Right Motive

by Christina Dodd

  “No, I don’t,” Shawn said.

  “Would you be willing to show me?”

  To Dumas’s surprise, Shawn said in that northern Midwest accent, “Well, sure.” He opened his shirt, one slow button at a time, and pulled back the material to reveal smooth skin over massive muscles.

  A. The guy worked out, which, except for the hair-all-over bit, matched Laila Shockley’s description.

  B. If, earlier in the day, a bear had clawed Shawn’s chest and shoulders, he had amazing healing properties, because the skin was smooth and unscarred.

  C. Or the guy/creature in the pickup who’d rescued Baby Bear wasn’t him.

  Dumas would have sworn it was, yet what could he do about it? He not only had no evidence, but no crime had been committed.

  “Okay, I’m done with that line of questioning.” Dumas shut his notebook. “Mrs. Magnusson… Theresa, if you’re reputed to have premonitions, did you have a hunch this vandalism was going to happen?”

  “That’s how you’re going to solve the crime?” Shawn’s voice rose. “By asking my wife about her premonitions?”

  Dumas returned to formality. “Sir, I never claimed I don’t believe in premonitions, nor did I ever say I would fail to use every tool in my arsenal to investigate criminal activity.”

  “Can I talk now?” Theresa snapped at her husband.

  Dumas hadn’t intimidated Shawn Magnusson, but his wife did. He subsided.

  Theresa said, “After I delivered the baby, I cleaned up and stepped out of their door, and I knew something was wrong. A malevolent soul had crossed onto our land, and he…” She paused as if in thought. “It was a he, and he takes delight in hurting, breaking, maiming. If I’d been here, he would have… He had hoped I would be here.”

  Donatti made a sound of distress.

  Shawn put his arm around Theresa and hugged her.

  “That doesn’t sound like—” Dumas paused.

  “Like Kittilia,” Donatti finished the sentence for him, then met his gaze. “He didn’t come into work this morning. Didn’t come in until after the Bigfoot call,” she corrected herself. “The first Bigfoot call. He was the logical guy to do this. But he’s more petty, if you know what I mean. Good-humored, but with bad morals. If it’s somebody like Auntie has described—do you want me to call for fingerprinting?”

  “I’m not putting you off, but not just yet.” Dumas glanced at his wrist. “I’m expecting a message, and there’s no signal. Do you have a hot spot nearby?”

  Theresa pointed behind the house. “We can get satellite there. Usually.”

  He followed the steep path to the tree-bare knob of land, and when he reached the critical point, his watch vibrated. He glanced at the message, then headed back down the path as fast as he could, pebbles and dirt rolling ahead of him. As he passed the shed, he said, “Donatti, you stay, get the official report together, and help your aunt and uncle clean up. I’ve got to go.”

  Donatti’s eyes flashed. He’d as good as told her he was expecting trouble. “But I’m on duty!”

  “That is your duty now.” Truth to tell, Dumas was glad for that excuse. In town, things were about to get ugly. This was his problem, his solution, and he needed to handle it himself. Like the first incident with West.

  Before Donatti could object more vigorously, he slid into the driver’s seat, locked the doors and roared off.

  Dumas turned from the gravel driveway onto the highway and drove about a mile before he spotted movement in the rearview mirror. He glanced, slowed abruptly, stared, then accelerated again.

  Doesn’t that just figure?

  * * *

  GABRIELLA DONATTI STOOD with her hands on her hips. “What the hell was that? You stay here and clean up while the big ol’ police chief goes to face…whatever danger it is he’s going to face?”

  “What makes you think he’s going to face danger?” Shawn asked.

  “You heard him. He’s going to solve the problem of the vandalism. Anyway, I knew something was up. He said so, and he’s been constantly checking his watch like he was waiting for a sign.”

  Theresa stood staring at the road. In that abstracted voice that made everyone in the family pay attention, she said, “Dear, I want you to take my car and go after him.”

  Oh, no. One of Theresa’s premonitions. That was never good.

  Shawn dug in his pocket for his keys, removed Theresa’s car key and fob, and tossed them to her.

  Gabriella caught them and started for the silver Subaru Forester. “I don’t know where he’s going.”

  “Then you’ll have to drive quickly, won’t you?” Theresa closed her eyes. “He’s going to a large, dim space. I can smell tires. And oil. It’s got a red sign above the door into the office.”

  Shawn and Gabriella spoke at the same time. “Cold Road Tire.”

  “That helps.” Gabriella slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

  Uncle Shawn appeared at the window.

  She rolled it down.

  “You be careful.”

  “You know I will,” she promised, and drove like a bat out of hell toward Rockin.

  Shawn watched her make the corner. He shifted from foot to foot. “Dear, I know she’s our adult daughter and has proved herself capable in every way…”

  “She is amazingly capable,” Theresa said. “I’m so proud of her.”

  “I’m proud of her, too.” He never took his gaze away from where she had disappeared. “And I don’t ever have any premonitions.”

  “That would be a bit much for one family.”

  “At the same time…how mad do you think she’d be if we wandered into Rockin today? Not to check up on her or anything, but to make sure everything is…”

  “Okay?” Theresa moved toward his truck. “Well… She did take my car, and Anna Cameron is in labor. It makes sense to go retrieve it.”

  He dashed forward and opened the passenger door. “Let me help you.” He cupped her butt as she climbed in, and asked, “Have I told you how wonderful you are?”

  “Not lately.” But she smiled as he hurried around to the driver’s side and climbed in. As he whipped the truck around and headed out, she said, “Don’t speed, dear. Trust in Gabriella’s strengths.”

  Shawn growled softly.

  But he drove the speed limit into Rockin.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DUMAS DROVE WITH the siren off and the red-and-blues on, doing a hundred miles per hour on the straights. When it came to over-the-speed-limit driving, he could have given Donatti a run for her money. Give him curves, and he would have left her in his dust. He’d had more practice on narrow roads, and he’d had experience keeping an eye out for wildlife; although a moose looked radically different than an alligator, they both would trash a speeding cruiser.

  The text he’d received at Magnusson’s home had been from Rob Colip of Cold Road Tires, letting him know that Rob had withheld payment from Kittilia and his partner—whoever that was—and the two officers were on their way to force Colip to pay or close.

  Dumas passed the Welcome to Rockin sign, slowed to the proper speed and drove into the parking lot of Cold Road Tires.

  The three giant garage doors were closed.

  The lights were off.

  All was silent.

  Dumas cruised around to the office door and parked, hoping against all hope that it was unlocked because on a Wednesday afternoon, a closed sign in the window of the local tire shop was bad. Very, very bad. When he started imagining how dire it could be, he wanted to crawl through the mail slot and take the whole place hostage.

  But no. He was a modern cop bound by modern rules. Not even in Alaska could he drive up, talk the tough talk, shoot up the shop and come away polishing his badge.

  He had to look on the bright side. There would be no civilians in the line
of fire. At least he hoped not. He reached for the knob, turned it slowly, opened the heavy steel door, eased into the dim, empty manager’s office and closed the door behind him with hardly a click.

  Rob Colip had requested Dumas handle the situation himself. He didn’t know—no one knew—how far the bribery racket went.

  Right now, alone and facing a possible shoot-out, Dumas wasn’t so sure he’d made the right decision by concurring.

  Dumas released the safety on his service revolver and opened the door between the manager’s office and the tire shop. He waited in tense anticipation, and when no shots were fired, he peered in.

  Two cars were up on the hoists.

  A car and a pickup had been pulled into the bays behind them. They blocked his view of the far side of the garage.

  In the middle between the hoists, one body was sprawled lifelessly on the concrete: Rob Colip, his hands tucked beneath him as if he’d grabbed his chest as he fell.

  The poor bastard. He’d set out to right a wrong and died for it.

  Dumas had come too late.

  He looked up, peered around, saw no one else. Kittilia and his partner were not visible from this vantage point. But they had to be here…somewhere.

  Up on the hoists?

  Most likely.

  Behind the vehicles parked against the garage bay doors?

  Also likely.

  This had all the makings of an ambush.

  He could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall. The smell of tires, of oil, of fear wafted toward him in waves. He imagined he could hear the mechanics calling to each other, talking to the customers, sending them away to escape this final showdown.

  Dumas’s sense of unease deepened. He knew, looking back, he’d somehow been played.

  He shouldn’t be alone in this. He should have called in his men.

  What a crunch to his pride to admit he couldn’t handle this on his own.

  On the other hand, what kind of fool got himself killed for pride?

  Pulling his watch close to his face, he typed a message to the Rockin police department. Come in. Come swift. With caution. He included the address.

  He immediately got an affirmative, and decided to back out and wait.

  Then he heard it—a rhythmic thumping, metal against metal. Something big was pounding on…a door? Was someone locked inside a closet? A customer?

  Dumas stepped into the garage and shut the door behind him with barely a click. He lifted his service weapon in both hands and swept the room. Then he eased himself along the wall, one slow step at a time, toward the pickup parked by one of the doors. He was looking for the trap.

  Where was Officer Kittilia? Where was his partner in crime? They weren’t visible anywhere.

  And who was his partner?

  Dumas didn’t believe he was wrong about Kittilia. The guy was weak, not vicious. Kittilia wouldn’t have wantonly destroyed Theresa Magnusson’s greenhouse. The other officer must sport a mean streak, and Dumas didn’t know who on the Rockin police force that could be.

  Pistol in hand, Dumas looked under the pickup. It was tall enough for a man to hide under, but no man did, and he inched between the pickup’s tailgate and the garage door. On the other side of the vehicle, he peered around the taillight into the corridor formed by the truck and the car beside it. He could see Rob Colip stretched out on the floor, but no one else.

  He prowled behind the trunk of the other vehicle, a sporty BMW 330i, moving more quickly but still silently. On the other side, he bent low and crept past the driver’s door toward the hoist and the—

  He halted. He stared.

  Six feet from the BMW’s front bumper, under the edge of the car-laden garage hoist, Officer Kittilia sat strapped to a folding metal chair. The chair sat on the metal plate that protected the hoist’s belowground mechanism. His ankles had been taped to the chair legs. His wrists had been pulled behind him and taped to the chair seat. Broad silver tape ringed his throat. Tape covered his mouth and wrapped around the back of his head. He resembled a partially wrapped mummy.

  His sweaty skin had the pale tinge of oxygen-deprivation. He saw Dumas, registered relief, then in an increase of agitation, he shifted his eyeballs—they were the only part he could move—toward the middle of the garage.

  Dumas eased forward, viewed Colip’s unmoving body, then returned his gaze to Kittilia. What is it, man? Where’s your partner?

  Again Dumas eased forward, all his senses straining to detect a sound, a movement. Nothing. He looked up everywhere—on the hoist, up by the high windows—and saw nothing. At last, he stepped away from the relative safety of the vehicle and looked around.

  Nothing. There was nothing but Kittilia strapped to a chair and the dead or at least inert Rob Colip.

  What’s going on? What am I not observing?

  He set the safety on his pistol, looked around again, then started toward Kittilia.

  Kittilia’s brown eyes bulged, and frantically he bounced up and down, awkwardly thumping the metal chair on the metal plate.

  That was the sound Dumas had heard in the office.

  Across the garage, the office door slammed open. “Put the weapon down, sir. Put it down!” Donatti’s voice, raised in a commanding shout.

  Dumas pivoted to see Donatti, service pistol extended, framed in the opening—and a completely conscious Rob Colip aiming the automatic pistol he’d kept hidden beneath his body pointed at Dumas, and at Jim Kittilia.

  Donatti shot three times.

  Colip shot, a blast of bullets that sprayed the walls.

  As Dumas launched himself sideways into Kittilia, he had one thought.

  I misread the whole situation.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  That evening

  POLICE CHIEF RODOLPHE Dumas leaned down to put the towel-wrapped pot of gumbo into the cooler, and groaned. He groaned as he added the rice cooker, lugged the cooler out to his car and groaned again as he hoisted the whole thing into the back of his truck.

  A man in his fifties did not fling himself at a trussed-up fellow officer, taking them both down and skidding across the metal plate and then the cement floor, without consequences. He had bruises and aches he would never have noticed in his twenties. But the brief review of his life that passed before his eyes had given him an appreciation for what he had here in Rockin, and cleared away any lingering doubts about his future in Alaska.

  He limped to the driver’s side door, slid into the seat and pointed the truck in the direction of the Due North Apartments. He got there in time to see Donatti getting into her personal vehicle. He pulled up behind her and called, “Chère, can I drive you to your parents’ house?”

  Like a doe in the headlights, Donatti froze and stared. “My…parents?”

  “The Magnussons.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. “I called in a favor to get the results of the blood tests early.”

  “Blood test?” She emphasized the singular. “The one I took in the alley? Did I contaminate it?”

  “Why don’t you get in and we’ll talk?”

  She had little choice. She could either talk now or later. So she locked her car, came around to the truck’s passenger side, climbed in and belted up.

  As he drove through the parking lot, he caught a glimpse of Laila Shockley going into the apartment offices.

  He waved.

  She stared in wide-eyed consternation, then waved in return.

  Damn. He wasn’t in uniform. Donatti wasn’t in uniform. They were driving out together in a civilian vehicle… Being a smart woman, Laila would have questions about him and the young officer beside him.

  Complications. Always complications.

  He got back on the street, then hit the highway toward the Magnussons’, following the same route they’d driven earlier today.

  H
e could tell Donatti was thinking, and he waited to hear what she’d say.

  Finally she asked, “What did the blood test say? One test, right?”

  “Two. I took a sample of blood while you were getting the kit from the patrol car.”

  “Why did you do that, chief?” She sounded more than a little annoyed.

  He glanced at her. Yes, definitely annoyed, but not scared of him or what he’d do or say. Good. She knew he was a friend. “At the time, I told myself the blood was drying and we needed to make sure we got that sample. Now I think my instinct was speaking to me.”

  “I was not behaving normally?”

  “I couldn’t tell if you were laughing at Ms. Shockley, which seemed out of character, or if you were frightened, also out of character.”

  “I was both. I wanted to do the right thing for both my family and my job, and they were in opposition. It was…weird.” She seemed to notice she had admitted she was related to Bigfoot and hastily added, “So two tests?”

  “The first one, from my handkerchief, revealed the DNA of a white male, not in any database, with an interesting gene. A mutation.”

  “Yeah.” She stared through the windshield.

  “The second test was clearly two different persons, one male, one female. They are directly related, and the female doesn’t have that confusing gene.”

  “Yeah.” She settled back in her seat. “Are you going to interrogate me about my family?”

  “No.” He had it figured out. “How was the psychiatric evaluation?” Because a psychiatric evaluation was a law enforcement requirement after an officer had fired a weapon that resulted in death, and Donatti had spent the afternoon with a psychiatrist.

  “The usual. I didn’t feel bad about shooting that bastard who had caused so much pain and, oh gee, intended to shoot you because you were interfering with his intimidation scheme.”

  “But you made sure to show some remorse about taking a life.”

  “You bet. I don’t need to be written up as a cold-blooded killer. Even though in this case—”