by L A Dobbs
“Sure, boss.” Kevin smiled and started the paperwork from his call.
Jo followed Sam and Lucy out. She caught up with them beside the Tahoe and stood close, leaning in toward Sam.
“Hey, Sam?”
He turned, and for a minute she got the impression he expected her to say something not work related. For a second she felt as if it might be okay to ask what Thorne had shown him that night in Holy Spirits a month ago. But then thoughts of Thorne reminded her of the real reason she’d followed Sam outside.
Jo lowered her voice and asked, “What about Dupont? Have you heard anything from him?”
Sam shook his head, looking over her shoulder toward the town offices, his gaze weary.
“I wonder what he’s up to?” Jo leaned her back against the side of the Tahoe, the warm metal of the car radiating through her T-shirt. “Why hasn’t he said anything further?”
“Maybe he’s waiting for the right opportunity to come up. Or maybe Thorne changed plans.” Sam shrugged. “I guess we’ll have to wait.”
“Well, I don’t trust him,” Jo said.
“Yeah, me either.”
Jo pushed off from the car. “We need to be extra cautious on this. Dupont may act like a bozo, but he’s dangerous.”
Sam opened the Tahoe door and glanced back at her. “I couldn’t agree more.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sam dropped the eggs off with an appreciative Nettie, but he didn’t stay to chat. His mind was preoccupied.
Good thing he could trust the station to Kevin. He was proud of the way he’d been proactive in taking that call at The Cut ‘N Curl and not bothering Sam with the details. Kevin was shaping up to be a fine officer, even if he didn’t want to work full-time hours.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the short conversation he’d had with Jo as he was leaving. He decided to take a swing by Jesse Cowley’s. If anyone knew when Thorne would start moving drugs again, it was Jesse.
He pulled into the driveway of the dilapidated blue ranch and cut the engine. Lucy shifted in the passenger seat beside him, her nose out the window, sniffing furiously. There was definitely something funky in the air.
Sam heard laughter out back, so he went around the side of the house, weaving around a pile of discarded plastic planters, the plants they once contained long dead and dried.
In the back, Jesse and three of his friends stood around a fire pit of cinder blocks. One of them, Brian Carlson, noticed Sam first. He jerked around, throwing something on the ground and then covering it with the heel of his boot. The others whipped their heads in Sam’s direction as attempts not to look nervous spread across their faces.
“Chief Mason, what brings you here?” Jesse tried to act casual, but Sam could tell by the way he licked his lips that he was anything but. His eyes flicked from Sam to Lucy, who trotted around the fire pit sniffing the ground.
“I was just driving by and thought I’d check in,” Sam replied, giving him his best official police stare. “What are you guys doing?”
“We’re just hanging around by the fire pit, you know, drinking a few beers.” One of the men raised his bottle. Lucy had sniffed her way around the crowd and was now digging in the ground where Brian had thrown something.
Sam wasn’t stupid. He figured Brian had tossed a joint. Even the wood smoke from the fire couldn’t hide the cloying smell of pot. But he didn’t need to make Jesse or any of the others too nervous. He wasn’t here to bust anyone. He wanted answers. He whistled for Lucy to come to his side.
“You want one?” Jesse fished a beer out of a white Styrofoam cooler and angled it toward Sam.
“Thanks, but I can’t stay. I just wanted to ask you a quick question.” Sam jerked his head toward the side of the house. He knew Jesse didn’t want his friends to think he was too friendly with the law, and Sam sure as hell didn’t want anyone else knowing that he was trying to figure out Thorne’s delivery schedule. Not to mention that Jesse wouldn’t want word getting back to Thorne that he gave this kind of information to Sam. It was better to keep Jesse’s friends guessing as to what they were talking about. He was sure Jesse would make up some crazy story that would satisfy their curiosity.
Jesse shrugged as if Sam’s request was no big deal and headed to the side of the house.
“What?” Jesse swigged his beer and glanced back in the direction of the fire pit.
“I was just wondering if you heard any news on when, uh, things might open up in your extracurricular business,” Sam said.
“Uh, not sure what you mean.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “I think you can cut the crap now. We both know about your side business. As long as we can help each other out, I’m not going to make any trouble for you. It would be mighty helpful to me if you could let me know when that business might open up again.”
Jesse stared at Sam for minute, then nodded. “I don’t know for sure, but I heard a rumor maybe this weekend.”
“How solid of a rumor?” Sam asked.
“Slightly solid.” Jesse shrugged. “They don’t exactly ask my opinion. I only know what I hear, and half the time that’s wrong. Like I told you before, I’m low on the food chain.”
Sam stared at him for a few minutes, then nodded. Jesse was telling him as much as he knew.
“Okay, thanks. You guys carry on.” Sam turned and walked back to the car, Lucy following behind.
* * *
Sam got back in the car and sat for a minute, thinking. Lucy, in the passenger seat, must have sensed that he needed help. She put her big paw on his arm.
He turned to her. “The weekend is in four days. And which day on the weekend do you think he meant?”
Lucy stared at him.
“Maybe that’s why Dupont hasn’t said anything?”
Lucy flicked her eyes from his to the window.
“I suppose the smart thing to do would be to put surveillance on the river. If trade is opening up in four days, that might mean product is going to come down the river before that,” Sam said.
Lucy took her paw away and settled back into the seat.
“You think that’s a good idea?” Sam started the engine. “I don’t know who we would put on surveillance. We’re short-handed as it is.”
Lucy glanced at him and whined.
“Yeah, I should’ve already made an offer to that Wyatt guy, huh?”
Lucy turned and looked back out the window.
“Maybe I’ll have Reese start the paperwork.”
Lucy continued to stare out the window.
“If only I could figure out a likely spot on the river. We couldn’t possibly surveil the entire river.” Sam pushed the button to slide down Lucy’s window, and put the car in gear. “Maybe Jackson knows something. Thorne would need boat access or a spot where they could get the product out to a boat. Jackson might know the most likely spots for that sort of thing.”
Woof!
Sam headed toward Jackson Pressler’s place, driving past the rolling hills and enjoying the view of the orange sun setting behind blue layers of mountains in the distance. Lucy enjoyed the view too, sticking her head out the window, her tongue hanging out and the wind in her fur.
When he got to Jackson’s, the old man was in the driveway, wedged halfway under a new sculpture.
Sam approached and knelt on the other side of the sculpture. Jackson looked up at him through pieces of twisted metal. On the grass beside him lay piles of assorted metal, plastic and rubber parts.
“Hey, Sam. What’s up?” Jackson scuttled out from under the sculpture, rubbed his hands, and then used the sculpture for leverage to stand.
“Hey, Jackson.” Sam shook his hand and remained quiet while Jackson bent to pet Lucy.
“I got a question about the Hogback River,” Sam started. “You know a good spot to put a boat in?”
Jackson glanced in the direction of the river and shook his head. “It’s all overgrown in there. I haven’t been there since I was a little kid. But there
is a spot down by Old Parade Road. You planning on doing some fishin’?”
“Something like that. What you got going on here?” Sam pointed at the junk in the grass.
Jackson looked down at the various parts spread on the grass. “Building a new sculpture. Can you believe people would throw away good parts like this?”
Sam looked down at the jumble of parts at Jackson’s feet. He didn’t particularly see anything good. Some old wheels from a baby carriage, a fancy silver-plate creamer with the plating rubbed off, some pieces of tires and … wait a minute, was that busted-up black thing a camera?
Sam squatted and picked it up, his heart thudding when he saw the make: Canon EOS.
Ray Ingalls’ camera.
He squinted up at Jackson. “This is an expensive camera. Where did you get this?”
“Down at the dump. Why?”
Sam didn’t answer. He was busy looking over the camera. There was a slot for a memory card, but it was empty. Isn’t that where all the photos would be? “That guy who was killed on your property, he had a camera like this, and it seems to be missing.”
“Well I sure as hell didn’t take it.” Jackson looked miffed.
Sam held his palms up. “I didn’t think you did. The killer took it. He must’ve thrown it away to get rid of it. Did you find a memory card with it?”
Jackson looked at the camera and made a face. “What’s a memory card? This is what I found. You’ve got it all here.” He spread his hands over the pile on the ground. “This is all the stuff I got from the dump.”
Sam sorted through the pile again while Lucy squatted beside him, sniffing every object. No memory card.
“You mind if I take this?” Sam held up the camera. It had to be Ray Ingalls’ camera, but it was pretty beaten up. Maybe it had internal memory and Reese could get something off it.
Jackson shrugged. “If you want to. It’s all just junk to me.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Jackson Pressler was incorporating this into a sculpture?” Jo asked when Sam showed her the camera the next day at the station. They stood in front of Reese’s desk in the lobby and, because they were the only ones in, Sam had just filled her in on what he’d learned from Jesse about the possibility of a weekend drug run on the river.
“Yep. Good thing I came along when I did.”
“And he found it in the trash? Smart killer. If Jackson wasn’t such a scavenger, that thing would be miles away in a landfill somewhere and you’d have never found it,” Jo said.
“Yep. I called Thaddeus Murloch over at the dump last night. He said the truck rolled out already, so if there was a card in the camera and it fell out in the truck, it’s gone. We’ll never find it.”
“That’s probably where Ray’s laptop is,” Jo said.
“Unless the killer still has it.”
“Why would he?”
“I think the killer is smart enough to know a laptop would have data on it. Even if you erase the hard drive, you can recover that data in a good forensics lab. He might not have realized the camera could have internal memory that would possibly allow us to recover the photos. A laptop is too big to burn, like the flash drive. Electronics are not supposed to go in the trash like that. Thaddeus was pretty upset that the camera was in there, so I think someone would have noticed a laptop and pulled it out. It wouldn’t be smart for the killer to toss it in there.”
The lobby door opened, and Reese came in lugging a backpack, a Styrofoam cup in one hand and white doughnut bag in the other.
Jo relieved her of the bag, peered in and picked out a jelly-filled.
Sam held up the mangled camera. “Can you get any photos off this thing?”
Reese put her backpack down and held out her hand. She made a face while turning the camera over and over. “What happened to it?”
“Jackson Pressler found it in a Dumpster, then was fixing to use it in one of his sculptures.”
“Where’s the memory card? I don’t think this model of camera has any internal memory. If you don’t have the memory card, we can’t get the photos.”
“Well, that sucks, because the killer obviously took this for a reason. Ray must have snapped some shots of him before he killed him,” Sam said.
“So we might not ever find the laptop, and the camera is no good,” Jo said. “That’s no help.”
“Maybe we don’t need the camera,” Sam offered. “We already have a pretty good suspect in Summer Solstice. She changed her name and would have a reason to want to stop Ray from revealing who she really is.”
“And she’s also up to something at that hotel,” Reese said.
“Looks like we know what the next step is: Talk to Summer to find out exactly what she’s up to.”
* * *
Sam liked order and precision, so he sent Kevin back to the hotel to see if Mina was on duty. Maybe she’d remember Summer with her rainbow hair or, better yet, Summer would be registered there under her former name. In the meantime, he and Jo drove to the owl zone to see if they could find Summer and pull her in for questioning.
A few cars, including Summer’s Volkswagen, sat along the dirt road.
“Now we know how she can afford a fairly new car.” Jo nodded her chin toward the Beetle as they started down the path.
“I hear she makes a pretty good living giving speeches, too. We don’t know that she even uses her family money,” Sam said.
Jo raised a brow. “Uh-huh.”
The owl zone was nearly empty. Two people crouched beside a tree studying moss, and another tight group convened under a pine listening to Summer preach about something.
Sam walked toward Summer’s group. Out of habit, his eyes scanned the area for anything amiss. There was still no sign of the egg shells from the crime scene. The absence of them niggled the back of his mind.
The tall pines and oaks shaded the lush green grass of the clearing. In the distance an owl hooted — a rarity for daytime. Sam knew they could normally only be heard after sunset. A slight breeze rustled the leaves, carrying with it the muted sounds of Thorne’s heavy machinery working on the hotel site.
The people gathered around Summer were what Sam would call earthy types. They wore practical cotton clothing in muted tones, Birkenstock sandals and long hair. Summer’s narrowed gaze tracked Sam as he walked toward her, but she didn’t miss a beat in her lecture about owl mating habits.
“And until the establishment stops ruining the environment, the numbers of these owls and other animals will continue to dwindle,” she said to the group, her eyes never leaving Sam and Jo.
“That’s true. It’s a damn shame too,” Sam said. It pissed him off that Summer assumed he didn’t care about the environment because he was in law enforcement. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The group turned around and scowled at Sam and Jo, their eyes softening when they noticed Lucy. She dogtrotted over to them. She was a good ice breaker, and soon none of them could resist petting her.
Summer stood with her arms crossed over her chest. “What are you doing here? Are we breaking some law? This is a peaceful gathering.”
“We just have a few questions. Important questions.”
Summer’s scowl deepened. “I don’t have to answer your questions.”
“Maybe not, but I’m going to ask them, and I’m betting you don’t want me to do that with all these people around.”
Summer chewed her bottom lip while she thought about it. Apparently she got the hint of the threat in Sam’s tone and realized it was a smart idea to talk to Sam and Jo alone. She addressed her little group. “I think that’s all for today. Tomorrow I’ll talk more about owl feeding habits if anyone is interested.”
The group broke up and walked off, stealing curious backward glances at them.
“What is this about?” Summer demanded.
“The murder,” Jo said.
“I told you everything I know already,” Summer insisted.
“Right. You said that you
heard someone leave the campsite that night.”
“Yeah.”
“So you were there all night?”
Summer scrunched her face. “Of course I was. How else would I hear someone leave?”
Jo showed her a photo of the mangled flash drive. “Does this look familiar?”
“No.”
“And you’re sure you don’t know why someone would want Ray Ingalls dead?”
“No. I already told you. This is harassment. I don’t have to stand for this.” Summer tried to push past them, but Sam pulled out the copy of the license issued under her former name that Reese had given him and shoved it toward her.
“I think you do have to stand for this. In fact, now that you insist on lying to us, I think we might have to bring you into the station.”
Summer stared at the paper, her neck flushing red in anger. She shoved it back at Sam. “So I changed my name. So what? That’s not against the law. It was all done legally. I wanted to disassociate from my family. I don’t stand for the same things they do.”
“Right. And it would be a shame if your followers found out who you really were, wouldn’t it?”
Fear flickered in Summer’s eyes as they jerked from Sam to Jo.
“Don’t you make a lot of money with those little articles you write and your speaking engagements?” Jo asked.
“So what if I do?” Summer’s voice was tight.
“I’m sure you didn’t want that to all go away when Ray published his book.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Ray was writing a book. A book that would expose all kinds of secrets in the environmentalist movement. Secrets like yours,” Jo said.
Sam tensed, ready to grab Summer if she tried to bolt. He didn’t want Lucy to have to chase her down. He had enough to bring her in, but she didn’t react like a guilty killer. He glanced at Jo, and the look on her face told him that she didn’t think Summer acted guilty either. And Jo’s instincts in that area were usually spot on.