Before she could reply, he strode forward, his flashlight flaring in her eyes. “Turn around, now.” He didn’t wait for her to comply and edged behind her and gathered her hands in his own. Her shoulder protested as he drew them forcefully behind her back.
“You don’t have to do this.”
God, that sounds like a line from a second-rate cop movie.
Said bad line did nothing to halt Ressler. She felt cold metal against her skin and heard the snick snick snick of handcuffs tightening around her wrists.
“It’s for your protection and mine, till we sort everything out,” he said, taking his turn at a bad cop-show line.
Then, one hand on her shoulder and the other on her cuffed wrists, he twisted, propelling her away from the farm buildings and toward his car.
She lurched forward in front of him, searching for comfort in what he had said. She’d accomplished what she’d intended. In a few minutes, everything going on in this place would be exposed and Robin would be safe.
They reached Ressler’s car—an unmarked blue Ford sedan—and he opened the back door and eased her in, a hand on top of her head to make sure it cleared the doorframe.
“I promise you, this isn’t necessary.” It was worth trying again.
He leaned in, a tight smile on his face. “I understand why you’re saying that, and I believe you. There’s no doubt in my mind you’re innocent in all this”—the smile slipped—“but there are deaths involved.”
In the brief flare of the overhead light before he closed the door, she realized it wasn’t a conventional cop car. There was no computer up front, no shotgun secured between the front seats, and no separation between front and back. Not the best place to put a prisoner, but he wasn’t expecting she would give him trouble.
She shook her head as he walked over to her car, to check it for evidence, she supposed. Great. He’d find empty vials of medication, syringes, and maybe some blood. Nothing that would disabuse him of the notion that keeping her handcuffed was a bad idea, and she couldn’t blame him. He was alone, after all.
A tremor went through her.
Months ago at Oakes’s farm, Ressler had been all by himself, too, but only for a few minutes. By the time Keller and her fellow captives were crawling out of the window, the first fire trucks were pulling in.
Ressler, from the RCMP’s General Investigation Section… working out of Calgary. Yet Ressler had been one of the first cops there. Maybe the first. Was that right? Her memories of the night were still fragmentary, but that part seemed clear.
Just what had a GIS guy from Calgary been doing out in the middle of Buttfuck, Alberta, in the middle of the night?
She’d never thought to question it before. Ressler was one of the good guys. And a lot of things were possible. He might have been in the middle of some unrelated investigation, was simply in the neighbourhood, but that didn’t entirely wash. Major Crimes guys worked mostly in teams, she thought. They had in her father’s day. If Ressler were out in the middle of the night, he would’ve had backup. But Hardy was the first regular RCMP to arrive, and that had been maybe ten minutes later.
Why was Ressler there so quickly?
She felt a prickle of fear down her spine.
You’re being paranoid.
She checked on Ressler. He was leaning into her car, looking on the floor or under the front seat.
Even paranoids have enemies.
She wriggled forward in the seat and moved her cuffed wrists down past her hips. It’d been a long time since she’d done this. Sixteen, and you were a little less hippy. Pain bloomed in her wrists and more in her right shoulder, ribs, and elbow as she worked her hands past her hips, but she was doing it.
Think it through.
Oakes’s ring had disappeared sometime between Keller leaving him unconscious and the ME transporting his body. Decker said it wasn’t in the crime scene photos, so someone at the scene had to have done it—the second man the girls had described but never seen. But he would’ve had to be pretty nimble to get in after the fire started, take the ring, and then escape. No, it made far more sense that someone there after the fire took it… and no criminal would try to sneak past a crowd of police, fire, and EMS people just to retrieve a ring.
What if that someone didn’t have to sneak past anybody?
She checked on Ressler again to find him still searching her car. Finally, an argument in favour of a messy vehicle.
As she worked the cuffs down her legs, she pictured him that night, standing beside Hardy and one of the other RCs. There was something interesting there, between the fractures in her memory, she knew there was. Hardy and the other officers were in uniform of course and Ressler had been in civilian clothes, but they’d all been wearing dark pants. What had been different…?
No, Ressler’s pants hadn’t been dark, or more rightly they hadn’t been clean. Ressler’s shoes and pants had been splattered with mud below the knees.
From dragging Jonas into the field.
Gooseflesh rose all over her body. There was no backup coming.
Ressler was going to kill her.
Seventy-Five
0227 hrs
As she got to within fifty metres of Ash Keller’s house, Sanders slowed her approach, looking the place over carefully. A black Ford Fusion was on the roadside just east of the driveway, tucked into the trees, as if whoever parked it hadn’t wanted anyone to see it arrive. No sign of any death and mayhem… yet.
Christ, Keller, what did you get yourself into?
But that was a little unfair and she knew it. Up until that night on Oakes’s farm, Ash Keller had been no different from thousands of other people who’d developed an opioid addiction after being prescribed the drugs for some legitimate reason. That in itself was not her fault, nor were most of the other things that had happened to her.
Except for leaving the scene of a shooting. That was a little stupid. She would be lucky to avoid prosecution for that.
Sanders killed her headlights and slid to a stop just behind the Ford, then disabled the overhead light and opened her door in darkness, stepping out onto the gravel. The snow had turned to freezing rain and her hair was plastered to her head within seconds of exiting the car, but the downpour would at least conceal any sound of her approach.
Or anyone else’s. She drew her Glock and checked her back frequently as she eased forward. The place was still and there was no movement in the areas around the house illuminated by the inside lights. She had the sense that whatever might have happened here was long over.
No point in taking chances, though. She activated her Maglite and held it up and away from her body as she approached the Fusion from behind, flashing it through the windows. No one and nothing visible.
Wait.
Keys on the passenger seat. She frowned. What killer would leave his keys in the car?
Worry about it later.
Easing around the Ford, the rain coming full in her face now, she took measured steps up the driveway, keeping in the shadows of the trees.
The front door was shut but the living room light was on and she sidled up to the front window and peered in to see the body of a man lying on the floor near the front door with an obviously fatal gunshot wound to the head.
“Fuck me blind.” She slung the Maglite under her arm and dug out her phone, dialling Decker.
Call Failed. She frowned and hit redial. Same error. Decker’s phone or hers? She hit 9-1-1.
Call Failed.
Now her spider-sense was tingling. She ought to retreat, find a signal, and get in contact with RCMP backup, but she couldn’t in good conscience leave the scene without checking that there was no one else inside who needed help.
If she went in through the front door she’d be stepping around blood and messing up a murder scene, so she quickstepped around the house to the back porch. The patio door was unlocked and she used the sleeve of her jacket to slide it open.
Inside, she could immediately detect th
e odour of blood and vomit. And something else… Capsaicin?
“Police! Anyone here?”
No answer. And the place felt empty. She went through the kitchen and took in the murder scene. There were clear signs of a struggle, and the stippling on the flesh around the dead man’s head wound—not to mention the blood spray pattern—indicated he’d been shot from close range. A pool of vomit lay on the floor beside the body and she thought there might be pill fragments in it. Bare feet had made bloody footprints around the body and left tracks leading up the hall, and there were several blue-green pills on the floor that might’ve been anything but looked like fentanyl—all a fit with what Decker had told her.
She went through the rest of the house and swept each room, continuing to dial 9-1-1 every few seconds, always receiving a failed-call error. The bathroom was in disarray, with more vomit on the floor, along with a pile of bloody clothing and packaging from syringes and needles. She crouched to see an empty medication vial of Narcan below the vanity.
The remainder of the house was empty and undisturbed, so she eased back out the way she’d come, thinking about checking outbuildings but deciding that getting in touch with Decker was more important.
She holstered her gun and jogged back to her car, the cold rain pounding at her.
Seventy-Six
0236 hrs
Decker adjusted the windshield wipers to high as the snow turned to rain.
Snow, then rain and intensifying. Alberta autumn to a T. The wash of liquid on the road ahead would be at triple point—water, ice, vapour.
He was running fast up the rural road, glancing at his phone every few minutes, waiting for Sanders’s call. He was determined to head Keller off at the pass, but he was equally determined not to wind up skidding into the ditch and having to call AMA. Getting hurt didn’t enter into it. He’d seen colleagues earn nicknames like “Crash” that followed them through their careers.
His navigator chimed, “In three hundred metres, your destination will be on the left.” He eased off the gas and peered out into the rain. Faintly now, he glimpsed what looked like house lights coming up, just west of the road.
There were headlights too. Two cars, pulled over a few hundred metres past the Palomino Palace, near what might have been a back entrance.
One of the cars had a red light flashing on the dash.
Cop.
***
Keller checked again on Ressler’s whereabouts and found he’d shifted his search to the rear of her vehicle. What was he looking for? Any sort of evidence about what she’d discovered, she decided. He was going to take her someplace to kill her, and if her car was discovered in the meantime, he didn’t want anything in it pointing to him or his friends.
She couldn’t count on much more time before he came back. Heart pounding and icy sweat running over her body, she leaned back and brought her legs to her chest, dragging the chain of the handcuffs over her boots, her right shoulder screaming. The links caught on one of the cleats and she writhed against the seat, panic rising in her as she jerked and strained until the handcuffs finally pulled free.
She sat up to see that Ressler had risen from her car and was peering at her through the rain, a frown on his face. He’d caught at least part of her movement to get the cuffs around in front of her, but he looked hesitant. She forced herself to stay still, hoping he wasn’t exactly sure what he’d seen.
Keep looking through my car, fucker. You’re not done yet, are you? Better finish before you do anything else, right?
Ressler lingered a moment, watching her, then waved as if to reassure her. All this is normal, not to worry. Then he dipped his head back into the rear of her vehicle.
As soon as he was out of eyeshot, Keller slid over the seat and pulled up on the door handle. A soft click as the latch disengaged and she was pushing the door open. The rain lashed at her as she eased out of the car. Ressler was running his hands through the rear compartment of her vehicle, and she gave thanks for the mess of uniforms, books, old shopping bags, and discarded Red Bull cans that was keeping him occupied.
She eased the car door shut and took stock. Apart from the trees around the Palace, there was a bare landscape of farmer’s fields all around her. Her only choice was to take cover on the property, try to hide in one of the outbuildings until she could reach 9-1-1. The thought brought her hands groping for her rear pocket.
Her phone was gone. She took a quick look through the back seat, hoping it had slipped out of her pocket when she was wriggling around, but saw nothing. Ressler must have picked the device out of her pocket when he handcuffed her. Bastard.
She turned and jogged up the service entrance drive, heading toward the trees, shooting another glance toward him. Ten more metres and she’d be out of the headlight glare, out of sight.
“Where the hell you going?”
The voice came from in front of her and she turned to see a man dressed in a long rain slicker coming out of the trees. He held a pump-action shotgun that looked a lot like the Mossberg Persuader her father had owned. Even in the dim light, she could see the black hole of the barrel was pointing straight at her.
Ressler whirled at the man’s voice as he stepped into the gleam of the headlights. Keller judged him to be around fifty. A hard fifty though. He had a wide craggy face that was unused to a razor. When he grinned, she saw that he was unused to a toothbrush as well, his teeth yellowed and grooved like a rat’s.
“That you, Ressler?” The man looked from Ressler to her and his grin widened. “You must be losing your fucking touch, boy.”
Ressler stared at her through the rain and she saw a smile touch his face too. “You’re as resourceful as your rep, Keller.” His gaze shifted to the man with the shotgun. “Put her with the others.”
Shotgun looked her up and down. “She’s already handcuffed. Can I have a turn at her first?”
She gritted her teeth, nausea, anger, and fear vying for control of her brain. “Fuck you, shithole,” she spat at him, and the grin disappeared. He pulled the shotgun back to strike at her.
“Taylor!” Ressler’s cry cut through the rain. “Do what I fucking say and put her with…”
His voice trailed off and Keller saw his expression turn from anger to shock and worry. Then she saw why.
Another car was coming up the road, slowing as it approached. In the light of the dashboard glow, Keller thought she saw a familiar face.
“Decker!” she screamed, summoning every ounce of breath in her lungs. “Deck—”
Taylor jammed the butt of the shotgun into her solar plexus and the breath went out of her. She would’ve fallen but he wrapped an arm around her neck, pulled her up against him, and lugged her back into the cover of the trees.
She retched, fighting at once to breathe and not to vomit as he dragged her along. Above her a vast grey blanket was closing around her vision.
She tried to scream but nothing came out.
Seventy-Seven
Decker’s phone buzzed against the leather of the car seat. He grabbed it up as he took in the scene ahead.
Cop. That could be anything. A traffic stop, a drunk driver, or even an overdosed Ash Keller who’d run herself off the road. So, a fellow cop, RCMP probably.
But while logic said nothing here was particularly out of the ordinary, instinct was niggling at him. And instinct was a bit of a bitch, in Decker’s experience. Instinct told you what she was thinking, but she was often pretty goddamn coy about why. Instinct outright disdained logic, but it was often correct. And something here felt wrong. Bad vibe pretty much summed it up.
A figure was standing beside the cop car. Tall and thin, with the confident bearing of a man who’d worked the highway, who’d stood beside many a car wreck. Cop for sure. He raised his right hand to halt Decker as he waved a flashlight back and forth in his left, then pointed it down, directing him to stop.
Decker brought his car to a halt about ten metres from the other man. His phone was still vibrating in
his hand and he finally glanced at it.
Sanders.
He tapped Answer as he placed the car in park. The phone beeped. He looked down.
Call Failed.
“Goddamnit.” He dumped the phone on the seat and checked that his Glock was loose in the holster, would draw unimpeded. Frowned at himself for doing it.
All cops, all friends here.
The cop hadn’t moved. He stood in the rain staring at Decker, his flashlight focused on the hood of Decker’s vehicle, half blinding him, by accident or intention.
Except Decker never took anything that might be hostile as unintentional anymore. Maybe that might’ve been his nature in elementary school, unlikely in high school, problematic as a rookie. It was certainly off the table now as a homicide cop.
He levered the door open and exited the car to be enveloped in a hard wash of rain, like the spray from a crashing wave. His left hand came up to shield his face but he kept the other resolutely near the grip of his pistol.
The cop waved at him. “RCMP. Ross Ressler.”
Ressler. A tickle at the base of his spine. The Oakes case. Ash goddamn Keller.
“Harry Decker,” he shouted. “Calgary. Major Crimes. We’ve talked a couple times.” Old friends, right? “What’re you up to here? You need any help?”
It was an overture toward normalcy. An opportunity for Ressler to spill—what was going on, why he was here—all the usual stuff. A test, really. Except it wasn’t, because no cop ever failed this kind of test. Calgary Police and the RCMP crossed paths all the time. So this was a giveaway.
What happened now was, one officer told the other what was going on—in general terms, at least—then told the out-of-jurisdiction cop politely to fuck off if help wasn’t wanted. That was it. You got your story out. Got the other guy on their way. A cakewalk.
The Beast in the Bone Page 34
