Buch lesen: «Ms. Calculation»

Chapter One

Everyone in law enforcement would admit the worst aspect of the job was notifying the next of kin when a loved one died. Today that job fell on Wyatt Fitzgerald’s shoulders... Well, not fell exactly, so much as it was a weight he’d offered to bear. The fact that they were only a few weeks away from Christmas only made it that much harder.

He parked his patrol unit at the end of the Johansens’ driveway, as far from the front door as possible so he would have plenty of time before he would have to face them—and his former high school girlfriend, Gwen. The last time they had spoken, almost a decade ago, she’d made it clear she hated him. What he was about to do would only make her hatred for him worse, and he wouldn’t be able to hold those feelings against her.

Though it was early in December, he was surprised they hadn’t started to decorate for the holidays. When he’d been younger, they’d always had the Widow Maker Ranch decked out, complete with handmade pine-bough wreaths and thousands of lights. From the look of the derelict place, with its shabby siding and in-need-of-new-shingles roof, it was like the Johansens were just waiting for someone to arrive with news like his.

This moment, his coming to the door with the news of the death of their beloved sister and daughter, would be etched in their memories forever. And he would always be remembered as the catalyst for this tragic change in their lives. Without a doubt, they would always blame him for the hurt they were about to experience. In a way, he felt almost responsible for Bianca’s mysterious death.

The snow crunched under his boots as he made the long march up the driveway to the ranch house’s door. Maybe he should have brought along the other officer. They’d always been taught to go in pairs. It made it easier to face what had to be done. But this time, under all the extenuating circumstances, he felt this was one journey he had to make on his own—that was, right up until the door was within his line of sight.

He would make it quick. Like a Band-Aid. One rip and it would all be over—at least for him. Then the real pain would begin for them. He cringed at the thought of how Bianca and Gwen’s mother, Carla, would take the news. Ever since her husband’s accident with the hay tedder at Dunrovin Ranch, she’d never been the same and she’d never forgiven his family or the crew that helped run the place. To her, everything about the accident had been Dunrovin’s fault, and therefore its owners—Wyatt’s parents—were to blame.

His stomach clenched as he realized this moment, his coming to the door with tragic news, was something Carla had gone through once before. Their shared past would amplify everything. He hated having to be a part of her pain once again.

He took a long breath in a failed attempt to calm his anxiety and knocked on the front door. The glass rattled as he tapped, loose thanks to the years of neglect since Mr. Johansen’s death.

The last time Wyatt knocked on this door had been the night of their senior prom. If only he could go back in time to the days when his biggest worries were centered on how much playtime he would get in the Friday-night football game, and whether or not Gwen would be free to watch.

The curtain was drawn back and Carla’s face appeared in the window. Her nose was red and purple and covered with the spider veins indicative of a long-term alcoholic—not that he could blame her after the life she had led. Her wind-burned skin, the mark of all serious ranchers, had more lines than he remembered and her hair had turned gray, but she still had the same dark eyes of a haunted woman.

“What the hell do you want? I’m fresh out of doughnuts,” she said through the glass, her words slowed by booze even though it was early in the day.

“Mom, seriously?”

He recognized Gwen’s voice and his heart picked up pace as she stepped into view. Some feelings really didn’t change over ten years, no matter how much they should have.

Unlike her mother, Gwen was even more beautiful. Her long blond hair was haloed around her face, as wild as the woman it belonged to. She looked at him and her mouth opened in surprise, her hands moved to her hair and she tried to force it to submit. Pulling it back, her blue eyes picked up the bits of the morning sun, making them glow with life. Her eyes were just like Bianca’s, reminding him of the death that had brought him here.

Gwen opened the door and stood in silence for a moment as she stared at him in his full uniform. Without saying hello, she turned to her mother. “What did you do last night?”

He shifted his weight, uncomfortable that she was chastising her mother in front of him like he wasn’t even there.

Carla rubbed her nose drunkenly, like she was trying to process her daughter’s accusation. “I wasn’t doin’ nothing.”

“Then why is Deputy Fitzgerald standing on our doorstep?”

So they weren’t on a first-name basis anymore. Apparently she wasn’t feeling the effects of nostalgia like he was. He forced his feelings down. It didn’t matter what she thought of him; that wasn’t why he was here.

Carla looked at him and frowned as though replaying the events of last night through her mind. As he looked at her, he couldn’t help but wonder if she was still drunk from the night before, or if the alcohol on her breath was just this morning’s continuation of last night’s party.

“I don’t think I was driving.” She leaned around him, looking out into the driveway for a car that wasn’t there. “Bubba drove me home. I kinda remember...”

Gwen crossed her arms over her chest as she glared at her mother. “Are you kidding me? You don’t even remember how you got home last night? This has to stop. It’s only a matter of time until you’re going to get into real trouble—” Her glare shifted to him as if she remembered exactly who he was. “So what did she do this time? How bad is it?”

The look on her face made him want to be standing anywhere but in her bull’s-eye.

“Actually, I was here for—”

“Where’s Bianca?” Carla interrupted, glancing behind her for her other daughter—a daughter who wasn’t going to come.

“Mom, be quiet. Bianca will be along,” Gwen said, moving between her mother and the door as if she was so embarrassed by her mother’s ramblings she wanted to hide her from his view.

He cleared his throat, wishing he had loosened the top button of his uniform before he’d made his way to the door. Even his body armor felt tight, and he gave it a slight tug in an effort to dispel some of the discomfort he was aware wasn’t really physical.

“Actually, I’m here about Bianca.” As soon as the name fell from his lips, Gwen’s scowl disappeared, replaced by a wide-eyed look of fear.

“She’s upstairs,” Gwen said, absently motioning toward the wooden staircase that led to the second floor of the ranch house. “Do you want me to go get her up?” There was an edge to her voice, a sharpness that came with panic.

He moved to touch her, but stopped and gripped his hands together in front of him to keep his body and emotions under control.

“I’m afraid to tell you this, Ms. Johansen,” he said, moving slightly so he could look the older woman in the face as well. “Mrs. Johansen. I’m sorry, but in the early morning hours, we found Bianca’s body. She is...deceased.”

He knew he should have just said dead, but he couldn’t get the word past his lips. It was too harsh for Bianca, the veterinarian who’d been a regular at Dunrovin. He’d seen her so many times over the years, and they had a friendship based on their mutual attachment to animals—and her sister. In fact, Bianca had been kind to him, offering him tidbits about Gwen’s life and her dating status, and once in a while pushing him to make his move to get her back. But he’d always brushed away Bianca’s urging. He and Gwen had already had their chance—he couldn’t go through that kind of heartbreak. It nearly broke him once. He couldn’t risk something that raw again.

“Deceased?” Gwen said the word as though she tasted its full, bitter flavor and spat it out.

He wanted to look down at the ground, to escape that gaze of hers that made every part of him charge to life. “Yes. I’m so very sorry for your loss.”

Carla stared at him and blinked, the action slow and deliberate. “No.”

Gwen’s hand slid down the door with a loud squeak, like nails on a chalkboard...but he knew what the sound really was—it was the sound of a heart breaking.

She collapsed on the floor, her head hitting the wood with a thump so loud he rushed to her side to make sure she was still conscious.

“Gwen...Gwen, are you okay?” He touched her face and looked into her eyes. They were filled with tears, tears that wet his hand as they dripped over his skin and fell to the floor. There wasn’t blood or a bruise where her head had hit the ground, but she wasn’t okay. She wasn’t going to be okay for a long time.

He stroked away her tears as she lay on the floor and cried. Her body was riddled with sobs, hard and heavy.

He wanted to tell her everything was going to be all right. That she would get through this. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to lie.

Some people held the belief that time healed all pain, but he knew all too well it wasn’t true. All time did was push it further from the mind, but just like a deep flesh wound, any time he brushed the area the pain was just as all-consuming and powerful as when the blow first struck. That cliché about the healing power of time was for the weak—for the ones who couldn’t face the reality of a future filled with wounds that wouldn’t heal.

Regardless of the state Gwen was in, he knew how strong she was. How much it took to bring her to this point. And he’d been the one to break her.

He hated himself.

“Shh...” he said, trying to calm her and help her in the only way he knew how.

Carla opened the door wider and stepped by him and out into the crisp morning air. “Not again...”

Gwen looked at her mother and, moving his hand aside, she rubbed the tears from her face and took a series of long breaths. “I’m fine... I’m fine...” she said, as though she was trying to convince herself. She sat up and smoothed back her hair.

Wyatt stepped out of her way and tried to ignore his feelings of rejection at her pushing him away. “Currently, Bianca’s body is at the crime lab. As her death was unattended, she will need to undergo an autopsy in order for us to generate a full report.”

Carla hugged herself as she rocked back and forth. Gwen stood up, and, brushing off her red plaid nightgown, she stepped to her mother’s side and wrapped her arm around Carla’s shoulders. “It’s okay, Mom. It’ll be okay.”

At least one of them had the strength to feed Carla the lines she needed to hear.

Gwen looked at him, her eyes red and thick with restrained tears. “A full report? What does that mean? You don’t know how she died?”

He shook his head. “The coroner was unable to make a determination as to the cause of death. It will need to be fully investigated by the medical examiner.”

She frowned and her gaze flicked to the right as though she was remembering something. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped, and then after a moment started again. “Where did you find her?”

The discomfort he had been feeling amplified. “She was found in the stables of the Dunrovin Ranch.”

“Your family’s place? Again?” Gwen asked, like she was calling him out for somehow being party to her sister’s death.

He nodded, guilt rising in him as her poorly veiled accusation struck. “One of my mother’s mares had come up lame. Last night, Bianca came to assess the animal and determine a course of treatment. We found Bianca’s body at about 1:00 a.m. From our estimates she had been dead for at least an hour.”

“No one found her until then?” Gwen’s voice rang with disgust. “How is that possible? You have more hands and staff than most working ranches. Someone had to have found her before then.”

He heard the slam at the fact that his family’s place was merely a guest ranch and not a working cattle ranch like theirs. Her words were flecked with pain, anger and denial—whatever she said now couldn’t be held against her.

“I don’t know the ranch’s current schedule. I’ve been out of that world, or at least a casual bystander, ever since I went to work for the department.” He realized he was answering her and defending himself against her allegations when all he should have been doing was being compassionate and taking the verbal hits she chose to let fly.

“You’re a bastard,” Carla spat out. “You and your dang family. You’re a scourge on the valley. You are the reason...you’re the reason my daughter’s gone. And now you tell me you don’t know how she died. You’re about as good at police work as your family is at ranching.”

Gwen sucked in an audible breath at the sting of her mother’s lashes. “Mother, stop.” She let go of her mother’s shoulders, repulsed.

Carla pointed at him with an unsteady finger. “You can’t tell me I’m wrong. He is doing a piss-poor job. How dare he come here without answers. If he was a real cop, he’d be able to tell us what we need to know. He’d be able to tell us about Bianca.”

It was as though her mother’s words had pulled Gwen back from the platform of anger she’d been standing on a moment before, a platform that had been targeted at him.

She looked at him with a mix of pity and pain. “Don’t say that, Mom. Just go inside. Go to bed and sleep off the booze.”

Carla shook her head, but staggered inside and toward her bedroom at the back of the house.

Gwen leaned against the porch’s white railing. “Did she commit suicide?” she asked, the question coming out of nowhere...almost as though she knew something he didn’t.

“Right now we believe that may be so, but we are unsure as to the cause of death—we’ll have to wait on the results of her autopsy. But may I ask if you believe Bianca had motive to kill herself?” he asked, wondering if Gwen knew something that would help him make sense of Bianca’s death.

She shrugged. “Vets have high rates of suicide—more than a lot of other professions.” She said it like it was just another fact from a book she read and had nothing to do with her reality.

“Was she having some mental health issues? Issues you believe would have led to her taking her own life?”

Gwen sighed. “She’s been unhappy, and with the holidays coming up... But I don’t think she’d have the power to do something like that. She wouldn’t.” She shook her head, like she could shake the idea from her mind.

But now the cat was out of the bag and there was no going back. His investigation had just moved from what some had assumed was a natural death to something else entirely. Why would a woman like Bianca, who had a family who loved her and a mother who clearly needed her, be that unhappy—was it her mother’s drinking, or something more? What had been going on in her life?

His gut twisted with a nagging feeling that everything wasn’t as it seemed—and that his life, as well as Gwen’s, was about to get turned upside down.