The deputies were looking at her curiously. She cleared her throat. “He was very thoughtful. Considerate.”
Neither of the men said anything.
She wet her lips. “He took care of my needs. I was aware. But not. Do you understand? Most of the time, he left me alone. To…to recover.”
Knight folded his arms across his sizeable middle. “In all that time, he never offered to call nine-one-one?”
She rubbed her forehead. “I don’t think so. Maybe. I don’t remember. Wasn’t there a storm? Fog? Weather that made the roads impassable?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He told me—he promised—that he would deliver me safely back once the roads cleared.”
“But he didn’t,” Grange remarked. “Most of the roads were clear yesterday.”
“I’m certain he would have if I had felt better.”
Jesus, you feel good. Sweet. Perfect.
Buying time before continuing, she reached down to reposition the ice bag on her elevated foot. “But I wasn’t up to it yesterday. Then I woke up this morning. My head was clear. I asked him to drive me here, to Drakeland, and he did.”
“Actually he dropped you outside of Drakeland,” Grange said. “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why not drive you to the sheriff’s office?”
“I don’t know.”
“He could have collected the reward.”
“Maybe he didn’t know about the reward.”
Grange shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Knight ran his hand over his face. Grange said, “What kind of truck was he driving?”
“A pickup.”
“I mean Ford, Chevy, Ram…?”
“I didn’t notice. I don’t know much about pickups.”
“Color?”
“Blue. Sort of silvery blue. And…tall.”
“Tall?”
“High off the ground,” she said.
“What about him? He tall, too?” Knight asked.
“I described him to you earlier.”
“Yeah, but in all the confusion, you might’ve forgot something.”
At the combo service station/convenience store, the scene had been chaotic. Her reunion with Jeff. The excitement among the personnel running the place. Customers taking pictures of her on their cell phones. A man delivering tobacco products trying to get a selfie with her.
Amid all that, the two deputies had pressed her for an explanation as to how she’d come to be there, and, when she told them that a man had dropped her off a short distance away, they’d naturally wanted to know his name. Since she couldn’t provide them with that, they’d asked her for a general description. She’d been inordinately general: Caucasian male.
“Hell, that circus going on at the Chevron almost made me forget what Miz Knight looks like.” Knight’s broad smile did little to put her at ease. “Let’s start with the basics,” he said. “Like his age.”
“He was old. Ish. There was gray in his hair.”
“Height? Weight?”
“My perspective wasn’t good. I was lying down; he was standing.”
“Not even an estimate? Taller than me or Grange? Noticeably shorter?”
“Not shorter. Slightly taller than Sergeant Grange.”
By a head, at least.
“Good,” Knight said. “We’re getting somewhere. He have a belly like mine?” he asked, patting it. “Or was he more of a hard body like my partner?”
“Somewhere in between.”
He repeated the words in a mumble, as though committing them to memory. “Distinguishing features?”
“Like what?”
“Big ears? A wart on his nose? Facial hair, scars, tattoos?”
Keep kissing my lightning bolt at your own risk, Doc.
Why? What happens?
It strikes my cock.
She looked away from Knight’s perceptive gaze. “No distinguishing features that I recall.”
“Approaching town, which direction were you coming from?”
“The north, I think. I’m not sure. We took a lot of turns.”
“Huh.”
A short silence ensued then Grange said, “Since we now know for certain which trail you were on Saturday morning, several deputies have been dispatched to see if they can retrace your steps.”
“Why?”
“In the hope of locating this man who took care of you,” Knight said. “To thank him and such.”
She didn’t believe for a moment that was the reason they were trying to retrace her steps. Her heart began to thud. “I don’t think he would wish to be thanked.”
“How come?”
“He impressed me as someone who would shun the limelight. He was…shy.”
“Huh.”
Knight’s repetitive use of that single syllable was most eloquent. It implied he wasn’t believing what he was hearing.
Grange was more direct. “You perceived a character trait like shyness, but you aren’t clear on his height or general body build?”
She divided a look between them. “Why are you so interested in him?”
“No reason in particular,” Knight said. “Just seems strange that after he sheltered you for four days and nights, took such good care of you, that he’d just drop you on the side of the road instead of delivering you into the arms of your husband or turning you over to an officer of the law.”
She scrambled for an answer which, if not probable, wouldn’t stretch plausibility too far. “You referred to the circus at the service station,” she said. “He realized that my reappearance, my reunion with my husband, would result in exactly that kind of scene. Obviously this man values his privacy. He’s reclusive and wishes to remain so. I think everyone should respect that and leave him in peace.”
“So he knew that you had a husband crazy with worry over you.”
She looked at Grange, realizing that she’d trapped herself. She truly was a dreadful liar.
When she didn’t speak, the deputy continued. “Even if the roads were frozen over and too hazardous to drive on, why didn’t he at least call somebody to let them know you were safe?”
“Perhaps his phone was inoperable.”
“He had yours, Dr. Charbonneau. It was working this morning.”
She couldn’t think of anything to say, so she wisely said nothing.
“Why didn’t you call your husband?” Grange asked.
“Until this morning, I was drifting in and out of consciousness.”
“But you had intervals of lucidity.”
“I wouldn’t call it lucidity. I was awake, but my thoughts were hazy.”
“Too hazy for you to make one phone call?”
“It crossed my mind, of course. But fleetingly. In the abstract. I didn’t act on it because my phone was out of reach, and I didn’t have the wherewithal to ask for it, or to get up and retrieve it.”
“He had your ID. He knew who you were, where you lived. But he never offered to make a call for you?”
“Maybe he did and I don’t remember. But again, I—”
“You have hundreds of numbers programmed into your phone,” Grange said, pressing now. “A couple of taps on the screen, and he could have notified someone that you were still alive.”
She lowered her gaze. For the longest time, neither of them said anything, but she could feel their stares boring into the crown of her bowed head.
Knight was the one to break the tense silence. “You’re not being quite up front with us, are you, Dr. Charbonneau?”
“I’ve told you what I know.”
“Well, what you’ve told me and Grange bothers us.”
She raised her head and looked at him. “Why? I’m back. I’m fine. Isn’t that all that matters?”
“Well, it would be. Except we’ve got an individual who interests us. He passed up a sizeable reward and dodged being thanked for his hospitality. We’re thinking there was a reason he ducked the media and wanted to remain anonymous, that maybe he wasn’t such a Good Samaritan.
“We think maybe your concussion wasn’t caused by you falling, and that possibly he didn’t find you on the trail, but that he assaulted you on the trail, banged you on the head, and then, for reasons only he knows, he chickened out on killing you.”
The rock.
You weren’t supposed to see that. I knew seeing it would upset you.