The Witness (13 page)

Arkansas, 2012

S
OMETIMES BEING THE CHIEF OF POLICE IN A LITTLE TOWN
tucked into the Ozarks like a sleepy cat in the crook of an elbow just sucked right out loud.

As a for instance, arresting a guy you played ball with in high school because he grew up to be an asshole. Though Brooks considered being an asshole a God-given right rather than a criminal offense, Tybal Crew was currently sleeping off several more than one too many shots of Rebel Yell.

Brooks considered overindulging in whiskey, on occasion, another God-given right. But when that indulgence invariably caused a man to stumble home and give his wife a couple of good, solid pops in the face, it crossed the line to criminal offense.

And it sucked. Out loud.

And it sucked louder yet as sure as daisies bloomed in the spring,
Missy Crew—former co-captain of the Bickford Senior High School cheerleading squad—would rush into the station before noon, claiming Ty hadn’t clocked her, oh no. She’d run into a door, a wall, tripped on the stairs.

No amount of talk, sympathy, annoyance, charm, threats would persuade her—or him—they needed some help. They’d kiss and make up as if Ty had been off to war for a year, likely go home and fuck like rabid minks.

In a week or two, Ty would get his hands on another bottle of Rebel Yell, and they’d all go around again.

Brooks sat in his preferred booth at Lindy’s Café and Emporium, stewing over the situation as he ate breakfast.

Nobody fried up eggs and bacon and home fries like Lindy, but the fat and grease and crunch just didn’t cheer Brooks up.

He’d come back to Bickford six months before to take on the job as chief after his father’s heart attack. Loren Gleason—who’d tried to teach Ty Crew and just about every other high-schooler the mysteries of algebra—bounced back. And with the nutrition and exercise regimen Brooks’s mother had put the poor guy on, he was healthier than he’d likely been in his life.

But still, the incident had left Brooks shaken, and needing home. So after a decade in Little Rock, a decade on the Little Rock PD, the last five as a detective, he’d turned in his papers and scooped up the recently open position of chief.

Mostly, it was good to be home. He hadn’t known how much he’d missed it until he’d moved back full-time. It occurred to him that he’d probably say the same about Little Rock, should he ever go back, but for now, Bickford suited him just fine. Just dandy.

Even when the job sucked.

He liked having breakfast once or twice a week at Lindy’s, liked the view of the hills outside his office window and the steadiness of the job.
He liked the town, the artists, the potters, weavers, musicians—the yogis, the psychics, and all the shops and restaurants and inns that drew the tourists in to sample the wares.

The hippies had come and settled in the sixties—God knew why his mother, who’d changed her name from Mary Ellen to Sunshine and still went by Sunny, wandered down from Pennsylvania about a decade later. And so Sunshine had charmed or corrupted—depending on who was telling the story—a young, first-year math teacher.

They’d exchanged personal vows on the banks of the river, and set up house. A few years and two babies later, Sunny had bowed to the gentle, consistent pressure only his father could exert, and had made it legal.

Brooks liked to taunt his sisters that he was the only Gleason actually born in wedlock. They rebutted that he was also the only Gleason who had to pack heat to do his job.

He settled back with his coffee, easing himself into the day by watching the goings-on outside the window.

While it was too early for most of the shops to open, The Vegetable Garden had its sign out. He tried to spread his patronage around, so he stopped in for soup now and again, but he was an unapologetic carnivore, and just couldn’t see the purpose in something like tofu disguised as meat.

The bakery—now, they were doing some business. And Cup O’ Joe likely had its counter full. February had barely turned the corner into March, but the tourists from up north often moseyed down early in the year to get out of the worst bite of winter. The Bradford pears hinted at blossoms. In a week they’d put on their show. Daffodils crowded together in sidewalk tubs, yellow as sticks of butter.

Sid Firehawk’s truck farted explosively as it drove by. On a sigh, Brooks made a mental note to give Sid one more warning to get his goddamn muffler replaced.

Drunken wife smackers and noise polluters, Brooks thought. A hell of a long way from Robbery-Homicide. But mostly it suited him. Even when it sucked.

And when it didn’t, he thought, straightening in his seat for a better view.

He could admit to himself he’d planted himself in that seat early, on the off chance she’d come to town.

Abigail Lowery of the warm brown hair, exceptional ass and air of mystery. Pretty cat-green eyes, he thought, though she mostly kept them behind sunglasses.

She had a way of walking, Abigail Lowery did, with a purpose. She never moseyed or strolled or meandered. She only came into town every couple of weeks, shopped for groceries. Always early in the day but never on the same day. On rarer occasions, she went into one of the other shops, did her business briskly.

He liked that about her. The purpose, the briskness. He thought he might like more about her, but she kept to herself in a way that made your average hermit look like a social butterfly.

She drove a big, burly, black SUV, not that she did a lot of driving around that he’d noticed.

As far as he could tell, she stayed on her own spread of land, pretty as a picture and neat as a pin, according to the FedEx and UPS guys he’d subtly pumped for information.

He knew she planted both a vegetable garden and a flower garden in the spring, had her own greenhouse and a massive bullmastiff with a brindle coat she called Bert.

She was single—at least she had no one but Bert living with her, and wore no ring. The delivery guys termed her polite and generous, with a tip on Christmas, but standoffish.

Most of the townspeople termed her odd.

“Top that off for you?” Kim, his waitress, held out the pot of coffee.

“Wouldn’t mind, thanks.”

“Must be working. You looked cross as a bear when you walked in; now you’re all smiles.” She gave him a pat on the cheek.

She had a motherly way, which made him only smile wider, as she was barely five years his senior. “It’s getting the motor running.”

“I’d say
she
got it running.” Kim lifted her chin toward Abigail as she walked into the market on the near corner. “Got looks, anybody can see that, but she’s a strange one. She’s lived here almost a year, and not once has she stepped foot in here, or any of the other restaurants. She’s barely gone into any of the shops or businesses, either. Orders mostly everything online.”

“So I hear.”

“Nothing against Internet shopping. I do a bit of it myself. But we’ve got plenty to offer right here in town. And she barely has a word to say. Always polite when she does, but barely a word. Spends nearly every minute of every day up there on her place. All alone.”

“Quiet, mannerly, keeps to herself. She must be a serial killer.”

“Brooks.” Kim let out a snort and walked over to her next table, shaking her head.

He added a little sugar to his coffee, stirred it lazily with his eyes on the market. No reason, he decided, he couldn’t go on over. He knew how to mosey. Maybe pick up some Cokes for the station or … he’d think of something.

Brooks lifted a hip for his wallet, peeled out some bills, then slid out of the booth.

“Thanks, Kim. See you, Lindy.”

The beanpole with the gray braid down to his ass let out a grunt, waved his spatula.

He strolled out. He had his father’s height, and given Loren’s post–heart attack regimen, they shared the same lanky build. His mother claimed he got his ink-black hair from the Algonquin brave who’d captured his great-great—and possibly one more great—grandmother and made her his wife.

Then again, his mother was often full of shit, and often on purpose. His changeable hazel eyes could shift from greenish to amber or show hints of blue. His nose listed slightly to the left, the result of a grounder to third, a bad hop and missed timing. Sometimes he told a woman, if she should ask, that he’d gotten it in a fistfight.

Sometimes he was full of shit, like his mother.

The high-end market carried fancy foods at fancy prices. He liked the smell of the fresh herbs, the rich colors of the produce, the gleam of bottles filled with specialty oils, even the glint of kitchen tools he’d have no earthly idea how to use.

To his mind, a man could get along just fine with a couple of good knives, a spatula and a slotted spoon. Anything else was just showing off.

In any case, when he needed to shop for groceries—a chore he hated like rat poison—he frequented the Piggly Wiggly.

She was easy to spot as she selected a bottle of the pricy oil, then one of those strange vinegars.

And though it wasn’t as easy to spot, he registered the fact she had a sidearm under her hooded jacket.

He continued down the short aisle, considering.

“Ms. Lowery.”

She turned her head, and he had a good full-on look at her eyes for the first time. Wide and green, like moss in the shadows of a forest.

“Yes.”

“I’m Brooks Gleason. I’m chief of police.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Why don’t you let me carry that basket for you? It must be heavy.”

“No, thank you. It’s fine.”

“I can never figure out what people do with stuff like that. Raspberry vinegar,” he added, tapping the bottle in her basket. “It just doesn’t seem like a workable marriage.”

At her blank stare, he tried one of his best smiles. “Raspberries,
vinegar. They don’t go together in my mind. Who thinks of things like that?”

“People who cook. If you’ll excuse me, I—”

“Me, I’m a throw-a-steak-on-the-grill kind of guy.”

“Then you shouldn’t have any need for raspberry vinegar. Excuse me. I have to pay for my groceries.”

Though in his experience the smile generally turned the tide with a woman, he refused to be discouraged. He just walked with her to the counter. “How are you doing out at the old Skeeter place?”

“I do very well, thank you.” She took a slim wallet out of a zippered compartment in her bag.

Angling it, he noted, so he couldn’t get a peek inside.

“I grew up here, moved to Little Rock for a spell. I moved back about six months after you got here. What brought you to Bickford?”

“My car,” she said, and had the clerk smothering a laugh.

A hard shell, he decided, but he’d cracked tougher nuts. “Nice car, too. I meant what drew you to this part of the Ozarks?”

She took out cash, handed it to the clerk when he rang up her total. “I like the topography. I like the quiet.”

“You don’t get lonely out there?”

“I like the quiet,” she repeated, and took her change.

Brooks leaned on the counter. She was nervous, he noted. It didn’t show, not on her face, her eyes, her body language. But he could feel it. “What do you do out there?”

“Live. Thank you,” she said to the clerk when he’d loaded the market bag she’d brought with her.

“You’re welcome, Ms. Lowery. See you next time.”

She shouldered the market bag, slipped her sunglasses back on, and walked out without another word.

“Not much for conversation, is she?” Brooks commented.

“Nope. Always real polite, but she doesn’t say much.”

“Does she always pay in cash?”

“Ah … I guess so, now that you mention it.”

“Well. You take care now.”

Brooks chewed it over as he walked to his car. Lack of conversational skills or inclination was one thing. But the sidearm added an element.

Plenty of people he knew had guns, but there weren’t many of them who hid them under a hoodie to go out to buy raspberry vinegar.

It seemed like he finally had an excuse to take a drive out to her place.

He stopped in at the station first. He commanded three full-time deputies on revolving shifts, two part-time, a full-time and a part-time dispatcher. Come summer, when the heat moved in like hell’s breath, he’d put the part-timers on full-time to help handle the tempers, the vandalism that came with boredom, and the tourists who paid more attention to the views than the road.

“Ty’s being a pain in the ass.” Ash Hyderman, his youngest deputy, sulked at his desk. Over the winter he’d tried growing a goatee without much luck, but hadn’t quite given it up.

He looked like he’d smudged his top lip and chin with butterscotch frosting.

“I got him breakfast like you said to do. He stinks like a cheap whore.”

“How do you know how a cheap whore smells, Ash?”

“I got imagination. I’m going home, okay, Brooks? I pulled the night shift since we had that stinking Ty back in the pen. And that damn cot about breaks your back.”

“I need to take a run. Boyd’s due in about now. He can take over. Alma’s due in, too. We’re covered as soon as they get here.”

“Where you going? You need backup?”

Brooks thought Ash would like nothing better than if they’d had some gang of desperados scream into town, blasting at everything. Just so he could be backup.

“I just want to check something out. Won’t be long. I’m on the radio if anything comes in. Tell Boyd to try to talk some sense into Missy
when she comes crying how Ty never touched her. It won’t work, but he should try.”

“The thing is, Brooks, I think she must like it.”

“Nobody likes a fist in the face, Ash. But it can get to be a habit. On both sides. I’m on the radio,” he repeated, and left.

A
BIGAIL STRUGGLED WITH NERVES
, with temper, with the sheer irritation at having a task she particularly enjoyed spoiled by a nosy police chief with nothing better to do than harass her.