Blind Faith (32 page)

"Wait a minute," Alan protested as she held a hand out to Sarah, helping her to her feet. "She needs to stay here. There's paperwork to sort out, I might file a cross-complaint—"

Caitlyn wrapped her arm around Sarah's waist and waved off Alan's objections. "Chief Waverly will help you with all that. But I have a favor to ask Mrs. Durandt. Do you think it would be possible for me to transport you home and make use of your shower? I'm in desperate need of a place to clean up."

She watched, holding her breath to see if Sarah would take the bait. Sarah's glance darted from Logan to Easton and back again. Ahh, it was Logan she was most afraid of. She'd have to see what hold he had over Sarah. She gave a gentle tug on Sarah's waist, aiming her toward the door.

"Sure, I guess," Sarah said, almost stumbling. "That would be fine. Ah, thank you."

"No, thank you."

Now came the hard part. Caitlyn kept her hand on Sarah's elbow as she escorted her out to the Subaru. Hal stepped forward when he saw them emerge from the station.

"What the hell you doing? That's my prisoner!"

"Not anymore," she said, opening Sarah's door and helping her into the car as if she were in custody. Caitlyn quickly jogged around to the other side of the car. "Federal jurisdiction. Sorry, Hal."

She started the car and spun out of the gravel parking lot before he could say anything. As she glanced in the rearview mirror she saw him standing gape-mouthed, an expression of twisted anger and distrust on his face.

The man she'd been attracted to last night had totally vanished. Had he ever truly existed?

"Was that true?" Sarah asked. "What you said in there about the gun being lost?"

Caitlyn heard an undercurrent of hope in the woman's voice. "That gun was lost by an law enforcement officer, yes ma'am. It's the truth."

Sarah's lips tightened and she crossed her arms over her chest as she sat back and considered Caitlyn's words.

"So the officer, he wasn't hurt?" she persisted.

Caitlyn twisted the wheel, turning onto Lake Road. Sarah obviously knew more than she'd let on, but not everything.

"I think he's down in Merrill right now," she answered truthfully. Only she left out the part about him being zipped up tight in a body bag.

"This smells delicious," Caitlyn said, taking the mug of tea from Sarah. It felt so good to have showered and cleared some of the cobwebs out of her mind. Sarah had been a gracious hostess, cooking them both a late breakfast and now serving tea. "It doesn't smell like tea, but like," she sniffed, "I don't know, my grandmother's kitchen."

"It's called Good Earth. Supposed to be calming, soothing. The Colonel's wife brought it after..." Sarah gave a brittle laugh as she filled her own cup. Caitlyn looked up, caught a strange expression trace over the other woman's face. Amusement mixed with anger.

"Thanks for letting me clean up here." She'd already re-packed her bag and stowed it back in her car while Sarah had taken her own quick shower. Now they sat, running out of polite conversation as Caitlyn decided on the best angle to take.

She sipped the steaming tea. It tasted of cinnamon and spices. "Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about Chief Waverly?"

Sarah straightened, leaned against the counter, her mug in her hands. "Guess not, since that was his shirt you were wearing this morning. But shouldn't you be asking him?" She paused and joined Caitlyn at the table, giving Caitlyn a discerning look. "If you're that interested, I mean."

Last thing Caitlyn was about to explain was her interest in the police chief. Or how she came to be wearing his uniform shirt. Somehow Hal had played a role in Sarah's tragedy. She just wished she could figure out exactly what. "He said his wife died of cancer. Right before you lost your husband and son."

Sarah's spoon clanked against the mug as she bent over her tea, stirring furiously. She looked up and met Caitlyn's gaze. Her eyes were clear but her lips were pinched. "I shouldn't say—it's none of my business—it couldn't be connected to Sam and Josh, but..."

Caitlyn waited. Sarah's words had rushed out in a single breath then drifted away. The clock ticked, the refrigerator hummed, and a stray rose branch scratched against the window over the kitchen sink. Finally, Sarah gave a small nod, as if giving herself permission to think unforgivable thoughts.

"Hal and I grew up here. Me since I was eight, he lived here all his life. We've been friends forever. I should have seen it—"

"Seen what, Sarah? How did Hal's wife really die?"

Sarah dropped her spoon into the tea. "She drove up to the Upper Falls, stripped naked and jumped."

Caitlyn pushed her mug aside and leaned forward, elbows on the table. "She killed herself? And Hal? Where was he?"

"He would have stopped her if he could. See, those last weeks, he was taking care of her full time. Oh, the rest of us, we stopped in, brought him food, tried our best to help. But Lily, she was—" She gave a little shrug, her lips blanching as they pressed together. "Towards the end there, she wasn't the woman we knew. She was out of control from the pain. It was like she was possessed. Hal was the only one who could sooth her, keep her from hurting herself or someone else."

"Couldn't the doctors?"

"Hal's insurance had long since ran out, and besides the doctors said the only hope was to give her enough morphine that she'd probably die from it. Hal couldn't bring himself to let them do that—even if he could afford to take her back to the hospital. They set up hospice workers to visit but they just made Lily worse. She was out of her mind, said they were trying to kill her, to poison the entire town, that she was the only one who could save us."

"Save you from what?"

"Lily was the county hydrologist. She loved being outdoors, especially anything to do with water. She checked the reservoir, monitored all the local wells, kept an eye on the ground water. After she got sick, she got the notion that something in the water had poisoned her, given her the cancer. That someone wanted to poison the entire town. She began spying on people at night, even confronted a few of the village council like the Colonel."

"But it was really the cancer causing her delusions, change of personality, right?" Caitlyn wondered if Lily hadn't been at least partially right. Hal seemed to have the same mood swings, paranoid ideas his wife had suffered from.

Sarah nodded, was silent for another long moment. "Hal's never forgiven himself for answering the call that night. He couldn't afford any more sick leave, the village had already given him an extension on his pay so that he could keep the bank from foreclosing, so he tried his best to work from home. By that time, Lily would go crazy at the sight of anyone else, so we couldn't even really help.

"Some kids went skinny-dipping in the reservoir. Got stuck naked in the water, forgot that the way the bank is sloped there'd be no way for them to climb out again from the other side. That was two years ago tonight."

"And Lily?"

"She must have left right after Hal did. I don't know how she made it up the Pike without driving off the side of the mountain. The autopsy showed enough painkillers and sedatives in her to kill a grizzly. When Hal found her missing, he went nuts. We found the truck and we knew what happened." She raised her now cold tea to her lips, her fingers white as they gripped the cup.

"We found her body two days later. In Snakebelly—same place I found that body yesterday."

Caitlyn sat back, her own drink forgotten as she plucked at an itchy patch of skin on her arm. Her veins were still buzzing—with fatigue or sexual excitement left over from last night, she wasn't sure. But her skin felt so tight she wanted to claw her way out of it.

"Must be long hours for a Police Chief around here," she said, shifting in her seat. "Especially one so committed as Hal."

"It's nonstop when the tourists are here in the summer and fall. I've tried to get Hal to take a break, but he's a stubborn man. Just loves this town too much to trust it to anyone else, I guess."

Caitlyn looked down, her fingers still worrying at her forearm. There was no rash or signs of a bug bite, but she couldn't stop. It was as if angry gnats had crawled under her skin and were now trying to burrow further. The same gnats kept buzzing through her mind with a suspicious and ugly thought of how Sarah's loss and Hal's might be connected. "I guess the insurance must have still paid off? That's how he kept his house, right?"

There was a knock of porcelain hitting the wood too hard. Caitlyn looked up, saw the blood had drained from Sarah's face. Ahh, no one ever said the woman was stupid. She'd obviously put two and two together almost as fast as Caitlyn had.

"No," she stumbled out the single syllable. "Sam said it was the worse thing he'd ever had to do, telling Hal that because it was suicide, the company wouldn't pay. Sam even offered to give Hal money to tide him over, help him with the mortgage. He knew how much that house meant to Hal."

"When was this, Sarah?"

"August, just a few days before Sam and Josh..." She looked past Caitlyn, her gaze focused on the refrigerator festooned with its colorful finger paintings, their edges yellowed and curling with age. She made a choking sound, then cleared her throat. "Sam said he talked to Hal about Damian Wright, that he warned him—it would have been the same time."

"Sam said?" Caitlyn leaned forward, engaging the woman's attention. It was the second time Sarah Durandt had referred to her husband as if she'd just spoken with him. "Sarah, what do you mean, Sam said?"

Sarah stared at Caitlyn for a long moment. Her chest tightened and she felt sweat break out all over her. Sam had managed to keep Josh and his secret safe for almost two years. She'd known for only a few hours and first Alan and now Caitlyn were reading her like a neon sign flashing in Times Square.

She closed her eyes, utterly exhausted. Physically, mentally, emotionally exhausted. No, that wasn't the right word. What came after exhaustion? Breakdown.

Not a bad idea. Sarah slumped forward, resting her head on the kitchen table, and allowed her emotions to swarm over her like a nest of angry timber rattlers. Tears she'd held back for so very long, a torrent of fear and anger and more fear. Her body shook, her shoulders heaved, her head rocked against the tabletop.

Caitlyn's chair scraped back and the FBI agent crouched beside Sarah, wrapping her arms around her. "Jesus, I'm so sorry. I did it again. Mrs. Durandt, Sarah, I'm sorry. Just take a deep breath. That's it, you'll be all right."

Sarah almost felt guilty about tricking Caitlyn into a show of sympathy. Or was it just a show? Caitlyn had come that night with Jack Logan—who obviously knew more about Sam than he was telling anyone. Except Alan.

Now her breath came in ragged gasps for real. Sam was right. There was no one they could trust. If Caitlyn's suspicions about Hal were correct, then Sarah couldn't even trust the man she'd known for over twenty years.

It was all up to her. And so far she'd failed miserably. How the hell had Sam managed to keep his sanity while living in this world of deceit and treachery?

The enormity of what he had sacrificed, what doing the right thing had cost him, eased her anger towards him. A little. Maybe. He'd still had no right to take her son away from her, to let her think they were both dead...

"I talk to Sam every day," Sarah said, finally raising her head. Caitlyn grabbed a dishtowel from the oven door and Sarah used it to wipe her tears and blow her nose. "I'm sorry. I've never lost it like that before. It must have been finding the body yesterday. I really thought it would be Sam. That maybe if I had found him and Josh I could find some peace."

Sarah stared into the yellow daisies that covered the cotton towel, hoping Caitlyn bought her performance. The agent was silent for a long moment before resuming her seat at the table.

"Sam told you he'd spoken with Chief Waverly about Damian Wright. When exactly did you speak with him, Mrs. Durandt?"

Sarah noticed the way Caitlyn lowered her voice and raised her inflection, to soften any hint of accusation in her question. She could feel the agent's eyes on her as she left the table and busied herself by clearing the cups and silverware.

"Whenever either one of us traveled, we talked every night. On the phone. So it must have been whatever night Sam told Hal. Surely it's in the files somewhere. I must have told you this before. After all, a father would tell his wife that a pervert was trying to take photos of their child, wouldn't he?"

Caitlyn was silent and Sarah realized the agent was allowing her to incriminate herself. The strident tone she'd fallen into, the bitterness she'd revealed with her last statement was all too obvious. No, Sam hadn't told her about Damian Wright. She wasn't sure if that was because Hal asked him not to or because Sam really hadn't believed there was a threat to Josh after all.

Or because that last time they'd spoken that summer, she'd spent all their time ranting about the educational system and the dunderheads in the government who were wasting her time and had threatened to walk out of the mandatory seminar and quit her job. She'd been so upset that it had taken Sam twenty minutes to calm her down, convince her to stay in Albany.