Little Falls Read online

  LITTLE FALLS

  A MYSTERY

  Elizabeth Lewes

  For my daughters.

  Sometimes in life you feel there is something you must do, and in which you must trust your own judgment and not that of any other person. Some call it conscience and some plain obstinacy.

  —John Masterman

  Survival…is an infinite capacity for suspicion.

  —John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

  Acknowledgments

  Little Falls is the result of years of study, sweat, and tears. I am incredibly lucky to have been accompanied on my mission to bring Camille to you by a number of terrific people who have provided moral support, constructive criticism, and helpful comments.

  Seattle is home to one of the best chapters of Mystery Writers of America. Of the many members who have offered a ready ear and quick response, I’m most indebted to my fellow sailor, Brian Thornton, and Colonel Larry Keegan (USA, Ret.). I am also very grateful to Larry for introducing me to Brigadier General Bill Bester (USA, Ret.), who in turn introduced me to the incredible Pam Wall. Pam generously shared with me some of her experiences as an officer in the Army Nurse Corps and her deep knowledge of the psychiatric consequences of combat.

  Special Agent Luke Thomas unwittingly inspired the location of Little Falls and wittingly provided valuable feedback on my interpretation of FBI procedure. He’s also been a great friend for more than a decade.

  Many of the stories about life after deployment that Melissa and Ryan Will have shared have stuck with me almost as long as they have over the years. Anj Jurich fed me lots of details about life in the green zone. Dr. Ron Grewenow spent a lifetime as a Veterans Affairs physician learning about post-traumatic stress disorder and influenced a lot of details in Little Falls by recounting his day over dinner during the thirty years he has been my step-father. Many other experiences of combat veterans came to life for me in the books I read for research. These authors are too numerous to count, but Kayla Williams’ and Ryan Leigh Dostie’s memoirs stand out as exceptional.

  My sisters, Madeline Grewenow and Sarah Grewenow Blumthal, have supported me every step of the way with handgun tutorials, wry suggestions, chocolate, and insightful social media guidance. (That is, all the essentials.) My best friend, Elisabeth Yandell McNeil, has been a valuable sounding board for everything important to this book and Camille’s development, as well as providing cover at work so many times. My mother, Melissa Coe Grewenow, is terrific, and I guess I can’t stop her from reading this book now. Same for my father, Richard Crouse, who has always supported my writing and made sure I had a steady diet of British mysteries growing up.

  In publishing, I’m grateful to have found my agent, Sandy Lu, and my initial editor, Chelsey Emmelhainz, both of whom just got Camille from the start. Stacy Robinson of The Next Chapter helped me see in early drafts where I didn’t. And I’m very appreciative of the staff at Crooked Lane Books who helped to bring Camille to you.

  Finally, my husband, who always looked hottest in his Air Force blues, is an inexhaustible well of support, patience, and tolerance. And he makes a damn fine cup of coffee, too.

  I remember fragments: the color of the desert burning, the smell of the blood drying in the sun, the sound of the glass shattering under fire. Never what happened after. Rarely what happened before.

  But sometimes … sometimes, I remember everything. Time slows, crystallizes. I see everything, I smell everything, I hear everything. I feel everything.

  Then something … snaps. Fragments.

  It just happened. Here. In the barn. Flakes of snow are melting on my jacket; they’re damp on my numb fingers. It happened when he looked up, when he turned toward me, when I saw her blood matted in his long hair, his hand on her face.

  Then I fired.

  This is what happened before.

  1

  Dust: long, fat streamers of it rose from the wheels of my truck as I drove up into the hills of Jeremy Leamon’s ranch. It was dry that Friday, dry as early August in Okanogan County usually is, but Leamon’s black steers were still bent low in the parched pastures, scrounging for tufts of yellow grass under the orange morning sun. The windows in the truck were down, and I was tapping my fingernails on the window frame, but not to the beat of the honky-tonk on the radio.

  An outcrop shot up out of the pasture and became a ridge. I steered the truck around it, bounced over the stones that had crumbled off, and powered through a mess of tree roots and washouts that made the steering column jerk and the axles whine. Not long after the truck stopped bucking, an outbuilding peeked out of the stand of ponderosa pines that washed down the hillside. Its corrugated steel paneling and wooden barn door had seen better days. Hell, better decades. But the thick padlock on the door was shiny and new.

  Suspicious? Yeah.

  The country is not that peaceful, you know. Drugs—we got plenty. Prostitution, too. And guns. Jesus Christ, do we have guns. In the years I had been inspecting properties for the County Assessor’s Office, I had seen more than my fair share out on the back roads, in the hidden valleys, and in forgotten forest clearings just like the one I found that day on the edge of Jeremy Leamon’s property. That’s why I carried my official ID in my pocket and my unofficial Glock in my right hand. Why I let the truck roll through the potholes until I turned a bend, then switched off the ignition and listened long and hard before I got out to take a look.

  I remember that when my boots hit the ground, puffs of yellow dirt rose around my ankles, drifted on air heavy with the smell of sunburned pine needles: dry, hot, resinous. The smell of summer. The smell of fire.

  I padded through the trees. A hundred yards in, I saw the back end of the building above me on the hill. I came up on the south side and approached the tree line, then doubled back to the north side. No sounds from the building, not even the whisper of a ventilation fan. So why lock it up, all the way out here in the hills?

  My finger slipped closer to the Glock’s trigger.

  Slowly, cautiously, I approached the building. There was only the one door and no windows. No way to see what the padlock was protecting. But as I rounded a corner, a gust of wind blew through the trees, and a steel panel on the side of the building swayed with it. I held my breath, waited for some sound, some shout, from inside the building. When it didn’t come, I caught the edge of the panel with the toe of my boot. It swung out easily, and daylight shot through holes where nails had once secured it to the building’s wooden skeleton.

  Inside was a stall for an animal, a horse maybe. Beyond it, open space, sunlight pouring through a hole in the roof onto messy stacks of last year’s hay. The air glittered with dust and stank of decay, the funk of rot. But there was something else there too, something sweet and high and spoiled. And buzzing, buzzing that filled my ears, that vibrated my brain …

  I ducked under the steel panel and clambered in, breathing shallowly. Holding my weapon at the ready, I rounded the corner of the stall, and then I saw him.

  Hanging.

  Hanging from a loop of braided wire stretched over a wooden beam. His fingers were at his neck, but not to scratch it or run over his scant, patchy beard. They were stuck. Stuck in the noose. Stuck when he’d clawed at it, tried to pry it away, tried to make room to breathe.

  I’m sure he tried.

  Because he hadn’t jumped: there was no chair, no ladder. Nothing kicked away, nothing standing.

  Nothing but the kid and the flies.

  * * *

  I don’t remember much of what happened next, but I know I went back to the truck, and I must have made a call. Because I know I watched the helicopter erupt over the rock and sweep down the hillside and land in the track I had driven down. And I can still feel the dirt from
the downwash blasting my face and the icy cold steel of the stairs when I pulled them out just after the bird settled on the ground. And I remember not understanding why everyone was acting so strange, why the doctor set down her things in slow motion, and the pilot just switched off the bird and strolled to the trees to light up a smoke and why both of them were so casual, like they were going to the park. But then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I turned around. And everything snapped into focus.

  Sergeant Darren Moses. My God, you should have seen him that day, in his mirrored sunglasses and chocolate-brown uniform, his black buzz cut and those high Indian cheekbones. He was always good looking—even when we were kids—but I guess I hadn’t seen him for a while.

  He asked me how I was, reached out and touched my shoulder again, looked concerned. I had on this green tank top, and the rough pads of his fingers were cool against my skin. He was standing close, almost intimately, his aftershave musky and faint. But I stood there and watched my reflection in his sunglasses and was an asshole.

  “I’m glad to see the Sheriff’s Office hasn’t cleaned out the stables yet.”

  Darren laughed, smiled broadly, his teeth flashing white in the sun. “You know I’m the kind of shit that sticks to the floor.”

  He moved his hand away. My shoulder was suddenly cold.

  I smiled, tried to laugh, then grabbed another bag instead.

  Darren held out his hand to take it. “You don’t have to haul our gear, Camille.”

  I shrugged. “May as well. I’m here.”

  “Really.”

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  Darren’s smile disappeared. “I’m sorry. I need you to stay here.”

  My fingers tightened on the handle of the black Sheriff’s Office duffel. “What are you talking about?”

  “I can’t let you into the crime scene.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve already seen it. My fibers or whatever you’re worried about are already in there.”

  “It’s procedure,” Darren said, his shoulders lifting slightly. “No exceptions, not even for old friends.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “And you’ve had a shock. Listen—Lucky’s on his way up here. He took a truck so he could stop and talk to Leamon. He can take you back into town, and I’ll drive your truck down after we’re done.”

  I frowned. “What? No.”

  “Camille. If you’re right and he’s …”

  “Hey, Moses!” someone shouted.

  I spun toward the building and saw a second officer standing by the peeled-back panel of corrugated steel: Deputy Jesus Moreno. His voice tight and flat and deathly calm, he said: “You need to see this.”

  Darren took the duffle from my hand and jogged over to the building. I followed. I’m not good at following orders. Never have been.

  Inside the building, the two men stood side by side, their chins lifted, their eyes fixed on the corpse. Moreno was frowning, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked like a man at a museum: interested, but removed, distant. Darren looked like a man taking it personally. His jaw was clenched, his neck rigid, his thumb twitching on the safety catch of his holster.

  In the corner, the medical examiner—a small woman with graying curls—busily set out her equipment on a bale of hay she’d draped with a white sheet. When she turned, she was zipping a white jumpsuit closed over a blue buttondown shirt.

  “It’s just decomposition, gentlemen,” the examiner said. “Part of the natural process.”

  “How long would you say?” Darren asked, still studying the corpse.

  “Three or four days,” I said without thinking.

  Darren shot me a look and started to say something, probably to tell me I was violating his procedure, to threaten me with arrest if I didn’t get out of his crime scene. But the examiner was faster.

  “Yes.” She adjusted her glasses, squinted at the body, then said slowly, like she was really thinking about it: “It’s been hot—hot enough for that much bloating—and the maggots are pretty far along. So, yes, that’s a fair assessment.”

  Darren glanced from me to the examiner and back again, then opened his mouth.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me, Sergeant?” the examiner said.

  For a moment, Darren was caught between irritation and manners. He was staring at me like I had strung up the kid myself, his eyes dark and intense, a vein in his neck jumping. The examiner was staring at him like he was a naughty schoolboy.

  “Doctor Marguerite Fleischman, Camille Waresch,” Darren said. “Camille found the body this morning, Doc. She works for the County Assessor’s Office.”

  “And?” the doctor said, looking over her wire rims at Darren.

  “And she’s leaving,” he said, taking a step forward, one hand reaching toward my arm.

  The examiner raised her hand to him. “Not until she answers my questions,” she said, then turned to me. “How is it you know the body’s been there for three or four days?”

  I shrugged. “Just a guess.”

  “Camille was a medic, Doc,” Darren said through gritted teeth. “She was in Iraq.”

  I clenched my jaw, looked away. “And Afghanistan.”

  “I see.”

  Doctor Fleischman pulled on a pair of latex gloves, snapping them against her wrists. Then she squatted and rifled through one of her bags. When she stood, she was holding a notebook and pen out to me.

  “My recorder is broken. You remember how to take notes?”

  * * *

  We had been at it for a couple of hours when a truck pulled up outside. The engine died and one door, then another, slammed. I stood up quickly and backed toward the wall, skittish, my eyes on the big door by the road.

  “I’m telling you,” a male voice said outside, his voice escalating from exasperation to anger. “That ain’t my building. I don’t know what your problem is, but it ain’t mine.”

  Leamon, Jeremy Leamon. My dad had known him. I had knocked on his front door and chatted with him about the weather that morning when I arrived at the property for the inspection.

  “All right,” another man said in this sort of soothing, persuasive voice, the kind of voice you want in commercials for condoms or caramels. Lucky Phillips, it had to be. He was Darren’s partner back then. And he was an outsider, one of the few people who’d moved into the Okanogan instead of out.

  “I believe you, Jeremy,” Lucky said. “But you know I’m a curious kind of guy—I just want to see if any of these keys work.”

  “It ain’t mine,” Leamon growled, but there was panic in his voice.

  Someone thumped the door and fiddled with the padlock, its steel loop rattling against the cleats on the door. The door jerked open, sliding to the side on the top rail. Lucky stepped into the doorway, all tall and broad in his brown uniform and flaming orange hair. And beside him, his arm clamped in one of Lucky’s big hands, was Jeremy Leamon, a man with too much denim wrinkled around his body and a halo of gray stubble on top of his head.

  “What’s that then, Jeremy?” Lucky asked, still cool, still smooth.

  Leamon ducked out of Lucky’s grip, his gnarled, liver-spotted hands clenched in enormous fists. But Lucky was younger and faster. He stepped forward, taking the older man’s arm and spinning him, forcing him to look into the building, to look at the body still hanging from the beam, still crawling with flies, dripping slowly onto the packed earth floor.

  Leamon staggered back. “What is that?”

  “What do you mean?” Lucky said in mock surprise. “You aren’t going to introduce us to your new neighbor?”

  “Neighbor?” Leamon’s face went white as butcher paper, his knees wavered and shook. He shoved Lucky to one side and, bent double, ran outside, his hand clamped to his mouth as he began to retch.

  * * *

  Later, much later, I could still smell the decay, hear the smack of flies against the inside of the plastic body bag after Moreno finally cut the kid down and zipp
ed him up. I was fine when they loaded him into the helicopter, fine when Darren asked me how I was for the second time that day. He said he knew I’d seen things before, but did I want someone to drive me to my place? I shook my head again, told him no. Then he climbed into the helicopter and I stowed the stairs, and I was fine until the bird disappeared over the rock, until even the sound of its rotors faded away, and I was alone again, alone in the narrow track, dust clinging to my jeans and caked in my hair.

  That’s when the shaking started.

  I fell to my knees and tried to not let it happen, but sometimes it just does. Sometimes the movie inside my head just won’t stop, and I see the sniper bullet blow off half that staff sergeant’s skull, see that corporal go limp on the table in the field hospital when everything went wrong, see that lieutenant’s eyes gazing blindly into the deep, blue desert sky while his blood sank into the sand. And then the mortar rounds, the streaks of fire in the night sky, the staccato burst of AK-47s in the bone-dry morning, the sudden sick rocking of an IED going off under the tires of the forward Humvee.

  After some time—God knows how long—I stood up and half-stumbled, half-ran to my truck and threw myself into the cab, then tore down the mountain faster than I should have. The assessment didn’t matter; the rocks slamming against the chassis didn’t matter; the cattle scattering wildly at the reckless rumble of the truck didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was getting out.

  I still don’t know how I got back that day. I just remember looking out the window of my one-bedroom apartment, my hair wet, my skin raw from the shower, watching people drive into the gravel lot below, go into the mart—my mart; felt strange to remember that, to remember that my father had bought it for me when I came home from the desert for the last time, that it was supposed to be my unwanted salvation—then leave again, a half rack of beer or a gallon of milk in hand. Across the street, my neighbor’s trees, their leaves still green, waved in the heat rising off the pavement of the two-lane road that went through my two-street town. Behind them, behind the trees, the hill rose yellow and pale, dried-out green, the dirt streaked with orange. Like it was rusting.