The Shadow's Edge (17 page)

             
                                                                                   
34

              I awoke to the most wonderful of all sights for me – the smiling face of my beautiful wife. She was perched on the side of my bed with her hand resting on my chest. If it’s possible to appear sad and happy at the same time, that’s how I would describe the way she looked. “Welcome back, big guy,” she said.

             
Behind Callie stood Sharon, flanked by Kat and Devon. My whole fan club.

             
“I survived?”

             
“Thanks to Sharon, yup.”

             
“I owe you big time,” I said, looking at Sharon.

             
“Actually the bullet came out pretty easy,” she confessed. “You’re not going to be doing much walking for a few days but the leg should heal well. You’re going to have a dandy scar on the side of your head, though.”

             
“A small price to pay,” I said.

             
“Come on, you guys,” Kat said, “let’s let these guys have some privacy.”

             
“Kat told me everything that happened,” Callie said after we were alone.

             
I couldn’t help but wonder if Callie had a true appreciation for what was behind the whole situation – a ploy to give her killing of Croop an aura of justification that was, perhaps, sadly lacking.

             
“We’re not in the clear yet, honey,” I said. “You can bet there’ll be a pretty intense investigation into Fordham’s murder. And we still don’t know for sure whether the new ‘evidence’ against Croop is going to hold.”

             
“Do you have a plan?”

             
“Not really. Once I’m healed well enough I guess we’ll go back to Colville and try to act as mystified as everybody else about what happened to Fordham. We’ll just take it one step at a time. I’ll call Christine Darrow tomorrow to see how things are progressing with your case.”

             
Callie stretched out beside me on the bed, careful not to jostle my heavily bandaged leg, and put her head in the crook of my arm. “Who ever thought our lives would be so complicated?” she murmured.

             
I had no good answer for that one. I closed my eyes, content for the moment that events would unfold as fate decreed.

              Devon and Sharon Stedman graciously allowed me the time I needed to mend. Sharon took care of changing my bandages daily and Callie looked after all my other needs. Kat had left for Colville and a return to work the day after Sharon dug the bullet out of me. She had phoned her boss and explained a family emergency had been responsible for her sudden departure.

             
My call to Christine Darrow had revealed no further developments in Callie’s case. We were on hold.

             
Devon, who was something of a backyard mechanic, had brought home some Bondo body filler and done a very decent job of eliminating all external signs of the bullet holes in the pickup. The spray paint he used wasn’t quite the perfect match but it wasn’t like the pickup was a showroom piece to begin with. He also took the truck to a glass shop and had the driver’s side window replaced.

             
After a week of convalescence I was pretty much good to go. Devon gifted me a light weight straw Fedora to hide the scrape on the side of my head and my leg was workable. I had a tendency to limp rather conspicuously but, if I concentrated and limited the distance covered, I could conceal it fairly effectively.

             
We waited until Sharon had a day off and then took her and Devon out to the best restaurant in town. When our wine arrived I held up my glass. “I owe you guys way too much for words to express,” I said. “Kat raised one hell of a fine son. And
he
picked one hell of a fine woman for a wife.”

             
It wasn’t much of a speech but it brought bright smiles all around and even the hint of a tear to Sharon’s eye.

             
The next morning Callie and I left for home.

                                                                                    *              *

              I phoned Miles the moment we got back to check in. “Anything new around here?” I asked.

             
There was a subdued tone to Miles’ voice when he answered. “You might say that, yeah. RJ Fordham was found on a back road about twenty miles west a town last week, shot ta death.”

             
Miles might have been a good old country boy but he was nobody’s fool. I didn’t insult his intelligence by trying to act overly astonished by the news. “Has anybody been arrested?”

             
“Not yet.”

             
“Any suspects?”

             
“I can’t rightly say for sure. But don’t be surprised if Jessup wants to talk to you about it.”

             
“Why would he want to talk to me?”

             
“Maybe he’s a little suspicious a the fact that you and Callie happened ta disappear just about the same time as the killin’ went down.”

             
Was it Jessup who was suspicious or just Miles?
“Well, I’ll give him a call now that we’re back. Put his mind at ease.”

             
“Yeah, you do that, Jack.”

             
“Okay, well, I’ll talk to you soon.”

             
“Right. By the way, Jessup confided that Fordham was killed with a 9 millimeter, most likely an automatic.” He waited for a second or two to see if I had a comeback, then hung up.

             
I knew Miles had come to some kind of acceptance in his mind for what I’d done to Reuben Henderson. He didn’t condone it exactly, but he understood how a man could be pushed to do unacceptable things under extraordinary circumstances. I also knew, however, that it was extremely unlikely that he’d be able to forgive another episode of extreme violence on my part. I’d have to think up some kind of a story for what happened to his gun if he should ask for it back.

             
I thought about phoning Jessup, then decided that probably wasn’t going to make it for him. He was the kind of guy who liked to look you in the eye and read your reaction to things.

             
I had a look in the mirror before leaving for town. With my hat on, and tilted just a bit to the left, the head wound was completely covered. It gave me kind of a jaunty look. I called upstairs to Callie that I was going into town for an hour.

             
I found Jessup in his usual pose, feet propped on his desk, cigarette in hand, reading a report of some kind. When he saw me he put down the report, dropped his feet to the floor, and took a final deep pull on the cancer stick.

             
“Chief,” I said, sitting down opposite him. “I understand there’s been some bad shit happened while I was away.”

             
His glare was penetrating. “Yeah, you could say that.”

             
“Any suspects yet?”

             
“I’ll get back to you on that.”

             
“Well, I’m sure it’ll all come together eventually.”

             
“I’m sure it will.”

             
“Anyway, I just wanted to let you know we’re renting the Stiller place out on Two Mile Road.” I would have bet big that this was not news to him.

             
“You’ve been out of town,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

             
“Yeah,” I said. “Just over in Rumford visiting some friends for a week or so. Callie felt she needed to get away for a bit, what with all the stress from the trial and all.”

             
Jessup ran his tongue around his mouth while continuing to stare at me. I had the strongest sensation that he was on the verge of quietly proclaiming I was a cop-killing piece of shit.

             
I held his gaze without withering for a full thirty seconds. That might not sound like much but, facing a steely-eyed lawman oozing distrust, it felt like an eternity. When he finally spoke his voice was surprisingly calm. “Two small town police officers killed in the same month by gunfire in unrelated incidents. Would you say that’s a bit of a coincidence, in your experience?”

             
“Yeah,” I said, “I’d have to say that it is.”

             
“I’m inclined to think not,” he said caustically. “In any event the State boys are working overtime on this. And when the hammer drops on this one I have a strong feeling there will be no bullshit defense justifying it. Not this time.”

             
The inference was chillingly clear. He was now saying he regarded Callie’s defense in Croop’s death to be bogus. Was he also insinuating that I might be responsible for Fordhams’ demise? Or was he just venting his anger at the loss of both his officers? Who knew?

             
“Chief, I don’t know what went down with Fordham but in Callie’s case her defense is not bullshit.”

             
“Well … we’ll leave that to the courts to determine, won’t we?” he said.  

             
I didn’t need to have a brick drop on my head to know I was facing some serious skepticism.               I got to my feet. “I guess I’ll be going.”

             
Jessup watched me closely. “There’s a good chance whoever shot RJ took a bullet or two himself,” he said. “RJ had fired his weapon six times before he died and he was a crack shot.”

             
I pursed my lips and nodded my head. “Good to know.”

             
As I walked from his office he called to me, “Next time you stop by, take off your hat and stay awhile.”

             
It was pure luck that I didn’t stumble at his utterance. Was the mention of my hat a chance occurrence? Or was it something else?

             
I held up my hand in a parting wave and concentrated on making it   out to the street without limping.

             
                                                                                   
35

             
If I had harbored any feelings of security up to now, they were disappearing fast. Miles had made it pretty clear he suspected I was front and center in Fordham’s death, and Jessup had all but made an outright accusation. My only consolation was that there was no physical evidence linking me to the crime scene – at least none that I knew of – and, to all intents and purposes, I had no motive for gunning down a police officer I   barely knew.

             
On the surface, I had nothing to worry about. As long as Kat remained tight-lipped. And Devon. And Sharon.

             
Three people with first hand knowledge of my culpability in a killing.

             
It was, of course, precisely three more than the ideal.

              When I stopped into the diner Kat was busy with customers. She mumbled, “Hi, Jack” and put a steaming cup of coffee at the end of the counter for me when I gave her the ‘just a coffee’ sign. I had hoped to have a quiet word with her, just to ease my mind that everything was copasetic, but it wasn’t going to happen unless I sat around for awhile.

             
Everyone in town knew who I was and it was normal for conversation in the diner to fade rather conspicuously while I was present. It made for an uncomfortable situation and I was not inclined to linger.

             
I drank up, left some change on the counter, and gave Kat a little wave when I left. She nodded to me but her face was impassive, leaving no indication as to whether or not she was at ease with the knowledge she held.

             
I got into the pickup and pointed it in the direction of home. About half way there it suddenly occurred to me I had never checked under the seat to make sure that Kat had gotten rid of the Glock like I had asked. All things considered it was a major oversight. It was, after all, the one thing in the world that, if discovered, would guarantee to put me in the slammer for the rest of my life. I pulled over to the side of the road, hopped out of the cab, and had a look.

             
And there it was, still wrapped in a rag and right where I had last tucked it away.

             
To say I was surprised would be to understate my feelings in the extreme. How could Kat have been so careless? Then again, considering all I had put her through, maybe it wasn’t so bewildering. The woman had after all placed herself in tremendous jeopardy for no other reason than to help me and Callie. And not only herself but her son and daughter-in-law as well. Put in proper context it was amazing that she had the presence of mind to function at all.

             
I was deliberating about what to do about the gun when I looked up and saw Jessup’s cruiser coming toward me in the distance.
Oh, shit.

             
I threw the door to the pickup closed. Devon had done a decent job of repairing the bullet-ridden outer door but the inside door panel was still pocked and torn.

             
There was no time to do anything about the gun. Jessup was coming up too fast. I bent down and pressed my thumbnail to the left front tire valve, letting out some air.

             
Jessup pulled up behind the pickup a moment later and emerged from the cruiser. Was it  my imagination, or did his hand linger threateningly near his holstered gun as he sauntered toward me?

             
“Hello again, Chief,” I said, rising to my feet as a sharp jolt of pain stabbed my bad leg, making me wince.

             
“Having trouble?” he asked.

             
It wasn’t hard to imagine the possibility of a double meaning in his question.

             
“Tire’s a little low. Thought I noticed it pulling a bit.”

             
“Uh huh.”

             
Jessup stood by my door, within eighteen inches of the weapon that had blasted his deputy into another dimension. The tension of the moment was palpable. Would he notice the slightly off color of the door Devon had sprayed? What would I do if Jessup decided to search the pickup for some reason and, in the process, found my hidden cache? Allowing that to happen would mean the end of everything for me. If I was arrested for killing Fordham my motive would very likely come out eventually. The result would not only mean a life sentence for me but very likely the same for Callie.

             
Not a scenario I could allow to happen.

             
Jessup glanced into the cab. I tensed, preparing myself to take yet another unthinkable action. I couldn’t help but marvel at the ease with which it appeared I was prepared to take yet another life. I wasn’t sure I knew the man I had become at all.

             
“This is old Ed Westling’s beater, isn’t it?” Jessup asked.

             
“Yeah. I bought it from him.”

             
Jessup nodded. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something else or to do something. I waited him out. Finally, when it became uncomfortable, I said, “Well, I’d better be going. Callie’s expecting me.”

             
“Hang on just a minute,” Jessup said. “After you left my office I had a call from the State boys conducting the investigation into RJ’s … death.”

             
I got that nauseous feeling again. “Uh huh.”

             
“I probably shouldn’t be telling you this but I’m going to anyway. Turns out the Staties have been conducting an investigation into the activities of one of our wealthier citizens. Fella by the name of Yuri Kristov. Lives near Colville on a large rural property for part of the year.”

             
“The name doesn’t mean anything to me.”

             
“No, I wouldn’t expect that it would. The thing is RJ was renting a house belonging to Kristov. It’s a very nice home, certainly well beyond anything one of my officers would normally be able to afford. When I asked RJ about it he shrugged it off as nothing more than a kind offer by a rich man to help out a public servant. But, much to my deep disappointment, I’m told there is now some reason to suspect that RJ may have been involved in a conspiracy with Kristov to acquire women in a human smuggling ring.”

             
This was all intriguing information and certainly served to confirm my low opinion of Fordham but I figured it was time to show Jessup some sign of righteous boredom. “What does all this have to do with me, Chief?”

             
“Well, as you and I discussed, for some time now I’ve suspected that Kat Stedman knew more about the disappearance of Charlene Lamont than she was admitting. And I’m aware that immediately after RJ was killed both you and your wife, along with Ms. Stedman, left town. I have to ask myself if that can be put down to coincidence.”

             
I put on what I hoped Jessup would read as an innocent face. “I can see where you might find that coincidental but not overly so,” I said.

             
“Mm hmm. Well, I’ve never put much stock in coincidence personally.”

             
“So what’s … uh, your intention here, Chief?”

             
“Just this,” Jessup said, crossing his arms across his chest. “I’m going to make you a one-time offer. Come clean to me right now about your involvement in RJ Fordham’s death. Before you respond, I want to tell you something. I know you’re involved in this matter but I also believe there must be a damn good reason for it. If you come clean I’ll do everything in my power to see that you’re treated fairly.”

             
Nothing Jessup had said went any distant in tempting me to say a word. Callie’s future would still be negatively affected no matter what Jessup promised me. “Sorry, Chief, I don’t know what you’re talking---”

             
“One more thing you should know before you complete that thought,” he interrupted me. “Kat Stedman is being held in custody as we speak. A lot of pressure is about to be put on her by the State Police to explain where she was during the events in question and about where she was in the week following. Personally, I have a pretty good idea it was with her son in Rumford. And that it’s very possible that’s exactly where you and your wife were. If that’s so and it’s determined that her son was involved in some way in an attempt to cover her or your involvement in Fordham’s death he will be charged as an accessory. Personally, I think Ms. Stedman will fold like a limp napkin when faced with the prospect of her son’s arrest. If you come clean before she folds it’s going to go much better for all of you. I’m telling you this for no other reason than to help you, Jack.”

             
It was the only time Jessup had referred to me by my first name and I admit it had the undeniable effect of legitimizing his plea for cooperation. In light of his revelations about Kat I also had to face the certainty that Jessup was right. My world was about to come crashing down around me and there was not a damn thing I could do about it.

             
Everything I had tried to accomplish by my foolish actions was headed for ruin.