by Shane Lusher
Rassi followed.
“So what do we do?” I asked. “Call it in?”
“Your call,” Rassi said. “Technically, it’s not breaking and entering, since the window was open.”
I looked at him. “What?” I asked.
He shrugged. “The window was open,” he said. He sat down at the table and looked up. “Anyway, after what I’m going to tell you, you probably won’t want to.”
“You mean there’s more?” I asked.
He nodded and pointed toward the bottle of bourbon I still held in my hands. I got out another glass, filled it with ice, and then placed it in front of him.
I sat down and sighed. “So tell me about your big secret,” I said.
He avoided my eyes, his fingers tracing a pattern in the ring left by the glass he held in his hands, then twisted the top off the whiskey bottle and filled it. He took a quick sip.
He smacked his lips as he swallowed. “Somebody switched the gun,” he said.
“Which gun?”
“The one they found on Alisha Stamm,” he said.
“What?” I said, “When? Who?”
“Right after it happened,” he said.
The crime scene people had written down the serial number on a scrap piece of notebook paper when they’d bagged it. Rassi had that piece of paper on his desk after the gun had been sent off to the forensics lab in Morton, and then he’d gotten a call.
“The serial numbers don’t match,” the woman at the lab had said. “The one on the bag isn’t what’s on the gun. The correct number is in the paperwork, though.”
Dave had her repeat what she’d said, and once it became clear she was right, he’d chalked it up to a stupid mistake, which was what the forensics woman thought, too. So she’d changed the number on the bag to fit the gun and what was in the report, and nobody was any wiser.
“She didn’t seem suspicious, which was strange, because I couldn’t remember anything like that ever happening before,” Rassi said. “Of course, I haven’t been around that long. And the bullet they took out of Tad’s leg fit with the gun that was in the bag, so I didn’t think about it until later.”
“How much later?” I asked.
“Last week,” Rassi said. “I was going through the case, and then I found the slip of paper in my desk.”
“And?” I asked.
“I have no idea how that mistake was made, Dana,” he said. “Everybody was in shock when it happened-”
“Did you run the other number?”
He nodded.
“What came back?”
“Reported stolen a month before,” Rassi said. “Out of a car in the parking lot at the Pekin Mall. A thirty-eight.” He bit down on his lip and took another swallow of whiskey. “The gun had been registered to Randy Dubois.”
I stared at him. He was struggling to look me in the eye.
“Wait a minute,” I said, and stood up to pace the room. I’d already emptied my tumbler, and gestured with it as I spoke. “Wait. You said that the bullet they took out of his leg matched up to the gun in custody.”
“That’s right,” Rassi said.
“Not the one that Dubois reported stolen?”
“Well, we didn’t exactly have that one,” he said.
I thought for a moment, kicking a pile of towels out of the way as I walked across the room. “So how can you be sure the gun was switched? You saying whoever it was switched the bullets, too? Did you run the other round, the one that-”
The one that blew out the back of his skull.
“Both matched the new gun. That’s what I’m saying,” Rassi said. “Whoever did this manipulated the entire chain of custody.”
“Wait a minute,” I said again. “So what’s your theory? Dubois put the gun in Alisha Stamm’s hand, and told her to kill the Sheriff? And then switched them afterwards?”
“Isn’t that what it looks like?” Rassi asked, but his voice was weak.
I thought about it. “It seems pretty far-fetched,” I said. I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Well, shit, Dana,” he said. “Why the hell do you think Dubois canned me?”
I stopped pacing. “You went to him with this?”
He nodded.
“You actually told him that the gun you ran the serial number on used to be registered in his name?”
“Yeah.”
“What was his reaction?”
“He threw me out,” Rassi said. “He told me I was suspended, on leave with pay, until this could all be cleared up.”
“What else did he say?”
“I just told you,” he said. Under the table, his leg was bouncing up and down.
“How did he react when you told him it was his gun?”
“He accused me of fabricating evidence,” he said. “Said he’d never heard of anyone trying to frame the county sheriff.”
I reached over and took the bottle and refilled my glass. There was something he wasn’t telling me. His leg was still bouncing, his eyes shifting back and forth. I let the silence grow between us as I swirled the amber alcohol around in the tumbler in front of me.
“He said that,” I said slowly. “He accused you of trying to frame him?”
“Yeah,” Rassi said, leaning forward on the table. “Why would I make that up?”
I waved my hand. “I don’t know,” I said. I looked at him. His voice had taken on a whiny tone I recognized from Erin. He was worried that I didn’t believe him.
“So what are we going to do now?” he asked.
I wanted to tell him that he was the cop. He should know what should be done. There were other organizations that could be notified, state police, FBI, whoever came in when the hometown cops didn’t know what they were doing, but I also knew that if Rassi hadn’t done that yet, there was a reason.
I took a drink and set down the glass.
Evidence. There was none. It was just his word against Dubois'. As I watched Rassi, I realized then that both of them had motive. Both wanted to be sheriff, and both stood to benefit from Tad’s demise.
“We’re not doing anything,” I said finally. “I think it would be best if you stayed here until tomorrow.”
He nodded. He was staring down at the tabletop. Maybe it was the booze, or fatigue, or the fresh air finally talking sense to him. And it didn’t take much to draw a connection between one dead cop and the potential for another to fall victim to the same fate.
Which left me back in that loop as well, but the dead cop in question was my brother. And I was the dog who just couldn’t let go of the bone.
“Then I’m going to go talk to some people,” I said.
“Who?” Rassi asked.
“State’s Attorney?”
“That won’t work,” he said. “Holzel will believe Dubois, not me.”
“How can you be so sure of that?” I asked.
“Who would you believe?”
I considered that for a moment. He was right. It was a crazy story, and not very credible. I wasn’t sure I believed it myself.
I leaned back in my chair. “I have to find a way to get at Alisha Stamm.”
He shook his head. “No way Dubois is going to let you talk to her,” he said.
“I’m not thinking about talking to her,” I said.
“Who else, then?” Rassi asked.
I stood up. “It’s midnight already. Let’s get some sleep.”
Thursday
Fourteen
I left the building feeling like an attorney must feel when he encounters his first really hostile witness: clueless, flustered, and pissed off. Nguyen didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d had much success leading a youth group, let alone a collection of vulnerable, parentless children who needed nothing more than just someone to look up to.
Then again, he’d always been friendly before. I’d struck a nerve. Something having to do with the Quiverfull, or Trueblood, or both.
As I drove down Lake Windsor Road for the second time that d
ay, I thought about dialing Rassi to talk to him about why he’d lied to me about Nguyen, but then I remembered what Kelly had said at lunch.
Erin. She needed a parent. The phone call to Rassi could wait.
I pulled up to the curb in front of the house and shut the engine off, looking out at the new concrete sidewalk, the bright green lawns, and the oak trees running down the center of the street.
Then I went in to face two nine-year-old girls on my own.
Erin and Casey were already involved in a hot game of Risk, but they traded me into most of Asia and South America with four or five cannons to allow for my handicap.
“Kelly told us no more screens,” Erin said. She made a face. “She says it makes us grumpy.”
“She’s probably right,” I said as Casey took Brazil.
“She’s probably ri-i-ght,” Erin sang out and took the dice from Casey.
Kelly was still at her deposition, but she had called during a break to say that she would be home by five-thirty. The babysitter, a seventeen-year-old girl named Gabby McMurtry who lived two doors down, had left, promising to return at six-thirty.
When I walked her to the door, I thought about asking her what she knew about Colby Trueblood, but I was done for the day. I was so exhausted, I’d be lucky if I made it through dinner. Besides, I didn’t think that would be very appropriate, considering the girls were present.
I’d also just lost China and Southeast Asia. I stood up to get a drink from the kitchen.
“What were you guys planning on having for dinner?” I called out. I eyed the beer in the bottom drawer and took an iced green tea out of the door. One thing I know: don’t get drunk in front of nine-year-olds. On second thought, after looking over my shoulder, I grabbed the bottle of vodka from the back of the fridge and took a short swig of that.
Then I took the green tea back into the dining room and sat down to try to win back Argentina.
“Mom says you’re going to try to solve the Colby Trueblood case,” Casey said.
I took a drink of the tea.
“That’s the plan, at least,” I said.
“Are you going to do that through the internet?” Erin asked, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. “Because the cops on TV usually walk around and talk to people.”
I smiled. “I don’t think the internet has all the answers,” I said. “And yeah, I’m driving around, talking to people. I talked to more people today than I did last month.”
“Mom says there are too many people getting killed around here,” Casey said. Her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and the both of them had stick-on tattoos on each cheek.
“She told you that?”
“No,” Casey said. She looked at me in a way that said I was incredibly stupid. “Mom never talks to me about work.”
Erin had gone quiet. I wondered if she was thinking about her dad. I also knew that she’d taken it better than I had. No matter what anyone says, Tad’s death had taught me that kids were much tougher than most people gave them credit for.
I took a long sip of my ice tea and wished it was a beer.
“You okay?” I asked Erin, who was looking down at the table. She sniffed, gave me a shaky smile, and then got up.
“I have to go use the bathroom,” she said.
Casey was rolling the dice around in her hand. She watched Erin go and set them down and went into the kitchen to get a tea for herself.
When she returned, I looked at her. “Is she alright?” I asked.
Casey shrugged. “Misses her dad,” she said.
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I murmured “Yeah,” and then asked her,
“How are you holding up?”
Casey looked at me for a moment, considering how to respond.
“Me?” she asked finally. “I’m fine. Things could be worse.” She shrugged again. “Can I play the iPad?”
“Didn’t your mom say no screens?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. Right.”
“If you’d wanted to fool me on that one, you shouldn’t have told me about it,” I said, and then realized that encouraging a child to be dishonest was probably not what you were supposed to do.
“Should I go check on her?” I asked.
Casey shrugged again. When I left the room she was building a tower out of the dice.
I walked down the short hallway to the bathroom and knocked. Inside, I could hear water running. I knocked on the door.
“Erin?” I asked. “Honey? Are you okay?”
“Go away!” she said.
“Erin,” I said. “I’m here. I’m here to help.”
That was the extent of my parenting skills. Nine-year-old girls can go from fine to drama to fine again within five minutes, and I knew that my best bet would be just to wait it out. But I had the feeling she needed someone’s help. Just not mine.
I waited for a moment, and the toilet flushed. Then came the sound of more running water, and Erin emerged from the bathroom. Her face was flushed.
“Are you alright, Erin?” I asked again.
She nodded.
“Is this about your dad?”
Wrong question. She scowled at me and then turned around to walk away.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with my Dad,” she said. She walked away from me, out into the living room. “Jeez. I was just using the bathroom.”
When I returned to the table, Erin and Casey were plotting a hostile takeover in the Middle East, and soon after that, thankfully, Kelly arrived and I was off the hook.
At least emotionally.
She looked strained, wrung out, and when she pointed toward the kitchen I followed.
“That was the most ridiculous waste of time I’ve ever been involved in.” She sighed as she put her purse down on the counter. “Roe’s wife is unbelievable.”
“I met her,” I said.
“I can understand that she wants to blame someone for her husband’s death, but she’s pointing the finger at anybody she can get her hands on. She actually insinuated that I might have been personally involved in her husband’s murder.”
“Is that what her lawyer said?”
“No,” she said, “But he can’t seem to keep Tasha Roe quiet.”
I felt like I should put my arms around her, do something, but we weren’t at that stage. I clasped her shoulder with my hand and rubbed up and down instead.
She forced a smile.
“I want to hear about this,” I said, “but I think Erin needs to talk to you. She was crying in the bathroom.”
Kelly raised her eyebrows and stepped over to look out into the dining room, where the girls had abandoned the game of Risk and were sneaking peaks at Kelly’s iPad.
“She, uh, didn’t want to talk to me.”
Kelly nodded. She walked into the dining room and tapped Erin on the shoulder. She leaned down to put her arms around her and said something in her ear.
Erin got up and followed Kelly into the bathroom.
I glanced in at Casey, who was fully engrossed, the iPad resting on her lap, working the screen with one hand while she pulled on her bottom lip with the other.
I decided to make a cup of coffee. That would keep me away from the bottle in the fridge.
As I took out the coffee filters and the can of beans and struggled to locate the grinder, I tried to catalogue what it was I already knew.
Four murders: Tad, Colby Trueblood, Roe and Sweeney.
Two tied together by obvious cause of death; hunting arrow: Roe, Sweeney.
Three linked by methamphetamines: Tad, Roe, Sweeney.
Three adopted from the same agency: Colby Trueblood, Roe, Sweeney.
Trueblood was connected to Tad because he’d backed him in the election, upsetting the previous status quo. He also had a financial motive in the deaths of Roe and Sweeney, and he’d raised the life insurance on his daughter prior to her death.
Again, that part still didn’t add up. Why hire me to solve his daughter’s deat
h if he’d been the one who murdered her? Why, when he knew very well that I would also have some access to the other three cases? Was he just keeping his enemies close, as he’d said?
Nothing I had seen of Trueblood would indicate to me that he was involved in anyone’s death. There was another connection here. I just wasn’t seeing it.
The coffee grinder was in the back of the cabinet above the sink. I put in the beans, ground them, put a filter in the coffee maker, and filled it with water.
I thought about Vic Daniels. What had been his motive in telling me about the life insurance policies? He had an agenda—he didn’t like Trueblood—and I was willing to bet it had something to do with his disbarment.
I turned on the coffee maker and leaned back against the countertop. Kelly and Erin returned to the dining room, and I went through a list in my head of what I was going to do next.
Vic Daniels.
Darcy Stamm. If I could finally get in touch with her.
Hannah Trueblood.
Percy? He’d gotten his job because of his old man, and he wanted to be in on whatever went down should I discover who had killed Colby.
He also had something against Dubois, but Percy Trueblood struck me as the kind of man who had something against a lot of people.
The man who’d tattooed Colby. Jimmy Remmert, the best friend. The other kids who had been with her the night of her death. I found that I had forgotten their names.
My deposition in the Roe case. Ullie Anderson.
I poked my head around the corner and looked into the living room.
“Okay?” Kelly said to Erin, who was sitting next to Casey now, both taken up by whatever they were doing on the iPad.
Erin nodded. She didn’t take her eyes off the screen.
Kelly got up and came into the kitchen.
“What-” I whispered.
“Girl stuff,” she said. She pulled out her cell phone and began searching through her contacts. “I’m ordering pizza.”
“Girl stuff?” I asked.
“Nothing you’d be interested in,” she said. “The pizza is for the girls,” she said. “I made reservations at Donovan’s.”