Catherine Anderson
Forever After
In memory of Goliath, my faithful friend and fearless champion, whose premature passing left an emptiness in my heart that will never be filled. There are those who believe a dog has no soul and that heaven is reserved for only humans. Those people must never have known a dog like you. Wait for me on the other side, Big Guy.
And also to Paula Detmer Riggs, my psychic twin and adopted sister, the only person I know who’s as crazy, eccentric, preoccupied, and compulsive about spending money as I am. Here’s to fender benders and tall tales, pig slippers on Main Street, sour notes at high decibels, death threats on the office doorstep, semiautomatics in the book rack, tangled wires on Monday morning, panic before deadlines, countless pots of coffee, chocolate-kiss tinfoil, hitchhiking hummingbirds, grease spots on the office rug where Goliath gnawed his bones, shopping instead of working, and last but not least, laughing in the face of adversity. You’ve enriched my life with the best of all gifts: a friendship that will last Forever After.
Contents
Dear Readers
Chapter 1
A volley of shouts jerked Heath Masters’ attention from the…
Chapter 2
Heath felt like an accident victim in vertical traction with…
Chapter 3
Waiting for someone to answer his call, Heath held the…
Chapter 4
Over the next two days, Heath’s life was a whirlwind.
Chapter 5
The next afternoon Sammy came running in the back door…
Chapter 6
Heath glanced up and down the hall. In the line…
Chapter 7
Heath swung the hammer with enough force to drive the…
Chapter 8
“Merry? Hey, Merry!” Heath called, his voice booming through the…
Chapter 9
The following evening while Heath was fixing supper, Meredith excused…
Chapter 10
Man and dog, dog and man. Over the next week,…
Chapter 11
Arms propped on his desk, chin resting on one fist,…
Chapter 12
The minute Meredith reentered the house, she went to get…
Chapter 13
Wind gusted across the supermarket parking lot, whipping Meredith’s hair…
Chapter 14
Memorial Day weekend, Heath thought grimly, one of the worst…
Chapter 15
After locking Goliath in his kennel to keep him out…
Chapter 16
After making a quick trip to the bank the next…
Chapter 17
Meredith was so overjoyed to see Sammy that she dashed…
Chapter 18
Trying to ignore Goliath’s continuous pacing and whining, Heath stared…
Chapter 19
Heath had never been so furious. Walking away from the…
Chapter 20
As Heath reentered the building, the sound of a child…
Chapter 21
“Oh, my God!” Meredith cried as the Bronco crashed against…
Chapter 22
The pickup truck Heath hot-wired was a rattletrap, four-wheel drive…
Chapter 23
Heath felt the rigidity return to Meredith’s body, and by…
Chapter 24
When Meredith woke up the following morning, sunlight filtered through…
Chapter 25
I’m not your son. The words hung there in the…
Epilogue
The thud and clanking of landing gear resounded through the…
About the Author
Other Books by Catherine Anderson
Copyright
About the Publisher
Dear Readers:
When I was asked to talk about what inspired me to write Forever After, I reread the dedication page, and the memories came flooding back. Forever After was written as a tribute to one of the best friends I’ve ever had.
Goliath was a rottweiler who came into my life when he was only three weeks old. His mother had no milk—a great loss to the sheriff’s department—for Goliath had been handpicked to become a canine deputy. Sadly for the sheriff, he had no time to bottle-feed a tiny puppy, so I volunteered.
Goliath grew from a handful of black fur into a one-hundred-and-fifty-pound powerhouse of muscle. He was the smartest dog I’ve ever known, and not only adored children, but was fiercely protective of them. He would have been a phenomenal canine deputy.
After Goliath died, I mourned him deeply. I got a burning urge to rewrite his life story the way it might have happened if he had become a police dog. Naturally, the sheriff in Goliath’s fictional life had to be a totally great guy, so Heath Masters, the handsomest county sheriff this side of the Continental Divide, was born. There also had to be a frightened and endangered woman and child in the story for Goliath to fall in love with and protect, so Meredith and Sammy were born. From there, the story took on a life of its own, and to this day, it’s one of the best and most romantic that I’ve ever written.
As you read Forever After, please know that practically everything about Goliath is truth, not fiction. It is a tribute, after all. Yes, he really was that wonderful, loyal, incredibly brave, and funny.
Sincerely,
Catherine Anderson
Chapter 1
A volley of shouts jerked Heath Masters’ attention from the report he’d been filling out. Tension bunched the muscles across his shoulders as he stared down the steep embankment. When he saw that his deputies were still combing the thick brush, he relaxed slightly. Not another body, thank God. Evidently, his men and the ambulance attendants had merely been talking back and forth, their voices raised to carry over the roar of the rushing water that ribboned the canyon floor below them.
Three-quarters of the way down the slope, a blue Ford pickup lay upside down at the base of a massive pine tree. The vehicle’s body and framework had crumpled like so much tin foil, and the rear axle had snapped like a toothpick.
A sudden gust of wind kicked up from the ravine. As the updraft molded his khaki uniform shirt snugly to his torso and cut through the heavy denim of his Levis, Heath caught the faint smells of burned rubber and gasoline. Trying to ignore the odor, he braced his booted feet wide apart and welcomed the refreshing coolness.
For almost a week, it had been unseasonably warm for early May, and this afternoon was no exception. There were few trees to cast shade over this section of the road, and with the eastern Oregon sun baking his shoulders, he was starting to sweat. When the breeze huffed softly under the brim of his brown Stetson, tousling strands of sable hair into his eyes, he only blinked, letting the air caress his hot face.
As if to remind him he had work to finish, the wind also ruffled the sheets of paper attached to his clipboard. Half blinded by the glare of sunlight, he squinted to read his writing. His aching eyes teared in protest. Damn, but he was tired. The kind of tired that went clear to his bones. He’d been working too hard, he guessed. Three weeks running with no days off, pulling twelve- to fourteen-hour shifts.
That’s what happened when there were budget cutbacks. He’d been forced to lay off deputies, and now he was running himself ragged to take up the slack. Not that he minded the hard work. No. What really wore him down was the sense of defeat that dogged him. He couldn’t be everywhere at once, and when he wasn’t, things like this happened. A year ago, he would have had two deputies patrolling this area when the weather turned warm. Now he could only assign one. As a result, at least two kids had slipped through the cracks, and all Heath could do was pray his men and the paramedics didn’t find others.
After making another unsuccessful attempt to b
ring his writing into focus, he decided it was time to give his eyes a short break. After securing his pen to the clipboard, he trailed his weary gaze over the slope that yawned below him, searching the bushes and tall grass for anything that looked out of place. He wanted to believe he would see nothing. But after ten years in law enforcement, he knew better than to get his hopes too high. When high school boys cut classes to go down to the river and guzzle a few beers, they usually went in groups. Unless he missed his guess, there had been at least three youths in the cab of that truck and others riding in back. Without restraints, those in the back could have been thrown quite some distance from the vehicle. It only remained to find them.
Eventually, Heath’s attention came to rest on the pickup again. As he studied it, he could almost hear the scream of tires grabbing for traction, then the crunch of metal as the truck plunged over the embankment and flipped end over end. He tried to shove the images from his mind, but they seemed to have a root system equal to that of the lofty pine that clung so tenaciously to the slope below him. Memories. They always haunted him at the scene of an automobile accident, but never quite so cruelly as when he looked at that old Ford truck with its chipped blue paint.
A flare on the asphalt behind Heath emitted a soft hissing sound that reminded him of compressed air seeping slowly from a tire. Kaleidoscopic flashes of red and blue came from the light bars of the county vehicles parked on the shoulder of the road. Diluted by sunshine, the rhythmic rotation of colors blurred together to create an ethereal, muted mauve that lent a strange, pink brilliance to everything. It was like staring through heat waves with rose-colored glasses.
A burst of voices from one of the radios snapped Heath back to the moment. If he meant to get this accident report finished before the news hounds arrived, he needed to get cracking.
Bracing the clipboard on his left palm, he used the information on the driver’s licenses he’d found inside the two victims’ wallets to fill in their names, ages, and physical descriptions. In the photos, neither youth looked old enough to shave, let alone die. His hand shook slightly as he recorded the last entry, the tip of his pen squiggling below the line. Emotional detachment. Every lawman knew it was necessary to perform his job. Unfortunately, it wasn’t always easy to turn off your feelings.
Sighing, he returned the pen to his shirt pocket and set the clipboard on the bumper of one of the cars so it would be handy later. After fishing a tape measure and piece of chalk from his trouser pocket, Heath signaled down to Tom Moore, the deputy closest to him. “I need a hand up here!”
As Moore struggled to climb the steep embankment, Heath found himself wishing he’d asked one of the other deputies to help him. Moore wasn’t exactly one of his favorite people. In the six months since he’d been sworn in, the younger lawman had stirred up trouble more times than not with his over-zealous dedication to law enforcement. He was the kind of deputy who would slap cuffs on a four-year-old for stealing a two-cent Tootsie Roll. Even worse, he expected a pat on the back for a job well done.
To add insult to injury, Moore made no secret of the fact that he had his sights set on Heath’s job. That was frightening. Moore was state certified to do police work, but that didn’t mean he had what it took to be a good cop. In Moore’s case, though, that probably wouldn’t matter. When your daddy was the local mayor, strings got pulled and doors were opened. It also made it difficult for your boss to fire your ass, even if you damned well deserved it.
Having been raised and tutored by a successful politician didn’t hurt Deputy Moore’s prospects in county law enforcement, either. He’d cut his teeth on campaign tactics, and he honestly seemed to believe that political opportunism was an addendum to the golden rule. Heath had never known anyone who could so easily manipulate a situation to work in his favor or suck up to a camera with so much charm.
At first, Heath had been secretly amused by Deputy Moore’s aspirations to become the sheriff. In his opinion, the citizens of Wynema County would be better served if they pinned the badge on an orangutan. Now, however, Heath was no longer laughing. Moore missed no opportunity to make a name for himself, and he had no compunction about making Heath look as bad as he possibly could in the process.
The deputy’s breathing was labored by the time he gained the shoulder of the road. Panting, he leaned over and braced his hands on his slightly bent knees. “That’s one steep puppy, I’ll tell you.”
Heath had ascended the slope only a few minutes before, and he’d been only slightly winded when he reached the top. “Maybe you should consider joining a gym,” he suggested grimly.
Moore straightened, his eyes glinting as he scanned Heath from hat brim to boot top. “Is that what you do to stay in shape, old man? Go to the gym three days a week?”
Heath chose to ignore the dig about his age. In this line of work, being seasoned was a plus, not a minus. “I have a small ranch. The hard work that goes along with it is all the gym I need.”
Still huffing for breath, Moore dogged Heath’s heels as he walked up the road. At the rear of the ambulance, two stretchers lay side by side on the ground. Heath kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, trying not to look at the dark green body bags secured to the stretchers with straps.
When he reached the spot on the asphalt where the black tire marks began, he bent to make a chalk mark. “You ever done this before, Moore?”
“Done what?” the deputy asked with undisguised disinterest.
A muscle in Heath’s cheek started to tic. “By using the tire marks here on the pavement, we’re going to calculate the approximate speed the pickup was traveling when the operator lost control. It’s something you should know how to do if you want to be the sheriff someday.”
Moore raked his hand through his blond hair. “I attended the state academy, remember. I know how to do it. I just need to refresh my memory on the particulars.”
After carefully examining the tire tracks, Heath instructed Moore to hold the end of the tape while he took the necessary measurements. As he worked, he reviewed the “particulars” that had slipped his deputy’s mind.
“Once you determine the percentage of road incline or decline, and find exactly where the driver first applied his brakes, you measure the distance from there to the point where he was finally was able to stop. Then you plug your figures into the formula. You tracking so far?”
Moore flashed him a resentful look. “I think I can keep up,” he said sarcastically. “I have an IQ of a hundred and forty. As for tracking, boss, you seem to be the one who’s thinking a little slow. Aren’t you forgetting one important point? The truck didn’t stop. It went over the frigging cliff.”
Heath dug down deep for some patience. It was his job to train the little ass, and he’d damned well do it. “That’s right. The tire marks end prematurely at the edge of the embankment, which makes it impossible for us to determine an actual stopping point. So, instead, we’re going to pretend he was able to stop the truck before it went over the edge, and we’ll measure from the beginning of the tire marks to that imaginary stopping point at the cliff. If we plug that distance and the percentage of incline or decline into our formula, we’ll be able to calculate the maximum speed he could have been going and still have managed to stop before going over.”
“Which tells us what? As far as I can see, all we’ll know is the speed he wasn’t going.”
“Exactly.” Heath jotted down a figure as he walked back down the road between the streaks of black. “Since he failed to stop before going over the edge, we’ll know he had to be driving in excess of the speed we calculate. It’s not as close as I generally like to get, but with the embankment factored in, it’s as accurate as we can be.”
Balancing the clipboard on the fender of the car, Heath quickly worked the formula. The figure he came up with was mind-boggling. According to his calculations, the pickup had been traveling in excess of ninety miles an hour.
Gripping the clipboard so tightly that his knuckles ached, he rewo
rked the equation, scarcely able to believe he’d done it correctly the first time. When he got the same answer twice, a tingle of alarm walked slowly up his spine. He fixed a measuring gaze on Deputy Moore.
“You did say you didn’t come upon the scene of the accident until after the fact. Right?”
Moore rested his hands on his hips. “That’s right. Why do you ask?”
Shaking his head, Heath left the clipboard lying on the fender and strode out to the no-passing line that evenly bisected the pavement. Anyone who drove in excess of ninety miles per hour on a narrow stretch of country road like this had to be crazy. Or suicidal.
“What’s wrong?” the deputy asked.
Heath was too preoccupied to reply.
Why would a kid drive that fast? The question circled darkly in Heath’s mind, and he could think of no answer. Granted, teenage boys tended to drive with one foot in the carburetor, and most of them were daredevils. But as a general rule, they didn’t deliberately try to kill themselves.
Something—or someone—must have pushed the youth into driving that fast, Heath concluded, and he had a very bad feeling he knew what it had been.
He turned to pin Deputy Moore with a relentless gaze. “Are you absolutely positive you weren’t anywhere near here when that accident occurred?”
Moore huffed air past his lips. “You questioning my word?”
Snatching the clipboard off the car fender, Heath turned away without dignifying that question with a reply. The bunched muscles in his thighs protested with every step as he strode to his Bronco. Once inside the vehicle, he radioed in to the department. After making contact with Jenny Rose, the day-shift dispatcher, he suggested they move to a less commonly monitored frequency.