The Wolf at Bay (Big Bad Wolf)

by Charlie Adhara

  “You’re saying Mr. Hardwick and Rose Daugherty were involved? She was a kid!”

  “Nineteen. A year younger than I was when we married. And she was a junkie. Alex would have liked that. He was the sort of person who thought love could cure all evils, and he liked seeing himself as a savior. But he wasn’t. Alex didn’t understand what he did to people, the ways he hurt them.”

  She reached up and undid her ponytail quickly, then put it back up neatly in the same place. For just a moment Cooper glimpsed a few strands of gray in her dark hair and was reminded that what she was talking about happened a long time ago. He couldn’t watch for the same tells. She’d had years to stop caring. Not even killers stayed angry forever.

  “He didn’t do it intentionally,” Mrs. Hardwick continued. “But he only saw what we wanted to see. He didn’t think further than the hunt, whether it was for his next story or another woman.”

  “What makes you think their relationship was sexual?” Park asked.

  She crossed her arms, but the gesture was less aggressive and more self-soothing. For all her seeming lack of caring before, whatever they were going to talk about now was making her uncomfortable. “After Alex disappeared I packed up his stuff. There wasn’t a lot, like I said, but... I didn’t want to see it anymore. In his drawer I found a disposable camera only about half used. I thought nothing of it. But eventually I got it developed.” She turned to stand by the sink, gripped the counter, and looked out the window. “There were...pictures.”

  Cooper’s own heart was beating fast and he wasn’t sure why. “What kind of pictures?”

  “A lot of them were nothing. Nature shots, woods, animals, old knickknacks, and empty chairs. But there were some of the Daugherty girl.”

  “Intimate pictures?”

  “She was naked and filthy and roughed up,” Mrs. Hardwick said bluntly.

  “Roughed up like she’d been hurt?”

  “No, like she’d been rolling around in the dirt. The photos were all in the woods behind the field here. I put two and two together. They met there for sex. Alex snuck some commemorative photos and then just left them hanging around for me to find. Bastard,” she added, almost clinically. “Such a goddamn bas...” She trailed off, perhaps remembering why they were there and that he was now officially a murdered bastard.

  “What did you do with them?”

  “I destroyed them, of course. Though I did tell your mother. I thought she should know what kind of man he was. Two-timing her as well, with a girl ten years younger than her, no less.”

  “Good of you,” Cooper said, voice carefully even.

  “Was she posing for the photographs?” Park asked quietly, and Mrs. Hardwick stiffened. “Miss Daugherty, I mean. It’s just that you said he ‘snuck’ commemorative photos and I wondered why.”

  “Of course she was posing. You think she was laying around with her tits out for the squirrels’ benefit?”

  “Was she looking in the direction of the camera, though?”

  “It was twenty years ago. I don’t know.” Mrs. Hardwick fiddled with something in the pocket of her scrubs, her gaze distant, then added, “Yes, she was looking toward the camera because I could see her face. I remember thinking she looked high.”

  “In what way?”

  Mrs. Hardwick sucked her teeth, losing patience or starting to feel defensive, Cooper wasn’t sure. “She looked out of it. Her eyes were closed. We get addicts in the ER sometimes, and she looked like that. I don’t know how else to say it.”

  “So she might not have been aware of the photos,” Park said. “Were they taken at close range?”

  Mrs. Hardwick’s eyes flashed. “I think it’s time you left now, don’t you?”

  “Please,” Cooper said. “Just a couple more questions—”

  “No.” She took a deep breath. “You’re trying to make him into a bad man. Alex wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t even that good, but he wasn’t what you’re trying to say he was. He wasn’t a villain and your father wasn’t a hero. He is a murderer, and the next time I see those agents, that’s exactly what I’m going to tell them.”

  What could you say after that?

  She let them out the back door and, not wanting to head back to his house and thus through the crime scene, Cooper led them into the field the properties butted against. He trudged aimlessly across the dying grass, Mrs. Hardwick’s last words ringing in his head. Christ, he hadn’t been expecting that. Any of that.

  “My fault,” Park said once they were far enough away from the house to be overheard. “I got us kicked out.”

  “No. It was a good catch. If those photos were taken without Daugherty’s consent and she told someone before she died...”

  “Could be a motive for murder,” Park finished. He rolled his shoulders as if he had a sudden cramp. “To be totally honest, it’s a motive I can sympathize with. You said she OD’d? If Hardwick was using the photos to harass or blackmail, the stress could have played into her drug use and someone might have even blamed him for her death.” His shoulders popped loudly and he sighed a little in relief. “Or Hardwick was using them to threaten someone else.”

  “What do you mean, someone else?”

  “Mrs. Hardwick said she looked roughed up. That could happen from fucking in the woods. Or”—Park’s lip curled back briefly flashing his teeth in anger—“someone did physically hurt her. Maybe Hardwick, though I don’t know why he’d keep photographic evidence of it lying around. Maybe someone else who he then blackmailed. Either way, the guy’s garbage.”

  Cooper grunted in agreement. He had been...surprised and confused to learn about his mother’s affair this morning. But he was repulsed by the possibility that it was with a man who, best-case scenario, had taken advantage of a struggling, young woman he was intimate with by violating her privacy, and worst case, had assaulted her. Either way, it was disgusting.

  Park was watching him closely. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” Cooper said quickly, and stopped walking. They were standing in the center of the field now. To his right the shadows of evergreens at the edge of the woods looked stocky and aggressive as the sun crept toward noon.

  “That stuff about your mom—”

  “I don’t want to talk about that part yet.”

  Park nodded, easygoing as ever. “Okay. So what about Mrs. Hardwick? Is she still top of the list?”

  Cooper raised his hands and dropped them. “I don’t know. The fact that she’s the one who told the FBI about the affair definitely makes her less of a suspect. But if there was any chance of them finding out from a different source—and if Dean knew, I have to think other people did too—then she might have decided it was safer to just bite the bullet. Establish her status as the wife who knew and didn’t care and thus has no motive.”

  “She might not have always been so blasé about it. It has been twenty-five years. Plenty of time to perfect your ‘I don’t give a fuck’ face. Trust me.”

  “And here I thought you came out of the womb with that expression,” Cooper said.

  Park smiled. “I still think it’s strange she didn’t report him missing, even with the cash withdrawals and disappearing case.”

  “Maybe. But if he was enough of an asshole to cheat on her with my mom and the nineteen-year-old neighbor, or whatever that was, I can see why she might not have given a fuck that he stopped showing up, dead or not.”

  But why didn’t Mom report him missing?

  Rachel Dayton had clearly been worried. Worried enough that she’d approached the wife of her lover. He couldn’t believe his mom had known about Rose, whatever the situation had been, and not said or done anything to help. Would she have really thought he’d run out on her then? What had she thought happened?

  She realized her husband had killed her lover, of course.

  He looked at Park and kept his mo
uth shut. There was no doubt in his mind that his dad had not killed Alex Hardwick. But Cooper didn’t have the best track record when it came to men he’d put his trust in, and Park knew that. He was afraid his gut feeling was not going to be convincing enough.

  Cooper looked back at the house he’d grown up in. Yellow crime scene tape trembled in the slight breeze and the excavator still stood with its digger half raised like a perching vulture. “Mrs. Hardwick is right about one thing for sure. It can’t be a coincidence that he was buried in our yard.”

  “You think someone tried to frame your dad?”

  “I don’t know, maybe? But the body wasn’t discovered for twenty-five years. That’s a pretty shitty frame-up. No, I don’t think it was planned. The unsub didn’t bring their own weapon. There would have been tools lying around everywhere, so they just grabbed the hoe out of convenience, killed him, and then panicked and buried him on site. Probably not premeditated. A crime of passion.”

  “Sounds like there was plenty of that going around.”

  “Mmm.” Cooper tried to imagine himself as Alex again, but he couldn’t get a grasp on it. He couldn’t sift through the information Mrs. Hardwick had given them and marry it to what he knew of his own mother, couldn’t tell what mattered and what didn’t, everything felt jumbled up in his head, and all he kept hearing over and over was Eva’s voice calling his dad a murderer.

  “He was taking out large sums of money and took time off work after Rose died. Obviously it wasn’t because he was leaving her like she thought, and apparently he wasn’t spending those late nights with my mom either,” Cooper said slowly. “So the affair wasn’t the only thing going on.”

  “Do you want to track down his old boss?” Park suggested. “Maybe Hardwick told them why he needed time off or maybe he really was working on some story that got ugly.”

  Cooper scanned the other four houses that backed up onto the field besides his own. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Park followed his gaze. “What are you thinking?”

  “Why here? If we assume it wasn’t planned, that it was spur of the moment—an argument, probably—why here? Why would Hardwick be arguing with someone in our backyard? That doesn’t make sense. Not unless the killer saw him there and went to confront him...”

  “And the only people who could have seen him back here are your neighbors,” Park finished.

  “If not Mrs. Hardwick, and I’m not ready to rule her out yet, then why else would the crime have happened there?”

  Park nodded. “That makes sense. So who was living in these back then?”

  Cooper pointed at his own house. “Me, Dean, my dad, my mom.” He moved counterclockwise. “Eva Hardwick, Alex Hardwick. Next to them, the Daughertys. A single mom with two kids. Both of them were older than me. They kept to themselves mostly. The mom, Margaret, wasn’t around a lot. Sometimes she’d take off for days, leaving her kids behind. Stephen was just a year older than Dean, so he spent lots of time at our house. He was really shy, but Dean can get anyone to like him. They’re still friends today. I barely remember Rose Daugherty. She OD’d at nineteen, so she must have been seven years older than Stephen, I think. They were really close. Stephen was devastated when she died.” He paused. “But I’m not saying I think he killed Alex.” A small swing set was in the yard now, and it made the house look cheerier than Cooper ever remembered it being when Steve and Rose lived there.

  “Twelve’s a little young,” Park agreed. “What about Rose’s mother? Or a boyfriend?”

  “No idea. I barely keep tabs on my own family. The last time I even talked to Stephen was at his mom’s funeral, and that was probably ten years ago.”

  “But if something did happen with Hardwick and Rose...”

  “We should still find out more. Stephen must be going to the party tonight. I’ll talk to him then.” Cooper pointed across the field. “Sal West. Creepy old guy. Or at least it felt that way as a kid. He was probably only in his fifties, now that I think about it.”

  “My god, ancient,” Park said dryly. “Why creepy?”

  Cooper dropped his hand, thinking about the flicker of light from the upstairs window. There was no movement there now. “I don’t know. Something about the way he talked, like he could see inside your head. I never saw him leave the house, but there was nothing in town he didn’t know all about. Some of the kids used to say he was a vampire.”

  “Nah, they hate fishing towns. Blood gets too salty.”

  Cooper jerked his head up fast. “Wha—”

  Park’s lips were pressed tight together, but he was still quite obviously holding in laughter.

  “Real nice.”

  “You wondered for a moment.”

  “Yeah, how stupid of me. Vampires would be ridiculous. But werewolves are totally normal.”

  The grin flickered strangely on Park’s face, and Cooper started to ask what was wrong. “What about that one, between West’s and yours?” Park interrupted him.

  Distracted, Cooper shifted, staring at the familiar house. It had undergone a lot of renovations and expansions over the years, but the upstairs windows still looked the same. He’d spent a lot of time in this field, in this spot, staring at one of those windows in particular.

  “Cooper?”

  “Those are the Bells. They own the marina.”

  “The same marina as this morning?”

  “Yeah. Private, but almost everyone docks there. It’s a long-time family business. Catherine and Robert Bell, important people as far as Jagger Valley goes.”

  “Big house,” Park remarked when Cooper fell silent again.

  “They’ll be glad you noticed. They’ve got three kids. Eliza is the oldest.”

  “The one running for mayor.”

  “Yeah, then her brothers, Jack—no, wait, Jacob—and, uh, Gabriel. Jacob and Eliza were both older. Around Rose’s age, I’d say. Gabriel was the surprise baby. He was only a couple years older than me.”

  Park nodded. “The older siblings might know if there was something going on between her and Hardwick.”

  “We could ask. But I doubt they were friends. Their parents would not have approved.” Cooper carefully kept the bitterness from his voice, and Park didn’t seem to notice.

  “So where do we start? We can’t really ask people for alibis. We don’t even know when he disappeared exactly.”

  “Hopefully we won’t have to. All I want is to find some other potential leads for the feds to focus their attention on besides my dad. Maybe someone else can confirm what was going on with Hardwick and Rose or knows what he was doing on all those late nights.”

  He looked across the field again. “West used to watch us. From that window there. If he’s still around, maybe he remembers seeing something.”

  Park scanned the house again, and the irises of his eyes widened a bit and brightened to a warm gold. “I don’t know about that window, but that curtain on the ground floor keeps twitching. Someone’s home.”

  Cooper squinted, but his eyes were nowhere near as good as Park’s. “Hmm, he sees, but does he observe?”

  “Shall we find out, Watson?”

  They trudged across the field and the backdoor opened before they’d even fully crossed the backyard. Sal West waited in the doorway. To Cooper he looked exactly the same as he remembered. Still a wiry white man with dyed black hair carefully combed to lessen the expansive bald real estate, and dark, hard, calculating eyes. He was probably in his early seventies, which meant he’d been even younger than Cooper remembered him being as a child, but that wasn’t surprising. He had tried to avoid West as much as possible. He had frightened Cooper, made him uncomfortable. Embarrassingly, he felt a strange shiver now when West stepped out onto the back patio and beckoned them closer. It was that same knowing smile that had made Cooper edgy all those years ago, patronizing and almost intrusive.

&nbs
p; “Mr. West, I don’t know if you remember me—”

  “Little Cooper Dayton. Of course I remember you. Don’t tell me you’ve lost another ball in my yard?” West’s voice was deep, but he spoke barely above a murmur, like he was trying to sound more feeble than he was. He looked past Cooper and scanned Park, then pulled the door shut behind him. Apparently they wouldn’t be welcome inside.

  “This is my friend Oliver Park. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

  “Questions about Alex Hardwick, I assume.”

  “You heard about what happened yesterday?”

  West inclined his head slightly and smiled. “The valley isn’t the easiest place to keep secrets. Not like living in the city, is it? Where did you end up? DC?”

  “Has my father been gossiping?” Cooper said lightly. “I admit I’m surprised.”

  “No, no, but like I said, there are no secrets here.” West looked Park up and down again, and there was something almost excited about his expression. Probably thrilled to see a stranger. The valley didn’t have tourists, either. “You live there as well? You must find that very...confining, a big man like you.”

  Cooper raised his eyebrows—the hell—but Park just shrugged. “I’m a city mouse.”

  “Mr. West, you’ve lived here for a long time, right?” Cooper said. It was awkward, but how was he supposed to segue naturally from I’m a city mouse?

  “Oh, forty years, give or take.”

  “How well do you remember Mr. Hardwick?”

  “Better than you, I imagine. You were still a little thing when he left.” West tapped a finger to his lips as if shushing himself. “Or didn’t leave, I suppose.”

  “Is there anything you could tell me about that time?”

  “About?”

  “Do you remember if Hardwick had any enemies or if he was acting strange at all before he disappeared?”

  West reached up and rubbed the skin at his throat thoughtfully. “You think Alex made someone angry enough to kill him?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. West,” Cooper said, frowning. “I thought you’d heard. Alex Hardwick was murdered.”