Only By Your Touch (40 page)

Nan directed Chloe to the garage, then hovered in the doorway, wringing her hands as Chloe searched through the garden tools to get what she needed. “We can’t go up there now,” Chloe said over her shoulder. “They’ll be investigating the crime scene.” She locked her hands over the handle of the shovel. “We’ll have to wait until they leave. Then we’ll sneak up there.”

“Isn’t it against the law to mess with a crime scene?”

Chloe met Nan’s gaze and grinned. “I think so. Do you have a couple of flashlights?”

Refreshed by a two-hour nap taken with Jeremy early that evening, Chloe was ready to go as soon as the summer dusk gave way to darkness. It was only twenty minutes before ten, but it seemed much later as they struck off down the steep driveway, Jeremy walking Methuselah on a leash, and Diablo trailing through the woods around them. Knowing that the wolf was checking for danger made Chloe feel safer. Venturing out into a forest at night would have been spooky under any circumstances. Knowing that they were about to visit the scene of a murder made it even spookier.

Their flashlight beams bobbed on the road in front of them, striking a marked contrast to the darkness all around. Jeremy pressed closer to Chloe. “Mommy, do you b’lieve in ghosts?”

“No, Jeremy, of course not,” Chloe said bravely. “Not in bad ghosts, anyway. If they exist, they’re just the spirits of people, like us. They wouldn’t want to hurt us.”

Jeremy seemed reassured. Chloe’s hands were sweating so badly, she could barely keep a grip on the shovel. She tapped the tool blade on the earth with every other step, feeling a little like Moses walking with a staff across the desert.

“How far is it, Nan?” she asked, hoping that the older woman didn’t trail off mentally as she was so often given to doing.

“About a quarter mile from the house. We’ll be there shortly.”

Nan angled to the right, taking a rutted dirt road that intersected the graveled driveway. They passed through an impossibly dark stretch where the forest canopy above them blocked out all trace of moonlight.

“This is where the trees are. Remember, I told you how I hid behind the log deck until the man wasn’t
watching, and then ran to reach the trees where I hoped he wouldn’t see me?”

Chloe did remember, and she cursed herself again for not taking Nan seriously. Soon they reached a large clearing. Somehow, even though the area was bathed in faint moonlight, it seemed more ominous than the darkness they’d left behind. Deadfall gleamed silver in the moon-spun shadows, and huge clumps of manzanita in varying shapes and sizes dotted the landscape. Little wonder that Ben had seen no sign of turned earth from the road. There could be a dozen graves on that slope, and no one would spot them.

Chloe shivered, wishing she’d thought to wear a heavier jacket. The night air in such mountainous terrain was chilly.

“Are you warm, Jeremy?”

“Yup,” the child whispered. “I’m shaking ’cause I’m kind of scared.”

Chloe winced. She could only hope Jeremy wasn’t permanently traumatized by his memory of this night. “Don’t be scared, sweetie. Diablo’s here.” She glanced around, but in the darkness, she saw no sign of the wolf. “He’s watching out for us. Nothing will harm us with him standing guard.”

“There’s the log deck,” Nan said softly. “One of Hap’s harebrained ideas, selling timber. He cut the trees, decked them to dry, and then left them to rot.”

Chloe played her light over the pile of old logs. Much farther up the incline, her flashlight beam glanced off the bright yellow crime-scene tape that the sheriff had used to mark the area. “Oh, Nan,” Chloe whispered, “you saw Jimmy Suitor’s killer. You actually
saw
his killer.”

“Of course, I saw his killer. I told you that, didn’t I?”

Nan, wearing jeans and sneakers, made fast work
of passing under the tape. Chloe held up the plastic for Jeremy and Methuselah to pass through, then ducked under to follow.

Flashlight bobbing, she hurried to catch up. “Can you remember where you saw him filling in the first hole?”

“Up there someplace,” Nan whispered, pointing with her light. “You know, an awful thought just occurred to me.”

Chloe’s heart leaped.
“What?”
she asked.

“Where’s the killer? He isn’t in jail. They arrested the wrong man.”

Chloe laughed softly—the sound slightly frantic. She gulped, took a deep breath. “Let’s not think about that. I doubt he’s out here.”

“You’re right. Only a damned fool would do something this crazy.”

Chloe laughed again. The humor eased some of her tension. “Two damned fools. Let’s go.”

Nan zigzagged back and forth once she had ascended partway up the slope. She examined the earth closely with her flashlight. “It was right up here somewhere,” she said several times. “I know it was. I may forget lots of things, but I remember that, plain as can be.”

All Chloe saw was bushes, pine needles, and dirt.

“He probably tried to cover the turned earth so it wouldn’t be noticeable,” Nan mused aloud. “Tap with your toe, Chloe. When you feel softness, give it a hard look. My guess is he strewed pine needles and brush over the spot.”

Chloe was busily tapping a section of ground with her shoe when Nan said, “Here! Turned earth. This is right about where I first saw him. This has to be the spot.”

Jeremy and Nan stood aside while Chloe put her
back into the digging. The hole grew deep, and Chloe was about to give up when the blade of the shovel finally struck something soft. She tossed away the shovel and went to her knees to carefully brush away the remaining dirt with her hands.

Nan, shining her light into the hole, identified the unearthed object first. “A backpack.”

Excitement coursed through Chloe. She carefully unearthed the pack, reminding herself that it might not contain evidence that would clear Ben.

“Why,” Nan wondered aloud, “did the killer dig a separate hole for the boy’s backpack? I was hoping he’d buried the murder weapon.”

Chloe soon discovered the answer to that question. Beneath the backpack was a billy club. Even after being buried for a month, the weapon was still covered with blood and strands of hair. Chloe shuddered so violently when she saw the gory leavings that she almost fell in the hole.

“There you are, Nan. Your murder weapon.” She sat back and braced her grimy hands on her thighs. “I don’t think we should touch it. We may destroy fingerprints.” She reached for her cell phone, which she’d clipped over the waistband of her jeans. “I’ll call the sheriff, and we’ll wait for someone who knows what he’s doing.”

“I don’t think so,” a deep voice said.

Chloe’s heart leaped. She knew that voice. The last couple of nights, it had been haunting her dreams.

“Put the phone down,” Bobby Lee said. “Try to dial out, and I’ll shoot you.”

Nan swung her light toward the voice. The beam played over Bobby Lee, who was standing about ten feet uphill from them. Legs braced apart for balance on the slope, he held a rifle angled across the front of his body.

“Shine that light in my face, you old bitch, and I’ll nail you right between the eyes. I’m a crack shot. Don’t think I can’t.”

Nan lowered the light so only a faint glow shone over Bobby Lee’s dark features. He was smiling. That frightened Chloe more than anything else; the relaxed, amused way he was smiling. She knew in that instant that Ben had been right. Bobby Lee had been shooting the animals. Jimmy Suitor must have made the fatal mistake of coming upon Bobby Lee in the woods.

“You really should have let it be, Chloe,” he said matter-of-factly. He glanced at Nan. “I knew you’d seen me that morning, old woman. You being nuts, I hoped no one would believe you, so I let you go. My mistake. Luckily, I got to thinking tonight that you might’ve seen me burying the club, so I came up to keep an eye on things, just in case. I figured right. Lo and behold, you show up with a shovel.” He gestured with the rifle barrel. “Nan, you and the kid, step back. Chloe, put the pack back where it was and get to work. You’ve got a hole to fill.”

“And after? What’re you going to do with us, Bobby Lee?”

“I guess there’ll be another shooting incident, only this time I’ll make the shots fatal. It’ll raise a few eyebrows when the casualties are human, of course. No matter. The gun isn’t registered. It can’t be traced back to me.”

Chloe knew Bobby Lee would kill Jeremy without hesitation. She’d seen the madness in his eyes the other night, and she saw it again now.

The rogue deputy looked at Nan and smirked. “You’re not half as pretty as my mother was. I never could figure out why my father chose to stay with you when he could have had a beautiful woman like Honey Schuck warming his bed. The booze, I guess.
He was so drunk most of the time, he didn’t care about much of anything, including me. He gave my mother five hundred dollars to get an abortion. Did you know about that?”

Nan’s quickly indrawn breath was the only sign she gave of her shock.

“That’s right. I’m Hap Longtree’s son,” Bobby Lee went on. “Almost a year older than your precious Ben. By Shoshone law, my mother was Hap’s number one wife, and I was the firstborn son. By white men’s law, I should have gotten everything. This should be my land, not Ben’s. Instead, what did I get? Jack shit, that’s what, while Ben got everything, including our father’s name.”

“So that’s why you’ve always hated him.” Chloe moved to put Jeremy behind her. “Not because of anything Ben ever did, but because of what his father did.”

“
My
father, goddamn you.
My
father! And you bet your sweet ass that’s why I hate him. I spent my whole life trying to make Hap see that I was the better son. I was the one who excelled at sports, the one who got the girls, the one elected student body president. Ben was nothing but an animal-loving weirdo. The only thing he ever outdid me in was grades, and that was only because I was working so hard to shine at other things.

“And what did I get for my trouble? Nothing. My father never acknowledged me. I ran into him on a sidewalk once. He looked dead at me and kept walking like I was so much dirt. Ben was the only one he gave a shit about. Never me.”

“And that’s Ben’s fault?” Chloe saw a flash of silver in the darkness behind Bobby Lee.
Diablo,
she thought. She’d forgotten about the wolf. “It seems to
me your anger is directed at the wrong person. Ben had no control over what his father did.”

“Ben Longtree took
everything
from me.
Everything!
Now it’s my turn to take everything from him. This is perfect. Every damned thing he holds dear, gone with a few pops of a rifle. Even his goddamned cougar. Seeing his face when he finds out—that’ll be the best moment of my life.”

Chloe saw the flash of silver again. She tensed, praying Bobby Lee wouldn’t hear anything behind him. To distract him, she asked, “How does Jimmy Suitor fit into the picture?”

Bobby Lee’s feet shifted on the slope. He dug in with a heel to keep from sliding. “Jimmy was a lazy slacker. He got it into his head that he could make a cool ten grand if he came up with information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person shooting the animals. What the hell, right? He liked to camp out, and it beat working. He knew most of the shooting incidents occurred near here, so he stayed in the area, hoping to see something. Unfortunately for him, he was successful in that endeavor.”

“So you killed him?”

“I wasn’t about to have him destroy my career for ten grand so he could lay around for six months, living off the proceeds. I took care of the problem.”

“By bashing his head in with a billy club.”

“I should have used a tree limb, but I always kept the club under the driver’s seat when I wasn’t in uniform, and it was handy. Burying him here was the perfect setup. There were already rumors that Ben had killed two hunters. I knew they’d arrest him on the spot if Jimmy’s body was found on his land, and I could make sure the charges stuck by planting evidence to rack him.”

Chloe saw Diablo closing in. The wolf slunk low to the ground, his eyes gleaming with feral intent.

“Why the club, though? It could implicate you.”

“Trust me. I covered my ass. And I think our little game of twenty questions is over. You’re stalling. Put the backpack in the hole, and start filling it in. As enjoyable as this has been, I can’t stand around talking all night.”

“That billy club can be traced back to you,” Chloe pointed out. “You might be smarter to hide it elsewhere.”

“They’ll never search for it,” he said cockily. “They’ve got their body, and they’ve got their killer. Besides me, you three are the only ones who’ll ever know they’ve arrested the wrong man, and you won’t be doing much talking.”

Chloe hated to step away from Jeremy, but she had no choice. She tossed the pack back into the hole. Then, positioning herself to watch Bobby Lee and the wolf creeping up behind him, she began shoveling dirt. When she saw Diablo tense to spring, she tensed as well.

Without so much as a growl of warning, the wolf came up off the ground in a powerful leap. Chloe flung herself sideways, tackling Jeremy to shield him with her body.

“Down, Nan!” she shrieked.

“Arghh!” Bobby Lee cried.

Knocked off balance by the wolf’s attack, he fell face-first in the dirt and skidded several feet down the slope with the wolf riding his shoulders. His silence broken, Diablo emitted vicious snarls as he savaged the back of the deputy’s neck. The rifle, still gripped loosely in Bobby Lee’s hand, struck a rock and went flying.