Roberta? Why do you make me hit you?
The first thing they started to teach you when you came to Bitterroot was how to protect yourself, how to fight back, and Roberta had been a very good student. After three months she could over-power anyone in the defense classes, even though most of them were younger, and the sense of empowerment filled her with a great resolve. She would never back into a corner again. She would never drop to the floor and cover her head and curl into a fetal ball and wait for it to be over. Not ever again.
Until this moment she had actually believed that. It was only now, with Kenny this close, that she realized the truth. If a stranger ever attacked her, she wouldn’t hesitate to slam her heel into his instep and break the bones in his foot, or jam her thumbs into his eyes to blind him – but to do these things to Kenny? It would be unthinkable. She didn’t know why.
There was nothing left for her to do, except what she had always done. Find a corner, because where walls came together they offered a little protection from the roundhouse swings; then drop, curl, cover your head and pray. There was just such a corner in the living room. She’d kept it clear of furniture, as she had kept another corner clear in her old house, and whenever another Bitterroot woman visited her, she would find that corner with her eyes and look at Roberta as if they were sharing a sad secret. Almost every house in Bitterroot, the safest place in the world, had a corner just like hers – empty, waiting, just in case.
Kenny wasn’t expecting it when she moved so suddenly. I mean, Christ, he hadn’t even raised a hand to her, hadn’t even thought of raising a hand to her, and she was running anyway, scooting into the living room really, really fast.
That was the thing about Roberta. Everybody always said she was built like a ballerina, but man, she scurried like a spastic rabbit when she got scared. Kenny had always thought that looked kind of funny. She was ten steps into the living room by the time he closed his hand around her forearm and jerked viciously.
Roberta didn’t have enough breath to scream, so she actually heard the sharp cracking sound of her bone breaking within the sheath of her arm.
She didn’t feel the puppet-like flopping of the part of her arm that swung uselessly beneath the break, but Kenny did, and it grossed him out.
‘Jesus Christ, Roberta, you stupid bitch, look what you did!’
She’d hurt herself again, and that always made Kenny angry. Now it begins, she thought, but then she saw the arc of his big, hard fist driving toward her head, and thought instead, And maybe now it ends.
34
As Iris made her way down one of the still, silent village roads, she started to feel very strange – her limbs were suddenly hollow and weak, her head was light, and sparkles danced in her peripheral vision. Even her skin felt all wrong, crawling with a hot, itchy tingle that made her think of centipedes. It was probably just plain exhaustion, topped off by one big, bad adrenaline hangover, and her body was telling her to slow down. And she would, just as soon as she finished her last round of Bitterroot.
She forced her shaky legs to plod along for another couple blocks, then paused to rest at a tiny cross-street, looking up and down in both directions at the rows of quiet little houses. Bitterroot had been turned upside down and inside out this morning, but bizarrely, the only evidence of all that had transpired here were messy trails of bootprints, and they were already filling in fast with snow, like wounds healing before her eyes. Their physical presence would be erased within an hour; but their psychological presence would probably linger for a long, long time.
He radio unit crackled, and she heard Deputy Neville’s tinny voice talking through the plastic box on her shoulder. ‘This is two-four-five. We just gave the all-clear to the last house. Heading out. Over.’
Iris punched her call button. ‘This is Sheriff Rikker. Are you the last team in the town?’
‘We’re it, Sheriff,’ Neville answered. ‘Where are you?’
‘On the northwest grid. I’ll see you back at the office.’
As Iris walked back toward the parking lot to wait for Sampson, she noticed that lights blazed in every house she passed, but there was no sign of life in any of them. She suddenly felt very lonely in this silent, snow-shrouded village and found herself wishing desperately for a glimpse of just a single person, a dog in a yard – anything that would make this place seem a little more normal, as it had yesterday, before Kurt Weinbeck.
She never knew what made her single out that house in particular, but as she turned her gaze toward it, she caught a flash of movement inside, through the open louvers of a mini-blind. She paused and squinted through the snow, and saw two figures: a woman, and goddammit, was that a deputy? As she moved closer, she could make out the unmistakable shape of the county hat, and the badge glinting on the side of his parka. Maybe a straggler who hadn’t heard the all-clear call?
Suddenly, she wasn’t tired anymore, just furious. He had no business being inside that house, even if he had missed the all-clear – she’d given direct orders to all the deputies not to enter any domicile in Bitterroot under any circumstances, and yet here was one of her men, blatantly disregarding his superior officer, and she was going to have to march right up there, pound on the door, and knock her first head as Sheriff…
But as she stormed up the front walk, she saw something else, and that something else was a gun rising in the deputy’s hand, then coming down hard.
Iris had no idea what made her grab the knob and throw open the door – certainly not a cop’s experience, since she didn’t have any; and certainly not courage, because she’d never had any of that, either. She wasn’t even sure how her weapon had come to be in her hand, how her body had found the shooting stance without her mind’s direction, or if that was really her voice – a little shaky, but roaring nonetheless, shouting at this huge man, ‘DROP THE GUN! DROP IT!’
For a split second she had a glimmer of the feeling she imagined any cop would feel, what Sampson must have felt when he’d stormed into her kitchen when she’d been cowering, terrified, with her back against the wall and a butcher knife in her hand. She felt strong and just and full of purpose instead of flat-out scared to death, and that’s when she made the mistake. She forgot the first lesson. Worry about the perp first; the victim second, because you can’t help the victim if you’re dead.
But Iris’s eyes darted of their own accord to the woman held upright only by the choke-hold the man had around her neck. It was such a short glance, just a flicker, really, but it was long enough to see the blood streaming down her face, the floppy, broken arm, and the sad flash of relief in her eyes before they fell closed and the deputy tossed her aside.
Oh God. The deputy. He was a law officer, too, and he hadn’t forgotten the first lesson, because now he was spinning toward her, leading with a handgun a lot bigger than hers, and fast, so fast, he had it pointed directly at Iris’s chest and saw the red light in Sheriff Kenny Bulardo’s eyes that Roberta had seen for most of her life.
Iris felt her finger close on the trigger, and heard the deafening blast of a bullet breaking the sound barrier.
He’d been smart. Nobody could say he hadn’t been smart. Kept his hat and his department parka, filched an extra deputy badge from the stock in the basement, and bought a new, bigger weapon on his way home from turning in his department issue 9-mm. He’d been ready and waiting for the smallest of chances to take back his wife if not his county, and last night it had come in the form of a phone call from one of the men who was still loyal. For the fist time since the fence was built, the gates to Bitterroot were wide open, and no one was checking who drove in.
Ex-sheriff Kenny Bulardo stood over Iris Rikker, watched the blood seeping out of her body onto the tile floor, and felt the grin crawling across his face.
He hadn’t really intended to kill anyone – certainly not a sitting sheriff, even if it was the bitchy little snip who’d stolen his badge. Hell, he hadn’t known the person he was shooting at was Iris Rikker until the bullet had left the barrel. When you live most of your life as a cop you learn early that you don’t hesitate when someone breaks in on you screaming, pointing a gun at your face. You turn and shoot first and ask questions later. That’s what they’d taught him all those years ago, and no one would blame him for doing exactly what a trained cop is supposed to do to save his own life, not even at his trial, if it should come to that. Roberta had been out cold by the time he’d pulled the trigger, so it was his word against a dead woman, who God damn her anyway had actually taken a shot
