Jude Devine Mystery Series (61 page)

Mercy’s voice poured into her ear. “Hello? Is that you?”

“Well, I don’t have a spare girlfriend who picks up the phone for me, so I guess it must be,” Jude said pleasantly.

Mercy ignored the sarcasm. “I’m calling to apologize about bringing Elspeth to town the other day. You were right. I should have checked with you first.”

“Apology accepted.”

Jude waited. For what, she had no idea. It wasn’t like Mercy would now announce that she’d been a fool and she was going to dump Elspeth and live with Jude forever in a secluded log cabin where they could have noisy sex all they wanted and no one would pound on the wall. It would be good-bye to seedy far-flung motels and hello to domestic bliss.

She edged the Dakota farther into the pull-off and killed the engine.

Mercy said, “I wanted to let you know...Elspeth and I have decided to get married. We’re flying to New York for an exclusive interview with Paula Zahn next week.”

“Married,” Jude repeated flatly.

“Yes, we’re going to Canada after the interview.”

“You’re coming out on TV?”

“Everyone’s going to know in the end, anyway. We thought it would make sense to get in first.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Congratulations?” Mercy suggested.

Jude’s mouth refused to form the word. “I thought you weren’t interested in long-term commitment.”

“Things have changed. When Elspeth and I had that break from each other last year we both realized that everything works better when we’re together.”

“That break—you mean the one when you started sleeping with me?” Jude wondered why she was prolonging the conversation. She loosened the collar of her shirt. Her skin felt hot and damp.

“Yes.” Impatience crept into Mercy’s tone.

“Back then you said she was an ex.”

“It’s what I believed at the time. Jude, is this postmortem really necessary?”

“I guess I’m trying to understand why you picked her and not me.” The words were out before Jude could come up with a more sophisticated way to express her bewilderment.

Mercy sighed. “How am I supposed to answer? I don’t know why I love her and not you.”

Well, she’d asked for that one. Jude flinched.

“Before you start reinventing everything, you might want to be honest with yourself for a change,” Mercy said. “The fact is, it suits you not to share your life with a partner. You work all kinds of hours, you have weird phone calls on that spare cell phone of yours—I have
no
idea what that’s about. And you don’t like explaining yourself to anyone. You might think you want a full-time relationship, but trust me, you don’t.”

“Free therapy,” Jude remarked dryly. “This is an unexpected bonus.”

“Jude, I’m not the enemy.”

“Then what is?”

“Loneliness.” Softly, Mercy explained, “We got together because we were lonely.”

“And sex starved,” Jude recalled.

Mercy laughed. “Yes. That, too.”

“It was good.”

“Extremely good.”

“I miss you,” Jude said.

“You miss
someone
,” Mercy replied after a long pause. “And for a while I’ve been your someone.”

“Yes, you have.”

“It’s not enough. I’m Elspeth’s everything.”

Jude’s mouth was as dry as dirt. She forced out a poorly formed, “Congratulations.”

She wanted Mercy to be happy and maybe she would be, married to an actress who, Jude suspected, had never met a mirror she didn’t like. Perhaps they understood one another well enough to make the compromises a long-term relationship demanded, the ones Mercy didn’t think Jude was capable of.

“I know you won’t want to come to the wedding,” Mercy said in a strained voice. “But I hope you’ll visit with us for dinner after we’re back and the reporters have lost interest.”

Jude would rather poke a stick in her eye, but she forced nonchalance. “Sure. I hope you’ll be happy.”

“Thank you.” Mercy’s soft breathing made Jude feel weak. And sad. “I care for you, Jude. You know that, don’t you?”

Was this supposed to soften the blow? “I know. Take care of yourself, Mercy.”

“I won’t say good-bye. We’ll still be working together.”

Jude could hardly wait. “Sure. It’s not good-bye. It’s just see ya.”

“Good luck with the search.”

“Thanks. I’ll try to have a body for you before you leave.”

Jude closed her cell phone and stared out at the knee-shaking view of Paradox Valley. The Dolores River slithered like a silver-green ribbon along the canyon floor, cutting a path through a pristine postblizzard canvas. Clumps of snow fell from the branches of the few firs along the ridge. The vast sky was Colorado blue again, a deep intense lapis that made the snow so white it burned Jude’s eyes. Copper ridges layered the valley in every shade from claret to rose gold, spilling in folds baked solid over millennia.

The sight purged Jude of her self-pity, supplanting it with a strange yearning to melt into the earth, to inherit its memories and lose her own. She felt hollow and directionless, stranded in a no-man’s-land between hope and resignation, between living life or letting it slip by. She had no idea if everyone felt this way, or if it was some kind of existential angst she ignored most of the time, maybe even a pining for the certainty of a belief system. She’d never been religious. It was hard to accept that there was a loving God ordering events when you dwelled by necessity on the evil men do.

In Mercy, she’d taken sanctuary from thoughts like these. Now she was alone with them, and with all the doubts that galloped in their wake. She would henceforth be deprived of the transient solace of skin and flesh unless she found a stranger to sleep with. She’d never had a problem with that, yet the idea made her queasy right now. It was only natural, she supposed; she’d just broken up.

Jude draped her arms over the steering wheel and lowered her head to rest. In a few weeks, she’d take a drive to Denver and hook up with some eye candy for the weekend. She forced herself to imagine an unknown head on the pillow next to hers, a new body to explore. What was so bad about that?

She sat up straight and started the truck. The windshield blurred in front of her and she lifted her hands to her eyes, appalled to find tears. Worse still, she realized something. She didn’t want to sleep with strangers anymore. Mercy was wrong. She didn’t want someone, just anyone. She wanted her person. The one who would be her everything.

*

“That body has to be in the reservoir,” Jude told Orwell Pratt. “And we can’t nail him without it.”

The FBI agents attending the briefing agreed. One of them said, “The goat’s head is the problem. We can make the case that he moved it, but it’ll be a mental patient’s word against his in the courtroom. We need more.”

“That elf hat Matt Roache says was in the driveway. We found it inside the house in Corban’s room,” Jude said. “Either Miller or Perkins put it back in there. It seems odd they would have noticed it on the driveway when they returned from Ms. Foley’s party.”

Pratt coughed for a few seconds and mopped his forehead. “Who knows what goes on in the minds of pond scum? We’ve got the clothing and the wet cash. And we’ve got him lying every time he opens his mouth.”

“But the amount of blood on the clothing indicates we don’t have a murder scene,” Jude pointed out. “All we have is the scene of an abduction and an act of vandalism. The two may or may not be related. We need to know where Corban was killed. And we need to search the homes of all the people closest to Miller in case he hid evidence elsewhere.”

A Cortez PD detective observed, “The small amount of blood on Miller’s clothing is inconsistent with the quantity on the baby’s clothing.”

“Correct,” Jude said. “So if Miller is our guy he must have changed out of the clothing he was wearing, washed himself, and disposed of the garments. If we can find those, he’s ours.”

The FBI agents conferred for a moment, then one of them said, “We’ll stay focused on the background check. We’re running down everyone he’s known since elementary school. If there’s any dirt on him, we’ll find it.”

“What about motive?” Pete Koertig said. “If he just lost his temper with the kid, the DA might plead him down to manslaughter.”

“Well, we now find out that Perkins is pregnant, and it seems as if he suspected she was.” Jude responded. “Perhaps that factored into a rejection of Corban.”

“Like a baby bird pushing another one out of the nest,” Pratt remarked before sneezing into a tissue.

“More like rats,” Jude said. “An adult male sometimes kills another male’s young so he can sire a litter of his own. It happens in quite a few species actually. Maybe the urge exists in human beings, too.”

In the midst of the general revulsion, Pete Koertig poked his head in the door and said, “Devine, you have visitors out in the waiting area.”

“Who?” Jude asked.

Koertig shrugged. “The sergeant just asked me to pass it on. Want me to get rid of them?”

Jude shook her head and said dryly, “Maybe it’s our lucky day. Five bucks says it’s an eyewitness who saw Miller carry the body to his truck. Anyone?”

“Yeah, while we’re placing bets, twenty says I’m running for President in 2008.” Pratt checked his mustache for shreds of Kleenex.

“Let’s reinterview every neighbor,” Jude said as she got up. “Someone has to have seen something. Gums Thompson talked about a neighbor turning on lights. We need to find the guy.”

She stalked down a labyrinth of hallways to the main entrance of the station house and caught her breath as she reached the final glass security door. Through it she could see the backs of two heads, one ash blond, the other burnished copper. As she entered the area the copper head turned and a small, perfectly formed oval face reacted to the sight of her with such naked joy, Jude felt shy.

Chastity Young seemed happy to see her.

“Hey, Detective Devine.” Adeline leapt to her feet and bounded around the modular seating.

Jude gave her a hug. “If you get any taller, I’m going to feel inadequate.” Looking past her to Chastity, she said, “This is a surprise.”

“I should have called, but it was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“We saw you on the news,” Adeline said. “Have you guys found the baby yet?”

“Unfortunately not.” Jude found herself remembering the feel of Chastity, her unexpected tenderness. She’d almost lost that moment in the daze that followed the Rapture shootout.

Adeline looked back toward her aunt. “See, I told you we’d get here in time.”

“Adeline wanted to help with the search,” Chastity explained. She looked a little embarrassed, hanging back, her expression hard to read. “I told her you’d probably stopped accepting volunteers by now.”

“No,” Jude said. “We’ll take all the help we can get. Where are you staying?”

“I was hoping you’d be able to recommend something. I didn’t have time to organize accommodations before we set off.”

“I have a spare bedroom,” Jude offered. “It’s not the Holiday Inn, but you’re very welcome. In fact, I insist on it.”

“We won’t be in the way?” Chastity began. “I mean, I’m sure you’re just flat-out with—”

“I have an idea.” Jude put an end to the protestations. “I’m starving and I bet you are after that drive. Let’s go get dinner, then I’ll take you back to my place. If you’re joining the search you’ll need to be at the command center before seven tomorrow morning, so we should all get an early night.”

“No sweat.” Adeline gazed around the room. With an air of disappointment, she said, “I thought there’d be wanted posters all over the walls.”

“It’s not the Wild West,” Chastity said.

“As a matter of fact, we do have wanted posters. I’ll show you.” Jude walked Adeline over to the bulletin board and singled out the FBI Ten Most Wanted list. “Recognize anyone?”

“No way!” Adeline stabbed a finger into Warren Jeff’s weasel face. “Aunt Chastity, look. It’s the prophet.”

Chastity picked up the down jacket beside her seat and strolled over, which gave Jude an excuse to appreciate her slender athleticism. She looked good in a dark green cardigan sweater and bone-colored chinos.

Staring at the mug shot, she said with prim disdain, “Not the kind of immortalization that asshole had in mind, I’m sure.”

Adeline instantly burst into smothered laughter. “Straight to hell,” she chortled, explaining to Jude, “We don’t say asshole in our house.”

Jude nodded sagely. “Well, we say it plenty in this place. So, when in Rome—”

“Oh please,” Chastity protested. “Don’t encourage her.”

“Asshole. Asshole. Asshole,” Adeline chanted maturely, then whipped out her cell phone and announced, “Daniel’s texting me. Hang on.”

As she moved away, Chastity lifted her unforgettable dark eyes to Jude and said, “It’s good to see you.”

Surprised to find her pulse accelerating, Jude said, “I’m really happy you came.”

“How are you?” The way Chastity asked, it wasn’t just a meaningless conversation starter. She looked at Jude like she really cared, like she could see past the face she showed the world. She’d done exactly the same thing in Rapture.