10

MYRA, WALT’S SISTER-IN-LAW, SAT ON THE ONLY FREE chair in Walt’s crowded office. Pushed back into a corner against a bookshelf, she faced his desk, her skinny legs crossed, a solemn expression dominating her shrunken face. Her awkwardly cropped brown hair was held out of her eyes with a pink plastic clip. Brown eyeliner was smudged over her right eye.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked, giving her a peck on the cheek as he crossed to his desk. She returned the kiss, and then grabbed his arm and worked the thumb of her left hand against his cheek to remove the lipstick left behind.

“You look tired.”

“I am,” Walt answered. “And I’m busy, Myra. A lot on my plate.” He’d received an update from Search and Rescue: forty percent of the mountain below the Drop had been searched, with no sign of the missing skier.

He didn’t want to say how she looked. And he didn’t want to get her talking. Once started, she was like an avalanche.

There had been a time, three years ago, back before the death of Walt’s brother, when she’d had some weight to her breasts and hips. Had even turned a few heads. But grief had freeze-dried her, and there was no reconstituting that original Myra. Robert’s death had cost Walt too-his marriage, among other things.

Myra kicked the office door closed. Walt rarely shut his office door; he could almost hear the gossip begin on the other side of it.

“You asked Kevin about something going on at school.”

“I’m talking to a bunch of the kids,” he said. “Just spoke to Taylor Crabtree a few minutes ago.”

“You could have told me.”

“It’s kind of quiet right now. I asked Kevin to keep it between us.”

“If you’re turning your nephew-my son-into an informer, I’d like to know about it.”

“And if it gets that far you will.” Walt shuffled some papers. “You and Kevin have dinner plans?”

“Now we do. Eight o’clock?”

Walt smiled. “Good.”

“Girls okay?”

“Nikki needs a new coat. Emily’s growing out of her boots.” He looked up exasperated. “I suck as a father.”

“Not true.”

“Work is taking over again.”

“It goes in cycles. You know that. You’re tired. Give me the girls for a couple days. Catch a movie or something.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You can’t be everything for everyone. There’s no one complaining but you. The girls are happier. You’re better off than you were with Gail around. At least things are consistent. That’s a major improvement.” She picked some lint off her sweater. “Have you cleaned out her stuff?”

Walt hit her with an icy stare.

“I can’t, Myra. Not yet.”

“That’s where it starts, Walt. I offered before: I can do this for you. You come home from work, it’s done.”

He shook his head, pursed his lips. “No thanks.”

“Open-ended offer.”

“Let’s change the subject.”

She stirred; he hoped she might get up and leave, but it wasn’t to be.

“And what about the primary? What if you lose?” Myra asked.

Walt closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He dreaded the election cycle. Every four years, like a plague.

“Have you thought about what happens if you lose this election?”

“ Myra, I’m a little busy for this.”

“It’s not as if there are other sheriff jobs in this valley. If you and Gail sell the house, and you end up unemployed, you’re going to be forced out of the valley like every other worker. Who can afford these prices anymore? Then what? Will the court let you take the girls out of state? Courts love the mother.”

“The mother doesn’t want them.”

“Not now, she doesn’t. But just wait until she sees you with another woman. Sees you happy. She’ll do anything to stop that.”

“That’s not going to happen anytime soon,” he said.

“Then it’ll be when you challenge her for custody. But the day is coming when she’s going to regret all this. Mark my word.”

He swallowed that one away, hoisted a pile of pink messages. “I’ll figure it out. I’ve got a ton of work here, Myra.”

“You need this election.”

“I’ll give it more thought. We’ll talk about it at dinner.”

She stood. No one could take that chair for too long. “You give me the word, I’ll have every trace of her out of that house in twenty minutes.” And she meant it.

11

WALT WAS EN ROUTE TO RANDY A KER’S CABIN WHEN THE call came in. Kira Tulivich, the missing bridesmaid, was in Emergency at St. Jude’s. He reached Fiona and asked her to meet him there.

“She wandered in through the front door about four-thirty this morning,” the attending desk nurse told Walt. “She didn’t know who she was or where she was,” the nurse continued, “and there was some confusion on our end in contacting you, as I understand it, because we thought we might be dealing with a minor. We’ve cleaned her up and examined her. Brought in a SANE nurse.” Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner. This told Walt all that he wanted to know. “She gave us her name about an hour ago. She’s nineteen. Doesn’t want her family notified, and we have to honor that.”

“You do, but I don’t,” he said. “We’ll let them know.”

The nurse seemed relieved. He placed a call to Nancy and asked her to inform the family. As Fiona came through the doors, he guessed they had fifteen to twenty minutes before the onslaught.

They waited quietly in seats alongside a set of automatic doors that errantly reacted to the slightest motion. Walt felt paralyzed, reeling over Mark’s disappearance.

A tall artificial tree stood in the corner of the waiting room, its dust-colored silk leaves looking pathetic. One of the seat cushions bore the artistic efforts of a child with a purple marker. The walls were covered in a sand brown corduroy fabric.

“You’re awfully quiet,” she said.

“I called the Hailey mortuary on the way up here. Mark’s never called.”

They sat in silence. Walt checked his watch, then the wall clock, then his watch again.

“I don’t love the idea of photographing this woman. Can’t the doctors do that?”

“The nurses. Yes. You’ll only be shooting her face and hands and belongings. Believe me, the quality of their pictures leaves a lot to be desired, and you’re the best we’ve got.”

“I’m the only one you’ve got.”

“I have a hidden agenda: I’m required to have a woman deputy in the room with me, and you were the closest.”

“Last time I checked, Walt, I was also a civilian.”

“Consider yourself deputized. Seriously. It’s done.”

“I want a badge,” she said. “And a car with a siren.”

“So noted.”

They were shown into a brightly lit examination room that held an array of colorful machines hung from stainless steel stands, yards of clear plastic tubing, and three boxes of different-colored examination gloves.

Fiona saw the young woman’s face and gasped.

Her reaction turned Walt toward her. “Listen, if you can’t handle this-”

“It’s not that!” she countered in a whisper. “I know her, Walt. From the wedding. Last night’s wedding. On the dance floor. She was there, for heaven’s sake.”

“Can you do this?” he asked.

“Of course.”

The girl’s knees were raised beneath a white cotton sheet adorned with pale blue bees, her head elevated by several pillows. Beneath the blotchy complexion and runny nose, she was a pretty girl of nineteen, but with a tormented sadness in her dull eyes that cut to the quick. Her red hair was a tangled mess. Her makeup was smeared down her face. There were bundles of oversized paper bags on a rolling table to the left of the bed. Her clothes and belongings. One of those bags would contain a bedsheet she would have stood on while undressing-Walt wanted a look at any debris that had fallen off her.

The nurse was an attractive woman in her late forties wearing the name tag HOPE on the chest of her scrubs. She spoke in a dry, husky voice.