Hunted in Conard County

by Rachel Lee

  But he’d also seen how totally disconnected she became, and he’d seen the confusion when she returned. It hadn’t lasted long, but it had been there. It was enough time for someone to take a knife to her.

  The way the rapist had taken his knife to the others. But he also couldn’t stop Kerri. He had no doubt she’d find a way to initiate casual conversations about these brutal assaults. What if she initiated one with the rapist? At least with a badge she’d become one of the cops. Maybe that alone would protect her.

  Hell, there was no good solution to this one.

  Nothing except to watch the change in her as she absorbed the news. She sat straighter now as she finished her sandwich. Her head came up. Her face relaxed.

  This was what she wanted. He just hoped neither of them would come to regret it.

  * * *

  Ivan took another walk by the park that evening. It was getting dark again. The darkness always gave him a secret thrill. The police cordon remained, and he saw a few officers milling about. He doubted they’d found anything as he was exceptionally careful. He did notice, however, that the women cops who’d been there earlier in the day were absent now. Might not mean anything, or it could be a precaution. He’d have liked to take credit for that.

  He’d really like an inside look at the investigation. No such chance existed that he was aware of. He’d learned a while back that cops, at least the ones around here, never discussed an ongoing investigation. Even with their wives or husbands from what he’d heard.

  He sure would have liked a leak. He wondered what his victims were saying. They shouldn’t have much to offer, though. They’d never seen his face, hardly heard his voice. He suspected the only thing they’d fixated on had been his knife. Glistening, gleaming, even with little light. They wouldn’t have missed that.

  One of them, the first, was still supposedly comatose, anyway. That news had flashed around. The other was coming out of surgery today and should be too woozy to be interviewed yet.

  Not that it would matter, he assured himself. He was smart and had paid attention in the evidence course he’d taken last year. Close attention.

  The pressure was building again, however. Too soon, he warned himself. Not that that made much difference to the urge. He’d try to quiet it by scouting another woman. Last night had been low-hanging fruit, unexpectedly offered to him. Next time would likely be different.

  He still needed to know who was alone at night and when. Who was the type of woman he preferred: young, dark-haired if possible. Reasonably good figure. Plenty of women around here fit that description. Well, at least enough of them did.

  He paused a moment to watch the cops, making sure he didn’t stay too long, then moved on. He didn’t want to be noticed. A casual pause could have been made by anyone. The belief that the perp always came back to the scene to watch the cops...well, that one worried him enough to keep him moving.

  He needed to find out more about the woman who’d been talking with Edith Jasper. She’d been sitting there with a service dog, which meant she couldn’t be a physical risk. Disabled people seldom were. But how had she gotten so close to that Edith woman? Why? Why had she been allowed to remain inside the cordon?

  He knew she taught at the college, so maybe he ought to see if he could find her on the web page. He didn’t remember seeing her on campus while he’d still been a student. That meant she was new.

  Yeah, he had to find her on the faculty pages. New could be a threat. Someone who didn’t see this place like everyone else. Someone who might spy something that no one else would notice because of familiarity.

  Like him. He’d lived here for a couple of years after his divorced mother had brought him back when he was four. He’d always hated losing his father but that didn’t matter much anymore. What mattered is that nearly everyone had thought they knew him. That poor little Raspin boy. He’d been so glad when his mother had moved them to Idaho.

  But there was nothing “poor” about him anymore. He held immense power now.

  That was one of the things he took from women. Sure, he loved their fear, the way it seemed to tingle all the way through him. But they gave him power with their terrified eyes and cries.

  * * *

  The next morning, Kerri walked to the sheriff’s office. Stu had apologized for not being free because he’d been called to a theft case and had offered to ask another deputy to pick her up. She preferred to walk with Snowy. They both needed it and it probably wouldn’t be too long before they had to take shorter walks because of weather.

  A smile danced around her mouth as she wondered how many hours she was going to be tossing a ball around her apartment to get the dog some good exercise. A good reason not to have someone living in the apartments around her. They’d have gotten really irritated by the thump of that ball and Snowy’s running feet.

  The sheriff’s office was in the center of town, not too far from the diner, but still a bit of a distance from her apartment. She enjoyed the brightening day and didn’t give a thought to the open space around her when she first departed. She wondered if the field had been left undeveloped because the college owned it and was thinking of expansion, or if it was just an accident of geography for some reason.

  Regardless, it wasn’t too long before she reached the outskirts of Conard City and began to pass widely spaced houses that looked newer than the ones closer to the town’s center. One of these days she was going to have to learn something about this place’s history. The longer she was here, the more her curiosity began to grow.

  Or maybe it was the idea of being deputized that made her want to look forward again. Really look forward, not make haphazard stabs at it, going only as far as wondering if she would teach an additional class next semester.

  Gage’s offer had lifted her sense of gloom. She hoped it would last.

  She stopped at the diner to get a coffee from Maude. She hadn’t missed all Stu’s remarks about the coffee in the office. “What does the sheriff like?” she asked Maude.

  “Strong, black and big,” Maude answered. “You want a latte for yourself?”

  Scarcely five minutes later she was headed up the street, a half block and one intersection to the office. She was still getting used to the fact that this town, seriously, had only one traffic light. And that at night it blinked.

  That was an element of charm she had never dreamed about.

  Gage was just about to enter the office when he saw her. He smiled, at least as much as he could with one side of his face scarred by a burn. Someday she wanted to hear the story about that, but she wasn’t going to ask him.

  “Good morning, Sheriff. Coffee?” She handed him the large cup.

  “You’re a lifesaver, Kerri. Can I call you Kerri?”

  “Of course.” She smiled. She had no idea whether it was Stu or Gage behind this unexpected opportunity, but she felt lighter on her feet than she had in a while.

  “Then call me Gage. Let’s go into the conference room.”

  She felt eyes on her, all of them friendly enough, as she and Snowy walked with Gage across the squad room, for lack of a better word, to the conference room. Apparently, this place was so small they didn’t have their main office divvied up by groups. All in it together. She actually liked that idea and believed it would cut down on the inevitable politics.

  Once they were inside, he closed the door, giving them privacy. They sat across the long table from each other and Gage sipped his coffee. Kerri unzipped her jacket.

  “Bless Maude,” he said. “She’s saved my stomach countless times. So Stu told you what I’m thinking?”

  “Yes.”

  “I took the liberty of checking your file from your last organization. A lot of commendations.”

  She felt herself blush faintly. “They handed them out freely.”

  He shook his head. “I read the letters of commendati
on. You were on your way to a great career. I’m sorry you got diverted.”

  Diverted was a nice way to put it, she thought.

  “Anyway, I saw your interaction with Edith and found it interesting that she was willing to sit and talk with you. At first, I thought it was just a woman thing when she needed some steadying. But then I heard about Mr. Webley approaching you. It looks like people instinctively trust you.”

  She hesitated, unsure how to respond to that. Her heart kept tap-tapping as she waited hopefully for the offer she’d never dreamed she might get. Aware, painfully, once again of her limitations.

  “I talked to Stu about you. He explained your situation and why you’re no longer an officer, but other than that he’s impressed with you. I understand why you could no longer work full-time in law enforcement, but you’re a qualified victims advocate. I need someone like you, at least periodically, but I wonder how hampered you might feel between your job and your epilepsy.”

  She folded her hands tightly. She had to be absolutely honest with this man while keeping in mind that this was a job interview. It wasn’t in the can, however encouraging Stu had been. Well, except for his worry about her, which she thought was probably overblown.

  But as usual, the honesty was going to be painful.

  “Hampered,” she repeated, not as a question. “I’ll let you decide that. I have absence seizures. I’m sure there’s a technical name of some kind but I forgot it somewhere in the road through recovery and rehab. Anyway, I just freeze. The problem is that I might as well be unconscious. Anywhere from half a minute to two minutes. As far as I know, none have been longer than that. When I come out of it, I feel confused for a bit. How much confusion depends on how much has changed, but there’s always some.”

  She wondered how many times in her life she was going to have to explain this. But the details seemed important, especially right now, especially given what Gage was contemplating.

  He nodded. “And your job?”

  “Right now I teach three hours a week. I usually don’t need much prep time because I did the work for so long. An hour, maybe two, depending on the subject. That leaves a lot of time.”

  A whole lot, she thought. She was getting tired of trying to keep herself occupied with long walks and reading. She had a TV and sometimes watched true-crime documentaries, but she feared that abyss. She might wind up lost in it and turn into a virtual couch potato. She needed to screw up her nerve and build some kind of social life.

  “If you were dealing with one of these rape victims, how would you handle your seizures?”

  “Be honest about them. I’m not happy about constantly having to explain. If there was any way I could just forget them, I would. But if I’m with a victim, she’d have to know.”

  “Why?” He drank more coffee and waited.

  “Because I guess I don’t look very friendly when it happens. Because I could miss something. So I’d tell them how my dog alerts me so they could recognize the warning, and explain that they might have to repeat themselves sometimes. But I can’t guarantee that nothing would get lost along the way.”

  She leaned forward, expressing a pain she rarely shared. “I can’t trust myself,” she told him. “You want the bare bones of what I feel? I’m scared I might miss something important.”

  She settled back in the chair, aware that her clasped hands were beginning to cramp. She tried to ease them. After what she had just said, she figured he was going to let her go. Who wanted a cop who could miss important things? Who couldn’t drive herself to where she needed to be? It didn’t sound good, but these were the very reasons she’d had to take disability.

  At last he put his cup down. “Pretty much what Stu told me but with less passion.” He winked. “Can’t imagine why.”

  Her stiff lips tried hard to frame a smile.

  “Okay, then. If you want the job, it’s yours. I don’t have to tell you it won’t be pleasant, but I want you. These victims need someone like you. Still interested?”

  The tension left her like a popping balloon. “Absolutely.” She could have jumped for joy.

  “I’ll expect a daily report of anything they say that you consider significant. Or sooner if you think it can’t wait.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then consider yourself deputized. You promise to uphold the laws of city, county, state and federal government. And to serve and protect. We take that last part very seriously around here. Do you so swear?”

  “I do.”

  He swiveled his chair and pulled open a drawer in a console against the wall, then pushed her a seven-pointed brass star badge in a leather folding case. “There you go, Deputy.”

  She looked down at it, drawing a deep breath, reading the magical words across the top of the center circle: Deputy Sheriff.

  “I’ll get your ID card sorted out, but you don’t need a uniform. Not for this job. Oh, and I’ll need your mug shot for your ID.” He gave her his crooked smile.

  “Thank you,” she said. The words came from deep in her heart.

  “Think about that,” he said jokingly. “You may change your mind. Anyway, we’ve got one woman who needs your visit this morning, and the other is starting to show signs of coming out of her coma, so you might have a long day at the hospital today. I advise you to get breakfast or lunch before you see them. There’s no predicting how much they may need you.”

  She rose, feeling that he was dismissing her, but paused to ask, “What about the night?”

  “Night?”

  “That’s when they were raped. It might be the worst time for them.”

  “Yeah. I know. I was hoping you’d bring that up. They’ll have an officer out front for at least a while, but in the meantime, you decide when it’s most important for you to be there. Dammit, Deputy, you have to sleep some time.”

  At last she laughed. It had been trying to bubble up since she’d realized she had the job.

  “One more thing,” he said as she was about to open the door to leave. “The pay is lousy.”

  She felt as if she were floating as she left the conference room with Snowy. As if sensing her mood, the dog pranced alongside.

  She also knew better than to believe the euphoria would last much longer than it took her to get to the hospital.

  She tucked her new badge onto her waistband, its weight familiar and good. When one of the deputies offered to drive her, it struck her. He was her colleague now.

  Once again, her life had abruptly changed course. Despite the ugliness that awaited her, she couldn’t have asked for a better change.

  * * *

  Stu found Kerri at the hospital. “I heard,” he said. “Feel good?”

  “Wonderful,” she answered with a brilliant smile.

  “I’m glad.” He was very happy for her. As for him, he could keep his worries to himself. He had years of practice at that.

  “May Broadwyn, the second victim, is still in recovery. She’s waking up slowly.”

  He nodded and took the chair beside her. No one else was in the room, so he felt free to talk quietly. “She’s going to be okay, though.”

  “Depends on what you mean by okay.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. All kinds of things could be meant by words like okay and fine. Once the physical trauma healed, the emotional trauma would remain.

  His mind suddenly slipped backward in time. “Field hospital,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  He knew she was looking at him but he couldn’t look at her. Not just then as he tried to take control of a memory that wanted to take control of him. “Back in the war. Too many times I had to sit on a folding chair waiting for word on some of my men. The smells here are more antiseptic, though.”

  He closed his eyes, wishing he couldn’t still see it. Hear it. It was quieter here, too. He’d left all that behind.
At least physically. He had some idea of what May Broadwyn was going to face.

  “Stu?”

  Kerri’s soft voice drew him back.

  “Should you leave? I mean...”

  He finally looked at her and saw she was biting her lower lip. “I don’t have to tell you that we just need to get through some things. Including memories.”

  She nodded and looked down at her hands. Her jacket lay on the chair on the other side of her, and Snowy, ever alert, rested at her feet.

  He needed to redirect. “That badge looks good on you.”

  She offered him a smile. “Thanks for helping with this. I don’t know how it looks, but I know how it feels. It feels right.”

  “I bet.” He was glad for her and dragged himself away from the mire that bubbled in one corner of his mind. He tried never to slip into it, but this was an exceptionally bad time to let it take over.

  “Stu?”

  “Yeah.” God, her green eyes were beautiful. Giving up, he allowed himself to notice her loveliness. Rusty red hair, cut in a businesslike manner he suspected she’d worn in uniform, small soft curls just beginning to show. A smattering of light freckles over her cheekbones, and a mouth perfectly sized for the rest of her oval face.

  He glanced away, reining himself in. “You were saying?”

  “I wasn’t in the war, but I saw...things.”

  “I know you did. They come back to haunt us sometimes, don’t they.”

  “Yes.”

  His hand rested palm down on his thigh, and he felt zapped when she reached out hers to rest on top of it. He’d been aware of how much she generally avoided contact with him, and this surprised him as well as causing his internal temperature to rise. Was this a sea change of some kind?

  “Anyway,” she continued, pressing gently on his hand, “I’ve been too self-absorbed lately to think much about it. I just want you to know that I have a small idea of things you must be dealing with.”