Cade grabbed his hat and squared it on his head. “In that case, I’m out.”
“Give the doctors hell and call me if there’s any news.” Zed settled the pitchfork onto the nail where it had hung as long as Cade could remember.
“Will do.” Slipping through the door into the frigid dusk, Cade watched his breath fog. Hands in his pockets, he jogged along the path of broken snow, through a rusted gate to the ranch house, where he snagged his keys from a hook near the back door and made his way to the garage.
He wondered if he’d see Hattie at the hospital again, then decided it didn’t matter. In fact, it would probably be better if he didn’t.
Akina Grayson Bellows didn’t know anything, Pescoli guessed. From the moment the detectives knocked on her front door, to the minute they left, Grayson’s petite, second ex-wife kept looking at her watch while holding her one-year-old daughter.
At least ten years younger than Grayson, with straight black hair knotted at her nape and almond-shaped eyes that seemed to miss nothing, Akina was as open about her relationship with Grayson as Cara had been closed.
Akina admitted to remarrying soon after she and Grayson
had divorced, and now she had a child. She seemed genuinely sorry that the sheriff had been attacked. “Oh, I read about it, I can’t imagine. Poor Dan. Come in, come in,” she said, waving them into a small duplex filled with baby toys, a playpen, a fake Christmas tree that was listing a little, and general chaos. Dishes littered the kitchen table visible through an archway, and the door to a back room was open, exposing two baskets overflowing with laundry and pet dishes on the floor.
While balancing her daughter on a hip, she’d shooed a white cat from the couch, cleared a spot for the detectives to sit, and said, “If there’s anything I can tell you, anything I can do, just let me know. This is horrible!”
Her phone chimed on the table, she glanced at it, smiled, and said, “Just a sec. My husband. I’ve been waiting for this text.” With flying fingers, she responded to him while her chubby baby cooed happily.
“There. Now, what can I tell you?” Smiling, she sat on the edge of a recliner.
“Let’s start with yesterday morning,” Alvarez suggested.
“Christmas. We were all here. My husband, me, and his son, Monty. Rick was married before, too, so Monty, he’s six, was over here too.” She seemed genuinely happy and the missing boy explained the Nerf gun boxes and toy trucks tucked into a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. “Anyway, this was our daughter’s first Christmas, so it was very special.” Akina’s eyes were bright with the pride that comes with a first child. Pescoli felt a little pang as she flashed to a memory twenty years old, when Jeremy was so tiny she and Joe stuck a big red bow on his bald head, laid him beneath the tree, and snapped dozens of pictures as he stared up at the lighted branches. And now . . . Joe was dead and she couldn’t even make the time to celebrate with her kids on Christmas morning. Extenuating circumstances, she reminded herself, but she still felt guilty.
Meanwhile, Akina, who had been an accountant before her maternity leave, was bubbling over about Sachi’s first Noel. She did stop herself once to say, “It’s just such a bummer about Dan,” but otherwise, Grayson’s attack almost seemed something in the abstract to her.
They spoke to her for nearly half an hour, but in the end she’d been able to tell them nothing that appeared to help. Her marriage to Grayson had been short-lived, the relationship a whirlwind that had occurred soon after her father had died. Akina flat out admitted that she’d been looking for a father figure, but Dan’s job and their age difference had come between them, and living in a cabin in the woods while her husband spent upward of sixteen hours of his days working as a cop just wasn’t her idea of a life.
“I spent a lot of time on the computer and reconnected with my husband. We’d dated in high school but lost touch. I’m not proud of it,” she admitted, her dark eyes flashing as her baby stuffed all the fingers of one hand into her mouth, “but that’s what happened. Rick and I began communicating. E-mailing, texting, and talking on the phone. Dan found out, but it didn’t matter, by that time I’d already talked to a lawyer. Rick and I got married and now we have Sachi.” She smiled at the baby and her daughter, around her wet fingers, smiled back. “I couldn’t be happier,” Akina insisted, and Pescoli believed her.
“What about Dan’s first marriage?”
“Oh, Cara.” Akina rolled her eyes and when Sachi started putting up a fuss, found a pacifier to place between her lips. Immediately her daughter was appeased. “It was all kind of weird, if you ask me. Oh. You just did, didn’t you?” She smiled, then let out a long sigh. “She was remarried to Nolan, but she kept calling Dan. Like, to come and fix things, you know. I remember an overflowing faucet once, and it was after hours, and Nolan was out of town, but Cara couldn’t get a plumber, so good old Dan to the rescue, and then once . . . Geez, what was it? Oh, a lightbulb broke off in a fixture. Dan went trit-trotting right over there again, like a damned trained pony. Oops, sorry, we do not swear in this house. Little ears, you know?”
She slid her eyes to her daughter, who had spit out her pacifier. “Cara’s excuse was that her husband was useless when it came to home repairs.” She gave Pescoli a woman-to-woman-you-know-what-I-mean look before continuing. “So, she’d call and off he’d go. After working overtime. Leaving his wife at home alone. Again. And that was just the way it went.” Akina lifted her free hand as if she couldn’t understand it. “I didn’t like it. At all. At first I was jealous, but it didn’t make any difference. He’d been a rancher before a cop and he can fix anything, so she took advantage of him.”
“What did you do?”
“Like I said, I started connecting with old friends on the Internet. Rick and I got together while we were planning a high-school reunion. He was divorced, I was . . . unhappy, and we just clicked again.”
“Do you blame Cara for your divorce?” Alvarez asked.
“Oh, no. I was insecure anyway.” She shook her head. “I don’t think I even blame Dan. I blame myself and Rick, and trust me, it was the best decision ever.”
Alvarez prodded, “Was Dan upset when he found out?”
“About Rick? Relieved is more like it. He might have been a little upset, but, no, not really. I don’t think he was even surprised. Seriously, the marriage was a mistake. We both knew it.” For a second she seemed a little sad. “But he’s a good guy, and I’m sorry about what happened. Do you have any idea who would do this?”
“We’re working on it,” Pescoli said, giving Grayson’s ex the company line. “Can you think of someone who might want him dead?”
“Any of those freaks he sent to prison, for sure.” Akina lowered her voice, as if afraid of being overheard. “Some of those guys are real psychos.”
“Any of them in particular?” Alvarez asked casually.
“Uh, he mostly kept his work out of the house and, as I said, he wasn’t home much. Oh, wait,” she said suddenly, as if an unlikely thought had struck. “There was one guy who really bothered him. Someone . . . Geez, I can’t remember his name, though.” She bit her lip and slowly shook her head as she thought. “Was it Renfro? Nah, or . . . Red Neck!” she giggled at that and her eyebrows drew together. “Oh, shoot! Rennick?” Akina looked to Pescoli for the answer. “I know it, I really do. It’s on the tip of my tongue!”
“Resler?” Alvarez asked.