In Harm's Way

by Ridley Pearson

  She felt a twinge of guilt. Why had she intentionally avoided telling Walt the missing vehicle was a pickup truck?

  She locked the door to the cottage, grabbed up her camera and reconnected it to the laptop, quickly working through the shots of the Gale crime scene, her finger finally hovering over the mouse as a series of shots appeared on-screen: muddy tire impressions.

  Walt had made it clear a pickup truck had left the tire impressions at the crime scene.

  The missing pickup truck? she wondered.

  She double-clicked the first of the four images and it opened in its own window. She leaned in to take a closer look.

  23

  “No photo to go with it,” Deputy David Blompier reported from the other side of Walt’s desk. He was balding, with an amiable face and bulging belly. He was under a second caution to begin a workout regimen and Walt feared he’d soon have to be suspended for failing to act upon the warning.

  Walt was looking at a printout of Martel Gale’s bank account transaction report, forwarded through by e-mail, from Purchase Bank in Mobile, Louisiana.

  “Gale used his ATM card a day after he died,” Walt noted.

  “Withdrew the full four-hundred-dollar limit. Then again, the next business day: another four hundred.”

  “And no photo.”

  “Sawtooth National has stickers on their ATMs saying there are cameras in use, but there aren’t any. Remember? It came up last year in-”

  “-that poacher case. Chasing that guy down. Yeah, I remember,” Walt said.

  “His killer?” Blompier asked.

  “We’re a long way from making that jump,” Walt said. “But it’s certainly possible. It’s good work, David.”

  “Thanks. All I did was-”

  “Get hold of the bank and find out if there’s a way to real-time monitor their ATM use. You looking for any OT pay?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Let me know what the bank says.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And David?” Walt caught him at the door. Blompier turned in profile-a sight to behold.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hit the gym, and lay off the doughnuts. Last warning. You have to pass the course on the third try or it’s an automatic suspension.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “My hands are tied on this.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We need you. You understand?”

  “Got it.”

  Walt fingered the page, wondering if the body had been found and robbed, or Gale’s wallet had been taken by his killer. His phone rang as if in response. Dr. Royal McClure, an M.D. who served as his medical examiner, informed him the results of the autopsy were in.

  Walt called Boldt’s cell and reached him on Main Street, where he’d been window shopping. He picked him up and they drove north together.

  “I’m glad you stayed,” Walt said, from behind the wheel of the Jeep.

  “My wife gave me a reprieve. I figured I’m already here, why not tack on a long weekend. Don’t get this chance every day. I haven’t been over here in years, probably won’t be back anytime soon.”

  Walt knew the truth-Boldt suspected Gale’s death tied into Vetta’s and knew that once he left the area, obtaining information would be increasingly difficult. He’d been anxiously awaiting the results of Gale’s autopsy and blood tox results.

  Neither man mentioned or discussed any of this, and Walt wondered why not, but at the same time felt hesitant to broach the subject himself. The events of the past week had made him increasingly aware of, and sensitive to, the existence of secrets big and small and the role they played in his and other people’s lives. In some ways everyone was acting out a role, keeping a face on a much more complicated identity: health issues, relationships, fantasies, fears, phobias-so often held in check just below the surface, and the person living the lie, mole-whacking to keep the truths from surfacing at inopportune moments.

  Walt parked in front of the medical building adjacent to the hospital and they entered.

  Dr. Royal McClure’s age was deceptive. The white hair and liver spots suggested sixty, but he was fit and bright-eyed. He had an excitable manner and a calming voice, the two somehow working in concert to give the impression of a facile mind at work in a laid-back personality. He had rotated into the county’s mandatory medical examiner service a few years back, and had done such a good job Walt had put him on contract.

  They were spared the body-on-a-gurney routine. McClure only brought out the body if Walt asked-which he rarely did-knowing Walt preferred an office visit to the hospital’s morgue.

  “In the preliminary,” McClure began after introductions had been made, “I told you about the blunt trauma to the parietal and occipital plates of the skull.” He reached back and touched the back of his own head. “And my suspicions were borne out: that was indeed the cause of death. The guy was struck hard. It’s a clean blow. Something smooth. No bark or detritus in the hair or scalp. A single blow.

  “There’s nothing much more to give you. Clean tox. No drugs or alcohol, tobacco, pot, nothing. Guy was a churchgoer, as far as I can tell. What I do have is speculative, or at least inconclusive, but nonetheless interesting, at least to me, which is why I thought you might want to hear it face-to-face.”

  “Absolutely,” Walt said.

  He placed down a stack of Fiona’s photographs. “Shots of the head injury and identifiers, including several tattoos. And, from the clothing,” he said, removing a plastic bag from a file box and laying it on his desk, “soil caught in the back pockets of both pant legs and both shoes. And not just soil, but clean soil. Clean soil and peat moss, would be my guess, though you may want the lab to run an analysis to nail that down more accurately. But my point is, it’s not your average dust bowl variety soil we typically see around here. Right? It’s more like garden variety.”

  “Nursery?” Boldt said, drawing a sharp look from Walt.

  “Why not? Sure. Nursery. It looks like what my wife and I use in our vegetable garden: black compost soil mixed with peat moss to hold in moisture. What it is not is the typical roadside dirt you see around here. It’s far more refined than that, and there’s no pebbles, leaf material, sticks. It’s clean.”

  “That’s helpful,” Walt said. “Very helpful.”

  “Which leads me to the only other thing I’ve got,” McClure said. “And honestly, I probably wouldn’t have noticed without the soil, or maybe I would have, who knows?” He laughed self-consciously, his self-deprecating humor one of the qualities Walt appreciated most about him. Rare in a doctor. “Earwax,” he said, fishing out a small plastic petri dish from the same cardboard box. The petri dish contained four cotton swabs on paper sticks.

  “Earwax,” Walt repeated.

  “Pollen,” Boldt said, craning his huge body over the desk for a closer look.

  “The blue ribbon goes to the sergeant,” McClure said. “Very good, Detective.”

  “We’ve used it a couple times. Once in a floater.”

  “Pollen most often adheres to sinus membranes, antemortem, and/ or the cerumen-which is doc-speak for earwax-postmortem.” He pronounced it “mor-tem,” lending finality to the sound of the word. “I retrieved the cerumen, but found nothing in the sinuses. Ergo-”

  “He was dragged through a garden or a flower bed, or thrown from a truck into a pile of debris,” Walt said.

  “I’d go along with the former, but would lay doubt at the foot of the latter,” the doc said. “You can see by the strong orange color that the pollen was thick and apparently consistent. It had to be abundant.”

  “This time of year?” Boldt asked. “Isn’t it a little late?”

  “In nature, yes,” McClure said. “I’d agree. Quite late. But we have a very shortened growing season here, Detective. Extremely short. I would imagine any number of vegetables, or other flowering plants might be pollinating at this time, but I’m not a botanist. Sunflowers, maybe? The lab may be able to identify the pol
len for you. But I thought its existence worth bringing to your attention.” He delivered this to Walt, who nodded and reached out to examine the petri dish.

  “I’ll put a rush on it,” Walt said.

  “The only other thing worth mentioning, and I think you’ll find this of some interest, is that a good number of the contusions and abrasions are also postmortem. Though scuffs on his knees and face are antemortem.”

  “A struggle?” Walt said.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say the blow from behind was enough to kill him, but possibly failed to do so right away. He went down. His brain hemorrhaged, but in those few conscious seconds it took the pressure on his brain to overcome him, maybe he managed to turn and get in a few blows on his attacker. They may have fought. I don’t know. His hands and forearms and mouth, all suggest such a struggle, an exchange of blows perhaps. Then the initial trauma caught up to him-any of the rest of us would have gone unconscious with such a blow, I think-it’s something of a medical miracle if he did not, but he was thick-boned and his skull may have protected him somewhat. His brain swamped, and he died.”

  “And was dragged through a garden,” Walt said.

  “Or a nursery,” Boldt added.

  “The lab work should help you there,” McClure said. “I’ll pack it up and get it off.”

  “I’ll have one of my guys drive it down there this afternoon,” Walt said, a video of the struggle playing out in his mind’s eye, and the disturbing realization that Vince Wynn had showed no signs of having been in such a struggle.

  “If there was a struggle,” McClure said, artfully awaiting the attention of the two, “a guy this size might have gotten in some serious blows. It might be worth checking the emergency room.”

  “Or twenty-four-hour convenience stores,” Boldt said, eyeing Walt. “Have you got any of those here?”

  “Good suggestions,” Walt said.

  As he and Boldt were approaching the Jeep, Boldt stopped and waited for Walt to turn. “The woman at the nursery-”

  “Maggie Sharp.”

  “-was wearing a lot of makeup. You notice that?”

  “I did.”

  “Struck me funny at the time, an outdoor person like that bothering with cosmetics. But if she was covering something?”

  “And while you were thinking that, I was thinking about Boatwright. The caretaker was tearing up a perfectly good garden and replanting it, supposedly at Boatwright’s request.”

  “That certainly plays a little differently now.”

  “Blunt trauma,” Walt said. “I keep coming back to a baseball bat. Marty Boatwright’s a football guy, and he’s old. I don’t see him clubbing Gale from behind.”

  “His gardener maybe? An ax handle.”

  “What if Wynn was right? What if Gale was here poking around old wounds? Wynn scares him off so he moves on to Boatwright. Caretaker sees a trespasser and takes a club to the back of the guy’s head without introductions. Boatwright realizes who it is, and for whatever reasons of his own, doesn’t want anything to do with this and tells him to dump the body and remake the garden, because in the struggle the garden got trashed.”

  “There’d be an evidence trail a mile long,” Boldt said. “If Boatwright or his man owns a pickup truck, I’d start there. His man’s clothes and house would be next.”

  “Be interesting if Boatwright’s name turned up on the same list server as Wynn: people considered at risk from Gale. That list would help us out.”

  “I had a case down there that involved a home for boys. I had contact with some people. I could make a few calls.”

  “It’s not your case,” Walt said. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

  “You didn’t. Not that I heard. And as far as that goes, Gale’s death could easily tie to Caroline Vetta, and that means I’m interested.”

  “Boatwright is not going to open his doors for us,” Walt said. “And replanting a garden hardly gives me probable cause.”

  “The lab identifies what kind of plant made that pollen and we’ve got front-row seats either at the nursery or Boatwright’s.”

  “I can nudge them to hurry it up. But they won’t get started until Monday at the earliest. And only then if I twist a few arms.”

  “Looks like you and I are entering a long-distance relationship, Sheriff. And you know how those turn out.”

  “In all honesty, it’s been a pleasure.”

  “Back at you.”

  Walt moved for the car door. Boldt stayed where he was.

  “It’s none of my business,” Boldt said. “How do I say this? Your father… when we talked…”

  “My father can be a real asshole.”

  “He took a kind of holier-than-thou attitude, not with me, but about you. Like I could teach you something by coming over here. As I said, it’s none of my business.”

  “I apologize.”

  “My point being, he was wrong. Dead wrong. I could give him a call, as a follow-up, let him know how it went over here. Wouldn’t want to do that without your permission. Wouldn’t want to tread where I shouldn’t.”

  The pit in Walt’s stomach told him more about himself than he wanted to acknowledge.

  “Tread wherever you’d like,” he said, feeling the warmth of sweet satisfaction flooding him. “Kind of wish I had a wire in place for that phone call.”

  Boldt barked out a laugh. When he climbed into the Jeep, the vehicle sagged to his side and then leveled. Boldt clipped into the seat belt, let out a sigh, and said, “I’m going to miss this place.”

  24

  “This is a pleasant surprise,” Walt told Fiona as he entered his office to find her waiting for him.

  “I told Nancy it had to do with photographs,” she said, hoisting her camera case. “I lied.”

  “A social visit?” He kissed her on the cheek. The return kiss was tepid at best. He moved around to behind his desk, thinking of little else.

  “I wish. No. It’s… I need a favor, and I’m not sure it’s fair to ask. I don’t want to take advantage of our… you know… the other night, but at the same time, I need something.”

  He stood and eased his office door shut and returned to the chair next to her, forgoing the seat behind the desk.

  “Talk to me,” he said.

  “I… the thing is…” She met his eyes and then looked quickly away.

  “We’re both adults here.”

  “It isn’t that,” she said. “It’s… We don’t really know each other,” she said. “Not all that well.”

  He felt it in the center of his chest, not like a knife but more like a medical procedure where all the blood, all the life, was being drawn out of him into a syringe, while he sat there watching it.

  “That’s what we do. Right? From here on out. Get to know each other better. Share the stuff you never share. It’s what makes the bond unique. Worth so much. I want to know you. I want to know all about you.”

  Her eyes welled. “You might be surprised.”

  “Try me. I like surprise.”

  For an instant he saw in her a hope or dream, but something passed like a shadow between them and then that look was gone, replaced by something more protective and even suspicious. He’d had similar moments in interrogations when the suspect seemed ready to download, only to clamp down and turn inward. He’d lost her. Rather than push, or fish, which was his nature, he sat back and tried to appear the model of patience.

  “I called the company. The one that can trace the pickup. Michael and Leslie’s pickup.”

  He kept his mouth shut, measuring her fragility in her sideways looks and the whispering quality of her voice.

  “They said I have to file a police report. Report it as a stolen vehicle. Without that they won’t trace it.”

  “Pretty common with these companies,” he said. “They want it to be for real. It’s not a service to track down your missing teenager.”

  “But that’s just it: that’s what I need. To track down Kira.”

&nbs
p; “Meaning?”

  “I haven’t seen her in a couple of days, Walt. That happens sometimes. We can go most of a week without overlapping. But the pickup truck being gone. That’s not good. She knows the rules. The last thing I want is for her to get into trouble with Michael and Leslie and maybe lose the house-sitting thing. But if I want to track her down, I have to report it as stolen, and if I report it as stolen-”

  “The Engletons find out about it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But if I were to make the call…?”

  “Something like that. Yes.”

  “No problem.”

  “What? Really?” He watched the load come off her: her head raised, her shoulders seemed higher, straighter.

  “Not a big deal,” he said. “I can have Nancy make the call.”

  “But does it… I don’t know. Could you get into trouble?”

  “I can’t imagine how. We make these kinds of calls often enough. It’s really not a big deal.”

  “It is to me.”

  “Well then, consider it done.”

  Her eyes softened.

  “Have you tried something old-fashioned, like calling her?”

  “Voice mail.”

  “I don’t love the idea of her going missing at a time we’re searching the woods in your area.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you think there’s any chance… any possibility that her departure is related to-?”

  “No!” she said sharply, cutting him off. “I think she just took off in the truck. She’s still just a kid. There was already stuff brewing between us. She was mad that I left the Advocates dinner when I did.”

  “That surprised me as well.”

  “And she apparently had a flashback in the middle of her talk-”

  “Yes, she told me.”

  “And that freaked her out, and I think she was counting on me being there for her. And I wasn’t. And I feel bad about that, but it is what it is.”

  He hoped she might explain her sudden departure that night, but she chose not to-and that was how he thought of it: that she made a decision not to share with him, and he took that as a bad omen. He nearly said so. Might have, had she not cut into his thoughts.