Page 101 of Water's Edge

Ronnie is quietly holding her phone. Not flipping screens like crazy. We pull into the Sheriff’s Office parking lot next to her Smart car. I can see she is crushed. She gave up a more lucrative life to take a job in law enforcement. Right about now she’s questioning that decision and, worse, she’s thinking maybe her father was right all along.

I turn off the engine.

“Ronnie, there’s bad in every job. Bad on the streets. Bad in every home. It’s just when it’s close to you, like a family member or a coworker or a best friend, that you don’t see it. Maybe you ignore it. Maybe the bad is good at hiding among us?”

I’m an expert at being deceived. My mother, my father, my aunt. But I’m on the lookout all the time. Ronnie still has some innocence. She’ll lose that if she stays in this job long enough. She’ll look for the bad before she lets her guard down and trusts anyone. Even a little.

She doesn’t respond or look at me. Then she lets out a sigh. A big sigh.

“I guess so. I need to write a report.” She opens the car door and I reach across and stop her.

“We can do that tomorrow. We still have no real evidence. I don’t want to tell the sheriff our suspects are cops. I sure as hell don’t want Nan to hear what we’ve found. Why don’t you go home, and we’ll start again in the morning if you’re up to it?”

“I want to finish this.” She’s lost the hurt look.

“I’ve got an idea.” I’ll probably hate myself for doing this. “Follow me to The Tides. We’ll have a stiff drink before we go home. Try not to think about this tonight.”

Like I wouldn’t.

She smiles tentatively. “I’ve got a better idea,” she says. “You follow me to my place, and we’ll have several drinks. I’ve got room for a guest and we can go through that hospital video—maybe come up with a plan for getting the evidence. I don’t want to work with a killer. I don’t want him getting away with this. I want to end this.”

“You’re on,” I say.

I follow Ronnie’s improbably little car to the Big Red Barn and park on the street while she finds a spot in a short gravel driveway. We walk across the footbridge and I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to live in a place like this.

“I had to pour you on your bed the last time I was here,” I say.

She laughs. Some color is coming back into her cheeks. I hope someone won’t have to carry me into the office tomorrow. She opens the front door without a key. That’s a demerit.

She sees me frown slightly.

“Nothing ever happens here. My neighbors are great and there’s never been a problem before.”

“I can’t tell you how to live, but you do remember what we’re working on? Who we suspect?”

“Oops. I’ll start locking up. I just don’t want to get paranoid.”

Better paranoid than dead, I think.Scotch eases paranoia a bit, but it does nothing if you’re dead.I don’t tell her this. She is, after all, providing the drinks.

“Let me give you the tour.”

I don’t tell her I took the tour while she was passed out.

She shows me the two most important places in any house: where the bathroom is and where the liquor is kept. She points to the door leading out onto the deck. “Go on out and have a seat. I’ll get the drinks. Scotch with some ice, right?” I nod and she leaves.

I sit in one of the Adirondack chairs and look at the magnificent view of the Port Townsend Bay.

Hayden comes to my mind and I feel ice form in the pit of my stomach. I can’t shake the feeling there is something wrong. I wonder for the umpteenth time if he’s okay. Maybe he’s been in a battle. Or an IED has blown him up. I don’t even know if he listed me as his next of kin. How would they know to notify me? I’d made myself hard to find. At least, by normal standards. Yet my stalker has found me.

The last time I stood out here, Ronnie was unconscious on her bed. I looked out over the bay and made a promise to Hayden. When this was over—when I took care of my stalker—I would get us a place like this. Two bedrooms. Two bathrooms, because he is probably still a slob. We’ll be a family once more. I’ll never do anything to push him away again. I’d try to live like a normal person and put the past behind me. Dr. Albright is convinced I can do it. I just have to convince myself. Switching gears to normal scares me more than killers.

Ronnie returns, hands me a drink, and takes a seat.

“Did you ever wonder why it is we chose this kind of work?” she asks.

I sip and ice rattles in my glass. “No. I’m driven to do what I do.”

“Well,” she says, a little too quickly, “I am too. But where do you think it comes from?”

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