The Witness

by Nora Roberts

  “Must be working. You looked cross as a bear when you walked in; now you’re all smiles.” She gave him a pat on the cheek.

  She had a motherly way, which made him only smile wider, as she was barely five years his senior. “It’s getting the motor running.”

  “I’d say she got it running.” Kim lifted her chin toward Abigail as she walked into the market on the near corner. “Got looks, anybody can see that, but she’s a strange one. She’s lived here almost a year, and not once has she stepped foot in here, or any of the other restaurants. She’s barely gone into any of the shops or businesses, either. Orders mostly everything online.”

  “So I hear.”

  “Nothing against Internet shopping. I do a bit of it myself. But we’ve got plenty to offer right here in town. And she barely has a word to say. Always polite when she does, but barely a word. Spends nearly every minute of every day up there on her place. All alone.”

  “Quiet, mannerly, keeps to herself. She must be a serial killer.”

  “Brooks.” Kim let out a snort and walked over to her next table, shaking her head.

  He added a little sugar to his coffee, stirred it lazily with his eyes on the market. No reason, he decided, he couldn’t go on over. He knew how to mosey. Maybe pick up some Cokes for the station or … he’d think of something.

  Brooks lifted a hip for his wallet, peeled out some bills, then slid out of the booth.

  “Thanks, Kim. See you, Lindy.”

  The beanpole with the gray braid down to his ass let out a grunt, waved his spatula.

  He strolled out. He had his father’s height, and given Loren’s post–heart attack regimen, they shared the same lanky build. His mother claimed he got his ink-black hair from the Algonquin brave who’d captured his great-great—and possibly one more great—grandmother and made her his wife.

  Then again, his mother was often full of shit, and often on purpose. His changeable hazel eyes could shift from greenish to amber or show hints of blue. His nose listed slightly to the left, the result of a grounder to third, a bad hop and missed timing. Sometimes he told a woman, if she should ask, that he’d gotten it in a fistfight.

  Sometimes he was full of shit, like his mother.

  The high-end market carried fancy foods at fancy prices. He liked the smell of the fresh herbs, the rich colors of the produce, the gleam of bottles filled with specialty oils, even the glint of kitchen tools he’d have no earthly idea how to use.

  To his mind, a man could get along just fine with a couple of good knives, a spatula and a slotted spoon. Anything else was just showing off.

  In any case, when he needed to shop for groceries—a chore he hated like rat poison—he frequented the Piggly Wiggly.

  She was easy to spot as she selected a bottle of the pricy oil, then one of those strange vinegars.

  And though it wasn’t as easy to spot, he registered the fact she had a sidearm under her hooded jacket.

  He continued down the short aisle, considering.

  “Ms. Lowery.”

  She turned her head, and he had a good full-on look at her eyes for the first time. Wide and green, like moss in the shadows of a forest.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Brooks Gleason. I’m chief of police.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Why don’t you let me carry that basket for you? It must be heavy.”

  “No, thank you. It’s fine.”

  “I can never figure out what people do with stuff like that. Raspberry vinegar,” he added, tapping the bottle in her basket. “It just doesn’t seem like a workable marriage.”

  At her blank stare, he tried one of his best smiles. “Raspberries, vinegar. They don’t go together in my mind. Who thinks of things like that?”

  “People who cook. If you’ll excuse me, I—”

  “Me, I’m a throw-a-steak-on-the-grill kind of guy.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have any need for raspberry vinegar. Excuse me. I have to pay for my groceries.”

  Though in his experience the smile generally turned the tide with a woman, he refused to be discouraged. He just walked with her to the counter. “How are you doing out at the old Skeeter place?”

  “I do very well, thank you.” She took a slim wallet out of a zippered compartment in her bag.

  Angling it, he noted, so he couldn’t get a peek inside.

  “I grew up here, moved to Little Rock for a spell. I moved back about six months after you got here. What brought you to Bickford?”

  “My car,” she said, and had the clerk smothering a laugh.

  A hard shell, he decided, but he’d cracked tougher nuts. “Nice car, too. I meant what drew you to this part of the Ozarks?”

  She took out cash, handed it to the clerk when he rang up her total. “I like the topography. I like the quiet.”

  “You don’t get lonely out there?”

  “I like the quiet,” she repeated, and took her change.

  Brooks leaned on the counter. She was nervous, he noted. It didn’t show, not on her face, her eyes, her body language. But he could feel it. “What do you do out there?”

  “Live. Thank you,” she said to the clerk when he’d loaded the market bag she’d brought with her.

  “You’re welcome, Ms. Lowery. See you next time.”

  She shouldered the market bag, slipped her sunglasses back on, and walked out without another word.

  “Not much for conversation, is she?” Brooks commented.

  “Nope. Always real polite, but she doesn’t say much.”

  “Does she always pay in cash?”

  “Ah … I guess so, now that you mention it.”

  “Well. You take care now.”

  Brooks chewed it over as he walked to his car. Lack of conversational skills or inclination was one thing. But the sidearm added an element.

  Plenty of people he knew had guns, but there weren’t many of them who hid them under a hoodie to go out to buy raspberry vinegar.

  It seemed like he finally had an excuse to take a drive out to her place.

  He stopped in at the station first. He commanded three full-time deputies on revolving shifts, two part-time, a full-time and a part-time dispatcher. Come summer, when the heat moved in like hell’s breath, he’d put the part-timers on full-time to help handle the tempers, the vandalism that came with boredom, and the tourists who paid more attention to the views than the road.

  “Ty’s being a pain in the ass.” Ash Hyderman, his youngest deputy, sulked at his desk. Over the winter he’d tried growing a goatee without much luck, but hadn’t quite given it up.

  He looked like he’d smudged his top lip and chin with butterscotch frosting.

  “I got him breakfast like you said to do. He stinks like a cheap whore.”

  “How do you know how a cheap whore smells, Ash?”

  “I got imagination. I’m going home, okay, Brooks? I pulled the night shift since we had that stinking Ty back in the pen. And that damn cot about breaks your back.”

  “I need to take a run. Boyd’s due in about now. He can take over. Alma’s due in, too. We’re covered as soon as they get here.”

  “Where you going? You need backup?”

  Brooks thought Ash would like nothing better than if they’d had some gang of desperados scream into town, blasting at everything. Just so he could be backup.

  “I just want to check something out. Won’t be long. I’m on the radio if anything comes in. Tell Boyd to try to talk some sense into Missy when she comes crying how Ty never touched her. It won’t work, but he should try.”

  “The thing is, Brooks, I think she must like it.”

  “Nobody likes a fist in the face, Ash. But it can get to be a habit. On both sides. I’m on the radio,” he repeated, and left.

  ABIGAIL STRUGGLED WITH NERVES, with temper, with the sheer irritation at having a task she particularly enjoyed spoiled by a nosy police chief with nothing better to do than harass her.

  She’d moved to this p
retty corner of the Ozarks precisely because she wanted no neighbors, no people, no interruptions to whatever routine she set for herself.

  She drove down the winding up-and-down private road to her house in the woods. It had taken weeks to devise a blueprint for sensors, ones that wouldn’t go off if some rabbit or squirrel approached the house. More time to install them and the cameras, to test them.

  But it had been worth it. She loved this house of rough-hewn logs and covered porches. The first time she’d seen it she thought of it as both fairy tale and home.

  A mistake, she knew. She’d weaned herself off attachments, but she’d fallen for this spot. So wonderfully quiet she could hear the creek bubble and sing. So private and secluded, with its deep woods. And secure.

  She’d seen to the security herself, and she trusted no one else.

  Well, she thought, as she stopped the car. Except Bert.

  The big dog sat on the covered front porch of the two-story cabin. Body alert, eyes bright. When she got out of the car, she signaled release. He bounded to her, all hundred and thirty pounds of him wriggling in joy.

  “There’s my good boy. Best dog in the world. So smart. Just so smart.” She gave him a brisk rub before retrieving her market bag. “You wouldn’t believe the morning I had.”

  She took out her keys as they walked to the house together on the narrow stone path. “Minding my own business, buying supplies, and the chief of police comes into the market to interrogate me. What do you think of that?”

  She unlocked the two dead bolts, the police lock, then stepped inside to deactivate the alarm with a code she changed every three to five days.

  “That’s what I thought, too.” She locked the door, secured the riot bar. “He was rude.”

  She crossed the living room she’d set up for relaxation. She loved curling up there, a fire crackling, Bert at her feet. Reading or watching a DVD. And she had only to toggle over to have the view of her security cameras come on the large flat screen.

  She moved back to the kitchen, with its secondary office area she’d set up in lieu of a dining room.

  Out of habit, she checked the locks on the rear door, the tells she left on the windows. But she wasn’t afraid here. She believed, at last, she’d found a place where she wasn’t afraid. Still, vigilance was never wasted. She turned on the kitchen TV screen so it synched with the security cameras. She could put her groceries away—what she’d managed to buy before being interrupted—and do a perimeter check.

  She gave Bert one of the gourmet dog treats she kept in a tin. She’d convinced herself he could tell the difference between them and lesser dog biscuits.

  As her bodyguard, he deserved the best.

  “I’ve got some work to do after this. I have to earn my fee on the Bosto account. Then we’ll go out, get some exercise. Give me an hour, then—”

  She broke off, and Bert came to full alert as the drive alarm beeped.

  “We’re not expecting any deliveries today.” She laid her hand on the gun holstered at her side. “It’s probably just someone who made a wrong turn. I should put up a gate, but we get so many deliveries.”

  She frowned as she watched the car approach, then moved to the computer, zoomed in.

  “Oh, for God’s sake. What does he want now?”

  Her tone had Bert growling low in his throat. “Pillow.” Her code word for stand down had the dog relaxing again but watching her for any distress. “Pillow,” she repeated, then signaled for him to come with her.

  Bert had a very successful way of discouraging visitors.

  She deactivated the alarm, unlocked the front door and stepped out on the porch as the chief of police pulled up behind her SUV.

  It made her itchy. He hadn’t blocked her in, or not altogether. She could get around him if she needed to. But the intent was there, and she didn’t like it.

  “Ms. Lowery.”

  “Chief Gleason. Is there a problem?”

  “Well, funny you should ask, because that was going to be my question. Before I do, let me just say that’s a really big dog.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  Hip cocked, thumbs in front pockets, his body language read relaxed and casual. But his eyes, Abigail noted, were sharp, observant. Were authority.

  “Is he going to rip my throat out if I walk over there?”

  “Not unless I tell him to.”

  “I’d appreciate if you’d not. Why don’t we go inside?”

  “Why would we?”

  “It’s friendlier. But we’re fine out here. The place looks good. Better than I remember.” He nodded to a patch of ground she’d marked off and covered with black plastic. “Going for flowers or vegetables?”

  “Flowers. If you came all the way out here to ask if there’s a problem, I’ll just tell you no. There’s no problem here.”

  “Then I’ve got a follow-up. Why are you carrying a gun?”

  She knew the instant of surprise must have shown, and wished for her sunglasses. “I live alone. I don’t know you, and you came uninvited, so I have a gun and the dog for protection. I have a license.”

  “It’s good you do. The thing is, you were wearing that gun when you went in to buy fancy vinegar. I don’t think you needed protection in the gourmet market.”

  Sharp and observant, she thought again, and berated herself for not taking a smaller weapon. “I have a concealed-carry license. I’m within my rights.”

  “I’m going to ask to see your license, if you don’t mind.”

  “I do mind. Why do people say that when they know very well the person they say it to minds?”

  “Empty manners, I guess.” He spoke pleasantly, patiently—she thought of the ability as a talent, and a weapon.

  “I do want to see the license, just to cover things—Abigail, isn’t it?”

  She turned without a word, took out her keys. She felt him follow her onto the porch. “I’ll bring it out.”

  “You know, you’re making me wonder why you’re so hell-bent on keeping me out of the house. You running a meth lab, a bordello, running guns, making explosives?”

  “I’m doing nothing of the sort.” Her hair, a blunt, shoulder-skimming drape of golden brown, swung out as she turned. “I don’t know you.”

  “Brooks Gleason, chief of police.”

  Yes, she decided, anyone who could deliver sarcasm with such a pleasant drawl, such an easygoing smile, had skills.

  “Your name and occupation don’t change the fact I don’t know you.”

  “Point taken. But you’ve got a big-ass dog there who’s giving me the stink eye because he knows you’re upset and I’m the reason. He must go a hundred and twenty pounds.”

  “One thirty-three.”

  Brooks gave Bert a long study. “I’ve got about thirty pounds on him, but he’s got sharper teeth and you’ve got a sidearm.”

  “So do you.” She shoved the door open, and when Brooks stepped inside, she held up a hand. “I want you to wait here. I’m going to put him on guard. He’ll restrain you if you don’t stay here. You have no right to wander around my house.”

  “All right.”

  “Bert. Hold.” She turned to the stairs, started up.

  “Define ‘restrain.’”

  Nearly out of patience—the police chief appeared to have more than his share—she paused, snapped, “Stay where you are and you won’t have to find out.”

  “Okay, then.” He let out a breath as she disappeared up the stairs. He and the dog eyed each other. “So, Bert, what do you do around here for fun? Not talking, huh? Nice place.” Cautious,