Mean Streak

“Emory had remarked to me how grueling it might be to run this trail. She mentioned the altitude as a factor. She also suffered a stress fracture in her right foot last year. She was worried about it.

“For all those reasons, she knew it was going to be strenuous and told me she might not want to drive home on Saturday, that she might stay over an extra night and rest. When I didn’t hear from her, I figured that’s what she’d decided to do.”

Grange asked, “Would you describe your wife as conscientious?”

“He called her responsible,” Knight supplied.

“She is,” Jeff said. “Very conscientious and responsible.”

Grange frowned. “Then it seems to me you would have been worried when she didn’t call to let you know she wouldn’t be coming home Saturday night.”

“I was worried.”

“But you waited another twenty-four hours before making the trip up here to look for her.”

“I’ve acknowledged the delinquency as poor judgment. But I told him,” he said, pointing to Knight, “last night, that I feared something had happened to Emory. He dismissed my worry. If you and this…” He looked around the squad room, his gaze pausing on the lady with the collapsed barn who was now weeping over a dead horse. “If this mismanaged department sat on her unexplained disappearance for another twelve hours, the fault is yours, not mine.”

With maddening composure, Knight said, “Nobody’s blaming you, Mr. Surrey.”

“That’s not what it sounded like to me. What he said sounded like an insinuation.”

Grange, unfazed, asked, “What did I insinuate?”

“Negligence on my part. Indifference. Neither of which is true or accurate.”

Knight leaned forward again and gave him that folksy smile. “Detective Grange wasn’t insinuating anything, Mr. Surrey.”

Jeff eyed them both coldly but didn’t say anything.

“Only…the thing is…” Knight shifted in his chair and winced as though he’d inflamed a hemorrhoid. “That one-tenth of one percent of missing people I mentioned earlier? Usually the person who reports them missing is the very person who knows where they’re at.”

Chapter 10

Any trust he’d won vanished the instant she saw that damned rock and drew the logical conclusion.

Her freak-out had lasted several minutes, during which she had fought like a wildcat. He’d tried to restrain her without injuring her, but she continued to claw, kick, and beat at him. One of her fists connected with the scratch she’d inflicted yesterday. It reopened and started bleeding. She hadn’t stopped flailing at him until sheer exhaustion overcame her. Otherwise she wouldn’t be even as docile as she was now.

Docile, maybe, but wound as tight as a harp string. He had deposited her on the edge of the sofa where she sat hugging her elbows, literally holding herself together. He went over and extended her a glass of whiskey. “Here. Drink this.”

“Like hell.” She pushed the glass away, sloshing the bourbon on him.

“Waste of good liquor.” He sucked it off the back of his hand.

“You’d like me to get drunk, wouldn’t you? Make me more manageable?”

“I didn’t pour enough to make you drunk, just enough to take the edge off.”

“I don’t want to take the edge off, thank you.” She threw her head back and glared up at him. “Why didn’t the rock work?”

“It did. It knocked you out.”

“And then you dragged me here.”

“Actually I carried you to my truck. You rode here slumped over in the passenger seat. Seat belt kept you from falling onto the floor of the cab.”

“Why did you bring me here?” She studied him with what seemed to be as much bafflement as fear. “If you wanted to kill me, why haven’t you just smothered me in my sleep?”

“No sport in that.”