“Drugs,” Stanton said. “When you’ve ruled out the impossible, whatever’s left, however improbable, is drugs.”
“One-size-fits-all motive?”
“It’s perfect,” Stanton said, and: “Damn!” The sound of slapping, a mosquito or blackfly departing the quick and joining the dead. “I’m all for drugs,” he babbled on. “Takes the guesswork out of law enforcement.”
They found Jo’s camp on a rocky bluff overlooking Lake Richie. Set like an orange Easter egg amid the froth of wild sarsaparilla, her tent was pitched on the hardened site.
Frederick crawled halfway inside. “Not searching,” he called out. “Can’t search without a warrant. Checking for guns and bombs. Officer safety.”
Anna sat down on a rock screened by Juneberry bushes where she could see the trail that wound up from the lake. Search finished, Stanton came and curled his long body neatly down beside her, hugging his bony knees to his chest. Despite his grumbling the hike hadn’t even winded him.
“Do you think Jo killed Denny?” Anna asked impulsively.
“The spouse is always a prime suspect.”
“Better than drugs?”
“Nothing’s better than drugs.”
“No more profiles. Do you, personally, think Jo did it?”
“I don’t think,” Stanton replied solemnly. “I’m a government employee.”
Anna gave up. His reticence had ceased to amuse or challenge. It merely irritated.
Out in the lake, silver rings were beginning to appear on the blue, fish rising to eat their suppers. Soon Jo Castle would be returning. Anna ran scenes in her head: Jo, jealous, following or luring Denny down on the
The story didn’t feel right. The knife: Anna couldn’t picture Denny defending himself from his wife with a knife. The location: too difficult to execute a planned murder, and without words, what could ignite that kind of passion under two hundred feet of water?
Still, in Anna’s mind, the greatest argument against Jo-as-killer had nothing to do with clues or evidence. Jo Castle lacked passion. She was a trudger. If Denny was unfaithful, Jo was more the type to outlive the mistress than kill the mister. It was why she had finally won Denny, and why it had taken her twenty years to do it.
A figure, humpbacked like a forest gnome, appeared on the trail at the far end of the lake. “That’ll be Jo,” Anna said. “I recognize the pack.”
“Shh,” Stanton returned. “Sound carries across water.”
His oversized face was hard with concentration. The angles of his usually gawky body were knifelike.
The distant figure disappeared into the trees. Frederick and Anna waited. She felt as if she were sitting by a crouching lion. She had an irrational urge to holler and warn Jo away.
Twenty minutes passed. The lake was absolutely still, a perfect mirror. Across the water, two backpackers had dumped their gear against a tree and were wading in the shallows. Muted, indecipherable, their conversation floated up to the bluff. A crunching from the trail: footsteps. With no more warning than that, Jo Castle walked into the clearing.
“Hi.” She seemed unsurprised and disinterested, as if most evenings law enforcement agents were waiting in camp for her.
Anna remembered that apathy. The dullness that followed had, in some ways, been harder to bear than the pain. It came when one accepted the death as fact: immutable, forever. Then, for a while, the world no longer held any wonder. Anna wanted to tell Jo if she lived through this, life would get better. But it was not a good time.
Jo dropped the pack with a thud. It weighed close to a hundred pounds.
“I’m Frederick Stanton,” the FBI man said. He moved easily between Jo and the pack. Officer safety. “We talked a week or so ago.”
“I remember.” Jo looked around as if for a place to sit, didn’t see one and lost interest. “Do you guys want coffee or something?”
“Nothing,” Stanton said as she moved toward the tent. “We came to talk with you about the death of your husband.”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you sit down, Jo? Sit here by me.” Anna patted the rock. Obediently, Jo came over. Stanton shot Anna a look of professional annoyance and Anna guessed he meant to keep Jo standing, literally and figuratively, alone and unsupported. Anna didn’t care. “You were saying, Frederick?” she said helpfully.
Stanton waited, letting the sarcasm clear from the air. “When did your husband die, Mrs. Castle?” It was not so much a question as a demand for information. Irritation nibbled at Anna’s self-control. Officer Stanton was seldom what he seemed. He preferred circuitous routes, but he usually got where he was going.
“When?” he repeated.
“Anna and Lucas told me Denny… Denny’s body… had been found on the twenty-second of June. I’m pretty sure it was the twenty-second. I was… What was I doing, Anna?”
“Not when did you hear, Mrs. Castle,” Stanton pressed. “When did he die?”
Jo turned to Anna as if for help. Anna looked sympathetic but still said nothing. Jo turned back to Stanton. “I don’t know,” she said distinctly.
“He died on June seventeenth. Four days before the body was found. Five days before you were notified.”
Jo raised her chin slightly, her face set and stubborn.
“You must have known your husband was missing. You were just married, on your honeymoon, your husband disappeared and you didn’t report it. I mean to find out why.” Stanton waited perhaps ten seconds after the end of the speech, then pointed a long finger at Jo. “Break camp. Come in for questioning. Pilcher’s office, eight a.m. tomorrow.” He dropped his arm, turned, and marched down the trail toward Moskey Basin and the
“What an asshole!” Anna said. “Are you okay, Jo?”
Jo rose to her feet. The defiance had gone with Stanton’s departure. She looked tired to the point of exhaustion. “I can’t break camp now,” she said wearily. “I’m in the middle of things. It’ll shoot weeks of work. God!” She crumpled down, legs crossed tailor-fashion, and hid her face in her hands.
“Why didn’t you report Denny missing?” Anna asked gently.
Jo didn’t look, didn’t take her hands from her eyes. “I thought he was with Donna. If she’d given him the nod, he’d‘ve come running. Even on my fucking wedding night.”
Anna sat on the rock, looked over the lake to give Jo a moment’s privacy. Denny and Donna: they could have run off together, left brides and husbands; could have turned up in a quickie-divorce court in Reno. But Denny had turned up dead and Donna had gone missing.
“Don’t break camp quite yet,” Anna said. “No need to louse up your experiments. I’ll square it with Stanton.”
“Thanks. Work is what I’ve got now. It’s got to be right.”
She left Jo still sitting in the dirt hiding her face from her memories.
Anna almost stumbled over Frederick the Fed. His back against a fallen log, his long legs across the trail, he sat twenty feet or so down from Jo’s camp just out of sight behind a dense screen of vegetation.
“Jesus!”
“Interesting,” Frederick remarked. He levered himself up. “Sounded pretty convincing to me. What a drag. I knew there was a reason I’ve never married. I mean other than nobody’s ever asked me.”
Anna quickly recovered from being startled, but the entire situation had put her in a foul mood. Being used was an unpleasant sensation, one she was growing altogether too familiar with.
She struck off down the trail at a good clip, hoping to walk away from Stanton and his bag of tricks. Muttering and fussing, he bumbled along behind. Several times he turned on his idle chatter, the stuff Anna had come to suppose was designed to disarm the listener. She ignored it.
In less than an hour they reached the shoreline of Moskey. Seven p.m. and the shadows had yet to grow long. The
