naturally-her mama was the same way. Erin used to scare her mother to death.”
His tone was easygoing, but when Roan glanced over he saw that the rancher’s face wore the same bleak and aged look it always got when he spoke of his daughter. He shifted his gaze back to the little girl and her red-gold horse galloping blithely through a sea of wildflowers, her hat now blown off her head and bouncing against her back, caught by the cord around her neck. The sun struck red-gold fire into her hair the same way it had once done her mother’s, and Roan caught his breath, waiting for the stab of grief and pain to follow.
It came…it would always come, but now it mostly came when he summoned it, rather than keeping him company every waking moment of every damn day and then haunting his dreams at night. Sometimes he even thought if he could just find the bastard who’d set the fire that killed her he might be able to move on. He knew he needed to; the years since Erin’s death had been damned lonely for him, and besides, a little girl needed a mother. He knew human beings weren’t supposed to be alone, and that it was supposed to be possible for them to fall in love more than once in a lifetime, in theory, at least. Maybe, he thought, it was coming time to put that theory to the test.
Though…with Clifford Holbrook’s ravaged face fresh in his mind and the sadness he’d gotten used to seeing in Boyd’s, he thought it must be different for a parent losing a child. He didn’t think the pain of that ever did go away. He tried to imagine how it would be for him if Susie… But his mind refused to go there, and he shifted in his saddle, cold to his core in spite of the noonday sun beating down on his shoulders.
“Heard you arrested somebody for the Holbrook kid’s murder,” Boyd said, as though his mind had been following the same trail.
Roan threw him a look, half-surprised, half-ironic. “News travels fast.”
“It’s a small town, what’d you expect?” Boyd let his horse plod on a few paces, then hitched a shoulder in an off-hand way. “Little bit and I stopped in at the one-stop on the way back from fishin’ last evenin’ to pick up some lemons and breadcrumbs to go with them trout we caught. Ran into that deputy of yours-what’s her name? Lori? Said you’d arrested the gal that took over the beauty shop when Queenie moved south last winter.” He glanced over at Roan, eyes squinted almost shut in the shadows of his hat brim. “You really think she did it? That little gal?”
“Wouldn’t have arrested her if I didn’t,” Roan said in an even tone. He didn’t exactly feel comfortable discussing his case with a civilian, even if he was family. And he was even less comfortable with the nagging doubts that question kept stirring up in his own mind.
Boyd lifted up in the stirrups and resettled his bony backside more comfortably in the saddle, a sure sign his arthritis was hurting him. “I don’t know, just can’t hardly believe she’d be capable of doin’ somethin’ like that.”
“You know her? Mary Owen? How’d you manage that? You’ve never been inside a beauty parlor in your life.”
Boyd snorted. “The hell I haven’t. Used to take my wife for her permanent wave every so often-Grace was a good customer of Queenie’s right up until just before she died.” He threw Roan another look, quick and oddly furtive. “Don’t really know the new gal, except to see her around, you know. Seems kinda meek and mild, though, like she wouldn’t hurt a fly. Sure don’t seem like the type to commit murder.”
“There isn’t any ‘type’ when it comes to murder,” Roan said grimly. “Anybody’ll kill if you give ’em enough cause. Even meek, mild people you’d think would never hurt a fly.”
“Well, I guess you’d know,” Boyd said.
After an oddly unhappy little silence, by some unspoken accord both men nudged their horses to an easy gallop, heading down the gentle slope to where Susie Grace waited for them at the edge of the grove of aspens.
Chapter 6
The Hart County courthouse was a much grander edifice than the size of the town and county it served would seem to warrant, having been built during Hartsville’s boomtown days when the mines were still going strong. A massive and sturdy granite block with two-story concrete pillars flanking the arched front portico, it dwarfed all the other buildings in the downtown area. The citizens of Hart County were enormously proud of it.
The first floor housed all the offices of county government except for the sheriff’s station and detention center, and emergency services. The courtroom, jury rooms and judge’s chambers were all on the second floor, reached either by a grand curving staircase or the stuffy creaking elevator that had been put in after the Citizens with Disabilities Act went into effect. In contrast to the rest of the building the courtroom itself was almost stark, having been renovated during an era when simplicity was in vogue, with floors, paneling, judge’s bench, jury box, witness stand and spectators’ pews all done in some pale golden-brown wood, unembellished and naturally finished. It reminded Roan of the inside of a church, one of the more austere Protestant varieties. Which was maybe why he always felt an impulse to whisper when he was in it.
It obviously didn’t have that effect on Senator Holbrook, who hadn’t stopped fuming and cussing like a bullwhacker since the moment the judge brought his gavel down. He kept it up while he and Roan waited for the other spectators to file out of the courtroom, and was still going at it as they made their way down the curving staircase together.
“What the hell was the judge thinking, granting that woman bail?” Holbrook’s hoarse attempt at a whisper echoed down the courthouse’s wide ground-floor corridor, causing heads to turn.
Roan, walking beside him, felt the tension and energy pulsing through the man’s body, and it reminded him of the geysers down in Yellowstone, the way they’d hiss and fume and rumble just before they blew.
“You might want to keep your voice down,” he said mildly, nodding toward the crowd of reporters and photographers gathered on the courthouse steps just outside the double glass doors. The senator’s heated indictment of the circuit court judge had included some adjectives of the type usually bleeped by the media, just clumsily enough so it was impossible to mistake the true meaning. Roan imagined getting caught using language like that wouldn’t do a politician’s public image much good.
Holbrook evidently didn’t share Roan’s concerns, because his comment on the media’s presence in Hartsville was more of the same-though he did deliver it with slightly lowered volume. At the bottom of the stairs he made an abrupt left turn and began to pace furiously back down the corridor away from the entrance, dragging a distraught hand through his hair.
“My God, they’re like a flock of turkey buzzards, aren’t they? Like they’re waiting for your horse to die. Where do they come from? How do they get wind of things like this so fast?”
Roan considered a man who made his living in national politics ought to be used to dealing with the news media, but when he made a comment to that effect, the senator waved it angrily aside.
“That’s politics. This is personal. There’s a line there, and if those vultures can’t see it they sure as hell ought to.”
From what Roan knew of the media, he thought the line between personal and politics had gotten blurred a long time ago, but he knew better than to say so.
Instead, leaning one elbow on the newelpost at the bottom of the staircase and fiddling with his Stetson in an easygoing way, he drawled, “They’re just doing their job. Can’t fault ’em for being good at it. Like you can’t fault Harry Klein for being good at his. All he did was point out the reasons why his client ought to be granted bail, namely, no criminal record, no previous history of violent behavior, local business woman…” He paused when the senator frowned at him-not that he was surprised by the look; he hadn’t tried all that hard to tone down the sarcasm. He met the steely stare with one of his own. “The judge was doing his job when he granted it.”
Holbrook made an impatient gesture and resumed his pacing. “I don’t give a damn about her previous history. That woman shot my son. If she gets away-”
“That’s not gonna happen,” Roan said evenly. The adult part of him was controlling his temper and hanging on to his patience for the sake of another man’s grief, but somewhere deep down inside him that little boy he liked to pretend wasn’t there was still nursing the secret hurt of being denied the acknowledgment and approval of his father. Pitiful, he knew, but not much he could do about it. “For one thing, Judge Conner set the bail high enough I doubt she’ll be able to make it, at least not right away. By the time she does we should have some results back from the crime lab. With physical evidence to back us up we might be able to get the judge to reconsider.”
Holbrook scrubbed a hand over his face, and Roan could see him making an effort to rein himself in. “What
