Angels Fall

field glasses. I want you to think if it's possible both those people walked away."
    "She was dead."
    "Now, seeing as you were across the river, up on the trail, you couldn't take her pulse, could you?"
    "No, but—"
    "I went over your statement a couple of times. You took off running, got Brody, went back. Got about thirty minutes there. Isn't it possible that woman got up and walked off? Maybe still mad, maybe with a few bruises, but alive and healthy?"
    The glass wasn't half empty or half full. Recce thought. It was just a damn glass, and she'd seen it for herself. "She was dead. If she walked off, how do you explain the fact there were no tracks? No sign anyone had been there?"
    He didn't speak for a moment, and when he did that same endless patience was in his tone. It was beginning to crawl up her spine like spiders. "You're not from around here, and it was your first time on the trail. You were shocked and upset. It's a long river, Reece. Easy for you to mistake the spot when you got back with Brody. Hell, it could've been a half a mile on up."
    "I couldn't have been that far off."
    '"Well, I've looked the best I can, but it's a lot of ground to cover. I went ahead and contacted the closest hospitals. No woman was admitted or treated who matched your description with trauma to the neck or the head. I'll follow up on that again tomorrow."
    She got to her feet. "You don't think I saw a thing."
    "You're wrong. I think you saw something that scared and upset you. But I can't find a single thing to support you witnessed a homicide. My advice is to let me follow through on this, and you've got my word I will. And you put it aside for now. I'm about to head on home, see my wife and kids. I'll give you a lift."
    "I'd rather walk, clear my head." She stepped to the door, turned. "That woman was dead, Sheriff. That's not something I can just put aside."
    When she left, Mardson blew out a breath, shook his head. He'd do all he could do, he thought, and that was all that could be asked of a man.
    Now he was going to take his dog and go home, and have dinner with his wife and kids.

Chapter 10
     
    BRODY GOT HIS beer and tossed a frozen pizza in the oven. When he punched the button on his answering machine, it spit out a message from his agent. The book scheduled for early fall had snagged a very decent book-club deal. Which might call for a second beer with dinner.
    Maybe, with a part of his take from it, he'd splurge on a new TV. Plasma. He could hang it over the fireplace. Could you hang plasma screens over a fireplace? Or would the heat screw it up?
    Well, he'd find out, because it would be very sweet to stretch out on the couch and watch ESPN on one of those big-ass screens.
    But for now, he stood in the open doorway of his kitchen, drinking the beer in his hand while he watched the light soften and the shadows deepen toward evening.
    The quiet went down just as smoothly as that first cold beer.
    He had work to make up—-can't afford a big-ass plasma TV it you didn't put in the time at the keyboard. Which meant he'd likely put in a couple hours on his current work-in-progress before he called it a night. Besides, he was looking forward to digging into it.
    He had a woman to kill.
    Still, over a beer, waiting for his pizza, he could spare the time to think about another woman.
    She didn't go down smooth. Recce Gilmore had too many jagged edges to slide easy into a man. Maybe that's what made her so intriguing when he hadn't had any intention of being intrigued. He liked the opposition of her—gutsy and fragile, cautious and rash. People who walked straight down one road got tedious after a while.
    Added to it, he couldn't help but feel they were in this situation together.
    Until they found their wav through that situation, it would pay to find out more about her.
    He glanced around. His laptop was on the table.
    "'No time like the present," he decided, and with another sip of his beer, closed the door.
    He booted up, then got the pizza out of the oven. The cutting wheel was, like his coffeemaker, one of his few kitchen essentials. He put the entire pie, cut into four slices, onto a plate, grabbed a couple paper towels and, popping the top on a second beer, considered it dinner.
    He doubted it took him any longer than it had taken the sheriff to access background data on Reece. Googling her, he got enough hits to keep him busy, and interested.
    He dug up an old article on up-and-coming Boston chefs that featured the