“She slammed him into the wall, shrieking all the time. Bertha Waldschmidt heard her and came out the back door with a knife.” Moen was getting enthusiastic in his telling. “Bertha chased him to the end of the alley, then came back for Monique. She’s okay, he missed her throat, cut her along the jawline, but man, you should have seen the blood!”
“Really. No. I don’t need to see any more blood.” She’d seen enough of her own. “Was she admitted?”
“I dunno. They’re stitching her up right now. She’s drunk, of course.”
She and Moen were going to have to have another chat about being careful with his politically incorrect commentary. “Do we have a perp description?”
“Monique said he was tall, dark and handsome.”
“Not helpful. What did Bertha say?”
“Bertha said she wants to talk to you.”
“Then we’d better go to the police station.” She held up one finger. “Let me say good-bye to Rainbow.”
“She won’t know—”
Kateri shot him a look that made him pale so much his freckles glowed like tiny beads of embarrassment.
“I’ll wait out here,” he said.
Kateri pushed the door open. She knew a moment of terror while she listened for the beeping of the heart monitor, but it sounded quiet, slow and steady. She walked to the bed. “I’ve got to go to the police station. You know Monique Ries … she got cut by an unknown perp. If you were here and talking, I’ll bet you would have a suspect for me. Wouldn’t you?”
No answer. Rainbow did not move. The flame of her life flickered so dimly, Kateri could scarcely see it.
Come on, Rainbow. Wake up! Lightly, Kateri put her hand on Rainbow’s chest. “I’ll be back soon. Stay alive. Please. Stay alive.” Turning, she hurried toward the door.
She met Mrs. Branyon coming in.
Mrs. Branyon took one look at the brightly lit room and shrieked, “You wicked girl! Do you never follow instruction from your betters?”
Tired, impatient and grieved, Kateri snapped, “I do. But I so seldom hear from my betters.” She stalked past Mrs. Branyon, down the corridor and out the exit into the sunshine Mrs. Branyon so despised.
Okay. Now she was ready to interview Bertha.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Moen babbled all the way into town. First he apologized for hitting the tree, asked how Kateri was feeling, then without waiting for a reply he told her that they’d lost John Terrance, he’d gotten away in an all-terrain vehicle, but they found his camp and confiscated his car. She didn’t try to interrupt, to tell him she already had heard a briefing from Bergen, and sure enough she picked up a few more details she stored away in her mind. Like the fact that Moen’s eyes were gleaming with excitement and the young man who usually only spoke to put his foot in his mouth spewed forth words as fast as he could. Virtue Falls didn’t usually see such drama, and he relished every moment.
The Virtue Falls City Hall housed the Virtue Falls Police Department. City Hall was in the Historical Registry so when the building survived The Earthquake—everyone in town referred to that life-shattering event as The Earthquake—monies had been collected to fix it. They got more than they hoped and less than they needed, and the resulting fight about whether to restore the ornate fa?ade or strengthen the structure had left them with a lot of seriously peeved citizens on both sides of the fence and a levee to raise enough money to pay the contractor when he overran his estimate.
Speaking as someone who worked in the big old stone building, Kateri thought all the money should have been spent on the seismic design upgrade. But nobody asked her or any of the other officers.
The walk through the police department to her office proved enlightening. She had left the chase in bad shape and returned in decent shape; she had expected to be inundated with mockery about her female frailty. Instead she heard mumbles of, “Sorry we lost him, Sheriff.”
When she got to the door of her office, she faced them and said, “Guys, a dead body is a great diversion. Time and again, I’ve gone through it in my mind and I don’t know what else we would have done. Do you?”
Heads shook.
“Let me talk to Mrs. Waldschmidt about this attack, then we’ll figure out our next strategy for catching John Terrance.”
Heads nodded.
Bergen asked, “You don’t suppose Terrance slashed Monique Ries, do you?”
Kateri shook her head. “There’s no way he could have gotten down here so fast.” But of course he could, and a smart move that would be with every law enforcement officer in the state chasing around the mountains. “Let me see what Bertha has to say.”
Bertha Waldschmidt was in her seventies, around five foot two and ninety-five pounds soaking wet. She wore black boots, black leggings, a slender coral sweater and a bulky black cardigan. Her inky-black hair was cut in the same pageboy style she’d worn for as long as Kateri remembered. The Gem Lounge had been in business for forty-five years and Bertha was the original owner. She was the toughest broad who had ever owned a bar in Virtue Falls.
Kateri adored her.
“Sweetheart!” Bertha sat in Kateri’s office, drinking the vile police department coffee as if she liked it. “Congratulations on your election. Sorry about the shootings. John Terrance and his son are pigs. Sit down and I’ll tell you what I know about Monique and her hookup.”
Kateri wandered behind her desk, leaned her staff against the wall, placed her hands on the arms of her chair and lowered herself into the seat. “Good to see you, too, Bertha. Mind if we record this?”
“Go for it, honey.” Bertha waited while Kateri pulled out her computer tablet, hit Record and placed it on the desk between them. Then, at Kateri’s nod, she launched into her story. “The attacker was never in the bar. I figure he came in by the unlocked back door.”
“Why was it unlocked?”
“Because I’m always going out into the alley to smoke my cigarette. Damn stupid state laws, won’t even let me smoke in my own establishment.” Bertha took Kateri’s agreement as natural. “The door’s always unlocked, sometimes the street people come in for a snack, but what do I care? I give them some popcorn, a few sticks of pepperoni, a baggie of vegetables and they wander off again.”
Beneath Bertha’s gruff exterior beat a kind heart.
Kateri knew better than to point that out. Bertha was tough; she could also carve out your liver with a broken beer bottle. And she’d break the glass to do it.
“I went out to smoke, and as soon as I opened the door, there was Monique shrieking at the top of her lungs and beating on this guy. I wasn’t going to interfere. When she’s been drinking, Monique has her ‘sexy moments.’” Bertha used air quotes. “But I took a second look and she was bleeding all down her neck and her shoulder. I yelled a word I don’t use in polite company, grabbed a knife and the guy started running toward the street.”
“No motivation that you know of?”
“None. Monique told me she had never seen him before, but she was swimming hard toward the drunk end of the pool.”
Exactly what Moen had said. “Can you identify the slasher?”