Still Waters (38 page)

Dane reached past her and pulled the door shut, closing off her tirade from the network of curious ears in the offices beyond. “He's a suspect, Elizabeth. I can't let personal feelings interfere with that. I've got a job to do.”

“Oh, right,” she sneered, swiping a hand under her nose, struggling against the urge to hurl herself at him and pummel his chest with her fists. “All your loyal constituents are screaming for his head, so you're just going to hand it to them on a platter. All nice and neat and easy for you—”

“It's not easy for me.”

“He's innocent!” she shouted.

“He's lying!” Dane shouted back, the thunder of his voice ringing against the cool white walls. “I can't just let him go. He had a fight with Fox in front of fifty witnesses, then Fox turns up murdered a mile from your house, and all Trace can say is he was out in the woods. Do you know where he was last night, Elizabeth? Do you know what he was doing?”

Elizabeth pressed a hand across her mouth and fought back tears. She was Trace's mother. She should have known where he'd been. She should have known what he'd been doing. She should have known beyond a shadow of a doubt that he couldn't have killed another human being. But she didn't. God help her, she didn't know that he couldn't have done it. He'd been so angry lately, so unreachable. She had felt him slipping away from her, and she had wanted so badly to pull him back, but she hadn't known how.

“Oh, God,” she whispered as the fear rose up to choke her.

Dane watched her fight for control. A part of him told him that this was a prime opportunity to sever any ties between them. He had a job to do and nothing could interfere with that. But still, he couldn't keep himself from reaching out to her.

“Come here,” he murmured, cupping a hand on her shoulder.

She shrugged him off and stepped back. “No. You can't have it both ways,
friend
. You can't break your life up into neat little pieces—friend, lover, cop—and keep them all from touching each other. Real life isn't that tidy. You can't reach out to me when your conscience pokes at you, then set me back on a shelf. I'm not a doll for you to play with whenever you feel the need. I'm a person with a heart, and I'm just sick to fucking death of getting it broken, so back off!”

She didn't wait for him to obey her. She pushed past him and bolted out the door. She ran down the hall and through the open office area with its maze of metal desks. Through the blur of tears she could see distorted faces staring at her, mouths moving, but she couldn't make them out, couldn't hear them. Voices and office sounds ran together into discordant noise that assaulted her ears. Standing near the front desk, Yeager's dog barked at her, and the agent reached out a hand toward her, but Elizabeth dodged him, slammed open the door, and ran down the hall that led to the parking lot. Clutching her purse against her, she barreled up the steps, out the door, and smack into Boyd Ellstrom.

He caught her by the arms and held her against him for a second before she could jerk back from the feel of his big soft body touching hers.

“Should have made friends with me when you had the chance,” he said darkly.

Elizabeth glared at him, wrenching herself free of his grasp. “Fuck you,” she snapped, backing away from him.

“Sorry, babe,” he sneered, something cold and mean flashing in his eyes. “You missed your chance. Be sure you spell my name right when you print the story about me arresting your son, the killer.”

Elizabeth whirled as a covey of reporters rushed in on her, shouting questions and brandishing tape recorders and cameras. She pushed past them and ran to the Caddy, tossing her purse on the seat and slamming the door without regard for any fingers that might have gotten in the way. The low-slung undercarriage of the car scraped the street with a shower of sparks as she hit the gas and roared out of the parking lot. Horns sounded as a pickup and a car coming from opposite directions screeched to a halt to avoid a collision with her.

She didn't spare a glance for the other drivers. She punched the accelerator and the Eldorado jumped ahead, leaving a smoking line of black rubber behind on the pavement. The Horse and Buggy Days workers paused in their construction of the parade judge's stand to watch her pass, and a bevy of senior citizens paused on their way to morning coffee at the Coffee Cup. An Amish mother grabbed her two small children at the corner of Main and Itasca and pulled them in against her long skirts as the Cadillac sped past.

Elizabeth saw all of them in her peripheral vision, but she dismissed them. She needed to think, not about Still Creek or what its citizens thought of her, but about Trace. She needed to clear the panic from her mind and wrestle the doubts into submission. No one else was going to come to her rescue or Trace's. She needed to think calmly and clearly.

The wind tore through her hair as the convertible shot down the highway like a bright red torpedo. The sun was shining, the sky was an incredible shade of blue. On one side of the road a herd of white-faced cattle grazed as their calves bucked and chased each other. On the other side, a field of corn lifted wide, money-green leaves to the sun. The day was altogether too beautiful for something like this to be happening. The weather should have been dark and stormy with a cold rain and a brutal wind.

Choosing a side road at random, she hit the blinker and swerved off the highway, the back end of the Caddy skidding sideways as the wheels hit the gravel. She straightened the nose of the car, eased off on the gas, and let the big car rumble down the road. When she felt she was far enough away from civilization, she pulled off onto a field drive and cut the engine.

Her first instinct had been to go home, but Aaron was there. Aaron the Righteous, who probably already thought she was the worst mother of the worst kid in the Western Hemisphere. She felt guilty enough without having the face of God staring down at her through Aaron Hauer's stoic countenance.

As her heartbeat slowed and her breathing returned to normal, she took a look at her surroundings. She was in the area known as the Hudson Woods, probably named after another family that had died out with the Drewes. The land was hilly and heavily wooded with a narrow strip of pasture running along the twisting path of Still Creek. From where she sat there wasn't a building of any kind to be seen, no sign of man at all except for the decrepit barbed wire fence that kept the cattle from wandering onto the road. A good place to think.

Like the woods behind her place, where Trace said he had been at the time Carney Fox had met his end.

He was lying. Elizabeth's heart sank at the thought. She brought her hands up and covered her face, pressing her fingers against her eyes until balls of color burst and swam in the darkness. He wouldn't lie unless he had something to hide. What did he have to hide?

Murder.

No. No, she thought, her mother's resolve taking hold of the fear inside her and squeezing it with an iron fist. Trace couldn't have killed anybody. She wouldn't,
couldn't
, believe he had. Yes, he had been sullen since the move—since before the move. Yes, he had seemed angry. Yes, he had been in trouble before, but never like this. The trouble he had gotten into in Atlanta had stemmed from a resentment toward Brock. The trouble he had gotten into at Shafer's had been to somehow avenge her honor. He had unleashed some of his youthful fury on inanimate objects, but Trace had never physically hurt anyone.

Until last night. His face and four dozen witnesses would testify to the fact that he'd had a donnybrook with Carney Fox in the Red Rooster parking lot.

But he wasn't a killer. He couldn't be a killer. Now that she had beaten back the fear, Elizabeth knew it with a certainty that went soul deep. Trace was her baby, her flesh and blood. She might not have known everything that was going on in the turbulent heart of a boy struggling to become a man, but she knew that at the center of the turmoil his heart was good. He couldn't have killed anybody.

Then why was he lying?

She groaned and leaned her forehead on the steering wheel as her thoughts chased each other around. The truth. She needed to find the truth. She was growing to hate that word more with each passing day.

Sniffling, she turned and reached into her purse for a tissue, but came out with the small manila envelope that held Trace's personal effects. Wanting to feel closer to him, she opened the flap and dumped the contents into her lap. Pocket comb, two pieces of Bazooka bubble gum, and his wallet. She stroked a hand over the fine calfskin wallet and smiled a sad smile. She had given it to him for his fourteenth birthday. Not a happy day either. Brock had promised to take him to a Braves game, then reneged when the opportunity had arisen to be seen at a big diplomatic do for the Japanese minister of trade. Business was more important than a boy's birthday, Brock said. Not to the boy.

Absently, she opened the wallet, snooping through it more out of habit than in the hope of finding anything. Seven dollars and a coupon for a jumbo popcorn at the State Theater. His student ID from the snotty prep school Brock had insisted he attend in Atlanta.

Tucked behind the ID was an old, dog-eared snapshot. Elizabeth plucked it out carefully, a wistful smile turning her lips. It was a picture of herself and Trace. They stood in front of a big old bright yellow Victorian house with green shutters and white trim on the wide porch. Elizabeth was wearing navy shorts that revealed a mile of tanned leg, a sky-blue T-shirt from Six Flags amusement park, and the biggest, brightest smile. Lord, had she ever really looked that young, felt that happy? Her hair was its usual wild mess and her sunglasses were crooked, and she stood behind Trace with her arms wrapped around him. He was grinning and gangly, his smile a checkerboard mix of baby teeth, permanent teeth, and no teeth. He wore the same Six Flags T-shirt, and he was clutching an inflatable brontosaurus by its long skinny neck.

Happier times. Elizabeth could easily picture the man behind the camera. Donner Price. A big gentle bear of a man. A Methodist minister, of all things. They had known him for a summer down in San Antonio. The best summer of her life, not counting the summer she had fallen in love with Bobby Lee. That summer had been filled with hope and possibilities. Then Donner had been killed in a plane crash, flying medical supplies to the poor in Guatemala, and she had taken Trace and her broken heart and moved to Atlanta for a fresh start and a job at Stuart Communications.

She flipped to the next window in the wallet, shuffling past the memories and regrets. Her heart gave a thump and her melancholy vaporized. Another photograph. A school picture of a girl with rumpled chestnut hair and freckles on her pixie nose. She smiled out at the camera, her eyes a warm shade of blue, sweet and tinted with a sparkle of mischief.

Amy Jantzen.

THE REPORTERS FOLLOWED DANE FROM THE COURTROOM
like a swarm of gnats, hovering and buzzing but never getting close enough to bat away. He had just finished his second press conference in a week. Two too many for a man who had never been able to stand the sight of a press pass. Bunch of goddamn vultures. With no fresh meat on the Jarvis murder, the flock had begun to disperse, but they were back in full force today, with pencils sharpened and hunger in their eyes. Two murders in a week might not have impressed New Yorkers, but it was big news when it happened in the sticks. He could see the headline now:
Reign of Terror in Tourist Town
.

At the stairs to the law enforcement offices a pair of husky deputies stepped in behind him and planted themselves like oak trees, effectively stopping the mob. Dane breathed a short sigh of relief that ended on a groan as Charlie Wilder and Bidy Masters met him in the lower hall. He didn't so much as check his stride, hoping that they would get the hint and let him pass. They fell in beside him, rushing at his heels, trying to make eye contact, their faces creased with lines of worry.

“Dane, can't you do something?” Charlie said, not bothering to butter up his demand with his usual smile and chuckle. He was huffing and puffing at the pace, his round face going red from the effort and the stress. “There are news crews using the Horse and Buggy Days parade stand as a backdrop for stories about a murder spree! Do you have any idea what this is going to do to attendance?”

“Kill it?” Dane asked sardonically.

Bidy turned a shade of ash. “This is no joking matter.”

“No,” Dane agreed, “murder isn't.” He stopped in front of the door to the offices and gave the pair a cool look. “I've got better things to worry about than the decline in revenues at the bingo tent.”

Bidy bobbed his head down between his shoulders like a vulture, his dark eyes dead serious. “Like your job.”

“You were elected to protect the community,” Charlie said. “There hadn't been a murder here in thirty-three years, now we've had two in a week!”

“Well, I didn't kill them, gentlemen,” Dane said softly, his gaze never wavering. “And maybe, if you'd quit hounding me about this penny-ante Podunk festival, I could direct my attention to finding out who did.”

They stepped back as one, stiffening with affront. Not smart, offending the town fathers, Dane thought as he left them standing in the hall, mouths agape. But he was at a point where he didn't really care. His prime suspect in the Jarvis murder was at this moment stretched out at Davidson's Funeral Home with a skull that resembled a squashed pumpkin. Trace Stuart was cooling his heels in the holding cell, hiding something. And Elizabeth was out there somewhere, cursing the day they'd met.

The office was louder than the press conference had been. Telephones rang incessantly. Officers and office personnel alike were rushing back and forth, in and out. A steady stream of noise ran in an undercurrent beneath staccato bursts of conversation. Lorraine was manning her post with a fierce look. In front of her desk stood a uniformed bus driver and a blonde in short shorts and a tube top. Dane took them in at a glance. The bus driver was forty-five and fat. The blonde looked like a twenty-five-dollar date with too much makeup and half a can of mousse in her hair.