What the River Knows (3 page)

But for right now, he was alone out here on the dike. Alone with Delia. He looked toward where her body lay, still shaken by the sensation that she had looked directly at him, beyond him even, maybe into his very soul. And something familiar about her haunted him. They had some sort of connection, of that he was sure. He just didn’t know what connection it could be.

“Twenty-one to seventy-three.”

“Go ahead,” he answered, glad of the steady voice of Bates.

“Team’s on our way to you to work the scene.”

“Ten-four.” He wouldn’t be alone with her much longer.

Chapter 4

Mags was gone. The best friend she’d known since third grade would no longer step in to rescue her from her own frailties. Now no one knew her better than she knew herself. No more late night calls or chick flicks or bonding over shopping and double mocha lattes.

Charlotte Daniels faced herself in the mirror and brushed on her blush. Her hand shook, and she put down the brush. For the moment, she was safe. Devlyn wouldn’t be home until after she began her shift at the Thirsty Dragon. She laid her head down on the vanity and let the tears come until the well was dry.

She stood up, wiped away the last tears, and blew her nose. She went into the bathroom to wash her face and begin the painting over again. Her tips depended on the most flawless look she could achieve, on how short the skirt, how low the blouse.

Though she’d only had the job six months, just a part-time job on Fridays and Saturdays to earn vacation money, the monetary value placed on her looks validated her. It usually boosted her esteem, made her feel sexy and feminine by the time she came home to Devlyn.

Tonight, though, she wouldn’t want sex when she got home. Tonight she would need to simply be held, comforted. Somehow, she knew that would never again come from Devlyn. She had seen what Devlyn was capable of. She struggled again to hold back the tears. She finally lost the battle.

Chapter 5

It was nearly midnight when he let himself into the apartment as quietly as he could. Rica had left no lights on for him, so he flipped open his cell phone to give him enough illumination to pick his way through the living room. They had too much furniture for this tiny apartment, he decided. Maybe soon he could convince Rica they had saved enough money to buy a house. He glanced toward the kitchen. No plate sitting on the table waiting for him. She must have expected him to be gone for dinner. Or just didn’t care.

He stopped in the bathroom, shutting the door to hold the light in as he brushed his teeth. He stared at himself in the mirror, face red from his hours in the sun and wind this evening, and wondered if he could see Delia’s face in his eyes. As the District Attorney arrived on the scene to assure no evidence was compromised, he had been one of the officers forming a human grid to scour the path and its surroundings for evidence while the coroner and forensic officers snapped photo after photo. He had watched as the forensic officers bagged Delia’s hands to preserve possible DNA of her killer and heard the DA make a careful statement to the media kept at bay on the dead end road. He splashed water on his face. He had to stop using Delia’s name, and just think of her as “the victim.”

Finally, shutting off the light before he opened the door, he crept into the bedroom, where the street light illuminated the room despite the closed blinds. He unclipped his holster, badge, and radio from his belt, and left them on the dresser where he could grab them at a moment’s notice. He pulled off his shoes while standing, then stripped off his clothes as quietly as he could before he slipped into bed, hoping not to wake Rica.

“So you’re finally home.” Her voice, muffled by the pillow, sounded flat.

“Yeah.” He rolled toward her, placing a tentative hand on her waist, where he felt cotton beneath his fingers. She was wearing a T-shirt, not sleeping nude as she normally did. She must be really angry. “We had a missing woman, that we finally found, dead, and had to work the crime scene and write reports.”

She rolled toward him, her eyes searching his face. “Was she murdered?”

He nodded, running one hand along her side to her shoulders. “I found her.”

Her eyes widened. “You found her? Yourself?”

He blinked, trying to hold back the memory. “Yeah.”

“Oh,
mijo
.” She used the Spanish term of endearment she had learned from her Mexican mother and put her arms around him, bringing his head down to cradle it on her shoulder. He stretched out alongside her, holding her close, feeling her breathe, trying not to think how Delia must have breathed just like this not two nights ago. “That must have been terrible.”

He nodded, his face buried in her neck, inhaling the sweet freesia scent of her shampoo, nuzzling her thick soft hair. He had always loved how she smelled, flowery and sweet, just a little bit spicy. So different from the smells he encountered in his work. Now she ran her hands across his shoulders and down his back, trying to comfort him with her touch. Any anger she carried for him had fled, replaced by her need to nurture him. He ran his hand from her waist to her breast, savoring the fullness of it. “I love you, Rica.” He kissed her chin, and she pulled him closer to her. He slipped his hand down to the hem of her shirt and worked his way under it, caressing the smooth skin of her back. She curved against him, and he felt himself responding to her. She ran her leg along his.

The thought of the position he’d found Delia in flashed into his mind, and he shut his eyes against the sight, as Rica wrapped both legs around him. Without conscious thought, he moved against her. He pushed her shirt up, and she pulled it off in one smooth move, then stripped off her panties with the next. He gave himself up to loving her, hoping that if he let the head between his legs do the thinking, it would silence the head between his ears. He looked down into her face, at the tenderness there, remembering the first time he had seen her, in the night literature class at the college. He thought her even more beautiful now, love expressed in her shining eyes.

Eyes. Delia’s eyes staring into his. He shut his eyes, trying to force Delia into that locked cellar in his mind. But as he opened the door to shove her memory in, others crowded into view, trying to escape. Aaron, the five-year-old his parents had covered in cigarette burns as they flew on the meth they made in the kitchen next to his room. He doubted that any amount of medical and psychological therapy would ever overcome the damage they had done to the boy. Andrea, the woman who had gutted her boyfriend because he gave a ride to another woman. The man whose name he never knew, burned alive when his car rolled on a sharp curve in the county. They had become a multitude, a seething mass that pounded on the door when he least expected it, threatening to escape despite the new and stronger locks he kept fixing on the door.

Rica’s hands played down his back, and his ghosts went silent for a while, as nature’s forces won out over psychological wars. At last he lay spent beside her, holding her close, and Delia’s eyes appeared before him again. And suddenly, he knew her!

“Margaret Stillman!” He sat up, shaking.

Rica sat up beside him. “Should I be mad at you for screaming another woman’s name after you make love to me?” Her hands on his shoulders expressed concern.

He turned to her. “The dead girl looked familiar to me.” He ran his hands over his face. “I just remembered where I know her from.”

“Should I be worried about that?” She rubbed his arm.

“No.” He focused on her for a moment. Did she think he had a mistress that kept him away from her? The only mistress he had time or energy for was his job. “They called her Delia Enfield at the briefing.” He brought his knees up to wrap his arms around them. “But I knew her as Margaret Stillman.”

He jumped from the bed, rummaging in the bookcase against the wall for the high school yearbook he thought was still there. At last he found it and hopped back in the bed, switching on the light on his nightstand. Flipping through the pages to the freshman class, in the S’s he found her, a plain, shy girl with brown hair and enormous blue eyes behind owlish glasses. “Margaret Delia Stillman.” He looked at Rica who was studying him with a half-smile on her lips and a serious look in her eyes. “She’s—she had—changed a lot.”

“Scott.” Something in Rica’s voice made him look at her. “I have a surgery with Dr. Ambrose at seven in the morning. Both of us need some sleep.” She took the book from him, laid it on the nightstand, and turned off the light. She kissed him gently. “We should both be relaxed enough to sleep now.” She tugged him down beside her. “Let it rest, Scott. All of the clues will still be there in the morning.”

He hugged her close, inhaling the now salty sweetness of her. She was right. He knew that. Still, as she breathed softly beside him, he lay awake in the darkness, listening to those memories that might lead him to Delia’s—Margaret’s—killer.

****

He lay quietly and listened to Rica sleep. He had dozed for a while, even slipping into a deep sleep, but it wouldn’t last. He rolled away from her, to stare at the alarm clock on his side of the bed. Three seventeen a.m. She had to be up in less than three hours. If he stayed in the bed, tossing and turning, it would disturb her sleep. Then she would not only be grumpy with him, she might make a mistake assisting in surgery and cost someone’s life. That burden he didn’t want to bear. Plus she wanted to impress this Dr. Ambrose—something about a promotion. He put his hand on the yearbook. Glancing back over his shoulder at Rica, he crept quietly out of bed. He pulled on his boxers and grabbed the book.

He headed for the kitchen. He could turn on the light over the table without it glaring into the bedroom. He set the book on the table and opened the fridge. Rica hadn’t even cooked the chicken last night. A pang of guilt lanced his heart as he suspected she hadn’t eaten at all. Then he remembered he hadn’t either. Still, after what he had seen as they worked the scene, food didn’t beckon him at all. He studied his options.

Beer sounded good, but didn’t seem like a wise choice. At last, he pulled the bottle of L’Orval Merlot from the bottom shelf. He had bought it for Rica for their fourth anniversary last February. They’d had a drink from it occasionally, but there was still quite a bit left. He grabbed a glass and poured a small serving. It might help him sleep, though he would have preferred the taste of the beer.

With the glass before him, he took a sip and opened the yearbook. He barely remembered Margaret—Delia. In fact, he wouldn’t have remembered her at all except for an incident during cheerleader tryouts after football practice. He wasn’t a star player—he was too light for that—but he could play any position, remember any play, and he could turn on the speed when bigger players bore down on him, so the coach put him in often, and started him his senior year. A guy, Kyle—he couldn’t remember his last name—tried out for the cheerleading squad that year, a boy that the others laughed at and teased. But his trying out angered the captain of the defensive team.

When the burly football player tackled Kyle as the tryouts got underway, Delia had stepped forward, unflinching, and hauled the bigger boy up by his ear. He came up swinging at first, until he saw that Kyle’s protector was a girl. He backed off, but swore to get even. Kyle got several beatings that year. There would have been more had Delia not been around to stop some of them.

He took another sip of wine. It was unlikely that someone would carry a grudge for the fifteen years it had been since they graduated, but such things had happened before. He reached for the grocery list and pen magnetized to the fridge. Rica was so organized. He smiled. More proof that opposites attract.

Sipping on the wine, he went through the yearbook, writing down names of the students that he could remember had either backed Delia and Kyle or Dean, the football captain. He would take the book to work tomorrow, and they could begin winnowing out the leads.

He tossed back the last swallow of wine and rose from the table. Then he thought better of his actions and rinsed the glass before putting it in the dishwasher. No sense in pissing Rica off with something so little. Turning out the light, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness before he crept back into bed and under the covers. He didn’t touch Rica, wanting instead to just let her sleep, and finally, he drifted off himself.

Chapter 6

“Good work, Aylward.” Chief Taylor closed the yearbook. He tapped his finger on the list Scott had stuck to the cover. “See how many of these people you can find contact information for.” He glanced at Bates. “We may need to interview them if our interrogation with the husband doesn’t give us a confession.”

“When are you interviewing him?”

Bates brought up his arm to check his watch. “About ten minutes, I’d say.” He turned to leave the chief’s office. “Jeffries and Anderson should be bringing him in any minute.”

“Why don’t you sit in on the interview, Aylward?” Taylor looked toward Scott. “It would be good experience for you.”

Scott scrambled to his feet. “Sure thing, Chief.” He followed Bates down the hallway to the interrogation room. “Have we got the results of the autopsy yet?”

Bates nodded. “Got preliminary results this morning. Time of death between midnight and three a.m. the day you found her.”

“So she was with the killer maybe twelve hours then?”

Bates stopped to open the door to the interrogation room. “Yup. Probably the longest twelve hours of her life.”

Scott suppressed a shiver. He didn’t want to imagine what those hours had been like. “Any wounds besides the throat slash?”

Bates laid some files on the table. “Some minor cuts on her neck, like the killer hesitated before killing her. No defensive wounds.”

“Any indication she was tied up?”

Bates shook his head. “They’re doing more tests, but it looks like he maybe suffocated her to the point of unconsciousness before doing the slash.” He pushed a file toward Scott. “She was also sexually assaulted.”

Scott paused before he opened the file. “She was raped, then.”