Taylor Smith - Deadly Grace

She blushed. “Oh, no, hon, not a word, unless you count ‘una margarita, por favor.’ I got that one pretty much down pat when I won a trip to Acapulco few years back.”

He smiled. “Well, that’s an important phrase to know.”

“I’m Verna Rasmussen,” she said, extending her hand. “Just call me Verna.”

“Nice to meet you, Verna. And you did say the name exactly right, by the way.”

“Well, good. I try. I figure a person’s name is special, so we should make a little effort to get it right, don’t you think? My dad was a ‘Bjorn,’ and he got so fed up with people calling him ‘Ba-jorn’ that he gave up and went by ‘Bub,’ if you can believe it. And, anyway, Alejandro’s an easy one. Like Alejandro Rey, the actor. Right?”

He nodded. “I guess so. Most people call me Alex. And as I say, the chief’s expecting me. Could you tell him I’m here?”

Her gray pin curls gave a regretful shake as she handed him back the ID. “’Fraid he’s not in today, hon.”

“I spoke to him by phone just yesterday afternoon. He knew I was coming.”

“You came out from Minneapolis?”

“No, ma’am, from Washington.”

“D.C.?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh, my, all the way from Washington, D.C.”

Cruz tucked the ID away. “So, what do you think, Verna? Could you give him a call, remind him I’m here?”

“Well, I would, but there’s just no way. Chief Lunders is in the hospital, and he’s not going to be back for a while, I don’t think.” One of her eyebrows rose.

That and her grimace told Cruz there was a long story there that Verna was probably quite prepared to tell him if given half a chance. But, he noted, glancing at his watch, it was past noon. In another couple of hours, the winter sun would start sinking fast before he’d had a chance to get a look at the site of the fire. The arson team was supposed to have gone over the ground this morning and were to have left their initial findings with the chief, but Cruz wanted his own clear picture to go with the team’s findings.

He glanced over Verna’s head to the glass window behind her. It opened into what appeared to be the squad room, with four steel desks facing one another in the center and a bank of file cabinets on the far wall. There was only one officer inside, as far as he could see from his vantage point. A khaki-uniformed officer, with buzzed hair nearly as white as the paper in his typewriter, sat at one of desks, and he appeared to be engaged in the familiar, endless and thankless task of typing up police reports on the ancient Olivetti in front of him. He looked too young to be out of high school.

“Who’s in command while Chief Lunders is laid up?”

“That’d be Nils Berglund, the deputy chief.”

“Could you—”

“—but he’s out on a call right now.”

“Can you get in touch with him?”

“Oh, sure thing!” she said, brightening. She cocked her thumb at the dispatch unit behind her. “I can call him up on the car radio.”

“Would you do that?”

“Sure. Why don’t you have a seat?” She pointed to a row of padded arm chars hugging one wall. “Oh! And here,” she added, pulling out a Tupperware box from a ledge behind her chair and peeling back the plastic lid. “Have a Toll House cookie while you’re waiting. I baked these myself for the guys. Forgot to put ’em in the squad room.”

Cruz took one of her cookies, then headed over to the waiting area while she put out the call. Instead of sitting, something he’d already spent far too much time doing that day, he headed for the bulletin board on the wall opposite, opening his overcoat which suddenly felt oppressively heavy in the heated building. Hot and cold, hot and cold.

He made short work of Verna’s cookie as he scanned the notices on the cork board. In one corner hung a familiar notice, the FBI Ten Most Wanted list, a gimmick J. Edgar Hoover had dreamed up in one of his more creative PR moments back in his early days as Director. Now, the list hung in half the federal, state and municipal offices in the country. Mostly, though, the bulletin board featured local notices about septic tanks, fishing and boating licenses, and the burning of household trash. A clipboard hanging on a peg contained minutes of town council meetings, while a hand-drawn sign down in one corner of the board, covered in turquoise rabbits and colorful eggs, asked for volunteers to help organize the 1979 Havenwood Easter Parade and Egg Roll.

Cruz heard Verna put out the call over the radio to the deputy chief, and a deep voice, broken by static, came back in response. He was just turning to eavesdrop when the last line on the Easter announcement caught his eye.

For more information, please contact:

Grace Meade

Chairlady, Havenwood Easter Parade Committee

Grace Meade, recently deceased pillar of the community and mother of his quarry, Jillian Meade. Now who would the town turn to organize its official Easter celebration? Cruz wondered, as behind him, the deputy’s crackled, baritone voice announced over the radio that he was on his way in.

Montrose, Minnesota

Thursday, January 11, 1979

It was that woman’s voice again, firm but friendly—the kind of voice that wants you to know it intends no threat, but which commands your attention, nevertheless. Jillian lay still, feigning sleep—which wasn’t hard because sleep was never very far away. Hoping it would be enough to discourage the voice. Willing it to just leave her alone.

“It’s Dr. Kandinsky, Jillian. Do you remember? I was in to see you a couple of times yesterday and then again last night.”

Yesterday? Last night? What time was it? What day was it? When she’d opened her eyes a while back—when was that?—Jillian had noticed her watch was missing, taken along with the rest of her things, she supposed. The windows in the room were high and small, and all she’d been able to see out of them was a pale sliver of frigid-looking sky. There’d been daylight, but the shadows were long and blue-tinged, the way they get on cold winter days when the sun over the prairie is brilliant but without any heat in it.

“How are you feeling today?” the voice asked. “You’re looking a little better.”

Better than what? How long had she been there? If this doctor said she’d been in last night…well, fine. It could have been last week or last month for all Jillian knew. She did remember that voice, though, warm and reassuring. Seductive, like a promise of mercy. Or absolution, maybe, for what she’d done.

Her eyes snapped opened. The guardrails were still there, and the green wall. What did I do?

“You’re safe now,” the doctor said. “No one is going to hurt you here. I thought you might like to get cleaned up a little today. You’d feel much better if you did.”

Cleaned up? What happened? She stared at her hand lying outstretched on the crisp white mattress. She recalled someone washing blood off her when she was first brought in, but there was still some under her bitten nails, crusted, brown and guilty looking. She must look godawful, Jillian thought. Her hair was hanging loose and unbrushed, sticky mats clinging to her cheeks and neck and shoulders, and the long bangs flicking against her lashes felt bristled at the ends. Singed, she realized suddenly. Singed like her lungs, which hurt with every breath she took. And she could smell the sour, dusky odor of charred wood. It seemed permanently etched in her nasal passages….

And then, suddenly, it all came back. She remembered the fire. She remembered Nils, and the ambulance, and what had happened after they had examined her in the ER and left her sedated and alone to try to sleep off the shock of the fire. Of what she’d seen in her mother’s house.