They all nodded as Quinn and Nick took out their notepads. Ryan spoke. “We took the horses out at seven this morning. Sean and Timmy spent the night because we wanted to go early, and they live in town.”
“Mom works weekends,” Timmy said with a bob of his head. “We come here a lot.”
“It’s probably fun to hang out at a ranch with horses and cool stuff to do,” Quinn said, smiling.
Timmy nodded. “Oh, yeah, and we get to-” His brother hit him hard in the arm.
“Shut up,” Sean said. “They only want to know about the dead girl.”
Timmy looked sheepish.
“That’s okay,” Quinn told the younger boy. “You never know what might be important in an investigation.”
The boys had left the ranch early and ridden across the pasture to the east. They took an overgrown trail intending to find an Indian burial site on the north ridge.
“You know you aren’t supposed to go that far,” Parker admonished. “That’s a treacherous path. You’re damn lucky one of the horses didn’t break a leg.”
“I’m sorry, Pa,” Ryan said, looking down.
“Go on,” Quinn said. Just what he needed was a scared kid and belligerent dad. “Where’s the Indian site you were looking for?”
“We don’t know. That’s why we were looking. Gray, you know, the caretaker at the Lodge down there,” he motioned vaguely south, “says it’s up on the north ridge, above Mossy Creek. Even he doesn’t know exactly where it is, just that it’s there and we’d know it if we saw it. We looked all last summer and couldn’t find it. And since it’s been raining all week, this was the first good day to look for it.”
Quinn remembered Gray. How could he forget the time he spent at the Gallatin Lodge when he was investigating Sharon Lewis’s murder? Or the weekends he came to visit Miranda on personal time?
Shaking his head, he pushed Miranda from his mind. It was harder now that she’d crept in, unbidden, but he had to focus on his job.
His job was to stop the Butcher.
Nick said, “You didn’t get to Mossy Creek.”
Ryan shook his head. “The horses started acting a little spooked, and then we heard a large animal. We steered them into a clearing and saw a brown bear sniffing at something. I fired my rifle to scare him away. Then we saw her.”
Ryan and Timmy had stayed in the area while Sean-the oldest of the three at twelve-took the old logging trail back to the main road and rode his horse three miles to the nearest phone.
“Did you touch the body?”
They all shook their heads vigorously. “I went close,” Ryan said. “A couple feet away. It didn’t seem real, you know? Until, well, until I saw it was that girl who’s missing. That’s when Sean went to get help. But I didn’t want to leave her there, you know? The bear could come back and, well, I just didn’t want to leave.” He looked down at his hands clasped tightly in front of him.
Quinn reached over and squeezed Ryan’s shoulder until the boy looked him in the eye. “You did the right thing.”
He stood and his joints popped from squatting so long, reminding him that he’d be forty this fall. “Thank you, Judge,” Quinn said as he turned to face Richard Parker.
An impeccably dressed blonde with vivid green eyes stood next to Parker with a blank expression. Parker’s wife? Quinn was surprised he hadn’t heard her approach.
“Mrs. Parker?” he asked, hand extended.
She took his hand, her grip surprisingly strong for someone who looked so fragile. Her fingers were icy cold, though the day had warmed considerably since he’d viewed the victim earlier this morning. “Delilah Parker.” Her voice was smooth and cool.
“Special Agent Peterson, ma’am.”
“I’ve made lemonade and banana bread in the kitchen, if you would care for some.”
Quinn was about to decline when Nick said, “Thank you, Mrs. Parker. We are much obliged at your hospitality.”
She beamed at Nick. “Excuse me, I’ll ready a tray.” She hurried off.
Quinn dragged his heels as they followed Judge Parker to the house. “We need to get back to the ridge.”
“Some things you don’t do. Refusing food from Mrs. Parker is one of them.”
“Playing politics,” Quinn mumbled sarcastically.
“Ten minutes will save me months of headache. Believe me. I declined the first time, too.” Nick rolled his eyes.
Quinn wasn’t quite sure what to make of the Parker family. Though the judge joined them in the dining room, Quinn noticed he and his wife didn’t speak much to each other.
Mrs. Parker’s impromptu get-together was surprisingly elaborate. She served the lemonade in crystal and the banana bread with fresh whipped cream on white bone china. Quinn felt uncomfortable with the formality, but Nick seemed to accept it with ease. When Quinn complimented her on a beautiful home, she beamed. The Stepford Wife of Montana, he thought, hiding a grin.
Nick was true to his word. Ten minutes later they were on their way, headed back to the stable to collect samples from the horses’ hooves before leaving.
“What’s with Parker’s wife?” Quinn asked as he shut the passenger door of Nick’s truck. “A little formal for a morning snack, wouldn’t you say?”
Nick shrugged as he started the ignition and drove down the long, winding road leading from the Parkers’ ranch to the main highway. “She likes entertaining. I declined the first time I came out here years ago when a couple of their cattle had been stolen. After I was elected, Judge Parker explained that his wife takes hospitality seriously, and he’d appreciate it if I accepted in the future.”
“You should have told me Parker was a judge. I didn’t even remember he was an attorney.”
“Nonpracticing at the time. He was on the Board of Supervisors. Now, he’s a state Superior Court justice. Word is he’s up for consideration to the Appellate Court.”
“That’s a big jump.”
Nick shrugged. “He has friends in high places.”
“Wonderful,” Quinn said cynically.
Nick shot him a glance. “You’re not thinking that Richard Parker has anything to do with what’s been happening to these girls?”
Quinn didn’t say anything for a minute. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “We have no witnesses, and Miranda only had vague impressions of her attacker’s shape and size.”
The Butcher not only kept his victims bound in chains to the floor, but he blindfolded them. Miranda swore she would know him by smell, but a man’s scent would be next to impossible to get a conviction on. They needed hard evidence.
Quinn hadn’t realized how much he had missed Miranda until he saw her today. He’d wanted to touch her, make sure she was really there, in the flesh and not another dream.
“She led us to the shack she’d been held in,” Nick continued. “She tracked down where the Croft sisters had been imprisoned. Miranda has led us to more evidence than anything you or I could have done on our own.”
Quinn knew it, and he knew why. The very reasons why Miranda would have made a damn good FBI agent were the same reasons why she would likely have gotten herself killed.
Miranda was driven, steadfast, unwavering in her pursuit of a killer. But she was obsessed with the Butcher. The case ate at her until it consumed her existence. Quinn didn’t blame her. Hell, who would? The bastard had destroyed her life. She’d had to rebuild it, brick by brick. And, amazingly, she had become an intensely strong woman. No longer a victim, but someone whom Quinn greatly admired for her ability to heal.
While she had dealt with being raped and tortured better than any victim he’d ever met, she hadn’t handled the survivor’s guilt. She blamed herself for Sharon’s murder, and her decision to join the FBI was more to avenge Sharon than to become an agent. And, ultimately, it was her need for vengeance that showed up in the psychological tests. Quinn had gone to bat for her time and time again, but when faced with the results of repeated sessions with the shrink, he had to agree Miranda wasn’t ready.