by Gayle Wilson
Despite the shock of his discovery, Cade hadn’t lowered his guard. Logic argued that, unless there were two murderers wandering these woods at the same time, the person who’d taken the shot at him had also killed the man at his feet. And if that person was Abel Comstock—
Something—maybe the lawman’s instinct Hoyt always talked about—replaced that thought with another. Cade moved his hand upward to braille the features of the dead man. Although he’d had no experience at that particular skill, the fleshy nose and the deep-sunk eyes beneath bushy, untamed brows assured him that his gut had been right.
Abel Comstock wasn’t the one who’d fired at him because his was the body Cade had stumbled over. Which meant whoever had taken that potshot was still out there in the darkness.
Waiting for him to make this discovery? Or leading him to it?
The question caused him to shift position slightly, his hand trailing first along the right arm of the corpse and then groping around on the ground nearby. Near the outstretched hand was the object he was searching for. Abel’s rifle lay as if he’d dropped it when he’d fallen.
Cade paused again to listen to the stillness surrounding him, taking another visual survey as he did. After a few seconds he leaned over the body, locating the end of the rifle’s barrel. Any prints on the weapon should be on the stock or trigger rather than down there.
He raised the muzzle to his nose and inhaled. As he’d suspected, the gun had been recently fired. Recently enough that he didn’t believe Abel’s hand had pulled the trigger.
Not unless you believe in ghosts…
He didn’t. Not ghosts that fired rifles. Or even ones that tapped on windows.
He placed the barrel back on the ground and got to his feet, both hands again closing around the grip of the semiautomatic. If he was right in what he was thinking, his attacker was already gone.
The attempt on Cade’s life had been a spur-of-the-moment action. The murderer couldn’t have known he was coming. Cade hadn’t been certain of that when he’d left the Comstock place.
Apparently when the killer had seen him following the creek to the site of that long-ago murder, he’d decided to try for some misdirection to cover up what he’d done. If Cade were killed with Abel’s rifle, Comstock would surely be blamed for his death. And as cold as it was, Cade doubted the coroner would be able to pinpoint the times of the two deaths accurately enough to dispute that scenario. Not with a medical certainty.
He didn’t know how the killer intended for law enforcement to explain Abel’s death, but Cade would be very interested in finding out its cause. If Comstock had been shot, would it be with the same caliber weapon Cade carried? Or had he been killed with his own gun? An apparent suicide?
He had no doubt, now that he’d worked through all the possible permutations, that the killer’s plan had been formulated as the events had played out rather than in advance. Unfortunately for the murderer, it hadn’t worked. Which meant there would be a thorough forensic investigation of Abel’s death. Cade would see to that, since it was something the killer obviously had hoped to avoid.
But there was a larger and more important question as far as Cade was concerned. What connection did what had happened in Smoke Hollow tonight have to the other murder that had taken place here? Given all he didn’t know about those two crimes, there was one thing he was absolutely certain of. When he solved one, he would also know the solution to the other.
Since the incident in the back garden, there had been a blessed lull in the night terrors. Although Blythe would have expected the fear Maddie had experienced that night to have increased their frequency, the opposite seemed to be true.
She had no explanation, but she’d been relieved enough not to question the reason behind that turn of events too closely. Something to the effect of not looking too closely at a gift horse. Especially one that brought a much-needed respite from lost sleep and endless worry.
What she hadn’t realized was that, despite the quietness of the last few nights, she was still awakening several times to listen for the now-familiar screams. And those weren’t what she heard tonight.
It took her a few seconds to identify the soft sobbing that came from her daughter’s room. Another few to decide that, although not nearly as frightening as the nightmares, this, too, required comforting.
She slipped out of bed, glancing at the bedside clock as she did. It was only a little after eleven. No wonder she’d awakened so easily. She’d not been asleep more than an hour.
She grabbed her robe from the foot of the bed, shrugging into it as she hurried down the hall. She couldn’t remember the last time Maddie had cried. Even during the fire, her stoicism had been remarkable.
She had just finished belting her robe as she entered the little girl’s bedroom, noticing that it seemed several degrees colder in here than it had in her own. Her eyes were automatically drawn to the windows where the drapes had been pushed back, revealing the expanse of dark glass.
Satisfied with that explanation for the chill, she ignored them, moving straight to the bed. In the glow from the nightlight, she could see that Maddie was lying prone, her face buried in the pillow as sobs racked her body.
Blythe sat down on the edge of the bed. “Hush, baby,” she whispered, conscious of the open doorway and of Ruth sleeping next door. “Shh…Everything’s all right.”
As with the nightmares, her words seemed to have no effect on the sobbing child. The same suffocating fear that always filled Blythe’s chest when she heard the familiar words of the nightmare stirred, but she denied it. This was something different. Something far more normal.
“Maddie. Wake up. I’m here, baby. It’s all right.” This time she took the child by her left shoulder, lifting it so that Maddie rolled onto her side.
The little girl’s eyes were open. As Blythe watched, tears welled from their blue depths and rolled down her cheeks, but the eyes themselves were as blank as they always were when she was in the throes of a terror.
“Maddie!” She shook her gently, trying to wake her. Instead her head lolled lifelessly, making Blythe afraid to shake her more forcefully. “Wake up, Maddie!”
Uncaring now if she disturbed her grandmother, Blythe raised her voice to try to break through the seemingly impenetrable barrier separating her from her child. After a moment, like a miracle, the blue eyes cleared. They focused on her face and then widened as if in surprise.
“Did you know?”
“Know what?” Blythe asked. As baffling as this was, at least it wasn’t a repetition of the terrifying scene they’d already lived through too many times.
“My daddy.” Maddie’s voice broke on the word.
Then her eyes filled again, a tear streaking down the curve of her cheek as Blythe watched. “Were you dreaming about Daddy, Maddie?”
Maybe the psychologist had been right. Maybe John’s death had been the root of everything. An unresolved grief that for some reason manifested itself only in her sleep.
Maddie nodded, swallowing as if to suppress a sob.
“It’s okay,” Blythe said, lifting her against her chest. “I dream about him, too. And I miss him. Just like you do.”
The small body lay motionless against hers. After a moment, Blythe leaned back so she could see her daughter’s face. She brushed a strand of tear-dampened hair away from her cheek to smile down into her eyes.
“Do you want to tell me what you dreamed? Sometimes it helps to talk about nightmares. Or we can talk about Daddy if you want. We can remember all the good times the three of us had together. Would you like to do that?”
The small head moved from side to side.
“Okay. Then…” At a loss, Blythe hesitated, trying to remember the advice the psychologist had given her.
“It was dark,” Maddie said, her voice low enough that Blythe had to strain to catch the words. “And cold. So cold.”
The uneasiness that had gradually dissipated as she held her daughter began to stir again. Bl
ythe wasn’t comfortable with any aspect of John’s death being associated in her daughter’s mind with cold and darkness. Those were not the images she’d tried to instill. Influenced by her upbringing, Blythe had talked about Daddy being in heaven. About him looking down on both of them and protecting them. This…
This was anathema to everything she had been taught as a child. And to everything she’d taught her daughter.
“It’s all right,” she said again, trying to draw the little girl back into her arms.
“He was so cold. And I couldn’t wake him.”
“Maddie, don’t.”
“I tried to find him at first, but it was too dark. Just like—” The words cut off as the blue eyes widened again.
Despite Blythe’s discomfort with what was happening, there was something about the broken sentence that compelled her to ask, “Like what, Maddie. It was like what?”
The little girl’s eyes focused again on hers. As Blythe watched, something began to happen within them. A change—almost a transformation—until they were once again…present. She didn’t understand the use of that word in this context, but it was the one that her mind supplied.
“Like what, Maddie?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
“Another nightmare?”
Her grandmother’s question caused them both to turn. Ruth stood in the open doorway, her robe lighter than the backdrop of shadows in the hall.
“Something—” Blythe began and then stopped. Had it been? Certainly it had not been like the others, but something had happened here. “Something a little different this time.”
“Maybe some warm milk to help her sleep?”
Blythe shook her head, unsure her grandmother’s remedy for anything involving lost sleep would work in this case. As she turned back to her daughter, she realized the little girl’s eyelids were already drooping. She knew from past experience that if she released her, Maddie would snuggle down under the covers and be sound asleep in a matter of seconds.
Without answering Ruth, she laid the child down on her pillow, pulling the quilts up over her. Unable to prevent the gesture, she again swept the disordered hair away from her temple to drop a kiss there. If not for its dampness, she might have believed she was the one who’d been dreaming.
She watched, still sitting on the edge of the double bed, as Maddie’s breathing steadied into a slow, regular rhythm that didn’t change even when Blythe stood up. She hesitated a moment more, but it was obvious the little girl was fast asleep.
Only when she turned did she realize that Ruth was still standing in the doorway. As Blythe made her way across the room, she stepped aside, allowing her to move out into the hall.
“What was that all about?” her grandmother asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Didn’t sound like what you’ve described.”
“It wasn’t. It was nothing like the other.”
“She was talking about her daddy? That’s good, isn’t it? Isn’t that what that woman told you?”
It was obvious that Ruth, too, had been awakened by the sobbing. She must have heard more of their conversation than Blythe had been aware of.
“She…There was something about the things she said…”
“The psychologist?”
“Maddie. She said it was cold and dark. That he was cold.”
“Lord have mercy. Now where would she get an idea like that? You don’t suppose somebody’s been talking to her about death?”
“I don’t know who that would be. She doesn’t see anyone but you and me. And Delores. You don’t think Delores—”
“’Course not. She wouldn’t fill the child’s head full of that kind of nonsense. You know better than that.”
She did. Delores cared for Maddie as if she were her own grandchild. That was evident in everything she did. Still…
“Maybe she was talking about something else, and Maddie got confused.”
“Hush, now. Whatever that baby’s confused about, you ain’t gonna lay it at Delores’s door. Next thing you’ll be accusing me of filling her head with nonsense about her daddy.”
“Not that kind, at least.” Blythe’s smile was tenuous, but the old woman answered it by reaching out to take her hand.
“This was just what it seemed. A nightmare. Don’t you go making anything else out of it.”
“She said she tried to wake him. She wasn’t there when John died. I don’t know where that could have come from.”
“From her imagination, of course. She’s a little girl who lost her daddy, and she wants him back. Seems pretty straightforward to me. Maybe she heard that in one of the hymns at church. Asleep in the bosom of the Lord. One of those. A child that age…Well, you can’t tell how twisted up things get in their little minds.”
It made sense. Maybe because Blythe needed it to. She needed some kind of rational explanation for what had just happened, and Ruth’s was as good as any. She could even remember some of the misconceptions about religion she’d harbored as a child. Things that she’d been too embarrassed to confess to when she’d finally grasped the correct theology.
“You need to start sleeping in my room so you can hear her if she cries. We’ll swap in the morning.”
“I can’t take your room, Grandmamma.”
“Why not? It’s you she needs, and not me. Besides, at my age, I need my beauty sleep. Can’t be jumping up and down all night. Now how about some warm milk for you and me? I expect we both could use some.”
“Include a shot of Granddaddy’s bourbon in mine…” Blythe put her arm around Ruth’s shoulder and pulled her close. She recognized the thoughtfulness that had prompted the offer of a room swap, no matter how it was couched. “And we’ve got a deal.”
At least tonight hadn’t been a replay of the other nightmares. And Ruth had provided a logical explanation for what had occurred. All Blythe had to do now—
Was convince herself the anxiety she was feeling wasn’t valid. And that whatever had happened tonight wasn’t really more terrifying than the nightmares.
19
I t was Delores who brought the news of Abel Comstock’s murder the following morning. Although much of what the old woman said Blythe believed to be speculation based on gossip, the essential part of the story, which Delores related with obvious enjoyment, was that Abel had been found dead in Smoke Hollow, right at the spot where his daughter had been murdered so long ago. According to Delores, he’d been killed with his own gun. The authorities hadn’t yet determined whether the gunshot wound had been self-inflicted.
“Guilt finally caught up to that man,” the housekeeper pronounced as she set Blythe’s coffee down in front of her. “’Bout time, too, after what he did to that baby.”
“Hoyt Lee never believed Mr. Comstock killed Sarah.” Nor did she, Blythe realized. Not based on what had been in his eyes and his voice when he’d talked about his daughter.
“Hoyt’s been wrong a time or two in his life,” her grandmother said, sipping her own coffee. “Not to hear him tell it, of course.”
“Why else would he have done it there, right at the very spot where he killed her?” Delores demanded.
“You said there was some question about whether or not it was a suicide.”
“Not to me, there ain’t,” the housekeeper said with an audible sniff. “Not a question in this world.”
“More than likely Abel had been drinking,” Ruth put in. “Same as he did every day of his life.”
“He went out there, and that place got to him. The memory of what he’d done.”
Delores’s words brought back the eerie feeling Blythe had experienced there. Still, that wasn’t how she’d read Abel. Grief, yes. A degree of guilt perhaps, the kind any parent who had lost a child under those circumstances would feel. But not the deep remorse a father would feel if he’d brutalized his own daughter in that way.
“I expect we’ll hear soon enough whether he took his own life,” Ruth said.
“’Course you know this is just going to keep stirring everything up.”
“What does that mean?” Blythe asked.
“Why, about Sarah’s murder. When Ada started telling everybody you were gonna write a book about it, that generated a whole lot of excitement in this town. Now with Abel’s death, I expect there’ll be a whole lot more.”
Since the excitement Ruth referred to had apparently precipitated the arson, Blythe wondered what the news of Abel’s death would bring. Of course, if Sarah’s father had been behind the two incidents—the fire and the scare in the back garden, she should be feeling relief. If he hadn’t been, it was imperative she know how his death was connected to those events. And there was only one person who could give her the answer to that.
“I need to check on Maddie,” Blythe said, pushing back from the table. “It isn’t like her to sleep this late.”
“Let her be,” Ruth urged. “She’s just catching up on what she missed last night.”
“She have another nightmare?” Delores asked.
“Not the same kind,” Ruth said. “This one was normal. Crying over her daddy. That’ll be healing, I would think.”
If the nightmare had been normal, her grandmother might be right. To Blythe, it hadn’t been. Whatever the dream had been about, it had been full of images she’d been careful in talking with her daughter not to associate with John’s death.
“I’ll be back,” Blythe announced unnecessarily.
She wasn’t sure why she was hiding from the two of them that she intended to call Cade. Maybe because she hadn’t told them about her own visit to Smoke Hollow. Without revealing that, it would be difficult to say why she resisted the idea that Abel Comstock had killed himself. And if he hadn’t—
If he hadn’t, someone had murdered him. In a place where there hadn’t been a murder in the last twenty-five years—when Abel’s daughter had been slaughtered in the same location where his body had been found.
Given that connection, and the mistaken one the town had made between her and Sarah’s murder, that meant Abel’s death, too, was linked to her. And, more frighteningly, linked to Maddie.