Snow Blind-J Collins 4 (38 page)

He’s better now that you’re here.

Te quiero mucho.

Jesus, Julie. Don’t fucking cry.

But if now wasn’t the perfect time to shed happy tears, when was?

Four distinctive raps sounded on my office door.

An Hombres bodyguard signal.

Martinez muttered, “Never fucking fails.” He kissed my forehead and moved me aside. “Later.”

He grabbed his crutches and hobbled out the door before I could speak around the lump in my throat.

Took me about four cigarettes to find my focus.

I spun in my office chair and dragged my mouse across the mousepad to get the screen to come back up.

Dumb computer crashed on me. I restarted it, 397

reentered the information parameters, and hit the online newspapers to see what I’d missed while I waited.

Weather, weather, and more weather. The
Bear
Butte County Gazette
only came out once a week so there wasn’t any new information on services for Melvin Canter.

On a whim, I looked up the number I’d written down for Marvin Canter and dialed it on the prepaid phone. Hey, Big Mike had paid for minutes; it’d be a shame to waste them.

Three rings and a suspicious “Hello?”

“Marvin Canter, please.”

“This is him.”

No proper phone grammar in Meade County.

“Mr. Canter, I’m the obituary coordinator for the
Rapid City Weekly News
. I was double checking my database and noticed we haven’t heard back from your family on service information for Melvin Canter. Do you have a firm date yet?”

“Ask the Bear Butte County sheriff. He ain’t released my brother’s body, so we can’t plan nuthin’.”

“Oh. I can see where that’d be a problem.”

“It’s very frustrating.”

“Have you talked to the sheriff? What seems to be the holdup?”

A snort. “He won’t say nuthin’ besides them bein’

behind on autopsies. Flu season’s been bad. Guess it shut down the whole staff in Pierre for two weeks, so no one can be spared for the VA. Which don’t matter 398

none to me because it ain’t gonna make Melvin any less dead. No matter what they find about how he died, it ain’t gonna make anyone around these parts more sorry that he’s dead neither. I jus’ wanna get this whole thing over with. My ma ain’t got much time left and she’d sure like to see her son have a proper Christian burial before she passes on herself.”

“You have my sympathies, Mr. Canter.”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but you can demand the body be released and not autopsied on religious grounds.”

Heavy pause. “You don’t say?”

I wasn’t exactly sure how that scenario worked on a suspected homicide case. “It’d be worth a phone call to the sheriff to find out.”

“Thanks for the heads-up. What’d you say your name was again?”

“Kate Sawyer.” My computer beeped and I hung up.

The search pulled up twenty names. I discarded the first ten and moved on to the next five. Something about number fourteen struck a chord in me. Elizabeth McClanahan. I clicked on the icon for a more in-depth search. Didn’t take long.

Elizabeth McClanahan, nee Newman. Born in Alpena, South Dakota. Graduated from high school in Blue Earth, Minnesota. Graduated from secretarial school at Southeastern Vo-Tech in Sioux Falls. Married Michael McClanahan in Luverne, Minnesota. Divorced 399

three years later in the same county.

Wait a second.
Newman
. Wasn’t that the name of the preacher whose daughter retracted her accusation of being raped by Melvin Canter? What was the girl’s name? Lizzie?

There was that seesaw sensation in my belly again.

I typed the name in and watched the
working
bar fill the screen. The information was identical.

Beth McClanahan was Lizzie Newman.

So little Lizzie Newman had come back. To exact revenge? How long had she been tracking Melvin Canter? I wondered if she’d taken the secretarial job at the church after Melvin Canter returned to Bear Butte County. How could she look him in the eye and not give away her murderous rage? Or had she finally gotten her revenge?

How would I react if I came face to face with my rapist? Could I kill him? Now? Ten years ago? I didn’t know. Rape was a hideous experience I survived, but I’d been older than eleven when it’d happened.

Painful as it had been, it’d changed my life but hadn’t ruined it.

Not like Elizabeth Newman McClanahan’s life.

Her whole family had pulled up stakes, disappeared, and started over. I’d bet Lizzie dealt with the shame on her own—the shame of the act itself and the lie to cover it up. Did she hold resentment toward her father for turning tail and running? Instead of putting a monster like Melvin Canter behind bars when they’d 400

had the chance?

Could Elizabeth Newman have saved Melvin

Canter’s other victims if they’d done the right thing all those years ago?

Look who’s talking. How do you know the man who
raped you didn’t rape again and again? Because you didn’t
do the right thing and report him either.

Jesus.

My feeling of contentment a memory, I shut down the computer, locked up the office, and hauled ass to BD’s.

This time I left my manners in the truck, grabbed my Sig, and stormed into the building. BD wasn’t alone. A dark-haired woman tapped away at the big desk behind a laptop computer.

“Lizzie Newman?”

They both looked up.

She froze; BD jumped to his feet. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but you can’t just come bargin’ in here—”

“If you wanna keep people out, BD, lock the goddamn door.” I saw Lizzie’s fingers sliding across the desktop. I whipped out my gun and sited it on her forehead.

She whimpered.

“Don’t move. Hands on the desk, Elizabeth Newman McClanahan.”

“Lord, have mercy, what are you doin’?”

“Sit down.”

401

He sat.

I asked her, “Do you have a gun in the drawer?”

She nodded.

Without taking my eyes from hers, I said to BD,

“You carrying?”

“No.”

“Good. Now, Miz McClanahan, come around

the desk slowly and sit next to him.”

She did. BD reached for her hand. I let him.

I allowed the gun to dangle by my side. “I have a couple of questions.” I directed the first one to BD.

“How’d you find out Beth McClanahan was Lizzie Newman? Did you recognize her, since you lived here when she was a girl?”

“No.”

“Did you apply for the job at the church before or after you found out Melvin Canter was out of prison and back in this county?”

They exchanged a look.

“After,” Beth said softly.

“How long have you been keeping track of him?”

“Five years. Since my divorce. I knew he’d been in prison for sexual assault.”

“Did you return to Bear Butte County with the intention of killing the man who’d raped you?”

Beth flinched.

I felt like Attila the Hun, but I repeated, “Did you?”

“I don’t know.”

BD’s eyes flashed angrily. “She wouldn’t have.

402

After she told me who she was . . . well, I started counselin’ her on not compoundin’ her problems by doin’ something rash.”

“Murder is pretty rash.” Not always entirely un-justified, but that wasn’t part of this conversation.

“Beth wouldn’t’ve done it. She’s a good Christian woman.”

I focused on Beth.

She stared back at me with haunted eyes. “BD’s wrong. I would have. Right after I got here, the first chance I saw him alone, I could’ve pulled my shotgun out and blasted that man in the face and rejoiced in seeing his brains splattered in the snow.”

“Beth—”

“It’s okay, BD, I can say that now because you helped me get past the bitterness. The angry child inside me is fading away.”

“So you came here to face your demons?”

“Yes,” she sniffed, “but I’m sure you wouldn’t understand.”

Like hell I didn’t.

“Beth gave her burden over to Jesus Christ,” BD

added.

Bully for her. I preferred to give Smith and Wesson the first crack at my problems. “Was that before or after the two of you were caught making the beast with two backs over at Sacred Souls?”

Beth cringed.

BD the protector jumped to his feet again. “I told 403

you what happened. I was tryin’ to protect her from all this nastiness. Can you imagine what would’ve happened if people found out who she was? Then Doug Collins thought he saw something morally wrong, but he was the one who was wrong, and he—”

“—made a big fuss and Beth was fired. Yeah, I know. But isn’t it convenient that the body of the man who’d raped her ended up on the land of the man who’d fired her?”

By the collective silence, evidently they hadn’t considered that scenario.

“But she din’t have nuthin’ to do with Canter dyin’!”

Lots of times the most obvious answers were the right ones. But it didn’t make sense for Beth to track her prey incognito, kill her prey, set up her fall guy, and then allow her mask to be ripped off to reveal her true identity when she’d all but gotten away with it.

If Beth slit Canter’s throat, I would’ve figured she’d be long gone by now, not in Bear Butte County, falling in love with BD Hoffman.

“Hey. I’m talkin’ to you.”

My attention snapped back to BD. “I will admit you both make a pretty convincing argument about her innocence. Unfortunately, I’m not the one you need to convince. Sheriff Richards is.”

“But—”

“You have a motive, Lizzie, or Beth, or whoever you’re calling yourself, a motive much stronger than 404

my father’s, as it turns out. And you can bet I will spill every detail about you, your sudden appearance in this county, and your motive to the sheriff. And you can also bet he’ll be around to ask you questions, so it’d be a helluva lot smarter for you to go to him first.” I pointed at the phone. “Call him. You can be sure I’ll be checking to see if you made the right choice.”

“Whoa. Wait a durn minute. You said something about your father?” BD demanded. “Who are you?”

“Julie Collins. Doug Collins is my father.”

With that embarrassing admission, I slunk out.

I called Big Mike on the secret Batphone. “Any word from Nyla on the whereabouts of Jackal yet?”

“No. And I need you to give this phone back.”

“Nah. I kinda like having two. Makes me feel important.”

“Great. I’ve created a monster.”

“
Enhanced
a monster.”

“Anything else?”

“Nope. Just checking in.” I hung up first. Hah.

Then I reached for Nyla’s diary. I flipped through the pages, which consisted of bad doodles, snippets of bad song titles, and bad poetry. It was so pathetic and sad I wanted to weep. No personal thoughts or 405

contacts. No secret contacts to decipher. No girlish dreams. Just something to waste the time before she got wasted again.

I felt bad for taking the one thing that had given her joy.

406

The next morning I fired up my Ford and scraped ice from my windshield. Appeared the mercury would hover in the single digits this morning since we were in the midst of an extended cold snap. And yippee! It was snowing again.

Swirling clouds of snow danced across the road.

A strange sense of déjà vu enveloped me as I drove out to the ranch. Then again, with the endless white horizon, every time I ventured into the country I experienced that “been here, done that” sensation. Winter wasn’t our longest season in South Dakota. It just seemed like it.

I parked in my usual spot. Dad’s truck was backed up to the barn. Good. I wouldn’t have to go in the house looking for him and drag his ass somewhere for a private conversation. Usually Brittney raced out the 407

door the second I pulled up. Hopefully, Trish would keep her in the house and out of my way. I didn’t have the energy to deal with her manipulative behavior when she realized I wasn’t here to see her.

The barn itself was frigid, but when I closed in on the far corner, the air warmed up considerably. A bright light shone and voices echoed from the tack room.

I paused in the open doorway. Two old-fashioned Army cots were lined up like soldiers in the space.

Dad sat on an overturned plastic bucket, working leather conditioner into an old saddle propped on another bucket in front of him. DJ stood in front of a tall post, twirling a length of rope. I hadn’t seen DJ since last summer. The kid hadn’t grown a millimeter. He hadn’t filled out; he wasn’t a skinny, gangly mass of long arms and legs like me. Like Ben. His physique was best described as a little butterball.

DJ said, “I like that other rope better. Has a little more give.”

“Don’t pay to have a favorite. Gotta be able to make adjustments on the fly with whatever you got handy. Sooner you can make any rope work for you, the better off you’ll be.”

“Same don’t hold true for bull riders, Dad. Them guys get mighty attached to their bull ropes.”