“No it isn’t,” said Jake. “I thought you were Gladys Nyberg and threw the rock about five feet away from where I thought someone might be. No jury would convict me.”
Haggerty gingerly massaged where a lump was rising like bread baking in an oven. “I still don’t appreciate being pelted by large stones, Mr. Finnigan.”
“I’m sure you don’t. If you hadn’t been hiding in the bushes, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“Had it crossed your mind I might be hiding out in these bushes on work related matters?”
Jake appraised the detective, clad in blue sweats and New Balance tennis shoes. On the front of his sweatshirt were the words ARROW BAY POLICE DEPARTMENT and the city seal. “Undercover, I’m sure.”
“Of course,” said Haggerty irritably. He followed Jake’s eyes to his sweatshirt and scowled.
“I think, Sam, that Detective Haggerty was out for his evening jog when he heard our voices. And he dove into the bushes to spy on us. Maybe he was hoping to hear us give away some sort of incriminating sort of statement, like ‘Oh dear, I wish we’d dumped Leona Weinberg’s body in the ravine instead’ or ‘Gosh, weren’t those bloodstains hard to wash off.’”
“Oh, drama, drama, drama, Jacob,” said Sam, massaging his temple with his left hand. “Really, Detective, my husband is a very nice fellow when he’s had enough sleep and hasn’t been fighting a headache all day. Sometimes the author just creeps through a little too much.”
“Either that or he was hoping to catch us snogging as some sort of cheap thrill,” said Jake, eyeing the detective again.
“Snogging?” said Haggerty.
“He picked that one up from Harry Potter. Jacob, you’re being an ass. Leave the nice detective alone before he tosses your well-meaning butt into the cooler overnight for being a melodramatic snoop.”
“I am not being a snoop,” protested Jake. “Don’t you want to know why he was in the bushes?”
“Well, frankly Detective Haggerty, it is a fair enough question. You about scared the hell out of us.”
“I apologize,” said Haggerty, scratching his goatee. “I was jogging. I do it when the weather’s reasonably good. I heard your voices, and I honestly didn’t know who it was so I ducked into the bushes. Despite what was said at the meeting, drug deals have been taking place in this park, so I thought I’d see what was going on.”
“And once you realized it was us, why didn’t you come out?”
“I couldn’t be sure you weren’t dealing drugs.”
“What, to each other?” asked Sam, incredulous.
“And had it been a drug dealer, what would you have done? Slapped them and told them to knock it off?”
“The waist pouch contains my cell phone and badge.”
“And you would have asked them politely not to shoot you?”
Haggerty unzipped his sweatshirt, revealing a shoulder holster.
Jake looked skeptical, shrugging.
“We’ll just leave you alone now, Detective,” said Sam.
“Look, I’m sorry if I startled you.”
“I think I’ll recover,” said Sam. “Now if you’ll excuse us, we’ll just head home.”
Jake opened his mouth to protest, but one warning look from Sam made him close it. He glowered and gave Haggerty a nod before heading back up the trail toward the parking lot.
* * *
Adam Haggerty watched the pair, a grin spreading on his face. The two of them reminded him of some 1930s comedy pairing, like Myrna Loy and William Powell, which he found fascinating. Haggerty also thought that if circumstances were different, he might like to know them in life. But he had a case to work on.
He stepped back on the gravel path and resumed jogging, which he had been doing before hearing their voice. He hadn’t wanted to tell them he had also seen someone else in the park, which was why he was in the bushes.
He thought the figure he’d seen had a weapon, possibly a knife, but he couldn’t be sure. He didn’t want to alarm them unduly, so he hadn’t mentioned it.
The cold night deepened, the temperature dropping even lower. Haggerty had finally had enough and jogged back to his car. Once inside, despite his freely sweating body, he quickly turned on the heat, watching the strange depths of Wilde Park disappear in his review mirror as he pulled out onto Enetai Avenue.
Chapter Sixteen
Derek Brauer stepped from his car Tuesday morning, October the 16th, feeling a steady rush of happiness surge through his veins. He was working on a good story, and finally felt his life was falling into place after the derailing it had taken in San Francisco.
Entering the Examiner office, Derek bid hello to Doris Woolsey, the paper’s receptionist, before stepping into the newsroom. He had been surprised by the new desks and computer terminals, figuring a small outfit like the Examiner would have last been decorated around the year of his birth. The wooden file cabinets against the pale sage painted walls remained, but they were officially antiques and added an air of class to the newsroom. Above the file cabinets, the walls were lined with historic photos taken by the Examiner’s photographers over the years. The latest one, a color shot of the ferry Kulshan arriving in the fog, had been Jason’s contribution.
No, for a chicken shit weekly rag, it wasn’t a bad gig, all things considered. He could file the stories for the weekly in his sleep, knocking them out in two hours tops, and then focus his energies elsewhere. His fuel bill was becoming exorbitant until he found out a commuter train ran from Mount Burlington to Seattle. That had made life—and his continued digging into stories that he knew would not please his editor or Jason—much easier.
Reed’s door was shut and the blind drawn. The thought of Jason drew his attention to the red light burning over the basement door. Jason was downstairs developing some black and white photos. He sighed at that. Jason was actually working on making prints of the old negatives to use up the last of the chemicals. The transition to digital and a modern operation was underway, though the paper was bleeding money.
He shoved these thoughts aside, waving at Marion Burd, who was busy typing away furiously at her computer while talking on the phone. She waved back while he crossed over to his own desk in a cubbyhole between a stanchion and the filing cabinets. He liked the desk as it gave him some privacy from the rest of the newsroom, which held the desks of advertising manager Duane Mollet, “Northwest Life” writer Joyce Eckhart and senior reporter Marion Burd. He could buckle down and sort of shut off the rest of the newsroom from where he sat, and more importantly, kept everyone else from knowing what he was working on.
Derek might—might—have settled into the quiet life, had it not been for the Susan Crane murder story being dumped into his lap. He was still unsure why Alexander Blackburn III had given him the information that had broken the case. Derek didn’t like McAvoy, Blackburn’s stooge, and he didn’t like being manipulated. After the story faded from the public conscience, Derek began poking around into his “patron’s” background and had found a less-than-snowy past. Derek felt in his bones there was much more than the man was letting on, and to reaffirm to himself that Blackburn couldn’t be trusted, he’d snuck into the crime scene where Crane’s killer had been caught after the police had left it. Derek had nearly killed himself in the process, but he’d uncovered one thing: there had been more people involved than McEvoy or the police had let on, he was sure of it.
While he felt free to poke around Blackburn’s background, McEvoy was not someone Derek Brauer wanted to cross. The man had a face like a pit bull carved in granite and eyes that glittered unpleasantly. They missed nothing, Derek could tell. McEvoy had eyeballed him with the stare of someone who has had a long distrust of not only the press, but humanity in general before he tossed over the documents without a word. Derek had thanked him and watched him go, making a note to check into his background as soon as he had a chance.
What he had turned up scared him more than anything he had so far: nothing. McEvoy’s past was as b
lank as white paper, his Internet profile virtually non-existent. This development left Derek with a queasy feeling about black ops, CIA spooks, and a litany of other deep cover government operations. Derek had little doubt McEvoy had a long trail of corpses behind him, and for the moment, he had backed off delving into Alex Blackburn’s history.
Derek was able to get the feel of the town and its people. It was nothing like the pace of San Francisco but was compelling in ways he had not expected. Derek found the town more and more unnerving. For all its bucolic setting with Mount Baker looming over the town, the San Juans, the sprawling, beautiful vistas imbued him with a hallucinogenic sense of abnormality. Arrow Bay was odd, unsettling to him. Having been at the Examiner for a year, Derek now knew that all-American façade presented and promoted by the town had a huge crack in it. Scandal and deceit bubbled right below the veneer. He’d found evidence of that dating back to practically the moment Arrow Bay had been founded up to the present day. He’d combed countless back issues of the Examiner and found story after story.
This course of inquiry had led him to Miranda Zimmerman, the lovely blonde librarian who had also taken a keen interest in her hometown. Talking with her, Derek found out even more of the sordid bits of Arrow Bay’s history. Miranda had documented some of the weirder events in a thick scrapbook which she kept locked in a large safe at her home.
He didn’t like her, though. He hadn’t been able to charm her, and even though he had no interest in women, he prided himself on being able to charm anyone. Zimmerman was having none of it, and that first meeting had been his last. Zimmerman was suddenly unavailable. In retrospect, he knew he’d made his mistake when he turned the conversation toward the Blackburn family.
Jason strode over to his desk with a plate of pastry. “So tell me what you’re working on,” he asked, taking a bite of a raspberry Danish.
“Still waiting for the cause of death of Leona Weinberg. Marion’s been kind enough to hand me that since—” He looked over at the closed office door that had REED LONGHOFFER, EDITOR on it in gilt letters. “Is he in?”
“Not this morning. I gather he’s gone down to the police department to harangue them over something or other.”
“Anyway, she’s let me take that since she’s bound and determined to hunt down everything Reed’s been trying to hide on the whole Wilde Park fiasco.”
“Marion’s a trooper. And she’s plenty pissed at him for calling her an ‘old fossil’ the other day.”
“I thought you were downstairs,” Derek said, motioning to the red light.
“I was. I was about to go grab some photos for Marion. Jonas is down there cleaning out his stuff.”
“Why’s he got the light on?”
“Haven’t the foggiest. He may very well have turned on the wrong switch,” he said, grabbing Derek’s phone and pushing the number for the extension for the basement. “Jonas, this is Jason. Jason. Yes. I’m fine. Jonas, why have you got the development light on? Yes, it is. I can see it from here, Jonas. Yes. No, shut it off. Well if it’s dark in there now, try the other switch. Well, turn the lights on and then turn the other switch off,” he said, shaking his head and covering the mouth piece. “They didn’t retire him a moment too soon.”
“What’s he doing after he leaves here?”
“Daughter is coming from Arizona to collect him. She’s been after him for years to move down there to be closer to the grandkids—Hi, Jonas. No, no. It’s Jason. Jason. Yes, okay, I’ll be right down,” he said, hanging up. “He turned off the light and now can’t find the switch. I better watch him to make sure he’s not making off with our photo archives,” he said, walking away from Derek’s desk and clomping down the cellar stairs.
Derek chuckled and flipped through his mail—letters from the usual two or three old cranks in town who complained about his stories. They never left their names, but he recognized the handwriting after a while.
The third envelope was different. Plain manila with no return address. The front looked as if it were standard Times New Roman font, with just his name and the address for the Examiner. Derek slit the envelope and shook a single sheet of paper out.
Unfolding it, he wasn’t sure whether or not to take it seriously. It was a letter made up of cut outs from newspapers, a message spelling out a chilling warning:
Weinberg was no accident. She won’t be the last, either.
From a Concirned Citisen
He looked around to see if anyone else had seen the letter, or his opening it. Everyone seemed thoroughly engrossed in their own work. Still glancing around, Derek carefully opened his bottom desk drawer and pulled out an empty zip-lock bag he kept for paperclips. Using a pen he neatly slipped the note and the envelope into the bag, sealing it tightly. He shut the letter up in the bottom drawer and pondered what to do next.
* * *
In his office at the Arrow Bay police station, Detective Adam Haggerty listened carefully to the argument Chief Sanderson was having across the hall with veteran detective Nelson Dorval. He was carefully folding a piece of blue kami paper into a butterfly. He had already finished the hummingbird he’d started when Dorval had entered Sanderson’s office, but this tirade was lasting longer than he had anticipated, forcing him to start another piece of origami.
Haggerty found origami soothing. It kept his mind clear and helped him focus his thoughts. The difficulty of his cases could be judged by the amount of origami flooding his office. On the last case he’d worked, the top of the filing cabinet turned into a small zoo of brightly colored paper animals. The case before that one had resulted in only five different creatures. He speculated the Weinberg case would end up occupying most of his file cabinet top again.
Dorval was, as usual, making no effort to keep his voice down. Most of the squad on the second floor was able to hear his outburst. Sanderson had responded in his usual soft-spoken manner, but over the last few minutes his voice had raised enough so that Haggerty could hear him.
“He comes in here looking like a goddamn bum,” Dorval said. “Always playing that goddamn music in his office and never dressing to code.”
“I’ll admit his methods are a little unorthodox, but they are effective. His cases are watertight and if you’ve not noticed, the conviction rate on his cases is well over ninety per cent!”
Haggerty made another careful fold, smiling to himself. Both he and the chief knew that all his cases had resulted in convictions. Sanderson was superstitious and didn’t want to ruin Haggerty’s winning streak. Haggerty would be the first to admit his success was due in great part to his partner, Sharon Trumbo, who was as fanatical about details as he was. Kulshan County’s brand new crime lab and their highly efficient, overworked team also contributed to his overall success. Haggerty was always one to give credit where it was due.
“Is anything wrong with his reports, Dorval?”
“No.”
“Is there anything wrong with the quality of his work?”
“It isn’t that, George, it’s—”
“Let me remind you, Nelson, you’re only acting captain. As soon as Montgomery is back from maternity leave, you’re back to being detective. This is the third unprovoked rant you’ve had about Haggerty in the last month, and I’ve damn well had it. Haggerty has put his time in and he earned that goddamn promotion. The next time you come in here to have a bitch fest I suggest you damn well have something to back it up or I’ll put you back on traffic duty again. Now get out!”
Chapter Seventeen
Adam watched Dorval storm out of the office and down the hallway. There was the slam of the Chief’s door, then silence as people got back to work.
He sat back in his chair, looking at the empty side of the desk where Sharon Trumbo usually sat. She was out at lunch, probably picking up her usual salad and soup combo from the Bitter End. He hoped she would get back soon.
Part of him knew Dorval was absolutely correct. He often went for long stretches without speaking to anyone and quite oft
en did have low jazz music playing in his office. It helped clear his head. They were not conscious forms of rebellion in any way. He had the goatee because he felt he looked too young without it and knew from experience suspects didn’t take him seriously when questioning them. One had made a cutting remarking about Doogie Howser, and the Van Dyke had started growing the next day. He didn’t follow the dress code to the letter, as he was always tramping through Arrow Bay’s pastures and creeks and got tired of shelling out for new shoes.
Adam made the final fold on the butterfly and held it in the palm of his hand, his long, narrow fingers cradling the pale blue figure that had moments before been a square of flat paper. He placed it softly on Sharon’s desk, which was set back-to-back against his.
The contrast between the two desks was noticeable. Sharon’s was a clutter of things, including an ailing jade plant, photos of her family and friends, and a huge stack of papers. Her screensaver was always set to the scene of a river with leaves gently floating across the silver surface.
His desk was completely bereft of anything personal, save for a copy of The Portable Blake, which he always had with him. Pens were all in their cup, papers neatly stacked, and everything was right within reach. The only anomalies were the stack of kami paper and a box of Junior Mints, which he tended to eat obsessively when concentrating.
The walls of their office were a blend of their tastes, however. Together they had decided they weren’t going to have the same sterile, boring offices as their coworkers and had decided to put photos up—something else that probably irked Dorval. The Trumbo/Haggerty office was the only place outside of the lobby that actually had photographs. He and Sharon had mutually decided to have scenic photographs of Arrow Bay and Kulshan County. Their last purchase, ironically enough, was a silver gel photo of Wilde Park in the fog, with the sun just bursting out. The photo had been taken by Jason Finnigan.
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