Unexpected Protector

by Justine Davis

  “The ‘chief’?” Demi repeated in a mocking tone. “You mean Cousin Finn? Is he still pretending to be in charge?”

  The two officers left the small eight-by-ten room without answering her. An angry, guttural noise escaped the redhead’s lips. Frustrated, she would have thrown something if she’d had something to throw.

  “Why am I here?” she demanded again, more loudly this time. Furious, she began to pound on the locked door. “I know you’re out there! I demand to be released. You can’t hold me here like this, you hear me?” she cried. “I haven’t done anything, damn it! You let me out of here! Now!”

  When the door suddenly opened just as she was about to start pounding on it again, Demi was caught off guard and stumbled backward. Had the table not been right there behind her to block her fall, she would have unceremoniously landed on the floor.

  “You’re here,” her cousin calmly told her as he and Carson walked into the room, acting as if they were about to have a run-of-the-mill, normal conversation, “to answer some questions.”

  Demi tossed her head, her red hair flying over her shoulder.

  “What kind of questions?” she asked defiantly, her dark brown gaze pinning him down.

  “Like where were you tonight?” Finn wanted to know, gesturing toward the lone chair on the opposite side of the table and indicating that she should sit.

  “Home,” Demi bit off, grudgingly sitting down. “I was in my home—since 5:00 p.m.” she added for good measure.

  Finn gave no indication whether or not the answer satisfied him. He waited until Carson sat down next to him, then asked, “Alone?”

  “Yes,” she bit off, then followed that up with a question of her own. “Why?” she demanded. Squaring her shoulders, she drew herself up and raised her chin, always ready to do battle with the world—and her cousin. “Is that a crime now?”

  Hearing Carson’s chair scrape along the floor as he started to rise, Finn shot him a warning look before answering Demi’s question. “No, but murder is.”

  “Murder,” the redhead repeated, growing more furious by the second. She made the only logical conclusion. “You think I murdered someone?” she cried, stunned. “And just who is it I was supposed to have murdered?” When Finn didn’t answer her immediately, she pounced on him. “C’mon, you can’t just throw something like that out and then leave me hanging in suspense, Finn. Just who was it that you think I murdered?”

  Unable to remain silent any longer, his hands fisted at his sides, Carson pinned her with a damning look as he answered her question. “Bo. You murdered Bo and then you stuffed a cummerbund into his mouth.”

  “Bo,” she repeated in noncomprehension. And then, for a moment, Demi turned very pale. Her eyes flicked from Bo’s brother to her cousin. “Bo’s dead?” she asked hoarsely.

  It was half a question, half a statement uttered in total disbelief.

  Then, not waiting for an answer, what had become known in the county as Demi’s famous temper flared, and she jumped up to her feet, her fists banging down on the tabletop.

  “You think I killed Bo?” she demanded incredulously, fury flashing in her eyes. “Sure,” she said mockingly. “Makes perfect sense to me. The man’s dead so let’s blame it on the woman he dumped—EXCEPT I DIDN’T DO IT!” she yelled, her angry gaze sweeping over her cousin and her former fiancé’s brother.

  “Sit down, Demi,” Finn ordered sternly. “And calm down.”

  Instead of listening to her cousin and taking her seat again, Demi Colton remained standing, a firecracker very close to going off in a flash of fireworks.

  “No, I will not calm down,” she cried. “And unless you have some kind of concrete evidence against me—” she said, staring straight at her cousin.

  “How about Bo writing your name on the asphalt in his own blood?” Finn said. “Demi C.”

  Demi paled for a moment. “The killer is framing me?”

  Finn raised an eyebrow.

  Demi gave him a smug look. “Just as I thought. You don’t have any sort of actual evidence against me. Okay, I’m out of here,” Demi declared.

  “You’ll leave when I tell you to leave,” Finn told her sternly. Rising from his chair on the opposite side of the table, he loomed over her.

  “Do you have any evidence against me, other than my name written in Bo’s blood and the fact that I had the bad judgment to have been engaged to the jerk for a month?” she asked, looking from her cousin to the other man in the room.

  Though it obviously killed him, Finn was forced to say, “No, but—”

  Triumph filled her eyes. “There is no ‘but’ here,” Demi retorted. “You have nothing to hold me on, that means I’m free to go. So I’m going.” Her eyes swept over her cousin and Carson. “Gentlemen, it has definitely not been a pleasure.”

  And with that, she swept past them to the interrogation room door like a queen taking leave of a pair of disloyal subjects.

  Finn shook his head as his cousin stormed out. “Hell of a lot of nerve,” he muttered under his breath.

  “As I recall, Demi was never the sweet, retiring type. If she was, she would have never become a bounty hunter,” Carson told him.

  Finn blew out a breath. “You have a point.” He walked out of the interrogation room with Carson directly behind him. “Well, check out her alibi, talk to anyone who might have seen her,” the chief said, addressing the victim’s brother. “I’m open to any further suggestions.”

  Carson looked at his boss in mild surprise. “I thought you made it clear that I wasn’t allowed to work on my brother’s case.” Although, he thought, since Finn could work on the case in which his cousin was a suspect, he should be allowed to investigate his brother’s murder.

  “Technically, you’re not,” Finn said as they walked out into the main squad room. “But I’m not an idiot, Gage. You’re going to work this whether I give you my blessing or not.” He stopped just before his office. “So you have any ideas where to start?”

  He’d been thinking about this ever since he’d found Bo’s body. The fact that Bo had written Demi’s name seemed pretty damning to him, but he didn’t want to discount the slim possibility that someone else had killed his brother.

  It didn’t warm his heart to have to admit this, but in all fairness, he had to. “Well, it’s common knowledge that Demi wasn’t the only woman Bo romanced and then dumped. I’d say that there were a whole lot of women who’d love to have seen Bo get what was coming to him. And that includes a number of disgruntled husbands and boyfriends, as well. Why don’t we start talking to them?”

  That Bo was a playboy wasn’t exactly news to anyone. Finn frowned. “But would any of them actually resort to murder?”

  Carson shrugged. Nothing jumped out at him, but this needed closer examination. “Only one way to find out,” he told his boss.

  “I agree,” Finn responded. “Make up a list. Meanwhile, I’m going to have some of the boys go over the crime scene with a fine-tooth comb, see if someone missed anything just in case. Although the ground’s undoubtedly been trampled on,” he commented.

  Carson nodded grimly. “Nobody ever said that solving crimes was easy. I can swing by my place, pick up Justice,” he said, referring to his K-9 partner. “See if maybe he can pick up a scent.”

  “After you put that list together,” Finn told the detective.

  Carson headed over to his desk. Given the hour, the squad room was practically empty. “Will do,” he told the chief.

  “Oh, and, Gage?” Finn called after him.

  Carson turned around, expecting further orders. “Yeah, Chief?”

  “I’m really sorry for your loss.”

  The words were standard-issue, said over and over again in so many instances that they sounded numbingly routine, yet he felt that Finn really meant them.

  “Yeah, me, too,” Carson
answered stoically, then added, “Thanks.”

  * * *

  Carson had just finished making a preliminary list of all the women he could remember Bo having had any romantic encounters with over the last several years when J.D. Edwards, one of the crime scene investigators, came into the squad room. J.D. looked excited.

  Temporarily forgetting about the list he’d just compiled, Carson crossed over to the man. J.D., in turn, had just cornered Finn.

  “You’re going to want to hear this,” the investigator was saying to Finn.

  The chief, seeing Carson, nodded at him, indicating that he join them. Carson was all ears.

  “What have you got?” Finn asked.

  “Lots,” J.D. answered. “First off, I found this under a wheel near where the body was found.” He held up a sealed plastic evidence bag. The bag contained a necklace with a gold heart charm.

  Finn squinted as he looked at the necklace. “That looks familiar.”

  “It should be,” the investigator said. “It belongs to—”

  “Demi,” Carson said, recognizing the gold heart. “That’s her necklace.”

  “And that’s not all,” J.D. informed them. The investigator paused for effect before announcing, “We’ve got a witness who says he saw Demi Colton running in the shadows around 6:45 p.m. near The Pour House.”

  “Six forty-five,” Carson repeated. He looked at Finn. “I found Bo’s body at seven.”

  J.D. looked rather smug as he said, “Exactly.”

  “Who’s the witness?” Finn wanted to know.

  “Paulie Gains,” J.D. answered.

  Carson frowned. He would have preferred having someone a little more reliable. “Gains is a small-time drug dealer.”

  “Doesn’t mean he couldn’t have seen her,” Finn pointed out. He looked at J.D. “How did he know it was Demi? It’s dark at that hour.”

  J.D. laughed. “Not that many people around here have her color hair, Chief.”

  Finn nodded. J.D. was right. “Okay, that puts her at the scene. Looks like we’ve got that evidence Demi kept going on about,” he told Carson, adding, “Time for that bounty hunter to do some heavy-duty explaining if she intends to walk out of here a second time. Let’s go wrestle up an arrest warrant.”

  Carson didn’t have to be told twice. He led the way out the door.

  Chapter 3

  It took a little time, but Carson and his boss finally found a judge who was willing to issue an arrest warrant at that time of night.

  “Do me a favor, lose my number,” Judge David Winkler told Finn, closing his front door and going back to his poker game.

  Tucking the warrant into his pocket, the chief turned toward Carson. “Let’s go. We’re not waiting until morning,” Finn told the detective as he got back into his vehicle.

  Armed with the warrant, for the second time in less than five hours police detectives hurried back to Demi Colton’s small ranch house on the outskirts of town, this time to arrest her.

  The house was dark when they arrived.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Carson murmured as he and Finn approached.

  Carson knocked on the door. When there was no response, he knocked again, harder this time. Rather than knock a third time, he tried the doorknob. He was surprised to find that the door was unlocked.

  Guns drawn, they entered and conducted a quick room-to-room search of the one-story dwelling. There was no one home.

  “Damn it.” Finn fumed. “My gut told me to keep her in a holding cell and not let her just walk out of the police station like that.”

  “Looks like some of her clothes are gone,” Carson called out to the chief, looking at a cluster of empty hangers in the bounty hunter’s bedroom closet.

  “Yeah, well, so is she,” Finn answered from the kitchen. When Carson joined him, Finn held up the note he’d found on the kitchen table.

  “What’s that, a confession?” Carson asked, coming around to look at the piece of notepaper.

  “Just the opposite,” Finn told him in disgust. “It says ‘I’m innocent.’”

  Carson said what he assumed they were both thinking. “Innocent people don’t run.”

  The chief surprised him when Finn said, “They might if they think the deck is stacked against them.”

  “Is that what you think? That she’s innocent?” Carson questioned, frowning. He supposed that there was a small outside chance that the chief might be right, but as far as he was concerned, he was going to need a lot of convincing.

  “I think I want to talk to her again and find out just how her necklace wound up under the wheel of that car,” Finn answered.

  In order to talk to the woman again they were going to have to find her. Carson blew out a long breath, thinking.

  “Maybe her father knows where she is,” he said, speculating. “Won’t hurt to talk to him. Man might be able to tell us something.”

  Although, from what Bo had told him about Demi’s contentious relationship with her father, Carson highly doubted that Rusty Colton would be able to give them any viable insight into his daughter’s whereabouts.

  But, Carson speculated, the old man might know something he didn’t know he knew. They had nothing to lose by questioning Rusty Colton.

  At least they would be no worse off than they were now, Carson reasoned as they drove over to The Pour House.

  * * *

  The bar’s door was closed when they got there, but the lights were still on. Carson banged on it with his fist until Rusty Colton came to unlock it. The tall, skinny man had his ever-present mug of beer in his hand as he opened the door.

  Bleary brown eyes quickly assessed the situation from beneath unruly reddish-brown hair.

  “Sorry, boys, I’m just about to close up for the night,” Rusty said just before Carson pushed his way in. Taking a step back, the bar owner regrouped. “Okay then, I’ll have to limit you to just one round—although I just might see my way clear to staying open a little longer if you two boys are willing to pay extra.”

  Small, beady eyes shifted from the chief to the detective. Rusty waited in anticipation to have his palm greased.

  He waited in vain.

  “We’re not here to drink, Mr. Colton,” Carson told the man coldly.

  He’d never cared for the owner of The Pour House. There was something palatably unsavory about Rusty Colton. Carson had no doubt that the man would sell his own mother if he needed the money.

  Annoyed, Rusty gestured toward the door. “Well then, ‘gentlemen,’ I need to get back to closing up my establishment,” he told them.

  Neither of the men moved toward the door.

  “We were wondering if you could tell us where your daughter is, Rusty,” Finn asked in a voice that said he wasn’t about to be trifled with. “Demi.”

  Rusty snorted. “She’s a grown woman, Finn. She comes and goes as she pleases. Ungrateful whelp never did mind me,” he said, banging down his empty mug on the counter. “I can’t be expected to keep track of her.”

  Carson moved in a little closer to the man. He wasn’t that much taller than Rusty, but he was a great deal more muscular and therefore more intimidating. “You keep track of everything when it suits you. Now, let’s try this again,” he said evenly. “Where’s Demi?”

  “Well, if you must know,” Rusty said, smugly drawing out each word, “she’s gone. Long gone. I think you two apes probably scared her and she hightailed it out of here.”

  That wasn’t good enough for him. “What makes you so sure?” Carson wanted to know. “Did she tell you?”

  “Didn’t have to,” Rusty answered, pushing together several glasses on the counter in a half-hearted attempt to clean up. “I stopped by her place during my evening break—I leave Amos in charge then. He’s dumb, but nobody’s going to try to skip out on paying that big ox,”
he informed the two men at the bar proudly.

  “Get back to the point,” Finn ordered. “You stopped by Demi’s place and then what?”

  “Well, she wasn’t home so I decided to dip into that big wad of cash she keeps under her mattress like I do every now and then—only when I need a little something to get me through to the end of the month,” Rusty admitted without a drop of embarrassment.

  “Except that I couldn’t this time,” he complained. “It was gone. Guess the little witch must have taken it and hightailed it out of here.” He looked quite put out by his youngest daughter’s action. “Didn’t even think to leave me any, my own daughter,” he complained.

  Carson exchanged looks with his boss. They weren’t going to get anything more out of Rusty.

  “Let us know if she comes back,” Finn told the man as he walked out.

  Rusty grunted something in response, but it was unintelligible and they’d already lost too much time, Carson reasoned, following the chief out.

  “Warrant’s not going to do us any good right now,” Carson bit out, handing the paper back to Finn.

  “I’ll put out an APB on her,” Finn said, striding back to his vehicle. “Maybe we’ll get lucky. In the meantime, have the team look into those people whose names you wrote down.”

  Frustrated, Carson nodded as he got into the car. For now, at least it was a place to start.

  * * *

  Early the following morning, Carson stood by as the chief called a staff meeting of all the K-9 cops and gave them instructions. Articles of Demi’s clothing, got from her house, were handed out in order to give the dogs a scent to track.

  Others on the force got busy looking into Bo’s past. The latter included interviewing women Bo had seen, exploring the various gambling debts he ran up and, since Bo had been an in-demand dog breeder who’d trained and sold dogs to people and organizations besides the police department, Carson started conducting a second background check on those people. Maybe there was a disgruntled client out for revenge and the situation had got out of hand for some reason.