Because I'm Watching

  “Thanks, Berk,” Jacob said with a fair amount of irony.

  “You’re welcome, Jakie,” Moore said with an equal amount of sarcasm.

  The truck pulled up to the curb. Two guys got out, opened the back, unloaded a footstool and a black leather recliner—not just any leather recliner, one of those expensive Scandinavian recliners that rocked, had a drink holder in the arm and, if the right music was played, could line dance—and carried it up into the sooty living room. They put the new recliner down, moved the old recliner out of the house, moved the new recliner into its place.

  One of the men—Leo, if the stitching on his overalls was to be believed—looked around until he located Jacob. “Mr. Denisov? Would you sign here, please?”

  Jacob took the iPad and signed on the line.

  Leo took the iPad, read the form, and recited, “This is for you, a gift from Mr. Wodzicki of Wodzicki Insurance, and he hopes you get many years of enjoyment from sitting in it.”

  Jacob’s eyes narrowed on the small brass plaque attached to the back of the chair.

  Leo pulled his phone out of his pocket and found his camera app. “Mr. Denisov, if you’d sit in the recliner, Mr. Wodzicki would like a picture for his collection.” He held up his phone as if expecting Jacob to obey like a well-trained dog.

  Instead, Jacob got on one knee and read the inscription: A gift from insurance agent Dennis Wodzicki to our local military hero, Jacob Denisov. We will never forget.

  In a determinedly level voice, Jacob asked, “Has Mr. Wodzicki taken a photo of the plaque?”

  “Yes, sir,” Leo said. “He’s going to frame it and the photo of you in the chair and put it on his wall.”

  Web groaned.

  Moore snorted.

  Jacob smiled. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

  Leo wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box; he couldn’t figure out why all the construction men took a step back. “Why not?”

  Jacob sucked in a deep breath of fresh morning air. Standing, he grabbed the chair by the back and one arm and swung it up over his head. Walking to the edge of the makeshift porch, he roared like a berserker and flung it as hard as he could into the middle of the yard.

  Leo’s cohort stood there, wide-eyed, while Leo sputtered, “But … you … he … the chair … publicity…”

  Jacob turned toward him, clenched his fists, flexed his shoulders, and roared again.

  Leo’s cohort broke and ran.

  Leo shook his head and said, “I’m going to be in trouble.”

  Moore said, “Kid, if you don’t get out of here, you’re going to be dead.”

  Jacob stalked toward Leo.

  Leo looked out at the chair, catawampus in the lawn. He looked at Jacob. He fled, jumping off the porch, and bounding toward the truck.

  Jacob stopped, breathing hard.

  As if nothing untoward had happened, Web wandered over. “You signed for that, right?”

  “The chair?” Jacob nodded.

  “So it’s yours, right?”

  Jacob lowered his head and glared evilly at Web.

  Nothing ever seemed to perturb Web. Probably because he towered over everyone. “Here’s what I’m thinkin’. The women’s shelter could use something like that, a nice chair for nursing mothers and abused old ladies. What say I take it down there and donate it in your name?”

  Jacob didn’t even have to think about it. “And the footstool.”

  “And the footstool. On the way back, I’ll stop by my mother-in-law’s and grab the old recliner off her front porch. It’s my dad-in-law’s. The family got him a new recliner for Christmas. He put the new one in the living room and the old one out where he could sit in the summer, look through the window, see the TV, and watch baseball. He loves that thing. But he’s the softest-hearted guy in the world. If I tell him the chair is for a veteran, he’ll offer it gladly. And if you take it, you’ll make my mother-in-law happy because that broken recliner sits there lopsided on her porch, and makes them look like white trash.” Web’s mouth twitched as if he wanted to grin. “Her words, not mine.”

  Jacob thought it over. Seemed like an honest proposition, one that screwed that pompous windbag Dennis Wodzicki, gave homeless women someplace to rest their weary bones, did a favor for Web’s mother-in-law, and at the same time got him—Jacob—someplace to sit. “Yes.”

  “Good deal.” Web grabbed the footstool and headed toward his truck.

  “All right, everybody, we got another crisis solved.” Moore sounded so reasonable anyone hearing him would think he didn’t know a single curse word. “Let’s repair the damage from last night before Mrs. Butenschoen comes over and gives us one of her famous pies. So to speak.”

  Laughter from the men.

  “You!” Moore pointed at one of the framers. “Build us a kitchen table. Mr. Denisov might not give a damn, but we all use it for lunch and I want to be able to spread out the house plans that are going to be handed to me before the day is over.”

  Much nodding from the electricians, the plumbers, the framers, the drywall men.

  Moore continued, “If anybody’s got a lawn chair, Mr. Denisov can sit there and wait for his new used recliner.”

  More laughter.

  Moore turned unexpectedly grim. “While he sits, he can work on figuring out who didn’t want his house repaired and why. Because by God, this was most definitely a case of arson and I am one slightly annoyed construction manager.”

  The men nodded in agreement at Moore, then nodded sympathetically at Jacob and went to work.

  They left Jacob standing in the remains of his blackened kitchen, feeling oddly like an accepted part of the community and even more oddly like a sleuth who owed them an explanation for the destruction of their hard labor.

  Jacob hadn’t thought about it before, but Moore was right—if Mad Maddie hadn’t set fire to his house … who had?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  One thing about being this tired—to Kateri’s gaze, the world was skewed. The trees waved fingered branches; the wildflowers glowed with impossible colors; the houses, what few there were on this isolated county highway, tilted on their foundations; and the two lanes wavered from side to side. If she’d been driving, she would have put herself under arrest.

  But she had commandeered Moen as her chauffeur, given him several firm and aggressive lectures about how he represented Virtue Falls’s law enforcement and was not to harass Madeline Hewitson about anything ever again.

  He nodded and agreed.

  When she asked what he had been harassing Maddie about, he looked sheepish and chagrined, but other than assuring her it had not been sexual in nature, he would not talk. She believed him. But she wished she’d gotten a glimpse of the papers on Maddie’s desk.

  Now they scoured the county looking for anything they deemed unusual behavior, anywhere someone could be hiding an abused child.

  “Since you told us about Cordelia’s report, I’ve been viewing my neighbors differently.” Moen sounded earnest, with an edge of desperation. “This evening at Starbucks, I waited in line and eavesdropped on conversations. Then at Bell Groceries, I pushed my cart through the aisles and I watched what people put in their carts, trying to judge if they were buying for a kid they don’t officially have.”

  “That’s good,” she murmured. “Hear anything? See anything?”

  “No! But I don’t like being suspicious of people I have known my whole life.”

  “I hear you.” He was right. Suspicion tainted everything.

  “I said I would sit at the end of the street and watch Miss Hewitson’s house, and I did, but first I cruised the streets, looking for windows with curtains that were never lifted, for sheds that were newly built, or for outbuildings with weird markings.”

  “Weird markings?”

  His voice lowered to a whisper. “Like … if someone is performing dark magic.”

  She wished she could scoff at the idea. But he had a point. People who liked to inflic
t pain sometimes wanted blood and skin for rites better left in the Dark Ages.

  Her eyelids drifted down. A dream started in her head, about a little girl in a cage.… Her head nodded. She jerked herself back into wakefulness, held her eyes wide and her back stiff.

  “You can take a nap, you know,” Moen said. “Everyone knows you’re working too many hours, and I won’t tell if you sleep on the job.”

  “I can’t do it.”

  He slanted a look at her.

  “I mean, I can, but I don’t want to. I dream about that little girl … and I’m afraid law enforcement will never find the people who held that child captive, and she’ll live out her days in darkness and abuse.”

  “We’ll find her. We’ve just started looking. Give it some time.”

  Moen was a nice kid. She needed to remember that … when he was making her insane with his seemingly pointless inanities and wistful sighs. “I don’t want to give it some time. The longer it takes, the more likely my officers would blab, and like all things in a small town, the news will spread like wildfire and the captor will move his victim.”

  “We won’t talk,” Moen said stoutly.

  Now she looked sideways at him.

  He squirmed. “Yes, it’s a possibility. My dad says law enforcement is a gossip factory and if you’re going to solve a crime, you have to do it fast.”

  “I remember your dad. He was a law officer and a good one.”

  “Until he was shot on the job. Now he’s disabled and proud of me for doing what I’m doing.” Moen did not glow with the filial gratification she would have expected. “He also says”—Moen swallowed—“that half of the officers aren’t going to seriously look for an abused girl because the warnings came from a female everyone thinks is crazy.”

  “Me or Cordelia?” Kateri asked drily.

  Moen looked alarmed. “No one thinks you’re crazy!”

  “Your dad doesn’t think I’m crazy for listening to someone who’s crazy?”

  Moen was squirming now. “No. No! He thinks … he does think … he says that if you’re going to win the election, you should stick with tried-and-true law enforcement techniques.”

  “Did your father never go with his gut?” It was a shrewd question; most officers had their occasional flashes of intuition.

  “If he did, I’ve never heard him admit it.”

  “Is he always right?”

  Moen looked wretched. “He is.”

  “Then I guess we ought to…” They cruised around a sharp corner, and Kateri focused her bleary eyes on the acreage surrounded by towering forest. Rusty cars cluttered an unkempt lawn. A ramshackle house sat at the end of a pitted gravel driveway … and at the back of the lot sat a new and suspiciously well-kept shop. “We ought to…”

  “We ought to what?” Moen asked.

  In a voice that was suddenly brisk, she said, “We ought to look closely at the Terrance place.”

  Moen focused on the home … and the shop. He slowed. “I know them. John Junior was two years ahead of me in school. Biggest bully in town. Beat me up until I got taller than him.”

  “Then?”

  “Then I punched him out.”

  “Heh!” Kateri was glad to hear it.

  “He whined to the principal and got me in big trouble.”

  “That figures. A bully and a coward.” John Senior was a bully, too, and a single father whose legacy to his son was bad manners, a nasty attitude, and a predisposition to evil. Once upon a time, the two had fixed cars. Probably still did. Both men were the kind who, if they caught a woman’s eyes, leered and adjusted their manly plumbing. Because if there was one thing that attracted a woman, it was a guy with jock itch. “Go past, then turn around,” she said. “Park and I’ll go check things out.”

  After the next curve, Moen made a U-turn. He pulled into a wide spot on the shoulder and prepared to unbuckle his seat belt. “I’ll go with you.”

  Leaning over, she put her hand on Moen’s arm and smiled into his face. “Rupert, there’s a reason my people survived in the deep, dark forests of the New World. We have black hair that flies in the breeze. We have bronze skin that blends into the bark of the trees. We have dark eyes that watch—”

  “Are you screwing with me?”

  She straightened up. “Maybe a little. But for sure a man with red hair, white skin, and freckles can’t skulk through the forest, so you have to stay here.”

  “If you’re not back in fifteen minutes, I’m calling Bergen.” The kid was good with a threat.

  “Make it twenty.” She took her walking stick and exited the car. She walked back along the side of the road, and when she reached the edge of the Terrance property, she skirted the forest and stopped beside an immense Douglas fir. Here she had a good view of the property—and of the hungry-looking Rottweiler that bounded out of the yard, barking furiously.

  Poor dog. He never had a chance. Within seconds she had looked him in the eyes, fed him a treat, scratched his ears, then his belly, and told him her cocker spaniel Lacey would teach him a lesson or two about manners.

  She knelt beside him; he whined and wiggled in ecstasy while she observed the property with a keen eye. To her surprise, a current-model black muscle car was parked behind the shop: a Dodge SRT Hellcat with air intakes cut into the engine hood. Clean and waxed, it gleamed in the sunlight. Was that a car John Senior and John Junior were fixing? Not likely. It was this year’s top-of-the-line model. Nothing should be broken. Yet it must be, for how else could they afford it?

  The possible answer made her feel sick.

  The house’s back door opened. The two Johns came out and headed toward the shop; they grinned like boys going for a treat. Kateri noted that, before they could enter, they had to deactivate an alarm and unlock the door. Most people in Virtue Falls didn’t bother locking their doors, and as far out of town as these two were, she wouldn’t have thought the Johns would have to bother. Perhaps they were paranoid about their tools. But locked doors in the middle of the day and an alarm system—that bumped her suspicions to a new level.

  Before they opened the door, they looked around, searching for … what? Observers?

  As she had promised Moen, they didn’t see her, dressed in her khaki uniform and kneeling in the dirt in the shade. They hurriedly stepped inside and shut the door. If they turned on a light, she couldn’t tell because … black paint covered the windows.

  She distinctly heard the lock turn. She waited for another five minutes to see if they came out again. With two more treats to the hungry dog and a final rib scratch, she walked back to the cruiser and nodded to Moen’s unspoken question. “We’ve found something,” she said.

  They drove toward town, and ten minutes down the road toward the coast a black car roared up behind them, John Senior at the wheel. As he passed, he flipped them off.

  For him to be so bold, that car must really have muscle under the hood. Or perhaps it was his contempt for a female law officer. Or maybe he was high. She didn’t care what his reason was. That behavior had given her another excuse to obtain a search warrant.

  Which she did. With Rupert and ten of her officers, she raided the Terrance property. They had to break down the metal door to the shop to get in, and once they were in, they had to dodge bullets aimed from John Junior’s pistol.

  It was an ugly arrest.

  Her officers dragged John Junior out of the lab while he shrieked insults and promises of violence directed at them and, when he saw Kateri, at her in particular. He would rape her, he promised, while she screamed and begged, and when he was finished with her, he would cut her up, piece by piece, and feed her to the fishes.

  Her men hustled him away.

  Bergen said, “Sheriff, please be careful. Meth has eaten his brain.”

  “It didn’t have much to work with.”

  He didn’t even crack a smile. “If he gets out on bail—”

  “Let us hope the judge does not allow that to happen.”

  There
was no female being held captive, but what they found there put Kateri on the front page of their tiny newspaper and made her a hero throughout western Washington.

  They had discovered a large, efficient, fully functioning meth lab, the one that law had been seeking for more than a year.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Coast Guard had been put on alert and captured John Senior on the coast, loading meth onto a small and beautiful schooner flying the Malaysian flag. The vessel tried to escape; the Coast Guard fired a warning shot, and when that didn’t stop the schooner, they fired another shot to disable the vessel’s power. While it foundered, they took command, arrested the five-man crew, and returned the schooner to port under auxiliary power.

  Over the next few days, Kateri spent as much time as she could spare watching the men in the hazmat suits clean out the Terrances’ shop. All the while she hoped fervently that they would find no captives, and even more important, no bodies. If they did, of course, that would wrap up the investigation, yet she cringed at the idea of a young woman subjected to a combination of brutal rape, torture, and those chemicals.

  No persons or bodies were found. A relief, and yet …

  She was filling out the paperwork when her administrative assistant knocked at her open door. “Sheriff, Lieutenant Commander Luis Sanchez is here to see you.”

  “Good. He can help me fill in the details on the Terrance case.”

  “I don’t think that’s what he’s here for.”

  Kateri stared at Mona’s knowing smirk. “Then what…?”

  Luis stepped into the doorway, holding a small bouquet of red roses.

  Kateri wanted to drop her head onto her hands. The man had walked through city hall carrying red roses. Within a few hours, rumor would have her engaged, married, divorced, pregnant, and/or transferring with her new lover/husband out of Virtue Falls to some “exotic” locale such as the Texas Gulf Coast.