by T. L. Haddix
“I’ve suspected it for years, since just after she died. I just can’t figure out how someone else knows about it. Until last night, I’d never told another soul about my suspicions.”
“That’s right. You weren’t home when she passed. Wasn’t her sister with her?” Beth asked.
The sheriff’s mouth tightened. “Marsha was, and that’s the first place I’m starting my questioning. As soon as we’re finished here, I’ll be heading to her house.”
Stacy’s voice was subdued when she spoke. “I think that’s one of the first questions we need to answer. How did the extortionist find out about all these secrets? And how do we plan on dealing with the fallout?” She crossed her arms and faced Wyatt. “If you aren’t planning on paying, even if we do catch this person, your secret is bound to come out. There’s no way we can stop it.”
“I know. If we use any of those letters for prosecution, assuming we catch the person or persons doing this, then the secrets inside them will be exposed.”
As the implications sank in, the mood in the room grew darker. Wyatt finally broke the silence. “Look, we aren’t down and out just yet. I have an appointment this afternoon with my attorney to go over my options. Even if it isn’t good news, we’ll deal with it somehow. Maybe if we work our butts off, we can figure this thing out before it blows up in our faces.”
“That’s all well and good, but do you have any idea of how to do that?” Stacy asked.
“We start at the beginning.” Gathering the four letters, Wyatt placed them in a row. “The wording is consistent in each letter. We have two business owners with wildly divergent clientele, a preacher, and a cop. That’s a pretty eclectic mix of targets. What do we all have in common?”
Beth stood and gestured to the large white board that hung on one wall. “Do you mind if I make some lists?”
The sheriff waved a hand toward the board. “Feel free.”
“Though Ethan teases me about my lists, they work.” She shot Ethan a quick, warm smile, then picked up one of the markers and started writing. “Aside from the fact that you all have blackmail-worthy secrets, it’s not age, sex, or marital status. What about religion?”
Wyatt shrugged. “The reverend was Baptist. Vestra’s a lapsed Catholic the last I knew. I don’t have a spiritual affiliation, but I was raised Methodist, and I don’t know about Raven.”
“I’m not sure about Raven, either, but I can ask. So that means the connection is probably not your beliefs.” She marked religion off the list. “What about the other obvious crossovers? Doctors, dentists, attorneys?”
After naming his contacts, Wyatt said, “We’ll have to ask the other targets.”
“I’d include your sister-in-law in that list, if I were you,” Ethan suggested. “If she did help Julie commit suicide, she may have told someone over the years. A confidant, a therapist. That’s a heavy burden to have to carry for so long.”
“Tell me about it.” Wyatt glanced at Maria, who had been unusually quiet. “You haven’t said much.”
She sighed. “Aren’t we forgetting one of the first rules you detectives usually use? Follow the money. Given the amounts the extortionist asks for, and how well he’s done his homework as far as the accuracy of the secrets goes, doesn’t it also stand to reason that he’s been that careful in picking his victims? Because he knows they can pay him? Who would have that knowledge?”
Stacy nodded. “She’s absolutely right. Keep it simple. Who knows the state of your finances, Wyatt?”
“Anyone where I bank, my financial advisor, my attorney.”
“What about your tax person or an accountant?” Beth asked.
“No, I do my own taxes and bookkeeping. When I’m involved in an election, I hire someone, but that’s just for the campaign. Not my personal finances.” He gave her the names of the people he used. “Ethan, I’m going to put you on tracking down the loose ends on my letter, since we discussed it in detail last night. Also, touch base with Raven Lynch, and keep Beth in that loop, if you don’t mind. He might not want to talk to you about it alone. Stacy, you stay with the reverend.”
“Will do. Are you taking Vestra, then?”
He grimaced. “For all the good it will do me. Maria, I’d like to have you act as our central depository. Keep working the forum angle.” He gestured around the table. “I want all of you to go to Maria with what you find. Maria, can you dump the information into some kind of sortable database?”
“Absolutely,” she assured him.
“Good. Then I’m going to head out, unless you all have any more questions?” When they all shook their heads, he saluted them and left.
For a minute after he closed the door behind him, there was silence in the room, as though no one was willing to voice their thoughts.
Finally, Stacy spoke, her distress obvious. “How in God’s name are we going to protect him?”
Maria’s throat was tight as she answered, “We’re going to find the SOB who’s doing this and stop him. And I’d advise us to pray… hard.”
“There’s no way this will end well, is there?” Beth asked.
Ethan walked to where she stood and pulled her in for a hug. “No, I very much doubt it.”
Chapter Fifteen
If he could have gotten away with it, Wyatt would have been perfectly happy never to see his former sister-in-law again. He and Marsha had never been close, even in the early days when his marriage to Julie hadn’t been strained. Marsha’s attitude toward him had always been a little cool, and as his relationship with her sister deteriorated, she became positively frigid.
He pulled his vehicle into her driveway and sat there, looking at the house. Wyatt had kept up with Marsha through the grapevine, and he knew that her marriage had ended in divorce a couple of years earlier. The last six years hadn’t been easy on her.
With reluctance, he got out of his car and went to the door. When Marsha opened it, her eyes widened. For a long moment, she didn’t speak. Wyatt was surprised by her appearance. She’d aged more than the intervening six years could account for.
“What do you want?” she finally asked.
“We need to talk.”
“No. We don’t have anything to talk about.” She started to close the door.
Wyatt stopped her with a hand on the wood slab. “It’s about Julie.”
A tense silence passed, and then Marsha finally nodded. “Fine. Come in.” She led him into the living room, but didn’t invite him to sit. “You have my attention. What about my sister?”
He pursed his lips. “Okay, straight to the point, no niceties. That’s fine. Who’ve you talked to about Julie’s death?”
Marsha crossed her arms. “Excuse me? What do you mean, who’ve I talked to? I’ve talked to a lot of people. She was my sister; I’m allowed to discuss her.”
“No, Marsha. I don’t mean about the ALS, or the fact that she’s gone. I mean, who have you told how she died? The truth about how she died?” Wyatt thought he would have been gratified to see her face lose its color, but to his very great surprise, he felt only pity and anger.
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stammered. “And you have some nerve, coming into my home and…”
“And what, Marsha? Asking you who else knows you helped Julie kill herself?”
She sucked in a breath and started around him. “We’re done.”
“I received a letter. A blackmail letter. Your secret isn’t a secret anymore.” His words stopped her as effectively as someone jerking her to a halt with a string. “I need to know who you’ve told.”
“You’re assuming I know what you’re talking about.”
Wyatt turned to face her. “Are you really going to keep up this pretense? That you didn’t have anything to do with Julie’s death? We both know that isn’t true.”
“If you thought I helped Julie kill herself, why didn’t you arrest me six years ago?”
Wyatt clenched his jaw. “You know why. You destroyed the evid
ence.”
“What did this letter say?” she asked, her voice faint.
“That unless I pay a certain amount of money, the information is going to be made public. And if it does go public, I can’t protect you. You could face serious charges, Marsha. Assisted suicide is a crime in Indiana.”
The look she sent him was full of loathing and despair. “Don’t pretend you give a tinker’s damn about me. Do you have any idea what the last few years have been like for me, being without her? Julie was more than just my sister. She was my best friend. Every damned day I’ve had to live without her, while you’ve gone on like she never even existed.”
Her vitriol shocked him as much as her words. “That’s not true.”
“Of course it is. You forget, I know what your marriage was like. I know the truth about the great Wyatt Dixon. You want everyone to think you’re such a fine, upstanding cop. The big hero. But you’re a pathetic excuse for a man. You look good on paper, I’ll give you that. But once you’re out of the limelight? You’re just a paper cutout. You never loved Julie.” Her voice grew louder as she listed his flaws. “She deserved better than you. She deserved someone who loved her, who put her first. That wasn’t you, but you’re what she got. It’s your fault the last decade of her life was miserable.”
With each accusation, Wyatt felt himself grow colder. Her words held a lot of truth, as much as he hated to admit it. Still, he knew he wasn’t the only person who shouldered blame. “Julie could have left at any time.”
Marsha gave a brittle laugh and wiped the wetness from her cheeks. “That’s rich. She could have left… and you would have just let her go? I don’t think so. That would have hurt your career.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. That’s bullshit, and you know it. If Julie had come to me, told me she wanted out, told me about the other man, I’d have helped her pack. I’m not the one who lied about how I felt, and what I was doing. I’m not the one who was unfaithful.” His voice increased in volume, but he didn’t bother trying to modulate it. “It was bad enough to find out my wife was dying, but then to find out she’d been screwing around behind my back? That it wasn’t just a one-night stand, but that she’d been cheating on me for three years? I know our marriage wasn’t perfect, but do you have any idea what that was like, finding out my entire life was a lie? Everything I thought I had, save my job, was false. I’m not the one who broke my vows.”
His voice echoed off the walls as the words died, and they faced each other grimly. If looks could kill, Wyatt would have been on the floor.
“What do you want from me?” Marsha finally asked.
“I want you to tell me the truth about what happened with Julie, and tell me who all knows.”
She took a few steps back to stand beside an end table, and with shaking hands, she gathered up the petals that had fallen off the flowers on the table. “And I will tell you again that I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She looked up and met his gaze in the mirror that hung above the table. “You’ve said your piece, and I think you need to go now.”
He saw from the set of her jaw that she was finished talking. “Fine, but keep in mind what I said. I can’t help you if you won’t let me. And regardless of whether you believe it or not, I do want to help. I don’t like you, Marsha, but I at least owe Julie’s memory that much. You know where to find me.”
As Wyatt drove toward town and his appointment with his attorney, he kept replaying the scene in his mind. One of the reasons he hadn’t entertained the idea of another relationship after Julie’s death was because of the way things had been between them. He knew he was a good cop. He thought he made a real difference in the community and served the citizens of Olman County well. But personally speaking? The sad truth was that he just hadn’t been the best husband in the world. He had tried to make Julie happy, but as hard as he had worked at their relationship, his efforts just hadn’t been enough.
There was no use denying his attraction to Maria any longer. At least not to himself. He was tired of being alone, of going home to an empty house every night. Although he doted on Mix and Match, sometimes he positively ached for real human companionship. But when he remembered what his marriage had been like, he shuddered. He didn’t know if he could open himself up to that kind of vulnerability again, especially to someone like Maria.
She was so much younger, so vibrant, so alive. Aside from the fact that she was in his employ and fraternization was frowned upon within the department, he couldn’t figure out what possible attraction he might hold for someone like her. Despite Ethan’s gentle teasing, Wyatt just couldn’t believe someone like Maria would be interested in him.
When he reached town, he decided to park at the department and walk to John Hudson’s office. It wasn’t a long distance, but it would hopefully be enough to help him clear his head. God knew he had a lot to think about.
Chapter Sixteen
By six o’clock that evening, Maria was cursing her stupidity and clumsiness. She was stuck trying to figure out how to extricate herself from an embarrassing and potentially dangerous situation.
Her task had been simple enough—retrieve one of the old surveillance cameras from the county storage facility where it had been taken after the recent departmental upgrade. As a senior staff member, she had access to the warehouse, which was located in a repurposed industrial park. The whole thing had turned into a hot mess with very little effort on Maria’s part.
“How do you get into these situations?” she asked herself. The only answer was the loud buzzing from the warehouse’s overhead fluorescent lights, and a distant sound of water dripping.
She had planned on being in and out of the warehouse within five minutes, but it hadn’t quite worked out that way. Though she’d quickly found the row of shelves where the cameras were located, the lighting wasn’t sufficient to highlight them beyond the first few inches. She’d had to dig around, moving boxes in order to see their labels.
As the headache she’d been fighting all day increased, she took out her hair clip, letting her hair fall around her shoulders. When she finally located the camera boxes, she’d had to shove another box out of the way to move the one she wanted forward. Doing so had disturbed the web of a very large spider.
With a terrified shriek, Maria had jumped back and crashed into the next row of shelves hard enough to rattle the metal structure, and probably hard enough to leave bruises, if the way her back stung was any indication. She had also become entangled in an old fishing net someone had left on the shelf.
If it had just been the net, she would have been okay, but the contraption came complete with hooks, some of which had embedded themselves into her skin. The more she tried to untangle the net and the hooks, the more they pulled at the skin on her back and shoulders. Additionally, the net seemed to be hooked to the shelf, as well. She was afraid that if she pulled too hard, she’d pull the heavy, industrial shelf, and its contents, straight down on her head.
All other avenues exhausted, she gave in with a defeated groan and not a few tears. She needed help. Very carefully, she eased her cell phone out of her pocket and called dispatch, a gasp of pain escaping as one of the hooks protested the movement. She couldn’t get the phone up to her ear, so she put the call on speaker. When one of the female dispatchers answered, she almost cried with relief.
“Carrie, it’s Maria. Listen, I need a favor. Do we have any units near the storage warehouse right now?”
“Let me check.” She heard the sound of radio traffic in the background, then Carrie came back on the line. “Sheriff Dixon is out that way. What do you need?”
“Of course it would be him.”
“Come again?”
“Nothing. I’m at the warehouse, and I need an extra pair of hands. Would you mind sending him over?”
Relaying the information, Carrie confirmed the dispatch to her. “He should be there in about three minutes. Are you okay? You sound funny.”
Maria gave a half-laugh, half-sob. “
I’ve… it’s just been a very long day. Thanks, Carrie.” Ending the call, she groaned loudly and managed to move her head enough to glare up at the fluorescent lights suspended from the ceiling. “Why? Why did it have to be Wyatt? It just couldn’t be Jason or Robbie or Wes. No, it had to be the one man I don’t want to see me like this.”
The minutes ticked by slowly, and the silence in the warehouse was unnerving. The only sound was the buzzing of the lights. As she waited, she noticed a chill creeping in and shivered. Though the warehouse was climate-controlled, the inside was still cool, too cool for comfort. She cursed the decision to remove her coat. The thin blouse that hadn’t protected her from the hooks wasn’t doing much to keep her warm, either.
When she heard a vehicle pull up and its door slam, she was surprised to find herself on the verge of tears once more. As the door to the warehouse squeaked open and Wyatt called out her name, she quickly sniffed them back.
“I’m here,” she called.
His footsteps hurried in her direction, and soon he was at the end of the row. “What are you doing?
“Oh, nothing really. I just… well, it’s embarrassing. But I seem to have… um, gotten trapped in a fishing net.”
Pulling his flashlight off his utility belt, he stepped in to get a closer look. “That’s the net we confiscated from Curtis Helton a few months back.” He reached for the net, but she stopped him.
“Don’t! It has hooks, and I’m caught on some of them. I think it’s also caught on the shelf, because the whole thing rattles if I pull on it.”
He cursed. “I can’t really see because of your hair. I’m going to try to move it out of the way, okay?”
“Okay.”
He moved so that he was standing less than a foot away from her, close enough for her to feel the heat coming off his body and smell his cologne. Very gently, he wrapped one arm around her neck and gathered her hair in his hand, using the other hand to hold the flashlight. “Son of a… damn. You’re bleeding.”
“I’m not surprised. I hit the shelf pretty hard.”