by Nancy Bush
“You’re not part of this investigation, Ford. You’re not a cop any longer, and this is your brother. You’re family. You stay out of it.”
“Which is why I called you to let you know what I found out.”
Vandra launched into a diatribe about why Sam should stay out of the investigation, and Sam listened with half an ear. Vandra wasn’t wrong, but Sam just didn’t care. He wanted Joe’s killer brought to justice, and he was going to do whatever he could to make that happen, no matter what the sheriff said.
As if he could read Sam’s mind, Vandra doubled his efforts to get him off the case. His voice rose with the effort.
But all it did was convince Sam to go back to Mayfield and press him himself. Even if the sheriff did as he’d requested, he wasn’t going to keep Sam in the loop. That was evident. As soon as Sam got the sheriff off the phone, he looked for a place to turn around and head back toward Salchuk. Ryan probably wouldn’t let him in a second time, but Sam figured he’d sort it out when he got there. If the guy’d been bought once, he could be bought again. Just a matter of finding the right buttons to push.
Sam parked in his same spot, locked his car, and pocketed his keys. It had been about forty minutes round-trip since he’d been there. Since he was no longer a cop, he no longer carried a gun, but he figured he could scare the shit out of Mayfield anyway—he’d already done it once—and that might get him results.
He took the stairs two at a time. When he got to Mayfield’s door it was cracked open.
Immediately he froze. The guy had been barricading himself in when Sam left earlier. Had he decided to get the hell out and leave the door open?
He used his elbow to ease the door open wider.
Ryan Mayfield lay on the floor, eyes open, a look of dumb surprise on his face. A gun lay beside his right hand, as if he’d used it.
Sam looked closer.
No one would believe he actually shot himself in the chest four times.
As Sam stared down at him he heard clambering footsteps coming through the outside door and then up the stairs. Less than a minute later he was once again looking at the dark circle at the end of the barrel of Officer Bolles’s Glock.
Chapter Fifteen
Sam carefully raised his hands and stared into Bolles’s eyes, needing to make sure the man saw him, didn’t shoot him. Bolles looked about to jump out of his skin. His eyes rolled from Mayfield’s corpse to Sam, then back again.
“I didn’t kill him,” Sam said carefully. “Check the gun. I didn’t touch it.”
“You coulda wiped it,” he charged, his gaze drawn like a magnet back to Mayfield’s bloody and bullet-ridden chest.
“I just got here,” Sam said. “I don’t know when this happened, but it wasn’t in the last five minutes, which is about how long I’ve been here.”
Bolles looked like he wanted to argue, but he kept his mouth closed. Possibly because he knew Sam was right, based on what time the call had come in and alerted him.
Sam added, “I’m guessing someone called in about shots fired. Maybe someone from one of these apartments. That someone may be able to tell you that I pulled up after the fact. Or you could check any of the traffic cams or security cams in the area.”
“If there are any. Besides, you were here earlier, too,” Bolles said belligerently.
“How did you know that?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“Ah . . . Sheriff Vandra.”
“Mayfield called us and complained!” he shot back, unable to stop himself. “Sheriff didn’t appreciate it much, and neither did the chief!”
“I told Vandra where I’d been. It wasn’t a secret.”
“I’m not standing here arguing with you anymore.” Bolles started reaching for his handcuffs, a bit disconcerted when he had to hold Sam at gunpoint and manage the cuffs as well.
“Just don’t shoot me,” Sam said.
He was saved by the arrival of Chief Pendergast, who hurried up the steps as fast as his short legs would carry him. Quickly observing the situation, he barked at Bolles, “For God’s sake, put your gun down! He didn’t kill Mayfield unless he was in two places at the same time!”
Bolles reluctantly lowered his weapon and Sam exhaled a pent-up breath. Held at gunpoint twice in two days. Holy mother of God.
“Sheriff Vandra’s on his way, and we got the ME coming.” Pendergast threw a quick peek into the room, like he didn’t really want to look, but had to. “Goddamn it,” he said wearily. “We don’t have killings in Salchuk.”
Sam pointed out, “Well, you got one now.”
“What were you doing here?” he questioned Sam.
“Asking Mayfield a few questions. The sheriff and I talked about it.”
“Goddamn it,” he said again.
Sheriff Vandra showed up a few moments later. Pendergast didn’t seem to mind having the sheriff on his turf and Sam sensed there might be some kind of underlying partnership between them. Bolles stood by tensely, as if he expected trouble. It took about twenty minutes more for the ME to show up, since he was coming from Tillamook. No one was exactly sure when the crime scene team would arrive, but they’d been alerted and were on their way.
Sheriff Vandra, Pendergast, Bolles, and Sam moved away from Mayfield’s door, heading down the stairs to the first floor entryway and outside into the afternoon sunshine. Sam inhaled the fresh, briny scent of the sea, welcome after the skunky smell of Mayfield’s weed.
“Who killed him?” the sheriff asked.
Sam didn’t immediately respond, since he thought the question was for the group at large, but then he saw that Vandra was looking at him, squinting in the sunlight. “You’re asking me?”
The sheriff nodded once, curtly.
“Then I’d say it’s whoever killed my brother.”
“That’s a leap, son,” Pendergast said.
“Joe didn’t buy the gas from Mayfield. Somebody else did and said he was Joe. Or, maybe Mayfield was lying about that, too. An embellishment to cover his own crimes.”
“What crimes?” Vandra asked.
“I think Mayfield was put up to break into my brother’s office. Somebody wants some information that may or may not have been there. Joe didn’t have hard copies at his office. He probably keeps everything on his computer or the cloud. Whoever did it may have taken his laptop. I don’t know. I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but a lot of the people I’ve talked to recently had invested with Joe. There’s a lot of tension now.”
The sheriff, the chief, and Bolles stood in silence for a few minutes. Sam waited for one of them to speak. It was Vandra who squinted up at the sun, then leveled a look at Sam. “Suicide never really fit with your brother’s profile. I thought I’d let Mayfield think I believed him. Hell, I wanted to believe him. I didn’t want to think that someone set out to kill Joe and his wife. Someone . . . from around here.”
Sam was a little surprised by Vandra’s honesty. The sheriff hadn’t exactly been transparent to date. He didn’t want the local investors, anyone he knew, to be involved in a crime of this magnitude.
“You sure about all this?” Pendergast asked Vandra. He, too, wanted to protect “his townfolk.”
Vandra snapped, “I’m not sure of anything, except that Sam Ford didn’t kill Ryan Mayfield.”
Bolles ignored the sheriff’s temper. “You think Mayfield’s killer was the same guy who set the boat on fire?”
Vandra pressed his lips together, got hold of himself. “We need to find out. There aren’t many cameras down by the marina, but there are some on nearby houses. We’ve checked and there’s no one on ’em in the last few days buying a can of gas, as far as we can see. We talked to some of the locals, fishermen and people at the marina. No one seems to remember anything out of the ordinary.”
“That was a fiction by Mayfield, then,” Sam concluded. “And you’d better check the hospital cameras outside Jules Ford’s room last night, if there are any. Someone came in to ha
rm her,” Sam said. He’d planned to put Stone on that one, but hadn’t yet called the detective. However, since the sheriff seemed more amenable now, he threw it out at him.
“Someone came into her room last night?” the sheriff demanded.
“That’s what Jules said. After the guard was pulled,” he pointed out, sticking it to Vandra a little. “She was lucky he was interrupted before anything bad happened.”
“Goddamn it,” Vandra growled.
Sam should have been relieved that the three officers had finally come around to his way of thinking, but mostly he was angry. Angry that it had taken them so long to get on the same page. “Whoever killed my brother blamed Joe for losing his investment money, whether it was true or not. This guy brought the gas to the boat, killed Joe, meant to kill Julia, then he burned the whole damn thing, probably hoping it would burn to nothing. Then he got Mayfield to break into Joe’s office, steal the laptop or whatever he could find that might incriminate him. He always planned to kill Mayfield because Mayfield could identify him. Then last night, this guy went after Jules, probably for the same reason. I have someone with her now. I’m not leaving her alone anymore,” he added. “But whoever did it, did it for money. That’s your motive. Money.”
Pendergast rubbed his chin. “One guy for all. That’s quite a theory. You have anything to support it?”
“Not a damn thing. Yet.”
“Any idea who we’re talking about?” Vandra asked.
Sam’s mind flashed on Walter Hapstell Junior, but he immediately pushed that thought down. He didn’t believe Hap had what it took to be a cold-blooded killer. He was too. . . weak. His father, Walter Hapstell Senior, however, was another story entirely, but Sam had no reason to suspect him other than he was a powerful man who may have risked a lot of money. “Jules is damn lucky to be alive,” he said instead of answering.
Sam stuck around with the other law enforcement officers while the ME processed the body. After being treated like a criminal, Sam seemed to have passed the litmus test and been accepted as one of their own again, even without a badge. It was a relief to be working on the same side, though he wasn’t going to quit investigating, which he knew was the tacit request.
It was after four o’clock by the time the crime scene investigators had arrived and had roped off the area. Everyone was wrapping up. Sam headed to his truck and found Sheriff Vandra trying to keep up with his longer strides. “Have you thought anymore about the job offer?” the sheriff asked.
“I haven’t thought about anything beyond finding my brother’s killer.”
“You’ve been helpful, thinking right, but you need to leave it up to us now.”
“Sheriff, I can’t do that.”
“We have the resources, and you’re family, and—”
“I know all the reasons. But if your brother was murdered, would you be able to just sit by?”
His lips tightened. “I would hope I had the good sense to leave it to the authorities.”
Sam snorted his disbelief. “What I want to know is how that killer got on the boat with the gas. Did he stash it there before? Was he a stowaway, or maybe someone Joe knew? Joe was supposed to meet me on his dock, but he went out in the boat instead. Was he trying to escape some kind of danger? Or did someone force him onto the boat? Was that why Jules was onboard? Because the killer set the stage?”
“We’ll look into everything.”
“You do that, Sheriff. And I will, too.”
“That is a bad idea, Mr. Ford.”
“Won’t be my first one, nor my last.”
* * *
When her phone rang Bridget snatched it up and saw that her hands were shaking. “Where the fuck are you?” she hissed when she realized it was Tom.
“Seaside. Got things to do. Gotta show that I’m working on the job, talk to people, establish an alibi.”
“What did you do?” she asked, feeling a jolt of fear . . . well, more like anticipation, really.
“I took care of the man’s problem. But shit, I damn near got seen.”
“Oh, God . . .” She sank onto a chair. She’d worked this morning but had come home early, her mind on Julia Ford. They needed to take care of her. He needed to take care of her. She couldn’t understand why he was so lackadaisical about the fact that she could identify him. He seemed to get off on the danger, and it was not the kind of danger that she craved.
“. . . that damn Ford,” he was saying in a voice laced with anger. “He showed up and talked to Mayfield. I damn near passed out from shock. Thought Mayfield was going to crack open like a goddamn egg and tell him everything. I was ready to blow both their heads off and damn the consequences, but Mayfield managed to hold Ford off. But after Ford left, fucking Mayfield called the police himself and complained about harassment! Jesus Christ, what a moron. I listened at his door and heard him on the phone. I barely got out of there before that fucking guitar player called nine-one-one. Jesus.”
“What guitar player? What are you talking about?” Her voice was shrill. She was freaking out, imagining him being hauled in by the cops.
“In one of the apartments. I was in the back, on the basement stairs that led to the outside. After Ford left and I’d listened at the door, I had to calm myself down, think it through. I had the gun from the gun show. Untraceable to me. I had gloves. It was simple. I just kicked open the door and plugged Mayfield. Bam, bam, bam, bam! Then I put the gun near his hand and got the fuck out the back way. No cameras.”
“No cameras,” she repeated. It was like a mantra with them. They were always looking around, checking for cameras. The whole damn country had turned into a bunch of pansy-ass voyeurs. “Nobody’s going to believe he shot himself four times!”
“Let ’em think Ford did it. I sure as hell didn’t expect him to turn around and come right back. Holy mother! I’d just pulled out on the highway, heading north, and he turns onto Fifth, into Salchuk! We like, pass each other. Holy shit. May have to do something about him,” he mused.
“What about Julia? What about her?”
“I told you, the word from the hospital is she has amnesia.”
“Well, that’s damn convenient.”
“I’m gonna do it. Just trying to get our hundred thousand, babe.”
“When’s that going to happen? Have you even seen one dime of this fucker’s money yet?”
“It’s all gonna happen very, very soon.” His voice lowered. “Then we’re gonna have some fun, you and me.”
“If we’re not in prison.”
“You gotta relax a bit. Get zen, or whatever the fuck.” He laughed and then he drawled, “You know what I see? I see you naked, on your back, legs spread, mouth open.”
She rolled her eyes. Half the time she asked herself what she was doing with him.
“Or, how about tied up? My hostage . . . and you’re lying on a pile of money. Hundred-dollar bills. A thousand hundred-dollar bills. You’re covered in them. And then I’m on you, and we’re rolling around getting dirty in dirty money.”
A wave of heat enveloped her in spite of herself. She could see it, too, and a thrill ran through her. She wasn’t quite as money motivated as he was, but he could sure paint a picture for her. And she did love him. She did. Most of the time . . . well, sometimes . . .
“I’m thinking about being inside you right now,” he purred. “God, I’m high.”
She wanted that same high. She wanted him inside her. But they had things to do. Loose ends to tie up. Then they could screw themselves silly, maybe go after another mark, kill him or her, someone not picked by “the man,” whoever the fuck he was. She didn’t even want to know.
“Come to Seaside right now,” he said. “I’m horny as hell.”
“I can’t leave the kids.”
“Bullshit, you can’t.”
“Bad things could happen, and then what? And you’ve got to take care of Julia Ford. She’s home right now, you asshole. If you don’t do something about her, I will.”
> “Maybe we could do her together.”
The thought sent an icy chill down her spine, fear mixed with a dangerous desire.
“Maybe,” she said cautiously.
“Scope it out, sweetheart. Do a little reconnaissance and maybe tonight . . . ?”
She hung up on him, but dangerous thoughts circled her mind. She would have to be sure she could get away unseen, and Julia had to be as dead as Joe Ford was, no fuckups this time, because Bridget was not going to jail ever. Nuh-uh. She’d take down anyone in her path if she was caught, and that meant all those nosy neighbors on the canal. The Fishers. It wouldn’t be such a bad idea to thin them out anyway. The world would certainly be a better place without them.
She walked through the house to the slider that led to her deck. Clasping her hands together in the shape of a gun, she lifted them to eye height and aimed through the window at each house on the canal. Bam. You’re dead. Bam . . . you, too, fuckers. BAM. Especially you guys! Bam, bam, bam! She shot every house on her side of the canal and across the way, too.
She pulled back her “gun” and blew across the top of it, thinking about the real gun that she owned herself, the small one Tom didn’t know about. Like his, it was untraceable to her. She had it squirreled away for that day she might need it.
A thrill swooped down her spine and she shivered. Maybe she should search out her vibrator. She hadn’t needed it in a while, but now might be a good time. While she was thinking about taking ’em all out.
Making the world a better place.
* * *
Jules checked the clock in her bedroom. Four p.m. She’d tried to stay up and talk to Sadie and Georgie, but Georgie had been with her friend Xena, and hadn’t been interested in any more sad conversation about Joe or anything else. Sadie had taken a look at Jules and told her she’d better lie down before she fell down. From that, Jules had walked into the bedroom that she’d shared with Joe, had lain down on the right side of the bed, her side, and had fallen into dreamless slumber.
But now she was awake.
She got up and wandered down the hall. The door to Georgie’s room was closed and she and Xena seemed to be watching something on TV or their iPads. She ran a blueprint of the house through her mind, seeking to reacquaint herself with her life before the boating accident, and was pleased that most of those memories were back in place. She knew the house and her surroundings. It almost felt like home. Almost.
