Virtue Falls (8 page)

About twenty feet down in the canyon, caught in a pile of debris, something bleached and white caught her eye.

What was that … down there? A bone?

She inched down the slope, peering at it. Holding on to tree trunks and grabbing at branches, she slid farther down the slope, the loose dirt falling away beneath her feet.

A femur? A human femur? Her mind leaped in scientific anticipation. Had the tsunami uncovered an archeological treasure? How cool would that be, if not only had her father’s prediction of earth-shattering disaster come true, but also the cataclysm had unearthed some ancient encampment built by prehistoric man?

Something slithered in the underbrush.

She half-screamed, then clutched her chest as a garter snake rippled away. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard her father’s voice say,
They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.

She doubted that. She was pretty calm about most of the creatures that populated the great outdoors, but snakes … She shuddered.

She should climb back up. She knew she should. Snakes weren’t the only creatures that had been displaced by the water. All of those creatures would be confused and hostile. The tree trunks and the wild clutter of branches that was her goal had come to rest at the highest watermark. The ground in the vicinity was unstable, ready to slide into the chasm. The earth’s slightest shudder could send her tumbling into the mud below. She’d slip down into the canyon until a rock or debris stopped her—or until she rolled off a newly exposed cliff face and fell all the way to the bottom.

At least the video would be safe in its bag at the top of the canyon.

Stupid thought, but that bone beckoned. She scooted closer, and closer, the bone gleaming in the gathering twilight. She stretched until her fingertips touched it, leaned farther until she was able to grasp it, brought it back and looked at it.

It didn’t look that old.

Of course, it
was
old. All the flesh had been cleaned away. But it wasn’t petrified. It didn’t show the cracks of extreme old age. She turned it over and over in her hands. In fact, she didn’t even know if it was human. What had she been thinking, to allow her enthusiasm to lead her here?

From the rim above, a man’s voice snapped, “What are you doing?”

She gasped, jumped, and dropped the bone. Grabbed for it. Caught it. Her feet skidded out from underneath her. She landed on her butt, crashed into the pile of brush, and came to an ignominious, and lucky, halt. That hurt her hand, a piercing pain that made her close her eyes long enough to gain control.

Then she looked up at the rim.

The man loomed there, a silhouette against the failing blue of the sky. He wore a broad hat. His hands rested on his belt. He carried a gun.

It was the sheriff. Dennis Foster. He glared at her as if he discovered her committing a crime.

Swift guilt rose in her. “I’m, um … I saw this bone.” She showed him. “I thought an … archeological find…”

He still glared.

“You know. I thought that the tsunami had uncovered a site where ancient man had built his home and…” Her voice faltered.

Sheriff Foster had never liked her.

She was used to people not liking or trusting her. But from the first moment they’d met, he had seemed more hostile than most. He’d been the one who had brought in the evidence to convict her father. She would have thought he’d be gloating, or patronizing. But he made it clear, right from the first moment he’d spotted her at the Oceanview Café, that he hated the sight of her.

Maybe she reminded him of Misty. Her aunt had been like that sometimes, angry that Elizabeth looked so much like her mother.

“You’re alone out here,” he said. “If anything happened to you, no one would find you for a very long time.”

She found his choice of words … menacing. “I know.”

“Especially since the earthquake created real emergencies in town.”

“I’m sure.” She tucked the bone under her arm and started to pull herself up the steep slope to the rim. She grabbed branches and trees, used her good hand to hoist herself from one spot to another.

Sheriff Foster watched without any offer of assistance. Probably he figured that if she had managed to get herself down there, she could get herself out. But he still loomed, unmoving, impatience shimmering, and if she could have figured out a different way around, she would have taken it.

At last, she crawled, literally crawled, onto level ground.

He moved back. But not far.

She stood. She looked around and located her bag … behind him.

“Are you satisfied now?” He asked as if he had the right to know.

Taking the bone out from underneath her arm, she looked at it again. “Archeology is not my specialty, of course, but I think this bone is probably no more than a hundred to two hundred years old.”

He barely glanced at it. “Probably it came from the whore’s cemetery.”

The contemptuous tone, the use of that word, the word she’d heard applied to her mother, shocked her. He wasn’t being rude to
her
—but it sure seemed like it. “What are you talking about?”

“Local story goes that late in the nineteenth century, Virtue Falls sported a thriving brothel. When the whores died, the ladies of the town didn’t want them resting beside them in the town cemetery, so they consecrated some ground somewhere farther up the canyon on a flat spot, and buried them there.” His words were clipped, his tone was flat and cold.

“Is that true?” Elizabeth clutched one end of the bone in both her hands.

“I don’t know. But it seems likely.”

“Wow.” She was, she realized, holding the bone like a weapon. “That’s so unfeeling.”

His impatience grew to something more, something close to violence. “I’ve barely got things under control in town, I’m running a fast perimeter check to survey damage and see if there’s anyone who needs help, and you want me to concern myself with old bones?”

It took her a minute to realize that he had thought she was calling him unfeeling. “No! I meant … I meant it was cold of the town women to shove the prostitutes into such a lonely place.”

“Oh. That.” He waved a dismissive hand.

She flinched, and ducked.

Satisfaction gleamed in his eyes.

A bully. He was a bully.

But he wouldn’t hurt her. After all, he was the sheriff.

Although, if he did want to hurt her, they were 1.6 miles from town, there was no one to hear her scream, and he could dispose of her body by the simple act of shoving her off the cliff and telling everybody the crazy man’s daughter had fallen while filming the tsunami.

“Was anybody in town hurt?” She hoped not.

“We haven’t found any bodies yet. But people are trapped in collapsed buildings. Medical personnel are hopping. You should go back to town. Get that hand stitched.”

She stepped sideways and caught the strap of her bag. “How did you know my hand needs stitching?”

His impatience swelled again, and his voice was sharp and aggressive. “Because Rainbow Breezewing found me and shrieked that you were probably bleeding to death and I had to find you. Why else would I do a perimeter check now?”

“I don’t know. But thank you. This was nice of you.” She inched away, bag over her shoulder, still holding the bone like a club.

“Give me that damned thing!” He moved fast, grabbing the bone and twisting it out of her grasp.

She turned and ran.

Sheriff Foster was a man teetering on the edge of violence, and she wanted to be nowhere near when he fell.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Garik Jacobsen walked into his Las Vegas apartment, his home now for eight months. He flipped on the TV, flung his suit jacket on the chair, and placed the Styrofoam containers that held his dinner on the kitchen counter. As he headed for the bedroom, his stomach rumbled.

Ever since the FBI had taken his badge, he hadn’t been eating regularly.

But tonight, for the first time, he knew exactly what to do, and his appetite had come back with a vengeance.

Yay for him.

The bedroom was stark: blinds at the window, a bed, a nightstand, a reading lamp. He pulled open the drawer and looked down at the pistol he wasn’t supposed to own. He picked it up, weighed it in his hand, checked to see that it was properly loaded. It was. And the safety was on. Putting the pistol back, he shut the drawer.

He kicked his dress shoes in the direction of the closet. They banged, one by one, into the cheap wooden sliding door.

He worked as a security guard at Nordstrom; the tie had been loosened as soon as he left the store. The jacket had come off as soon as he got to the court-ordered therapist’s office. Now it was time for T-shirt and jeans, and he donned them with the reverence of a man who wore them all too seldom.

Opening the drawer again, he picked up the pistol. He shoved it into his waistband, and headed back to the kitchen. There, he kicked a discarded pizza box aside. He flipped open the tops of his Styrofoam containers and admired the contents.

Yeah. Steak: thick, charbroiled, rare. Potatoes au gratin with enough cheese to give a cardiologist a heart attack. Green beans cooked with bacon.

He might skip the green beans. He liked them, but what was the point of eating something good for him now?

In the other container, tiramisu. In the paper cup, espresso.

Yeah.

He heated the skillet on the stove, melted a stick of butter until it was smoking, and slapped the steak in to crisp it up. He put the beans and potatoes on a plate and into the microwave. He got out a fork and his good steak knife—it was actually a stiletto, but he wasn’t allowed to own one of those either, so he called it a steak knife—and put it on the coffee table.

On the TV, a rerun of
CSI
. Like he needed to watch that noble shit about duty and honor and esprit de corps. He changed the channel, found
The Punisher
, one of the best, most violent, stupidest movies of all time, and left it.

He flipped the steak, watched it sizzle another minute, then pulled the plate out of the microwave and lovingly laid the steak beside the steaming potatoes. Going to the couch, he sat down, put the plate on the table, and pulled the pistol from his waistband. He placed it beside the plate, within easy reach.

The movie had ended. The local news blared, the silly anchor team making much of insignificant details in the Las Vegas area while ignoring the big shit that was important. He used the remote to mute them, picking up his knife and fork, and with exquisite care, he carved the steak.

Perfect. The blood ran red onto the white plate, embracing the pile of potatoes.

Elizabeth would have turned her head away. She seldom ate steak, and when she did, it was always well done. Blood made her squeamish. Once after he’d been shot, she had rushed to the ER to see him, taken one look, and had fainted so hard and so fast she’d needed medical attention for a concussion.

So during the whole time of their marriage, Garik had eaten his steak medium. When she had told him she wanted a divorce, he’d pointed out his steakly sacrifice, but she had said, in that supremely reasonable tone which bugged the shit out of him, that if not for him and his carnivorous habits, she would be a vegetarian. And anyway, eating to please each other didn’t make for a happy marriage.

Apparently not.

Now he lifted a bite of tender, rare steak to his lips, chewed and swallowed, and smiled.

Heaven.

Piercing one of the green beans with his fork, he lifted it in a salute. “To you, Elizabeth,” he said, and ate it, too.

His pleasure in the moment slipped … Damn, but he missed that woman. He hadn’t understood her. The stuff she cared about! Stuff like rocks and quakes and volcanoes. Stuff that bored him silly, and when he tried to get her interested in what was important, like crime and passion and violence, she’d pointed out that people change, come and go, but the earth was forever. She had always been so calm, so logical … so remote.

Except in bed. My God, he’d never met a woman like that, who hid a fiery passion beneath a cool, inquiring, scientific mind. He wished … well, he wished a lot of things, most of them to do with Elizabeth, and all of them impossible now.

He shrugged. Water over the dam, or under the bridge, or whatever it was. It had taken him more than a year to get himself to this point of Zen acceptance. He wasn’t going to screw it up now thinking about what might have been.

Instead, he once again submerged himself in the meal, in the cheesy, salty potatoes, in the steak, in the beans and the bacon.

He’d love to enjoy a glass of wine, but he had decided he didn’t want anyone to say alcohol had influenced his decision.

As a last dinner went, this one was pretty fine. Any man on death row would be glad for this, and when he had finished—he ate every bite, even the green beans—he leaned back against the couch and sipped his espresso, laced with cinnamon and whipped cream.

All he needed now was a woman. But since Elizabeth had left him, he hadn’t been much good at sex. He figured that was a big part of his problem. No sex, no pressure valve, and Garik the perfect-record FBI agent gets fed up with the bullshit regulations and loses his temper. And gets in big trouble. Yeah, man.

So no, he wasn’t going to go looking for sex for dessert. Going out in a blaze of impotence would be too humiliating.

Instead, he reached for the pistol.

It wasn’t his service pistol. The FBI had taken that away from him, kind of like ripping the badge off an old-time Western sheriff. Garik had bought this piece at a pawn shop, though, and the Colt felt good in his hand. Solid. Cold. Uncaring. Unthinking …

He felt at rest with his decision.

Margaret would be angry, grieved and hurt, and he regretted that. He knew Elizabeth would mourn him, too. But Margaret wasn’t related to him, for all that she’d cared for him so diligently, and Elizabeth was no longer his wife. He’d gone over the logic a hundred times, and he couldn’t live with the knowledge he had started down the road in his father’s footsteps. That he was a killer. Inadvertently, but a killer.