She Who Watches (9 page)

A broad smile inched across Mac's face. “Do I get to drive a tractor?”

“Sure.”

“Then it's a deal.” Mac offered his hand.

Nate looked over Mac's proffered hand before shaking it. “Looks to me like you could use some work that puts a few calluses on those hands, though.”

“If you two are done bonding, would you mind if we wrap this up?” Dana yawned.

“I'm ready,” Mac answered. “Let's get those bags of soil loaded up, and we're out of here.” Looking over at Nate, he said, “Why don't you go on home? I'm sure you have things to do—like making sure that fire isn't encroaching on your property.”

“You're right, thanks. I'm pretty sure my place is going to be fine, but I would like to get home and check my livestock. It's the smoke I'm worried about now. You better take all you need from here tonight. With this southern wind blowing fuel into the fire, this place will be history.”

“Hopefully, we have all we'll need. I went down over a foot under the body in soil collection, and I have plenty of photographs of the scene to look over if need be. It's not ideal, but we'll make do if we have to.”

“You calling it a night after you leave here?” Nate helped them load the bags into Mac's trunk.

“Unfortunately not.” Dana sighed. “We have to log all this evidence into the Portland office before we can even think about going home. We both live across the river in Washington, so we are a good three hours from hitting the pillow.”

“Oh, are you two . . .?” Nate pointed a finger at both of them, asking if they were a couple.

“Oh, no, no.” Dana was quick to respond. “We just live in the same town. Not the same house.”

“You don't have to make it sound like the idea is totally repulsive, partner.” Mac tried to look insulted. “I feel you owe me an apology.”

“Oh, please.” Dana slapped her hands together to brush off the ash and dust. “I'll see you later, Nathan.”

“See you, pal.” Mac scanned the parking lot, the gravity of his mission returning to him. He took one last look at the body dump and the glowing red sky before loading the remainder of the soil sacks into the back seat. Dana had placed a yellow plastic emergency blanket out across the back seat to afford the seats some protection from the dusty plastic sacks.

She secured the beaded leather piece she'd gotten from Nate inside a second evidence bag before writing a case number and date on the outer bag. Then she placed it in her briefcase.

With their work complete, the detectives started westward. The initial excitement of the call had long since worn off and turned to exhaustion.

“You think we ought to contact Scott Watson right away, let him know we think we found his wife?” Dana asked.

“Let's hold off until we can confirm the identity at the post tomorrow. We can at least give him one more night of rest before we make the call.”

“I don't think I'd be resting much if my spouse was missing. I think I'd like to know,” Dana countered.

“I agree, but I think the best call is to confirm her identity though the M.E. and meet with the hubby tomorrow. If it turns out to be Sara, which I'm ninety-nine percent sure it is, then we're going to have to be prepared for a comprehensive interview with her husband after making the notification. Who knows? This guy could be dirty.”

“Your call, Mac. Don't know if I agree with you, though. I just think the decent thing to do is let the guy know, that's all.”

The decent thing wouldn't be to dump your wife in a shallow grave
. Mac kept the thought to himself. More often than not, murder victims were killed by someone they knew, and female victims were most often preyed upon by a male counterpart. Dana knew that, so what was her problem?

“I'd rather do it by the book, Dana. I'm sure that's what Sarge would want us to do. Another half day won't matter.”

“Like I said, Mac, it's your call.” Dana crossed her arms and stared out the window.

Mac shook his head and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. He knew better than to argue with Dana when she was tired.

Besides, if she was upset with him, it might be something he did hours or days ago that came to a head over a discussion on the death notification. Or she could simply be a little tired and grumpy, a danger for everyone in their line of work from time to time.

He would cut her some slack and give her some space. Mac was a quick study if nothing else.

NINE

C
laire Montgomery couldn't sleep. She hadn't slept most of the night. The newscaster on the Channel 8 news had reported on a body find in central Oregon. There was little reason for Claire to think it might be Sara, but she couldn't help but wonder. For the past five weeks, any mention of a body being discovered captured her attention and didn't let go until the police made a positive identification. Although the police weren't releasing information, a camper was describing the gruesome find to the local media after alerting authorities. The red numbers on the clock radio told her it was only 6:00 a.m. Saturday. She could have stayed in bed for at least another hour. Probably should have, but there might be new information. Being careful not to wake Allysa, with whom she shared the guest bedroom, Claire eased out of bed and dragged on her bathrobe.

Downstairs, she plucked the
Oregonian
off the front porch and perused the headlines. The body, a woman, found near the Warm Springs Indian reservation, had not been identified. The medical examiner and police were not available for comment. That didn't keep the reporters from speculating on the preliminary information from the man whose dog found the body. The reporter had listed several local women and reiterated the circumstances surrounding their disappearances. A college girl from Eugene, a middle-aged woman from The Dalles. And Sara. Tears blurred the page, and the familiar heartache settled into her chest.

She brushed aside the tears and put on the coffee, then settled into a chair at the table in the breakfast nook, where the sun was already brightening the predawn sky. Soon she'd make breakfast for the four of them as she always did. During these past few weeks, they'd settled into a routine—like family, yet not like family. With Sara still missing, they were more like robots carrying on, doing what needed to be done and little more. Normally, she spent her days caring for Chloe and Allysa, cooking and cleaning, comforting and encouraging Scott and the others, and working when she could slip in a few hours alone.

She didn't want the body to be Sara's. She wanted Sara to come home. More and more, these past few weeks of hearing nothing had led to a number of speculations. The most likely scenario was that she had been abducted and murdered.Others, primarily those who didn't know her well, thought she might have run away to start a new life.

“You're up early.” Scott's deep voice startled her and, at the same time, brought comfort.

“Couldn't sleep. So I got up to read the morning paper, and . . .” Her throat caught and she nodded toward the paper. “They found another body. A woman.”

He stood behind her for a moment and then went to the cupboard, pulled out two mugs, and filled them with coffee. Setting one in front of her, he lowered himself into the chair beside her. “Do they think it's Sara?”

“There isn't enough information. Just this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I want her to be alive, but. . . .”

“Not much chance of that.” His gaze focused on the paper, but he wasn't reading. “I know this sounds callous, but I just want it to be over. I want to know what happened once and for all.”

“It's not callous.” She placed a hand on his arm. “I want the same thing. So do the others. Waiting is the hardest part.” She moved her hand and reached for her coffee. “I'll call the FBI agents again this morning. Maybe they know something the papers don't.”

Scott's gaze drifted up to hers. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For being here. Picking up the slack.” He set down his cup and, elbows on the table, dropped his face into his hands. “I don't know what we would have done without you.”

Claire settled an arm around his shoulders. “It'll be all right, Scott. No matter what happens, we'll be OK.”

The words had a hollow ring to them. How could things ever be right again? After a few moments, she got up and took her coffee into the kitchen. She'd made baked oatmeal the night before, and all she had to do this morning was heat it and cook some sausage. Taking care of Scott and Chloe was the least she could do for Sara.

TEN

M
ac yawned as he rolled out of bed and focused blurry eyes on his alarm clock. Eight o'clock in the morning, and he could still use several hours of sleep. He'd had only three hours of restless sack time. It seemed he had the most trouble falling asleep when he needed it the most. Though analyzing the cases often complicated his sleep, it was the way Dana had acted on the ride home that had troubled him the most.

Was she jealous of his relationship with Kristen? Or maybe she was stewing over some guy. Mac thought back to a recent date that had turned into a fiasco. Maybe the guy was bothering her again. If the opportunity arose, he'd ask her about it. Of course, she could have been reacting to Nate's assumption that they were an item. He'd teased her about being hurt, but her reaction had affected him more than he cared to admit.

Lucy, Mac's golden retriever, ambled into the room, looking for some affection. The dog's thick tail thumped the wall as Mac rubbed her head and ears. “I'll be back later for a walk, old girl, I promise. I have to work again today, but the overtime is nice. We like the overtime, don't we?” Mac smiled at the dog, who seemed to understand what he was saying.

Mac showered, put on a pair of gray slacks and navy blue blazer, and grabbed a tie for the road. He wouldn't need it for the autopsy, but he might need it for the follow-up and death notification. Mac locked Lucy in her kennel and left a message for his neighbor, Carl, to pick her up, which was standard practice with his schedule. His widowed neighbor and Lucy both enjoyed each other's company, a little too much sometimes. Mac couldn't help feeling a little jealous when Lucy seemed to enjoy seeing Carl as much as or more than she liked seeing him.

They'd managed to get the autopsy scheduled for eleven that morning. Thoughts of the morgue reminded him of Kristen's unexpected trip to Florida and put him in a sour mood. He really wanted her to perform the autopsy. Besides her being the best, he liked working with her. He liked her banter and her sense of humor and her cooking and the way she kissed him.

Mac groaned. He had to stop thinking about Kristen. From the way she sounded the other day, their relationship, like much of Oregon, had gone up in smoke.

He left his Vancouver apartment and drove south to Portland, crossing the wide, ambling Columbia River that served as a boundary between Oregon and Washington. Many of the troopers assigned to work in Mac's office lived on the Washington side to avoid paying Oregon's property taxes. Mac lived there to be close to his grandmother, who resided in a retirement community not far away from his home. On the way, he stopped at a Starbucks for a coffee to go. He almost got one for Dana but decided against it. After the way she'd treated him on the way home from Warm Springs, he opted not to. On top of that, she had refused his offer to pick her up this morning.

Mac punched the gate code and drove into the back lot, parking his Crown Vic next to Dana's Pontiac. He walked through the patrol side of the building, greeting a few of the uniformed troopers on his way to the back room where the plain-clothes detectives worked. The door to the detectives' office was already open. Apparently, he and Dana were not the only ones pulling overtime today. Weekends were generally days off for the detectives, but it looked like the entire crew had come in. The narcotics guys had served a warrant the previous day and had to act quickly on their arrests if they wanted to move up the drug-dealing food chain to the supplier.

Philly and Russ, the other pair of detectives assigned to the Violent Offender Unit with Mac and Dana, were working a murder investigation out of Clackamas County. They were pulling together a search warrant affidavit on an outlaw biker clubhouse, which would require the department SWAT team to assist them. The murder suspect, a dope dealer accused of killing a junkie, was in custody and looking to make a deal by ratting out some buddies at the clubhouse. He claimed to have witnessed a large weapons cache at the clubhouse, along with a substantial supply of crystal meth.

“You look lovely this morning.” Philly met Mac in the doorway. “How come Dana beat you to work, and she doesn't look like she slept in her car?” He took a sip of coffee from his dingy yellow cup.

“How come you look like a train wreck every day?” Mac countered. He took the last sip out of his own coffee before throwing the empty container into the garbage.

“Well, I never.” Philly shrugged and walked back into his office, where Russ was typing an affidavit for a search warrant application. Philly loved a good insult exchange, but thankfully, he knew when not to press a tired detective who'd only had one cup of coffee. He'd withdrawn for now, but Mac had no doubt that he'd find time to exchange barbs later.

“Morning, Dana.” Mac poked his head into her new office before going to his cubicle. Once there, he powered up his computer and began checking phone messages.

Dana came in and set a paper sack and a cup of coffee on Mac's desk.

“What's this?” Mac asked.

“Coffee and a scone, the fattening pumpkin one you like with all the icing. Sorry about last night—or this morning, actually. I wasn't mad at you; things just came out wrong.”

“No problem. I'd forgotten all about it,” Mac fibbed. “Thanks for the coffee, though.” Mac felt guilty. He wished he'd taken the high road and purchased his partner a treat too.