it is where to start. Keeping these things inside, given your current situation, isn’t going to help anything. I’ll be honest with you: your memory is going to come back—that’s my prediction based on a good deal of experience. Talking to me may or may not precipitate that return. But your sharing your fears with me, your discussion of the emotional context will greatly improve how you handle the memories when they do return—this I can promise. You don’t need to do this alone.”
“But I do,” she said.
“I’m here,” Katherine said. “Day or night, I’m here.”
Fiona bit her lower lip because she felt it quivering, felt her eyes well. She stood from the chair, offering her back to Katherine, and tried to keep calm as she walked out of the room.
17
“You okay?” Boldt asked from the Jeep’s passenger seat.
Beatrice half-slept in the backseat, rolling a lazy eye as the men spoke.
“Yeah. Sorry. I petitioned the court about acquiring a DNA sample and was turned down. It’s a child abuse case.”
“The toughest there are.”
“Right. So I’m a little out of sorts.”
“Understandably. Any way around it?”
“Maybe. Might be. I have an article of clothing—a pair of panties. But ultimately I need the embryo’s DNA and that’s apparently not going to happen.”
“And another scumbag remains out there.”
“Something like that.”
“You can always lie to the bastard and hope he comes apart, though such guys rarely do. And never discount the value of a fine piece of entrapment. Any felony will do.”
Both men laughed into the windshield.
“The offer still stands for you to sit in on the Boatwright interview.”
“We’re good,” Walt said.
“You don’t have to drive me around. I can rent a car.”
“It’s my pleasure. I thought I might canvass the neighbors or his employees about any knowledge of Gale or visits to the house. I’d like to start eliminating potential suspects. That is, with your permission.”
“Don’t need my permission,” Boldt said. “Other way around. I’m the guest here, and I appreciate your helping me out.”
“I wouldn’t mind talking to Matthews,” Walt said, “if you think that’s possible.”
“Easily arranged.”
“I can pay her if necessary. Bring her over here, if you think that’s possible.”
“No need for that,” Boldt said. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to help out. If you nail down a suspect and the suspect is a tough nut you might want to bring her over. She’s extremely good at reading people and leveraging weaknesses in personalities. But that’s for down the road.”
Walt could see Boldt went somewhere else, staring out the side window. At first he thought the landscape had grabbed him, overcome him the way it could. But the longer the silence went on, the more Walt suspected something else was going on, that he’d triggered something without having any idea about what he’d done.
“Hell of a place you live, Sheriff,” Boldt finally said at the end of a long sigh.
No man in his seventies looked like Marty Boatwright without the help of plastic surgery. His watery eyes and the chicken skin on the backs of his hands gave him away. He greeted both men, meeting the Jeep in the driveway, then escorted Boldt inside. As Walt parked the Cherokee, he imagined Boldt would likely take that to the bank—guys like Marty Boatwright didn’t greet anyone in their driveway; the impending interview had rattled the man and had put him on the defensive before it began.
The 11,000-square-foot log home sat on three acres carved out of a hill, giving Boatwright an unobstructed view of the Warm Springs side of the Sun Valley ski area. The property was terraced into two cascading drops, both supported by four-foot stone walls, with a narrow creek falling down waterfalls and collecting into a half-acre pond at the bottom, just this side of the helicopter pad that had drawn the scorn of his neighbors.
On the bib of lawn that supported a large flagstone terrace and dining patio, a garden worker struggled with an invasive tube root in the first of three successive flower beds. A wheelbarrow topped with fresh soil sat alongside a tarp and a variety of garden tools.
“How’s it going?” Walt said, immediately sensing the man’s unease. Not an atypical reaction. He tried to soften the moment. “I have the same problem in my backyard,” Walt said. “Can’t stop the things.”
“I transplanted one indigenous aspen seven years ago, and there’s not a day I don’t curse the decision. If I’d gone with one from a nursery . . . They don’t send out tap roots like