by L A Dobbs
“Big money?”
“Like that hotel being built next to the area. Those owls could be a real hindrance to that guy’s expansion plans. What if they find owls breeding on his land, too? Maybe he’d get shut down.”
“I see what you mean.” Kevin hit the blinker and turned onto the dirt road to the campsite, the Crown Vic taking the bumps smoothly. “But how would killing Ray solve that problem?”
“You got me.” Dennis shrugged.
Kevin focused his attention on navigating the narrow road. Did his contact’s request for information have anything to do with Thorne? The guy must have millions tied up in that project.
Maybe his contact wanted to find out if there was something about to happen with the protected owl zone to take some sort of preemptive action. But if that were true, then the contact wouldn’t be with the FBI or the state police. And if it wasn’t the police who wanted information, then maybe that meant that Sam and Jo weren’t doing anything wrong.
Kevin remembered his contact’s warning that he could be “taken down” along with Sam and Jo. He’d assumed that meant losing his badge, maybe even prosecution or jail time, but if the contact wasn’t gathering information for some kind of police case, and Sam and Jo weren’t doing anything wrong, then what exactly had he meant by “taken down”?
Chapter Sixteen
The Carrington House was three stories of concrete and brick, complete with fancy cast embellishments and crosshatched windows that made it look like a 1600s castle rather than a modern hotel.
Lucy waited in the car as Sam and Jo pushed through the glass doors into the air-conditioned lobby. Decorated in light blue and brown, with a tufted velvet sofa on one side and three chairs clustered around a danish-modern coffee table, the room was anchored by a blue-and-brown rug in modern geometrics.
The lobby was calmingly quiet, and Sam wondered how they managed that. Maybe they had piped in white noise, along with the soothing smell of crisply laundered bedding that seemed to hang in the air.
In front of them, a half-round blond wooden reception desk gleamed with a thick layer of shellac. Behind the desk stood a twenty-something with large, dark-framed glasses and ruby-red lips that parted to show her sparkling white teeth.
“Help you?” Her gaze flitted nervously over their attire — WRPD Police T-shirts over jeans.
Sam headed to the desk, his boots thumping on the shiny marble floor.
“We’re looking for the room number of a guest,” Sam said.
The girl’s gaze narrowed. “I don’t know. The manager isn’t here, and I don’t think I can just give out room numbers. Don’t you need a warrant or something?”
Sam glanced at Jo. Everyone was an expert now thanks to all the cop shows on television. Put a damper on getting information quickly. They didn’t have a warrant, and it would take too long to get one. “Okay, how about you just tell us if the person is registered here? You can do that, right?”
She shuffled her feet uncertainly. “Okay, I guess so.”
“Her name is Summer Solstice.”
The girl gave them the side eye as if to test if he was joking, but Sam continued to look at her with a straight face. She went to a computer and started tapping keys. After a few seconds, she shook her head. “Nope. No Summer Solstice here.”
“Maybe you’ve seen her,” Jo said. “She might be staying here with someone else. She has a pretty unique look. She’s got rainbow-colored hair.”
“Rainbow hair? Um. No. Nope, I haven’t seen anyone here like that.”
“Are you sure?” Sam asked.
“Yes, but I only work part time. You want to talk to Mina, but she’s off today. Fishing, I think.”
Chirp!
Sam pulled his phone out, his heart kicking at the text from Reese.
Just got a call. Trouble at The Balsams. Break-in at Ray Ingalls’ cabin.
* * *
Sam hit the flashing lights and sped toward the Balsam Cabins. He didn’t want to use the siren, because that might warn off the intruder.
“Ray’s cabin? That can’t be coincidence.” Jo’s mouth was tense, and her cheeks flushed with excitement. Even Lucy seemed excited, sitting straight in the back, her ears perked up and ready. The police hadn’t released Ray’s cabin yet. All of his items hadn’t been claimed, and yellow police tape still draped across the door. Someone had been in there before looking for something. Apparently they hadn’t found what they were looking for and had now returned to get it.
“Get the K-9 vest out. This guy could be our killer,” Sam said, thinking more about Lucy’s safety than his own.
Jo undid her seatbelt and hung over the back of the seat, rummaging in the big box they kept on the floor. She pulled out the Kevlar K-9 vest they’d had specially fitted for Lucy.
Sam pulled in to the Balsams, slowing the Tahoe. “Get ready. I’m going in slow so we can surprise him.”
Jo yanked the vest over Lucy and took two more, one for herself and one for Sam, as he coasted toward the cabin with the engine off.
Sam frowned at the front door. The cabin looked intact. He’d expected the door to be broken in, but that wasn’t the case. No windows smashed. Nothing. But a beat-up Dodge sat in front of the cabin.
“That look like a break-in to you?” he whispered.
“No.”
They got out of the Tahoe slowly, leaving the doors open. Jo handed Sam a vest as she wriggled into hers. They approached the cabin with their guns out, Lucy quietly trotting along beside them.
Jo jerked her head to the side of the cabin. Sam figured she must have seen something, so they made their way there, backs flattened against the cabin. No sound interrupted the twitter of birds and the buzz of insects.
A scurrying at his feet brought Sam’s attention to the base of the cabin. It didn’t have a basement, but rested on cinderblocks with a lattice skirting. The noise came from under the cabin. Probably a squirrel or chipmunk burying acorns for the winter.
When they got to the corner, Jo stuck her head around, then jumped out with her gun in front of her. Sam followed suit.
Someone squirmed out from under the cabin, took one look at them with surprised eyes and then turned and ran into the woods.
Lucy glanced up at Sam. He gave her the signal, and she took off, gaining on the man easily and then launching herself onto his back. He fell to the ground and flooded the air with cursing.
Sam and Jo were there in a second.
“Hey, get it off!” The man, who was on his stomach, tried to squirm away from Lucy. The dog glanced up at Sam, the man’s wrist in her mouth as he tried to shake loose.
Jo stepped in, shoving her knee into the perpetrator’s back and his face into the dirt as she whipped the flexi-cuffs out of her back pocket.
Lucy let go of his wrist and then sat on her haunches, eyeing the man warily.
“What the heck? This is police brutality. I didn’t do anything!” The man’s voice was muffled. Jo might have been pushing his face into the dirt a little too hard.
“You ran. That usually indicates that you did something.” Sam hauled him up and swiped off the hoodie to reveal orange-tipped hair. He was just a kid, maybe mid-twenties. His long, dark bangs partially covered scared eyes. And he had a look on his face that was a cross between indignation and terror.
“What were you doing under there?” Sam demanded.
“Nothing. I swear.”
“We got a call about a break-in,” Jo said, brushing off her jeans.
“I didn’t break in! I was outside.”
Sam jerked him forward, and he stumbled as they walked him to the police car.
“Yeah, yeah. You can tell us all about it at the station.” Sam stopped at the Tahoe and opened the rear door.
Lucy had followed along, standing right beside Sam. The cuffed man eyed her warily.
“And you get to sit in the back with Lucy. I don’t think she likes you, so I’d think twice about trying anything funny.”
&nbs
p; * * *
At the station, they put the guy in the chair with the uneven leg. Jo thought he looked like a scared little kid, his eyes darting from Sam to Jo to Lucy, who lazed in the sun under the window, one eye trained on him. He had the orange-tipped hair and he’d run when he’d seen them, so he couldn’t be that innocent.
“So, John,” Sam started. He’d had a license on him showing his name as John Serrao. He was from out of town.
Sam had his butt resting on the edge of his desk in front of John, and he leaned forward right into John’s face. “What were you after at Ray’s? Why did you kill him? Who is behind this?”
John leaned away from Sam, the chair rocking back precariously. “Kill him? I didn’t kill him. What are you talking about?”
Jo sat next to John. She leaned over the arm of her chair, closer to him, trying to appear friendly. She softened her voice. “Look, we have witnesses who say you met with Ray the night he died. And they saw you meeting with him before that. Not to mention, you were clearly doing something under his cabin. If you tell us who put you up to this, we’ll try to keep you off death row.”
John jerked terrified eyes from Jo to Sam, the chair thumping back and forth. “What the hell? I didn’t have anything to do with killing him. I needed him. I’m screwed now that he’s dead.”
“How so?” Sam asked.
John let out a breath and sat back in the chair and closed his eyes. “I guess I can talk about it now. It doesn’t matter now that he’s dead. I was helping Ray write a book. No one was supposed to know. That’s all.”
“A book?”
“Yeah, he was writing a tell-all book about his life on the environmental fringe. It was a big deal, supposedly. Anyway, I’m just the ghost writer. You know, I take his ideas and put them into pretty words. But the book was supposed to be a secret. The publisher didn’t want anyone to know it was coming out ahead of time. That’s why we met in secret and why we had that crazy switch-off with the flash drive that he would put under the cabin so I could come get it when he wasn’t there.”
“Why didn’t the publisher want anybody to know?” Jo asked. “Don’t publishers usually like to create buzz ahead of a release?”
John shrugged. “I guess some of the stuff in the book might make some people angry.”
“What stuff?” Sam asked.
“Darned if I know. So far it’s all boring. Stuff about this extinct species here and that rare plant there. I don’t know what in there would make anyone mad, but I think he was just working up to the good stuff.”
Jo tapped her pencil on her pad and exchanged a glance with Sam. Could what this guy was saying be true? It made sense. The clandestine meetings, the reason for murder.
Jo wanted to believe the murder had something to do with Thorne and his activities at the river, but this made more sense.
John put his palms up. “Look, why would I kill him? I cut a deal for a royalty percentage, so I lose if this book doesn’t get published. I’ve spent six weeks working on it. No book, no royalty payments. That’s why I was looking for the flash drive. I was hoping he stashed one under there before he died and that there was enough on it to complete the book.”
“But there was no flash drive?” Sam asked.
“Nope. It was a long shot anyway. He’d just given me one the other day, and usually it takes him a few days to plant another.” John’s shoulders slumped, and his gaze drifted from Sam to Jo, and back to Sam. “I just found out he was dead and thought I’d double-check. Look, you can verify this with my publisher. Trade Lake Press.”
TLP.
Sam frowned at John then looked at Jo and jerked his head toward the lobby, shouting over his shoulder at John: “Stay there.”
Sam stood just outside the door, arms crossed over his chest, and looked at Jo. “What do you think? I tend to believe him.”
Jo glanced back in through the cracked door. The kid sat in the chair, wringing his hands. “Yeah, he doesn’t seem like the killing type. And it makes sense, but this takes the case in a whole new direction.”
“I’ll say it does. I’m still hoping Thorne is tied into this somehow.”
“So that’s why someone was searching for something at Ray’s cabin. It wasn’t John. It was the killer. The killer knew he had something on his computer and wanted to find it before anyone else did.”
Sam nodded. “Remember that flash drive we found in the fire at the camp?”
Jo nodded. “Do you think that had the tell-all information on it?”
“Not sure, but whoever put it in that fire probably thought it did.”
Jo glanced back into the room at John. “Which means our killer is someone at that camp.”
Chapter Seventeen
By the time they were done with John it was almost 7 p.m. They’d checked out his credentials. He really was a writer as he’d said. The publisher verified he was working with Ray on a book. He wasn’t even in town the night Ray was killed. They let John go. He had no motive anyway. In fact, he was worse off now that he would lose out financially unless he could get the notes that Jo assumed were on Ray’s computer.
Jo sat at her desk, tapping the eraser end of her pencil and staring down at her notes. The smell of stale coffee wafted from her cup, and she glanced in to see a dark ring at the bottom. She really should wash that thing out. Her gaze drifted to the town offices. When was Dupont going to give them the information on the drug movement so they could bust Thorne? That bust seemed even more important now that it didn’t look like he had anything to do with Ray’s murder.
Sam stood in front of a corkboard, looking at the photos and notes they’d tacked up. Lucy snored in her dog bed.
“Now this case has another angle,” Sam said.
“And now I guess someone really did break in and take the laptop from Ray’s cabin,” Jo said.
“Not break in. No doors or windows were busted, remember?” Sam said.
“Yeah, but the place had been tossed.”
“Meaning someone must have had the key to the cabin, because it wasn’t in Ray’s pockets.” Sam tapped a photo on the cork board, the one of Ray’s personal effects from the morgue. Wallet, car fob, press pass. No cabin key.
“By now I’m sure they’ve gotten rid of it, though,” Sam said.
“At least we know the fifteen grand deposit was a book advance. TLP specializes in tell-all books. Whistleblower books and true stories of interest. Reese was right. That was too much money for a single article.”
“So who wants to stop that book from being written?”
“It could be one of the other environmentalists. He would have plenty of information about them,” Jo said.
“Or someone from his past. Someone who did something shady during another environmental protest,” Kevin’s voice drifted over from behind the post office boxes.
Sam turned, and Jo craned her neck to peer around Sam just in time to see Kevin step around the boxes and into the room.
Kevin paused, his gaze flicking from Sam to Jo. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I just got back from settling an argument at the Cut and Curl.” At their curious looks, Kevin held his palms up. “Don’t even ask. Usual local stuff, and it’s all taken care of. Anyway, that guy Dennis said that there had been other deaths at previous environmental rallies or whatever they call those things. Maybe Ray was going to expose some underground environmentalist killer or something.”
Sam pressed his lips together. “I think it’s someone closer. Someone here in town right now. Someone with a secret they don’t want revealed.”
“And I might know who that is.” Reese appeared from behind the post office boxes with a piece of paper in her hand. She held it up to show them. “Summer Solstice. Turns out her true identity is Sandra Grenier. She’s an oil heiress. And get this. Her father’s company is responsible for a lot of the fracking in the Midwest.”
Jo’s brows shot up. “She certainly wouldn’t want that to get out, would she?”
�
�Nope. She built her career railing against the rich and fighting oil companies. Being an heiress to one that does fracking isn’t exactly environmentally responsible.”
“But she said she heard someone leaving the camp that night,” Jo said. “Unless she was making that up, lying to cover for the fact that she left.”
“Could be,” Sam said. “But we need to find out if Ray knew about her identity. And let’s not forget about Peter or Sally. They might have something to hide.”
“Already looked into them,” Reese said. “There was nothing much on either of them. Peter got into some trouble with a big construction conglomerate a while back, but that’s par for the course for most of them. None of them like it when corporations decimate the woods to build a strip mall.”
“Like Thorne,” Sam said. “But whatever Ray had was secret. It wouldn’t be anything that was in the public record.”
“There’s still another angle. What if Ray discovered Thorne was up to something? What if Thorne did something to the owls and Ray was going to expose it in a book? That would be big news, right? Take down the greedy corporate guy,” Kevin suggested.
“Could be. We can sit around here guessing about it as long as we want, but until we know for sure it’s not a solid lead. We need to find that computer.” Sam turned to Reese and raised a brow.
“I’m on it. I got to call in to all the pawnshops in the area. I’ve already scoured Craigslist and eBay, but didn’t find one of those cameras for sale,” Reese said.
Sam glanced at the clock. “Okay. I guess we need some thinking time on this. It’s late. I promised Netty Deerdorff some eggs, so I’d better get up to her place before sundown.”
“Yeah. I got to run to class.” Reese spun around and headed toward her desk in the lobby.
“I suppose I should go home and feed Fin.” Jo opened her bottom desk drawer and pulled her backpack out, then glanced at the dirty coffee cup. Plenty of time to clean that tomorrow.
Sam whistled for Lucy, and she darted up from her bed and trotted to his side. He looked at Kevin. “You okay with the night shift?”
