“I know. So we could ignore it . . . or we could try to teach her, which feels patronizing, but I’ve talked to her, and she’s fine with that. She doesn’t want to be difficult. Or rude. Or thoughtless.”
“Thank you. You’re good with her.”
He shrugs. “My brother had autism. A much more serious case. He . . .” Kenny tugs at his sheet, fussing with it. “He’s been gone a long time. We were close. When he was little, my family worked with him, getting him as far as we could. I’m no expert, but I can guide April a little. I’m almost certain she is on the spectrum. I see little hints of my brother’s behavior patterns. She’s far from his situation, though. She’s also an adult, and that’s important to remember, too. She’s a very successful, independent, brilliant adult. She’ll accept guidance, but she shouldn’t be treated like she has a debilitating condition. Not like . . .” He taps his legs.
I sit on the edge of the bed. “April says the swelling’s going down, and your sensation has improved.”
“It’s not as bad as I feared. It’s not as good as I hoped, either.”
“We still don’t know—”
“It’s okay, Casey. You don’t need to sugarcoat it for me. If I was going to recover one hundred percent, I’d be farther along by now. I’m going to have problems. The question isn’t whether I’ll ever run as fast as I did before. It’s whether I’ll walk with or without braces. My goal is getting back on my feet, one way or another. Otherwise, the council won’t let me stay.”
I open my mouth.
He cuts me off with a look. “No sugarcoating, remember? Rockton can’t handle a wheelchair-bound resident. I need to be mobile, even if I need braces and crutches. I’m ready to do the work. Just cross your fingers for me.”
“They’re already crossed.”
FORTY-TWO
I’m still working at ten, when Dalton brings our poor, neglected dog to the station and points out her poor, neglected state and guilts me into accompanying them on a long forest walk. He’s right, of course. While Roy’s episode added a laundry list of new “things to investigate,” none of it is urgent.
Until I figure out what happened to Roy, I have no idea whether it’s connected to the case. It’s probably not. He’s a bullying asshole, and he’s been getting worse, and it’s entirely possible that someone had enough and doped him in hopes he’d go on a banishment-worthy rampage. If that’s the end result, I am okay with it. Okay with the result, not the way it was done. Mindy suffered in that outburst. Whoever drugged Roy will answer for that.
I have nothing that needs my immediate attention, and my sleep gauge is close to empty, so I agree to that walk with Dalton and Storm. Then I agree to a beer on our back porch while Dalton plays with the dog. After that, I agree to let him play with me upstairs. Okay, “agree” might imply I actually consider refusing. I do not. By midnight, I am soundly and happily asleep.
I wake to the odd sensation of something encircling my wrist. I crack open my eyes to bright sunlight, and I have a momentary flash of alarm, thinking I’ve overslept, before remembering that up here, at this time of year, it’s full sunlight by six. I yawn and reach for Dalton. Whatever encircles my wrist tightens, and I find my other hand following the first as if pulled along. No, not “as if”—it is being pulled along. My wrists are tied together.
There’s not a single second where I wonder whether Dalton’s having some fun. I hesitate to call his sexual style vanilla, because that implies boring, and it’s definitely not. It’s just that kink isn’t really part of his vocabulary. He grew up with minimal exposure to mass media—including porn—and by the time he was eighteen, he had older women eager to initiate him into the world of sex. Many women, very eager. Even if he did develop a sudden interest in bondage play, there’s no way in hell he’d instigate it while I was asleep, unable to refuse. Those women taught him well.
So when that strap tightens, my heart hammers, but I keep my face relaxed, eyes shut. My hands fall onto the bed, as if I’d reached out in sleep. Then I listen. The room stays silent.
I crack open one eye. I’m lying on the right side of the bed, facing the left. Dalton’s spot is empty. On the nightstand, there’s a thermos, and a plate with a muffin and berries. The clock lies face down. A note is tucked under the plate.
Dalton’s gone. He’s turned off the alarm and left me breakfast. The note will say he’s taken Storm into work while I sleep.
I’m ready to open my eyes when fabric rustles behind me. A floorboard gives underfoot, not a creak, just a whisper of movement.
My hands are tied in front of me. Plastic cuffs. I know that without even looking. They’re the ones we keep by the box-load in the station, and we have no reason to secure them.
My gun is under the mattress. Close at hand without lying in plain sight. Not close enough to grab. There’s a knife in the nightstand drawer. A pen-knife, for utility rather than defense. It could cut these cuffs off. I peek at the drawer. Three feet away. I need to throw myself across the bed, roll up onto my feet, get the drawer open, find the knife . . .
It’d be an excellent plan if I were alone with my attacker waiting downstairs.
I am not alone.
Another board gives underfoot. The sound comes from the foot of the bed. My captor is walking around it. Moving slowly. Trusting I am asleep but knowing, from my movement a few minutes ago, that I’ll wake soon.
I turn my face into the pillow with a groan, as if shifting in sleep. I hear breathing now. Slow breathing.
I ease one leg back and brace my foot. My knees are bent, my shoulders twisted, my bound hands against the mattress. The covers lay over my legs, and I consider tossing to get free of them, but I know that’s too much movement. The sheet feels loose. I hope it is.
I have my eyes almost shut, and that means I can see only a shape circling the bed. I desperately want to open them a little more, but I don’t dare. I wait until the figure moves up alongside the bed. Then I spring. I push off with my legs, an awkward leap and roll on a direct trajectory with that figure. It is only as I hit that I see who it is. My shoulder strikes, knocking her back. I kick as hard as I can and then swing both hands—
“Casey, don’t.”
She lifts a gun, pointed at me. Pointed not at my head, but at my shoulder, and I when I see that, rage fills me. It’s the same thing I’ve done, the same thing I did with Phil, to show that it’s no idle threat. She does that, and I want her to point it at my head instead.
Don’t do what I would do. You are nothing like me.
“Casey? Just sit down, okay? I’m here to talk. That’s it. Talk.”
I stare at her, and rage blinds me until I see only the gun floating in front of me.
“This is not how you talk to me,” I say, my teeth gritted.
Petra eases back, gun lowering a fraction. “It’s not how I want to talk to you, Casey, but apparently, it’s the only way I can.”
“Like hell. I may not be happy to chat these days, Petra, but that does not give you any right to—”
“I did what I had to.”
“Break into my house? Tie me up while I’m asleep? Hold me at gunpoint? If you try to tell me that I’m overreacting, and you’re still my friend, you had better be prepared to shoot me or I swear I will kick your fucking teeth in.”
She blanches at that.
I step toward her. “You want to talk to me? Take off these cuffs. Put down that gun. If you do that, I might give you five minutes.”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” she says. “If I’m not holding you at gunpoint, you’ll decide when and if you listen to me, and when and if you stop listening to me. You’re pissed. I get that. I don’t blame you. But this . . .” She waggles the gun. “This is the language you and I both understand. Under the circumstances, it’s the only language, under the circumstances, you’ll respect. But this isn’t the conversation where I try to convince you I’m on your side and hope you’ll see I am. This is one where I—we—are in a
shitload of trouble, and I need you to listen to me.”
“Put down the gun.”
“I’ll untie your hands, but I am not—”
“If you untie me, and things go south, we’ll grapple for the gun. Neither of us wants that. So I will accept the cuffs if you put that gun down. Pull the chair over. Set the gun on the dresser. Out of your reach. Out of mine. Then you have fifteen minutes of my time, and afterward, if I don’t think whatever you had to say was this important, you’ll be charged with every offense you’ve just committed. We’ll see if your friends in the council can get you out of that.”
She puts the gun on the dresser and tugs over the chair. I sit on the edge of the bed.
“I’m the one who doped Roy,” she says.
“I know.”
She looks at me sharply.
I continue. “All right, I didn’t know for certain. There wasn’t any evidence. But you were at the top of my suspect list. The council asked you to do it, didn’t they? Dose something in his house. Plant the mushrooms. Plant the watch. Hope that he freaks out, and I find the watch and decide he did it and close the case. Phil already tried to get me to do that, as soon as I asked him about the watch. Your setup was clumsy as hell. I’d have expected better.”
“Watch?”
“Phil’s watch. Which you planted at Roy’s.”
She shakes her head. “That wasn’t me. Seems like I’m not the only one who thinks Roy makes a good suspect. As for Phil, he’s drawing his own conclusions. He wasn’t part of this. The council is barely speaking to him. They don’t trust him. They probably fed him the same story I got, that they had proof Roy was the killer, and they’d made a mistake sending him here. Tell Phil that, and as soon as you find the watch, he’ll draw his own conclusions. I can guarantee he wasn’t part of it, though. He failed with Brady. They’ve cut him loose. He’s our new Val. They just haven’t told him that yet.”
“So the council—”
“It’s not—” She stops herself. “It’s people from the council. It is not the entire council. That’s where you’ve made your mistake, Casey. Where we both did. It’s like the blind men with the elephant, feeling around and drawing conclusions based on one part. Except, with the elephant, they didn’t realize they were dealing with the same beast. You and I thought we were dealing with the same beast. And we aren’t.”
“Uh-huh.”
She leans forward. “You see a corrupt council, acting in its own best interests. I see good people who need to make hard decisions to protect the town’s best interests. But it’s not one elephant we’re assessing. It’s a council comprised of different people, with different agendas. I just got a glimpse of yours, and that’s why I’m here.”
“Okay.”
“I have primary contact with the council. You spoke to her.”
“Émilie.”
“Yes. She’s the reason I’m in Rockton. She’s dealing with health issues, though, so I’ve been in contact with two others who occasionally give me orders. My order yesterday was to dope Roy. I was told he was the killer.”
“Based on what? I know his real crimes, and they aren’t violent.”
“The council has been investigating, and they discovered he’s wanted on a Federal warrant.”
I start to say he’s not but stop myself and let her finish.
She continues, “They directed me to a cache, where I’d find a substance to place him in an altered mental state.”
“Which it did. It also could have gotten Mindy raped or killed. Maybe both.”
Petra’s cheek twitches. “I know, and that was not what I was told it would do. It was to suppress his central nervous system. Lower his defenses. Like involuntary intoxication. Place him in a state where he’d be far more likely to confess.”
“In vino veritas?”
“Yes. An easy way to place him in a state of increased suggestibility, while keeping him alert enough to be questioned.”
“That sounds like something out of a spy movie. You actually believed them?”
“I’ve used similar substances before. Not in Rockton but—Anyway, yes, I believed them, and while it was not supposed to make him violent, no one can predict the way a person will react. I was supposed to monitor him and then lead him into a situation where he’d be questioned.”
“Except you weren’t monitoring him.”
“I was. Then I was called to help in the general store, unloading the supplies Eric brought, and I made the mistake of deciding I could leave my post for a few minutes. Roy usually doesn’t drink until after dinner, and if I refused to help with the unloading, that would be suspicious. What happened to Mindy is on me. An inexcusable error in judgment. I was also furious with the council, for their error in judgment. That’s all I thought it was. In their zeal to stop a killer, they miscalculated his reaction to the drugs. Then I overheard Eric and Will talking about Roy.”
“Convenient. Also uncharacteristically indiscreet of them.”
She nods. “All right, I’ll rephrase that. I was intentionally eavesdropping on a private conversation between Eric and Will. Eric said you’d done some digging on Roy, and there was no possibility of a Federal warrant. You believed he was being set up and that the doping was tied to that.”
“Which is when you realized Roy wasn’t the only one being set up.”
“The council didn’t want me to take the fall. They wouldn’t.”
I snort.
She shakes her head. “Trust me. I have leverage like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Oh, I’m sure you believe you do.”
She starts to answer and then stops with another shake of her head. “That’s not important. The point is that I was only set up in the sense that I was given orders under false pretenses. That’s why I’m here. Something is going on with the council.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. I laugh, and when I can finally stop, I say, “Something has been going on with the council for a very, very long time.”
“I’m only just seeing that. You can laugh at my naiveté. But you haven’t exactly shared your suspicions with me, and until now, I’ve only seen the council making hard choices, like with Oliver Brady. I’m accustomed to that.”
“From the council.”
“No, from . . . before. My past life. The council, too, but I lived in a world where people made these hard choices, Casey, and I have always believed they were for the greater good. With Oliver Brady, it was. With other situations I’ve resolved here, it was.”
“Other situations?”
“Minor ones that have not interfered with any of your cases. I still believe in the council as a whole. I have just come to realize that they may not be whole. There are elements with an agenda that conflicts with Rockton’s purpose.”
“You have no idea. You honestly have no idea.”
“You’re right. I don’t. Yet you don’t see the side of the elephant I’m on. You need to understand that there are good people who can help you. That’s a conversation for another time. Right now, I believe you’re right. Someone in the council—likely multiple someones—wants this case to go away. They may be protecting the killer. They may just want to kill two birds with one stone—close this case and get rid of a problematic resident. That’s not evil, but it’s sloppy, and it endangers everyone here, forcing them to unknowingly live with a killer.”
I want to laugh at so much of what she says. At the earnestness with which she says it. She’s like the sheepdog in a cartoon, suddenly realizing one of her flock is a wolf wearing a sheepskin . . . and the scene pans to show half the sheep with wolf tails hanging out the back.
I don’t laugh because she is earnest. She really is worried that we’ll leave a killer—one killer—in Rockton. She really is blindsided by the revelation that a council member isn’t acting in Rockton’s best interests. She’s shocked that she’s been tricked into framing Roy . . . and I’m sitting here thinking “That’s it? A council member lied to you and misled you? Around
here, we call that Tuesday.”
While her genuine shock makes me laugh, it also gives me hope. Of course I need to consider the possibility she’s lying. Still, if there is a chance her shock is sincere, then I have an opportunity here. One to flip an adversary to an ally and, yep, I’ve screwed that up before—hello, Val!—but I’ve also succeeded, and I cannot afford to reject the possibility. Rockton needs all the help it can get.
“I want to see this cache,” I say. I lift my hands. “You’re going to undo these, and I’m going to take my gun. You’ll leave yours here.”
Her mouth opens in protest.
I cut her off. “You want me to trust you again? Start by trusting me.”
She nods and pulls out a penknife to cut the wrist strap.
FORTY-THREE
I stop at the station first. Petra is with me. Dalton isn’t there. I know he isn’t. I caught his voice on the wind, like Storm picking up a favorite scent. I avoid him and detour to the station, in hopes of catching someone there. I do. It’s Sam, doing militia paperwork in Kenny’s absence. I tell him that Petra and I are going for a walk to chat, and please let Dalton know if he comes by. Dalton will buy the excuse . . . as long as he doesn’t see my expression while giving it.
I do consider asking if Sam knows whether Dalton has Storm or he’s left her with a sitter. I’d love to take her on this trip. Whatever Petra might do to me, I trust her around my dog. She was Storm’s first sitter, and when Jen lashed out at the dog a few weeks ago, it was Petra who went after her. I think back to that now, to the rage on Petra’s face, so uncharacteristic, it startled me. A hint at deeper wells. I’d known that. I just hadn’t pursued it, presuming it was something in her past, no concern to me except as a friend who might want to help her get past it.
I laugh at that.
“So that story about your kid was a lie,” I say as we head into the forest.
She tenses and looks over quickly.
“You remember the one,” I say. “Not really a story so much as a scrap, tossed my way so I’ll feel like you’re sharing something personal. You’d joked about Storm being a sign that Dalton wanted kids. Then you said that we should sort that out because you’d been married and you wanted a baby when your husband didn’t. You had one, and it destroyed your marriage. When I asked about your child, you suggested he—or she—had died. A poignant backstory scrap that I now realize was complete bullshit.”
Watcher in the Woods: A Rockton Novel Page 31
