Because I'm Watching (3 page)

A long time ago, he would have been interested in sitting down and having a conversation with her. Now … she was a reminder of who he used to be, and what he had become.

Conversations were for people who still walked and breathed and hoped and dreamed. Not for him.

Dust drifted and swirled in the sudden onslaught of outdoor air currents and intrusive rays of sun, settling on his ugly-ass furniture, the stuff that had been left in the house when the old lady had died and her lousy unsentimental son had sold everything, lock, stock, and barrel, so he didn't have to fool with it. As he had said,
It's not like Mother had anything of value in here.

More and more people were gathering on the sidewalk. He could hear the buzz of their voices now, like killer bees swarming, preparing to attack with questions and conversations and nosiness masquerading as sympathy.

A line split the floor; on one side was sunshine, on the other, shadow.

He moved farther back, into the shadow. He would not come out. He would not expose himself to the light.

Then he heard Maddie say, “But I don't want to take a blood test. I'm not drunk, and I'm not on drugs!”

He wanted to smack someone. “Wait a minute,” he said to Sheriff Kwinault. He turned toward the two cops who had Maddie cornered against his recliner. “She's not on drugs,” he said.

Both cops and Sheriff Kwinault viewed him with interest.

Sheriff Kwinault said, “I thought you said you didn't know her.”

“I don't have to know her to know she fell asleep at the wheel. Look at her. Lack of coordination. Dark circles under her eyes. Pupils are normal, but can't stay on track with any thought.” He gestured stiffly. “I don't know when she slept last, but it's been a long time.”

Maddie blinked at him. She did that a lot, to keep her eyes focused.

He knew what he was talking about. He did that most days, himself. Waking hallucinations were better than nightmares. Usually.

“Those are also symptoms of drug and alcohol use,” Sheriff Kwinault said.

He didn't care. Abruptly, he replied, “Fine. Do the goddamned blood test. It's your money you're wasting.”

The cops exchanged glances.

Jacob conceded that he might have sounded hostile.

The Virtue Falls policeman, Ed Legbrandt, seemed to realize he was facing a losing proposition and backed away from the scene. “You know, Kateri, you are right. Dogwood Blossom Street is past the city limits sign and into the county. It's your jurisdiction. It's your case.” He opened up his computer tablet and tapped it a few times. “I sent you a file with all the evidence I've collected.” He jumped down from the remnants of Jacob's porch onto the small, rutted, overgrown lawn. “Have a nice day.”

“Coward,” Sheriff Kwinault muttered. To her cohort, Deputy Sheriff Gunder Bergen, she said, “Go give the guys a hand interviewing the witnesses.”

Bergen nodded, a brief, antagonistic acknowledgment, and followed the city cop out of the house—or rather off the floor—and onto the street.

Ah.
There
was the antipathy Jacob expected.

Sheriff Kwinault seemed oblivious to her deputy's attitude. All of her focus was on Maddie. “Okay, let's assume Mr. Denisov is right and you're sleep deprived. Why are you sleep deprived?”

Maddie brushed her overgrown bangs off her forehead. “I'm … I don't sleep well at night.”

“Then why did you get into a car and drive?” Sheriff Kwinault asked. “Surely you know it's dangerous.”

“I was desperate. I was out of food. And toilet paper. And”—Maddie's voice got very quiet—“feminine hygiene … um, products?”

In unison, Sheriff Kwinault and Jacob said, “Oh.”

Maddie acted like this monthly thing was excruciatingly embarrassing, and for a woman her age …

“How old are you?” Jacob asked.

“Twenty-six.”

“Twenty-six. Yeah, well, I'm thirty-four. Do you think I don't know that females—”

Sheriff Kwinault gave Jacob the stink eye.

Impatiently, he said, “I've got two older sisters. And a mother.”

Sheriff Kwinault gave him the sterner stink eye.

He shut up. He sat down on his chair, the one sitting like a throne in front of the hole in his floor, which was occupied by the Forester's front tire. He picked up the brown box with the sparkly blue ribbon and the fork.

“Where did you go?” Sheriff Kwinault asked Maddie.

Jacob held the box in both his hands. Something smelled good inside.

Maddie said, “I went to the grocery store and the sporting goods store and to the Bayview Convenience Store for lunch.”

He untied the ribbon and opened the box. Inside was some kind of sandwich, some kind of pasta salad, and a giant cookie. Smelled like ginger. “She's telling the truth about lunch, anyway.”

“I've got groceries in the back of my … um…” Maddie looked at the SUV, really looked at it, at the building's timber that had pierced the hood, and the puddle of oil and transmission fluid seeping from under the front end, and she sagged. “My brother is going to kill me.”

“Your brother? The writer? Why would he care?” Sheriff Kwinault asked.

“He bought me the car.” Maddie looked embarrassed.

As she should. Any twenty-six-year-old who had to have her brother buy her a car needed to grow up and go to work.

“He lives near Denver, right?” Sheriff Kwinault asked.

“Yes. In Colorado Springs in our parents' home,” Maddie confirmed.

“You moved to Virtue Falls from there?” As if she knew the answers, Sheriff Kwinault was fiddling with her pen and watching Maddie, waiting to see if the story had changed.

“Actually, I moved out when I went to college and after … after college I lived with my fiancé in Colorado Springs.” Maddie's eyes looked bright and luminous, as if she were holding back tears.

“When you speak with your brother, please tell him how much I enjoyed his last book,” Sheriff Kwinault said.

Maddie beamed. “I will. Thank you. There's another book coming out in a few weeks. Its title is
Sacrifice!
”

Sheriff Kwinault made a note. “I'll order it.”

Jacob took a bite of the sandwich.

He would have thought a puny-looking girl like Maddie would get some wimpy vegetarian sandwich. But no, this was pork barbeque with ham and swiss cheese, some lettuce and garlic aioli on a whole grain baguette. Best damned thing he'd put in his mouth since he'd returned to the States.

Sheriff Kwinault looked in the back window of the Subaru. “Groceries,” she confirmed. “Scattered all over the back. And a sleeping bag?” She straightened. “Are you going camping, Miss Hewitson?” For whatever reason, Sheriff Kwinault made camping sound like a crime.

Maddie's gaze dropped, and by God if she didn't look guilty. “Maybe?”

Interesting. Jacob finished half of the sandwich and ate the cookie. What did Sheriff Kwinault suspect Maddie would do when she went camping?

Did people who committed crimes here go on the lam into the wilderness and escape justice?

Why was he thinking like a cop? He was not curious.

He pried the lid off the pasta salad.

Sheriff Kwinault leaned in close to Maddie. She sniffed at her, looked into her eyes, had her display her inner elbows. “I believe you. But at the least, we're going to have to give you a ticket for reckless driving and endangerment.”

“Okay.” Tears rose in Maddie's eyes and trickled down her cheeks.

“Perhaps Mr. Denisov wants to press charges for attempted vehicular homicide?”

“No.” Like he wanted that kind of attention.

Undaunted, Sheriff Kwinault continued, “He might also bring a civil suit for damages.”

Right. Make
that
clear. With the plastic fork he gestured around at the house. “You're going to have to pay for this.” As if on his signal, the cornice fell off the wall and disintegrated in a puff of ancient wood and plaster.

Maddie flinched. “I'm sorry.”

Jacob didn't care whether she said she was sorry. Jacob didn't care whether she cried or not.

He put the fork back, shut the box, and put it down beside his chair.

He wanted her—all of them—to go away.

Sheriff Kwinault was oblivious, or maybe indifferent, to what he wanted. She asked, “Miss Hewitson, have you got a driver's license and proof of insurance?”

Maddie nodded and crawled into the car again. She searched in the glove box and center console.

Still a nice ass.

She crawled out with her purse on her arm and a long slip of paper in her hand. She handed Sheriff Kwinault her information.

Sheriff Kwinault scanned everything into her phone and handed them back. “You might want to call your insurance agent and get him out here.”

“Right.” Maddie pulled her phone out of the pocket of her sweatpants and headed toward the back of the room.

Sheriff Kwinault put her phone in her breast pocket. “If this wasn't
actually
in my jurisdiction and if I wasn't
already
caught in a pissing match so violent it's like being caught in a monsoon, I would have let the city boys keep this case.”

“Pissing match? Because you're a woman?” Jacob didn't know why he was asking. He didn't care.

“That, and this is my first post in law enforcement. The former sheriff had to take medical leave to be with his wife who suffered through a difficult pregnancy—she required hospitalization—and he strongly suggested the county commissioners appoint me.” A dimple briefly flashed. “Against their better judgment, they did.”

“Right.” That explained how a Native American woman had gotten elected.

She hadn't.

Kateri said, “None of the men in area law enforcement have taken kindly to the change. They think Bergen should have gotten the post.”

Bergen looked perfect for the job. Midthirties, tall, rugged, in shape, with sharp eyes that saw everything. He was white, and he was a
he.
“Right.”

Sheriff Kwinault looked him right in the eye. “Do you mean, ‘Right, Bergen should have gotten the post' or ‘Right, now you understand'?”

Jacob looked right back at her. “I mean, ‘Right, I don't give a shit.'”

“That's okay, then.” She glanced at Maddie's back. “She's got worse problems than driving into your house.”

He muttered, “I don't give a shit about that, either.”

“The real reason I didn't bother to get a blood test was because when we've tested her before, she's never come back with a positive result.”

 

CHAPTER FIVE

Now Jacob did give a shit. “Before?”

Sheriff Kwinault inclined her head. “On previous occasions, we've tested her drug and alcohol level.”

The silence that followed was long. Sheriff Kwinault was content to wait for Jacob to decide what he
really
wanted to do.

He
really
wanted to end the conversation. He didn't want to be involved. He wasn't curious. He damned well wasn't concerned about his crazy neighbor. Yet the question popped out of his mouth. “Why did you test her?”

“Apparent hallucinations. Public scenes. Illegal use of firearms.”

“What's wrong with her?”

“I don't know that I would say there's anything
wrong
with her. A couple of things happened to her. When she was in college, she was the sole surviving witness of a massacre in her dorm room. Crazy guy—the janitor—with a knife and a fingernail filed to a point. Four girls—friends—dead. You might have heard about it?”

He shook his head. “Out of the country, probably. How did she escape?”

“She hid under the bed and called campus security. The call gave away her position. The nutcase knocked over the bed and went for her. Campus cop arrived and shot him. Killed him.”

“Jesus.”

“A couple of years later, her fiancé was murdered, his throat cut.” Based on the concise way Sheriff Kwinault gave her report, she
must
have been in the military. “Assuming she had an unstable mental state, and given the security of the premises and the fact that she was holding a pistol, law enforcement believed she did it.”

“You said his throat was cut.”

“She didn't save him. Maybe she held him at bay while her accomplice finished him.”

Jacob closed his eyes. “People are stupid.”

“Agreed. Seemed unlikely to me. Lack of evidence led to her release.”

“Case never solved?”

“No.”

He looked back at the skinny, short girl talking, gesturing to her insurance agent over the phone. “Everyone in Virtue Falls knows that?”

“Gossip circulates.” Sheriff Kwinault waited while he processed the information.

This sheriff was an irritating woman. Good cop, though. He recognized those tactics. He could end the conversation, and she would be satisfied. She would have delivered her warning packaged as common knowledge. Or he could ask more questions.

He didn't want to ask more questions.

But Maddie was still talking, the deputies were headed toward the house, and if Jacob wanted to know, he didn't have much time. Inevitably, his mind moved into the familiar pattern of inquiry.

“She's violent?”

“Not at all. Well…” Sheriff Kwinault gestured at the vehicle parked in his house. “This.”

Deputy Sheriff Gunder Bergen and a young redhead wearing a badge that identified him as Officer Rupert Moen joined them.

Sheriff Kwinault turned to them. “What did you find out?”

Bergen said, “Quite a lot. Lots of witnesses. A couple of them are even credible. Mrs. Butenschoen was out watering her new rhubarb starts.”

“Mrs. Butenschoen saw the whole thing … that's a stunner,” Sheriff Kwinault said. To Jacob she said, “Nosy neighbor.”