Dead Man's Lake (The Braddock & Gray Case Files Book 5)

by H. P. Bayne

  “But McCrory was gone by the time police arrived.”

  “Must’ve been Waterford tipping him off. Probably felt guilty.”

  Or maybe it was something else. Maybe Greg had thought Walter would panic and run. He’d have to stop off to pick up the stolen loot. Greg might have decided he’d make sure he was there when that happened.

  “Did Waterford leave the site around the same time?” Lachlan asked. Evidently, his mind had taken the same turn Dez’s had.

  “No idea. The cops showed within minutes of the call, and I was busy dealing with them, trying to help them find Walter. In all honesty, his taking off was the best thing that could have happened. If they’d arrested him and questioned him, they might have quickly discovered he was innocent of the crime. Next thing, they’d be knocking down my door again, trying to find out who’d made the call. The way things worked out, with Walter disappearing and all, questions have remained.”

  “Bullshit questions have remained,” Dez corrected. “All this time, police put him down as the robber, and he wasn’t.”

  Another shrug. “No skin off my nose.”

  Dez glared at the back of Brinks’s head and went back to work. Already he could feel a nick in the plastic, and he still had at least forty minutes to work at it. All he needed to do was get it to a point where the plastic would be weak enough to snap with enthusiastic twisting and one or two solid tugs. He could do it.

  He had to do it. The fact was, they’d just learned an earlier suspicion of theirs was correct. Greg Waterford had indeed possessed motive to go after Walter, possibly even to kill him.

  But Dez had his hands full here. All he could do about Greg now was to hope Sully kept his guard up and played it safe.

  Anything else, and Sully would find himself in the same predicament as Dez and Lachlan.

  23

  Something was wrong.

  The feeling plucked at the corners of Sully’s consciousness as they trailed Greg Waterford’s half-ton through the city. Something … He couldn’t put a finger on it.

  “You’re being paranoid,” came Forbes’s voice from the driver’s seat next to him.

  After the meeting with Harrison Craig, he could have bailed. But he’d stuck around, saying he wanted to see this through. Just as well, since Sully had the feeling Lachlan had been right. Things were happening fast now. Too fast.

  And Dez wasn’t responding to Sully’s last text.

  “He’s probably in the middle of the interview,” Forbes said, not for the first time.

  “Yeah,” Sully said, also not for the first time.

  He said nothing else. Neither did Forbes.

  They just drove.

  Three texts later, scattered a few minutes apart, and Sully knew Dez wasn’t in the middle of an interview.

  In half that amount of time, it had become clear Greg was making another trip out to Dead Man’s Lake.

  “What do you want to do?” Forbes asked. “We can head back into the city, see if we can find Dez and Lachlan.”

  Sully had been stewing over that very option for the past twenty minutes. He had his instructions from Lachlan, but if Dez and Lachlan were in trouble, orders wouldn’t mean much. That said, Sully knew if Brinks was planning something bad, he’d be apt to go for an out-of-town location. If that were the case, doubling back on themselves now would cost them valuable time. And if Brinks had any involvement in Walter’s death, Dead Man’s Lake seemed as likely a spot for him to take someone else he was contemplating harming.

  Sully had thought about getting Eva to tap into Dez’s phone’s GPS, but she wasn’t picking up either. On shift, no doubt, and probably in the middle of a call. He hadn’t left a message—not yet, anyway. If she was really in the middle of something herself, divided attention over worry for Dez could get her hurt. Sully wouldn’t want that, and Dez definitely wouldn’t thank him for it either.

  For now, he and Forbes were on their own, relying on Sully’s instincts to figure this out. And Sully’s instincts told him to stay the course to Dead Man’s Lake.

  “Maybe the two of them are working together,” Forbes said. “Brinks and Waterford, I mean. You think about that?”

  “I’ve thought about a lot of things,” Sully said. And he had. But his thoughts had narrowed in on one thing now, and little else was going to interfere.

  He sent another text. Waited.

  Nothing.

  “Damn it, Dez.”

  Forbes reached over, landed a hand on Sully’s knee and gave it a pat. “Hang in there. They’ll be okay. Hell, you don’t even know anything’s wrong.”

  Except he did.

  No great surprise when Greg turned onto the road to Dead Man’s Lake, nor when he made the right to take him around to the lake’s east side.

  Something told Sully he wasn’t here to meet Brinks about a land survey.

  “Stay back so he doesn’t see you,” Sully advised. “I know where he’s going.”

  Forbes eased off the gas, allowing a larger gap in time and distance between them and Greg. By the time they rounded the corner into the parking area by the fish cleaning shack and hiking trails, Greg had already parked—next to what Sully recognized as Marvin Poller’s beat-up half-ton—and left the car. Neither Greg nor Marvin were anywhere to be seen, but something else was.

  “Is that Dez’s SUV?” Forbes asked.

  Sully’s heart pounded its response before his mouth formed one. “Yeah, it is. Come on.”

  Forbes pulled up next to the SUV. Sully was out before Forbes pushed the stick into park.

  Sully placed a hand on the hood. “Still warm,” he said for Forbes’s benefit.

  Forbes circled his vehicle to check Sully’s observation for himself. “Okay, so where to?”

  The answer was at the front of Sully’s brain anyway, but a pale form at the start of one of the trails solidified it for him. Walter was barely visible now, transparent as a sheer curtain. Despite that, the message he was trying to impart was clear.

  “Follow me,” Sully said. “I think I know where they’ve gone.”

  24

  Dez stared at Brinks—or more specifically, the weapon in his hand—as they stood in the centre of what had once been Walter McCrory’s cabin.

  Brinks didn’t waver, holding his prisoners in his sights while keeping a comfortable distance back. Still too far to jump him, despite the fact Dez had shredded one side of the plasticuffs to the extent he knew one tug would free him. He hoped so, anyway, since he’d had to allow the razor blade to slip between the seats upon pulling into the parking lot. If Brinks spotted it, he’d have gotten wise to Dez’s attempt at escape—which might have proved immediately fatal or, at the very least, ended in his being more securely restrained.

  Now it was only a matter of watching and waiting for an opportunity. That and hoping Brinks wouldn’t put a bullet in him in the meantime.

  “So this is where he holed up, huh?” Brinks said, barely casting a glance at the surroundings. “Smack in the middle of our development.”

  “Proposed development,” Lachlan corrected.

  Dez wasn’t sure this was the time for Lachlan to start issuing reminders about competition and calls for public consultation.

  Brinks only smiled. “I stand corrected.”

  “So what’s the plan here?” Lachlan asked. “You kill us and then what? I mean, I still don’t see the point. If you genuinely didn’t kill McCrory, how does murdering us help your cause any?”

  “I didn’t kill him, but I’ve admitted to setting him up. I can’t allow that to get out. I’m not a stupid man, Mr. Fields. I’ve done my research. I know I’ve committed a crime, and I know how it will look—whether or not I can convince others I didn’t kill anyone. That’s the problem, isn’t it? If you and your associates go out and start telling people I had Waterford make a false report against Walter, the automatic assumption will be I had something to do with Walter’s disappearance and death. It’s a slippery slope and one I can’
t afford, especially now with a major project on the verge of happening.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” came a voice from nearby.

  Dez sought out the source of the voice and watched as Greg Waterford stepped from behind one of numerous boulders settled against the nearest slope. Waterford stared at Brinks, eyes wide.

  “What do you mean, you had me make a false report?” he asked.

  Brinks barely spared him a glance. “Greg. I see you’re keeping well.”

  “What the hell did you mean?” Yelled now.

  “Get over here and I’ll fill you in. I’m not shouting.”

  Desperation made people do some ridiculous things. The fact Waterford actually did as Brinks directed rather than running fast and hard away from this armed nut job told Dez exactly how far Waterford had slid into his delusions about Walter’s ill-gotten riches.

  “The robbery—it didn’t happen?”

  “Oh, it happened,” Brinks said. “I just have no idea who did it.”

  “But it wasn’t Walter? All this time, and it wasn’t Walter? But that doesn’t …”

  Dez dragged his eyes from Brinks and his gun to study Waterford for a couple of seconds. He was confused, perhaps even stunned by the news. He looked worse than he had since they’d started surveilling him, despite the efforts he’d sometimes gone to in order to appear seriously injured.

  “The shoulder injury was obviously faked,” Lachlan said, proving he’d made the same observations. “Let me guess, Mr. Waterford. You suspected the project was moving ahead, and you knew if you didn’t find McCrory’s money before the lakefront was levelled, you never would.”

  “He said … he told me … oh hell.”

  Brinks waved the handgun in Waterford’s direction. “Get over here, Greg. Right now.”

  At last, Waterford seemed to notice the gun. “What the hell’s going on? What are you doing?”

  “Move it!” Brinks’s drill-sergeant command had Waterford scuttling over like an abused dog. Dez imagined when Brinks yelled on the job site, people did whatever he wanted.

  So far, Brinks had stayed on top of things, his attention, while divided, never gone for so long Dez dared make a move. Now, with Brinks watching Waterford’s reluctant approach a little more cautiously, Dez allowed himself to make his first significant move. He pulled at the cuffs. At first, they didn’t budge. But then, a prolonged and painful tug later, he was rewarded by the sounds of a snap. Dez managed to catch his arms before they gave him away by jumping out to the sides with the momentum.

  Lachlan made his own move, stepping to the side, boot crunching down on a small branch so as to disguise the sound of the snapping plastic. When Brinks’s gaze fired back in their direction, Lachlan offered him a placating smile.

  “Spider,” he said. “Big one.”

  Dez knew they’d succeeded when Brinks’s glare and aim returned to Waterford. He again waved the gun to indicate direction. “Go. Over there. With them.”

  Waterford moved slowly, as if suspecting he’d be gunned down the moment Brinks got them lined up. He probably wasn’t far off the mark, Dez thought. Something about this setup had the feel of a reverse-firing squad.

  “Must be a pretty terrible moment for you,” Lachlan said to Waterford as he came to stand next to him. “All these years, hunting for Walter’s stolen loot, and it’s never even been here.”

  “But it was here. I found some of it inside the old cabin, wrapped in plastic and buried. Five thousand dollars, even, all in fifties. I figured there had to be more of it if I kept looking.”

  Brinks’s head shot back. “What?”

  Waterford nodded. “Yeah. And the way it was wrapped, it looked like you see in the movies sometimes, like it came from a bank. Maybe you thought you were setting him up, but you weren’t. He really did it.”

  Brinks raised a brow. Impressed. “I didn’t see that one coming.”

  “So what’s the plan here, Brinks?” Lachlan demanded. “You planning to kill us or what?”

  Dez cast him a side-eye. Rushing along a murderous man with a gun seemed the wrong move.

  “Well, you haven’t left me much choice.”

  “Okay, but may I propose an alternative?”

  “There is no alternative.”

  “A delay then,” Lachlan said. “Waterford here has got my curiosity up. I’ve got to see for myself if there really is money here. I’m an old cop. The Latimer Bank heist really turned my gears back in the day. If I could solve it, I’d die a happy man. Give me that much, at least.”

  Dez caught a glimmer of where Lachlan was taking this thing. He eyed Brinks. “Better four of us search than just yourself. We’ll get a lot more done.”

  Brinks smirked. “You mean three of you. I’m happy to watch. Get to it.”

  “You mean two of us,” Lachlan reminded him. “You’ve cuffed my associate.”

  “And he’s staying that way.”

  “He’d be a big help to us here.”

  “No way in hell I’m falling for that. Move it, Fields.”

  Dez stood aside, hands held behind him, while Lachlan and Waterford lowered to their knees and began to dig through debris and fallen leaves soaked through with snowmelt. Dez stayed close to Lachlan, counting on him to create an opening.

  Whatever Lachlan had up his sleeve, he was taking his time with it, making real efforts to dig. After a few minutes, it occurred to Dez a few minutes in that maybe this wasn’t a ploy. Maybe Lachlan really was digging for buried treasure, hoping to solve what had, to date, been an unsolvable crime in the annals of Kimotan Rapids crime. Dez wouldn’t entirely put it past him.

  Dez calculated at least five minutes had passed when Lachlan uttered a triumphant, “Ha!”

  Brinks, who had taken to leaning against one side of the charred door frame, straightened. “What?”

  Lachlan kept clawing through the soil, barely glancing back at the gunman. “Come take a look.”

  Waterford, too, began to edge toward them, but Brinks waved him back. “Stay over there. Don’t move.”

  Brinks circled, keeping himself out of Dez’s path while trying to get closer to Lachlan. However, room to move was limited in here, the debris making it difficult to put too much space between any two bodies.

  Dez read something in the sudden stiffening of Lachlan’s back and readied himself.

  As Brinks stooped over Lachlan to see what he’d found, he ended up blinded by a fistful of damp soil flung from below. Dez didn’t miss a beat, diving toward Brinks and tackling him to the ground. The gun fired once, but Dez had been expecting it. He’d pushed Brinks’s gun arm to the side on the way down, putting any bullet well out of reach of anyone. Two solid thuds of Brinks’s wrist against the ground, and the gun came free.

  Brinks wasn’t going down so easily though. He put up a fight, landing a left hook to Dez’s chin before Dez was able to get his own back. Busy with the struggle, Dez didn’t immediately notice the movement to his left. Too late, he realized Lachlan and Waterford were each diving for the freed handgun.

  Unfortunately, Waterford got there first. Gun in hand, he stood and took aim at Dez and Brinks below him.

  And once again, Dez found himself staring down the barrel.

  Sully raced through the woods, leaving a protesting Forbes a short distance behind.

  Moments ago, a gunshot had cracked through the silence. Every thought turned to finding Dez and ensuring he was okay. The fact was, Dez, as the largest and strongest man in the group, would be the first one to go down if Brinks was aiming to eliminate a threat.

  “Sully, wait!” Forbes called out behind him.

  Maybe he should have waited, but he didn’t. He couldn’t afford the time.

  Ahead of him came movement. Something much more solid than the shimmer of Walter McCrory. Something alive. Someone alive.

  It took a moment before Sully recognized the man ahead of him as Marvin Poller. He was carrying an old but still deadly looking hunting rifle
.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he demanded as Sully closed the distance to him.

  Sully paused long enough to tentatively reach for the gun. “Can I borrow this?”

  “No bloody way. Where are you headed?”

  “Walter’s cabin.”

  Marvin nodded once, then turned and set off in that direction, gun in hand.

  “Let’s go,” he huffed out.

  Sully, with Forbes catching up behind, followed.

  Waterford waved the handgun at Dez, motioning him up and to the side.

  “Get off him,” he said. “Now.”

  Lachlan’s hand bunching into the fabric of Dez’s coat and tugging provided an added command, and Dez did as indicated. Now standing next to Lachlan, Dez felt some relief as Waterford shifted his aim from Dez to Brinks and held it there.

  “You lying sack of shit,” Waterford spat at Brinks.

  “Greg, put the gun down.”

  “Right, like you were going to do for me? Forget it, asshole.”

  “Give me the gun, Greg,” Lachlan said. “He’s not worth you going to prison over. Let’s do the right thing and hand him over to the police.”

  Brinks rose to his knees and propped himself up with an arm. “I sign your paycheques, Greg. You’re not getting any younger. Most construction firms are looking for young, fit men. I’ve always kept you on because I know you’re a good worker.”

  “Bullshit. You’ve always kept me on because I had something on you. You knew if I or anyone else figured out about my reporting Walter for you, you’d sink. But you want to know something? I’ve been working against you anyway. All your backroom deals over this whole Crystal Lake development? I’ve recorded them. I planted a nanny cam in your office, caught some pretty juicy details to go with the documents I pulled off your computer.”