Sterling's Reasons (25 page)
She wasn’t one for invading privacy. But the hell with it. She was desperate.
Sterling’s Reasons
The first message was from a woman with a soft, teasing voice inviting him to call her when he got back. Sterling made a face at the machine. The second voice was Joe’s. “Call 555
-
0090.”
That was it. Three faint beeps marked the end of the messages.
Sterling pushed the buttons and listened again. Call 555
-
0090.
What did that mean? She picked up the phone and dialed the number. It rang four times and then someone picked it up. Sterling held her breath.
“Hello.”
The rush of relief almost had Sterling crying. “Joe, where are you?” she breathed into the phone.
“Sterling? What the hell…Where did you get this number?”
“I’m at your apartment, Joe. You ought to be more careful. You left the door unlocked. Oh, Joe, I’ve been so worried…” Then remembering how angry she was at him for sneaking away, she cleared her throat and finished the sentence.
“Where are you and why did you leave this number? What’s going on?”
There was a pause and Sterling pictured him expelling his breath and looking at the ceiling trying to summon patience. She heard the decided click of his lighter and then the deep draw on the cigarette.
Sterling gave him a few seconds and then said sternly, “You might as well tell me. I’ll find you. It’ll just take me a little longer. I love you, Joe.”
She heard him draw smoke again and blow it out along with a few muttered curses.
“I always leave a number in case someone is trying to find me.”
“Someone is. Give me directions to the cabin, Joe.”
“No. Wait for me there.”
“Why are you at the cabin?” she asked, trying not to let the panic she was feeling come across in her voice.
197
Joey Light
“Look, Sterling. This has nothing to do with you. I have some things to find out.”
“I resent that. You’re in danger and it has everything to do with me.”
“This is police business, Sterling. Stay out of it.”
She gave up. “I have a bad feeling about Jessica. I—”
“Jessica,” he interrupted. “Why?”
Sterling’s hand fell on an old pack of cigarettes and she pulled a drawer open to find matches. “I went to see Sam yesterday.”
“What? Why? I told you to stay clear of this.”
She pinned the matchbook under her elbow to the counter and struck the match, holding it to the end of the slightly crooked cigarette she held between her lips. Breathing in, she drew to light the end and choked a little. Taking the cigarette between her fingers as she had seen Joe do, she answered, “Red said that Jessica had been out of town off and on and that she had just left again for a few days. He’s been home taking care of the kids.”
“So?” Joe asked impatiently.
“He said that Jessica has been acting weird.” She took a puff of the cigarette and coughed, batting at the smoke surrounding her.
“Sterling, what are you doing?”
“Smoking.”
He laughed at that. “Don’t set my apartment on fire. Listen, relax. Jessica called and said she had some information for me. She said for me to wait at the cabin, that she was coming up. So, see, it’s perfectly simple.”
“Why didn’t she come here? Why did she ask you to go to the cabin? It
isn’t
perfectly simple. You’re a cop. You ought to smell a rat here.”
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Sterling’s Reasons
She heard him groan low in his throat before he spoke again. He pronounced each word precisely. “If you and I are going to have a life together when this is all over, you have to learn to stay out of police business.”
Her heart tripped faster. She took a drag on the cigarette. It burned her throat and she blew the smoke out quickly and looked at the thing in her hand.
“When you left, you just told me to go home.”
“I’m coming to get you when this is all over. I don’t want you exposed to whatever it is.”
That’s what she wanted to hear. “I love you, Joe.”
“Then do what I ask.” He couldn’t hide the fatigue in his voice.
Still, he didn’t say the words she so longed, needed, to hear. And it was clear he wasn’t going to direct her to the cabin. But she’d find it, regardless. “I’ll wait for you here. I’ll keep the home fires burning.”
He laughed with obvious relief. “Not literally, I hope. Sterling, you don’t smoke.”
“No kidding. Joe, be careful. Don’t trust Jessica. I think she’s unbalanced.”
He was quiet a moment. Sterling put the nasty cigarette out in the sink.
When he spoke, she could hear the love in his voice. “I’ll be home soon, kid.”
The line went dead at the click of the phone. She held the receiver to her ear a few seconds more as if to prolong her contact with him. She ached. She was scared. She wanted to be in his arms, lying on the beach with nothing to worry about except sunburn. Instead, she was standing in the middle of a teeming city, miles away from him, wondering, worrying what was going on. She pushed the button to release another connection and called Sam.
One of the children answered and then went off to find their grandpa, leaving the phone to klunk to the floor.
199
Joey Light
“Sam, this is Sterling Powell again. I’m sorry to bother you, but I need directions to the cabin in Cumberland.”
“Why?” he bellowed.
“Joe’s there.”
“So?”
“I have to talk to him, Sam. Please.”
The other end of the line was quiet.
“Jessica is going there, Sam. Think about it.”
Sterling heard a weary groan and sounds indicating that the man had sat down. “How do you know?”
“I called up there. Joe answered. He said Jessica called him and asked him to meet her there. That she had some information for him. Sam, something is terribly wrong.”
He was silent again. This time Sterling gave him all the time he needed to think. When he spoke again, his voice was strained.
“Yes. Okay. Take 495 to 270 to 70. About five miles this side of Cumberland you’ll see a sign that says Twain Mountain Road. Follow that about five miles.
You’ll pass a little Mom and Pop grocery with gas pumps outside. Go exactly one mile from there and you’ll probably see his vehicle parked on the side of the road. You have to walk from there. About a half-mile straight up. Road got washed away a couple of years ago. It’s rough climbing.” Sterling scribbled his directions on an old, crumpled piece of paper.
“Thanks, Sam.” She moved to hang up the phone when she heard his voice again.
She brought the receiver back to her ear in time to hear him say, “Be careful.
Jessica isn’t herself. She can’t help it.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Sam.” So, he suspected something himself. Family loyalty.
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Sterling’s Reasons
Sterling ran to the station wagon to get her sturdiest shoes and her jeans.
Changing in Joe’s bedroom, she pulled open a drawer in his dresser and got out a T-shirt. Unfolding it and reading the front of it, she smiled. “Cops do it on the run” was printed on the front of it. She pulled it over her head and tucked it in her jeans. Yanking her hair back, she wrapped a rubber band around it and pulled it into a ponytail. She looked at herself in the mirror. She didn’t appear terrified and panic-stricken. Good. After she sucked in a deep breath and took one more look around the apartment to be sure everything was turned off, she sprinted outside, slamming the door behind her.
Four hours later, glad to be out of the grueling traffic and on Route 70 north, Sterling played the entire scenario out in her head. It could be that Jessica hovered between sanity and insanity. After Jerry’s and Timmy’s funeral, she had been close herself, floating between reality and unconsciousness. And she’d wanted to blame anything. Anything other than herself. The fuel mixture had been off. But Jerry was a good pilot and she knew he checked those things. She’d accepted the explanation the officials had given her and had dismissed it. They had died because she didn’t stop them. That thought nearly drove her crazy.
Jessica had lured Joe to the cabin, she was sure of it. She would hurt him. A woman was capable of hurting anyone that hurt her family. It didn’t matter that Joe was almost part of that family. Times like this, it didn’t make any difference.
Jessica was scared—lost, angry, and desperate. The man she loved had been taken from her. Sterling felt sorry for her. But the thought of Joe alone with a crazy woman… She accelerated to seventy. She ought to see the Twain Mountain Road sign soon. And then what? She’d wing it, she said silently. Whatever it took, she was prepared to do it.
201
Joey Light
Sterling slowed the car and took the turn onto the narrow road. She clocked the odometer. The woods were thick on both sides of the macadam road.
On one side, the terrain—rocks and boulders—dipped away, dropping about sixty feet straight down only to build back up and away. The mountains were high here. The sky was lost as she traveled farther down the road, trees arching and growing together forming a tunnel. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, glittering and sparkling reflections across the windshield. The other side went straight up. Large deposits of lime rock jutted here and there. Fallen trees rotted under a blanket of newly fallen leaves. She could smell the mildew, the moss, and the dampness. Rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks darted back and forth in front of the car.
She imagined Joe and Red tramping through the forest, dressed in hunting camouflage, orange hats and rifles supported across their arms, pointing toward the ground. They would have small hunting licenses pinned to their backs. They would be chattering along the way. Camaraderie. Then later they would probably go back to the cabin, pop tops on beer cans, and kick back and laugh and tell lies about the day.
The Mom and Pop store came into view. It was an old cinderblock building painted white years ago. The roof was buckled, shingles curled. The gas pumps were ancient. An old pop cooler sat outside advertising Tru-Ade. The white had worn to expose aluminum and the orange lettering had faded to rust. A green dumpster sat by the side of the building, boxes and trash overflowing.
The road changed here. It became narrower and the macadam fell away to a gravel path. It was marked with pot holes, and more than once Sterling felt sure she had just knocked the front end out of alignment…along with her teeth.
There, finally, she saw it. Joe’s Jeep. A warmth rushed through her, and her stomach floated. Behind it was parked the Chevy Cavalier. Bright blue and 202
Sterling’s Reasons
looking dead out of place in this setting. The dread set in, crawling through her and making her feel sick to her stomach. It weighed her down. What would she find when she finally made it to the top of the path?
That there was ever a road here was beyond Sterling’s imagination. Deep ruts cut down the mountain, and piles of rocks blocked her way. She walked and then climbed, tripped and scrambled, clambered and scaled her way up the incline. Catching her foot in a tree root, Sterling fell to one knee, bruising it and ripping a hole in her jeans. Not being prone to cursing, she surprised herself when she let a foul word fly.
She continued her ascent. Though the temperature was only in the seventies, Sterling felt perspiration dribble down her back and into her jeans. She brushed burning salt from her eyes and paused to catch her breath. She looked up.
Nothing but more of what she had just been over. Scaling over a fallen tree, she shinnied up and over another pile of rocks.
The ground began to level out and the going became easier. When she was about to believe that Sam’s half-mile must be five, she saw it. It was in a small clearing. Its simple beauty touched her. Sterling stopped, bent slightly, and braced herself with her hands on her knees and just took a moment to look.
The cabin appeared as if it had been carved from its surroundings by wind and erosion instead of the hand of man. Pine logs and white chinking, dulled and worn with the passing of time. And crooked. The porch dipped at one end. The roof bowed in the middle, and the tin curled a little at the edges. The windows were off square and in need of washing. It was early afternoon, and the sun played with the shadows it cast across the little cabin. She loved it. A time warp.
And here she was in a century past. The stream that she had heard, but not seen, came into clear view. It traveled near the cabin and then dropped off into the ravine.
203
Joey Light
Should she march right up and open the door or should she creep around to the windows and peep in? She had no choice. The front door opened and two people walked out. Beside Joe stood a woman, a small woman with a head full of curly blond hair. They seemed to be talking amicably about the weather. Joe had his hands stuck in his pocket as he looked down at the pretty woman and listened. He nodded and then seemed to look out and around him. He spotted Sterling and, in his surprise, shouted her name.
The woman jolted and disappeared into the cabin only to come back a split second later with a gun in her hand.
Joe recognized the .357
Mag Colt Python immediately. It was Red’s gun. And she was pointing it at him.
Her tone of voice was one Joe had never heard before. “What’s that slut doing here?” she hissed dangerously. “I saw you two on the beach, romping and kissing like you were on some damn vacation…and all the while my Red is rotting in the ground; where you put him. I went down there to tell you I didn’t blame you, and there you were…with her…like nothing had happened. I
do
blame you. I hate you, Joe. You’re going to die like my Red. You deserve it.”
She emphasized her last words by poking the gun close into Joe’s back.
Joe’s suspicions were confirmed. The muscles in his gut contracted. He had begun to think he was wrong. He wished to hell he had been. Jessica had been rational ever since she’d arrived at the cabin. They had reminisced. It seemed to help her to talk about Red and he had let her. He had noticed a blankness that would come over her now and again. He had also noticed that in the three hours she had been with him, she hadn’t once looked him in the eye.
