by K. J. Emrick
"Oh," Travis said, his look changing from bored to uncertain as he grasped what Jon was saying. "Oh. I see. You probably want the State Police then. If Sheriff Rockwood was here—"
"'Course I'm here," a kindly, deep voice said. Sheriff Rockwood stepped through the door Deputy Travis had left open a moment before. "Where else would I be?"
He was in the same uniform Darcy had seen him in yesterday, judging by the wrinkles in the shirt. His eyes looked tired and there was a stubble of gray hairs on his strong jaw, at odds with his neatly buzzed hairdo. He smiled at them, but it didn't touch his eyes.
"What's this about a kidnapping?" he asked the three of them. Darcy relaxed and she saw JoEllen do the same. Finally, they would get the help they needed.
Jon explained the story as they had rehearsed it, leaving out major parts like JoEllen's profession or Darcy's snooping through the folder she'd seen at the Gold Bear Bookstore. The way he laid it out, JoEllen was just another tourist, and her son was the victim of a senseless crime.
"So what makes you think," Sheriff Rockwood asked carefully after Jon had finished, "that Carson Middlemiss is involved? Can't say I like the man all that much myself, always seemed a little shady to me, but that won't make him a kidnapper."
This was the one major gap in their story, and Darcy and Jon both knew it. The only way they had figured around it was to lie. They could always clear things up later, but right now Connor needed their help. A little lie seemed like it could do more good than harm in this case.
"JoEllen saw her son being taken," Jon said with a straight face. Darcy didn't know whether to be proud of him for that skill, or worried. "She couldn't stop it, but she saw the man who took him. That's how we know."
"Well," the Sheriff said, tapping his fingers against the window counter. "That changes things. That changes them quite a bit." He chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment before nodding to himself, making his mind up about something. "Travis, I want you to go out to Carson's house. These are exigent circumstances, and you're going to break in if you get no answer at the door. Search the place. Top to bottom. You find anything that concerns you, you stop and radio to me, got it?"
Travis shifted uncertainly. "Uh, Sheriff, I've never done—"
"For the love of Saint Peter, boy," Rockwood almost shouted, "you need me to write it out for you?"
Grabbing a yellow notepad with the Sheriff's Office emblem at the top from the dispatch desk the Sheriff pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and wrote as he spoke. "You're…going…to go to…Carson's house and find…anything suspicious. There." He slammed it down on the counter. "You find her child in there and I might even promote you to head meter reader. Okay? Now go round up the other two we got on patrol and get over there!"
Travis looked at the sheet the Sheriff had written out, embarrassment turning his face red. He muttered that he understood and then quickly left the room. He left the page where it was.
Rockwood shook his head. "Travis is a good enough officer but he's as green as a newborn toad. Listen, Jon…can I call you Jon? Good. Let's you and me step into the back and discuss this more. Uh, Darcy, is it?" He waited for Darcy to nod. "Okay. Darcy, you and Miss JoEllen stay out here for now and I'll be right back to take your statements."
The door that led from the entryway of the Sheriff's Office to the inside of the building stood to the right of the service window. Sheriff Rockwood pressed a hidden button under the window counter and the door buzzed, indicating it was open. Jon gave Darcy a quick kiss on the cheek. "I'll be back. Stay here, okay?"
After the door had closed again and the buzzing stopped, Darcy and JoEllen were left alone. The Sheriff had left the service window open, and leaning in a little Darcy could see every angle in the building on the monitor screens. On them, Jon walked down a hallway with Rockwood, then down a turn to another hallway, and finally into an office. The door closed. Scanning the bank of little screens, she couldn't find any that showed the inside of the room.
"I can't just wait here," JoEllen said. "He's my son. I should be out there looking, not these cops!"
Darcy kept watch of the monitors, waiting to see if Jon would reappear. "The deputies here can take care of that, JoEllen. If your son is at Carson's house, they'll find him."
She snorted at Darcy's comment and began pacing up and down the short entryway. "I could probably do it better than these yokels. Did you see that Travis guy? Did he just get hired yesterday or something? For crying out loud, his Sheriff had to write him a note! I mean, come on!"
Darcy looked down at the yellow page of lined paper still right beside her on the counter. Under the five pointed star and the name of the Bear Ridge Sheriff's Office, Rockwood had written, "Your going to go to Carson's house…"
Hmm, she thought. That was odd. Coincidence, maybe. Sure. It had to be.
Her eyes drifted from the words on the page to the emblem imprinted at the top. The star. Why were Sheriff's badges shaped like stars? Like in those old westerns or those songs. A star.
A memory of her dream drifted back to her. Smudge humming his little tune. Twinkle, twinkle, little bat. What had he said to her? Something about preferring the other version of the song. The dormouse had sang those lyrics at the Mad Hatter's teaparty to the tune of the old children's rhyme.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star…
The other version.
A star.
Oh, no. Oh no no no no no.
"JoEllen, we need to get inside. Now!"
"What? What are you talking about? I don’t want to stay here and give a statement. I want go and find Connor."
Darcy grabbed the note off the counter and stuffed it into the pocket of her shorts. "I don't have time to explain. Just give me a boost. I'll climb up through this window and then help you in."
JoEllen blinked at her. "You're serious?"
"Yes, I'm serious! Give me a boost."
Just as Darcy was deciding she could jump up and over the counter herself JoEllen leaned past her and reached under the counter to the hidden button Sheriff Rockwood had used to unlock the door. It buzzed, loudly, indicating it was open.
"Oh," was all Darcy could think to say.
"Hurry up," JoEllen told her. "And you'd better start explaining what's going on here."
Past her, on the monitors, Darcy saw Sheriff Rockwood leave the room he and Jon had gone into, no doubt alerted by the sound of the door buzzing.
Jon was not with him.
"Uh, change of plans," Darcy said. "We should run."
Scrunching her eyebrows down, JoEllen looked over at what Darcy was staring at and saw Rockwood coming. "Why are we running from the Sheriff?"
"Because he has a gun and we don't." Darcy pulled JoEllen away from the buzzer, away from the window, and two steps towards the exit before Rockwood stepped out into the entryway.
He smiled a cold smile at the two of them, and his hand went for his holster.
"Figured it out, did you?" Rockwood said in that same kindly baritone of his.
The same voice that Smudge had spoken with in Darcy's dream. She recognized it now.
He drew his gun and aimed. "Ah, well. Guess I'll have to add your names to the list of missing persons."
Chapter Ten
At the point of a gun, Darcy heard the Sheriff ask what she thought was a pretty stupid question.
"Do you know how much paperwork this is going to cause me?"
Darcy had stepped in front of JoEllen as they stood there in the entryway of the Sheriff's Office, feeling scared down to the marrow in her bones, knowing there was nothing they could do to help themselves. The gun looked impossibly huge in Rockwood's hand, and she was sure the bullet would look just as big. Rockwood leaned back against the door that led inside, keeping it open.
For all of her concern for her own life, and even JoEllen's, there was someone she was even more worried about. "Where's Jon?"
"Oh, your boyfriend's fine," he told her with a wave of his hand like it wasn't important. "For now. Left
him in the office filling out forms while I came to see why the door was buzzing. Now, I gotta take care of you two and him. Just like I had to kill that idiot Carson Middlemiss when he came in here saying he'd been checking his property where that arena's supposed to go and found one of my gravesites. He wouldn't let it go. Insisted on a big investigation. He figured it would stop the arena being built but I really couldn't have anyone poking around up there."
He sighed heavily like the whole world was against him. "Just got back from burying him and tidying up the other grave, and now here you three are. JoEllen saw who took her kid, did she? See, that's a problem. Because I know different. So, Jon is fine for now, I guess the answer is? Just not for long."
Darcy tensed. The Sheriff didn't plan on letting them go. He'd killed Carson. That explained his disappearance. Could she call out to Jon? At least save his life?
"Don't be stupid now," Rockwood said to her, aiming his gun a little more in her direction. "I can shoot you dead before you make a peep. You, and your friend too, and then when Jon boy comes running I can just stand here and take him out."
"Aren't you going to kill all of us anyway?" JoEllen asked him sharply.
"Well, sure," the Sheriff said with that same smile. "I mean, I can't exactly let you leave now. The difference is in how I kill you. I can make it quick and painless or I can lock you up somewhere and let you starve to death while everyone searches for you like ants swarming across the ground. Kind of like I have poor little Connor locked up."
JoEllen took a step past Darcy but Rockwood waved her back with his gun. "Oh, don't worry, your son is fine. He'd be back with you already, if you'd just done what I told you to. I heard a contract killer was in my town, I figured this was a no brainer. Get her to do the murder this time, keep my hands clean, maybe even arrest her after the fact and look like a hero. Yeah. That would have been sweet. Except I got to your cabin and you weren't there. Just some dumb nerdy looking guy and a kid. Had to kill your fiancé. Sorry about that. Really. I am. He didn't need to die. But, he saw me taking your kid away and tried to stop me, so that's that."
Darcy could almost feel the hate radiating off JoEllen in waves. Her voice held an edge to it that should have killed Rockwood where he stood. "What did you do with my son, you filthy—"
"Uh, uh, uh," the Sheriff warned her. "None of that, please. I can still make sure the kid dies. You behave, and maybe I'll let him go. Although I aughta kill him just because you didn't fulfil our contract."
Those words hung over their heads like daggers. Sheriff Ben Rockwood was JoEllen's blackmailer. The killer of her fiancé. The kidnapper of her son.
And Darcy hadn't seen it until it was too late.
"Why?" she asked, knowing that stalling was their only chance. "Why would you do this?"
"It's a might too complicated for you to understand," was his answer. Scratching at his temple, he pursed his lips. "Not to mention I don’t really want to explain all of it to you. Suffice to say Carson wasn't the only one who stood to lose if an arena broke ground over by the ski resort. What I need to know from you two pretty ladies, is how did you find out it was me? There any other folks out there I'm going to have to silence?"
From her vantage point, Darcy could see some of the interior monitors still. Just enough of them to see Jon come sneaking around a corner, his own gun drawn and held in a double fisted grip.
She had to stall.
"Come on now," the Sheriff urged, "tell me how you found out."
"Yeah," JoEllen whispered to Darcy. "I'd like to know that myself."
Knowing that she couldn't very well tell them her human-sized tomcat had given her the clue she needed at a teaparty in a dream, Darcy slowly reached into her pocket and took out the Sheriff's note instead. She uncrumpled it, then held it out for him to see.
"You misspelled the word 'you're' on this note," she told him. "The same way the blackmailer misspelled it on his note to the mayor."
YOUR DEAD, the mayor's note had said. Your, instead of you're.
"Really? That was it? Really?" The sheriff grumbled to himself and shook his head. "Never was much of a speller. That's what kept me from getting this job in the first place."
"But you have the job," Darcy pointed out, her eyes flicking to the screens and back. "You're the Sheriff."
That brought his cold smile back. "Am now. Old Sheriff Allen was one of the first people I killed. Had to get where I am somehow."
The cold feeling that had been twisting in Darcy's stomach knotted tighter. One of the first people he'd killed. All those missing people here on Mount Borealis. Did Rockwood kill all of them? Just to get to where he was now?
Worse still, were she and JoEllen going to be his next victims?
On the one screen, she saw Jon peek his head around the corner at the other end of the corridor that led to the door where Rockwood was standing. Her heart leapt into her throat. If the Sheriff saw him…
In a chilling sing-song voice, he put words to her fears.
"I see yo-o-o-ou."
In that split second the world became a blur of motion. Rockwood swung his gun away from Darcy and down the hallway, the muscles of his forearm tensing as he put pressure on the trigger. An explosion of sound hammered at her ears. Even as the gun went off, Jon was moving on the monitor.
And then from behind her, JoEllen pushed her aside, drew her own gun, and shot so many bullets into Sheriff Ben Rockwood that Darcy lost count.
Blood smeared the wall as Rockwood slid down to the floor, his boot heels shuffling comically on the linoleum. He was already dead.
When Jon raced out of the doorway that Rockwood's lifeless body kept propped open, Darcy heard herself sob in relief. She raced into his arms, and he held her close, his body warm and strong against hers.
"So," he said after a long moment. "Sheriff Rockwood?"
She nodded into his chest. Not Carson. It had never been Carson. He'd died because he had wanted to keep the town from building an arena on his property, and stumbled across Audie Berkstone's grave in the process. He probably would have died anyway even if Darcy and Jon hadn't come to town, but she couldn't help feeling a little responsible. That must be why he had that folder out in his bookstore that Darcy had seen. He'd been preparing to go out there last night, and what he had found had gotten him killed. At least she and Jon—and JoEllen, too—had been able to bring his killer to justice.
A thought occurred to Darcy. She turned to JoEllen, making sure to stay within the safety of Jon's arms. "I thought we had your gun in Jon's car?"
"Yes," Jon added, gently stroking Darcy's hair. "Didn't we agree it made us all feel more comfortable having it there?"
"It made you more comfortable. It made me feel very uncomfortable not to have it, so I took it back." For a woman who had just shot a man to death, JoEllen's voice was very calm. Her eyes, however, sparked with a fury that boiled just below the surface. "Now where is my son?"
Chapter Eleven
Jon used the dispatch radio to call the cars back to the station. Three Deputies, all of them standing with wide eyes at their dead Sheriff, made for a very uncomfortable scene. Two of them settled their hands on their weapons as Jon explained the situation. Darcy could tell they weren't buying it. It was only after Deputy Travis reviewed the security recordings on the monitors that the Bear Ridge officers believed their story. Only then did Darcy dare to breathe deeply again.
There were still a lot of questions to be answered, but there was something more important to do first.
The first place they searched for Connor was the Sheriff's Office itself. The building wasn't big, Travis explained as they went room to room, but it had a basement that was hardly ever used and a crawlspace over the roof tiles. One of the other Deputies did a search of the crawlspace and came up empty.
A search of the basement turned up the same. Connor wasn't here.
Next, Travis brought Jon and Darcy and JoEllen to the Sheriff's house. The other two deputies were left behin
d to start processing the crime scene. One of them, a portly guy with freckles and red hair, looked down at the blood pooling around the man who had been his boss only an hour earlier, and promptly threw up into a waste basket. He came up for air muttering that he was okay, and then promptly threw up some more.
Ben Rockwood's home turned out to be a small doublewide on the outskirts of the town. It sat on the very end of a dead end street, away from all the other houses, huddled low to the ground. In the wash of the patrol car's headlights it looked to Darcy like a dog huddled over a bone it didn't want to give up.
There were no lights on. Curtains were drawn over all of the windows. Travis told them that Rockwood lived alone. No pets, no family, just him. The Sheriff had brought him out here once to pick up a packet to deliver to the court but hadn't let him step inside. Sheepishly, he admitted how suspicious that looked in hindsight.
"He was my boss," Travis told them, almost defensively. "How was I supposed to know?"
Jon put a hand on JoEllen's arm, holding her back from whatever she had been about to do to the young deputy. Travis turned pale and looked away.
Up on the front patio, the four of them made a quick search of the bushes and any loose stones looking for a hide-a-key. JoEllen lost her patience quickly. With two quick steps she brought her foot up and slammed it down on the door right next to the knob. Wood splintered with a sound like thunder, and they were in.
Travis clicked on his duty flashlight. Jon found the lightswitch. Each room they went to was more austere than the last, with minimal furniture and walls painted a stark white with bare floors under their feet. Rockwood lived a very simple lifestyle.
In one closet sized room they found articles from the local newspaper spread out across a worktable. Several of them were about missing person cases here in Bear Ridge, each with a picture of someone circled in red. Darcy picked one up and scanned it, then set it back down with the others. Five people, all declared missing, all dead at Rockwood's hands. Including the former Sheriff. That was a lot of blood just for one man to get to the top.