by Dana Mentink
Heather sank onto the sofa. “Oh, no. Is it really bad?”
“He’s alive and breathing on his own, but we couldn’t rouse him. Doctors will have to tell us more.”
She groaned. “Charlie’s all Tina’s got. Where will she go?”
Bill considered the question that had been alive in his mind since the day Johnny died. What would happen to Tina with only an old man to care for her? Johnny had never forgotten a birthday, never skipped a chance to play in the river with Tina. He’d been mother and father to her with Charlie’s help, and his death left an old grieving man to fill the void. A swell of desperation engulfed Bill.
He was still wrestling with the problem when he felt Heather’s hand on his forearm.
“She can stay here with us. Mom and I will do our best until we can figure something else out.”
He sighed. It was a generous offer, considering Heather’s uncertain relationship with her own mother. “Thank you, but I think she’d be safer with Aunt Jean for a little while. I already phoned her.”
“Why would she be safer at Jean’s? Oscar’s been there, too.”
“Yes, but I think he’s focused more on you.” Bill turned and found himself so close that his arms seemed to encircle her of their own accord, as if his body was no longer ruled by his mind. Her eyes sought his, filled with such tender compassion that he found it hard to breathe. He desperately wanted to press his mouth to hers and drink in some of the warmth that filled her heart and soul. “I’m sorry for that, for all of it.”
She reached up and put her palm gently on his cheek. He longed to press against it, to dive into that touch and let the world go away.
“You’re not responsible for Oscar’s craziness. You never have been.” She added softly, “And you’re not responsible for what he did to Johnny.”
He wanted to believe it, but laying down that burden of responsibility even for a moment would leave his heart open to moving on. To what? To love again? To turn back to the life he’d had before and the faith he’d left behind? It was too much.
He allowed himself to linger for another moment in the warmth of her touch and then he moved away. Tomorrow. It would all be over one way or another tomorrow.
Out the window he could see the ambulance had arrived and begun to load Charlie onto a stretcher. Heather joined him and they watched until the rescue vehicle departed.
He cleared his throat, dreading the news he would have to give Tina. He wasn’t good with kids. He could hardly even get Tank to listen. What chance did he have with a precocious six-year-old? “Would you come with me to Charlie’s? I’ve got to take her back so she can pack up a few things she’ll need. I’m not sure how she’s going to handle this.” And I’m not sure how to handle it, either.
“Of course. I’ll go get her.”
Trying to piece together what to tell Tina, Bill waited until they entered the room.
Tina climbed up and sat next to Heather on the sofa. “Am I going home now, Uncle Bill? I’m not done sorting my treasures.”
Margot gave her a smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of them until you can come over again and we’ll finish.”
The girl seemed satisfied. “Is Uncle Charlie better now?”
Bill swallowed. “Honey, Uncle Charlie has to go to the hospital for a while.”
Tina stuck her fingers in her mouth. “Is he gonna come back?”
The pain knifed at him. He knew she was remembering that Johnny never returned from the hospital.
Tina’s eyes began to tear up and he took a step toward her, unable to find even a single word to comfort her.
Heather took Tina’s free hand. “The doctors are going to take very good care of him.”
Tina clutched at Heather, her words garbled from the fingers jammed into her mouth. “Is he gonna die? I don’t want him to die.”
Heather stroked Tina’s arm. “I know you feel scared. Do you know what I do when I’m really scared?”
Tina shook her head.
“I pray to God. Do you know how to do that?”
She nodded. “Aunt Jean taught me.”
“Okay. Let’s say a prayer together, then.”
Bill watched them, heads bent together as Heather guided the little girl through a simple prayer. He ached at the sight. How could she trust God after she’d lost so much? How could they both commend Charlie into His care in spite of the grief they had both experienced?
But when they looked up, both had the same childlike peace about them, as if they had put down a heavy burden. Heather’s eyes found his and he knew she could see the yearning on his face. He looked away.
“Aunt Jean is going to take care of you for a while. I’ll walk you home to pack up some things to bring along, okay?” Heather said.
Tina nodded, fingers still in her mouth, as she hopped off the sofa.
Bill cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said to Heather. “For helping her with that.”
Heather smiled. “I’ve had a lot of experience feeling like an overwhelmed child. Still do, sometimes.”
He didn’t reply as they walked outside, checking the perimeter as they did so, nodding to the Tribal Ranger still stationed at the front. Both dogs joined them, sniffing and nosing their way along onto Charlie’s property, where they were left to explore outside.
Rudley clicked off his phone and greeted them at the door. Tina shuffled past him down the hallway, which was piled with cardboard boxes. “Got someone going to check Aunt Jean’s place again to make sure everything is normal before I transport Tina over there.”
“I’ll take her,” Bill snapped. “She needs someone familiar.”
Rudley shook his head. “Not you.”
“I …” Bill stopped. Rudley was right.
I’m a target and everywhere I go I put the people with me in danger.
Heather must have sensed his thoughts. “I’ll go with you, Agent Rudley. Tina knows me a little. I’ll help her get settled with Aunt Jean.”
Bill felt a surge of gratefulness that left him unsteady. He walked into the tiny front room, noting more boxes stacked against the wall. Moving boxes. Charlie must have found a buyer, or at least a renter, for his land and was going to follow through on his goal to get Tina out of South Dakota. Where would they go? Someplace, anyplace where memories of Johnny did not linger in every dusty canyon or under the shade of each cottonwood tree.
It wouldn’t work, he thought grimly. The memories would follow along. He thought of Leanne, chasing her through endless acres of crackling golden grass, helping her deliver pizzas to make ends meet. The birth of her daughters, his nieces, and the joy on her face, in spite of the fact that the man who fathered them had taken off long before they were born.
Heather followed Tina down the hall, to help her pack, he imagined. Rudley began texting, leaving Bill to wander among the boxes. The house was dingy, he noticed, the paint peeling along the baseboards, the worn carpeting stained and threadbare. For Johnny it was an endless task to repair this old place, a job Bill had never once heard him complain about.
The question returned. Who would have bought this house? Or even be interested in renting it? Rockvale had suffered the full brunt of the economic downturn, in addition to the poverty that seemed an integral part of life on the nearby Eagle Rock reservation. People did not come to Rockvale, except for the lab folks, and they lived in housing constructed specifically for that purpose in Copper Springs, a nearby town with better amenities and a bigger population.
So who had bought this place?
He was still musing when Heather and Tina came into the room, Tina holding a duffel bag.
“All packed,” Heather said brightly.
A glint of metal caught Bill’s eye and he looked closer at Tina, at something she was wearing around her neck. As he got a good look, he grunted in surprise, not believing what he saw.
Heather saw Bill’s face go slack with shock as he darted toward Tina and dropped to one knee. Reflexively she grabbed th
e little girl’s hand. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Bill ignored her. He reached up and put one finger on the silver heart that hung on a chain around Tina’s neck. “Where did you get that?”
Tina shrank back and put her fingers into her mouth again with a shrug of her slender shoulders.
His voice cracked as he repeated the question, causing Tina to hide behind Heather. She whispered to him.
“You’re scaring her.”
He remained on the floor for a moment before he stood again and backed away a few steps, but she could see the emotion storming through his eyes.
“The necklace. I need to know where she got it.”
Heather did not understand what was driving Bill, but she knew him well enough to know he didn’t ruffle easily. Whatever the reason for his interest in the necklace, it was serious.
“Tina,” she said. “Uncle Bill was surprised to see your pretty necklace. Can you tell him who gave it to you?”
Tina shook her head, so Heather led her to a chair and sat next to her. “It’s important. Uncle Bill isn’t mad at you. He just needs to know, okay?”
Tina had a fearful expression on her face as she looked from Bill to Heather.
“I found it,” she finally said. “On the other side of the bridge.”
Heather frowned. The other side of the bridge would be her father’s land, but the necklace was nothing she had ever seen before.
“How long ago?” Bill croaked.
Tina screwed up her face in thought. “A long time ago. The same time I started to go take art class at Aunt Jean’s.”
“Last September,” Bill said. “You found the necklace in September.”
Rudley was listening in now, having caught the tension.
Heather watched Bill take a steadying breath.
“Did you find anything else with the necklace, honey?” he asked.
She stared at her lap. Bill touched the top of her head very gently. “It’s real important. I promise you won’t get in trouble if you tell the truth.”
Tina looked at Rudley, eyes narrowed.
Heather patted her hand. “Agent Rudley won’t punish you, either, right?”
Rudley looked bemused. “Oh, of course not. We never punish children.”
Tina seemed satisfied. “I’ll get it.” She hopped off the chair and disappeared down the hallway.
Bill remained frozen there and his strange behavior scared Heather. She wanted to grab his shoulders and shake the wild, faraway look off his face, but she didn’t dare. Instead she watched, holding her breath until Tina returned with a grimy brown purse.
It was made of cheap vinyl and one of the handles was almost severed. The outside was pocked with dings as if it had been badly treated.
She handed it to Bill. “Uncle Charlie doesn’t like me to collect treasures, so I hid it in my room.”
Bill took the purse, frowning, and carefully slid the contents out onto the table. A compact, the one Heather had seen Tina powdering her nose with before, a curved white rock, a mint container and a wallet.
The wallet was empty except for a dirty driver’s license. Heather itched to examine it, but Rudley and Bill moved in. All was quiet until Rudley let out a low whistle.
Heather couldn’t take a moment longer. “What? Tell me before I have to scream.”
Rudley was pulling out his phone. “It’s Hazel Birch’s purse.”
“Hazel? Oscar’s wife?” Suddenly the mystery of the missing purse was solved. She was right. Hazel had grabbed her purse before she fled, before Oscar caught up and murdered her. “But why would Oscar dump his wife’s purse on my property?”
“There’s another mystery here,” Bill said, voice dull. They all turned to stare at him.
“That necklace. Turn it over and read the back.”
With fingers suddenly gone cold, Heather turned over the heart on the chain around Tina’s neck.
“It says, ‘To Leanne …'” She broke off.
Bill filled in the rest. “‘The new mother. Love, Bill.'”
Heather stared at him in horror. “This was your sister’s.”
He nodded. “I gave it to her on the day her girls were born. She never took it off.”
“Then how …?”
Rudley spoke softly. “It would seem that Hazel knew something about Leanne’s death. She found the necklace, some other evidence perhaps that Oscar was involved.”
“But I thought …” Heather flushed. “I thought Leanne died of a drug overdose.”
“She did,” Bill growled. “But it might not have been self-induced, after all.”
Rudley nodded. “Hazel guessed Oscar was involved and decided to run, but Oscar caught her.”
She saw from the white-hot rage kindling in Bill’s eyes that he agreed with Rudley’s theory.
“But how did the purse get here?” she finally managed.
“I think I know the answer to that, too,” he said as he stalked out the front door.
FIFTEEN
He didn’t have to go far. Al Crow was pulling up the gravel drive. Bill waited for him to get out, fury building to a crescendo inside him.
Al gave him a curious look. “What’s up? You look like you’re about to explode.”
Heather and Rudley jogged up next to them.
“What’s going on?” Rudley asked.
“Why don’t you tell him what you did?” Bill snapped at Crow.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. Last September you found the car Hazel Birch abandoned before Oscar killed her.”
Crow shifted, arms crossed. “There’s a whole report on file about that. I don’t see why we gotta talk about it now.”
The rage overwhelmed him and he grabbed Crow by the collar. “How could you do it?”
Crow struggled in his grasp until Rudley pulled him away. Heather clamped a hand on Bill’s shoulder.
“Calm down. Calm down and tell us,” she said in a soothing voice.
Bill tried to suck in some air. His heart hammered an angry rhythm against his ribs. “Hazel found out that Oscar killed my sister.”
Crow’s face blanched. “What? But Leanne died of an O.D. I thought… .”
“That’s what we all thought, thanks to the blood tests, but now it seems like Oscar just made it look that way. Maybe somehow he overpowered her and injected her with the stuff and pushed her body off the ridge. We don’t know for sure, but we do know he took her necklace first.” He looked out at the distant edge of Charlie’s property, the place where he imagined Oscar had taken Leanne’s life. “Hazel had the necklace in her purse. Somehow she found it, guessed that Oscar killed Leanne and was going to tell, but he caught her.”
Crow licked his lips. “How do you know that?”
Rudley spoke up. “Tina just showed us Hazel’s purse. She found it, with the necklace inside, on the Fernandes property last September.”
“Someone,” Bill said, fighting the urge to grab Crow around the neck, “took the purse from her car and didn’t want to be caught with it, so they discarded it on Heather’s land. That someone was you, wasn’t it?”
He heard Heather gasp but he did not take his eyes off Crow. “Why did you do it, Al?” The rage suddenly drained out of him and he felt unaccountably fatigued. “Why didn’t you report the purse?”
Crow looked down at his feet. “I made a mistake.”
“Why?” Bill said, though he knew the answer already.
“I needed the money. I have some debts.”
Bill shook his head. “That’s why you sold your Falcon?”
He nodded. “It was stupid, but when I found that purse there and a wallet with a couple hundred bucks …”
“You took it?” Heather’s voice was incredulous.
“Yeah. I was first on scene sitting in my vehicle. At that time I had no idea it was a murder investigation. All I knew is it was an abandoned car, so I looked through the wallet. Then I heard Cloudman and Johnny
approaching. I panicked. I hid the purse in my car. By the time it was clear we were looking for Hazel and it wasn’t going to turn out well, I’d already told Bill and Johnny there was no purse, so I couldn’t put it back. Later I dumped the purse at Heather’s.”
Bill pushed on. “You meant to go back and get it later.”
“Yeah, but it was gone. After a few months went by, I stopped looking, but when Oscar showed up and there were all kinds of cops roaming over Heather’s land, I figured I’d better find it before they did, on the off chance it was still there.”
Heather edged closer. “So it was you on my property with the lantern? You swung a shovel at Bill?”
He looked confused. “No. That wasn’t me. I wouldn’t have done that to Bill.”
“What you did was worse.” Bill’s eyes burned. “You concealed evidence that would have told me that Oscar murdered my sister. All this time I thought she caved in and started using again. All this time—” He broke off.
Crow seemed to shrink. “I’m sorry, Bill. I had no idea there was a connection between Hazel and Leanne. I never would have kept it from you.”
“You kept it from all of us and you kept my sister from having justice. Because of you her daughters think their mother died a junkie.”
Crow’s mouth opened and then closed.
Rudley exhaled. “Crow, you’d better come with me. I’ll make arrangements with you to talk to someone at headquarters.” He turned to Bill and spoke more gently. “We can exhume your sister’s body and have a thorough postmortem. We’ll talk it out in a little while.”
Bill walked away in disgust. Talk? What good was that now? His friend, his longtime friend, had betrayed him. Crow might face the loss of his badge, his career, but Bill had lost so much more. The bitterness almost overwhelmed him. Vaguely he noticed Tina trot out the door to play with the two dogs. He sank onto a worn bench under the shade of a scraggly pine, head reeling.
He felt rather than saw Heather sit next to him. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“I should have believed in her. She said she was clean and I should have known she was telling me the truth. I never should have believed she overdosed.”
Heather reached out and took his hand. “Speaking from experience, an addiction problem destroys trust so completely, it’s hard to win it back, no matter how much you try.”