Now Tim had his own small place, and their father was once again alone, but he’d never leave. Her family had lived here for fifty years, starting with her grandparents. And though she sometimes worried about Dad being outside of town, two miles from the closest neighbor, she couldn’t imagine him ever living anywhere else.
Dropping her elbows onto the railing, she stared at the thick woods, the lake, and the old red barn in the distance. Then, hearing the scratch of nails on the steps, she realized she had company. “Hey, girl,” she murmured with a smile. “Out getting into trouble?”
She bent to scratch the tired old mutt who had shown up on her father’s porch a few winters ago and never quite left. Her dad had originally called his unexpected pet Tramp, because of the dog’s wandering tendencies. Then he’d realized she was a Lady. But she still wandered.
“Don’t be mad at Connie for telling me,” her father said as he joined her at the railing. She hadn’t even heard him come back out.
“I figured she would.”
“She’s not a blabber; it didn’t go anywhere beyond me.”
“I know.” Accepting the cup he offered her, she sat in one of the wicker rockers by the door, waiting for him to sit beside her. The dog curled up at her father’s feet, resting her head right on top of his leather loafers.
“So what did she tell you?” Honestly, Stacey wasn’t sure what Connie knew, whether she’d been listening through keyholes or just making a lot of assumptions.
“That the FBI is here looking for Lisa Zimmerman’s body.” Her father’s big, competent hands, gnarled with the rheumatoid arthritis that had forced him to retire before he was ready, tightened on the armrests of his chair. “That there’s some kind of movie of her being killed, and you had to watch it.”
Listening at keyholes. Thank God the video had been a silent one.
She sipped her coffee, trying to decide how much she could share. Her father was no random bystander; he’d been sheriff of this town for more than twenty years and had lived in it for more than sixty. She trusted him like she trusted no other person on earth.
Most important, he knew every person in the county. And while he’d probably have as much trouble as she did imagining that one of them could be a serial killer, having another set of eyes evaluating possible suspects could be very helpful.
“This is going to be hard to hear,” she warned. “I know you were friendly with Lisa Zimmerman’s father.”
He nodded once, indicating he was prepared for what she had to say.
So she told him. How Lisa had died, where, and when. Everything the FBI had on that case. Respecting Dean and his team, she made a point to avoid discussing specifics on other murders, expanding only on the facts that affected Hope Valley.
That was enough for any normal person to digest, anyway. She saw no need to describe how those seven other women had suffered. Hearing the details last night had been enough to make her physically ill again.
By the time she was finished, her big, blustery father had grown pale and glassy-eyed. “Lord almighty.”
“Yeah.”
“That poor little thing. This will crush her mother.”
“I know.”
He fell silent, thinking about it, slowly stretching and massaging his pained knuckles by long force of habit. Finally, his gaze focused somewhere on the woods beyond the house, he murmured, “Do you think they’re right? That somebody from around here killed her and those other women?”
She did. Mentally, she had accepted that as a likelihood. But damn, did it hurt to admit it out loud, especially to someone who loved this town so very much. She couldn’t lie to him, though; never had been able to. So she nodded. “I do.”
He closed his eyes, a low, small shudder rolling through him. The cup shook in his hand, and Stacey reached for it, worried his poor, tortured fingers would lose their grip on it and spill hot coffee all over his lap.
But he waved her away, lowering the cup to a small table himself. “I’m all right. Just… not something I ever thought I’d hear about Hope Valley.”
“Me, either.”
“I investigated a murder once, you know. More’n twenty years ago. And damned if it didn’t involve two good old boys who’d had a fight out at Dick’s one Saturday night.” He shook his head ruefully. “I can’t help thinking lightning shoulda struck and burned that place clear to the ground by now, with all the trouble it’s been.”
She hadn’t known that, but wasn’t surprised at her father’s sentiments regarding the rowdy tavern. It had been the bane of many of her weekends since taking office, and many of his before her.
“Have you got anybody in mind? One of Lisa’s no-good boyfriends? I heard she was dating some ex-con biker.”
“He’d been in a Georgia jail for a few months when she disappeared,” she said, already having looked at that angle as soon as Winnie had reported Lisa missing.
“I suppose, if there are other cases you’re not telling me about, that it’s got to be somebody who can go out of town without much notice.”
“Possibly, though I think all the other murders were within a few hours’ drive of here.” The Reaper had been able to do his dirty work in a single night, in most cases.
“Still, that many overnights, wouldn’t be easy for a family man to be gone nights, unless he had a reason to be. Night job, or one that required travel.”
“True.”
“I think there are a lot of marriages around here that had some ups and downs because of that girl, so it could be a married man. But I bet you’re looking for a single fella. Somebody who hasn’t had much luck with women.”
Stacey’s brow rose. “Maybe you should go to work for the FBI as a profiler.”
He shrugged. “Common sense. If he’s as vicious as you say he is toward women, he obviously hates them.” Frowning darkly, he mumbled, “That Warren Lee, somebody sure dropped him in a whole barrel full of crazy somewhere along the line.”
“But he hates everybody, not just women. When he goes…”
“He’ll go postal,” he said, finishing her sentence.
“He did act strangely yesterday, though,” she mused, more to herself than to him.
“Stranger than usual?”
“Good point.”
Her father fell silent for a few moments, gazing toward the lawn. Then, in a low voice, he said, “That stepfather of hers is a mean son of a bitch.”
Stacey concurred, but she’d rarely heard her dad use foul language and always made a point of cleaning up her own around him. “Did you ever think, ever wonder…”
“If he abused her? Hell, yes, I wondered. Something made that girl change right after he moved into her mama’s house.”
“I sometimes see bruises on Winnie’s arms,” Stacey admitted. “Whenever I ask her about them she says they’re from work.”
He sneered. “Yeah, those laundry carts have big fists on ’em, don’t they?”
Deep in thought, she whispered, “I never saw bruises on Lisa. But maybe the abuse was different.”
Dad’s hands clenched into fists, though it must have pained him terribly. “I asked her once when she was a teenager.”
Stunned, Stacey felt her mouth fall open. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. You were with the VSP when the worst of it happened. She went so wild, and I had to haul her in for dealing. When she begged me to let her off, saying she was pregnant and desperate, I flat out asked her if Stan was the father.”
“Oh, my God,” Stacey mumbled, never having heard this part of the story.
“She denied it. Told me if I went to Winnie about it, she’d run away forever.”
Which just made it more likely.
“I knew by the look in her eyes that she wasn’t lying about the pregnancy, but I guess she miscarried, or went out of town and took care of it. Never saw her have any baby. She was probably, oh, fifteen at the time.”
The story stunned her and broke her heart all over again for Lisa. By the time Stacey had come back to Hope Valley, she’d simply accepted the girl as the town tramp and druggie, not even recognizing her. If she hadn’t left, if she’d moved back after college, might she have been able to do something? Lisa had looked up to her once, had treated her like a big sister. If she’d been around, could she have helped her escape the nightmare her life had become?