Strangers in the Night

“You saw him?” Jackson asked sharply.

  “He helped us get a tree out of the highway. Anyway, we figured the storm had caught you. We didn’t want to take any chances, since you could have run into some other kind of trouble out here, so we came looking.”

  Jackson shook his head. He never would have figured Thaniel capable of that much brass; maybe that thick-headed act was more of an act than If so, he’d have to take Thaniel a lot more seriously than he had before. Walking down to the dock, he handed the shotgun to Alvin and stepped into the boat. “Well, let’s go to work,” he said. He turned and raised his hand. “Thanks for feeding me, Miss Jones.”

  “You’re welcome,” she called, smiling as she hugged her arms against the early-morning chill. She waved them good-bye, a wave both deputies returned, then went back into the house.

  Jackson settled onto a boat seat. “Y’all seem to know Miss Jones pretty well,” he said, driven by curiosity.

  “Sure.” Lowell got behind the wheel. “We went to school together.”

  It was such a prosaic answer that Jackson felt like smacking himself in the head. Of course she had attended school; she hadn’t lived her entire life marooned upriver. He had a mental image of a small, solemn Lilah sitting in that little flat-bottom boat, clutching her schoolbooks, being ferried back and forth in all kinds of weather.

  Because he wanted to know, he asked, “How did she get back and forth to school?”

  “Boat,” Alvin said. “Her daddy brought her. He’d take her to the park ramp, closest to school. If the weather was good, he’d walk her the rest of the way. If it was raining, a teacher would meet them and give her a ride.”

  At least he wouldn’t have to fret about that young Lilah being left alone at the boat docks, Jackson thought; her father had been concerned for her safety. Though why he would fret about something so long in the past was beyond him.

  The trip downriver was much more leisurely than his risky dash up it the day before. The swollen river was full of trash, making caution necessary. Jackson hoped he’d see two boats tied to the shore when they got to the ramp, but no such luck.

  “I wonder what Thaniel did with Jerry Watkins’s boat,” he growled.

  “No telling,” Lowell said. “The damn fool probably just turned it loose. Jerry will be fit to be tied; he set a store by that boat.”

  At least Jerry Watkins would have insurance on his boat; Jackson very much doubted Lilah would have it on hers. How would she replace it? He gave his bank account a quick mental check; one way or the other, Lilah would have another boat—by tomorrow, if he couldn’t find hers. He couldn’t bear the thought of her being completely stranded out there, though she was so damn competent he could see her hiking into town if necessary, even though it had to be twenty, maybe thirty miles around. But what if she got sick, or injured herself. She chopped her own wood, for God’s sake. He went cold at the thought of an ax buried in her foot.

  She had become more important to him, faster than anyone he had ever known. Twenty-four hours ago he hadn’t known she existed. Within two hours of meeting her, he’d been in bed with her, and he’d spent the most erotic, exciting night of his life in her arms. He had climaxed so many times he doubted he’d get a hard-on for days. Then he thought of Lilah, waiting for him, and a sudden pooling of heat in his groin told him he had miscalculated. He jerked his thoughts back to the day’s work before he embarrassed himself.

  The Watkins truck was still sitting where Charlotte had parked it, boat trailer still hitched to it. At least a tree hadn’t come down on the truck during the storms; that would be the final insult to a good deed. He looked around; there were some small branches scattered around the parking area, but nothing substantial.

  Lowell eased the boat into the bank and both Jackson and Alvin climbed out. While Alvin went to the truck to back the trailer into the water, Jackson surveyed the area. Yesterday he’d been in too much of a hurry to think about details, but now his cop’s eye swept the launch ramp, not missing a thing. The parking area was surprisingly large, given how isolated and little-used the launch ramp was. But … was it little-used? The area was free of weeds, showing that there was a good bit of traffic. The sandy dirt showed evidence of a lot of different tire tracks, more than he expected. That was strange, given what Jo had said about the best fishing being downriver.

  Lowell and Alvin competently took the boat out of the water. They had come in two vehicles, one county car and then the truck pulling the boat, which Jackson assumed they had borrowed from the Rescue Squad. That made five vehicles he could count since yesterday afternoon: his, Thaniel’s, Charlotte Watkins’s, and now these two. The rain had destroyed all but the deepest tracks, but he could still make out at least three more sets of tracks besides the ones he knew about.

  Now, why would there be so much river traffic up here? The fishing wasn’t good, and right past Lilah’s the river got too shallow for boat traffic. He tried to think of a logical explanation for the tracks. Being in law enforcement, his first thought was that maybe drug dealers were meeting here, but he discarded that idea. It was too open, and though Old Boggy Road wasn’t the busiest road in the world, there was occasional traffic on it. As if to prove it, at that moment a farmer drove by in a pickup truck, and he craned his neck to see what was going on.

  No, drug dealers would find a place where they were less likely to attract attention. So … who was coming here, and why?

  He strolled over to Lowell and Alvin. “This little ramp gets a lot of use, doesn’t it?”

  “A fair amount,” Lowell agreed.

  “Why?”

  They both gaped at him. “Why?” Alvin echoed.

  “Yeah. Why does it get so much use? Only someone who doesn’t know the river would come up here to fish.”

  To his surprise, both deputies shifted uncomfortably. Lowell cleared his throat. “I guess folks go to visit Lilah.”

  “Miss Jones?” Jackson clarified, wanting to make certain there wasn’t another Lilah in the area.

  Lowell nodded.

  Looking around the area, Jackson said, “From all these tire ruts, I’d say she gets a lot of company.” He tried to picture a steady stream of visitors to Lilah’s isolated little house upriver, but just couldn’t.

  “Some,” Lowell agreed. “A lot of women go to see her.” He coughed. “And—uh, some men, too, I guess.”

  “Why is that?” A variety of wild reasons ran through his mind. Marijuana? He couldn’t see Lilah growing marijuana, but the place was certainly isolated enough. He didn’t let himself seriously consider that. Women didn’t go to backwoods women for abortions anymore, either, so that was out. Nothing illegal, for sure, because his deputies obviously knew about whatever was going on up there, and had done nothing to stop it. The only thing he could think of that made sense was so ridiculous he couldn’t believe it.

  “Don’t tell me she really is a witch!” He could just see it now, boat after boat making its way upriver for spells and potions. She had denied the witch thing, said she didn’t know anything about spells, but in his experience people lied all the time. He dealt with serial liars on a daily basis.

  “Nothing like that,” Alvin said hastily. “She’s kind of an old-timey healer. You know, she makes poultices and stuff.”

  Poultices and stuff. Healer. Of course. It was so obvious, Jackson wondered that he hadn’t seen it. Relief spread through him. His imagination had been running wild, a sick feeling congealing in his gut. He had just found her, a woman who appealed to him on every level, and he couldn’t bear the thought of her being involved in something shifty. He didn’t know where this thing between him and Lilah was going, but he intended to follow it to the end.

  “It’s how she makes her living,” Lowell said. “People buy herbs and things from her. A lot of folks go to her rather than a doctor, because she’s so good at telling them what’s wrong.”

  He wanted to grin. Instead he collected his vest and shotgun from the boat and said, “Well
, let’s go round up Thaniel Vargas. Even if we get the boats back and Jerry Watkins doesn’t press charges against him, I want to scare about ten years off the bastard’s life.”

  8

  Thaniel Vargas was nowhere to be found. He had gone to ground somewhere, Jackson figured, waiting for the trouble to blow over. Because things were still kind of busy in the county, with the continuing power outage in Pine Flats and cleaning up from the storm, Jackson couldn’t devote a lot of time or manpower to finding him.

  More than anything, he wanted to get back upriver to Lilah’s house, but it just wasn’t possible that day. Besides the problems from the storm, the blue moon craziness was still in full force. At traffic court that day, a woman totally lost it and tried to get out of paying a speeding ticket by holding the judge hostage. Why anyone in her right mind would want to trade a simple fine of fifty bucks for a felony charge was beyond Jackson. Getting the courthouse settled down took several hours out of his day, hours when he needed to be somewhere else.

  He got home at midnight that night, tired and disgruntled and aching with frustration. He wanted Lilah. He needed Lilah, needed the simple serenity of her, the quietness of her home that was such a contrast to his hectic days. They had known each other for such a short period of time, he wasn’t certain that they had anything more than a one-night stand, brought about as much by circumstance as by mutual attraction. But he had been her first lover, her only lover; Lilah wasn’t the type of woman to have a one-night stand. For her, making love meant something. It had meant something to him, too, something more than any of his other love affairs.

  Lilah was special: honest, witty, with the bite of irony he enjoyed, and gutsy. She was also sexy as hell, with her well-toned, femininely muscled body and her cloud of curly hair that just begged to have his hands in it.

  Though he was her first lover, she hadn’t shrunk from anything he wanted to do. She had met him halfway in everything, enjoying what he did to her as much as he enjoyed doing it, and returning the favor. He couldn’t imagine such uncomplicated joy ever getting boring.

  Until now, his house had suited him perfectly. It was an older house, with high ceilings and cranky plumbing, but he’d had the main bathroom completely redone, and the kitchen, not that he was much on cooking. It had just seemed like a smart thing to do. His bed was big enough for him, not like Lilah’s too-short, too-narrow bed. They’d had to sleep double-decker, when they slept—not a big sacrifice. He’d liked having her sprawled on top of him, when he wasn’t on top of her.

  But now his house felt … empty. And noisy. He hadn’t realized until now how much noise a refrigerator made, or a water heater. The central air system blotted out the night’s sounds of crickets and the occasional chirp of a bird.

  He wanted Lilah.

  He took a cold shower instead, and crawled into his big, cold, empty bed, where he lay awake, muscles aching, eyes burning with fatigue, and thought of that first searing, electric moment when he pushed into Lilah’s body. That got him so hard he groaned, and he tried not to think about sex at all. But then her breasts came to mind, and he remembered the way her nipples had peaked in his mouth when he sucked her, and how she had moaned and squirmed when he went down on her.

  Sweat sheened his body, despite the air conditioning. Swearing, he got out of bed and took another cold shower. He finally got to sleep about two o’clock, only to dream erotic dreams and wake up needing, wanting Lilah even more than before.

  AT EIGHT TWENTY-ONE in the morning, Thaniel Vargas’s body was found floating in the river. He was easily identified because his wallet was still stuffed in his jeans pocket, along with a can of chewing tobacco. If it hadn’t been for his wallet, his own mother would have been hard-pressed to identify him, because he’d been shot in the face with a shotgun.

  “I don’t think he’s been dead long,” the coroner said, standing beside Jackson as the body was wrapped and loaded in a meat wagon. “The turtles and fish hadn’t been at him much. As fast as the river’s flowing, the current would have kept him on the surface, plus that dead branch his arm was tangled in gave him added buoyancy.”

  “How long?”

  “It’s just a guess, Jackson. I’d say … twelve hours or so. Hard to tell, when they’ve been in the water. But he was last seen night before last, so it couldn’t have been much longer than half a day.”

  Jackson stared at the river, a sick feeling shredding his guts into confetti as he thought this through. He plainly remembered Lilah staring at Thaniel and saying, “You’re dead,” in that flat, unemotional tone that had been even more chilling than if she had screamed it at him. And now Thaniel was dead, from a shotgun blast. Lilah had a shotgun. Had Thaniel gone back to her house yesterday, or even last night? Had she made good on her threat, if it had indeed been one?

  That was the best-case scenario, that Lilah had been forced to defend herself, or even that she had shot Thaniel at first sight. He didn’t like it, but he could understand if a woman alone shot first and asked questions later when a thug who had been shooting at her the day before came back for more target practice. He doubted the district attorney would even indict under those circumstances.

  Worst-case scenario, however, was the possibility that Lilah was lying in a pool of blood at her house, wounded or even dead. The thought galvanized him, sending pure panic racing through his bloodstream.

  “Hal, I need that boat!” he roared at the captain of the Rescue Squad, referring to the boat they had used to retrieve Thaniel’s body from the river. He was already striding toward the boat as he yelled.

  Hal looked up, his homely face showing only mild surprise. “Okay, Sheriff,” he said. “Anything I can help you with?”

  “I’m going up to Lilah Jones’s place. If Thaniel went back to shoot up the place again, she might be hurt.” Or dead. But he didn’t let himself dwell on that. He couldn’t, and still function.

  “If she’s hurt, she’ll need medical attention, and transport. I’ll call for another boat and follow you.” Hal undipped the radio from his belt and rapped out instructions.

  The Rescue Squad boats were built for stability, not speed, which was a good thing in the roiling river, with all the broken limbs and debris floating downstream, but Jackson still cursed the lack of speed. He needed to get to Lilah. Desperation gnawed at him, tearing at him with the knowledge that, if she had been shot, if she still lived, every second help was delayed could mean she wouldn’t survive. He knew gunshot wounds; damn few of them were immediately fatal. A head or heart shot were about the only ones that could kill on contact, and that wasn’t guaranteed.

  He couldn’t think of her lying bleeding and helpless, her life slowly ebbing away. He couldn’t. And yet he couldn’t stop, because his experience gave him graphic knowledge. Images rolled through his mind, an endless tape that made him sicker and sicker.

  “Please. God, please.” He heard himself praying aloud, saying the words into the wind.

  Getting to Lilah’s house took forever. He had started out much farther down the river than from the ramp on Old Boggy Road. He had to dodge debris, and a couple of times the boat shuddered over submerged limbs. The engine stalled the last time, but it restarted on the first try. If it hadn’t, he probably would have jumped into the river and swam the rest of the way.

  At last the house came into view, nestled under the trees. Heart pounding, he searched for any sign of life, but the morning was still and quiet. Surely Lilah would have come out on the porch when she heard the outboard motor, if she was there. But where else could she be? She had no means of transportation.

  “Lilah!” he yelled. “Lilah!” She had to be there, but he found himself hoping she wasn’t, hoping she had gone for a walk in the woods, or borrowed a boat from some of the multitude who evidently found their way to her house for folk remedies. He hoped—God, he hoped almost anything at all had taken her away from the house, rather than think she didn’t come out on the porch because she was lying somewhere dead or
dying.

  He nosed the boat up to the dock and tied it to the post. “Lilah!”

  Boots thudding, he raced up the dock just as he had two days before, but the adrenaline burn he’d felt then was nothing compared to the inferno he felt now, as if he might burst out of his skin.

  He leaped onto the porch, bypassing the steps. The windows on this side of the house were intact, he noted. He wrenched open the screen door and turned the knob of the main door; it was unlocked, and swung inward.

  He stepped into the cool, dim house, his head thrown up as he sniffed the air. The house smelled as before: fragrant and welcoming, the faint odor of biscuits lingering, probably from last night’s supper. The windows were up and pristine white curtains fluttered in the slight morning breeze. No odor of death hung like a miasma, nor could he detect the flat, metallic smell of blood.

  She wasn’t in the house. He went through it anyway, checking all four rooms. The house seemed undisturbed.

  He went outside, circling the house, looking for any signs of violence. Nothing. Chickens clucked contentedly, pecking at bugs. Birds sang. Eleanor waddled out from under the porch, still fat with kittens. He stooped to pet her, his head swiveling as he checked every detail of his surroundings. “Where is she, Eleanor?” he whispered. Eleanor purred, and rubbed her head against his hand.

  “Lilah!” he roared. Eleanor started, and retreated under the porch again.

  “I’m coming.”

  The voice was faint, and came from behind the house. He jerked around, staring into the trees. The woods were almost impenetrable; he could be right on her, and not be able to see her.

  “Where are you?” he called, striding rapidly to the back of the house.

  “Almost there.” Two seconds later she emerged from the trees, carrying a basket—and the shotgun. “I heard the outboard,” she said as he reached her, “but I was a couple of hundred yards away and—uumph.”