Virtue Falls

  “She was on the Atlanta morning show with him one day,” Mrs. Daniels said, “and she said he has contributed a lot to Virtue Falls.”

  “He has indeed. You probably heard that he raised funds to rebuild the gym at the high school when it burned down. They named it the Bradley Hoff Facility.” Which peeved Margaret more than a little, for over the years she had put a fortune into various causes and charities in Virtue Falls, too. In fact, right now, she was supporting the tiny public library, and no one had named even a brick after her.

  But it was not Bradley’s fault he had found fame as Nature’s Artist, serving up pretty paintings to a grateful world, and Margaret was just a crotchety old innkeeper. And ungrateful, too, for … She gestured to a large Hoff on the wall behind them. “Bradley painted that here on our deck, and as a surprise for my eighty-fifth birthday, he had it framed and hung for me. I particularly like the way the ocean rises into the sky as if there’s no horizon.”

  “With all this valuable stuff sitting around, you must have a great security system,” Aurora said.

  “Yes,” Margaret said crisply. “I do. Any other questions?”

  “I’d love to tour Mr. Hoff’s studio. Is he in town?” Mrs. Daniels asked.

  Mr. Daniels sagged.

  “I believe he’s on tour with a showing of his newest paintings, and in any case, the only person he allows in his studio is his wife.” When Mr. Daniels straightened up again, Margaret smiled at him. “Bradley is a pleasant man, but in the end, he is an artist first and foremost, with an artist’s quirks.”

  A hand waved.

  She waved back at the teenager. “Yes, young man?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Mason Eugene Turner!” His mother looked shocked—and curious, too.

  “It’s all right,” Margaret said in a soothing tone. “I’m at the age where I might as well brag about it. I’m ninety-one.”

  “Whoa.” The boy grinned. “That’s cool!”

  The guests laughed.

  “Thank you, I think so, too. It beats the alternative.” Margaret looked around. “Any other questions?”

  “Why did Mrs. Smith bring you back from Ireland? I mean, it was such good timing, it being right before World War Two and all.” This female was in her early forties and here by herself, and she had that I’m writing my first book look about her.

  Margaret made a mental note to avoid conversations with her. Authors always wanted to blather on about their plot.

  “It was good timing, yes, and Mrs. Smith brought me back because I did her a favor.” Before the female could ask what, Margaret gestured to her staff and they threw open the three sets of French doors.

  The wind off the Pacific rushed in, filling the great room, chasing every other thought out of the guests’ minds.

  “That fresh air will bring a light to your eyes and a bloom to your cheeks,” Margaret said in satisfaction.

  They streamed out onto the deck, exclaiming at the view. The younger ones hurried to the railing and looked down fifty feet to the waves that battered the rocks. The older adults accepted the wool throws the staff were handing out.

  Guests who had been here for days arrived to socialize and enjoy the complimentary drinks: Washington wines, a local beer, or bottled water.

  Margaret took a moment, as she always did, to listen to the ocean.

  It was a good life for little Maggie O’Brien of Dublin, Ireland. A very good life indeed.

  And on that thought, she reached out and softly rapped her knuckles on the wooden railing.

  Knock wood.

  She knew better than to tempt fate.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sheriff Dennis Foster shuffled through the papers on his desk.

  His secretary wasn’t worth much even when he was in town, and when he left to attend a law enforcement conference in Oakland, Mona apparently spent all her time doing her nails because she sure as hell didn’t file the reports from his deputies, the mail, or God forbid, the alerts that came in from the FBI.

  He could see the alert dangling, half off the edge of his desk. It had that distinctive FBI official letterhead …

  When he first got into law enforcement, he had dreamed of being an FBI agent, of traveling the country fighting crime. But he was stuck in Virtue Falls, taking care of his mother, whom he loved, he really did, but she’d been sick for so long, and that voice of hers, like fingernails scraping on a blackboard.

  No wonder he went to every conference he could wangle the money for.

  He told himself he was in command here, and surely it was better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.

  He picked up an envelope and ripped the corner, blew into it, and pulled out a special offer from some women’s fashion magazine.

  How did he get on a list for a women’s fashion magazine?

  He flung it in the recycling bin, then thought better and shredded it. He wouldn’t put it past Mona to go through the recycling and spread the rumor he wore women’s underwear. Like he could get away with women’s underwear in this town.

  The alert still rested on the corner of his desk, waiting …

  He remembered a time when he had eagerly reached for those alerts, scanned them to see what was happening in the wide world. He remembered a time, twenty-three years ago, when Charles Banner had brutally killed his wife and the local FBI office had wanted to take over jurisdiction—they were as bored as he was with the piddly-poop crimes that occurred along this stretch of the coast—and he had grinned at them and said, “No, boys, this one is mine.” He’d been smart enough to recognize that this high-profile, media-attention-catching murder would make his name in the county and in the larger law enforcement community.

  And it had. Every election day, he reminded voters he’d been the one to bring vicious Charles Banner to justice, and every election day they voted him back in. At every law enforcement conference, someone remembered Misty’s murder and wanted to discuss the details, and he was happy to do so. Although as the years passed, fewer and fewer of the other officers could place the case, or his name.

  It’s not like he wanted another vicious murder to occur in Virtue Falls. He didn’t. He just wished folks had a longer memory.

  If he gave the stack of mail an accidental nudge, the alert would flutter to the floor and he wouldn’t have to look at it.

  But he would know it was there.

  He didn’t understand what he was so afraid of. Most of the alerts were a waste of paper. It was probably nothing more than a notice to watch for the drugs coming into the coast from Canada. Like he didn’t know that.

  He reached over, picked up the alert, and read the first line.

  He groped for his chair, pulled it toward him, and sat down heavily.

  There’d been another murder. Four murders, in fact. The mother. The babysitter. Some bar owner who got involved. And the child, a little boy named Carter.

  In San Francisco. And it had happened when Foster had been at the conference in the Bay Area.

  The attacks were getting more frequent. They were getting more vicious. It was definitely the work of a serial killer. And whoever he was—most serial killers were male—he always killed the child, too.

  No reason to be afraid. No reason to be upset. No reason for Dennis Foster’s hands to tremble. No reason to pace the house at night in fear and self-loathing.

  Violently, he wadded up the alert and threw it at the trash can.

  These murders were none of his business. They were out of his jurisdiction. They always occurred somewhere on the Pacific coast … while he was visiting there on business.

  He knew nothing relevant. Nothing for sure. Nothing he could relate as fact.

  These murders had nothing to do with him.

  Nothing.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Coast Guard lieutenant and current commanding officer Kateri Kwinault sat in the Virtue Falls Coast Guard office break room at the round table, and counted her poker chips. “Nobody ever
said being in the Coast Guard is easy.”

  “It is when you’re winning.” Lt. JG Landon Adams, aka Landlubber, didn’t like to lose.

  Neither did Ens. Luis Sánchez, but he’d been stationed here longer than Adams. “She always wins.”

  “She cheats?” Adams sounded hopeful.

  “Kateri’s good. And she’s lucky.” Sánchez sounded sour, and resigned.

  Adams had recently transferred from New York Harbor, a busy, cushy job which he managed to wrangle (Kateri suspected) because his uncle was a New York senator.

  But nothing lasts forever. After the sex scandal, his uncle got voted out and now Adams was stationed on the rugged Washington coast, in a fifty-year-old station that had been built twenty feet above sea level on Virtue Falls Harbor. Here, the kid faced the kind of culture shock only a white boy from the East could face when confronted with the realities of the wild Pacific Ocean and a society of summer tourists, leftover hippies, hostile Native Americans, and speeding Canadians, along with a determinedly egalitarian attitude, socks worn with sandals, and an outright worship of organic vegetables.

  Washington State was an ongoing shock to poor dear Landlubber. He didn’t like anything, including his nickname … which of course inspired an even more determined use of it.

  Easterners really needed to climb out of their snotty little shells occasionally.

  Kateri shuffled the cards and smirked at her guys.

  They were bored.

  She was bored.

  This station was great in the winter: big storms, dangerous currents, commercial boats out fishing and crabbing, leaky foreign vessels passing by, lots of trouble, and plenty for the Coast Guard to do.

  In the summer, they could usually depend on some idiot tourist to get out on the water and capsize, or on some greedy dealer to try and smuggle in his carefully tended stash of weed. But now, in the dog days of August, when the sun shone, the weather was clear and warm, and the water was like glass, duty could be dull. Kateri likened it to being a fireman. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing … and then all hell breaks loose.

  So with three cutters in the harbor, eight guys on vacation, and nothing to do, they worked with sixteen Coasties on duty; a skeleton crew, but doable as long as they didn’t have to take all the cutters out at the same time.

  And they played poker.

  “I worked at the tribe casino as a dealer. I know my cards.” She looked at Adams. “But so do you, Landlubber. You’re good.”

  “I used to think so.” The guy’s color was high. He really didn’t like to lose.

  She really didn’t care. She dealt the cards and played them to win.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  At the Honor Mountain Memory Care Facility, Charles Banner sat in the dining room eating his dinner.

  Unlike a lot of the residents, he didn’t mind being confined. He’d been sent to the care facility directly from the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. After twenty-three years of prison life, he had diagnosed himself with early onset Alzheimer’s, and also diagnosed the probable causes: stress caused by his repeated attempts to get a retrial; anguish at knowing his little daughter, Elizabeth, had been traumatized and needed him; and the repeated head injuries he’d suffered in beatings at the hands of other inmates.

  The state had steadfastly denied him a retrial. The case was far too notorious for them to reexamine the evidence with an eye to injustice. As far as law enforcement was concerned, they had scored in a high-profile case and unless someone offered convincing evidence that his conviction was wrong, he was staying put.

  Over the years, he had interested different lawyers in his case, but each came to the same conclusion: there was no conflicting convincing evidence. None.

  The situation with Elizabeth was desperate; she was an intelligent, sensitive child who loved her parents, and to see her mother murdered had devastated her. Afterward, to be torn from his arms—that was nothing less than cruel. He worried about the possible psychological scars; he tried to comfort himself that her aunt and uncle would care for her.

  But Misty’s sister and her husband were middle-class, salt-of-the-earth people who worked, watched television, went to church, and never looked beyond the boundaries of their own narrow lives.

  And Charles knew Elizabeth; she was like him. She would always be asking why. Why had her mommy died? Why couldn’t she see her daddy?

  What would they tell her? If he could only have had some communication with the child … But that wasn’t allowed.

  As for the prison beatings … Charles was, after all, an easy mark. The other prisoners mocked him. The guards, tough guys in a difficult environment, detested him. He was not only smarter than everyone else, but he had never won a fight in his life. In fact, before prison, he had never been in a fight.

  He’d never been raped before, either.

  There was a first time for everything.

  Even losing his mind.

  One day, he visited the prison library to study the current report on his geological study at Virtue Falls Canyon, and he discovered notes written in the margins. He then realized those notes were accurate, they were in his handwriting, and he had no memory of making them.

  He had at once gone to the prison doctor.

  Not surprisingly, Dr. Walter Frownfelter accepted Charles’s analysis. When Charles and Misty lived in Virtue Falls, Dr. Frownfelter had been the physician there, and when the doctor joined the penitentiary staff, Charles had been glad to have another scientist to talk to.

  But that worked against his diagnosis; the warden noted they had a friendship, and that put Dr. Frownfelter’s word in doubt. Getting Charles released to the care facility had taken multiple psychiatric evaluations with an ever-changing list of physicians, and hearings with highly suspicious parole board members.

  Finally a criminologist examined the evidence that had convicted Charles, and she stated that, given the current tests that were not available twenty-three years ago, there could possibly be reasonable doubt about his guilt. She pointed out that Misty’s body had never been found, which left the murder in limbo, and Charles’s record of good behavior along with ongoing mental deterioration made him a likely candidate for release to an asylum or care center with a secure facility for dangerous patients.

  So the state, with their typical lack of care and foresight, sent him back to the place where he had last lived, the town where the crime was committed: Virtue Falls.

  By the time he arrived, two years after the diagnosis, his disease had advanced enough that he didn’t remember a lot about his years in prison. He only knew this place was much nicer that the last place. No one beat him up. No one pushed him around. No one cared if he read books and scientific articles.

  At first, the nurses kept him separate from the other patients. At night, they locked him in his room. They watched him in alarm, and when tending to his needs, always kept a strong, muscled orderly with them.

  Then, sometime in that first year, something happened, because apparently they decided he was harmless. They stopped following recommended protocol, and even allowed him to sit at the nurses’ station and tell them about the intricacies of the Virtue Falls geological studies. They didn’t say he was boring; they said his pleasant voice relaxed them.

  Most of the time, the other patients didn’t fear Charles, either, but George Cook had developed a dementia that left him loud and abusive. Or maybe his dementia exacerbated an already nasty disposition. George was always after Charles, making comments about how he wished he’d thought to kill his wife with a pair of scissors so he could go to prison for a little while and then get out and live for free on the state’s dole in this plush nursing home.

  Whenever George was around, the women in the facility were frightened of Charles.

  Whenever George was around, Charles always wished he had learned how to fight, because someone needed to teach George manners.

  But Charles knew he wasn’t the one to do it, so he ignored Geo
rge.

  Right now, Charles steadily ate the last of his dessert, even though George stood directly behind his chair and deliberately bumped it.

  “Mr. Cook, I wish you would sit down.” Nurse Yvonne sounded exasperated, but she made no attempt to relocate George Cook. None of the female nurses ever tried to move him on their own.

  George Cook snickered. “What? You don’t like to be reminded of how your favorite patient killed his wife? With the scissors … stabbed her … took her body apart piece by piece … so he could loll around in prison while I worked all my life in a sawmill … until the goddamn Chinese took the wood and I don’t have a job…”

  “Mr. Cook, please sit down.” Nurse Yvonne sounded stern.

  Not that it mattered to George. “Charles Banner held the scissors just like this, ripped her throat out, because she’d been fucking around.”

  One of the female patients whimpered and clutched her throat.

  “If he’d been a real man, she wouldn’t have had to fuck another guy.” George started bumping Charles’s chair again. Humping it. “Stabbed her, stabbed her, stabbed Misty, stabbed her, stabbed her…”

  Abruptly, memory clawed at Charles, and he froze.

  He’d stood in the house, seen the blood, didn’t understand what had happened. He’d looked at his own hands; blood covered them. In an ever-increasing panic, he looked for Misty, for Elizabeth …

  His hand holding the fork began to tremble.

  “Mr. Banner?” Nurse Yvonne’s voice was concerned. “Are you all right?”

  “Ooh! Look! He’s going to stab me with his fork! I’m scared, so scared of the little geologist.” George slammed himself into the back of Charles’s chair, crushing Charles into the edge of the table. “C’mon, you coward, fight me! Stab me!”

  The dining room erupted into pandemonium. Nurse Yvonne sounded the alarm. Medical personnel rushed in. Patients cried and screamed, and fled toward the doors and their rooms.

  Charles’s pulse accelerated until he was breathless, his heart pounding.