Virtue Falls (50 page)

“Oh. That’s cool.”

“I think so.” She squeezed his fingers. “When I break a rock open with my pick, I’m a prophet. I see the past. I see the future. I know where the world is going, and where it’s been. And I always, always want to know more.”

“I, um, don’t have that kind of job.” He sounded vaguely perplexed.

“No. You don’t worry about the past that stretches back to infinity or the future that could end tomorrow.” She was very aware of the schism that divided their jobs. She’d always been aware. “You have a real job, involving real people. You save lives. You make a difference, right here and right now. Everything you do has an influence on the world today.” But for the first time, she got to say with satisfaction, “But you know what?”

“What?”

“My father said, ‘Virtue Falls is a place on the coast where the tsunamis sweep in high and fast, sometimes without warning.’ Some people believed him, and when I said it again, they believed me. They didn’t believe the Native American legend because they thought that was superstition. But they believed us because we’re scientists.” Proudly she said, “So I save lives, too. That’s nice.”

Garik was silent so long she first wondered if he was trying to contain his laughter, then whether she’d put him to sleep.

For the first time, she noticed that the breeze off the ocean was cool. She slid her hand out of his, and crossed her arms over her chest, trying belatedly to gather the pieces of her soul that she had so lovingly laid out for him to inspect.

After a thoughtful interlude that seemed to stretch as far as the horizon itself, he got out of his swing, and knelt at her feet, and found her fingers and kissed them. “You are an amazing woman.” Standing, he pulled her to her feet and into his arms. He held her, and rocked her. “You see eternity, and you save lives. That’s so far above the dirt-dog common shit of life I dig around in.”

His praise, his affection, was so unexpected, she didn’t know what to do, what to say.

The scent of him was warm and rich, a familiar comfort and a new memory. His body heated her, banishing the chill of the ocean breeze, of her long isolation. “You never liked what I did,” she said.

“But I always liked
you
.” He took her jaw in one hand, tilted her head back, and kissed her neck, her shoulder, and for one moment, rested his head against her in a gesture of love and homage.

Lifting her arms, she wrapped them around his shoulders, opening her body to him. “I like you, too,” she said. “I love you.”

He straightened and pulled her closer, bringing their bodies together in a heated promise of later delights. Sliding his hands under her T-shirt, he found her breasts. He weighed them in his hands. Softly he pinched her nipples, using a slow rhythm that made her breath grow deeper, more vital.

Sex. He wanted sex. Thank God. Because so did she.

“Let me talk love words that you will understand.” He dipped his head. He spoke intimately in her ear. “You remind of a volcano—Vesuvius comes to mind—a snow-capped peak which explodes with no warning, with fire and smoke and heat that encompasses everything around.”

“Oh…” she said huskily. She liked his almost-lyrical turn of phrase … and the way one of his hands moved from her breast to the inside of her thigh. His fingers skimmed across her skin under the hem of her shorts. His thumb lifted her panties, slid beneath.

She held her breath.

He said, “I’m lucky enough to be the man who dies a little every time you … blow.”

She gave an explosive snort of laughter. “I love it when you talk dirty.” She wrapped her leg around his thigh to ease his access, to bring them closer.

He found her clitoris and stroked softly. “I love your hot lava.”

“I love…” She caught her breath, then gathered her wits and said, “I love your pyroclastic flows.”

His finger stilled. “If I knew what that meant, I would answer with equal wit.”

Without even thinking, she said, “A pyroclastic flow is when a volcano suddenly lets off a blast of hot mud and gasses which race down the side of the mountain, incinerating everything in its path. The speed of a pyroclastic flow is determined by—”

He put his mouth on hers, and shut her up in the most primitive way possible.

And before the hour was over, she remembered what it was to be caught in a blistering heat that burned away the flesh and left only two spirits, fused into one.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

Sheriff Dennis Foster sat by the ham radio in the courthouse and listened to John Rudda cry.

In between sobs, John said over and over, “I should have left the truck at the truck stop. I should have come home. But I won … I won a bundle at poker and I thought … I thought I would take Yvonne to Reno. You know, to gamble and watch some shows. Give her a break from all those crazy people she works with. She never complained, but God … God … God. Are you sure it’s her?”

“I’m sorry, John. Yes. It’s a positive ID.” This morning at dawn, two of Sophie Ciccolella’s dogs had found Yvonne’s body up in a tree by Beggar’s Creek. She’d been washed up there by the second bunch of tsunami waves. Her throat had been slashed, her hair cut, and her eyes removed.

But it was still Yvonne.

For twenty-three years, Dennis Foster had pretended that he’d done the right thing when he investigated Misty Banner’s murder. He had convinced himself, almost, that he had done everything possible to convict the man who murdered her.

But he couldn’t fool himself anymore. That little pipsqueak Garik Jacobsen was right. Dennis Foster was guilty, at the very least, of conspiracy to conceal evidence. He’d thrown away the FBI flyer, but he knew what it said. And he knew what Yvonne’s murder meant.

The killer wasn’t in San Francisco; or San Diego; or Vancouver, British Columbia The killer was in Virtue Falls.

He looked down at his own hands.

He wasn’t sure the killer wasn’t sitting in this chair.

*   *   *

Garik walked out of the resort’s front door, and there Elizabeth was, sitting in his truck, rummaging through her bag, humming as she riffled through the stuff she always carried to the dig. She looked so pleased with herself, so confident, so happy, that he finally yielded to the inevitable.

She loved geology as much as she loved him, and he might as well figure she was going to work every day whether he liked it or not. And he might as well get enthused about that branch of the sciences, because it would be part of his life forever. And he had better figure out what he was going to do for a living, because he was going to be living in Virtue Falls … with Elizabeth.

This was no one-way street. She had wholeheartedly joined in his hunt for her mother’s killer, following him through his initial instincts when with her logical mind and his lack of evidence, she must have been convinced he was overreacting.

Now, she looked up, saw him, and smiled.

No, she didn’t merely smile. She
glowed
. Because he was near.

How cool was that?

Somehow, the two of them had become the world’s most unlikely couple. In the future, they would fight, laugh, talk, love—but they would always, always be together.

He smiled back.
Glowed
back. He walked across the sunny parking lot toward the driver’s door, intent on kissing her, telling her what he had realized their life would be, when something happened that hadn’t happened for far too long; his pocket vibrated. For a moment, he wondered what it was. Then he pulled out his cell phone and stared at the screen. It showed an incoming call. From the county.

He had service. “I have service,” he said. Then he shouted, “I have cell service!”

Elizabeth grinned at him. “I do, too,” she called through the open window. Then, “Are you going to answer it?”

“Right.” He did. “Hello?”

“It’s, um, Sheriff Foster.” Pause.

Garik’s grin faded. “Yes?”

“I’d like to see you ASAP.” Pause. “I’m at the courthouse.”

“I’ll get there as soon as I can.” He hung up.

Dennis Foster sounded as if he had finally, really, completely flipped out.

Garik would go in prepared for an ambush.

As he stared at the phone in his hand, texts crowded the screen of his phone, the first one from the day he put his gun in his mouth. The numbers mounted up, he felt an absolute sense of WTF. Then he laughed at himself. He’d wanted to be connected again.
This
was his punishment.

He walked to the passenger door. “I have to check in with my supervisor at the FBI, and I need to do it while I’ve got service. Can you wait?”

Elizabeth hopped out of the truck with her bag over her shoulder. With that same happy, I’m-going-to-work smile, she announced, “While I have greatly enjoyed having you haul me all over Virtue Falls, this time I’ll drive myself.”

Oh, no.
“What? Where? How?”

“First, I’m going to go to see my father. Then I’m going to go to the Oceanview Café and get a coffee. Then I’m going to go to work. And I’m going in
my own
car.” He was appalled, and she knew it, because she viewed him with a mixture of humor and displeasure. She pulled her car keys out of her bag and dangled them in front of his face. “I
can
drive, you know, and very well. I’m from California, where only the swift and agile survive.”

“I know that. It’s the—”

“I know. It’s the danger.” She stepped closer, body to body. “There’s a killer on the loose. Don’t worry. I’ve got a phone. You’ve got a phone. We’ve got service, which means someone out there in the great big world is actually fixing something.”

“Like I have faith in that!”

“I’ll check in. You check in. We’ll be in contact all the time. I will be careful, I promise.” Standing on her toes, she kissed his lips.

He wrapped his arm around her waist, held her as if he could never let her go, and kissed her back.

Then he let her go.

She said, “I have promised to be careful. Now—you promise to be careful, too.” She smiled, but her eyes were anxious.

“I will.” He watched her walk to her car, get in, and drive away.

Standing there in the middle of the parking lot, he called Tom Perez. Because he damned well needed to get this case wrapped up, and fast, before Elizabeth got hurt.

The call wouldn’t go through.

He swore, viciously and fluently.

But the phone showed three bars. He had a connection, and he needed Tom Perez.

He opened his e-mail to see if Tom had tried to contact him.

He had.

The first e-mail was from the morning of the earthquake, and had “Scissors” in the subject line. Tom Perez said,
I sent out an agent to this helicopter guy’s house and caught him as he was leaving on a job. Agent scared the guy …

“Good,” Garik muttered.

… Guy claimed he’d mailed the package the night before, dropped it at a box at the post office. Agent told him he was in trouble if he was lying. Guy insisted he was telling the truth. So now we wait for the USPS to work their magic.

One from yesterday.
Got the scissors. Told the lab which case we were reviewing. Scissors got bumped to the front of the line. Tech said, it’s like having the Shroud of Turin in my lab.

This morning:
Scissors have fingerprints on the handles in the murder grip. Fingerprints not Charles Banner’s. Fingerprint is unknown, but it matches a partial at a murder in San Francisco.

Garik replied,
Urgently need FBI secure network on my phone.

The software appeared. He logged in with another trick password. And he typed,
What murder?

The latest Edward Scissorhands.

Thumbs suspended above the keyboard, Garik stared at the screen. Then:
What in the fuck are you talking about? Are you saying Misty Banner’s murderer is a serial killer who slaughters …
His brain put the pieces together, and every one of them snapped into place.
Of course. Edward Scissorhands, who slaughters blond mothers and their children, then mutilates the children.

Tom messaged:
He cuts the children’s eyes out.

Garik’s mind worked feverishly.
Yes. The children … can’t see what he did if they have no eyes.

Tom agreed.
If you’re one sick bastard, that is the way you would think.

This all comes back to Misty Banner’s murder.
Garik sprinted toward his truck.

He didn’t see Tom Perez’s last message:
Keep me in the loop. I’m ready to send agents into Virtue Falls.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

Everyday when the sun shone, the Honor Mountain Memory Care Facility residents were encouraged to come outside. Supervised by the medical staff, they wandered the paths of the small garden at the front to the side of the building. It was there Elizabeth found Charles, sitting on a bench, smiling at an exuberant climbing rose.

“Hey.” She dropped a kiss on the top of his head.

He stared at her, as he always did, as he tried to place her. Then his face lit up. “Elizabeth! How good to see you.”

She beamed. Any day when he recognized her was a good day. She seated herself beside him on the bench. “Do you want to see the tsunami video?”

“Not today, dear.” Apparently he recalled it from the dozen times he’d viewed it before. “I was wondering how the work was progressing après tsunami.”

“In the canyon?” Her enthusiasm bubbled over. “There’s so many exciting discoveries. When we can get marine biologists in to view the remains of some of the creatures the ocean brought up from the depths, I think we’ll have a whole new branch of science buzzing with excitement.”

“What have you seen?” He faced her, and his blue eyes sparkled.

“The last time I was at the dig”—the day she was attacked—“I found a shrimp which I swear has only been recorded off the coast of Japan. Here.” She brought out her laptop and showed him photos.

He frowned. “I can’t quite see…”

“The fog rolled in. The light was bad. I wasn’t paying attention…” She pulled out her notebook and pencil. “The swimmerets on the abdomen didn’t have the same joints as the common shrimp we see off the Washington coast. They looked more like this.” She sketched them and frowned. “That’s not good. It was more like this.” She sketched again. “Well, that’s not good, either. They had an extra joint right here…” She strained to get it right.