City of the Lost: Part Four Page 6

  I leave Lang's and pick up an admirer of my own. It's Jen. She follows me for three houses before yelling a racial epithet, because that's just the kind of girl she is. Apparently, this particular insult is supposed to get my attention, and when it doesn't, she jogs up alongside me and says, "I was talking to you."

  "Oh?" I look at everyone else on the street. "Right. You were. How can I help you today, Jen?"

  "It's how I can help you, detective." Jen says it the way street thugs say cop.

  "Okay," I say, as if I don't notice her tone. "Do you want to go back to the station and talk?"

  "Considering what my tip is? Not a chance." She steps too close for comfort, but I stand my ground. "I heard you talking to Pierre."

  She means she heard Lang yelling at me. My side of the conversation was a little more discreet.

  "You want to find Abbygail's secret admirer?" she says. "He's sitting in your cop shop." When I hesitate, she says, "Um, your boss?" She backs up and eyes me. "Unless the rumours are true and Dalton's more than your boss, in which case this tip sure as hell won't go anywhere."

  I resist the urge to deny the rumours--she wouldn't listen. "If you have reason to believe Sheriff Dalton was interested in Abbygail--"

  "I have more than 'reason to believe.' After Abbygail's birthday party, Petra and I saw them getting hot and heavy behind the community hall." My shock must show, because she sneers. "Sweet on the sheriff, are you, detective? How predictable. All you so-called educated women--you, the doctor--think you're so smart and yet you all fall for that hick. And who did he have his eye on? The teen hooker who thought he shit solid gold. That's what men want. Not a woman they can talk to. A dumb little girl who'll worship the ground they walk on."

  "You say Petra--"

  "Yes, your new pal Petra saw it. Go talk to her, since you obviously won't believe me."

  "Can you tell me exactly what you saw?" I ask as calmly as I can.

  "After the party broke up, Dalton and Abbygail were k-i-s-s-i-n-g behind the community hall. Which apparently was more his idea than hers, because after we walked away, I heard arguing. Abbygail was pissed off and the good sheriff was in full-on defence mode. If she'd been in trouble, I would have interfered, no matter what you might think of me. The situation was under control, though. She was giving him a dressing-down, and he'd backed off, so I left them to it."

  Petra works part-time in the general store. It's exactly what it sounds like--the place to buy pretty much everything you need. "Need" being the operative word. This isn't the place for luxury items. At least half the store is second-hand goods. Everything in Rockton is valuable for as long as it can be recycled. I find Petra sorting a stack of clothing into what can go immediately on the shelves and what the seamstresses need to repair first. When she sees my expression, she sticks on the "Back in Five" sign and ushers me into the backroom.

  "I need to ask you something," I say as she shuts the door.

  "I can see that. What's up?"

  "It's about Dalton and Abbygail."

  She goes still, and I know it's true. I suspected it was--Jen wouldn't dare invoke Petra's name in a lie. But I did hope that maybe Jen presumed I'd never actually investigate, and she just wanted to stir up shit. Now I see the truth in Petra's face. And it hurts. On so many levels, it hurts.

  "Jen told me," I say.

  Petra lowers herself onto a crate.

  "Abbygail's party," I say. "Behind the community hall. Jen says you two saw them kissing."

  She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment. "I'm sorry. I'd decided it wasn't worth mentioning. But after her death ... I was trying to figure out how to tell you."

  "Not worth mentioning? That the local sheriff was seen making out with a girl who went missing a few days later?"

  "Making out? No, it was a kiss behind the community hall. Probably a drunken one. Between a young sheriff and a girl who was deeply infatuated with him. A momentary lapse in judgment for Eric."

  "Did you hear the argument?"

  "What argument?"

  I tell her and she says, "I didn't hear anything. Yes, I left the party with Jen that evening. We aren't good buddies, but I understand there's more to her than the stone-cold bitch you see. She has issues. Lots of them. That doesn't mean she isn't a bitch. Or an addict.Or a part-time prostitute. It also means she lies."

  "You think she's lying about the fight?"

  "Maybe not outright, but I'd strongly consider the possibility that her hatred of Eric colours her interpretation. Think about it. If Abbygail had a crush on Eric, is she really going to tell him off for kissing her? Isn't it more likely that Eric realized it was a mistake, backed off, and she got angry? Embarrassed?"

  "Just because she had a crush doesn't necessarily mean she'd welcome an advance."

  I want her to argue my point. She only goes quiet and then says, "I guess so," and I'm left with this stark truth: something happened between Abbygail and Dalton, and he hid it, and now she's dead.

  After I talk to Petra, I run home, if not physically, then mentally. I pretend I don't hear the hellos or see the waves and the smiles, and I get my ass home as fast as I can without actually breaking into a run. I stumble inside, close the door, and collapse against it.

  Dalton and Abbygail.

  I want to say that Petra is right, that the fight was because they kissed, and he backed off. But even that doesn't fit my image of him. Kissing Abbygail--drunk or not--steps over a line. He was her mentor, her big brother, the guy determined to set her on the right track and keep her there. To kiss her was a violation of that trust.

  I want better from him. There, it's out. The sad truth. That Abbygail isn't the only girl with a crush. Perhaps this is why I identify with Abbygail--because I'm not a grown woman seeing a man and saying, "I want that." It's my inner teen who looks at Dalton with just a touch of that starry-eyed gaze. Like Abbygail, I missed that stage in my teen years. If I liked a guy, I let him know. If he wasn't interested, I moved on without a backward glance. I was as efficient in my love life as I was in everything else.

  I've polished over Dalton's rough edges, put him on a pedestal, and said, "This is a good man." A man with a strong and true inner compass.A man who would not kiss a damaged, infatuated, twenty-one-year-old girl. And if he got drunk and did, he'd admit it to his new detective because it played into her investigation, and if he'd done nothing wrong, then there was no reason not to admit it.

  Once night comes, I cycle through nightmares of Dalton and Abbygail. He kisses her, and that kiss is more than she wants, so she pushes him away. He asks her to meet him in the forest--he has something to show her, an apology for his bad behaviour. She goes. He kisses her again. She fights him off. Things get out of control and Abbygail dies. Then the accidental killing of Abbygail unleashes something in him, a twisted perversion of his need to protect his town. He'll cover up Abbygail's death by killing those he suspects of being smuggled in.

  The next nightmare scene is right out of a movie--the female detective who is so enamoured of her new boss that she never realizes he's the killer, even when the audience is shouting at her and groaning at her stupidity. Dalton lures me into the forest, and I run along after him like an eager puppy. Run to my doom. Deservedly so.

  In a movie, he would be the killer. The last guy you'd suspect. The sheriff devoted to keeping his town's people safe is actually the guy murdering them? Ah, the irony. Afterward, viewers can look back and spot the clues that point to him.

  Dalton didn't want Anders and me wandering off in that cave. He'd been the one who overreacted to Petra's scream. The brave and dedicated shepherd worried about his flock? Or the killer who knew what we must have found?

  Dalton asked for a detective, but he also discouraged me from coming here. Maybe he only wanted to look as if he wanted a detective. Then, when he was forced to take me, he decided to build a relationship where I would trust him enough to share all aspects of my investigation.

  And about Abbygail and Dalton ..
. Am I so sure there wasn't a secret relationship? It's not as if he's dating anyone else in town. Or even sleeping with anyone as far as I can tell. Something is off there.

  There's a lot off when it comes to Eric Dalton. Maybe those eccentricities and complications are a sign of deeper damage. Of a deeper schism.Of a truly dark side to his nature.

  Those are the thoughts that keep me tossing all night. Then I wake--on the folding mattress he gave me, beside a stack of his books--and I look up at the fading stars and hear him telling me the constellations, and I can't see absolute darkness. Not in Dalton.

  Or maybe I just don't want to.

  KELLEY ARMSTRONG is the internationally bestselling author of the thirteen-book Women of the Otherworld series, the Nadia Stafford crime novels and a new series set in the fictional town of Cainsville, Illinois, which includes the novels Omens, Visions and Deceptions. She is also the author of three bestselling young adult trilogies, and the YA suspense thriller, The Masked Truth. She lives in rural Ontario.