She thanked him and hung up.
* * *
Irving was hunched over a pile of papers at his desk, which he quickly shuffled together and stuffed into a manila folder when Brett approached. His tie today was forest green and covered in rows of dime-sized pheasants. He leaned back in his chair and waited for her to speak first.
“I just got off the phone with Charlie,” she said. “The lab confirmed that the knife used to kill Zach Danforth is the same one that killed Nathan Andress.”
He sat forward again. “Now that complicates things, doesn’t it?”
“Zach’s blood was all over the knife, obviously,” she repeated what Charlie had told her. “But not just his. There was another blood type mixed in, and it matches Nathan’s.”
“So we have our murder weapon. And it looks like we’ll be pooling resources.” He rose from his chair. “We better update the sergeant.”
She glanced across the room at Stan Harcourt’s office. His door was closed, but a light was on inside. When she didn’t move to follow Irving, he asked, “Is there something else?”
She took him back to her desk, removed the photographs from the drawer, and handed them over. He flipped through them, his frown deepening. Though he wasn’t in any of the pictures, she could tell from his expression of surprise that he recognized a lot of faces. When he got to a picture of Stan Harcourt taking an envelope that looked to be stuffed with money from a man whose back was to the camera, he stopped.
“Where did you get these?” His voice was quiet.
“I did a preliminary search of Zach’s room yesterday and found them in a box with some weed. And Elizabeth’s underwear.”
Irving’s gaze snapped to her, then back down to the photographs. He flipped through them a second time, then stacked them together and rushed them to the detective sergeant’s office. Brett chased after him, calling for him to wait, but he ignored her. He shoved the door open without knocking and dropped the photographs on the sergeant’s desk. “What the hell is this, Stan?”
Stan looked up from his work, flustered and blinking stupidly. He glowered at Brett, who hovered in the doorway, then reached for the photographs. He looked at the top one, the one of him taking money from someone in a dark alley, then set the stack down again and gestured for Brett to come inside. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her with a quiet click.
Stan tapped one finger on the stack of photographs. “Does someone want to tell me where these came from?”
Irving glanced at Brett. She repeated to the sergeant what she’d already told Irving. When she finished talking, he shoved the photographs back into the envelope and then shoved the envelope into a desk drawer.
“What are you doing?” Brett demanded.
Stan’s expression was unreadable as he took a pack of gum from the pocket of his shirt, unwrapped a stick, and folded it into his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds, then said, “What you’re both going to do is this. You’re going to forget you ever saw these pictures. You’re going to pretend they never existed.”
Brett sputtered in protest.
At the same time, Irving said, “Come on, Stan. Don’t do this.”
“This isn’t anything you have to worry about anymore.” He bared his teeth in a smile that looked more like a grimace as he waved them to leave his office. The chewing gum squished between his teeth, a sticky white glob that smelled faintly of mint.
Brett stood her ground. Irving stayed too.
“Those photos are evidence in a murder case,” she explained.
Stan shrugged one shoulder. “Well, I guess you’ll have to figure out how to investigate the case without them. You’re a smart girl. I’m sure you can handle it.”
“Stan, as of this morning, the cases are linked,” Irving said and told him about the knife. “We’re looking for the same guy, and chances are good he’s in one of those photos. Zach was obviously in a position to ruffle a lot of powerful feathers.”
“I said, leave it alone.” Stan’s voice was a warning.
“We need to bring Danny Cyrus back in,” Brett said.
Stan’s eyebrows shot up. “Absolutely not.”
“He’s our best link between Nathan and Zach.”
“She’s right.” Irving backed her up. “Nathan owed Danny money. Zach worked for Danny. Zach and Nathan were seen together two weeks before he died. We need to reexamine that connection. Especially now that we know Zach was collecting dirt on every influential person in this town, including half our own force.”
“Danny didn’t kill Nathan or Zach.” Stan sounded sure of it.
“Even if that’s true, it wouldn’t hurt to bring him in and ask a few more questions,” Irving said.
Stan folded his hands over his desk. His jaw worked over that piece of gum as he talked. “Listen to me carefully—both of you. Danny Cyrus is working with us on a different case. He’s been working as an informant for us for months. If you drag him in here a second time, you’re going to fuck over this other thing we’ve been building. And I can assure you this other thing is much bigger than some two-bit, wannabe gangster getting stabbed.”
“It’s not just Zach—” Brett tried to argue, but Stan cut her off with a wave of his hand.
“Enough. This case with Danny has tentacles that run deep. We’re working with multiple states and with Canada. And that’s all I can tell you, but you get it, right? You need to steer clear of this. I can assure you neither Danny nor his crew had anything to do with Nathan or Zach’s deaths. We’ve had our eyes on them every day since the investigation started. In addition to Danny feeding us info, we have officers working undercover. If Danny or anyone in his crew was connected to these murders, we’d know about it already. Besides, Zach was an asset to Danny. You’re right that he knew a lot of things about a lot of people. But, I assure you, Zach is the last person Danny would want to turn up dead.”
Brett shifted her gaze to Irving, gauging his reaction. He worked his lips between his teeth, and the muscles along his jaw were clenched tight. He didn’t like what Stan was telling them any more than she did.
“And Nathan?” Irving asked, his tone detached.
Stan lifted his hands in a shrug. The gum cracked between his teeth. “He was nothing to them. A bottom feeder who owed Danny money. Dead, Danny gets nothing, right? See where I’m going with this?”
When neither of them said anything in response, Stan sighed, exasperated. “Ask the chief if you don’t believe me. But don’t go anywhere near Danny Cyrus. Do you understand me? He is off-limits. Him and his whole crew. Look somewhere else.” He waved his hand at the door with more emphasis this time. “You’re dismissed.”
Irving spun on his heels and stormed out. Brett followed him.
“Do you have anything on your calendar right now?” he asked.
With the photographs gone and strict instructions from their sergeant not to pursue Danny Cyrus, Brett’s case was stalled. She shook her head. “Not anymore.”
“Good.” Irving reached his desk and slipped on his windbreaker. “Grab your jacket and meet me in the parking lot.”
“Where are we going?”
He pulled a heavy-duty pair of binoculars from his lower desk drawer and said, “I’m taking you birdwatching.”
Chapter 28
Irving led Brett over two miles into the woods near Lake Chastain. He said nothing as they walked, except to point out various species of birds. Wrens and nuthatches, thrushes and sparrows. Once he stopped, tilted his head back, lifted the binoculars to his eyes, and said, “Last year I was lucky enough to spot a pileated woodpecker. He was right over there.” He pointed in the distance. “Every time I come out here, I look for him, but I haven’t seen him since. A once in a lifetime sighting was what that was.” Whenever he spotted a bird of any kind, common or interesting, he would pause and make a mark in a small notebook he carried in his pocket.
When Brett left th
e office with Irving, she hadn’t expected to be doing any actual birdwatching. At first, she was annoyed by having to thrash through tangled underbrush, cobwebs catching on her arms and face. Now that Stan had buried her only good lead, she had too much work to do to spend hours traipsing in the woods looking for varying shades of brown feathers. But the longer they walked, the more her anger dissipated, and she started to enjoy herself. It was a nice day, sunny, but not too warm. Crisp with the scent of autumn. After a while, immersed in the quiet task of spotting birds in the shadows, Brett could see how a person might find herself sucked into a hobby like this. It would be a good way to unwind at the end of a long workday and burn off some extra energy.
They climbed a small hill that was dotted with fir trees and scrub bushes. The vegetation at the top was sparse enough that it was possible to see for miles in any direction. Thin wisps of clouds drifted across the vast blue sky above them. Irving stopped next to a large stump and took off the small backpack he carried over his shoulder. He offered Brett some water. She drank deeply from the canteen. Tiny birds flitted through the branches of a nearby bush, picking at berries and hanging upside.
“Those are chestnut-backed chickadees.” Irving made a note in his book. “Nothing too special, but they’re fun to watch.”
A shadow passed overhead, and Irving lifted his binoculars, tracking the path of a large black bird riding air currents. “This is the best spot to see raptors,” he said, adding, “That right there is just your standard crow, though. Of course, if you ask me, there’s nothing standard about crows. Fascinating birds, smarter than we give them credit for.”
Brett sat on the stump that overlooked the rolling landscape, a patchwork quilt of trees and bare patches. Large sections had been logged, and holes in the canopy revealed smaller, natural meadows and glittering lakes. Where the light touched, the world was edged in copper and glinting.
Irving lowered his binoculars. “The thing about birdwatching is that you have to have patience. Sometimes I come out here, and I see maybe one bird if I’m lucky. Other times, it’s like everywhere I look, there’s something interesting. Osprey, sooty fox sparrows, belted kingfishers, loggerhead shrikes. Sometimes though, you have to know where they like to roost, where their nests are. You have to know which direction to point the binoculars.” He took them off his neck and held them out to her. “Go on and give it a try.”
She held the binoculars to her eyes, and Irving showed her how to adjust the focus. She swept slowly across the horizon, then up to the sky, trying to snag on some motion, some winged creature, but if there was a bird to find, she was looking in the wrong spot.
“Try over here.” Irving touched the back of her hand, guiding the binoculars down and to the left.
At first, it was a blur of trees, branches overlapping, and then a break in the green, and she was staring at a meadow with flattened down grass. A tick to the right, and she found the fire road, the underbrush cut through with ATV tracks. It was the same meadow she’d stood in last week with Eli and Billy, the meadow Irving had sent her to investigate for noise disturbance.
Irving pushed her hand again, guiding the binoculars farther to the left, about ninety degrees south of the meadow. A chimney, a roof, a road. Then Danny’s trailer came into focus. Brett sucked in a sharp breath and lowered the binoculars, lifting her eyes to Irving.
“I’ve been watching him for twenty years,” he said. “Ever since your sister was killed.”
“You were with Crestwood back then?” She made no attempt to hide her surprise. She’d known he’d been with the department for a long time, but she didn’t remember seeing his name on any of the paperwork or reports in her sister’s file. “Were you a detective?”
He shook his head. “I was a patrol officer, a few months out of the academy, but Stan put me on his team. For the experience, he said. Margot’s case was the first murder I worked.” He stared in the direction of Danny’s trailer, though nothing but trees were visible without the binoculars. “To this day, I wonder if I should have pushed him to do more. He was so convinced Danny Cyrus had killed her—we were all so convinced—a lot got ignored.” He sighed and shrugged. “What can I say? I wasn’t even a year into the job, and Stan was my superior. I thought he knew what he was doing.”
Brett lifted the binoculars again. Nothing moved in or around the trailer.
Irving continued. “Ever since your sister was killed, I’ve been doing my best to keep my eye on Danny, waiting for him to slip up, I guess, and show his true colors. Except for that fight club of his, though, he’s…Well, as much as I can tell, he’s living a damn monk’s life.”
Brett lowered the binoculars to stare at Irving. “You knew about the fights before Zach told us, didn’t you?”
He nodded.
“Who else knows?
He shrugged. “Stan. A few of the old-timers, definitely. We don’t mention it to the rookies unless we have to. Eli has no clue.”
“And all of you who know, you just look the other way?” She shoved the binoculars at him. “Why am I surprised?”
She started to walk back down the hill toward their cars, but Irving stopped her with a gentle hand on her arm.
“I was the first to realize what was going on out here,” he said. “It happened by accident, actually. I’d been coming up to this spot frequently during the day to check on Danny, but sometime last year, I came out for the first time at night. A friend in the birding community told me he’d spotted a long-eared owl nesting in one of those snags down there, and I wanted to try to see it for myself. I came at dusk. I didn’t see the owl but noticed there was a lot of commotion happening in that clearing, so I stuck around to find out what was going on. I went straight to Stan with it after, but he told me to leave it alone, said everyone was consenting adults, that there were worse ways the boys of this town could be spending their time.”
“So that disturbance call you sent me out on last week? You knew exactly what I was walking into. Why bother sending me at all?”
“I thought maybe if I sent a new face out there, someone who isn’t friends with Stan Harcourt, someone Lincoln wasn’t familiar with, then maybe it would put the scare in them, and they’d stop.”
“Did it work?” she asked.
He squinted at the sky. “It’s too early to tell, honestly, but they weren’t at it over this last weekend, so maybe, yeah, it did work.”
“Did you know about the ongoing undercover operation, too? That Danny’s working with the cops?”
“No.” Anger edged his voice.
They were quiet for a few minutes, then Brett said, “You don’t always have to do what he tells you to do, you know. Stan, I mean. You can go above his head. Henry won’t fire you.”
Irving laughed like she’d said something stupid, then he said, “Stan saved my life once.”
She raised her eyebrows in disbelief.
“It was during the early days of my career,” he continued. “I was still on probation, and Stan was riding with me that night. We pulled this car over for a broken taillight. The driver wouldn’t get out of the car. He was real belligerent about it. The next thing we know, he’s whipping a gun out of nowhere, and I’m down on the ground with a bullet in my gut.” His hand moved to his stomach, resting there a minute before finishing the story. “Stan moved fast. He got a med kit from the car, put pressure on the wound, and called for an ambulance, all within a few seconds. The driver was long gone by then, but Stan gave dispatch the license plate, and another patrol car pulled him over a few miles up the road and took him in without any trouble. Stan stayed with me, kept me conscious until the paramedics took over. If he hadn’t been there, I would have bled out on the side of the road.”
Brett stared at the ground, trying not to let him see that it didn’t matter how many people Stan Harcourt saved—saving people didn’t make him a good cop. It didn’t mean he could be trusted either.
“Even if I didn’t owe him
my life, I owe him my career,” Irving said. “Stan was the one person who fought for me to stay on the force when everyone else wanted me gone. Things were a lot different when I was coming up. Our sergeant at the time was a real…well, let’s just say he didn’t like me much. He undercut me at every turn, did everything he could to keep me from promoting. If I made even one tiny mistake, I was on desk duty for three weeks. Or worse, I was sent to work traffic. I was nearly fired a dozen times, but for Stan, who stepped in every time and took the blame for whatever the sergeant was accusing me of messing up. When that prick finally retired, Stan was promoted sergeant, which made things a lot easier for me. All those years, he looked out for me, and I looked out for him.” He cleared his throat. “What I’m trying to say is Stan’s not a bad cop. He just lost his way a bit. He’s forgotten who it is we’re supposed to be protecting. What he did back there, with the photographs, he shouldn’t have done that. We’ve both got victims who deserve better than to be shoved in some desk drawer and forgotten. Nathan’s family, Zach’s. Elizabeth. She deserves better. But…” He paused and ran his hand behind his neck, like he knew what he was working up to say would piss Brett off. “But he’s not entirely wrong.”
Brett opened her mouth to argue, but Irving cut her off.
“What motive does Danny have for killing Nathan? Or Zach? One owed him money. The other worked hard to make him money. You don’t kill the people bringing in the income you depend on to live.”
“Maybe money wasn’t the motive.”
“I agree. Zach and Nathan were both stabbed multiple times. Nathan’s autopsy report even indicates the stabbing continued after he was already dead. Whoever did that was angry,” Irving said. “It was personal for them. These stabbings weren’t self-defense or some kind of terrible accident. They were acts of rage.”
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