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Catherine turned back toward the lodge with Ravinia at her side. “What’s with the graves?” Ravinia asked.
“Detective Dunbar says there will be an exhumation, so I need to make sure your mother’s bones are in the ground beside her headstone.”
Ravinia looked at her carefully. “They’re not now?”
“No. They’re in a separate place in the graveyard.”
“So, whose bones are in there?”
Catherine felt her stomach tighten. She hadn’t talked about it. Ever. Not even with Mary, who’d been there, who’d saved her . . . “The bastard who tried to rape me. The one your mother killed in order to stop him.”
“My mother killed someone?” Ravinia asked in surprise.
“And he deserved to die,” Catherine responded tautly.
“My God, Aunt Catherine . . . who? One of our . . . fathers?”
Catherine thought back to the evil monster who’d pushed her into the closet, his hot breath stinking of bourbon, his eyes a malevolent blue flame that burned into her as his hands crawled all over her and he bit at her neck and breasts. “Yes,” she stated flatly. “But he sired a son, not a daughter. And I think he’s out there on Echo, biding his time. Waiting to come for us.” She looked to the west, but there was no fire tonight. Then she turned to Ravinia, who was standing immobile, waiting for more. “I may need your help in this endeavor.”
“Just tell me what I have to do,” Ravinia said, on the same wavelength as Catherine for possibly the first time in her life.
Conversation stopped as soon as Savvy eased into the chair behind her desk. Lang wasn’t immediately visible, but she’d seen his car in the back lot. Burghsmith looked to Deputy Delaney, who’d been off for a week on a pre-Thanksgiving vacation, and Delaney looked to Clausen, who finally said, “Lang filled us in. Real sorry about Kristina.”
“Yeah.” If Savannah said anything more, she risked those tears that were hovering behind her eyelids, ready to jump out at a moment’s notice.
“Congrats on the baby,” he added. “O’Halloran really put the fear of God into you about desk duty, huh?”
He was trying to keep things light, but his eyes were serious and she could feel the empathy, even if he wasn’t showing it. This was not good. If they were going to be nice to her, damn it, she was not going to make it through the day.
Lang appeared from the break room with a cup of coffee and an individual-size bag of barbecue potato chips from the vending machine. Seeing Savvy, he put the cup and chips on his desk and sat down across from her. “You really did come to work.”
“I said I was going to.”
“Think you and I could talk alone for a moment?”
“Sure,” she said slowly, wondering what was coming. She looked around, but before she could get up from her seat, the other officers left in a herd, as if they knew what was coming and didn’t want to be anywhere around. “Uh-oh,” she said.
“You didn’t mention yesterday that Kristina’s death was a homicide.”
“That hasn’t been fully determined yet,” she said.
“Yeah, it has.” Lang looked at her with sympathy. “O’Halloran took a call from Detective Hamett out of Seaside. They interviewed Hale Bancroft yesterday.”
“St. Cloud, Lang. St. Cloud,” she said, her face flushing from growing fury. “I just saw Hale, and he didn’t say anything about it.”
Lang lifted his palms. “Maybe there’s a reason for that.”
“Don’t play word games. What are you suggesting?”
“That maybe he didn’t want you to know that they were looking at him.”
“Looking at him,” she repeated. “You’re kidding. You have to be kidding. Hale? It’s not him.”
“He is her husband,” Lang pointed out, “and by his own admission, they were working on their marriage, so something wasn’t right between them.”
“Hale said that? To Hamett?”
“And his partner, Evinrud. They went to Hale’s house yesterday afternoon and asked him where he was Saturday night, and he said his wife never came home Friday night at all, and
