Chapter 15 Annie
The mortuary was windowless, the wooden bench outside the door unadorned and perfunctory as it held Annie and Jake with their elbows on their knees, shoulders rounded in identical slumps.
The dead woman’s parents had arrived thirty minutes before and quickly identified the body on the table as their daughter, Hannah Schroeder.
Mrs. Schroeder had burst into noisy tears as she stepped out through the suctioned door of the morgue, burying her face into her husband’s shoulder as his own went ashen.
He seemed to Annie to be on the verge of fainting, and her instinct had been to look around wildly, wondering if there were smelling salts in any of the drawers, but Jake had jumped forward without hesitation, offering his own arms and shoulders for support as he guided the grieving parents to a set of chairs and took a knee before them, leading them in a prayer for peace.
Scolding herself, Annie had offered them paper cups filled with cold water from the cooler in the corner, and when they left with their arms tight around each other’s waist, Jake used the phone in the office to notify the Landers police department.
Sheriff Smith informed him that he and his deputies were already tracking down Hannah’s boyfriend and would have more news soon, which left Jake and Annie free to resume business as usual.
Neither felt like returning to the station right away, and they had been sitting outside in subdued silence ever since.
“You did good,” Annie said, straightening her back and reaching out to rest a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “What you did in there, for the Schroeders, it was good of you.”
Jake nodded his bowed head. “Mom always says it’s not the burden that breaks you, but whether or not you have someone to help you carry it.
I sure do hope they find the guy and get some sort of confession out of him.
Until then, those poor people are just going to be grieving over something senseless without answers. ”
“Hey there, Jake.”
A tall man with silver at the temples of his dark face stepped up onto the curb, and Jake stood to shake his hand.
“Hey, Phil.”
Phil leaned around Jake as though peering through a nonexistent window into the building. “Is the autopsy happening right now?”
Jake’s mouth popped open, and he dropped Phil’s hand like it was white-hot. “What are you talking about?”
“You know, that poor girl up on Lewis Ridge. Becca told me about it this morning at the Sky High.”
“Becca?” Jake sputtered. “But… but I never said a word—”
“Course not,” Phil said jovially. “Becca’s niece is the same age as Layla Gannon, and Layla had a birthday party yesterday. The story made the rounds like chicken pox, and them kids carried it home to their parents. Was it true her head was twisted around backwards when you found her?”
“No!” Jake threw his hands in the air. “No, her head was not backwards, now get on out of here!” He pointed a stiff arm down the street, and Phil shrugged before ambling on.
A heavy sigh passed Jake’s lips as he shook his head at the ground.
“I better go,” he said. “If I don’t start damage control, this thing’s gonna get away from me. Now that the story’s out, I might as well give them the plain facts.”
Annie stood. “You want help?”
Jake smiled at her, but it was a sadder cousin of the happy gap-toothed grin she’d grown accustomed to.
“Honestly, Annie, you’ve been an angel. You’ve gone above and beyond to help me out with all of this, and if anyone deserves a day off, it’s you. Go explore, or go on a drive or a hike or something. I’ll see you at the station tomorrow, okay?”
She nodded gratefully and Jake gave her a half-hearted salute before turning on his heel and jogging down the sidewalk after Phil. Annie watched until he rounded the corner, then took a deep breath and looked around at the storefronts lining the street.
She hadn’t spent much time exploring the shops of downtown yet, and it was the perfect day for it, warm and pleasant, with downy clouds ringing the summit of the mountain like a cotton halo, inviting her to put the morning’s troubles behind her for a few hours.
First, she treated herself to a vanilla-bean latte and a marionberry-jam doughnut at Bigfoot’s, then she spent the next two hours wandering up and down the row of shops lining the main strip of town.
She bought a wind chime with a delicate glass hummingbird perched atop the hollow silver pipes, and a small pencil sketch of the mountain, hanging for sale in a store window with a label that boasted LOCAL ARTIST!
She played a round of minigolf by herself on the wooded course behind the Lake Lumin Zoomin’ Go-Kart Track and bought a black-cherry ice cream, throwing bits of the waffle cone to a pair of finches nosing around beneath the outdoor tables.
On her way back to the Jeep, she decided to make one last stop, ducking into the General Store for a bag of brown sugar. Laura liked to sprinkle it over their morning oatmeal and the bag was almost empty.
As she walked through the aisles of the store scanning the wares, Annie realized with a jolt of surprise that she was happy.
Or, at least she wasn’t miserable anymore, and that was as close to actual happiness as she’d been in a long time.
After what had happened with Brendan, she’d gotten used to moving through the world with a sort of numbness.
Things that should have made her glad utterly failed to do so, as though she were standing outside in the sun, knowing that she should be able to feel the warmth of it on her skin, but was followed around by a personal cloud that kept her shadowed—a cloud that had dissipated now, without her realizing that it was gone.
Food tasted good again. There was real, honest joy in a marionberry doughnut, a lucky hole in one through the snapping mouth of a plastic alligator, and the sight of a finch with a bite of waffle cone in its beak. A scab had formed over the wound and there was, once again, pleasure in being alive.
Annie found the sugar and carried a bag up to the front of the store, stepping around three men gathered at the magazine rack.
At the counter, she exchanged a few words with Phil, who recognized her from outside the mortuary and pressed her for details about the body and the crime, all of which Annie deflected, echoing Jake’s words and reminding Phil not to spread rumors.
She left the store and walked back up Main Street with her bags slung over her arms. She felt like whistling. Like humming. Like singing out loud. She felt somehow twenty pounds lighter than she had been when she woke up. And then, three blocks from the station, her heart stuttered in her chest.
She was being followed.
She could feel someone there, trailing her at the exact same speed at which she walked, but hanging far enough back to avoid notice.
Annie picked up her pace, using the stoplight to cross to the other side of the street, and in the reflection of a storefront window, she caught sight of them. Three men, crossing the street behind her. The same three men who had been clustered around the magazine rack in the General Store.
It could be a coincidence. It was entirely possible that they just happened to leave the store moments after she did and had intended to go this way all along, but when she picked up her pace again, moving at a brisk clip up the sidewalk, so did they.
Annie forced a deep breath. It was broad daylight. Other people were out on the sidewalk. Cars were driving by. Surely these men wouldn’t be stupid enough to try anything out here in the open, but just as she was about to take the turn onto Hughes Street, one of them spoke.
“So,” came the tinny male voice behind her, “you’re the new officer in town, are you?”
Annie stopped walking and turned to find a thin man in his mid-thirties, flanked on both sides by younger men, each boasting tattoos on their necks, arms, and shoulders.
Heart thudding, she lifted her chin a fraction of an inch.
“That’s me.” She set the bags at her feet and stepped forward with her hand outstretched. “I’m Annie Heston, the new game warden.”
“Ian Ward.” He dropped his eyes briefly, distastefully, to her extended hand.
Annie lowered her arm back to her side. So, this was the infamous Ian Ward she’d been warned about, son of the Lake Lumin Wards, the only multimillionaires in the county, with their racehorse dynasty and sprawling stables south of town.
He didn’t look like much, certainly not the heir of millionaires, this sour-faced string bean of a man with a receding hairline and the fading tattoo of what must be his family crest visible over the collar of his shirt.
“Well”—he cast a glance over each shoulder at his companions—“I’m sure we’ll all sleep a lot better at night knowing that even though there’s a murderer on the loose, we’ve got the protection of Anne of Green Gables on our side.”
His friends snickered, and a strange sound escaped Annie’s lips, a bark caught somewhere between a scoffing laugh and a snort of disbelief.
“Excuse me?” she managed. The barb had broken the skin, a reference to the fiery red-haired heroine for which her mother had named her.
“No offense,” Ian said, lifting his hands in an exaggerated gesture. “I’m just saying, pretty strange coincidence that we trade out one of our male officers for a female, and, lo and behold, we get our first murder in town.”
Annie was so befuddled by the man’s sense of logic that she simply stared at him in open-mouthed disbelief.
“You can’t be serious,” she said when she found her voice again.
Ian lifted his upper lip in what Annie supposed was meant to be a smile. “It’s a pretty strange coincidence, is all I said.”
Annie felt the indignation rising in her chest as his friends laughed again. No. Tamp it down. That’s just what he wants, to see you lose your temper so he can call you hysterical.