CHAPTER 17

Dear God! Clearly the man had been dropped on his head as a child. More than once. And from a considerable height. It was the only explanation for how he could possibly had gotten to be so mind-bogglingly, jaw-droppingly, awe-inspiringly stupid.

So she needed time to think, did she? No way could she possibly know her own mind about the man she was having a relationship with! A feeble-minded and opinionless woman like herself couldn’t ever be trusted to make anything as complicated as her own decision, and even if she had, she would obviously need time to mull it over and over in her vacuous little head until the two brain cells she barely had to rub together had worked out all the complexities of such a thing as her own bloody emotions.

Of all the arrogant assumptions! The man was lucky she didn’t march out onto the porch, carafe in hand, and dump the entire pot of scalding-hot coffee onto his head! In front of his damn deputy!

If she had brought her own car out here this afternoon, she would have changed into her own clothes, grabbed her keys, and been halfway back to Stone Creek before the moron managed to pry even half of his size twelve boot out of his condescending throat. To hell with the responsibilities of citizenship and looking out for a neighbor. He could fill out his own police report. It would serve him right if she developed a sudden and debilitating case of amnesia every time the subject of the break-in was even mentioned.

Of course, after that little lecture inside, if she did pretend to have forgotten the evening’s incidents, he would just chalk it up to her overwrought female nerves and add it to his list of asinine reasons why she couldn’t possibly know yet how she felt about the miserable jerk.

As if she wasn’t perfectly capable of acknowledging that she loved the miserable son of a bitch!

Men!

Her temper was frayed, to say the least, as she yanked open cabinet doors until she found a shelf of coffee mugs. She grabbed one for herself, filled it, dumped in the requisite flood of cream—Trust a Feline bachelor to keep half a gallon of real heavy cream in his refrigerator. Josie hadn’t even known the stuff came in half gallons!—and returned to her seat at the table. When they wanted to hear what she had to say about earlier events, they could damn well come and get her. She wouldn’t be going out of her way for them anytime soon.

She sat alone for almost fifteen minutes, nursing both her coffee and her rage. Unfortunately, the coffee was the only thing that cooled in the time before the two men filed into the kitchen and helped themselves to the still-brimming pot.

“Well, that was a nasty bit of work he did outside there. I’ll give him that.” Jim Cooper sighed as he eased himself into a straight-backed chair. “I’m happy to say we don’t see much of that kind of sentiment around here, Dr. Barrett, and I’m real sorry that you had to see it tonight.”

What the hell? The man spoke as if she hadn’t spent twenty-two of her thirty-two years living in the frickin’ town and becoming aware of what people saw around it and what they didn’t. Was Eli’s stupidity contagious? Was it an epidemic among the male population of Stone Creek? Would she go into work on Monday morning and discover that Ben had forgotten how to take a patient statement or use the CBC machine?

“I believe I’ll survive the trauma, Deputy, but it’s... kind of you to be concerned.”

Jim nodded, perfectly content to believe in her sincerity.

Dear Lord, what was the world coming to?

“I agree with the sheriff about it, though,” the man continued in his slow, steady tone. “I don’t think it was done by anyone local. Based on the wording of the graffiti and the description Eli gave of the attacker, I’d say it’s likely we’ve got another skinhead incident on our hands.”

Oh my goodness. They had managed to figure that out for themselves, had they?

“You may be right,” she acknowledged steadily. “But last time, the incident was a bit different, wasn’t it? Less personal and more disseminated. Protests and riots instead of a personal attack. Why do you suppose they changed their tactics? Assuming it’s the same group, I mean. And why wait a year after the protests that summer?”

Eli shook his head. “I’m not sure we can assume it’s the same group, but we probably shouldn’t rule out the possibility at this point, either. Oregon, Washington, and Idaho unfortunately have more than their share of white and human supremacist groups. But since they usually leave Stone Creek alone, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a link to last year’s events. We’ll need to look into it, definitely. As for the time lapse... we made it fairly clear last year that their kind weren’t welcome in town. Maybe it took this long to reorganize, or to come up with a new strategy.”

“A whole year should make for more of a strategy than one random attack.”

“I think they changed tactics because the things they tried last year didn’t work,” Jim concluded. “All they got for their pains was a night in jail, a court summons, a couple of fistfights, and a lot of bad press. Maybe they figured since they couldn’t change the whole town’s mind about Others, they’d just take care of things themselves, one sympathizer at a time.”

Josie blinked at that. “You still think he was after me?”

“We won’t be able to really say until we’ve taken a look at the bedroom and seen what his attack angle was and things like that. But the graffiti on the door does make me a mite suspicious.”

She drained her coffee and stood, crossing to the counter and depositing her mug in the top rack of the dishwasher. “Then I say we go on and take a look.”

Jim retrieved a large, thick, briefcase-style bag from his truck and accompanied Eli into the cabin’s bedroom. Both men insisted that Josie remain in the doorway so that she wouldn’t “compromise any evidence.” As if she wasn’t already part of the damn evidence. Still, since that wasn’t the fight she was in the mood to start at that particular moment, she held her peace and remained where she was, mimicking Eli’s favorite position by leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb and crossing her arms over her chest.

Eli insisted that they start the search for clues by the window, which he dubbed the point of entrance. “He didn’t have to break the window. It wasn’t locked. There aren’t usually any people out here to worry about keeping out, and I’d had it open this morning for some fresh air. It was closed when we went to bed, but not locked.”

Josie noticed that Jim didn’t even blink at Eli’s use of the plural in the context of bedtime. Apparently, the entire town either knew they were sleeping together or assumed it, which didn’t do all that much to improve Josie’s temper. Oh, she knew better than to think that Eli had been bragging about her to people as a conquest, but at the moment she was in the mood to hold the deputy’s attitude against the sheriff anyway. Mostly just for spite.

“When we’re done in here, I’ll head around back and check for footprints and debris and whatnot,” Eli mentioned.

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait until morning? When there’s light?” Josie asked.

“I’ll check then, too, but I want to get a sense tonight of where he came from and where he ran off to.”

She fell silent again and watched as they worked to process the scene. Eli appeared interested mainly in logistics, while Jim performed the basic tasks of dusting the window for fingerprints—even though Eli had said the assailant wore gloves, it was procedure to check, apparently—and scouring the room for trace evidence. She had to admit that the deputy performed his job with thorough determination. He pored over every inch of the room, collecting anything the attacker might have touched, shed, or left behind. He used a couple of different flashlights to search for latent evidence, even checking in the bedsheets and under the furniture.

After the first hour, though, neither he nor Eli had yet located a weapon.

Finally, Jim worked his way around the bed toward the door and knelt in front of the nightstand with his cheek to the floor and his high-powered flashlight aimed underneath. He passed the beam from left to right and jerked to a halt. He made a noise that Josie interpreted to be a combination of surprise and excitement, with maybe a tinge of concern thrown in.

“Hey, boss, come here and check out what I just found.”

“Did you find the weapon? Is it a knife? I never got a good look at it.” The sheriff had the words out even before he rounded the end of the bed.

“I suppose you might consider it a weapon,” Jim drawled, “but it sure as heck isn’t a knife.”

Reaching out with latex-gloved fingers, the deputy carefully stuck his hand under the small table and emerged holding the plunger end of a full, unused medical syringe.

Josie stared in astonishment. “What? He attacked us with that? What’s in it? Some kind of poison? Or was he just going to drug one of us? Or was it supposed to be some kind of a kidnapping?” She frowned. “I don’t get it.”

“I don’t know if I do, either.” Eli had his gaze fixed on the needle, and something in his expression made Josie take notice.

“Eli? What is it?”

He shrugged, but the look on his face was far from unconcerned. “It might not even be related,” he said slowly, “but when I went to look at the site where Rosemary was shot, I found a hunter’s blind that I think was used by her shooter. In the underbrush there, I found an empty vial—the kind that doctors draw medications out of. Using a syringe.”

A wave of cold swept over Josie. She couldn’t decide if it came from a premonition of something sinister, or from a sense of hurt that Eli hadn’t shared something so significant with her. “And you didn’t tell me? Why didn’t you show me the vial? Maybe I could have identified what was in it.”

“I told you, there was nothing in it. It was empty.”

“But I’m familiar with all kind of drugs, and even if I didn’t recognize the name, I could easily have—”

“There was no name on it,” Eli explained. “The vial had no label. It was just plain glass. And it’s not as if I deliberately didn’t tell you. I found it just before I heard the call about Bill going berserk in the clinic. Frankly, at that point I forgot all about it because I was scared to death that you were hurt.”

“But why didn’t you tell me later?”

“Because things kept getting in the way. Every time I thought of it, something would happen to distract me. Like more wolf attacks. But I did realize it would be good to know what it contained, so I sent it to Steve along with the samples from Bill and Rosemary.”

“Oh, great, so that’s one more clue that we can’t interpret because it’s being held hostage by your friend in Colorado.” Josie threw up her hands and spun around to stalk back toward the kitchen. She could feel Eli trailing along behind her even though she couldn’t hear his footsteps. He moved more silently than a ghost.

“Stephen isn’t holding anything hostage.” His voice sounded strained, as if he had to struggle for patience. Poor thing. “I already told you, he’s doing this as a favor to me because he owes me, but he’s doing it on his own time. He does have a job to do, and I can’t ask him to make us a higher priority than that.”

Josie didn’t care how sane and logical his argument was. She was sick and tired of waiting around for answers while her world sailed merrily down to hell in a handbasket. “Maybe your favor isn’t a high priority with him, but the lives of Bill and Rosemary Evans are a high priority with me. In fact, at the moment, they’re almost my only priority, and every day we have to wait for answers is another day when they get worse instead of better. Someone has to do something, and if that means me flying to Colorado and standing over your friend’s shoulder while he runs his tests, then by God that is exactly what I will do.”

How much farther the argument would have gone, Josie didn’t know. Before Eli could form a response, Jim stuck his head in from the living room, looking almost as if he feared someone might snap it off.

“What?” Eli barked, his scowl ferocious.

“Sorry to interrupt, boss, but I kept hearing this weird noise in the other room, and I couldn’t figure out what it was until I realized it was coming from the doc’s... uh... from her clothes. I think it must have been a cell phone or a pager. You want me to bring them to you, Dr. Barrett?”

She shook her head. “No, don’t bother. At this hour, it must be the clinic.” She looked at Eli. “Mind if I just use your phone to check in?”

“Be my guest.”

Josie picked up the receiver and dialed the number of the clinic. Given the time, someone must have reached the night service with an emergency. Mentally bracing herself for a rush back to town and into her surgery suite, she waited until the line picked up before saying, “This is Dr. Barrett. Is there an emergency?”

Instead of the voice of an anonymous call screener, Josie heard her secondary vet tech Andrea, and the woman’s voice was shaking.

“Dr. J, I got a call from the alarm company because something tripped the system at the clinic and they couldn’t reach you on your cell.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear it ring. Did you have to tromp all the way out there for another falling IV stand?”

“No.” Andrea made a choking noise that sent Josie’s heart into overdrive. “Dr. J, it wasn’t a false alarm.”

Impatience melted into concern. “Someone broke in? Was anything taken? Did anyone get hurt?”

“No. Yes. I mean... No one broke in. The alarm went off when something broke out.”

And just like that, Josie knew it was bad. Very bad.

“The wolves somehow managed to get through the gate, Dr. J. Bill is gone. He’s missing. It looks like he went out the window in the file room.”

Her grip on the receiver tightened until her knuckles turned white with the strain. “And Rosemary?”

“God, Dr. J. She’s dead. And it looks like Bill killed her.”

Exp. 10-1017.03

Log 03-00141

It is nearly time to move into the final phase. It becomes difficult to conceal my enthusiasm and to maintain the proper distance of a trained scientist. I have worked so long toward this goal that to come so close to its final realization...

Words fail me.

Soon it will be past time to collect data and record observations. Anticipation is my constant companion. Anticipation and elation.

The end is near.

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