Watcher in the Woods: A Rockton Novel

by Kelley Armstrong

  She doesn’t answer.

  “Yeah, didn’t think so. It’s Eric.” He examines another hole. Then he starts poking at Garcia’s shredded shirt, lifting it with forceps and examining the damage.

  “Can I help you, Eric?” April says.

  “Actually, you can.” He rocks back on his heels. “You got any experience treating dog bites?”

  “Dogs?”

  “Garcia was attacked by a wolf. Those are the puncture wounds you see here and here.”

  She takes a cursory look and glowers at him. “If you are testing my expertise, Sher—Eric, I do not appreciate it. While I am hardly an expert in wounds inflicted by animals, I did see dog bites as an intern in the emergency ward.”

  “And these are different?”

  “Those holes are near perfect punctures. If a dog bit him once, then yes, these could be correct. But an attack involves ripping.”

  Dalton nods. “Ragged punctures. Tears.” He lifts Garcia’s arm to examine the gash on the underside.

  “That is not a wound caused by an animal either,” April says.

  “He didn’t say it was. He got this one sliding into a rock crevice.”

  She takes a closer look. “That’s possible.”

  “It’s shallow, though. Like the punctures. Lots of blood, but shallow wounds.”

  “Yes.”

  “Shit,” I say. “He wasn’t attacked by wolves, was he? I wondered when he said that—I know it’s not normal behavior for them. But you didn’t question, so I figured . . .” I shrug. “First rule of dealing with wildlife: the wildlife doesn’t know the rules.”

  “Yep. Basic animal behavior supposes no external mitigating factors.”

  “Like human behavior. Mental illness, physical impairment, drugs, alcohol, extenuating circumstances . . . they all play a role.”

  He nods. “For humans, wolves are probably the least dangerous predator out here, all other things being equal. The big, bad wolf lore is bullshit. Livestock is more likely to attack you than a healthy wolf in the wild. A pack of wolves setting on Garcia at a stream makes no fucking sense. There’s plenty of water to go around. Plenty of prey—wolves sure as hell aren’t starving this time of year. Plenty of land, too—we aren’t encroaching on their territory. That doesn’t mean a wolf couldn’t have attacked him. Maybe he did something he failed to mention. Maybe there were cubs nearby. Hell, maybe a wolf ate something it shouldn’t have and wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “You suspected Garcia’s story was bullshit, but you wanted April to check the wounds first.”

  “Nah, I wanted to get him back here first. Which didn’t turn out so well.”

  I walk over to the body. “He wanted to come back, didn’t he? That’s why he faked the attack. He heard us in the woods. He hopped down into the crevice. Cut himself up a bit, nothing so serious he couldn’t get out again.”

  “That makes no sense,” April says.

  I wince. She’s been following of our conversation, as if genuinely interested in the exchange. But now she must treat me like an idiot drawing a ridiculous conclusion.

  “Is that a statement or a question?” Dalton asks.

  “What?”

  “Well”—he leans back against the counter—“if you’re curious about our reasoning, you should presume we have a motivation in mind and ask. Which might be what you meant. But the way you word it sounds like you’re just rendering judgment.”

  “Of course I want an explanation,” she snaps. “I pointed out that your reasoning does not—to me—make sense, which is your opportunity to explain it.”

  “Yeah, that’s not actually how people phrase a question. Unless they want to be a dick about it.”

  “I do not appreciate—”

  “I’m sure you don’t. Get used to it. I’m not putting up with your bullshit. If you have a question, phrase it as one.”

  I cut in. “Here’s our reasoning, April. Yes, it seems to make little sense to fake being injured in order to return to a town you escaped. But if we tracked Garcia down, we’d toss him in the cell. At best, we’d put him under house arrest. That means there’d be no way he could grab his fugitive and run.”

  “If he’s injured, though, presumably he’d come to the clinic instead of a cell,” she says.

  “Right. He’d be a patient, not a prisoner. He told us he twisted his leg and hurt his ribs. That’s hard to prove. The guy just escaped a pack of ravenous wolves—we aren’t going to be questioning his injuries.”

  “He would be allowed to stay in the clinic,” she says. “Then he could sneak out, finds his fugitive, retrieve his radio and leave.”

  I nod. “That seems to have been his plan. He faked being injured . . . and ended up dead.”

  “Would have been better taking his chances out there,” Dalton says, jerking his thumb toward the forest. “The wolves in here are a lot more dangerous.”

  FOURTEEN

  Our theory makes sense. Even Dalton rarely sees wolves around here. Garcia likely heard them howling at night and presumed they were close. Even if he encountered a pack of the more vicious wolf-dog hybrids, they wouldn’t leave such neat and shallow bite marks. Nor would they have let him escape so easily.

  There’s also the issue of coincidence. In all this wilderness, Garcia just happens to fall into a crevice where we’re searching? And just happens to be calling for help while we’re within earshot? Sure, it’s possible. It’s a whole lot more possible, though, that he heard us talking to Cypher and Jacob, our voices echoing through the quiet forest. Then Garcia formulated a plan, which ultimately got him killed. There’s a lesson about the dangers of crying wolf in there. Maybe a joke, too, a little of that gallows humor my sister sniffed about.

  We leave April in the clinic, cleaning Garcia’s body, hooking up a dummy IV, and making it appear as if the patient is sleeping. When Kenny wakes, we’ll have to break the news that he’s stuck in that supply closet. He won’t want a dead roommate . . . and we also don’t want him near Garcia when we expect someone will try to break in. As for letting Kenny in on the secret, well, it’s not as if he’s a suspect.

  For everyone else . . .

  April thought Anders was joking about eliminating ourselves from the list. Down south, I’d never turn to my detective partner and say “Where were you the night our victim was killed?” Up here, with such a restricted population, everyone must be a suspect.

  I know Dalton didn’t do it, and he’s my alibi. So that’s sorted. Anders is cleared, too, which really does make this easier.

  Dalton takes off to speak to Phil and update the council. I head to Anders, who has found the militia members with solid alibis. We station them outside the clinic, with orders not to disturb the patients.

  Next comes the public announcement. I spin our story—Garcia is comatose, and he has not told us who he came to collect, and we hope he’ll make a full recovery. In the meantime, someone shot the guy, and it’s my job to figure out who.

  After that, everyone wants to tell us where they were at the time of the shooting, with cries of “I’m sure someone saw me” and “Hey, Jim, didn’t you see me?”

  Dalton would tell them not to be too eager to claim an alibi, because if it turns out they can’t produce a good one, that’s suspicious. I try his tactic. The roar of the crowd drowns me out. Anders gets up on the porch with his trained-military bark, and people hear that, but well, there’s an ingredient missing from our bluster: Dalton. With him, it’s never mere bluster, and they know it.

  Someone shouting for my attention stops mid-word and goes crowd surfing. Or, more accurately, he does an impressive imitation of a bowling ball, the people around him serving as pins. Dalton strides through and grabs the guy—Artie—by the back of his shirt. Then he drags Artie over and dangles him in front of me.

  “You have something to say to my detective?” Dalton says.

  “Uh, y-yes. I wanted to tell her that I was over at the Roc—”

  Dalton cuts him of
f with a firm shake. “I’m not holding you up so you can convey your alias, Artie. What you just did is the proper way to speak to her. What I heard before? It’s not the proper way.”

  “I’m sorry, Casey. I just wanted—”

  “You just wanted what everyone else wants. You think you’re special?” Dalton raises his voice. “Sam? I find Artie’s enthusiasm suspicious. Go search his quarters. Bring me anything that looks like a weapon . . . or contraband.”

  Dalton tosses Artie aside and nods for me to address the now-silent crowd.

  “I need to handle this one person at a time,” I say. “Which is going to take a while. I’ll start with those who were on search parties or had volunteered for town patrol. If you were helping us with the current situation, you move to the front of the line. If you do not have an alibi, give your name to Will. If your alibi is ‘maybe someone saw me around town,’ give your name to Will. We’ll follow up with you later. For now, I only want to speak to those who were in the presence of at least two other people. Patrol volunteers to my left. Everyone else with a two-person alibi, queue up on my right.”

  * * *

  The council will see us now.

  We’re almost done gathering preliminary alibis when Phil comes to say there’s someone on the line. That’s how he phrases it. Someone. At first, I think he’s being pissy, refusing to grant his replacement with a name. But then I see his expression.

  “Who is it?” I ask as we walk.

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Someone you aren’t familiar with.”

  There’s a pause. A long one. That look intensifies, until he seems as adrift as he did when he first discovered he had to stay in Rockton.

  When Phil arrived in town, he’d marched in like he owned the place. Undaunted by a new situation, or by meeting people who had every reason to hate his guts. There’d been a touch of the junior executive in that. The thirty-year-old AVP striding among the cubicles, unable to hide his disdain for the grunts who lacked the education and connections to rise higher.

  Then Phil was told he had to work alongside those grunts, and his orderly world tilted, his career path jolting out of sight. Now he has that look on his face again, as if he’s just discovered that, not only is he condemned to purgatory with the office drones, but the entire upper management structure has changed, his connections disappearing . . . and with it, his chance for escape.

  “Phil?” I say. “Is there a problem with the council?”

  A sharp shake of his head, coming back to himself. “Of course not. They need to find a temporary replacement for me, which is understandably not easy.”

  Dalton snorts at that.

  Phil gives him a hard look. “I mean given the security clearance required, Sheriff. In the meantime, someone from the board will be speaking to you.”

  “The board of directors?” I say.

  “Yes. I don’t deal with them, so I’m not familiar with this person.”

  “Did you get a name?”

  “No.” A long pause. “She didn’t give me one. I have also been told it’s a private audience. I cannot stay.”

  “Huh,” Dalton says. “Well, that’s a problem.”

  “I’m sure you can manage without me.” Phil’s tone is cool, but I hear the hurt—and the worry—in it.

  Dalton continues, “I mean it’s a problem if you don’t know this woman . . . who won’t give her name and doesn’t want you listening to the call.”

  “Any chance the communication system has been hacked?” I ask.

  “She provided all the necessary credentials. The call is legitimate. It is just . . . not our standard operating procedure.”

  That’s one way of putting it.

  FIFTEEN

  We’re at Val’s old house. We’ve told Phil he can move in—he was originally in the fortified box we constructed for Brady. His suitcase sits by the front door. One latch is undone, suggesting he’s been using it but keeps it there, like that AVP sentenced to a cubicle, his briefcase ready to grab as soon as his superiors realize they’ve made a terrible mistake.

  The house seems ready for a new occupant, with not so much as a piece of art on the walls. That’s because Val never actually moved in herself. Three years in Rockton, and the only personal touch she added was small shelf of journals. I take one down and, with no small trepidation I crack it open. I know now what Val thought of us, and I’m not sure I care to see the extent of her contempt. Within these journals, though, I might find insight into a mind I can’t quite fathom.

  And I do. Because they aren’t journals at all. They’re filled with algebraic equations. I remember seeing her doing that once. She’d said something about trying to solve a problem. Later, I learned she’d been a mathematician. Still, I expected that at least some of these notebooks would contain her thoughts, her musings, her words. They do not. I flip through all four to find only numbers and symbols.

  Trying to solve a problem of her own.

  You never found it, did you, Val?

  And neither will I. There is no solution to the problem of Val Zapata. Certainly not in these books.

  Or maybe there is, indirectly. These books speak of an obsession. One that is meaningless up here. Solving a math problem wouldn’t have set her free. Nor would it have improved her life. It was a distraction. Expending energy better directed toward improving her life—getting outside these walls and engaging the world. But that wasn’t her way. Never had been. And so she worked through a math problem, filling books with her computations, all that effort about to be consigned to flames, recycled as fire starter.

  “Casey?” Dalton says, his voice soft.

  I nod and walk to the satellite receiver. Phil has it set to the proper station. I press the call button to let our mystery board member know we’ve arrived.

  A woman’s voice comes on with, “Hello?” as if she’s answering the phone.

  “Detective Butler and Sheriff Dalton,” I say.

  “You’re alone?”

  “We are.”

  “Before we start,” Dalton cuts in. “I don’t like this. I don’t know you. Phil doesn’t know you. You’re a faceless voice on a radio, telling us you’re a member of the board of directors. So tell me, who am I?”

  A dry chuckle. “That sounds like an existential question, Eric. I have the feeling, though, that you know exactly who you are. On a purely biographical level, you are Eric Dalton. Formerly Eric O’Keefe. Or Eric Mulligan, if your parents gave you your father’s name. I’ll go with the matrilineal O’Keefe.”

  Dalton goes still. Very still. Panic touches his eyes, and I realize he’s never known his parents’ surnames. Now a stranger is telling him, and that is humiliating. This woman joked that Dalton knows exactly who he is. Yes, he does, in the sense that he knows his place in the world and has a better grasp of his strengths and weaknesses than most people twice his age. But knowing who he is on a familial level, the one that we take for granted? That is entirely different.

  The woman continues, her voice calm, as if not realizing she’s telling him anything he doesn’t already know. “Your parents were Amy O’Keefe and Steven Mulligan. Your dad came to Rockton as a newly minted police officer who’d tried to expose corruption in his force and ended up on the wrong side of some very dangerous people. Your mother had arrived two years previously, a Masters student fleeing the unwanted and dangerous attentions of her thesis advisor.”

  Dalton’s eyes are shut, tightly shut, and he looks queasy, as if he wants to tell her to stop, just stop. This is all new to him and it’s too much, hearing it calmly recited. He wants to tell her to stop, yet he doesn’t dare . . . because he doesn’t want her to stop. These are tidbits he’s secretly longed for. I opened Val’s notebook hoping for insight into her, but that’s mere curiosity. This is vital information. It is the truth of where Dalton comes from, of who he is on another level.

  “Your mother was due to leave six months after your father arrived. By then, the young c
ouple were deeply in love, and they applied for an extension on her stay. When it was denied, they gathered supplies and headed into the forest. You were born two years later. When you were ten, the Daltons found you in the forest and took you in.”

  Dalton’s cheek twitches. He’s holding back words. The ones that say the Daltons did not take him in. They just took him.

  The woman continues. “Gene Dalton said you were filthy, unkempt. According to the town doctor, you were severely malnourished.”

  Dalton’s mouth opens now, his eyes flashing. He pulls back then, his jaw snapping shut, gaze still simmering.

  “I don’t know if that’s true,” she says. “At the time, I questioned it. I wanted to speak to you personally. I was overruled, as I was when I questioned the council’s decision not to extend your mother’s stay. As the sole woman remaining on the board, I was often accused of sentimentality.”

  “I was fine,” Dalton says, and he speaks through his teeth, as if he’s struggling against saying words that cannot be kept in. “When they found me, I was fine.”

  “I feared that,” she says. “But Gene Dalton was insistent that he’d rescued you from terrible conditions. His wife begged to be allowed to keep you. It was . . . I will say only that Gene Dalton was an excellent sheriff, and even I agreed that Rockton desperately needed him. The Daltons had lost a child shortly before they arrived and . . . We let them keep you, Eric, and we stifled our doubts in return for Gene’s pledge to stay in Rockton until you were grown. That was necessary—you couldn’t be allowed to leave until you were old enough to understand that you had to keep Rockton’s secrets. As it turns out, you wanting to leave wasn’t an issue.”

  There’s a pause. Then, “I’m sorry. I’m making light, and this isn’t a light situation. It’s an awkward one, and any apology I can offer isn’t enough. The point is that I know you, Eric. I have known you since you arrived in Rockton. I knew your parents since they arrived. If you want further proof, test me. Ask me what Rockton looks like. Where to find the nearest stream or lake in any direction. Ask me what it smells like in the spring, after the ice melts. Ask me what it sounds like at night, when the wolves sing. It may have been fifty years since I lived there, but I still wake up smelling that, hearing that, and when I don’t look out my window to see evergreens, I feel as if I have lost something. Something I gave up when it seemed convenient to do so. There were so many other important things to be done . . . and now I can barely remember what those were, and why they were so important.”