The Sound of Broken Ribs(27)
Because of both cases, Jenna had taken on the role of Small Town Hero, but had somehow managed to keep a chip from building up on her shoulder.
She decided to ignore the guilty-looking individual in the ER. Her car was parked in the Reserved for Police spot toward the front of the building. She headed for it.
She considered going home to change into her uniform, but decided against it. Technically, today was her day off. But she refused to let one of her deputies handle the Duncan case. Not that they were incapable of solving the mystery of the hit-and-run driver’s identity and bringing them to justice, but because they were men. Jenna took violence against women personally. Even something as impersonal as a hit and run. The reason for this was a man named Boothia Thompson.
Boothia’s odd name came from the Canadian Arctic peninsula of the same name where Boothia’s father had died while on an excursion with the ill-fated Xing Expedition, which had become the biggest loss of life in the arctic since the tragic Franklin Expedition in 1845. In memory of the dead Arctic explorer, Boothia was shoed with quite possibly the silliest name Jenna had heard. Because of this, Boothia preferred to be called Booth. Could you blame the guy?
But, all things considered, the name Boothia was the only silly thing about Jenna’s ex-husband. Booth liked to hit. What started as rough sex sometime halfway through their first year of marriage soon escalated to beatings during intercourse. It was a sudden, unexpected change, and those are the worst. Especially for victims of abuse. The reason for this is simple: because the onset of the violence is so sudden, the victim believes that the abuser will eventually come back around to their old ways. The truth of the matter, usually, is the exact opposite. Booth’s sudden violence wasn’t a phase he was going through. It was his default setting. He’d worn an average-person mask when Jenna had first met him. But once he became comfortable with her and she allowed those first few slaps while drunk on passion, the flood gates opened and the violence poured out of the bedroom and into everyday life.
Like most abused people, Jenna had continued to tell herself, all the way up until the end, that Booth would change. She only had to give it time.
And then he’d tried beating her to death with a phone book. During the attack, she managed to get to her side of the bed, where she kept her holster atop her nightstand.
She showed her appreciation for being beaten half to death with The Yellow Pages by shooting him through the eye with her service revolver.
For fuck’s sake, who even owned a phone book these days? Could her situation have been any more 1950s America? Probably not.
She had been concerned she’d lose her badge over the shooting, but she never even went before a judge. The killing was labeled self defense and Jenna was allowed three months paid leave to deal with her feelings concerning the situation.
She didn’t hate Booth. In fact, she kind of missed him. He was an amazing lover, considerate of her own level of satisfaction, that was, when he wasn’t treating her like a punching bag.
Booth was five years in the rearview. Jenna still thought of him from time to time, but nowadays, his memory only surfaced when she came across a battered and broken woman. Lei Duncan hadn’t suffered her injuries courtesy of domestic violence, but just seeing the other woman in the condition she was in had enraged Jenna. She wanted to offer the woman some justice.
And she thought she knew just how to do that.
*
The cabin burned down without incident. The fire didn’t spread. The grass around the structure was too green, as were the trees, and the fire stayed pretty much indoors. All in all, the blaze took four hours to burn out.
An hour into the festivities, Tony had sent Frank back to the house for beers, a shovel, and a rake. What the rake was for, she didn’t yet know.
Belinda had no way of knowing what time it was and didn’t ask anyone. And while she felt it must be far too early to start drinking—drink she did. She had four before she stopped. Had acquired a nice buzz, to boot.
While the fire burned, Carl dug a shallow grave, about two feet deep. Tony raked Paul’s remains out of the smoking ruin of the cabin and into the hole Carl had dug. He left the charred springs from the mattress inside. No real reason to bury them. Any evidence had burned away long ago.
Frank found the cabin’s front door laying farther out in the field—as to why it was out there was anyone’s guess—and after filling in Paul’s grave, Carl dropped the door onto of the freshly churned earth. Paul and Carl jumped on the door numerous times, tamping down the dirt in the hopes that no one would think that the grave was a grave.
That was, if anyone ever came out here.
Belinda thought this property belonged to her family, more accurately, to Tony. She vaguely remembered playing in an old broken down cabin when she was a kid, but for some odd reason, she associated the memory with a trip the family had taken to St. Louis, Missouri. She was four, maybe five, at the time, and recalled playing hide and go seek as the sun descended and the fireflies came out in droves. Had there been a cabin there too? Either way, she didn't think it was likely someone would trespass onto Tony’s land. Even if they did, it was even more unlikely that they would pick around.
If small towns were capable of nothing else, they were capable of keeping secrets.
Done and drunk, Belinda followed The Boys home.
*
The first address Sheriff Jenna Wales stopped at was the most likely suspect in the Duncan hit-and-run case—Belinda Walsh. Jenna had to admit to herself that she was profiling by association by choosing Belinda as her first choice, but the woman’s relationship with troublemaker Anthony Marchesini concerned Jenna. It was a drastic leap to think that just because the two were brother and sister that both would be bad seeds, but there was more evidence to substantiate Jenna’s suspicion than she’d wanted to reveal to the Duncans.