Chill Waters (18 page)

Sorrel’s hawk-eyes bored into his. “Where you been living, Gardner? In a cave?” Peter had to walk fast to keep up with him. “Take a look around you. Look at the Menendez brothersblew their parents away without so much as a by-the-by, then lied through their teeth in court. And think about those two kids who tortured a two-year-old, then laid his broken body on some railroads tracks. Or the jerk that takes a gun to school and starts popping his classmates into oblivion. Kids ain’t what they used to be, for chrissakes. They’re a new breed…”

Peter followed him into his office. “I know you see a good deal of the underbelly of humanity in your job, Captain. But there really are good kids out there. Why don’t you come out to the school sometimes? Maybe give a talk on law enforcement as a career. Meet some of those good kids. You might be pleasantly surprised.”

Sorrel growled around the Tums he’d just popped into his mouth. “Is that really why you’re here, Gardner? To ask me to give a talk at your school?” He smiled an alligator smile. “No, I didn’t think so. I heard about the little fiasco in the restaurant. I don’t blame Bob Myers one damn bit for having it in for your friend, Prichard. It’s a natural thing for a man to want to avenge the murder of his little girl. Let it be on your own shoulders, Peter, if anything happens to the kid.”

“There’s a killer out there somewhere, Captain, but it’s not Tommy Prichard. He’s as entitled to protection under the law as anyone else. Unless I’m mistaken, a person is still presumed innocent in this country until proven guilty.”

“You sound like your lawyer friend, Goldman.” He sat down behind his cluttered desk. “They tell me you used to be a pretty damn good amateur cop, Gardner. So how do you explain Officer Willis seeing Prichard coming out of her room that night? Prichard fled the scene. He hid out. Now, I know you’re the teacher, but when I went to school, two and two made four.”

“Circumstantial. Willis was threatening to shoot at him, for God’s sake.”

A light knock at the door, and Detective Chuck Mason, a stocky, broad-featured man with pale eyes that gave away little, swaggered into the office. Giving Peter a nod of recognition, he then dropped a report on the captain’s desk.

Sorrel picked it up, scanned it.

“Domestic,” Mason said, snapping his gum, sending a whiff of spearmint in Peter’s direction. “She’s in the hospital. Broken jaw, internal bleeding from her old man’s boots. She just keeps coming back for more. One of these days they’ll pick her up in a body bag.”

Sorrel tapped the paper with his forefinger. “See, Gardner. Anytime you got a woman dead of other than natural causes, ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s the boyfriend or hubby who did it.”

Peter didn’t bother to ask about the other one-percent. Cutting his visit with Sorrel short by mutual unspoken consent, he drove around aimlessly for awhile, ended up in the parking lot of St. Clair Hospital. It was quarter to seven. Already the sky had turned a dusky purple, a smattering of stars visible. He needed to talk to the nurse who was on duty that night.

He was in luck. Nurse Janet Lewis was just about to start her shift. He knew he had no official right to be here, to be asking questions of anyone, but dammit, someone had to.

“I’ve already told the police everything I know,” she said, a trace of defensiveness, even weariness, in her voice. “I didn’t get your name, Officer…”

“I’m not a policeman, Miss Lewis. My name is Peter Gardner. I’m a teacher. Heather was my student.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry.” Her brown eyes were sympathetic. He also thought he saw guilt there.

“Yes, so am I. But it’s not your fault.”

“I’m not sure that’s true, but thank you for saying it. I feel so awful about what happened to her.”

“Miss Lewis. Janet. I wondered if, in the wake of all of this aftermath, there might have been something you missed. Or that the police missed. If you don’t mind.” He glanced at his watch. “Fifteen minutes before you go on duty, right?”
The TV room was empty, so they went in there. She sat on the edge of the sofa, while he took the yellow, cracked leather chair facing her. He waited.

“As soon as I went into her room that night and saw him standing over her,” she said tonelessly, “I felt something wasn’t right. Something about the way he stood, the edge in his voice when he spoke. I ignored my own gut reaction to him. Oh, I asked him what he was doing there, and his answer seemed plausible enough. Sometimes Doctor Halstead
will
ask another doctor to check on a patient. It wasn’t that unusual. Except that he didn’t. Not this time. I didn’t know that then, of course.”

“No,” he said quietly. “You couldn’t.”

“It was late and he was in a hurry. He was a doctor, or so I believed. I’m just a nurse.”

He couldn’t help thinking that if she’d been able to summon more courage that night, Heather might still be alive. But he also felt sorry for Janet Lewis, who was obviously a caring, decent person. This must be very hard for her, thinking she might have left her patient in the hands of a murderer.

“I have to go now,” she said, checking her watch. At the door, she turned. “There was one thing…” A frown etched in her smooth forehead. “Something I noticed. It’s probably not important…”

“Please, Janet. What did you notice?”

“I think he might have worn a wig. I remember thinking it odd that someone would buy a grey wig. I could be wrong of course, but…”

“But you don’t think so. Then you’re not convinced Tommy Prichard killed her.”

“I don’t know. I have to hope it was him. Otherwise…”

That night his sleep was haunted by a shadowy man in a grey wig stalking a hospital corridor. At some point, Mary Ellen entered the dream. She was sitting before the vanity mirror in their bedroom, trying on one of the wigs she was forced to wear in those last months of her life, smiling at him in the mirror.

It took a while to shake the dream off. Now, he sat the kitchen table working on his second cup of coffee and marking the last of the book reviews on Winston Groom’s
As
Summers Die.
Groom was also the author of Forrest Gump, which came as a surprise to most of his students, who had no idea it was a book before it became a movie starring Tom Hanks. If they knew that, he’d reasoned, they might be more enthusiastic about the assignment, and he’d been right.

As Summers Die
reminded him somewhat of Harper Lee’s
To Kill A Mockingbird,
a comparison a few of the more avid readers in his class had also picked up on. There were some excellent book reports here, and others more than passable. All except for Derek Chesley’s paper, which was blank. Disappointing, but not surprising.

The last report marked, he clipped the pages together with a red plastic paperclip, set it on top of the others in his briefcase. Snapping the briefcase shut, he shrugged into his leather jacket. It was nearly eight-thirty.

As he passed the kitchen window, a goldfinch flashed at the corner of his eye. He stopped to watch it peck at the seeds in the birdfeeder. Mary Ellen had always made sure the feeder was well stocked when the cold months came, and Peter carried on in her honor.

The pancreatic cancer had slowly and cruelly stripped her of energy, of physical beauty, and finally, of life itself. She died at home, in his arms. A small breath expelled, then nothing. He’d waited for the next breath to come as it always had before, even with the long seconds between. But it never came. Though he’d known she was dying, it was a shock to feel her body cooling even as he held her. To see that eternal stillness on her pale lips.

There’d been no other woman in his life since her passing. He’d had no interest in dating. But he knew that was no longer true. From the moment he’d removed the splinter of glass from Rachael Warren’s cheek, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind.

Maybe that was why Tommy’s comment about his lack of personal life had rattled him so. Sighing, Peter bid the finch good morning, picked up his briefcase and headed off to school.

As soon as he walked into his classroom, he spotted Chesley at the back of the class, a defiant smirk on his face and he wanted to smack it off. Some you couldn’t reach; they already had all the answers.

Unlike Tommy’s father, Derek’s dad was a prominent lawyer who thrust out his hand and pulled his son up every time he fell into crap, while Nate Prichard was more apt to make a fist of his.

His classroom had grown quieter since Heather’s murder. Some of the students were still having nightmares, and required counseling, which the school was providing. This tragedy involving one of their own had hit them hard, made them feel unsafe in their world. Thinking it might be helpful he suggested they write about what they were feeling. About how Heather’s death had affected them. Mary Brewer, a tall, studious girl, raised her hand. “The psychologist already asked us to do that, Mr. Gardner.”

“Oh, of course. Well, those of you who aren’t seeing a counselor might want to take this opportunity to explore your own feelings. It’s not compulsory. The rest of you can work on a short story of your choosing.”

A few groans went up around the room. Mary raised her hand. “Everyone is saying Tommy Prichard killed Heather, Mr. Gardner,” she said, dark eyes solemn. “Do you think he did it?”

“No. No, I don’t think so, Mary.”

“Then who…?”

A few more hands shot up. “I don’t know. Please…” He smiled weakly. “Just get on with your assignment.”

A whisper of doubt in his mind. Was it possible he was wrong about Tommy and the others were right?

No. He didn’t believe that. Deep down he was certain that the man who went to Heather’s room that night, posing as a doctor, had murdered her. And even though she didn’t want to admit it, he was pretty sure that Nurse Janet Lewis believed it too.

Twenty-Two

Rachael ventured farther along the beach that morning than she had in years, scaling the same mossy, slippery rocks she had climbed as a girl. Along the stretches of hard sand, her long legs took on a rhythmic stride that gave her a pleasant sensation of flying.

She was growing stronger every day, both in body and mind. She could feel it. Although there were times when it was all she could do to put one foot ahead of the other, she’d learned that if she pushed herself through those times, the darkness would lift.

As it did now. The cry of gulls, the occasional call of a loon accompanied her on her journey. Tension soon ebbed from her body as if borne away on the waves that rushed the shore.

She’d been running for a good half-hour when she spotted a brown harbor seal seadogs they called him when she was a kidlounging on the beach in the morning sun. She slowed her pace, stopped.

She approached the seal cautiously, not wanting to frighten it. Looking into those moist black eyes, the seal looking into hers, she felt a profound connection with the creature. A brief connection, but one as real as the salty breezes that now cooled her skin. A primal communion, ancient as the earth itself.

The connection broke as the seal turned away. Pushing itself forward on its flippers, the animal waddled into the bay where it became as liquid as the sea, pure grace in motion. She watched until it was a black dot on the deep blue water, and understood that she had been given a rare and special gift.

I am coming back to myself. I really am going to make it through this
.

A slender figure in a dark green running suit, white sneakers flashing in the sun, she ran with the grace of a deer. As if it were in her nature to run. Strange, he did not recall her as being particularly athletic.

He kept her in his line of vision until she disappeared behind an outcropping of jagged rock. Then he lowered the binoculars and slipped his hand into his pants’ pocket, fondled the key there. Useless since she’d had her locks changed. Not that it mattered. Soon, he would need neither key nor guise. Soon she would come to him of her own free will, her eyes all soft and loving just for him. He would forgive her transgressions.

Had Rachael run another quarter of a mile that morning, she might have been the one to find the body washed up on the rocks. As it was, a teenage boy scanning the shore with his metal detector for hidden treasures, came across it. Rachael had been headed back to the house when she heard the sirens. Within minutes, the ambulance and the police car came into view, followed by a train of traffic, including a van from the local TV station. People were running behind the cars. It seemed half the town was streaming in her direction. Rachael fell in with the curiosity seekers.

“I thought at first it was some kind of mutant starfish,” the boy was telling the reporter who was holding a microphone up to his mouth.

Noticeably shaken, he was talking fast, hands gesturing wildly. Rachael could see he was also somewhat taken with being something of a celebrity. “Then I realized it was a hand wedged in some rocks. And then I saw the body. His hair looked like seaweed. The smell was gross.” He glanced around at the crowd who was hanging on every word. “Somethin’ ate most of his face. His eyes were gone. Only hollow sockets left.”

The interviewer kept her face solemn, but her eyes held a spark of glee at these lovely graphic details. Rachael got a whiff of the odor the boy was talking about and backed away, stomach churning.