FIFTY-EIGHT

Jess helped Jana Marsh concoct a cover story. For her husband and her boys. For the after-school babysitter she called, last minute, in a rush.

There was an afternoon ferry that Jess wanted to catch. Back across to Port Angeles, then west into Makah County. They would take Jana’s Land Rover, but Jess would be driving.

She’d listened to Jana’s story. All of it. Watched how Jana had seemed to become lighter in the telling, physically and mentally both. She stood straighter and wore relief on her face after she’d finished, as plainly obvious as her lipstick.

Jana hadn’t named the men who’d helped her kill Brock Boyd, but she’d agreed to come with Jess. She’d agreed to tell the sheriff her story, and she’d agreed to tell who it was she’d hired to kill Boyd, but only on conditions. She had to know that she’d still be charged, that she wouldn’t ever walk away from this scot-free, but she must’ve known, too, that sooner or later the law was going to catch up to Logger Fetridge and Dax Pruitt, and that she’d be better off telling her story to the sheriff first, before the men had the opportunity to speak out against her.

Jess figured Sheriff Hart would have his own opinion about Jana’s stipulations, but she knew that getting the suspect across the border was a good start in and of itself.

If nothing else, she might free Burke by doing this. And beyond that, nothing else really mattered.

  

There was a cafeteria on the ferry, but Jess spent the entire ride on the afterdeck beside Jana Marsh, keeping an eye on the woman in case she decided she’d rather jump off the stern than let Jess take her home to Makah County.

But Jana didn’t move. She stood stoic at the railing and stared out at the water, and did not say much to Jess as they waited. Jess wondered what she was thinking, whether she knew this was probably the last ferry ride she’d be taking for a while. Whether she even cared, now that Bad Boyd was dead.

The Land Rover was a nice truck. Leather seats, heated steering wheel, a GPS-based navigational map in the center of the dashboard. It was dark by the time they drove off the ship in Port Angeles. Jess’s stomach growled. She knew Port Angeles pretty well, but she still followed the lines on the map as she drove the SUV away from the ferry terminal toward the state road, headed west.

There was apparently satellite radio in the Land Rover too, but Jess kept that turned off. She and Jana rode in silence.

  

They drove out of Port Angeles on empty highway and passed through Clallam Bay a short time later, and then they were nearing Makah County and the spot where the billboard with Brock Boyd’s face would have been. Jess slowed the Land Rover and peered into the trees at the edge of the road until she found her turn, a little dirt path cut through the pines to a clearing on the opposite side.

The Land Rover made short work of the dirt and the bumps; Jess could tell it had been built for the hard stuff, heated steering wheel notwithstanding. In the clearing sat an old wooden gillnetter, all faded paint and rotten wood like everything else in this part of the world.

The boat was called Esperanza, “hope” in Spanish. Jess couldn’t decide if that was an omen. Certainly the boat itself looked like it had run through its fill of hope, and then some.

Jess parked the Land Rover and checked her phone, but there was no reception here. She killed the engine and sat and looked out at the boat, and listened through the trees for the sound of cars on the highway, waiting for the sheriff to arrive.

They didn’t have to wait long. Hart pulled into the clearing in his Makah County Super Duty, parked behind the Land Rover as Jess reached for her door handle.

“Come on,” she told Jana, and if there was the slightest bit of hesitation before Jana followed, it wasn’t much. She kept her head high as she exited the truck, chin forward and her expression blank.

The sheriff climbed from his truck and took in the Land Rover. Made a noise in his throat like he was impressed. He came up to meet Jess and Jana at the front of his truck, looked Jana over.

“You want to tell me what we’re doing out here, Jess?” he asked. “Why you called me all the way out of my jurisdiction with the whole county going to hell?”

“Sheriff, this is Jana Marsh,” she told Hart. “Maiden name’s Cody.”

Hart looked at Jana some more.

“Cody,” he said. “I seem to recall we’ve got a Linda Cody out in Neah Bay. You’re related?”

“My mother,” Jana said. “Levi Cody was my brother.”

She said it as though Hart might know who he was, and from the look on his face, Hart didn’t, and it was how Jana’d said it that made Jess feel rotten.

“Sheriff,” she said, “Jana’s got a story to tell you. And she’ll come back to Makah County and confess to her role in Brock Boyd’s murder, but I told her you’d listen to her first.”

Hart looked from Jana to Jess and back again. His eyes goggled.

“She?” he said to Jess. Then, to Jana: “You’re going to tell me, once and for all, how it was Bad Boyd was murdered?”

Jana barely tilted her head: Yes.

“Well, heck,” Hart said. “If that’s the case, then sure; I’d be glad to listen to your story, Mrs. Marsh.”