Dark Paradise (8 page)

sex, an attitude J.D. had been more than happy to share. He would bed

Marilee Jennings if he got the chance, but damned if he would like her.

She was the last thing he needed in his life. She was an outsider.

"You're not from around here, are you?" Sheriff Dan Quinn tried to sound

nonchalant, but he couldn't quite keep from raising his eyebrows a

little as he took in the sight of Marilee Jennings. There were too many

contradictions - the faded denim jacket two sizes too big, the feminine,

silky dress, the shit-kicker boots and baggy socks. Dangling from her

earlobes were two triangles of sheet metal dotted with irregular bits of

colored glass.

Her hair was a wheaten tangle with near-black roots. She scooped back a

rope of it and tucked it behind her ear.

"No. I'm from California."

The sheriff hummed a note that all but said it figures.

He tried to look noncommittal. He had to deal with a lot of outsiders

these days. Part of his job was to be diplomatic. With some of these big

shots, that seemed harder than saying the right thing to his

mother-in-law. As he looked down at Marilee Jennings, he worried a

little that she might be someone famous and he was failing to recognize

her. She looked as though she could have come off MTV.

"What can I do for you, Miz Jennings?"

"I was a friend of Lucy MacAdam's," Marilee said, staring up a

considerable distance to his rugged face.

He could have either been a boxer or gotten kicked in the face by a

horse. His nose had a violent sideways bend in it, and small puckered

scars tugged at his upper lip and the corner of his right eye. Another

scar slashed an inch long red line diagonally across his left cheekbone.

He was saved from ugliness by a pair of kind, warm green eyes and a shy,

crooked, boyish smile.

He stood in the middle of the squad room with his hands on his hips.

Around them, dotting the small sea of serviceable metal desks, several

deputies were working, clacking out reports on manual typewriters,

talking on the phone. Their eyes drifted occasionally toward their boss

and his visitor.

"The shooting," he said, nodding as the name clicked into place. "Did

someone get a hold of you?
 
We been trying to call since it happened.

Your name and number were in her address book."

They'd been trying to call a phone she had had disconnected as she had

hurried to dump her life in Sacramento for something truer. Marilee

rubbed a hand across her eyes.

Her shoulders slumped as a vague sense of guilt weighed her down. "No,"

she said in a small voice. "I didn't find out about Lucy until I got

here."

Quinn made a pained face. "I'm sorry. Must have been a terrible shock."

"Yes."

Two phones began to ring, out of sync with each other.

Then a burly, bearded man with a face like a side of beef and lurid

tattoos from shoulder to wrist came hurtling through the door. He wore

biker basics - jeans riding down off his butt and a black leather vest

with no shirt beneath it, a look that showcased a chest and beer gut

carpeted with dense, curling dark hair. His hands were cuffed behind his

back and he was dragging a red-faced, angry deputy in his wake.

They crashed into a desk, toppling a coffee cup on a stack of reports

and sending the deputy at the desk bolting backward. The air turned blue

with assorted curses from three different sources. Quinn scowled as he

watched the fiasco. He slid a hand around Marilee's arm, ready to jerk

her out of harm's way. But the biker was finally wrestled into a chair

by a pair of deputies and the excitement began to dissipate.

Satisfied that the worst was over, Quinn turned back to Marilee. "Let's

go in my office."

Keeping his hand on her arm solicitously, he guided her into a cubicle

with one windowed wall that looked out on the squad room, and shut the

door behind them.

Marilee sat down on a square black plastic chair that was designed

neither for comfort nor aesthetics, her eyes scanning the white block

walls, taking in the diplomas and certificates and framed photographs of

rodeo events.

One was of Quinn wrestling an enormous steer to the ground by its horns.

That explained a lot.

The sheriff settled into the upholstered chair behind his desk and

adopted the most official mien he could manage, considering he had

unruly yellow hair that stood up in defiant tufts in a rogue crew cut.

"We were unable to locate any kin," he said, taking up the threads of

their conversation as if they had never been interrupted.

"Lucy didn't have any family. She grew up in foster homes."

He looked unhappy about that, but didn't pursue it.

"Well, the case is closed, if that gives you any peace. It was all

pretty cut and dried. She went riding up on that mountain, got herself

mistaken for an elk, and that was that."

"Forgive me," Marilee said. "I don't know a whole lot about it, but I

thought most hunting seasons were in the fall. It's June."

Quinn nodded, his attention drifting through the windows to the biker,

who was bellowing at Deputy Stack about his civil rights. "The guy was a

guest of Evan Bryce. Bryce's spread - most of it, anyway - lies to the north

of the Rafferty place, north and east of Miz MacAdam's land. Bryce

breeds his own herds elk, buffalos. They're considered livestock.

Limited hunting seasons don't apply. He lets his guests take a few head

now and again for sport."

"And this time they took a human life instead," Marilee said grimly.

He glanced back at her and shrugged a little, bulging shoulder muscles

straining the seams of his khaki uniform shirt. "Happens now and again.

'Spect it'll happen more and more with the increase in tourism and

second home owners coming up here out of big cities. Most of these

people don't know beans about handling firearms.

They get all duded up in their L.L. Bean safari jackets, sling a big ol'

elephant rifle over their shoulders, and off they go.

"The guy that shot your friend?
 
He didn't have a clue.

Didn't know he'd hit her. He didn't even see her. Took two days before

the body was found."

"Who was he?" Marilee asked numbly, needing a name, a face she could

picture and attach guilt to. He hadn't even known. Lucy had died up

there all alone, had lain there for days while the jerk who killed her

went on with his vacation, oblivious.

"Dr. J. Grafton Sheffield," Quinn said, swiveling his chair toward a

black file cabinet that took up the entire width of the room behind the

desk. "There's a trust-fund name for you," he mumbled as his thick

fingers flipped through the files. He pulled one out and checked the

contents. "Plastic surgeon from Beverly Hills. When word got out what

had happened, he came in and confessed he'd been up there hunting. He

was sick about it. Really was. Cried the whole time in court. Cooperated

fully."

"The ballistics matched up, I take it?"

Quinn's brows sketched upward.

"I was a court reporter for six years, Sheriff," Marilee explained. "I

know the drill."

He rubbed one corner of his mouth with a stubby forefinger as he studied

her, considering. Finally he nodded, selected a thin sheaf of typed

pages from the file, and handed them across the desk. She scanned the

initial report, her eyes catching on familiar words and phrases.

"There wasn't anything left of the bullet that nailed her," Quinn said.

"It passed through her body and hit a rock. We couldn't test for a

match. The shell casings in the area were consistent with the loads

Sheffield had been using - 7mm Remington. He confessed he'd been in the

area, didn't know he'd wandered off Bryce's land. He pleaded no

contest."

"You mean it's over already?" Marilee said, stunned.

"How can that be?"

Quinn shrugged again. "The wheels of justice move pretty quick out here.

Our court dockets don't see the same load yours do down in California.

It didn't hurt that Sheffield was a buddy of Bryce's. Bryce swings a lot

of weight in these parts."

"Sheffield is in jail, then?" Marilee said, sounding hopeful and knowing

better. Plastic surgeons from Beverly Hills didn't go to jail for

accidents they readily owned up to.

"No, ma'am." Quinn's attention went to the squad room again. The biker

was standing, the chair shackled to his wrists sticking out behind him

like an avant garde bustle. Quinn started to rise slowly. "He pleaded

guilty to a misdemeanor count of negligent endangerment. One year

suspended sentence and a one-thousand-dollar fine.

Excuse me, ma'am."

He was out the door and barreling toward the melee before Marilee could

react. She stared through the window at the surreal scene for a moment,

Quinn and his deputies and the woolly mammoth tussling around the room

in what looked like a rugby scrimmage. She dropped her gaze to the file

in her lap. Surreal had been the theme of her vacation so far.

She glanced at the notes made by the deputy who had originally been

assigned to the case, then at Quinn's comments. The coroner's report was

appallingly brief. Cause of death: gunshot wound. There were scanty

notes about entrance and exit wounds, contusions and abrasions. A broken

nose, lacerations on the face, probably caused by the fall from her

mount. It seemed pitiful that the cessation of a life could be boiled

down to two words. Gunshot wound.

The battle raged on in the squad room, the biker smashing cups,

coffeepots, computer screens with the chair attached to his butt. Good

thing Quinn had experience wrestling enormous hairy animals to the

ground.

Across the desk lay the file folder that held whatever other meager

comments on Lucy's death Quinn had not planned to make privy to her.

Marilee bit her lip and battled briefly with her conscience. What she

held in her hands seemed so scant. . . . Her friend was dead. . . .

A roar that sounded like an enraged moose sounded beyond the door. The

men went down in a heap of tangled arms and legs. Marilee scooted up out

of her chair and slipped around the desk to flip open the manila folder.

Her heart stopped, wedged at the base of her throat just ahead of the

breakfast she was still digesting.

The only things left in the case file were the crime scene Polaroids.

Lucy's body. Lifeless. Grotesque. She had lain there at the edge of that

meadow for two days. Nothing about the corpse bore any resemblance to

the vibrant woman Marilee had known. The brassy blond hair was a dirty,

tangled mat. The fingernails that had been meticulously manicured and

lacquered at all times were dirty and broken. Features were

unrecognizable, the body bloated out of shape like a Macy's parade

balloon. The bullet had hit her square in the back and exited through

her chest, leaving massive destruction.

Hideous. God, she's hideous. She would have hated to die this way.

Alone.

Ripped apart.

Left for the carrion feeders.

Tears spilled over her lashes. Chills raced down her from head to toe.

Trembling, she dropped the reports on top of the pictures and ran out of

the office, choking on the need to vomit and the necessity to breathe.

The biker was being dragged off to a holding cell. Quinn dusted his

pants off with his hands, glancing up from beneath his brows as Marilee

rushed into the squad room. She swept a fist beneath both eyes, trying

in vain to erase the evidence of her tears. She gulped a deep lungful of

air that was sour with the scent of male sweat and bad gas. Her stomach

rolled over like a beached salmon.

"I - I - thank you for your help, Sheriff Quinn," she said, her voice