the blink of an eye he was back to business and she was back to being a witness. As she passed him in the doorway and headed down a flight of service stairs, she couldn’t quite decide if that made her happy or sad.

  “THAT WENT WELL ENOUGH—EXCEPT FOR THAT LITTLE rhubarb at the end.” Bret Yeager sprawled in the visitor’s chair with his Top-Siders propped on Dane’s desk. “You just jumped right in there with both feet, didn’t you?”

  Amusement was in his voice, and Dane shot him a look intended to back him off. It had no effect. Yeager just grinned at him. He was the picture of rumpled relaxation, his tan chinos creased from too many wearings without washings in between, his plaid sport shirt looking as though it had been snatched out of the laundry basket without benefit of seeing an iron. His sun-streaked brown hair hadn’t known a comb anytime recently.

  “I told you, son,” he drawled with no thought to the fact that
Dane was three years past his own thirty-six. “Throw ’em a bone. Give ’em a suspect. They’ll gnaw on that for all it’s worth and leave you alone for a while.”

  Oklahoma twanged in his speech, though he hadn’t lived there in years. Bret considered himself a vagabond of sorts, drifting across America in pursuit of justice. Sort of like Paladin or that Kung Fu character. Taking into account his penchant for philosophizing and his general dislike of violence, he thought the latter might be a more accurate comparison.

  His career had taken him from Oklahoma City to St. Louis and up the Mississippi to Minneapolis, with a blessedly brief stopover in the hell that was the south side of Chicago. He had lost his taste for violent crime around the time he’d lost count of the bodies he’d seen and the bereaved he’d had to speak those awful words to—We regret to inform you . . . The position of BCA agent to this pretty little corner of the world had seemed just the thing to him. Tyler County was a sportsman’s paradise with trout streams crisscrossing acres of woods and farmland that abounded with deer and game birds. The people were honest and hardworking. The pace was slow. There hadn’t been a murder in Tyler County in thirty-three years. Until now.

  On that grim reminder, he dragged his feet off the desk. He sat up and rubbed a hand back through his hair, watching as Dane paced the room like a caged tiger. “Relax a little, will you? I’m getting worn out watching you.”

  The big yellow dog sprawled in a boneless heap beneath his chair lifted its head and whined in agreement.

  “Hear that? You’re wearing out my dog too.”

  Dane glanced at the dog as the big Labrador groaned and dropped his head to his paws, falling into an instant sleep. “That wouldn’t take much from what I’ve seen. Is he good for anything besides peeing on tires?”

  “Ol’ Boozer?” Yeager straightened in his chair, ready to defend his longtime companion. “Why, he’s just a dynamo when duck season rolls around. You ought to see him. He’ll swim a mile and he’s got a mouth soft as butter. He’s just saving his energy now, is all.”

  Dane arched a brow as the dog rolled onto his side and belched.

  “I don’t think anybody is going to be satisfied for long with a suspect at large,” he said, turning his attention back to the matter at hand. “I know I’ll be a lot happier once we’ve brought Carney Fox in and closed the case.”

  “Yeah, you and the press too. You just wait. They’ll be there shooting rolls of film like a pack of tourists at Disneyland when we haul Carney’s sorry butt in, then they’ll trot on home and we’ll never see them again.”

  “Fine by me,” Dane said. “The less I see of reporters, the better.”

  He ignored the image of Elizabeth that quickly flashed through his mind and planted himself in front of the time line taped to his wall. He had made LeRoy Johnson open up the Piggly Wiggly at two in the morning so he could commandeer a roll of butcher paper for the purpose. A strip of the waxy white paper now stretched the length of the wall, notes made in his own neat hand chronicling everything that had happened the night before, as well as statements that had been made about the time leading up to Jarrold Jarvis’s death. He homed in on his favorite tidbit, given by Eugene Harrison, who had been sitting in the Red Rooster spending his unemployment check on Old Milwaukee. 4:20—Carney Fox pays for a pack of cigarettes. Talks about going to Still Waters “on business.”

  That all but put Fox at the scene of the crime. All they needed was a fingerprint, a strand of hair, a knife with his name on it, and they would have a closed case. Fox was a troublemaker. Had been since the day he’d rolled into town in his ’81 Chevy with his hair greased back and a cocky sneer curling the corners of his lips. Dane couldn’t say he’d be sad to put Fox behind bars for good. Then Still Creek could get back to business as usual and the Miss Horse and Buggy Days pageant could go on without fear of being disrupted by something as unpleasant as a capital crime.

  A sharp rap sounded on the door, then Lorraine poked her head into the office. She gave Yeager a scathing once-over, ironing his clothes with her gaze. He smiled lazily, rubbed a hand over his rumpled shirt, and scratched his belly.

  “That Stuart woman is wondering if you’re ready for her.”

  Dane let out a long, controlled breath. He had needed a moment’s respite after their little heart-to-heart in chambers and had left Elizabeth cooling her heels at Lorraine’s desk. It seemed his moment was over.

  “Send her in, Lorraine.”

  Lorraine hesitated, pressing her thin lips into a line as she contemplated speaking her mind. Her eyes narrowed behind the lenses of her cat-eye glasses.

  “Yes, Lorraine?” Dane prodded.

  “It’s not my place to criticize, but that woman is as brazen as they come,” she said, her cheeks coloring. “Calling the deputies ‘honey’ and ‘sugar.’ It’s disgraceful.”

  Yeager grinned up at her. “She’s from down south. It’s just her way, darlin’,” he said in an exaggerated drawl. He winked at Dane as Lorraine lifted her bouffant to its full impressive height and gave an imperious sniff.

  “I think she’s sweet on me,” he said with a chuckle as the door thumped shut.

  Dane laughed. “Not.”

  “It’s nice to see you boys are having such a good time while some of us are wasting the day away waiting on you.” Elizabeth slipped into the office and stood with her arms crossed and her back up against the wall.

  Yeager straightened up out of his chair, the grin dropping off his face as he cleared his throat. “Agent Bret Yeager, ma’am,” he said politely, offering his hand. “I’m awful sorry we kept you waiting. Hope it didn’t trouble you none.”

  Elizabeth shook his hand, responding automatically to Yeager’s down-home charm. She shot Dane a sideways look. “Well, it’s nice to see some people have more manners than God gave a goat. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Agent Yeager.”

  “Pleasure’s all mine, ma’am.”

  Dane rolled his eyes. “Before you start telling her she’s pretty as a bald-faced heifer, can we get down to business?”

  Yeager grinned. “Would you care to sit, Ms. Stuart?”

  Elizabeth glanced at the chair the agent motioned to and the huge yellow dog that lay beneath it, and shook her head. “No, thanks. I just want to get going. We’re putting together a special edition of the paper.”

  “I’ll be brief, then.” Yeager leaned over the desk, frowning as his eyes scanned a freshly typed document. “You state here that it was approximately seven-thirty when you left your office and headed out of town. You’re sure you didn’t see anyone around? Not necessarily at Still Waters, but maybe going by on the road or maybe a cloud of dust in the distance—a car going the other way?”

  Elizabeth tipped her head. “Sorry. Whoever did it either left before I got there or after I’d gone for help. The only car I saw was the Lincoln.”

  “In the past—before the murder—did you ever happen to hear Mr. Jarvis say anything about being on the outs with someone? Someone who worked for him, someone he might have fired or turned down for a job?”

  “I didn’t know Mr. Jarvis,” Elizabeth said coolly, her back straightening against the wall. “He grabbed my ass once in the paper office and I belted him for it. I don’t know how y’all get on in Minnesota, but where I come from, that kind of thing doesn’t exactly constitute friendship.”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it, ma’am,” Yeager assured her, lifting a hand to stem the defensive stream. “I didn’t mean a thing. It’s just that this is a small town. People overhear conversations, pick up a little gossip here and there. I thought maybe with you being a reporter and all . . .”

  “No,” she whispered, her gaze falling once again on the sleeping dog. Had to be Yeager’s, she thought absently. Jantzen wouldn’t have a dog like that, a fat old friendly sleepy dog. He’d have something big and mean—a German shepherd, a wolf. A wolf with blue eyes, and they’d communicate telepathically.

  “No, I didn’t overhear anything,”
she said softly. She lifted her head and met Yeager’s curious gaze, not even trying to hide the weariness she was sure was showing through. “And I wish to God I hadn’t seen anything. Now, if you don’t have any more questions, I’ve got a job to do.”

  He scribbled something on her statement with a ballpoint pen and nodded. “You’re free to go, ma’am.”

  “Am I free to ask some questions of my own?”

  “Sure.”

  She turned toward Dane. She didn’t know cop protocol. The BCA man might have seniority on the case, but it was Jantzen she wanted the answers from. This was his town, his county. He was the man in charge, protocol or no. “You’re sold on this transient theory. Is this drifter your only suspect?”

  One corner of his mouth tugged upward sardonically, “Aside from you? Yes.”

  “Why is that?” she asked, ignoring the jibe. “From all I’ve been told, Jarvis wasn’t a popular man. There must be someone else who might have wanted him dead.”