Tumbledown (13 page)

Using a bottle of water from her bag, Alex rinsed her face clean and dried it on a spare T-shirt. She had been out of the room for less than five minutes, but when she returned she found Sarah asleep, still wearing the scrubs the hospital had given her. Her face creased in distress as Alex covered her with a blanket, but she quickly relaxed when Alex smoothed a hand through her hair.

Too wired to sleep, Alex made a cup of coffee in the small kitchenette and carried it across to the table by the window. Adjusting her familiar routine slightly, she double-checked the locks on the door and tilted the window blind so she could see out across the parking lot. She took her Glock from its holster and placed it on the table next to her mug, and then unlocked the screen on her cell phone.

Castillo answered her call in a voice gruff with sleep. “Hello?”

“Mike, it’s Alex. Sorry to wake you.”

She heard him smack his lips and empathized with the confusion that came from being pulled suddenly from a deep sleep.

“Hey, Alex,” he said. Then, as if a switch had been flicked, his tone altered completely. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” she said, unable to keep the quaver from her voice. “Everything’s wrong.”

“Start at the beginning.”

He was quiet when she had finished. She sipped her lukewarm coffee, listening to him type on his computer.

“Okay,” he said, and the clicking of keys stopped. “I’ve sent an urgent e-mail to all the surveillance teams we still have working the Deakin case and asked them to check in ASAP. The way things are organizationally, though, that could take a few days.” He sighed. “This is a fucking mess, Alex.”

“I know.”

“From what you’ve said, they’re going to be looking at Sarah very hard for the murder.”

She pushed away her coffee. “I think they already are.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered, and the admission made her bow her head with shame.

“My advice would be to come clean with Quinn about everything. Pass on my details for corroboration and see if we can get him to start thinking along other lines of inquiry. He should be putting protection in place for you both, and he won’t be doing that if he’s stuck on Sarah as his prime suspect.”

“Okay.” That had been top of her priorities for the morning, but having Castillo confirm her plan made her feel better about it.

“Alex.” He sounded her name like a warning. “You could lose your job over this. Quinn will probably see it as a vote of no confidence in him that you didn’t disclose what happened in the Cascades.”

She had already considered that. She hadn’t trusted Quinn enough to tell him her history—hell, she hadn’t even told him her real name. She had always thought of him as an honorable man, but after what he had just done to Sarah, she was no longer quite so sure.

“I don’t care what happens to me, if it keeps Sarah safe,” she said.

“Just be prepared for the fallout.” Castillo sounded as sickened as she felt; he had tried so hard to manufacture a normal life for them. “Try and get some sleep now, and I’ll be in touch as soon as I have anything. I submitted a request for a background check on Emerson, too. Should hear back from that in the next forty-eight hours or so.”

“Thank you.” Somehow, the words seemed inadequate. She pushed back in her seat, calmer now that she had a strategy to work to. “I’ll call Quinn first thing.”

“Good.”

She heard a musical chime as he closed down his computer.

“So much for staying under the radar, huh?” he said.

“Yeah.” She gave a humorless laugh. “Bit fucking late for that.”

*

It was past midnight when Caleb stopped the car in front of the rental cottage. He had driven slowly, obeying the letter of the law, not wanting to be pulled over for an infraction while covered in blood and with the handle of a murder weapon in the trunk. Rain pelted down on Leah as she opened the car door. She tipped her face toward the sky, relishing the feel of the cool water against her heated skin. Caleb strode past her with two duffel bags, and she followed him into the kitchen, where he stripped naked and handed her his filthy clothes. Then he dug into the side pocket of one of the bags and set the knife handle on top of the pile.

“Burn them. Go a ways into the trees,” he said. “Then come back and clean this shit up.” He nodded at the blood and dirt his clothing had left on the floor. “We’re leaving again in an hour.”

His clothes were sodden with blood; by the time she had carried them to a clear spot in the forest, she had to add her own soiled shirt to the small bonfire she constructed. The rain and damp undergrowth made it difficult to keep the fire lit, but the newspapers she had found beneath the kitchen sink eventually caught, and a smell like rancid meat rose up from the flames.

The task took longer than she intended. Glad to leave the stench behind, she hurried back to the cottage as another heavy downpour began to beat on the trees. Far from being angry, though, Caleb smiled at her as she entered the kitchen. He had his cell phone in his hand.

“Take a shower, baby,” he said, oblivious to the way she tensed at the endearment. “News I just heard, we don’t need to rush.”

She had no idea what he was talking about, but he didn’t seem inclined to go into detail, so she remained silent.

“Soon as you’re good, we’re moving to a new place in Ruby.” He took her face in both hands and kissed her. “My man reckons we should stick around, see how all this plays out.”

The offer of a shower apparently forgotten, he pushed her urgently toward the bedroom. The door shut behind them with a soft snick of metal. She stood as motionless as a statue in the middle of the room and waited for him to tell her what he wanted.

Sarah had ordered pancakes, just to stop Alex from worrying about her, but the smell of maple syrup and buttermilk batter was too much for her to stomach. She toyed with a small piece and then dropped her fork, pushing the plate away.

“Here, try this instead,” Alex said, swapping the pancakes for her own dish of plain oatmeal. She smiled when Sarah took a tentative taste. “When I was a kid, whenever I felt like crap, our cook would make oatmeal. She told us it had restorative qualities.”

Sarah raised a skeptical eyebrow but ate another mouthful anyway. The diner was full of early morning bustle and smells: bacon sizzling on the griddle, people in suits impatiently reeling off orders for coffee that sounded as complex as neurosurgery, and the constant ping of the cash register. It seemed surreal to her that life was continuing all around her, as if the man who wanted two eggs over easy with a side of hash browns should somehow take a moment to acknowledge that a brutal murder had happened just hours before.

The spoon slipped from her bandaged fingers and she made no move to pick it up.

“Did Lyssa have a family?” she asked quietly. “I don’t think she ever mentioned her family.”

Alex retrieved the spoon for her and carefully closed her fingers around it. “I think she has a sister, somewhere on the West Coast.” She sipped her coffee, obviously trying to recollect. “San Diego, maybe? I remember her telling me that they didn’t really keep in touch.”

“She still had the brownies in the fucking car,” Sarah said. “She took some leftovers for her shift and they were right there on the passenger seat, and I keep thinking, what if she’d set off earlier or stayed later or we’d picked another day…” She was beginning to sob, her voice struggling to break through as her chest heaved with grief. “It must have been us he wanted, Alex. It had nothing to do with her.”

A woman at the adjacent table tutted loudly as Alex gathered Sarah into her arms and kissed her hands and then her face.

“Quinn will find whoever did this,” Alex told her.

Sarah shook her head. “He’s not even looking for anyone,” she said. “He thinks it was me.”

The ring of Alex’s cell phone cut off the discussion, but she looked defeated and Sarah knew that she hadn’t been about to disagree.

Alex’s expression hardened as she saw the caller ID. She had left a message with Esther asking Quinn to contact her as a matter of urgency. For him to be returning her call at seven a.m. indicated how eager he was to hear what she had to say. Sarah watched her face as she listened to him speak. A stranger might have found her difficult to read, but Sarah knew her better than she had ever known anyone, and she could tell that Alex was furious.

“Eight thirty,” Alex said. “We’ll be there.” She disconnected the call and took a long drink of water.

“Tell me,” Sarah said as Alex set down her empty glass.

Alex shook her head, and for a moment, Sarah thought she was going to cry. Even in the Cascades, when things had been at their worst, she couldn’t remember Alex ever seeming so lost.

“Tell me,” she repeated softly.

“Judge Buchanan granted a search warrant for our house.”

“On what grounds?”

“Your prints are on the blade, and Quinn is taking issue with the timeline you provided. He and Buchanan are old hunting buddies, so he wouldn’t need anything more than that. He has officers over there now, said he was letting me know as a courtesy.” Alex ground out the last word, but then terror seemed to overwhelm her anger and she took a ragged breath.

“What else?” Sarah prompted.

“He’ll speak to us both at eight thirty, but he advised you to find a lawyer.”

“Does that mean he’s going to arrest me?”

“No,” Alex said, her voice flat and bleak. “No, not yet.”

*

Bill Quinn slowly turned the small card in his fingers. He hadn’t said anything for over a minute, and the interview room was so quiet that the buzz of a fly flitting around the overhead light was almost unbearably loud. Alex’s mouth was dry from having spoken with little interruption for nearly an hour, but she didn’t dare reach for her glass of water. Beside her, Sarah sat motionless, while Scott Emerson sat behind Quinn with his head tilted slightly. At some point, as Alex explained what had happened to her and Sarah in the Cascades, he had stopped taking notes and simply listened, his eyes bright with interest.

When Quinn finally cleared his throat and laid the card face down in front of him, everyone seemed to sit up straighter. “So, it’s Alex Pascal, is it?” he said.

Determined that her response not come out as a weak rasp, Alex took a sip of water before answering. “Yes, sir.”

“This Agent Castillo”―he tapped the card she had given him, which listed Castillo’s official FBI contact details―“been a busy boy, hasn’t he?”

“He’s helped us a lot.” She couldn’t keep the edge from her voice; she felt Sarah nudge her thigh, reminding her to keep Quinn on their side. “He’s a good man, sir.”

“I’m sure he is.” His tone directly contradicted his assertion. “And between the three of you, you’ve decided that one of these white supremacist types, bearing a grudge, managed to locate you via an image from a local newspaper?” He paused, making a show of looking at Sarah and then at Alex for confirmation. “This person then accessed your property and, for whatever reason, murdered Lyssa Mardell?”

Alex didn’t grace his question with an answer. It was all too apparent that he considered the theory ludicrous. “Sir, will you at least speak to Agent Castillo? He’s expecting you to call. We can get this cleared up right now.” Panic was bringing her to the verge of begging. Common sense told her that in order to exhaust all lines of inquiry and build a case against Sarah, Quinn would have to investigate what Alex had just told him, would have to contact Castillo at some point, but it seemed he was going to make her sweat while he took his own sweet time about it.

He folded the card and pushed it into his shirt pocket.

“You join my team under a false name, with an FBI agent working in the background to purge details from your record,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet. “And now, when your wife’s up to her neck in shit, you suddenly decide you can trust me?”

“No, it wasn’t like that,” she said, realizing that it appeared exactly like that. “Chief, please, at least consider the possibility—”

He stood, effectively ending the discussion. “The search team has just finished at your house,” he said. “I suggest you remain on medical leave and take Sarah home. Beyond that, I wouldn’t be making any plans.”

He left the room, and seconds later, his voice could be plainly heard through the open door, greeting Margot St. Clare and thanking her for taking the time to drop by. Alex rubbed her face with her hands, wondering what the hell had just happened. She jumped when Sarah touched her shoulder.

“We should go,” Sarah said.

Emerson stood as they did, reaching the door just before them. He pushed it closed, blocking their exit. “Half the town is suddenly remembering Lyssa Mardell kissing Sarah at that picnic,” he said quickly. “Get a lawyer, a decent one.”

Alex stared at him, dumbfounded, trying to figure out what his angle was. He shrugged uneasily and gestured toward the discolored skin beneath her eye.

“Figured I owe you one,” he said. “You got another card for your FBI agent?”

She didn’t have one, but she scribbled Castillo’s number on a scrap of paper Emerson gave her. When she was done, he tucked the paper back into the middle of his notepad.

“I’ll do my best, but Quinn’s under a lot of pressure to move fast on this.”

“Meaning he’ll stick with the easy option,” she said, and heard Sarah’s sharp intake of breath. Emerson must have heard it too, because he shifted uncomfortably.

“It’s looking like that,” he conceded. “The ADA seems confident enough. She was going to request a detective to come in from Prescott County, but she doesn’t think that’s necessary now.” He put a hand on the door. “I have to get back out there. Leave by the side exit. There’s a news crew out front.”

He left before Alex could thank him. Feeling more confused than ever, she watched him stride down the corridor.

“I don’t get it,” Sarah said. “Is he a bad guy, or not?”

“I have no fucking clue anymore.” Alex let out a desperate laugh. “Let’s just go home.”

*

Newly clean of dust after the rain, Main Street was bright with sunshine. Outside most of the shops, small clusters of townsfolk were deep in earnest conversation. Several of them stopped to gesticulate excitedly as Alex drove past, and the expressions of distaste, and in some cases outright hostility, were impossible to mistake.