by Dana Marton
He swore under his breath. Chuck Lamm was stranger than most, but he hadn’t deserved a violent end. Since Broslin PD hadn’t been able to prevent his murder, they’d do the next best thing: see to it that justice was served.
“Anything obvious missing?”
“TV, DVD player, ham radio all in their places.” Chase kept on brushing powder on everything in sight, perhaps a little too diligently. “Haven’t had a chance to process the rest of the house yet. We went around to make sure nobody else was in here, but that’s about it.”
Harper spotted a worn leather wallet on the side table next to the sofa. He stepped closer, but didn’t touch it. No powder residue meant Chase hadn’t dusted it for prints yet.
“Found his wallet,” he said.
“Empty?”
He caught glints of green from the fold. “Doesn’t look like it.” He crossed the room, mentally recording its details. Everything old, worn, but undisturbed. There hadn’t been a fight in there either. “Have you checked Lamm’s prepper stash?”
“Canned food and bottled water stockpiled in the basement,” Chase told him. “Arsenal of guns locked in gun cabinets.”
“Did you see a safe?”
Mike walked in behind him, camera in hand. “No. But we weren’t searching for one.” He began snapping pictures of the living room. “Did you really find a pile of gold bars? Leila said.”
“Half a million dollars’ worth.”
“Holy shit.” Mike let loose a wolf whistle, then grinned. “So, a leprechaun—”
Chase cut him off. “Don’t even think about it.”
“You think Allie Bianchi and her father did it?” Mike asked without missing a beat.
“Father is dead,” Harper said. “Boot print out there is too large for Allie, but just because Tony is gone, it doesn’t mean she didn’t have an accomplice. My money’s on someone local.”
“Because Lamm let him in?”
“That, and a random stranger wouldn’t have known that Lamm kept gold on the premises.”
“Most locals wouldn’t either,” Chase put in. “How did you know to check on Lamm?”
“Last time he came into Finnegan’s, he told my father to keep his money in precious metals for the upcoming apocalypse. Gave him some flyers on where to order, how to set it up for home delivery instead of having it sent to a lockbox in a bank. Because when the apocalypse hits, the banks are going to be closed. So, no sense in keeping anything there.”
“Huh.” Mike scratched his chin. “Never thought about that.” He wrinkled his forehead, nodded, then went back to snapping pictures.
Harper did his best to remember more of Lamm’s visit. “He said a hundred-gram gold bullion was worth around sixty-five hundred. Said to order plenty of silver dollars too, because food would have to be bought when the chili cans ran out, and it would be too dangerous running around the countryside with gold bullion, not to mention how would anyone make change?”
Mike moved to the opposite side of the room for a different angle. He lifted the camera back to his eye and aimed it at the body on the kitchen floor. “Lamm’s gold brought him plenty of trouble. No apocalypse needed.”
A shame, Harper thought. “I’ll finish my initial walk-through, then I need to head back to the station.”
He left Mike and Chase to their work and searched the three small bedrooms—nothing special in any of them, worn-out furniture, ancient brown carpet. Lamm spent his money elsewhere.
The walls were blank, no artwork to hide a safe, so Harper moved on to the laundry room. No sign of a safe there either.
The basement door had a lock, similar to the lock on the front door, one that needed a key and could be locked either from the outside or the inside. The key in the lock had a bloody string hanging from it.
Mike said, “We figured the killer pulled it from around Lamm’s neck after he shot the man.”
Harper silently agreed as he moved past the door and walked down the stairs. Switched on the light. Whistled.
“Right?” Mike called after him. “Chase said he’s seen army depots stocked worse. The old guy was no slacker.”
Harper strode to the gun cabinets lined up against the wall, holding close to a hundred weapons, from handguns to semiautomatics, not all legal to own by ordinary citizens. On top, and next to the cabinets, hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition waited in carefully marked boxes.
“How did nobody at the PD know the extent of this?” he shouted up. “You know what this is?”
“A very bad day waiting to happen,” Chase responded. “Hell, if Lamm ever snapped…”
Harper didn’t even want to think about it. He turned from the disconcerting pile of weaponry.
“Six bunkbeds,” he called up. They stood ready at the far end of the basement. “Maybe Lamm had family out of town he planned to bring here for the apocalypse.”
Harper wrote his notes, then moved on to the mountain of canned food and MREs that occupied the middle of the space, carefully stacked on wooden pallets. He did a quick sketch and estimated the inventory. He was about to move on when a small detail caught his eye. One stack, only half-finished, possibly newly started, set askew from the others.
“Looks like one of the pallets was jiggled around.”
He stepped closer and crouched to check the concrete floor. No muddy footprints. Then again, if the perpetrator or perpetrators had spent some time upstairs, their boots could have dried by the time they reached the basement.
Harper grabbed the corner of the crooked pallet and pulled. As soon as he moved it a few inches, he could see the corner of a steel safe. “Here we go.”
He dragged the pallet aside until he cleared the safe—keypad entry busted—then opened the door with the tip of his boot. And he found exactly what he expected.
“Located the empty safe under the food stockpile,” he said as he went upstairs.
Two heads snapped to him.
“Cleared out?” Chase asked.
Mike lowered the camera. “What? Nothing left?”
“Killer didn’t miss a thing,” Harper told them, then he drove back to the station, thinking the case over from the beginning, step by step. In vain. He walked into Broslin PD without a single new revelation.
Leila looked up from her keyboard. “The lawyer’s with her. He got here a little after you left.”
“Thanks.”
“How are things at Lamm’s place?”
“Messy.” He paused at the counter. “You should go home. Thanks for all the help.”
She glanced at the clock on the wall. “I wanted to wait until you got back, but I wouldn’t mind checking on the boys. You know teenagers.”
Harper did. He’d certainly been up to no good at that age. “They could be sleeping the sleep of the dead, or up and smoking up a storm, drinking the tequila you’re saving for those margaritas this weekend.”
“Exactly. If you’re sure you don’t need anything else…”
He needed a lot of things. A moment of sanity, for one. And then someone to tell him what the hell was going on. He needed to get past, as quickly as possible, that the prime suspect was his ex-girlfriend. He needed to find a way to lock away old memories and focus on the here and now without letting the past color the murder case he was handling. But since Leila couldn’t help him with any of that, Harper told her to head home and catch some sleep.
“Contact information for next of kin for Lamm is on your desk.” She shut down her computer. “You have a good night too. Maybe the Bianchi girl will confess.”
Harper snorted. “Maybe I’ll win the state lottery.”
“Nope. That’s mine.”
“Okay. Then maybe aliens will land and take me to a planet populated entirely by hot women who wear nothing but cowboy boots and chaps.”
“You can have that.”
Because Harper was a guy, he gave the fantasy due consideration as he strode to his desk and picked up a sticky note that said nephew, Kevin Lamm, San Di
ego, then the address and phone number. “Thanks.”
Nearly 2:00 a.m. in Broslin meant close to 11:00 p.m. for Kevin in California. They were three hours behind PA. Kevin might not have gone to bed yet. Harper pulled out his phone and dialed.
“This is Detective Harper Finnegan from Pennsylvania.” He confirmed that he was talking with the right person before saying, “I’m calling from Broslin. I’m sorry to inform you that your uncle, Chuck Lamm, is deceased.”
Shocked silence on the other end, then “Sorry, I…”
“News like this, coming out of the blue, can be disorienting. Why don’t you sit down?” Harper signed into his computer and pulled up traffic cam footage for around his estimated time of the murder—early evening. “I can wait.”
“What happened?” Kevin asked eventually, his voice shaking. “I mean, we weren’t close, but… Can you tell me how?”
“Your uncle was shot during a robbery.”
“Oh God.” Then another long stretch of silence.
Long enough, so Harper ended up breaking it. “We’re a small town, but I can assure you, this case is going to be our priority until we have a resolution. We are going to do everything in our power to put the killer behind bars.”
“Of course. Yes. I’m sure you will. Sorry, I’m still processing here.”
“Take your time. And, please, accept my sincere condolences.” Harper wished he could give Kevin as much time as the man needed, but he couldn’t keep the lawyer waiting all night. He had to press the nephew for some answers. “I know you said you weren’t close, but are you aware of anyone who would have wanted to harm your uncle?”
“No.” The response was instant and sure. “But lately he’s been… I was going to fly out and check on him as soon as I could catch a break at work. We talked on the phone once a month, but the last few times, I thought he was… I don’t know… More paranoid than usual? He was ranting. Like he was always ranting, but more, about the apocalypse. He was convinced the end times were just around the corner, and the government was covering up how bad things were. I thought maybe early stages of Alzheimer’s?”
Kevin’s teeth clicked together on the other end, as if he was literally biting off a curse. “Do you need me to fly out there tomorrow?”
“I wouldn’t think so. I’ll call if I have any further questions. And if you think of anything that could help the investigation, or have any questions for me, you can reach me on my phone.” Harper rattled off the number.
“Thank you. I’m trying to think… I don’t know…” The man kept trailing off as the news kept hitting him. Then he gathered himself again to say, “I know he hoarded supplies. Even money. Was he killed for…”
“At this time,” Harper told him, “we believe so, yes.”
Kevin swallowed, a wet, desperate sound. “Do you have any suspects?”
“We have a person of interest in custody.” Harper closed his eyes for a second. Think of her as just another suspect.
Truth was, he would rather have had anyone but Allie Bianchi in that holding cell. But she was the one, and he was a cop, and this was the job. Someone had killed Chuck Lamm. So Harper was going to get the old man justice.
Period. End of story.
Chapter Eight
Harper pushing the door open without warning startled Allie. And that was the point, she supposed. He’d want to keep her off-kilter.
She was going to have to hold her act together and not fall for a trap. He was framing her for murder—it was the only thing that made sense.
He set the recorder he’d brought onto the middle of the table and nodded at her new lawyer at the same time. “Devon.”
“Detective Finnegan.”
“Coffee?” Harper offered them next.
Allie shook her head. Her nerves were buzzing aplenty. She didn’t want to be any more wired than she was already. She needed to stay calm and collected, unflappable. She could not afford to let him trick or goad her into saying something he could use against her later.
Harper had some tired lines around his eyes, his clothes wrinkled from the long night, yet he emanated strength. If there were any chinks in his armor, she sure couldn’t see them. He treated her in an impersonal manner as if to drive home the point that he represented the law. That they used to be friends would not matter here.
“No coffee. Thanks,” Devon said. “I’ve already had way too much tonight. I was still up, doing research for another case, when Leila called.” Then he gestured at Allie. “I would like the cuffs removed from my client. It’s unnecessary to make her uncomfortable.”
Allie expected Harper to protest, but he unlocked the cuffs and hung them back on his belt before he sat. He advised her that she was being recorded, clicking the red button, then he dictated date, time, and the names of the people present as he pulled a notebook and pen from his shirt pocket.
“Why don’t you tell me more about your relationship with Chuck Lamm?” was his first question.
Allie stopped rubbing her wrists and dropped them onto her lap. She made sure that her voice sounded strong, no hesitation, no wavering. “I haven’t seen Lamm since I moved away. And before that… Honestly, I can’t even tell you when I saw him last.”
Her lawyer took his own notes as Harper asked, “How did you know about his gold?”
“I don’t know anything about any gold.”
“Why are you in Broslin?”
“I do historical reenactments. I have my own business. I visit schools and clubs and town fairs. I have a performance for the Broslin Historical Society tomorrow.” She clenched her teeth. “I mean, today. They’re putting on a special event, and the theme is Women of the Old West. I’ll be performing as Annie Oakley. You can confirm with them.” The more her story checked out, the better. It would prove that she wasn’t a liar. “I had a performance yesterday afternoon at Suntown Elementary in Maryland. Mrs. Leone’s class. You can call and check that too. I was driving here for the next job. The storm they were predicting hit early. My car got stuck in the snow. You found me and brought me into town. Then you went back to tow my car.”
If the accusatory tone of her voice registered with him, he didn’t show it. “You didn’t drive over to the victim’s home at any time?”
“I never made it to Broslin. And you know it. You were there. Why don’t you check the traffic cams?”
“Packed with snow. It was blowing hard.” The footage was a blank screen. “Did you travel alone?”
“Yes.”
“Have you kept in touch with anyone in town over the years?”
“No.”
“You’ve had no contact with anyone in Broslin since you left?”
“That’s correct. I haven’t.”
“Not any neighbors? Old friends…”
“I didn’t have fond memories of the place. If anything, I wanted to forget the years I lived here.”
She caught his momentary pause at that. That’s right, two could do the rattling.
“You never ran into anyone from Broslin on your travels? Nobody reached out to you on Facebook?”
“No.”
Harper spent a full hour trying to catch her in a lie, her lawyer interrupting several times with “You don’t have to answer that question.”
And when Harper said, “I’d like to examine your phone,” Abram told her, “You don’t have to hand it over without a warrant.”
She liked the guy. But she gave Harper her permission and her password. “I have nothing to hide.”
Abram shook his head. He did seem like a good lawyer, but Allie didn’t relax, not for a second. Harper was just looking for an excuse to pin the murder on her. She was not going to let him. Smart, calm, and collected. She stayed the course, no matter what he threw at her.
Then, finally, finally, Harper set his pen down and leaned back in his chair. “All right. I think we’re done here for now.”
As he reached over to turn off the recorder, Allie’s lawyer gathered his own paperwork.<
br />
She didn’t want him to leave. “What’s going to happen now?”
Harper answered. “You’ll have a bail hearing at one point tomorrow.” He glanced at his watch and corrected, “Today.”
While the lawyer added, “I’ll be there.”
Panic raced through her, not enough air in the room all of a sudden. “And until then?”
“You’ll stay at the station,” Harper said.
Her gaze snapped to Abram. She waited for him to pull some legal maneuver from his sleeve. Not so fast. I object. Or What about precedent? Or some other thing lawyers always said in legal dramas. But all Abram told her in a sympathetic tone on his way out was “I’ll see you at the bail hearing. Hang in there.”
Harper pocketed the recorder and straightened the chairs before he took her elbow and led her out, escorting her to the back of the station. “Bathroom?”
Numb all over, she nodded, grateful that at least he didn’t cuff her again.
He let her use the station bathroom, and she was grateful for that too, for the privacy. In the cells, the toilets sat out in the open.
“Ever been back here before?” he asked when they got there.
“Once. Brought clean clothes for my father because he threw up all over himself during an arrest.” Being on the other side of the bars, as Harper locked the door behind her, gave Allie a whole new perspective.
She stood in the middle, more scared than she’d ever been in her life, mentally and physically exhausted but not ready to lie down yet, not ready to accept that she was there. Then anger nudged anxiety out as she watched Harper walk away. Mad enough to swallow a horn toad backwards, Calamity Jane would have said. Jane would never have let a man think she was beaten. And neither would Allie.
So, she gathered everything she had, stuck out her chin, and belted out “Cell Block Tango” from the musical Chicago at the top of her lungs.
God, the sheer defiance made her feel better. Screw Harper Finnegan.
“Singing about shooting a man in the head?” He glanced over his shoulder with an amused expression. “Might not be the best choice for a song when you’re in jail for murder.”
