Gatekeeper

by Natasha Deen

  “—and trekked in?”

  I flopped into the chair across from her desk. “Okay, so it’s a little fantastic but what else do we have?”

  She clicked on the mouse. “The preliminary report from the coroner.”

  That had me sitting up straight. “Seriously?”

  “Very preliminary. There was evidence of a fight, a suspicious puncture wound, and he died from blunt trauma to the head. And to make sure, the murderer tossed him down the hill.”

  “But that’s stuff we already suspected. There was nothing…exotic in his wounds?”

  “Like the puncture wound being indicative of a one-fanged snake bite?”

  I ignored the jab. “I was thinking about drugs, but if you want to pin the murder on an escaped anaconda with a grudge against Kent for having once bought a snakeskin belt, I’m all for it.”

  Her laugh made the sides of her eyes crinkle. “No snake bites.”

  “Do you think it was premeditated?”

  “I don’t know. It seems spontaneous but then there’s the mysterious needle mark.” She pointed to the note on the medical examiner’s email. “If someone drugged him, it would have been a lot easier to toss him down the hill.”

  He was drugged, his mom was drugged. “Let me go with you to Edmonton,” I said. “I can do some nosing around on campus, talk to his friends.”

  “What do you think you’re going to find out that the Edmonton Police Service and I can’t?”

  “Stuff kids don’t tell adults and stuff they definitely don’t tell adults in authority.”

  “If they’re keeping something from the police, that’s obstruction.”

  “But they may not think of it as obstruction. It just might be embarrassing stuff and they’re trying to keep his privacy.”

  “Ouch, using my words against me. There’s no defense for me against that. So.” Nancy cocked her head. “How do you plan on getting them to talk?”

  “That’s really sweet of you,” said Courtney, of the long blond hair, blue eyes, headband, pearl necklace, and a sweater set. She’d been one of Kent’s classmates and lab partner. “Doing an account of Kent’s last few days for his mom and dad.”

  A few mornings after our talk at the station, Nancy and I drove to Edmonton, where she’d arranged for me to meet some of the kids Kent had been in class with. They’d gathered in front of the registrar’s office. I’d scanned the group of ten and honed in on a tall girl.

  The rest of them had seemed curious about why they had been called to the registrar’s office. She—Courtney—had sat there, all but vibrating in her seat. She was a girl with a story who was hoping someone would ask her to tell it. Which probably meant her information was going to be more fiction than fact, but I’d asked to talk to her first. The more she talked, the more I’d have when I went to the other kids.

  As we’d headed to the Student Union Building, she told me he’d tutored her on their infection, immunity and inflammation class, and how much she missed having him around.

  “I thought it was weird that he’d drop out because of class pressure when he was always so in control.” She shrugged. “But then you have kids taking all kinds of drugs to keep up, and doctors are among the worst when it comes to drug use, so…” She leaned in. “There was an article about it in the Journal of Addiction Medicine. There was an interview with like, fifty-five patients and thirty-eight of them were abusing drugs. Which is why I make sure I do yoga and meditation. I’m not giving up ten years of med school to end up in a gutter or in front of a hearing committee.”

  We walked for a minute and found a quiet corner away from the crowd. I wiped the crumbs of a muffin from the tabletop, flipped open my tablet and placed it on the surface.

  Courtney perched on the edge of her seat, shifted her upper body forward. “Did you know Kent well?”

  Let her take control. If it made her comfortable enough to spill her secrets, that’s all I cared about. “No, not at all. My best friend had a huge crush on him a couple years back and Kent had worked with her dad.”

  “Her dad’s a doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s funny that she didn’t come instead of you if she was the one with the crush.”

  “We decided I’d do it because…” I pushed the tablet aside and did my best impression of a girl trying to be strong in the midst of emotional trauma. “Actually…I’m the one who found his body.”

  “No!”

  I nodded and hoped I looked vulnerable.

  “Oh my God!” She grabbed my hand. “Are you okay? Are you having nightmares or trouble concentrating? What about your connections with friends and family?”

  From the questions, obviously, Courtney was heading to the psychiatric branch of medicine. “I’m doing…as well as can be expected, I guess.” Seeing the dead had given me a certain immunity when it came to bodies—especially since Dad owned a funeral home. Courtney, I suspected, would respond better to a damsel in distress than a casual dead-stuff-happens chick. I tried to look traumatized and strong all at the same time. Odds were, I probably just looked constipated. “You asked why I was here…I guess, seeing Kent just shook me up.”

  “I understand.”

  “It made me question life and death, and I just had to know more about him. I went to see his folks and when I saw their pain…” I shrugged and looked away, trying to buy time and come up with something equally plausible and heart-rending. “…I guess it just made me want to forget my own.”

  Her face softened and she tightened her grip on my fingers.

  Bingo.

  “So you asked the sheriff if you could come along? Was it hard to be invited into the investigation?”

  Rule one of dealing with people with stories to tell, never give them a reason to close their books, and telling Courtney I was living with the sheriff was going to ruin our sisterly connection. “I’m not part of the police investigation but Sheriff Machio, she really seems to understand—”

  “Really? She struck me as a ballbuster.”

  Oh, boy. Courtney didn’t know the half of it. “I think it’s a gender thing. Being one of the few women in a male-dominated arena.”

  There was a flash of connection in her eyes. Double bingo. Courtney would soften on Nancy, now. After all, she was a girl aspiring to be a doctor in a field that men still dominated. Heck, given the rate at which women were still under-diagnosed with heart attacks, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they were still talking about female hysteria in class.

  “Wow,” she said. “Okay, I’m understanding her a little better.”

  Great. Time to take control. “Look, I know you’re missing class and I really appreciate you giving up your time—”

  “No problem.”

  “Really, I’m just here to find out about Kent and his last days, and be able to bring something back to his family. Kent had been so busy with school that he hadn’t seen his folks in months and—”

  “Tell me about it.” She rolled her eyes but her smile took the sarcasm from the action. “I thought I was an over-achiever. That guy makes”—Her smile crumpled—“made me look like the grasshopper from Aesop’s fable.”

  “Yeah, he was driven.”

  “School from eight-to-five, labs from six-to-nine, volunteer on the weekends, plus a courier job. When did he find time to study?”

  When did he find time to shower or eat? Her timeline for his classes didn’t mesh with my memory of his schedule, and I made a note to double-check it when I got back. “I didn’t know he had a job.”

  She glanced over her left shoulder, then the right, then leaned in. “It was one of those off the book things.”

  “Off the book?”

  “They were paying him under the table.”

  Huh.

  “Something about the family being in Canada illegally but h
aving that go-get-’em attitude. It spoke to Kent.”

  “Really.”

  “So he’d help run deliveries—”

  “What kind of deliveries?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure. Stuff.”

  Something was binging in my brain. Telling me this was important. But I didn’t know why “stuff” seemed vital to the investigation. Maybe it was the shadowy family. They were in the country illegally. Maybe something had happened. Could Kent have seen something he shouldn’t have?

  My imagination raced with images of a poor but determined family smuggling themselves in crates and trucks to live the Canadian dream, only to be screwed over by a dark and evil human trafficker. It sort of made sense. I mean, if you hide people for a living, surely you could hide yourself in a small town. And if you were willing to treat humans like chattel, then maybe you were equally willing to get rid of them like trash if they threatened your livelihood. “Did he do it often? Help out the family?”

  “I think he worked almost every day. Just a couple of hours because of his schedule.” She smiled. “But every little bit helps, doesn’t it?”

  It sure did. Even if it created more questions than answers. “Do you think there’s any way for me to get a hold of them?” I raised my hands. “Not to get them in trouble or anything, but his parents would love to know that in his last days he was still trying to help people.”

  “No, I don’t know way to get a hold of them,” she said with a nose wrinkle.

  Okay, ask an open-ended question. “Who could help me with that?”

  The nose wrinkle became a full-on frown. “No one. Kent was great and nice, but he didn’t exactly get close to people.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad.” I injected as much disappointment as I could into the sentence, then I let the conversation lapse into silence.

  After a minute, the skin on her face smoothed out. She snapped her fingers. “Does the sheriff have Kent’s laptop?”

  “Uh, I’m not sure.”

  “If she does, you should see if she’ll let you take a look at it. Kent kept everything in the computer. He was very protective—overprotective—of it.”

  “Wow.” Total dead end. There’s been nothing on his computer except school notes, pictures, and the usual inane stuff people kept on hard drives. “Okay, thanks.”

  We chatted a bit more, but there wasn’t much to get from her. After the appropriate amount of time, doing some small talk so I didn’t look like I was giving her a bum rush, I stood and said, “Thanks so much for your time.”

  She came around the table and gave me a tight hug.

  If Serge had been here, he would’ve lost his mind on that.

  “No problem. If you need any extra help—” She ripped out a piece of paper and jotted down her number. “Text me. Anytime. And if you need someone to talk to, I’m here, okay?”

  I gave her another hug. “Thanks. That’s really great of you.”

  We parted at the main entrance of the building and she left to give her statement to Nancy.

  “Hey, Maggie.”

  I turned to see her coming back to me. “Yeah?”

  “You said his folks hadn’t seen him in a couple of months, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Is that what they told you?”

  I nodded again.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t say anything, but his dad’s lying.”

  What? “What?”

  “I saw him and his dad having a big fight a couple weeks before he died.”

  “You’re sure it was his dad?”

  “That’s what he said when I asked,” she told me.

  “Did he say what they’d been fighting about?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay, thanks.” I watched her leave and when I was sure she was out of range, I phoned Nancy. “Hey,” I said when she picked up the phone. “I think I just figured out how a non-resident of Dead Falls could sneak into town, kill Kent, and no one would notice. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I think Mr. Meagher may have killed his son.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Okay, thanks, Frank” Nancy tapped the Bluetooth bud nestled in her ear and returned her hand to the steering wheel. “Frank says Doug denies seeing Kent that night. And he’s pissed as hell at the suggestion he might have killed his son.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “It’s about what we can prove, not what we believe. Frank will keep him in one of the cells until we can figure that out if he’s telling the truth or lying.”

  On the other side of the passenger window, the fields of farmers’ crops, long since harvested of their grain and corn, sped by in a bleak unchanging landscape of dead grass and grey sky. I put my hands to the SUV’s heater, warmed my fingers against the cold landscape and my even colder thoughts. “But in most violent crimes, isn’t that the case? The victim’s been killed by a loved one? Or at least someone they knew?”

  She nodded.

  “And what Mr. Meagher said, isn’t that what every murderer says? ‘Gee, it was an accident. Who knew bonking my son on the back of the head with a’—what was the weapon of choice?”

  “They’re still trying to figure that out.”

  “—smacking my son on the back of the head with a yet-to-be-named object would crush his skull.”

  She grimaced. “I can’t imagine Doug would do that to Kent.”

  I couldn’t, either. But he was the only one who fit the non-resident-but-sort-of-resident MO for the killer. Plus there was the fight with Kent two weeks before he died.

  “There’s no evidence to prove he didn’t do it.” Nancy took a quick breath. “There’s also no evidence to prove he did do it. It’ll take weeks for the final autopsy report to come in and for us to get an idea of what was used to kill Kent. Until we get that information—the specifics on when Kent died and how—Doug will remain a suspect.”

  The downside of a town as small as Dead Falls was that we didn’t have a designated medical examiner. We had to rely on the one from Edmonton, which was fine. But it meant Kent was at the end of a long line of dead bodies, and it would take a while before we really knew anything.

  “Mr. Meagher doesn’t seem like the type to off his kid, does he?”

  “Nope. They had an amicable if superficial relationship.”

  “I get Mr. Meagher saying he didn’t kill his son,” I said, “What I don’t understand is why he’d deny seeing him that night when Courtney’s a witness to the fight.”

  “Probably because he’s scared it’ll turn into suspicion of murder.”

  “And lying about a fight isn’t going to land him in the same boat?”

  “No one ever said people are logical when being questioned by the police. He’s got a lot to worry about. On both the night he’s accused of fighting with Kent and the night Kent died, Doug says he was home, alone. There’s no one who can back up his story.”

  “What about his cell phone? Can’t the GPS back him up?”

  “Not really. He could have left the phone at home.”

  Good point.

  “Did you talk to Serge or Kent about this?” asked Nancy.

  I shook my head. “I figure these are the kinds of things you tell people in person.”

  “I don’t envy you.”

  “I just want to be there for both of them. Although, I’m not sure I’ll be anything but extra baggage. There’s so much in common with both their stories—”

  “When it comes to domestic crime, the stories are always the same. Only the names seem to change.” She shifted into the left lane to pass a slower-moving tractor-trailer.

  There didn’t seem to be much to add or say, so I went quiet and listened to the soft hiss of the heater.

  After a few minutes, Nancy asked, “How is everything else?”

 
“Which everything?”

  “Things are good with you and Craig?”

  “Great. I occasionally forget to…” I shrugged. “Act like a traditional girlfriend but he doesn’t seem to mind.”

  “Act like a traditional—what does that mean?”

  “You know, text him, send cute photos of me.”

  Nancy laughed. “Kid, he’s ten thousand years old. I think he’s fine with a non-traditional relationship. Besides, it’s good for you to keep some independence.” Her eyes cut my way then returned their focus to the road. “I know I’m not your mom, Mags”—She looked my way again—“but I’m happy he’s good to you. I’m happy you’re happy, and if you ever need to talk about anything, I’m here. Always, okay?”

  I blinked fast and looked out the window. When I trusted my voice, I said, “Yeah, thanks. I’m glad you and Dad found each other, too.”

  She smiled.

  “Uh—” I took a breath and plunged ahead before my second thoughts could become the words I spoke. “Has Dad ever mentioned my mom?”

  She frowned. “How do you mean?”

  “Well, you got involved with a man who has a kid. You guys must have had The Talk. Where’s the baby-momma and all that…didn’t you?”

  Her rich laughter warmed the interior. “I got to say, Mags, I’ve never thought of you as a ‘baby.’ You’ve always been full grown to me.” Her smiled flickered as she added. “Especially once I found out about the cursed-blessing of your abilities.”

  Cursed-blessing. That was well said. “But he never said anything—?”

  “It’s not something we talk about and even when I’d asked…” she sighed. “I don’t know what happened between Hank and your mom, but it’s a hurt he’s never gotten over. To ask seemed cruel—”

  “Yeah, that’s why I don’t ask. It’s just sometimes I wonder—”

  “Why she abandoned you?”

  All I could manage was a jerky head nod. “Dad’s found a way to love me. What was it about me that made her—”

  “Stop.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed tight. “You stop right there. There was nothing about you. Nothing wrong. Nothing horrible. You were just a baby—”