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  “That doesn’t sound like Lyric.”

  Cameryn flopped back onto the couch and sighed. “You’re right. She’s probably just ticked because I didn’t go for her wacko theory. She said Mr. Oakes burned up from partial spontaneous human combustion. When I told her it couldn’t happen, she got mad and stormed off.”

  “Ah, that part does sound like Lyric. But we weren’t talking about her. I was trying to talk about you and Kyle and this sudden relationship of yours. What’s the rush?”

  “I’m not rushing. I’m doing what every other kid in my school does. For once I’m feeling instead of thinking.”

  “But you’ve never been like all the other kids,” he protested.

  “Maybe I want to be.”

  He looked at her with genuine concern. “Why?”

  Cameryn pictured her mother, pressing forward ever closer in her car, but she abruptly forced her mind away from that image. How could she explain to her father that part of Kyle’s attraction was that he diverted Cameryn from her own inner life? Or that thoughts of Kyle blotted out a dreadful anticipation of the encounter that was drawing so near, whether a plague or salvation she couldn’t tell. Traces of Hannah were white noise in Cameryn’s soul. She knew that when she saw her mother, face-to-face, her life would change forever.

  She’d tried hanging on to the beautiful lie of life with her father in their small green-shingled home. Now Kyle blotted everything out, which was exactly what Cameryn needed. But she couldn’t say that out loud to her father. Instead, she shrugged and answered, “I don’t know, Dad. The heart wants what it wants, when it wants it. I guess that’s all there is.”

  When her father cleared his throat, she realized he had something more he wanted to say. His skin glowed in the fake Tiffany light, which made her wonder if he’d applied lotion to his face. That would be news. He’d always been a minimalist when it came to male primping.

  “Well, you can’t argue with love,” he said. “I guess when it comes down to it I couldn’t agree with you more.”

  “I never said love. I’m in ‘like.’”

  “Call it what you will. You know it’s strange—fortuitous, really, that you should be embarking on a relationship of your own. ‘The heart wants what it wants,’” he repeated her words slowly. “The thing is, something’s happened in my own life that I want to talk to you about, Cammie. It seems we’re on parallel tracks. Although my train is going much more slowly than yours.”

  Cameryn felt a rabbit kick to her ribs. “What are you talking about?”

  He had on dark blue slacks with a pleat in them, and he spread his fingers over his knees. “I’m old, Cammie,” he began.

  “No you’re not.”

  “Thank you for the requisite lie, but the truth is, life has a way of whipping by. When your mother reentered your life, it was like a wake-up call. It’s been fourteen years since I’ve seen her. Fourteen years of my life, just . . . gone. I realize now how alone I’ve been.”

  “I’ve been here with you. And Mammaw.”

  “What I’m talking about is something different. I love you and Mammaw more than anything, but I want— need—a life of my own.”

  Of course she understood what he was saying, and her insides coiled when he said it. “Except . . . you’re married,” she said softly.

  “In the eyes of the Church, yes. But I’m not even sure about that anymore. I’ve talked to Father John about filing for an annulment, and he’s behind my decision. Lord knows I’ve got grounds.” He cleared his throat, but his words still sounded strange, as though his throat had tightened. “I hope you understand.”

  “Are you telling me you’ve met someone?” she asked. It seemed best to be blunt, to lay it out there, a cold hard fact that could just be answered, yes or no. Steeling herself, she tried to prepare. She stared at her father, but he didn’t meet her gaze.

  “Yes. There is another woman in my life. She came when I wasn’t even looking, and no one was more surprised than I was—”

  With a one-word question, a bullet to pierce him as she’d been pierced, she asked, “Who?”

  He waited a beat before answering. “As you may have noticed,” he began, somewhat formally, “I have been spending a lot of time in Ouray.” His voice softened, became his own again. “There’s a judge up there that I’ve gotten friendly with. Friendly’s not the right word. Close. Amy Green. Judge Amy Green. You’d like her, honey.”

  “How long?”

  “A few months now.”

  Cameryn almost laughed at this, at the fact that they’d both been living secret lives, secret lies.

  “Does Mammaw know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Another secret between the two of you, with me left out again.”

  Now he did look at her, his eyes pleading for her to understand. “It wasn’t like that. We thought it best to wait to see if the relationship with Amy went anywhere before I told you. Well, it has.”

  With a Herculean effort, she shrugged as if it didn’t matter to her at all, even though she felt another plank crumbling inside. It was hard to admit, even to herself, that one of the story lines she’d imagined was that Hannah would appear at their doorstep, crying, castigating herself, and begging the two of them for mercy, and then her father would break down, too. In her mind’s eye she would see him understanding Hannah’s story of woe and loving her all over again. And then somehow they would become a family: father, mother, and daughter, a new trinity to replace the old. But that was the problem with fantasies. They rarely came true. And they left the one who did the imagining feeling emptier than ever, because even the dream was gone.

  A word Mr. Oakes used to use played in her head like the beat of a drum: irony. Here was Hannah, poised to reenter their atmosphere, and her father had gone and found someone else. After fourteen years in limbo. The timing was nothing if not ironic.

  Gently, he asked, “Do you want to know about Amy?” Cameryn, still reeling inside, worked on hardening her inner shell. “Not particularly,” she said. “I don’t think I’m up for adding another woman to the equation when I haven’t figured out Hannah yet.”

  “Understandable. Completely understandable.” He looked disappointed, but he smiled to cover it. “Let’s make a deal. How about if I be happy for you and Kyle, and you be happy for me and Amy?”

  Cameryn forced an answering smile. “Sure. Absolutely. You know what they say—life goes on.”

  “If it doesn’t, there’s definitely something wrong.” He laughed at this, but it sounded hollow. His face shifted again, and now he was earnest as he tried to explain, “Cammie, I need you to understand. Your life is just about to start and it’s going to move on without me. You’re a year from going out on your own and—I’m suddenly very much aware of that ticking clock.”

  So am I! she wanted to scream. Hannah’s on her way and I’m facing this alone and now there’s no way to bring you in because now there’s another woman! You’ve done this thing and ruined the dream. This was the proof she needed, to confirm that their lives had pulled apart, like a braid undone. Before, there had been no secrets, and now that was all there was between them. Separate lives, lived underground. Instead of saying any of this she stared blankly at him.

  “You’ve changed,” he told her, perplexed. “I’m looking at you and I’m not seeing the same girl.”

  Funny, that’s what Justin said when he showed me the carcass of a dog. And I’m not the same girl. I don’t want to be.

  “I’m not sure what to say to that, Dad. Maybe I’m growing up.”

  “Up is fine,” he said. Then, eyes pleading, his features turned soft. “Up is fine,” he said again. “Just not away.”

  Who knows what’s coming? she argued inside. Who can tell?

  Then, on the outside where everything counted, she answered, “Never away, Dad. I promise.”

  Chapter Twelve

  AS CAMERYN APPROACHED the Oakes home, she heard, rather than saw, the difference. It was the silen
ce. Rudy, Mr. Oakes’s dog, had been given to a friend who lived across town, and now the backyard stood empty, with a single water dish turned on its side, giving the house an eerie feel. Trees shifted restlessly in a wind that flapped a remnant of yellow plastic tape caught on the chain-link fence, a scrap from the CRIME SCENE: DO NOT CROSS barrier.

  The rest of the tape had been taken down, she knew, because the sheriff had released the crime scene the day before. “We’ve done everything that we know to do, and I still don’t understand what in the Sam Hill I’m dealing with,” Sheriff Jacobs had said. “Could be flipping aliens for all I know, and I’m not sure how to serve a warrant on green men in spaceships.” Cameryn’s father, handing her the balled-up yellow tape, had replied, “Something killed this man, John. And if there’s a something, I bet there’s a someone.”

  Which was what had brought Cameryn back to the Oakes house. After a lot of thought last night, Patrick had called the sheriff with Kyle’s story, and Sheriff Jacobs, desperate due to the lack of clues, had decided to follow the lead. At best it was a tenuous link to a possible suspect. Following a paper-thin trail, Cameryn was here to see if that someone might be Dwayne Reynolds.

  She heard a car door slam and turned to see Deputy Justin Crowley walking toward her. She hadn’t noticed his car parked across the street.

  “It’s about time you got here,” was Justin’s greeting.

  “Hello to you, too.”

  “Sorry,” he said, unlocking the door. “I’m a little tense. It doesn’t help that I had to wait for you to get here to even put the key in. I’ve been sitting in my car for almost fifteen minutes!”

  He pushed open the door and stepped inside, then waved her in. But he didn’t move back far enough, which meant Cameryn had to brush past him, grazing his body lightly as she entered the foyer. Justin’s hair had fallen into his blue-green eyes like a wedge. Impatiently, he raked it back.

  “Something you should know about me, for future reference,” he said. “I hate to wait.”

  “I will pledge my entire life around that incredibly important fact. If I ever make you wait again may I be put to death on the spot.”

  “I also hate sarcasm.”

  “Can’t help you there.”

  Justin helped Cameryn out of her coat, hanging it on a metal hook near the door. She felt cold, and blew on her fingers to warm them.

  “Before we go any further I want you to know I think this Dwayne-Brad connection is completely bogus,” Justin claimed. “Rumor is not the way we’re going to solve this thing. Do you have any news from the forensic front?”

  “The lab work hasn’t been completed yet, but nothing’s changed since we were there with Dr. Moore,” she told him. “Brad Oakes fried in his own bed. Manner of death—unknown. So far, no one has a clue, so we’re pretty much grasping at straws.”

  “The difference is, these straws can destroy innocent people.” A beat later, he added, “I talked to Dwayne today. ”

  “And?”

  “And . . . he said he knew Brad fairly well, but he had the key to the house just in case he needed to get Scouting equipment at the last minute. He also said they didn’t socialize much beyond Boy Scouts. For what it’s worth, I believe him.”

  “We’ll have to see. And by the way,” Cameryn mentioned, pulling a pair of latex gloves from her bag, “you could have started without me.”

  “No, I couldn’t. The law, remember?”

  She wiggled her fingers into the end of the gloves. “Ah, yes, I remember. Colorado State Statute 30-10-606. Having a coroner present allows you to recheck a formerly released scene without going through the hassle of securing a new search warrant. As long as I’m here you can step oh-so-neatly around the law. Am I right?” She watched Justin’s face as it registered surprise, his dark brows arcing into his hairline.

  There was another pause. “How old are you again?”

  “Seventeen. Eighteen in January.”

  He blew out a breath, like steam escaping from a kettle. “Hard to believe,” he said. “You are the oldest kid I’ve ever met.”

  Justin’s badge was actually pinned on his shirt this time, but his jeans looked as though he’d been riding a motorcycle. There were grass smudges, dirt. The hem of his pants was encrusted with mud. Cameryn, at least, was clean. She had on jeans, faded but just washed, and her favorite sweater. The sleeves were too long, which meant she was forever pushing them up to free her hands, but the fabric made it worth the hassle. Chenille yarn, soft as velvet, in a Dublin-green color made her think of moss on stone.

  “How’d you get so dirty?” she asked him.

  “I went looking for the dog carcass I dumped down the mountain.”

  This surprised her. “Really? I wanted to look, too. I know the sheriff says there’s no connection, but I thought it should be checked. Did you find it?”

  “Nope. Body’s already scavenged and gone. Not a trace left, at least that I could see. But at this point I want to follow every thread I can because nothing about this case makes sense. So far we’ve got a dead man and zero evidence.” He held up his hand, ticking off his fingers one by one. “We got no motive. We got no weapon. Brad had no enemies and there’s no money trail. We got blown-out eyeballs and cooked flesh and a crime scene that’s completely clean. I don’t know what happened in this house. We may be looking at the perfect crime.”

  The thought chilled her enough that she didn’t speak. In that slice of silence she could hear the wind outside howl mournfully, the harbinger of a coming storm. This was the time of year when Silverton itself became frozen in a layer of snow. The townspeople still existed, of course, but they were like fish in a winter pond, alive beneath the glassy ice but living in an ever-shrinking sphere. If there was evidence outside, it was about to get buried until spring. But forensics looked inside, into the very corpuscles themselves, if necessary, to let a body tell its own story.

  To be here, she’d had to miss another shift at the

  Grand, which worried her a little. If she missed too many shifts she might lose that job. It didn’t pay a lot but it was steady, or at least it had been until she became so involved in what she was doing as assistant to the coroner. She was thinking about this when Justin said, “Sheriff Jacobs is up in Ouray, filing for a search warrant to let us get the phone records legally. Your presence here is just to jump-start the process until we get the right papers.”

  “I know. My dad’s with him.”

  Justin cocked his head. “Why’d Pat go?”

  “Because my dad’s hoping to obtain a search warrant issued through Judge Amy Green. He’s got a . . . connection . . . with her. He thinks she’ll write it if he’s the one doing the asking.” Cameryn felt a pang when she said this, but Justin didn’t seem to notice. He was already on his knees, intent on a stack of DVDs.

  “Wow,” Justin said. He held up several jewel-boxed DVDs toward the light, squinting at the titles. “Here’s some disturbing news. Looks like our Mr. Oakes was a wild one.”

  “Is that porn?”

  “National Geographic special on the life of Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings complete DVD set, and Shakespeare in Love. Here’s another one that’s pretty extreme—Emma. Wasn’t that a chick flick? Hmmmm, maybe Kyle’s on to something after all.”

  “Not funny.” Cameryn drummed her fingers on the desktop. “While you’re investigating his movie selection, what exactly am I supposed to be doing?”

  “Try to find any evidence of a too-close relationship with Dwayne. We weren’t looking for that before. Cards, pictures, phone records—if you see anything, just bring it to me.”