FOURTEEN

“How well do you know this guy, anyway?”

The sheriff sat perched on the edge of Jess’s desk at the detachment, flipping through a thick file she knew belonged to Burke. The sheriff had set out for Deception, that file in hand, as soon as she’d called him, and Jess figured he’d probably been up most of the night memorizing its contents.

The detachment was quiet. Gillies was sleeping off last night’s shift, and Paul Monk was home sick with some kind of head cold, he claimed, though it sounded to Jess like your run-of-the-mill hangover. Even the last few reporters had wandered away, grown bored with the lack of progress on the case, the whole story already gone stale.

That left Jess and the sheriff to hash out the Burke problem. And now she’d gone and told Hart about the fight, and Jess knew that must make Burke the prime suspect.

“Burke’s a good man,” she told Hart. “You know about the murder they convicted him for, the circumstances. Robbery gone wrong; his friend pulled the trigger.”

Hart nodded. Regarded her thoughtfully. “Still makes him a murderer in the eyes of the law.”

“It does, and Burke owns that,” she said. “You go ahead and ask him yourself, Sheriff. He’ll tell you he did his part to kill that man and that he served his time for it solid, without any complaint.”

She could still feel the nerves alive inside her, wondered how the sheriff couldn’t tell she was shaking. Wondered what she was doing defending Burke, what she was doing betraying him.

“Fifteen years,” Hart said.

“Yes, sir. And the first thing he did, the moment he came out, was to make sure his dog was okay.”

Hart knew the story about Kirby Harwood, of course. But Jess figured he might not be so well versed in how Burke came to be involved, which was to say, how he’d found out that Harwood had taken Lucy from Jess, how the deputy had planned to destroy the dog.

He’d come out here, twenty-five hundred miles from his home, to save his dog. And he’d stayed because he’d seen how Jess was in trouble.

“You know, Sheriff,” Jess said, “Harwood and his pals wanted to kill me. They’d have done it if Burke hadn’t been there to help.” She looked up at Hart, met his eyes. “Hell, it was self-defense, anyway. He nearly died on that island.”

Hart held her gaze a short while. Then he turned back to the file. “Be that as it may,” he said, “that fight he had out at Spinnaker’s was more or less the last time anybody saw Boyd alive.”

“Don’t forget about the woman,” Jess said. “That lipstick stain on Boyd’s wineglass.”

“Right,” Hart said. “The lipstick.” He closed the file. Let out a long sigh. “Been days now, Jess, and still no sign of that woman, whoever she is. Look, maybe she had something to do with this; maybe she didn’t. But your man Burke, he’s got blood on his hands, literally. I think it’s about time we brought him in.”

She felt her breath hitch, and she started, wondered if Hart noticed. The way he was studying her, she could tell that he had.

“Just to ask him some questions,” he told her. “Get his story on the record. Put a few more pieces together, that kind of thing.”

She said, “Yes, sir.”

He studied her another beat.

“You have the makings of a damn fine deputy,” he said, “and I’d hate to lose you on this case. But if you don’t think you can handle this, Jess, you ought to recuse yourself now. There’s no shame in sitting it out.”

Jess knew Hart was right. Knew if this were anywhere else—a bigger county, the city—there’d be no question: she’d be on the sidelines. But this was Makah County. Everybody knew everybody, and Hart’s staff was limited already. No way was she taking herself out of the game, not the biggest case the county had seen since—well, since Harwood.

What the hell would I do with myself, she thought, if they took this from me now too?

She’d been a soldier, and now she wasn’t allowed anymore. And while policing wasn’t exactly like the Marine Corps, there were enough similarities—the structure, the discipline, the reliance on your friends amid the ever-present threat of violence—that she’d grown, in this short time, to feel she needed the work. The badge and the gun, the sense of purpose.

What would you do, she wondered, if you couldn’t do this anymore?

“I swore an oath, Sheriff,” she told Hart. “If Burke did it, I’ll put him in cuffs myself. I just don’t think he could have done it, and I want to see he gets a fair shake, is all.”

“He’ll get a shake,” Hart replied. “This isn’t Kirby Harwood’s county anymore.”

“No, sir.”

And you have Mason Burke to thank for it, she thought.

Hart pursed his lips, looked around the detachment.

“Right,” he said finally. “I guess we’ll bring this guy in.”