“He’s gone,” Winona said unnecessarily as she wrapped her arms around Crystal from behind.
“But he’ll be back.”
“Yes. That boy’s like a puppy with a bone. He’s not going to let go until he’s got what he wants.”
Eyes still closed, Crystal tried to summon an image of Ravencrest as a cuddly, ornery little puppy. It wouldn’t form. There was nothing the least bit cuddly about him, nothing cute or playful. Maybe as a full-blown dog—a Rottweiler or a Doberman, maybe an ill-tempered German shepherd. Something big and vicious and dangerous to someone as weak as she was.
When she opened her eyes again, nothing had changed. The sun was still shining, the air was still cool, and her world was still tilted askew. “He threatened me,” she said softly.
“With what?” Winona demanded indignantly. “You’ve done nothing wrong!”
“If I don’t cooperate with him, he’s going to tell the Montgomerys and everyone else.” Tears welling in her eyes, she turned to hide her face against her aunt’s shoulder. “They’ll say I’m crazy, Aunt Winona! They’ll make fun of me and pretend they don’t know me! It’ll start all over again, and I can’t bear it again! I can’t go through it again!”
“There, there,” Winona clucked soothingly. “It’s all right, honey. Nothing’s going to start all over again because you and I aren’t going to let it. You’re not alone anymore, Crystal. We’ll handle it together.”
You’re not alone anymore. They were the sweetest words Crystal had ever heard. She clung to them as a drowning man might cling to a life preserver, and she hoped that this time they were true.
Because one more betrayal would be more than she could survive.
From a rise a few hundred yards away, Sloan lowered the binoculars to the truck seat and tried to rub the image of Crystal in tears from his eyes. He didn’t even try to erase the guilt. That would be impossible.
He’d made suspects cry before, but not innocent women. Not women with more secrets and sorrows than he might ever understand. Not beautiful women with wary eyes of emerald green and all the temerity of a doe caught in headlights.
Grimly he started the engine, shifted into gear and spun the rear tires in the dirt as he pulled onto the road. Unless he could find a puppy to kick or a kitten to run over, his job here was done.
At least for the day.
Two
Shortly before noon on Friday, Sloan parked in front of the Stop-n-Swap, radioed his location to the dispatcher, then went inside. There were a couple of customers, strangers to him, but he spared them little attention. His gaze was locked on the two women behind the counter.
Crystal noticed him first. Though she didn’t look at him, he knew because one instant she was so fluid and animated, and the next she was rigid. What had some idiot Georgia cop done to earn her distrust for cops everywhere? Wrongly accuse her of a crime? Break her heart? Betray her?
He hated that kind of all-encompassing distrust. Some cop made a mistake, and so all cops were bad. Some man hurt her, and so all men would do the same. Or—a version he was intimately familiar with—some Indian somewhere was a drunk, lazy or a thief, and so all Indians were suspect.
He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t like other cops, other men, other Native Americans. He was an individual, one person with his own unique traits. If she was going to dislike him, he had a right to be disliked for his own failings, not someone else’s.
But he’d given her good reason to dislike him yesterday. He’d threatened to expose her to ridicule and gossip. He’d made her cry. The only thing keeping her from fleeing to the back of the room was fear. Of him.
He stopped at the counter and laid his gray Stetson and dark glasses on it. “Miz Winona,” he said with a nod. “Crystal.”
“Morning, Deputy.” Winona glanced at her niece, then circled the counter. “I—I’ll leave you two to talk.”
Finally Crystal turned and looked not directly at him, but in his direction. It was a start. “What do you want to know?”
“Can we go outside? I know it’s a little cool, but…”
She took a sweater from a hook on the wall and wordlessly led the way outside to the same patio where he’d sat with Winona the day before. She sat on one side of the table, holding the sweater front closed with her arms across her chest, and fixed her gaze somewhere off in the distance.
He sat across from her, pulled out his notebook and pen, then cleared his throat. Before he could speak, though, she did.
“You said you would keep my name out of it.”
“As much as I can.” Regretfully he added, “I don’t want to give you a sense of false security, though. If your vision pans out and helps us in any way, then it and you will have to be part of my report. I can’t avoid that.”
The look that came over her delicate features was one of despair, followed almost immediately by resignation. “What do you want to know?” she asked again.
He studied her for a moment—the cold green eyes, the taut jaw, the defensive posture—before forcing his mind to the notes from his first conversation with Winona. Instead of a pertinent question, though, one born of curiosity popped out. “How long have you had these abilities?”
Her gaze darted suspiciously to him, then away. “What does that matter?”
“Background. Humor me.” What he really wanted to say was, I’m interested. Trust me.
“All my life. And that’s the first and last question that doesn’t concern Christina Montgomery.”
All her life. She was younger than him, and he was only twenty-nine, so “all” her life didn’t add up to much in terms of numbers, yet she made it sound as if it were centuries.
Ignoring her comment, he pushed on. “Psychic abilities must run in your family—you, your aunt. Is your father also psychic?”
She snorted derisively but didn’t speak. That was answer enough. It told him there was a problem between Crystal and her father. Maybe he thought she was a flake, unbalanced or even cursed. Maybe he was part of the reason she’d left Georgia for Montana.
Oh, he’d heard the story. After Winona’s heart attack last summer, she’d needed help and Crystal had been the only family member in a position to come. Supposedly she’d liked Whitehorn so much—and loved Winona so much—that she’d stayed.
Which was bull. Oh, not the love for Winona. That was obvious. But liking Whitehorn? Even now, months later, she hadn’t seen enough of it to know if she liked it. She made rare trips into town and spent the rest of her time hiding out here.
She hadn’t decided to stay in a new place that had captivated her. She’d decided to not return to an old place that had hurt her.
“Tell me about your vision.”
“There was a hillside—”
He stopped her with one up-raised hand. “What were you doing when you had it? Where were you? Was it different from other visions you’ve had?”
She looked as if she wanted to squirm but couldn’t allow herself to move so much as a muscle. He’d questioned people before who hadn’t wanted to be questioned, but none who hadn’t wanted it as much as she didn’t.
Taking a shallow breath, she began speaking. “I was in the back room, unpacking some items we’d purchased at an estate auction in Kalispell, including a set of rare books. When I opened one, the vision started.”
“Could it have been caused somehow by the book?”
She shook her head. “If there was a trigger, don’t you think I’d avoid it?” After another shallow breath, she went on. “After the first vision passed, a few minutes later I had a second one. As far as being different from other visions…I don’t know. They seemed more intense, more vivid, but seeing someone dying is more intense than having a premonition about a letter or a phone call.”
“’Seeing someone dying.’ How do you know she wasn’t already dead?”
“Because she spoke.”
That was something Winona had left out. Because in a story that sounded completely unbelie
vable, that part somehow seemed even more unbelievable than the rest? “What did she…say?”
His hesitation was slight, but she caught it. It added another layer of tension to her jaw. “’Help me, please help me.’”
“Was she pleading with whoever had hurt her? Calling out in case someone was near enough to hear?”
Abruptly Crystal shuddered, as if an unbearable chill had passed through her, and for the first time that day, she looked directly at him. “I think…I believe she was speaking to me.”
Disconcerted, he sat back. According to true believers, communication between the dead and the living was neither rare nor difficult. Sometimes the spirits of those who had passed on provided guidance to those who remained. Other times they offered nothing but trouble. His aunt Rita was such a believer. She insisted that her first husband Leon was too jealous to let her be happy with her second husband Frank, that he was more troublesome to her dead than he’d ever been alive.
His grandmother thought the only spirits threatening Rita’s marriage to Frank were of the bottled variety. But Crystal didn’t strike him as a woman fond of the drink.
“You don’t believe me, do you? You’re putting me through this for nothing, because you don’t believe a word I’ve said.”
“Honestly, I don’t know what I believe. But I do know I don’t know everything. I know there are things that can’t be explained. And I know I’d be a bad cop if I ignored a lead because it didn’t fit my preconceived notions of how the world is.” He paused one beat, two, then added, “I’m not a bad cop, Crystal.”
Her expression remained impassive.
The silence between them dragged on until he finally broke it. “Tell me about the vision. Everything you can remember, whether it seems important or not.”
She spoke in a dull monotone, recounting the same scene Winona had described to him weeks ago. A hillside, a road, a body of water, buildings. Christina.
“If you close your eyes and concentrate, you can see the scene again, can’t you?” he asked softly. He didn’t know whether his theory was close to the mark or way out in left field, but after a moment, with her eyes open wide, she nodded. “Will you do that?”
She looked afraid. He didn’t blame her. Murder scenes, if that was what this was, were difficult for anyone to examine closely. It must be even tougher for a Southern belle who’d lived a pampered, privileged life before coming to Montana.
“It can’t hurt you, Crystal. It’s just an image. It’s the middle of the day. You’re sitting in bright sunlight. I’ll be right here in front of you.”
“I’d be happier if you’d never come near me,” she said with a thin, bitter smile. The sentiment stung, almost as much as that terrible little smile. Then she closed her eyes and summoned up the memory she’d no doubt spent the past few weeks trying to forget.
Sloan used his lowest, calmest voice, so it wouldn’t be intrusive. “Do you see Christina?”
“Yes.”
“What is she wearing?”
“A dress. Navy-blue, pleated, too big for her. It’s covered with blood.”
“What can you see where she’s lying?”
“The ground is wet. There are a lot of trees, some boulders. The clearing’s not very large.”
“Are there any wildflowers? Can you see any traffic on the road? Any lights on in the buildings? Is there anything remarkable about the clearing or the water or the woods?”
“No,” she said impatiently, encompassing all four questions, then shrugged. “Yes. Lights outside the buildings. Yellow lights. And there’s a flat rock in the clearing, set at a right angle to another rock, almost like a natural chair.”
“You mentioned a second vision. Same scene?”
She shook her head. “It was just a flash. An image of her hand reaching for help.”
Sloan leaned back, hands folded over his stomach, and let his gaze turn thoughtfully to the mountains on the horizons. A small clearing surrounded by trees, not far from a curving roadway, with water in the distance. There were probably countless places in the county that matched that description. He could think of half a dozen off the top of his head. He’d already ridden up into the hills. How much time would he waste checking out every one of them?
But what else did he have to do? He, like everyone else on this case, was at a dead end. He couldn’t sit back and do nothing while waiting for a legitimate lead to pop up.
Besides, she’d said something that had caught his attention. The ground is wet. They’d had heavy rains at the time of Christina’s disappearance, so the ground would have been wet. It was possible that Crystal had simply remembered and inserted that one detail, but not many people could recall weather conditions for one particular day several months earlier unless they had some reason to.
Though faking a vision of a dying woman could be a good reason to go look up the weather on that particular date.
But he didn’t believe Crystal was faking anything. The vision might not amount to anything, but he believed it was very real for her.
He also believed that Christina was dead. That part felt too right, had been too easy to accept. He felt a moment’s regret for the Montgomery family, for Christina herself. He didn’t really know her—he didn’t exactly run in the same social circles as the very young, very spoiled daughter of the most influential family in town—but she’d been too young to die. But hell, who wasn’t?
Slowly he became aware that he was under intense scrutiny. He moved his gaze to the right, to Crystal, who was staring at him as if he were as unwelcome a sight as the vision. How badly had he screwed things up with her? Was it likely that she would ever forget how he’d blackmailed her into cooperating with him? And what if she did? Was she ever going to overlook the fact that he was a cop and she didn’t trust cops?
He smiled at her, his best, friendliest, nonthreatening smile. “Can I interest you in a back-roads tour of the county tomorrow?”
“No.”
“I’d leave the uniform and the patrol unit at home. You could forget I’m a cop.”
“Do you ever forget you’re a cop?”
He shook his head.
“I didn’t think so.”
“Aw, come on. I’ll bring lunch. I’ll show you some of the prettiest places you’ve ever seen. There’s a spot up on the river where the sunrises and sunsets are incredible, and the fishing’s not half bad, either.”
“And, of course, on the way to that spot up on the river, we’d be stopping at every small clearing you could find, wouldn’t we?” Her chilly smile disappeared. “No, thank you.”
With some regret, he closed his notebook and stood up. “Thank you for your time.”
She remained where she was, gazing impassively at him.
He started to walk away, to return to the store to get his hat, then leave, but abruptly, before his nerve failed him, he turned back. “One more question,” he said conversationally, as if that was really all it was. “Are you ever going to forgive me for this and give me a chance?”
Her already china-doll-pale skin turned even paler, then gave way to two spots of crimson in her cheeks. “A chance to do what?” she asked warily.
Though he smiled, he didn’t feel he had much reason. “To impress you. To flatter you. To take you out. Maybe to court you.”
She looked as if the idea appalled her at least as much as being the main course for Whitehorn’s gossip-hungry crowd. “I— You— No! Never!” Jumping to her feet, she rushed to the trailer and slammed herself inside.
He’d thought he knew all about rejection. Hadn’t his own mother abandoned him because his skin was a few shades too dark to suit her bigoted family? He’d dated a lot of women, and had been turned down by his share. But he’d never seen a woman look so repulsed by the idea of going out with him. He’d never made a woman jump and run to get away from him.
And he’d never felt such intense regret.
“Have you ever wondered why I never married?”
Cr
ystal looked up from her breakfast with a fierce scowl. Ever since Deputy Ravencrest had left the day before, Winona had been probing, gently prying, urging, encouraging. She’d made at least twenty comments about that nice Ravencrest boy who came from a good family, was respected both in town and on the reservation, and was a hardworking boy who never gave up.
Rather like her aunt on that last one. The old woman was curious about the outcome of yesterday’s meeting. She’d already remarked that when Ravencrest had gone inside to reclaim his hat and glasses, he’d looked stricken. She’d also wondered out loud more than once why Crystal had retreated to her bedroom for much of the afternoon.
“What did you say to him?” Winona had asked at one point, and Crystal had wanted to protest her innocence. He was the one guilty of saying something, not her! But then Winona would want to know what he’d said that was so awful, and Crystal would have to tell her. He said he wanted to go out with me, to impress me, to court me.
And Winona would have proof then that her niece was crazy, and that her insanity had nothing to do with her psychic curse.
Crystal took a deep breath and forced herself to reply to her aunt’s question. “I always thought you were having much too much fun being the belle of every ball to settle down with one man.”
Winona gave her a loving smile and squeezed her hand tightly. “You can be so kind.”
And so unkind, Crystal thought, remembering how rudely she’d run from the table yesterday.
“I was the belle of every ball,” Winona said dreamily. “I may have been flaky, but I was also young, thin, and pretty, and my family was wealthy. I was a good catch. But finally I did fall in love, with a handsome young army officer from Mississippi. His family was wealthy, too, and he was as good a catch as I was. He was very proper, very duty-bound. The night before he shipped off to Europe, he gave me this ring—” the crystal around her neck caught the light as she pulled another chain from underneath her dress to display the gold signet ring dangling from it “—and he promised we would be married when he returned.”
Big Sky Lawman Page 3
