“Stay put for just a minute, I’ll be right back. Please, Sam,” he added when he saw her eyes flare.
Annoyed, she cursed under her breath and paced the kitchen while Jake went out to his car. She saw him put the stained t-shirt in a plastic bag and make a call on his cell phone. The arguments she had ready died on her lips when he returned and she saw the look on his face.
“Jake, tell me what’s going on,” she said, half demanding, half pleading.
“Sit down.” Looking over her shoulder at him, she moved to the sofa. When she sat, he sat next to her and took her hands. “I called the office to get someone out here to take a look around the woods. Someone was out there recently, there’s an area with some blood on the ground and, in addition to the t-shirt, I found a knife.”
She gasped. “What kind of knife? Where is it?”
“For now, it’s where I found it. I didn’t want to disturb the area more than necessary. Marc’s on his way out here with evidence bags, a camera…we’ll take a closer look around when he gets here.”
Sam stood and began pacing again, her mind racing. “So, you’re thinking whoever vandalized my shop was in the woods and left behind a bloody t-shirt and a knife? That seems pretty stupid. What, he leaves clues full of his DNA so you can catch him? Wants to make it as easy as possible for you?” She was nearly shouting, her anger at being a target fueling her tirade.
Since he understood how quickly anger could, and often did, turn to fear and panic, Jake spoke calmly. “First of all, I don’t know for certain the shirt and the knife belong to the same person. Even if they do, I don’t know if that person is the one responsible for what’s been going on here. Second, using DNA to catch someone isn’t quite as easy as television would make it seem. If a person has no prior criminal history, their DNA isn’t part of the database so there’s no way a sample obtained at a crime scene will match any existing data.”
She studied him, trying to decipher the look on his face. “Then what do you hope to find out there?”
“It’s standard procedure. We’ll take a look around, see if there is any additional physical evidence, distinguishing footprints.” He looked out the window and frowned. “The rain won’t help.” Raindrops had begun pelting the windows and the sky seemed to darken as they watched.
“Who do you think is doing this?”
“I don’t have any suspects yet. Hopefully we find something in the woods that will help me get closer.”
Sam jumped at the knock on the door then berated herself for doing so. She simply refused to be frightened in her own home. She waved away Jake’s offer to answer the knock and, after a quick glance out the window at the young man in uniform, opened the door to Marc. Jake introduced the two, made a few notes in the incident book Marc had brought with him, then the two men donned rain gear and headed out leaving Sam to stew.
As much as she didn’t want to, she couldn’t keep her thoughts from drifting to the kids from Project Strong Start and wondering if one of them could be responsible. She would defend them with her last breath but knew she had to be reasonable and if Jake found evidence suggesting one of them, she’d have to accept it. She ran her students through her mind again and couldn’t find anything that worried her. Except Zach.
Oh, how she didn’t want to believe he could be responsible but his behavior had her second-guessing herself. He was so secretive, so unwilling to talk to her—or to any of the other kids, for that matter. And there was the fact that it had looked an awful lot like a knife he had tried to hide from her in class. What she couldn’t come up with was a reason. Why target her? Did he think he could steal from her? Was it just to be hurtful?
Realizing she was coming close to assigning blame where she had no reason to, she decided she needed to busy herself so quickly showered and changed clothes then set about making sandwiches for Jake and Marc since the planned barbecue was obviously not happening. She had a plate of sandwiches, fruit, vegetables, a pitcher of iced tea, and a pot of coffee ready when the two returned from the woods. “So?” she demanded when they got inside and out of their rain jackets and boots.
“There wasn’t much to find, I’m afraid. We bagged up the knife and took some soil samples we’ll send to the lab along with the t-shirt but that’s about it. Between the dog and the rain, any footprints that may have been there were long gone.”
Sam ran her hand through her hair, clearly frustrated. “Do you think you’ll learn anything from what you did find?”
“It’s possible. I’d like to know if the blood on the shirt matches the blood on the ground. And, I’d like you to look at something.”
“What?” she asked slowly, eyes darting from Jake to Marc. Marc dropped his gaze to the floor and Sam’s stomach twisted.
“The knife. You said you thought maybe one of the kids had a knife with him during one of your sessions. Do you think you’d recognize it?”
“Jake!” she hissed and looked toward Marc who still had his head down, clearly wishing he were someplace else. She wanted to shout that he shouldn’t have said anything, that she had told him those things in confidence because she simply wasn’t sure of anything, then realized of course he’d tell his deputy. “Fine, I’ll look at it but I doubt I can tell you anything. I just saw something silver that I thought could be a knife.”
While Jake went for the bag he had left by the front door, Sam told Marc to help himself to the food spread out on the kitchen table. “Thank you, Ms. Taylor. Maybe just a cup of coffee.” He looked toward Jake before continuing. “I have a date tonight, taking Sarah out to dinner…soon, hopefully.”
Softening at the blush rising on Marc’s cheeks, Sam smiled. “Is Sarah your girlfriend?”
“Been together almost five years now. She’s amazing, just about finished with her degree in social work.”
“Good for you, that’s nice,” she replied sincerely. “Is she from Misty Lake?”
“No, she lives about fifteen miles away in Fox Grove. She has cousins here in town, that’s how I met her.”
Jake returned with the knife, safely encased inside a plastic evidence bag, and held it out for Sam. She didn’t take it but inched closer to get a better view. It was silver, the blade anyway, the handle black. The blade was extended but looked like it would fit into the handle. “Is this a switchblade?” Sam asked, not exactly sure what a switchblade even was.
“That’s one name for it. And it’s illegal in Minnesota. Could it be what you saw?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. I told you, I didn’t see much more than a flash of something silver. It was small, could have been a knife but I’d have said it could have been a phone, too, if I hadn’t seen Zach’s phone a dozen times before and known he has a green case on it. I’m sorry I can’t be more help.”
“It’s okay, it was a long shot.”
The conversation stalled and Marc cleared his throat. “If there’s nothing more here, Sheriff, maybe I’ll head back?”
“Sure, Marc. Take this stuff back to the office and lock it up until we can ship it out on Monday then take off. You’re already pulling overtime tonight.”
“Thanks, Boss. Ms. Taylor,” he tipped his hat at Sam as he grabbed the gear and made his way back out into the rain, a little spring in his step if Sam wasn’t mistaken.
She was smiling when she turned to Jake. “Nice kid. He’s in love, you know.”
“In love?” Perplexed, he looked at Sam. “Who? You mean Marc?”
“Yes, I mean Marc. He has a date with his girlfriend Sarah tonight so he was anxious to get out of here. They’ve been dating for five years and from the impression I got, he’s head-over-heels in love with her.”
“And you learned all that when?”
“Just a minute ago when you were digging the knife out of your case over there.” She waved toward the door while Jake continued to stare at her.
“He told you all that in the two minutes it took me to get the knife?”
“It doesn’
t take long to learn about someone. Don’t you ever ask him about his life outside of work?”
“Sure. I know he likes to fish, both in the summer and in the winter. Puts a fish house out on the lake every winter as soon as the ice is thick enough. He may have mentioned a girl going fishing with him…” He scratched his head trying to remember if he had ever asked about a girlfriend and decided probably not. That was personal, not like talking fishing or baseball.
“Oh, Jake.” She shook her head and chuckled. “Have a sandwich. Those burgers are going to have to wait for another day.”
After they had eaten, cleaned up, and agreed to stop discussing police business for the evening, they sat in the living room and watched the storm rage. Lighting crackled in the inky sky and thunder shook the house. Rigi paced nervously, returning frequently to Sam for a reassuring pat.
Jake loved this, sitting in the dark, watching the storm with Sam snuggled next to him on the sofa. He imagined them doing the same when the leaves changed to crimson and gold, when the snow fell, when the ice turned black before it melted into spring. He caught himself. Since when did he think about being with a woman and imagine just sitting on the sofa? He wasn’t quite sure what it was about Sam that made him think of those things, of doing the everyday things together, but it seemed natural. To get his mind away from bizarre domestic fantasies, he asked, “Was today really the first time you’ve been on, or in, the lake since you moved here?”
“Yes, I guess I just didn’t want to face it and all the memories. I need to get past it, it’s just taking some time.”
“Did you learn to swim here? Looked to me like you could have kept going clear across the lake this afternoon.”
Sam smiled at that, recalling her embarrassment and the fact that the thought had crossed her mind. “Learned to swim and learned to love it here. My older cousins didn’t know what hit them the year I outswam all of them. It was fun having something I was the best at, we were pretty competitive.”
“I get that. Growing up with three brothers, and a feisty little sister, more or less everything we did was a contest. I don’t think any of us could ever come close to keeping up with you in the water, though.”
“I guess I was fast, once. Now it’s more for exercise. My days of competing are long behind me.”
“Tell me about it. Where did you compete?”
“You don’t really want to hear my boring stories,” but she continued when he nodded his encouragement. “I started swimming competitively when I was about eleven, I guess. Age group stuff with the local swim club. I swam all through high school, went to state, got a couple medals, then went down to Florida at my grandfather’s insistence and swam one year in college. That’s about it.”
“Why just one year?”
She sighed. “I didn’t want to go…didn’t want to go to college or be away from home. I told my grandfather I would make a living doing woodworking. He wouldn’t hear of it. I was offered a scholarship to swim in Florida, he insisted I go, give it a try. It was a long, miserable year for me. I didn’t swim well, mostly because I didn’t want to be there, and I needed to be home with my grandfather and my brother.”
Jake noticed the sadness creep back into her voice when she spoke of her brother and grandfather and gave her hand a squeeze. “When you came home after the first year did you start a woodworking business?” He was curious about her past, the good and the bad.
“No, not right away. My grandfather and I argued fiercely about school. He felt so strongly I should have an education that I finally gave in. We compromised on a technical school that offered classes in woodworking, among other things, along with business classes. It ended up being a good thing. I even told my grandfather so…after about five years.” She laughed at the memory. “I couldn’t let him know too soon that he had been right.”
It didn’t take much imagination to picture Sam ten years younger and fighting with her grandfather about her future. If she was half as stubborn and determined as she was now, her grandfather must have been a hell of a man to have won the argument.
“How about you, Mr. Sheriff? How’d you end up doing what you’re doing?”
“I guess I always wanted to do what my dad did. I watched him go to work every day dressed in his uniform, carrying a gun, and I thought he was so cool. Pretty heady stuff for a kid. What I didn’t see was the worry my mom dealt with on a daily basis. Looking back, I can see that she did a good job of hiding it from us. Being the wife, or mother, of a cop isn’t easy. I didn’t learn that until I told her I wanted to go to school for a degree in law enforcement. It took me, with a lot of help from my dad, weeks to convince her it wasn’t the dumbest idea I had ever come up with.”
She sat up straighter and looked at him. “I didn’t know your dad was the sheriff before you. How didn’t I know that? It seems like everyone I talk to is more than anxious to share town lore and gossip.”
He nodded at her assessment of the town’s residents. Pretty accurate, he figured. “It’s no secret, I’m not sure why it hasn’t come up until now. My father retired about three years ago, I ran for sheriff and was elected. My brothers would tell you the only reason I won was that half the people who voted saw the name McCabe and assumed they were voting for my father again. I suppose there could be something to that, not that I’d ever admit it to them.”
Sam laughed as she considered this new information. She wasn’t sure why, but the fact that Jake followed in his father’s footsteps made her look at him a little differently. She had always viewed cops as distant, tough, if not harsh, cold, and unemotional. They would have to be in order to do their job. Even without having met his father, she felt certain he wasn’t like that. It would take loving parents to raise a big family with children like Jake…and Joe. And a child didn’t want to be like his father unless he admired his father.
“What are you thinking so hard about?” Jake asked, taking in her furrowed brow and slightly narrowed eyes.
“Nothing,” she lied. Then, before he could ask any more questions, “Did you work with your dad before he retired?”
“I worked as a cop for a couple years in the Twin Cities after I got through school then came back up here and, yeah, worked as a deputy for my dad. I learned a lot from him in a few years. Things are different here than in the Cities, a slower way of life, but people still do stupid and dangerous things. My dad taught me how to separate the stupid but harmless from the stupid and not so harmless.”
She nodded and leaned her head on his shoulder, gazing back out the window at the lake, lit up with frequent flashes of lightning. She was starting to see him, and maybe all cops, in a little different light. She had always respected police officers, realized their job was a difficult, dangerous, and often thankless one, but had had some negative experiences that weren’t so easy to put behind her. It was easier to think of them not as fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters but rather as autonomous, even faceless, individuals. Not fair, she decided.
She turned her head, looked into Jake’s dark eyes, barely visible in the dark of the storm, and made a quick decision. She was lonely, had been for a long time, and the companionship of a man, a good man, didn’t seem like such a bad idea any more. Nothing serious, she told herself, she’d see to that, but maybe a date here and there, someone to spend a warm day on the lake or a stormy evening with, someone to talk to, surely there wasn’t any harm in that. Keeping her eyes on his, she slowly leaned her head down and pressed her lips to his.
The fact that this was the first time Sam had initiated any sort of physical contact other than the simplest hand holding was not lost on Jake as he put his arms around her, ran one hand up her back and into her long, thick hair. The kiss deepened and Jake fought for control as he fisted his hand in her hair and gently pulled. His lips traced a line down her neck and he felt her tremble under his hands.
The lightning and thunder had nothing on the feelings pounding through her, Sam thought, as Jake trailed kisses down her neck
, onto her shoulder. A soft moan escaped her lips as his hand found its way under her shirt and caressed her back. She shifted her weight to mold herself more tightly to Jake when all at once the room lit up in a flash, thunder cracked so loudly the pictures on the wall shook, and Rigi propelled herself from the floor onto the couch landing right on top of Sam. Whining and panting, the dog wedged her way between Sam and Jake and buried her head in Sam’s lap.
Sam couldn’t help herself, she started laughing. Jake’s expression went from shocked to frustrated to annoyed in a matter of seconds. He let his head fall back onto the pillow and blew out a deep breath before looking at her and shrugging. Still laughing, Sam settled the dog between them and stroked her silky fur until she calmed. Together, the three watched the storm run its course until, at some point, all three relaxed enough to fall asleep.
He sat in the car, far enough around the curve in the road that he couldn’t be seen from the house. He tipped the bottle to his lips again, and fumed. He’d seen the kid from the sheriff’s office show up, knew they were heading back out to the woods. Damn, he should have realized before today that he’d left the t-shirt and knife behind. But when that stupid mutt had come charging into the woods when he had been there with the raccoons, his only choice had been to run. He figured he was lucky it had been late and the woman had called the dog back inside quickly or he may have had to act sooner than planned.
No more mistakes, he promised himself. He’d be more careful. Besides, what could they learn from the knife and an old t-shirt? He had worn gloves, there’d be no fingerprints. He was smarter than they were, he knew that. Idiot backwoods cops, he’d outsmart all of them. Just like he had outsmarted the big city cops. His confidence buoyed as the bottle emptied.
10
Sam let herself sleep in a little on Sunday morning. She wasn’t sure who had stirred first last night, although she knew it wasn’t the dog. Sometime around one o’clock Sam had realized she could no longer feel her leg below the point where Rigi had decided she needed to lie. She squirmed to free herself and had discovered Jake looking at her in the dark. The night had cleared and the moonlight lit his face enough for her to make out the sharp angles and sleepy eyes. Once they untangled themselves from the dog, Jake had decided he had better head home. It had been a good night and Sam smiled remembering the long, slow kiss on the dock and the brief, but passionate one, on the sofa.
Misty Lake: Book One in the Misty Lake Series Page 10