Maam, he said, and gave her a nod as he stepped through the doorway. Hed barely drawn his first breath of the chilly spring night air when he heard the door close and a dead bolt lock slide home behind him.
Back at the four-wheel-drive SUV that served as his patrol car, he got a couple of evidence bags out of the back and stowed the gun and the tissue with Mary Owens blood on it, then un-hooked his cell phone from his belt and climbed behind the wheel. Hed already hit the quick-dial button he used most when it came to him-the thing that had been bothering him about the woman hed just left, the thing he hadnt been able to put his finger on, the thing that just wasnt right.
It was her walk. More specifically, the way shed walked when shed left him standing in the kitchen and crossed through the living room on her way to the front door to get her gun. That one time when shed been too upset, too ticked off to remember the role she was supposed to be playing.
Like a panther.
How was it that mousy Miss Mary should have a walk that was long-legged, strong, confident and gracefulthe walk, not of a shy homely mouse, but of a beautiful woman?
Yesa tall, graceful woman with a panthers walk and eyes that sparked with green-gold fire. It struck him, then, that Miss Mary Owen was anything but mousy. That she was, in fact, a very beautiful woman, though she seemed to be trying her level best to hide the fact. And he and everybody else in town had evidently been too damn blind to see beyond her disguise.
Everybodyexcept for Jason Holbrook, who was now dead. Coincidence?
Sitting there in his SUV on a quiet street in the town hed lived in most all his life, Roan felt the Spirit Messenger stir once more across his skin.
Inside the house that wasnt and never would be her home, the woman who called herself Mary Owen leaned back against the door and closed her eyes. As she waited for the sound of the sheriffs car starting up and driving away, she felt the fear creep over herthe hollow sense of dread that meant her life had just taken a hard left turn and was about to go careening off in an unexpected direction.
It wasnt a new feeling. Shed felt it for the first time almost twenty years ago, that fear, the day shed run away to New York City to pursue a modeling career, never to return. Not exactly an original move for an unhappy young girl in a drab and miserable existence; a few decades earlier, she might have fled to Hollywood with dreams of becoming a movie star.
It wasnt a new feeling. Shed felt it for the first time almost twenty years ago, that fear, the day shed run away to New York City to pursue a modeling career, never to return. Not exactly an original move for an unhappy young girl in a drab and miserable existence; a few decades earlier, she might have fled to Hollywood with dreams of becoming a movie star.
A life of glamour, excitement and beautywhat young girl didnt dream of such things? How many found the courage to risk everything, leave the security of the only life theyd ever known to follow the dream? Darn few, Mary thought, with a valiant lift of her head. Darn few. She didnt regret leaving home, even if the dream shed sought so long ago still fluttered like a rare and lovely butterfly, tantalizingly beyond reach.
Not that shed be all that sorry to leave this town, she thought, at least no more sorry than all the other times shed had to pull up stakes and start over again someplace new. It had begun to seem natural to her always to be the new face in town. The shy, retiring stranger who keeps to herself and never lets anybody get too close
Hartsville, Montana-Heartbreak, shed heard the oldtimers call it, the ones who remembered way back to when the mines went bust. Shed come to the town purely by chance. It had merely been the place shed wound up in last winter when shed pulled off the interstate in the middle of a snowstorm because a warning light had come on in her car and shed needed to find a service station right quick. Waiting in the coffee shop across the highway from the Gas-n-Go Kwik Service for a new alternator to be installed in her elderly Ford Taurus, Mary had found herself in friendly conversation with Queenie Schultz, owner-operator of the towns only beauty parlor. Shed learned that Queenies sister down in Phoenix had been after her to move down there, and that Queenie had about had her fill of the cold and the snow, but couldnt bring herself to run off and leave her faithful customers with nobody to do their color and sets.
Mary hadnt expected to spend the rest of her life in Hartsville. But not even six months? That was a record, even for her.
She opened her eyes and found the cat still crouched on the back of the sofa, watching her with an expression of profound disdain. The silence in the room crawled over her skin and pricked her scalp like a premonition.
Why hasnt his car started up yet? Why hasnt he gone away?
She crept to the front window, fingered back the brown plaid drape and its heavy insulated lining and peered out. The sheriffs SUV was still parked in front of the house-across the bottom of the driveway, in fact. To keep her from escaping, she wondered? Her skin prickled again, and she shivered. What is he doing out there?
Daddy!
Roan felt his heart lift, the way it always did when he heard his daughters voicewhich at the same time, oddly, also made his heart ache.
In the darkness and privacy of his patrol vehicle, his mouth formed a grin. Hey, peanut, how ya doin? You and Grampa Boyd eatin supper?
YeahGrampa made hot dogs and beansagain. Roan chuckled; he could almost hear those eyes rolling. We were gonna make cornbread, but Grampa said we should save that for when youre home, cause we know how much you like cornbread. Dad
Yeah, peanut? Roan pressed his thumb and forefinger against his forehead and rubbed, bracing for Susie Graces inevitable disappointment.
Grampa said you have to work because something bad happened and a man got killed and you have to find the person that did it. But when are you comin home?
He let out a gusty breath. Im gonna be pretty late, Susie-G. Most likely itll be past your bedtime, so dont you try and wait up for me, now. You go to bed when Grampa Boyd tells you, you hear me?
He heard a noisy exhalation that was a pretty good imitation of his own. Okay. But, Daddy?
Yeah?
If Im asleep when you get home, would you come and kiss me good night and tuck me in anyway?
Dont I always?
Yeah, but promise me anyway.
Roan gave an exaggerated sigh. I promise.
Okay, then. Gnight, Daddy. I love you bunches and bunches.
Love you the same back atcha. Gnight, now. Be good.
With the cell phone dead in his hand and the silence of night settling in, Roan realized his face was aching-most likely because he was still wearing that grin. He scrubbed a hand over his face to ease the muscles and was reaching for the ignition key when his radio crackled to life.
He thumbed it on and IDd himself. Yeah, Donna-whats up?
Sheriff, uhwhats your ETA back here at the shop? The night dispatcher sounded uncharacteristically restrained.
Let me guess, said Roan with a new and decidedly sardonic grin stretching his face muscles. Theres a United States Senator sitting in my office right now, spittin bullets.
Uhthat sums it up pretty well, only hes not sittin. More likepacing. Thinka big old mountain lion in a cage.
He chuckled and reached for the ignition. Im on my way.
As the SUVs lights came on he looked up at the house once more, in time to see the window curtain twitch back into place.
At least, the sheriff thought as he drove away from the dark, quiet house and its puzzling, enigmatic and oddly disturbing occupant, I can tell the victims father we have a possible suspect.
He wondered why that thought didnt make him happier.
Mary let the draperies fall back into place, laughing silently at her own foolishness. Hed only been checking in, or calling in, or whatever it was policemen did when theyd been absent from their radios for a time. She was being paranoid, worrying for nothing. Sheriff Harley had her gun, and if he was as competent and as good and decent a man as Miss Ada said he was, it shouldnt take him long to conclude that shed had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Jason Holbrook.
But I could have. Maybe I would have
Revulsion rippled across her skin, and she fought down a wave of nausea as for a terrible moment it all came rushing back-the smell of his breath, hot and thick with beer and tobacco and lustthe pressure of his arm across her throat, and the rising curtain of blackness and terror that threatened to suffocate herthe sharpness of his belt buckle cutting into the small of her backthe sound of his breathing, intent and determinedthe sense of stark disbelief that curtained her mind from the thought that shrieked from some distant place: Oh God, Im being raped.
And perhaps most shockingly, she recalled the violence and brutality of her release, and the strange mixture of rage and relief that had shaken her then, to the very depths of her soul. Not raped violated nonetheless. She had not been a well-loved child, nor had she lived a protected life up to then, but she had never been spat upon before. She had never been struck in the face. Even Diego had never struck her in the face.
She could still taste the sickness that had risen into her throat after Jason had left her, in spite of all her efforts to prevent it.
Oh, I wish I could have killed him.
Would she have, she wondered now, if she had been able to reach the gun in her purse, the one shed bought and practiced with so faithfully, then left sitting on the table beside the front door when shed stepped onto the porch to check on the burned-out light bulbonly to realize a moment later, with a horrifying clutch of fear in her belly, that the bulb had been deliberately removedand to know, with a cold sick sense of irony, that all her vigilance and preparation had been for nothing?
For nothing. Because in the end, the boogieman had found her anyway. Not the boogieman shed been expecting, true, but bad enough. Definitely bad enough.
But the sheriff had taken her gun, and the forensics would prove she hadnt shot Jason, no matter how much she might have wanted to. She had nothing to worry about.