City of the Lost (Rockton 1)

"It's too big. I tried taking out the mattress, but that won't fit through the door, either."

He looks to see if I'm kidding, realizes I'm not, and shakes his head.

"It's safe, though, right?" I say. "We ruled out flying monkeys?"

"Yes, but we have another primate who can climb out there."

"Oh." I step from the window. "Maybe it's not such a good idea, then."

"Nah, it's safe. The hostiles don't come this close, and even if they did, no one can see you up there. Just ... I know you don't like sleeping with your gun, but I'm going to ask you to have it there. Put it out of reach nearby."

"I will."

He sets his empty mug in the sink and heads for the door. I follow to lock it behind him. In the front hall, he stops and says, "What we talked about. With Irene and ... well, pretty much everything related to this case. That's between us."

"I know."

"I mean it. I'm not saying I trust you more than other people. I don't." He looks over at me. "I'm sure it's rude to say that outright, but you know it's the truth. Trust takes a helluva long time to build out here, and ours is situational."

"Because I'm the detective on the case and you're not going to solve it by withholding information I need. I understand that."

"Good. And of the people I do trust in this town, Beth's near the top of the list. But we share case details with her on a need-to-know basis. For her own good and her own safety. That goes for Will, too."

"Will?"

"Yeah. He's the best damn deputy this town has ever had, and on that short list of people I trust, he's at the top. But Will likes to talk, as you may have noticed. He goes out and has a few drinks and sometimes it's one too many, and then he does shit he reg

rets in the morning."

"I got that impression."

"With Diana? Yeah. Will likes to cut loose. Dealing with baggage and all that. He can be a little careless, and that's why I don't tell him anything that would get him in trouble. Or jeopardize an investigation."

"One of the things they warn you about at the academy is that you can't talk about cases to a friend, a lover, a spouse, anyone. For me, that comes naturally."

"Good. Keep it that way."

The evening ends so well. I'm relaxed and centred and settled. Then I remember what Diana did, and I'm in bed, half asleep, but all I can think about is her. In a surreal way, it's as if I'm back downstairs with Dalton, and I'm talking it through and I'm seeing his reaction and ...

And I realize I'm angry. I'm so damned angry. I don't want to cut Diana any slack. I don't want to say she was drunk and didn't mean what she said. Of course she meant it. Alcohol doesn't transform us into a different person--it just lowers inhibitions. In vino veritas. Pour enough alcohol down someone's throat and they'll start sharing opinions and beliefs they never would otherwise.

Diana's tirade was nasty and downright cruel. She may have aimed some of that invective at Anders and Dalton, but that was collateral damage. The venom was for me. Insulting them was just a fast route to humiliating me.

I think of all the other times she's lashed out. When she ran off to join the cool girls in high school, I tried to warn her, and she accused me of being jealous, made it very clear she'd only befriended me because I was the one who stepped up. Afterward, she begged and cried and swore she hadn't meant any of it, and I'd let her back because I felt bad for her. Then, when I warned her about Graham, she said I was a jealous, selfish bitch who--post-attack--had lost most of my friends so I clung to her. When she ran back to me again, I let her, because I owed her for keeping the secret about Blaine. And from there? From there it became like a long-running marriage. We'd fight. She'd needle and insult me, but by that point I just didn't give a shit. Like my ex said, there was nothing anyone could say about me that was worse than what I said about myself.

And now this. I came here for her, and she was acting like I was a puppy who'd followed her home. No, worse--like I was her nemesis, spoiling her fun and stealing her lovers.

Well, fuck that. Really. Fuck that.

I wasn't ready to cut her loose. I didn't have the headspace for that--I had murders to solve. But those murders would keep me properly busy, and so I would step back. Skip the ugly confrontation and hope that this was what Diana needed--what we both needed. A truly fresh start for both of us.

THIRTY-ONE

I start my day with more interviews. Dalton joins me again. He's calm today, his edges muffled until an interviewee gives me grief, and then all he needs to do is rock forward, his jaw setting, and she falls in line so fast it's like having a Rottweiler at my side, dozing until he smells a threat and then rising with a growl and a lip curl that douses that threat in a heartbeat. Very handy.

My first interview is with the last person to see Powys alive. It's a woman, perhaps not surprisingly, given that he disappeared in the middle of the night. From her bed, apparently. She's convinced he was kidnapped on his way to the bathroom. According to Dalton, there was absolutely no evidence of a break-in, but she's not going to admit Powys screwed her and then snuck off in the night. Which means pretty much everything about her story is suspect. Including the part, I'm guessing, where they had sex four times that evening. Which was, as Dalton snorted, "irrelevant," though the fact she kept repeating it suggested this was highly relevant to her.

The second interview is Irene's co-worker, who'd been the last to see her alive. Irene had worked in the greenhouses, having a background in horticulture. Her co-worker is also a gardener, and I remember her from Dalton's little brown book. She is in Rockton hiding from charges of poisoning her abusive husband and burying him in the garden. In researching her online, Dalton had uncovered a story about a very wealthy woman whose abusive husband had been found fertilizing her prize roses. She'd disappeared while out on bail. The article included her photo, which apparently matched the sixty-year-old woman now telling me what a sweet girl Irene had been. As for why she'd needed to buy her way into Rockton, that had less to do with her killing an abusive husband and more to do with the body found beside his--that of their twenty-three-year-old maid, pregnant with his child.