CHAPTER ONE
The
fog slips in on death’s feet, then stoops to drink at the
water’s
mirrored surface. In the eerie lakeside stillness, the
silvery layers
mute everything, from the outraged caws of disturbed crows
to huge cypress
trees grown shaggy with wiry, gray-green moss.
But
along the wild shores of the big lake straddling the Texas
and Louisiana
borders, some things cannot be softened. Not by mist or
deepening gloom
or the chill rain that patters through the gold-and-blood-
hued autumn
foliage. Certain sounds, so out of place here, stand out
starkly: the
slap and rattle of a rope tossed over a stout oak branch,
the panicked
scrape of human breath, a guttural curse and stumble of
footsteps. The
harsh cacophony of a struggle quickly silenced.
Quickly
silenced but for a single, strangled cry, followed by the
rhythmic creaking
of the newly burdened tree.
Monday, October 19
Death
notifications were the worst part of Sheriff Justine
Wofford’s job.
Worse even than the state’s efforts to nail her on charges
of corruption,
the Dogwood Sentinel’s calls for her head, and the
county’s
demands that she slash her operating budget. Eight months
after she’d
claimed the remainder of her late husband’s unfilled term,
Justine’s
professional life was circling the drain, and not even her
deputies
were bothering to disguise their relief about their boss’s
imminent
demise. Nor were most inclined to follow orders, including
her request
for someone to accompany her on this hideous detail.
But
the lack of support didn’t matter. What mattered to Justine
most was
the knowledge that she was about to shatter the fragile
shell of a family’s
well-being, as her own had been destroyed eleven months
before.
Except
she was for damned sure going to do this thing right, with
all the care
and compassion she’d been denied by the young physician who
had delivered
the news — with one foot out the door — that a sudden
stroke had
killed Justine’s husband. Inconvenienced by her meltdown,
the newly-minted
doctor had had the nerve to say, "What was he, twenty,
twenty-five
years older? I would have thought you’d have prepared
yourself for
something like this."
"Lou’s
sixty. Sixty, that’s all," she had argued, as if she might
talk
the little pissant into a different diagnosis. "He’s
healthy, active,
watches his diet. We still have plenty of time left."
With
his gaze already straying to the nurse urgently flagging
him down, the
doctor had spared her a pitying look before leaving her
alone with her
nine-year-old autistic son, who could no more comprehend
grief than
he could decipher hieroglyphics but had keened in harmony
with his mother’s
weeping because he liked the sound.
Yet
as her decaying department SUV veered onto a dirt road so
rough it shook
her fillings, Justine counted her blessings. Shocking as it
was, Lou’s
passing had at least been natural. Not like this atrocity,
the third
hanging death discovered in the last month in rural Preston
County.
"Suicides
tend to cluster like that. Not uncommon to see a group of
running buddies
do themselves in, one by one," Chief Deputy Roger Savoy had
lectured.
Not only was the asshole gunning for her office in next
year’s election,
he still felt it was his place to school her like a rookie.
Which
was why it had given her a twisted burst of pleasure to
point out a
faint set of ligature marks on the man’s untied wrists and
a swollen
bump behind his head. "Except this one’s no suicide," she
said
loudly enough that he couldn’t lay claim to the discovery
later.
As
Justine jounced over the road’s chuck holes, any lingering
satisfaction
was swallowed by her growing dread. But in spite of the gut-
churning
apprehension, she noticed the play of late afternoon’s
light as it
filtered through breeze-stirred boughs and the flutter of
leaf shadow
that leant deceptive charm to the ramshackle cabins she
passed. Near
the wooden steps beside a swaybacked trailer home, a trio
of flop-eared
pups wrestled, and yellow-breasted warblers darted through
the underbrush.
She
slowed, lowering her window to wave at a pair of skinny
white girls
whacking the heads off squat brown mushrooms with what
looked like rusted
golf clubs. Eight and ten, she recalled, with streaming
yellow-brown
hair and piping laughter that dried up when they saw her.
The taller
of the two flipped Justine the bird before she and her
sister raced
inside the small rental cabin that now served as the
overcrowded residence
of three kids and two adults.
"Make
that one adult," Justine said. She parked beneath
the gnarled
arms of a primeval oak and stared at the tire swing
suspended nearby.
Hanging, while the Expedition’s cooling engine
ticked like
an old clock. When she was finally able to tear her gaze
away, she spotted
the twitch of a stained curtain and the fierce glares of
small faces
pressed against the filmy window.
Doubtless,
the children figured she had come to talk to their
grandmother about
getting them to school more often, or to report their daddy
was in jail
again for public intoxication, disorderly conduct, or any
one of the
penny ante misdemeanors that so often left them in the sole
care of
their half-blind grandmother.
But
for all of Caleb LeJeune’s flaws, for all the rough poverty
of the
part-time fiddle player’s home near the southernmost
portion of Bone
Lake, Justine reminded herself she faced a family that
loved him. A
family that would forever carry not only her words, but the
tone and
body language of the message that would irrevocably change
their lives.
Steeling
herself, Justine slid out of her truck. She brushed
crumbled smears
of crime-scene dirt from the dark suit she wore, took
another deep breath,
then strode toward the cabin’s front door.
She
didn’t have to knock before it opened to a swirl of
cigarette smoke
and a round face braced for bad news. Dee LeJeune
asked, "What’s
he done now, Sheriff?" in her two-pack-a-day voice.
Before
Justine could think of how to answer, Dee flicked her
cigarette into
the yard and narrowed her gaze. "And don’t be thinkin’ I’m
gonna
pad the county’s pockets bailin’ him out this time. Not
when I can’t
hardly feed these kids he’s saddled me with."
In
spite of her harsh words, her fingers skimmed the fine hair
of a boy
not five years old, and Justine knew Dee would rip the
throat out of
anyone who came between her and these children.
But
it wouldn’t matter in the long haul. In the end, the state
would take
Caleb’s kids, would more than likely have to split them up.
"Ma’am,
may I step inside and have a word?" Justine asked, her
throat tightening
in anticipation of the cabin’s smoke-and-Pine-Sol reek.
Dee
must have heard a new brand of misfortune in Justine’s
voice, for
with a stricken look, she shooed the grandkids
outside. "And mind
you two, you keep a close eye on your brother. Don’t go
nowhere near
the water, and I mean it."
Once
they’d slunk away, Dee said, "All right, then," her milky
eyes
already leaking tears.
By
the time Justine stepped back outside, her eyes burned as
well, and
not only from the odors. She didn’t see the kids around, so
she headed
back toward her mud-spattered Expedition, only to stop
short when she
noticed it was listing toward the driver’s side.
"Shit."
Leave it to Caleb LeJeune’s brood to have the gall to
puncture her
tire. Justine broke into a jog, hustling past the giant oak
in the hope
of catching the budding delinquents in action.
But
what Justine caught instead was a hard crack to the side of
her skull.
A blow that splashed like black paint over the jewel-bright
October
day.
#
With
ER physicians almost impossible to replace, Dr. Ross
Bollinger’s boss
had promised the moon, the stars, and coddled half-shifts
if he would
come back early on a trial basis. So it stood to reason
that by seven
PM on his third day, Ross had already been on for thirteen
hours, chewed
out for his ignorance of a new record-keeping protocol, and
sworn at
by a habitual drug-seeker. Not to mention having been
exposed to vast
legions of germs by a pair of preschoolers he’d mentally
rechristened
Snotzilla and Vomitus Maximus.
In
spite of the grueling work he’d done to build back his
stamina, he
was feeling every one of his thirty-nine years as he
scrubbed his hands
for the fiftieth time that day.
His
favorite R.N., Debbie Brown, stopped mid-stride to look him
over, concern
in her blue eyes. "You all right?"
Ross
grimaced, wishing he had staged a comeback somewhere no one
would remember
the day he had keeled over. "I could do another twenty-
four," he
assured her. An outright lie, but he’d rather drop in his
tracks than
cop to the slightest hint of fatigue. Especially to the
veteran charge
nurse who all but ran the emergency department.
"Good,"
she said as she adjusted her clip to recapture a loose
strand of auburn
hair, "because Dr. Fleming’s still AWOL, and EMS just
radioed. We
have a big one in the works, just a couple of minutes out.
Thirty-eight-year-old
female, blunt head trauma, unresponsive and bleeding from a
laceration
to the skull. It’s Sheriff Wofford, Doctor —"
"Justine?"
Ross felt a jolt deep inside his chest that had nothing to
do with his
new implant.
Debbie’s
gaze sharpened, and her head tilted slightly. "That’s
right,"
she said after a brief pause. "You’re the one she always
asks for
when she brings in her son."
That
was how Ross’s affair with Justine had started this past
summer, a
little over four months earlier. Another set of stitches
and an x-ray
for her autistic nine-year-old. Another conversation about
ways to keep
the boy from harm. And suddenly, stupidly, he’d blurted out
that they
ought to discuss it over coffee.
Burning
fast and hot, the relationship had flamed out only six
weeks later.
And to Ross’s knowledge, no one else suspected anything had
ever happened.
Justine had insisted on that from the very start.
A
recent widow — her husband had been dead just seven months
when it
had started — she had insisted on a lot of things, promises
he’d
broken. Not to hope for more from her. Not to press her on
it. Since
he’d ended their relationship, not a day had gone by when
he didn’t
think about her, not even those days when the virus that
had slammed
him seemed more likely to kill him than relax its icy grip.
Debbie
went on to say, "She was injured on duty, so we’ll be ass-
deep in
badges before we know it."
Still
shaken, Ross nodded, remembering from his Houston trauma
center days
how protective first responders were when it came to their
own.
With
no other choice but to set aside his own emotions, he
downed an energy
drink to keep him going and emerged from the lounge as a
pair of EMTs
wheeled in the sheriff, limp and bleeding through the gauze
that partially
covered her loose, dark-brown hair. Strapped tightly to a
backboard
with her neck in a C-collar, the patient was pale, with her
shadowed
eyes closed.
Justine.
God. His adrenaline-steeped brain flashed on images of
the way they’d
parted, the pain in her dark eyes as she had turned to
leave him. Pain
that reminded him of his wife’s, when they had argued the
last day
he had seen her. The last time before the car she’d driven
was broadsided,
killing her on the spot.
Five
years’ worth of guilt washed over grief. Guilt that hit him
harder
than the virus that had attacked his heart. I can’t let
Justine
die, too. I have to stop it this time.
One of the EMTs rattled
off vitals as he and his partner whisked the stretcher past
a handful
of waiting patients and the usual check-in at the triage
station. "Injury
wasn’t witnessed, but deputies found an old golf club lying
near her,
blood and hair on the business end."
"A
golf club?" A newly-graduated nurse gaped, still green
enough to be
surprised at the damage one human being could inflict upon
another.
In
the exam room, Ross fell back on training and experience to
complete
the primary assessment. As he checked the patient’s airway,
breathing,
and circulation, he called repeatedly, "Sheriff Wofford.
Justine,
can you hear me?"
No
response, but she gasped and pulled away, her eyelids
flashing open
when he pressed the base of her nail bed to check her
response to pain.
She attempted speech, too, though the words came out a
jumbled murmur.
With
a groan, she struggled to turn, and Debbie had a basin out
in time to
catch the vomit.
"We’re
going to need a chest x-ray, then head and spinal CT, CBC
and let’s
type and screen," Ross said as they began the secondary
assessment.
"Justine,
are you with us?" he repeated. "I need you looking at me."
No
discharge from the ears or nose, and the laceration above
her right
ear seemed to have mostly clotted. No bruising patterns
that would indicate
a basilar skull fracture, either, and her pupils looked and
reacted
normally.
Yet
she seemed disoriented and lethargic, drifting off as he
used a pair
of trauma shears and both nurses’ assistance to remove her
clothing.
Swallowing hard, he tried not to think about the last time
he had seen
her naked. Tried not to recall the way she had responded
when he’d
trailed kisses to her navel, laving his tongue in the
depression before
—
You’re
a damned professional. Act like one.
Ross
wrenched his mind back on track and completed the head to
toe check.
Finding no further injuries visible and her blood pressure
holding steady,
he refocused on the head wound.
With
years of emergencies under his belt, he had the procedure
down cold.
Yet the work itself, the adrenaline rush that went hand in
hand with
trauma, left him spent, reminding him it had been months
since he had
done this. But part of his fatigue, he suspected, was the
backwash of
emotion, the flood of memories of times when he and Justine
had laughed
and fought and made love with such intensity that the
outside world,
even their past lives, disappeared.
A
half-hour later, he was looking at Justine’s CAT scans when
Carolyn,
the triage nurse, came in, a flush creeping from her
neckline toward
the roots of her cropped gray hair. "There’s getting to be
quite
a crowd out in the waiting room." Above her squared-off
glasses, her
brow settled into well-worn worry grooves. "They’re getting
awfully
impatient."
Ross
nodded, understanding that, federal privacy laws or not,
Justine’s
deputies would come down hard on anybody refusing to
disclose details
of her condition. Which still worried him, though nothing
on the films
jumped out as serious.
"Family
member out there I can talk to? Patient’s father, maybe?"
He remembered
the man, a weathered rancher type with woolly white brows
and a John
Wayne-style swagger, who’d come in the last time Noah cut
himself.
Ross
recalled the warning in Justine’s dark eyes, her unspoken
plea that
he say nothing, do nothing to give away the fact that the
two of them
were intimate. That moment, the realization that he would
never be anything
to her but a dirty little secret had been what led to their
unraveling,
even more than her unwillingness to explain the newspaper’s
allegations.
"He’s
on his way, I’m told." Carolyn looked desperate. "If you
could
— just offer a word on her condition. Deputy’s out there.
Roger
Savoy. He seems to speak for the rest, and he’s giving me
all kinds
of attitude."
Ross
glanced back toward his patient. "Why don’t you let them
know we’re
still waiting for the —"
Justine
opened her eyes before speaking, her words so low Ross had
to lean in
to hear them. "You can tell that bastard Savoy — tell all
of them
they’re not getting rid of me this easy."
Ross
took her hand and squeezed it, smiling to hear her more
coherent. Her
contrariness was music to his ears. "I’ll let them know if
that’s
what you’d like. But first, can you tell me your name?"
"You
know — Justine Truitt. And my head’s killing me."
It
was her maiden name, he remembered, and asked her to tell
him the day
of the week and the current President. She couldn’t recall
the first
and started out wrong on the latter, but corrected herself
quickly before
adding, "Come on, Ross. You have something in this place
for a headache?
And coffee — Good Lord, do I need coffee."
Stroking
her hand with his thumb, he ignored his body’s surge of
recognition,
the relief of homecoming and reminded himself she was a
patient. "Do
you know where you are?"
She
looked up at him. "My home away from home, right? County
Regional.
But I usually bring…" She stiffened. "Where’s Noah? Was
there
an accident? Was he with me in the—"
"He
wasn’t with you when you were brought in. You were hurt on
duty. Can
you tell me what happened?"
Justine
shook her head slightly, then squinched her eyes and
groaned. "Stomach
hurts."
Debbie,
who’d stepped back in the room at Carolyn’s bidding,
grabbed a basin,
but this time, Justine managed to regroup.
Still,
Ross ordered an anti-nausea medication, as well as
something for the
pain. "You took quite a knock to the head. Do you remember
any of
it?"
"I
was… driving out to Tanager Trail. I have to tell Mrs.
LeJeune her
son is — somebody has to let her know Caleb’s dead. I get
in a wreck
on the way there?"
Caleb
LeJeune’s dead? But Ross kept his focus on his patient.
"The
EMTs said you were found outside your vehicle," he said. "I
think
Charlie mentioned it was Dee LeJeune called it in."
"Dee…
did I? Does she know? About her son? And the little ones,
are they—?"
"Right
now you need to concentrate on feeling better. We’ll be
checking you
over and admitting you for observation. You were out cold
for quite
a while, so we need to watch for—"
"I
have to get home right now. My sitter’ll be so pissed if
I’m late.
She has a really hot date… I think. Was that tonight?"
Justine struggled
to sit up.
Ross
pressed a firm hand to her shoulder. Though she six feet
tall or close
to it, she was in no shape to fight him. "You’re hurt,
Justine,
and still disoriented. You’re not going anywhere."
Her
nearly-black eyes caught his gaze and held it, her
expression so intent
it made him want to confess that even now, three months
after their
affair had ended, he dreamed of Justine in vivid detail,
reliving the
silken glide of her long hair past his erection, the way
her dark eyes
watched him take her breast into his mouth. Reliving and
regretting
that he’d left her thinking that he had had his fill of
her. That
he ever could.
"What
do you care?" Her tone reminded him he’d been the one to
end it.
"What do you care if I leave?"
"I’m
your doctor." Ross picked up her chart and pretended to
check his
notes. Better that than seeing the accusation, the
lingering pain in
her face. "But even if I weren’t, I’d still—"
"Do
you have any idea how tough it is to find qualified
caregivers for a
boy like Noah?"
He
risked frowning at her, thinking she must break down
criminals every
day at work with that look of hers. "Do you
have any idea how tough it is to find a qualified parent?
Especially
for a boy like Noah, should you, let’s say, end up a
drooler if there’s
a brain bleed I’ve missed." He was still waiting for a
Dallas radiologist
to fax him an official verdict. "Or if you simply walk out
of here
and drop dead."
Justine
grimaced, splashes of color coming to her cheeks, reminding
him of their
final argument. But she needed a swift dose of reality, and
a blunt
delivery drove the risks home faster than a barrage of med-
school jargon.
"Point
taken, Doctor…" she said after a pause. "And you — how are
you
doing? I heard about…"
She
patted the hospital gown she had been dressed in, just
above her left
breast, concern in her expression. But there was caution
there, too,
the wariness of a woman who’d been burned.
"I’m
fine now," he answered easily. "Got your card. Thanks."
"I
wanted to — You left town." She avoided his eyes.
Uncomfortable,
he changed the subject. "Tell me the year again."
Her
face flushed. "I don’t want to do this. I don’t think we
should…
Is there another doctor on duty?"
"Not
right now, unless you want me to call in someone." When she
hesitated,
he added, "Come on, Justine. We can be professional about
this…
or would you rather have the nurses wondering what the
problem could
be?"