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In the kitchen, he determined that Meagher had, astonishingly enough, called for a crime-scene crew—borrowed from the county as the small city of West Fork didn’t have much need for one of their own—and the medical examiner. Both were en route, the young officer reported.
Ben nodded and, reluctantly, started upstairs.
Before he’d taken over, West Fork police would have turned the case over to the sheriff’s department because they had no officers experienced in homicide investigation. He might yet have to do that, if there seemed to be any doubt about tonight’s events—he knew he was emotionally involved, whether he liked to admit it or not. If it turned out the dead man wasn’t Hardesty, or Hardesty hadn’t been carrying a weapon, things could get messy.
A couple of the steps creaked under his weight. Had Faith’s ex spent enough time at the house to know to avoid them? Or were those faint sounds what had woken her?
In the hall at the top of the stairs, the first room on the right was Don Russell’s. Unsurprisingly, it had an air of disuse. On the left was Charlotte’s, where Ben had talked to her when she was recuperating from Hardesty’s last assault. Bathroom beyond, also on the left. And finally, Faith’s bedroom.
The door was wide open. The overhead light wasn’t on, but the bedside lamp was. Had Faith turned it on? If it was Meagher, if the idiot had done a thing in here but verify Hardesty was dead, Ben would string him up by his thumbs.
Ben pulled on the latex gloves he carried in his glove compartment, but didn’t have to touch either knob or door.
The body lay sprawled beside the bed. In fact, the dead man had been so damn close to the bed when the bullet—bullets?—struck, he’d slid down the side of it, fountaining blood on the quilt. Shit, Ben thought; from the quantity of blood, she’d likely gotten him right in the heart.
He pictured her at the range, taking methodical shot after shot, never flinching, her hands steady. Had she been envisioning this moment when she pulled the trigger? Seen her ex-husband in the white paper target?
Reality, Ben had long since learned, was one hell of a lot more brutal than anything the imagination could conjure.
He eased into the room with a sideways step to avoid walking where the intruder had. Sticking to the perimeter, he circled to a position near the foot of the bed and squatted on his haunches so he could see the face.
Rory Hardesty, Ben saw with relief. No mistake there, except on Hardesty’s part. He’d misjudged Faith, bigtime.
At first Ben couldn’t see any weapon, which worried him. Not to say Faith hadn’t had reason to shoot the bastard; he’d hurt her badly enough with his bare hands before, and it was well-documented. But this would be cleaner if he’d carried a gun or.
Ah. The knife had fallen out of his hand and lay in the shadow just under the bed. It was an ugly one with a thick black rubber grip, designed for the military or hunters, if Ben was any judge. The blade was at least eight inches long. He was willing to bet it would turn out to be the same knife Hardesty had used on Charlotte.
Oh, yeah. This one was open-and-shut, but he knew that wouldn’t make it any easier for Faith to live with what she’d done tonight.
He retreated as carefully as he’d entered the room. Now, how the hell had the son of a bitch gotten in? The easiest way would have been to knock out a pane of glass on the back door and reach in to unlock the new dead bolt, but he hadn’t done that. He clearly hadn’t made enough noise to wake either Don or Faith until he was upstairs and so close that in another few seconds Faith could have died.
Ben swore under his breath, pausing at the top of the stairs to get a grip on himself. He couldn’t let anyone see him falling apart at the idea of that knife descending toward Faith Russell’s breast. Or her throat.
Or—God—would Hardesty have wanted to carve up her face to punish her?
He actually shuddered and wanted to go back and kill the bastard all over again. He wished he’d done it in the first place. He could handle killing in a way he was terribly afraid Faith wouldn’t be able to. Especially not when the man she’d shot was someone she’d once loved.
Finally confident he could hide everything he felt, Ben went downstairs where both his officers waited with thinly disguised anxiety.
“Have you looked for the point of entry?” he asked.
Both heads bobbed. Burgess and Meagher exchanged a glance. Jason Burgess, who’d been a cop for two whole years, was the one to answer. “Yes, sir. The laundry room, sir.”
The door was behind the stairs. The window above the washer and dryer was missing its glass. The frame wasn’t large; it would have been a squeeze, but doable. This might have been the only room in the house with a closed door, which would have helped make the entry quiet. Also, Ben determined by prowling, the staircase and a storage space beneath it that was packed with boxes lay between the laundry room and the living room where Don had been sleeping. The pile of boxes would have offered dandy sound insulation.
He went outside, fetched a flashlight from his car and circled the house, where he found a painter’s stepladder under the window. The glass had been removed almost whole and leaned carefully against the house. Cut, presumably, although he didn’t see a tool.
He wondered if Hardesty had intended to reclaim the ladder once he was done inside and drive away to start his life anew, freed of his vicious compulsion once Faith was dead. Or would he have sat down on the side of the bed and called 911 himself, then waited for the arrival of the police as domestic abusers who killed sometimes did? Unless he proved to be carrying a handgun, too, which Ben wouldn’t know until the medical examiner was done with the body and photographs had been taken, Ben doubted Hardesty had intended to commit suicide, another popular option. Stabbing yourself would be a lot harder to do than pulling a trigger.
Satisfied with this first survey, Ben walked back around the house to find all his guests had arrived. He showed the medical examiner upstairs, and encouraged the crime-scene techs to start outside with the ladder and cut window, then returned to the living room. He hoped Faith was up to talking to him now.
Don was back in his hospital bed, the sheet and a thin blanket over him. On the sofa, Charlotte sat beside Faith, holding her hand. Gray stood with his back to the window, watching the two women. They all looked at Ben when he walked in.
“He got in through the laundry room,” he told them. “Took out the window glass neat enough, I’m betting he used a cutter. He either found a stepladder in one of the outbuildings or brought his own. It’s still standing under the window.”
“We have one,” Don said. “It’s damn near as old as the girls. Getting pretty rickety. Wood, with lots of paint splatters.”
Ben shook his head. “This one’s wood, but newish. Maybe he picked it up at his mom’s house.”
“Oh, no,” Faith breathed. “Has anyone told his mother yet? “
Trust her to worry about someone else.
“No,” he said. “I’ll do that eventually. The medical examiner is here right now, and the photographer is taking pictures. It’s going to be a few hours before we can move the body out of here.”
Faith seemed to shrink. Ben felt cruel, but had no choice but to keep on being cruel.
“I need to ask you some questions,” he said.
She swallowed and raised her gaze to his. “Your, um, officer tried earlier, but I …” She closed her eyes briefly.
“I couldn’t.”
“I understand.” He tried to make his deep, rough voice as gentle as possible. “Why don’t you just tell me what happened in your own way?”
“Yes. Okay.” She did, with some stumbling and halting and trembles. Something had woken her up, she didn’t know what. “I haven’t been sleeping well,” she admitted. “I wake up every time Daddy goes to the bathroom, or a truck rumbles by on the highway, or the house settles.”
Ben nodded.
At first she’d thought that’s all it was, one of those sighs an old house makes. Then she heard a creak, and what she thought was something brushing the wall outside her bedroom. So she’d reached for her phone.
“And then I saw him in the doorway. It was dark, but he was darker, and I knew it was too late to call anyone.” Her breath came in agitated pants. It was all Ben could do to stay five feet away and let Faith’s sister comfort her. “I told you I keep my gun under the extra pillow at night.”
All he could do was nod again. His entire body seemed to be locked tight, absolutely rigid. All he saw was Faith, her blue eyes dark with remembered fear. He had his back to Don, and Gray and Charlotte were no more than blurs on the periphery of his awareness.
“I pulled it out and lunged to turn on the lamp. He was rushing forward, a knife in his hand. He was almost at the bed …”
Charlotte made a soft sound of distress. Gray jerked, breaking Ben’s concentration.
Faith was hunched as small as she could make herself, her gaze still pinned to Ben’s as if she couldn’t look away. “I pulled the trigger,” she finished, barely audible. “Twice. Or … or three times. I don’t remember.” The blankness was coming back into her eyes, shock tugging her back under. “I saw … blood. He … he staggered and dropped down.”
“What did you do then?” Ben asked quietly. His hands, he realized, were balled into fists at his side. He could only imagine what her father was thinking and feeling.
“I screamed and scrambled off the far side of the bed. I fell down. I looked under the bed and I could see him on the other side.”
“Your gun?”
“It was still in my hand.”
“All right,” he said. “Then what?”
“I pushed myself to my feet and made myself circle the bed. I was holding the gun. You know. But my hands were shaking so much, I could see it wavering up and down.”
God.
“Did you touch him?”
She shook her head. “I could see his face….” What little color she’d had disappeared, just like that, and suddenly she sprang up. “I’ve got to … Got to …” She clapped a hand to her mouth and fled.
Char raced after her.
“Couldn’t this have waited?” Gray asked.
Ben looked at him. “You know it can’t.”
He knew he hadn’t succeeded in hiding everything he felt. Nobody was that good. Gray studied him for a moment, then dipped his head in acknowledgment.
None of the three men said another word. Five minutes passed before the two women returned, Faith leaning on her sister. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and let herself be settled on the couch again, the comforter wrapped around her.
Without prompting, Faith resumed her tale. “I edged out of the room, even though I wanted the phone on the bedside table. I was afraid to get that close to him. I knew he was dead, but … I guess part of me still thought he’d wake up and grab me. Dumb.”
“Not dumb. Smart. He could have been faking it. Getting away, calling the police, that was smart.”
After a minute she nodded, although Ben doubted she was convinced.
Her voice was grave now, and small, like a child telling a story about something so bewildering and horrific she didn’t really understand it herself. “I ran downstairs. I fell the last few steps.” Faith paused. “I suppose I’ll have bruises. I can’t feel anything right now.”
“Did you call from the kitchen?”
She shook her head. “Dad was yelling my name and I went to the living room. I told him what I’d done and he said he’d call, but I thought I should do it. And then I waited here until there were knocks on the back door and someone yelling, ‘Police.’”
“The shots are what woke me,” her father said, and Ben turned so he could see him. “And Faith screaming.” He shuddered, not surprisingly. There was a lot of that going on tonight. “I reached for the phone and managed to knock it to the floor. By the time I got out of bed and found it, Faith had rushed in here.” He looked at his daughter. “I took the gun from her. I guess you’ll find my fingerprints on it, too. But the way her hand was shaking …”
Ben had already spotted the Colt, lying on the bedside table. “Did you take it by the barrel or by the grip?”
“Ah …” Don mimicked reaching out, and they established that he had never held it by the grip or touched the trigger.
Ben turned back to Faith. “Did you see that it was your ex-husband before you shot him?”
“Yes.”
“How was he holding the knife when he came at you?”
She stared at him.
He took the TV remote from the bedside table and demonstrated the two choices, blade pointing up, as Hardesty had undoubtedly held it when he’d sliced Charlotte, or down, with the clear intention of stabbing from above.
Gray moved to lay a big hand on his fiancée’s shoulder. He didn’t like the memory of what that knife had done to her.
“Down,” Faith said, lifting her hand. “He was going to stab me.”
“You did what you had to do,” Ben told her, as calmly as he could. “You’d be dead if you hadn’t shot him.”
Unbelievably, she began to shake her head and kept shaking it as if she couldn’t stop. “I don’t know. Once I turned the light on he must have seen that I had a gun, and that’s when he rushed forward so fast. Before that, he might’ve meant only to scare me.”
“You don’t believe that,” Ben said incredulously over the voices of everyone else’s protestations. Her face was still so white, he stepped forward and laid the back of his hand on her cheek. “You’re cold again.”
Her head was still shaking like a pendulum slowing but far from run down, and she’d started to rock. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “How can I know?” Her gaze lifted to his. “He’s dead? I really killed him?”
“He’s dead, Faith. But you have nothing to be sorry for.” He crouched in front of her and laid a hand on her knee. “Nothing. Remember how close he came to killing you before you divorced him.”
“But he was angry….”
“Remember what he did to Charlotte.”
The rocking was becoming more pronounced. “He might have been …”
“Damn it, no!” His sharpness had them all staring. Faith quit rocking. “He was angry this time, too. He came to kill you, Faith. You saved your life, and maybe your father’s, too.”
He could tell she hadn’t considered what Hardesty would have done if Don Russell had confronted him when he came down the stairs.
As if the words were wrenched from her, she said, “I never really believed …”
“You’d have to use the gun?”
She nodded.
Again, there might as well have been no one else in the room. They only looked at each other. “Didn’t you?”
“I did,” she whispered brokenly. “But I didn’t.”
Ben would have given anything to hold her right now, but instead he stayed where he was, squatting in front of her. “You did the right thing,” he repeated.
But God almighty, he wished she hadn’t had to.
After a minute he took his hand back from her knee and scrubbed it over his face. He rose to his feet and looked at Gray.
“Can you take Faith and Don home with you?”
“I planned to,” the other man said, in a way that told Ben exactly nothing about what he was thinking.
From the doorway behind them, someone said, “Chief Wheeler?”
He turned his head. The medical examiner, whom he had met only a couple of times since he’d taken over as police chief in West Fork. “Just a minute,” he said, then told Gray, “Watch her for symptoms of shock. She needs to be kept warm.”
Gray surprised him then by reaching out and gripping his forearm. One hard squeeze that felt like … sympathy. He’d seen too much, Ben realized.
“We’ll take care of her. I assume you’ll be by in the morning?” Gray asked.
