Impulse (8 page)

16

A
lthough he’d been in what deputy
Trace Honeycutt insisted on calling The Box countless times, watching Sam question his son turned out to be the worst experience of Will’s life. Even worse than getting shot.

And it damn well hadn’t been easy on Josh.

It was nearly four in the morning by the time they left the station. The ashen green had faded from Josh’s face, leaving his complexion as white as bone. His eyes were swollen and red-rimmed and he stank of fear, sweat, vomit, and beer.

At any other time, Will would want to know where in town two underage kids had gotten their hands on booze. But right now, that was the least of his concerns.

If Josh was to be believed, and Will did, Erin Gallagher had been at the mini-mart when he’d stopped to get gas around nine thirty. She’d invited him back to her apartment,
and like any other sixteen-year-
old boy on the planet would’ve done, Josh had accepted. They’d had sex, ordered out for pizza, watched a video, drunk
some beer. Had another round of sex. After which, Josh had proven himself to be a typical male by falling asleep.

When he’d awakened, she’d already left the apartment for the lake.

“You doing all right?” Will asked as they drove the darkened road leading out of town to the ranch he’d grown up on.

“Oh, yeah. I’m just fuckin’
fantastic.”

Will decided this wasn’t the time for a lecture about language.
“It’s not your fault.”

“Yeah. Shit happens, right?”

“Sometimes
clichés
are true.” Hadn’t he told himself that time and time again after the shooting?

“Well, that one’s fucking goddamn original. Maybe you oughtta put it on a bumper sticker. You’d probably sell millions. Maybe even enough to buy a house somewhere in California, or Hawaii. Get out of this shithole.”

“Sarcasm’s good. At least it’s better than wallowing in guilt.”

Josh folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

“Actually, I don’t want to talk about it, either. Since we’re in
a really weird father/son/law-e
nforcement place. I’m not sure of the legalities, having never been in this situation before, but if you were to tell me something that might help me solve Erin Gallagher’s murder, even if it might complicate our relationship, I wouldn’t be able to ignore it.”

Josh was staring out the passenger window, at the mountains looming over the valley. “Like we have any relationship."

“Sure we do."

That drew a sharp look.

“It may be a fucked-up, shitty one. But you gotta admit it’s a helluva lot more of a father-son relationship than we had this time last year.”

“You didn’t even know I existed this time last year.”

“My point exactly. And it’s something you might want to keep in mind next time you find yourself getting pissed off at me for not having been around to go to your soccer games.”

“I don’t play soccer.”

“Neither do I. Which, I suppose means, as distasteful as the idea is, that you’ve got something in common with your old man after all.”

Josh didn’t respond. But Will had been a cop long enough to know that his son was thinking about that.

He’d shut his eyes tight, as if trying to block out the sight of Erin Gallagher’s mutilated body.

Unfortunately, Will knew all too well that the horrific images had been scorched onto the teen’s brain and would probably haunt him for the rest of his life, popping up when he’d least expect them, bringing back this night he’d undoubtedly give anything to forget.

“If you’d gone out to the lake earlier, you could’ve been killed as well.”

“Like anyone would give a shit.”

Why didn’t the kid just take Will’s Glock and shoot
him through the heart. Christ, hadn’t he changed his entire life for his son? What the hell else could he do to prove he was trying his damnedest to be a good father? “I’d care. So would your grandfather.”

Again, nothing.

“I didn’t kill Erin,” Josh said after they’d gone another quarter mile. “I know I said I did, when I saw her body, but I didn’t mean I’m the one who cut her throat.”

“I never, for a single second, thought you were.”

“You going to catch the bastard who did it?”

Will nodded. Firmly. Resolutely. “You bet.”

It was Josh’s turn to nod. “Good. Then you can shoot him. Beginning with his balls, then working out from there.”

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way
,” Will said. “But believe me, s
on, we’re in perfect agreement about wishing it did.”

17

G
oing right back on the air, knowing
that Erin was zipped into some ugly black police body bag, undoubtedly on her way to Jackson, since Faith guessed Hazard wouldn’t have the forensics necessary for a serious autopsy, had been one of the most difficult things she’d ever done.

Each time she’d dodged a caller’s question, she’d wanted to break down and weep.

If that wasn’t bad enough for her nerves, she kept waiting for Sal to call again. Or worse yet, to show up at the station, armed to the teeth, prepared to shoot anyone who got in his way.

But he did neither, and the only calls were from listeners wanting to know what had happened out at the lake. Keeping to her agreement with Will, Faith merely revealed that a body had been discovered by two sledders, that the sheriff was conducting an investigation and would be holding a press conference in the morning.

Fortunately, the audience tended to drop off in the
last hour of the show, allowing her to mostly play music and watch out the window for headlights.

Which, thank God, never appeared.

Having hated the way she’d allowed Sal to control not just her life, but her emotions, Faith had been determined never to let anyone frighten her again. Nevertheless, she wasn’t about to protest when Mike insisted on following her home, as he had every night since she’d begun working at KWIND.

He waited in front of her rented house while she pulled her Explorer into the garage and unlocked the kitchen door. She was probably the only person in Hazard to bother to lock her doors, but she’d lived too long in cities to be able to just walk out the door and leave her home open to anyone passing by who might decide to wander in and steal her stuff.

Not that she had anything worth stealing. In fact, the only pieces of furniture in the house were a sofa, a bed, a chest of drawers, a kitchen table, and four wooden chairs she’d found at Grannie’s Attic Antiques down on Main Street. But for her they signified a major lifestyle change since they were the first she’d ever owned.

The diesel engine on Mike’s old pickup truck clattered as he continued to idle, giving her time to get inside her house, waiting until the garage door rumbled back down again.

Then, with a little toot of his horn, he was gone.

Normally, when she arrived home from work, she’d make a cup of tea and settle down with a book for an hour or so to unwind before going to sleep.

Unfortunately, the past few hours had been anything but normal. Going from room to room, she closed the draperies and made sure all the windows were locked.

From her early years with her mother, to another two years spent in the revolving door of Texas’s foster care system—which she’d escaped by merely walking away one day when she was fifteen, only to end up living on the streets—Faith had been a gypsy all her life.

But, dammit, from the time she’d first arrived in Wyoming, she’d felt a little internal click, as if she might just possibly belong in Hazard. That the town was a place she could belong. A place she’d fit in. A place she could call home.

Although this three-bedroom house was much more than she needed, she’d actually been considering taking her landlord up on his offer of a buy/lease deal. The problem, of course, was that Faith
Prescott
didn’t have any credit record, which made applying for a loan impossible. And she’d been afraid that using her real name could create a paperwork trail for Sal to follow.

Perhaps he’d changed.

That’d be the day.

“Better tell Bridger to be on the lookout for four horsemen riding down the streets of Hazard,” she muttered. “Because if Sal Sasone has decided to stop trying to control his world and everyone in it, it’s a sure sign of the Apocalypse.”

It was nearly five o’clock. In the summer a pale predawn light would be shimmering on the horizon. This time of year, and thanks to the heavy cloud that
had drifted across the m
oon, the hour was the darkest
time of the morning when she pulled aside the curtain just enough to look out the bedroom window.

In the distance, she could see the glow of the lights across Silver Lake, revealing that someone was still
working the crime scene. On this side of the lake, it was like trying to see into the depths of a deep, black well.

Was he out there? Watching? Waiting?

No. Lurking outside a house in the dark, especially in the cold—which everyone knew Sal hated almost as badly as liberal Democrats—-was not his style.

Or at least it hadn’t been. He’d always been much more up-front, more in-your-face. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been angry, drunk, and dangerous.

Beyond dangerous. He’d been deadly.

Eighteen months was a long time. If he’d continued his downhill slide into alcoholism, no telling how worse his paranoia and possessiveness might have gotten.

Fear skimmed its cold, bony fingers up her spine and wrapped around her heart as she retrieved a suitcase and a large red leather bag from the back of the closet.

The bag held a heavy Colt revolver that, ironically, she’d received from the very same man who’d tracked her to Wyoming.

She put the ugly gun on the mattress, within reach. After making sure her boots, parka, gloves, and keys were close by, Faith began yanking clothes from the chest, which just yesterday she’d allowed herself to have the foolishly optimistic idea of refinishing.

18

J
osh had decided things couldn’t get
much worse. Until he walked into the sprawling, old log house and saw his grandfather sitting at the table, steam rising from a thick mug.

“’Bout time you boys got home,” he said. “I fixed some steak and eggs. They’re in the oven.”

“I’m not hungry.” The thought of food roiled Josh’s empty stomach.

“You’re gonna want some food in your belly,” Jim Bridger said. “A body needs fuel to work.”

Josh just wanted to go to bed. And sleep until spring. Or at least until he turned eighteen and could escape this dead-end town.

Star Trek
had it wrong. Wyoming was the final frontier.

“I’ll eat later.” Maybe by March he’d be able to choke something down.

“You’ll eat now.” Josh’s grandfather pushed himself out of the chair and grabbed a dish towel from the
wooden counter and took a platter from the oven. “We’ve got to get going.”

“Going?” Josh looked over at his father, who was hanging his jacket on the peg by the door. “Where?”

“With the wind having stopped, this snow’s just gonna keep on falling, instead of moving east. So, we’d best make sure we’ve got lots of feed out for the stock, before the roads close down.” Jim put the plate in front of Josh. “We’ll be gone a couple a days,” he told Will.

The look the two men exchanged told Josh they’d already discussed this. Without—no surprise here—giving him any choice.

“You just want to get me out of town so I can’t talk to reporters.”

"I’m sorry.” Will poured a cup of the thick, black sludge that bore no resemblance to the Starbucks Josh was used to in L.A. “Did you want to talk to reporters?”

“Hell, no.”

“Well, then,” Jim drawled, “there you go.”

“But I don’t want to run away, either.”

That was a lie. He did want to run. As fast and as far as he could. All the way back to California. Better yet, down to Mexico.

“You’re not gonna be runnin’ anywhere,” his grandfather agreed brusquely. “You’ll be doing ranch work that needs to be done. I figure after we get the hay tossed out, we’ll ride the fence line a ways, checking for breaks. A cow fall into a gulley this time a year, we won’t find her till spring. Which’ll be too damn late.”

“I don’t know anything about fixing fences.” Josh
had, however, been surprised to discover he actually had a knack for riding horses.

“’Bout time you learned. Like I always used to tell your father, boys are like dogs and horses. Ain’t worth a damn if they’re not being used.”

“I haven’t been to bed yet.”

The old man arched a silver brow. “That’s not what I heard.”

Josh shot a look at Will. “You had no right telling my private stuff.”

“Nothing’s private when you’re talking about a murder. Besides, it’s not like I wrote it up on a press release and gave it to Faith Prescott to read on the radio. Whether you like it or not, whether you’ll even admit it or not, you, your grandfather, and I are a family. And family doesn’t keep secrets.”

Josh snorted. “Like you don’t have secrets.”

“None that involve you.”

“Oh, no?” Josh welcomed the temper he felt beginning to heat up in his gut. It beat the hell out of the sick, greasy cold he’d been feeling. “What about whatever the hell happened down in Savannah? Whatever it was that had you dragging me up here to Sticksville?”

“Eat,” the older man said firmly, cutting off any further discussion. “You can sleep in the truck.”

To his son he said, “Sam called from over at the Gallagher girl’s apartment. Said he found an address book, but he couldn’t find any listing of her parents.”

“That’s because she doesn’t talk to them,” Josh volunteered grumpily.
“Didn’t
talk to them,” he corrected.

It was still hard to think of Erin in the past tense. How could that be? He’d been warm and mindless inside her, just a few hours ago. He wondered if he’d ever
get used to the idea of her being gone. His father might know. As a cop, he undoubtedly knew a lot about people dying. Bu
t Josh was damned if he’d ask.

“Why not?” Wi
ll asked.

“Because she hated them.”

And I know just how she felt.
He didn’t say the words, but they
hung in the air just the same.

“They should be on h
er school admission records,”
Will said. He started to
leave the room, then turned.
“That was a damn good interview you gave to Deputy Charbonneaux. Straight
forward, and you stuck to the
facts. He cowboyed up real good,” Will informed his father.

Jim Bridger nodded. “Doesn’t surprise me in the least. He might not have been raised up in the West—”

“California’s as far west as you can get,” Josh broke in.

“California’s the coast,” Jim corrected. “The
Left
Coast. I wouldn’t let it into the West with a search warrant
…
But, like I was saying before I was interrupted,” he continued, turning back to his son, “our boy comes from good stock.”

Our b
oy.
Made him sound like a colt he was considering buying. Or a
yearling he was planning to auc
tion off.

Josh was still thinking about that idea twenty minutes later, as he and his grandfather drove down the mountain.

“People aren’t cattle,” he said.

“Now there’s a newsflash,” Jim said drily. “Maybe we ought to pull over so I can get out a pen and paper and write it down.”

“I just meant that just because a guy fucks a woman and accidentally makes a kid, it doesn’t mean that kid will grow up to be anything like him.”

“The old nature-versus-nurture argument.” Jim nodded. “As a father, I like to think that I had some influence over my son. And I've got a strong enough ego to be damn proud of how he turned out. Though I’ve gotta admit, back when he was your age, trying to have any kind of conversation with him was a lot like bull riding.”

Josh didn’t want to bite. But, after a lengthy pause stretched between them, he couldn’t resist asking. “Why?”

“Because I was damn lucky if it lasted eight seconds. Shoot, that boy had a flashfire temper.”

“My father?”

“The very same. Of course, at the time, I was younger and a lot more hotheaded, too. I’m mellowed some since then. And we were both having trouble dealing with the loss of Will’s brother right on top of his mother dying of cancer.”

“I had an uncle?”

Josh had been given sketchy information about his grandmother’s death when he’d asked about a framed
photograph on the wall in the den. But no mention had been made of another son.

“He died before you were bo
rn
. Rolled the truck he was driving over when he was fourteen.”

“He wouldn't have been old enough to have a license.”

“Like you never drove illegally before you got your license?”

“Maybe.” Josh decided there was no need to mention running his mother’s Jag off the Coast Highway when he’d been fourteen.

Jim reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lipped one out of the red-and-white hard pack, and punched the lighter on the dash.

“He and your dad were coming back from the feed- store. Matt, that was his name, was about a week out from getting his permit. Like most kids in this part of the country, he’d driven off road around the ranch before, but he’d never been on the public road.

“From day one, he was always trying to keep up with his big brother, had to try to do every damn thing Will did. That day he had himself a yen to try real drivin’. It was a dry road without a lot of bends, so Will—who would’ve been sixteen at the time—let him take the wheel.”

The lighter popped out. Josh had never claimed to be the most sensitive guy on the planet, but he suspected, from the way the old man was taking his time lighting that cigarette, that the subject of his younger son's death was still painful.

“Things were going along okay for a while,” Jim said on a stream of exhaled smoke. “Then he took a curve too tight, overcorrected, and rolled the rig. Your dad got thrown clear.”
He drew in on the cigarette again. “Matt wasn’t that lucky. Got himself stuck in the cab with the roof smashed down on him and the engine block clean into the front seat on top of his lap.

“Will broke his shoulder and two ribs, but he managed to hike the five miles back to town to get help for his brother. Took the rescue guys another hour with the Jaws of Life to cut Matt out. Doc said he probably died instantly.”

“Jesus.” All Josh had done was smash a fender and break an axle. “That blows.”

“Wouldn’t argue that,” Jim Bridger agreed around the burning cigarette clamped tightly between his teeth.
“Your dad wouldn’t talk about it, still doesn’t that I know of, but I figure he took it pretty hard, especially co
m
in’ on top of having lost his mother, because it was right about then he got wild. Started getting into all kinds of fool trouble.”

“Mr. Law and Order wasn’t always a Boy Scout?” That was as much a revelation as that he’d had an uncle who’d died. Especially given the fight they’d had yesterday after his father had found the roach clip he’d forgotten to take out of his jeans pocket before throwing them in the hamper.

Jim snorted. “Not by a long shot. I probably wasn’t
the best father back then, what with all that had happened, and my generation didn’t believe in talkin’ stuff to death the way folks seem to these days. Plus, we’d been having a drought, which led to some real lean times with the ranch, but even if none of that had happened, it might not have made all that much of a difference.

“Like Paul Newman said in that movie,
Road to Perdition,
it’s a natural law. Sons are put on this earth to trouble their fathers.”
He slanted Josh a look. “Seems you’re doing a bang- up job of that,
s
on.”

“My mother got married six times.”

Even to his own ears, that sounded like a whiny-kid excuse. Though it was fact. Whitney of the half dozen last names had clawed her way up L.A.’s social ladder, discarding husbands the way she’d kick off her shoes when she walked in the door.

“I never paid any attention to her husbands, since I knew they’d be gone. But I sure as hell never thought I’d end up with a cowboy cop for a father.”

“When you were a little lad, you might not’ve thought you’d grow hair on your crotch, either,” Jim drawled. “But there you are.”

Since Josh could think of no response to that typical Jim Bridger comment, he fell silent, watching the white snow drifting down from the sky illuminated by the beam of the truck’s headlights.

By dying in that plane crash in the Andes on a flight back to the States from Rio, his mother had left her
lawyer to clean up the mess, the same way the maids had been forced to pick up her Manolos.

Josh rubbed the pad of his thumb along the crease etching its way across his forehead. The same one that had been the first thing he’d noticed about his father.

For the first time since he’d been dragged to Savannah and dumped on Will Bridger, he thought about him having lost both a mother and a brother when he was about the same age Josh was now.

And wondered if, just maybe, he and his father might have more in common than their physical resemblance.