by Nora Roberts
“I need to talk to my crew.”
“I know.” He put a hand over hers. “Soon.”
* * *
The shadow had become a man, and the man stood outside with an excellent view of the activity on the lake. He’d watched the yahoo jump in, swim to the floater.
It had given him a chuckle along with his morning coffee.
He’d stood right there when the bumfuck cops had come across the truck he’d left where a blind moron could find it. He suspected one Stuart Hubble—according to the registration—was in for a bad day.
But the floater, the too-late lifeguard, the whole scene of chaos really topped it off.
Then the cops came screaming up—man, what a show! This was the most fun he’d had in weeks. At least since he’d beaten that two-bit whore he’d picked up somewhere in Dickwad, Virginia.
Best thing he’d done, he thought as he watched the show, had been following his gut—and following the asshole with the paint cans.
Like fucking divine intervention, that’s what it had been.
He hoped killing the stupid bastard brought some trouble down on Walker. Maybe it would, just maybe. Asshole vandalizes the shithead’s office, then vandalized the whore bitch he’s fucking—
He had to stop, take a breath there, unclench his fists.
Then what does he do, but sneak his drunk way right up to Walker’s place, pop a bunch of bullets through the glass.
Dead idiot could think of it this way. If he hadn’t done him the favor of bashing his brains in, he’d be spending a nice stretch in prison.
Better off dead.
“You’re welcome!” Snickering, he slipped back inside for another coffee, a croissant, some local jelly.
He brought it out on the porch, sat in the nice sturdy chair. And enjoyed his continental breakfast and show.
* * *
When Emily brought out the tea, she rubbed Zane’s shoulders. “I’m going to make a big pasta salad, get it chilling.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Darby began.
“Lee’s letting the crew go, and every one of them wants to come here, see the both of you. So I’m going to put together some food from what I can find in your poorly stocked pantry. I’ll be raiding your kitchen garden while I’m at it.”
Zane reached back to squeeze her hand. “Best pasta salad going. Is Gabe okay?”
“He seems to be. I want to see him for myself. I’m having Ralph go by and pick Brody up. I want both my boys where I can see them. Then you’ll have the lot of them to help you take down the rest of these canopies, and haul in the rest of the extra tables and chairs.”
She looked around. “Hard to believe it was just yesterday all of us were out here celebrating.” She lowered her head to kiss the top of Zane’s. “Lee’ll be a while yet. He’s got a lot to deal with.”
“Zane.” Darby reached for him when Emily went back inside. “Somebody has to tell Traci.”
“I want to do that, and in person. And as soon as I can,” he added. “Will you be okay if I go into Asheville?”
“Of course I will. Do you want me to go with you?”
“You stay here, help settle your crew. I’m going to check with Lee, get his go-ahead. He has the tougher one. He’ll have to notify the rest of the Drapers.”
Which he would, but Stu Hubble had to come first. Lee found him snoring on the couch in his hovel surrounded by empty beer bottles, a scatter of pills not yet consumed, ashtrays full of butts—tobacco and weed, and what looked like the remains of a meat-lovers pizza along with a couple empty bags of Doritos.
The good hard shove Lee gave him loosened an enormous fart, followed by a belch that smelled nearly as foul.
“Fukov,” Stu muttered, and attempted to roll over.
This time Lee used his foot, and helped Stu land on the floor.
“Sumbitch! What the—” He broke off when his bloodshot eyes focused on Lee. “Who the hell let you in? This here’s my place. You got no right—”
“This here’s your grandmother’s place. Get your sorry, stinking ass up. You’re under arrest.”
“Am not. Didn’t do nothing.”
Considering, Lee narrowed his eyes. “Where’s Clint Draper?”
“How the hell am I…” Stu blinked, got slowly to his feet.
He was a big guy with a big gut of hard fat. He had little eyes and bad teeth.
“Around, maybe in the can. We’ve been hanging out. Was gonna go camping, but it got too hot, so we come back yesterday, hung out. Ain’t illegal.”
“Defacing property is. And you were stupid enough to use your truck when you painted obscenities on Zane Walker’s office, on Darby McCray’s house.”
“Did no such thing. Been right here. You ask my gramma.”
“Paint’s still in your truck, smeared all over the steering wheel.”
But none, Lee noticed, on Stu, who obviously hadn’t changed or showered in several days.
“Your paintbrushes, Stu. Your paint cans, your truck.”
“Nuh-uh. Less’n somebody must’ve stole it. You ask Gramma, you ask Clint.”
“I asked your grandmother, who’s deaf as a post and hasn’t been down those steps for six months or more. I can’t ask Clint Draper.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because we fished him out of the lake this morning, not a quarter mile from where we found your truck. He’s dead.”
“Is not.” Stu pushed around to see if any of the empty bottles had anything left. “Back in the can’s where he is. We’ve been hanging out right here ’cause it’s too hot for camping.”
Lee pulled out his phone, brought up the crime scene photo of Clint Draper, eyes wide, face gray. And shoved it under Stu’s nose.
He yanked back the phone, and himself, when Stu bent over and puked on his own shoes.
The stench, Lee thought, would wake a decomposed corpse.
“Did you have a falling-out, Stu, up at Zane’s place when you were shooting at the house?”
“It ain’t Clint, no way. You’re tricking me.”
“We fished him out of the lake this morning. He’s got a fist-sized hole in the back of his skull. I expect he was dead before you dumped him in the lake.”
“I never did that.” Stu’s tree-trunk legs wobbled until he thudded back on the couch. “I never done killed nobody in my life. Clint’s a friend of mine. I never done killed nobody.”
“Get your sorry ass up or I’ll haul you up. You’re coming to the station, and you’d better start telling the truth or I’ll see you do some real time behind bars. You’re up shit creek, Stu, and every lie takes you farther from shore.”
“I never done killed nobody! I swear on my life.” Tears began to leak. “Clint just came by yesterday—we never went camping, he just asked me to say so. He came by after he heard Traci took off and you was looking for him. I was just helping out a bud, that’s all it was, and anybody’d do the same.”
“You reckon anybody’d hide and lie for a man who beat his wife black-and-blue?”
“I don’t know nothing about that. Clint, he was here, that’s what I know. We had some beer and such, and I passed out, I guess. I don’t know nothing about the paint or nothing. Jesus, he’s dead? For real?”
A moron, Lee thought, a lazy, bullying bastard, but an unlikely killer.
“Get up. You’re coming in, telling it all. If you don’t want me to cuff you, get up. You got another pair of shoes?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Well, change them. I’m not having your puke in my house. Get a shirt and pants, too. I’m taking what you’re wearing into evidence. They find any paint, any of Clint’s blood on you, you’re fucked good.”
“I was just covering for a bud, like anybody would. I didn’t do nothing. I never killed nobody.”
Lee believed him, right down the line. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t squeeze him first. If Stu knew anything, anything at all, he’d damn well squeeze it out drop by drop.
/>
* * *
By the time the crew arrived with Brody in tow, Emily had the pasta salad in the fridge and a second pitcher of tea steeping. Darby went straight to Roy.
“I’m still wet,” he began, but she hugged him close. After a second’s hesitation, he clamped hard around her.
“Holy God, Miss Darby. Holy God. I’ve never seen—never gonna stop seeing. When I—when I got to him, grabbed on, he turned over. And his face…”
“Come on, sit down.”
“I—I got some dry clothes in the truck. Any place I can change outta these?”
“Sure.”
She waited while he got them, then led him in and to the lower level, past Zane’s home gym, the home theater and into a full bath.
“Take a hot shower, take your time,” Darby told him, then gripped his hand. “Roy, you’re a hero.”
“I didn’t do nothing.”
“You went in the lake, trying, hoping to save someone. And when you saw he was past saving, you still brought him in. You’re a hero.”
As his eyes went damp, he shook his head. “I never liked the son of a bitch, that’s God’s truth. Liked him less since it got out he was hitting on Traci. But…”
“That only makes you more of a hero. Take your time.”
She went up to find her crew huddled together at a table, united in shock. And Brody sitting so close to Gabe they made a twin pack.
“Is he all right?” Hallie twisted her hands together, released them, twisted. “He’s hardly said a word since … since he pulled Clint Draper out of the lake.”
“He just needs some time.”
“Can you tell us what’s going on?” Ralph demanded. “I’d sure as hell like to know what’s going on.”
“Me, too, but I’ll tell you what I know.”
She didn’t sit, couldn’t. “Somebody—we have to assume Clint Draper—shot out the terrace doors to the bedroom upstairs.”
“Son of a bitch.” Ralph pounded a fist on the table, made Hallie jump, and sent his own glasses skipping down his nose. “That son of a bitch. Not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but hell with that.”
“Where’s Zane?” Brody demanded. “Is he hurt?”
“No, no. He went to get Traci’s sister. They’re going into Asheville to tell her. Before Clint came here, he painted a bunch of crap on Zane’s office building, on my place.”
“The Drapers are no good,” Hallie muttered. “Never have been, never will be. We’re going to help you fix it up, Darby, don’t you worry about that.”
“I’m in on that,” Brody said. “We’ll make it right. But … how’d he get in the lake?”
Darby let out a breath. “They found—well, Zane and Zod found where he shot from, and … You can see over there where the police tape is. There’s blood, too. He had to be with somebody, and whoever he was with must’ve hit him with a rock, then dragged him off, dumped him in the lake.”
“Don’t make a lick of sense,” Ralph added.
“No, it really doesn’t.”
“It kinda does,” Brody put in. “Could be two things that kinda do.”
Intrigued, Darby pulled up a chair, looked into Brody’s Walker-green eyes. “What two things?”
“He was probably drunk—they’ll do a tox screening and find out. But everybody knows he gets meaner and more stupid when he’s drinking. Dad’s had to lock him up a couple times for drunk and disorderly.”
Emily poured more tea. “And how would you know?”
“I’ve got ears, Mom,” he said, adding a teenage eye roll. “Anyway, whoever was mean and stupid enough to be with him when he shoots at the house was likely drunk, too, right? Could be he wanted a turn with the gun, and they tussled over it, and bam. Probably didn’t mean to kill him, but did, then what’re you gonna do, right? Dump the body. Should’ve just left it lay and took off, but drunk, stupid, and mean.”
“Put it that way,” Gabe considered, “it makes some sense. What’s the other way, Sherlock?”
Brody grinned, then shrugged. “Okay, so he’s going around tagging Zane’s office, then Darby’s house. Somebody sees him. Maybe somebody as mean as Clint Draper was, and they follow him right on up to here.”
“Why kill him?” Darby asked.
“Sometimes mean doesn’t need a reason, just opportunity. I heard Dad say that once. Either way, Dad, Silas, and the rest of them will figure it out. It’s what they do.”
“That’s right.” Standing behind her son, Emily squeezed his shoulders. “It’s what they do.”
“If it’s the second…” Gabe hesitated, drew a finger down the condensation on his glass of tea. “They’re even meaner than the Drapers. I don’t know anybody like that. Except … is Dad sure Zane’s—I mean, Graham Bigelow is still locked up?”
“He checked first thing.” Now Emily shifted a hand to Gabe’s shoulder. “He’s locked up good and tight, don’t you worry.”
But wasn’t the real worry, Darby thought, the possibility that someone in Lakeview was meaner than the Drapers?
And a killer.
* * *
After he took Stu’s clothes into evidence, Lee left him with an officer and gave him orders to shower, change, and wait in lockup. He’d be damned if he’d interview the idiot while said idiot was still stinking of sweat and stale beer and puke.
In any case, he had to notify the deceased’s family, and wouldn’t that be a goddamn picnic?
Knowing the Drapers, he took both Silas and Ginny as backup.
Horace Draper answered his knock, stood sneering with his thin gray hair buzzed to his scalp, a home-rolled cigarette tucked tight in the corner of his mouth.
The air inside, barely stirred by a couple of standing fans, still smelled of breakfast grease.
“Y’all come out here looking for my boy, I’m gonna tell you again, he’s off camping. You ain’t stepping in without a warrant.”
“We found Clint, Mr. Draper.”
Something shifted in the old man’s eyes. “All right, then you know he wasn’t nowhere around when that lying bitch he married says he smacked her. Never smacked that lazy woman in his life. Might be she coulda used it.”
He jabbed a nicotine-stained finger at Lee. “You got my boy locked up, I’m gonna have your badge for it this time.”
Lee ignored the finger, ignored the threat. “Mr. Draper, I regret to inform you, your son Clint is dead. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“That’s a stinkin’ lie!”
“His body was recovered earlier this morning from Reflection Lake.”
From behind Horace, Bea Draper began to wail, “Not my boy! Not my boy! Not my boy!”
“You hush up, woman. They’s lying!”
Lee took out his phone, brought up the crime scene photo. “Is this your son Clint, Mr. Draper?”
He saw it then, the moment when reality and the grief that came with it overtook belligerence. Draper stumbled out the door, dropped into one of the chairs on the rickety porch.
“My boy’s gone?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
Grief snapped into a wild rage that shoved Draper to his feet. “You done it!”
Before he could lunge at Lee, Silas had his arms yanked behind his back. The old man had plenty of ropy muscle with that rage fueling them. Ginny had to step in, help hold him back.
“We don’t want to put you on the ground, Mr. Draper,” she said. “We don’t want to cuff you.”
“We didn’t find him alive.” Lee spoke calmly. “The Lakeview Police Department didn’t cause his death.”
“Then who done it! My boy can swim like a shark. He didn’t fall into the cursed lake and drown. Who done it!”
“We’re investigating.”
“Investigating, my ass! Cops is nothing but corrupt all the way up to the FBI. You don’t give one good shit about me or my blood. Never have.”
“I’ll do my job. It’s best you sit down, get yourself under control. It won’t do your family any good if I
have to take you in for assaulting an officer.”
“I’ll tell you who done it. That pissant Bigelow boy goes by Walker. The one who stole my boy’s woman, got her to say lies about him. You best put him in a cell right quick, ya hear? Before me and mine find him.”
“Be careful who you threaten. Now sit down before I put you down.” Lee jerked his head to Ginny, signaling her to go inside where Bea Draper continued to wail and sob.
“Zane never hurt your boy.”
“You’d say that.”
“I know that. When your boy was killed, Zane was busy protecting Darby McCray and himself from the bullets Clint shot through the exterior doors of his bedroom, and calling the police.”
“Bullshit. My boy did no such thing. That Bigelow scum, he’d lie and you’d swear to it.”
“We found Clint’s rifle, recently fired, in the truck he took from Stu Hubble, and we dug bullets out of Zane’s bedroom walls. They’re going to match. We found Clint’s prints on the steering wheel, smeared with the paint he used to deface Zane’s office building, Darby’s house shortly before he fired the rifle. The paint was still wet. Seeing as Zane had a half dozen cops in his house about the time Clint was dumped in the lake, he’s got a damn good alibi.”
“You’d lie, they’d swear to it. Every one of those useless police.”
“You know that’s bullshit. Even you know. We have the time logged on the nine-one-one. I’ve got Stu Hubble in lockup now, and from the looks of his place when I picked him up, he and Clint got good and drunk, smoked some weed, popped some pills before Stu passed out, before Clint took it into his head to grab some paint cans, his gun, and go on his vendetta.”
He crouched down now, looked into Draper’s eyes. “You think about this. If you and yours hadn’t lied to me yesterday, your boy would be alive right now. He’d’ve had his day in court. He might’ve done some time, but he’d be alive.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah.” Lee straightened. “That’s what I thought.”
He saw the fist coming, had a half second to calculate. He let it land, took the bare knuckles on the cheekbone.
“That’ll do it. You’re under arrest, assaulting an officer.” With Silas’s help, he wrestled Draper to the ground, cuffed him, while Ginny had to shift from comforting a grieving mother to restraining a wild woman.
