Kateri sat at her desk in her office, pulled in the evidence from her guys, compiled the reports and the photos, and by nine A.M. she was calling Garik’s private line. A female answered, her tone businesslike, proving not even his cell phone was his own during FBI business hours. Kateri said, “Garik Jacobsen, please. This is Sheriff Kateri Kwinault from Virtue Falls. I’d like to speak to him about a situation we have here.”
“Let me see if he’s in.” Which translated meant, Let me see if he wants to speak with you.
He came on the line right away and for some reason, his voice sounded amused. “So … what’s this I hear about the Virtue Falls sheriff shacking up with a bouncer?”
Kateri had been concentrating on the gruesome photos of the murder. Caught off guard, she stammered, “A … a bouncer? You mean Stag? He’s more than a…” She realized Garik was pulling her chain, and said, “How did you hear about it?”
“When half the law enforcement in Western Washington is deployed to Virtue Falls to catch John Terrance and their chase comes to such a walloping finish, you know what they do afterward.”
“They gossip. I know. But really? Why would they care who I’m sleeping with?”
“You’re a female sheriff—that’s still pretty rare in the business—you’re famous and you’re hot.”
She looked down at her scarred hands, at the walking stick leaning against the wall. “Hot, huh?”
“Every day.”
Yep. She liked Garik. He was smart, sharp, with a lot of law enforcement experience. When he recommended her for the interim position of sheriff, the city council had gone along. She’d had to win the election on her own, but he’d given her the push she needed. Maybe more important, he was dedicated to his mother, his wife and his daughter. Good guy.
He was still laughing at her. “Plus the cops all know I’m from Virtue Falls, so I got a call right away. Plus…” He let that dangle.
“Your foster mother told you.”
“Margaret Smith knows all.”
“She’s almost one hundred years old. How does she hear this stuff?”
“She’s charming, she has connections and she runs the Virtue Falls Resort. Everyone tells her everything.”
Yep. Kateri liked Margaret Smith, too.
He continued, “Stag Denali, huh? I remember him. Good catch. He’s quite the arm candy.”
“I don’t know that that’s what he signed on for.”
“He’s a tough guy. He’ll bear up under the strain.”
They laughed, then Kateri got down to business. “We had a second slashing in Virtue Falls. This one ended in a death.”
“Slashing? John Terrance?”
“We’d like to think so.”
“But you don’t.”
“There is reasonable doubt.” She filled him in, sent the files on the first slashing and the preliminaries on the second, and promised the autopsy when Mike Sun had finished.
“Looking at the pictures now…” She could hear him clicking through the photos.
“See anything familiar? Does the FBI have reports of similar attacks anywhere close? Or far? Past or present? Have you heard anything?”
“No clusters of slashing attacks that I’m aware of. The only things the victims had in common was that they’re white and female?”
“And that the slashing was to their faces. That coincidence seems unlikely.”
“Agreed. Let me look around at FBI reports, talk to some people, get back to you. In the meantime, you eliminate or confirm Terrance as a suspect.”
“You mean, catch him?”
“You’ve only got a little time before Virtue Falls goes from quiet hysteria to a riot.”
“I am aware. But he’s gone to ground.”
A short, portly man stepped into the doorway and rapped briskly on the sill.
This could not be good. “Garik, I have to go. City Councilman Venegra has arrived for a visit.”
“Viagra Venegra? Isn’t that the guy you arrested last week?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Along with most of the city council and the school board?”
“Yes, I did.”
“For getting involved in a fight between two members of the school board in front of the courthouse that became a riot involving every politician in town?”
Shut up, Garik. “That is correct.”
“Think he might hold a grudge against you?”
She checked out Venegra’s scowl. “Absolutely! I’ll keep you posted as events unfold. Call me as soon as you’ve got something.” She hung up on him and gestured to a seat. “Come in, Councilman. What’s on your mind?”
He gripped the arms of the chair as he lowered himself down and he winced as he settled on the cushion.
On that fateful day last week in front of the courthouse, Venegra’s wife had discovered he was having an affair with Mona Coleman and she had bunched up her fist and landed a good solid hit. That was part of what precipitated the riot …
Kateri refrained from asking how his nads were feeling.
“Who were you talking to, sheriff?” Venegra asked.
As if he had the right to know. As if she reported to him. Which she did not. But she knew damned good and well he’d heard at least some of her part of the conversation and so she told him, “Garik Jacobsen at the FBI. In case you haven’t heard, we have a situation here in the county.”
“I’m glad to hear you admit that. For as little as you’ve done to apprehend John Terrance, I thought you were unaware of the danger lurking on every corner. When are you going to catch John Terrance? The citizens of Virtue Falls didn’t vote you in and expect you to prove your incompetence in the first week.”
He was a nasty little sexist creep. Kateri wondered what Mona saw in him—and Kateri didn’t think much good of Mona.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” he demanded.
“Is this official business, Councilman? Because I’ve got citizens to interview, calls to make and—”
“This is official business. The Virtue Falls City Council is in charge of the finances of this city and this adverse publicity that you have garnered by letting John Terrance run around the county unchecked when the Fourth of July, the date of our country’s independence and the largest moneymaking week for Virtue Falls businesses … this is ruinous!”
She was staring, she realized, with her mouth cocked sideways. “You’re not complaining because the citizens of Virtue Falls are in danger, but because the city treasury is in peril?”
“When the town’s profits are disrupted, do you imagine the citizens will be happy?”
She had been up for hours. She’d viewed the scene of a gruesome murder, grieved for a woman she had never met, worried that others would suffer the same fate, dealt with paperwork, listened to police reports, dealt with more paperwork, organized photos, called the victim’s family, comforted Carolyn Abner’s children, persuaded them to authorize the autopsy … and now Kateri faced an indignant, moneygrubbing politician who looked like a bug-eyed snake who had swallowed an egg.
But she had to be fair … “You have heard a woman was discovered early this morning at Lupine Point, murdered by a slasher?”
“What? What? Murder?” Venegra put his hand over his heart as if to still the palpitations.
Kateri thought he’d be better off putting his hands on his aching testicles.
In a booming voice, he asked, “Did you catch the killer?”
“We have no suspects.”
“Is the victim someone local?”
“A tourist.” Kateri’s sarcasm got the better of her. “Is that better for business or worse?”
She was making fun of him, and Venegra was smart enough—barely—to know it. “At least you’ve done one thing right—you had the good sense to bring Garik Jacobsen into the case. Maybe our former sheriff will come back and catch the murderer before he kills again!”
In a voice that would have frozen a normal man, she said, “Garik would not so overstep his authority.”
“Well, maybe we’ll just vote him in after the citizens of our fair city impeach you!”
That’s it. I am done with you. Kateri stood up and offered her hand. “Let’s shake on that.”
Venegra grabbed her fingers and squeezed. Hard.
Kateri dragged seething fire, molten rock, ocean-cold, angry-red power up from the earth and let it flow through her and into him.
First Venegra started trembling.
The earth jolted hard and fast, a brief movement the seismologists would categorize as an aftershock to the big one that had reshaped Virtue Falls.
Venegra’s eyes grew wide.
Kateri pulled her hand away before she wholly gave in to her temper—and brought the walls down.
He flopped backward into the chair, his gaze fixed on her in horror.
With a fixed smile, she reminded him, “I did say, ‘Let’s shake.’”