He grabbed her hand. “You bet we do, one being your husband. How’s he doing?”
“He’s back in the Middle East, I’m afraid. He’s been gone a few months. I’m staying with my dad while he’s there, but Matt told me I’d better come here right away, look you up, find out when your boys are coming around, because Matt’s best friend and our best man is Paul Haggerty.”
“That’s right,” Jack said. “I remember, now that you mention it. I had those two boys in my squad way back—they were just kids. Paul, Matt, Preacher, Mike Valenzuela. Then Paul and the others were in my platoon on my last assignment in Iraq, and we’re still tight. Paul was here not very long ago, and due back again soon. We always try to catch some of hunting season, however many can make it.”
“Paul and Matt went to school together,” she said. “They enlisted together, went into basic and served a couple of tours together. In fact, they were together the night I met my husband.”
“Oh, Preacher and Mike are going to love this,” Jack said. He turned away from her and hit the wall that separated the bar from the kitchen to bring Preacher out.
“I’ve heard all about Preacher,” she said. “Paul talked about you guys and this little bar a lot. It was such a weird coincidence that my dad found this place to settle.”
“Where is your dad?”
“He bought an old ranch on the edge of town a couple of years ago, right before his last assignment. He was having some work done to renovate it before he retired, then brought my little brother and their horses out here from D.C. over summer.”
“Last assignment?”
“He retired from the Army. Major General Walter Booth.”
Amused surprise registered on Jack’s face. “A grunt general let his daughter marry an enlisted jarhead?”
She lifted one pretty eyebrow, aquamarine eyes sparkling, and said, “I don’t take orders from anyone.” And they both laughed.
Preacher came out of the back, frowning at having been summoned by the pounding. He met with the gleaming smile of the pretty redhead at the bar and he softened his expression somewhat, curiously.
Vanessa was not startled by the big man’s size or surly expression. Neither was she surprised when his features softened into a curious smile. “You must be Preacher,” she said. She put out a hand. “I’d know you anywhere, except I heard you were big and bald. Now you’re just big. Vanessa Rutledge—Matt Rutledge’s wife.”
“No way!” Preacher exclaimed, reaching for her hand. “I heard he got married. What’s he doing these days?”
She shrugged and made a half smile. “Guess. Iraq. Baghdad, last I heard.”
“Oh, kid,” Preacher said sympathetically. “And you’re here?”
“My dad just moved here—he’s out on the edge of town. A nice place for him and his horses. And my little brother, Tommy.”
“My lord,” Preacher said. “I can’t believe it. Right here!”
“The world just gets smaller,” she said, stepping back from the bar and pulling open her jacket to reveal a pregnant tummy. “I’m on my way to see Jack’s wife. I’m going to need her services.”
“Wow,” Jack said. “Look at you. First?”
“Yep. Just a few months to go.”
“Is Matt going to get back for the baby?” Jack asked her.
“No, but if we time this right, he should get a nice long leave when the baby’s a couple of months old.” She looked around, taking in the bar, the animal trophies on the walls, the rich dark wood. “So this is the place, huh? Boy, I’ve sure heard a lot about this place.”
“The boys love this place,” Jack said. “When Matt’s out, we’ll make sure he gets up here with the rest of them.”
“When he’s out? Hah! You think that’s going to happen? Matt’s a career Marine.” But she smiled, clearly proud of her man. And being a general’s daughter, she would be more than familiar with the rigors of military life.
“No rush,” Jack said. “We’ll be around a long time.”
Paige was summoned to the bar to meet Vanessa. Before long Mike made an appearance and was delighted to make the acquaintance of Matt’s wife. An invitation was extended for the general to stop by the bar for one on the house and Jack promised to get in touch with Vanessa and her father before Paul joined the next Semper Fi gathering, coming up soon.
“Whatever you do, don’t tell Paul we’re here,” Vanessa said. “I’d love to surprise him.”
Five
Mike Valenzuela became aware that beneath the surface of a perfect small town there could be crime, some minor and predictable, some of an insidious nature. He thought often about the two patients Mel had presented as he visited casually with neighbors, with the high school in the next town attended by the Virgin River kids, asking what people did for fun around these parts. Most of the time he got the expected responses—adults had their own gatherings, parties, picnics, cookouts. They frequented restaurants, galleries, wineries and nightspots in and around the coastal towns, and of course just about everyone hunted and fished. Most of the community socializing surrounded school functions, from sporting events to band and choir activities, after which there would always be big gatherings among the parents.
Zach Hadley dropped by Jack’s once or twice a week for a beer and Mike took the opportunity to get to know him a little better—his link to the high school kids paid off almost right away. He said the teens had their school functions from games to dances, but they also had a few haunts. Parties, both with parents home and away, keggers in the woods. He’d overheard some talk about an isolated old rest stop back off highway 109 where there were a few ancient barbecue pits, bathrooms and picnic tables. Highway 109 had been heavily traveled before the newer freeway was finished and now was more of a daytime road, left to the teens by night. A perfect place, when the weather allowed, to bring a keg or a case of beer. Where Mike grew up in L.A. the kids had desert keggers or beach keggers—but out here, they had the forest.
“As long as they don’t get way back in the woods, far from the towns, they’re probably safe from problems with wildlife or marijuana growers,” Mike said. But were they safe from each other? Mike wondered.
“That’s true, then?” Zach asked. “All that illegal growing they talk about?”
“It’s true,” Mike confirmed. “Listen, if you ever have any concerns that I can help with, I wouldn’t let on where I got the information.”
“Actually,” he said, keeping his voice low, “I happened to see something—a half-written note—that startled me. Got my attention—but I wouldn’t have the first idea where to go with it.”
“I’m your first idea,” Mike said.
“It’s just gossip, you know. Sometimes things kids that age say can be shocking—and entirely fictional. But the note said something like stay away from those parties. There was a rumor about a girl ending up pregnant, though she couldn’t remember having sex.”
Mike’s eyebrows shot up. “How’d you come across that?” he asked.
“A student left a notebook in class.” He shrugged. “I looked through it.”
Mike smiled. “I like your style. Nosy. Whose notebook was it?”
“I have no idea. I left it where I found it and it disappeared after lunch. Never saw it again, and I watched the kids, checked out what they were carrying into class. It belonged to a girl, I can tell you that. The doodles were all female.”
“You keep an eye on that, huh? Listen carefully,” Mike suggested. “That could be important information.”
“I know kids are going to drink some beer,” Zach said. “But if there’s any truth there, that’s some real hard drinking.”
“Yeah,” Mike said. And he thought—I bet it wasn’t the beer. “Keep me posted. I’ll never let on that we talked.”
Mike hung around the school, introducing himself, trying to cozy up to the kids, being as friendly and cool as possible. He knew he’d find some pot as he looked deeper. There was whispering of some methamphetamine, but no one breathed a word of roofies. Having Zach on his team was a big plus, but he was hoping to nab himself a teenage confidential informant, a CI who would feed him some names. The local police and sheriff’s department would already be looking into any underage drinking or illegal drug use when it turned up. But he wanted to know if any of his Virgin River girls were getting raped, and unless someone had filed a police report, local law enforcement wouldn’t know about it. And he already considered them his girls, his town.
He took a swing by the rest stop on 109 and found some beer bottles and condoms in the trash. He decided he might visit this spot with regularity, see who turned up. What turned up. He might even try a little woodsy surveillance. But winter came early in the mountains and he suspected that his window of opportunity was nearly closed for the season.
There was only one new guy on the block, as far as Mike could determine—seventeen-year-old Tom Booth, Vanessa’s younger brother, the general’s son. Tom hadn’t been in town very long, not long enough to effect any damage. Booth, who invited Mike to call him Walt, was a widower and introduced him to Tommy, who seemed bright and affable. Polite and sincere. He would probably be popular with the girls, but he didn’t know many people yet. If Tom were well acquainted at school, he’d make a good source, but that wasn’t the case. When Mel’s second patient had awakened pregnant after a party, Tom had still been back in D.C.
And then there was a host of boys who had passed the age of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen—and perhaps come into some serious hormonal brain damage. A little testosterone and a lack of values could do the trick.
Unsurprisingly, the one person he wished he could talk to about this was Brie. But if he was any judge, she wasn’t up to that conversation. It was still too close to her own violation.
Mike didn’t expect to find himself back at the sheriff’s department quite so soon, but he felt compelled to let him know what he was sniffing around for. Since he had no victim, no suspect, no evidence, he really expected the sheriff to thank him politely and ask Mike to keep him informed. To his surprise, the sheriff called a detective named Delaney into his office and introduced him as their representative to a multi-agency drug task force, comprised of law enforcement from each local, state and county agency. “We have a detective working sexual assault, but it sounds like that would be getting ahead of ourselves. I’ll check with him, though. Ask if he’s heard anything about this,” the sheriff said.
“Thank you, sir,” Mike answered. “I understand this is big marijuana country,” he said to Detective Delaney.
“We have a lot of that, yeah. But we have a growing problem with white dope and really want to get ahead of that,” he said. White dope would be meth, cocaine, heroine.
“Gotcha,” Mike said. “Heard any rumblings about ecstasy? Roofies?”
“Ecstasy, though rare. Roofies—no. But Jesus, if you chase that down…”
“You’ll keep us up to speed?” the sheriff interrupted.
“Absolutely,” he said. “With this reluctance on the part of possible victims to report this, it could be a long process.”
“Even more reason I’m glad you’re willing to look further,” the sheriff said. “Without a victim or charge, no way I could free up a deputy to look into this. I appreciate the help.” He stuck out his hand. “That little town upriver is lucky to have you around.”
“Thank you,” Mike said. What he didn’t say was that in this case his motivation went a bit deeper than simply finding a bad guy. This was hitting a little close to home. There was Brie…
