“That makes no fucking sense,” Dalton says. “Unless you’re arguing that you aren’t a member of this town at all, in which case . . .” He points. “The forest is that way. Hope you’ve got a knife to go with that gun, or you’ll be ripping dinner apart with your teeth.”
“Forget it,” I say. “We’ve got more important things to do. We’ll take this up with the council. You’re dismissed, Phil. April? We need to discuss who I call and what I say. I’ve got a notebook in my bag. Just let me grab that.”
I walk to the plane while Phil turns to leave. As we pass, I grab his wrist and throw him down so fast April yelps.
I pin Phil on the ground, take the gun from his waistband and then hold it up for Dalton. “You wondered what a three-eighty looks like?”
“Fuck.”
Once Phil gets his wind back, he launches a litany of threats that I ignore, backing away from him with the gun in hand.
“I tried asking for it nicely,” I say.
“That is personal property.”
“Nope,” Dalton says. “It’s evidence in a crime, and you refused to surrender it.”
“Crime? What are you talking—?”
“Do you keep this weapon secured?” I ask.
Phil gets to his feet, brushing himself off. “Of course I do. I am a responsible gun owner.”
“Good. So you knew its whereabouts at all times. Do you keep it loaded?”
“A gun is hardly useful if it’s empty, Detective.”
“Fully loaded? When’s the last time you fired it?”
“At the range, a few weeks ago”
“Mmm, no, I don’t think so.”
Phil looks from me to Dalton. Then he straightens. “Is that how you handle law enforcement in this town? I fail to turn over my gun, so you’re going to accuse me of firing it at you?”
“I have reason to believe this gun was used in a crime,” I say. “I knew if I said that, you’d never hand it over.” I lift the gun. “A three-eighty. The same caliber as the bullet that killed Mark Garcia.”
Phil blusters and then straightens again. “That only means a similar gun was used. I’m sure one of you has such a weapon.”
“A three-eighty?” I say. “This is the kind of handgun they sell guys like you. Inferior fire power, but cheap and easy to handle. An amateur’s self-defense weapon. I’ll do the ballistics, of course, but if you want to lay bets . . .”
I open the chamber and lift it to show two rounds missing. “Didn’t you say it was fully loaded?”
“I have not fired that gun in weeks.”
“Two rounds were fired at Marshal Garcia. Two rounds are missing from this gun. It’s a shame you kept it secured, too. Otherwise, we’d think someone borrowed it without your knowledge.”
“I keep it in my bag. Someone could very easily—”
“Now the story changes,” I say.
“Phil?” Dalton says. “You are under arrest for the murder—”
“What?” Phil squeaks. Then he clears his throat and speaks a few octaves lower. “Do you think I’m an idiot, Eric? I minored in law. I know that you cannot arrest me for murder based on rounds missing from my gun.”
“Fuck.” Dalton looks at me. “Have I been doing this wrong all along?”
“You have,” I say. “Sorry. You need to speak to the Crown Attorney’s office first and see whether we have enough to charge him.”
“Crown what?” Dalton says.
“Ah, right,” I say. “Sorry, Phil. The council hasn’t sent us prosecutors. Or attorneys. Or a judge. As soon as we get back from Dawson, we’ll talk to the council and see how they want to proceed. I’m glad we caught the killer, though. Now we just need to figure out who the marshal came for.”
THIRTY-THREE
Dalton leads Phil away. Once they’re gone, April says, “Phil shot the marshal?”
“Nah,” I say. “Well, it’s possible, but I doubt it.”
“So you’re locking him up because he’s a jerk?”
“Pretty much.”
“That seems wrong,” she says. “But also, oddly fair. Pulling a gun on Eric was unnecessary and dangerous. Phil should have turned it over as an act of good faith. He also shouldn’t have lied about keeping it secured.”
“Yep. We’ll let him go as soon as we’re back. Honestly, though, the reason we’re putting him into the cell isn’t to teach him a lesson. It’s to keep him from running to the council and giving them his version of events. Now, if you want to leave, there’s no gun-toting stockbroker blocking the way.”
She shakes her head. “I have considered my commitments in Vancouver and realized that none of them vitally requires my presence. The most pressing is the surgery I was consulting on tomorrow, but I’d already given my recommendations, and the surgeon doesn’t need me to hold his hand. I should see Kenny further into his recovery. The swelling is finally receding. Once it does, I can properly assess his condition.”
“All right. Phil gave his word that you’ll be allowed to leave on the weekend. At worst, we toss him in the cell again until you’re gone. At least now he doesn’t have a gun.”
* * *
If asked to choose between Whitehorse and Dawson City, I’d say it’s like choosing between tequila and chocolate chip cookies. I love both, and they serve very different purposes. If I take that comparison literally, Dawson is the tequila. It’s the fun sister. The town where you can watch a dance-hall revue and play the slots and drink a cocktail with a dried toe in it.
The streets of Dawson are paved with nothing. They’re dirt, with wooden sidewalks, and the first time I came, I thought that was for the weather—because concrete and asphalt might buckle over the permafrost. A perfectly sensible answer. Also wrong. The answer is tourism. Dawson City made its reputation in the Klondike Gold Rush, and apparently, people expect that six hour drive from Whitehorse to launch them back in time.
Yet Dawson also serves as a supply town. It’s the second biggest city in the Yukon, clocking in at a whopping fourteen hundred souls. This time of year, it’s bursting with tourists but also miners, of the professional and amateur variety. Last month, I met a miner who looked like he walked straight out of the Klondike, with a grizzled long beard and fewer teeth than fingers—he was also missing a few of the latter. On the trip before that, I met a university professor from California with a doctorate in geology, who’d been bitten by the gold bug as a child and returned every summer, finding just enough to justify the trip.
We arrive at the airport, which is fifteen kilometers outside town. It is the smallest airport I’ve ever seen. There’s no baggage carousel—they push your luggage through a trap door into the tiny terminal. We land, and Dalton checks in and gets our car. Dalton hasn’t arrived with a flight plan. Most of the air traffic is little bush planes like ours trucking people in and out of the wilderness. Dalton radios with plenty of notice, and when he does that, if it’s a controller he knows, he can have the car summoned and waiting when we arrive.
There are no taxis in Dawson. No car rentals. No buses. There’s a “guy,” who the council apparently pays well enough to come at a moment’s notice, bringing a vehicle and then finding his own way home.
After checking in, Dalton chats with one of the ground crew, an older guy who’s known Dalton for years. Dalton’s asking if anyone took an inordinate amount of interest in either our last departure or last arrival.
The Yukon isn’t a place where you ask too many questions, especially up here, where destinations are closely guarded secrets, often lying close to a good mining or trapping or hunting. At the airport, Dalton is unfailingly polite and friendly enough. Well groomed. Well spoken. He follows airport protocol and never causes trouble. He tips just well enough to be appreciated, and not so well that anyone suspects he’s sitting on a gold mine. His story is that he’s an independent contractor with a place in the woods, and he runs supplies to companies that appreciate discretion.
Still, as smooth as Dalton’s relationsh
ip with the airport is, this is the most likely source of the leak—that Marshal Garcia knew the Rockton supply plane flew in and out of Dawson and made a deal with someone to let him know when it arrived. That would explain his sudden flight from Calgary to the Yukon, tags still on his clothing. He got the call. He came. He followed.
As Dalton talks to his contact, I wait off to the side, but I can hear the conversation. Dalton is concerned. His clients pay him very well for privacy and discretion, and it seems he was followed on his last flight. He managed to evade his pursuer before his client realized what happened, but his professional reputation is at stake. Did his contact hear or see anything that might suggest anyone noted Dalton’s last arrival or departure? Maybe something as seemingly innocent as another pilot asking to be notified when Dalton arrived because he wanted to speak to him? The contact doesn’t have anything, but he promises to ask around, and Dalton passes him a couple twenties for his help.
Our car arrives then. We drive halfway to Dawson. Then Dalton takes a rough road, pulls off and walks into the forest. This is his stash where he keeps a pay-by-use cell phone and a laptop, wrapped up and insulated against the elements.
Dalton used to use the phone primarily to contact his adoptive parents. When he had questions about a resident, he’d set Gene Dalton on the case. He doesn’t do that anymore. Part of that is because he has me, and I can do the research myself. Also, the council revealed that they’re aware he’s in contact with his parents, and while he hopes that just means they’re monitoring the Daltons—and not that his father is informing on him—he’ll err on the side of paranoia. We now have multiple SIM cards for the phone. One he uses to call his parents and anyone else he doesn’t mind the council tracking. The other one is for me to make research inquiries.
On the drive to Dawson, I send two texts for my sister. The only person April deems “phone-call worthy” is the surgeon she’s consulting with tomorrow. Even then, I only get the woman’s voice mail. April has told me to impersonate her, and I do. I keep the call short and business-like. I inform her that I was away for the weekend, and I have encountered travel issues with my return, which will prevent me from attending the surgery. Everything the surgeon needs, however, should be in the files I sent last week. If she needs to discuss anything, please e-mail me, but my vacation was also an internet sabbatical. That means I have limited access to my e-mail and none to my cell phone, which is why I’m calling from this number.
I text a similar message to her research assistant and a colleague. That’s it. Before April came to Rockton, she’d placed one call, presumably a personal one—she’d made the business notifications by e-mail and text. Yet when I asked if I should notify anyone else, she said no. This was, as she said, sufficient, thank you. In other words, her private life shall remain private.
We reach Dawson. It’s midmorning, and the town is bustling as tourist season ramps up. That only means it’s tough to get decent parking, and lodgings will be full. Even at its peak, the town in never crowded. Just busy. That’s still enough for Dalton, and after the third tourist steps out in front of our car, I suggest he drop me at a cafe while he runs errands outside the town center.
Dawson may be touristy, but this isn’t Orlando, with endless chain restaurants and cheap T-shirt stores. There isn’t a chain restaurant in Dawson, not even the ubiquitous Tim Hortons. Tourists who come here are a very different sort, eager to experience the Yukon wilderness. Those tourists expect that when they come out of that wilderness, one thing they can find is a nice cafe, with locally roasted coffee, homemade baked goods, comfortable seating, and most importantly, free wifi. There are a few of those off the main street. At this time of year, they’re all crowded. Dalton drops me at one and happily escapes.
I claim a table outdoors and settle in with my cappuccino and a cookie—okay, two cookies. I have come prepared for an efficient work session. Coffee shops might be good about letting patrons camp out with a laptop, but at this time of year, they’re going to notice if I’m here for five hours, and with the amount of research I need to do, I could be, if I didn’t come with a ready list of questions and search terms.
The first question is the most pressing. Please, Google, tell me what you know about Marshal Mark Garcia, from Washington state.
I don’t like the answer.
No, let’s not mince words. I fucking hate the answer.
I type his name and occupation into an image search and within seconds, I’m looking at the man I watched die two days ago. Of course, the search engine gives me some unrelated results. A guy named Marshall Garcia. A guy named Mark Marshall, who works for Garcia’s Gastropub. But when the page fills with thumbnail images, at least six are pictures of the man who came to our town.
I click on the oldest version of his face. I’m holding my breath as I do. I’m hoping that the word “marshal” is included for some unrelated reason. Maybe it’s his middle name. Or he works for the U.S.M.D in a clerical position. Or he used to be a marshal but quit two years ago for a private security job. The last is my most fervent hope. It’s also the most likely. People give up on law enforcement all the time. Crap pay. Crap wages. Crap hours. Danger, disrespect and derision. The constant temptation of corruption. The high rates of alcoholism, divorce, suicide . . . It’s not surprising that at some point, many realize being a cop isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Private police work suddenly looks very tempting. Garcia could have been a marshal once and switched to private investigating or bounty work or even murder-for-hire.
He didn’t. It takes only five minutes of typing to confirm, beyond any doubt, that we are dealing with an active employee of the U.S. Marshal service.
There is a moment, on realizing that, when I am tempted to do something I have never done in my career. Never considered doing. Never could have imagined myself considering.
I consider framing a suspect.
Phil, to be precise.
I have known detectives who’ve done it. Maybe they’re desperate to close a case. Maybe they know suspect x is guilty of many things that won’t stick, so they arrest him for one that might. It’s extremely rare, but it does happen. The reasoning is that we aren’t throwing someone in jail for a crime they didn’t commit. Okay, yes, we are—they’ll be in jail pending an initial hearing and longer if they can’t make bail—but the cops who do this ignore that technicality. The point, to them, is that it’s up to the prosecutor to make a case, and if the person is innocent, then they have nothing to worry about. Forget the lives you destroy, the prosecution jobs you endanger, the taxpayer money you waste—at least you cleared a case.
I actually consider doing the same. Not clearing a case but shifting the responsibility. If I can make Phil seem like a viable suspect, that puts this mess on the council. He’s their guy. They left him here. Give them Phil, make them handle the fallout, and then quietly find the real killer on my own.
If I did that, though, I’d be throwing Phil to the wolves. No, he’d have a better chance of survival if I threw him to actual wolves. At best, he’ll lose his job. At worst . . . Well, I know what “worst” is, and therefore I don’t do more than briefly consider the possibility. I will, however, investigate Phil as a serious suspect, more than I planned to.
The realization that Garcia was a real marshal is also enough to have me ready to slap my laptop shut and walk away. Screw finding the killer. Does it actually matter now? The U.S.M.D is our real concern now. I should stop working and go find Dalton and tell him what I’ve found.
Except I don’t know where to find Dalton. I’m safely ensconced at this busy coffee shop, and he’s out doing whatever, so he has the cell phone. I can’t contact him. I can’t track him. I must continue my work, which is really what I ought to be doing anyway.
I have arranged the remainder of my list in order of answering ease. When it comes to researching suspects, it’s not really about priority. The issue is the likelihood that I’ll fall down the research rabbit hole, that I’d find m
y answers and then chasing them for more information, satisfying mere curiosity after I got what I came for. So the suspects who interest me the most go to the bottom of the list. Start with the ones where I’m just double-checking data.
Paul comes first. Dalton has already said he found his case online, and so do I, when I use the real name Dalton gave me. It went exactly as Paul said—during a protest, he beat an FBI agent. Witnesses said he mistook the agent for a rival protester, and there was an altercation, and the outcome was that beating, which led to a hospital stay for non-life-threatening injuries. A Federal warrant has been out on him since the incident, which took place four years ago. I skim one article. It’s accompanied by a photograph taken during the protest and, yep, it looks like Paul.
I attempt to research Petra next. While I might be more curious about her than anyone on my list, I have little expectation of finding answers. Dalton’s given me the name she applied under, and he’s had no reason to research her story, so he’s never tested it. I do now, and as expected, it seems to be fake. I have a list of keywords to search using her first or last name. I know she was a comic-book artist. I know she’s been married. I know she had a child who died young.
Correction—these are things Petra has told me about herself. That doesn’t make them true.
Those keywords lead to nothing useful, and I don’t have time to dig deeper.
On to Roy. I put in the name from his application, but it’s a laughably common one. Roy McDonald. Again, I have my list of keywords. Two lists. The first is specific to his story. The second is a list of things we may know about him—the city where Dalton picked him up, his approximate age, and so on.
I start with the most obvious. Is there a Roy McDonald who worked as an investment manager and was accused of cheating his clients? I’m mildly surprised when I don’t get a hit. I keep digging, using my keywords and then . . .
“Holy shit,” I whisper, because I know Roy McDonald. Not by name. Not even by face. But his story? That I know.
Watcher in the Woods: A Rockton Novel Page 24