Montana Refuge. Alice Sharpe

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СКАЧАТЬ box and carted it outside. Not stopping for even a backward glance, she walked down the busy sidewalk wrapped in a bubble of invisibility. She’d felt this way once before in her life, a year or so ago, when she’d come face-to-face with the fact that her marriage was over.

      But she wasn’t in Montana anymore, she was in Portland, Oregon. Instead of high mountains and cattle trails, she now walked the city streets of the Pacific Northwest. Different climate and situation, same desolate feelings of failure and guilt.

      Why had she trusted Roger Trill?

      Her bus stop was up ahead and she approached it with leaden feet, pausing at the edge of a cluster of other waiting people, standing next to a woman wearing a purple scarf.

      The brisk wind that blew up the gorge and over the river tangled Julie’s long hair. Almost dizzy with regret, she closed her eyes until she sensed the shift of the crowd and opened them in time to find the bus approaching.

      The push came from nowhere, a shove in the middle of her back that sent her catapulting into the street. The box flew from her arms as she fell and the collective gasp of the onlookers mingled with the screech of air brakes as the noise of traffic faded away.

      She hit first on her knees, then her hands, her forehead banging against the pavement, coming to rest with her right cheek smashed against the road. Huge tires filled her vision. Diesel fumes scorched her throat. It was too late.

      Hands grabbed her, yanked her, pulled her. The bus doors squealed open and a driver exploded from within. “What the hell?” he shouted. “You trying to kill yourself, jumping out in front of my bus like that? You crazy, lady?”

      Things were fuzzy. People were picking up her belongings and putting them back in the box and it seemed unreal. Somehow she’d ended up sitting on the curb, stomach rolling, head throbbing, knees and hands embedded with gravel while her unruly hair whipped around her head.

      A policeman knelt down beside her. He was in his thirties with piercing blue eyes and a fuzz of brown hair. His smile was movie star quality as he tried to reassure her.

      She wasn’t even sure how he got there or when. He introduced himself as Officer Yates and talked to her about a psych evaluation which wasn’t surprising considering the bus driver was still telling anyone who would listen that she’d jumped in front of him.

      She shook her head which made her want to throw up. “No,” she said. “I was pushed.”

      She said it in a whisper. The policeman looked up and around and so did she. Some of the crowd had dispersed. A few remained, including the woman in the purple scarf.

      The policeman questioned each of them. What had they seen or heard? Very little, it seemed. He took names and numbers. The last person he approached was the woman in the purple scarf. “I heard what she said,” the woman said, nodding at Julie. “She might be right.”

      Officer Yates wrote on a pad. “You saw something?”

      “Yes. A man in a black hoodie thing. He was standing behind her. I saw his hand come out of the pouch on the front. Now that I think about it, he might have pushed her.”

      “Did you see his face?”

      “No. He was wearing sunglasses, that’s all I can tell you.”

      “Young, old? Short, tall? Thin, heavy build?”

      “I couldn’t say about age. I’m old enough almost everyone looks young. His sunglasses were big and had those orange lenses that you don’t see much anymore. He was just a medium-size guy. Oh, and he wore a silver watch.”

      “Do you remember anything else about the watch?”

      “No, just that it was silver.”

      “And what did this guy do after the accident?”

      “I don’t know. I wasn’t watching him. We were all watching her, you see. I thought for sure she was a goner. It wasn’t until she was safe that I wondered about what I’d seen, but by then the man in the hoodie was gone.”

      The officer told the woman he’d be in touch, then he ushered Julie into his car and drove her to the emergency room where a nurse used tweezers to pick asphalt from the abrasions on her hands and knees. Next came ointments, bandages and a tetanus shot. She was asked a few questions about how many fingers the doctor held in front of her face and who was president of the United States, then she was released.

      The policeman had waited for her. “I’d like you to come look at some mug shots if you’re up to it,” he said.

      Julie blinked in confusion. “Mug shots?”

      “We have a few troublemakers working this district. Lately they’ve been distracting women and stealing their pocketbooks.”

      “And you think that’s what happened to me?”

      “I think it’s a possibility. Maybe someone got a little too enthusiastic and pushed too hard. Then when they saw what happened to you, they were afraid to take the handbag because everyone was watching. I’ll ask the other people at the stop to come down and give it a go, too. I don’t suppose you can add anything to the description the older woman gave?”

      “I was preoccupied,” Julie mumbled. “I wasn’t really paying attention.”

      “Well, you can do it tomorrow if you’d rather. We might get lucky.”

      “Might as well get it over with,” Julie said.

      He drove her back downtown where she carted her pitiful box of desk contents upstairs to a desk where he produced two books of mug shots and asked if she’d like something hot to drink. Julie requested coffee and he left to get it for her as she started what she suspected would be the pointless process of looking through the books. She’d been way too focused on her own problems to notice anyone but the lady in the purple scarf.

      She looked around the room, wishing that the coffee would arrive as her head had begun to pound and some of the pictures in the book even blurred. Officer Yates must have gotten sidetracked.

      She rubbed her temples as two men came into view walking down the hallway that ran on the other side of the interior windows. They stopped more or less across from her. Their body language caught her attention and shading her eyes, she looked at them surreptitiously through the gaps between her fingers. Whatever they were talking about had at least one of them pretty upset. She could hear a raised voice.

      The man closest to her was of dark complexion and built like a linebacker. He was the one doing most of the talking, punctuating his sentences with jabs of a finger. The other man was shorter with an average build, sharp features, colorless eyes and thin lips. He wore a badge on his belt and it showed because he’d pushed his jacket aside to bury his hands in his trouser pockets.

      In a world gone topsy-turvy, she recognized Roger Trill and he carried the same badge Officer Yates had shown her.

      What was he doing here?

      He glanced up as though sensing someone staring at him. She’d dropped her hand in surprise and their gazes locked. He appeared as shocked to see her as she was to see him.

      He instantly interrupted his fellow officer СКАЧАТЬ