Lethal Target

by Janice Cantore

  “Don’t you preach to me!” He waved a finger in Oliver’s face. “You know why Anna was killed and where her killer is. Whoever hurt Tim is still out there, enjoying life, getting away with murder because no one wants to find him. Well, I do. And I will, and he is going to pay for what he did to my son. Stay away from me. I don’t need your help.”

  He stormed away, across the parking lot. Oliver wanted to go after him, convince him that he was wrong, but he knew Drake wouldn’t listen. He prayed for the man, fearing the direction his grief would take him.

  41

  Monday morning, Tess still hadn’t heard from Addie but guessed she wouldn’t until Addie had talked to the entire council and weighed the situation carefully. After a sleepless Sunday night, she took her time at home with coffee and a light breakfast. She normally dressed at the station but knew that this morning her duty weapon would be conspicuously absent. Her 9mm was at the state crime lab and might be there a couple of days. Sighing, she went into her closet, opened her small gun safe, and considered her old duty weapon, her .45. Tess had carried the .45 for the first couple of months as chief but then decided to switch to a 9mm.

  There was no earthshaking reason for the switch. She’d seesawed back and forth while in Long Beach about the best weapon to carry. With the .45 she carried four extra magazines; with the nine she only had to carry two because each mag contained fifteen rounds compared to the six in the .45 magazine. Here in the Hollow, all her officers carried nines, so for the sake of easy ordering for qualification ammunition, Tess switched shortly after the apprehension of Roger Marshall. She did have to be mindful of the budget.

  She considered carrying her .45 now, then placed it back in the safe for the time being. Belcher had assured her that her gun would be returned as quickly as possible, so until then, she wouldn’t carry a weapon.

  I’m innocent and my gun will be back soon, she told herself.

  She left for the station, the remnants of her morning coffee in a travel mug. The weekend’s events turned over and over in her mind. She’d hated having Hector here, but he was irritating and obnoxious, not physically dangerous. She’d never wished him dead.

  Tess nodded to Sheila and entered the locker room to change. Not having her weapon didn’t worry her as much as it just felt odd. She’d not fired a gun since her hire here except for qualification and the apprehension of Roger Marshall. And that situation had been a rare and dangerous one. Most law enforcement in Rogue’s Hollow was routine and handled with words, not weapons. Plus, she had the option of delegating work to her officers, which she’d do until her duty weapon was returned.

  She’d been in the office only a short time when her phone rang. It was the state lab in Salem with news about her prints.

  “There was only one print on the syringe, on the plunger, a partial thumbprint. It matches one you took off the bike. But there’s no hit in the system. A written report is headed your way.”

  Talk about good news, bad news. Clear enough prints to run through the system, but no match. That meant her probable killer had never been arrested. It wasn’t Don Cherry or Eddie Carr.

  No hit in the system . . .

  Tess sat back and pondered this development. If not Cherry or Carr, was Haywood a possible suspect? He hadn’t been at the party, and there were really no other red flags where he was concerned. She’d made a mistake concentrating on the Hang Ten—she could see that now. But when she looked at her other possible suspects, aside from the man they’d yet to identify, she saw a list of generally clean-cut high school graduates and one high school baseball coach. Was one of them a killer?

  She pulled out the interviews and reviewed them all. There was a colossal lack of motive if everyone was telling her the truth.

  Coroner put the time of death at between 2:30 and 3 a.m.

  Coach Whitman was only at the party for a few minutes early, around 11 p.m.—that was corroborated by everyone. His girlfriend in Salem verified he arrived at her home about 3 a.m.

  Dustin Pelter was still missing. They’d been looking for him for nearly three weeks. That was suspicious, but she had a hard time seeing the drug addict as a killer who could plan.

  So with no lead on the unidentified man, all that remained for Tess to do was to concentrate on the boys, one by one.

  Duncan claimed to have headed out early. His parents confirmed that he got home a little after midnight.

  Josh Heller left next. Greg Nguyen said he took off with Trace Danner a little after one and Tim was the only partier left.

  Tim said he was leaving as well but planning to find a good location for some moon photos.

  They’d never identified the older man who’d been at the party. MADGE said they might have a lead on him, but she’d heard nothing further.

  Tess phoned the lieutenant in MADGE, got his voice mail again, and left him another message.

  She needed to speak to the boys again. But time was ticking; she feared Addie would soon relieve her of duty or force her to take vacation time. She picked up the phone to call Duncan first.

  Delia Peabody answered the phone.

  “I’m looking for Duncan.”

  “He’s not home. Uh, Chief, what happened? I mean, I read about that man; I saw news reports—murdered on your porch?”

  Tess hated the tone of Delia’s voice, the indecision. The woman had lost faith in the chief of police.

  “Delia, I don’t know what happened. But I’m certain that the Jackson County sheriff will figure it out.”

  “Well, Duncan is fishing with his friends. Greg will be leaving soon; he’s going to visit his school, so the boys wanted to get in some time together on the river before he left.”

  “Where do they usually go?”

  “Their favorite spot is below the fish hatchery. What’s this about?”

  “I need to clear something up. It’s a question that has come up regarding Tim. Procedure more than anything.”

  Delia accepted that explanation and Tess disconnected. She knew where the boys were likely to be. There was a fish hatchery below the dam at Lost Creek Lake. She’d heard from others that it was a good place to fish. It wasn’t in the Hollow, but it was close.

  Tess looked at the time. A little after nine. It would be a piece of luck to catch the boys. She grabbed her portable radio and headed out to find them.

  42

  Lost Creek Lake was off Highway 62, east of Rogue’s Hollow. It took Tess about fifteen minutes to get there, and she found the boys right where Delia had said, on a rocky bank below the dam and across from the boat ramp. Because it was Monday, the boys basically had the area to themselves. Trace and Josh had lines in the water, and Greg and Duncan were munching on chips and talking. She was trying not to be paranoid, but a sinking feeling hit that the boys were not happy to see her.

  “Chief, you looking for us?” Duncan asked.

  “I was,” Tess answered as she picked her way carefully across the rocky retaining material to reach the guys.

  “Something up with Tim’s case?”

  “In a way. I wanted to go over everything again. You heard that we found Tim’s bike?”

  They nodded.

  “It was the guys at the Hang Ten, wasn’t it?” Greg asked.

  “No, it wasn’t. I have evidence that cleared them.” Tess didn’t miss the looks that passed between the boys, and all her instincts went to code red.

  “So we’re missing something. It’s really a shame that we couldn’t recover his phone and look at the pictures. I believe it all comes down to the photos he took. Are you certain he didn’t say anything to you about where he was going to take his pictures?”

  “We—” Duncan started to say something, but Greg cut him off.

  “We’ve told you everything we know. He was our friend. If we knew where he went, we would have said.”

  Duncan suddenly became interested in his shoes, and Josh and Trace went back to their fishing poles.

  The boys were hiding someth
ing. Why hadn’t she seen it before? She’d have no luck with them as a group, but Tess knew she’d revisit this, one boy at a time.

  – – –

  Tilly rarely read the newspaper and only saw the news when she was cleaning in the bar area of the inn and the TV was tuned to a local channel. She’d been brooding because Bryce hadn’t been around to see her all weekend. Monday night she glanced at the TV and saw the chief’s name, which caught her attention. She had to pause in her cleaning and read the closed-captioning. She felt her jaw drop when she saw that Chief O’Rourke was considered a person of interest in a murder.

  A picture of the victim flashed across the screen. She knew that guy.

  Lance Loud was found dead on the chief’s porch! Tilly felt dizzy for a moment, and she had to sit down. She liked Chief O’Rourke, looked up to her. Was it possible?

  After a minute she shook her head. “No.”

  “You okay, Tilly?” the bartender asked.

  “What? Yeah, sorry.” She stood.

  “I don’t think the chief did it either,” he said. Then he changed the channel.

  Nodding, Tilly hurried to finish her work, considering the last words she read: “Evidence is being collected and analyzed while Tess O’Rourke remains on active duty. ‘I see nothing that indicates Chief O’Rourke is guilty of anything except the misfortune of having a murder occur on her porch’ was the only comment acting Mayor Getz would give.”

  Good for Addie, Tilly thought. Chief O’Rourke is a good person, a kind person. Someone else killed Lance Loud. She needed to talk to Bryce more than ever.

  43

  By Tuesday morning, news of the murder had hit every nook and cranny of the Upper Rogue. Tess heard a lot of rumors mixed in with facts and determined not to be distracted or angered by the murder or the rumors. She was still waiting to hear from Addie and felt that news would come sooner than later.

  Her contact with the boys the day before was foremost in her mind. She didn’t want to think the young men had anything to do with the murder. But as she laid out the facts, her stomach began to rumble with discomfort.

  At first, she’d concentrated on the drugs; after all, that was the problem of the day everywhere. But Tim’s autopsy told a different story—the head injury, the damage to the bike . . . The drugs were an afterthought.

  If some stranger had hit Tim on his bike, if they weren’t going to call 911, they would have left him where he lay.

  Instead, he was taken home and put to bed. A profiler would say this indicated knowledge of, friendship with, a certain fondness for. And the missing clothes could be someone removing or destroying evidence.

  Since the coroner said the head injury wasn’t fatal, if one of the boys did hit Tim, what would keep them from calling 911? Why take him home and kill him with drugs? But then, she thought, what if one of them accidentally hit him? That caused a head shake. It didn’t make any sense.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t think the kids were capable of murder; she’d arrested too many teen murderers in her career. But what possible motive could there be? Still, they were hiding something, and until she discovered what that was, they’d be listed as suspects.

  Then she came back to Dustin. Tess tapped her chin with an index finger. He was what an old partner would have called a drug tragedy. Months ago she’d seen him with “the nods,” something that happens with heroin users after they shoot up. The inability to keep their eyes open made them nod off, then catch themselves, then nod again. In that condition, he would not have had the ability to stage Tim’s murder like it was. Several people claimed Dustin was clean now, off heroin and simply a pot addict. She did know he’d gotten his driver’s license back, so he’d stayed clean long enough to do that. But he’d certainly done a Houdini, and she really wanted to talk to him, if only to set her mind at ease.

  He might not seem like a calculating killer, but none of her suspects were in that category.

  Tess blew out a frustrated breath and pulled out the entire file. She was again impressed by the work Jonkey had done on her report. The computer-generated diagram of the party area was detailed, a good, clear drawing. She’d noted the debris on the ground and listed the description of the guy Duncan didn’t recognize, the party crasher, drawing her own composite. The woman had talent.

  Unknown crashers were unusual here in this small town, where everyone knew everyone. In Long Beach a party crasher and violence were not unusual, and sometimes the crashers got away with it because when they fled, they fled miles away and had no real connections to Long Beach.

  Here in the Upper Rogue, Tess had been quick to talk to and get everyone identified, except for the old guy. People she talked to thought he looked familiar, but no one had a name. But everyone seemed certain that he didn’t live in Rogue’s Hollow. For Tess that shifted her suspicion away from Haywood and his crew. Tess went back to the beginning.

  The older guy was described as a male white in his forties, with bushy gray hair, wearing a brown leather jacket. He was taller than Duncan, who was five-ten, and he was pudgy with a pockmarked face. He drank beer. Duncan didn’t see him smoke any pot.

  The ringing phone interrupted her musings, and she picked it up without even looking at who was calling.

  “Chief O’Rourke.”

  “Hello, Tess.”

  She pulled the phone away from her head, tempted to hang up, but decided that would be childish. Bringing the phone back to her face, she answered. “Steve.”

  “That’s all I get? Not even a ‘Hi, how are you?’”

  “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”

  “Okay, if you want to play it like that. Do you still have the .45 you carried on duty when you first came here?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Where is the gun now?”

  Tess pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to keep the snarkiness out of her voice. “At home in my safe.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes—wait, Connor-Ruiz must have been killed with a .45. My nine doesn’t fit, does it?”

  “Tess, believe it or not, I’m trying to help you. Belcher will need the .45.”

  “Come and get it. And bring me back my nine while you’re at it.”

  “Connor-Ruiz was a thorn in your side, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, he was. Oliver told me once or twice to calm down and ignore him.”

  “Did you do that?”

  “Yes, I did that—what do you want from me?” A light went on in her thoughts. Logan wasn’t on the investigative team. Tess stiffened. “What are you doing, trying to trick me into a confession? Are you recording this call?”

  He cleared his throat and Tess felt her heart drop. A guess, a shot in the dark, just shattered whatever feelings she had left for this man. Oregon was a one-party state, meaning a conversation could be taped if at least one party knew it. It wouldn’t be admissible in court, but it could still be done. That Steve would do it broke her already-brittle heart.

  “Well, for posterity and the recording, I didn’t kill Hector Connor-Ruiz. Like I said, I was at the inn for part of the afternoon with Pastor Mac. We had soup. I stayed there to wait for my friend Jeannie, and then for the rest of the night we were in room 330. Good luck finding the real killer. Come and get the .45. I haven’t fired it in at least three months.”

  She hung up the phone and fell back into her chair. She was holding her head in her hands when Sheila popped her head in the office to tell her that Pastor Macpherson was there to see her.

  “You okay?” Sheila asked, face scrunched in worry.

  Tess managed a smile, feeling weak and worn-out though it was still early. She and Oliver hadn’t parted on the best of terms on Saturday. She wasn’t mad at him, but considering all he represented, she’d taken out a little of her frustration on him. She’d try to be more cordial today. Oliver might be a pastor and preach everything she couldn’t believe, but he was also a friend who was unwavering in his support for her.

  “Yeah, j
ust not enough coffee yet this morning. Send the pastor in.”

  All her angst about their last meeting faded when he popped into her office with two cups of coffee from the Hollow Grind and a bag that suggested sweet stuff from the Rogue’s Hollow bakery.

  “Morning, Chief. Thought I’d drop in with some fuel for your day.”

  “Are pastors mind readers? You sure read mine.” She leaned forward as he set the goodies down. The coffee she sipped immediately while Oliver placed a plastic container holding a cinnamon roll on her desk. He handed her a fork and a napkin, then sat back with his own plastic container and fork.

  Tess inhaled the warm, sugary smell before she took a bite. Her stomach tingled as she looked at Oliver for the first time with a different perspective. Boyfriend.

  “I love these,” she said, mouth full. She swallowed. “But I really must get back to running, or I’ll need a new uniform. Having coffee with you is a fattening proposition.”

  Oliver smiled and swallowed. “These really are special, one of life’s simple pleasures. I only indulge occasionally.”

  Tess took another bite and washed it down with coffee. “Did you come here this morning wondering if I was still standing, still chief?”

  He shook his head, a wry smile on his face. “I know you’re still standing and you will stay that way. You’re made of sterner stuff, and this attempt to make it look as if you’ve done something you’re not capable of will all be for naught. I would have come by yesterday, but it was a busy day.”

  Emotions welled up and Tess swallowed a lump in her throat with another sip of coffee. “After Saturday, your confidence is heartening. I thought being subjected to a grand jury grilling was bad. I’ve never been on the receiving end of a criminal interview.”

  “Like I said before, the truth will show itself. It always does.” He fiddled with his cinnamon roll, and Tess felt he had something on his mind.

  “What is it?”

  A smile played on his lips. “You’re a trained observer. Hate to add to your plate, but I’m worried about Drake Harper. He’s in a bad place, and he’s convinced you’ve missed something, that Tim’s murderer will get away with it.”