“What kind of complaints?” she asked.
“Legit stuff. Nothing I can do anything about.”
“Let me guess. Overworked, underpaid, lack of equipment?”
“Hey, you’re good,” he said with a warm grin. “I told them I’d bring it up at the next meeting with the chief, but I can’t promise anything.”
“There’s my girl!” Detective Buckner came tumbling out of the men’s room with all the galloping enthusiasm of a puppy. At thirty-six, Brandon was a big guy, with a round face and twinkly brown eyes, but hyperactive and enthusiastic about everything. “Shove over,” he said, and Natalie made room for him in the booth. “How did it go tonight? The deathiversary?”
“Sad but healing,” she said.
“Here’s to Willow.” Brandon raised his shot glass.
“To Willow, may she rest in peace,” Luke said, and they all clinked glasses.
Brandon Buckner hadn’t been Luke’s first choice for detective, second grade, but Brandon’s rich-as-Midas father and the mayor were good friends, and Chief Snyder had a long-standing alliance with both men. Fortunately for everyone, Brandon turned out to be an okay guy. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but funny. Quick on his feet. Loyal. Sincere. Now he knocked back his drink and said, “Christ, I’m thirsty.” He signaled the waitress, who was way ahead of them.
Anorexic Teena swung by with another round. “A Rolling Rock for the lieu, a Perrier for the lady detective, and a whiskey double-neat for the biggest dick in town.”
“Hey, I resemble that remark,” Brandon said with a hearty laugh, and when Teena didn’t reciprocate, he said, “You should eat something, Teena. You’re a stick figure.”
“Brandon,” Luke groaned.
“Don’t you make fun of my girl,” Natalie scolded him.
“Go ahead. Keep spewing your diarrhea, frat boy,” Teena said and walked away.
“Did she call me fat?” He looked down at his belly.
“Does Daisy approve of you being such an asshole?” Luke demanded to know.
“Daisy loves me. The whole beautiful package.”
“Pfft. You and your fairy-tale marriage,” Luke muttered.
“Speaking of which … big news.” Brandon downed his shot and clapped the empty glass on the table. “We’re pregnant. Ta-da.”
“Hey, that’s great news,” Natalie said, genuinely happy for them. “Congratulations, Brandon.”
“Right?” He grinned. “Drumroll, please.”
It wasn’t a secret that the Buckners had been trying to get pregnant for years now. Daisy Buckner, Grace’s best friend since kindergarten, had suffered through two previous miscarriages.
“Daisy wouldn’t let me spill the beans until after the first trimester,” Brandon explained. “She couldn’t face losing another one in front of the whole town, but the doc says three months is a good enough milestone.”
“I’m thrilled for you guys,” Natalie told him.
“Believe that? I’m gonna be a daddy.” He shook his head, dumbstruck.
Luke’s eyes softened with a faraway look. “Skye used to listen to Motown when she was little. ‘Dancing in the Street’ was her favorite song.”
“Yeah, huh?” Brandon said encouragingly, since Luke rarely mentioned his daughter. Sixteen-year-old Skye Pittman lived in California with her mother, Luke’s ex-wife, and it pained him to talk about it.
“I helped her make cookies shaped like bees once,” Luke said, stroking his chin.
“Bees? Why bees?” Natalie asked.
“Why not?” He laughed, his eyes straying from the beer label to look at her. Luke’s eyes had a gorgeous laziness about them tonight. He had a rangy, predatory grace, and she could picture his cynical, hip boyhood face superimposed over his no-nonsense, grown-up face. It made her smile. He was still there, underneath the professional veneer. Mocking authority and dreaming about his future.
“That’s sweet,” Natalie said.
“Hey, Teena! Over here!” Brandon signaled the waitress for another round. “Is she on strike or something? She keeps ignoring me. Hey, Teena!” He made another drunken swipe at the air, and Luke batted his hand away. “Ow.”
“I’d stay out of the deep end of the bar if I were you, Brandon.”
“Yeah, this is not a good look for you,” Natalie agreed.
“You have to cut this shit out. You’re going to be a father.”
“C’mon, Lieutenant. I’m buying.”
“You’ve celebrated enough.” Luke scooped up Brandon’s car keys from the table.
“Hey!” Brandon reached for his keys, but Luke held them out of reach.
“I’ll take him home,” Natalie volunteered.
“You sure?” Luke said.
“Yeah, no problem.”
He handed Natalie the keys, then fished out his wallet and dropped a couple of twenties on the table.
“You leaving already, Lieutenant?” Brandon said with disappointment.
“Got to split.”
“Party pooper,” he said, sulking.
Luke stood up. “See you tomorrow, Natalie.”
“Same bat-time, same bat-station,” she said, keeping it light.
The way he studied her made her nervous. But he looked at everyone that way—dead ahead, like a cougar, sizing you up. Measuring your worth. “Don’t keep my best detective too long, Brandon. She’s on-call this week.”
“Yes, sir.” Brandon winked at Natalie.
Luke walked away, and they watched him tip the waitresses on his way out of the bar. As soon as he was gone, Natalie pocketed Brandon’s keys.
His eyes narrowed to stubborn slits. “Jesus, I’m not that drunk.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re drunk enough to make a DUI stick. Drunk enough to make our stupid-busts list. Drunk enough to get your wife thoroughly pissed at you. Do you want me to call Daisy? Because I will.”
“Daisy doesn’t get mad at me. I told you, she loves me.…”
“Right, the whole sorry package.” Natalie stood up. “C’mon, let’s go.”
The bar walls, like a pair of lungs, had absorbed decades of secondhand smoke. The lizard-skinned bouncer, Mickey, sat on his leather-padded stool watching ESPN. A bunch of locals were taking potshots at one another. Brandon grabbed a bottle of bourbon on his way out, and Natalie had to pry it from his sweaty hands.
“Quit embarrassing yourself,” she said with exasperation.
He laughed. “I sincerely enjoy messing with your head.”
They walked out of the bar together, sidestepping big puddles. Neon-blue lettering blinked on and off in the dusty plate-glass windows. Outside, the rain had blown away, and the evening mist slowly swirled up into the atmosphere.
“Seriously, Brandon. It’s time to cut back on the drinking.”
He stopped walking and just looked at her, his gaze slightly mocking.
“What?” she said, irritated.
“You and Luke.”
“Shut up.” She laughed dismissively but could feel the familiar tightening of her facial muscles, a physical reaction that occurred whenever Brandon—who prided himself on his candor—got too personal for comfort.
“Come on,” he said, studying her with excruciating honesty. “Ain’t no big thang. This is a small town, Natalie. Everybody knows everyone else’s dirty laundry. Besides, I can see the way he looks at you. Especially since you dumped that loser boyfriend of yours…”
She cringed. “Keep digging yourself a deeper hole. Go ahead.”
“Relax. I’m busting your chops.”
“Well, cut it out! Quit trolling me.”
“Sorry.” He threw up his hands in surrender. “You know I love you, Nat.”
“Love you, too, you big dope.” She opened the passenger door for him. “Now get in, before I arrest you for loitering.”
4
The distant mountains stole moisture from the clouds and soaked the county in forty inches of rain per year. Dense woods of jack pine, red maple,
and yellow birch tumbled across the landscape, cloaking the valley in a lush green growth. Driving with the windows down, Natalie breathed in the chilly April air and felt an invigorating rush. As they crested the next hill, she could see the glittery lights of downtown in her rearview mirror. The frozen months of winter had left big potholes in the road, and one of these bumps woke Brandon up.
“Uh,” he hiccupped, producing a beer bottle from his jacket like a magician.
She glanced over at him disapprovingly. “Where’d you get that?”
“Ain’t sayin’.”
“Seriously, Brandon. What’s up with the drinking lately?”
“Nothing’s up. Dickwise, that is.”
She shot him a look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. We’re fine. Everything’s fine,” he muttered.
“Who’s fine?” she asked suspiciously.
This was a small community, surrounded by thick woods like a fairy-tale kingdom, and it was true—everybody knew everyone else’s business, or at least people assumed they did. Brandon wasn’t a problem drinker, but he’d been getting drunk after work lately—twice this week, three times last week, a worrisome trend. Natalie wanted to know why.
“I just felt like getting staggeringly wasted tonight, okay? So shoot me.” He took a defiant swig of beer, rolled down his window, and chucked the bottle into the night. “There. Happy now?”
“Jerk. You just littered.”
“I’m a deeply flawed human being,” he admitted, raking his fingers through his brown, medium-length hair until it jutted out all over. “Stay for dinner, Nat? I’ll let Daisy know you’re coming.”
“Sorry, Brandon. I can’t tonight.”
He ignored her and called home. “Huh,” he said after a moment. “She’s not picking up.”
“That’s okay. I can’t stay for dinner.”
Brushing her off, Brandon tried again. “Come on, babe. Pick up.”
The car rolled toward its destination through an endless expanse of woods—there weren’t many streetlights out this way. It got pretty dark and eerie out in the countryside, where the brambled trees reached for the moon. The wind blew year-round in Burning Lake, sweeping in from the southwest and deforming the hemlocks and sycamores over time, until they became as gnarled as old crones. At the heart of autumn, the constant winds made a haunting, ghostlike lamentation.
“Hey, did I show you my new barbecue yet?” Brandon asked, fumbling with his iPhone and swiping through the images. “Check this out. Thirty-six-inch grill, stainless-steel hood, rear-mounted rotisserie … she’s a beaut, huh?”
“Awesome.”
“And look at this,” he said excitedly, still swiping. “I got so sick of my front yard looking like crap every Christmas, I decided to plant some evergreen trees, you know? Spruce things up a bit. Ha-ha. But then I found out there’s more to it than that.”
“More to it than what?” she asked, glancing at digital pictures of Brandon’s torn-up front yard.
“It’s called winter landscaping. You plant a bunch of colorful berries, like red-twig dogwood and Christmas holly,” Brandon explained, showing her the results. “See? Yew bushes will catch the snow in their branches, and bayberry smells like the holidays. My house is gonna look like a fucking Christmas card this year.” He put his phone away and sighed. “Okay, so my marriage isn’t perfect.”
She looked at him, startled by this admission.
“They say it’s only natural. We’ve been married for twelve fucking years.”
“Things are good enough, though, right?” she hedged. “With the baby coming?”
He shrugged it off, which disturbed her.
The clouds parted, and a frost of moonlight dappled the surface of the lake. Natalie took a left onto Lost Pines Road, which snaked through the gorgeous wooded countryside that used to belong to the Native Americans, then to the French fur traders, then to the Jesuit missionaries, then the pork farmers, and finally the apple farmers. Now it was a booming tourist destination with a budding technology sector. At least, that was what the town website wanted you to believe.
“I fell in love with Daisy in the fifth grade,” Brandon said quietly. “She wrote this poem about shoes … how a person’s footwear can tell you everything you need to know about them. God, she was cute. She said my sneakers looked comfortable enough to curl up in. That cracked me up. Anyway, life goes on, and then one day, you wake up, and suddenly you aren’t on the same page anymore.” He wore a look of frustration. “Daisy’s satisfied with what we’ve got—a house, a car, a barbecue. Life’s simple for her. It’s a series of goals.”
She glanced at his sweaty face in the moonlight. “But not for you?”
“Hell, no.”
Natalie didn’t know how to respond to any of this. Brandon had done nothing but brag about his marriage for as long as she’d known him.
“My wife’s smart. Book-smart. She likes to read and think about stuff intellectually, whereas I prefer to get my hands dirty. Dig around in the dirt, you know? Like with the winter landscaping. I’m a spiritual person, and whenever I look at the sky and the stars … it moves me. But Daisy will spout a bunch of facts and figures, very cut and dry. Anyway, our sex life…” He shook his head.
“I’m sorry to hear it.” She winced.
“Too much information, huh? Maybe the lieutenant is right. Me and my fairy-tale marriage. Pfft.” He put the phone to his ear. “Still not picking up,” he grumbled. “Funny, I told her I’d be home by eight.”
Wolf Pass Road was home to generations of hardworking families and boasted some of the most beautiful Victorians and Gothics in town, painted all colors of the rainbow to highlight the original trim work. By midsummer, these historic residences would be swimming in oceans of black-eyed Susans and tangerine touch-me-nots.
“Listen,” Brandon clarified, “my marriage isn’t in trouble or anything. I love Daisy, and she loves me. We’ve been through some bad patches before. Maybe it’s just the stress of being pregnant again, having all our hopes and dreams wrapped up in this baby … I don’t know.”
Natalie pulled into the driveway and parked next to Daisy’s green minivan. Strange. The house lights were off. The property was completely dark—no porch or yard lights. The gabled house was bathed in moonlight.
Brandon got out and stood swaying in the front yard as if he were standing at the helm of a ship. The lawn was freshly seeded, and there were newly planted shrubs around the foundation with the price tags still attached—part of his winter landscaping scheme, she figured.
“Daisy?” Brandon shouted at the house.
Natalie left her keys in the ignition and followed him across the yard. On the wide front porch was a wrought-iron table and chairs with a floral centerpiece straight out of Better Homes & Gardens.
Brandon opened the door and banged his way inside. “Daisy? I’m home!”
Natalie prevented the screen door from slamming shut in her face and followed him inside. The first floor was open concept, with a long cherrywood bar dividing the living room from the kitchen area. Brandon brushed the light switch with his hand, and several designer spots cast a pale hue over the handsome built-ins crowded with sports memorabilia—football trophies and team letters.
“Babe?” Brandon said as he headed for the kitchen.
Natalie tensed. The air smelled vaguely familiar—earthy, coppery. A stiffness invaded her limbs as she followed him into the kitchen, then froze in the doorway. Daisy Buckner lay in a puddle of blood at the base of the refrigerator. She wore faded Levi’s, a pullover top, and a pair of Marc Jacobs low tops. Her glassy eyes were open. Her arms and legs were sprawled across the floor. There was an ugly gash on the right side of her head, and her short red hair was matted with blood.
Brandon dropped to his knees as he tried to suck some relief out of the air. He crawled across the tiled floor toward his wife, and before Natalie could secure the scene, he was cradling her limp body in his arms. His m
outh moved fishlike as he tried to produce a sound, but nothing came out. He sat there rocking his dead wife back and forth, silenced by grief, while Natalie stared at the bright spatter of blood arcing across the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets. A single can of soda had rolled against the base of the dishwasher, and there was a greasy cast-iron skillet on the floor not far from the body, and a smattering of cooked ground beef on the Mexican tiles. A blue-checkered dish towel lay crumpled nearby.
“Brandon?” She gently plied his shoulder. “You’re contaminating the scene.”
His eyes were frosted with shock. “What?”
“We need to protect the evidence. Put her down.”
He shook his head viciously. “Back off!”
Her mind spun like a compass needle. They were wasting precious seconds. It felt like an eternity. She radioed Dispatch to report the crime, then pried Brandon away from the body. After propping him in the doorway, she checked for a pulse on Daisy’s neck. Of course she was dead, but you had to make sure.
“I can’t breathe,” Brandon gasped, his eyes jerking in all directions.
“Stay there,” Natalie commanded. “Don’t touch anything.”
She tested Daisy’s skin for lividity. The blood had settled into the lower regions of her body due to the pull of gravity. A purple discoloration was noticeable on the lower sides of her arms, hands, and neck—all of which were bruised from blood vessels filling with red blood cells and coagulating inside her veins, skin, and muscle. There was no pulse. Her skin was cool to the touch. Her pupils were of differing sizes. The position of the body had been compromised. Because of Brandon’s actions, there was the possibility of cross-transfer of prints, fibers, and hairs. Natalie placed the body back where they’d found it originally—or as close to that position as she could recall. Daisy had been dead for several hours now.
Her heart began to pound with an explosive mixture of adrenaline and fear. She tamped down her anxiety and had a flash-memory of the boy in the woods. The stick. The dead raccoon. A sour taste filled her mouth. A snowy dullness crept over her.
Natalie shook it off. She had to stay focused. For a few miserable seconds, she couldn’t pry her eyes away from the refrigerator magnets that had slid off the stainless-steel door and landed in a darkening pool of blood. SpongeBob, Lisa Simpson, Wonder Woman.
Trace of Evil Page 3