Chapter 14
The stop at my old police HQ was less than reassuring.
The looks I got around town are gnawing on my nerves.
Breakfast didn’t happen, but lunch did, and at a sandwich shop with Wallace, the waitress stared at me and whispered to another person, who checked his phone.
Looks of disbelief. And curiosity. What horrible secret is she sitting on?
But it’s not just the looks. It’s the earrings.
A raven squawks like a petulant teen cursing me for coming home. I bought my little run-down place before prices skyrocketed, right after I joined the KPD and thought I was starting a lifelong career. The pay wasn’t great, but enough to cover a monthly mortgage payment. The bank agreed.
Now the picture’s muddied. I’ve fallen behind on my credit card payments because I figure the mortgage takes priority.
Still, I’m optimistic. In addition to Clarissa Haynes’s case—I’m not charging Paxton Rhoads much, since he doesn’t have it—I’ve got insurance work to fall back on.
Thank goodness for the lead on Lasserio that I got in Choteau two weeks ago.
I look out beyond the row of pines behind my house to the wide expanses of fields stretching toward the rolling, friendly peaks of the Whitefish Range, so unlike the barred fangs of the Divide farther east. I’m scanning for anything that seems out of place or strange.
A few years ago, I laid down sod and distributed wood chips in the border below the house that doesn’t have flowers or bushes.
Now I wish I’d left the old dirt and its better ability to capture prints.
I hike my backpack up onto my shoulder and wheel my other bag to the front stoop.
The porch is also clean—no obvious disturbances.
I leave my luggage by the front door and check the front windows. They’re locked and tight. There are no broken twigs or leaves knocked to the wood chips. Dust on the white sills hasn’t been smudged. I inspect all the side and back windows and the kitchen door. All good.
Inside, I bolt the door behind me. Everything’s in order: sofa pillows stacked as usual, pictures on the shelves unmoved, artwork on the walls straight, frames in need of TLC. I cleaned before I left, but early fall—fire season—means endless Montana dust.
I check my office on the main level and my bedroom and another smaller room—the guest room—upstairs.
In my room, I open the bottom drawer of my bathroom vanity and find the rectangular leather travel case.
The case is special to me, a Christmas present from my mom—the last one I’ll ever receive from her.
A month after I said goodbye to her following holiday break during my senior year of college, she ran her car off the road east of town.
She crashed into a tree, landing upside down.
The roads were icy. She’d been drinking.
She was a functioning alcoholic who could accomplish daily tasks relatively well, but not this day.
The only silver lining was that she didn’t hit another vehicle.
I pull out the leather case. My mom had my first initial, C, engraved on the top. I remove the individual pouches that contain various earrings, rings, necklaces, and bracelets. I inspect each one.
But no earrings.
Impossible.
I check my bedroom, feeling a weird and loopy lightness.
Knickknacks from Glacier Park—a sculpture of a mountain lion, a stuffed moose—sit untouched on my dresser and beside my table.
There’s a pair of bookends made from the original timber from the legendary Sperry Chalet, which burned down in 2017 when a wildfire raged through Glacier.
A framed photo of me with a group of my U of M friends, including Sophie, and one of my mom and Les on high school graduation day.
The photo of me the day I completed Basics, which I stuffed way back in a drawer the day I quit KPD.
No earrings.
I keep a safe in my closet to hold the Sig Sauer P226 I purchased after I turned my back on police work.
I dial the combination and peer in. My Sig sits in the center on top of my passport and birth certificate.
Nothing else. I pull out the gun and squeeze my palm into the waffle grip of the handle. The weight of it instantly reassures me.
But no, I refuse to carry a gun around in my own house, especially when I don’t even know if I’m the woman in the sketch. I shove the gun back in the safe, close the door, spin the lock.
I dig through the catchall drawers in the kitchen. Useless. I lift all the cushions on the couch. Nothing but crumbs, a nickel, and two quarters.
In the kitchen, I lean against the counter.
The back of my neck tingles. The small house is stuffy, so I swing open the back door and step out.
A flock of chickadees dispatch from the crab apple tree, all exacting the same angle as they fly off.
The wind picks up, slapping gusts of warmth against my cheeks.
The deer have gone to town on my hostas and hydrangeas and eaten most of my geraniums and potato vine that were still hanging on into the fall. The repellent mix I spray on the beds only works when I apply it regularly. Otherwise, my plants are a delectable smorgasbord.
I walk the perimeter of my yard, where the mowed parts end and the unruly fields of wild, dry grass stretch through a heavily treed area toward the Whitefish Range. Other than deer hooves, no tracks. I walk it again, just to make sure.
Close by sits an old double garden swing. Since I figure no one will search under the rusty thing on the opposite end of the yard, it’s where I hide my spare key.
I lift the left corner of the heavy iron legs. I’m relieved to find the key, dirty and ground into the soil, two earthworms keeping it company. I pick it up and shove it in my pocket.
Jess has texted me again: Are you at your house yet? Call me!
Wallace too: Home now. Call or text if you need anything.
I spin around, taking in everything, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
I spot the raven in a pine tree beyond my yard, where it squawks again.
A squirrel scurries down my crab apple tree, grabs a rotting crab apple, and races back up.
A dog barks in the distance. An airplane flies above over the Whitefish Range, leaving a contrail that’s beginning to fray.
The whole scene, although typical, feels like things are on the brink of change.
I remind myself that early fall always seems this way as the heat tries to hang on but can’t outpace the shorter days and the lengthening shadows.
In the two days since the updrafts from the late-August heat generated a massive thunderstorm in the valley, making me race to Jess’s, the air has cooled and the light is already changing.
Darkness comes a touch earlier and shadows stretch a little farther across the valley floor, devouring everything.
I’m about to turn to go back inside when there’s movement in a copse of aspens. I flinch. Go rigid. The hairs on the back of my neck rise.
Suddenly, a deer darts through the brush, twigs snapping. My pulse slows as I shake my head in disappointment. Is everything going to make me jump now, too, like Jess?
Inside, I grab some ice water and sit down at the kitchen table. I text both Jess and Wallace that I’m fine. Nothing to worry about. I tell Jess I’ll call her later.
I’m tired, but twitchy. Crepuscular, like a cat gearing up for the evening hours. None of the CA’s victims were attacked until their time was up, but the whole idea is unsettling enough that I can’t help it.
I go into the bathroom to throw some water on my face.
When I peer in the mirror, I’m surprised to see small, faint flecks of red spotting the fabric of my T-shirt near my shoulder.
I examine my thumb. It’s bleeding from my relentless picking, and I’ve managed to spot the fabric near my sleeve where I touched it when adjusting my backpack.
The last time I mutilated my own thumb until it bled was when I was being harassed on the force.
I cut the loose skin off, clip my nails, and find a Band-Aid to prevent any more picking. After I secure it, I stare in the mirror.
I still can’t fathom that I’m the person in the sketch—the next target—but the headline I saw runs through my head like a news ticker: Is everyone in the US who resembles this sketch potential prey?
I pull my hair back from my face and bind it into a tight ponytail like I used to wear it on the force. There. I cock my head. With my hair up, as Ross had maintained, I don’t resemble the sketch as much.
In the living room, I refocus on the earrings. I try to come up with the last place I wore them. It would have been with Wallace. I only wore them when I was with him. We broke up in February, so I’m positive I haven’t even had a reason to look for the earrings or think about them since then.
I’d chosen a lazy Sunday afternoon when we were hanging out at my house to spring it on him. I was in sweats. I’d moped around all morning with a sad nervousness. He sensed something was up.
I’d sat him down on the couch, in the exact spot I’m sitting now.
I settled in next to him with my legs crisscrossed under me, faced him, grabbed one of his pale hands, and stared at it, at his long, smooth, piano-playing fingers.
His nails were manicured and perfectly pink with a white horseshoe on each tip.
“What?” he said.
I angled my head this way and that like some junior high student, and came out with it, telling him I cared for him deeply but thought we were better as pals, that I missed the simplicity of our friendship.
I explained that he’d done nothing wrong at all, that it was me, that I needed to be on my own, and that I needed to be there for Jess.
I rolled on, said that I was sorry, that I was afraid I’d relied on him too much during my battles at the department and again as I struggled to switch to PI work and open my own business.
It all sounded horribly trite—the sophomoric let’s just be friends breakup—and the way I’d phrased it all made me feel like a complete ass who’d used one of her best friends to get through some tough patches.
I left out a large part of the truth—that it was me buckling under the weight of my own conscience, of shoving yet another secret behind an already-splintered door.
He shifted away, took his hand back, and looked at me curiously. His fingers twitched like he was already composing it all in his head, working at how to translate the feeling of breaking up into sound. Something aching and mournful. Or maybe even a little ravenous.
I’d responded to that quality in his music, too—something beyond hollow sadness, a sense of the insatiable, of not holding back—but I could never figure out why it existed in his creations but not in his personality. And definitely not in the bedroom.
The music is how it began. I’d known Wallace since Sophie introduced me to him that first year at the University of Montana.
Wallace was a year older, in the music school.
We got closer after Sophie left us, but we were never anything but friends until years later, after he’d moved to Kalispell to conduct the local orchestra.
He resided in Kalispell for several years, and we’d often simply check in or meet for coffee, but one time, when we met and I confided in him about the unpleasant atmosphere at the department, he said, “You know, right, that I don’t just conduct, that I still give piano performances. ”
I did know, but for some reason, it never seemed like it was a good time to go. I was on shift or lined up to babysit Sam.
“I have one this Saturday,” he said. “Why don’t you come? It would be good to get your mind off things.”
This time, I didn’t have an excuse, so I went. I watched him up on that stage at the community college, and out of the blue, something stirred in me. I’d only been to one of his recitals before, with Sophie that freshman year, when Wallace was performing with the university’s music department.
Wallace had been a great source of pride for Sophie. She used to brag about what a renaissance man her brother was, how he was so in tune with his creative side. Back then, he seemed gangly and shy to me.
Older now, he was almost powerful up onstage.
The tall, thin college student I knew had become more filled out and statuesque under the lights.
His blond hair shone like gold. His serious face—his jawline—could have been cut from marble.
How had I not noticed before? Did I only see this because he was up on the stage, as if the platform itself acted as a lens for me to look through, bringing him into focus?
I heard something in his piano playing that I hadn’t before. Joy. Something that awakened a part of me I’d buried long ago. Something that made me hungry for human connection and affection. Along with a sharp ache, an ecstasy rose from his music.
A week later, I asked him if he wanted to go on a hike with me in the Mission Mountains. We trekked up to Cedar Lake through sweet-smelling old-growth cedars. The dusty trail turned our hiking socks gray.
We picnicked beside the lake before returning to Wallace’s dusty Jeep.
On the way home, we stopped at a roadside bar near Swan Lake, shaped like a tadpole nestled between the Swan and Mission Ranges.
We ordered Pacificos and chicken wings and giggled over silly stuff.
He made me laugh. It felt good to not think about the department and the tension around Hartley.
I found myself wanting him. In the bar, I nonchalantly placed my hand on his thigh. He looked at me curiously. I leaned over and kissed him. When I pulled away, his blue eyes stayed on mine, wide and flickering, asking, Is this for real, Cros?
It had taken me until that lazy afternoon seven months later to look into those eyes again and give him his answer.