"The tight, well-constructed plot complements the searing portrait of Camille as she deals with the guilt she feels over her daughter and her general rage at the world."
—Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review
“A dark, dangerous read populated by distinct, well-drawn characters. The tormented heroine is a woman on the edge and fascinating in her unpredictability. You’re rooting for her, afraid for her, but never fully confident that she won’t succumb to her multiple demons. There is a desperate sense of urgency right up until the very end.”
—P. J. Tracy, New York Times bestselling author of the Monkeewrench series
I remember fragments: the color of the desert burning, the smell of the blood drying in the sun, the sound of the glass shattering under fire. Never what happened after. Rarely what happened before.
But sometimes ... sometimes, I remember everything. Time slows, crystallizes. I see everything, I smell everything, I hear everything. I feel everything.
Then something... snaps. Fragments.
It just happened. Here. In the barn. Flakes of snow are melting on my jacket; they're damp on my numb fingers. It happened when he looked up, when he turned toward me, when I saw her blood matted in his long hair, his hand on her face.
Then I fired
This is what happened before.
1
Dust: long, fat streamers of it rose from the wheels of my truck as I drove up into the hills of Jeremy Leamon's ranch. It was dry that Friday, dry as early August in Okanogan County usually is, but Leamon's black steers were still bent low in the parched pastures, scrounging for tufts of yellow grass under the orange morning sun. The windows in the truck were down, and I was tapping my fingernails on the window frame, but not to the beat of the honky-tonk on the radio.
An outcrop shot up out of the pasture and became a ridge. I steered the truck around it, bounced over the stones that had crumbled off, and powered through a mess of tree roots and washouts that made the steering column jerk and the axles whine. Not long after the truck stopped buck ing, an outbuilding peeked out of the stand of ponderosa pines that washed down the hillside. Its corrugated steel paneling and wooden barn door had seen better days. Hell, better decades. But the thick padlock on the door was shiny and new.
Suspicious? Yeah.
The country is not that peaceful, you know. Drugs—we got plenty. Prostitution, too. And guns. Jesus Christ, do we have guns. In the years I had been inspecting properties for the County Assessor's Office, I had seen more than my fair share out on the back roads, in the hidden valleys, and in forgotten forest clearings just like the one I found that day on the edge of Jeremy Leamon's property. That's why I carried my official ID in my pocket and my unofficial Glock in my right hand. Why I let the truck roll through the potholes until I turned a bend, then switched off the ignition and listened long and hard before I got out to take a look.
I remember that when my boots hit the ground, puffs of yellow dirt rose around my ankles, drifted on air heavy with the smell of sunburned pine needles: dry, hot, resinous. The smell of summer. The smell of fire.
I padded through the trees. A hundred yards in, I saw the back end of the building above me on the hill. I came up on the south side and approached the tree line, then doubled back to the north side. No sounds from the building, not even the whisper of a ventilation fan. So why lock it up, all the way out here in the hills?
My finger slipped closer to the Glock's trigger.
Slowly, cautiously, I approached the building. There was only the one door and no windows. No way to see what the padlock was protecting. But as I rounded a corner, a gust of wind blew through the trees, and a steel panel on the side of the building swayed with it. I held my breath, waited for some sound, some shout, from inside the building. When it didn't come, I caught the edge of the panel with the toe of my boot. It swung out easily, and daylight shot through holes where nails had once secured it to the building's wooden skeleton.
Inside was a stall for an animal, a horse maybe. Beyond it, open space, sunlight pouring through a hole in the roof onto messy stacks of last year's hay. The air glittered with dust and stank of decay, the funk of rot. But there was something else there too, something sweet and high and spoiled. And buzzing, buzzing that filled my ears, that vibrated my brain ...
I ducked under the steel panel and clambered in, breathing shallowly. Holding my weapon at the ready, I rounded the corner of the stall, and then I saw him.
Hanging
Hanging from a loop of braided wire stretched over a wooden beam. His fingers were at his neck, but not to scratch it or run over his scant, patchy beard. They were stuck. Stuck in the noose. Stuck when he'd clawed at it, tried to pry it away, tried to make room to breathe.
I'm sure he tried.
Because he hadn't jumped: there was no chair, no ladder. Nothing kicked away, nothing standing.
Nothing but the kid and the flies.
* * *
I don't remember much of what happened next, but I know I went back to the truck, and I must have made a call. Because I know I watched the helicopter erupt over the rock and sweep down the hillside and land in the track I had driven down. And I can still feel the dirt from the downwash blasting my face and the icy cold steel of the stairs when I pulled them out just after the bird settled on the ground. And I remember not understanding why everyone was acting so strange, why the doctor set down her things in slow motion, and the pilot just switched off the bird and strolled to the trees to light up a smoke and why both of them were so casual, like they were going to the park. But then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I turned around. And everything snapped into focus.
Sergeant Darren Moses. My God, you should have seen him that day, in his mirrored sunglasses and chocolate-brown uniform, his black buzz cut and those high Indian cheekbones. He was always good looking-even when we were kids—but I guess I hadn't seen him for a while.
He asked me how I was, reached out and touched my shoulder again, looked concerned. I had on this green tank top, and the rough pads of his fingers were cool against my skin. He was standing close, almost intimately, his aftershave musky and faint. But I stood there and watched my reflection in his sunglasses and was an asshole.
"I'm glad to see the Sheriff's Office hasn't cleaned out the stables yet.”
Darren laughed, smiled broadly, his teeth flashing white in the sun. “You know I'm the kind of shit that sticks to the floor.”
He moved his hand away. My shoulder was suddenly cold. I smiled, tried to laugh, then grabbed another bag instead.
Darren held out his hand to take it. “You don't have to haul our gear, Camille."
I shrugged. “May as well. I'm here." “Really." "It's not a big deal." Darren's smile disappeared.
“I'm sorry. I need you to stay here."
My fingers tightened on the handle of the black Sheriff's Office duffel. “What are you talking about?”
"I can't let you into the crime scene."
I shook my head. “I've already seen it. My fibers or whatever you're worried about are already in there."
“It's procedure,” Darren said, his shoulders lifting slightly. “No exceptions, not even for old friends."
"That doesn't make any sense."
“And you've had a shock. Listen-Lucky's on his way up here. He took a truck so he could stop and talk to Leamon. He can take you back into town, and I'll drive your truck down after we're done."
I frowned. “What? No."
“Camille. If you're right and he's..." "Hey, Moses!" someone shouted.
I spun toward the building and saw a second officer standing by the peeled-back panel of corrugated steel: Deputy Jesus Moreno. His voice tight and flat and deathly calm, he said: “You need to see this."
Darren took the duffle from my hand and jogged over to the building. I followed. I'm not good at following orders. Never have been.
Inside the building, the two men stood side by side, their chins lifted, their eyes fixed on the corpse. Moreno was frowning, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked like a man at a museum: interested, but removed, dis tant. Darren looked like a man taking it personally. His jaw was clenched, his neck rigid, his thumb twitching on the safety catch of his holster.
In the corner, the medical examiner—a small woman with graying curls—busily set out her equipment on a bale of hay she'd draped with a white sheet. When she turned, she was zipping a white jumpsuit closed over a blue buttondown shirt.
"It's just decomposition, gentlemen," the examiner said. “Part of the natural process.”
“How long would you say?” Darren asked, still studying the corpse. "Three or four days,” I said without thinking.
Darren shot me a look and started to say something, probably to tell me I was violating his procedure, to threaten me with arrest if I didn't get out of his crime scene. But the examiner was faster.
“Yes.” She adjusted her glasses, squinted at the body, then said slowly, like she was really thinking about it: “It's been hot-hot enough for that much bloating-and the maggots are pretty far along. So, yes, that's a fair assessment."
Darren glanced from me to the examiner and back again, then opened his mouth.
“Aren't you going to introduce me, Sergeant?” the examiner said.
For a moment, Darren was caught between irritation and manners. He was staring at me like I had strung up the kid myself, his eyes dark and intense, a vein in his neck jumping. The examiner was staring at him like he was a naughty schoolboy.
"Doctor Marguerite Fleischman, Camille Waresch," Darren said. "Camille found the body this morning, Doc. She works for the County Assessor's Office."
“And?” the doctor said, looking over her wire rims at Darren.
“And she's leaving,” he said, taking a step forward, one hand reaching toward my arm.
The examiner raised her hand to him. “Not until she answers my ques tions,” she said, then turned to me. “How is it you know the body's been there for three or four days?"
I shrugged. “Just a guess.”
“Camille was a medic, Doc,” Darren said through gritted teeth. “She was in Iraq."
I clenched my jaw, looked away. “And Afghanistan.” “I see.”
Doctor Fleischman pulled on a pair of latex gloves, snapping them against her wrists. Then she squatted and rifled through one of her bags. When she stood, she was holding a notebook and pen out to me.
“My recorder is broken. You remember how to take notes?”
We had been at it for a couple of hours when a truck pulled up outside. The engine died and one door, then another, slammed. I stood up quickly and backed toward the wall, skittish, my eyes on the big door by the road.
"I'm telling you," a male voice said outside, his voice escalating from exasperation to anger.
“That ain't my building. I don't know what your problem is, but it ain't mine.”
Leamon, Jeremy Leamon. My dad had known him. I had knocked on his front door and chatted with him about the weather that morning when I arrived at the property for the inspection.
“All right,” another man said in this sort of soothing, persuasive voice, the kind of voice you want in commercials for condoms or caramels. Lucky Phillips, it had to be. He was Darren's partner back then. And he was an outsider, one of the few people who'd moved into the Okanogan instead of out.
“I believe you, Jeremy,” Lucky said. “But you know I'm a curious kind of guy—I just want to see if any of these keys work."
“It ain't mine," Leamon growled, but there was panic in his voice.
Someone thumped the door and fiddled with the padlock, its steel loop rattling against the cleats on the door. The door jerked open, sliding to the side on the top rail. Lucky stepped into the doorway, all tall and broad in his brown uniform and flaming orange hair. And beside him, his arm clamped in one of Lucky's big hands, was Jeremy Leamon, a man with too much denim wrinkled around his body and a halo of gray stubble on top of his head.
“What's that then, Jeremy?” Lucky asked, still cool, still smooth.
Leamon ducked out of Lucky's grip, his gnarled, liver-spotted hands clenched in enormous fists. But Lucky was younger and faster. He stepped forward, taking the older man's arm and spinning him, forcing him to look into the building, to look at the body still hanging from the beam, still crawling with flies, dripping slowly onto the packed earth floor.
Leamon staggered back. “What is that?”
"What do you mean?” Lucky said in mock surprise. “You aren't going to introduce us to your new neighbor?”
“Neighbor?” Leamon's face went white as butcher paper, his knees wavered and shook. He shoved Lucky to one side and, bent double, ran outside, his hand clamped to his mouth as he began to retch.
* * *
Later, much later, I could still smell the decay, hear the smack of flies against the inside of the plastic body bag after Moreno finally cut the kid down and zipped him up. I was fine when they loaded him into the helicopter, fine when Darren asked me how I was for the second time that day. He said he knew I'd seen things before, but did I want someone to drive me to my place? I shook my head again, told him no. Then he climbed into the helicopter and I stowed the stairs, and I was fine until the bird disappeared over the rock, until even the sound of its rotors faded away, and I was alone again, alone in the narrow track, dust clinging to my jeans and caked in my hair.
That's when the shaking started.
I fell to my knees and tried to not let it happen, but sometimes it just does. Sometimes the movie inside my head just won't stop, and I see the sniper bullet blow off half that staff sergeant's skull, see that corporal go limp on the table in the field hospital when everything went wrong, see that lieutenant's eyes gazing blindly into the deep, blue desert sky while his blood sank into the sand. And then the mortar rounds, the streaks of fire in the night sky, the staccato burst of AK-47s in the bone-dry morning, the sudden sick rocking of an IED going off under the tires of the forward Humvee.
After some time—God knows how long—I stood up and half-stumbled, half-ran to my truck and threw myself into the cab, then tore down the mountain faster than I should have. The assessment didn't matter; the rocks slamming against the chassis didn't matter; the cattle scattering wildly at the reckless rumble of the truck didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was getting out.
I still don't know how I got back that day. I just remember looking out the window of my one-bedroom apartment, my hair wet, my skin raw from the shower, watching people drive into the gravel lot below, go into the mart—my mart; felt strange to remember that, to remember that my father had bought it for me when I came home from the desert for the last time, that it was supposed to be my unwanted salvation-then leave again, a half rack of beer or a gallon of milk in hand. Across the street, my neighbor's trees, their leaves still green, waved in the heat rising off the pavement of the two-lane road that went through my two-street town. Behind them, behind the trees, the hill rose yellow and pale, dried-out green, the dirt streaked with orange. Like it was rusting.
Numb. I was numb. That's how it is at first. First bomb. First kill. You're scared out of your mind, scared straight. Get shit done, accomplish the mission. And then—it gets quiet. You're out, you're back at base. You're safe. And then numb. It's like floating, and nothing can touch you, nothing can make you feel. You're floating through the day, through the tour, through life. Then someone shoots down your balloon and it's all pain.
Most days, I miss the desert. But what I really miss is that numb.
* * *
As the shadows were lengthening, a key turned in the front door.
I was sitting at the scuffed kitchen table, staring at the property report for Jeremy Leamon's ranch in the black binder I'd had with me on-site that morning. My hair was dry and sticking to the sweat on my neck, so it must have been awhile since I had gotten back. I leapt to my feet-bare feet grabbed the Glock, cocked it, and held it down, but ready, my index finger hovering next to the trigger. God, I must have looked insane when the door opened and my teenage daughter walked in.
"Uh, hi,” Sophie said and dropped her backpack on the floor. “Hi,” I said without breathing.
“What's with you?”
Sophie sauntered into the kitchen. Hastily, I slid the Glock under the county map draped over the table.
“Nothing."
Across the narrow room, Sophie raised her eyebrows. I looked away, my jaw clenched. Be calm. Be normal.
“How was work?” I said, trying and failing. "Okay.”
Sophie opened the fridge, rummaged, smacked things around until she found the last can of soda.
“Crystal was okay?"
“Yeah, Crystal was okay.” Sophie stood up, closed the fridge, and popped open her drink.
"Roseann dropped you off?” She paused. “I asked if Roseann dropped you off.” "No," she snapped, her back still toward me. I ground my teeth.
"She had to go to Coulee City for something," Sophie said before I could open my mouth. “She said she wouldn't be back until late."
“Why didn't you call me?"
“I got home.” Sophie hesitated, her back stiffened. “I mean, I got back okay, didn't I?”
And that was it, really. Home. Her home was my home: the white farmhouse I had grown up in, the same place she had grown up after I left her to join the Army and then after I came back, when it was too much for me to take care of myself and take care of her too. And it had stayed that way, me in the apartment over the mart, her and my father in the old farmhouse thirty miles away. Until he died that May. After that, home was ... well, not my apartment.
"Who brought you?" I asked as evenly as I could. “Who brought you back?”
"A friend."
Sophie turned quickly and stalked past me until, like a toy tied to her with string, I sprang up and reached out to grab her. But then she stopped and the string broke. My hand snapped back.
“Who?" I insisted, my voice cracking with the strain of holding back the fury, the anxiety and fear.
“Just a friend."
“A name. Give me a name.”
Sophie glared at me, then bent to pick up her backpack. I rushed forward and put myself in her path. Her brown eyes—flecked with gold like mine-flashed dangerously, just like her father's had when he'd been pushed too far. Just like mine must have too.
“Jason,” Sophie said through clenched teeth. “Jason Sprague.” I stared her down. “Never heard of him.”
"You wouldn't have," she sneered. But then she dropped her eyes, dropped her head, and a lock of dark hair fell over her forehead.
"Granddad thought he was okay."
She said it so quietly, almost reverently, her eyes so downcast that her long lashes fanned over her cheeks. Even I felt tears welling. But my father thought everyone was okay; he was everyone's hero. And here's the thing, here's what I had learned about being a mother during those few months that Sophie and I had been the only ones left: your kid is the predator and you are the prey. They smell blood. They smell fear. And then—just then Sophie was playing with her food.
"Fine,” I said, biting off the word. “I'll meet him next time.”
I let her push past me. She slammed the bedroom door behind her; I stomped to the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and took it to the table.
Hours later, I was still there, trying to write my report about Leamon's ranch on my laptop when Sophie burst out of the bedroom. Her eyes were wild, and her long black hair flew behind her as she darted to the front door.
“Where are you going?” I demanded, rising from the table.
Sophie was pulling on her shoes, didn't even glance up when she said, "To Tracy's."
"Why?”
“I just am,” she said dismissively, snarling in that way that burned through all my nerves.
"No." Pulling the laces tight, her face away from me, she muttered, “Fuck
you."
In the blink of an eye, I was standing over her, the muscles in my arms screaming against the force it took to hold back my fists. “Stop.”
Her head jerked up: trails of tears streaked down her face, smeared mascara haloed her eyes.
“What the hell is wrong with you?" she shouted.
The heat of her anguish drove me back to the kitchen counter. Fury I could deal with, but anything else, anything more ... My chest tightened, my vision narrowed, darkened. Pinholed. I closed my eyes, shook my head, pushed down all the thoughts, the impulses, and the screams.
And when I opened my eyes, there was just Sophie. On the ground. Crying and tying her shoes like a child. My child. I dropped to my knees.
“What's going on, Sophie?” I said quietly, tentatively. “Why are you, why do you need to go to Tracy's right now? It's late.”
“Because,” she wailed, then breathed deeply, the air shuddering in her chest. “Because Patrick is dead.”
I shook my head. “Patrick?”
"Yeah, Patrick.”
"Okay.” I nodded. “Who is Patrick?”
“A friend,” Sophie said impatiently. She scrambled to her feet, grabbed her bag.
"A friend."
Sophie wove to push past me; I wove too, pushing back.
"Like Jason?” I said too sharply.
Sophie's eyes flashed through her tears. “No. He's my-he's just a really good friend. From school."
“From school,” I repeated, trying to keep myself in check.
Sophie rolled her eyes. “I mean, he just graduated in May.”
What?
"Patrick?" I whispered, looking past Sophie, looking over her shoulder into the distance where I could still see a male, his bloated body black and purple with pooled blood, patches of peach fuzz on his face, hanging at the end of a length of braided wire.
"Yeah, Patrick!” Sophie hitched up her backpack. Fresh tears were puddling in her eyes, her shoulders were tense. “He hasn't been around for a couple of weeks and now—” Her shoulders rose, her voice shuddered. “And now someone found him up in the hills and he's ... he's dead."
My heartbeat quickened. “What do you mean in the hills? Where?” “I don't know! Why would I know? Tracy just called me, okay?"
But I couldn't believe the kid that morning had been Sophie's friend, that the casualty was that close. I couldn't believe the medical examiner would have released an identification that early, that she could even know yet who the dead boy was. And why would some kid—why would Sophie's friend-know about it anyway?
Then everything sort of slowed down, came into focus: the tears on Sophie's cheeks crept down to her jaw, the smell of her shampoo-green apple-filled my nostrils; the dim light from the lamp by the sofa was suddenly blinding.
“Who found him?" I asked, my voice sounding tinny and distant in my ears.
"I don't know!” Sophie was shrieking now, her voice echoing in my brain, overloading every circuit. “How would I know?"
"How old was he?" I said urgently. “How old was Patrick?”
"It doesn't matter; he's dead!" She tore my fingers from her arms, even though I didn't remember—don't remember-grabbing her.
“Tell me.”
“Nineteen, okay?" Released, Sophie lunged for the door. “He just turned nineteen!”
Nineteen.
I had written nineteen on Doctor Fleischman's yellow notepad that morning.
“Victim is a Caucasian male, approximately nineteen to twenty-two years of age,” she had said from her perch on the ladder. “Death likely caused by asphyxiation, likely involuntary hanging, but”-she had leaned closer, peering through a magnifying glass at the discolored skin on the
kid's chest— “what appear to be electrical burns were inflicted to the torso prior to death. Two, maybe three days prior.”
She had pulled back then and shifted her attention downward. “Other indications of torture include nails missing from digits two through four of the right hand, pre-mortem bruising and lacerations on the left side of the face, including the eye ..."
Downstairs, the heavy steel door slammed.
* * *
I waited for Sophie to come back, waited while I was stretched out, rigid, on the couch, with my jeans on and my boots lined up on the floor by my feet. All the lights in the apartment were off, so I studied the ridges and valleys on the ceiling by the yellow light of the sodium streetlamp.
Around two, I heard footsteps on the gravel in the parking lot, and then the door downstairs opened. She crept up quietly; I smiled because it sounded like she'd even taken off her shoes. When her key turned in the lock of the apartment door, I threw my arm over my eyes and pretended to sleep.
Later, I crept to her door and opened it silently. Inside, the bedroom that had always been bare when it was mine was now anything but. Clothes were scattered everywhere, books were stacked in uneven piles. Sophie's pink backpack had been slung onto the chipped wooden desk. In the middle of it all was the girly white bed my parents had bought her for Christmas one year when I couldn't-or wouldn't-come home. She lay on the covers, curled in the fetal position, her hair tied up in a messy bun, her hands balled up under her chin.
I walked into the room, fighting the urge to pick up the mess, and watched her in the light that seeped through the thin, frilly white curtains that had once hung at the window of the bedroom we had both spent our childhoods in. At just barely fifteen, she still looked like the child I had watched growing up during visits two or three times a week for years. Her cheeks were thinning but were still rounded; the skin on her arms peeking out from under her T-shirt was still silky and down covered. Regret surged through my body as though it were a physical force—a shock wave. I closed my eyes to keep it in.
When I opened them again, the first thing I saw were the freckles sprinkled over her nose and cheeks. She looked like her Colville father, like Oren, with her dark hair and pale brown skin and almond eyes. Only her freckles were me.
Her phone, clutched in her hand, buzzed. She stirred but didn't wake. I glanced at the screen, then did a double take. The phone background was of her and a boy. He was a little older than her, but sort of wholesome looking—if you looked past their glassy eyes and flyaway hair and flushed cheeks. I thought I recognized the boy, imagined there was some resemblance there to the kid who had been hanging in Jeremy Leamon's barn. But then the screen went dark, and I glanced back at my daughter, her rounded cheeks not so childlike, her arms more sinew than down. And I looked past the freckles and saw a lot more of me.
***
Excerpt from Little Falls by Elizabeth Lewes. Copyright 2020 by Elizabeth Lewes. Reproduced with permission from Elizabeth Lewes. All rights reserved.
Elizabeth Lewes is a veteran of the United States Navy who served during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. An analyst and linguist by training, she now practices law in Seattle. Little Falls is her debut novel.
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