I couldn’t see the details of his face, hidden as they were deep in the night’s shade.
But nothing could hide the wound in his voice.
“Why would I be afraid of you, Barrett?”
I sank onto the bag’s quilted lining just to prove my point.
He did the same, but stuck to the far edge of his half of the bag.
He said, “I saw how my old friends looked at me tonight. It’s the same way everyone’s looked at me all day. And it’s the way they looked at me over twenty years ago. I know what they’re thinking, Jamie. They think I raped and killed Kayley, just like they think I raped Pamela.”
“But you didn’t,” I said. “In either case.”
“No,” he murmured. “I didn’t.”
He stretched out on his half of the sleeping bag, tucked an arm beneath his head, and gazed up at the sky.
After a while, he said, “She said she loved me.”
And I knew he meant Pamela.
“She was so young, Jamie. How could she know?”
“You got married once. Presumably, you loved your wife. You must’ve known you did.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t a fourteen-year-old girl at the time.” He huffed out a sigh. “How do you know when you’re in love?”
Barrett’s question made something shift uncomfortably behind my breastbone. I scooted closer to him and lay back on the soft sleeping bag. Overhead, the stars glittered like a crocodile’s tears.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Falling in love hasn’t happened to me often, though. I can tell you that.”
“It happened once, didn’t it? You were married, too.”
I could’ve lived without Barrett bringing that up. He’d briefly served under my ex-husband. Barrett knew what a heel the guy was.
But I forgot all that when Barrett rolled onto his side to face me. He propped his head in his palm, gazed down at me in the starlight. With a gentle hand, he tugged the points of my blazer’s lapels closer to my throat. The ground was chilly and I shivered. But that wasn’t the only reason. My pulse had picked up its pace. Like something special was about to happen.
But Barrett was waiting for my answer, so I gave him one.
I said, “I suppose I’ll know I’m in love when I can’t wait to see the guy. If I can trust him with everything I am, not just everything I have. If his smile lights me up like fireworks on the Fourth of July. If I’d travel a million miles just to stand by his side, I—”
And in that instant, I couldn’t say another word. Because the truth came crashing in on me. I wasn’t just describing theoretical feelings for some random man who would walk across my path some day.
I was describing exactly how I felt about Barrett. Here. Now.
The realization made me clam up. It made me sit up. It made me sick to my stomach. Because it cast a whole new light on why I’d felt bereft when Barrett had left my guest bedroom last Tuesday. I’d told myself my feelings had been about sexual frustration and the embarrassment of rejection. That I’d been ready to be close to him, that he’d been all for sex but wanted to keep me emotionally at arm’s length. However, in this fit of honesty under the stars, I could see the bigger picture. For some time, I’d been in love with Lieutenant Colonel Adam Barrett. And he’d made it painfully clear he didn’t feel that way about me.
“Vance,” I blurted, desperate to change the subject before Barrett could see too far into my heart.
“What about him?”
“I saw you today. In your grandmother’s driveway. Before you two left for Eric’s memorial. Did he tell you who he was meeting at the Cherry Bomb last night? Did he tell you why?”
Barrett shifted on the sleeping bag, crossed one ankle over the other. “He claims the guy was an old buddy from the National Guard. His name’s Llewellyn. Supposedly, he was just passing through.”
“I’m not sure I believe that,” I admitted. “Do you?”
“No.”
I wrapped my arms around my knees in an effort to keep myself together, to keep my mind on Vance, and looked up at the dome of the sky. In bright detail against the black of the night, the constellation Perseus had just set foot above the treetops at the horizon. A stranger in a strange land, he’d taken on one bizarre injustice after another according to the Greeks—and he’d triumphed. Now, preserved among the stars, he’d tumble forever across the night for the sake of his love, the cold and remote Andromeda. And the thought of an outsider, a warrior, like Perseus, still alone after all his trials, made me want to weep.
But then Barrett said, “Vance is keeping something from me. I just don’t know what.”
“Did he have a thing for Pamela in high school? Or maybe Charlotte?”
“Why Charlotte?”
I told him about the nightie.
And how his grandmother had seen Charlotte shoplift it.
“You don’t know Vance like I do. I can’t see him ambushing and attacking anyone, let alone a woman. He’s never been very proactive,” Barrett insisted.
“But he drove down to D.C. to get to you. He held Mrs. Montgomery at gunpoint to convince you to come with him. And right before Kayley disappeared, you said you hadn’t seen him in a day or more, so you don’t know he didn’t grab her.”
“None of that means Vance had anything to do with what happened to her.”
This was true.
But I wasn’t willing to bet my bottom dollar on it.
“Whatever Vance is hiding, it’s got to be about Eric,” Barrett said. “And I can’t go back to New Jersey until I know what it is.”
“If you don’t go, Barrett, Shelby will have to arrest you.”
“She’ll have to find me first.”
“She can, she will, and it’ll ruin your career,” I snapped, unable to mask my irritation any longer. “Are you willing to throw away everything you’ve earned for the secrets men like Vance McCabe keep around here?”
Barrett chuckled and I didn’t like it.
“Go ahead,” he teased. “Tell me how you really feel.”
But that was exactly what I’d done every moment since we’d stepped out under the stars.
“We should get back to the orchard,” I said, springing to my feet—and blinking back tears. Besides, I hadn’t forgotten Dawkins wanted to chat. And I was all for listening to what he had to say.
“All right.” Barrett rose slowly.
He balled up the sleeping bag, stuffed it under his arm, and we began the short march to the truck.
“Jamie, since we’re talking about this, Luke wants you gone. He’s worried Kayley’s attacker might’ve been after you.”
Like I didn’t have a care in the world, I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my blazer, squared my shoulders, and willed my spine as straight as a ramrod.
“Why would anyone want to do that to me?”
“I don’t know. To intimidate you? Silence you? Make you feel less than what you are? That’s what rape’s about. But I don’t want you to take that chance. Just because things didn’t work out between us doesn’t mean I—”
“Don’t say it,” I ordered.
Because if he uttered any words of caring or friendship just then, they would kill me.
I wanted to be more than friends with Barrett. I wanted much more so badly. And I didn’t want him to know it.
But Barrett didn’t say another syllable. He and I walked to the old truck in silence. And just as silently, we drove away, leaving the splendid stars behind.
Chapter 24
The ride on the old bench seat beside Barrett lasted an eternity as far as I was concerned.
The luminous dial on the Cartier Roadster I wore on my wrist, however, claimed the trip took less than eighteen minutes.
At any rate, it was nearing nine o’clock when the Chevy’s headlamps snagged the first black twists of the Barrett Orchard’s apple trees. I was eager to reach the house and to slip away from it. To meet Deputy Dawkins behind the barn. I wanted to know what he’d have to say about Sheriff
Rittenhaus and the crimes committed in Fallowfield. Maybe even more than that, I wanted to put some distance between myself and Adam Barrett.
But all that would have to wait.
Barrett slowed the truck, turned into his grandmother’s lane. And for a split second, I thought we were back at the fire ring. Because as we eased up the drive, through the dark of the night, I spied a river of flame.
“What the hell?” Barrett said.
“It’s the display in front of the farmhouse! The straw bales are on fire!” Every bale was alight, burning yellow and orange and white.
Barrett hit the gas. We sped closer, got a closer look. The pumpkins heaped on the straw were withering in the heat, collapsing in on themselves. And the scarecrow…The scarecrow?
“It’s Dawkins!” I exclaimed.
Arms outstretched, head lolling to the side, Dawkins hung where the straw man used to be. Only now he was surrounded by a hillock of fire. And the flames snapped hungrily at his feet.
Barrett slammed on the brakes. The truck skidded to a halt. I was out of the Chevy and running for the deputy before I could think.
I kicked at the first bale I came to. It rolled onto the lawn, smoldering but smothering its flame. I kicked another, grabbed the twine that bound the thing together. The rough cord bit into my fingers. It drew blood as I tried to haul the second bale onto the first. As I tried to build stair steps. As I tried to reach Dawkins.
Barrett appeared at my side. He clutched the sleeping bag in his hands. He flung it wide, tried to suffocate the blaze. But the fire burned through the nylon. It sent up the stink of reacting chemicals.
Undeterred, Barrett and I climbed onto the ruined bag. I tried to climb higher. He tried to climb closer. But there was no reaching Dawkins. Not hoisted on the pole and crossbar like he was. And not with choking smoke billowing around him. Through the wavering heat, I could see sweat running down the man’s cheeks. Or maybe those were tears leaking from his closed eyes.
Desperate now, I sprinted for the truck, slid behind the wheel. I put the Chevy in gear. And I plowed into the blaze. I thought I heard Barrett shout my name. But all I heard for sure was the crackling of the flames as they attacked the truck.
Riding the brake, I pushed into the bales, nosed the grill against the post holding Dawkins high. And revving the engine, I toppled it. Like a tree felled in the forest, the post went down, carrying Dawkins beyond the inferno.
I grabbed the gearshift, hissed at the heat singeing my hand. A snap and a pop shook the truck. I tried to throw the stick into reverse, but it didn’t want to go, and I suspected the transfer case had ruptured.
So I stomped on the accelerator, threw all my weight into turning the wheels.
The Chevy surged forward onto Mrs. Barrett’s well-kept lawn. But the burning bales were behind me now. And Barrett had Dawkins by the shoulders, dragging him to safety.
I cut the engine. It shimmied to a halt and I abandoned the vehicle, running to do what I could for Dawkins. Barrett had him flat on his back near a bed of marigolds. The deputy’s trouser legs had burned away. The remaining flesh was red and black and smoking—and I caught a stomach-turning scent that smelled a lot like charred chicken.
“He’s unresponsive,” Barrett barked.
He pressed his ear to the deputy’s chest, listened for a heartbeat.
He didn’t find one.
Dropping to my knees beside Dawkins, I tilted his head straight and back, checked his airway with my fingers, and noted a dark discoloration over his Adam’s apple. Someone with strong hands had choked the dickens out of him. But I pushed that from my mind. On Barrett’s count, I gave the deputy the kiss of life. His chest rose and fell as I forced air into his lungs. And when I paused, Barrett went to work, his muscled arms compressing Dawkins’s sternum as he tried to make the man’s heart beat.
We kept at it until paramedics’ hands closed over ours. Luke Rittenhaus appeared out of nowhere to pull me away. I turned and looked and saw firefighters beating back the raging flames on Mrs. Barrett’s front lawn, their ruby-red fire engine dwarfing the scorched Chevy I’d left behind. Charlotte Mead, with her hands clasped beneath her chin, looked on from the passenger seat of a Ford that must’ve belonged to the sheriff. And on the front porch, Barrett’s grandmother, swaddled from chin to ankle in a lilac bathrobe, stood gripping the railing as if it were the only thing keeping her vertical.
Barrett joined her, spoke to her, steered her toward her own front door.
But his eyes remained on me.
I was shaking. After the heat of the blaze and the burn of adrenaline, the autumn night stole all the warmth from my body. And, apparently, when the paramedics reluctantly proclaimed Dawkins dead, the deputy’s death stole something profound from Rittenhaus.
In an informal questioning session around Miranda Barrett’s kitchen table that would never pass muster in any other jurisdiction I’ve ever crossed, Rittenhaus and a junior deputy asked Mrs. Barrett to describe what had happened. As she talked, Charlotte bustled about making coffee. Barrett had descended from upstairs with an armful of blankets. He’d wrapped one around his grandmother—and one around me. I wanted to shrug it off, but I knew my body was in shock and I’d be smart to listen to it.
“I heard a car,” Mrs. Barrett explained softly. “It didn’t sound like the McCabe boy returning or the old Chevy, so I looked out the parlor window. I saw a silver sedan parked beside the scarecrow. There was a man. He had a lighter. He touched it to something in his hand and threw that at the straw. A second later, there was this brilliant yellow flash.”
Molotov cocktail, I thought.
If we were lucky, the fire marshal would find a shattered bottle in the blaze’s aftermath. And the pieces would offer clues, like accelerant residue, that would lead to Dawkins’s killer. But luck was usually hard to come by.
“Can you describe the man or the sedan?” Rittenhaus asked, his voice flat.
Mrs. Barrett’s face folded; mutely, she shook her head.
Well, I’d seen a silver sedan recently. A silver Mercury, to be specific. And the thought that Eric Wentz’s stolen vehicle had turned up here, at the orchard, to burn up a solid guy like Dawkins made my temper flare.
I sent Rittenhaus a look that told him so. He recalled the report I’d phoned in after the Mercury had rear-ended me. I could see it in the way his gaze slid away from mine.
“Deputy Dawkins was off duty,” Rittenhaus said. “Can you tell me what he was doing here?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Mrs. Barrett replied.
And that’s when I thought I’d better lay my cards on the table.
“He was here,” I announced, “to meet with me.”
If I’d hoped my little revelation would provoke a reaction, it certainly did. Barrett, Rittenhaus, and his junior deputy turned to men of stone—but that didn’t hide their shock. Mrs. Barrett reached toward her grandson and patted his fisted hand. Charlotte, leaning over the table to pass around coffee mugs and a plate of cookies, fumbled a handful of spoons. They clattered to the kitchen floor like rain on a tin roof.
“Sorry,” she mumbled and knelt to scoop them up.
“Why the devil,” Rittenhaus growled, “did Dawkins want to meet with you?”
“He never got around to telling me.”
And this was the truth. But I wouldn’t necessarily expect the sheriff to believe it. Instead of pressing me about it, however, he hauled himself to his feet and wished Mrs. Barrett a good night.
“I think we’re done here,” he told her. “The fire chief might want to speak with you tomorrow.”
And with that, Rittenhaus turned on his heel. He stomped through the house. His deputy and his girlfriend had to scramble to catch up with him as he barreled through the front door.
For one long moment, neither I nor the Barretts said anything.
But then Barrett spoke.
“All right,” he said, and anger reverberated in his low baritone. “Luke’s gone.
He can’t hear you now. So you tell me, Jamie. What did Dawkins want to talk to you about?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Adam!” his grandmother breathed.
And I felt as if Barrett had spit in my eye.
But I kept my calm, sloughed off the blanket he’d brought me, collected the coffee cups, and carried them to the sink.
“I could guess,” I admitted. “Dawkins wasn’t from around here. He was an outsider as well as a law enforcement officer. He saw things Rittenhaus—and you—can’t. Or won’t. I think he was going to tell me about them. But I don’t know that for a fact.”
Barrett was at my side in a heartbeat, leaning over me while I rinsed the mugs under the tap.
“You expect me to believe you’re only guessing?” he demanded.
With my back to him, I answered, “I’ve never lied to you, Barrett. But ever since I arrived in Fallowfield, you’ve made me think I ought to start.”
Head held high, I left him and his grandmother in the kitchen, went upstairs to take a shower. I could no longer smell the smoky stink that had to be clinging to my hair, my skin, and my clothes. But I knew it was with me.
And just as I couldn’t pick up the scent of the contamination I carried, I knew there was some connection among these crimes in Fallowfield that I couldn’t see. Too many people had died. And there were too many stories of drug use.
Death, drugs, and a decades-old assault seemingly came together with Eric Wentz—and I wondered if Kayley’s demise, so much like Pamela’s, had pointed Deputy Dawkins toward the crux of it all. After all, someone had wanted to shut him up. That much was clear.
But the reason behind these crimes was still murky. And my list of suspects was short. All of Barrett’s high school friends were on it, as far as I was concerned. But when it came to them, Barrett couldn’t see the forest for the trees. And I believed Rittenhaus couldn’t, either.
It had taken an out-of-towner like Dawkins to begin to put the pieces together.
Well, I was an out-of-towner, too. And I knew of a third stranger who’d taken a keen interest in what went on in Fallowfield. So, one way or another, I’d finish what Dawkins had started—whether Rittenhaus or Barrett or Dawkins’s killer wanted me to or not.
The Kill Box Page 18