Chapter Seven

 

 

West of the Reed Ranch, Wyoming

 

“So what’s your story, anyway?” Lucy asked abruptly.

“Excuse me?” the sheriff said, his dark look momentarily replaced by surprise.

Lucy was pleased. She meant to be surprising. They were walking briskly west, Zilla trotting ahead of them. The mixture of pine and cottonwood trees that covered the steps of the ancient riverbed was fast approaching and Lucy hadn’t the faintest idea how to find the deadfall where they’d found the skull and the murder weapon.

She was from Baltimore, a very old city, and she prided herself on being able to find her way around in any metropolitan area. But these were woods, Wyoming woods, and the only structure in sight was the ancient homestead cabin and chicken coop where Dr. McBride had been found. Sheriff King walked quickly, his camera swinging in one hand.

“I was wondering what your story was. I know about you and Eileen,” Lucy said.

“You do?”

“We’re women, if you’ve noticed,” Lucy said with exaggerated sarcasm. “Girlfriends. We’ve told each other things you’d never tell another soul. We compare tampon types, for goddsake. I know about you.”

Sheriff King flushed and looked away. Lucy grinned to herself. Tampon talk always disconcerted and embarrassed men. It was a cheap shot, but she was willing to use it.

“So what do you know?”

“Eileen went to prom with Owen Sutter and his new girlfriend Molly, because they were all friends. The three had been friends since they were kids, right? So Eileen was already on her way to college and flight school in the Air Force, which you know all about. She left after a few years and went into police work, but she was on fire to get out of Wyoming and Owen wasn’t, so they had broken up months before the prom. She told me it was better when Owen was with Molly, because that’s the way it should have been in the first place. Things just felt right. Eileen didn’t have a boyfriend and didn’t want one, so she went solo but traveled to the prom with Owen and Molly, and you thought you had a chance with her and you tried to make out with her.”

Lucy stopped and drew breath. Damn Wyoming, anyway. The air was too thin out here, five thousand feet above sea level and a thousand miles inland. The air was thin and dry, too. She wasn’t feeling tired, just out of breath, but it didn’t suit her to let King know that. She wanted to connect with this man and she needed an excuse to make conversation. So she stopped and gasped and gestured for a little time to recover her breath.

“That’s her story?” King asked, stopping. “That’s what she told you?”

“Well, I would go on but I seem to be running out of breath out here,” Lucy said finally, with a smile she considered her very best. The sheriff wasn’t immune. His expression lightened and he fumbled at his side for his water bottle. Lucy took it gratefully, ignoring her own water bottle. The sheriff might not know how powerful a symbol sharing water represented, but Lucy did. She handed it back with a grateful sigh and a shrug.

“She hit me,” King said after taking a drink from his bottle. He didn’t look at her when he said it.

“I imagine she would hit pretty hard,” Lucy said, trying to keep her expression mild and friendly. She was now determined to make this man a friend, or at least to make him friendly. She thought the whole case might revolve on whether they could get this man, the local sheriff, to cooperate. “Worst would be the rejection, I suppose.”

“Yeah,” the sheriff said, his face darkening into his usual glower. “I fell into the lake. In my tuxedo. In front of everybody.”

“Not in front of me,” Lucy said. When he looked at her, she pointed her finger at him. “Listen to me, sheriff. Do you know why this state scares the crap out of me? There’s nobody here, for miles and miles. Things seem incredibly large out here, and incredibly important. Maybe something that happened a long time ago still seems important because everyone knows the same stories. Maybe things aren’t that important. Come on, I’m not that much of a wimp.”

She started walking and Zilla wagged her tail and gave a happy little rowf. She’d been lying in the shade of a leafy tree, her nose settled on her one foot. Lucy suddenly had an idea. Perhaps she could find her way to the deadfall after all, without having to admit to the sheriff that she didn’t know where the hell she was going.

“Zilla, find, find,” she said, waving her hand the same way Eileen had done down on the river. Lucy’s heart thudded hard as Zilla scrambled to her feet and started nosing back and forth. Would she find Dr. McBride’s trail again, or was she simply sniffing for rabbit?

Zilla wagged her tail briskly and gave a sharp bark. She headed up the grassy slope and into the trees, then turned and looked at the sheriff and Lucy with an inquiring expression.

“Good girl, Lassie,” Lucy said under her breath. “I mean, Zilla.”

“So what do you mean, things aren’t so important?” Sheriff King asked after a minute of silent hiking. Lucy didn’t smile, although she wanted to.

“Just that. Things aren’t so important. Back in Baltimore, where I grew up, you could move twenty miles away and nobody would know you from Adam. There’s lots of people back east, have you ever been?”

“I went to California once,” the sheriff said in a low voice. “Never east. Always wanted to go to the Capitol, see the Declaration of Independence.”

“You should go,” Lucy said. “It’s great. There’s a guard there all the time, did you know that? So nobody can take pictures. The room is dark and quiet and there isn’t a lot of light, and the Declaration is under about a foot of bulletproof glass. Gives me the shivers just to look at it and see the signatures. Damn, I have to stop again.”

“You do go on,” King said, but he said it kindly. Lucy stopped for breath and looked down the slope where Zilla waited impatiently. She recognized the meadow with all the tiny flowers, wasn’t that where they’d looked in the diaper and saw the knife? Only a few minutes to the deadfall, then. She couldn’t fake another oxygen stop.

“Well, yeah, I do. But you should go. But watch out. Go into a bar in Georgetown and you’d never make it out alive, sheriff.”

“Why’s that?” King said, his face darkening again. Lucy laughed internally. It was all too easy.

“Because the women there would fight over you like a bride’s bouquet in one of those funny home videos. They’d probably carry you off on their shoulders like a trophy. You’re a fine looking man, don’t you know that? Or aren’t there any women in Wyoming other than Eileen Reed and her friend Molly what’s-her-name?”

The sheriff looked as though he’d been struck. His face reddened again and then paled. Lucy wondered if he’d ever been complimented before. Didn’t women flirt out here? Were there any women out here?

“Molly O’Neil,” he said in a low voice. “Molly Sutter, now.”

“And Eileen Reed. She’s a great woman and she’s about my best friend in all the world, sheriff, but she isn’t the only woman in the whole world. She’s a Wyoming ten, but she’s a Washington seven.”

There was a small silence and Zilla gave an impatient woof at the bottom of the small hillock. Lucy put a hand on her hip and glared at Sheriff King.

“Ok,” she said, with an exaggerated sigh. “She’s a ten in Washington, too. Damn it.”

Richard King threw his head back and laughed, his hands on his belt and his eyes closed. Lucy laughed with him, her voice a silvery tinkle through his lower range, and she wasn’t faking her laughter. She could almost see the tension draining out of him.

“Who are you?” he asked, when their laughter finally tapered off and ended.

“Just a friend from back East, sheriff,” Lucy said with a shrug and a smile. “Just Eileen’s friend. Maybe yours too, if you’ll have me.”

She held out her hand, little and strong, and he shook it with a crooked little smile that looked almost shy.

“Let’s go find that deadfall, Lucy,” King said.

 

 

The Reed Ranch, Wyoming

 

“I was thinking my brain was actually going to explode,” Joe said dreamily. He was on Eileen’s bed, wrapped in a comforter even though the day was warm. Eileen didn’t try to get him through a shower before she put him to bed. She made a mental note to change the sheets before she went to bed that night. Joe was filthy. His hair, unwashed, was matted with blood and sweat and dirt. Dirt was grimed into his knuckles and creased his neck. The bandage was still white but was starting to fray at the edges. Joe had swallowed two of Roberto Espinoza’s pills and collapsed on the bed, obediently drinking a full glass of water.

“Drink some more water, Joe. You don’t want to get dehydrated,” Eileen murmured, echoing her mother.

“Sure,” he said, raising his head with an effort and drinking another half glass of water. Letting his head fall back onto the pillows, he sighed. “Damn highway was going to kill me. I couldn’t take anything more than aspirin or I’d fall asleep. Haven’t slept in – what, two days?”

“What happened, Joe?” Eileen said. She smoothed his dirty hair back from his brow, feeling a fierce protective love and a consuming fear that made her feel like she might throw up. Had he hurt someone, even by accident? Had he done something wrong?

“Got run off the road,” Joe said. His eyes started to lose focus and grow blurred and soft. “They killed Sully, remember? She talked to me, told me to get out of the wreck and hide. I saw them – they killed her, they want to kill me.”

Eileen abruptly reached to the bedside table and picked up Joe’s water glass. She drank the rest of Joe’s water. She shoved her worries about Lucy and Sheriff King, her thoughts about Dr. Jon McBride and his potential murderer out of her mind. They were gone. She brushed her mental table clean and focused.

“Professionals,” she said. “Contract killers.”

“Yes,” Joe gasped, and his hand nearly crushed hers. “You believe me.”

“Of course I do,” Eileen said calmly. “Get some sleep, love. I won’t do anything until you wake. I’ll keep you safe. We’ll take care of this. Go to sleep.”

Joe’s hand relaxed in hers and his eyes closed as though he were waiting her permission to let go, to finally sleep.

“I love you,” he whispered. “Sully told me—”

“Sully told you what?” Eileen whispered, but he was gone. Eileen sat for a few minutes longer, feeling confused. Harriet Sullivan was his old girlfriend, his fiancée, killed in a car wreck over five years ago. Wasn’t she?

Joe snored and rolled on his side. He pulled the comforter up to his chin and drew his legs up like a little boy, like Hank sleeping his happy toddler sleep in the bedroom down the hall.

Eileen held Joe’s hand, leaned over it, and rested her cheek against his grubby skin. His skin was warm and she could feel the slow steady pulse of his heartbeat underneath. She breathed through her confusion, her fear, until the tears that threatened her moved back inside her and were gone.

Eileen finally kissed his shoulder gently, then got to her feet and headed for the door. There would be time, later, to figure all this out. Right now she had to rescue Lucy from the clutches of the sheriff.

 

Colorado Springs, Colorado

 

“Two more minutes and we’re out of here,” Ken said. Rene didn’t answer. He was sorting through Eileen’s filing cabinet and was elbow deep in Bride’s and Modern Bride magazines. He stifled the urge to throw the things down to the floor and stomp on them. The magazines were the most offensive, heavy and scented so thickly they made him feel like sneezing. The girl, the detective, Eileen, had more than magazines to confound him. She had filing folders full of invitation samples, other ones for catering companies. Then there were dozens of brochures for reception halls, from the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park to the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. She had folders for disc jockeys, florists, bridesmaid’s outfits and tuxedos for the groomsmen. She had catalogs that listed bridesmaid’s gifts and other catalogs that offered centerpieces for tables at the receptions. The amount of information was staggering.

Rene continued to sort through the satin and silks of a bride’s planning, his head pounding fiercely. In all this, there was no indication of a second home like a mountain cabin or a favorite place to stay. He shuddered at the thought of checking on all the hotels Eileen was looking into for a wedding reception. Eileen had pictures of her mother and father and pictures of Joe Tanner. She had pictures of a black-haired girl who was holding a little baby boy. She had pictures of a handsome older man who looked eerily like her, perhaps an uncle or a cousin. She had addresses in her address book but her only address for her parents’ house was a post office box in Hulett, Wyoming.

“Less than a minute to go before we have to leave. I think she went to Hulett, Wyoming.” Ken said. He was gloved and masked just like Rene, and the shower cap they both wore looked ridiculous on his wiry brown hair. It made him look like a cross between a circus clown and a psycho. Rene didn’t want to know what he looked like. His head pounded.

He sneezed into his handkerchief for the twentieth time. The detective bitch had a cat, to top things off. The cat was nowhere to be seen, evidently shipped off to friends. This was another sign that Eileen Reed was out of town for more than a day or so. The cat hair and dander remained. With the heavily scented bridal magazines the smell was enough to drive Rene out of his skull.

“I think so, too,” Rene said. “Time to clear out.” He stripped his gloves and shower cap off before they left the apartment. He took a last look around and the apartment, a simple three-room affair with big windows that faced south, was pristine. Unless she was looking for intruders, she would see nothing wrong. Rene had no intention of giving this young lioness his scent. Leave her surprise for when he killed her.

He saw a final scrap of paper on the kitchen counter and put his gloves back on with a sigh. The receipt for a matron-of-honor dress was the jackpot. Lucy Giometti was the black-haired girl with the baby, if the measurements on the receipt looked correct. Best of all the dress was to be delivered for final alterations directly to Lucy’s home address.

The address was listed. Great Falls, Virginia. But at least it was a start.

“So where is Hulett, Wyoming?” Ken asked, as they drove away from Eileen’s apartment. Rene’s head was already starting to clear and he sighed heavily in the Lexus’s air-conditioned breeze. The hour was almost noon, and he was hungry. Being discovered in Eileen’s apartment was least likely at eleven o’clock, when most people were at work. They had their false badges at the ready, but didn’t have to use them.

“False badges aren’t going to work in Wyoming, Ken,” Rene said heavily. “Do you know how many people live there?”

“Not many?”

“Less than the population of Denver, in a state as big as Colorado. I’ve driven through there. We’d stick out for miles, you and I. Maybe we can find out more about this Lucy Giometti. She might be the answer. Her and her adorable little brat.”

Ken nodded, leaning back in his seat and closing his eyes. Rene knew that Ken hated to burgle. Ken loved to kill, that was what satisfied his soul. He loved to kill and he loved listening to music. Rene thought that Ken might have a chance to listen to a lot of music while they drove through the empty spaces of Wyoming. Though Ken didn’t know it, Joe Tanner was a priority higher than they’d ever had. This one was going to be the last hit, the one that broke the camel’s back. After Joe Tanner, there was no one else who was ready to step up and play a thermonuclear attack and win. They were going to have to go into Wyoming and kill him there, like it or not.

Now all they had to do was find out where Eileen’s mother and father lived. That should be possible. It might be best to kill everyone at the Reed household. Set it up as a transient serial killer, the kind that Eileen Reed was so good at catching and putting behind bars.

Humming softly to himself, Rene steered the car towards home and a good meal. There were many plans to make.