TWO
Truman found Tilda Brass fascinating. He and Special Agent Jeff Garrison sat in the woman’s living room, waiting to ask her about the fire, since it’d occurred on her property. The eighty-year-old woman had answered the door dressed in men’s faded jeans and a denim shirt pinned closed with a half dozen safety pins. Her rubber boots looked far too big to be a woman’s size, but she wore them gracefully. She had long gray hair, and her manner was that of a society belle—quite at odds with her clothing and boots.
Operating on two hours of sleep, Truman had felt his early-morning adrenaline rush fade away hours ago. The EMTs had applied something that numbed the burns on the back of his neck and then bandaged them, warning him of infection and ordering him to see his doctor as soon as possible. Truman didn’t have time. He took some Advil and pushed on. A doctor’s visit could wait.
Now he was simply putting one foot in front of the other, running on sheer determination to get to the bottom of his arson mystery.
Murder.
What’d started as pesky arsons had suddenly blown up into the murder of two law enforcement officers.
Deschutes County Deputy Damon Sanderson had been twenty-six and married for two years. His wife had collapsed at the news of his death. His three-month-old daughter would know her father only through pictures.
Deschutes County Deputy Ralph Long had been fifty-one and divorced, with three grown children and four grandchildren. Truman had once bought him a beer at the bowling alley after his team lost to Ralph’s.
When the call went out last night that officers had been shot at the location of the fire, every on-duty officer in a thirty-mile radius headed toward the scene. Granted, this was a rural community, so two Oregon State Police troopers, three other county deputies, and two of Truman’s officers who got out of bed composed “every on-duty officer.” They established a perimeter as the fire department soaked the crumbling building and surrounding brush with the water from its trucks, and then they attended to the murdered men.
There was no sign of the shooter.
By the time the sun came up, Truman had been interviewed by the county sheriff and by Jeff Garrison, the supervisory senior resident agent for the Bend FBI office. Frustration had boiled under his skin all night. He’d been a hundred feet from the murders and hadn’t seen a thing to help the investigators find the shooter.
Truman numbly accepted a cup of hot coffee that Tilda had insisted on brewing. He took a sip and it burned its way down his esophagus in a satisfying way, momentarily distracting him from the burn on his neck. His pain relief was running out.
He’d heard about Tilda from the police station’s previous manager, Ina Smythe, but he’d never met or seen the woman. Ina said Tilda didn’t come into town as much as she used to but made good use of her phone to keep up with the local goings-on. Truman inferred that Ina and Tilda were part of the same gossip tree.
“You didn’t know about the fire until one of the county deputies stopped by?” Jeff asked the woman.
“That’s correct,” Tilda said as she took a sip of coffee from her elegant tiny cup. Each of their cups had a different image of a flower, and the rims appeared to have once been painted with gold . . . or gold-colored paint. Truman could have finished the contents of his tiny cup in three swallows, but he took another minuscule sip, mindful of the temperature.
“I heard the sirens,” she added. “But I ignored them. That barn isn’t anywhere near the house. I had no idea that’s where they were headed.”
“Did you use the barn for anything?” Jeff asked.
“Nope. It hasn’t been used in years. We bought the property nearly twenty years ago. My departed husband”—she silently crossed herself—“used to store some things in there, but it never held livestock. It wasn’t convenient, since it was such a far trek from the house. Now I just pay to have the brush cleared away from all my outbuildings in case of wildfires.” She solemnly shook her head. “I never dreamed someone would deliberately set one of them on fire.”
“Do you know if there was a propane tank stored in the barn?” asked Jeff.
Tilda thought for a moment. “It wouldn’t surprise me if there was, but I can’t say for certain.”
“Did you recently see any strangers on any of your property who shouldn’t have been there?”
“Of course not. Charlie keeps away any intruders. One footstep on the property and if his bark doesn’t send them running, then one look at his teeth will.”
Truman glanced around for a dog. “Dogs are excellent alert systems. Has anyone come to the door in the past week? Perhaps tried to sell you something?”
“No, I haven’t had anyone try to sell me something in ages. I used to have a regular Avon lady stop by, but she died several years ago. Oh! There was a man who stopped by to ask if I’d seen his dog not too long ago. He said it’d run away when his son left the door open.”
“Your dog didn’t scare him off?” Jeff asked.
Tilda gave him an odd look. “I haven’t owned a dog in years. My last dog was Charlie. That’s him right there.” She dipped her head at her fireplace.
Truman spotted a photo of a German shepherd on the mantel, and a sinking sensation started in his stomach. A minute ago she told us the dog was alive. He stood and stepped closer to take a good look. The photo was quite faded, and Truman recognized the car in the background as a Ford Mustang from the eighties. “That’s a good-looking dog,” he said. He exchanged a brief glance with Jeff. The FBI agent looked grim. Their witness had lost some of her reliability.
“Do you have any other sources of protection in the house?” Truman asked. He took a long look at the woman, wondering if she had a touch of dementia. Have we wasted our time? Exhaustion crept up his spine, threatening to make him close his eyes while listening to Tilda’s voice.
“I’ve got my husband’s old guns. I practice target shooting every now and then, but I haven’t needed to use them recently.” She tilted her head. “When those loud teenage boys would ride their four-wheelers on my property, I’d get out a rifle. I never shot at them,” she added quickly. “One look at me with the rifle and they’d head back the way they came.” She sniffed. “They left tire tracks everywhere.”
“How long ago was that?” Truman asked, wondering if any of her answers were reliable.
Tilda sighed and took a sip. “Let’s see. It was definitely hot, so it was during the summer.”
“This past summer?” he asked faintly, wondering if the woman’s memory of time was accurate.
“Yes.” She nodded with assurance.
“I’d like to take a look at your rifles,” Jeff stated, rising to his feet, a pleasant smile on his face.
Tilda immediately rose and led them down a narrow hall to a bedroom. She moved spryly, making Truman doubt his earlier thoughts about her memory. The bedroom smelled like lavender and he spotted a dried bouquet of the purple flowers next to the bed. The room was clean and airy, but a thin layer of dust covered the nightstands and bed frame. She opened a closet to show a rack with five weapons. Dust covered each one.
Truman sniffed, searching for the odor of a recently fired gun. All he smelled was lavender. If one of Tilda’s guns had been used, it wasn’t in this closet. “Do you have others?” he asked.
“I keep a pistol in the drawer by my bed,” she said. “You never know who might decide to visit an old lady in the middle of the night. I don’t have anything worth stealing, but people do stupid things. Especially the ones on drugs.” She whispered the last word as she leaned close to him and Jeff, her faded blue eyes deadly serious.
Truman fought to keep from smiling and silently wished for more pain relievers. And his bed.
Mercy glanced at the clock on her vehicle’s dashboard and pressed harder on the gas pedal.
She’d told her boss she wanted an hour to handle a personal errand. She needed to pick up her niece. Kaylie had spent two weeks with her aunt Pearl and a cousin while Mercy was training back east. Mercy knew from frequent phone calls that Kaylie was at her wits’ end. Kaylie was used to being the only child and living with her father, so being with the lively male cousin and an overly attentive aunt had turned her world inside out. “I can’t get any peace,” she’d grumbled to Mercy. “Each time I tell Aunt Pearl I need to be left alone, she spends the next hour asking me if I’m okay.”
Mercy had sympathized. She liked her alone time too. But Kaylie’s father had just been murdered, and Mercy wasn’t comfortable leaving the seventeen-year-old by herself. Pearl had reported that there’d been some crying sessions, but she felt the teenager’s overall mental health was solid. Mercy had taken her niece to a therapist after Levi’s death and was pleased that Kaylie was still going every other week.
She parked in front of her sister’s rural home and stepped out of her Tahoe. The odor from the pig barns wasn’t nearly as strong as it’d been earlier in the fall. Kaylie emerged from the house, a backpack slung over one shoulder. She hugged her aunt and dashed down the porch stairs in one leap. “Let’s go,” she said as she gave Mercy a brief hug, and then hopped in the passenger seat, clearly eager for them to be on their way. Mercy looked back at Pearl, who watched them from the porch. Her sister held up a hand in acknowledgment.
Mercy’s legs froze in place. She’d been about to walk up to her sister and at least have a short chat, but Pearl’s hand gesture indicated it wasn’t necessary. I guess I’m done here.
Getting to know her siblings after a fifteen-year absence hadn’t been easy. Mercy’s fight with her father when she was eighteen had led her family to cut all ties with her. Mercy had never regretted her stance in the argument, but she’d regretted missing out on the lives of her siblings. When she’d been temporarily assigned to a case in Eagle’s Nest two months ago, she’d been sick with worry about bumping into people from her past. Now she viewed that case as fate intervening and giving her a second chance with her family.
Not all of her family had accepted her return, but Mercy believed things were moving in the right direction.
Pearl had embraced her on the first day but kept her distance after that. Phone calls were the best way to communicate with Pearl. She was almost chatty on the phone. The oldest sibling, Owen, still refused to talk with Mercy and kept his wife and kids from doing so.
Her other sister was the Rose she’d always known. Wide open, loving, and accepting. Her love kept Mercy sane and optimistic for some sort of relationship with her other siblings. Mercy had been in town less than a week when Rose was kidnapped and tortured by a serial killer, and the slashes on her face were now a constant reminder of his abuse. The killer had been the target of the FBI’s hunt after a string of prepper murders in Central Oregon. Her blind sister was also two months pregnant with the dead man’s baby.
Levi. Her heart lurched as it always did at the thought of her murdered sibling. Rose had survived, but Levi had not. Mercy would always feel slightly responsible for Levi’s murder. The death of his killer at her and Truman’s hands hadn’t given her much peace, but raising his daughter did. She’d learned to be grateful for every day she had with this living piece of Levi. To her surprise, Mercy had deeply missed the teenager while she’d been gone.
She turned her back on Pearl and climbed in the Tahoe. Kaylie immediately switched on the radio as Mercy started the vehicle. The girl punched buttons until she found a song she liked. Mercy grimaced and turned down the music. They had an agreement: Kaylie picked the station, but Mercy was in charge of the volume. It was one of many small issues they’d had to figure out in their first month of living together.
“Ready to go home?” Mercy asked.
“More than ready.” The teen pulled back her long hair, using a band from her wrist to fasten it in a knot on top of her head. The red stud in her nose twinkled in the sunlight. “I think the coffee shop is going to be okay. Aunt Pearl seems to enjoy it.”
Mercy blew out a breath of relief. The fate of her brother’s Coffee Café in Eagle’s Nest had been the subject of many long conversations among her, Kaylie, Pearl, and Truman. Mercy had assumed they would sell the cute store, but Kaylie’s emotional attachment to her father’s store, where she’d helped since she was ten, had halted those plans. Then had come the discussion of who would run it. Kaylie had insisted she could do it alone, but no one agreed with that plan. Pearl had stepped forward, pointing out that she had spare time.
“She’s finally mastered most of the drinks,” added Kaylie. “And she lets me handle the baking, like she should. She really wanted to do that part, but it’s mine,” Kaylie said emphatically. “I created most of the recipes and designed the bakery menu. I wasn’t about to let her fool with that. I think she enjoys the social part of the café too. She already knew most of the customers, and they like talking with her. That’s important.”
Mercy glanced at her niece, happy to hear the satisfied tone in the girl’s voice. Kaylie had been pessimistic about her aunt’s involvement in her father’s legacy, but it appeared the two of them had worked out a system that gave both what they needed. “Is Samuel much help in the shop?”
Kaylie sighed loudly at the mention of her cousin. “He’s okay. You have to tell him to do everything. He can’t see for himself what needs to be done.”
Is that a boy thing or a teenage thing?
Judging by Mercy’s struggles to get Kaylie to clean up her things around their apartment, it was a teenage thing. Thank goodness Kaylie was a girl. At least Mercy had been one and had an idea of how girls’ brains worked. She would have been clueless about a teenage boy, other than knowing to constantly shove food at him. That much she remembered from having two brothers.
Please don’t let me mess up with Kaylie.
She wanted to get it right for her brother’s sake and for Kaylie. It was a tough world for a teenager without a family. Mercy was determined that Kaylie would never feel the abandonment she’d felt at eighteen when she’d parted ways with her family. At the very least, Kaylie would always know Mercy would be there for her.
Am I exaggerating the benefit of a slightly paranoid, workaholic aunt?
It was better than the complete absence of family she’d experienced.
“I’ll drop you off at the apartment, and then I have to go back to work,” she told the girl. “I haven’t even unpacked my suitcase yet.”
“I heard about the fire and dead officers. That’s horrible. Aunt Pearl said Truman was there too. Is he okay?”
“I talked to him on the phone. He got some small burns from the fire and banged his head, but he’s fine.”
Is he?
Mercy knew his history with fire and burns. Just over a year ago, he’d been too late to get a fellow officer and a civilian away from a burning car before it exploded. He’d been severely burned in the blast, and the stress of the deaths had nearly made him give up law enforcement. He still had bad dreams. Her heart ached with the need to see him in person. The quick phone calls during the morning had assured her only that he was still upright and functioning. He’s going to crash tonight. Possibly in more than one way.
She’d been away from him for the last two weeks. Their relationship was still in an early stage. She firmly believed in taking things slow . . . tortoise slow. If Truman had had his way, she’d be living with him. Kaylie too. He liked the girl and teased her as if he were a good-natured uncle. But Mercy wasn’t ready for living together. Hell, they’d only known each other two months.
“What?” Kaylie hollered.
Mercy nearly drove off the road as she frantically looked from side to side for what had made her niece shout. “What happened?” she gasped.
“Did you hear that?” Kaylie stared at the Tahoe’s radio. “What the announcer just said?”
“No.” Mercy took a deep breath and focused on slowing her heartbeat. “Please don’t yell when I’m driving.”
“Sorry. But he just said some local idiots are claiming the shooting last night was justified. That the deputies deserved it.”
Mercy’s heart sank. No. Not here. Not in my state.
“That’s asinine.” Kaylie leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms. “People are stupid. Who thinks like that?”
“Sadly, quite a few people.” Mercy knew all too well that there were some residents who would prefer the government stay out of their lives. But usually they didn’t act so violently on their beliefs.
“Do you think they’re the ones who shot the deputies?” Questioning eyes turned toward Mercy. “This is your case, isn’t it? Are you going to find the guys who said that shit?”
“Don’t swear.”
“Sorry. It makes me angry.”
“It makes me angry too. And yes, someone will look into it.”