the relief that washed over Fiona’s wounded face, and the warmth of her hand as she once again touched his.
3
Beatrice, Walt’s three-year-old Irish spaniel, drooled onto Fiona’s face on the front page of the Mountain Express, and then turned to lick Walt, who remained trapped behind the wheel of the Jeep. Walt pushed her into the backseat and told her to stay. He brushed the drool off the newspaper, but too late: Fiona, carrying the half-drowned child from the river, now had a teardrop beard that ran to her waist.
He pulled the Jeep Cherokee into the driveway behind his deputy’s cruiser. The call of a bear attack had come in thirty minutes earlier. The property owner’s insurance would want the police to sign off on the cause of the damage—it wasn’t the first time for Walt. Garbage cans or vehicles with windows down were the most common targets of a wayward bear; rarely did the bear actually break into a kitchen and shred the place. This, Walt had to see.
Fiona’s Subaru was parked beneath a portable basketball backboard. She’d been called in to document the damage. Sprinklers ran in the front yard, creating a haze behind which the densely green mountains rose magnificently. Every view here was worthy of a postcard.
The Berkholder residence, a 9,000-square-foot stucco home, occupied the back corner of a five-acre parcel at the end of a quarter-mile semi-private drive. Their only neighbors—the Engletons—lived a half mile away. Fiona, who served as the Engletons’ caretaker, lived in their guesthouse, meaning she could have walked over here.
He tossed the Mountain Express onto the car floor, annoyed by the reminder of his own failed attempt to keep Fiona’s picture from appearing in it. He feared there would be hell to pay.
He cracked a window for Beatrice, told her to stay, and climbed out, in no great hurry to reach the front door. Thankfully his phone rang, stopping him alongside the chick, chick, chick of the sprinkler guns.
He instantly recognized the caller’s number.
“Dad?”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”
“Pleasantly surprised is more like it. It’s been a while, is all.”
“Has it? I suppose it has. Honestly, I don’t remember.”
That’s the point.
“To what do I owe . . . ?” Walt said.
“I’ve been approached as an intermediary, I suppose you could say. A detective with Crimes Against Persons, over here in Seattle. The guy knew I was your father and got hold of me through a mutual friend, Brent Staffer, a Bureau buddy of mine.”
“Okay.” Jerry never failed to remind his son he’d been a special agent for the FBI and that Walt had missed his own chance to serve a higher calling. He was also fond of reminding his son that he read the local Ketchum paper, tracked the stories involving Walt’s department, and liked to rub it in when those jobs involved clearing a band of sheep from the highway or serving motorcade duty for a rock star on a weekend ski trip.
“He’s trying to keep things low profile, very low profile, because of the personalities involved. Doesn’t want so much as the record of a phone call. You get the point.”
“I do.” Walt dealt with plenty of the rich and famous—more than his father knew.
“He could call you on your cell number or maybe your home. He’d rather not call the shop. I mentioned that I knew you used that Internet thing—”
“Skype.”
“That’s the one. Said he could do it that way if you wanted.”
“Did he say what it’s about?”
“It’s a homicide. He’s a homicide dick. Boldt. We’ve talked about him before.”
“We have,” Walt said. In the world of homicide, Lou Boldt was a living legend—able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. He had a career clearance rate of eighty percent when the nearest competition was in the mid-sixties. He’d not only caught the Cross Killer, but the serial killer’s copycat. Just the idea of speaking with Lou Boldt excited him—being involved with a case of Boldt’s would be rare air.
“I’d be happy to speak with him,” Walt said.
“Thought that was how you’d feel, but didn’t want to put words into your mouth.”
That’s a first.
“I’m pretty sure I know the homicide,” Jerry Fleming said. “Just guessing, but there’s one been in the Intelligencer off and on for a week now. Makes sense that Boldt would have caught it. Woman assaulted. Beaten to death. Nothing sexual—at least not that’s been reported. Reason it stays in the papers is both because of the beating she took—it was really bad,