The girls ended the practice and chattered aimlessly as they gathered up their pompoms and scattered clothes and stuffed them into their cheer bags. Sam rose from where she sat in the bleachers and headed down the wooden stairs, listening as a dull
plonk
sounded with each footfall.
This was the same high school Sam had attended, and it still smelled the same, looked the same. Brought back those same mixed emotions. Sam fought them away like pesky flies. This was her job, not some melodramatic movie.
Whitney watched her come, sitting on the gym floor, holding her pompoms. She didn’t move, just watched as Sam drew closer. The other girls noticed her then, and the chatter stopped, and they began to back up a bit, perhaps sensing Sam was a different creature. Not one of them, a preppy, popular cheerleader.
“Hi, Whitney, hi, girls,” Sam said.
“Hi, Aunt Sam,” Whitney said, her voice still and surprisingly calm, though she looked as if the world were about to explode around her.
Most of the other cheerleaders gathered up their bags and skittered away, a few giving vague hellos. Others stood and watched, wondering what this was about, perhaps sensing trouble. Or something to gossip about later.
“We need to talk, Whit,” Sam said gently.
“Yes, yes, we do,” Whitney answered, again her voice calm, her face shattered.
“Is now a good time?”
“Let me just go put my things in my locker, okay?” Whitney said, and stood up shakily.
Sam reached out to steady her and she flinched and pulled away.
“I’ll just wait here,” Sam said, and watched as Whitney wobbled away. The other cheerleaders followed, sneaking glimpses back at Sam and then whispering to each other.
They all seemed to know who she was and what position she held. Her gun was covered by her light jacket and she hadn’t pulled her shield out, but still, they all knew and they were all leery of her. Since when did good Mormon high-school students disrespect the police?
Especially cheerleaders?
Sam sat down on one of the hard benches and waited for Whitney to come. After about five minutes, Sam stood up and went into the locker room. It was empty. No chattering cheerleaders. No one. Including Whitney.
But there was a note on the floor, written on the same lined paper Sam had used years before when she was a student at this school. Written in red lipstick, the paper had only one word on it.
“Bethany.”
EIGHTEEN
Sam went back to the police station after being ditched by Whitney. She’d tried calling Susanna but got no response.
“Learn anything?” she asked D-Ray as she walked past his cubicle and into her own.
“The football coach thinks they had a shot at a state title with Jeremiah as quarterback, but now there’s no way,” D-Ray said, rolling back on his chair to the edge of his cubicle and shooting a small foam basketball into a net he had attached to the wall. “Score. Two points. The crowd roars.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “Let me rephrase the question. Did he have any information about Jeremiah Malone, and whether or not he was suicidal, or had a lot of enemies?”
“Nope. He’s just crying in his Cheerios because the team is going to suck now. And apparently he has a phobia about dead bodies, because he is not looking forward to going to the funeral or viewing. He asked me if it would be open casket.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, what do I seem like, a mortician? Anyway, I’m headed home. Time for dinner and a movie with my girl. Unless Your Highness has anything else for me to do.”
Sam shot him a look that would shrivel a plant. He just laughed.
“Night, Sam.”
She sat down at her desk and looked through the pink message slips the secretary had left on her desk. The lady whose pet cat had been killed wondered if there had been any headway in the case. The local video store wanted to know if Sam had followed up on the graffiti they had found sprayed on the side of their building. Apparently, someone in the community regarded R-rated movies as “Smut and porn.” Nothing about the suicides. One note from Pamela Nixon. That one made Sam wince.
She heard someone approach her cubicle and turned to see Gage standing there. “Well, according to Brother Green, Jeremiah was a fine young man. Did you know BYU was looking to sign him as a freshman? A freshman! Imagine that.”
Sam couldn’t help but chuckle. “Did you really think he was going to open up to you?”
“Then why did you send me?”
“Covering all the bases. He could have had some helpful information. You know that.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t.” Gage watched her for a moment, and she met his stare without backing down. “So, you going to work all night, or can we get some dinner?”
“Gage—”
“Just a working dinner. I have some questions for you.”
Sam sighed. “Not tonight. I have things to take care of.”
“All work and no play make Sam a dull girl,” he said, grinning at her.
She didn’t return the smile. She might have to work with him, but she wasn’t about to let her defenses down and have real conversations with him. She needed to concentrate on what she was doing here and not worry about a man who didn’t believe in her skill as a police officer.
So she would play nice in the office. It was either that or kill him, and that didn’t seem like a viable option.
“You look like you would rather shoot me than have dinner with me.” An uncannily accurate assessment, Sam thought.
“I don’t shoot for no reason. Just don’t give me one.”
Gage laughed. “It’s just dinner, Sam. No strings attached. Nothing to be afraid of.”
A challenge. He knew how to get to her, even now. And she could see the merriment in his eyes as he tried to paste an innocent look on his face.
His eyes crinkled in the corners, and his teeth flashed white against a permanent tan. He was a man who spent nearly every free minute outdoors, and the dark angles of his face showed it. Nothing fake or too smooth about him. Sam felt a familiar warmth pooling in her stomach and remembered what it had been like to purely like this man—his humor, his rough readiness and rock-solid core.
And she remembered his awe and what she had thought was respect the first time he saw her shoot at the firing range.
“Damn, Sam,” he’d said. “You hit that target dead center.”
“I’m a good shot.”
“You aren’t a good shot. You’re a great shot.”
“Thanks.”
“Of course, it’s a little different when you are shooting a target and when there’s a live human being in front of you.”
“What are you saying, Gage?”
“I’m just saying that you are a good shot. And I hope to hell you never have to find out what it means to kill another human being. Because when you aim, you aren’t going to miss.”
* * *
“Fine. Just dinner.” Sam rose from her chair. He might think he’d won, but she knew better. This would be a working dinner. She would ply him with questions on his case in SLC.
They ended up at Sill’s, and he ordered the mountainous hamburger and fries she always got when she was with D-Ray. Since Gage didn’t play the game, she felt free to order the soup. It was almost a jubilant feeling.
“So, what have you been doing the past six months? Besides making waves in Kanesville,” he asked.
“I don’t make waves,” she said irritably as she stuck her soupspoon in the bowl. She’d already crinkled up the requisite four hundred crackers into the tomato mixture, and now she stabbed at them with her spoon, crushing them into bite-sized pieces. “I get seasick.”
He laughed, and she fought off the stirrings of attraction. What was wrong with her? She was acting like a bitch in heat.
“I’m serious. The only thing making waves is the fact I’m a woman and it’s new ground for all these people. I’m just doing my job. Why don’t you tell me about your case? The one that got you ‘loaned’ to us.”
“Like a little soup with your crackers?” he asked, gesturing to her bowl.
She sighed. “I’m not here to be friends, Gage. Let’s just talk about the case, okay?”
“I’m glad you don’t want to be friends. That’s not what I want, either.”
Her stomach stirred again, and butterflies took flight. She shook her head. She could tell Gage was trying not to grin.
“The case?”
“The case. The suicides.”
“Oh yeah, those. Well, they were a little different.”
“Different how?” Sam asked, trying to be patient.
“Well, we knew it was a suicide pact. Everything pointed toward it. Two young boys. College freshmen. Roommates. Finally out of their parents’ houses. They discovered they liked each other, and stopped fighting it. Until they got caught by one of their roomies. Then everything snowballed out of control. You know how mean kids are. The torture started, and the primo thing held over their heads was they would be outed to their families, church, student ward. Never mind that these other boys were screwing girls, and drinking every night, and these two were in love.”
Sam cringed as she considered the two boys and how they must have felt. How they must have been treated.
“It culminated in two boys dying together, looking like a murder-suicide. The parents of the Smoot boy screamed that it
had
to be a murder-suicide and no son of theirs was gay. Tried to blame it all on the other boy. But evidence showed he was the shooter. Then they found a note. They had planned it. And the Smoot parents starting screaming lawsuit, if it wasn’t hushed up. President Smoot sits on the presiding bishopric of the LDS Church.”
“This is a horrible story. But I’m not seeing the correlation between that case and ours.”
“There really isn’t one. But no one understands suicide, so when they ask for help and you’ve dealt with it in any way, shape, or form they knock at your door.”
Sam sighed with exasperation. She’d eaten only a few bites of the soup, and he was done with the burger and fries. And eyeing her suspiciously.
“Not hungry?” he asked.
“Too many crackers,” she lied. “So they came and asked you for help? Because I sure didn’t ask for help.”
“Well, actually, I volunteered. Wasn’t busy. And your chief was happy to have my expertise on suicide.”
“Which you don’t actually have,” she said with a grimace.
“Hey, I had a case. More than one, of course. I’ve gone out on other suicides. This just happened to involve teenagers. Just like yours.”
“Not the slightest bit like mine,” Sam said, trying not to speak harshly. “You’re going into this just as blind as we are.”
“Maybe. But I’m a good cop. I can help.”
“I’m a good cop, too.”
“I know,” he said, his face suddenly serious. “You’re damn good. I’m just going to help you prove it.”
“I didn’t ask for your help.”
“You never do, Sam. You never ask for anyone’s help, and you never want it. But everybody needs it. We all need that interaction.”
His voice was gentle, his eyes concerned, and she stared at him, fighting back the sudden urge to give in to him, to open up. That would mean falling apart. The price would be too great. She had way too much firsthand experience with what happened when people fell apart.
NINETEEN
Sam left Sill’s Café alone. What she hadn’t told Gage was that she was still working, heading to the home of Bethany Evans. Sam continued to try to reach her sister but had no success. She pulled up in front of the Evans home and stared at it for a minute.
It was one of the older homes in Kanesville, redbrick and small and square, with white window trims that were faded and cracked, peeling paint. The lawn hadn’t been mown for a while. Weeds had invaded the flower beds. There were no homey touches that said “someone lives here and loves this house.” It was probably a rental, and because of her Air Force enlistment Bethany’s mom probably did a lot of moving. Little time to make a home, or feel like you fit in, especially during the important and emotional teenage years.
It appeared to be locked up tight, no one there. Sam sat in front of it for a while and pondered what she knew about the “new girl.” Not much. Sam got out of her car and headed briskly up the front steps to knock on a obviously empty house.
While she was waiting her phone rang and she looked down to see a number she didn’t recognize. She let it ring.
There was no answer at the door and, not surprisingly, no barking dog. Pets required care and stability. This looked like a situation that was as unstable as they came.
“Hello there.” The elderly lady waving at Sam from across the overgrown bush was not someone she knew. “If you’re looking for Martha, she’s not home. TDY this week. I think Bethany is staying with some friends from her church group. They aren’t Mormon, you know.”
“Oh … thanks.”
“I’m Elva Tippetts. You look official. Is something wrong?”
Sam introduced herself and soon found herself inside Elva Tippetts’s house, eating food she did not want and listening to information she desperately needed.
The woman must not have a lot to do, because she was sure happy to find someone to listen to her talk. Her husband had apparently tuned her out years ago and instead watched
Wheel of Fortune
with the volume so high that Sam suspected he had permanent hearing loss.
Bethany Evans had moved with her mother to Kanesville when she’d been transferred to the large Air Force base nearby after a stint in Germany. Martha Evans was an enlisted soldier, and she worked on the base. She apparently chose not to live there because she had been an Army brat and didn’t want the same for her child. And yet Martha still moved from base to base, dragging her teenage child along with her, probably reluctantly.
The Evans duo were not Mormon, did not attend any church actually, although Bethany had become involved with a youth church group through her new “private school.”
Mrs. Tippetts wasn’t sure why Bethany had left Smithland High. “Maybe that Assembly of God Church lured her in. I think they’re one of those holy-roller churches, you know?” she said conspiratorially. “Did you know they wear pants to church? Can you imagine? What would God say?”
Sam considered the question for a moment. What would God say if she wore pants to church? Men wore pants to church. They had two legs. She had two legs. What was the difference?