Thanks to the portable cherry atop her Durango and the heavy boot she'd applied to the gas, it took Kate twenty-two minutes to reach the outskirts of Braxton. Another three had her abandoning the interstate off-ramp and swinging around the backside of town to turn onto the gravel road that twisted through the outer rolling hills of her jurisdiction to reach the Weaver farm. It wasn't until the Durango was headed up the lane that she realized that Jakob Miller's wooded property—and the dump site for the first line of brown paper bags that Staff Sergeant Burke had left around town—was just beyond the vast spread of thriving winter wheat to her right.
Kate shook off the eerie coincidence as she parked her Durango behind the sheriff's sedan.
Other than Lou's official wheels, the medical examiner's wagon and Nash Weaver's gleaming-white, extended-cab Ram 350 and older, significantly more beat-up gray Chevy pickup, there were no other vehicles within the driveway's doublewide spread of gravel. Nor did the two cars slotted in with the farming equipment along the side of the barn to her left appear out of place.
Lou and Nash stood on the covered porch that ran the length of the two-story clapboard house to her right, talking. Her former high school classmate acknowledged her arrival with a half-hearted wave, then headed into his house as her boss turned around to descend the wooden steps and cross the lawn.
Kate hauled her stainless-steel crime scene kit from the rear hatch of the Durango. She was setting it on the gravel as the sheriff's stocky girth reached her side. Lou didn't even bat an eye at the sight of her matching police uniform on an off day.
Odd.
Almost as much as the dearth of official vehicles in the drive.
She glanced around, noting the distinct lack of Braxton PD personnel as well. They were light on deputies at the moment—but not this light.
"Where are Drake and Owen?"
The sheriff shook the thick crop of gray that insulated his scalp. "They're both still 'bout two hours out. I promised I'd hold down the fort this weekend. Owen and his girlfriend were headed to Fayetteville for the last game of the season. Drake's a closet LSU fan, so they got him a ticket too—so's they could watch him squirm."
Yeah, she wasn't too sure about that. Given that the Tigers were having a great year, and the Razorbacks a crappy one, Drake might've been the one chortling and rubbing it in on the drive home—had Lou not made that call.
As it was, she and Lou would be the ones squirming.
Hell, she already was.
The wind had shifted as she'd reached back into the Durango's rear hatch to grab the sack of evidence markers. The odor now wafting in on the chilly early afternoon breeze? The multi-layered stench of burnt human flesh.
Kate pushed aside far too many memories as she and Lou turned in tandem, instinctively keeping the breeze—and that nauseating smell—to their backs for as long as possible. "So, what have we got, boss?"
Lou used an already gloved hand to lower the SUV's hatch for her. "Not much. Weaver's been on a pastor's retreat for a solid week."
"Was his absence publicized?"
"Yep. In the church bulletin and on the website."
Meaning whoever'd torched the body had probably known he or she had time and privacy on their side. Worse, with the damp weather they'd been experiencing? Anyone spotting smoke from this side of Braxton would've assumed a neighbor had fired up the burn barrel—but they'd have been too far away to pinpoint which neighbor, much less offer a timeline on that distinctive smell.
Lou's thoughts must've traveled down the same dead-end lane as hers, because he sighed as he tugged a spare set of latex gloves from his trouser pocket and passed them to her. "Yep, we got bupkis for witnesses. And that ain't all. Weaver's Goin' Prayin' notice went up on the website a full two months back. They been repostin' it in the church bulletin almost as long. The man got home 'bout an hour and a half ago. The wind hadn't shifted yet, so he didn't notice the smell when he drove up. Since he'd just picked up his lab from the kid who was watchin' him, he brought the dog straight in to feed him. Once the lab finished, he let him out to do his business—and saw the body. Well, he didn't know it was a body 'til he got closer."
Kate set the bag of markers down on the gravel beside her crime kit so she could don the gloves the sheriff had provided. "Did Nash touch it?"
"Nope. Got nowhere near close enough. He swears he stopped when he reached the base of the hill. That puts him a good ten, twelve yards shy of the body. What with how he was still shakin' like a meth head comin' down off the chalk when I drove up, I'm inclined to believe him."
So was she, and not because Nash had taken up the pulpit since her return to town. She'd been Nash's partner way back in Mr. Barring's tenth grade anatomy class. Two weeks into the syllabus, she'd ended up with a front row seat—and smell—to a then sixteen-year-old Nash's introduction to their furry, four-legged dissection subject and the formaldehyde it'd been preserved within.
Hopefully, the thirty-one-year-old man Nash had grown into hadn't been enjoying a meal of his own while he'd been waiting on his dog. "Did he see anything else? Notice anything out of the ordinary in the garage, house or his barns?"
Lou shook his head. "Nope. I made a point to walk him through all of 'em while we were waitin' for you, too."
"What about phone calls? Email? Snail mail?"
Though Nash's church had a hundred regulars at best, she couldn't ignore the religious fire-and-brimstone angle. Not with a charred body waiting on her...and the fact that the congregation's previous home had gone up in flames the year before.
The frown marring Lou's craggy features deepened. "You think it's connected to last August?"
While the town fire chief had leaned toward accidental in his final report, he hadn't been able to rule out arson, had he? "I don't know, boss—do you?"
"Christ, I hope not. That's all we'd need after that shitstorm we just waded through with all them bags. Not that we need any more dead bodies in town, no matter what the cause."
"Amen." And then there was the rest.
Kate glanced over Lou's shoulder as he reached into his shirt pocket to retrieve his chew. Jakob Miller's treeline loomed closer than it ever had when she and Nash were teenagers as Lou dug out a heathy pinch of tobacco from the tin and shoved it into the side of his mouth. Two murders in the past decade plus. Then those endless lines of sacks.
And now this?
Dumped on the next property over?
The ominous feeling she'd had while driving up the lane returned.
The sheriff followed her stare to Miller's demarcating thicket of mixed pines and balder, deciduous trees. "Yep. It's all stickin' in my craw, too."
Kate shook off the feeling as best as she could as she leaned down to scoop her crime kit and the bag of evidence markers off the gravel. "All right, then." Gut-churning odor or not, "We'd best get to it."
The distinctive stench of burnt human intensified as she followed Lou across the dormant front lawn and around to the back of the house.
The blackened source of that smell lay directly below and roughly thirty feet out from the base of the hill upon which the home had been built, and—as Lou had stated on the phone—just inside Nash's current crop of sprouted and already thriving winter wheat.
Several feet further to the right of the charred corpse lay an oversized heavy duty plastic body bag, already zipped open and waiting. Between the two, Braxton's dark-blue flannel and denim-clad medical examiner.
The afternoon winter sun glinted off Tonga's sleek ebony scalp as he turned away from his own crime kit to kneel beside the body.
Kate glanced at Lou as they headed down the hill. "Where's Nester?"
While she hadn't seen their forensic guru's van in the drive or parked beside the barn, Lou had been known to swing by Nester's place and grab him on occasion, leaving one of the department's part-time crime scene techs to bring up the rear with the official wheels and gear.
The sheriff had phoned her a good half an hour ago.
So where was Nester?
Lou shook his head as they reached the base of the hill and breached the crop line. "He'll be an hour behind Owen and Drake. Nester stopped in late yesterday to let me know he was takin' his crew to his cabin in the Ozarks for some fishin' 'n' forgettin', now that the forensic hustle of the last case has settled down."
Great. Talk about timing. While she understood the deep-seated need to decompress, that left them with just Seth. Only from Lou's sheepish shrug, they didn't have Deputy Armstrong and his dwindling days with the department either.
"I didn't have the heart to make Seth smell what's out here. Not after what he found in that damned crematorium. I told him to head to the station and hang out there in case we needed anythin'."
It was just her, Lou and Tonga for the duration then.
Given the pinched features of the medical examiner's face as they reached the body, they were in danger of losing him too. And it wouldn't be in another year and to Tonga's well-earned retirement. It would be in less than thirty seconds and to the appalling close-up view that went with the smell the ME was currently leaning over.
Lou had been right about the setting, wrong on the description of the corpse. The body hadn't been reduced to an unholy crisp. Though not for lack of some bastard trying.
Somehow, that made it worse.
The mass of cooked flesh lying amid a haphazard pile of ash, mostly burnt tree branches and scorched wheat appeared all too human. Though the right side of the body was deeply charred—including the eyeless head, torso and abdomen—parts of the victim's thighs, lower legs and the outermost portion of the upper left arm were still fleshy and almost...normal. Both arms also displayed the characteristic triple flexion or "pugilists' pose" Kate had noted on far too many burnt corpses in Afghanistan and Iraq—military and civilian.
And the stench.
Even if she hadn't spotted the dehydrated curve of what remained of the victim's left breast, along with the strands of singed hair that were caught up at the base of a nearby shriveled stalk of wheat, she'd have been able to hazard a guess as to gender from the overpowering odors of sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide that were still being churned up with each breeze. "It's a woman."
The intensity of the expended sulfur trapped within the damp Arkansas air pointed to one with a serious amount of hair too.
Tonga nodded as he came to his feet. "Agreed. I have Vick's Vapor Rub in my bag for the smell, but—" A resigned sigh escaped. "—it won't help."
He was right. As putrid as those sulfur byproducts were, Kate could make out the disconcerting scent of grilled meat that clung to the layers of charred muscle and fat—along with the metallic tang of cooked blood, and more, from what appeared to be a still pink kidney bursting from within the split of blackened abdominal flesh.
But that wasn't the worst of it. It was the latest memory that had seared in with the sight of that blackened split and the rest of the harrowing odors that came with it.
Corporal Babin and Sergeant Gault.
Babin had been driving the Humvee in Afghanistan that fateful day. Gault had been teasing Babin about how she'd finally be able to impress her dad with her chauffeur skills when they returned home. Max had been smiling and jabbing his elbow into Kate's ribs and winking, because he was certain she was going to have to pay up on the bet they'd placed over the romance that had been budding between the younger soldiers in the preceding months.
A split second later—that earth-shattering blast.
Flipping upside down in the blink of an eye and hanging there, suspended amid melting rubber and splintered steel—and the overpowering stench of Babin's burning hair and bubbling skin. The searing agony in her own shredded face. Struggling to breathe though the thickening smoke, a crushed clavicle and fractured ribs.
And then, as she'd identified the source of the coppery warmth dripping into her eyes, her shattered heart.
"Kato?"
She flinched—and jerked her fingers from the thick scars knotted along the upper ridge of her right collarbone beneath her jacket. She could still see Max. Feel him standing beside her. For a full second, nearly two, she could've sworn that his welcoming arms had been wrapped about her, bracing her.
Kate swallowed the knot of grief clogging her throat and nodded as the sheriff's face replaced her friend's. Lou looked as green and rattled as she felt.
"You okay?"
She nodded numbly.
"You sure? Thought I'd lost you for a moment there."
He had. And they both knew it.
She faked a smile and tacked on a pretty lie for good measure. "It's all good."
She set her crime kit and the bag of markers down between two rows of sprouted wheat before Lou could follow up the pity dulling the soft brown in his eyes.
Tonga's too.
"So, boss, what do we know about her?"
Lou took the hint and turned to aim a stream of tobacco juice at the three-inch tower of mud built up around a fresh crawdad hole several feet away. Kate made a mental note to mark the tower for crime scene exclusion as the man shrugged.
"Other than that she's a she? Not a busted thing. What about you? You see anythin' yet?"
It was more what she didn't see. "There are no visible signs of a struggle." And with the remnants of those carefully arranged tree branches amid the surrounding virgin blades of wheat and loosened dirt, there would be. "I'm also pretty sure I smell a petroleum-based accelerant, but I can't be positive." The stench of the sulfur byproducts was too strong; they'd have to wait for confirmation in the chemical analysis.
Either way, she was all but certain that this was not their primary crime scene. "Unless the woman was unconscious, she had to have been killed elsewhere. As to how?" Kate shook her head. "Not a clue."
Unless Tonga saw something she'd missed, they'd be waiting on the autopsy to confirm that too.
Kate pointed toward the tip of the metal strip poking out from between the woman's relatively intact upper left arm and remaining breast. "And there's that."
Lou bent closer. "Is that a piece of wire?"
She nodded. "Manufacturers weave them into the cups of bras for added support. The substantial diameter of that one suggests her cups were on the larger size."
"Our victim was probably well-endowed then."
"Yup." The underwire's presence revealed something else, as well. "She was also at least partially clothed when she was set on fire." If they were lucky, the chemical analysis would provide specific information as to the type of fabric the woman had been wearing. Though Kate doubted it would do them much good.
Both Lou and Tonga moved deeper into the field as she retrieved her smartphone from her utility belt. She opened the camera app and snapped a slew of wide-angle shots of the body and the dump site in general, then moved in for a series of close-ups.
Since Lou had been first on the scene, he'd have already taken the official photos. But he wouldn't mind if she followed up his efforts with duplicates of her own. Ever since the department had lost a set of accident photos due to a digital camera glitch six years earlier, he actively encouraged it.
As she returned her phone to its pouch, Tonga skirted around the right side of the corpse and crouched beside the remains of a scorched branch to better examine that protruding kidney.
She knelt beside him. "What have you got?"
The ME shook his head. "Not much more than you. The body has already cooled. It's equal to the surrounding temperature, in fact."
That meant the humid air alone was responsible for zealously trapping that godawful smell. It also meant they were looking at a crime timeline of twenty-four hours or more.
Time of death was going to come down to the insects.
Kate stifled the urge to push Tonga for speculation. She'd worked enough accidents and natural causes deaths with the man to know he wouldn't be weighing in on larval activity until he'd finished collecting his samples and had brought them all back to the lab and examined them at length.
"Cooper! Get back here!"
Kate glanced over her shoulder in time to see her old classmate-turned-preacher grab the collar of his energetic yellow lab and nudge the dog through the slider.
She stiffened as Nash turned to wave an apology down at them.
Shit.
Jackknifing to her feet, she whirled around to stand motionless as the suspicion simmered in. It bubbled into a full-blown boil as she judged the line of sight from where she, Lou and Tonga were standing and up to the view from the deck.
If the body behind them hadn't been lying precisely where it was—
"Kato? What is it?"
She spun back to Lou. "He wanted us to find her. Today. The moment Nash returned."
"The killer?"
"Yes."
"How can you be so sure?"
She turned around again and pointed to the upward slope of the clapboard's back lawn. "Like Tonga said, the body's cold. It's been lying out in this field for a day at least, possibly longer. You also said Nash just got back; that folks knew he'd be gone. Whoever gathered up these branches and used them to set this woman on fire, did so knowing that too. But he also placed the body exactly here, so that when Nash returned and let his dog out, he'd see her."
"Shit. I been standin' here prayin' some jealous asshole decided his woman done him wrong and lashed out in his rage, then tried to cover it up." Another stream of spittle hit that tower of mud. "But that ain't it, is it? This ain't a one-off, so-called crime a passion."
"I don't think so." In fact, she was beginning to suspect far worse.
Burnt corpses didn't bear any resemblance to bloodless, shrink-wrapped body parts. But that ominous feeling she'd been getting had returned, and it was growing. Twisting. And she did not like the path it was taking. Because this entire crime scene was starting to feel familiar. Planned.
Her wrist began to itch.
She forced herself to ignore it. To focus on the case.
This case.
For some reason, the bastard who'd killed the woman at her feet hadn't wanted the charred remains to rot away, unnoticed.
Nor had the killer set this woman on fire solely to obscure her identity—if that outcome had entered his twisted agenda at all.
Too much thought had gone into this dump. Too much effort. Not only had Nash's house been vacant, the body had been laid out just past the first row of wheat. Given that the only boot prints in the field belonged to her, Tonga and Lou, the reason was obvious: the killer had been intent on concealing evidence of his own footprints. Someone that meticulous and determined would've known to add an old mattress or a good half a cord of kindling instead of a nest of two-inch branches beneath the body to ensure that it burned consistently and completely. Nor would a killer that smart have left the remains where some small-town preacher would be able to spot it within minutes of his return home—unless he'd wanted just that outcome.
Were they looking at a fire and brimstone connection, after all?
"Sheriff? Deputy? I'm ready to move her."
"I got it." Lou stepped in front of her, using his girth to cut her off before she could argue.
Despite the fresh wave of pity washing his frown, she was grateful. Not only was the itch clawing at her resolve, it had spread around her entire wrist, completely encircling it.
Lord only knew what would've happened if she'd had to physically handle the source of that smell.
Kate caved into the need and slipped her fingers beneath the cuff of her jacket, discreetly rubbing at the band of abraded flesh that'd barely begun to heal over as she headed for her forensic gear. By the time she'd bent down to retrieve several evidence markers from their bag, the itch had calmed enough for her to concentrate on the job at hand.
Namely, the singed hairs she'd spotted upon her arrival.
She slipped the markers into her jacket pocket and unlocked her crime kit to select a pair of tweezers and several collection envelopes from within. She deposited the first tented number beside the crawdad tower Lou had been targeting to tag the man's tobacco spittle for exclusion, then approached the strands of inky hair that had gotten caught up at the base of that nearby stalk of wheat.
Placing a second tented marker down beside the strands, she snapped several photos, then used her tweezers to transfer the hair to one of the envelopes.
She was still kneeling as the men lifted the body.
Was it her imagination, or had something white fallen from the corpse?
Curious, she waited until Lou and Tonga had carried their burden over to the body bag and gently set it within, then closed in on the dump site. The dirt where the body had lain was scorched, the branches that'd been used to jumpstart the fire completely reduced to ash...except for a single stone gleaming up at her.
She added another evidence marker and snapped a photo, then bent to snag the rock.
Lou reached her side as she stood, using his own gloved fingers to shield his view from the glare of the winter sun behind her. "Whatcha got, Kato?"
"A stone." She flipped it over. It was roughly an inch and a half in diameter, and blackened on the opposite side like the dirt in front of her.
Had it gotten hung up within the seam of the woman's legs while the killer was preparing to torch her? Or had the stone come from the primary crime scene? The one they'd yet to locate?
Lou squinted down at her palm. "That there's a milky quartz. Had a rock collection as a kid. Was even into lapidary for a couple a years. Those stones are pretty, but they ain't worth squat. Won't help our case neither. Quartz is the most common mineral on the planet. Pieces get smoothed out and polished up over time from all the runnin' water in streams and the like." The sheriff shrugged as he straightened. "There's probably a hundred others just like that one in this field alone."
He was right, about all of it. Especially since Braxton and its entire, outlying acreage had once been subject to the ebb and flow of the Arkansas River.
But this stone? Something about it didn't sit quite right with her. For one, it was too round. Too polished. Too...perfect.
And wasn't there something in the Bible about women and stoning?
She'd have asked Lou, but he'd attended church even less often than she and her dad. Seth, however, would've been able to spout chapter and verse.
She'd have to drop by the station on her way home.
Until then, the rock had been wedged into a crevice created by their victim while she was on fire. That meant it was going to the lab.
Lou's phone pinged as she used a second envelope to bag the quartz.
Kate caught the sheriff's scowl as he closed his text app. "What's wrong?"
He shot another stream of tobacco at that marked crawdad tower. "Weaver was frettin' about his congregation earlier, and with good cause. He mentioned a phone tree, so I gave the go ahead to fire it up and see if all his folks were accounted for."
"And are they?"
"Yep." Lou's scowl deepened as he shoved his phone into his pocket. "Don't get me wrong; I'm head over heels they're all okay. It's just—" He waved a hand at the corpse nestled inside the unzipped bag. "With those prints of hers charred off, identifyin' that poor woman's gonna be a task and a half."
Kate nodded. And then some.
While there was enough viable flesh to obtain DNA, a closely related genetic profile would need to be waiting in the database for the computer to cough up an instant match to the woman or a traceable family member.
That left dental work. But since there was no centralized dental X-ray database in the country, or even the state, that was going to take time and legwork. Nor would they be guaranteed a match there either. Especially since the bastard they were after had proven himself sharp enough to have disposed of the body far from where he'd killed—and possibly farther yet from where the victim's former dentist worked.
The only thing they had going for them was the dump site itself. Since Nash's farm was in the middle of nowhere, even by Braxton standards, the odds were good the killer had a personal connection to this specific field and/or the person who owned it.
But if not?
She didn't even want to consider that possibility.
Kate sighed as Tonga finished packing up his ME's kit. From the slump to the man's shoulders, the depressing reality of the coming autopsy was already setting in as he gently pulled the bag's plastic flap over the victim and began to zip it.
He finished sealing the bag and retrieved his kit. "I'll be back shortly."
Kate returned Tonga's nod as he headed across the field and up the sloped lawn to prepare the back of his wagon for its coming cargo.
She faced her own crime kit and tucked the pair of sealed envelopes within. As she regained her feet, she spotted a pinpoint of light glittering from a nearby stalk of wheat. Intrigued, she made a beeline for the plant.
The glitter had disappeared the moment she'd moved. She maintained her focus and kept walking. Since her target stalk was a good three rows of wheat beyond the section of scorched earth and deeper into the field, her coming prize was bound to be another specimen of milky quartz. That, or a plowed-up shard of old glass.
Or...nothing.
She couldn't see anything but green as she bent to study the stalk. The plant in question was as crisp and upright as the ones surrounding it. So what had caught her eye? She bent lower, grasping the blades and gently spreading them apart, frowning as something red slid deeper into the plant.
"Whatcha got now, Kato?"
No idea. Yet. "Can you grab my tweezers? I left them in my kit."
"Sure thing."
While she was waiting, she pulled another evidence marker from her jacket pocket and set it down next to the stalk in question, then snapped several photographs, just in case whatever she'd spotted was connected to their case after all.
Lou rejoined her as she finished the photos, tweezers in hand, along with a fresh collection envelope.
She glanced up. "I thought I saw something glitter."
"Probably another bit of quartz."
"Probably." Except she'd swear the flash had been red. She accepted the tweezers, carefully slipping the tips down between the blades of the plant to grip something small and solid.
Lou's whistle drifted between them as she sat upright. "I'll be damned. It's an earring."
Kate nodded as she deposited the crusted stud into the envelope he was holding open, then stood. Definitely an earring. But as to whether the gem crowning the top of the gold post was real or not, that was for someone else to determine.
Jewelry was not her thing. She'd rarely come across it in eight years as an Army cop, even these last three and a half as a civilian deputy.
As to how this piece had landed this far from the body, that she understood. The fat inside burning flesh tended to spit and pop as it cooked off. The blackened bit of skin clinging to the base of the stud suggested its volatile point of origin.
DNA would confirm it.
Lou peered inside the envelope for several moments before tipping his head toward the tweezers in her hand. "Can I borrow those?"
"Sure."
He used the tips to grip the base of the stud, an honest-to-God curve overtaking the man's lips as he held the gem up toward the afternoon sun.
Why, she had no idea. Bit of blackened skin and childhood rock collection or not, she did not want to think about why that particular stone was tinted with that particular shade.
Lou's smile actually deepened as he slipped the stone back into the envelope. "This here's a diamond, Kato—a pink one. I'll bet my pension on it."
That explained his lack of nausea over the shade...and his beaming expression. Overpriced chips of ice weren't just some mythical girl's best friend. Cops of both sexes had been known to buddy up to them too. Especially if the chip in question had been found at a crime scene.
Diamonds tended to come with a microscopic serial number inscribed on the girdle of the stone.
And with that number came a registered owner.
But would this tinted chip come with one?
Based on the certified grin that overtook Lou's face as he sealed the flap to the collection envelope, he believed so. "The heck with quartz—this is a rock worth finding. We're lookin' at IDing that poor woman in days now, not weeks. Ya done it again, Kato."
She shook her head as she accepted the envelope so she could label it. "Nester and his team would've found it."
"Maybe. But what with how far that stone was launched durin' the burnin'? And where it landed?" The sheriff shook his head. "I doubt it."
She finished labeling the envelope and held it back out to the sheriff.
Lou didn't take it. Worse, his smile had bled down to a deep, dark frown.
As she followed his line of sight, she realized why. The cuffs to both sleeves of her Braxton PD jacket had ridden up her forearms while she'd been bent over, rooting through that stalk of wheat. But it was the band of skin now visible around her left wrist that had captured her boss' attention.
It was tinted several shades darker than that diamond she'd bagged, and definitely due to smeared, freshly dried blood. Hers.
For a moment, she was afraid Lou would demand to know what had caused the abrasions. The fear mutated to terror—because he didn't. There was no need.
He already knew.
The urge to grab Max's watch from her pocket nearly felled her. And then the itch set in.
Make that clawed.
She forced herself to slide her left hand in front of her abdomen and held it there, strangling her wrist with the concealing fingers of her right as she kicked herself for not listening to Dr. Manning. The shrink had cornered her after she'd hung up from Lou's call and before she'd been able to escape his office. Manning had politely read her the riot act again about grounding techniques taken to the point of self-harm.
It didn't matter that the shrink was right; she'd still been pissed.
But the doc had also had a solution.
Manning had suggested that she stop on the way here and pick up a tube of ointment and an ace bandage. He thought that, with her wrist wrapped even after it was healed, she'd be able to wear the watch, since the twisting sensation would be dulled enough to keep her from using the accompanying pain to tune out.
It would've been a quick stop to make too.
But with each gas station she'd passed upon leaving Fort Leaves, the reality of an already dwindling shortened winter day had bucked up against the ironclad experience of just how long it took to canvass an outdoor crime scene and scour it for evidence.
She wished she'd taken the time to stop now. Because Lou was still staring.
Like the shrink, the sheriff knew what she'd been doing to her wrist, all right—and why. It was in the murky depths of his eyes. They'd begun to glisten. His attention finally shifted to the sealed black bag several feet away.
His hoarse whisper followed. "I am so sorry."
What? "Why?" She released her wrist and stepped closer. "Boss, I'm the one—"
"No. You ain't at fault here, Kato. It's all on me." The glistening strengthened as Lou took his own step forward, his entire craggy face now brimming with guilt. "I knew you was havin' trouble. A lot longer than Seth, too. I'd wonder what the hell I was thinkin' sendin' him to the station and bringin' you here—but there's no need. 'Cause I wasn't thinkin'. Didn't want to. Don't get me wrong; I like Seth. I respect the hell outta that boy. But I need you. And now—" That damp remorse slipped over to the body bag. "—I done made it all worse by makin' you stand here and look at what we put in there. Smell it. Feel that goddamned shit you went through over there all over again."
The irony of it.
She managed a smile. Sort of. "That's exactly what I'm supposed to be doing."
Confusion clouded over the guilt.
She nodded. "Remembering. Feeling." Burning through all those charmingly horrific, natural emotions that her brain had been actively avoiding for four years now.
"This advice coming from your shrink?"
She tensed. For a split second, she suspected that her boss had followed her to Fort Leaves. But no. This was Lou. He'd never violate her trust like that. The man was simply that good at reading her. Understanding. Far better than her own father had ever been. Not for the first time did she wonder why.
"Kato?"
She met that muddy pain. It was threatening to spill over, intent on bringing a flood of guilt down with it. Enough to drown Lou on the spot. That, she couldn't allow. "How'd you find out?"
"That you was seein' someone?"
She nodded.
"Did the math." Pink tinged the man's jowls as he shrugged. "I stopped by your place two Saturdays ago, followin' the funerals, to see if you were up for a spur o' the moment lunch, but you were out. Stopped by last weekend, too. Same time. Then again today. Different reason today, o'course. But still—three Saturdays in a row? And there's your phone." The pink in those jowls deepened to scarlet. "You'd set it on your desk last week to help Owen with that drunk and disorderly. There was somethin' about an impact statement on the screen. I was pretty desperate, so I picked it up. When I realized that what I was readin' was private as hell, I turned off the phone and put it back. But it was kinda too late. I'm sorry."
Oh, God. It was bad enough that Manning knew what was in that statement. But now, so did Lou. Namely, how she really felt about that Silver Star and the entire, truly fucked up chain of events that had spawned it.
How she felt about herself.
Lou was her boss, for crying out loud. The man who'd issued her the service weapon currently tucked inside her holster. The man who could revoke her right to carry that weapon at any time—and prevent her from carrying another.
And Lou now had a doozy of a reason to support either. Typed out by her own betraying fingers, no less.
The only silver lining in this entire rotten cluster of blackened clouds that'd become her life was that the drunk and disorderly she'd assisted with had gone down on Monday. Even if Lou had read the accompanying stuck points log that she'd been adding to ever since she'd downloaded the CPT app so she could work on her therapy assignments away from home, he wouldn't have read that she planned on quitting—because she hadn't added her decision into the software yet.
But from the dread still torturing his stare—and the raw confession that Lou had offered earlier about Seth—he'd figured that out as well. Lou knew she was on the verge of following the department's senior-most deputy out the door.
Sixteen years of leaning on the man standing in front of her in lieu of her own father had her wishing she could put his mind at ease.
She even got her mouth to open. But the words wouldn't come out.
Yeah, she'd promised Manning two more weeks of purgatory. But she'd been hanging on by a thread ever since she'd turned into Nash's drive. And with each whiff of those nauseating sulfur byproducts still tainting the air, it was fraying that much further. There was no telling when it was going to snap.
But she could soothe another fear. Though this one was more akin to terror.
"Lou?"
He flinched.
She wasn't surprised. She rarely called him by his first name. At least, not to his face. Not even when he'd insisted on the practice after she'd come home from the Army. It had seemed disrespectful somehow. Especially after she'd accepted this job. But she needed the man's absolute attention now. So he'd know that what she was about to say was the truth.
She stepped closer and looked straight into his eyes. Made certain he was looking into hers. "I am not going to eat my gun. Ever."
Those muddy eyes turned even glassier than they had before. The jaw beneath began to tremble and work amid the silence that followed, until a hoarse whisper finally escaped. "Promise?"
She could feel her own eyes filling up as she nodded. "On Ruger's life."
Oh, there'd been a moment or two before she'd stumbled across the German Shepherd out behind her spare cabin as a pup three years earlier, bleeding out from some heinous hunter's bullet, when she wouldn't have been able to make that vow, but Lou did not need to know that. Not now. Given the strength of that fresh wave of tears spilling down to swamp the crevices of his face, probably not ever.
More tears followed. His thick shoulders shook with the force of them—until his entire body was shaking.
She reached out a split second before he could, wrapping her arms around his stocky chest just as tightly as he was wrapping his around her.
She held on until the quaking ebbed, then pulled back to use her latex-covered fingers to wipe at the moisture still drenching his cheeks. She'd just have to swap out the compromised gloves for a sterile set later.
"I been so damned scared for you, Kato."
Her nod came out a wobble. "I know. Me too. But you're right. I am seeing someone. He's a shrink with the VA."
Lou's nod was steadier than hers, though not by much. "Is he helpin'?"
Yes. No.
She pushed forth a shrug as she stepped back a bit, opening up the space between them again. That tenuous thread of trust. "I don't know."
"You want him to?"
Ruger's gorgeous, furry face flashed through her mind's eye. The Shepherd's absolute joy at simply being with her. Living his life alongside hers.
She'd do anything to keep that dragon's tail of his flapping about indefinitely.
Anything.
She rubbed the burning from her eyes and nodded. "Yeah, I do."
Lou's own gloved palms came up to cup her face—the smooth and the shredded sides. The nod that followed was firm. Resolute. "Then this shrink will help. You just need to hang in there. Do what it takes to get where you need to be. 'Cause this town—me? We need you. You're too blessed good to crawl in a dark, deep hole somewhere and give up. You cain't let them bastards win. I meant what I said about Seth. He's top-notch. But you're better. Better than the whole dang department put together, me included. Even with half your wits tied behind your back."
She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again.
What was point? It was that stupid Silver Star. No one could get past it. Not even Lou. Despite what he'd found in that app on her phone.
His flush returned. "I'm truly sorry I read your private thoughts."
"It's okay."
He shook his head. "Nah, it ain't. But you been fadin in 'n' out these past few weeks. More than when you first come back. And I—" It wasn't until he broke off and glanced past her shoulder that she realized Tonga was headed down the hill.
It was time to move the body.
She braced herself as she turned—only to pause as Lou touched her arm.
"I got this. Geraldine Oakley passed late last night. Her daughter claims her pacemaker failed. Tonga had already started the autopsy when I called to tell him about this. He'll need to finish Geraldine, then open up this poor soul first thing tomorrow. We both know this crime scene's as clear cut as they get. Not much left to do." Lou checked his watch. "Drake and Owen will be pullin' up soon enough. Nester and his boys will be showin' soon afterwards. I'll stay. You go home. Spend the evenin' with Ruger. If we find anythin' else—and I doubt it—I'll let you know."
She thought about arguing. But why?
There was nothing left for her to do case-wise except decide if she had the strength to withstand the silent plea suffusing the sheriff's features. The one begging her to come back to work in the morning.
Don't leave him to work this mess alone.
She ignored the sludge that had been bubbling up in her gut since the moment she'd taken that call in Manning's office. "Okay. But I'll stop by the station first. Log the stone and hairs into evidence." She held up the envelope containing the earring. "Get Seth started on tracing the number engraved into this."
Kate turned away from the relief that was blistering through Lou's entire body—because she could see the hope churning up in its wake. Hope that was as false as the man's faith in her and her skills.
Tomorrow.
She'd deal with quitting tomorrow.
After the autopsy. Just as soon as Seth was able to make an ID from that diamond. She'd call Manning. Given the nature of this case, surely the shrink would understand.
Hopefully, so would Lou.
She gathered her shredded nerves along with her crime kit and headed for the base of the hill, reaching out to give Tonga's arm a silent squeeze as they passed.
Before she knew it, she'd breached the crest, then the gravel drive.
Kate stowed her stainless-steel case in the rear of the Durango and climbed into the driver's seat. She was about to lay the evidence envelopes on the passenger seat when she spotted the homework Manning had handed her hours earlier. On the uppermost sheet, blaring at her in bold ink even more loudly than it had in the shrink's office: the stuck point Manning had insisted she work on this week.
My judgment can't be trusted.
She drew her breath in deep as she worked to quell the fresh mix of panic and guilt that seared in with those five simple words.
It didn't help.
Her wrist had already begun to itch.
She dumped the envelopes on top of the worksheets, staring directly into the SUV's rearview mirror as she straightened.
The mishmash of mottled scars and pockmarks that had made up most of the right side of her face and neck for the last four years stared back.
Manning had asked if they bothered her.
She'd told him the truth. She welcomed her rearranged features in all their repulsive glory. They kept her honest about what lay beneath.
Turning in her badge was for the best.
For her and for Lou. Hell, for the entire town—especially that horrifically charred woman whose body was headed for the morgue.
She was simply not the cop Lou or Dr. Manning believed her to be. Nor would working through a thousand worksheets make it so.
She'd misjudged Joe Cordoba, Grant Parish and Staff Sergeant Burke. In doing so, she'd failed to prevent the murders of countless fellow soldiers and homeless veterans, as well as the monsters who'd been preying upon them.
If she caved into Lou's pleas and Manning's demand to stay on the force to work this case—how many more men and women would die because of her?