Lady Killer

Chapter 4

His father had been working cattle in the high country that summer-the high-altitude meadows of the Sierra Nevada. The cow camp had cabins for the hands, so his mother and the four youngest kids-the ones too young to have summer jobs-had joined him for a month toward the end of the roundup season. Branding time. Josie and Anita had been ten and twelve that year, and they liked to go watch the cowboys work the cattle, but Tony and Elena had been too young to be trusted to keep out of the way, so they had to stay in camp with Mama.

Or they were supposed to.

We’re bored, Elena and I, and Mama is busy in the cookhouse, helping the cook make biscuits for dinner, so we decide to go find our own adventures. We’ll stay well away from the meadow where the cowboys and the cattle and horses are, we tell each other, so we won’t get into trouble.

We’re walking along, and we come around a big pile of rocks, and there it is, right in front of us. A mountain lion. We freeze, all three of us, and the lion seems as surprised as we are.

I can’t seem to breathe. Everything inside me has frozen solid. All I can see is the lion’s face, with its black mask and big yellow eyes. It seems huge, taller than I am, and I can almost feel its breath on my face. Beside me, Elena whimpers.

“Don’t move,” I whisper without moving my lips. But I feel my sister’s hand creep into mine.

I don’t know how long we stand there, the three of us, staring into each other’s eyes. Then, suddenly, the lion twists its body and bounds away over the rocks and is gone.

Elena gives a little gasp and looks at me. Her face is pale, and there is moisture on her cheeks. “Don’t tell Mama,” I say, and she shakes her head, quickly and hard. “We can’t tell anyone-ever,” I say as she wipes her cheeks with her hands. “If we do, they’ll come with guns and shoot it. You have to promise.”

She nods, sniffs and says, “She didn’t hurt us.”

But she takes my hand again as we walk back to the camp, and I feel a prickling on the back of my neck, as if yellow lion eyes are watching me all the way.

“Wow,” Daniel said. “She’s never done that before. Look, Mom. She’s not even afraid.”

Tony looked up at Brooke and shrugged. “Just got the knack, I guess,” he said, making light of it because his chest felt peppery inside and his world still shivered around its edges with the vividness of the memory flashback.

He heard her take a shuddering breath. “Daniel, time for you to get started on your homework. You have some makeup work to do. Don’t even think about arguing.”

Daniel hurriedly closed his mouth, evidently having been ready to do more than think about it. He let his drooping shoulders and hanging head show how unfair he thought it was, and lumbered off in the loose, disjointed way of disappointed children everywhere. Tony vividly recalled employing the same drama tactics, to roughly the same effect.

“He sure does mind well,” he remarked, and she made a dry sound that might have been a laugh.

“He’s been on his best behavior since…all this happened.” She said it without much expression in her voice but couldn’t keep the shadows of everything she’d been through in the recent past from flashing across her face.

Couldn’t keep it from Tony, anyway, because he had an eye trained to notice such subtleties. The tension in her facial muscles made his own ache.

Gently, not wanting to distress her more, he finally asked the question she’d already offered to answer. “What happened here?” When she didn’t reply immediately, he said, “I promised I wouldn’t write or photograph anything about it, and I won’t. But you’re right-I would like to know.”

He’d meant to leave it there, but she finished for him as if he hadn’t. “Whether you’re in the company of a killer or not?”

She crouched down beside him and put her face close to the wire and her fingers through it, and the cougar licked her fingers and butted her head up against the wire like a house cat wanting to be petted. Tony heard a peculiar rumbling sound, almost a vibration felt in his bones rather than heard, and with a small sense of wonder, he realized the animal was purring.

With her eyes closed, Brooke fought to gain control of her emotions, wondering why it seemed so tempting to give in to them here, now, with this strangely charismatic and imposing man. She drew in a breath and began.

“I was late getting home from town…”

He listened intently, not interrupting, and when she was through with her story, she stood up, and so did he. She looked down at Lady, who, at some point during her narrative had flopped down at the base of the fence and was lying stretched out with her back to them, close enough to touch through the wire. She seemed completely relaxed except for the tip of her tail, which twitched now and then.

“She seems to have accepted you completely,” she said with a small laugh, because she was in suspense, wanting to know how he was going to respond. Because she needed so badly to be believed. “For her to turn her back on you like this, it means she trusts you.”

“What can I say?” he said, showing that incongruous dimple. Then he cleared his throat, and his voice was abrupt, almost harsh. “Mind if I ask you some questions?”

She shrugged and spread her hands. Not saying the words, but thinking, What does it matter? Feeling gray and dismal and hopeless.

“I guess what I don’t understand is how they think you could have done this when your-excuse me-when Duncan was already dead when you got here, and Daniel is your witness to that fact. What? Do they think he’s lying to protect you?”

She threw him a look, feeling faint touches of warmth and light that were like the first rays of the rising sun on a frosty morning.

“No, actually.” She tried to smile and couldn’t even manage irony. Fear was a cold chill in her belly and a brassy taste in her throat when she swallowed. “They think I set it all up before I left, before Daniel got home from school. They say I asked Duncan to meet me here, somehow lured him into the compound, shot him with the tranq gun, let Lady out of her cage, then went to town to do my shopping. That I never meant for Daniel to be the one to find him, which only happened because the guy at the feed store had lost my order and I was late getting home.”

He was frowning, his tawny eyes intent in a way that reminded her oddly of the cougar’s eyes.

“So…do you have a tranq gun? The one you’re supposed to have used?”

She hissed out a breath. “I do have a tranq gun. Did. And that’s weird, because it’s gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean? Like-lost, stolen…”

“All I know is, it’s missing. Duncan bought it for me when Lady got big. He was afraid she might attack Daniel-or me, I suppose. He kept it in the tack room, in the barn, so it would be handy in case…in case Lady ever went berserk, I guess.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and laughed thickly. “Ironic, huh?” She sniffed and, after a moment, went on. “Anyway, I told the police-uh, sheriff’s department detectives, you know-where it was, and they said it wasn’t there. They had a warrant and searched the whole place for it, and so far they haven’t found it. Which, as far as they’re concerned, only proves their theory, that I did it before I left for town, took the gun with me and disposed of it somewhere on the way.”

“I don’t know,” Tony said in a slow and thoughtful way. “It all sounds pretty circumstantial.”

“Yes. But don’t forget, I also have motive. Duncan was contesting our custody agreement. He wanted full custody of Daniel. And this being a county in which the good-ol’ boys system governs just about everything, he actually might have won.” She struggled again with the smile. “And don’t they always suspect the husband or wife first? Especially-” she drew a shivering breath “-when there’s nobody else to suspect. I mean, who else could it be, right?”

She looked at him, and he looked back at her, not saying anything. She thought he looked shaken. Because he thinks I’m a murderer? Or because he sees, as I do, how hopeless it is…

“So,” she said when the silence had stretched as far as it could, “do you still want to do your story when the odds are I really am a cold-blooded killer?” To her own ears her voice sounded as thin and brittle as she felt. As if the wrong word would shatter her into a million pieces. She watched him closely, waiting for it…

But he only said, “Okay if I come back tomorrow? Looks like Lady’s okay with me, so I don’t see why I can’t start shooting.” He wasn’t smiling, but it seemed to her-she wasn’t imagining it?-that his eyes were kind.

She let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “Tomorrow’s fine,” she said, not smiling, either. But once again she felt it-that faint touch of warmth.

“I don’t think she did it,” Tony said to Holt at the diner that evening. He had just put in his order for the deluxe Black Angus cheeseburger and was trying not to think about all the stuff his sisters had just been preaching to him about bad fats and red meat and cholesterol. He shook his head and reached for his beer. “But I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to stay objective on the subject.”

Holt leaned back against the booth’s red plastic upholstery and draped one long arm along the top edge of it and gave him a narrow-eyed gaze that reminded Tony of Clint Eastwood-minus the stump of cigar. “Why’s that?”

Tony shrugged. “Well, shoot, man, she’s my best friend’s baby sister. Of course, I want her to be innocent.”

It was enough of a reason to give Holt, but in his heart he knew it wasn’t the only one.

He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t get the lady out of his mind. Images kept flashing through his head like snapshots in a slide show: a work-worn hand resting on the head of a huge, shaggy fawn-and-white dog; laugh lines at the corners of smoky blue eyes filled with tears; a head with spiky blond hair shooting every which way out of a haphazard ponytail, leaning against one side of a chain-link fence, with a mountain lion’s head butting against it from the other; a pair of long, slim legs in blue jeans just inches away from his shoulder, folding up to lower a long, slim body down next to him, so close he could feel the heat of it.

Okay, so he was aware of her as a woman. He liked women. Especially beautiful ones. But he’d never had one get into his head like this one had, not in so short a time.

He drank beer, paused, then frowned and said, “The thing is, it doesn’t look like she could be. I mean, it all points to her being the only one who could have done it. Circumstantial, sure, but add to that a good motive and the fact that she’s the ex-spouse-I mean, hell, I’d have arrested her.”

“But you don’t think she did it.”

“No, I don’t. Call it a gut feeling, I guess.” At least he hoped it was his gut he was feeling, and not some other part of his anatomy, the one known to be considerably less reliable in its judgments.

“Well, okay then,” said Holt, and then they both leaned back to allow the waitress-a buxom, fortyish woman with shocking red hair-to deliver their dinner plates.

“Thanks, Shirley-looks great,” Holt told her with a wink and a smile, and she smiled back at him, gave her fanny a little wiggle, said, “Eat up, hon. You need some meat on your bones,” as she winked at Tony and sashayed off.

“Okay, so let’s go from there.” Holt picked up a bottle of steak sauce and studied his plate for a moment before applying generous amounts to his burger and passing the bottle on to Tony. “Let’s assume she didn’t do it. So…who did?” He picked up his burger, bit into it, looked at Tony and raised his eyebrows as he chewed.

Tony gave a bark of laughter without much amusement in it.

Holt leaned toward him, and Tony thought again of Clint Eastwood. “No, look here. It’s a matter of logic. If she didn’t do it, someone else did. So, we have to think who could have done the things she’s supposed to have done. Take it one thing at a time.” He held up a finger. “One, the victim was inside the cougar’s cage. How did he get there? You said Brooke told you her ex was afraid of the lion. So, would he go in there by himself? Not likely. Not willingly, anyway. Which means somebody either had to put him in there after he was tranqed, or somehow enticed him in while he was still mobile.”

“He was a big man, from what I understand,” Tony said, beginning to get into it now himself. “And there were no drag marks, at least that I could see or anyone mentioned. Brooke couldn’t have put him in the cage herself, I don’t think.”

“So,” said Holt, with a shrug, after another bite and chew, “either it was somebody bigger than the victim, strong enough to carry him, or somebody he trusted enough to go into the cougar’s pen with. That’s not likely to be an ex-wife he’s in a custody battle with, seems to me.” He held up a hand. “Actually, that should have been point number two. Number one, what was he doing at his ex’s ranch in the first place? His vehicle was there, parked on a dirt road that ran around the back of Brooke’s property. A road that passes pretty close by where the cougar’s pen is. I’ve been doing some scouting of my own,” he explained when Tony started to ask how he knew that. “So, that’s a big question. Why was he there? If he was there to see Brooke, wouldn’t he just go up the driveway to the house? We have to assume he met someone there-the person who killed him, right? Who would he go there to meet? And why?”

“You have to think they-whoever the other party or parties were-they were up to no good,” Tony said, chewing thoughtfully. “Otherwise, like you say, why not go on up to the house?”

“Right. Then there’s the matter of the weapon.”

“The tranquilizer gun.” Tony nodded. “Which Brooke says was kept in the tack room in the barn, a room that wasn’t locked. And now it’s missing.”

“Okay,” said Holt, leaning back with beer bottle in hand. “Who knew about the gun? For starters, the man who bought it-Duncan Grant.”

Tony was frowning. “Let’s get this straight. Duncan Grant comes to his ex-wife’s ranch when she’s not home, parks where he won’t be seen, meets some person or persons unknown, most likely male, gets the tranquilizer gun from the tack room-or tells his partners where it is and they take it-and somehow he winds up shot with it and left inside a cougar’s compound to die. Then whoever the unknown killer is, he takes the gun and drives away, leaving a nine-year-old boy to discover his father’s body, and the lion and the ex to take the blame.”

Holt nodded. “That about sums it up.”

Tony pushed his plate away with about a third of his burger still on it, having pretty much lost his appetite. “And it explains the dog,” he said.

“The dog?”

“Yeah. Brooke’s got a giant dog-some kind of sheepdog, I think. Very protective. I don’t think she’d have allowed a stranger onto the place, but if it was Duncan and somebody he trusted-”

“Like a friend.”

“Right,” Tony said.

Then both he and Holt went silent as the diner’s door whooshed open and a group of men wearing brown Stetsons and tan shirts came in together, bantering and laughing in the confident, swaggering manner of men who know they own their little corner of the universe.

Tony watched them until they’d settled into a big corner booth near the front of the diner, then turned back to Holt. He felt chilled. “And Duncan’s friends are probably mostly gonna be…”

“Cops,” said Holt.

Brooke was finishing up the morning chores when she heard a car drive up to the house. She didn’t realize until she saw that it wasn’t Tony Whitehall’s sedan how much she’d been looking forward to his coming.

But it was a sheriff’s department SUV. She stood in the big barn doorway and watched it come up the lane and stop beside her pickup, and she felt afraid. It was a cold, sick, queasy kind of fear, a fear that she hadn’t felt in a very long time and had hoped she’d forgotten.

I’m afraid, because I know something bad is about to happen to me, and I know that I am powerless to do anything to stop it, and that there’s no one I can turn to for help. I feel dirty and small, and I’m trembling inside, but I know I have to be strong…

The SUV’s door opened and Lonnie Doyle got out. Hilda didn’t go trotting out, with her tail wagging, to meet him, although she knew him well from all the times he’d been there with Duncan. Instead, she sat at Brooke’s feet, close to her side, trembling a little, as if she, too, was afraid.

“Hey, Brooke,” Lonnie said, sauntering toward her, wearing a big smile, as if he’d never made threats against her and her pet cougar, as if he had the right to still call himself her friend just because he was Duncan’s. As if he had every right to be there, on her place, which of course, he did, she reminded herself, because he was The Law.

“Lonnie,” said Brooke, without a nod or smile.

“Just thought I’d stop by, see how you’re doin’.” He had the grace to at least look a little awkward, although he didn’t take off his hat to be polite. Probably, she thought, because it was a big part of what gave him his authority. His power.

“I’m doing okay.” Her hand had come to rest on Hilda’s silky head, and that gave her a small measure of comfort.

“How’s Daniel?”

“He’s fine. In school right now.”

“Good…good…” His small eyes gazed past her, through the barn and off toward where the animal pens were. Where Lady was. Where Duncan had died. She saw his jaw clench.

Before he could say anything, she asked in a flat voice, “What do you want, Lonnie?”

His eyes flicked at her, then away, and he shifted his stance and folded his arms in a way he maybe meant to be ingratiating but somehow just felt intimidating instead. “Uh, look, Brooke, about the other day. If I came on too strong…” He coughed, and Brooke thought, My God, is he trying to apologize? Then he seemed to draw himself together, and the intimidation was back-definitely-as he went on. “Look, Dunk was my best friend-my partner. What that cat did to him. Hell, I would have shot him-”

“Her,” Brooke corrected softly, but he didn’t seem to hear.

“-if Al hadn’t stopped me. I’m glad he did, because I wouldn’t want to do that to the boy. To Danny. I’m sorry if I upset him. But, Brooke, you need to understand, that cat is a killer. For your own sake, and the safety of your boy, you need to let that animal go. Let animal control take it and put it down.” When she would have protested, he held up a finger, like a teacher lecturing a class of small, unruly children, and moved closer to her, hemming her in. “Look, all you need to do is read the paper, watch TV. There was that case in Florida where two cheetahs turned on their keeper, tore her up good. And then the guy in Las Vegas. What was his name? Anyway, you got no business keeping a dangerous animal like that on your place when you’ve got a kid to think about.”

“Thank you for your concern,” Brooke said coldly. “If that’s what you came to tell me, you’ve told me. So, if you don’t mind, I really do have work to do.”

“Look, I’m just trying to look out for you and Danny. Dunk was my best friend. It’s the least I can do.”

She felt a dangerous impulse to laugh. But he was standing too close to her, making her feel claustrophobic and, although she couldn’t have explained why, afraid. It suddenly seemed important to placate him, and that impulse, too, brought back memories she wished she could forget.

She drew a steadying breath. “Lonnie, that’s kind of you. But I don’t need any help. Really. I’ve been getting along fine on my own for two years. Daniel and I will be just…fine.”

Something glittered in his little blue eyes and quivered around the corners of his mouth, and Brooke thought about what Mr. Henderson had told her, and of all the evidence and suspicion against her, and for a moment she actually thought she might throw up. She felt clammy and cold, and there was a humming in her ears. She couldn’t breathe.

Then the spell broke, and instead of humming, she heard the growl of a car making its way up the lane. She felt warm again, and not afraid.

“Who the hell is that?” Lonnie asked, as if he had a right to know. He was scowling, watching the gray sedan pull around and park on the other side of Brooke’s pickup.

Brooke drew a breath that quivered with relief and a strange, unanticipated gladness. “Oh,” she said in an offhand way, “it’s just a reporter. He’s doing a story about Lady.” She folded her arms and smiled, enjoying the way Lonnie jerked back in surprise. “He’s with National Geographic, I think. Or Animal Planet-one of those.”

His lips curled in a sneer. “Yeah? Well, if you think that’s gonna save that cat, think again. He’s a killer, and I can guarantee you the judge is gonna see it that way, too, so you tell your Animal Planet big shot he’s got until the hearing next week to get his story, because after that the cat is history. Count on it.”

He stabbed a finger at her for emphasis as he turned and started for his vehicle, then abruptly turned back, smiling in a way that didn’t even try to be friendly. “Oh-forgot to tell you. Just thought you’d like to know, we haven’t found the tranq gun yet. Still looking for it, though.”

Why did that sound like a threat? Brooke thought as she watched him stride away, barely acknowledging Tony as he passed him by.

She saw Tony pause for a moment to look back at Lonnie, wondering at his rudeness, maybe. When he came on, loaded down with his cameras and bags, he caught her eye, and she saw his tough, bulldog face break into its oddly sweet smile. Once again, that peculiar warmth came over her, along with reassurance, an overwhelming sense that she was safe, now. Because he was here.

Tony felt the animosity as he and the other man passed each other, a wave of something so tangible he could almost see it, smell it, like the smoke from a particularly nasty cigar.

He turned to watch the deputy get into his official sheriff’s department vehicle, then continued on, frowning. But when he saw Brooke’s face, and that she looked pale and scared, there was something about that and the look in her eyes that affected him in unfamiliar ways. He considered himself a nonviolent person, one much more inclined to make love than war, but he felt a sudden surprising urge to inflict great bodily harm on the individual who had put that fear in this woman’s eyes.

He summoned the most reassuring smile he could muster and felt a strange lifting beneath his heart when she smiled back, even though her smile didn’t reach as far as her eyes. “What’s wrong? What’s a deputy sheriff doing here?” he asked her, aware that his own bravado was equivalent to that of a nine-year-old’s, secure in the knowledge that the school-yard bully had already departed the field of battle.

She shook her head, made a gesture, making light of it all. “Oh, that’s just Lonnie.” She took a breath. “Duncan’s partner.”

“Ah,” said Tony. He glanced down at the dog, who was in her usual position beside Brooke, but panting lazily and gazing after the departing SUV, evidently not in the least concerned about Tony’s presence there. He was remembering what Holt had said about Duncan’s friends most likely being other cops. “He’s…a friend, then?”

She gave a high, humorless laugh. “Not mine.”

He could see her struggling with it, not sure whether she could trust him, afraid to say too much. But, of course, she already had told him a lot, much more than she probably realized. He was good at reading faces.

“Gotcha,” he said, turning as if to walk on toward the barn’s wide, open entrance, as if he didn’t need her to say another word. Which, in the contrary way of people-women especially, in his experience-gave her permission to say what was on her mind.

“They grew up together, Lonnie and Duncan,” she said as she came to walk beside him. “I swear, as long as I knew Duncan Grant, wherever he was, I could count on Lonnie not being far away. They played high school football together. Just generally raised hell together. Then they both joined the sheriff’s department and went off to learn to be cops together, which kind of surprised everyone, I think. Most people around here probably thought they’d wind up in the same jail cell-together.”

“Stands to reason he’d take his buddy’s death hard,” said Tony. “Sounds like they must have been really close.”

She tilted her head in a thoughtful way. “Close? Yeah, they were…I guess. But the funny thing is, they didn’t always get along. Most of the time, in fact. Those two probably had more bare-knuckle brawls than any two best buddies in the state of Texas, which is saying a lot. I guess maybe they were more like brothers who didn’t see eye to eye most of the time.”

Cain and Abel were brothers, too, Tony thought. But he said, “What about you?”

“I never did care much for him,” she said in a diffident way, watching the ground in front of her. Then she threw him a look and a wry smile. “Can’t stand the man, if you want to know the truth. And I’m sure the feeling is mutual. Lonnie being single, I imagine he didn’t much like losing his good ol’ drinkin’ and hell-raisin’ buddy-not that I noticed Duncan’s lifestyle or priorities changed much after we got married. Or even after Daniel was born, for that matter.” She went back to looking at the ground, forehead furrowed. “That’s why I can’t understand-”

“What?” he prompted when she paused, but she shook her head.

“Nothing. Really.” She gave a soft, embarrassed laugh. “I can’t imagine why I’m even tellin’ you all this. Particularly after I said you couldn’t do one little bit of your story about me or Daniel. I still do mean that, by the way.” She gave him the last in a warning tone, but with a new lightness in her attitude that made it seem almost like banter.

He looked over at her as they strolled, unhurried, down the lane between animal pens, with the dog trotting on ahead of them. Brooke had her fingertips tucked in the pockets of her jeans and her face lifted to the warm September sun. Her straight, layered, sun-streaked hair was twisted up in an artless style and fastened to the back of her head with a wide metal clip, leaving pieces sticking out and waving around her head in a way that was whimsical but oddly attractive. The camera shutter in his mind went click.

“No story,” he said. “Just interested. What don’t you understand?”

Again, she hesitated, then let out a surrendering breath. “Why Duncan even wanted custody of Daniel. I don’t think Lonnie understood it, either. I would think Daniel would just have gotten in his way.”

“What about Daniel? How does he feel about it?”

“The custody battle?” Her face was suddenly a study in anger…bitterness…pain. “He doesn’t want to live with his dad, that’s for sure.” She threw him a look and quickly added, “Oh, don’t get me wrong. Daniel loves his father. Loved.” She closed her eyes briefly, and he saw her throat struggle with a swallow. “But-” and her voice had gone harsh and soft “-he’ll never forget what that man did to me.”

Tony didn’t want to ask, but of course he had to. “What did he do?”

They’d reached the cougar’s high wire enclosure. Brooke halted and, with a jerky, angry gesture, lifted her hair away from her forehead to show him the white scar running into her scalp. She turned to him and tried, without success, to smile. “That’s just the one that shows.”