Lethal Target

by Janice Cantore

  Tess sighed and leaned against the doorframe. He was right; if Haywood didn’t want to open the gate, the only thing that would get them through was a warrant, and she hadn’t heard anything that would justify a warrant. Even if Bryce skipped out, if his court date wasn’t for another week, there wouldn’t be a bench warrant until after he didn’t show up.

  “I’ll go talk to Pastor Mac. But I need to clean up first.”

  Tess rinsed her face off in the bathroom, really wanting a hot shower and meal, then a nap. But first Drake, now Bryce. What was going on? Or did it just bother her that Oliver put himself in an odd position by visiting the pot farm?

  56

  Oliver answered the knock at his door, surprised to see Chief O’Rourke there so late in the day. He hadn’t expected to hear from her until morning. She always looked petite, almost fragile, when out of uniform. He knew it was deceptive. From experience he’d seen that Tess O’Rourke was anything but a fragile woman, at least physically. But tonight he could see she was tired, and there was a nasty cut on her cheek.

  “Tess, are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine, Oliver. We had a big mess happen earlier. I’m tired, but fine. Del told me a little about your problem.”

  “I’m glad you’re here about that. I am really bothered. Please, come in. Tilly’s here.”

  He motioned for her to follow him into the house. Tilly was seated at the kitchen table finishing a meal Oliver had made for her. He’d succeeded in calming Tilly somewhat, but he couldn’t admit to her that he was just as concerned about Bryce as she was.

  “Have a seat, Chief. Tilly, tell the chief what you told me.”

  Tess listened as Tilly told her story and why she was afraid for Bryce.

  “And you went up to the pot farm yourself?” Tess asked Oliver when Tilly finished.

  “This morning.” He thought he saw irritation cross her face and ignored it. “And I agree with Tilly. Bryce wouldn’t up and leave without saying something. And he wouldn’t skip out on his payments and his final court date.”

  “Does Bryce have any family here? Anyone we could talk to, anyone he might have talked to about his plans?” Tess asked.

  Tilly shook her head. “His parents are dead. When they died, he left the valley to clean up his life and escape the people who were pulling him down. For the last five years, he’s moved around from place to place.”

  “He never mentioned any friends to you?”

  “He mentioned a couple of bosses he liked, but they’re in Montana and Idaho. And the guy who hired him in Portland fired him as soon as he heard about the warrant.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t have any probable cause to force Haywood to open up so we can look around.”

  Tears sprang to Tilly’s eyes. “What about Arthur’s place? Or up the canyon? Bryce said he thought Cherry was doing something up there. Maybe they took Bryce somewhere . . .” She rambled on, practically hysterical.

  Oliver put a hand over hers and spoke softly. “Calm down. We’ll figure this out, I promise. We’ll keep praying. Something will make it possible for us to get to the bottom of this. Don’t lose your faith, Tilly.”

  Tess said nothing. Oliver, for the first time he could remember, wished he could read her mind.

  “What are you thinking, Tess? Maybe I can help.”

  – – –

  Tess knew that Oliver’s offer to help was a true one; he wasn’t just saying it to be kind. But her thoughts were so tangled at the moment, there was nothing he could do to free the knot. From what she’d just heard, Bryce had disappeared Tuesday, around the same time as Drake. Coincidence? Hector Connor-Ruiz had been murdered on Saturday. Was Bryce Evergreen a cold-blooded murderer? Or should she be looking at Drake? Did Drake kill Hector because he was attached to the Hang Ten? And if he did, where was he now? What was the connection between both men being missing? Or was there no connection?

  Oliver was waiting for an answer. Tilly was looking at her expectantly. She had no answers for either of them. Tess was exhausted and she had a headache and she knew she needed some downtime.

  “Oliver, I’m at a loss right now.” She glanced at Tilly, not wanting to say that she’d have to find Bryce and look at him hard for Tim’s murder. He could be the killer hiding in plain sight.

  “You need sleep,” Oliver said. He pulled Tess outside onto the porch, out of earshot of Tilly. “I told you I’ve been visited a few times by Don Cherry.”

  “Yeah, and I told you I didn’t think that was wise. The man is dangerous.”

  “I agree.” He proceeded to tell Tess about the last conversation he’d had with the big man.

  “He said that?” she asked. “‘Bad things. Stuff you’d probably call sin’?”

  “He did, and I don’t know what he meant.”

  “As odd as that is, it’s still not enough to get us into the pot farm if they don’t want us there.” She turned as if to leave, then turned back, irritation bubbling under her skin like hot water. “What made you tell him that you thought he believed in God?”

  “I know he does. I believe God speaks to every person on this earth always, every single day. Some listen, some don’t. For most of his life Cherry has not listened, but for some reason, he can’t tune out what he’s hearing now. I think that’s why he comes to talk—”

  “I thought you said you didn’t know why he came to talk to you.”

  “He’s never said in so many words, but something is bugging him, goading him, and it underlies all the banter.”

  “So you think God is speaking to a two-bit criminal?” Tess stepped back. Fatigue and frustration made her cranky. “What on earth would God say to him?”

  “My guess would be ‘Turn and repent.’ You don’t agree?”

  Tess looked away for a moment. “Ever since I was sixteen, I wanted to hear from God.”

  “What makes you think you haven’t?”

  “Because I still don’t know why he took my father from me.”

  “I think you do know the answer to that question.”

  “Stop trying to read my mind.” Eyes narrowed, Tess felt her anger building.

  “You told me once about the inscription on your father’s headstone, the Bible verse: ‘Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.’”

  “So?”

  “Your father laid his life down; it wasn’t taken from him. It was a choice he made because of the profession he chose. Your father’s death was tragically heroic; it wasn’t a betrayal by God.”

  Tess stared at Oliver, anger boiling over. All the rage she’d directed at God for most of her life she now directed at him.

  “You’re saying being murdered was my dad’s fault?”

  “Not fault. Choice. He—”

  “I don’t want to hear any more of this. You have overstepped your bounds.” She turned on her heel and left.

  57

  Furious, Tess drove straight home, her feeling of exhaustion chased away by righteous indignation. She felt blindsided by Oliver’s “insight.” How could he say that about her dad? How could he think he knew anything about her dad?

  Even her appetite was gone. She sat in her recliner and stared out her window into the dark, reliving the day the chief of police came to tell her that her father was dead. Pieces of her dream resurfaced while she sat there awake. She wasn’t there at the time, didn’t visit the scene until years later, but somehow her subconscious reconstructed the event and she saw her father get shot and fall.

  After several hours of brooding, she got up and retrieved the box of her father’s things. She hadn’t decided what to do with it because she knew what was at the very bottom of the box. The day she found it, she’d purposely avoided emptying it. Tonight she did.

  There at the bottom was her father’s Bible and his journal. The Bible was well-worn because her father had used it for years. And it was taped together because the night he died, Tess had thrown it across the room and it spli
t in two pieces. Her mom had repaired it and placed it in the box.

  Tess held the Bible and sat in her chair. She didn’t know how long she sat there, but eventually a painful realization hit her hard, like the business end of a baseball bat. Oliver was right. Her father made a choice, a choice she knew he would make again if given the chance.

  So if Tess knew that was true, why did it make her so angry to be confronted with the truth?

  “We protect people, Tessa. That’s what we do. No greater honor than to save someone’s life.”

  Tears fell and she didn’t stop them. As an adolescent, she’d been hurt and angry that her dad had chosen a stranger’s life over his own. But if he’d made any other choice, he wouldn’t have been her father. All these years she realized she’d directed her anger toward God when she was in truth angry at her father. She was angry at him for the same thing that made her immensely proud of him.

  “Tragically heroic.”

  Her father died a hero’s death by choice—not because of a capricious deity. As the tears ended, the anger faded and Tess felt as though a huge weight had been lifted from her chest. She fell asleep in the chair clutching the beat-up Bible in her hands.

  Tess woke at some point during the night, stiff from sleeping in the chair, and got up and went to bed. When her alarm woke her, she felt rested. After a hot shower and her first cup of coffee for the day, she thought about her conversation with Oliver the day before and knew she’d have to apologize for storming out on him. She also considered the situation with Don Cherry very nearly confessing to being a homicidal maniac, and Bryce and Drake Harper being missing.

  Who was the bad guy? Knee-jerk, Tess would say Cherry. But where did Bryce go and why? How did Drake fit in? Oliver and Tilly obviously saw no bad in Bryce; Casey Reno had told Tess she believed Bryce was a good guy. But was all that just wishful thinking? Were they blind to him because they knew him before, when he was a kid?

  When Tess took the murder off the table, even though she didn’t know Bryce well, she might be inclined to write him off as a flake, not a killer. But she put a lot of weight into what Oliver told her he felt. Bryce wouldn’t leave and blow off his court fines and final court date.

  A week and a half was a long time to wait and see if the guy truly did leave town. Even longer if he was the killer who could clear her name once and for all.

  Then there was a third alternative—Bryce was a victim of foul play. Who would want to hurt a down-on-his-luck guy like Bryce? And why? He seemed to truly be trying to get back on his feet and fix things in his life.

  Where did that leave Don Cherry?

  And it did not escape Tess that Haywood’s pot farm worked its way into nearly every dark plot: Hector’s murder, Bryce’s disappearance. Even Carr—Howard Delfin had written his letter of recommendation. Did Delfin know Carr was a fugitive, and was he trying to put one over on Haywood? Or was the surfer a criminal mastermind who wanted the cover?

  What in the world was going on there at Haywood’s farm?

  58

  “You have overstepped your bounds.”

  The words stung in Oliver’s thoughts as if he’d stepped on a wasp’s nest. They kept him up; he barely slept, and when he did get out of bed the next morning, he felt anything but rested. His intention was not to hurt Tess, but to hopefully get to the root of the barrier between Tess and God. All he could do now was pray that the Spirit would work to heal the pain she’d carried with her these many years.

  At any rate, by the time he finished breakfast and his devotions, he knew he couldn’t push her. He’d done what he thought was right, and he had to wait and see what the result would be. As the sun rose in the sky and he saw that it was going to be a gorgeous day, he decided he couldn’t sit around and brood or second-guess himself. And there was still no word on Bryce. He owed it to Tilly to not let that issue fall by the wayside.

  It would be a good day to do a thorough check of Arthur Goding’s home. Before the man left on vacation, he’d given Oliver a key and asked him to keep an eye on things.

  “I’m worried about those pot growers,” he’d said. “Don’t want them putting salt in my well, hurting my livestock, or doing any other type of mischief.”

  Oliver had driven up to the house a couple of times, walked around, and spoken to the kid feeding the animals, but he didn’t look in the house or check out the workshop or really take Arthur’s worries seriously until Bryce’s disappearance. This was Rogue’s Hollow—a person could trust their neighbors, couldn’t they?

  Pot farms like the Hang Ten had changed all that.

  Tilly had mentioned Arthur’s place. Bryce had told her that Cherry was riding an ATV up the canyon. He’d almost have to cross Arthur’s property to do that. Suppose something was going on at Arthur’s? He wasn’t due home for two more days.

  Since Oliver had nothing on his plate until a midmorning meeting with Travis and some other pastors from the valley, he left a note for his assistant pastor saying that he’d be back shortly. He then drove up to Arthur’s place. He decided to walk the whole property, keeping an eye on the pot farm. As he cruised up the driveway, his gaze raked over the next-door neighbor’s farm. It looked quiet, but there was a different car in the parking area, one that wasn’t familiar to Oliver. He wondered who the visitor was.

  The boy tending Arthur’s livestock didn’t live real close. Arthur’s property and the Hang Ten were rather secluded. But he would hike over or ride his bike. Oliver didn’t think he was old enough to drive. As a former 4-H kid, he took good care of animals.

  Oliver paused at the animal pens in the front of the property, where nothing looked amiss. The goats and chickens looked happy enough. The only structure the boy would have to enter was the small barn, across from and slightly in front of the house.

  Oliver then did a 360 and surveyed the area. He knew the history here; originally the two parcels of land had been part of a much bigger parcel owned by the logging baron who’d built the town and the mill, the remnant of which was Oliver’s church.

  The heirs held on to the acreage for as long as they could, carving off pieces here and there. But logging took a hit all over the state in the eighties, and they eventually subdivided everything. Arthur had built his home and lived there for about fifteen years. His next-door neighbors for most of that time were a retired couple, former schoolteachers. Arthur and the man had been fishing buddies and good friends. But when he died, his widow left for Arizona to live with her kids. The property was vacant for a couple of years until Haywood purchased it.

  Redwood fencing was the signature of a pot farm in Oregon, and Oliver couldn’t resist a head shake as it came into view. He watched for a few minutes but didn’t see any people. No Bryce, no Don Cherry, no Haywood. Oliver had not seen or heard from Cherry since their confrontation on his porch earlier this week. He wondered what the big man was doing. Had Oliver made any headway with the man at all?

  Oliver used the key and let himself into Arthur’s house. At first glance, everything looked fine. He made his way to the first bedroom, the den, then the kitchen, and that was when he saw something out of place. The door to the pantry was open.

  Frowning, Oliver opened it wider and saw empty spaces. There was food missing. He didn’t know what was gone, but from what he remembered, the pantry had been well stocked. His gaze moved to the sink, where he saw dirty dishes. Arthur was a neat person; he never would’ve left a mess in the sink, and the food was not all dried out like it would have been had it been there for more than a month.

  The hackles on the back of his neck rose, and he knew he’d be calling Tess about this situation.

  He moved to the back door. It was locked securely. He began to check every window in the place. There it was, the back bedroom window. The screen was off and it was unlocked. And the bed in that room had obviously been slept in. The kid taking care of Arthur’s animals would not be doing this, Oliver was sure of that, but he’d have to talk to him, see if he had notice
d anything odd.

  Someone was living in Arthur’s home while he was gone.

  “Who would break in here to stay?” Oliver mumbled. It made no sense that the pot growers would. And the couple of homeless who came to mind weren’t likely to hike all the way up here for a place to stay. He glanced down and saw a muddy footprint on the bedroom floor that banished all doubt that someone had been inside the house.

  He reached for his phone and realized he’d left it in the car. Sighing, hands on hips, Oliver knew he’d need to notify the police right away. And explain to Arthur how he’d let this break-in happen during his watch. He turned to exit the house and make the call.

  He hadn’t heard the man come into the house, but there he was, in the hallway, pointing a gun.

  “Sorry you had to come here today, padre,” was all he said before he fired.

  59

  After pouring her second cup of joe, Tess almost picked up the phone to call Oliver but resisted. She’d slept in this morning, rising at six instead of five, and she knew Oliver was an early riser, so she was reasonably sure he would be up. But what to say to him escaped her. After about a minute she put the phone down without pressing the button. Still processing all that he had said to her the night before, she knew she needed to apologize in person, not over the phone. She thought about just showing up on his doorstep but decided no. She wasn’t ready yet.

  As she sipped her coffee, she wondered about Dustin. Steve had promised to call with an update, so she’d have to wait. Yawning, she walked into the living room to open the blinds. She almost didn’t see the envelope on the floor by the front door. It must have been slid under the door. Tess had yet to address the gap there after she’d changed the flooring.

  Stiff with apprehension, Tess picked it up. It was addressed to Chief O’Rourke in neat block letters. When she pressed it between her palms, she could tell there was something hard inside. She walked back into the kitchen, opened the envelope, and dumped the object out. It was a thumb drive.