NO MATTER HOW quietly Julia nudged open her office door, Marie’s head snapped up and turned her way, her moon face palely aglow with hope that Julia would toss her a new crumb vaguely resembling a meaningful task.
This morning, Julia handed her a whole slice of bread.
“Did you know, or know of, Leslie Harper? The legislator?”
Marie slumped. “The one they think might have been murdered? Even though it looked like she killed herself?”
“We don’t know either of those,” Julia said. “Listen, before you go any further in this line of work, there’s another saying you should memorize. Maybe write it down on a sticky note and put it on your computer.”
Marie, who’d taken every opportunity to inform Julia that she already knew everything—at least, that’s how Julia saw it—folded her arms across her chest. “What’s that?”
“Assume makes an ass out of u and me.”
Marie’s lower lip crept forward. Her eyebrows pulled together in a single faint line.
“What does she have to do with your case?”
“Nothing.”
Marie’s expression made Julia think of a saying her mother had employed during her various childhood discontents: You could perch the whole world on that lip.
“Maybe something,” she amended. “I’m counting on you to find the connection.”
She looked away, embarrassed and faintly ashamed at the strength of the gratitude shining in Marie’s eyes. She didn’t even want to admit to herself, let alone to Marie, that her questions surrounding Leslie Harper’s death were probably nothing more than a distraction from the seemingly intractable matter of the charges against Ray.
“I’ll get right on it.” Marie was all business now, gathering her things, stashing a notebook and a recorder in her briefcase. “I’ll talk to the other legislators from Peak County. Unless you were going to?”
Julia was going to do no such thing. But Marie pressed on, even as Julia shook her head.
“Who are you pursuing? I’d hate for us to trip over each other.”
No chance of that, Julia thought. “I’ve already talked to Wayne Peterson.”
Marie’s shoulders drooped.
“And”—remembering what Wayne had said—“I’ll talk again to that other deputy. Cheryl Hayes.”
“The one who Wayne said might be sitting on some evidence about Mr. Belmar?”
“That one. He’s bad-mouthed her about Ray’s case and now Harper’s too. What is it about these two cases that’s making her monkey around with them? Maybe she’s a bad apple who just turns everything she touches to fuck. Wayne’s phrase, not mine,” she said in response to Marie’s startled grimace. “But if it’s just these two, maybe there’s a relationship.”
Marie nodded briskly, all business. “I’ll report back to you as soon as I’ve got something.”
As though there were anything to be had.
But at least she was gone, leaving Julia blissfully alone. She picked up a pen and bit down on it. Suppose Wayne was right, that Hayes was one of those people who saw faults and slights everywhere and objected to everything. God knew the Public Defender’s Division had its share of malcontents, as did every office.
But three people were dead, all of them either at least a little or a lot drunk, all of them with lethal head wounds. Still, the old Sesame Street tune played in her head: “One of these things is not like the other.”
The deaths of Billy Williams and Miss Mae, while tragic, were surprising only in that they’d been murdered. A handful of transients died in Duck Creek every year, with Amanda Pinkham dutifully delivering the results from their autopsies: exposure, longtime illness, drug overdose—“deaths of despair,” as would-be reformers, including Harper, labeled them.
She looked at the clock. It was long past time for the deputies’ lunch break. She wouldn’t be able to track Hayes down again in the tea shop. Which wasn’t the worst thing in the world. And she had no appetite for another freezing creekside expedition.
Her best move would be to lurk near the courthouse’s back door and try to catch Hayes coming or going. But the seven-to-seven shift changes conflicted with Calvin’s kindergarten and after-school-care schedule. She had to pick him up by six and couldn’t very well loiter with him outside the courthouse as the last vestiges of daylight leaked from the sky.
As for mornings—maybe she could plead an early meeting and ask Beverly to come by and take him to school; an idea she immediately rejected. She was supposed to be self-sufficient now.
Still gnawing on the pen, she tapped at her keyboard, cyberstalking Hayes, hoping to find a home address, although she knew most of the deputies, along with the town’s police officers, were hypercautious about personal information on the web. The town was full of people they’d arrested, people who’d massaged grudges for years, people who tucked handguns into waistbands, coat pockets, purses, in flagrant violation of the state’s concealed-carry laws, but what did it matter if they never got caught? Paranoia wasn’t crazy when it was justified.
She took the pen from her mouth and glared at its mangled cap. Bad enough she had to share an office with Marie. Now she appeared to be picking up her bad habits. She tossed the pen in the trash and returned to her sleuthing.
Julia wasn’t surprised not to find an address. But she found something nearly as good. Hayes was a member of the local running club, which, according to its website, met for group runs on Saturdays—the day Beverly had designated for once-a-week visits with her grandson. The group runs were open-invitation, not just for club members but for anyone interested in running.
While Calvin was helping himself to Beverly’s cocoa and cookies, Julia would be going for a run.
Saturday morning found Julia rooting around in the depths of her new closet, searching for the running shoes she was sure she hadn’t given to Goodwill, the puppy snuffling happily beside her, evidently excited about the possibility of more things to chew on.
“Go away,” she snapped. Then she saw the shoelace between his teeth. “There they are! You found them! Good boy. Good Jake.”
He fell onto his back, legs bicycling in delight.
Julia backed out of the closet and held the shoes up to the light. They were stiff with age, their once-bright colors faded, the laces frayed. She poked doubtfully at the soles, their tread worn nearly smooth.
Her running days preceded Calvin, who was now in kindergarten. The shoes were practically fossils. She didn’t even try to find her running clothes, which she remembered as sweats emblazoned with her college logo. The runners she saw around Duck Creek were decked out in sleek, skintight gear, something she’d looked up online at a site she’d quickly closed after gasping at the prices.
She made do with a pair of leggings, a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt and—checking the temperature, which had risen to a comparatively balmy twenty-five degrees—her lightest winter jacket, which meant she was freezing on Saturday morning when she approached the group gathered in a downtown park.
Her first surprise was that there were so many, knots of people who apparently knew each other well spread out around the park, chatting animatedly, clouds of condensation gathering around them. She hovered at the edge of the park, searching the groups for Hayes—a challenge, given that people looked more or less alike in head-hugging beanies, tights whose sheen bespoke a high-tech fabric several levels of cost above her cotton leggings, and formfitting jackets that made her feel bulky and strange in her puffer, light though it was.
After a few minutes, she realized the groups represented a sort of pecking order. The smallest, lean unto stringy men and women in faded, well-worn gear, casually performed stretches and warm-ups while talking.
At the other end of the spectrum were middle-aged and older people, many with actual meat on their bones, seeming no less enthusiastic than the elite runners. Among them was a woman defiantly bareheaded, her cloud of white hair catching the morning sun. A woman jogging late to the gathering came to a stop beside Julia and followed her skeptical gaze.
“That’s Sandra. She’s in her seventies. I tried to catch her once in a marathon. Never even got close.” The woman sighed and wandered toward the slower group, which was where Julia figured she herself belonged.
Except there was Hayes with the other elites, bending as though her back had no bones at all, placing her hands flat on the ground, then stretching them high above her head. The few times Julia had seen her before, Hayes’ face had been closed, expressionless. Now she smiled easily, then threw her head back and laughed at something someone had said.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” she hollered to the group at large. “Just a quick one today—only four miles.” She narrated a route that would take them through town and then down along the creek trail. “Everybody got spikes? It’s still icy down there. Last thing we need this close to spring is a broken ankle.”
Huh?
But a few people lifted their feet to display the spiked ice grippers affixed to their shoes.
Julia did not have spikes. But it didn’t matter. She’d started shaking her head the minute she’d heard four miles. No way. Maybe one mile. Half, even.
She hurried toward Hayes’s group, grateful they were starting out at a walk. She lengthened her stride and caught up with Hayes.
“Hey.”
Hayes turned her head. Her eyes widened.
“Are you a runner? I don’t remember seeing you out here before.”
“Trying to get back into it.” Julia gulped air. They were walking fast.
“You’ve come to the right place. This group is fantastic. There’s all levels out here. Some people don’t even run, they just walk. But it doesn’t matter. The whole idea is to be outside and moving. It’s the best thing in the world.”
Julia took that as a hint that she should be back with the walkers, something she’d already figured out on her own. Where she should be, she thought, was back at home, maybe indulging in a soak in the tub while Calvin was at his grandmother’s house.
“Ready?” the person at the head of the line called.
A shout of assent arose, and suddenly everyone was running—and in the case of Hayes and those at the head of the pack, really running, not just jogging. Julia figured she had five minutes at most of enough wind to speak.
No time for conversational warm-ups, easing into what she wanted to ask.
“Harper’s study group,” she gasped. “What was your problem with it?”
“Problem?”
Hayes loped along. A stitch moved up Julia’s side, muscles contracting, commanding her to stop.
“Heard you had some objections.”
“I’ll bet you did.”
Julia forgot about her burning lungs and the pain in her side, so corrosive was the bitterness in Hayes’s voice.
“So? What are they?”
“What’s your deal with Harper? What about Ray? You should be focused on him.”
Were they actually picking up speed? Julia was already moving at a near-sprint even as Hayes pulled away. Who could maintain this pace for four miles?
“I am,” she managed.
Hayes stopped so suddenly that Julia nearly crashed into her. Hayes stepped out of the flow of runners and pulled Julia with her.
“Listen.” She put both hands on Julia’s shoulders and shook her hard. “Ray was fighting. He was fighting. Don’t you see?”
Julia didn’t. But it didn’t matter. Hayes let go and galloped away, catching up with her companions, leaving Julia bent double in someone’s front yard, sucking in oxygen in long, ragged gasps and cursing herself for the waste of time and energy.