The Familiar Dark(5)

Sheriff Land took the seat across from us, pushing a dusty arrangement of fake flowers to the side to give himself an unimpeded view. Cal took up a position leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest. “Well, now,” Sheriff Land said, “I know this is difficult. And I sure do hate to ask you folks questions at a time like this, but the more we know and the earlier we know it, the better our chances of catching this guy.”

“You know it’s a guy?” I asked, hands knotting on the tabletop.

Sheriff Land paused. “We don’t know anything for certain at this point. But this kind of crime, the way they were killed . . .” He shook his head. “Be unusual for a woman, that’s all.”

I thought that was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. Women might not act out as often as men, but they were capable of anything, could be as awful and vicious as men when they wanted to be. I knew firsthand the violence that could live inside women. “Were they raped?” I asked. “Is that why you’re sure it was a man?” Land’s face tightened up. He didn’t like my talking, interrupting the picture of how this was going to go that he’d already worked out inside his own head. Sheriff Land loved being in control, making everyone dangle on his string. On the other side of Zach, Jenny sucked in a breath, a low moan escaping on her exhale. Zach reached over and patted Jenny’s arm, shot me a warning look that took me by surprise.

“What?” I said. “Am I not supposed to ask things like that? Are there rules in this situation that I’m not aware of?” Anger simmered inside me, anger I’d been careful with for years. Not wanting to give anyone a reason to look down on my daughter. But now it didn’t matter anymore. Didn’t matter if I was a smart-ass or got in fights or acted a fool. Junie was gone and I could let it all spill out. I couldn’t think of a better place to start than right here in this room.

Land cleared his throat, glanced over his shoulder at Cal.

“No,” Cal said from his spot against the wall. “No rules.” He caught my gaze, held it. “We won’t know anything for certain until the medical examiner gets here. But from what we can tell, it doesn’t look like they were raped. Clothes were intact.”

I nodded, looked at Land, and waited for him to continue.

“We’re wondering if the girls talked about anybody new lately? Someone they’d met? Anything different with their routines? Demeanors? Anything stand out to you folks at all?”

I scrolled through the last few weeks, searching the corridors of my own memory and coming up with nothing. “I can’t think of anything,” I said finally. “Junie seemed like her regular self.”

“Izzy was fine, too,” Zach said, his voice hoarse with tears. “As far as I know.”

We all looked at Jenny, who nodded her agreement. “I don’t understand,” she said, from behind her fistful of tissues. “It was a stranger, wasn’t it? I mean, someone from another place? No one from here would do something like this.”

Spoken like the unofficial ambassador of Barren Springs, I thought. Even now defending the reputation of a town that didn’t deserve it. “Well, now,” Sheriff Land said, “we don’t get a lot of tourists or out-of-towners this time of year. We’re not assuming anything, but we’ve got to take a look at local folks, too.”

Truth be told, we didn’t get many tourists or out-of-towners any time of year, unless you counted people stopping for a tank of gas on their way to greener pastures. Generally someplace closer to one of the lakes that drew people to this part of the world in the first place. And I seriously doubted those people would know how to find the dilapidated town park or be interested in going there in the middle of a snowstorm. Land might not be ready to assume anything, but I sure as hell was. My daughter and Izzy had been killed by someone local, someone whose face they probably recognized. Something ached deep down in my gut, and I wasn’t sure if my daughter knowing the person who’d taken her life made Junie’s last moments better or worse.

“All right,” Land said, leaning back in his chair, hands steepled on the table in front of him. “What about people hanging around the girls? Notice anyone driving by your houses? Maybe the same face showing up when you were out?” He looked from me to Zach and then Jenny. “Nothing like that?”

“This town has less than a thousand people,” I pointed out. “I see a lot of the same people over and over.” I flicked a hand toward Zach and Jenny. “They probably do, too.” I knew my attitude wasn’t helping, wasn’t doing the hunt for Junie’s killer any favors. But I didn’t know how to sit across from Land and act like we were anything less than adversaries. Our roles had been written in stone a long time ago.

Land sighed. “All right, then. What about Jimmy Ray? You seen him lately?”

I stared at Land, our gazes locked. “No,” I said, voice even. “I haven’t seen him.” I paused. “Have you?”

Land’s brow furrowed. “Now, listen—”

“Who’s Jimmy Ray?” Zach asked. “Did he have something do to with this?” This question, more than anything else he could have said, cemented Zach’s status as an outsider. It didn’t matter that he’d lived in Barren Springs for more than a decade, volunteered with the fire department, and had married Jenny Sable. If you were born in this town, if you really belonged, you knew everyone else. Simple as that.