The Rhoda A was a forty-year-old CrisCraft that had once been named the Mary A for Rho’s mother. After Mary left town with an itinerant bartender who had briefly worked at the hotel, Jack Antolini renamed the cruiser and maintained her well till Rho went off to college. Some of Rho’s fondest memories were of the time she’d spent aboard her namesake. But when she moved back to Signal Port she discovered that her father had let the craft deteriorate, and since he’d moved onto her after his forced retirement, he’d done little maintenance. Now the Rhoda A was shabby and barnacled and rode low in her slip, the only tenant of the abandoned marina.
Jack came up on deck as Rho approached: a big man with several days of gray stubble on his face and broken veins on his broad nose, wearing rumpled work clothes and an Oakland A’s cap. When he saw who was coming he broke into a wide grin that revealed tobacco-stained teeth and called, “Permission to come aboard granted, Deputy.”
She stepped onto the boat and hugged him. He smelled of Irish whiskey and cheap cigars and probably hadn’t bathed in days, but the solidity of his chest and arms called forth memories of the nights when she would wake from dreams of abandonment and chaos, crying for her mother. Jack had always been there to comfort her when he wasn’t working, and only a quick radio patch away while on duty.
They went down to the cabin, Jack leaning heavily on the railing to compensate for the bad leg that had resulted from his car crash. While she seated herself at the small table, he turned down his scanner and poured them both coffee, lacing his liberally with Irish. Rho held back the critical words that automatically came to mind. They would only lead to a quarrel, and besides, she was not one to talk. She may not have satisfied last night’s craving for alcohol, but only because it had eventually been overwhelmed by exhaustion following her overlong shift.
“So where’s that mutt of yours?” Jack asked. He was Cody’s biggest fan.
“I left him at the substation. Valerie’s had a gift for him in her desk for days — a new chew bone — and I couldn’t tear him away from it.”
Jack snorted. “It’s a wonder she hasn’t knitted him one of those things she makes. Someday you’ll leave him there and when you pick him up, he’ll be wearing it and looking like an idiot.”
“She means well, Dad.”
“You think I don’t know that? She’s a good woman, has had a hard life. Of course, you could say the whole damn town’s had a hard life. What’s your take on these latest developments?” Jack leaned forward, eyes glittering greedily.
Rho brought up her guard. These work-related discussions always went badly. “Well, we don’t have the autopsy results on Chrystal Ackerman yet, but I think we can safely say it was rape-and-murder. Our appeal for people to come forward with information places her at Point Deception somewhere between fifteen hundred fifty and nineteen hundred hours, but nowhere else, and we doubt she was killed there. Clark County, Nevada, is trying to contact next of kin, and if whoever that is can’t shed any light on where she was going or why, I guess Ned Grossman or Denny Shepherd’ll have to fly down there, go over to her apartment, talk in person with the people who knew her.”
“Any chance the Lindsay woman’s death is related?”
“There’s nothing to indicate that was anything other than an accident.”
“There’s a circular out on her jewelry and credit cards.”
“Someone robbed the body, yes.”
“Someone who caused the accident, maybe.”
“There was no damage to her car consistent with involvement with another vehicle.” She heard her language become stilted, as if she were trying to justify her theories to Station Commander Iverson.
“What about the Scurlock woman?” Jack asked. “Is her disappearance related to the murder?”
“Only in the sense that the murder made a previously unstable woman flip out.”
“You taking a good look at Will Scurlock? Cases like that, you always look at the husband or wife.”
“There was nothing in his behavior to make me suspect him of any wrongdoing.”
“Uh-huh.” Jack’s tone was skeptical.
“Look, Dad, I was there, and you weren’t!”
Hurt flickered in his eyes and he looked away. Rho bit her lip, ashamed both for snapping at him and for reminding him that he hadn’t been and never again would be officially present at a crime scene. He drained his mug and went back for more — straight Irish this time.
“Who’s this Guy Newberry you’ve got a BOLO out on?” he asked, his back to her.
“You don’t miss a word that comes over that scanner, do you?” She tried to force affection into her tone, lighten the atmosphere.
“I was a deputy for over thirty years, Rhoda. I can hear scanner broadcasts in my sleep.”
Rhoda. He really was hurt. He’d always called her “honey” or, since she’d joined the department, “Deputy.”
“Well, Guy Newberry is a writer from New York City. He came out here to do a book on the Cascada Canyon murders. At least that’s what Wayne heard. I want to talk to him about the project, but I can’t locate him since Hugh Dawson kicked him out of the Sea Stacks.”
Jack turned and leaned against the counter. “Why’d Dawson do that?”
“Because of the book.”
“Well, Hugh’s an asshole, but he’s got a point.”
“Does he? I wonder. Besides, kicking him out of the motel isn’t going to stop a man like Newberry. I’ve met him.”
“He’s got to be stopped.”
“How?”
“You should know, Deputy.”
“What does that mean?”
“There’s stuff in the property room at headquarters. Plenty of incriminating stuff. Plant it on him, pick him up, give him the option of leaving the county or going to jail.”
“Oh, come on, Dad!”
“Goddamn it!” Jack exclaimed. “Where’s your backbone? This town has suffered enough. The department’s been embarrassed enough. No New York City writer who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the problems we’ve got here should be allowed to ridicule us in print. And he sure as hell shouldn’t be allowed to ridicule my daughter!”
Here we go, she thought. He’s really into it now. “Why would he ridicule me?”
“Do I have to point out the obvious? I guess I do. One, because you panicked and didn’t get a dying statement from a witness. Two, because you disturbed a crime scene. Three, because you took an incomplete statement from another witness, and the omissions weren’t caught till the FBI stepped in. Four, because you broke the chain of physical evidence. Are those enough reasons for you?”
Rho gripped the table’s edge, fought for control. Her father’s anger filled the small cabin.
“We’ve been over this before,” she said. “I’ll go over it again, but this is the last time. Ever. I couldn’t get a statement from Heath Wynne; he was only a little boy, dying in extreme pain. The shed I took Oriana Wynne out of wasn’t technically a crime scene. Yes, I was distracted and unfocused when I took Virge Scurlock’s statement, but show me anyone who wouldn’t’ve been after what I’d gone through. And as for breaking the chain of evidence...”
“Yes? How’re you gonna justify that?”
She voiced it, for the first time ever. “I didn’t misplace those blood samples, Dad. Wayne did.”
Gregory Cordova remained silent when Guy finished summarizing what he already knew about the Cascada Canyon killings. Finally he said, “You may know a lot about those people, but I know things the sheriff and even the FBI didn’t find out.”
“Why didn’t you share them with the authorities?”
“I had my reasons, but they’re not important anymore.”