SIXTEEN

Jess watched from behind the glass as Burke walked past Hart and let himself out of the interview room. She fought the urge to chase him down, catch him in the hall of the Neah Bay detachment, take him in her arms and say—well, what, exactly?

Apologize for how Hart had questioned him?

Tell Burke she didn’t believe that he could have killed Boyd, no matter what the sheriff thought? Tell him she loved him and they’d fight this thing together, stand side by side until they found the real killer?

Or—maybe—she’d tell Burke to just clear out and run. Tell him to get the hell out of Makah County while he was still a free man, forget trying to fight. Tell him it wasn’t worth the risk that they would lose, not given his history and the way folks in the county still tended to see him.

But Burke wouldn’t run, Jess knew. Not if it meant he would have to leave her behind.

She didn’t chase Burke down. She didn’t even leave the viewing room, and after a short while, Hart stood from the interview table and walked out of the room. A moment later he came into the room where she waited.

“Well,” he said. “What do you think?”

She thought that no matter what she believed, the sheriff would need more than just her instincts if he was going to knock Burke off his list of suspects. If she hoped to make him trust her as his deputy, and not just the killer’s girlfriend.

Jess looked the sheriff square in the eye and tried to sound confident. “I think we still don’t have the murder weapon,” she said.

  

Burke was about a mile out of Neah Bay, walking east on the highway, when she caught up to him in her county cruiser. Rain was pouring now; Burke was soaked, but he walked steadily on the shoulder as if he didn’t notice, didn’t care.

She put on her flashers and pulled over just ahead of him. Watched him in the rearview as he approached the car. When he’d come up beside her, she lowered her window. “It’s twenty miles to Deception, Burke,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of walking.”

He looked up and down the empty highway. “Don’t really like my chances of flagging a ride,” he told her. “And it’s not like that sheriff of yours offered me a lift.”

She looked up at him, his jaw set and stubborn, rain streaming out of his hair and in rivulets down his face. He held her eyes for a moment and then looked away, up and across the top of her cruiser, his expression inscrutable.

“Get in,” she said.

He kind of smirked. “You want me in the front seat or the back?”

“Fuck you.” She felt anger flare up and glared at him. “Just get in the car, Burke. You want a ride home or not?”

  

He took the front seat after all, slid in beside her and rubbed his hands together in front of the heater vent as she signaled off the shoulder and pulled back onto the highway. They drove in silence for a while, and then he glanced at her.

“You were watching,” he said. “All of that, me and Hart.”

She nodded. She didn’t say anything.

“I guess he’s good at his job,” Burke continued. “He knew he’d get me riled up, get me to spill something.”

He seemed to be waiting for her to reply, and when she didn’t, he looked over at her again, and he sighed.

“I didn’t kill Boyd, Jess,” he said. “I can’t believe it even needs repeating, but I’ll say it again. I didn’t kill him.”

“I know.” Her mouth was dry; her voice came out rough, and she coughed it away. “But the whole county’s about ready to pin it on you anyway.”

Burke frowned. “You mean to tell me you have no other suspects, Jess? A guy like that, in a county like this, and I’m the only one you all can think to pin this on?”

She drove and watched the wipers arc fast across the windshield.

“He was a criminal, same as me,” Burke said. “And he was rich, and he was an asshole, and he didn’t seem to care if people knew it. But the sheriff and them all think I’m the only one who could have killed him? Over Lucy?”

“You love that dog,” she said.

“So do you.” His voice was sharp, but she could hear the pain behind it.

She closed her eyes, and drove, and took the next bend with her eyes closed and only the sound of the tires on the pavement to guide her.

“We think there was a woman,” she said. She opened her eyes, and Burke was watching her. “Or I do, anyway.”

She told him about the broken wineglass. The lipstick stain and the partial fingerprint. About how nobody in Deception Cove would admit to seeing Boyd with any woman.

“It’s just strange,” she said. “Whoever she was, she just disappeared. And it could be she has nothing to do with the murder at all, but…” She shrugged. “Damn it, we’d still like to talk to her.”

She realized she’d probably crossed a line, telling Burke this. But Burke seemed to recognize it was a risk, what she’d done, and he seemed to be grateful for it.

He sat back in his seat. Watched the forest whiz by out his window.

“Thank you,” he said. “For telling me.”

  

They sat the rest of the way in silence, and it was a silence that made Jess afraid for what must come next. She wanted to take Burke’s hand and feel him close beside her, and she wanted to lie together in bed and laugh at how Lucy chased squirrels in her dreams; she wanted to feel again how Burke’s body fit against hers.

She didn’t want to lose him, and she wanted to tell him this, but instead, as they came into Deception, she slowed down the cruiser and cleared her throat and asked, “Where do you want me to drop you?”

“Lucy’s at the jobsite,” he told her. “I figure you’d better take her.”

She nodded and drove past the gas station and the motel and the turnoff down Main Street, found her way to her own turn and Timberline Road, a going-nowhere dead end with hardly any neighbors, the property she’d owned with Ty near the end of it. Joe Clifford’s truck wasn’t parked out front, thank God, but as Jess slowed her cruiser she saw Burke’s friend, Rengo, come out from underneath the toolshed with Lucy in tow.

The kid slowed his pace when he saw the cruiser, but Lucy sped up, made a run at the driver’s-side door and leaped up for the window before Jess had even stopped the car, the dog’s claws undoubtedly scratching that Makah County paint, but neither the dog nor the deputy was particularly inclined to care.

Jess rolled down her window and let Lucy leap up at her, tongue lolling this way and that as, beside her, Burke reached for his door handle.

“Come on over here, girl,” he called, and Lucy dropped down from the car and dashed around to his side, leaped up at him and fell short and leaped up again, leaving muddy tracks on his jacket and his jeans.

Burke shepherded Lucy to the open passenger door, where the dog looked in at Jess and then back at Burke and paused, like she could tell, somehow, something was amiss.

“Up you go,” Burke was saying. “Get on in there.”

He tapped on Lucy’s butt and the dog leaped inside, muddy paws on the passenger seat and the center console, her tail wagging as she stretched across the car to assault Jess with her tongue.

Burke closed the passenger door, walked around to the other side of the cruiser, and stood at her window, his hands in his pockets.

“Probably best if I leave you be for a while,” he said. “At least while the sheriff still thinks I’m the killer and you’re still wearing that badge.”

She glanced down at the badge where it was pinned to her chest. Knew Burke was right, but hated it anyway.

Is this what it comes down to? she wondered. Is this how it’s going to be, choosing Burke or the job? The county?

“We’ll catch whoever did this,” she said instead, and tried to sound sure. “It’ll be over soon, Burke. Just keep your head down until it’s done.”

Burke nodded, opened his mouth like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t. And there was plenty more she wanted to tell him too, but she kept her mouth shut and didn’t say any of it, just rolled up her window and put the cruiser in gear, steered away from the shell of her new house, and the man with whom she’d hoped to make it a home.