admire her, though, she held her head up. Never let her son feel ashamed, either. She worked hard to support herself and the boy—I have an idea the father, whoever he was, might’ve helped out some—and she managed to put money away for Roan’s college. He applied for scholarships and won several—he was a very bright young man. He was going to become a lawyer—that was his mother’s fondest wish. But then she got sick and died suddenly.”
Normally it was Mary’s habit to let this sort of gossip flow in one ear and out the other, but for some reason she was finding this particular story hard to ignore. She made murmurs of sympathy, and Miss Ada sighed.
“Yes…it was sad. Roan came home to bury his mother and never did go back to the university. Instead, he stayed on, married his childhood sweetheart, enrolled in the state law-enforcement academy—I believe he’d had a minor in criminology, or forensics, or some such thing, in college. Anyway, he became a deputy, and when Jim Stottlemyer retired, ran for sheriff and got himself elected first try. Youngest sheriff in the history of the county, and I must say, it was the legal profession’s loss and Hart County’s gain. Roan’s been a fine sheriff.” She paused for another sigh. “It should have been one of those and-they-lived-happily-ever-after stories, but it wasn’t. No, indeed. Roan Harley’s troubles were just beginning.”
“Really? What happened?” Mary turned the chair in order to reach the other side of Miss Ada’s head, and Miss Ada’s eyes met hers directly instead of in the mirror. Mary was startled to see a sheen in them that could only be tears.
“I’m sorry, dear,” the elderly clerk of court said with a halfhearted smile. “Oh my. It’s been four years, but it’s still hard to talk about it. Seems like it happened just yesterday, yes it does. It was such a terrible tragedy, the kind of thing a small community like this never does get over.” She paused, lifted a hand and absently patted the neat row of curlers that marched down one side of her head.
“Well, now…I told you Roan married his childhood sweetheart. Erin Stuart—she’d been a classmate of Roan’s, all the way back to kindergarten, I believe. And her dad, Boyd Stuart, he’d befriended the boy, too, knowing he was growing up fatherless. Roan looked up to Boyd and respected him as he would a father, and Boyd…well, you could tell he loved Roan like a son. In fact, Boyd was so tickled when Roan married Erin, he signed over the deed to his ranch to the newlyweds and moved into the ranch foreman’s cottage.” Miss Ada chuckled, then took a quick breath as if it were a shot of whisky she was tossing back to fortify herself before going on.
“Well then, two years later Erin and Roan had a little girl. They named her Susan Grace, after their late mothers—Erin’s mother, Grace—she was a Pascoe, from over in Lewiston—had passed away, too, when Erin was still in high school. For the next three years—that was when Roan ran for and was elected sheriff—the family was so happy. Truly blessed.” She paused, and when she went on her voice had a quiver in it.
“Then…one night while Roan was out of town on a case, there was a fire. It woke up Boyd down in the cottage, and he came running… Oh, he tried his best, but he was only able to save the little girl. His own daughter, Erin, died in the fire. Boyd and the child were both seriously burned.”
“My God,” Mary whispered. She felt cold clear through, and a little queasy—and how in the world had she let this county sheriff’s unhappy story slip past her radar and take dead aim at her heart? She’d taken care to keep her feelings sandbagged and fortified against just such an assault. She couldn’t afford the luxury of caring. Now more than ever.
Miss Ada’s tear-bright eyes flicked upward and softened when they found Mary so obviously touched by the story. “Yes…yes. Poor Roan, he was just devastated, as you can imagine. He tried to pick up the pieces after the tragedy, I think for his little girl’s sake as much as anything, but I do believe he carries scars from that fire still, just as surely as Susie Grace and Boyd do. The only difference is, Roan’s scars don’t show.” She heaved another sigh. “I don’t imagine it helps, either, that he’s never been able to find out who did it—who killed his wife and maimed his child.”
Mary’s hands stilled, a curler half rolled. She fought to control a shudder of horror. “You mean…it wasn’t an accident?”
“Oh, no, dear,” Miss Ada said softly. “The fire was deliberately set, no doubt about it. It haunts Roan, I think, that the crime remains unsolved to this day.”
“I’m sure it does. It must be awful for him,” Mary murmured. But it was only words, and once again safely distanced from feeling. Her defenses had slipped momentarily, but they were back in place, now.
“It was terrible for everyone,” Miss Ada said, firmly, reaching up to pat the tissue paper band Mary was fastening around her hairline to protect her skin from the dryer’s heat. “The worst time this town’s had since the mines closed, I do believe. And now this.” She threw Mary a look as she accepted the hand she was offering to help her out of the chair. Her eyes were fierce again, and her voice brisk—it was the tone and the look that had kept jurors in line for so many years. “I am sure of one thing: Roan won’t let it happen again. Whoever it was shot Jason Holbrook, the sheriff will find him. I know he will.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mary murmured. She was confident that, with the dryer humming away, even Miss Ada’s keen senses couldn’t have caught the tremor that had just rippled through her.
Dave Salazar, Hart County’s coroner, was also both a licensed physician and deputy medical examiner for the State of Montana, and, as such, fully qualified to conduct autopsies, which he did, on the relatively few occasions one was called for, in a basement room at the county hospital. That was where Roan caught up with the two detectives from the state’s Special Cases Unit.
Kurt Ruger was short-legged, barrel-chested and looked like a college football player, with a brushy blond crewcut, prominent brow ridge and sharp, rather small and close-set blue eyes. His partner, Roger Fry, appeared to have been picked to balance the team in just about every way, being tall, lanky, dark-haired and balding, with benign brown eyes behind rimless glasses perched on the end of an oversized nose. He reminded Roan of an economics professor he’d once had.
After murmured introductions and handshakes all around, both SCU men sidestepped to make room for one more in the cramped space against the observation window, well out of the way of any stray odors or splatters.
Roan had seen his share of autopsies and had pretty well gotten over being squeamish about the process. He folded his arms on his chest and stepped closer to the partially draped nude body on the stainless-steel table, startling the coroner, who’d been so engrossed in his examination of the body he was oblivious to everything else, including the arrival of one more observer.
The doctor glanced at him in mild surprise. “Hey, Sheriff.”
“What you got for us, Doc?”
“Haven’t started the autopsy yet, but I found a couple of things that are kind of interesting.” He nodded his head, swathed in a green surgical cap, toward the two SCU detectives. “Like I was saying to these two gentlemen, I wanted to wait until you were all here—no sense in going through everything twice.” Roan nodded, and the doctor reached up to adjust the overhead lamp, then pointed with a gloved finger. The two SCU detectives moved in closer.
“See this here? Laceration on his lower lip?” He delicately inserted a fingertip into the victim’s mouth and turned the lip downward to expose the puffed and discolored inside. “That’s a bite mark. Not self-inflicted—the curve’s wrong. Definitely human, definitely ante-mortem, I’d say two hours, at least.”
Roan
