Thunder at Dawn

by Jill Gregory

  “I was dumb and young and an idiot. Maybe it’s time we cleared that up,” he said.

  But she tore her hands from his grip and began backing away. “No. Don’t explain. I don’t want that. I’ve moved on, we both have, and you don’t owe me any—”

  She stumbled on something, and cried out even as she fell backward. She landed on her rump in the soft grass.

  Zach started toward her. “Are you all right?”

  But he stopped suddenly and stared down through the starlit blackness. He was staring at the darkened grass, at what had tripped her.

  Faith stared too. Horror rose in her as she felt warm stickiness on her hands and the moon drifted out from behind a cloud—and she realized what that long dark shape was.

  That’s when she started to scream.

  Chapter 15

  IT WAS 3 A.M. BEFORE THE ACTING SHERIFF, Deputy Rick Keene, the coroner, the county medical examiner, and the other deputies investigating the murder scene finished their photographs, notes, questions, and sketches, and left the crime scene on Blue Moon Mesa.

  Before heading out of the Barclay cabin, Keene paused and studied Faith, huddled white-faced and exhausted on the sofa.

  “I’ll be contacting your brother to let him know what’s going on.”

  Despite his sympathetic tone, Faith thought she saw a certain steely appraisal in his eyes—one she recognized well, even at three in the morning.

  I’m a suspect in a murder investigation. Talk about the shoe being on the other foot.

  “I’ll be calling him too,” she said wearily. “If there’s anything else I can do, you know where to find me.”

  At that moment Zach stepped through the door of the cabin. Keene’s nearly black eyes glanced from one to the other of them, then he touched his fingers to his hat and made one final statement.

  “Don’t go near that crime scene. I’ll need both of you to stop in tomorrow and go over your statements once again. It’s just routine,” he added.

  As he left and Zach closed the cabin door at last, a shudder ran through her.

  Candy Merck was dead. She’d been bound, gagged, and stabbed to death, less than twenty feet from the Barclay cabin.

  “Are you all right?” Zach sat down beside her. Hours ago, he had asked her the very same thing. Seconds before they learned that a woman they’d known for years had been murdered, her body sprawled between them in the shadowy Wyoming night.

  “I’ll be okay. I need . . . to take a shower.”

  “And you need some sleep.”

  So do you, Faith thought. He looked almost as exhausted as she felt. His hair was rumpled, and the fine lines around the corners of his eyes looked deeper, harsher against the drawn contours of his face.

  They had been questioned separately, as was standard procedure—Faith inside the cabin, Zach in the sheriff’s Crown Victoria. Even now, with Rick Keene’s empty coffee cup sitting on the side table, the smell of Deputy Marsden’s Brut aftershave wafting through the cabin, and the knowledge of the yellow crime-scene tape circling a bloody section of the mesa, it all seemed unreal. Like a harrowing other-dimension dream, a nightmare from a horror film.

  “Who could have done this?” She gazed at Zach through aching eyes.

  “Let’s start with the guy who was lurking around here the other night.”

  She sighed. “I’m not sure Keene believed you about that.”

  “He wrote it down.”

  “They always write everything down. But he looked skeptical.” She dragged a hand through her hair, tension throbbing through her. “I should have called and reported it when it happened. You were right about that.”

  Guilt rubbed at her. What if it had been the murderer prowling around the cabin that night? If she’d notified the police, maybe he would have been caught. Maybe Candy would still be alive . . .

  “Hey, we searched for him, remember?” Zach seemed to be reading her thoughts. “We didn’t find any trace of him. The police might not have either. By the time they arrived, he probably would have been long gone.”

  She nodded, but a bleakness filled her heart. “They suspect us, you know. At least for now. That’s how it works. Everyone’s a suspect until they’re ruled out. We found the body . . . we knew the victim . . .”

  Her voice trailed off. The victim. Candy. With her too-blond hair and overly defined mouth. Her rich laugh and affinity for low-cut purple shirts and skintight black jeans.

  Faith had never liked her very much. They’d gotten along fine back in those days when they were teenagers, but they’d never really connected. Now grief and guilt and shock raged within her, and she covered her face with her hands, squeezing her eyes shut, trying to keep the tears inside.

  “Faith.” Zach drew her into his arms. He held her close, stroking her hair as she fell against his chest and the tears tumbled down her cheeks.

  “I know, baby, I know. Let it go.”

  She felt so fragile, so soft in his arms. Her grief tore a hole through him. He was remembering the last time he’d seen Candy—how he’d left her drinking alone.

  Damn it. He’d considered her a friend, nothing more, and he sure as hell hadn’t encouraged her to think there was anything more, but . . . hell.

  His gut clenched as he remembered the blood-slicked grass and the stab wounds that had made a horror of her body.

  “They’ll catch him, Faith,” he said quietly. “Whoever did this—he’ll pay for what he did to Candy.”

  It took a while, but her sobs eventually slowed. He felt her shoulders stop shaking and stroked her hair as she lay, spent and quiet, in his arms. When she stirred at last and peered up at him, he felt a pull of tenderness deep in his gut.

  He loosened his hold, putting some distance between them.

  “How about a drink?” Zach cleared his throat. “I could sure use one.”

  “There’s wine chilling in the fridge.” She wiped at her damp eyes. “Glasses in the cabinet. Would you mind getting them?” She shivered. “I need to take a shower. Get out of these clothes . . .”

  Her gaze trailed down to the blood on her boots, on her jeans . . . and she felt sick.

  Considering all the cases she’d prosecuted, and all the brutal photographs of death she’d seen and presented in excruciating detail to a jury, she should have been hardened to it. But this was different. This victim was someone she knew . . . and she’d fallen over the body. Candy’s blood was on her clothes, her skin, perhaps in her hair. She began to shiver again.

  “Faith, are you sure you’re okay? You’re not going to faint in the shower, are you?”

  She shook her head. Pull yourself together, she thought wearily. You deal with death for a living. “I’m not usually a wuss . . . it’s just . . .”

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  By the time she’d showered, sudsed her hair, and rinsed off the blood and sweat and grime of the night, she was beginning to feel a little more in control. She towel-dried her hair, ran a comb through it, then wrapped herself in a thick white robe and padded barefoot back to the living room.

  Zach was talking to someone on his cell phone, two glasses of white zinfandel on the coffee table before him.

  “Yeah, Neely knows you’re coming. She has the security system on, but I want you to check everything out. Then make yourself comfortable in the spare bedroom. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He glanced at her as she took a seat beside him on the sofa. “Feel better?”

  “Yes. Who was that?”

  “Gabe Hawthorn, my foreman. I spoke to my housekeeper while you were showering.”

  She stared at him. “You woke them at this hour?”

  “Dillon gets nightmares sometimes and comes into my room in the middle of the night. I didn’t want him to find me gone and be afraid. When I’m going to be away all night, I tell him in advance.”

  “You’re going to be away all night?” She gaped at him. “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere.” H
e handed her a glass of wine. “I’m staying right here.”

  Surprise left her speechless for a moment. “I don’t think so,” she said at last.

  “Let’s not argue about it.” He shot her a wry smile. “We’ve been getting along so well.”

  “Let’s keep it that way. You know, I’m fine, Zach, really I am.” She took a gulp of wine. “I was shaken up at first, and in shock, but . . . I’m not afraid. You don’t have to babysit me, for God’s sake—”

  “Save your breath, Barclay.” His tone was unexpectedly gentle. “I’m sleeping right here on this sofa until daybreak. And unless you think you can physically evict me, there’s no point discussing it.”

  God, he was infuriating. But . . . strangely comforting to have around. She was startled by how much she appreciated having him here with her right now.

  “The killer won’t be back. They don’t usually return to the scene of the crime the same night,” she muttered, giving him one last chance to bow out. “And I do have a gun, as I told you earlier. There’s no reason—”

  She broke off. Zach was shaking his head.

  “We need to talk about something, Faith.”

  “What?”

  “There’s something you haven’t addressed. You didn’t even bother mentioning it to Keene. I’m talking about those phone calls you’ve been getting from Hank Bayman.”

  Faith’s nerves jangled at the name. She gripped the stem of her wineglass. “It’s irrelevant. Bayman would have no reason to murder Candy. It’s his wife he’s mad at—and me. He’s an anger freak, an abuser. A bully and a stalker, definitely, but not a killer—”

  “Candy’s body was found no more than twenty feet from your front door. Maybe he was trying to tell you something.”

  She fell silent. The same thought had occurred to her briefly but she’d pretty much dismissed it. It just didn’t fit.

  “It’s too much of a stretch,” she told Zach at last. “If Bayman wanted to scare me or hurt me, he’d come after me.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Pretty sure.” But a tiny voice inside of her whispered that she couldn’t completely rule Bayman out. The man loved fear. Loved to create it, to draw it out, to watch it in his victim’s eyes. Susan had told her that sometimes he would talk to her, tell her exactly what he was going to do with the baseball bat, or the knife, then watch the terror build in her and smile like the devil when she began to cry.

  Had Candy’s murderer taunted her too? Told her what he was going to do? Was it Bayman, had he gone over the edge? Maybe he was getting off on another woman’s fear, trying to send Faith herself a message at the same time, to make her afraid before he even came for her. So afraid that when he showed himself she’d blurt out Susan’s whereabouts . . .

  As if that would ever happen, she thought, then pushed the entire theory away. It was unlikely—highly unlikely. Candy’s murder was about Candy. She’d either been killed by someone with a grudge against her, or she’d seen something she wasn’t supposed to see, gotten picked up by the wrong stranger . . .

  She drained the last of her wine, aware that Zach was studying her. She felt much too vulnerable to his acutely perceptive gaze. She was simply too exhausted, too shaken right now to keep up her defenses—much less to try to analyze the motive behind Candy’s killing.

  “I need to get some sleep, Zach. Tomorrow I’ll have to go into the sheriff’s office for more questioning—and so will you. God, I wish Ty was here.”

  He nodded. She looked paler than he’d ever seen her—and like a spring breeze would knock her over. Tense and fragile and exhausted beyond words. “It’s going to be all right, Faith. We didn’t do anything wrong and as soon as they get a little deeper into the investigation, they’ll realize that.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Faith wanted to believe that Rick Keene would follow all the threads, but she’d had experience with too many cops who got a notion in their head and then tended to ignore everything else.

  “You’ve been seen with Candy quite a bit lately,” she said in a low tone as she carried her glass over to the sink. “And I had words with her at the Tumbleweed. There were witnesses. And now . . . God, Zach, we found the body—together.”

  “We have ironclad alibis,” he reminded her. “The waiter and dozens of other people saw us at the restaurant. We can be placed positively in Casper from eight o’clock until the time it took to drive back here after dinner . . .”

  He broke off suddenly at the frown creasing her brow.

  “And it doesn’t mean anything, does it?” he said. Why hadn’t he realized it before? “Our entire alibi depends on the time of death.”

  Faith nodded. “If the medical examiner finds she was killed earlier, before we even left for Casper . . .”

  “We could still be suspects,” he finished for her. “Suspects who provided themselves with an alibi before pretending to ‘discover’ the body.”

  “Yes.” There was no point in denying it. “That could be a problem. But . . .” She took a deep breath. “Since we didn’t kill her, there won’t be any physical evidence to tie us to the crime.”

  Saying the words aloud, knowing they were about Candy, struck her anew and she felt her temples throb. “Who would want to hurt Candy?” she whispered. Against her will, her brain was kicking into prosecutor mode. “Is there some psycho roaming around Thunder Creek—or was it personal? A real estate client who thinks he got a bad deal, some man she threw over or cheated on—”

  “Hey. Madam Prosecutor. This isn’t your case. You don’t have to solve it.”

  “It’s what I do,” she sighed. “I can’t help it. And I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “Let’s wait and see what kind of physical evidence the police come up with.”

  “As if they’ll tell us,” Faith murmured. She struggled to suppress a yawn. It wasn’t always a good thing to know the way the police and DA worked. Sometimes, despite the best intentions, justice managed to get all screwed up.

  Zach went to her and took her arm. “Come on—bedtime. The investigation can wait until morning. You need to get some rest.”

  She knew he was right. She was too exhausted now to even think straight. A few hours’ sleep would put everything in sharper focus.

  “If you insist on staying, I need to at least get you a blanket and a pillow. Wait here.”

  She emerged from her bedroom a moment later with both and dropped them on the sofa, then glanced over and met his eyes.

  “You’re sure you want to do this? You must have a very comfortable bed in your own home. I doubt this sofa is on a par with it.”

  “You got a bulldozer? Because you’ll need one to get me out of here.”

  Something trembled inside her. A smile touched her lips. It’s gratitude, she told herself wearily, that’s all. Gratitude that she wouldn’t be alone here for the rest of the night after finding Candy’s body.

  “Sleep well, Zach.” Her voice was soft. Too soft. She hurried into her bedroom and closed the door.

  Leaning against it, Faith tried to block out the memory of his arms around her, of his comforting strength and warmth and steadiness, of his deep, even voice.

  Stop it. You’re losing it. You have to stop thinking about him.

  But the alternative was thinking about Candy. About what had happened to her, and what kind of monster was loose in Thunder Creek.

  Dropping her robe over the back of a chair, she slipped on a gray camisole and matching drawstring pants, then sank like a stone into bed.

  That’s when she realized she hadn’t locked the door. But she knew there was no need.

  What separated her and Zach was a lot stronger than any bolt or lock, she told herself in the darkness.

  And she couldn’t forget that.

  Any more than she could forget what had happened to Candy.

  Chapter 16

  “I HEARD DEPUTY KEENE QUESTIONED OWEN Carey for the third time yesterday.” Patti set down her half-emp
ty coffee cup in Bessie’s Diner and looked across the booth at Faith with worried eyes. “What do you think that’s all about?”

  “I wish I knew.” Faith shook her head. “It’s not as if Owen would ever hurt Candy. Even Keene must know that. It’s probably just routine,” she added quickly, seeing the concern on Patti’s face. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  Across from her, seated beside Patti, Bessie Templeton snorted. “Routine? I’m not so sure, Faith, honey. They questioned Owen for nearly four hours. Now, I’ve known that young man all his life—he’s no more a murderer than I am.”

  It was the afternoon lull in the diner and Bessie had taken a break, sinking her small spry frame into the booth with them to sip tea and nibble at a slice of one of the strawberry rhubarb pies her granddaughter Katy had whisked from the oven this morning.

  Candy Merck’s funeral had been yesterday—a grim affair attended by nearly the entire town. No one could talk of anything else.

  In a town this small and close-knit, every death was like a death in the family. But the murder of a young woman, one of Thunder Creek’s own? No one could imagine any of their friends or neighbors committing such a crime. It had to have been a stranger, a madman, a monster. And everyone in town drew protectively closer together at the common threat to their tranquil community.

  Poor Ned Merck, Candy’s widowed father, who owned Merck’s Hardware, was walking around in a grief-stricken fog at the loss of his only child. Silently he endured the sympathy of friends, nodding woodenly, his face the color of dead gray leaves, but he seemed unable to shed a single tear.

  “Bob saw Owen at the gas station after he was questioned this last time and he said Owen looked pretty shaken up.” Patti stirred sugar into her decaf. “Keene was really curious why Owen had Candy’s car keys, and why, if Candy had gone out for air, Owen didn’t call the police when she didn’t come back. I guess he kept hammering away at that, over and over.”

  “Well, did Owen tell him what he told me?” Bessie asked, frowning. “He looked all over for her in that parking lot and finally he concluded she’d gotten a ride home with someone else. He was just hanging onto those keys until she wanted them back.”