Page 80 of River Wild

“You know what this is about, right, Norma?” Stuart asked, the video camera running. He was still having trouble breathing although his cracked ribs were taped. Fortunately they weren’t broken and hadn’t punctured a lung as he’d feared.

“Ralph,” Norma said, nodding. She sat up straight, meeting their gazes, as if only too ready to help them. She hadn’t cried when she’d heard that her husband was dead. She’d looked a little surprised, his deputy had said, but nothing more. She’d been shocked, though, to hear that she was being arrested, saying it wasn’t her, it was Ralph and his lust for Bailey McKenna.

Now she folded her hands in her lap and looked the sheriff in the eye. “We are respectable people. Ralph was a good man. He wasn’t perfect. Few men are. But I had dedicated my life to him—just as I promised his mother I would do. Truth is, he would have never looked twice at me if his mother hadn’t encouraged him to marry me. She knew I would do anything to make him happy. He didn’t cuss, and he rarely complained. I made a home for him, kept the cleanest house, lay with him whenever he asked, ignored his wandering eye.” Her chin came up, her back ramrod straight. “I was raised to stand by my husband.”

“Even help him kill?” the sheriff asked.

Norma waved that away and turned to the state crime investigator. “Did you know I make the best peanut butter fudge in the entire Powder River Basin and have for years? Ralph loved my fudge. I started making it just for him because it gave me such pleasure.” She smiled as if remembering.

“You know Ralph gave women your fudge as small presents,” Stuart said.

“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “I knew. It was harmless.”

“Like it was with Willow Branson?”

“I wouldn’t know about that. Bailey though, she doesn’t like my peanut butter fudge,” Norma said, as if that told them everything there was to know about Bailey.

“Whose idea was it to kill her?” Stuart asked.

She drew herself up, chin rising again. “Something had to be done to end the spell that woman had on my husband. Ralph didn’t want to be this way. He would cry, get down on his hands and knees, and beg me to help him. I had to help. There was no other way to get it out of his system.”

“You know he raped those women,” the state crime investigator said.

Norma pursed her lips. “Had to be done. Only way. If just killing them would have done it, I’d have taken care of it myself. But Ralph said this way, he could kill the horrible compulsion in him.”

The room went deathly quiet for a few moments.

“Why brand them?” the sheriff finally asked.

“To mark them like the harlots they are.”

“But why with a horseshoe brand?”

She seemed to think about that for a moment, frowning as she did. “I told you, didn’t I, that we had tiny horseshoes as decorations at our wedding for luck and happiness?”

“But why brand these women with it?”

Her frown deepened. “I don’t know. I guess because I still had one in my wood-burning craft kit. I wanted them marked. I told Ralph it was no different than branding cattle. Why does it matter? It’s over.” She started to get up, brushing off her dress skirt as she rose. “I need to see to my chores.”

“You can’t leave, Norma,” the sheriff said. “You helped your husband assault and kill one woman and assault and attempt to kill the other. If Bailey hadn’t gotten away, you and your husband would have killed her. Instead, you helped him not only commit these crimes, but also cover them up.”

“He was my husband,” she said, her voice steely. “A good woman does whatever she has to do to protect her husband and help him...” Her voice broke. “No matter what he needs, no matter what he does. I tried to save him from Bailey McKenna.”

“Why her?” Stuart asked.

Norma frowned again, her lips pursing. “You never met Ralph’s mother, did you, Sheriff? She and Ralph were very close. Ralph was her baby boy. He cried like one when she died. It had been just the two of them after her husband died young. Ralph had been the only child after a half-dozen miscarriages. She called him her miracle baby.” She looked at the sheriff, locking her gaze with his. “I always thought it was odd how much Ralph’s mother resembled Bailey.” He felt the hair quill on the back of his neck. “I think he missed his mother.”

Stuart turned to the state crime investigator. “If you wouldn’t mind reading Norma her rights,” he said quietly. “Then she is all yours.” He rose and walked out of the room. Behind him, he could hear her Miranda rights being read and Norma’s confusion as she was handcuffed and taken away.

Moving quickly down the hall, he shoved open the door and stepped outside to throw up in the grass, grabbing his side in pain. His stomach roiled, but the queasiness passed. He’d been planning to walk away from this job and would have if not for Bailey. He’d had no business working this case. He’d been too close to it from the start, not to mention where his head had been. He’d almost gotten her killed.

He wiped his mouth and took a large gulp of fresh air. He felt sick to his stomach, shaken still. Not that he hadn’t been from the moment he saw Willow Branson lying face down in the river. Just as Ralph had said, she’d looked so much like Bailey.

Stuart breathed deeply, his skin crawling from what Norma had said back in the interrogation room, and what she hadn’t. Bailey was right. We didn’t know our neighbors. We had no idea what goes on behind closed doors. Everyone had a secret, some more than others. Some worse than others.

Stuart Layton certainly had secrets. From the time he was but a child, he’d known to keep quiet about what went on behind his closed doors. He’d grown up scared of what kind of man he was. Worse, what he might be capable of doing. His greatest fear had always been what he would do if the truth came out about the woman who’d raised him.

His father had been sheriff, a man sworn to protect, and yet he hadn’t protected Stuart from the woman who should have loved him. His childhood had been a horror show of frightening memories right up until the night his mother disappeared.

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