Faultlines (20 page)

“You don’t get it—how this town works,” she said. “It’s not Houston.”

“You’re starting to sound like Mia.” Annoyance sharpened Libby’s voice.

“I’m offering you a perspective, not conspiracy theories and soap-opera dramatics.” Ruth wasn’t less annoyed.

“Beck would get this mess sorted out,” Libby insisted. “You know he would. Especially where it concerns Jordan. How can I do less?”

“Beck wouldn’t want you to put yourself at risk, Libby. That’s what I know.”

She picked up her purse. “I’ll call you later.”

“I’ll look forward to that,” Ruth said. “And if I don’t hear from you, I’ll call the law—in another town—to come check on you!”

Libby lifted her hand, waving without turning, a
whatever
gesture, and then she caught sight of Coleta. She was sitting at a desk in a cubicle near the entry doors. There was a stack of brochures in front of her, but she wasn’t doing anything with them. She was watching Libby, and while she was smiling, there was something other than humor working in her eyes. Libby couldn’t decide what it was. Frustration, maybe, over the language barrier. But while Coleta might not be so fluent in English, Libby thought she knew her way around another language quite well.

She had no plan, driving over to police headquarters. No ideas about how to get to the bottom of it, as she’d told Ruth that Beck would do. If only Beck were here. Why was the truth never simple? But no, the truth
was
simple. It was people who complicated it. Why couldn’t they tell the straight facts, own up, say they did a thing, and then do their best to make it right? Why was it easier to lie? She could take that question back to Sandy Cline, Libby guessed, if she ended up having to talk to her. If she couldn’t find another way.

Sergeant Huckabee, dressed in his uniform, was on the sidewalk outside the building that housed local law enforcement. Libby saw him as soon as she pulled up. He was talking to another man, dressed in civilian clothes, jeans and a T-shirt. Ricky Burrows.

She got out of the truck, smiling and waving when Ricky caught sight of her. She didn’t know what to make of it when he suddenly wheeled and walked quickly away in the opposite direction.

She and the sergeant exchanged greetings. He was warm, almost effusive, asking how she was, whether or not she’d enjoyed the tamales. He went so far as to extend his hand, but she pretended not to see it, not wanting to make physical contact. His demeanor changed after that, becoming professional. It was hot, standing on the sidewalk, but she swore the air between them cooled.

She said, “I keep meaning to return your dish.”

He nodded curtly and asked how he could help her.

“That was Ricky Burrows you were talking to, wasn’t it? Did he come about his truck?”

“No,” Huckabee said. He didn’t elaborate.

“What do you know about him?”

Although the sergeant appeared to be looking at her, he had on mirror-lensed sunglasses. She couldn’t see anything of his expression, only her own reflection. It annoyed her. She wanted to ask him to take them off. She said, “He’s working on my property, part of the construction crew that’s building my house. That’s why I’m interested. I’d want to know if he’s in any kind of trouble.”

“Not the sort you need to worry about.” Huckabee looked off in the direction Ricky had disappeared. “He’s got a fondness for Coors beer, but he doesn’t start until quitting time—beer thirty.”

“He’s not local, from around here, is he?”

“Nah. Came from up north somewhere. Colorado, I think.”

It was the same story Libby had heard from Augie, verification of a sort, she guessed. “Is he in any legal trouble that you know of?”

“Not as of today. The boy has finally got his story straight. Look, I’m real sorry to cut this short, but I have an appointment.”

“If you could spare another few minutes, I’d like you to go inside with me and talk to the captain.” What she really wanted was to see Huckabee’s eyes without the mirror lenses.

“About?”

That car accident,
she thought. “What’s being done to find the person responsible for leaving dead animals on my property.” Libby studied her twin images captured in the lenses of his sunglasses, wondering what he’d do if she pulled them off his face. It aggravated her; he aggravated her. But she couldn’t really picture Huckabee committing wanton acts of vandalism, even though she was aware that cops could be as mentally twisted as the next guy. The drawback with the sergeant, though, was the lack of any motive. Why would he do it? Not for any reason she could see.

There was nothing new, he said, with obvious impatience.

“Is it possible I’m being targeted?” Libby raised Ruth’s suspicion. “I know no connection has been found to the animal killings in Houston, but that just makes what’s happening on my property more worrisome. Whoever is behind this—they were inside the cottage. It’s unnerving. I don’t know what their reason is, or what direction they might come from next.”

“You might want to make other living arrangements,” the sergeant said. “You might consider going back to Houston for the time being. I’ve advised your neighbors to do the same.”

“What neighbors? I wasn’t aware anyone else had bought property at the Little B.”

“Ruth didn’t tell you? A couple with three kids, teenagers. Grayson is their name. They bought the fifteen-acre parcel next door to you, on the east side where the old farmhouse is.”

“Did something happen there?”

“They found a gutted hog, too, hanging in one of their trees the day before you found the one at your place. I didn’t know about it until I saw the report a day or two ago.”

“Do you still think it’s kids?” She couldn’t keep the disgust from her voice.

“I’ve told you before, Ms. Hennessey—”

“Libby.”

“Libby. We’ve stepped up patrols out that way, and if we get any leads, we’ll run them down, but right now we’ve got nothing to go on. Now if you’ll excuse—”

“I’d really like to see your captain.” She was thinking of the note. If Huckabee didn’t consider the vandalism on her property a threat, maybe his captain would. Or the cops in Greeley. She could take the note there.

“He isn’t going to tell you anything different, Miz—Libby. Captain Perry isn’t the one you would speak to about this matter, though. He’s head of the patrol division. You would need to speak to Captain Mackie with the criminal division. But they’re neither one here, in any case. They’re in Dallas, attending a police conference.”

Libby searched her mind, but she could come up with no response, no reasonable way to detain him.

“Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Jordan Cline?” She said his name, and it was completely off topic, but she was out of options. “I wanted to mention again that he’s working for me now.”

Huckabee’s eyes narrowed. “I’d be careful having him around your place, if I was you.”

“I’m curious, why are you so sure he was driving that night?”

“It’s what the evidence suggests.”

“Isn’t it possible his cousin was the driver? Weren’t they both out of the car by the time you arrived? How could you tell who was at the wheel?”

“Well, as much as I might like to, I really don’t have time to discuss the ins and outs of an accident investigation. I’m on duty, and as I said, I’m late for an appointment.”

“Is Officer Carter here? Ken Carter? He was the other officer on the scene the night of the accident, right? Maybe I could talk to him.”

“What is your interest here, Ms. Hennessey?” He stared hard at her.

She retreated a step. She needed more facts before she could answer his question.

“All right, then,” Huckabee said, “if we’re done?”

She nodded, and he left her, walking toward the back of the building. Libby could see several cars parked there, a mix of civilian cars and a handful of squad cars. She waited until Huckabee got into one of the patrol cars before going inside to the duty desk.

But according to the dispatcher, Ken Carter wasn’t available. It was his day off, the woman said; he wouldn’t be in until the following day.

Libby was there when Ken arrived the next morning, waiting for him on the same section of sidewalk where she and Huckabee had talked the day before. And she got the same vague response from Ken, with the added caveat that he wasn’t at liberty to discuss an ongoing police investigation with her unless she had information that pertained to it.

The difference between Huckabee and Carter was that Ken Carter wasn’t wearing sunglasses. Libby could see his eyes, and they were full of some jittering anxiety. He seemed nervous in a way that Huckabee hadn’t, but Carter was young. He hadn’t been on the job long enough to perfect his cop face, that casual-appearing air of authority that could turn lethal in the space of a heartbeat. Ken Carter had something on his mind, Libby felt sure of it; he was bearing some burden he’d like to be free of, one he probably resented. One that belonged to Sergeant Huckabee. There was a code among cops, wasn’t there? Didn’t they talk about something called the blue line?

Cops were like doctors or attorneys; they protected one another.

She went back to her car and got in, watching Carter get into his squad car. Passing her on his way out to the highway, he touched his forehead in salute and smiled. What if she was wrong about him? It was only conjecture, intuition, coupled with a boy’s story—a boy whom she didn’t know, who had a lot to lose, who was a known liar. A self-admitted drinker. Beck’s son. And she—she was a woman with no experience of children other than as a high school guidance counselor. She had always fancied herself a person with a mother’s brain and heart who lamentably had nothing to mother. Was she still so desperate for the experience that she would take this on? Interfere with someone else’s kid as if he were hers and she knew best? How was this any of her business? What if she was letting emotion rule, letting her heart get the better of her? But then again, how would she feel if she did nothing and Jordan went to prison?

Her cell phone rang and she pulled it from her purse. Ruth’s name was in the ID window. “I don’t know what to do,” she said instead of hello.

“Ricky Burrows, the guy who got his car keyed on your property, the one you feel all kinds of sorry for?”

“Uh-huh?” Libby drew out her assent, making it a question.

“I don’t think he’s who he says he is.”

12

J
ordy didn’t come home at all on Wednesday night, but Sandy wasn’t alarmed until Thursday morning, when he still didn’t answer his cell phone. He’d stayed out several nights in recent weeks, but all those other times he’d answered his phone when she’d called and told her he was with friends. She didn’t know what friends. Not the old gang he and Trav had hung out with.
New friends
,
he said. He was evasive about their identity, furtive in a way that worried her.

Leaving her cell phone on the kitchen counter, she went to his bedroom and looked inside. She didn’t know what she expected to see—a clue, a sign, something to explain where he was? She doubted the FBI could have found anything useful in all the mess. The bed was buried under an assortment of litter. Who knew if he’d slept there? Except she did know, in the way a mother knows things about her kid. She leaned against the door frame, feeling anxious, frustrated, a heavier weight of disappointment.

She’d made the mistake over the last few days of letting herself believe things were improving, however slightly. Because Jordy had stayed home and hung out with her—sort of. They’d caught up on yard work over the weekend. Done stuff like that. When Hector hadn’t been able to help her with the annual cleaning of a client’s koi pond on Tuesday, she’d called Jordy, and he came right away.

Ponds were his thing.

It was big, close to two thousand gallons, and cleaning it took longer with only two of them to do the work. By the time they refilled it and put the last fish back into the water, the sun was almost down, and they were both worn-out. Still, Sandy’s heart lifted, as it never failed to do, when they left Wyatt behind, picking up speed. The highway opened to the view, a wide-ranging panorama of hills, dipping in and out of lengthening shadows, even as they were crowned in a late-day fizz of light the color of pink champagne. Above that, a band of soft lilac held aloft ribbons of silver clouds as transparent as vapor. She turned to Jordy, to remark on the beauty, but he’d reclined his seat and pulled his old Dolphins ball cap low over his eyes. It was when she was turning her glance back to the road again that she saw the car in the rearview mirror, the one that had followed them out of the subdivision.

The sedan was midsize and light in color. Gold? Green, maybe? Sandy couldn’t tell. She couldn’t see the driver clearly, either. It could have been a man or a woman. It gave her a bad feeling, though. Worried her in the same way the car parked in front of her house last Sunday night had worried her. But it wasn’t as if she had actually identified that car, other than it had been light colored, too. Still, there must be hundreds of cars that fit the description. And while FM 1620 wasn’t a major highway, it was well traveled. She thought of waking Jordy but then didn’t. It seemed ridiculous to assume they were being followed. Who would do such a thing? Patsy Meade? A cop out of Wyatt, or a Madrone County sheriff’s deputy in an unmarked car? One of Jordy’s new friends?

Sandy checked the rearview again. A vehicle was back there, but so far away she couldn’t tell if it was even a car, much less the same one. It was the stress, she thought. It was causing her mind to run away with itself.

She hadn’t mentioned it to Jordy, not after they got home, nor yesterday morning, the last time she’d seen him, when wonder of wonders, he’d gotten up before her and made bacon-and-scrambled-egg breakfast sandwiches. That was when she’d let herself become foolishly optimistic. When she’d entertained the possibility that he’d forgiven her, or set aside his hard feelings, or somehow come to terms. What an idiot she was to think it would be—that it
could
be—so simple.

Picking her way across his bedroom floor now, she sat gingerly on the edge of his bed, pulling his pillow onto her lap. It smelled faintly of soap and whatever shampoo he was using now. After breakfast yesterday, when she’d asked if he wanted to give her a hand with the work she’d scheduled, he’d said no.
I’ve got stuff to do,
he’d said. She’d felt let down, anxious.

She hadn’t seen or heard from him since then. Every one of her numerous calls had gone to his voice mail. She’d finally given up on hearing from him at midnight last night and gone to bed, where she’d lain awake imagining every worst-case scenario: he was too drunk to call. He was with Libby Hennessey, unable to tear himself away long enough to extend his mother the courtesy of a phone call. Sandy had entertained the idea of calling Libby, and she might have followed through if she’d had the woman’s phone number. She’d thought of calling Emmett, too, but what could he do from Oklahoma other than worry?

Of course she hadn’t slept, not really. She’d gone from berating Jordy in her mind to arguing with herself. Why couldn’t she let go? He was nearly twenty-one, a grown man. Gone were the days when she had any legal right to know where he was every minute. She left his bedroom now. She wasn’t angry anymore. She just wanted him home. She wanted to know he was safe, and the sense that he was not was cold inside her, like chips of ice darting through her veins.

She could tell she’d wakened Roger when he answered her call, and she apologized. She said, “I should have waited.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She heard rustling as if sheets were being tossed aside, and the sound was oddly intimate. She was flustered by thoughts of what he was wearing: Did he sleep in boxers like Emmett, or in long joggers the way Jordy sometimes did, or briefs? She knew even as she thrust the thoughts away, she was drawn to him. “Jordy didn’t come home last night, Roger. I thought he was with friends, or maybe at Libby Hennessey’s, but he would have come home, or called by now.”

“Have you called around?”

“I don’t know any of the guys he’s hanging out with now.” Sandy hated admitting this, hated that she didn’t know. “He doesn’t bring them here. He hasn’t even told me their names.”

“Yeah. Okay. You haven’t called the police?”

“No.”

“Good. Don’t. Not yet, anyway.”

“I don’t trust them.” Sandy paused. “Is it possible you could check with Libby Hennessey and find out if she’s seen him? Do you know her at all? I’d do it myself, but I don’t think she’ll talk to me.”

“Do you have a number for her?”

Sandy said she didn’t.

“No worries,” Roger said. “I’ll find it.” He paused, then said her name—“Sandy?”—making a question of it, and his tone caused her teeth to clench. “Has it occurred to you that Jordy might take off? He was pretty stressed last time we talked.”

“When was that?”

“Yesterday, around noon.”

“He didn’t tell you where he was calling from?”

“No, but he talked about how everyone might be better off if he was gone.”

He had said virtually the same thing to Sandy on Sunday night.

“I want to believe he was just blowing off steam. I kind of let him go on, and by the time we hung up he seemed to have settled down, so I didn’t really think it was worth telling you and adding to your worry.”

Yes, she thought, there was that, Roger’s reluctance to upset her. But there was also this awkwardness between them now. She’d felt it since they’d shared dinner, and again on Monday evening when he’d come by to repair the dishwasher. Jordy had been home then; Roger hadn’t stayed, but still there was this undercurrent of awareness between them, that he wasn’t simply Jordy’s attorney anymore. He’d become more than that. But Sandy didn’t know if it was real—at least when it came to her part, she didn’t. It could as easily be a feeling born of her isolation, the lack of anyone else to turn to. She said, “You aren’t suggesting he would harm himself, are you? Because I can’t—” She broke off. Her heart was beating so heavily, she felt the throbbing in her skull. She put her fingertips to her temple.

Roger protested that he hadn’t meant to alarm her. “He’s conflicted, you know? He wants to clear his name, but at the same time he knows if he does, the accident will become Travis’s legacy, the thing Travis is remembered for. That’s his perception anyway, that no matter what he does, it’s a lose-lose. Do you see what I mean?”

She did, and the sense of it, Jordy’s burden, his fear and confusion, made her feel weak. She sat on the edge of the love seat. “Maybe that’s why he won’t say what it is Huck has against him, because it will somehow implicate Travis in a negative way.” Sandy frowned.
Could that be right?

“Maybe.”

“But I just don’t think he’d hurt himself, Roger.” She couldn’t allow the idea; she would break into a million pieces if she did. “He wouldn’t run off, either. I think, ultimately, what he wants is for the truth to come out.” She cradled her elbow in the cup of her hand, praying she was right, vowing to herself she would do all she could to help him.

“But if you think about it, what better way is there to avoid the whole damn mess than leave? Find somewhere to hide out? The law considers him a man, but he’s just a kid, really, and he may not be thinking straight. I’m not saying he’d actually go through with it, but he could be considering it as an option. I’m not sure I wouldn’t if I were in his shoes.”

Sandy thought of the countries she’d looked up on the Internet, the ones that didn’t allow the United States to extradite. Jordy could have done his own research; he could be on a plane right now, bound for Russia, or Syria, or some other godforsaken place in the world that refused to do legal business with the United States. She bent over her knees.

“Sandy? Let’s not go off the deep end here.” Roger was rational; his voice was a soothing hum in her ear. “He’ll turn up. I’ll get hold of him, and once I do, I’ll make sure he calls you. I promise. Okay? Don’t worry.”

“Thank you.” Her gratitude to Roger made her throat tighten.

“Listen, before we hang up, I want to let you know I’ve hired a private detective, a guy I’ve worked with in the past. I don’t have much confidence in what I’m hearing from the Wyatt police or the DA. I think we should undertake our own investigation.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Just a hunch. That business with Nat Blevins backing off his witness statement. Something’s—off, and I want to know what it is.”

Sandy thought she detected an element of optimism in his voice, but she wasn’t buying into it, not this time.

She was on her knees in the vegetable garden behind the barn late that afternoon, jerking weeds from the row of poblano peppers when his shadow fell over the ground and her gloved hands. At first glance, sitting back on her heels with the sun in her eyes, Sandy thought it was Jordy and started to her feet, feeling the thrust of her fury at him pierce the swell of her relief. But when he stepped down the row toward her, she saw it was Emmett and sat back on her heels.

“Be careful where you’re walking,” she said, and marveled at herself, at her brain that would deliver an order like that to the husband she hadn’t laid eyes on in a month.

He stopped, eyeing her warily.

She kept still, too, her gaze locked on his.

They were actors on a stage awaiting direction, a prompt to remind them of the lines they were to speak.

“I don’t want you to get pissed, okay?”

“I don’t think I’d characterize that as a future event, since I’m already pissed, not to mention scared out of my mind. Jordy’s gone.”

“No,” Emmett said. “No, he’s been with me.”

There was the moment of heady lightness when her dread lifted, and she uttered, “Thank God,” but then confusion took over. “With you where? In Oklahoma?”

“No. Here. I’m back here now.” He looked uncomfortable, twitchy.

“When did you get back?” Sandy felt an inkling of alarm, as if she’d stepped off a ledge and was uncertain of how or even where she might land.

“A month ago. Since you called and told me Jordy’d been arrested.”

“My God! And you didn’t tell me?”

He apologized. He said, “I can’t be with you right now. Too much has happened, but I want to be here for Jordy. He’s in a lot of deep shit, and I’m not just talking about the legal stuff.”

Sandy bolted to her feet. “You think I don’t know that? That I haven’t been here, living it with him every damn minute?” The heat of her sudden fury seared the backs of her eyes; it licked at her temples.

“He doesn’t trust you, Sandy. He’s having a hard time trusting anyone. Have you thought about it? How it’s affected him, finding out his dad—me—that I’m not—” Emmett looked away, looked back. “Have you thought how he must have felt when he looked his birth dad up on the Internet only to discover the guy had died a few weeks before and not a hundred miles from here? He told me Beck Hennessey had property on 1620, on the other side of Wyatt. Jordy said that he and his wife are building a house there. That’s scarcely fifteen miles from here. I couldn’t believe it, that they were going to be so close. Did you know?”

“Yes,” she said, and she could have bitten off her tongue. But it was time for the truth, wasn’t it? To let the chips fall where they might? She was too tired to dodge it any longer, anyway, too weary to try and force the issue, to make Emmett come back or stay. Not unless he chose it, once he knew everything.

“I thought so,” he said. “When? When did you find out?”