by L A Dobbs
Sam figured the killer hadn’t wanted to be arrested for driving a stolen vehicle and had shot Tyler then disappeared.
"I still think we can find someone who saw something. That killer must’ve gotten a ride from someone. That stretch of road is too far away from anything for him to have gone anywhere on foot," Jo said.
This far north, most of the roads were remote. Houses were spaced far apart. Tyler had been up at the north end of town, almost to the Canadian border. There would’ve been no one around for miles to see what happened.
"Whoever it was must’ve been smart enough to wipe the car clean," Sam said.
The car had been wiped of fingerprints. The only thing they’d found was a partial print in the ashtray along with a dusting of cocaine. Sam figured they’d had drugs in the car. The cocaine might’ve come out of a bag they were stashing in the ashtray. They must have been in a hurry to get out of there after the shooting. Maybe the bag ripped in the killer’s haste to grab it out of the car, and some cocaine spilled out. "Seems like if someone knew enough to wipe for prints, they would’ve been a criminal with a record, but we didn’t get a match from the database for the partial."
"Poor Tyler probably didn’t know what he was stumbling onto," Jo said.
Hadn’t he? Sam wondered about that. There were a few discrepancies, like the fact that he hadn’t pulled his gun and that he’d been shot right in front of the police cruiser. If the killer had come out of the stolen car with a gun, wouldn’t Tyler have pulled his? It was hard to know exactly—Tyler hadn’t logged the stop in his logbook, so there were no notes as to why he was pulling over. Sam just assumed his intention had been to help the disabled vehicle.
"We’ll get to the bottom of it." Sam glanced sideways at Jo. Logging a stop was police protocol. Usually, they called in or logged it in a book. That time of night, there was no one in the squad room to take the call, so they each carried a logbook. Sometimes they bent the rules a little and logged things after the stop—when they got back to the station. Except for Tyler—there was no "after." He never made it back to the station. Jo had forged the log in his notebook to avoid a black mark on his reputation during the state investigation. "By the way, thanks for covering for Tyler."
Jo shrugged. "We look out for each other, right?" She spun her chair around so that she was facing out into the main bar. She looked relaxed, casual. But Sam knew she was recording every detail of what was going on in the bar inside that superior brain of hers.
Her eyes widened, and she jerked her head toward the door as Billie slid a basket of fries across the bar to her. Sam turned to see Mick Gervasi, private investigator and his best friend since grade school, saunter in.
Mick was wearing a black jacket, leather like Jo’s but bulkier. His dark hair was cut in a short military style. His clear-blue eyes scanned the bar much like Jo’s but for a totally different reason. Mick didn’t trust anyone, and he was looking around to see if there might be trouble he wanted to avoid.
A slight smile ticked up the corners of his lips as he spotted them. He headed toward the bar and slipped into the seat beside Jo.
Billie slid a tumbler half full of amber liquid and ice in front of him before his jean-clad ass even settled into the seat. Whiskey. Jack Daniels, to be exact. Mick was a regular.
Jo spun back around, and the three of them hunched forward, their elbows on the bar, leaning in toward each other with Jo in the middle. Sam had hired Mick to do a little investigating into Tyler’s shooting, and Jo was totally on board.
The investigation by the state police wasn’t going anywhere, and Sam and Jo technically weren’t supposed to be getting involved. Conflict of interest or some damn thing. They weren’t about to let strangers handle Tyler’s investigation, but they had to be careful how involved they got. That was where Mick came in.
"So what have you got?" Jo picked up a fry and slid her eyes toward Mick.
Mick took a swig from the tumbler. The condensation had already dripped down from the sides of the glass to form a wet ring on the bar. He put the glass back down exactly on top of the ring.
"Not much. I’m digging into all the relatives and connections for Barbara Bartles. I’m thinking maybe her car wasn’t stolen by a stranger." Mick shrugged and looked out over the bar. "But I haven’t come up with anything concrete yet."
Sam swigged his beer. It was cold, slightly bitter with the lemony tang. He thought about the car that Tyler had pulled over. It was a late-model Ford. The registration in the glove compartment said it belonged to Barbara Bartles, who turned out to be an elderly woman. She claimed the car had been stolen the day before.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Jo munched on fries and scanned the room by looking in the mirror behind the bar. "Here he comes."
She swung around in her chair again, her elbows on the bar as a young guy with thin brown hair pulled back into a ponytail slid in between her and Mick to capture Billie’s attention.
Jesse Cowly leaned across the bar, his long ponytail swinging to the side and brushing her arm. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Sam could see he was already trying to turn on the charm, his smile wide as he looked at Jo’s cleavage. Then his eyes trailed up to her face and widened with surprise when he recognized who she was.
"Hey, Jesse, you’re just the person we’ve been looking for." Jo’s words caused a flicker of concern in Jesse’s eyes.
If he was guilty of something, he was good at hiding it, though. He squared his shoulders and gave Sam and Jo a blank look. "Oh? Why is that?"
"Heard you were partying with some campers last night," Jo said.
"Yeah, so? Is there a law against that now?" He grabbed a longneck from Billie and slapped a few bills on the bar then took a step back, still facing Jo and Sam.
"No law against partying," Sam said. "But when one of the other partiers gets murdered…"
Jesse’s brows shot up. "Murdered? Hey, wait a minute. I didn’t have anything to do with any murder."
Sam glanced at Jo. Jesse seemed panicked enough to be telling the truth, but that was more Jo’s area. He knew she’d be studying his body language.
"But you were with them, right? One of them was named Lynn. Do you remember her?" Jo asked.
Jesse scratched the back of his neck. "I remember them. They were here in the bar. You can ask anyone. So what? Lots of people were in the bar."
"Yeah, but you went back to the campsite with her, didn’t you?" He was acting cocky now. Arrogant. It reminded Sam of his cousin’s trial almost twenty years ago. Those guys had been cocky and arrogant, too. Until Sam and Mick had stepped in with their own brand of justice.
Jesse frowned. "What is this? Are you interrogating me? You can’t just come in here and ask me questions without reading me my rights or something."
Sam put up his hands palms out and plastered an easy smile across his face. "We’re not interrogating you. We’re sitting here in the bar having a conversation. If we wanted to interrogate you, we’d bring you into the police station. We just want to know what you saw out there at that campsite."
"I didn’t see anything because I wasn’t at the campsite. I was here in the bar all night. I never went out there, so whoever you got your information from is lying."
Jesse stormed off, and Jo and Sam exchanged a look.
"Well, looks like someone is lying," Sam said.
Jo turned back toward her beer. "They usually do when it comes to murder. The hard part is figuring out who’s doing the lying and why."
Chapter Eight
On the way home from Spirits, Sam couldn’t help thinking about the dog, Lucy. The shelter was on his way, and it was still open, so he swung by just to make sure Lucy was doing okay. Hopefully, she’d be gone, picked up by her family.
She hadn’t been picked up, but Eric had taken good care of her, and she was nestled in a thick sherpa-fleece-lined dog bed in the corner of a squeaky-clean kennel. Someone had washed her and groomed out the mats, and her fur sho
ne like silk.
Sam squatted in front of the kennel door, and Lucy trotted over, eagerly sniffing his hand.
"Hey, girl, you’re looking good." She smiled and looked up with hopeful whiskey eyes.
Sam patted her between the bars then stood and turned away.
Lucy whined.
Sam turned back. She was seated on her haunches, her tail swishing back and forth and those eyes looking right into his soul.
"Sorry, I can’t take you home. You wouldn’t like it. You’d be alone every day and most nights, too."
Lucy shot him a recriminating look. When it became clear that he wasn’t there to spring her from the kennel, she turned her back on him and curled up in the bed, facing the other way.
Sam headed to his hunting cabin. He’d inherited it from his grandfather, and it was his own slice of heaven on earth. It wasn’t big, just two bedrooms and a loft, but it had plenty of room for him and his daughters when they came to stay.
Evie had hated the place. She’d said it was too far out in the woods. She hated the deer-head mount that hung on the fieldstone fireplace and said it always seemed to be watching her with its black eyes. The taxidermy fish that dotted the rounded log walls freaked her out.
Funny thing, those were all the things Sam loved about the place. Especially the fish. Gramps had been an avid angler, and Sam still remembered the day Gramps had let him help pull the giant salmon they nicknamed Charlie out of Lake Howard. Charlie had gone on to win the county ice-fishing prize—five thousand dollars—that season, and he now hung proudly displayed on the wall above the overstuffed couch.
Evie had refused to live here. They’d bought a big old house closer to town, and she’d pestered him to sell the cabin, but he’d hung on. Good thing, too, because the cabin had outlasted her. Maybe Sam had always known that would be the case.
Sam tossed his keys on the aluminum fish-shaped tray beside the door and headed for the fridge, where another beer awaited. A feeling of calm settled over him as it always did when he was at the cabin. It was still pretty much the way Gramps had left it. The way he remembered it being his whole life. Since Evie had taken all their combined furniture in the divorce, he’d simply moved right into the cabin and left it as it had been when he inherited it.
The furniture was worn but comfortable. The rustic decor included many items made out of birch bark and logs. Old family photos littered the pine tables, and his grandmother’s homey touches could be seen in the flow-blue china dishes displayed in the china cabinet and the quirky antique salt and pepper shaker collection that lined the kitchen windowsill. Even the old jadeite-green batter bowl that Gram used to let him lick her homemade cake batter from still sat on the stainless steel counter. The place was home.
The best part about it was that Gramps had had the foresight to buy up twenty acres of land, so Sam didn’t have a soul nearby. Nothing but deer and bears for company, just the way he liked it. He even owned a few acres across the street, where the land sloped down to reveal a pond. Sometimes at dusk the deer would come to the edges of the pond, and Sam would sit on the porch to watch them, just as he’d done with his dad and Gramps when he was a little boy.
Thorne had approached him about buying up part of the land, but Sam would never sell. Thorne would only get it over his dead body.
Sam brought the beer over to the little desk situated under the overhang of the loft. He cracked the small window on the wall next to the desk just an inch. The cool night air washed over him. In the woods, he heard the hoot of a barn owl and the reply of another.
He sipped his beer and thought about Jo. He admired the way she’d handled Jesse. In fact, she was probably one of the best cops he’d ever worked with. Funny thing, though, even though they’d been side by side every day for four years, he still felt as if he didn’t really know her. Sure, they hung out sometimes and talked a lot at work, but there was something there, just below the surface, that he couldn’t put a finger on. Something in her private life she wanted to keep private. Then again, who could blame her? Sam had some of that himself.
He fired up the computer and navigated to the financial site where he had his 401k just as his phone dinged.
He pulled it out of his pocket. His daughter, Hayley.
Hey Dad, just checking in. U keeping everyone honest up there?
Sam’s heart expanded. One good thing had come from his first marriage—his twin daughters. He typed a reply.
Much as I can. How’s school?
Hayley was studying at the Boston School of Pharmacology. Her twin sister, Marla, was studying marine biology, also in Massachusetts. He missed them both. They were too far away.
Semester almost over. Coming up to visit soon.
Sam replied:
Can’t wait.
The phoned dinged again. Marla this time. Sam smiled. When one of them texted, the other was soon to follow. He exchanged a similar text conversation with Marla. He figured they’d come to visit at the same time. Sam made a mental note to make sure there were clean sheets for the guest room and loft.
Texting with his girls brought up thoughts of their mother, his first wife. Vanessa. They’d been high school sweethearts and had a volatile relationship. It had been both good and bad. In the end, it was mostly bad. Still, she’d had some sort of hold on him. Sam thought maybe she had a special place in his heart because she was the mother of his children. Whatever the reason, he could never refuse her anything. They’d tried to get back together a few times, but it never worked out. When she moved to Las Vegas, it had been a relief.
Thoughts of his daughters also reminded him of Dupont’s threat. Had his words just been idle speculation, or did Dupont know more about what had happened during Sam’s cousin Gracie’s rape trial twenty years ago than Sam thought he did?
The rape had happened in Boston, and two of the rapists had been Harvard students, just like Dupont. But Dupont’s name had never come up. He’d acted shocked and conciliatory back then. As far as Sam knew, Dupont hadn’t even known them.
The trial had been splashed all over the papers, so Dupont knew enough just from that, but how much did he know about the part Sam and Mick had played in making sure justice prevailed?
Sam turned back to his computer. What did it matter what Dupont knew? He didn’t regret what he’d done. Sometimes the system needed a little help to make sure justice prevailed and that people couldn’t buy their way out of prosecution.
And sometimes you needed to skirt the system to make sure those that needed help the most got it. He clicked into his retirement account and withdrew a sizable chunk of money. He couldn’t do anything to bring Tyler Richardson back to his family, but maybe this would help ease their pain.
Chapter Nine
Sam was the first one into the station the next day and headed straight to the coffee machine. The K-Cup brewer was a new addition purchased by Reese, who had gotten sick of cleaning out the old coffee pot that they always seemed to burn the last of the coffee in. It was expensive, though, and not in the budget, so they all brought in their own K-Cups.
Sam picked up his orange K-Cup of Gorilla organic, popped it into the receptacle, and pressed the brew button. The smell of coffee wafted up.
He glanced at the rack where their K-Cups were all neatly stacked. Tea for Reese, dark roast for Jo, generic for Kevin. His eyes fell on the Moonbucks brand. Tyler’s brand. A hollow feeling filled his stomach, and his eyes flicked automatically to the empty desk in the corner.
"Pop one in for me, will ya," Jo said then stopped short, following his gaze. Her face immediately softened, her eyes misting.
Sam turned his attention back to the coffeemaker. He removed his spent K-Cup and popped hers in, swapping his now-steaming blue police-issue mug for the bright-yellow smiley-face mug she preferred. When it was full, he handed it to her.
They proceeded to Jo’s desk. She sat in the chair, her hands curled around the steaming mug. Sam rested his hip on the corner of her desk, and she offer
ed him a jelly donut from the white bag she’d brought. Their usual morning routine. It was the closest thing to a meeting they ever had, crowded around Jo’s desk, discussing their plan of attack for the day. Of course, there were usually three of them. The fact Tyler wasn’t there weighed heavily on Sam, and judging by the way Jo kept glancing at the empty desk, he could tell it did on her too.
Sam was just about to start talking about the Palmer case when the door opened and Reese came in with the phone pressed to her ear.
"Yes, Mrs. Deardorff. I know that goats can be very destructive."
Reese shot a look at Sam and rolled her eyes. "Yes, I know Mrs. Hoelscher needs to keep Bitsy in her yard. No, we can’t put a restraining order on a goat. I’ll have an officer come by to take your statement."
"They’re at it again, huh?" Jo asked.
Nettie Deardorff and Rita Hoelscher had been next-door neighbors for over fifty years. The two widows didn’t have much to do but complain about each other. Sam didn’t know what had happened to start it, but ever since he could remember, the two had been feuding. Lately, Nettie had been complaining about Rita’s goat, Bitsy. The previous week, she’d complained Bitsy had eaten up all her bulbs from her garden. The only way to appease them was to send an officer out and pretend the other woman would get punished somehow.
"This time, she’s saying Bitsy chewed her siding." Reese flipped a postcard to Sam.
"That’s odd. She complained about Bitsy last week. I thought it was Nettie’s turn this week," Jo said.
"Maybe they are getting senile and forgetting whose week it is," Reese said.
Jo eyed the postcard over her steaming mug. It had a big pink flamingo on the front. "What’s that?"
Sam flipped it over and recognized the oversized shaky scrawl.
It’s hot as hell down here. And boring. Only talk about knee replacements and gout. Get me out of here. P.S. Sorry about Tyler
-H