by Gayle Wilson
Her grandmother glanced up, meeting Blythe’s eyes. “I don’t see why not. If you don’t want to save them.”
“I’d be careful with them,” Maddie promised.
“Of course you would,” Blythe said. “Miz Ruth knows that.”
“There’s coffee.”
Ruth’s change of subject indicated that as far as she was concerned, the discussion was finished. Having made her point, Blythe was more than willing to let it drop.
“Can I pour you another cup?”
“My goodness, no. I’ve been drinking it since sunup. Any more and I’ll be turning cartwheels.”
“I can turn a cartwheel,” Maddie offered, her eyes on the pillowcase as her fingers guided the needle through the cloth.
“But you can’t drink coffee,” Ruth teased, reaching over to push a strand of hair behind the little girl’s ear. “Only grown-ups like your mama and me can do that. Ask your mama if she remembers how to make a French knot.”
“What’s that?”
“Something you’ll need to know so’s you can make the centers of your flowers.”
“Do you, Mama?”
“I expect I can still make a French knot.” Blythe smiled down at her daughter. “I’ll show you just as soon as I’ve had a couple of cups of Miz Ruth’s coffee.”
She walked over to the stove and took a mug off the metal tree beside the pot. She poured the steaming black brew into it, breathing in the aroma, which was always better than the taste. Holding the cup in both hands, she brought it to her lips as she turned back toward the table, savoring the first long sip. She was even getting used to the hint of chicory.
“You slept mighty late. Must have been catching up.”
She had been, Blythe realized. And for once she’d slept the night through without any disturbance.
“It’s nice not to have to get up and dress for work. It’s nice to be here with the two of you.”
She could see that Ruth was pleased by the comment. There was evidently still some lingering hurt that Blythe hadn’t agreed to move in here when she’d first returned.
If you had, maybe none of this would be going on now.
“So…do you have plans for the day?” her grandmother asked.
“Only to spend it with y’all.”
As if to put a lie to that, the bell at the front door rang, its deep chime reverberating through the house.
“Lord have mercy,” Ruth said, pushing back her chair. “Reckon who that could be this time of the morning?”
“I’ll go,” Blythe offered quickly, turning to set her cup down on the counter.
As she walked down the front hall, still relatively dark despite the morning sunshine, she, too, wondered who could be calling this early. Maybe someone from Ruth’s church, she thought as she opened the door. Or maybe—
Though he’d been looking out on the winter-browned front lawn, Blythe had no trouble recognizing their visitor. Even without the uniform, Cade’s height and the width of his shoulders were a dead giveaway.
He had turned at the sound of the door. For a few seconds, neither of them said anything. The connection she’d felt from the first day in his office was still there, apparently stronger than it had been before their argument.
“Sheriff?” The word was intended to reveal her curiosity about why he was here.
“Ms. Wyndham.” A couple of long brown fingers touched the brim of his Stetson.
If anyone but Cade did that, she would have laughed. Instead her eyes followed his hand and then held on his face.
“Although I appreciate good manners as much as the next person, the kid at the car wash calls me Blythe. I think by now we can safely dispense with the formality.”
“Especially since I acted like a royal bastard the last time we talked.”
Both the word and the confession surprised her, but not unpleasantly. “I’m not sure what a royal bastard is, but…”
“You’ll concede the other.”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Then you’ll understand why I’ve come.”
“Actually, I don’t, but I’m willing to be informed.”
“I wanted to apologize. I had no right to suggest what I did.”
“That I should take Maddie to Smoke Hollow.”
“I don’t blame you for being angry. The only excuse I can offer is my frustration with the investigation.”
“Of Sarah’s murder?”
“I was talking about the fire.”
“And you don’t see any connection between the two.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Look…” Cade began and then stopped. He closed his mouth and took a breath. A muscle jumped in his jaw, sending an unexpected jolt of heat through her stomach.
What the hell was it with Cade Jackson and her libido? Did she have to react sexually to every move the man made?
“I didn’t come here to argue with you,” he said.
“Just to apologize.”
“Believe it or not.”
“I don’t have any reason not to believe it. In all honesty, I don’t want to argue either. And…after you left, I wondered if there wasn’t something to what you’d said.”
“About taking Maddie to the Hollow?”
“I thought maybe you were right. That it might prove something one way or the other.”
“So…are you now saying you want to take her?”
“I’m saying I thought about it. So seriously that I went.”
The furrow formed between his brows. “To Smoke Hollow?”
“I thought if there was anything to what I’ve been thinking, then there should be some kind of…I don’t know. Residual energy or something.” She lowered her eyes, recognizing how ridiculous that sounded. “God, I can’t believe I just said that. Until we came here…Believe me, something like that wasn’t part of my vocabulary. So…I know what you’re thinking. I can even sympathize with it.”
“You don’t have any idea what I’m thinking.”
She glanced up, puzzled by what was in his voice. He was looking down at her intently, with no trace of ridicule or amusement in those aquamarine eyes.
And he was right. She didn’t have a clue what that look or his tone meant. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“You said it was beautiful,” she said instead of pursuing the opening he’d provided.
“You didn’t find it to be?”
“Okay, I confess I don’t know about ‘residual energy,’ but there was something about the place that made me uneasy. And it was the middle of the afternoon.”
“You shouldn’t have gone there alone.”
“That’s something else I figured out after it was too late.”
“If you want to go back—”
“That I wasn’t alone.”
It took him a second or two to get it. “There was somebody out there?”
“Someone who claimed to be the owner of the property.”
“The county owns that land. They have since Longleaf closed their mill in Draper.”
“Then he was lying about that. But…I don’t think he was lying about the rest.”
“The rest?”
“About Sarah. Her death.”
“He told you something about the murder?”
“Several things, actually.”
“Blythe? Who is it, dear?” Her grandmother’s voice came from the other end of the dim hallway.
Blythe should have known that Ruth’s curiosity would demand she come out to see who their visitor was. She shook her head, trying to indicate to Cade that he shouldn’t say anything about what she’d just told him. Then she turned, finding her grandmother standing in the doorway, silhouetted against the light from the den.
“It’s Sheriff Jackson, Grandmamma. He came to talk to me about the fire.”
“Well, for goodness sakes, child, don’t leave him standing in the cold. You want some coffee, Cade? Got a pot on the back o
f the stove.”
“I’m fine, Miz Ruth. Thanks.”
“Well, come on in and close that door. You’re lettin’ out all my heat. You two can talk in the parlor. I’ll make sure Maddie won’t trouble you.”
“Thank you.” Blythe met Cade’s eyes again, trying to convey her apologies with the look.
She knew now that she hadn’t been mistaken when she wondered if Ruth had picked Cade out for a little matchmaking. She could only hope he hadn’t figured out the plan as well.
“After you,” he said.
The front room was better, she acknowledged, its warmth seeming to provide some distance from what had happened in the Hollow. She bent to turn up the fire in the logs. When she straightened, Cade had removed his hat and was shrugging out of his jacket. To him the parlor probably seemed stuffy and overheated.
“Sorry,” she said. “We could have gone outside to talk.”
“Do we need to?” He stopped, one arm still enclosed in the sleeve of the jacket.
“I didn’t mean that. I just meant…It doesn’t matter.”
“Did he tell you his name?” Cade finished removing the jacket, laying it over the back of one of the wingbacks in front of the hearth.
“He didn’t have to. He told me he was Sarah’s father instead.”
“Abel Comstock? He was out there?”
“I wasn’t even at the location of the murder. Once I got there, nothing looked like I expected it to from the newspaper photos. I figured I must not have gone deep enough into the woods, but by that time, I didn’t want to go any farther. I turned around to head back to my car, and there he was.”
“He scare you?”
“At first, I didn’t know who he was. He made me uneasy. I think anyone would have, given the situation. It was pretty clear he’d been drinking. And then, when I knew who he was—”
“You know he was everybody’s prime suspect at the time of the murder.”
“Except Hoyt’s, apparently.”
“As much as I respect Sheriff Lee, I’m not sure he was right in this case.”
“Abel asked me if I knew anybody who could do that to their own child. I don’t. I can’t even imagine it. And then I remembered all the children who are abused every day, and I confess I wondered…”
“If he might be capable of that.”
“I think he could have killed her,” she admitted. “Everybody says he was mean. Abusive. To his wife and his kids. That he was an alcoholic. I think maybe, given the right set of circumstances, he could have hit one of his children too hard. Shoved them away from him and caused them to fall. Or struck them in a drunken rage. Slammed them into a wall or a cabinet or something. A terrible accident…” She ran down, having produced all the scenarios she’d thought about on the way home from the Hollow yesterday.
“But?”
“How did you know there is one?”
“It was in your voice. You think he might have hit her, maybe even hard enough to kill her, but…”
“I don’t think he could mutilate her. He said she was cut up ‘like slaughtering a hog.’”
“Judging from the autopsy photographs, that isn’t far from an accurate description.”
“Who could do that to a child?”
“Someone who was very, very angry with her. Out of their mind with rage. Make no mistake. What happened beside that creek was a personal act of violence, committed by someone who had strong feelings for the victim. It was not a random murder. Not the killing of some unknown child who’d been snatched from her bedroom by someone who saw her as he was passing by.”
“That’s exactly what he said.”
“Abel?”
“That she knew him. That she had opened her window to him. That Sarah had to have been the one who turned the latch and let her murderer in.”
“Unless he was already in. There’s something else the autopsy showed. Something that wasn’t made public back then.”
“What?”
“Long-term sexual abuse. Whoever murdered Sarah that night had probably been periodically raping her for a long time. And the most likely candidate for that…”
“Was her father,” Blythe finished softly.
17
T hat made two people he needed to talk to, Cade thought as he descended the front steps of the Mitchell house. He just couldn’t decide which one he was going to call on first.
Logic argued it should be Hoyt Lee, but something about the thought of Abel Comstock proclaiming his innocence at the scene of his daughter’s murder made him want to think with his gut instead of his brain.
And if it had been someone other than Blythe he’d pulled that stunt on? Would you still be itching to slam your fist into his lying mouth?
Lee might be right that Comstock hadn’t killed his daughter, but the drunken bastard was never going to win an award for being father of the year. He’d sent his wife and a couple of children to Doc Etheridge’s office long before Sarah’s death. For him to now pretend to be some kind of victim…
Cade took a breath, trying to control the surge of anger that thought provoked. Although Sarah had been dead for a quarter of a century, just thinking about what she’d suffered during her short life was enough to make his blood boil. He couldn’t imagine how people who had to work on cases like that kept from committing physical violence against a suspect.
The same way good law-enforcement officers always gain control. They distance themselves from the victim.
That was the first thing Hoyt had taught him. If your gut was tied in knots and your hands shaking with rage, you couldn’t be an effective force in bringing the perpetrator to justice.
Cade took another long, slow breath, remembering the man who’d taught him everything he knew about the job he held. Maybe it was time for a refresher course.
“I didn’t arrest him because I didn’t think he’d done it.”
“I know you well enough to know you had to have a reason for thinking that,” Cade said.
“I didn’t teach you about gut instinct?” Hoyt questioned with a laugh.
Cade’s mentor didn’t seem to have changed much in the year since Cade had been out here. He hadn’t realized it had been that long, but he knew better than to argue with Hoyt about it. If it had come down to it, his former boss could probably have provided him with the exact day and time of his last visit.
The former sheriff’s hair was completely white now. And for the first time there was an almost imperceptible stoop in his near-military posture. Nothing had changed about the keen intelligence in those faded blue eyes, however, which were looking at Cade now as if their owner were simply waiting for the other shoe to fall.
“I just never heard you admit to using it to solve a case,” Cade said.
“I didn’t. Wish I had. Solved the thing, I mean. That’s the one that still gives me nightmares, even after all these years.”
“Because of the way she died.”
“And the way she lived. The fact that somebody could do something like that to a helpless little girl and then melt back into this community like he’d done nothing out of the ordinary.”
“He never killed again.”
“Far as I know. Until I left office, I used to try to keep up with child murders in the surrounding states. I always had it in the back of my mind that one day…” The sentence trailed.
The old man lifted the beer bottle from the scarred table beside him and took a long draw of its contents. Cade knew him well enough to know that was to cover an emotion he wouldn’t want anyone to see. Apparently this was one victim even the legendary Hoyt Lee hadn’t been able to get distance from.
“So why not Abel?”
“I don’t know. Hell, he was mean enough to kill—her or anybody else that crossed him. And he was probably drunk enough to have done it the night it happened. I’ve often wondered if she called for him, and he didn’t hear her because he was sleeping off a binge.”
“But you didn’t arrest him.”
“I saw him that morning. When they found her body. Didn’t look hardly big enough to be a nine-year-old girl. ’Course the way it’d been left…” Hoyt shook his head. “There wasn’t a man out there that wasn’t affected. Even those like me who considered themselves real Alabama hard-asses. I wept that morning for Sarah Comstock. I don’t mind admitting to that.”
“And her father did, too? Maybe a sign of remorse.”
“He didn’t cry. Maybe if he had…” Hoyt paused reflectively before he lifted the bottle to his lips again. When he brought it down, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “He looked like the heart had been cut out of him. She was his baby, you know. The youngest of that scraggly brood. That’s why her and her sister was sleeping in that little ol’ bitty lean-to he’d added on to the house. It’d make sense to anybody but the Comstocks to move the babies into the warmest part, now wouldn’t it? Abel just built the two newest additions a room and stuck ’em out in it, rain, wind or shine. Never did have the gumption God give a goose. And sorry as bat hoobie to boot. But…if you’d ’a seen his eyes that morning, you wouldn’t be asking me why I didn’t arrest him.”
There wasn’t much Cade could say to Hoyt’s comment that wouldn’t sound disrespectful. He took a draw on his own beer as he tried to figure out what to ask next. The old man took the problem out of his hands.
“Why are you asking, boy? You ain’t been to see me in more’n a year, and now you come all the way out here to ask about a girl that’s been dead for twenty-five.”
“It’s a long story. And I don’t know how much of it I believe myself.”
“Well, I ain’t got no pressin’ appointments this afternoon. Actually, I’m pretty much free for the rest of the month, if it’s all that long. Why don’t you try me out and let’s see how much I believe.”
“Are you sure I wouldn’t be imposing?” That was one thing he’d tried not to do when Sheriff Lee had retired. He’d figured the man had earned all the uninterrupted fishing and hunting he could manage before he passed on.
“I been setting out here by my lonesome all winter watching some World War II documentaries I’ve seen a couple ’a dozen times. What makes you think telling me a story, believable or not, ain’t gonna be preferable to that?”
