Sharon, Dalton mouths, and with that, I understand.
Sharon. One of our winter dead. The woman who'd died of a heart attack last week. Whom we'd been burying when Brady arrived.
Sharon was not a perfect doppelganger for Val. She was older. With longer hair. Heavier. Shorter. But none of that mattered for a water-bloated corpse floating facedown in the water. Cut the gray-streaked hair to Val's length. Dress her in Val's clothing. Put her corpse in the water and send it downstream, and even if we had managed to pull it out, between the rot and the bloat, it would have been hard to say it wasn't Val.
Peter Sanders had pulled that same trick with Nicole--found a dead hostile or settler and put her in Nicole's clothing and damaged the body enough that Dalton naturally concluded he'd found Nicole. Val knew we didn't have the equipment to test DNA, and that told her the trick might work again.
"Eric stopped to help me," Val says. "He couldn't resist, even when he considers me dead weight on your precious town. All I had to do was lie in his path, and he holstered his gun and raced over to help."
"And that's weakness to you, isn't it?" I say. "That he came to your aid, no questions asked, despite all the shit you've put him through."
"Put him through? I'm the one who's gone through hell in that godforsaken town. Condemned to coexist with people who lack the IQ to carry on a proper conversation with me. Yet they all tried. Even you, Casey. Especially you. You had to try to help a poor fellow female, trapped in her home, cowering like a mouse. I wasn't cowering, you idiot. I was waiting. You said once that the council constructed a prison for me--made me too afraid to leave my house. No. I constructed it. It was my refuge, and you couldn't leave me well enough alone."
"Yeah," Dalton says. "We're all assholes for giving a shit."
My look warns him not to antagonize her. I'm all too aware of that gun at his back.
"You should have left me alone, Casey," she says. "But you couldn't. You had to dig and poke and prod. Destroy what little sanctuary I had. Rob me of what few allies I had."
"Allies?" I say. "You mean the council? Because I proved they set you up to be raped?"
"I was not raped." Her voice shakes along with the gun, and I give myself the same warning I gave Dalton.
Stop. Just stop.
She continues, "I escaped. If you don't believe that's possible, it's because you didn't escape your attackers, Casey. You let them beat you. Let them almost kill you. Almost certainly let them rape you. You could not get away, so you cannot conceive of the possibility that another, stronger, smarter woman might have."
"Okay," I say, and it's a calm, even response, but she keeps shaking, wanting to fight, to defend herself, and I change the subject fast. "So you helped Oliver here. You ingratiated yourself with him, while pretending you were spying for us."
"And you bought it." She smiles. "You couldn't help yourself. Your pet project was showing signs of improvement. Joining the community. Making herself useful. I manipulated you into giving me access to him and you jumped at the chance."
"You brought supplies," I say. "Food. Weapons. That's why Oliver didn't bother retrieving my gun after he shot Brent. And you sent him to Brent. You knew Brent could lead you both to Jacob."
She says nothing. It doesn't matter. Not now.
Focus on the facts. On how this fills in the holes.
Brady attacked Brent because Val said Brent could get them a better hostage: Jacob. Who could also guide them out of the wilderness. And the companion Jacob saw with Brady? Val. From a distance, Jacob mistook her for a man. She brought those protein bars they shared, old stock she had access to. Brady had been so confident, he'd outright lied about it. Didn't even bother making up a story.
I have no idea what you're talking about, Detective.
Dalton jerks his chin toward Val, and it takes a moment to see what he's gesturing at--the rifle barrel poking over Val's collarbone, a gun slung at her back.
"You're the sniper," I say.
"Yes, I know my way around a gun, too, Casey," she says. "Did you presume I was too weak and timid? I told you I used to stay on my grandparents' farm. They had guns. I insisted on learning. I'm good at it--my aptitude for mathematics comes in handy with distance shooting. Of course, my grandparents didn't think it was a proper sport for a girl, so while they humored me as a child, I had to shoot in secret when I got older. Which was useful, as it turns out. Do you recall those boys who taunted me? Chased me? Tried to assault me? One died the month before he graduated from high school. Shot by a stray bullet in the forest. A careless hunter, it seems."
"And you shot Kenny," I say. "Who was no threat to you. Was never anything but respectful--"
"Respectful? He was a toad. Always trying to talk to me. Ask what he could do for me. I know what he wanted to do for me."
"So you shot him?"
"He was in the path of my actual target."
"Casey," Dalton says, when I don't respond. "You wanted to kill Casey. You felt threatened--"
"Threatened? By this child?" Val laughs. "No, Sheriff. I only wanted her out of the way. She stood between me and the one thing that really can get us out of this godforsaken wilderness."