Mr. Write (Sweetwater) (44 page)

“Is that her name?”

The disdain in Carlton’s voice crawled right up Tucker’s back.  “That’s right.  Sarah, with an H.  You should learn to spell it right so that you can note it in the family bible.”

Gray eyes clashed with gray.  “You’re a fool.  Just like your father.”

“Thank you.  I can’t tell you how that warms my heart.”  Tucker pushed to his feet, until he was towering over his grandfather.  “And by the way, donating a couple buildings here and there doesn’t make up for what you did.  A man died.  Your son died.  And you screwed the Hawbakers over.  That’s three families I know of whose lives you’ve ruined.”

“They ruined themselves.”

It amazed him that he could still feel the sting of disappointment.  “You keep telling yourself that.  It might be cold, but I guess it’s better than no comfort at all.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

SARAH
left Tucker sleeping, having discovered it was easier to avoid significant delays if she did the morning routine at her place.  Tucker’s argument for water conservation aside, the joint shower wasn’t quite as beneficial to her schedule as it was to the environment. 

Resisting the urge to press her lips to the truly spectacular shoulder r
ising above the tangled sheet, she settled for a stray lascivious thought about whipping up another batch of frosting.

A
s had become her habit over the past week, she peeked in on Mason before she left.

Sarah
cracked the door, and the air slapped at her with icy fingers.  The a/c unit seemed to growl, probably annoyed at having to work so hard.

He looked well enough, sprawled across the bed, in the plaid pajama
s she suspected he’d begun wearing for her benefit.  Either that or he was trying to avoid frostbite.   

Anyway, h
is color was all the way back, and the glaze of pain came over his eyes less and less often.  In fact, she’d caught him, Tucker, Noah and Branson Hawbaker – who apparently, judging by his sheepish smile, had defected to the pro-Mason camp – on the back porch last night, playing cards and swilling beer out of the bottle.

It
was not, she was fairly sure, on Mason’s list of approved activities. 

The way Mason had slid the bottle beneath the table, smiled at her sweet as a baby lying innocent in
his crib, suggested he was well on the way to full recovery.

He had a follow-up appointment with his doctor
that afternoon.  If she cleared him, he’d be on a flight bound for New York tomorrow.

Sarah wasn’t sure how she felt about that.  She knew he had a contract
, a career.  A life that was as far removed from Sweetwater as the moon.

But darn if she
wasn’t going to miss him.  It gave her a pang of divided loyalty.  Not that Allie was petty enough to begrudge Sarah her concern on Mason’s behalf.  She was genuinely relieved that he was going to be okay.  But since Mason’s departure was imminent, and he and Allie still hadn’t patched things up, Sarah guessed she was bound for disappointment there.

Pu
lling his door shut to keep the permafrost from melting, Sarah continued outside.

And was startled by the figure rocking in the chair on her front porch.

“Mornin’,” Will called easily.

“Yeah, hi.” 
Sarah decided it would only make it more ridiculous if she attempted to smooth down her bedhead.  So she imagined herself well dressed and coiffed instead of looking like a slug in one of Tucker’s old T-shirts.  “You’re out and about awfully early.”

“Crime never sleeps.”

“I thought it never paid.”

“It never pays because it hasn’t slept, and sleep-deprived people tend toward inept, clumsy or stupid.”
  He hefted his steaming mug.  “That’s why, on the eighth day, God invented coffee.  To give cops an edge.”

“Let me write that down.”

“When you make it up into T-shirts, I’ll take twenty percent royalties.  Aw hell, what are friends for?  Let’s make it fifteen.”

A bird, tucked into the sweet-smelling boughs of Tucker’s magnolia, welcomed the morning with song.

Abandoning the pretense of dignity, Sarah
sat right down on the floor.  “Not that I’m not thrilled to see you before I’ve brushed my teeth or my hair, but what are you doing here?”

“Had my
early morning date with Josie so that she could grill me on why I haven’t arrested that no-good Jonas Linville, what happened to the rest of the applesauce cake that she’d promised to save for Branson, and when am I going to find a nice girl to settle down with and stop messing with wild women.”

“You’ve been messing with wild women?’ Sarah grinned
, rested her back against the railing.  “Do tell.” 

“Not in this lifetime.  Though I will confess to eating the applesauce cake.”

“There’s breaking news.”

“Which brings us around to Jonas Linville.”

“Will.”  Sarah sighed even as lingering embarrassment flushed her cheeks.  “I hope you don’t think that
I
think you haven’t done your job.  I know you haven’t had a lot to go on.  But you found his… lair next door.  You stepped up patrols. And things have been quiet around here for nearly two weeks.”

“If you can call breaking and entering and assault
quiet.”

“Well, of course not.  But that was something to do with Tucker, with
what he told you about his grandfather.  It’s totally separate.”  Her stomach jittered.  “Isn’t it?”

Will rubbed his eyes, and it was only then Sarah realized how tired he was.  All jokes aside, she figured the caffeine was propping him up like a crutch.  “I’ve got nothing other than some old hearsay, a couple coincidences and theories,
a concussed Englishman, a shoeprint and the claim of a stolen note that amounts to more hearsay.  Most of the original evidence on the library fire appears to have been lost when we had that flooding back in ninety-eight. The arson investigator retired to Arizona and doesn’t seem to want to be reached.  The man your father tagged as Pettigrew’s torch for the office complex is dead.  Austin Linville isn’t talking, if he even knows anything worth talking about, and his brother’s ghosted.  At this point, I couldn’t pin a ball of lint on Tucker’s grandfather.”

“Did you talk to Chief Harbin?”

“You mean the man who may or may not be in Pettigrew’s pocket?”

“I’m sorry.”  Sarah
winced.  “I know this is difficult for you.”

“I respect Harbin.  Or I did. 
He does the job, isn’t an asshole to work for, doesn’t run roughshod over the populace in the name of the public good.  He’s got pictures of his grandkid on his coffee mug, for chrissakes. But I checked his financials, as quietly as I could.  If there were payoffs, I couldn’t find them.  Doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.  Just means he was clever enough – or someone was – to hide them.”

“You should be talking about this with Tucker.”
   

“I will.  I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Okay.”  This time her empty stomach twisted like a wet rag. 

Will sipped his coffee, and watched the bird that had been in Tucker’s tree dart like a yellow bullet into Sarah’s garden. “You’ve done a nice job here,” he commented as the goldfinch ruffled his feathers in the little copper bath she’d added over the past weekend. “You’ve a real hand for… tending things, I guess you’d call it.”

“Will.  I’m a big girl.  You don’t have to ease me into whatever it is you came to say.”  

“All right.  The thumbprint didn’t amount to anything usable, but the impression of the shoeprint we took from beneath Tucker’s office window is the same size – not the same tread, mind you, as one appears to be a sneaker and one some type of work boot – but they’re the same size as the prints we found inside the empty apartment next door.”

“Lots of men wear the same shoe size.”

“They surely do.  What’s significant about these prints is the wear pattern.  I won’t bore you with all the details, but this pattern indicates that the man – and judging by the weight, the size, the style, I feel confident in saying it’s a man.  Anyway, this man appears to walk with a limp.”

“Jonas.”  The rag twisted again.  “He has to be limping still
, from where Austin shot him.  You think Jonas broke into Tucker’s?  That he took that note?  That he hurt Mason?  Why?  How would he even know?  You think he works for Carlton, just like his father?  That Carlton put him up to –”

“Hold your horses.” Will held up his free hand, then used it to pat Sarah’s knee.  “I don’t have the whys at the moment. 
And I’m working on the how, although I have a hard time imagining Carlton Pettigrew being fool enough to hire a man who’s already suspected of making a repeated nuisance of himself to pull off a b and e.  But that remains to be seen.  What I do have is a lot of circumstantial evidence – and your word that it was him on that phone call, which is what led us to that empty apartment – that suggests Linville is indeed that nuisance.”

“My word?” Heat crawled up her cheeks.  “You think I’m mistaken?  Or what, that I’m making it up?”

“Did you take a hair-trigger pill this morning?  Christ, Sarah. All I’m saying is that what evidence I have implicating Linville, any defense attorney with two working brain cells would be able to rip to pieces in court.  If I can get a look at his shoes, we might have something solid.  But that’s not the reason I’m sitting on your porch looking at your unbrushed teeth and messy hair shy of seven o’clock in the morning.”

“What?”  Instinctively, Sarah reached for his hand.  “Is it your father?  Harlan?”

Setting his coffee aside, Will covered her hand with his warm one.  “No.  But I want you to know that it matters to me that you asked.  It’s… best to just say it, I guess.  You heard about the rape after the concert in the park?”

“S
ure.  Lots of gossip flying around the store.”  Will’s department had done their best to keep a lid on the woman’s identity, but as would happen in a small town, word had gotten out.  Sarah didn’t know the assistant librarian, given that she was a relatively new transplant to the area, but Allie did. Allie’d been torn up when she heard about it.

The sheen of perspiration on her skin turned to ice.  “Did you catch
the guy?”

“Working on it
.” But the worry was clear in his eyes.  “It was dark.  He wore a ski mask, gloves.  A condom.  Plus, she’s still a little… muddled. She couldn’t give us a lot to go by.”

“It’s hard to think, to remember to think, when you’re scared.  And
there’s a part of you doesn’t want to see him.  Doesn’t want to accept that it’s happening.”

Will squeezed her hand.  “
As the investigation is still open and a woman’s privacy is at stake, I can’t go into too many details.  But I’m going to tell you that it’s a great deal more than simple… post-traumatic stress causing her memory lapse. He hurt her, Sarah. Badly.”

Oh
. God. 

“Will, why are you –”

“There was a shoeprint.  At the scene.”

The bottom dropped out of Sarah’s stomach.

“The tread, the wear pattern is identical to the print we found beneath Tucker’s window.  Then there’s the fact that both Mason and the rape survivor were struck in the head. As an officer of the law, I’m obliged to say we’re regarding Jonas Linville as a person of interest.  As your friend,” Will looked her in the eye “I’m telling you to watch yourself.  You stay with Tucker – with the damn windows locked – or if that doesn’t suit, you come out and stay with us.  But you do not stay alone.  Because he’s gone from nuisance to very, very dangerous.”

She pressed her free
hand to her twisting stomach.  “I guess so.”

“I mean it, Sarah.”  Then his voice, his hand gentled.  “The rape survivor.  She has
long red hair.”

Helplessly ill, Sarah
felt a tear spill down her cheek.  “And you think that he… raped her as, what, some kind of surrogate? Because he was angry with me?”

“
No,” he said before she even finished her statement.  “Don’t you put this on yourself.” He tipped her chin up with his finger. “You’re smarter than that.  But I do think he’s fixated on you.”

“Why?
” Guilt, frustration, rage simply exploded out of her.  “Because his big brother bullied me when we were kids?  Because he thinks I somehow sent big brother to jail?  Because I know a lot of big words?  It’s so stupid, Will.  I mean, it makes
no
sense.”

“Was it only Austin who bullied you?”

She swiped at the tears streaming down her cheek.  “He was the main perpetrator.  Jonas, he’d just kind of stand off to the side and watch.  If Austin wasn’t around, he’d say something nasty or gross, and a few times he followed me home from school, or ripped up my homework, that sort of thing.  But he didn’t get physical the way Austin did.  He didn’t trip me or knock me down.  He didn’t try to rape me.”

“
Sarah, I want you to consider.  It was dark, and he grabbed you from behind.  He pushed you, facedown, to the ground. You said yourself that it’s hard to think when you’re scared.  That you didn’t really want to see him.  Could it have been Jonas who assaulted you that night?”