CHAPTER THREE

Jack left once the halogen lights were brought to the scene so Simon Jones, the lead crime tech, could sweep for trace evidence as late into the night as need be. The scene would be active for hours yet, though the officers would spend most of the time standing around, waiting for other people to do their jobs. Jack thought to use the scene as a way to get out of attending the debate, but with three Stillwater cops and half a dozen county deputies standing around waiting for something to do, he couldn’t justify it. He’d make a quick appearance at the debate and still be back in plenty of time to see the bodies tagged and bagged.

Jack turned off Old Yourkeville Highway and onto Boondoggle Road. In a nod to its founding by a lumber baron, Stillwater’s streets were all unimaginatively named after trees. Except Boondoggle Road. Only old-timers who remembered the fight against building the road during the postwar boom of the fifties said the name with any derision these days. Jack guessed the same residents who were against moving the main road a mile west of downtown back then would be voting on Tuesday for Doyle, the man who made his fortune from the move, and against Ellie, who wanted to pull businesses back downtown. Apparently Doyle’s supporters’ nostalgia for the good old days rested more on the status quo than in revitalizing downtown if it meant pulling in new residents and tourists. Outsiders.

When he couldn’t put it off any longer, Jack pulled into Stillwater High School’s parking lot and went inside. He opened the front doors to the school and wrinkled his nose against the faint, tangy aroma of teenage body odor hovering in the air. Chris Ryan, Joe Doyle’s son-in-law, watched the debate through the rectangular window in the auditorium door. Chris was stocky, with a big head and a bull neck, an athlete gone to seed. “Hi, Chris,” Jack said.

Chris jumped away from the door as though he’d been electrocuted. Confusion and fear flashed across his face before his expression fell into an easy grin. “Hey, Chief. You scared me.”

“Obviously.” Chris was dressed in khakis and a Nike half-zip pullover and smelled of grass and sweat. “Glad I ran into you,” Jack said. “You know Paco Morales?”

“Sure. He’s one of my groundskeepers. Head one, in fact.” Chris wrinkled his nose and sniffed. “Why do you smell like smoke?”

“Came from the fire out on 107. We found Morales’s truck parked back on Willow Street, behind DI. You send Morales to corporate for anything?”

Chris turned his hat forward and shook his head. “No.”

“Seen Morales lately?”

“Today at work.”

“Ever had any problem with him?”

The front door of the school opened and Miner Jesson entered.

“No, none. Very reliable. Why? Do you think he’s involved in the fire?”

Jack shrugged. “His truck is abandoned where floppers tend to park.” Jack jerked his head toward the debate raging inside. “Going in?”

“I guess I have to. Michelle’s already ballistic I’m late. You?”

Miner walked up. “Hey, Chris. How’s your game?”

“I’m winning more than I’m losing.”

“Can’t complain about that, huh?”

Chris shrugged and entered. When the door closed, Jack turned to Miner. “Let’s go in the audio booth.” Jack knocked on a windowless door next to the auditorium door and opened it.

A teenager swiveled in his chair as the two men entered. The kid’s eyes widened, and he pulled his headphones off. “Sir?”

Jack pulled a couple of ones from his wallet. “Take a five-minute break. Get something from the vending machine.”

Eyes bulging like golf balls, the kid took the money and bolted.

“What did you find?” Jack said.

“Esperanza Perez is Paco Morales’s daughter.”

Esperanza Perez had been an important part of solving Jack’s first case in Stillwater, the murders of Gilberto and Rosa Ramos. She’d also been the alibi of their initial suspect, Diego Vazquez, who turned out to be the front man for the Pedroza drug cartel as well as the man who escaped Jack’s custody his first day on the job. Every police department in Yourke County had been searching for Diego for the last eight weeks, and no one had been able to find him.

“What?”

“Yep. Said he hasn’t come home. Usually gets home by six when it turns dark early. Sometimes he goes out again, but he never came home tonight.”

“She seem worried?”

“She tried to hide it, but yeah. How soon will Jones get to the bodies?”

“He’s sending them to Tyler,” Jack said. “It’s beyond his scope. Said he’d try to rush the bullets and the trace evidence, but considering his backlog, he didn’t promise anything. Apparently, the Sheriff’s department found a meth lab in some Dallas oil company executive’s lake house. They cooked in it but didn’t do a good job of cleaning up.”

Miner watched the debate through the opaque glass.

“Set up in a house that’s rarely used, leave before they realize. No one’s the wiser. Surprised it took them so long to think of it.”

“Maybe they’re getting sloppy.” Jack followed Miner’s gaze but pointedly avoided looking in Ellie’s direction. Joe Doyle watched Ellie with a condescending smirk on his tanned face. With a full head of silver hair styled in an elaborate pompadour and his dark suit and power tie, Doyle looked like a televangelist and was about as trustworthy.

Jack could look at Doyle’s oily countenance for only so long. He stared down at the sound board.

“Wanna hear what they’re saying?” Miner pulled the headphone plug from the jack before Jack could reply.

Ellie’s whiskey-soaked voice filled the room. Jack focused on counting the number of bald spots in the audience until Joe Doyle started talking.

If you’re such a pussy you can’t even look at her, just leave, you idiot.

Jack jingled the keys in his pockets. He should leave. If he waited until the debate ended, he would get caught up with talking to residents and coming face to face with Ellie was almost guaranteed. Considering the size of Stillwater, they had done an amazing job of avoiding each other since September, the day his wife came home. He was strong as long as he wasn’t anywhere near Ellie, but he wasn’t a fucking robot.

He would leave.

His mistake was glancing at Ellie as she pushed a strand of hair behind her right ear. He was swamped with the memory of the first time he saw the mannerism two months earlier, when he sat across the desk from her and talked about Stillwater history and signed mortgage papers. The ache in the center of his chest, the one he had done a pretty good job of ignoring for the past six weeks, intensified. Ellie’s eyes left Joe Doyle and moved to the back of the auditorium before fixing on the smoky glass separating them.

What was I thinking?

Ellie stood on stage in her high school auditorium for the first time in twenty-five years and listened to Joe Doyle slyly dredge up every scandal of her life.

It was, unfortunately, a long and varied list.

Her mother’s suicide.

Her father’s gambling, drinking, carousing, and his legendary hatred for his only child.

Witnessing the suicide of her best friend on a Lake Yourke dock in 1985.

The point-shaving allegations from the 1988 Girls State Basketball Championship.

Fertility problems. A lying, cheating husband who swindled Stillwater residents and was serving time in Huntsville.

Divorce.

Ellie doodled “Fuck you, Joe Doyle” on her legal pad. She clicked her pen, put it down, and tried to hide her smile. She always wondered what politicians wrote during debates. Now she knew.

Ellie’s eyes roamed over the crowd. She knew everyone there, figured 30 percent would vote for her out of pure spite for Doyle. If dredging up tired old scandals was the best Joe Doyle could do to discredit her, maybe this election wasn’t …

Oh, hell no. Did he call me a liberal?

Ellie removed her glasses and pushed her hair behind her ear. If that wasn’t the nail in the coffin of her ill-advised campaign, she didn’t know what was.

She should probably listen to what Doyle was saying, but what was the use? She wasn’t going to win. She knew it. Everyone in this auditorium knew it. They all came tonight to witness her inevitable humiliation at Doyle’s hands. There was too much in her history to overcome the modicum of respect she had been able to build over the last ten years. She knew plenty of people admired her, but those same people, as well as the ones who still held reservations about her, wouldn’t be able to resist the sight of her disgrace. Stillwater residents had been the rubberneckers to her car wreck of a life for too long to change now.

The audience looked bored, and Ellie couldn’t blame them. She glanced at the clock above the sound room window. Fifteen more minutes. She steeled herself to pay attention to Doyle so she could rebut when she saw Jack through the sound booth window. She didn’t need to see clearly to know it was him; she knew his stance, the slope of his shoulders. His hands were in his pockets, absently jingling his keys, she had no doubt, but his eyes were on her.

The memory of those eyes raking over her, possessively, appreciatively, made her skin tingle, a welcome change from the intermittent nausea that plagued her all day. His hair was longer, a little disheveled, as though he’d been running his fingers through it—the long, square tipped fingers that had skimmed along her skin like …

“Ms. Yourke Martin?”

The debate monitor’s nasally voice clawed through her consciousness like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Yes?”

“Your rebuttal?”

Of course. The debate.

In the audience, Julie McBride rose, walked up the aisle and out the door.

Ellie smiled at the moderator. “I’m sorry, Leo. What was the question again? I was too busy reliving my sordid past to take much notice of the points Joe tried to make. Or, maybe I’m correct in assuming his point was to merely distract this audience, and me, from the real issues?”

Jack couldn’t breathe. Could she see him?

Ellie returned her focus to the moderator and broke the connection. Had there been a connection or did he just want there to be one? She couldn’t possibly know he was here, at this spot, amid the hundreds of people in the audience.

Now that he’d looked at her, he couldn’t stop. Though more than a hundred feet separated them, Jack knew the brown flecks in Ellie’s green eyes were accentuated by the conservative camel-colored dress she wore, whose square neckline revealed enough to entice the men without offending the women. It dipped a shade lower than the First Baptist congregants would think appropriate, but the gemstone flag pin on her left breast and the single strand of pearls made up for it. The classically tailored dress stopped a few inches above the knee, but Jack’s gaze continued down past her toned calves to the nude patent leather four-inch heels. Jack knew every red-blooded man in the audience had entertained the fantasy of seeing Ellie in nothing but those pearls, shoes, and the reading glasses she held in her left hand.

It kinda pissed him off.

“What did Doyle say about basketball?” Jack said, not taking his eyes off Ellie.

Miner nodded to the audience. “Here comes your wife.”

Julie McBride smiled at him as she walked up the aisle. Talk about a study in contrasts. Where Ellie was tall and elegant, Julie was petite and a bundle of barely constrained energy. Jack wasn’t surprised in the least she had been able to zone in on where he was, despite his best efforts at being incognito. He should have left earlier. Or not come at all.

Ellie’s easy smile was now strained.

Julie entered the video booth without knocking and coughed. “It smells like smoke in here.”

“I told you we were at a fire.”

“Right. Hey, Miner. Good to see you.” She smiled broadly at Jack’s deputy, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes.

“You, too,” Miner said with a goofy, embarrassed grin. Julie had that effect on people, even men like Miner who were usually deceptively astute in reading people. Jack wanted to slap Miner and tell him Julie thought he was a rube without the sense God gave a slug.

“Hi, honey.” She hugged Jack. The top of her head barely brushed the knot of his tie. He squeezed her briefly in return, grasped her elbow gently, and pulled her away from him as discretely as possible. She coughed and waved her hand in front of her face. “God, that’s awful.”

“Miner was about to tell me about Doyle’s basketball comment.”

“He doesn’t like Ellie much, does he,” Julie said with a wry smile.

“If Big Jake, Ellie’s dad, would have gotten Ellie’s property away from her,” Miner said, “Doyle was set to buy it. Still hasn’t forgiven her for having a backbone.”

“The championship?” Jack said.

“Ellie was accused of throwing the championship game. Point shaving.”

Jack’s head jerked back. “Impossible.”

“She was the star, had the sweetest shot you’ve ever seen,” Miner said. “She was money at the free throw line, something like 92 percent and still holds the UIL record for three pointers, I think.”

“Impressive,” Julie said.

“So, when she had a horrible game, people wondered, but no one believed it. Didn’t help Big Jake was the biggest bookie in Yourke County. Everyone assumed he put money on the game. The coach kept her in until the end. With time winding down and losing by ten, Big Jake was poised to win thousands.”

“He bet against his daughter?” Julie asked.

“He was a son of a bitch,” Miner said, matter-of-factly. “Game’s all but over. Ellie takes the ball down the court, everyone had given up, her team, the other team. She walked down the court, unopposed. She stepped inside the three-point line and dribbled once, twice, as the clock ticked down. Five seconds, four seconds. At three seconds, she stepped behind the three-point line and let it fly.”

Jack leaned forward. There was a small smile on Miner’s face. “Most beautiful shot I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of basketball,” he said. “Everyone in that field house held their breath as that ball arced through the air.”

“Did she make it?” Jack said.

“What kind of story would it be if she missed?”

“She covered the spread, didn’t she?”

“Yep.”

“She went against her father?” Julie said, flabbergasted. Julie was too much of a daddy’s girl to understand, or condone, a child betraying a parent’s wishes.

“Of course she did,” Miner said. “She’s as honest as the day is long.”

“I guess,” Julie said, still unconvinced. “Jack, can I see you outside for a minute?”

Jack opened the door for Julie. “Bye, Miner,” Julie said with a broad smile.

When the door closed behind them, Julie’s smile fell from her face like rock slide.

“When did you get here?”

“Five or ten minutes ago.”

“I saved you a seat.”

“I didn’t want to disturb the debate.”

Julie scoffed. “It’s a fucking city council debate.”

“It’s important to the people here and I wanted to respect that.”

“Oh, and I didn’t? Is that what you’re saying?”

“That wasn’t what I was saying, or even implying, Julie.”

“That’s what it sounded like to me.”

Jack put his clenched hands in his pockets. Change the subject. Move on. “I didn’t see Ethan. Is he here?”

“No. He was at Troy’s doing homework.”

For someone who wanted his parents to mend fences to restore the three of them to a happy family, Ethan was conspicuously absent from home a lot of the time. Jack was torn between wanting Ethan to spend time with his new friends, Troy, Olivia, and Mitra, and wanting Ethan to spend time with his mother to see that the last year without her hadn’t been so bad after all. If Jack was honest, he missed having Ethan to himself, spending time with his moody 14-year-old son. He wondered if Ethan missed him or if he’d even noticed they’d barely seen each other these last few weeks.

“I thought he said he would get extra credit for attending,” Jack said.

Julie shrugged. “Guess it wasn’t worth it. Anyway, I want him to like me, not hate me for dragging him to this snoozefest. Your brother’s here, though. Right down front, supporting his girlfriend.”

“Is he?” Screw putting in an appearance with the community. The last thing Jack wanted was to run into Ellie with Julie connected to his hip. “Listen, I have to get back to the fire scene.”

“Can’t Miner take charge?”

“No.”

Her face softened and she moved close to him. She ran her hand up and down the smooth, silk fabric of his tie. She bit her bottom lip and dropped her voice into the sexy baby-doll timbre he knew so well. “We’ve only made love twice since I came back. You know we work best when we have that.”

When Julie turned on this persona, Jack could easily forget that hatred made his heart race when he was near Julie instead of desire.

“Maybe I want more than sex, Julie.”

Her laugh was harsh. “You didn’t before.”

Before I didn’t know there could be more. He looked away. “Why did you come back?”

“I told you. I missed my family.”

“Bullshit.”

“Jack, you and Ethan are the world to me. Tell me what you want and I’ll do it.”

Though they were alone in the foyer, Jack lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “I want for the last year to have never happened. To not have had to lie to Ethan for a year about where you were, why you left. To never have been suspected of murdering you. To not have lost my career because you decided you wanted to ‘find yourself.’ Can you do any of those things?”

She sighed dramatically and rolled her eyes.

“You ruined my life, Julie. You’re delusional if you think I’ll take you back with open arms.”

“Well, let me know when you’re done punishing me,” she said.

“I’m not punishing you.”

“Then what do you call this? Because it’s not a marriage.”

The auditorium doors opened. Julie moved to Jack’s side and intertwined her arm with his to meet the Stillwater residents, her demeanor now one of an enthusiastic resident.

Jack’s soft response was lost amid the rumble of the crowd. “I call this temporary.”