by Rachel Ford
He spoke with the polished, almost practiced tone of someone who had spent most of his adult life abroad. Not quite British, but almost: a Midwesterner, trying to sound posh and superior.
It followed that he would have some accent, since much of his time at school and all of his working life had been lived overseas. But Halverson thought it was overdone. Overdone and off-putting.
Of course, it might have been the content of his speech rather than the delivery. Or maybe it was the smugness in his tone. The undisguised schadenfreude.
Halverson wasn’t one to wish a man guilty. That would be unprofessional and unethical. It might cloud his judgement. But the more he listened to Joshua Wynder, the closer he got to breaking his own rule.
He could see himself slapping him in cuffs. He could see Wynder’s glee turning to something else entirely when a sentence of seventy-five years, or life, came down.
Too bad they did away with the damned chair.
For all that, the young man had a rock-solid alibi. He’d been half a country away or in the air during the time of his stepmother’s murder.
“I know what you’re thinking, Sheriff. But I don’t have to pretend to be sorry that the old bitch bought it, because there’s no way I could have done it. Lizzy can tell you: we met up last night and had drinks and dinner. We took the plane together, stayed at a hotel by the airport, and met Brit this morning for the ride down here.”
“So your sister is your alibi?”
“And I’m hers. But you don’t have to take our word for it. Check our credit cards. Check the hotel records, and the airline. Hell, look at the bloody CCTV footage. I’m sure there’s mountains of it.
“You’ll need a warrant first, of course. But by all means, have at it. Knock yourself out.”
Halverson reminded Mr. Wynder that this was a homicide investigation.
He put on a patiently amused expression. “I didn’t think it was a social call, Sheriff. But unless you think I shot her from an airplane, I humbly suggest you need to look elsewhere.”
The sheriff decided that the wrong Wynder’s had been killed. Not that anyone should have been murdered, of course. But in the elder Wynder children, he saw two far more deserving targets than their parents.
The news reached Owen later that day. He was at the café. He’d already picked up his printing. Now Tanney was looking through his printouts while they drank coffee.
The old man grunted and snorted now and then. He conceded that maybe there was something there, but that he couldn’t find any connection between them. “And without a connection…”
“I know, I know,” Owen said. “I’m working on it.”
Which wasn’t entirely true. He was trying to work on it. But Tanney’s commentary interrupted his thoughts, almost on a schedule: every time he really started to get back into it, the old man would have some new observation.
And then the news came of Marsha Wynder’s death. It happened in pieces. One of the locals bustled into the shop. She was an older woman, with dark hair going gray around the temples.
She seemed to know the barista. She greeted her by name, and ordered a coffee, extra sweet with room for cream. Then she leaned in close and started talking.
She made no pretense about her purpose – or her excitement. “Did Danny tell you about the shooting?”
Owen didn’t know who Danny might be, but the topic caught his attention. He figured eavesdropping wasn’t any worse than gossip. So he stopped pretending he wasn’t interested. He watched them in earnest.
“Shooting?” the barista asked. “Not a word.”
The older woman nodded briskly, like she expected the answer. Expected, and was pleased by it. “The judge’s wife. Marsha Wynder. Someone blew her brains out some time last night.”
The barista gasped, and old man Tanney looked up frowning and muttering to himself.
“Do they know who?”
The old woman shook her head. “No idea. But Danny thinks it’s the same guy that did the judge. Came back for round two, I guess.”
The barista was horrified. She said so two or three times. “Poor Marsha. After losing Rick like that, too? Couldn’t he have left her alone?”
“I think he never meant for her to live. She wasn’t home when it happened the first time. He couldn’t hang around with a dead body in the front yard. So he came back a few days later to finish the job.”
The barista shivered. The old woman went on, providing nothing more in the way of information, and plenty by way of speculation.
Tanney frowned down at the papers. Owen gave up eavesdropping and stared in surprise. “Marsha too?”
“So what’s her connection to all this?” the old man asked.
He thought for a long moment in silence. Then, he shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.”
Tanney sighed and pushed the pages away. “None of it makes sense. We’re trying to fit the facts to a theory. Like those nutjobs with Nostradamus. You can make anything fit a theory, if you’re set on it. But that doesn’t make this any more believable than Nostradamus’s prophecies.”
Which, of course, Owen didn’t accept. His pattern was real. He was convinced of that. And he remained convinced of it.
Until more information came in. Danny was apparently one of the medics who worked for the county. Danny was the old gossipy lady’s son, and the barista’s boyfriend.
And every bit as much of a gossip as his mother. He called the girl behind the counter shortly after his mom came into the shop. They spoke for fifteen minutes.
Then she headed out from behind the counter and settled into the table across from her boyfriend’s mother. She threw a quick glance over her shoulder.
Owen and Tanney each dropped their eyes, like they weren’t spying on the pair, waiting for gossip.
She must have noticed them, because she spoke in low tones. Owen missed some of what she said, but the gist was plain enough.
Danny Loose Lips had it straight from the medical examiner himself: Marsha Wynder had been killed sometime between five and eight o’clock the night before. She’d died of two gunshots to the head, which had left her a bloody and unrecognizable mess.
The two women lingered on the grim details with an interest that seemed ghoulish. But then the barista went on. “The killer took a trash bag from the bathroom trash. Dumped rubbish all over the floor.”
“A trash bag? Why?”
“The sheriff thinks it was to bag his shoes, before he got into the car. He got blood on them. Her blood. It was all over the carpet. That’s what Danney says. He wouldn’t want to track that into his car.”
The old woman, Danny’s mother, smiled in some kind of morbid appreciation. “Smart bastard, that killer.”
“Danny thinks it’s the same guy who got Rick.”
“That’s what he told me, too.”
“But the sheriff thinks it might be some kind of burglary. Some of the judge’s stuff went missing.”
The old woman’s face lit up as the plot thickened. “Really? What stuff?”
“A computer, and something from one of the desk drawers. They’re not sure what.”
“A computer? They need to be checking the pawn shops. Someone who’d kill for a computer probably plans to pawn it. Probably for drugs. People do that, more than you’d think. I’ve read about it.”
“They should be checking online,” the barista whispered excitedly. “That’s where I’ll bet he’ll try to sell it. Craigslist or eBay or the Facebook Marketplace.”
The older woman glanced at the younger, a sour expression on her face. But she ceded the point with an, “I suppose.”
They went on in this vein for another few minutes. Then a new customer walked in, and the barista had to work. Loose Lip Danny’s mother finished her coffee and headed for the door, her eyes gleaming.
Intent, no doubt, on spreading this new intelligence to any and all of her acquaintances.
Owen shook his head, although he wasn�
��t in much of a position to judge. Eavesdropping might be marginally better than gossiping, but that was a very subjective hierarchy. One he’d constructed himself, for his own ends.
Still, he figured his own interest was more legitimate than theirs. They were entertaining themselves with the details of someone’s death. He was trying to solve a murder – a series of murders.
“Well,” Tanney said, “I hope I don’t get murdered here. Not that I want to be murdered at all. But whoever this medic is, he’ll have my business all over the county before I’m cold.”
Chapter Seventeen
Owen spent the day thinking about the case, and he came to the conclusion that he’d got it all wrong. This was an aberration. This was a change from the usual pattern.
His killer – and he did still believe there was a killer out there – struck once and moved on. He didn’t wait around to pick off relatives of the victims. He never struck twice in the same area, much less in the same family.
The other victims fit that pattern. But Judge Wynder didn’t. Judge Wynder was an outlier. Someone had gunned him down in his garden, and then gunned his wife down in her own home.
Someone other than his killer.
So he gathered up his papers and shook his head. “I got it wrong,” he told the old guy.
Tanney nodded slowly. “Well, it was a good theory.”
He was being polite. Owen knew that. Whatever fledgling confidence Tanney had started to put in his ideas, the murder of Marsha Wynder eliminated it all.
The old guy thought of him as a kook. A well-meaning kook, but a kook all the same: one of those weirdos with an overactive imagination and too much time on his hands. One of those weirdos who watched true crime shows and considered himself a detective.
Owen couldn’t blame him. He’d certainly done himself no favors in his time here.
They each ordered another coffee. They drank it in silence. Then Owen said he should be getting back to the hotel.
“You leaving tonight?”
He shook his head. There was bad weather in the forecast – snow and freezing rain. No sense driving on icy roads after dark. Plus, he’d reserved the room through the week. “Not tonight. I’ll go tomorrow morning.”
They got into the vehicle, with the same slow process as always. Then Tanney buckled himself in. “Hey,” he said. “You know what we need?”
“What?”
“A drink.”
Owen shook his head. “Can’t. I’m driving.”
“I’m not.”
“I need to get back to my room and do some thinking.”
“About what?”
“The case.”
“There is no case, Owen. You just got done telling me that.”
Owen shook his head again. “I told you Wynder isn’t part of the case. But the rest of them – Manilow and James and Danielson and all of them – they’re real. I’m telling you. They’re connected.”
Tanney pulled a face and then sighed. “Okay,” he said. “You want to think about them?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Take me to get a drink. That place we went yesterday, Tiny’s. That was a good time.”
“Not a good idea. Those guys might be back.”
“Fine. Take me somewhere else. You pick, as long as they’ve got beer. Whiskey, if you’re going to still be going on about dead people.”
Owen hesitated. “I need to look at my notes. I need to think about the case.”
Tanney tapped the stack of paper between their seats. “You got your notes. You can stare at them all night.”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, Owen. You’re going home tomorrow. You want me walking through the snow to go get a glass of beer?”
“Of course not.”
“Exactly. So let’s go somewhere. You take your notes. You think, and I’ll drink.”
Owen gave in. He didn’t get much thinking done, but he didn’t expect to. He went for the old guy’s sake, so he didn’t do anything stupid in pursuit of a pint.
They picked a place called Skeevy Shamrock. It was another establishment modeled after some kind of Irish pub, with mutton and potato dishes and Guinness featured on the menu. There were burgers and pizza and coconut shrimp, too.
But the décor and the atmosphere were clearly meant to evoke Ireland. Owen supposed Yellow River Falls must have had its share of Irish settlers back in the day.
He thought back on the people he’d met so far, and their names. Not many of them were Irish in origin. Then again, he hadn’t met many people. By design, granted; but it didn’t give him much of a sample size to work with.
Tanney ordered a coffee stout. Some kind of artisan beer, from a local brewery with a Celtic-inspired name. Then he poured over the menu.
“Come on, Owen,” he said. “You better get something to eat. On me.”
Owen told him that wasn’t necessary.
He said it was. “And don’t say you won’t do it, because I’ll order something for you. Don’t think I won’t.”
So Owen got a beef and Guinness hand pie with American potatoes on the side, and a glass of water.
Tanney’s beer came, and he sipped it slowly, making up his mind if he liked it or not. He decided he did. “Two of the best things in life,” he said. “Coffee and beer.”
Ted Walters got the news as he was eating dinner. He’d taken a nap when he got back from breakfast, and he had a headache when he got up. Consequently, Moses didn’t get a walk.
The dog was anxious and active. He ran from window to window and yipped at everything and nothing. Which did nothing for Ted’s headache.
He took Tylenol and washed it down with whiskey. That did the trick. He was feeling alright when he popped a pair of frozen dinners into the microwave: Salisbury steak and macaroni and cheese.
He grabbed a plastic fork and took the two trays into the living room. Then, he turned on the television. He browsed through the channels until he settled on a replay of a tennis match from earlier in the year.
Ted didn’t care about tennis, but it was something. It was better than those blathering idiots on the six o’clock news. And the players were female, and they looked alright in their little skirts.
He didn’t know who they were, or where they were playing, or for what. He didn’t really care. He’d find something else to watch once he ate. So he started on his dinner, alternating forks full of meat and gravy and macaroni and cheese. Once in a while, he’d mix in mashed potatoes from the steak dinner.
He grumbled at the girls on the television as they didn’t take his advice. The short one was losing. She didn’t move fast enough. She didn’t keep her eye on the ball. But the tall one wasn’t much better. She overreacted to everything.
He worked his way through most of the macaroni and half the steak before he’d had enough of tennis. He flipped through the channels again. He reached a local news station and blitzed past it.
Then he froze. He’d only seen the screen for half a second, but the afterimage had seared into his brain. It was a picture of Rick’s house, with a pair of prattling news anchors and a bar of text underneath: Second Killing at Wynder Estate.
He fumbled with the remote and turned the channel back. The same duo, a dark-haired guy and a blonde woman, chattered on. But the photo had changed. It wasn’t the big house now. Now, he was looking at Marsha’s face.
It was a good shot of her. It looked like it had been taken earlier that year, somewhere in the garden. There were roses in the background – just little pink and yellow blurs against green. She was smiling, and pretty.
Forty-something, but wearing the years well.
Only now she was dead. That’s what the prattle was about. That’s who the ticker at the bottom of the screen confirmed dead.
Marsha Wynder, Rick’s wife. Ted’s neighbor. Dead.
Halverson was at the sheriff’s office. It was located on the far end of Yellow River Falls, adjacent to the courthouse. Not centrally, because cen
tral real estate had cost too much back when the county decided to build the new courthouse complex.
The police department was located in the center of town, and it employed two officers: one full-time, and one part-time, from the hours of seven to four-thirty, Monday through Saturday. It sat in part of the old sheriff’s department building, where they’d been before the county had sold it to the city.
That had been fifty years ago, when Halverson was just a kid. He remembered watching the new building’s progress. He remembered it being shiny and new.
The five decades since had left the place a little scarred and worn, but still newer than most of the buildings in the area. Still a lot newer than the police department.
Right now, though, it looked dark and lonely and desolate. It had been a long day. There were deputies on patrol of course, but the building itself was empty aside from the dispatch pen and himself.
Technically, he should have been off-duty too. He should have been at home watching TV. Or, more realistically, asleep in his armchair while the TV played.
But with a second murder and no real leads, he couldn’t sleep. He knew that. So he was working on his notes, typing up his interviews from earlier.
Elizabeth Wynder had provided her ticket stubs. With her prodding, Josh had followed. They’d been in the air when their stepmother had been shot. A point that, as much as he wished it didn’t, bothered him.
Marsha had been a good woman. Rick had messed up, it was true. But he’d done everything he could afterwards to make it right. He’d furnished Donna with generous alimony payments. He’d paid his child support, and more. He’d covered the full cost of the kids’ education, no questions asked.
Not that money could erase the past, of course. But the judge’s indiscretions had nothing to do with Marsha. She’d been a widow, and a single mom when she met him. He’d been single for years too.
Whatever anger the kids and Donna felt about the dissolution of their family, none of it should have rested on Marsha’s shoulders. And yet, there they were: thrilled at the idea that her life had ended.
That wasn’t right, and Sheriff Halverson had no way to make it right. It wasn’t his job. He was just a county cop, not a preacher or a shrink. They needed both. He was sure of that. But it wasn’t his job.