by Lisa Harris
“Did Mr. Hendrix say when he spotted it?” he asked his deputy, Jay Powers.
Jay, squatting next to him, shook his head. “He only said that he was here fishing yesterday and it wasn’t here. So, it washed in with the tide sometime during the night. He said it was clanking against the rocks and he hadn’t had a bite all morning.”
Holden glanced up to see the subject of their conversation giving a hearty wave from his schooner a quarter mile from the shore.
“Emergency my left foot.” Holden grumbled as he assessed the situation. He didn’t want to get wet. He really didn’t. But the bucket was too near to shore for a boat, and they’d tried every tool they had that might work. The handle on their net was too short, besides which, the bucket might be too heavy to lift from this distance and the rocks here were sharp and might cut the net if they dragged it.
There was also the consideration that if the bucket held something sinister, they really ought to record the area around it in case it was needed as evidence. They could go back to the office for the department’s dinghy, or for the waders, but that seemed like a lot of work for such a silly thing.
He glanced over at his deputy.
Jay winced and sighed.
But Holden waved him off. “Seem to recall that you were the one who got down in that sewer ditch when Mrs. Sorenson’s cat got stuck in that pipe last month.”
Jay looked hopeful. “I was.”
“Besides, I need something to wake me up.” Holden reached to unlace his boots. If he had to get wet, at least he wanted dry socks and shoes to put back on afterwards. He balanced awkwardly on first one foot, then the other to remove his socks without getting them wet, then stuffed the socks into the tops of the boots. He rolled his pants up to his knees, then slipped on a pair of evidence gloves.
The bucket wasn’t out far, but this was still going to be torture.
He couldn’t withhold a gasp as he stepped down into the lapping icy water. “Dang!” It was the worst his language ever got, but even that word didn’t seem to cut muster in this instance. At least he was no longer feeling drowsy.
Though yesterday had been nearly sixty degrees, temperatures had plummeted overnight and ice had formed along the edge of the shore. Cold didn’t begin to describe the water. His toes spasmed and cramped and already he could barely feel them. He’d be lucky if he didn’t come out of this with a smashed toe.
He hurried as quickly as he could through the rocky shoals. He didn’t want to lose his balance and end up wet from head to toe. It didn’t take him more than a few seconds to get to the lidded bucket, but he couldn’t just snatch it and run back to the shore. He clamped his teeth together to keep them from chattering as he used his phone to snap a series of pictures of the bucket’s position and the water all around it.
By the time he got back to the bank and handed it up, his feet were so numb that Jay had to help him out of the water. The towel Jay tossed to him, actually felt warm, even though it had been in the utility box in the back of their truck and it was thirty-three degrees outside.
Holden sank onto a rock and tugged his socks and boots on as quickly as possible.
“Do we open it here?” Jay asked.
Holden shook his head. There was too much risk of whatever was in the bucket getting contaminated if they opened it out here. Not that it was likely to be anything important. “Let’s get this back to the station, then we can crack it open and see what we’ve found.”
There was another bonus about opening the bucket back at headquarters. He wouldn’t say anything, but he hoped that Jay would crank the heat on the way back to the station.
And bless the man’s heart, he did just that as they pulled away from the shore, leaving Mr. Hendrix waving behind them. “Want to take bets on what’s in it?” Jay grinned. “I’m betting it’s…firecrackers that floated away from some shoreline home a few months ago.”
Holden flipped the dial on their old truck’s heating vents to direct the heat to his still-aching feet. “Likely as good a guess as any. Maybe it’s full of treasure that has been languishing at the bottom of the ocean for three hundred years and bobbed to the surface only last night.”
Jay rolled his eyes. “Yeah, because five-gallon buckets have obviously been around that long.”
Holden waved a hand. “There goes my theory, I guess.” He huddled into his coat, trying not to look as miserable as he felt. At least some of the feeling was returning to his feet now.
By the time they pulled into the parking lot at the station, he was starting to feel human again.
Kate Dollinger looked up from the reception desk, salt-and-pepper brows peaking as Holden followed Jay who carried the bucket through the door. “What have we here?”
Holden ignored her.
Jay only offered, “Bucket.”
Holden bit back a grin. Seemed Jay was as tired of Kate’s curiosity as he was.
Truth was, if he had any other person on the island that he felt he could talk into doing the job, he’d let Kate go in a heartbeat. She was much too nosy for the position. And too many times he’d caught wind of people knowing information they could only have learned from Kate. The job of receptionist at a police station required someone incurious and unflappable, and Kate lacked both qualities.
She rose from her desk and followed them across the room. “Oh my. Where did you find that? What’s in it?”
They stepped into the side room that normally functioned as the station’s interrogation room. But in this case the table would be used to examine the evidence.
The small room barely had space for the table and four chairs. Other than those, the one overhead light, and the two-way window, the room contained nothing else.
Jay was already stacking the four chairs in the far corner.
Holden nudged Kate out of the room. “You’ll know anything we need you to know when the time comes.”
“But—”
He shut the door. And then gave the blinds a twist, because even though he couldn’t see her from this side of the window, he knew she, at this very moment, had her face pressed up against the glass.
With nothing between them and the orange bucket on the table now, the two men stood over it as they donned rubber gloves.
Jay asked, “Ready?”
Holden nodded and gripped the base of the bucket. “Go ahead.” Island life must really be boring him if a little curiosity over a bucket could get his pulse skipping a few beats. His lips twisted in a smirk.
The plastic of the lid was new and stiff. It creaked and resisted. Jay worked his way around it, prying it up a little at a time. It hinged toward Holden, blocking his view. Jay glanced inside. “Dear God!” He leapt back so quickly that the lid clattered from his hand and rolled into the corner.
Holden’s brows shot up. He leaned forward and looked into the bucket. His heart stilled. What had he just been thinking about island life not being exciting enough? His stomach curled. This was worse than anything he’d ever seen while working homicide.
Inside the bucket lay a severed head, a foot, and maybe a few other parts beneath. The lid must not have been sealed all the way because the bucket was half filled with murky water that had swollen the tissues till they were almost unrecognizable for what they were.
He glanced at Jay who was still trying to gather himself in the corner. A case like this would stick with the kid for a while. Holden adjusted the bands of his rubber gloves and lifted the upper lip of the dead man. His teeth had all been pulled out. “A few more hours in the water and this poor guy would have been unidentifiable.”
With one hand propped against the wall in the corner of the room, Jay scrubbed a wrist over his forehead and spoke over his shoulder. “Think we’ll be able to get prints to identify him?”
“Probably.” Holden glanced back into the bucket. Something metallic caught his eye. He nudged aside the foot. His heart sank. The metallic object in the bottom of the bucket was a police badge. “But we won’t have to wa
it that long.”
The call came into the Everett Police Station just after five o’clock.
Detective Damien Packard could hardly believe the news. Ryan Skelly was a newer transfer to their department. He hadn’t worked here long, but Damien liked him. He couldn’t fathom that he was gone. Much less in such a manner.
It was bad enough that Treyvon Johnson had been killed. But now Skelly too?
Worse yet, this news confirmed what he and Case had been afraid of for several months now. There was a dirty cop in their precinct—maybe more than one.
He hadn’t known Treyvon all that well. The kid was barely past his training and had been undercover for most of the time since he’d been approved. But his first day as a rookie, his T.O. had been out sick and Damien had been assigned to the kid. They’d only spent that one day together, but Damien had liked the kid. He was made of the right stuff for this job. His death was beyond a tragedy.
And now to find out this…
Sheriff Holden Parker, the officer Case had worked with last year on a drug bust, was on his way here via chopper with what was most likely Skelly’s partial remains. Skelly, who’d been investigating Treyvon’s death just the night before. What had happened to Skelly last night? One minute, officers said he’d been at the scene and then he’d simply seemed to vanish.
Lexington strode toward him. His face was grim. “We really need to interview that witness. She’s been in the interrogation room off the deputy chief’s office all night. He’s not on the roster today, so I figured that was the best place to put her.”
“Right.” Damien stood wearily. “Now’s as good a time as any.”
Lexington strode toward the break room. “I’ll get coffee.”
Before Case had taken two steps, Captain Danielson poked his head out of his office. “Lexington! Packard! My office!” He disappeared again without giving them a chance to reply.
When they arrived in his office, it was to find Laurence Miller and his partner, Jack Kingston, already present. Captain Danielson was behind his desk, but not sitting. Arms folded, he leaned into his heels and glowered at them. “Miller tells me you snatched the witness from the scene last night?”
Damien clasped his hands behind his back in an at-attention pose, seeing Case do the same from the corner of his eye. Damien kept his mouth shut, letting Case formulate the reasoning behind his actions.
“We drew this one, Captain.”
Captain Danielson’s palm slapped down on his desk with so much force that a pencil jumped and rolled off. “I know you drew the case! But Miller says you dressed him down in front of a whole crowd of people!”
“No, sir. That’s not the way I saw it, sir.”
“How did you see it?”
“She was our witness, sir. We drew the… But you already know that.”
The captain leaned across his desk, eyes spitting fire. He brought his face to within inches of Case’s. “Are you yanking my chain, Lexington?”
Damien clamped his teeth to keep from coming to Case’s defense. It wouldn’t do his partner any good. Nor would mentioning that he hadn’t been at the scene of the hit-and-run because he’d been taking a bag of groceries to the ex-wife of an abuser they’d arrested last year. The captain wouldn’t care that the broken woman had captivated his heart and kindled his every protective instinct. Ever since the captain’s wife had come down with cancer several months back, he’d been surly and irritable. The whole precinct had been walking on eggshells for weeks now.
“No, sir. I’m not yanking your chain, sir.” Case was at full attention.
The captain seemed satisfied with that, because he eased back a little. “Very well. Where is she?”
Damien heard Case swallow. They couldn’t reveal that they had her in a concealed interrogation room because they didn’t trust their fellow officers. Not until they had proof, at any rate. But the very fact that Miller and Kingston had toddled in here to tattle on them, bumped them up several notches on the suspect list.
Case still hadn’t replied and the silence was stretching too long. Captain Danielson’s eyebrow twitched.
“We were just about to interview her, sir.” Damien was careful not to fidget under the captain’s gaze. “We wanted to be the first to speak to her so that we would have unmuddied testimony. But we’ll be happy to make her available to speak to others as soon as we’ve concluded our interview.”
“You’ll be happy to—” The captain’s voice trailed off, his tone revealing his astonished irritation.
It was time to send the punch all the way through. “Have you ever been displeased with any of our investigations, Captain? Lexington’s and mine?” He gave a beat for the captain to ponder before hurrying ahead. “I’d venture to say the answer to that is a firm no. Because we produce results. And we are able to do that because we are very particular about the way we do things—including how we interview eye-wit—”
All their radios blared at the same time. “All units, SCJ is reporting an escape. I need several units to move that way. Missing from roll call is Vossler. Kirk Vossler. Six foot, brown hair, brown eyes, medium build.”
“What the—” Captain Danielson was already racing for his door. “Miller. Kingston. You’re with me! We’ll finish this discussion later.”
Case and Damien were left in the captain’s office, staring at one another. An escapee at the Snohomish County Jail?
Case’s brow furrowed. “Wasn’t he the guy who was convicted of inciting that riot?”
“Pretty sure. Yeah.”
“Let’s hope it’s a false alarm.” Case batted his arm with the back of his hand. “Doesn’t matter to us right now. Let’s get this interview done and try to get this witness out of here before Miller and Kingston get back. My alarm bells go off every time either of them are in the room.”
Damien sighed and followed Case back into the main part of the office. He knew exactly what Case meant. There were too many little coincidences surrounding that team. Miller in particular. But they had no proof.
For now, their biggest priority had to be the safety of this witness. With two people involved in last night’s incident already turning up dead, they couldn’t take any chances with her life.
Chapter Six
Camryn couldn’t have said exactly how much time had passed when she woke. She lurched upright, and for a moment confusion had her searching the room as she tried to figure out where she was. The memories rushed in with a jolting clarity and she realized she’d fallen asleep.
What time was it? She tugged her phone from her apron. Nearly five! Panic swirled through her. She had to be to work in three hours. She’d slept here all night? No wonder she had a kink in her neck. She reached to massage it.
Maybe now was the time to set aside her qualms about God. She closed her eyes. “Lord, I know it’s been awhile. But if ever I needed you to show up, it’s now. You know how tight my finances are. I need to get to work. I can’t jeopardize this job! So if you could please speed this along and get me out of here, I’d appreciate it.” She felt a little guilty at the selfishness of the prayer in the wake of what she’d witnessed the night before, so tacked on a quick request that the people responsible would be caught.
The door from the deputy chief’s office opened, jolting her out of her prayer. Either this was the quickest answer to prayer in the history of the universe, or God had a cruel sense of humor.
A grim-faced man plopped a file folder on the table and sank into one of the seats. A different man than the one who’d brought her here. But about the same age, she guessed. Late twenties? Early thirties? His rawboned face sported a couple days’ worth of scruff.
“Sorry it took so long for us to get to you,” he said. “I’m Detective Damien Packard. My partner is the one who brought you here.” The detectives were younger than she might have expected men of their profession to be.
Camryn stood from the couch and took the lone seat on her side of the table. She glanced at her blurry ref
lection in the tabletop. It distorted even further as memories of the accident formed a horror film that kept replaying in her mind.
She lifted her gaze to the man across from her.
He silently returned her scrutiny.
He looked bone weary. His hair was dark, and he had striking light brown eyes and a hard set to his jaw that made her pity any criminal who crossed his path. But when he spoke, his voice was not unkind. “I’m sorry for all you’ve been through tonight.”
Camryn rubbed at a mark on the steel tabletop. “I only wish I could have helped—” Her voice broke and she cleared her throat.
The man folded his hands and leaned forward, casual but attentive. “I listened to the tape of your 911 call. Sounds like you did all you could. My partner will be here soon and—”
“I’m here.” Behind him, the blond man who’d brought her to the station pushed the door open with his hip, balancing three cups with a stack of napkins on top. “I figured we could all use some coffee.” He set the three lidded Styrofoam cups on the table and then stretched his hand to her. “I’m Detective Case Lexington, Detective Packard’s partner. Sorry we didn’t get a proper introduction earlier. I was in a bit of a hurry.”
She took his hand. “Camryn Hunt.”
He set the napkins aside and nudged one of the cups in her direction. “Cream? Sugar?” He pulled some packets and stir sticks from his shirt pocket and tossed them all on the table.
The coffee smelled divine. “This is fine. Thank you. When will I be able to leave?”
Neither of the men answered her. Detective Packard was the one who spoke. “We’d like you to tell us everything you saw last night, Camryn. Try not to leave out anything. We’ll prod for details if we need to clarify. But the most important thing you need to realize is that you’re not in any trouble here. We appreciate how cooperative you are being.” He placed his phone in the middle of the table. “We do need to record this conversation so we can refer back to it later. Is that all right with you?”