Come Sundown

by Nora Roberts

  going right back at you. Is that hard enough to suit you?”

  He could see fury blaze over Clintok’s face, like fire over sagebrush. And stood just as he was, eyes level, body deceptively relaxed.

  “Where were you December twelve, starting at four in the afternoon, going to nine?”

  “Well, let’s see.” With his free hand, Callen pulled out his phone, tapped open his calendar. “Looks like I started that day early. Took a before-school lesson. We had some sleigh rides. When I got here, Easy there took one, I took one myself, and Ben—he’s still down at the center right now—took the others. Had feed delivered that day, and I’ve got here the paint we call Cochise was favoring his left foreleg. We had—”

  “I don’t want all that bullshit. Four o’clock.”

  “I’d’ve been heading out about then.”

  “Alone?”

  Callen pocketed his phone. “It was more than a month ago, but since I don’t believe you’re showing a sudden interest in how I spend my time, I recall December twelfth is when that girl from college went missing. That being the case, I’d have been on my own, as Bodine was off in Missoula, and I came in too early for Rory and me to ride in together.”

  “You don’t have the high-and-mighty Longbows lined up for your alibi?” Clintok took an exaggerated look around. “I don’t see Bodine rushing up here so you can hide behind her.”

  “You’re going to want to be careful there,” Callen said softly.

  “We’ll see who has to be careful. Money doesn’t buy sense, which the Longbows and Bodines proved by hiring you on. I wonder how they’ll spin it around when you’re behind bars where you belong.”

  Even as temper clawed its way through his gut, Callen spoke evenly. “You and me, Clintok, we both know your problem’s not with the Longbows or Bodines, or not most of it. So why don’t we stick with you and me?”

  “Since you don’t have them backing you this time around, did anybody see you December twelfth? Anybody who can verify where you were?”

  Not a damn soul, Callen thought, as he’d loaded Sundown in a trailer, had taken him down to the center to work with him for a couple hours.

  “That’d be hard to say.”

  Clintok leaned in. “What’s hard about it?”

  “Ah, boss?” Swallowing deeply enough to be audible, Easy stepped out a little. “Sorry, but I heard you trying to remember. The day Cochise needed his foreleg wrapped, wasn’t that the same day we started working on the tack? Cleaning, repairing. You ended up staying, working with me on that till damn near six o’clock. We cracked open a beer after that, being done for the day. I don’t think I headed out myself till close to seven, and you were still here. Wanted to check Cochise’s leg before you went on home. I remember pretty clear on it.”

  Callen held Easy’s eyes another moment. “Maybe it was.”

  “I’m pretty clear on it. Is that what you wanted to know, Deputy?”

  Clintok angled toward him. “Are you lying to me? It’s a serious offense to lie to a police officer.”

  “Why would I do that?” Easy backed off a step. “I’m just saying what you asked about. How we were here till about seven—it was nice to sit and have a beer after a long day—and then I went on home.”

  “Go on back, Easy,” Callen told him.

  “Okay, boss, just trying to help.”

  “How come you don’t have all that shit he just spread on your fucking phone, Skinner?”

  “I’ve got my schedule, and I was off at four. Sometimes things need to be done, or I want to get them done, and I stay later. I don’t note having a beer with one of my men down on my calendar. If that answers your questions, I’ve got horses to take care of.”

  “Two women dead, Skinner. Two since you came back here. Maybe I’ll do some checking back in California, find more.”

  “You spend your time as you see fit, Deputy. I’ll do the same.”

  Callen led the horse into the shelter, carefully removed its blanket, then rested his tightly fisted hands on the withers. Another ten seconds, he figured—likely no more than five—he’d have used those fists.

  He wouldn’t have been capable of holding back longer.

  Now he forced himself to relax those fists as he heard Clintok’s engine roar to life, heard him drive off, spitting gravel from his tires.

  He had the boy to thank for sparing him what would’ve been an ugly brawl. But …

  “You didn’t have to do that, Easy.”

  “I was just giving my recollection. We had all that tack to get to.”

  “We started on the tack a couple days after that. You know that as well as I do.”

  “I don’t know as I do.” Easy looked over the horses’ backs. The stubborn set to his jaw loosened under Callen’s steady stare. “Maybe I do now that I think on it, but I didn’t like the way he came at you, boss. I didn’t like how he talked, or how he looked. I swear he wanted to pull out his sidearm, draw down on you. I swear. I didn’t want to see him give you trouble, that’s all.”

  “I appreciate it. I do. But next time—and with Clintok there’s always a next time—don’t. There’s no point in you walking into his sights. He’s had me there since we were boys, and it’s never going to change.”

  “Some people get born with a mean streak, I reckon. Was he talking about that girl who went missing? Is he saying she’s dead?”

  “That’s how it sounded to me.”

  “Holy hell, Cal.” Easy let out a long breath as he ran a soft brush over the mare. “Holy hell. That’s terrible. That ain’t right. But he’s got to be stupid thinking you’d do something like that.”

  “Like I said, I’ve been in his sights a long time. Sooner or later, he’d like to have an excuse to pull the trigger.”

  Sooner or later, Callen thought, he might get pushed into giving him one.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  — 2012 —

  Esther scrubbed the bathroom, top to bottom, as she did every other day.

  Cleanliness was godliness.

  Her hands, red, raw, and cracked from years of hot water and harsh soaps, burned some as she dunked the scrub brush in the bucket. Her knees ached; her back pinged and popped.

  She barely noticed.

  She took such pride in the white linoleum floor, in the shine she worked out of the faucets and knobs in the sink and the shower.

  She sang while she worked, her voice as young and strong and pretty as she’d once been.

  When she finished there, she’d sweep and scrub the rest of the house, and when Sir came, he’d be pleased with her.

  He’d built it for her, hadn’t he, even said how she’d earned it. And he warned her, as she was weak-minded and lazy, he could take it away again if she didn’t show it—and him—the proper respect.

  He’d even let her hang a flower-print curtain to separate the bathroom from the rest of the house.

  The rest consisted of an eight-by-ten-foot space that held a twin bed, a rusted iron pole lamp with a torn shade, the chair he’d hauled from her room in the basement, a counter formed out of birch logs and plywood, a shower rod that served as her closet.

  Unfinished drywall covered the walls; a brown braided rug, frayed at the edges, spread over the subflooring. She had two cupboards, one for the plastic dishes, one for foodstuffs, and a cold box for keeping perishables.

  Best of all, she had a window. It was small, and high up at the ceiling, but she got light when the sun shined, could see the sky, and the night stars.

  When she stood on the bed, she could see more. A few trees, the mountains—or a hint of them.

  The space was smaller than the room in the basement, but she’d wept with gratitude when Sir had brought her to it, told her she would live there now.

  She no longer wore the leg irons, though Sir had bolted them to the wall to remind her what he’d need to do if she angered him.

  She tried hard not to anger him.

  Here, in what was a palace to her, she
could heat water on the hot plate and make her own tea, or open up a can and cook soup.

  In the season, he’d even let her out to work the vegetable garden. Of course, he had to tether her, lest she wander off and get lost or mauled by a bear.

  She had to work at first light or at night with the dog chained, as he was watching her, but she prized those hours in the air, with her hands in the dirt, planting or weeding.

  Once or twice she thought she’d heard a child calling or crying, and another time—maybe more than another time—she was certain she heard somebody call for help. But Sir said it was birds, and to get about her work.

  Sir provided for himself and his own, he liked to say, with chickens in the coop, the milk cow in the pen, the horse in the paddock.

  The garden served an important role in providing, and a woman worked the earth and tended its fruit. Just as a woman was to be planted and bear fruit.

  She’d had three more children, all girls, as well as two miscarriages and a boy, stillborn.

  The girls he took away, and though she’d wept for each precious one, she let herself forget. Then the boy. She’d felt such joy, such hope, then such shock and grief.

  Sir said it was God’s wrath on her, a punishment for her evil ways, the curse of Eve.

  Holding that still form, that lifeless child, like a pale blue doll, she knew Sir spoke truth.

  God punished the wicked. She was the wicked. But every day, she repented her wicked ways, worked toward her redemption.

  She pushed herself to her feet, wincing as her knees creaked. She wore her scrubbing dress—a cotton tent that hung to the middle of her calves—and thin-soled slippers. Her hair, well past her waist now, hung in a brittle, graying braid down her back.

  She was not afforded a mirror, as vanity was a sin lodged dark in every woman’s heart, but her fingers could feel the lines scoring her face.

  She told herself to be grateful Sir still wanted her to do her marital duties, that he rewarded her by providing for her.

  She pressed her hand to her belly, where she knew another child grew. She prayed it would be a boy. Every night, she knelt and prayed for a son, one her husband would allow her to keep with her. One she could love and feed at her breast, could tend and teach.

  She emptied the bucket, filled it again. Time to scrub the cupboards, the counter, the cold box, and the little kitchen sink. Time to do her work.

  But after she carried the bucket into her kitchen, she had to lean against the wall. It was the baby, of course. Growing inside her, needing to take from her, that made her so tired, and half-feverish with it.

  She’d make some tea, sit for a little while until she felt stronger. Stronger for the baby, she thought as she got out the jar holding the dandelion greens Sir had been so kind to teach her, an ignorant woman, how to dry.

  She put a cup of water in a pot to boil, and while it did, used the hot, soapy water in the bucket to scrub while she waited.

  It wouldn’t do to let it go cold. Waste not, want not.

  By the time the water boiled she felt hot and dizzy. The tea would put her to rights, the tea and a little sit-down time.

  She poured the boiling water over the plastic teaspoon of greens, carried it with her to the chair.

  As she sat, she closed her eyes. “We’re just going to rest a minute,” she told the baby. “Just going to take a rest. We’ve got beans and tomatoes to harvest tonight. And maybe some summer squash. We’ve got—”

  She broke off, gasping at the sudden, vicious cramp.

  “No! No, please!”

  The second doubled her over in the chair, dropped her onto her knees as the cup fell out of her hand, spilling dandelion tea on the old braided rug.

  She felt it leave her, that life, felt it flood out of her in blood and pain.

  God punished the wicked, she thought, and lay on the rug, wishing for her own death.

  — Present Day —

  Bodine managed to get home just before dark—and before another hit of February snow. As she stripped off her winter gear, she caught the scents of cooking from the kitchen.

  “God, that smells good! We’re in for another couple feet they’re saying, Clementine. You might want to—” Spotting the sturdy, stoic cook wiping hastily at tears, Bodine broke off, rushed forward. “What’s the matter? What happened? Is somebody hurt? Mom—”

  Sniffling, trying to shoo Bodine aside, Clementine shook her head. “She and your dad are out on a date. It’s nothing. I got something in my eye.”

  “Don’t hand me that bull. You could have a splinter the size of my thumb in your eye and you’d pluck it out without shedding a tear. You sit down.”

  “Can’t you see I’ve got this chicken to finish?”

  With a flick, Bodine turned off the burner. “It’ll keep. I said you sit down, and I mean it. Right now.”

  “I’d like to know when you started giving orders around here.”

  “I’m giving this one. Or do you want me to call Mom?”

  “Don’t you dare do any such thing!” Face set, cheeks still damp, Clementine sat. “There. Satisfied?”

  Though she wanted to snap back, Bodine held her tongue. She thought to make tea, decided it would take too long and she might lose the advantage. She pulled out a bottle of whisky instead, poured two fingers.

  After slapping it down in front of Clementine, Bodine sat. “Now, you tell me what’s wrong. How many times have I told you when I got hurt or upset or just mad enough to cry?”

  “It’s nothing to do with you.”

  “You’re everything to do with me.”

  Defeated by that, Clementine lifted the glass, downed half the whisky. “I don’t know what came over me. I just heard … A friend of mine in my quilting club—you know Sarah Howard.”

  “Sure. I went to school with her younger son, Harry. I— Oh, Clem, did something happen to Mrs. Howard?”

  “No, no, she’s fine. I’m just—” Holding up a hand, Clementine composed herself. “Sarah’s friends with Denise McNee—that’s that poor child Karyn Allison’s ma. She took her name back after the divorce some years back. Sarah’s cousin Marjean married Denise’s brother, and Sarah and Denise got friendly over the years.”

  “All right.”

  “We were meeting up tonight, the quilting club, at my house. Eight to ten. Sarah just called, said how she couldn’t come—she was bringing her coffee cake.”

  The rambling road wasn’t hard to follow. “What happened to Denise McNee, Clem?”

  “She took a bunch of pills, Bodine. Just swallowed a bunch of pills the doctor gave her to help her get through this terrible time. I don’t know what kind of damn pills.”

  “Oh, Clem.”

  “It was Sarah who found her, went over to take her a casserole, give her some company for a while. It was Sarah who found her and called an ambulance.”

  “She killed herself.”

  “Tried to. Might have done it yet. She’s in the hospital, and Sarah said they just don’t know yet. She was sobbing over the phone, Sarah was. Just beside herself. And I just started thinking how that poor woman wanted to die, how she lost her child in such an awful way, and it’s the same as losing her heart.”

  “I’m so sorry, Clem. I’m just so sorry.”

  “She ain’t never going to be the same, that mother.” Chin quivering, Clementine used the hem of her apron to wipe at her red-rimmed eyes. “If she goes on living, she’ll never be the same as she was. People look at me and think I’ve never had children, but that’s not the truth.”

  “No, it’s not.” Tone gentle, grip firm, Bodine took Clementine’s hand. “You’ve got me and Chase and Rory. I guess Callen, too, really.”

  “It just came over me so hard.” Steadier, Clementine dashed away tears with her free hand. “A good friend of mine crying over