The Woman Who Couldn't Scream

  Faintly Benedict heard Carmen Mendoza moan under her breath.

  Dawkins took the opportunity to launch into a college-level literature lecture in which he cited his years at Oxford and the Sorbonne. His pontificating encouraged low buzzing conversations to start and swell, and Nauplius Brassard flushed with irritation—he did not enjoy losing his place in the spotlight or being told what to do—and tried to interrupt.

  Oblivious, Dawkins rambled on.

  Without asking, the bar staff delivered another round of stiff drinks.

  The band came in; the musicians played guitar and keyboard; the singer was thin, young, attractive and handled the microphone with an expertise that spoke of long familiarity. They began the first set.

  Dawkins held forth until his wife touched his hand and they left to find the dessert buffet.

  With a pretty smile, Helen pushed Brassard’s drink toward him.

  Brassard folded his arms over his chest, transferring his irritation to her.

  She tried to sign to her husband, to cajole him into a better mood.

  He turned his head away.

  When she persisted, he whipped around to face her, caught her wrists and effectively rendered her mute.

  At once she stopped her attempt, and when he released her, she contemplated the champagne in her flute and drank.

  An interesting scene, Benedict thought. Helen was Brassard’s whipping boy. What kind of background created a woman so greedy she would put up with that kind of abuse?

  Of course, when Nauplius Brassard died, she would be wealthy beyond imagining. Legend had it that Nauplius had grown up on the streets of Marseilles, a scrawny vindictive thief; by the time he was twenty he had made his first million. Now he was still scrawny, still vindictive, but worth billions.

  Carmen Mendoza began to hum and then to sing in a warm contralto, and within five minutes she had kicked off her shoes and stood before the band dancing. Before another minute had passed Juan Carlos had taken the female high school teachers onto the floor and the male high school teachers had joined them on the fringes, gyrating sheepishly.

  Reginald Bardzecki, the eighty-year-old corporate lawyer, stood and offered his hand to Helen. She glanced at the still-fuming Brassard, smiled defiantly, removed her heels and joined Reginald. Unlike anyone else on the floor, they danced like experts. He led, she followed, the two of them staging a series of ballroom moves that only two people who reveled in the music could perform.

  The musicians played. The staff and dancers stopped and watched.

  Benedict leaned back in his chair and appreciated the sight. Then instinct led him to glance toward the other end of the table.

  Nauplius Brassard sat glaring at the elderly man who spun his youthful smiling wife across the floor.

  And Benedict remembered what Abigail had said about Nauplius Brassard: He is dangerous. We take care never to displease him … Benedict thought Helen would suffer for her insubordination.

  The song ended. The dancers came back to the table, flushed and laughing. They ordered drinks and complimented Reginald and Helen on their skill.

  Helen seated herself next to her husband, keeping a few careful inches away from his simmering resentment.

  The next song started. Carmen pulled Benedict to the dance floor and taught him flamenco. When he felt he’d made a fool of himself for long enough, Benedict started back toward the table.

  The Brassards were gone.

  The next morning, a helicopter arrived and lifted Nauplius Brassard and his wife off the ship.

  * * *

  Thirteen months later, Nauplius Brassard died of a brain aneurysm.

  His children, all in their forties, moved swiftly to eject his young wife, Helen, from the Brassard Paris home.

  They discovered her designer wardrobe, her jewels and all the furnishings intact.

  The fortune Brassard had set aside in a bank account under her name had vanished—and so had she.

  * * *

  Less than forty-eight hours later, one of Nauplius Brassard’s legal team was found murdered, slashed to death in her office.

  The French police feared a copycat killer, one imitating the serial killer who two years before had died in a Canadian prison.

  To their relief, no further murders followed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Washington’s Olympic Peninsula In the mountains

  Officer Rupert Moen steered the speeding patrol car around sharp corners, up steep rises and through washouts caused by spring rains. Sweat stained his shirt, ruddy blotches lit his cheeks and the middle of his forehead. He was young, with the sheriff’s department for only a couple of years, shy and never the brightest bulb in the chandelier. But damn, put that kid behind the wheel and he could drive.

  Sheriff Kateri Kwinault’s only jobs were to lean into the curves and keep him calm. In the soothing voice she had perfected during her time as regional Coast Guard commander, she said, “Four wheels on the ground. Don’t skid on the gravel. Your job is keep that car in sight. We’ve got a helicopter on its way and every law enforcement officer on the peninsula moving into position.”

  Like a Celtic warrior, Moen was all wild red hair and savage grins. “This road is a real bitch, isn’t it?”

  “It’s … interesting.” Kateri purposefully kept her gaze away from the almost vertical plunge on her side of the car, away from the equally vertical rise on the other side.

  “Goddamn interesting.” With flashing lights and a blast of the electronic air horn, Moen harried the black Dodge SRT Hellcat that raced ahead of them. “This time we’d better catch those bastards.”

  “Yes.” The Terrances, father and son, were bastards and worse: drug dealers, meth cookers, jail escapees, drive-by shooters … and murderers.

  Kateri corrected herself. Attempted murderers. No one was dead … yet.

  She checked the dash cam; she wanted video of every last moment of this capture. “I hope the roadblocks stopped all unofficial vehicles. We don’t want to meet someone in a head-on.”

  “Not much traffic up here this spring. Too much runoff. Good thing, considering.”

  Considering the steep and narrow gravel road, considering the speed, considering no civilian wanted to encounter John Senior and John Junior. Well, except for those few locals who monitored their police frequency radio scanners and were delighted when they could actively observe or participate in law enforcement activities—especially pursuits. So far, there hadn’t been a problem; in this case, the public had been of assistance.

  This was wild country. All the things that made the Olympic Peninsula a hiker’s and boater’s paradise—steep mountains, dense forests, wild beaches and hidden inlets—made it ideal for two fugitives intent on evading arrest. Except, oh gee, if the Terrances had been hidden in a cave or deep in the woods, they would have had no Wi-Fi, no radio reception, no way to contact the outside world.

  The public and law enforcement had been put on alert and for three intensive days, the hunt had pulled in county, city and state police to patrol the roads as well as the Coast Guard to cruise the Pacific coast. The hunt had been publicized by local news media with the warning, “If seen do not attempt to apprehend; contact your local law enforcement agency.” Finally alert citizen Pauline Nitz had spotted the black Dodge SRT Hellcat speeding along one of the isolated roads and the chase was on.

  Now, spitting gravel and raising dust, Kateri and Moen led a line of Virtue Falls Police Department cars in hot pursuit.

  Moen’s white knuckles gripped the wheel. “Hold on.” He steered them over a series of washboards that rattled everything in the car and made Kateri moan and press her hand to her side. He glanced at her. “Sorry, Sheriff.”

  “Not your fault,” she said. Four days ago, while Kateri sat in the window of the Oceanview Café, celebrating her surprise election to the office of sheriff, the Terrances had sprayed bullets through the windows. One of their bullets had skipped off her ribs like a flat stone off the rippled
surface of a river, leaving her broken and bloody and sore as hell, but not seriously wounded.

  Instead, they’d put two bullets into Virtue Falls’s beloved waitress, busybody, and local wise woman, Rainbow Breezewing. Now Rainbow rested in the hospital hooked up to ventilators and drips, unmoving, unconscious. The doctors told Kateri that Rainbow didn’t have a chance. They said Rainbow’s coma was a blessing, for she was dying. Dying …

  “The Terrances are slowing down.” Moen moved closer to the Hellcat’s bumper.

  “Maybe they’re out of gas.” That would be too wonderful—and too lucky since as far as Kateri could tell, the Terrances had stashed fuel and food all up and down the coast. “I don’t believe it. Back off.”

  Moen sighed noisily, but did as he was told.

  She leaned forward, trying to figure out what they were up to. “Be care—”

  John Terrance, Junior or Senior, goosed the black Dodge SRT and threw it into a skid that sent the car sideways, passenger side toward the pursuers.

  “Don’t T-bone him!” Kateri shouted.

  Moen downshifted, eased off the gas and in the excessively patient tone of the very young toward the very old (Kateri was thirty-four), he said, “I know what I’m doing, Sheriff.”

  The SRT’s passenger door flew open. Something tumbled out.

  Someone tumbled out.

  Moen screamed, “Shit son of a bitch!”

  Kateri yelled, “Don’t hit him. Don’t run over him!”

  Moen slammed on his brakes, locked up all four wheels, making the patrol car a high-speed toboggan propelled by inertia and momentum.

  No way to avoid the collision.

  The patrol car’s left front tire caught the body. The car went airborne.

  “The tree!” Moen shouted.

  They rammed it, a giant Douglas fir, square on.

  The airbags exploded.

  Kateri was smashed against the back of her seat. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see. She was drowning.

  She fought the hot white plastic out of her face. The airbag was already deflating … she tore off her sunglasses. White dust covered them, covered the interior of the car. The siren blared. She needed to catch her breath—

  Moen looked in the rearview mirror and yelled, “They can’t stop. They’re going to nail us!”

  “Who?”

  “Cops!”

  Another explosion of sound and motion as they were rammed in the right rear fender. Metal scraped. Fir needles rained down. The impact spun the patrol car sideways, wrenched the stitches over Kateri’s ribs. The wound opened, one torn stitch at a time. Icy-hot pain slithered up her nerves. Warm blood trickled down her side.

  Moen opened his door.

  Through the ringing in her ears, Kateri heard the roar of an engine. Was another vehicle going to hit them? Or worse—had John Senior escaped?

  Moen unbuckled his seat belt. “You okay, Sheriff?”

  “Yes.” She pressed the pad of her bandage. “Go.”

  He leaped out and ran toward the unmoving body in the middle of the road.

  Had they inadvertently killed a hostage?

  Someone yanked open her door. “Sorry, Sheriff, when you fishtailed, we couldn’t stop.” A moment, then a face thrust into hers. “You okay, Sheriff?”

  Kateri blinked at the star-pattern of pain before her eyes.

  The face belonged to Deputy Sheriff Gunder Bergen. Good guy. Good law officer. Second in command. He knew stuff.

  “Who did we hit?” she asked. “Did we kill him?”

  “Moen’s coming.”

  Moen stuck his head in the driver’s door. He leaned a hand on the steering wheel and one on the seat and spoke to her. “The body was John Junior. He was already dead. Like … there was no rigor mortis so a few days ago, right?”

  Bergen inched in farther, leaned a hand on the dashboard. “We’re getting the coroner out here, but yeah. What killed him?”

  Moen switched his attention to Bergen. “Gunshot wound.”

  “Close range? His father shot him?” Bergen asked.

  The two men were talking over the top of her. Which was annoying as hell. “He shot his son so he could use the body as a diversion?” Kateri clicked her seat belt and let go.

  The buckle smacked Bergen on the thigh.

  He jumped back, bumped his head on the roof, looked surprised as the dog who ate the bumblebee.

  “No. I mean, maybe, but the shot was long range, entered the right side at about the liver. He bled out.” Moen looked hard at Kateri. “Sheriff, you don’t look much better than the corpse.”

  Bergen nodded. “Ambulance just pulled up. We’ll send her to the hospital.”

  Kateri said the obvious. “Don’t be silly. I’m fine.”

  “You sound just like my wife right before she collapsed with a ruptured appendix,” Bergen said.

  “I’m fine,” she repeated. The air coming in the door was hot. Wasn’t it? “Did we get John Senior?”

  Moen clearly didn’t want to give this report. “The diversion worked. He gunned it. Road was too narrow. No one could get past us. He’s gone.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Now I’m not fine.” As her brief burst of hope faded, Kateri felt each torn stitch. “Hand me my walking stick.”

  Moen pulled it out of the backseat and passed it to Kateri.

  Four years ago, an earthquake had hit the coast of Washington. Kateri Kwinault had been the regional Coast Guard commander. She had lost her Coast Guard cutter in the resulting tsunami, saved her crew, been sucked out to sea and drowned by the frog god …

  She said, “Moen, move the cars and the body and get after John Terrance.”

  “If we do that, Sheriff, we’ll compromise the evidence.”

  She looked at Moen. Looked at him.

  “Right away, ma’am.” He ducked out of the car.

  She could hear him shouting instructions. “Good boy,” she muttered.

  Some people thought she was nuts thinking she had seen the frog god, that ancient god who lived in the depths of the ocean and whose leap caused the earth to move and the tsunamis to rise. Some people made snotty comments about her belief that she had died and been resurrected. But after too much time in the hospital, too many operations, too many joint replacements and months of rehabilitation—after surviving when she should have died—she didn’t care what anyone thought. She knew what she knew.

  So she used a genuine Lord of the Rings Gandalf-tested polished walnut staff to help her get around … Maybe it wasn’t truly Gandalf-tested. But it was genuine walnut.

  To Bergen she said, “Terrance is up here for a reason. He’s got a hideout and supplies. Find out where.”

  “Will do.” Bergen stepped back. “As soon as I see you get yourself out of the car.”

  Cautiously she swung her legs around to the ground. Took a breath. Yeah, it was hot. Summer solstice, almost July, surprising for Washington State even-in-the-summer hot. Kateri put a hand on the door and one on the stick and tried to stand.

  A few inches off the seat—and she dropped back.

  Mistake. Such a mistake.

  After The Earthquake, she had suffered so much pain, she should be inured to it.

  Nope. Pain still hurt, and something about having stitches ripped out of already shredded skin nauseated her to the point of … She breathed deeply, staying conscious. “I’m not going in the damned ambulance,” she muttered.

  Bergen swore at her in some Scandinavian-sounding language.

  “Mean. Considering.” She crooked her finger to him, and when he leaned close she said, “Look. I’m not being stubborn or foolish. I was elected four days ago. By two votes. Had a drive-by shooting in the first few hours of my office. I was shot. Rainbow was critically wounded. Worse, the crime was committed by felons who escaped from custody. Tourists freaked out and left town. City council wants my head.”

  “Like they didn’t already want it.” But Bergen was beginning to comprehend.
r />   “Business owners are screaming. July fourth is in two weeks. If I don’t capture John Terrance, we’re going to have a financial disaster. And we just lost him again.” She stared Bergen in the eyes. “I’ll go to the hospital, but not flat on my back in an ambulance. Get someone to drive me and I’ll by God walk into the emergency room under my own power. You stay and handle this situation. We have to catch that guy and not just for the tourist trade or to keep Virtue Falls citizens secure. You know why? For Rainbow. She deserves to have justice.”

  Bergen stared right back at her. “You deserve justice, too, Kateri.”

  He didn’t call her by her first name very often. Usually only when he and his wife, Sandra, had her over for dinner. Or in moments of great stress … Kateri supposed this boondoggle qualified as great stress. “We’ll have justice. Bergen, make sure the memory on this dash cam is safe. Back it up as many times as you can. When we capture John Terrance and he tries to sue us for running over his beloved son, that’s our insurance that we’ll come out clean.”

  “Will do. I’ll make sure we’ve saved the memory on any other camera that might have captured the action, too.” He stood and glanced around, then leaned in briefly. “Someone’s coming who can help you get down to the hospital on your terms.”

  “Thanks.” She closed her eyes, listened to Bergen shout instructions to the assembled police, and hoped the someone who would drive her was not Moen. With her ribs, she didn’t think she could survive a trip down the mountain at the same breakneck speed they’d come up.

  A man’s warm, reassuring voice spoke close beside her, “Don’t worry. I’m here.”

  Familiar, but definitely not Moen.

  Without hesitation, the guy slid an arm around her waist, down under her butt and handled her out of the patrol car.

  She opened her eyes wide.

  Oh. Now she knew who it was.

  Stag Denali. Bouncer. Enforcer. A Native American with rumored connections to the Mob. A man who had served time for murder. The guy who was bringing a casino to the local reservation. Rainbow had once expressed a wish to see him running through the forest naked. Kateri had … in a figurative sense.