The Sheriff of Heartbreak County Page 2

  “Yes, ma’am.” Mary murmured the all-purpose response she’d learned in a former life from a dear Southern friend, warming her fingers in the stream of water and ignoring the deeper chill inside her. “How’s that, Miss Ada? Is that gonna be too hot?”

  “No, no, dear, it’s fine. Well, I suppose Clifford did the best he could, with his wife being in such delicate health most of the time. But that boy always was a bully.” She sniffed, then added, “Still and all, nobody deserves to die like that. Shot dead right in his own driveway. Makes you wonder if any of us is safe anywhere nowadays.” She gave a genteel shudder.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Mary watched her fingers massage moisturizing shampoo over Miss Ada’s scalp.

  “A good thing we’ve got a decent sheriff in this county,” Miss Ada said with a sniff, her festively painted features settling into stern and uncompromising lines. “Roan Harley-now there’s a fine young man. A real fine man.” She opened her eyes and aimed them upward. “Have you met our sheriff yet, Mary?”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t believe I have-except to see him driving by, maybe.” She wrapped a towel loosely around the old lady’s head and raised the chair to its upright position.

  Miss Ada pulled one knotted, blue-veined hand from under the drape to touch away a drop of water that had taken the liberty of trickling down her forehead, then gave one of her little hoots of laughter as she met Mary’s eyes in the mirror. “Well, I suppose that is a good thing, isn’t it? Not that I expect you’d have any reason to fear the law.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mary agreed as she began to divide Miss Ada’s sparse wet hair into quadrants, twisting each segment loosely and securing it with a clip.

  Miss Ada’s face seemed to droop with sadness as her eyes shifted focus to something only she could see, and she spoke more to herself than to Mary. “Oh my, that poor man has had more than his share of trials and tragedies to bear, yes he has…”

  “Ma’am?” Mary said politely, only half listening, her mind already numbing with the tedium of winding thin strands of Miss Ada’s hair onto the old-fashioned rollers she favored.

  The old lady’s eyes snapped back to Mary’s, light kindling in them now as she prepared to enjoy the kind of harmless gossip people are wont to indulge in with their hairdressers. “The boy didn’t exactly have a happy beginning, you know. No, he didn’t. His mother-Susan Roth, her name was, a perfectly lovely girl-never married, and to be unwed and pregnant in a small Western town…well. You can imagine. You had to admire her, though, she held her head up. Never let her son feel ashamed, either. She worked hard to support herself and the boy-I have an idea the father, whoever he was, might’ve helped out some-and she managed to put money away for Roan’s college. He applied for scholarships and won several-he was a very bright young man. He was going to become a lawyer-that was his mother’s fondest wish. But then she got sick and died suddenly.”

  Normally it was Mary’s habit to let this sort of gossip flow in one ear and out the other, but for some reason she was finding this particular story hard to ignore. She made murmurs of sympathy, and Miss Ada sighed.

  “Yes…it was sad. Roan came home to bury his mother and never did go back to the university. Instead, he stayed on, married his childhood sweetheart, enrolled in the state law-enforcement academy-I believe he’d had a minor in criminology, or forensics, or some such thing, in college. Anyway, he became a deputy, and when Jim Stottlemyer retired, ran for sheriff and got himself elected first try. Youngest sheriff in the history of the county, and I must say, it was the legal profession’s loss and Hart County’s gain. Roan’s been a fine sheriff.” She paused for another sigh. “It should have been one of those and-they-lived-happily-ever-after stories, but it wasn’t. No, indeed. Roan Harley’s troubles were just beginning.”

  “Really? What happened?” Mary turned the chair in order to reach the other side of Miss Ada’s head, and Miss Ada’s eyes met hers directly instead of in the mirror. Mary was startled to see a sheen in them that could only be tears.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” the elderly clerk of court said with a halfhearted smile. “Oh my. It’s been four years, but it’s still hard to talk about it. Seems like it happened just yesterday, yes it does. It was such a terrible tragedy, the kind of thing a small community like this never does get over.” She paused, lifted a hand and absently patted the neat row of curlers that marched down one side of her head.

  “Well, now…I told you Roan married his childhood sweetheart. Erin Stuart-she’d been a classmate of Roan’s, all the way back to kindergarten, I believe. And her dad, Boyd Stuart, he’d befriended the boy, too, knowing he was growing up fatherless. Roan looked up to Boyd and respected him as he would a father, and Boyd…well, you could tell he loved Roan like a son. In fact, Boyd was so tickled when Roan married Erin, he signed over the deed to his ranch to the newlyweds and moved into the ranch foreman’s cottage.” Miss Ada chuckled, then took a quick breath as if it were a shot of whisky she was tossing back to fortify herself before going on.

  “Well then, two years later Erin and Roan had a little girl. They named her Susan Grace, after their late mothers-Erin’s mother, Grace-she was a Pascoe, from over in Lewiston-had passed away, too, when Erin was still in high school. For the next three years-that was when Roan ran for and was elected sheriff-the family was so happy. Truly blessed.” She paused, and when she went on her voice had a quiver in it.

  “Then…one night while Roan was out of town on a case, there was a fire. It woke up Boyd down in the cottage, and he came running… Oh, he tried his best, but he was only able to save the little girl. His own daughter, Erin, died in the fire. Boyd and the child were both seriously burned.”

  “My God,” Mary whispered. She felt cold clear through, and a little queasy-and how in the world had she let this county sheriff’s unhappy story slip past her radar and take dead aim at her heart? She’d taken care to keep her feelings sandbagged and fortified against just such an assault. She couldn’t afford the luxury of caring. Now more than ever.

  Miss Ada’s tear-bright eyes flicked upward and softened when they found Mary so obviously touched by the story. “Yes…yes. Poor Roan, he was just devastated, as you can imagine. He tried to pick up the pieces after the tragedy, I think for his little girl’s sake as much as anything, but I do believe he carries scars from that fire still, just as surely as Susie Grace and Boyd do. The only difference is, Roan’s scars don’t show.” She heaved another sigh. “I don’t imagine it helps, either, that he’s never been able to find out who did it-who killed his wife and maimed his child.”

  Mary’s hands stilled, a curler half rolled. She fought to control a shudder of horror. “You mean…it wasn’t an accident?”

  “Oh, no, dear,” Miss Ada said softly. “The fire was deliberately set, no doubt about it. It haunts Roan, I think, that the crime remains unsolved to this day.”

  “I’m sure it does. It must be awful for him,” Mary murmured. But it was only words, and once again safely distanced from feeling. Her defenses had slipped momentarily, but they were back in place, now.

  “It was terrible for everyone,” Miss Ada said, firmly, reaching up to pat the tissue paper band Mary was fastening around her hairline to protect her skin from the dryer’s heat. “The worst time this town’s had since the mines closed, I do believe. And now this.” She threw Mary a look as she accepted the hand she was offering to help her out of the chair. Her eyes were fierce again, and her voice brisk-it was the tone and the look that had kept jurors in line for so many years. “I am sure of one thing: Roan won’t let it happen again. Whoever it was shot Jason Holbrook, the sheriff will find him. I know he will.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mary murmured. She was confident that, with the dryer humming away, even Miss Ada’s keen senses couldn’t have caught the tremor that had just rippled through her.

  Dave Salazar, Hart County’s coroner, was also both a licensed physician and deputy medical examiner for the State of Montana, and, as such, fully q
ualified to conduct autopsies, which he did, on the relatively few occasions one was called for, in a basement room at the county hospital. That was where Roan caught up with the two detectives from the state’s Special Cases Unit.

  Kurt Ruger was short-legged, barrel-chested and looked like a college football player, with a brushy blond crewcut, prominent brow ridge and sharp, rather small and close-set blue eyes. His partner, Roger Fry, appeared to have been picked to balance the team in just about every way, being tall, lanky, dark-haired and balding, with benign brown eyes behind rimless glasses perched on the end of an oversized nose. He reminded Roan of an economics professor he’d once had.

  After murmured introductions and handshakes all around, both SCU men sidestepped to make room for one more in the cramped space against the observation window, well out of the way of any stray odors or splatters.

  Roan had seen his share of autopsies and had pretty well gotten over being squeamish about the process. He folded his arms on his chest and stepped closer to the partially draped nude body on the stainless-steel table, startling the coroner, who’d been so engrossed in his examination of the body he was oblivious to everything else, including the arrival of one more observer.

  The doctor glanced at him in mild surprise. “Hey, Sheriff.”

  “What you got for us, Doc?”

  “Haven’t started the autopsy yet, but I found a couple of things that are kind of interesting.” He nodded his head, swathed in a green surgical cap, toward the two SCU detectives. “Like I was saying to these two gentlemen, I wanted to wait until you were all here-no sense in going through everything twice.” Roan nodded, and the doctor reached up to adjust the overhead lamp, then pointed with a gloved finger. The two SCU detectives moved in closer.

  “See this here? Laceration on his lower lip?” He delicately inserted a fingertip into the victim’s mouth and turned the lip downward to expose the puffed and discolored inside. “That’s a bite mark. Not self-inflicted-the curve’s wrong. Definitely human, definitely ante-mortem, I’d say two hours, at least.”

  Roan frowned. “You mean…”

  “Unless Jason Holbrook had a secret nobody knew about, there’s only one way I can think of that could have happened. And that is, he forced himself on some gal, and she bit him.”

  One of the detectives let slip a snort of laughter, hastily stifled. Roan said dryly, “Yeah, that sounds about like Jase. You said a couple of things. What else?”

  The doctor turned away from the table and gestured for the others to follow as he moved to some articles of clothing spread out on a stainless-steel countertop. He paused in front of the light gray Western-style shirt that was liberally soaked with blood, shifting to allow Roan and the SCU guys to move in close. He pointed, careful not to touch. “Okay, this is interesting-there’s some blood here on the left sleeve-see that? Now…look at the way he went down. Fell backward, arms went straight out, right? Never came in contact with either of his wounds.”

  One of the state detectives-Kurt Ruger-cleared his throat and frowned. “Spatter, maybe?”

  The doctor shook his head. “It’s a smear, not a spatter. And it’s on the back side of the sleeve. Again, the way he fell, there’s no way spatter would’ve hit there. No…look here. Think about it. What do you do when you get hit in the nose or mouth, and you’re bleeding? You wipe with your sleeve, right?” He demonstrated. “That puts a smear right about where this one is.”

  “Okay, so he got his lip bit and wiped the blood on his sleeve.” Roger Fry sounded as if he wanted to add, “So what?”

  Roan waited. He knew Doc better than the two newcomers did, well enough to know he wasn’t finished.

  Salazar took a breath, threw the three lawmen an expectant look, and backed up a step. “Okay. Now look at his other sleeve. The right one. You got more blood smears here, see? But on the inside this time. Now, you try wiping your mouth with that part of your sleeve.” Again he demonstrated. “It’s awkward-unnatural. You’d have to really twist your arm to put a blood stain where this one is. Anyway, I thought that seemed odd, so…I tested it.” He paused, eyes gleaming. “Just a preliminary, so far, but I’ll tell you this, it doesn’t match Jason’s blood type. And something else. It’s female.”

  Roan felt a chill go down his spine, but he kept his arms folded and said mildly, “You got a scenario in mind, Doc?”

  The coroner nodded. “If I may…Detective…Ruger, is it? Mind if I borrow you for just a second?”

  The muscular blond cop half grinned and lifted a wary eyebrow in his partner’s direction, but allowed himself to be maneuvered into an awkward sort of embrace with the slightly built ME, who narrated as he demonstrated.

  “Okay, I’ve just been bitten by this lady, right? What’s my first reaction gonna be? If I’m the sort of guy to force myself on a woman to begin with, I’m probably gonna strike back.” The doctor doubled up a fist and grazed Ruger’s square chin with it, as Ruger obligingly offered a falsetto squeal of pain. “So, I smack you a good one,” Salazar went on. “Your mouth is bleeding, too, now. But that’s not enough for me, I’m good and riled up, not to mention intoxicated-”

  “Is that theory, Doc, or fact?”

  Salazar jerked Roan a look over his shoulder. “Fact-blood alcohol level was way up there. Anyway, now I’m really gonna get rough with this lady. Something like this…” Turning his demo partner around, he placed his right arm across the detective’s broad chest. “Now, she’s gonna be struggling, trying to get loose, so I tighten my hold, pull my arm higher, up to her neck…like this, see? And my sleeve brushes across her mouth-or anyway, the blood from it.” He let go of Ruger and held up his right arm, pointing to the wrist in triumph. “Voila! Right there, and that’s just where you see that smear on the victim’s sleeve.” The ME subsided, looking expectantly from one member of his audience to another.

  Roan and the two SCU detectives looked back at him, not saying anything for a moment or two, none of them smiling. Then Fry pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, gave a small cough and said what they were all thinking.

  “So, are we thinking rape, here?”

  Roan dragged a hand over his face and let out a breath. Ruger glanced at him, eyebrows raised. “Hey, if the victim raped somebody-or tried to-and got shot in the process, that makes it self-defense, maybe.” He shrugged and looked doubtful. “I don’t know if the senator is going to buy that, though.”

  A vision of that crime scene flashed into Roan’s head in full living color: Jason Holbrook stretched our flat on his back in his driveway beside his brand new Chevy truck, a third eye, bloody and black, in the middle of his forehead. He shook his head, but didn’t say anything. Too soon, he told himself, to be jumping to any conclusions.

  He knew one thing, though. Whoever had shot Jason Holbrook, man or woman, it hadn’t been self-defense, not in the legal sense, anyway. It had been more like an execution.

  “Strange, though,” Salazar continued in a musing tone, peering interestedly down at the body, “she puts her ‘take that’ shot here, in his heart. Most women…uh, payback for rape…I’d think they’d aim farther south…” He pointed delicately at the part of the body modestly concealed beneath the drape and lifted his sharp black eyes to Roan. “Know what I mean?”

  Chapter 2

  It was half past eight when Roan walked into Buster’s Last Stand Saloon, which put it right about the time family dinner hour would be finishing up. He’d learned this was the best time to catch the regular crowd of Friday-night drinkers, just when they were starting to get their tongues loosened up but before they’d quit making any kind of sense at all.

  He and the two SCU detectives had agreed Roan should be the one to question the victim’s last-known associates, since it stood to reason locals were more likely to open up to one of their own. Ruger and Fry had drawn straws to see who’d get the honor of driving to the airport in Billings to meet the senator’s plane. Ruger lost, so that left Fry to accompany the victim’s clothi
ng and vehicle to the state crime lab in Helena.

  The state detectives were nice enough guys, Roan allowed, easy to get along with and willing to let him take the lead in the case. No doubt they did know their stuff. Still, he was just as glad to have them out of his way, even though he’d been the one to call them in on the case in the first place. Which, to be honest, he’d done mainly because he knew the first thing Clifford Holbrook would want to know when his feet hit the tarmac in Billings was whether Roan had called in the big guns from state yet. Roan didn’t take it personally; the senator’d most likely be wanting to call in the FBI, the CIA and Homeland Security, too, if he could think of an excuse to do it.

  However, Roan figured he was smart enough to know and man enough to admit when he was in over his head, and also confident enough to know when he wasn’t. In this case, the victim’s father might be a national figure, but the crime looked to be down-home local. The fact was, someone in this town-his town-had shot Jason Holbrook, most likely someone Roan knew well, somebody he’d spoken to, looked in the eye, maybe even gone to school with, played baseball with…or danced with, he thought, remembering that female blood evidence on the vic’s shirt sleeve.

  Why do I keep calling him the vic? His name was Jason. Jason Holbrook. The guy was a bully and a sonofabitch-maybe even a rapist-but he was also my brother.

  Buster Dalton, the owner of the Last Stand Saloon, was where he could be found most nights after the dinner hour-behind the bar, riding herd on his regular drinking customers. When there wasn’t a rodeo in town, Buster ran a fairly tight ship, and since he topped out at six four and 350 pounds-and looked even bigger because the bar was elevated two steps up from the rest of the room-there weren’t many that ever got drunk enough or stupid enough to argue with him when he decided they’d had enough for the night. Buster was first and foremost a good businessman who believed in looking out for his customers’ welfare, his philosophy being one of Live and Let Live-and Come Back to Spend More Money Here Another Night.