“So there’s one thing I still don’t understand,” said Hawk, cracking open a Budweiser and sitting down at the kitchen table. “How did Kali work the setup with Jimbo Perrine? How did she find him in the first place?”
“Seems like Jimbo had a little business going, buying and selling guns off the books. You could do it on the Internet,” said Sally. “Nobody knows who anybody is in cyberspace.”
“Right. They’d never even have to meet in real space,” Hawk said. “You could do pretty much everything anonymously, using encrypted electronic transmissions and a global freight delivery service.”
“Up to a point. Kali must have decided that even the anonymous transaction didn’t give her cover. She had to clean up the last loose end. Probably told herself that anybody who dealt in black-market guns had it coming,” said Sally. “Weird. That’s pretty much what Jimbo said about Nina Cruz. He and Kali had more in common than he’d have ever believed.”
“Yeah,” said Hawk. “But Jimbo never killed any people.” He paused. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think she was planning to kill you at first. I think she just wanted to scare you off with the Halloween thing. Then she got desperate when it didn’t work.”
“Oh, I don’t know. She struck me as pretty strange from the moment I met her,” Sally said.
“Precisely my point. She’s a head case, clearly, but recall the business she was in, and her connections to international bad guys.”
Sally’s eyes got big. “Oh. I see your point.”
“Yeah,” said Hawk. “If she’d wanted to kill you on Halloween, she might not have had that much trouble getting real anthrax.”
She reached across the table and grabbed his hand. For a little while, they sat without speaking.
“She couldn’t let her go,” she said at last. “If Kali couldn’t have Nina, nobody could.”
“More likely, if Nina was going to sell BIOS short, she’d lose her life savings. What a way to stop insider trading,” said Hawk. “It would be really interesting to know who told the police that Kali was in Salt Lake City the morning Nina was killed.”
“Probably somebody who’s on the way to Stuttgart with a suitcase full of Euros. Recall that Kali showed up in government surveillance photos of radical animal rights groups,” Sally observed. “There are more of them out there, Hawk.” On that note, she got up and opened a Budweiser of her own. “For that matter, remember that the FBI has been interested in the Wild West bunch for quite a while.”
“Right,” said Hawk. “The FBI. Including undercover agent Schwartz.”
“Now that I think back on it,” said Sally, “it must’ve been Quartz I saw sitting in Scotty Atkins’s 4Runner, out on Ivinson. Talk about hiding in plain sight!”
“You know, I wondered how Pammie would take the news that her soul mate was a willing tool of the fascist state,” Hawk said.
“From what I’ve seen, she doesn’t appear to be interested in politics, one way or another. Anyway, it sure didn’t look like it bothered her any last night.”
Quartz and Pammie had been hugging and kissing at the wrap party after the benefit, an affair featuring food flown in from Stone’s favorite Nashville barbecue joint. Pammie just didn’t have it in her to kick out one more bash, though she vowed she’d cook again, and she was still thinking about moving to Portland. Quartz said he was going to ask the Bureau for a desk assignment.
“So what do you think about the dope brownies?” Hawk asked.
“I guess Kali could have sent them, just to keep Arvida from noticing anything that might help the cops pick up the thread. But somehow, I don’t see Kali whipping up a batch of pot brownies. Maybe it really was somebody else, and they just don’t want to own up to it,” Sally said. “I’ll have to keep an eye on the boys in the band. Any of ’em show up for practice looking extra goofy, I might mention the matter and see how they react.”
The doorbell rang.
Two bundled-up figures stood on the front step, frosted with fast-falling snow. Thomas Jackson and Caterina Cruz.
“We stayed in town last night so we could go grocery shopping,” Cat explained as they shook off the snow, pulled off knitted caps and gloves, and walked in. “We’re on our way out to Shady Grove before we can’t get there. But we wanted to stop in and thank you for sticking with this thing.”
“Ah shucks,” said Sally.
“And we made a point of telling that lovely Detective Atkins we thought you’d been a big help,” Cat said.
“Great,” said Sally. “I bet he was really delighted to hear that.”
“Sally only did it because she’s been in love with you her whole life,” Hawk told Stone.
“That happens with a lot of women,” said Stone. “But they usually get over it once they meet me.”
“Not me,” said Cat.
“Me either,” said Sally. “But I’m afraid you’re in line behind the big guy here.” She pulled Hawk close and gave him a squeeze.
“So it’s sloppy seconds for me,” said Stone.
“Hey! What do you think I’m settling for?” Cat said, looking up at him.
Stone gazed at Cat, with more peace in his eyes than Sally could have believed possible for Thomas Jackson, world-famous victim of bad love. “How about the undying devotion you deserve from somebody better than some old broken-down Tin Pan Alley hack?” he asked.
“Land’s sake,” said Cat. “You’ll turn my head.”
“You guys are really cute together,” said Sally. “Now get out of here, while you still can.”
“Hey,” said Stone. “We just heard some news on the radio. Seems the Game and Fish Department found the poacher who shot the deer. A seventeen-year-old kid. He said that after he fired the shot, he noticed that the animal was sick and decided to take off. Appears he was driving his father’s Dodge Ram, and the game warden managed to track down somebody who’d seen him skedaddling and recognized the truck. He’s evidently cooperating with both the Game and Fish and the Albany County Sheriff’s Department, at the suggestion of his father, a municipal court judge.”
So much blood, that fateful morning at Shady Grove.
Sally had to ask. “So what’s going to happen with Nina’s place?”
“I’m going to hang on to it for the moment,” said Cat. “I kind of like it out there. Though there are a lot of ghosts. Who knows? Maybe I’ll make it a wildlife refuge. Or become a developer and subdivide it.”
Sally and Hawk grimaced.
“Just kidding,” said Stone. “Right, darlin’?”
Cat smiled enigmatically.
“Boy,” said Sally, deciding a change of subject was in order, “it’s too bad the benefit didn’t make any money. Poor old Arvida Perrine’s going to need all the help she can get.”
“We’re setting up a fund for her,” Cat said. “Nels said he’d get the ball rolling. Says it’d be a good way to start coming to terms with walking out for his morning constitutional and finding the man’s body in Nina’s woods. Between the three of us,” she said, looking up at Stone, “Mrs. Perrine will be pretty well taken care of.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Sally told them. “She’s a cool person. Now seriously, the weather’s getting worse and worse. You’d better go.”
“We’ll be in touch,” said Cat. “As soon as the police release Nina’s papers, we want you going to work on that biography.”
“Jeez,” said Sally. “You know, I almost forgot I was supposed to be doing that.”
“You’re doing it,” Stone said. “We need your help.”
Sally stared at him. “I was really suspicious of you the first time you told me that,” she said. “I’m still suspicious.”
“Too late,” said Stone. “I’ve been in touch with a movie guy I know. Had him call your agent. The screen rights are pretty much locked up.”
For once, Sally was speechless.
“Gotta go,” said Cat, putting on her hat. “Bye, honey,” she said, hugging Hawk and turning to Sall
y for a little bit longer hug. “Bye, bye, love.”
Here’s a sneak preview
of Virginia Swift’s new novel
HELLO, STRANGER
Available soon in hardcover from
HarperCollinsPublishers
Chapter 1
The Rule of Thumb
The Rule of Thumb was one of those grotesqueries of English common law. For centuries, it had stood rock-solid, entitling—no. Make that, obliging a man to “correct” the misdeeds of his wife and children with physical force, but holding that the instrument of household justice be no bigger around than a man’s thumb. Some kind of limit, that. A switch cut from a tree, hickory or willow; a leather whip, braided rough; a well-knotted piece of rope; objects close to hand, within the reach of a modest man. A prince might have more means at his disposal: the blade of a fencing foil, say, or a length of iron chain. Such things would certainly remind a woman of her duty to submit to her husband’s authority. As God and nature and the Bible and everybody had decreed.
The hell you say, thought Professor Sally Alder.
Whenever Sally taught the course titled “Women’s Rights in America,” she opened the class on domestic violence with a few minutes on the Rule of Thumb. Talking about the Rule made her a little sick to her stomach every time she gave the lecture, but it was something that had to be done. The students needed to know, or at the very least, to be reminded, that history could be a horror show. That a woman’s right to be secure from bodily abuse should never be taken for granted. Even in the twenty-first century, there was plenty of reason to assume that not everybody had gotten the message.
Some students stared vacantly back at her, or surreptitiously checked their cell phones. More scribbled busily in their notebooks, knowing that this Rule of Thumb was likely to show up on a test. She might just as well have been telling them the names of the states, or the atomic weight of zinc. But at least the scribblers would have some memory of this lecture, unlike the girl who’d taken out an emery board and spent most of the class happily filing her nails.
Sally brooded all the way back to her office, huddled into her coat against the wind. Did she really imagine that bearing history’s lousy news was actually doing any good? They had given a new meaning to blasé today, she thought as she entered Hoyt Hall and climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, headed for her office hours.
She already had a customer. Sally had put a chair in the hall outside her office, a molded plastic thing with a fold-down desk, so that students waiting their turn to see her wouldn’t have to hunker down on the floor. Just now, a girl slumped uncomfortably in the chair, a knit cap pulled down over her head. She’d put a backpack on the desk and lay on top of it, her head on her arms, motionless, the picture of dejection.
What in the world had happened to Charlie Preston?
This was the first time Sally had seen the girl in nearly a month. Charlie was registered in Sally’s class, but she hadn’t been around before spring break, hadn’t returned in the week after.
Plenty of students bagged lots of classes. They dropped out, or failed, or contented themselves with Cs and Ds. But Charlie hadn’t struck Sally as your typical half-assed student. A third of the time she didn’t show, true, and she’d missed a number of assignments. She never said a word in class. But she listened. And it seemed like she got it. And Sally’s real measure for intelligence in a student: she laughed at the professor’s jokes.
When Charlie did turn in the work, she showed real spark and insight. She’d come to Sally’s office hours more than once, simply to talk about women’s history. Sally’d been delighted, encouraged her interest. Charlie was only a freshman, but Sally was already imagining writing recommendations to get her into graduate school.
“Charlie?” she said, touching the girl on the shoulder. “Are you okay?”
A moment passed.
The girl raised her head, and it was excruciatingly obvious that she was not close to okay. The cap covered her ears, but revealed a face that was a mass of bruises, darkening, it seemed, before Sally’s eyes. Her lower lip was cut and swelling fast, and one eye was nearly closed. It occurred to Sally that the spike Charlie wore through the eyebrow, the ring through the lip, would be trouble soon, if she didn’t get them off.
It wasn’t the first time Sally had seen a woman who’d been beaten up. Back in her own student days, she’d run the University of Wyoming Women’s Center, which had taken calls for the local shelter. More than one woman had called up crying, asking what to do, where to go. And more than one woman had shown up at the Center, grim or shaking or shame-faced, mumbling something about having walked into a door.
This was the worst she’d ever seen.
“Come in with me,” she told the girl, bending over to rub her back, briefly, before unlocking the office door. “I’ll call an ambulance, and go with you to the hospital. And we’ll call the police.”
Charlie hefted her backpack, an effort that cost her, and followed Sally in. But then what Sally had just said seemed to sink in. A look of terror swept Charlie’s face. “No!” she exclaimed, grabbing Sally’s arm, grimacing at the pain that opening her mouth had caused. “I can’t. Can’t go to the hospital. No cops.” Tears sprang into her eyes, leaked down the sides of her cheeks.
“Charlie,” said Sally, as gently as possible. “Sit down a second.”
The girl collapsed into the broken-down easy chair in front of Sally’s desk, the backpack slipping to the floor with a clunk. These kids. Sally bet there wasn’t a backpack at the University of Wyoming that weighed less than forty pounds. They’d all be in back braces by the time they were thirty.
Sally took off her coat, hung it in the closet, moving deliberately to calm herself down. “You’re badly hurt,” she said, turning back to Charlie. “You need medical attention. I know you’re scared, but let me help you. Let the police help. Sheriff Langham’s a really, really good friend of mine, a truly incredible person. Trust me, he’ll take care of you.”
“Yeah, right,” said Charlie Preston. “Just like they always take care of me. Nobody ever believes me. Every time I manage to get away, they always send me back to him and the bitch. He’s such a great liar, I even believed him this time. He’s all, ‘All I want to do is help you,’ and I fucking believed him. I must be the stupidest person in the world.”
Sally set her briefcase and purse on the floor next to the desk, sat down in her chair. “You’ve got to see a doctor, honey. I’d drive you myself, but my car’s at home. I could call a friend, if you don’t want an ambulance.” She thought a minute. “You wait tables at the Wrangler, don’t you? I’m sure Delice wouldn’t mind giving us a ride.”
Delice Langham, owner of the Wrangler Bar and Grill, was one of Sally’s best friends, known for being a demanding, but compassionate boss. Sally knew that on more than one occasion, Delice had slipped a waitress money to get away from a loser boyfriend, had called the cops when angry men showed up looking for “their” women, had been known to take them on herself, with a bag of quarters, or even the Colt .45 she kept below the counter. Sally was also aware that Delice had fronted the down payment for one of the bungalows used by the Laramie SafeHouse. Delice was probably at work now, but she would leap into her Explorer and speed over in five minutes flat if Sally called.
But Delice was also the sister of the Albany County Sheriff, Dickie Langham. Charlie shook her head. “I got a car,” she said. “I can drive myself. I’ll go to a doctor, I swear. But not the hospital. They ask too many questions. And I’m serious, there’s no need to get the police involved.”
Sally looked at the girl, very steadily. “Listen to me, Charlie. Somebody hurt you, a whole lot. Nobody’s entitled to do that. They need to answer for it.”
Charlie bristled, tried to sit up very straight, wincing. “I got it. I can take care of myself. I know a doctor I can go see. She’s helped me out before.”
Sally asked the obvious question. “Then why didn’t you go straight to he
r?”
“She’s not in town. She’s somewhere else—I don’t want to say where.”
“You’re in no shape to drive a long distance.”
“It’s no big deal, Dr. Alder,” said the girl. She looked down, shook her shoulders, looked up again, screwing up her courage. “I’m sorry I missed class again. I didn’t want any of the kids to see me. I knew you had office hours after, so I waited here. I almost waited outside the classroom, but I thought I might miss you. I couldn’t go to the Wrangler. I didn’t know who else to ask.”
“For what?” Sally said.
“Money. I need money, Dr. Alder. I need to see a doctor, all right. And I need to get out of here for a while, figure out what to do next.”
“Your parents...” Sally said, pointlessly.
Charlie just glared.
“Okay. What about the SafeHouse?”
“They know where it is,” said Charlie. “It’s not safe for me.”
“There’s more than one,” Sally pointed out.
“It doesn’t matter. They’d find me.” Charlie slumped in the chair.
“Your friends...” she tried.
“My dad scares the shit out of them, and my stepmother makes them think they’re all going to hell.” She sat up straighter, and Sally had to admire the effort. “Please, Dr. Alder. Help me out this time. I swear I’ll pay back every cent.”
“It’s not the money, Charlie. Do you promise to call and let me know where you are, as soon as you’ve seen the doctor? To keep in touch with me? You can’t just run away. And you don’t have to.”
“I can handle myself!” the girl insisted. “I just need some cash.”
Sally took a deep breath. “How much?”
Charlie took a breath of her own, but the air caught in her lungs, hitched out in a small grunt. Broken ribs too?
“How much do you have?” Charlie asked.
“Just a second,” said Sally. She reached down for her purse, took out her wallet, extracted bills. She’d just been to the ATM. She had more than two hundred dollars. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d given money to a woman in trouble, no questions asked. She handed over the cash.
Bye, Bye, Love Page 30