Devil Creek

by Stephen Mertz

She quickened her step through the hallway that was deserted, except for a senior class hall monitor and old Mr. Finney, pushing his bucket with the brooms attached. And yet somehow she could practically feel Mr. Tutwiler's spying eyes, noting her tardiness, though he was nowhere in sight.

  Good God. Jeff. Jeff! This was the worst possible thing in the world to happen. She had never, ever, ever expected to see Jeff Lovechio again. She never wanted to see him again.

  This was devastating. Was everything in her life going to fall apart again?

  Please don't let that happen, she thought. First, fourteen years ago, she had been the happy bride and mother who went on to find out that she'd married an abusive, cheating predator. Jeff understood nothing about concepts like romantic love or sexual fidelity. She had been such a child. Then to leave that that situation and move to Devil Creek, where her greeting was a chain of events that could have driven her from this community also, except for the kinship she came to feel with her fellow townspeople, and the romance of her heart, drawn to her second husband.

  By the women's faculty restroom, she decided the hell with Tutwiler's spying eyes, to hell with being late just this once. She needed to freshen up.

  When she saw herself in the mirror, she gasped. Right now, anyone looking at her would see that something had her upset. She was pale. She brushed her hair into place and applied some makeup. That didn't help. She turned away from the mirror.

  She was as surprised as Paul at her mention of the woman in the parking lot yesterday at Merrill's. She too had thought the matter was laid to rest. She hadn't seen Carol Landware yesterday. This was a straightforward, simple, clear-cut fact. How could she have seen a walking, talking, driving woman . . . who had been murdered years ago? It could only have been a woman who bore a striking resemblance to Michael's first wife. That's all there was to it. And the fact that the woman had been talking to Paul? Coincidence, plain and simple. It could be nothing else.

  As for Mike showing up late last night for their anniversary . . . well, she had forgiven the lug, and it's true what they said about make-up sex being the best sex.

  With everything seemingly back to normal this morning around the breakfast table, only one question continued to nag at her mind. Why was he late? Last night she had guessed that it concerned Sunrise Ridge, and he had not denied it.

  She wondered the same thing Paul had wondered. Did Michael already know that Jeff was in town? It could be that way: Mike investigating the construction of the resort, and Jeff the new project manager. Or maybe not. But if Mike did know, is that why he was late coming home last night?

  If she found out that Michael had known about Jeff's presence in Devil Creek last night, and didn't bother to tell her, then, by God, he would be in the doghouse.

  What was happening, dear God?

  Yesterday she sees a woman speaking with her son, who is identical in appearance to her husband's first wife, who is deceased. And today, Jeff drops into her lovely little world. He wasn't dead, but she had buried him in her memory. The past had unexpectedly, and with brutal suddenness, reinserted itself into what had become her placid, perfect life.

  She told herself that she shouldn't have been surprised. She had so wanted to believe that the past was behind her, that this life would last forever, that she had come to believe it was so. She, who had always prided herself on her ability to logically analyze any situation. She should have known better, and, subconsciously, perhaps she had, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for the happiness to be stolen from her again.

  The woman in the parking lot. Jeff showing up. Were these incidents related? What was happening here?

  She left the restroom, and the first thing that caught her eye was Mr. Tutwiler, who stood at the far end of the hallway, outside his office door. Too far away for her to see his expression, but he was looking her way. He pointed at his wristwatch, then he pointed at a wall clock.

  She was seven minutes late for her class.

  She indicated to Mr. Tutwiler that she realized this, then walked rapidly away from him. She turned a corner, and withdrew her cell phone from her purse.

  Cell phones weren't as common or as practical in this remote region, with spotty linkups and dropped calls more common than not. But they worked most of the time when calling locally.

  She auto-dialed Mike's cell phone number.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Sunrise Ridge construction site was not visible from the state highway. The people who would live and vacation there would expect the privacy they were used to in Houston or Los Angeles or wherever they hailed from. A wide, smooth gravel road curved away from the highway, into the trees.

  Within a quarter mile, the road swept around a bend where the dense forest, juniper and pinion mostly, had been cleared away at the foot of a quarter-mile-across canyon that sliced its way into the mountainside. The wooded canyon climbed and narrowed into a giant V of sharp, angular rock cliffs. With the peaks to the south highlighted against the gathering banks of white clouds, the view was spectacular.

  A uniformed security man, stationed in a guard shack at the entrance to the site, watched the steady stream of dump trucks and cement trucks and smaller vehicles—mostly pickup trucks—passing through an iron mesh gate that would be closed after hours. Mike didn't recognize the security guy, a hefty young man of linebacker proportions, and he hoped like hell that the security guard was not one of the men who had fired on him last night and, if so, that he would not recognize Mike.

  The man watched Mike drive through, on the heels of Ben Saunders' police cruiser.

  Ben steered his unit to a stop where a group of men in hardhats stood in discussion around a set of blueprints which one of them held unfurled in front of an ugly, functional box-like mobile home that served as site headquarters.

  Mike braked to a stop next to the cruiser.

  It never failed to impress him, how fast this place was going up. Sunrise Ridge was like a small village blossoming almost overnight from the ground. The mobile home was at ground zero of noisy, nonstop activity. The main lodge was a towering mass of girders on high ground. Rows of adobe condominium units curved to the side of a big clearing where earthmovers rumbled industriously, sculpting what would be the golf course. Roofers labored at spreading uniform red tile that glimmered in the sunshine. Landscapers worked the grounds, planting trees, their backhoes digging. An army of carpenters, electricians, plumbers, drywallers and their minions swarmed everywhere.

  Mike was at Ben's side when the group of men glanced up from the blueprints at their approach.

  Ben said, "I'm looking for the project manager."

  The man who was holding the blueprints let them curl into a roll, which he handed to the workman nearest him.

  "That would be me." He spoke to the others. "All right, that looks good. We've got some catching up to do, so let's get started instead of standing here talking about it." There were hasty assents, and the group broke up. The man turned to Mike and Ben. He said, "How can I help you, Officer?"

  His bright yellow hardhat could not have looked more mismatched, topping as it did the expensive gray suit, the crisp white shirt and red tie.

  Ben said, "You're new. Didn't a man named Olson run the show?"

  The guy nodded. "Joe Olson, out of Houston. Joe's gone back home. Something about his wife taking sick. He left this morning."

  Mike said, "He didn't get far."

  There was something about this man that he didn't like at first glance. It wasn't just the snazzy suit and tie out here in this world of hardhats and blue-collar working men. Anyone was entitled to be out of place. Mike knew that if he were to show up at this outfit's corporate office headquarters in Chicago, looking as he did in a black T-shirt, light denim jacket, jeans and desert boots, he'd have been as out of place at this man was here. No, it wasn't that. It was a subtle, brute arrogance that he sensed rippling just beneath the patina of the man's well-attired façade. There was a sort of perpetual sneer to his
mouth and tone toward all he regarded.

  Ben sent a reproving sideways glance at Mike and said to the man, "I'm Ben Saunders. Chief of Police."

  They shook hands.

  "Jeff Lovechio, Chief. A pleasure."

  It took a half-second for the name to register. It was one of those names that sounds familiar, but comes from so far out of context—like now, in the middle of a bustling beehive of construction—that at first it only triggered something way at the back of his mind, but that something grew big at the front of his mind very quickly, at about the same moment the man concluded shaking hands with Ben and shifted his attention to Mike.

  Ben said, "This is—"

  Mike caught Lovechio's eye. He said, "I'll bet he knows who I am."

  Lovechio's smile didn't reach his eyes, which were like polished chips of stone. His chuckle was dry, like pebbles rattling in a teacup.

  "You'd win that bet, word pusher. Mike Landware, ace reporter. You don't seem surprised to see me showing up in your midst."

  "I'm surprised," said Mike. "It just doesn't show."

  Ben growled deep in his throat like a grumpy old bear. "Something happening here that I don't know about. Bring me up to speed. You two know each other?"

  Lovechio's sneer became less subtle. "You could say that." He spoke to Ben, but his eyes stayed locked with Mike's. "Or, since we've never met, I guess you could say that we've known the same woman . . . in the Biblical sense."

  Mike felt his face flush. His fists clenched. "Watch it, mister. I'm disinclined to like you. Don't make it any easier for me."

  The man snickered. "Hell if I care what you think, loser. Moving to a nowhere outpost of civilization like this just shows that you don't amount to squat."

  Ben saw something in Mike's eyes. He saw the clenched fists. He spoke before Mike could speak.

  "I said fill me in. And, stranger, some of us like it here just fine. Some think of it as heaven on earth."

  Lovechio's shrug was disdainful. "To each his own, I suppose."

  Mike said, "Chief, this is Robin's former husband."

  Ben's eyes became slits, interested in nothing but the man in the suit who stood before him. "Do tell. Now that's mighty interesting. And you two have never met?"

  Mike said, "Never met. Never wanted to. Wish I wasn't meeting him now."

  Lovechio said, "Cut that. I don't like being talked about like I'm not here. And what are you acting so sore about, word pusher? You're the one who ended up with her. You ought to be thanking me for sending her down here from Chicago so you could meet her in the first place."

  Mike said, "You didn't send her anywhere. Robin's her own woman."

  Lovechio continued as if he hadn't heard. "And you damn well ought to be happy if that girl's putting it out for you like she did for me the first year we were married. Why, when I told her to, she used to—"

  It was the way he was sneering the words—one at a time, his eyes mocking, trying to get Mike's goat—that finally pushed Mike over the edge.

  "You sewer-mouthed, lying son of a—" he started to say, and closed in with his left fist up to block and right cocking back for a punch.

  Lovechio eased back, but he didn't bother to raise his fists and his sneer remained.

  Ben inserted himself between them, raising both hands to rest his palms on Mike's shoulders. "No, Mike." His voice was iron. "No."

  Mike wasn't about to go up against the implacable obstacle that Ben was making of himself. He heard himself sputter.

  "This son of a bitch is talking about my wife—"

  "I heard what he said. Slow down."

  The reasoning tone penetrated. Mike slowed down.

  He would not strike a blow that wasn't in self-defense. For a while in Albuquerque, he'd pursued Eastern philosophical disciplines as part of his healing and the reclamation of his soul after a lifetime spent, up to that point, walking on the wrong side of the street. To take a swing at this man who was goading him would be to demean himself, to give in to his base nature and lose the moral high ground he held. Lovechio was right about one thing. Mike was the present husband of Robin, and as such, he felt a responsibility to behave in a way that would not embarrass her or Paul, like something as tacky as scrapping with the ex-husband. And there was the business consideration. How would it look for the editor of the local paper to be arrested in a common brawl? That would go over great with Robin's nemesis at school, the notoriously tight-assed Mr. Tutwiler.

  He lowered his arms and unclenched his fists. "Sorry, Chief."

  Ben accepted the apology with a curt nod. He said to Lovechio, "We'll have no more talk like that. Devil Creek is a small, friendly community."

  Lovechio's sneer stayed right in place. "So I've heard." He kept a watchful eye on Mike.

  "Around here," said Ben, "everybody knows everybody else and we pretty much have to get along. In a community this size, you can only put your problems with other folks behind you and get on with your business. Grudges and the like are kind of uncomfortable to everyone when you keep on running into the same folks once every week or so at the post office and the supermarket and the hardware store. You never know when you'll be broke down on a country road and that person will be the only car that comes along, or vice versa. Always seems to work that way."

  Lovechio said, "I haven't done anything to get a lecture from the law."

  Ben said, "Yes, you have. Like I said, everyone tries to get along. Robin was your wife in another place, a long time ago, fella. These days, she happens to be a friend of mine. She's a good human being and a law-abiding citizen, and I won't stand for that kind of talk about her."

  Lovechio said, "Wait a minute. We're getting off on the wrong foot here. I'm not looking for a grudge or anything else except to get the job done that I was sent here to do, and that's get this resort built before the snow flies." He indicated Mike with a contemptuous nod. "Why'd you let him tag along anyway?"

  Mike's anger was back where it belonged, in check. He said, "No one's tagging. You happen to be newsworthy."

  "And why's that? Haven't you already written about Sunrise Ridge in that rag of yours?"

  Ben remained squarely between them. He said, "This is about Joe Olson. How come he's out and you're project manager?"

  "Joe asked for an emergency leave of absence. We handled the management changeover into late last night. As you can see," Lovechio glanced around to indicate the industrious chaos around them, "this place is a damn three-ring circus. There was a lot to straighten out between us."

  Mike said, "I'll bet there was."

  Too many emotions were racing through him, unsettling his objectivity, his emotional equilibrium, and he was unable to stem them. He was stunned at this unexpected encounter.

  Ben sent another reproving glance his way, more severe than before. He asked Lovechio, "When did you last see Olson?"

  Lovechio said, "Joe told us he was driving to Albuquerque this morning to catch a plane home." The stony eyes never left Mike. "What did you mean before, when you said he didn't make it?"

  Ben said, "Olson is dead. His car went off the road on the highway out of town about an hour ago."

  Lovechio's lips pursed in what could have been an expression of grief. "Well now, that's a damn shame. That's different. Thanks for coming to tell me about it, Chief. The company will cover all costs getting his body back to Houston, of course. Damn, we just never know when it's going to be our time, do we? Poor Joe."

  Ben scrutinized him, but his voice remained neutral. "So the only reason you got yourself transferred down here was because Olson's wife had taken ill and he had to get back home."

  "That's right. Poor Mrs. Olson."

  Ben said, "Quite a coincidence, Olson getting his papers, then driving off that road."

  Lovechio nodded. "Terrible coincidence. What else could it be? He must have been preoccupied, worried about his wife. Poor guy."

  Mike said, "I'd like to ask a question for the paper, if you don't mind," and he
proceeded before Lovechio could respond. "What sort of a job was Olson doing for you? How would you rate his job performance?"

  "He was a fine man," said Lovechio, his words cool and precise. "It's going to be a tough job to fill his shoes. Joe did an outstanding job of keeping this project on schedule and at cost."

  "So there would be no reason to let him go for any sort of job neglect or chicanery?"

  Lovechio said, "Chicanery? What the fuck are you talking about, word pusher? Do you know something I don't?"

  Mike's grin was tight, without humor. "Read The Clarion and find out."

  Lovechio nodded. "So that's how it is. You boys are tight on it and I'm the outsider."

  Ben said, "Let's get back to why I'm here. Mind telling me where you were about an hour ago?"

  Lovechio gave another stones-rattling-in-the-cup chuckle. "You mean, where was I when Olson's car smashed into a tree?"

  Mike said, "Wait a minute. Who said Olson smashed into a tree? The Chief just said he went off the road."

  Lovechio glared. "He's dead, isn't he? It's a goddamn forest across these mountains. I didn't think he hit a giraffe."

  Ben said, "Do you mind answering my question, sir?" in his patiently official tone with the iron in it.

  Lovechio paused. "I don't know what you're getting at. Am I going to need a lawyer?"

  "You'd know that better than I would," said Ben. "It's your right to have one present if you want one. I'd figure a smart fella like you would already know that."

  Lovechio scowled. "Now what the hell is that supposed to mean? You mean because I'm from Chicago and I wear a suit, I must be a gangster? That's a hell of a stereotype and I resent it. Is that what you're saying, Officer?"

  "You were right," said Ben. "We're starting off on the wrong foot. Why don't you just answer the question, Mr. Lovechio? Can you account for your time this morning?"

  The scowl became a smirk. "Damn right I can. I stayed overnight at the Best Western on the highway outside town. The maids there will remember me from this morning. I left them a fat tip and asked for the time."