Deadly Grace. Taylor Smith
then. Could you get her, please?”
The speaker crackled once more. “I think she was on the ward a while back, but I’m not sure if she’s still there. Take a seat. I’ll page her.”
Cruz had already moved over to a window that overlooked the parking lot and the broad, frozen prairie beyond. The hospital stood at the very edge of the town of Montrose. Beyond was a flat expanse of open farmland broken only by a grid of shelterbelts, poplar and spruce mostly. The fields were dark and dead-looking, blackened by stubble burned off after the harvest, only occasional patches of snow here and there. What snow there was had piled up in drifts that littered the shade of the shelterbelts, like beach debris left behind after a receding tide. Cruz had seen places like this at the height of the growing season, though, when they were transformed into a vast, swaying sea of golden wheat. During those restless months after his first tour of duty in Vietnam, before he’d decided to re-up and go back, he’d ridden his old Harley down back roads from one end of the country to the other, drifting aimlessly, keeping mostly to himself. Trying to come to terms with what he’d seen and done over there. Trying to come to terms with himself.
Berglund’s massive frame moved beside him. The deputy gave the view out the window a glance, but it was probably as familiar to him as his own face in the bathroom mirror. He turned back to the waiting room, hooking his thumbs in his belt as he leaned against the window ledge, the typical stance of a brawny man unconsciously compensating for the unfortunate tendency of his arms to swing, gorilla-like, away from his overbuilt body.
“Let’s hope this lady shrink’s around, or we’ve made the drive for nothing,” Berglund said, his fingers drumming against his thick leather gun belt as they listened to the soft hum of the building, the ping of the elevators, and the singsong tone of pages going out over the hospital’s PA system. “Not much snow out there,” he added conversationally, giving the view behind them another glance. “Almanac says it’s going to be a hot, dry summer.”
“Guess the farmers won’t like that.”
“No. It’s typical, though. Feast or famine. Last spring, the fields were so saturated it was nearly June before we could get machinery out onto them. Finally get a crop in, and the next thing you know, summer drought sets in and the ground dries up harder than cement.”
Cruz gave him a sideways look. “You farm yourself?”
Berglund shrugged. “A little. Work my father-in-law’s old place. Got a few fields in barley and winter wheat.”
“Must keep you pretty busy, between that and the police work.”
“It can get hectic. Summertime’s when the town fills up with tourists and cottage people. Population jumps from a couple thousand to nearly ten.”
“You’re going to be really stretched this year if your chief’s still off the board.”
Berglund paused, as if that realization were just sinking in, and he passed a weary hand over his square, lined face—a man with too much to do and not enough to do it with. “I guess we will. What about you? You live in Washington?”
“These days, yeah, since I took this Bureau job.”
“Wouldn’t be my cup of tea, living in a big city like that. Where were you before the Bureau?”
“All over the place. Thailand, the Philippines, England, Germany. A tour in the Pentagon, a stint at Fort Gordon, Georgia.”
“Military, huh? Air force?”
“Army.”
“That a fact?”
They stopped, listening, as a page for Dr. Kandinsky finally went out over the PA system.
Berglund turned back to Cruz. “So where’s home?”
“Southern California. Santa Ana.”
“Oh, yeah. I know where that is. Near Disneyland, right? Wife and I took the kids there a couple of years ago. ‘Happiest Place on Earth.’”
Cruz nodded. “So they say. Haven’t lived there myself since the draft, back in ’65.”
Berglund glanced around, but the waiting room was empty. “Were you in ’Nam?” he asked quietly.
That was how vets talked amongst themselves these days, Cruz reflected grimly—in low voices and in safe places. Nobody spat at them and called them “baby-killers” anymore, but nobody wanted to hear about what happened to them, either. How kids got sent to fight an enemy they couldn’t see for a cause nobody believed in. How it messed with their heads, turning too many of them into burnout cases. “I did two tours,” he told Berglund.
“Two? Christ, one was enough for me. Why’d you go back?”
“Unfinished business. Then the Army turned into a career. What about you? Ex-grunt?”
“No, Navy man. Crazy, huh? Landlocked guy like me, ends up swabbing a deck? I didn’t even wait for my letter from the draft. Figured they were going to get me, anyway, so I volunteered to have my pick of services. Coming from a dust bowl like this, the idea of the ocean just appealed, you know?”
“Yeah, I guess I can see that.”
“So, you reenlisted, then stayed on? What kind of work did you do?”
Cruz hesitated, loathe to give details. He’d re-upped as penance for his sins, and penance it had turned out to be when word leaked out that he’d testified against those involved in a murder and subsequent cover-up conspiracy in his old unit. Being the guy who sent four former buddies to Leavenworth had earned him no points with his new outfit. On the contrary. He’d already endured two savage beatings he refused to talk about by the time the Criminal Investigation Division finally moved in and yanked him out of there. When they’d seen he’d taken a couple of criminology courses during his college days, they’d offered to train him as a professional investigator. It had been an offer he knew he couldn’t refuse. The only alternative was to return to a front-line unit and the near certainty of being taken out sooner or later by some hothead’s “friendly fire.”
He wasn’t about to tell Berglund that, though, and not just because the deputy, like so many others, would probably think he should have kept his mouth shut and not testified. No one in the service liked the CID, just like no city cop had anything good to say about internal affairs divisions. Cops who policed other cops and soldiers who investigated other soldiers learned to stick to their own kind and watch their backs.
“It was mostly field work I did,” he told Berglund. “Army life appealed, I guess.”
“Humph. Well, you’ve seen some places, I guess. Me, I did the run between San Diego and Cam Ranh Bay when I was in the Navy. Had a furlough in Bangkok once, attended police academy in St. Paul. Took that vacation in California with the wife and kids. Period. Rest of the time, I’ve been right here.”
“Havenwood seems like a nice town.”
“Yeah, it is. Some people might find it a little slow-moving for their taste, but I never wanted to live anywhere else.” He paused for a moment, as something flashed across his features, like a bad memory or an image of ghosts walking on his grave. “This thing with Grace Meade and the fire and all, though…stuff like that doesn’t happen around here, you know? You get your Saturday night bar fights and too many drunk kids wiping themselves out on the highway every year, but a murder….”
It happened everywhere, Cruz wanted to tell him, but he just nodded.
“How long are you planning to stick around?” Berglund asked.
“Only as long as it takes.”
“You just need a statement from Jillian, right.”
“Pretty much. I wouldn’t mind talking to a few people who know her, too, just to round out the report I have to make back to Scotland Yard. You know, the usual background stuff. Can you suggest some names?”
Berglund