12
"I don't understand," Phil says after I explain what's happened.
"Someone tried to shoot Oliver Brady," I say.
"Yes, I understand that's what you're telling me, Detective, but I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. You presume Mr. Brady was the target."
"If Eric hadn't pushed him down, he'd have been--"
"And what proof do you have of that?" Phil cuts in, his voice edged with impatience. "I'm sorry to interrupt, Detective, but I am concerned that you are leaping to conclusions here. There is no way of telling that the bullet would have hit Mr. Brady. Even if there was, that doesn't prove he was a target. It may have been simply a random shot fired by a settler."
"The shooter was in a tree. That's a targeted attack."
"Perhaps because you were trespassing on territory the shooter considers his."
"So it was a complete coincidence that we were walking the prisoner in the forest when someone fired a shot from a tree--which has never happened before--and that bullet just happened to seem aimed at our prisoner. Presuming it was a random attack--"
"--is like seeing a grizzly barreling in your direction," Dalton says, "and standing your ground because there's a chance he's not actually charging at you."
"A colorful analogy, Sheriff," Phil says. "But I take your point. Obviously extra steps will be required to secure the prisoner."
"Like what?" Dalton says. "Keeping him locked up six months with no exercise?"
"I do not have an issue with that. Nor does his stepfather."
"Our residents will. They already think he's being mistreated."
"I'm sure you can handle that, Sheriff."
"I can. What I can't handle is the loss of respect they'll have for me--and Casey and Will--for a situation that is not our fault. We don't want Brady here."
"And did you take steps to rectify that?"
"Excuse me?" I say.
"Yeah," Dalton says. "We put one of our guys in that tree to shoot him. Stupid me forgot we planted the sniper and nearly got my ass killed trying to save the target. Whoops."
"What I mean, Sheriff, is that you might have let your dissatisfaction with the situation be known, and one of your citizens decided to relieve you of the responsibility. Are all your guns accounted for?"
"They're all in the locker," I say. Which is technically true.
"Then I don't know what to tell you, besides my suspicion that this was one of your forest people, and regardless of whether Mr. Brady was the target, you should reconsider walking him outside of town boundaries."
"On another subject," I say, "do you know anything about a shooting in San Jose?"
Silence. "A shooting . . ."
"In San Jose."
"There are many shootings in America these days, Detective. To the point, sadly, where they begin to blur."
"This was in a school playground, and the shooter is still at large."
"That does sound familiar. But I fail to see what . . . Are you suggesting that has something to do with this shooting?"
"Brady mentioned it."
"All right . . ." A long pause. "I'm still not seeing the connection. I seem to recall a sniper was involved in the playground incident, but I'm at a loss to even guess what the connection might be."
"I thought it was odd that he brought it up."
"Ah. What you're saying is that it's odd that he mentioned a sniper shooting . . . and then seems to be the target of one. You're wondering if Mr. Brady himself had something to do with the attempt this afternoon."
"Sure." That wasn't where I was going at all--I just wanted to verify that there had been a shooting in San Jose and see how Phil reacted to Brady mentioning it.
Phil continues, "You're asking whether Mr. Brady knew where he was going. Or if he might have been followed there by a confederate."
"Yes."
"There was no indication of a partner in his crimes. However, Mr. Brady has the money to hire someone to do what you are suggesting--appear to shoot at him, in hopes of bolstering his claims of innocence. He is proclaiming that innocence, I presume."
"To anyone who'll listen, which is why we're keeping the gag on."
"A wise idea."
"Yeah," Dalton says. "It really helps those who think we're mistreating him."
There's a pause, and Phil manages to sound borderline sympathetic when he says, "I can see that would be a problem. It will need to be dealt with very carefully."
Dalton snorts.
Phil continues, "Back to the issue, while I will agree that Mr. Brady could hire someone to do this, I don't see how he would carry it out. We were exceedingly careful with transport, funneling him through multiple handlers, none of whom knew the situation or the destination or had any experience with Rockton."
"None knew the situation?" I say.
"That is correct. They were told only that they were transporting a dangerous prisoner. We advised leaving the gag on, and we said they could not trust any story he told if it came off. The warning wasn't really necessary. For those we hired, this would go without saying."
"The woman who brought him here was ex-military," I say.
"Most were."
"Any with sniper training?"
He pauses. "I have no idea, but I will look into that, particularly with the woman who delivered him. That would be the only scenario I see working here--that he communicated with her and she agreed to help. She knew where he was being held. And she is a mercenary. Excellent deductive reasoning."
Or, maybe, just an excuse he can utilize. Why, yes, Detective, it turns out she was trained in distance shooting, and we cannot track her current whereabouts. Good job, Casey. Gold star. Case solved. Move on.
"What about the stepfather?" I say. "Does Gregory Wallace know where Oliver is being held?"
"Not specifically. And I can't imagine why he'd pay us to keep the young man safe . . . and then hire an assassin to kill him. That's hardly cost effective."
Actually, it would be very cost effective. If Oliver Brady is innocent, that will be proven when someone else is accused of the same crimes. Even if that never happens, his mother might begin questioning. It's far more convenient for Brady to be dead. I'm so sorry, darling--I tried to keep him safe for you, and I couldn't.
If Brady is guilty, there's still a reason to assassinate him. How long will Wallace want to pay to keep his murderous stepson safe? Whatever the scenario here, killing Oliver Brady is both efficient and cost effective. The only reason Wallace wouldn't have done that right away is his wife. Better for her to think Wallace tried to save her boy, no matter what crimes he's committed.
I talk to Phil for a while longer, but there's nothing more to get. Before we sign off, he says, "Sheriff?"
"Yeah."
"I know we've put you in a bad position."
"The word you want," Dalton drawls, "is 'untenable.' "
There's a long pause, and then an almost reluctant "I'm not sure that's the proper term," as if he's loath to correct his uneducated sheriff, when the poor guy is trying to expand his vocabulary.
"Yeah," Dalton says. "It is. Untenable. A position or argument we cannot defend. We have a killer who has done seriously fucked-up things, yet I cannot explain that to people or they'll revolt. But if I don't tell them, they'll think we're mistreating a common criminal. Or that he didn't commit a crime at all. Maybe we're afraid they'll discover the truth if we take off that gag. An untenable situation."
Another long pause. Then, "You'll work it out, Sheriff. I just need you to understand, particularly in light of this shooting, how important Mr. Brady is to Rockton. The cost of hiding the town against modern technology is skyrocketing. We need to take advantage of opportunities like Oliver Brady."
"Bullshit." Dalton's voice is low, nearly too low to hear, and there's a note in it that has the hairs on my neck rising.
"I beg your pardon?"
"That's bullshit, and you know it. You want to cover skyrocketing costs? Look at reducing y
our profit margin."
Phil's voice cools. "I don't like your implication, Sheriff. Anytime you would like to see our fiscal reports, I will have a copy sent to Dawson City for you."
Which wouldn't do any good. It's not the official income that counts. It's the hidden profits, from those who buy their way in under a false story.
"Oliver Brady is your responsibility, Sheriff," Phil says. "You only have to keep him safe for six months. I'm certain you can do that. If you can't, we'll need to find someone who can."
13
It's almost ten at night, and there's still enough daylight for me to squeeze in an hour of training with Storm. She's graduated beyond obedience lessons. We covered those as soon as she was old enough. We've passed manners training, too, which is particularly critical given her size. Greeting people by jumping on them ceased to be adorable about twenty pounds ago. By the time she's full-grown, even leaning in for attention could topple people. Roughhousing is for playtime and only with a select few people. For the rest, she must comport herself with queenly dignity.
Tonight's lesson is also critical for her breed: distraction and dominance training. She'll weigh more than me in a few months, which means I will physically be unable to restrain her. I'm putting her through her basic paces--sit, stay, come--while Dalton sits on the porch and tosses her favorite ball in the air.
"Storm . . ." I say when she looks his way.
Her ears perk, but her gaze doesn't move.
"Eyes on me."
Her head shifts, just enough so she can see me out of the corner of her eye.
"Uh-uh. Eyes on me. Both of them."
Her gaze shoots to me. Back to Dalton. He chuckles.
"Storm."
She sighs, a deep one, her jowls quivering. Then she looks my way and keeps her attention there.
Dalton fake-fumbles the ball. As it thumps to the ground, her head whips toward him.
"Storm," I say. "Eyes on me."
Another sigh, as she looks my way with a glower, like a teen saying, Happy now?
"Stand."
She does.
"Sit."
She grumbles at that, having clearly hoped the stand meant she was about to be released.
"Down."
She flounces to the ground. Dalton pitches the ball. It springs past us, and her muscles bunch.
"Stay."
She hesitates, muscles still tense. Then she gives in and tears her gaze from the ball.
"Are you ready?" I say.
She whimpers, body quivering. But she doesn't rise. Doesn't look at Dalton. Keeps her gaze on me.
"Wait . . . wait . . . and . . . go."
She leaps up and tears toward Dalton . . . and I see that sling on his arm.
"Shit!" I say. "I mean, no, wait--"
He falls on his ass before she can get to him. As she pounces, I'm running over with "Storm, no--"
"It's fine," he says. "We've got this."
He sits on the ground and rubs her with his good hand as she dances on his lap. Then he raises his arm for me to toss him the ball. I do, and I retreat to the deck to watch them play fetch. Except Dalton has never actually known a dog, so his version of fetch is, well, unique. He throws the ball, and they both run after it, which usually results in a football tackle. That's more his style, getting in there and working off energy, and Storm loves it, so I wouldn't argue . . . if he didn't have his arm in a sling.
When I try to intercede again, though, he waves me off, and he is being careful, so I settle on the deck. I watch him shrug off his day and become the guy he can be only in the relative privacy of our backyard. The guy who slides on the grass and tackles a dog and gets a faceful of fur and comes up sputtering and laughing and crowing in victory, too, as he waves a slobbery ball over his head.
I think of Phil's thinly veiled threat to exile Dalton, as if he's committed some terrible crime. That "crime" is devoting his life to this town, risking his life today to protect a man who did not deserve protecting. Dalton might stride through Rockton like he owns the place, but it owns him, too, and it owes him better than this.
I never want to lose the guy I see tonight, playing with a dog. This problem isn't mine to fix, and it's patronizing to try, but sometimes I peer down Dalton's life path, to a future where he becomes the front he shows others--harsh, tough--and then continues along that road until he reaches bitter resignation, no longer even bothering to fight back, because he knows it won't do any good.
I fear for a future where Dalton is no longer Rockton's protector, its best advocate, its biggest cheerleader. A future where he's just a guy doing a job, putting in his time here because he has no place else to go, hating the town and himself for that.
I want to tell myself I'm overreacting. I see him playing with Storm, and I want to say, See, even amid all this, he's fine. But I know Oliver Brady will not be an anomaly. Phil hinted at that today. If Brady survives his stay here, there will be others. If he doesn't? I don't know what happens then, but I fear that outcome would be even worse. For Dalton. For Rockton. For all of us.
14
That afternoon, I run fingerprints from the gun locker, which is a far cry from the way I used to do it down south. I'm a technology-era baby. From my earliest experiences in a police department--when I told my parents I was volunteering at the Y--I saw fingerprints run on computers. I remember my disappointment at that. It seemed so dull compared to what I'd read in old crime novels. I also remember, when I became a detective, looking back and rolling my eyes at my younger self, unable to imagine the work involved in manually processing fingerprints.
Now I can.
It might be possible to process them by computer. Dalton has a laptop for when he goes down south on business. It will run here if I charge it from the generator. I could buy a scanner and input the townspeople's fingerprints into a database and then find a program to compare them to crime scene prints. But honestly, with a small and constricted population, that's more work than manually processing.
So, in this, as in many other aspects of my job, I have become that Victorian-era detective. I have my fingerprint powder and my index cards of exemplars. And I love it. Sure, there's some misplaced nostalgia there. The public is better served by modern crime-solving methods. Yet I'm not sure that applies in Rockton, and I feel more like a detective when I dust prints from the gun cabinet, see whorls and ridges and say "That one's mine, and that's Will's, and Eric's, and Kenny's . . ." without needing to consult my cards.
I've lifted all the prints and brought them home. I'm stretched out on my stomach on the bearskin rug. Storm has her head on my legs. She snuffled the cards once, withdrawing at an "Uh-uh" from me, though not before leaving a string of drool.
While I eliminated most prints at the site, I still lifted them to pore over here. Yet I'm not seeing any other than the ones I'd expect.
"The problem," I say to Storm, "is overlapping prints. A computer is so much better at analyzing those." I lift a card. "All I see is a mess of whorls. It's like a reverse jigsaw. A very imperfect science. I hate imperfect."
"Does she ever answer you?"
Dalton's voice drifts in as the front door clicks shut.
I wait until he appears and say, "She's not supposed to. She's my Watson."
He lowers himself beside me. "I thought I was your Watson."
"Watson is the guy Holmes talks at. A sounding board to hear his theories and tell him he's brilliant. You can do that last part if you like."
"Better stick with the dog." He reaches for the card I'd been examining. "Is it even possible to separate these?"
"With computers, there are algorithms. Even those are still works in progress. I can separate out the ones at the edges, but not once I get into the middle. I'm not sure this isn't just busywork anyway. I've got enough smeared prints to suggest whoever took the gun used gloves. The stock is totally wiped down."
"Which supports the theory that we're dealing with a pro."
"No, just a non-idi
ot. The fact fingerprinting works in any of our cases shocks the hell out of me. It's not like it's difficult to find gloves around here."
He stretches his legs. "Think there's any chance Phil's right? That this could be the woman who flew Brady in?"
"On paper, she looks good. Trained soldier. Mercenary. She admits she removed his gag. If he got the chance he'd have offered her money. No doubt about that."
"Because he knows she's a mercenary."
"Right. But how mercenary? Adjective versus noun. Just because she uses her army skills to make a living doesn't mean they're for sale to the highest bidder."
"Yeah." He scratches Storm behind the ears. "And there's no chance she snuck into town without being noticed."
"Young, female, attractive . . . yep, they'd notice."
"Female's enough for this town."
I chuckle. "True. If the sniper was the pilot, why steal our gun? She'd have access to her own."
"But framing us would still help. Set us chasing our tails looking for a shooter internally."
"This is why you aren't Watson. You come up with good ideas."
Dalton rises. "Pretty sure Watson had some good ideas. Coffee?"
"Yet another good one." I watch him start the fire to heat water. "Does Tyrone have military experience?"
"Ty Cypher?"
I sit up, crossing my legs. "Sorry. Mental jump there. Thinking about the pilot made me wonder who in town has military experience. That's just Will and Sam, right?"
"Kenny was in Air Cadets."
"Which is a youth group. I don't think they train snipers. At least not in Canada. And Sam served in the navy."
"That's the one with water."
"It is."
"Any snipers?"
"The Canadian Navy has one destroyer, which is on its last legs. Lots of tugboats, though."
"Uh-huh."
"I think Sam was in peacekeeping."
"So . . . snipers?"
"That's one way to keep peace. But no. Not usually. I don't think a military connection is the answer. Marksmanship doesn't need that, though. Not by a long shot, pardon the pun. I'd like a list of our best shooters."
"That'd be Will."
I shake my head. "Good thing he was on the scene then. Otherwise, he'd be our key suspect, which is just awkward."
"After him? The best shooter is you."
"Even more awkward. Let me guess, you come after me?"