This Fallen Prey

by Kelley Armstrong

  Brady is thankfully unconscious by this point. I say thankfully, because we would not have earned his confidence if he'd been awake, hearing Dalton reading aloud from a chapter on emergency poisoning treatment as Anders and I worked.

  And he really wouldn't want to hear us concur that pumping his stomach is the extent of what we can do. After the pumping, we put him on an IV to replace fluids. Then we wait.

  It's two hours before he wakes. I'm collapsed in a bedside chair. Anders sits on the floor beside me. Dalton has gone back to the station to secure the scene.

  Brady wakes, and the first thing he says is, "Dog."

  I remember him saying that in the cell, and again I think I must be mishearing.

  "Doug?" I say. We do have a resident named Doug . . . who also works as a chef.

  He shakes his head and rasps, "Dog. Your dog food."

  Anders rises. "You think someone served you dog food?"

  More head shaking, Brady's face screwing up in frustration. "Your dog. The food. Poison. Did she eat--?" He coughs and winces as the cough sets his raw throat aflame. "Did your dog eat the food? Tried--tried to warn--"

  "You were trying to warn us that your food was poisoned," I say. "Before my dog ate the rest."

  He nods, eyelids fluttering as if even keeping them open is too much effort.

  "Is she okay?" he manages.

  "She doesn't eat anything without permission. The sheriff got your tray out of there. We'll be analyzing it for poison."

  He gives a harsh laugh, wincing again. "Pretty sure it'll come back positive."

  19

  I've lied to Brady. I have no way to analyze his food. Down south, we'd just ship the sample off to the lab. Up here . . .

  Before I requisitioned a Breathalyzer and urine-testing kits, Dalton used the old-fashioned methods--walk in a straight line, recite the alphabet backward, let me see your eyes . . . I need something more scientific. To be honest, though, I've never used the formal tests and gotten a result different from his assessment. It just stops people from protesting their innocence when I have hard evidence.

  Our poison-testing method is not unlike Dalton's sobriety testing. Someone finds berries or mushrooms in the forest, brings them back to town, and he says, "Yeah, don't eat that." Food spoilage is a bigger poisoning risk, but Rockton has very stringent food-handling rules, and the problems occur only when someone says "I'm sure that meat I left out of the icebox is fine."

  The one person who might have been able to help us here is Sharon--the woman we just buried. Not only was she a gardener--familiar with poisonous plants--but for Sharon that was more than theoretical knowledge. She was one of the residents the council snuck in, a wealthy woman who'd poisoned her husband and his pregnant mistress. Even in that case, though, we could hardly have gone to her and said, "Hey, you wouldn't know anything about poisons, would you? Random question."

  We don't have any chemists either. The two residents with that sort of experience are both dead, which has at least temporarily fixed Rockton's drug problem.

  So I'm not sure what to do, beyond saying, yes, Brady was poisoned, and it seems unlikely that it wasn't in his food. As for what it could have been, I'm stumped. We don't use pesticides in our greenhouse. We certainly aren't spraying our yards to control "weeds." Nor do we use poison for vermin. That's just too dangerous.

  I'll need to dig up all the chemicals we do have. I'm hoping to narrow the field by figuring out suspects and what sources of poison they have access to. The obvious place to start is by tracing the path Brady's breakfast took.

  Dalton was the last person to handle it. He took the tray from the delivery person and gave it to Brady while Paul stood guard and the delivery person waited. So two people were watching the whole time, meaning I can eliminate Dalton, should anyone else suspect him.

  Who delivered the food? That'd be Kenny.

  Then I need to consider those who prepared the food. There's Brian, who made the muffin and poured the coffee. Before that comes the person who brought the tray--with scrambled eggs and sausage--from the kitchen. Then the person who made the eggs and cooked the sausage, as well as everyone else who was in the kitchen at the time.

  Finally, the chain goes back to the guy who made the sausage. Mathias.

  "I did not poison the sausage," Mathias says when I walk into the butcher shop.

  "Yes, I know."

  That stops him, bloody knife in hand. He wipes it on a cloth, slowly, as if awaiting a punch line.

  "You delivered that batch of sausage yesterday," I say. "There was no way of knowing which links would go to Brady, and you wouldn't poison innocent people."

  "Thank you." He sets the knife aside and removes his apron. "I did not shoot at Mr. Brady either. I was expecting to see you after that."

  "It was the wrong kind of murder."

  He chuckles, pleased. When Brady first arrived, Mathias had asked if I wanted him to assess or assassinate the prisoner. If I'd pursued that, he'd have claimed he was joking. He wasn't. I have no doubt that Mathias has killed murderers. He has a modus operandi, though. Poetic justice. What Brady is accused of requires a more fitting punishment than a shot in the head.

  "Also," Mathias says, "you are not convinced he is a killer."

  "Are you?"

  "No. But I am rarely convinced until they confess. Even that is never a guarantee. In Mr. Brady's case, though, I require more interviews to make an educated guess. Which would still not be enough to warrant capital punishment. One must be absolutely certain. Hypothetically speaking."

  "I should have you speak to Roy and his crew about that."

  Mathias sniffs. "Roy is a cretin. I would like to interview him."

  "That can be arranged. We'd appreciate it, actually."

  "So if you did not come to question me . . ."

  "Even if there's no way you poisoned the sausage, I must be seen coming in here to question you. Otherwise it'll seem as if I'm excusing you because we're acquainted."

  " 'Acquainted'?" His brows rise. "That is an odd word to use, and I will presume you choose it because you have temporarily forgotten the French word for friend. Otherwise, I would be insulted."

  "If I said we were friends, you'd make some comment about that. Now, I do need to get back to the business of finding who poisoned the prisoner. If you have more of that batch of sausage, I'll take some for analysis."

  "You mean you'll eat it."

  "That's the best way to test it. Also, I missed lunch."

  He walks into the back, leaving the door open. "So it was poison."

  I list the symptoms.

  "Interesting," he says as he returns with a package of sausage. "Did Mr. Brady say anything?"

  "Sure." I make retching noises.

  He shakes his head.

  "At the time, he only mentioned Storm. When we removed his food tray, he was worried she'd eat what was left and get sick."

  His lips purse in thought. "Or worried she would eat it and not get sick, proving the food was not the source of the poison."

  "If so, he could just say it must have been in his water or coffee. That was also the first thing he said when he woke. He was concerned that she'd eaten his food."

  "Interesting," he says again.

  I eye him. "In what way?"

  "Just . . . interesting. I would like to speak to him later."

  "I don't think he'll be in the mood for your brand of conversation."

  "We will discuss dogs."

  "Uh-huh . . ."

  "He apparently has a fondness for them. It would be a topic of conversation--other than himself--that he might respond to."

  I have a suspect for the poisoning. I'm just trying not to fixate on him, because, well, he couldn't have done it, considering he was locked in the icehouse at the time. Roy is the most obvious possibility. Less than twenty-four hours ago he wanted to try Brady, a sham trial that I'm sure would have resulted in a guilty verdict and a death sentence.

  Obviously Roy did
n't do it. But he didn't act alone yesterday. When I track the path that Brady's food took, I'm looking for one of those names, somewhere along the line. When there are none, I start to investigate the whereabouts of those five residents who'd been with him.

  I've found a possible lead. Cecil was supposed to work at the main food depot this morning. He would have prepared Brady's breakfast . . . if Dalton hadn't yanked him onto chopping duty. It would be easy, though, for Cecil to pop into the food depot and wander around a bit, poison Brady's tray . . .

  I'm heading to the depot when Val hurries up alongside me.

  "It seems I've been trailing one stop behind you," she says. "I wanted to ask if I can sit with the prisoner."

  "Hmm?" I catch a glimpse of Diana up ahead, coming out of the bakery.

  "Take a turn playing nursemaid," Val says. "I think Diana's up next. Looks like she's got a coffee to keep her awake."

  "Right." I'm distracted, and it takes effort to follow what Val's saying. "So you want to take her shift?"

  "Oliver was awake when I went by earlier. Nicole refused to talk to him, so I think he's getting bored. If I go in when he's feeling lonely and groggy, it will help establish me as an ally." She gives a look, like a five-year-old whispering plans to eavesdrop on her parents' party. "I've managed to establish a rapport that I feel will be useful."

  "Uh-huh."

  I could tell her that I'm no longer convinced we need this. But that look really is childlike, her eyes glittering. Val wants to be helpful, and the idea of playing spy with Brady makes her feel both happy and useful.

  "Sure," I say. Then I call, "Diana?" When she stops, I say to Val, "Tell her you're taking her shift. I'll swing by in a couple of hours to see if he's ready to go back to his cell. If not, Diana can take over then."

  20

  No one at the food depot saw Cecil there that morning. It's still possible he was--he'd have access. It's also possible there were more than five people following Roy's madness. I'm going to need a complete list of everyone who could have come in contact with Brady's food.

  First, I want some idea of what kind of poison could have been used, in hopes of linking the two--who had access to both the food and the poison. Dalton's helping me compile a list of potential toxins. We're walking around Rockton checking labels on everything he can think of. We're in the brewery at the Roc, where Isabel is explaining that not only is this the most secure location in town, but the only poison there is methanol.

  "He'd have spit it out," she says. "He's not going to think we just brewed a batch of cheap coffee."

  "We don't brew cheap coffee," Dalton says. "He'd know that by now."

  Which is true. Supply issues in Rockton are a matter of transport and storage rather than cost. Our milk might be powdered, along with most of our eggs, but when it comes to dry goods, we can get the good stuff. Which is one reason why the money Brady brings us won't impact our basic lifestyle.

  "Are we sure he was poisoned?" Isabel continues. "I treated enough bulimic patients to know how easy it is to make yourself sick."

  "He had symptoms other than vomiting. They were consistent with poison."

  She's not the first person to mention this possibility. Each time someone suggests that Brady faked it, I feel a nudge at the back of my mind, the one that says You're missing something.

  "Could it be environmental?" Isabel says. "God knows, there's enough in our forest that can kill you."

  "We do have water hemlock and false hellebore," I say. "Which vie for the title of most poisonous plant in North America."

  Isabel sighs. "Of course they do."

  "Hey, at least it's not Australia. Everything's poisonous there."

  "I would rather face a kangaroo than a grizzly. Or a cougar. Or a wolf. Or a wolverine. Or a feral dog, feral pig . . ."

  "There are no feral pigs in the Yukon."

  "Just the ones Rockton released. Like the dogs, the cats, the hostiles . . . Because our forest really needed more threats."

  "Water hemlock's rare," Dalton says. "Only seen it twice this far north. False hellebore is the problem. Which is why I don't tell folks that real hellebore is edible. Can't take the chance. The symptoms fit, though."

  "But it'd be tough to get and mix into his food or drink," I say. "That's why we're looking in town for poisons--"

  There's a shout from outside. Then what sounds like . . .

  "Is that the bell?" I say.

  We installed a bell this winter. Another of my suggestions, after a fire burned down the lumber shed. Dalton resisted--there hadn't been a problem alerting people for the fire, and I think he didn't like the intimation that he needed a bell to make residents listen. A bell wouldn't have saved the lumber shed, so I didn't get one . . . until after Nicole was taken and rousting searchers five minutes faster might have helped.

  "If that's another goddamn prank . . ." Dalton says as he strides from the brewery.

  Shortly after we installed the bell someone rang it in the middle of the night. Drunk, obviously. Rang it and ran . . . leaving boot prints in the snow, which I matched to a perpetrator, whom Dalton then sentenced to go to each and every person in town and say, "I'm the fucking idiot who rang the fucking bell at two in the fucking morning. I'm sorry."

  No one has touched the bell since.

  As Dalton jogs out, I hear "Eric? Eric!" from several directions.

  Jen races around the corner and sees us. "Finally. The lumber shed is on fire."

  Dalton stops so abruptly that I bash into him. I know exactly what he's thinking. That the lumber shed cannot possibly be on fire nine months after we rebuilt it. Jen must be making a very bad joke. And yet one sniff of the air brings the smell of wood fire.

  He shouts for everyone to "get to the goddamn fire," infuriated that they went looking for him rather than tackling the actual problem.

  As we run, Jen explains that Anders is already at the shed, with as many people as he could gather. He sent her to find Dalton and me.

  People join us as we run. They hear the bell and smell smoke and see us running, and they fall into our wake. This is Dalton's success as a leader. People don't smell that smoke and retreat. They join the fight.

  As we run, Dalton barks questions. How did the fire start? When did it start? Who saw it first? How bad is the damage?

  Jen doesn't know. She wasn't first on the scene. Dalton keeps questioning; I retreat into my head, into my own questions.

  There is no chance that the lumber shed accidentally caught ablaze. We are a town made of wood surrounded by a forest of the same. Whatever dangers lurk in the wilderness, none approaches that of fire.

  On the drive up from Whitehorse, one of the most memorable sights I saw was the markers by the roadside, memorials to past blazes. Each was labeled with a year, and I hadn't really understood the power of fire until I saw those signs and the forest they marked. Vast swaths of wasteland left by flames that had blazed before I was born. Dalton would point out the signs of rejuvenation in that seeming wasteland. He'd even say that fire served a purpose in the forest: rebirth. He saw hope and new life; I saw death and destruction.

  The precautions we take against fire border on insane. Smoking is prohibited. Only a select few can use kerosene at night. Candles are restricted to certain areas, like the Lion and the Roc, where the staff can ensure they're put out at night's end. Fireplaces are inspected weekly. Bonfires are permitted only in the town square, only on designated days, and only with supervision and sand buckets. The list goes on. Before the lumber shed, the last fire had been years ago, when lightning struck a building.

  This is arson, as it was before. That fire had been set to cover a crime. This time . . .

  There is only one explanation.

  "Eric," I call as I jog up to him.

  He looks over as if startled, having been too busy to notice that I'd fallen behind.

  "I need to . . ." I trail off. "To check something." Which is not an excuse at all, and any other time, he'd call me
on it, but he's focused on that burning shed.

  "I'll be right back." I turn to Jen. "Make sure he watches his arm."

  A nod from her, and she will, if only because she's one of the few who'll tell him off. Whether he listens is a whole other matter, but the risk of him injuring his arm is minor compared to what I fear.

  I'm running as fast as my bad leg will allow. I tear down the narrow passage between two buildings, and I fly out onto the street just as another figure heads the opposite way.

  "Kenny?" I call.

  He looks over but doesn't stop. "There's a fire."

  "I know, but you're posted at the clinic."

  "Val's there." He keeps running. "Brady's secure. She said I can go help . . ."

  The rest is muffled as he runs into the passage between buildings.

  "No!" I shout. "Get back to your post!"

  He's gone. I slow, torn between running after him and--

  A bang comes to my right. From the direction of the clinic. My brain screams gunshot, but as I spin, I see it's just a door slamming shut as Diana runs from her apartment.

  She sees me. "Casey?"

  Come with me. That's what I want to say. I need you. Come with me.

  I can't, though. Both because I don't trust her, and because I can't put her in danger.

  "I need someone at the clinic," I say. "Get . . ." I trail off. Get who?

  "Mathias," I say. "Get Mathias for me."

  She nods, no question, presuming it's a medical emergency. Also, she's happy to avoid going near the fire. I don't blame her for that--she nearly died in the last one.

  I run for the clinic. I know what this is. A diversion. Everyone in town is dealing with that fire. No one is paying attention to Oliver Brady.

  Even Kenny is gone, because Val wants to prove herself. As soon as Kenny asked Val what she wanted him to do, she would tell him to go help with the fire. Brady's hands were secured. He was weak from the vomiting. He was no threat.

  The possibility that he was under threat? I could not trust her to realize Brady had faced two assassination attempts, and Kenny wasn't only there to make sure Brady didn't escape.

  As soon as I dash into the clinic, there's a crash in the examination room. I already have my gun out. Now I put my back to the wall. The door is beside me. I watch the knob. When it turns, I aim, take a deep breath--